Forget Me Knot (32 page)

Dan, who had been hovering uneasily, clearly searching
for something useful to say, suddenly offered to go out and fetch the coffee.

“Sure you don’t mind?” Abby said.

“More than happy.”

“Come on, Scozz,” Abby said after Dan had gone, “it’s going to be OK. I promise.”

Abby decided that as they were both pretty fired up, she would close the shop for twenty minutes so that they could get their breath back.

They went upstairs to the flat to drink their coffee and eat the pains au chocolat Dan had bought. With some caffeine and sugar inside him, Martin began to cheer up.

“Don’t you just love what Abby’s done with this space?” he said to Dan. “See how she’s used white as her neutral background color and then added in color with her accessories—flowers, fruit, the apple-green sofa and fuchsia cushions. I think it looks fab. Her talents don’t end with flowers. She’s got a real gift for color and design.”

Abby felt herself blush. “Oh, stoppit,” she said to Martin.

“No, Scozz is right,” Dan said. “The place is stunning. Makes me a bit embarrassed about all my safe black ash.”

Martin made a face and turned to Abby. “I’ll tell you one thing for certain,” he whispered. “This one ain’t gay.”

“
DINNER TONIGHT?
” Dan said to Abby as he was leaving.

“That’d be great.”

“Pick you up at eight.”

Abby and Martin were just about to reopen the shop when Martin’s mobile rang. It was Ichiro. “Hi, Ichicoo…
I’m at work, babe, so I’ll need to be quick. What is it?… Of course I miss you…. No, I miss you more…. I can’t wait until tonight, either….”

“Look, Scozz,” Abby said, once Martin had ended the call. “You’ve had a rotten morning. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go and spend some time with Ichiro.”

Martin seemed horrified by the suggestion. “What? No way. You’ve had a lousy morning, too, and you pay me to work Saturdays. End of discussion, OK?”

“OK. But I really don’t mind you taking some time off.”

“Maybe you don’t, but I do. Plus, I love working here. This is the first job I’ve had where I wake up in the morning and can’t wait to get to work.”

“You’ve no idea how much I appreciate hearing that,” she said. “Your loyalty means so much to me.”

She knew now probably wasn’t the time to tell him, because she wasn’t certain where the business was heading, but she couldn’t help herself. “You know, if and when the time comes to expand Fabulous Flowers, I want us to become partners.”

Martin looked stunned. “You’re kidding.”

“Why would I kid you? You are intelligent, keen, energetic, loyal. You know the business inside out. You have a wonderful sense of design and you’re a great mate. What more could I want in a business partner?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“‘Yes’ would be a start.”

“That goes without saying. I’d give my right arm for an opportunity like this.”

“Brilliant. Let’s agree that we’ll see how the business pans out over the next few months and take it from there.”

He nodded. “Abby?”

“What?”

“Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. I won’t let you down.”

“I know,” she said, and she planted a kiss on his cheek.

“So,” he said, once the shock had worn off, “you haven’t told me how last night went. What happened to ‘I’m not remotely ready to start a new relationship’?”

She shrugged. “I guess I changed my mind.”

“Good for you, girlfriend. So, was it fabulous? I mean… did you?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Martin Scoredaisy, if you are standing there hoping for details, you are going to have a long wait.”

“But you did do it… right?”

“Yes, we did it. It was bloody fantastic. And we’ve decided to carry on seeing each other…. That’s all you’re getting.”

“You mean you’re officially
stepping out
together?”

Abby smiled at the quaint choice of words. “Yep, we are
stepping out.”

Martin squealed and flapped his hands in delight. “Right, I have to tell Soph.”

“Hey, don’t you dare. This is my news. I want to be the one to tell Soph.”

“OK, but be quick, ’cause if she phones I won’t be able to control myself. I’ll blurt. I just know it.”

IN FACT
, an hour or so later, Soph rang Abby. “Just wanted to say thank you again for being there last night. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done without you lot. And Dan is gorgeous.”

In the end it was Abby who blurted. “We did it.”

