‘Hello, my girl.’
I heard a warm, deep voice speak from the end of the table before I saw him. It was Al, my fairy godfather, resplendent in a dark three-piece suit and white shirt. Beside him sat Kekipi, similarly suited and booted but opting for a more Kekipi-ish cream-coloured fabric that set off his tan a treat. Apparently we were dressing for dinner.
And when I said we, I did not mean me.
I was wearing my jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a low back and, formerly, a sequin trim on the sleeves that had been relatively easily hacked off with a pair of nails scissors. It was the only half-decent option I had found in Amy’s suitcase of horrors and incredibly upset about it I was too. This was not the outfit I would have chosen to be wearing when I went one-on-one with Nick Miller. Obviously, the outfit I would have chosen would be the dress I had worn at my recent wedding to Ryan Gosling. Sadly, I was stuck in baggy old jeans and Amy’s T-shirt. Score.
‘Hello!’ I opened up my arms to Al for one of the best hugs in the business, keeping one eye open to scan the rest of the room over his shoulder but there was no one lurking in the shadows, no one waiting with a snarky comment, just Kekipi, tipping me the wink.
Nick wasn’t there.
I breathed out for what felt like the first time in hours, relieved, disappointed, sick to my stomach. I wanted to see him so badly, I could taste it; I wanted to take my eyeballs out and rub them all over him so I would never forget exactly how he looked, sitting in the garden, smoking that cigarette.
‘I am very glad to see you here.’ Al pulled out the chair beside him and waited for me to sit down, his eyes twinkling in the candlelight and late evening sun. ‘And how lovely you look.’
‘I didn’t know we were dressing up,’ I replied, taking my seat as a waiter appeared to pour my water before disappearing just as quickly. There seemed to be an awful lot of cutlery surrounding my eighteen million plates and four glasses. What was I going to do with four glasses?
‘I had a bit of a luggage malfunction.’ I gestured down at my jeans and pulled a face. ‘Fingers crossed I can do better tomorrow.’
‘Luggage malfunction?’ Kekipi asked, slapping another waiter’s hand away to pour my glass of prosecco himself. ‘Sounds scandalous.’
As with the rest of the house, the dining room was predictably beautiful, but instead of the high ceilings everywhere else in the palazzo, I looked up to see the sky. The dining room was outside. Even though it was inside. Mind. Blown. The dining table was right in the middle of the room, covered in more white and peach flowers, roses this time, and the whole space was lit with candles.
‘Amy decided to pack for me,’ I said. ‘So I need to go shopping. Without her.’
‘Milan’s best boutiques are right on our doorstep,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in the morning.’
I nodded, deciding now wasn’t the time to get into the difference between Milan’s best boutiques and the nearest H&M. Sipping my water, rather than the prosecco, I tried to peep around the room as subtly as possible. Definitely just us. And the invisible waiters.
‘Are you looking for someone in particular?’ Kekipi asked.
I looked at him sharply.
‘Should I be?’ I asked, combing my hair behind my ear and lowering my voice into a hiss. I’d been calling his extension for hours and he hadn’t replied once. It was hard to concentrate on half an Italian episode of Game of Thrones when you were as pissed off as I was. I had not had a restful afternoon.
Kekipi shrugged and I dug my fingernails into my palms so sharply, I was worried I had magically developed Wolverine powers.
The double doors opened once more to reveal Amy, wearing the leftovers from Molly Ringwald’s prom dress in Pretty in Pink. Her polka-dot skirt entered a full three seconds before she did, clashing impressively with the peachy tones of the dinner table.
‘Hi!’ She tiptoed over to the table in matching pink Mary Janes and white ankle socks. ‘I’m not late, am I?’
‘Not at all.’ Al rounded the table to kiss the back of Amy’s hand and pull out her chair. ‘I apologize for not being here to meet you earlier; I am Albert Bennett, and please call me Al. So happy that you were able to come along on the adventure.’
‘How could I not?’ she said, settling into her chair with a prolonged rustle. ‘Tess had such amazing stories about her visit to Hawaii that I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. And you know, she needs a chaperone.’
