Love (10 page)

“Well, not much really. I've kind of met this guy though.”
The flat monsters tightened their lips and watched her. “He's quite nice.”

“Oh yes?” The Amy Inquisitions always followed this pattern. Sneering questions with Amy feeling compelled by ancient loyalty to divulge all.

“Yeah. You might know him actually.” This was bait for the piranhas.

“Really? Who?”

“A guy called Orlando Rock?” ' She didn't want to presume.

“What? Orlando Rock the actor?” Cath didn't miss a beat. Deadpan. Not a flicker of excitement.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“So how did you meet
him
then?” No girly shrieking and hearty congratulations. Hey, our friend's sleeping with a love god, let's open that bottle of tequila. Well done, Ames!

“I suppose I met him that weekend in Dorset. We've only been out a couple of times.” She played down her conquest.

“So this has been going on for a while then?” The accusation was leveled straight at Amy's conscience. And why didn't we, your oldest and dearest (ha bloody ha) friends, know about this?

“Not really, it's not a big deal. You'll have to meet him.” Amy offered this encounter with Orlando as an olive branch. She'd no more want him to meet them than she would have liked to have been reincarnated as a Christian in Roman times. Their eyes were narrow and their derision much more hideous than being fed to the lions. Suddenly Amy couldn't be bothered anymore; she
emptied the rest of her orange juice down the sink. “Anyway, guys, I'm really knackered, I'll fill you in on all the gory details in the morning. Sweet dreams.” Like hell. Their idea of sweet dreams was to spike a toddler's sherbet dip with arsenic. Amy fell into her own Orlando dreams with the
ssssshhhhhing
of the witches' whispers in the kitchen below.

The phone rang and Amy jumped out of the bath, a deluge of her favorite lilac bubbles settling in pools around her ankles. She grabbed a towel and hurtled herself down the stairs to catch it before the answerphone did.

“Hello.”

“Hi, could I speak to Amy?” Drip drip, bubble bubble, melting sensation in tummy.

“Orlando, it's me.”

“I didn't recognize your voice.”

“I've just got out of the bath.” Pause so Amy can imagine him imagining her in her glorious state of undress.

“Oh. I was just wondering, I won't be around this weekend so thought maybe you'd like to come round tonight, have some supper?”

“That'd be lovely, but I think it's my turn. Why don't you come here? My flat monsters are out and we could get a take-away.”

“OK, I'll be there in half an hour.”

Orlando Rock, have you no sense of decency? No shame? Don't you know that it's a cardinal sin to allow a girl a meager half hour to get ready? We're not just talking “See you in the pub in half an hour,” which can be accommodated.
A few miracles with concealer and some mousse and all could be well. But here? In half an hour? Gottabejoking. Amy coped womanfully with the task. She deposited all dirty laundry in her sports bag; hid her Tampax and contraceptives in a drawer; turned round her clipboard with twee photos of herself in mutton-sleeved ball dresses, myriad ex-boyfriends all over it; chucked
Hello!
under the bed and replaced it with
Trainspotting
, no, on second thought, too hip and grim.
Fear of Flying
, that'll do, very retro but seminal and sexy.

She plunged a bottle of white wine into the freezer (mustn't forget or I'll end up with an exploded mass of frozen peas and white wine all over the place), took the pair of black lacy knickers someone had hung on the notice board down, and hid her council tax demands. Good. Nearly there. Oh my God. Me? She looked down at her deeply unsexy toweling dressing gown and hurled herself back up the stairs. No time for nude lipstick application. Powder, Japanese silk dress number? Nope, too try-hard. Jeans, T-shirt, nice and tight. Fine. Barefoot? Yes, very Bardot. So, within twenty-seven minutes Amy was perched at her kitchen table perusing the arts section of the
Telegraph
, sipping wine with Sting at low volume as though she'd been born there. As though she always wore full makeup and shaved her legs just to sit at the kitchen table.

She'd read most of cinema and a bit of the television guide when the doorbell finally rang.

