Love (28 page)

“Do you remember that day when you said you wanted glamour and hair-free legs in your life, not monotony and Sunday roasts?”

“It's not the same though, Luce, I really love Orlando. And he's very handsome.”

“But he's very ordinary, you know he'll never go to casinos in Monte Carlo or buy a boat.”

“So?”

“So just pointing out that fact.”

“It doesn't matter, I love him.” Amy was adamant.

“So the fact that he's as famous as cornflakes has nothing to do with it?”

“Absolutely not. I've had my brush with glamour and couldn't give a damn about it, had my fingers burned. Anyway, why are you asking?”

“No reason, only that we got a postcard from Orlando this morning saying that he was coming back next week—”

“I know that,” Amy interrupted.

“And that it's the premiere of his film, and would we like to come.”

“Who, me and you?”

“No, me and Benjy.”

“What?” Amy shrieked, letting her noodle drop back into her miso soup and splash her clean shirt. “Why didn't he ask me?”

“Presumably because you've done such a great job of convincing him that you're now limelight-shy.”

“Yes, but I'm not Lord Lucan, I do intend to be seen again.”

“But the press will be there.”

“Yes, but I don't care, I'll just wear jeans or something and then they won't want to take pictures.”

“And Tiffany Swann.” There's nothing like a bit of competition to heighten one's sense of occasion.

“Well then, maybe they'll be silk jeans or something.” Amy smiled wickedly. “And maybe they'll be fitted and I might just go to the hairdressers first.”

“And get a seaweed wrap,” added Lucinda.

“And a pedicure. God, I can't go out without a pedicure.”

“And maybe a tiny weeny collagen injection in your lips, just to even them out.”

“God, yes, and whip out a couple of ribs, just to emphasize my minute waistline.” The girls exploded with laughter and their noodles plopped and splashed and a piece of sushi was knocked onto the floor in the fracas. The waiter looked disapproving and they laughed even more.

But whatever Amy said she had meant. As she wandered down King's Road looking for a pair of shoes worthy of a premiere, she didn't think I must look nice for the cameras, she thought I want to look nice for Orlando, I want him to think my feet look so unutterably perfect in these shoes that he just has to kiss my toes one by one and then work his way up, I want him to lose concentration talking to all those famous people because I'm there and he can't take his eyes off me. I want him to love me more than anyone or anything, more than beer, she smiled wistfully. So he was an actor of Olivier proportions, so he was possibly the most handsome man she'd ever set eyes on, he was also in love with her and no amount of public adoration or designer freebies could match that for her. It was a buzz and a head-fry and it was the first time she'd felt like this. She hadn't told him that she loved him yet, but she would, when the time was right.

The car would be arriving at seven so she had two hours. There hadn't been time for the rib removal but she gave herself a homemade face pack and fluffed
around in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. She lay in the bath and remembered a trick where if you hypnotized yourself and imagined your breasts were growing, they actually would. She didn't want to be outdone by Tiffany “Tits and Bum” Swann, so she thought swelling breasts for all of three minutes until she got bored and decided she'd have to be content with what God had given her. If they were good enough for the
Sun
, they couldn't be the small bee stings her mind's eye perceived them as. She put heavenly smelling soap in places she didn't know she had and, wiping the steam from the bathroom mirror, looked at herself in her new underwear, white and bright against her now pale caramel-colored skin. She thought it most becoming, and indeed herself most becoming. Tiffany Swann may have the assets but Amy could go as au naturel as women ever did and shine with wit and charm instead.

Yes, there was no knocking her confidence tonight. In the wake of the
Hello!
fiasco, she'd learned that she was not a hallowed babe. She would never be. Elegant? Yes. Well dressed? Yes. Lithe? Yes. She could think of a million adjectives but
babe
wasn't one. To be a babe you had to have tiny plucked eyebrows and pneumatic boobs, tiny T-shirts and high heels. Amy was too tall for high heels for a start and she couldn't laugh at men's jokes if she didn't find them funny. No matter how rich or gorgeous the man. So long, babe. Hello, Amy, she thought, winking in the mirror at herself. Tiffany Swann would have to do the gin-and-limelight party-queen bit tonight. Amy just wanted to see her man act his socks off and then take him home and get his kit off. Why
couldn't things have been this simple from the start, she thought, burying the buttock-clenchingly cringy moments of the last three months beneath her excitement at seeing Orlando again. She wondered if he'd shaved his beard off. She also wondered what Bill would think of her. He was coming in the car with them, Orlando had told her on the phone from LA, and was dying to meet her. She'd have preferred to have him in the car by herself, limousines were practically an invitation to licentious behavior on the backseat, and now she'd have to shake hands and make do with air kisses. Should she practice her vehicular exit, she wondered, thinking of all those terrible actressy pictures of exposed knickers and spilling breasts. The last thing she wanted was to be on the front of the newspapers in a
crise d'
underwear. Finally she was ready. She sat on the stairs of her flat and checked her toenail polish one more time, wondering what Orlando would wear and say tonight.

“Heaven, I'm in heaven,” she sang quietly until the doorbell rang and she pattered down to find the sleek ridiculously long limousine blocking her road. God, how embarrassing and naff, she thought, locking her door and trotting to the car. It's obscene.