‘So this is Amy.’ I glanced over at Kekipi who was clearly already utterly in love. He was so fickle.
‘What are you wearing?’ she whispered as the main doors opened again to allow four waiters carrying elaborate platters to the table. ‘That’s supposed to be a dress.’
‘Maybe on you,’ I hissed back. ‘But unless everyone at the table wants to see my womb, it’s a shirt on me.’
‘Still, you could have dressed up a bit,’ she muttered. ‘I love Al’s beard.’
‘It’s a brilliant beard and don’t you start,’ I warned her as the platters were placed on the table, full of cold meats and cheese and God knows what else. ‘Are we waiting for anyone else?’
‘Artie can’t join us this evening,’ Al replied with a barely detectable edge to his voice. I couldn’t work out if he was annoyed or relieved. ‘So I believe I have you two ladies all to myself. So, Tess, remind me exactly where we left things in Hawaii? What’s been happening with you?’
‘I’m sure no one wants to hear about that.’ I waved my hand, waiting for someone else to start eating so I could stuff my face with prosciutto. The service might be super formal but I was happy to see the actual meal was going to be suitably casual.
‘She came home, she made up with Paige, called Nick like a million times but he hasn’t called her back, so now she’s sort of going out with her mate, Charlie, and he wants to start an advertising agency but I think she’s mental to do that when she could be doing this. Oh, and Charlie told her he loved her and she gave him a double thumbs up.’ Amy paused to take a breath. Just one. ‘And, oh, she got kicked out of her flat and then arrested for breaking and entering and fell out of a window, which sounds worse than it is because it’s actually quite a funny story. I swear to God.’
The entire table stared at her in silence.
She raised her glass to her lips, peering at me over the edge. ‘What?’
‘Thanks,’ I said with a bright smile. ‘That was concise.’
‘What?’ she reached over and grabbed a piece of bread, much to Kekipi’s delight. ‘You didn’t break your neck or anything. They didn’t put you in prison; you’re not in Holloway. Or Rampton.’
‘What’s a Rampton?’ Kekipi asked, nothing on his plate and rapture in his eyes.
‘Prison for mentals,’ Amy answered.
‘It’s a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane,’ I said, piling my plate high with meat. ‘So yeah, we’re all relieved I’m not there.’
‘Yet,’ Amy added.
‘It sounds as though you’ve done a fine job of keeping yourself busy,’ Al said, spooning some olives onto his plate. ‘I’m glad you could fit me in.’
‘It wasn’t a difficult decision,’ I lied, not wanting Al to think I didn’t want to be there. ‘There’s a lot of stuff going on but I’m really excited to be here. Super excited about your project.’
‘As am I,’ he replied. ‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I needed someone to give me a kick up the backside to get it started.’
‘Kekipi?’ I said.
Al smiled as he swallowed an olive. ‘Of course not, it was you.’
It was me?
‘It was me?’
‘Of course you.’ Al set down his knife and fork while Amy and I ploughed through the cheese platter. ‘All those talks we had, you really made me think, Miss Brookes. Life is too short not to take chances when you get to my age and so I’ve decided to go for it.’
‘Go for what, exactly?’ asked Amy, through a mouthful of burrata. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘Originally, when I asked you to come here, it was to shoot a retrospective of sorts,’ Al explained. ‘Taking those photos of Jane’s clothes, it was wonderful. Really, it was the first time I’ve been able to take pleasure in fashion since I lost her.’
Amy sniffed loudly, pulled a very sad face and then shovelled another forkful of cheese into her gob.
‘I thought what a glorious idea,’ he went on, after offering Amy a consoling pat on the wrist. ‘A beautiful book to catalogue all of my Janey’s glorious clothes, all the fashions she chose for the store, all of the outfits that were important to us. Janey always said that clothes tell a story and what better story to tell?’
‘I think that’s a brilliant idea,’ I said. He was right, I’d never been much of a clotheshorse but I remembered every last detail of every important outfit I had ever worn, good or bad. ‘But, what are you thinking now?’
