Further Under the Duvet (36 page)

You must
.

‘Okay, then,’ she grumbled, and took a Snickers from the mini-bar.

I meant something a bit more nutritious than that, actually
.

But Ros didn’t answer. She was climbing, fully dressed, into bed and in a matter of seconds fell asleep, the half-eaten Snickers beside her on the pillow.

While Ros slept, Bib watched telly with the sound turned
off and kept guard over her. He couldn’t figure himself out: his time here was limited because they could find the spacecraft at any time, so he should be out there cruising, checking out the females, having a good time at somewhere called the Viper Room (owned by one Johnny Depp, who modelled himself on Bib, no doubt about it), but instead he wanted to remain here with Ros.

She woke at 4 a.m., jolted upright with jet lag and heartbreak. He hated to see her pain, but this time he was powerless to help her. He managed to tune into her wavelength slightly, picking up bits and pieces. There had been a frenzied screaming match with the Michael person, the night before she left. Apparently, he hadn’t wanted her to come on this trip. Selfish, he’d called her, adding that she cared more about her job than she did about him. And Ros had flung back that
he
was the selfish one, trying to make her choose between him and her job. By all accounts it had been the worst row they’d ever had and it showed every sign of being their last.

Human males, Bib sighed. Cavemen, that’s what they were, with their fragile egos and sense of competition. Why couldn’t they rejoice in the success of their females? As for Bib, he loved a strong, successful woman. It meant he didn’t have to work and – Oi! What was Ros doing, trying to lift that heavy case on her own? She’ll hurt herself!

Puffing and panting, Ros and Bib manoeuvred her case onto the bed and when she opened it and started sifting through the clothes she’d brought, Bib realized just how distraught she must have been when she’d packed. Earth still had those quaint, old-fashioned things called seasons and, even though the temperature in LA was in the nineties,
Ros had brought clothes appropriate for spring, autumn and winter, as well as summer. A furry hat – why on earth had she brought that? And four pairs of pyjamas? For a three-day trip? And now what was she doing?

From a snarl of tights, Ros was tenderly retrieving a photograph. With her small hand she smoothed out the bends and wrinkles and gazed lovingly at it. Bib ambled over for a look – and recoiled in fright. He was never intimidated by other men but he had no choice but to admit that the bloke in the photo was very – and upsettingly – handsome. Not pristine perfect like the wannabe Brads and Toms but rougher and sexier-looking. He looked like the kind of bloke who owned a power screwdriver, who could put up shelves, who could stand around an open car bonnet with six other men and say with authority, ‘No, mate, it’s the alternator, I’m telling ya.’ This, Bib deduced with a nervous swallow, must be Michael. He had dark, messy curly hair, an unshaven chin and his attractiveness was in no way marred by the small chip from one of his front teeth. The photo had obviously been taken outdoors because a hank of curls had blown across his forehead and halfway into one of his eyes. Something about the angle of his head and the reluctance of his smile indicated that Michael had been turning away when Ros had clicked the shutter.
Real men don’t pose for pictures
, his attitude said. Instantly Bib was mortified by his own eagerness to say ‘Cheese’ at any given opportunity. But could he help it if he was astonishingly photogenic?

For a long, long time Ros stared at Michael’s image. When she eventually, reluctantly, put the photo down, Bib was appalled to see a single tear glide down her cheek. He rushed
to comfort her, but fell back when he realized there was no need because she was getting ready to go to work. Her heart was breaking – he could
feel
it – but her sense of duty was still intact. His admiration for her grew even more. Luckily, in amongst all the other stuff she’d brought, Ros had managed to pack a pale grey suit and by the time she was ready to leave for her 8 a.m. meeting she looked extremely convincing. Of course Bib realized she
felt
like a total fraud, certain she’d be denounced by the Los Angeles company as a charlatan the minute they clapped eyes on her, but apparently that was par for the course in people who’d recently been promoted. It would pass after a while.

Because of her lack of confidence, Bib decided he’d better go with her. So off they went in a taxi to DangerChem’s headquarters at Wilshire Boulevard, where Ros was ushered into a conference room full of orange men with big, white teeth. They all squashed Ros’s little hand in their huge, meaty, manicured ones and claimed to be ‘trullly, trullly delighted’ to meet her. Bib ‘trullly, trullly’ resented the time they spent pawing her and he managed to trip one of them up. And not just any of them, but their
leader
. Bib knew he was the leader because he had the orangest face.

