Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (35 page)

“Well, yes, but . . . we’re alone now, sort of. Bar that tramp and that man waiting for a bus.”

Willow had already started walking.

As was often the way with the very rich, the man who owned the million pounds’ worth of mews cottage that James was staying in had questionable taste. There was a coffee table made out of a white porcelain dolphin topped with smoked glass, white leather sofas and a life-size, rather pointy-breasted statue of a nude reclining in the hallway. Willow felt a huge swell of affection for James as he walked in and hung his jacket off one nipple without giving the monstrosity a second glance.

“You think that’s bad,” he told her. “The headboard of the bed is a giant gilded swan. A swan. Impossible to read a book comfortably when your headrest is a metal swan.”

She followed him into the living room, where he eased off his shoes. “Thank God, it’s just a blister,” he told her. “My dreams of becoming a dancer aren’t over yet. So what can I get you?”

Willow watched by the door as he went to a mirrored drinks cabinet that lit up as he opened the doors and peered in. “I’ve got some blue shit, some green shit, some pink shit and . . . oh, there’s scotch. Would you like some scotch? It’s twenty-five-year-old single malt apparently, probably quite nice, I wouldn’t know. I’m more of a cider man, myself.”

“Yes, please,” Willow said, slipping her coat off and crossing to the window, where she looked down the narrow cobbled street. She heard the clink of ice and a moment later James handed her a glass. Willow took a sip, enjoying the heat
of the spirits on the back of her throat, spreading warmth all through her. It was nice here, lost in this new life with expensive and ugly objets d’art and a man who thought she was wonderful.

“So, you are remarkable,” James said. “Somehow I knew it, when I first met you. Do you remember?”

Willow looked rather hard at a small brass model of a cow and bull copulating.

“At Daniel’s?”

“At Daniel’s studio, about a year ago.” James’s smile was distant, lost in a past moment. “There I was with a glass of very cheap wine, stuck in the middle of a crowd of people I had no idea how to talk to—”

“I thought that was everyone.”

“—and there you were. You walked in the door and it was like you absorbed all the light and then reflected it back times a billion. Like a sun. I mean, you are beautiful, right, and stacked, but it wasn’t just that I noticed. It was your—strength. I looked at you and the first word that came to my head was
remarkable
. I thought you were remarkable, and now I know why. Willow”—James coughed—“I was wondering. . . .”

“Would you like to have sex?” Willow asked him.

“Pardon?” James’s face froze. “What?”

“I said, if you like, we could have sex now. I like you and I know you like me, and that’s what you want, isn’t it? To have sex. You said onstage tonight your penis would be telling your brain to ask me for sex . . . and I don’t mind if we do it. It might even be quite nice.”

“You don’t mind?” James repeated.

“No, I don’t mind if you want to have sex with me.” Willow put down her glass and went to him, winding her arm around his neck and pressing her breasts against his chest. “You want me, don’t you? You want sex.”

James stiffened.

“I . . . yes, of course I do. But not . . . not like this. This isn’t you at all, what are you doing?”

Willow’s arm dropped to her side as James gently guided her two steps away from him.

“This isn’t you, Willow,” he said gently. “This isn’t about you wanting me. I’m pretty sure you don’t want me at all. So tell me, what’s going on?”

“How do you know what I want?” Willow asked him. “How do you know what is or isn’t me? You know nothing about me. You’ve made up this fairy tale in your head about poor Willow, asleep for a thousand years, never to wake until her handsome prince comes along to make her laugh. That
is
a joke!” She backed away as she spoke, her pride stinging from the rejection, draining the last of her whiskey.

“Why bother with all the crap, James, all the talk and the romance and the words? It all boils down to the same thing. You want sex. And I don’t mind. What’s so bad about that? You’d be getting what you want, wouldn’t you?”

Willow watched the stunned expression on James’s face as if from a distance.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, this isn’t about sex. The way I feel about you isn’t just about . . . desire. I want you, of course I want you, you’re stunning. But I want you to want me back, for it to mean something and for it to go somewhere more than a one-night stand. You are so amazing, Willow, don’t give yourself away so cheaply.”

Willow replied with a mirthless smile. “Not even to you?”

“Especially not to me,” James said. “Especially not to the person who thinks you are worth everything. Maybe there is no chance you and I would ever be together, but I know I’d regret ruining any chance I do have of getting to know you properly by jumping into bed with you now.”

“It’s just sex,” Willow said. “And actually it’s pretty rude to turn a woman down.”

“It’s not just sex—even when it’s just sex it’s never just sex,” James said. “Look, I haven’t had a lot of partners, I certainly haven’t had a lot of casual sex, and I’m just not very good at it. Not sex, I think I am reasonably good at sex. But I’m not good at something being ‘just sex.’ Because when that bit’s over, if you don’t feel something at least for the other person, then it’s like a little bit of you has been eroded away. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know that I have rarely been so completely turned down by any man before,” Willow said, a little haughtily, but catching the look of genuine concern on James’s face she softened a little. “I do, I do know what you mean. I just suppose that I have never considered it to be such a big deal.”

“Oh, Willow,” James said, stepping toward her and picking up her hand. “How did you get so lost?”

“Lost?” Willow said, tugging her hand from his. “I’m not lost, and you know what, James, frankly, I’m a bit bored of you analyzing me. I’m just a woman who wanted to have sex with a reasonably inoffensive man, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t think you’re really interested in me at all, I think you like the idea of me; you like the idea of someone to rescue, to save. Well, here is the news. I don’t need to be saved. Especially not by you.”

Willow dropped her glass, hearing its lead weight thud on the polished wood floor. She turned on her heel, picking her coat up on the way out.