“Sorry I'm late, terrible traffic coming over the bridge.” A vision in pale lilac cotton, damp hair, and a shy smile stood on her doorstep. Ohmigod.

“That's fine, come in.” She sprinted up the stairs before
him, careful not to let his eyes dwell too long on her bottom, which followed her at what felt like fifty paces. They retrieved a dial-a-curry menu from the wastepaper basket and ordered enough kormas and nan bread to satisfy a maharaja. When it arrived they laid it out on the living room floor and sat cross-legged with their plates on their knees. Amy watched Orlando as he helped himself to more rice, mesmerized by his hands. They were large and slim with the merest dusting of blond hairs, and his watch, a brown leather strap and solid face. But it wasn't the watch that held her transfixed, it was the way it sat on his wrist bone, the tanned and powerful wrist, the forearms and gentle curve of muscle beneath the creased rolled-up cotton of his shirt. She'd never seen anything more suggestive of good sex in her life. She shifted in her seat with anticipation and distraction. Get on with it, Orlando, I'm losing patience.

“How's the Hardy?” she asked, trying to suppress her urge to jump on him.

“Good. I can't say I'm having the time of my life, but I think it's working well.”

“What about the rest of the cast?” Amy attempted to extract salient information about his luscious costar.

“They're fine, we all get on pretty well.”

“And your leading lady?”

“Fine, she's a great Eustacia.” He had women a little wrong in this respect. While Amy longed to hear how dull Tiffany was and he longed to tell her, he thought it would just make him seem crass and misogynistic. Oh, crossed wires.

“Actually, that's part of the reason why I came round.”

Oh God, he's having an affair with her. He's perfectly entitled to, of course. It's not as though we have anything going on, but …

“I have to go away to finish the filming.” Amy's heart sank like a stone into her stomach and she felt nauseous.

“Really?”

“Not for very long, just a month. We're going to New Zealand. The light in Dorset's really bad so the producer thought we should go to Auckland.”

“Excuse me for pointing this out, but Auckland and Dorset aren't awfully similar.” Amy came over all acerbic.

“It's a popular ploy among crews who feel like a trip. Pretend the light's better on the other side of the world and heigh-ho, off we all go. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. I mean, not to me. It's not as though anything's going on, is it?” There. She'd done it. Voiced her paranoia and made herself sound like a bitter spinster.

“Amy, I don't know what to say. I thought things were going well. I thought that when I get back from New Zealand we could see a bit more of each other, if you still want to.”

Amy was unconvinced. I've heard some elaborate brush-offs in my time but heading for the Antipodes at the first sign of trouble seems insane. But then all actors were insane. Professional weirdos. Amy's warmth plummeted to room temperature and below. Icy spells.

“You don't owe me some debt of gratitude, Orlando. You're a free man, you can go to the other side of the world whenever you wish.” Poor bloke, and he thought it was all going so well.

“Amy, I'm not asking your permission to leave, I'm
just asking if we can see each other again when I get back.”

“Just as long as you don't ask if you can kiss me.” In her general hysteria Amy got uncontrollable giggles and couldn't believe what she'd just said. He smiled in bewilderment, not getting the joke.

“It's just something Lucinda and I were laughing about the other day, men who ask you if they can kiss you. We weren't sure if they existed anymore.” She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes before erupting again. Orlando sat still, smiling benevolently and waiting for her to calm down.

“I take it I don't have to ask then,” he said, leaning over and taking her wrist. She fell silent and they kissed.