“Did what?”

“Oh, come on! You know
… it…
Sex.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night, after we left you.”

“At his or yours?”

“His.”

“So, what’s his place like?”

“Nice. Rather a lot of black ash, though. But I can’t tell you how much I prefer it to that French salon thing Toby had going on. I always liked his taste in clothes, but his ideas on interior design were way over the top.”

“So what does he look like naked, our Dan?”

“My
Dan looks amazing naked. And before you ask, it was fabulous. The best orgasm I’ve ever had. Correction— make that orgasms, plural. OK, no more questions. You’ve got plenty to be getting on with.”

Abby looked up to see an elderly, prim-looking woman in a green quilted jacket and silk head scarf. “Omigod,” Abby muttered, her face turning crimson. “Speak to you later,” she hissed to Soph, before pressing end.

She performed some nervous throat-clearing before asking the woman how she could be of assistance.

“You didn’t have to end your conversation on my behalf,” the woman said eagerly, eyes lit up. “When you haven’t had sex with a man in thirty-seven years, you rather enjoy living vicariously. That’s not to say I don’t do it, you understand, but it’s all so predictable, what with it being just me and Dildo Baggins.”

While Abby groped for a suitable response, the woman
looked wistful, as if summoning the exquisite memory of some long-lost lover. She must have spent several seconds staring into the middle distance before finally snapping out of her reverie to inquire about the price of a narcissus-and-hyacinth centerpiece.

DAN BOOKED A TABLE
at a posh French place in Kensington, to celebrate their new status of girlfriend and boyfriend. They ate steak tartare infused with herbs and garlic, followed by moules in butter and more garlic.

“I’m assuming,” he said, “that etiquettewise it’s permissible to make love if we both smell of garlic.”

“Totally.” She grinned, reaching out under the table to rub his leg with her foot. “When you’ve both eaten it, I don’t think you smell it. You sort of cancel each other out.”

Afterward they went back to her flat and made love until dawn. They carried on so long partly because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and partly because of the game Abby had devised. This involved thinking of a film and guessing how many stars Roger Ebert, the eminent
Chicago Sun-Times
film critic, had given it. Abby would check their estimations on the
Sun-Times
Web site. The one who got closest was rewarded with an orgasm.

With Dan’s superior film knowledge, it came as no surprise to Abby that his guesstimates were far more accurate than hers. This meant that orgasmwise she started to lose
out. The balance soon turned in her favor, though. It was pretty obvious that Dan was letting her win on purpose. When she challenged him, he denied it categorically, and since having Dan go down on her for twenty minutes at a time was an experience she had no intention of forfeiting, she decided not to press the point.

They woke just after nine, made love again and demolished fried egg sandwiches. What little was left of the morning, they spent rug shopping. Abby had explained how drafty the flat became in winter and that somehow she had never gotten round to buying rugs. “Any reason we shouldn’t do it today?” he said.

She shrugged. “None, I guess.”

They schlepped from Habitat to Heal’s to Conran and back to Habitat, where Abby bought two huge shaggy white rugs for less than three hundred pounds—plus thirty pounds delivery since they wouldn’t fit in Dan’s car. They had a late lunch at Babushka in Primrose Hill. Abby had a bowl of thick, steaming borscht, and Dan had a chopped-liver bagel, which he said was nice but not as good as Mrs. Weintraub’s.

After lunch they strolled along the main drag, stopping to look round the expensive, arty shops.

“I was thinking over lunch,” she said, as they browsed in a jewelry shop where all the pieces were made out of fluorescent Perspex, “that you hardly ever mention your parents.” She pushed a chunky bubble-gum-pink ring onto her finger and took it off again when she saw the hundred-fifty-pound price tag.

“Not a lot to say,” he said. “They’re both lovely people. Warm, generous, supportive. I know it sounds boring, but
we’ve always gotten along. I gave them a few hairy moments when I was a teenager, but apart from that…”

“You’ve never told me what they do.”

“Mum’s never really worked. She studied art history and then got married.”

