Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (5 page)

BOOK: Lessons in Laughing Out Loud
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“I want you!” Daniel teased her, without knowing how just by uttering those words, even in jest, he made Willow’s heart ache. Daniel Fayre, photographer, Willow’s former next-door neighbor back when she had been married. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, he’d come to the UK in his twenties and, upon discovering that British women could never get enough of his accent, never went back and never lost his accent. Willow’d first gotten acquainted with him when she’d found him on the steps outside his ground-floor flat, staring bleakly at a smashed bottle of gin that had proved too weighty for the flimsy plastic bag it came in.
“Careful,” Willow said, watching him gingerly pick up the shards of glass. “You might hurt yourself.”
“I might kill myself,” he’d said, directing a heart-melting smile at her. “I had been planning to drink myself to death, but that was my last ten-pound note.” His American accent pronouncing those alien words had charmed her instantly, and taking pity on him, she went to retrieve her dustpan and brush, then invited him in for a glass of wine. When she told him her husband imported wine for a living, he declared on the spot that she was his new best friend, and somehow, that flippant remark had come true. When Willow was lost in the depths of divorce, Daniel had taken it upon himself to look after her. He’d given her a couch to sleep on the night it all broke down, found her a place to live afterward, and generally patched her up and got her back on her feet, even bringing her a series of TV dinners every night for a month after she’d moved into her new flat, getting them both so drunk that they’d pass out every night on the sofa, heads lolling on each other’s shoulder in snoring abandon. Willow wasn’t sure exactly when, during all of this, she had decided she loved Daniel, but she was certain it was a futile longing that would torment her for as long as it endured, which would quite possibly be forever. Daniel loved her, in his way, and with steadfast loyalty, not at all in the same way that she loved him, which was hopelessly, pointlessly.
“You’re sighing, why are you sighing?” Daniel’s voice interrupted her train of thought.
“I’m picturing you naked,” Willow told him.
“Then you should be laughing!” Daniel chuckled. “I’m getting middle-aged, Will, I’ve got a paunch, an actual paunch, and I think I might be going bald. Will you look at the top of my head for me, because I have the distinct feeling that I’m getting a lot more sun up there than I used to.”
“You want me to look at the top of your head?” Willow
caught herself smiling in the mirror as she toyed with the ribbon around the box of chocolates.
“No. I want you to come to dinner Friday night and perhaps between courses look at the top of my head, you know, if the conversation is running a little dry.”
“Dinner?” Willow was delighted. Daniel had recently starting seeing someone regularly enough for her to be considered a girlfriend. Which meant he didn’t require her company for watching films or eating out or drinking far too much on a school night. Perhaps this invitation meant that he’d already tired of the latest one, a leggy model he’d met on a shoot in Spain, and she had gone the way of the others. Willow smiled. A night out before India moved in was just what she needed.
“I’m not sure . . .” Willow pretended to play hard to get, although both of them knew it was artifice.
“Willow, I need you, I’m working on something brilliant, real art for once instead of prostituting myself and my camera. But I need your thoughts, you know I can’t make any decisions until I’ve talked to you.”
Willow knew she was being shamelessly manipulated, but still she glowed, preening under the caress of his voice. It had been too long since she’d spent time with Daniel, talking nonsense about nothing serious, lying on the decking of his roof garden, gazing at the stars.
“Don’t deny me, baby,” Daniel pleaded. “Please, Will, I need you.”
“Do you?” Willow asked softly, each one of her heartstrings expertly tugged. “I suppose I
might
be able to make it.”
Willow closed her eyes for a second.
“Think about all the times I’ve been there for you. Like that time I came and picked you up at three in the morning from that Australian barman’s flat in Earl’s Court.”
“I know.” Will winced, remembering how she had drunkenly
thrown herself at the much younger barman, until he relented, taking her back to a one-bedroom flat he shared with six others. Sobering up mid-mistake, Willow had told him she was popping to the loo, quickly dressed and sneaked out of the flat without saying good-bye, stumbling into the early hours of a wet October morning. Daniel had come to fetch her even though it was late and he was drunk and there had been a girl in his bed. A lot of people, Holly especially, said that Daniel Fayre was no good for her, but aside from her sister he was the only other person in the whole world who would always come.