“Orlando, darling!” She did kiss both cheeks. My God, he looked sexy, crisp clean white shirt, black tie, beardless and tanned. He smelled of lemons and musk and soft dark leather, and as she was about to squeeze his bottom Amy noticed a hefty man in a dinner jacket sitting in the backseat, too.

“Amy, this is Bill Ballantyne.

“Bill, Amy.”

“Pleased to meet you.” He reached a hairy paw out and Amy shook it.

“You, too,” she lied. I'd rather shag senseless in the backseat, she thought cheerfully.

“So how was Los Angeles?” She offered her conversational opener and sat back to watch Orlando's mouth as the two men exchanged anecdotes and jokes, made for eating oysters and women, an interview had once said of his mouth. Perfect description, she agreed.

“So, Amy, are you looking forward to seeing your young man's crack at Thomas Hardy?” Not as much as I'm looking forward to seeing the crack of his bottom.

“Oh, yes, I can't wait.”

“And have you read the book?” Which book? Why was this Scottish voice bothering her every five seconds, couldn't a girl fantasize in peace?

“I studied it for A Level actually,” she replied. Now shut up and let me think about his pulsating manhood. Finally they arrived at the cinema, and Amy was unprepared for the long red carpet she had to trail down with her consort. This wasn't fun, this was terrifying, why on earth she'd wasted her days wanting to shunt up and down vile colored carpets she couldn't begin to understand. Help!

Orlando did help; he took her hand and led her from the taxi, whispering softly, “If you get through this, I'll do anything you want me to do to you later.” Amy's face lit up in a smile and she felt totally desirable and confident and fabulous.

“Anything?” she asked. He nodded and smiled in just the right direction and with just the right amount of starriness. She hadn't a bloody clue where to look, she was
either grinning like the village idiot or looking like her goldfish had just died. Her face flickered from one expression to the other like a broken television set. Smile grimace, grimace grimace smile. Help. She was consumed by admiration for Orlando's easy manner and when they finally got inside the doors was sweating and shivering.

“God, that was horrible,” she said.

“Don't worry, darling, you were beautiful,” he reassured her, and oh, what perfect timing, there behind them to hear his adoration were the heaving bosoms and expanses of flesh that denoted Tiffany Swann. Amy looked closely at her face as she talked to Bill. She's a babe really, isn't she? she thought, examining her thinly arched brows. Well, bugger that then, I couldn't compete if I tried, and neither could she. Amy's head was swimming with faces and shining gowns and the whir of chatter and laughter and it was an enormous relief when finally they were shown to their seats and sat down to watch the film. She gripped the inside of Orlando's thigh as the credits rolled and only when she saw his name did she realize the enormity of his penis … no, of his fame.… Stop it, Amy, put those hormones away. There are words for women like you, she chided herself.

Then she was suddenly transported to the wilds of Egdon Heath, to windswept heather and bleak titanic skies. To interweaving fates and sorrows and missed opportunities, to Eustacia's love first for Wildeve and then Clym Yeobright, Orlando. There he was, ohmigod, there he was with his striking eyes and breathtaking body, he was wearing first a smart Parisian outfit and later some dashing thigh-high boots and trousers, his chest bare and
broad, he was sensitive and in love with Eustacia but she treated him so badly, such a wronged man, such a handsome man. There was no way she'd treat him like that if she were Eustacia, she thought, as her eyes pricked with tears at the thwarted love, and his mother hindering his happiness by forbidding the banns in church, how could she? Amy melted into the celluloid and made the characters' emotions her own. She pricked with pain and oppression as they did and was struck by love for the weak but well-meaning Clym, for after all here was a man who understood daydreams, who knew that life was more perfect in the imagination. Here was a man who understood her, Amy, sitting in her cramped red velvet seat with a tissue drying her eyes. She was desperate for the film to stay there, not to finish but to wind on beyond the end to engulf her in it. God, how tragic. Clym, I'd never have treated you so badly, she thought.

As they all filed out of the cinema and the buzz filled her head, the night air was as cool and reassuring as the breeze across the heath, the soft enveloping carpet a floor of heather. Amy could think only of Clym; she wanted to live on Egdon Heath with him in his furze cutter's cottage and tend to his failing eyesight like an angel of mercy. She'd make him broth and help him take faltering steps from his dark room onto the lichen steps of their cottage. She wouldn't desert him by cruelly drowning herself. No, she'd stand by her man to the death, she'd kiss him tenderly on his full, sad mouth and restore happiness to his life, they could have children and maypole dancing on the heath each spring, she'd …

“So what did you think, my love?” Clym asked, oh, but not Clym, it was Orlando.

“I think I'm in love,” she said as the cameras popped in their direction, and they walked out into Leicester Square and the midnight blue sky overhead flickered with flashes of stars. She was dazzled and saw only the moon over Egdon and a distant bonfire beside which she and Clym could stand and talk long into the night.

“I love you, too, darling,” he said, kissing her forehead, not caring about the cameras or the paparazzi yelling, “Give 'er anovver one, Olly!”

Amy blinked in all the light and thought, yes, Clym, I love you, too. But what about Orlando, Amy? Well, yes, I love Orlando as well, but then that's the more glorious thing about all this, I get to have my cake and eat it. For once I get to sleep with my hero and my boyfriend, interchangeable romance and reality in the same bed. Just the thing for me, thought Amy.