Then Bib perked up – a couple of girls had just arrived in the meeting! Initially, he thought they were aliens too, although he couldn’t quite place where they might be from. With their unnaturally elongated, skeletal limbs and eyes so wide-spaced that they were almost on the sides of their head, they had the look of the females from planet Pfeiff. But when he tried speaking to them in that language (he knew only a couple of phrases – ‘Your place or mine?’ and ‘If I said you
had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?’) they remained blankly unresponsive. One of them was called Tiffany and the other was called Shannen and they both had the yellow-haired, yellow-skinned look he usually found so attractive in a girl-type. Although, perhaps not as much as he once had.

The meeting went well and the orange men and yellow girls listened to Ros as she outlined a proposal to buy products from them. When they said the price she was offering was too low she was able to stop her voice from shaking and reel off prices from many of their competitors, all of them lower. Bib was bursting with pride.

When they stopped for lunch, Bib watched with interest as Tiffany used her fork to skate a purple-red leaf of radicchio around her plate. Sometimes she picked it up on her fork and let it hover in the general vicinity of her mouth, before putting it back down. She was
miming
, he realized. And that wasn’t right. He switched his attention to Shannen. She was putting the radicchio on her fork and sometimes she was putting some of it into her mouth. He decided he preferred her. So when she said, ‘Gotta use the restroom,’ Bib was out of his seat in a flash and going after her.

He’d really have resented being called a peeping Tom. An opportunist, he liked to think of himself. An alien who knew how to make the most of life’s chances. And being invisible.

But how strange. He followed Shannen into the cubicle and she seemed to be ill. No, no, wait – she was
making
herself ill. Sticking her fingers down her throat. Now she was brushing her teeth. Now she was renewing her lipstick. And she seemed happy! He’d always regarded himself as a man
of the universe, but this was one of the strangest things he’d ever seen.

I should be nominated for an Oscar
, Ros thought, as she shook her last hand of the day. She’d given the performance of a lifetime around that conference table. But she tried to take pride that she
had
done it. Between jet lag and her lead-heavy unhappiness over Michael she was surprised she’d even managed to get dressed that morning, never mind discuss fixed costs and large order discounts.

However, when she got back to her hotel, she insisted on shattering her fragile good humour by asking a not-quite-right Ralph Fiennes if anyone had phoned for her. Ralph shook his head. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, wearing her desperation like a neon sign. But unfortunately, Ralph was very sure.

Trying to stick herself back together, Ros stumbled towards her room, where no force in the universe – not even one from planet Duch – could have stopped her from ringing Michael.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as soon as he picked up the phone. ‘Were you asleep?’

‘No,’ Michael said, and Ros’s weary spirits rallied with hope. If he was awake at two in the morning, he couldn’t be too happy, now could he?

‘I miss you,’ she said, so quietly she barely heard herself.

‘Come home, then.’

‘I’ll be back on Friday.’

‘No, come home now.’

‘I can’t,’ she said gently. ‘I’ve got meetings.’

‘Meetings,’ he said bitterly. ‘You’ve changed.’

As Ros tried to find the right words to fix things, she wondered why it was always an insult to tell someone that they’d changed.

‘When I first met you,’ he accused, ‘you were straight up. Now look at you, with your flashy promotion.’

He can’t help it
, Ros thought. Too much had changed too quickly. In just over eighteen months she’d worked her way up from answering phones, to being a supervisor, to assisting the production manager, to assisting the chairman, to becoming vice-production manager. None of it was her fault; she’d always thought she was as thick as two short planks. She’d been
happy
to think that. How was she to know that she had a natural grasp of figures and an innate sense of management? She had bloody Lenny to thank for ‘discovering’ her, and she could have done without it. Everything had been fine – better than fine – with Michael until she’d started her career ascent.

‘Why is my job such a problem?’ she asked, for the umpteenth time.

‘“My job”!’ Michael said hotly. ‘“My job, my job.” You love saying it, don’t you?’

‘I don’t! You have a job too.’

‘Mending photocopiers isn’t quite the same as being a vice-production manager.’ Michael fell into tense silence.

‘I can’t do it,’ he finally said. ‘I can’t be with a woman who earns more than me.’