“I’ll try, I can’t say more than that,” Willow told him, already knowing that she’d probably leave India Torrance alone with a cutthroat razor and a hot bath rather than miss spending time with him.
“Great. Kayla, you remember Kayla, right? She’ll be pleased to see you. Ah, and Serious James is coming, he’ll be
very
pleased to see you.” Serious James was Daniel’s other unlikely best friend, an archetypal accountant who dreamed of being a stand-up comedian, who seemed to persist in his delusion despite so far testing his talent for timing in only a few flea-ridden pubs here and there. He seemed nice enough, with his permanently tousled blond hair, which he wore a little longer than you might expect for an accountant, and his gray-green eyes that crinkled when he smiled were quite attractive, might even be considered very attractive if he wasn’t standing next to Daniel Fayre.
“Bring someone if you like. Hey—bring that hot, slutty one you hate from work. That will keep Kayla on her toes, the sex is always better when she’s really insecure.”
Willow tugged absently at the ribbon on the box of chocolate, barely noticing it give way as she fought the disappointment of a rejection she hadn’t even known she was in line for. She could still say no, of course, call him later with apologies. But to pass up the chance to spend a whole night in the
company of Daniel, making jokes with him that his girlfriend wouldn’t understand, laughing about Serious James behind his back, drinking so much that every nerve ending was lulled into a false sense of security, was hard to do, even if every moment of pleasure would be simultaneously blended with pain.
“If I lose my job over this, you’ll have to marry me, you understand that, don’t you?” Willow heard the wistful edge to her voice too late, knowing Daniel had heard it too.
“Babe, you are the only woman I would ever marry, you know that, don’t you?” he told her with practiced sincerity.
“So you say,” Willow said with a mouth full of chocolate, which gave her pause. As she looked down at the box, its lid askew, it became apparent that one of the chocolates had already found its way into her mouth. In fact, on closer inspection it seemed that she had finished off three during the conversation and had barely even noticed.
“Ciao, bella.”
Willow sighed, popping the last two chocolates into her mouth as Daniel hung up. Turning around, she found herself confronted by the watchful shop assistant.
“Are you planning on paying for those?” the woman asked, with more than a hint of accusation.
“Yes,” Willow said. “And I’d better take another couple of boxes too, please.”
“Of course, madam,” the woman said as she bustled off to retrieve more chocolate, the look on her face giving away exactly what she thought of Willow in an instant.
Willow winced internally, brushing her long hair off her face and shaking her shoulders briefly as if she could shake off the darkness that sometimes engulfed her. Why had she picked Daniel Fayre to be in love with? Because he was absolutely, totally, one hundred percent guaranteed to never love her back, that was why.

Chapter
           Three

W
ithout really thinking about it, Willow turned right when she left Liberty’s, choosing the back way to the office, rather than attempting to navigate Regent Street, thronged as it continuously was with tourists and day trippers, intent on ambling along aimlessly exactly wherever she wanted to be. It was a sign of a practiced city dweller to take the road less traveled, but it was more than finding a shortcut for Willow, who was perfectly well aware that she chose to travel via the back-streets because it was less obvious there that no one noticed her. Once Willow would have put it down to the opposite, that she hated the thought of strangers judging her wobbly thighs or generous stomach, remarking to each other, “Look at the state of
that
,” not quite under their breath.

But quite recently she had been compelled to walk the short distance between the office and the Athenaeum with Lucy Palmer on the way to a party being held in celebration of an elderly and slightly alcoholic actor’s long and illustrious career in the theater, although, as Victoria bitterly reminded everyone, in all that time he had never managed to break into film, not even to play a requisite villain or a Harry Potter wizard, and a knighthood was all very well, but she didn’t get twenty percent of that.