‘I still want to do the book one day, a full retrospective, the history of it all,’ he replied as the servers reappeared to take away the food, much to my dismay. ‘But looking back made me look forward. I might have seen my best years but I’m not for the knackers’ yard just yet. I’m not quite ready to go gentle into that good night.’
‘What he’s trying to say is, you created a monster,’ Kekipi interrupted. ‘I find him huddled over his desk at two, three in the morning. He won’t go to sleep, he won’t rest in the day, it’s all quite frustrating.’
‘He’s worse than having a wife,’ Al said, scratching his beard and shaking his head. ‘As you know, my son Artie is set on taking over the Bennett’s retail business.’
‘I do know that,’ I confirmed. Artie had been quite clear about his ambitions the last time we had met. He had also been an obnoxious wanker, a trait he did not inherit from his father. ‘So what does that mean for you?’
‘It means starting again,’ he said, the twinkle in his eyes turning into a burn. ‘AJB.’
Amy looked at me, concerned. ‘Isn’t that something you can catch?’
‘The initials stand for Albert and Jane Bennett.’ Al sat back in his chair and unfastened the bottom two buttons on his waistcoat. ‘My new fashion line.’
‘That’s amazing.’ I said, both to Al and the servers who had reappeared carrying lots more food. ‘You’re really going to do it?’
‘Janey always wanted to start her own line but we got so caught up running the shops and then Artie came along and before we knew what was happening, we were old and she got so poorly.’ He nodded to a tall, dark-haired waiter to fill one of the glasses beside his plate with red wine. I wondered how many members of staff were rattling around the place; I had yet to see the same person twice.
‘I was game at the time but once things had moved on,’ Al said, swirling the wine around in his glass, ‘I felt out of step with things. And Artie was quick to confirm that for me, as you can imagine.’
I smiled politely as the waiter filled another of my glasses with red wine and then drained my prosecco, so that I wouldn’t have two full glasses of booze in front of me. Two glasses of wine would be fine. I couldn’t possibly get throw-up drunk when I’d eaten a bakery’s worth of bread and was about to go to town on what looked like the most delicious pasta I’d ever seen. My biggest worry was that my jeans wouldn’t fit in the morning and then I really would have to wear the stretchy green and blue paisley mini skirt I’d found in my suitcase.
‘But looking at Jane’s clothes for the first time in so long, it occurred to me that maybe fashion hasn’t changed that much. Or maybe I’m so old that my eye has come back in style, I’m not sure.’ He spun a forkful of tagliatelle into his mouth, miraculously missing his beard. ‘The idea of putting together a history of Bennett’s made me think that we should be documenting this new venture from the very beginning. And that’s why I need you.’
I felt myself flush a little, whether it was from the wine, the compliment, or the fact that it was still almost thirty degrees out and I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I wasn’t sure.
‘Not that I’m trying to talk myself out of the job,’ I said pushing my pasta around the plate. ‘But you do know I’m not a real photographer, don’t you? You could get anyone for this. Like – like a proper one.’
The fact that I could not actually name any proper photographers only confirmed to me that I was not one.
‘I know you may not be as experienced as some photographers,’ he corrected me, ‘but I’ve seen your work and, more importantly, I’ve seen your passion. Do you remember that first day we met on the beach?’
I thought back. ‘The day I wasn’t watching where I was going and fell flat on my arse?’
‘The day you were so engrossed in your pictures that you didn’t even see me sat right in front of you,’ Al said. ‘You have a talent, Tess. And what’s more, you bloody well make me laugh. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have poking around in my business with a camera. I don’t want a gang of strangers documenting my every move. I’ve thought about this. I only want people I trust in on this, people I like.’
‘And there’s nothing I would love more,’ I said, meaning every word. ‘But I don’t want to let you down. I love taking pictures, I just don’t know if I’m experienced enough to do you justice.’
Al reached across the table to take my hand. ‘You are so determined to deny your passion. Why would you wish your life away on anything other than the thing you love?’
