Dev tossed four pairs of Calvins, three random T-shirts and some shorts into his carry-on case. He was pretty sure they were clean. Although, he might have worn one pair of shorts when he was playing basketball with some of the lads down at the sports centre the other night. Sod it. He could get them washed when he got there. Or maybe he wouldn’t even be there long enough to run them through a spin cycle.
Over on the bed, his flatmate, Lizzy, was watching him with mild amusement. ‘You’re really doing this?’
‘I’m really doing this,’ he confirmed, scratching his head as he cast a glance around the room looking for some kind of miracle to occur. Dear God of Shite Packing Skills, let everything I need find its way into this suitcase in the next ten minutes, otherwise I’m bound to leave without something vital.
‘Do you want me to tell you that you’ve lost your mind now, or will I wait until we’re on the way to the airport?’
Dev lunged towards the pair of trainers peeking out from under the base of the bed. ‘Tell me when we’re on the way to the airport. Right now, I’m in “Packing” mode. “Castigation and Prophecies of Doom” mode will have to wait.’
That made Lizzy laugh. It had always been the way with them. Next-door neighbours since they were kids, Lizzy was a year younger, but somewhere around the age of five, her maturity level had fast-forwarded at least ten years and he’d never quite caught up. She was the sorted one. The one who knew what she wanted, had the courage of her convictions and who made her dreams happen.
The perfect example of that was a cold night in 2008, aged around sixteen, when they had sunk a whole bottle of cider in her parents’ shed before she went in and announced that she wasn’t entering the family business and was going to be an artist instead. ‘But we’re lawyers, darling,’ her mother had replied, aghast. Lizzy had launched into an argument that a Crown Court barrister would have been proud of and eventually won the battle. Now she made really cool digital art that she sold around the world on every online platform you could mention, and her annual profit was more than Dev had earned in the last two years writing sports features for the Essex Tribune.
Going into journalism had seemed like such a great idea when he was thirteen and choosing the subjects he wanted to study at school. It was an even better plan after a few ciders in Lizzy’s family shed, when he’d waffle on about all the world-class sporting events he’d get to write about. Not such a great idea when he was twenty-one and got an entry-level job on the paper that mostly involved making tea and phoning irate pensioners to discuss their dispute with their neighbours over a thirty-foot leylandii. It got a little better at twenty-five, when Bob, who ran the sports desk, retired and Dev got his job. But by the time he was thirty, Dev knew without a doubt it had been the crappest life plan ever, because by then newspaper circulation had been dropkicked out of the park. Sure, the website that had been developed a few years ago had helped make it slightly more interesting and brought in more readers, but management had yet to work out how to make it generate a profit. The result was more cuts, more work for less pay and a staff morale that was so low they’d cancelled the Secret Santa at Christmas because they couldn’t be arsed.
Not that Dev would be there much longer, because, well, he had a plan. Somewhere in between watching approximately three thousand four hundred and forty-seven romantic comedies and every episode of Friends at least ten times with Lizzy, he’d started writing about things that didn’t involve two teams of sweaty men chasing a rubber ball. Romantic stories. Sweet beginnings. Slushy endings. All the clichés that no one cared about because when the titles rolled at the end, or the last page was turned, you felt a bit better about yourself.
A romcom novel. That’s what he really wanted to write. Sure, there were not many blokes in that line of work, but as far as he was concerned that was a plus, because it made him unique. That was where his confidence ended though. When it came to actually writing the book, he was racked with self-doubt. Over the last few years, he’d made at least a dozen stabs at it, but he’d abandoned every one of them because they weren’t original enough, or didn’t have a shock twist, or a storyline that would keep readers guessing.
Not surprising really, given that his entire romantic history consisted of a few one-night stands, several casual relationships that never made it past the one-year anniversary, and his most recent debacle, a ten-month engagement to Poppy on the entertainment desk that had ended after he found out she’d slept with Robbie Williams. Not the one from Take That – the one from a Take That tribute act who’d charmed the knickers off Dev’s fiancée at a girls’ night out in a nightclub function suite in Basildon. Dev had no idea what they were called, but in his mind, they’d be forever known as Fake Twat. It had taken a solid, self-pitying, beer-soaked week with Lizzy and the whole of Jennifer Aniston and Sandra Bullock’s back catalogues to even begin to restore his faith in love again.
‘She didn’t know the real you, anyway,’ Lizzy had told him gently, in the middle of The Proposal. ‘All she saw was the blokey, footie-playing journalist who could pass for Ryan Reynolds on her Instagram.’
‘Only if the pics were taken in a dim light,’ he’d muttered. He got that all the time though. There were three little kids in the next street who were convinced he was Deadpool. He was pretty sure their noses were pressed up against their windows every night, waiting for him to race past them in red and black Lycra.
Anyway, with such a tragic relationship history, it was no surprise that he couldn’t write the great romantic novel.
Until now.
Because, last weekend, the answer had, quite literally, dropped in his lap.
His packing slowed considerably as, for what might have been the hundredth time that week, he replayed the previous Saturday night in his head.
He and Lizzy had been up in town with a group of mates from their college days. They’d had a great time at a Greek restaurant, doing some highly therapeutic plate smashing, then Lizzy had dragged them all to a swanky new country-themed bar that had commissioned her to design all their wall art. She’d immersed herself in the theme and had been wearing bootcut jeans, big buckle belts and silver bangles up both her arms since she’d started working on it. The place was mobbed, the music was loud, and after a few more beers, he’d finally decided that Poppy deserved the bloke from Fake Twat and he wasn’t going to care. Time to stop feeling shit and move on.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Lizzy had barked over the sound of Chris Stapleton grinding out ‘Hard Livin’, when she’d returned from the bar with another round of drinks.