Willow had been pretty pleased with her outfit, a black cotton full-skirted dress with a sweetheart neckline that hinted at her deep cleavage, the skirt skimming the top of her knees, showing off her pleasingly turned fake-tanned calves that were accentuated by the very high heels of her Prada slingbacks. And then Lucy emerged from the ladies’ room in some tiny white Grecian-esque frock and a pair of heeled gold gladiator sandals with straps that wound all the way up to her knees. Cheerfully breaking the low-neckline-short-skirt rule with some aplomb, she bared about as much of her shapely, slim frame as she could get away with without being arrested for breaching decency laws.
“Wow, Lucy. Does your boyfriend know you’re going out like that?” Marcus Blane, head of legal, commented, naked admiration all over his face.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, lol.” Lucy then winked at Marcus, who looked like he was only seconds away from actually salivating, which reminded Willow rather uncomfortably how after working late one night last year he’d offered to take her out for a drink and she’d ended up giving him a blow job in Victoria’s office. An incident neither of them spoke of again.
Willow had never felt less attractive as she trailed along beside Lucy that evening, and never more conscious that everyone they passed, every man, woman and child of every sexual orientation, not only noticed Lucy but even turned their heads to look at her. By the time they reached their destination Willow was hot, her brow beaded with sweat, her thighs rubbing together uncomfortably and her small swell of pride at feeling quite nicely turned out withering in the glare of Lucy’s golden splendor. Of course, Lucy was a good deal younger than Willow, but Willow was faced with the knowledge that if she had managed to say a healthy size four, like her
sister, or even the size she had been during those happy days of flat sharing, she certainly would have given Lucy a run for her money. At the party she stood in the corner, attempting to hide behind a large potted palm, watching from a distance as Lucy enchanted anyone or anything that happened to be passing. Despite her willful refusal to do anything about her shape or size, Willow was still a little vain, and it hurt her to realize that at the age of thirty-nine she had become invisible.
Lost in her thoughts, Willow stopped on the curb to get her bearings, seeing that she’d somehow taken a wrong turn. Normally she emerged from a little-known alleyway called Portal Run onto the north side of Golden Square, but somehow she’d gone wrong in the hundred yards or so of the alleyway, because now she found herself in a small square, really more of a courtyard, that was entirely shadowed from the glare of the midday sun by tall, windowless buildings, which Willow assumed had to be the back of something. There didn’t seem to be an exit from the square, which a dirty, half-dislodged sign told her was Bleeding Heart Yard W1, and Willow could not for the life of her work out how she’d never stumbled on this curious little corner of London before. The courtyard was covered entirely in cracked paving, infested with half-dead weeds, and in its center stood a forlorn and ragged-looking tree, drooping over the circular iron railing that imprisoned it. A willow tree, Willow noticed wryly, picking up a crushed catkin from the ground and rubbing it into yellowish powder between her thumb and finger. It was very quiet in the square, the din of London silenced by the insulating crowd of surrounding buildings. For a moment Willow stood there, enjoying the peace, content to let the shadows bathe her in cool quiet calm, feeling almost weightless in this undiscovered inner space, and then something bristled the hairs on the back of her neck and forearms and a sense of disquiet rushed
through the air, along with a strong gust of wind that dashed yet more delicate catkins to the ground.
Unsettled, Willow was about to turn back when the jingle of an old-fashioned shop bell attracted her attention, echoing around the square. For a moment it was hard to tell where it had come from, but then Willow realized there could only be one place, the three or four feet obscured by the tree’s disheveled canopy. Peeping around the tree, like a little girl entering a forbidden room, Willow discovered a shopwindow, nestling incongruously in among all the expanse of Georgian brickwork. Hesitant, she found herself looking over her shoulder. The dark, squat door that stood to the left of the window looked firmly shut, and yet she had definitely heard a bell ringing. As Willow glanced around the deserted square she felt her heart racing, not from fear or anxiety but from something she recognized because she felt it so rarely: a kind of prescient optimism. The certain knowledge that something really good was going to happen. Navigating the reach of the tree, Willow approached the shop, the echo of her heels ricocheting off the windowless walls.
BOOK: Lessons in Laughing Out Loud
4.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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