‘Good question.’ Amy spoke from behind her wine glass, her eyes rolling skyward.
‘Amy hates my job,’ I explained. ‘In case you were wondering.’
‘I don’t hate her job,’ she said, turning to address the gents. ‘I hate that she has no life. I hate that I’ll call her on a Saturday morning to go to the pictures that night and she’s in the office and I hate that I call her on Sunday to see if she wants to go for lunch and she’s in the office. Do you know she missed her own surprise birthday party two years ago? Tell them why.’
‘They don’t want to know why,’ I said.
‘Tell us why immediately,’ Kekipi countered.
‘My boss asked me to work on a special project,’ I said, flashing Amy a warning which she duly ignored. ‘That’s all.’
‘She cat-sat his incontinent Persian for three bloody days,’ she shouted, slapping the table. ‘Over her own birthday.’
I rubbed a hand over my face, only to get a palmful of smudged mascara. Brilliant.
‘Professionalism and self-sacrifice are great strengths,’ Al said, taking my panda hand in his. ‘But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for you to take a little bit more time to see what makes you really happy, work out what lights the fire.’
He let go of my hand and patted it lightly, before turning his attention to the rest of the table.
‘So, Amy.’ She perked up at the mention of her name like a neglected puppy. ‘I’m assuming you haven’t been assisting my favourite photographer for very long. Tell me, what were you doing before she convinced you to run away to Milano?’
‘Me and Tess grew up together and then we went to uni and I was going to be a teacher but I hated it and then I was engaged to this guy Dave who was lovely but it didn’t work out and I probably should have broken it off earlier but you don’t really know until you know, do you?’
Al and Kekipi stared at her, shell-shocked once more. Amy took a deep breath and started again.
‘So we broke up just before the wedding, actually, but he’s fine, he’s engaged again and she’s having a baby and I’ve been working retail mostly but at the moment I’m in between jobs, so Tess said, come to Milan and help, so I thought, why not go to Milan and help! So yeah, that’s it really. Any other questions?’
I sipped my wine and sat back in my chair, smiling at my shoes, while Al and Kekipi stared at my best friend, completely speechless. There were only three things to know when dealing with Amy. One, never wear anything dry-clean only, two, never order anything you weren’t prepared to share and three, never, ever, ask her a question.
Once she got started, she did not stop.
‘Al’s right though,’ Amy said, following me along the hallway, Mary Janes in one hand, a full glass of red wine in the other. I couldn’t bear to look in case she was spilling it on the carpet. I wasn’t her mother; she wasn’t my problem.
Oh God, I thought, fiddling around in my pocket for the suite key, she so was.
‘You’re so dead set on doing what you think is the right thing you’ve actually convinced yourself it’s what you want.’
I breathed in through my nose and reminded myself I was only moments away from locking the door to my bedroom, with Amy on the other side of that door.
‘I’m not saying starting an agency wouldn’t be exciting, I’m not saying Charlie isn’t exciting,’ she said with a look that suggested that was exactly what she was saying. ‘I’m only thinking about how excited you were when you got your first camera. You were so happy. I can’t think of anything else you’ve ever loved that much. Apart from me. And The Little Mermaid.’
‘It is a genuinely good film with an important message,’ I replied, unlocking the door to our suite. Someone had been in to straighten up. There was nothing I didn’t love about this place.
‘Yes, I know! It’s about pursuing your passions.’ Amy rapped me on the side of the head. ‘Ariel takes a chance and risks everything to get what she loves.’
‘No it isn’t,’ I said, pushing her away and kicking off my Primark flats. ‘It’s about determination. It’s about knowing what you want and refusing to give up on it.’
Amy glugged her wine and attempted to place the empty glass on a side table and missed. ‘So you’re saying that working eighty hours a week is the same as selling your voice to a sea witch?’
I picked the glass up and placed it down carefully. ‘So you’re saying that trading my voice for legs is the same as turning my back on my career to fanny about trying to be a photographer?’