“Didn’t she have to go out to work after your dad died?”

“No. There were various insurances. She was pretty well provided for.”

Abby nodded.

“And my stepdad still runs his own business.”

“What sort of business?”

“He’s in the rag trade.”

She looked up at him. “Aha… that makes sense now. God, all the color has drained from your face. You OK?”

He swallowed. “Yes, I’m fine. Bit of indigestion from the chopped liver. You know, it really wasn’t that good.”

“All I was going to say was, now I understand how you manage to put your own clothes together so effortlessly. Even though you say it bores you, style seems to be in your blood.”

He thanked her for the compliment but said style wasn’t something he thought about. “Certainly not consciously.”

They carried on up the hill, hand in hand, toward the park. At one point Abby stopped to look at the Whistles window.

“Abby.”

“Mmm.”

“Look, there’s something I really ought to tell you.”

“’K.” She was only half listening. A black minidress
with short puffed sleeves and a sixties Peter Pan collar had caught her eye. “That is gorgeous. I’d love to try that on.”

“You see, the thing is—” Dan went on.

“Mm?…? I wonder if they’ve got it in my size.”

“It’s about my dad. There’s something I need to tell you. You see, when I said he was in the rag trade—”

“I wonder if it comes in any other colors.” She turned to face him. “Sorry, I was being rude. I got a bit carried away. You were talking about your dad.”

“What? No. I was just saying that dress is very Twiggy and that you’d be
mad
not to try it on.”

“You won’t be bored waiting?” She explained how it always took her ages to make up her mind and how there might be other stuff she would want to try on, as well.

“How’s about we make a deal?” he said. “I wait while you try on the dress, and afterward I get to go into that camera shop across the street and look at the vintage Leicas.”

She said it seemed a fair exchange.

The young assistant, who had a dolphin tattoo on her upper arm and a blue-black Amy Winehouse beehive, found the dress in Abby’s size and led her to a cubicle. “Cool,” she said, apropos nothing in particular. “Shout if you need another size.”

For some reason—probably because people were still in the restaurants, lingering over Sunday lunch—the shop was empty. As Abby got undressed, she heard Dan and the assistant chatting. At one point she asked him to excuse her while she went downstairs to fetch some new items from the stockroom.

Abby was standing in front of the mirror, admiring the
dress. It fit perfectly. All she needed to complete the Swinging London effect were some lace tights and a pair of round-toed granny shoes.

“Wow, that looks amazing,” Dan said, pulling back the curtain. “I hope you’re going to take it.”

“I think I might.” She smiled.

“Makes you look dead sexy.”

“Really?” she said, turning to look at her profile in the mirror.

“Really.”

The next thing she knew, he was running his hand up her thigh. She clamped her hand onto his to stop him. “Dan, for Chrissake, anybody could come in.”

“There are no customers, and the clerk has gone to the stockroom.”

“But she’ll be back any second. What if she comes in to check how I’m getting on?”

“I’m prepared to risk it.” He pulled the curtain across. Then he pressed his body against hers so that she was forced back against the cubicle wall.

“We can’t,” she whispered.

“Of course we can.” His hand was moving up her thigh again.

“No, we can’t,” she giggled. “Now, stoppit.”

Suddenly his lips were on hers. After a couple of seconds of futile struggle, she gave in and kissed him back. As his tongue probed hers, she began grappling with the buckle of his jeans belt.

His hand had reached the crotch of her panties. She started letting out little whimpers of delight, which were clearly louder than she thought.

He shushed her gently and began tugging at her panties. She stepped out of them and felt him part her. Her stomach quivered. This time there was no time for teasing. He spread her moisture with a touch that was firm and rhythmic. Sometimes he broke off to push his fingers deep into her. The pleasure was so intense, she felt her legs might buckle. She carried on fumbling with his belt. Finally it was loose. She tugged at his fly buttons and eased his jeans and boxers to his hips. His erection sprang out. She took hold of it and began pumping. This time it was her turn to shush him. He continued to work on her—his fingers going from her clitoris to her vagina and back again.