He’d knocked back the shot of tequila she’d just placed in front of him. ‘I’m smiling at the decision to not give a fuck about what happened with Poppy.’
‘Ooh, that’s an excellent decision. I’m very happy to drink to that,’ she’d agreed, picking up her shot and throwing it back too. ‘What’s the plan then? Single life? Taking a break? Tinder?’
Her words had drifted off as he’d stopped listening, suddenly aware that the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen was walking towards them, presumably on the way from the large group of riotous ladies who were celebrating something at the table on the right of where Dev and Lizzy were sitting, to the bar on the left of them. If that was indeed where she was going, she was about to walk straight past him. She was three metres away, when Chris Stapleton left the building, and the opening bars of Miranda Lambert and Elle King’s ‘Drunk’ had struck a beat so loud, it had bounced off the wall.
Two metres. Lizzy had shrieked, ‘I bloody love this song. Come dance with me!’ as she’d jumped off her stool.
One metre. Lizzy had somehow managed to accidentally elbow the approaching goddess, who’d then stumbled on her skyscraper heels and begun to go down. Dev had reached over, trying to save her, she’d grasped his outstretched arms, and in what could only be described as a startling feat of acrobatics crossed with a miracle, she’d twisted around, swayed and fallen right onto his lap. Or, rather, his right knee, but it was close enough.
It had taken a moment for all three of them to process what had just happened, but the stranger got there first and broke into a low, sexy laugh. ‘I do apologise. I seem to be invading your personal space.’
Dev had shrugged, acting nonchalant. ‘Not at all. This happens to me all the time. I’m pretty much public property.’
That had made her laugh even more, her long sheet of ash blonde hair falling behind her as she’d tipped her head back.
‘Maybe I’ll just park myself here for a minute then. I mean, take advantage of the public property.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he’d registered Lizzy rolling her eyes, then summoning their mate, Mike, to the dance floor. Nothing ever stood in her way when she wanted to dance. Not even the sudden arrival of a five-foot-eight-inch tall woman with an incredibly intoxicating Irish accent.
Dev had fallen in love at that second. Everything that had happened over the next few hours only confirmed it. She was his person. At the risk of sounding like a complete twat (not the Fake variety), he’d always known that his true love was out there. For a while, he’d thought it was Poppy, but he’d been kidding himself, because he’d never felt like this. This was like a shot through the heart. And yep, he did realise that Jon Bon Jovi might have come up with that line first.
His legs had gone numb after about twenty minutes, but he didn’t care. Despite lots of hollers and nudges and knowing nods from her friends at the other table, they’d swapped brief stories of how they’d come to be in that bar at that moment. She and her mates were flying out the next morning to St Lucia, to prepare for a wedding the following weekend at a swanky resort. He’d recognised the name of it, because one of the former Love Island contestants, a fellow Essex boy, had taken his last showmance there, and the paper had run some pap pics.
Not that Dev cared, because all he could do was sink further into her eyes.
After a couple more hours of drinking, dancing, and being glued to each other’s sides, she’d come back to his place and spent the night. It had been mind-blowing. If it was a romcom, there would have been fireworks. And they’d have been followed by a heartbreaking violin solo when he woke up the next morning and discovered she was gone, with only a note left behind to make him smile and convince him the previous eight hours had been real.
‘Hello! Yo!’ Lizzy’s insistent demand for his attention took his mind off the twist of his guts, the one that happened every time he thought about how wonderful that night was, and how terrified he was that she might not feel the same. He tossed a pair of pool sliders into the holdall and then looked around the room for his charger. He was almost done. Bag packed.
‘Are you even listening to me?’ she prodded, amused.
‘Of course, I am. I always listen to you. You’re on the same “must listen at all times” level as my mother and Reese Witherspoon. I like you the best though.’
‘Aaaaw, do you mean that?’ she chirped, grinning.
‘No. Reese probably wins it. But you’re definitely second… Unless it’s Mother’s Day.’
Lizzy cackled with laughter and threw a scrunched-up pair of socks at him. He picked them up and shoved them in his bag. ‘You never get less annoying.’ She’d been telling him that since they were about eight, so it wasn’t a newsflash.
‘I realise this. It’s a gift. Anyway, what were you saying before, when I was trying to mentally escape back to the giddy bliss of that last Saturday night, to a woman who didn’t think I was wholly irritating?’
Lizzy’s bangles rattled as she pulled her wild mane of blonde curls up into a high ponytail and secured it with a band that she slipped off her fingers. ‘I was asking what her full name was. I just realised that all this week you didn’t say. I just need to know so that I can give the information to Interpol and the Crimewatch team when you vanish during this completely fricking insane mission to find a stranger you picked up in a bar a week ago.’
Again, thinking about her made him smile. Everything about her had that effect. Her voice. Her touch. The incredible, mind-blowing sex they’d had that night. Twice. And of course, the note she’d left the next morning.
It was written on the top of the Nike shoe box that had been lying at the side of his bed.
Had to go for flight. Thanks for catching me last night. Cxoxo
The box had made it to the recycling bin, but he’d torn off the lid with her words on it and stuck it to the fridge, where he’d read it a thousand times as his plan of what to do next had unfolded in his head.
‘I only got her first name. Cheryl,’ he replied, the corners of his mouth turning up when he said it. ‘She never told me her surname. I didn’t ask.’
This was bonkers. It was so out of character for him. It was impulsive. Daring. Bold. And the perfect romcom twisty tale, complete with drama, suspense and, of course, happy ending.
Because today was the day that Dev Robbins was going to St Lucia to track down the Cheryl of his dreams.