‘She’s got legs!’ Amy yelled as I turned and walked straight into my bedroom. ‘Human legs! And we’ve only got three days!’
Closing the door behind me, I undid the top button on my jeans before it pinged off across the room and broke something. It would have been great to get some advance warning that there were going to be four courses at dinner before I stuffed my face with half a loaf of bread and hoovered up all the pasta. Not that the steak that followed wasn’t delicious. Or the tiramisu. I just didn’t need to eat again for another week.
‘Tess!’ Amy pounded at my door. So much for peace and quiet.
I opened it an inch, peeping through the crack.
‘Me and Kekipi are going out for a drink, do you want to come?’ Amy stood smiling sweetly with the living room phone in her hand.
I did want to go.
I wanted to ask Kekipi what was going on with Nick. Had I really seen him in the garden earlier or did I need to book myself in for a CAT scan? All through dinner, every time I’d try to raise the subject, Kekipi had moved the conversation on to something else. But now it was late, I was tired, I had more mascara on the back of my hands than on my face and so it was a no.
‘You go,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Don’t take him to a karaoke bar though, I’m warning you.’
‘You’re sure?’ she asked, looking more than a bit sad. ‘Come on, we haven’t had a night out in ages.’
‘I’ve got to be up in the morning,’ I reasoned. Al and I had made breakfast plans to talk business and I didn’t think rolling in, stinking of late night McDonald’s with sick in my hair would be a good way to start. Not that I’d ever done that. Cough. ‘I wouldn’t be a lot of fun. You go and bond with Kekipi, keep him out of trouble.’
She saluted and leaned in to plant a jammy goodnight kiss on my cheek. ‘Understood, so get some sleep. Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ I said. ‘Have fun.’
I watched as she skipped out the front door and waited to hear it close before shutting my own. She was exhausting but she was still the best. Shimmying out of my jeans, I picked up a hair tie and pulled as much of my hair as I could up behind my head.
‘Tess!’
More pounding on the door.
‘Amy?’
‘Nice pants,’ she commented, glancing downwards when I opened the door. ‘I can’t find my key. Can I borrow yours?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ I picked my room key up from its home on the nightstand and handed it over, knowing I would probably never see it ever again. ‘See you tomorrow.’
More kisses, more love, and Amy and her polka-dot prom dress were gone.
Standing by the door, I played around with the five light switches I had found until I decided on my favourite arrangement: chandeliers off, desk lamp off, lamp on my side on, lamp on the other side off. Pretty lamp in the corner of the room on but dimmed. I wondered if Jane had put all these options in herself. Not for the first time since I’d met Al, I wished I could have met her.
‘Tess!’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I muttered, opening the bedroom door on my best friend. ‘What now?’
‘You haven’t got any cash on you, have you?’ she asked. At least she had the decency to flutter her eyelashes at me. Her unsmudged eyelashes. ‘I’ve got my credit card but I don’t want to be a dick and have to go out to find a cash machine if we end up somewhere that doesn’t take cards.’
I silently stalked over to my handbag and counted out the euros I had picked up at the airport while Amy had been busy trying every perfume in Duty Free.
‘Thank you.’ She took the cash and backed away without going in for a kiss. ‘I’ll bring you a present.’
‘Don’t bring me a present, just don’t lose my key,’ I replied, closing the door behind her with not quite a slam. If the stuff she’d put in my suitcase was anything to go by, I really didn’t want a present.
I sat on the edge of the bed in my knickers, counting slowly and waiting for the next knock. Knowing Amy, there would be at least one more thing. Sure enough, a few moments later there was another knock. I covered my hands with my face and tried not to laugh. This time she was getting a slap. A lovely, well-meaning slap.
I opened the door, ready to impart the slap of love but it wasn’t Amy.
‘Hi,’ I said.
Nick didn’t say anything.
Instead, he took a step forwards, forcing me to back up into my bedroom, and shut the door behind him. I looked up at him; with my bare feet he was just a little taller than me, setting us face to face, only inches apart. But staring into his eyes was too hard. His expression was impossible to read, hard and unsmiling. No one was going to accuse him of being in a good mood. And he still wasn’t saying anything.