Postcoital
tristesse
. Amy couldn't understand who'd coined this term.
La petite mort?
No, don't get that either. The French are so morose about sex, take it far too seriously, she thought, experimenting with little kisses on Orlando Rock's shoulder. It was definitely a turn-on having a sex symbol in your bed. But he was Orlando, too, kind Orlando, gauche Orlando who'd looked so hurt when she pretended not to care. Cute. She kissed his chocolaty dark nipple and wished it were chocolate. Forget the old joke about women turning into pizzas after sex; if men turned into chocolate, she could die a happy, very fat woman. Forget
petite mort
. Fat
mort
, more like. She bit his nipple to test if he was awake. He groaned a bit and ruffled her hair with his hand. Amy remembered a saying she'd heard about men thinking women didn't masturbate and that they had to be kidding, God only made men fall asleep after sex so women
could get on with it. Well, I'm not complaining about this man's ability to deliver, she purred. After she'd looked at his lips from all angles, their almost indecently large, succulent form, she decided she wanted him to kiss her again. She slipped her hand around his bottom and pinched it lightly. His eyes flickered open and Orlando Rock, sex god, woke from his slumber. He bit her lips and she raked her nails across his back, they shook the house to its foundations and Amy bumped her head on the wall. He screwed his face up tightly and her neck stretched out, her muscles tensing. Mmmm, better than a Cadbury's flake, she declared to herself, and sucked his earlobe.

H
er mood wasn't so sassy, though, a week later. She'd been there, had the hormones to prove it, basked in them, and was now officially “missing him.” Orlando Rock's flight from the country had been detailed in the tabloids, Tiffany Swann not far away in the background. Bollocks, she thought. If only, she thought. But he was now firmly ensconced in the land that invented bungee jumping, had lots of sheep, and who knows what else? Who cares, frankly. He was there and she was here. And she could just see it in that tart's eyes, she was hankering after him, would probably get him in a month, too. No man can wait that long till he has sex again. Amy knew about such things. Or so she thought.

She dragged her feet around the house and refused to wash her hair.

“It's good for it, after six weeks it'll start to wash itself anyway, and I'll never have to waste money on shampoo again,” she justified it to Lucinda.

“You'll stink.”

“Natural oils, they're very pleasant, I could probably market them, they're full of pheromones.”

“You'll smell like a sheep,” Lucinda protested. Amy
took herself into hibernation mode. The girls at work tried to prize her from her moribund state, come out with us to this new bar, they chorused.

“I'm making coleslaw tonight, I can't.”

She stayed at home and wrote letters to long-forgotten aunts, except she never really started one, let alone finished and posted one. Instead she drew flowers in the corner of the paper and, chewing her pen, gazed over at her bed. He's been here, in this room. He's kissed me. He's on the cover of
Esquire
. We've had sex. But the facts didn't stick. Maybe he's an impostor, some bloke who looks like Orlando Rock and hangs around bars picking up women. But I didn't meet him in a bar, did I? And Lily knows who he is. So he's real. She felt sick at the thought of how amazingly handsome, in fact, just how amazing, Orlando was.
Was
, because she knew that she would never see him again. She was just one of those bints who these guys could have all the time, anytime they wanted. She still wasn't convinced as to why her number had come up in the lottery rather than one of those ravishing creatures you see on Friday nights on Fulham Road. Maybe I remind him of his mother? Amy nearly chipped a tooth, she was chewing her pen so hard. Shit. I guess it happens all the time, famous person sleeps with normal person and they never set eyes on them again, except on the cover of a magazine or on the rare occasion that the fortunate bint gets pregnant during her encounter and she can establish a link, albeit via the tabloids, with the man she'll never forget. Never forget even after she's married an investment banker and now lives in a very nice house thank you very much in
Virginia Water. God, I'm pathetic, thought Amy, finally giving up the fight with the pen and paper and wandering downstairs to watch telly instead.

In her exile she even tried to mend fences with the flat monsters, who grilled her incessantly about Orlando and provided her with an excuse to talk about him.

“What did you talk about?” queried Cath.

“Oooh, all sorts,” said Amy, reeling off the little jokes they'd shared and not shutting up when she should have known better. But at least they were interested; everyone else she knew tried to make her forget it, take her out of herself, and enjoy herself.

“I don't want to bloody well enjoy myself, Lucinda, I'm miserable. I've been deserted by sodding Orlando who quite obviously just wants to get into that tart's knickers and I think my heart's broken.”

“You're not, you're just being a drama queen and you've got to get a grip. You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“Thanks for the support,” Amy snapped, and put down the phone. Right now she didn't deserve friends, particularly not ones as nice as Lucinda.