“Wait, Willow, I’m sorry. I was only trying to make you see . . . Willow!” Willow slammed the door shut behind her, dragging her coat on as she headed toward the King’s Road. It took less than a minute for a cab to pass by and when she climbed into the back, Willow finally had a moment to think.

She felt as if her being, her fabric, was being pulled apart in every direction. This was what happened when you let yourself connect, let other people into your heart and life again. She had wished for this, every solitary tube journey home on a dark night, every awkward kiss good-bye from a man she never intended to see again, every lonely meal for one on her lap in front of the TV—whether she had been conscious of this or not, she had wished for it. For Chloe, for Sam. For Daniel to want her and, more than anything, for herself to feel, to feel the way she had for a little while with James that evening. To feel like the woman she should have been.

The bitter truth was that when it came to it, she simply didn’t know how to be that woman, just like she didn’t know how to be a mother or a wife. And James was right, she didn’t laugh. She hadn’t laughed since the day she left Chloe.

For almost thirty years she had been a prisoner of the past, its hungry fingers ceaselessly finding and reaching for her no matter how much she tried to escape it. How could she be there for Chloe, or her sister? How could she ever be free of it unless she wrenched herself free at last? Holly had been begging her for years to try to break free and now for the first time in all of the thirty years, Willow not only knew that she must, she knew that she could. Her decision made, she reached for her phone to call Holly. It rang just as she took it out of the bag.

“It’s time for me to go home,” Willow said.

“If you are sure,” Holly replied. “I’ll be with you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“But I will be,” Willow said. “I will be.”

Chapter
           Fourteen

“T
ime off?” Victoria looked at Willow over the top of her fake glasses. “I beg your pardon?”

“I need some time off, some . . . compassionate leave.”

“Some . . . say again?” Victoria cocked one ear toward to Willow.

“It’s my mother,” Willow lied. “And you did technically give me the rest of the week off anyway, in front of witnesses. It’s just I might need a bit more time. Off.”

“Dead?” Victoria began thumbing through her diary, ignoring Willow’s reminder. “Can you be back by Thursday?”

“No, she’s not dead, and I can’t be back by Thursday. I need to see her. She’s ill.”

“Ill, darling? Cold, flu, cancer—give me some details, sweetie, I need to know how, what was it you said? How ‘compassionate’ I need to appear to be.” Victoria was irritable, and Willow wasn’t surprised. Officially Willow was owed weeks in unclaimed leave that she could take whenever she liked, but Willow had felt it only proper that she ask in person for some more time off. Now that she had made the decision to go home and see her mother, she couldn’t delay it. Any hesitation and she was certain she’d put it off again, perhaps for another thirty years. But the word on the office grapevine
was that Lucy had gotten everything wrong on India’s photo shoot, offended both star and photographer, and did nothing very much more than get in the way trying to cadge freebies off wardrobe. In the meantime, another one of Victoria’s clients had been “mugged” while walking his dog on Hampstead Heath, returning home to his wife not only with no wallet, but also, most mysteriously, with no underwear, either. Some bright and probably underpaid spark at the local police station had leaked it to the press, and now Victoria was working out how to spin the news that TV’s most wholesome hunk had a thing for desperate young men.

“I don’t know what the fuss is about, these days,” she’d been grumbling to herself when Willow appeared in her doorway. “If you are gay, you are gay. What’s the point of pretending otherwise? Unless you are in a boy band, obviously.” Looking up and seeing Willow, she didn’t miss a beat. “Where
have
you been, darling? I need you to find me a mugger who also steals underwear from heterosexual men, and then pay him to give himself up. Chop-chop.”

The news that Willow had only popped in and was rather hoping not to come back again for at least a week came as something of a blow.

“Mum’s got multiple sclerosis,” Willow said rather quietly.

“On her deathbed, is she?” Victoria asked, resentfully.

Willow hesitated, considering telling the truth, which was that the disease ate away at her mother year by year; her mobility, her hearing and, most recently, her sight, but that actually, with the kind of care that Holly and the team of nurses Gray provided to keep her in her beloved house, there was no reason why she wouldn’t live for another twenty years, if she could stand it that long. Everyone admired her English-lady refusal to let anything as trivial as a neurological disease stop her from entering her plum jam in the village fete. And
when it did strike her down, as it had recently, she never let depression defeat her. In many ways she was a brave, resilient woman, a woman who deserved to be loved, and Willow did love her. But she hated her too, with a bitter, poisonous fury that meant that being in a room with her for longer than an hour was almost impossible. To admit to hating one’s mother wasn’t something Willow found easy to do, but it was easier than it should have been because, of course, the truth was her mother hated her back.

However, she was not anywhere near to being on her deathbed.

“Yes, the doctors think she might be,” Willow said, pressing her mouth into a thin line.

Victoria’s sigh was long and theatrical.

“You’ll have to find me a temp who knows how to use basic office equipment and then find me a reason to fire that bloody awful Lucy. Honestly, darling, never, ever employ the child of a friend. That girl is good for only one thing, and I don’t want to repeat what it is.”

“A temp I can do before I go, but a reason to fire Lucy . . .” Willow stopped. “As much as I hate to say it, she is good on the phones and easy on the eye. Matilda in reception is going on maternity leave in a month—”

“Matilda is pregnant? Who’s the father?” Victoria perked up.

“I imagine it’s her husband.”

Victoria sighed.

“Why not transfer Lucy there for some training. If she complains, tell her you’re letting her learn the job from the ground up, like you did.”

“Well, I did spend a lot of my early career lying down, that’s true,” Victoria mused. “Okay, you can have a week off; any longer and I may fire you.”