I tried to move my feet but I couldn’t, tried to open my mouth but nothing came out. Instead I stayed where I was, arms glued to my sides and wishing more than anything that I was wearing something other than Amy’s T-shirt dress and my M&S pants. Breathing in sharply, Nick took another step towards me and slowly exhaled, his breath warm on my neck. I realized my breathing wasn’t quite so even, and as he raised a hand up to my waist, I felt it becoming more and more ragged, more uncontrolled. He wasn’t even touching me and I couldn’t hold it together. His hand settled underneath my T-shirt, on my hip and burned through my skin. He always seemed to run a few degrees warmer than me but this time, it felt like he was melting right through me, as though I was turning to liquid where he touched me. I couldn’t walk away but I could stand still. Ish. My toes curled underneath my feet and I padded on the spot, crossing my legs and making incoherent noises as Nick tightened his grip on me and raised his other hand up to my face. He traced his fingertips along my cheekbone and reached around to the back of my head, searching for my hair tie. I stretched up to help him, needing the comfort of my hair to hide in but before I could find it, he pulled away sharply and slapped my arms back down to my sides.
‘No,’ he said, his voice low and dark. ‘Stand still.’
I made a noise, not quite sure what it was, but entirely incapable of controlling it, and pressed my arms against my sides, my fingers digging into my thighs, and waited for him to take out my hair. I felt it before I saw it, because at some point I’d closed my eyes, but it didn’t make it any easier, not being able to see him. I could feel him, I could smell him, that top layer of soapy freshness – shower gel, shampoo, fabric detergent, all tempered with something real and warm and unrelenting underneath it all. He smelled so wholly like himself I would have known it was Nick in front of me if I had been wearing a blindfold.
With my hair loose and arms by my sides, I waited for his next move, but instead, his touch disappeared. Slowing my breathing, I opened my eyes to see him unbuttoning his light blue shirt, slowly and purposefully, looking at me the whole time. I made myself keep my own eyes open and looked up, as boldly as I dared. I took in his hair, ash blond and newly cut, revealing his Hawaii tan line where he was starting to go grey at the temples. His wide mouth was still unsmiling and his jaw firm as he peeled away his shirt and dropped it on the floor behind him. Next came his shoes, his brown leather lace-ups, and as he bent down to remove them, the muscles in his broad back moved underneath his skin. Shirt, shoes, socks, gone. All that was left was his belt, his jeans and whatever was underneath.
Then something inside me snapped. What was I doing? I wasn’t some ridiculous virgin about to be devoured by the big bad man. I was pissed off. I hadn’t heard from him in over a week. I had called and called and left messages and sent emails and he had ignored every one of them. I had chased after him a week ago, asked for one chance to explain and he had walked away from me. And now he thought he could just walk into my room, take off his clothes and – do what, exactly?
His eyes firmly on mine as he unbuckled his belt, it didn’t really seem like he was being terribly coy in his intentions.
‘I called you,’ I said, forcing my lips to make more coherent sounds than a whimper. ‘You didn’t call me back.’
Nick pulled his belt out of its loops with a snap and held it in both hands. Blinking slowly, he looked down at the length of leather in his hands and then back up at me.
‘Do you want me to go?’ he asked, moving closer to me until I felt myself backed up against the bed. ‘Tell me to go.’
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him to never have shown up in the first place. I wanted him in New York, across a sea and an ocean and several time zones away.
But instead of saying all of that, I reached out and took the belt from his hands, throwing it down somewhere behind me. Nick reached out and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me towards him with a handful of hair, and kissed me hard. It was like nothing I’d ever known, the feeling of his skin against mine, one hand caught in my curls, the other wrapped around my throat. I clutched his shoulders, trying to hang on for dear life until he broke away and pushed me backwards onto the bed.
‘I didn’t think so,’ he said, unbuttoning his jeans and dropping them to the floor.
Now he was smiling.