‘But it’ll be our money.’

‘What if we have kids? You expect me to be a stay-at-home househusband sap? I won’t do it, babes,’ he said, tightly. ‘I’m
not that kind of bloke.’ She heard anger in his voice and terrible stubbornness.

But I’m good at my job
, she thought, and felt a panicky desperation. She didn’t want to give it up. But more than her job, she wanted Michael to accept her. Fully.

‘Why can’t you be proud of me?’ She squeezed the words out.

‘Because it’s not right. And you want to come to your senses. You’re no good on your own, you need me. Think about it!’

With that, he crashed the phone down. Instantly she started to ring him back, then found herself slowly replacing the receiver. There was nothing to be gained by ringing him because he wasn’t going to change his mind. They’d had so many fights, and he hadn’t budged an inch.

So what was the choice? She loved him. Since she met him three years ago, she’d been convinced he was The One and that her time in the wilderness was over. They’d planned to get married next year, they’d even set up a ‘Meringue Frock’ account. How could she say goodbye to all that? The obvious thing was to give up her job. But that felt so wrong. Oughtn’t Michael to love her as she was? Shouldn’t he be proud of her talents and skills, instead of being threatened by them? And if she gave in now what would the rest of their lives together be like?

But if she didn’t give in…? She’d be alone. All alone. How was she going to cope? Because Michael was right, she had very little confidence.

For some minutes she sat abjectly by the phone, turning a biro over and over, as she pondered the lonely existence that
awaited her. All she could see ahead of her was a life where she jumped on hotel beds by herself. The bleakness almost overwhelmed her.
But just a minute
, she found herself thinking, her hand stopping its incessant rotation of the biro –
I managed to get all the way from Hounslow to Los Angeles without Michael’s help
. And
I managed to get a taxi to and from work. Even held my own in a meeting
.

To her great surprise she found that she didn’t feel so bad. Obviously, she felt awful. Frightened, heartbroken, sick and lonely. But she didn’t feel completely suicidal, and that came as something of a shock. She was so used to hearing Michael telling her that she was a disaster area without him that she hadn’t questioned it lately…

How about that? She remained on the bed, and her gaze was drawn to the window. In all the trauma, she’d forgotten about her ‘toadally awesome’ ocean view and it couldn’t have been more beautiful: Santa Monica beach, the evening sun turning the sea into a silver-pink sheet, the sand rose-coloured and powdery. Along the boardwalk, gorgeous Angelenos skated and cycled. A sleek couple whizzed by on a tandem, their no-doubt perfect baby in a yellow buggy attached to the back of the bike. He looked like a little emperor. Another tall, slender couple roller-bladed by, both sun-glassed and disc-manned to the max. Hand in hand, they glided past gracefully, their movements a ballet of perfect synchronization.

‘Fall,’ Bib wished fiercely. ‘Go on, trip. Skin your evenly tanned knees. Fall flat on your remodelled faces.’ He had hoped it might cheer Ros up. But, alas, it was not to be, and on the couple glided.

Ros watched them go, gripped by a bitter-sweet melancholy. And then, to her astonishment, she found herself deciding that she was going to try roller-blading herself. Why not? It was only six-thirty and there was a place right next to the hotel that rented out roller-blades.

Hardly believing what she was doing she changed into leggings, ran from her room and in five minutes was strapping herself into a pair of blades. Tentatively, she pushed herself a short distance along the board walk. ‘Gosh, I’m quite good at this,’ she realized in amazement.

Bib held onto Ros’s hand as she awkwardly skidded back and forth. It had been a huge struggle to convince her to get out here. And she was
hopeless
. If he hadn’t been holding onto her hand, she’d be flat on her bum. Yet her ungainly vulnerability made her even more endearing to him.

Bib had followed the evening’s events with avid interest. He’d been appalled by Michael’s macho attitude, the cheek of the bloke! He’d longed to snatch the phone from Ros and tell Michael in no uncertain terms how fabulous Ros was, how she’d terrified a roomful of powerful orange men. Then when Michael hung up on Ros, Bib had used every ounce of will he could muster to stop Ros from ringing him back. He’d worked desperately hard at reminding Ros how wonderfully she’d coped since she’d arrived in this strange threatening city, even though it was so obvious, she should know it herself…