One Summer Night At the Ritz (8 page)

‘I’m really hungry,’ she said, almost without thinking, with none of the planning that she’d been putting in re asking him for another drink.

‘Yeah, me too.’

They were walking through Green Park.

‘We could go somewhere on Piccadilly?’ he said. ‘The Wolseley will still be open. Or…’ He paused.

‘Or what?’ she asked.

‘We could have room service at The Ritz. You’re staying there, right?’

She turned and looked at him to see if this was all some great ploy to get her into bed, but his face was impassive. And Jane had absolutely no idea what constituted flirting or hints at attraction any longer. She knew they’d been getting on, but she also knew she was as far from Will’s type as she could possibly be and the way he said it seemed more just like it’d be a kinda fun thing to do, like swimming in the lake.

‘Well at least we could get dry that way,’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ he agreed, and then he slung his arm over her shoulder as if they were in cahoots over a plan.

And as they walked, she realised how dangerously addictive such closeness could be.

Chapter Fourteen

Jane could feel her damp sandals squelching as she walked through the lobby of The Ritz. She watched the doorman and the concierge staff give her wet hair and now see-through white top a subtle once-over. Trevor on the door had tipped his hat at her and she felt like she’d seen a twitch on his lips at the sight of Will following her inside. When they passed the door of The Rivoli Bar, the barman who had served them all night was just crossing the corridor to get something from Reception. He grinned when he saw them and Jane could almost see a silent high-five pass between him and Will. She looked at the floor, she looked up at the chandelier and the fancy pelmet on the curtains, anywhere but a mirror to see her burning red cheeks or the eyes of one of the all-seeing staff.

In the lift they stood side by side, their reflections staring back at them. Both wet, both almost smiling, both thinking their separate but possibly the same thoughts.

As the doors pinged open, she suddenly felt completely aware of her every movement – the length of her strides, the swing of her hands, the depth of her breathing, the closeness of his arm against hers as they walked.

‘OK, so this is my room,’ she said, fumbling with her key.

‘A suite, very impressive,’ he said as she pushed open the door. ‘Blimey, I haven’t been in one of these for a while,’ he added as he walked in. ‘It’s exactly the same, nothing’s changed. Wow.’ He picked up one of the blue and white china urns on the mantlepiece and turned it over to look at the base. ‘It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how they get away with it. Like the rules of the world don’t count here.’ He swept an arm around the sitting room of the suite. ‘Would you decorate your house like this?’

She laughed. ‘No.’

‘There you go. If I did my hotels like this, I’d be laughed out of the industry, but The Ritz. They can get away with it. You’re buying into this. This…’ He looked around with a frown.

‘Dream?’ she added.

‘Fantasy. You’re basically being given what you think they have in Buckingham Palace. You’re royalty for the bargain price of— How much did you pay?’ he asked, looking back over his shoulder at her as he picked up the bottle of champagne in the silver bucket and inspected the label.

‘I’m not telling you,’ she said, starting to dry her hair with one of the towels from the bathroom. ‘And can you stop picking apart my hotel room. It might be work for you, but for me this is a dream.’

Will put the champagne back in the bucket. ‘Sorry,’ he said, seeming to catch himself. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think. So what does the queen want to eat?’ he asked, handing her the room service menu and pinching her towel.

‘I’d rather be Kate Middleton actually.’

‘Really? God, who does that make me? Harry?’ he laughed.

‘You can be the butler,’ she said, giving him a quick glance from behind the menu.

‘At your service,’ he said with a raise of his brow before rubbing his hair dry.

She watched him for a second with the pretence of looking at what to order. He’d unbuttoned his shirt and was drying off his body. She wondered if he was doing it on purpose so she would look. Then she made herself remember that he was wet and needed to dry off. He looked like he went to the gym a lot but didn’t spend much time out in the sun. She wondered what her body looked like in comparison. Flabbier. Ruddier from so much time at the allotment and trying to fix all the problems with the boat. She didn’t want to dry off in front of him. Didn’t want him to see her body the way she could see his because she felt she would be judged and found wanting.

‘I’ll have the grilled chicken sandwich,’ she said, handing him the menu. ‘Do you want to have a shower?’ she asked.

He paused, then slung the towel round his neck and said, ‘Together?’

‘No.’oShe rolled her eyes.

He laughed. ‘OK, well you go first, I’ll order the food.’

Even though the door was shut, Jane undressed like she was in a school changing room. Holding the towel tight round her and pulling off her damp clothes and underwear, then almost jumping into the shower cubicle. She knew he’d already seen her half-naked swimming in the lake, but suddenly here, back to the stark reality of the hotel where they had first met, she felt hugely self-conscious. So much so that, after the shower, she stood taking deep breaths at the door, psyching herself up to cross the room in her towel to go and find some dry clothes.

When she walked out of the room, he was phoning through the room service order. His head didn’t move but she could feel his eyes follow her across the carpet. She didn’t look at him, just headed for her suitcase which was an open mess of stuff on the sofa and, keeping one hand firmly on the knot in her towel, rummaged through for something vaguely acceptable to wear while trying to surreptitiously pack her tatty belongings away at the same time.

‘I’ve seen it all before, you know? At the lake,’ he said with a nod towards her clutched towel as he put down the phone.

‘Doesn’t mean you’re going to see it again,’ she said with a raise of her brow and he laughed.

‘That’s a shame.’

Jane swallowed and had to look away from his pleased-with-himself grin. Focusing on her clothes, she found that the only things she had left to wear were her denim shorts and an old white hoody that she wore instead of a dressing gown at home. Never had she wished that she’d listened to Emily more and packed a whole host of possible outfit choices.

Will went to have a shower, and proved himself to have a great deal fewer inhibitions – he left the door open for the whole thing and then just strolled out the bathroom dressed only in a white Ritz robe and threw himself lazily down on the sofa. ‘This is the life, isn’t it?’

Jane was sitting cross-legged, a touch awkwardly, on one of the straight-backed chairs and jumped to attention as soon as the waiter knocked on the door with their dinner.

‘Hi yes, great, er, just over there,’ Jane said, pointing to the coffee table, ‘Thank you.’

She saw the waiter glance towards Will, who was really playing up his whole relaxed dressing gown look and loving how flustered it was clearly making her. Her fingers fumbled in a purse for a tip. The waiter did a sort of bow and Will raised his hand in a cheery goodbye, his bare feet up on the pouffe.

When she smelt the food, however, all Jane’s inhibitions were gone. She was not someone who did well without food and, lifting the silver cloche from her sandwich, she was already taking a bite as Will sauntered over.

‘What did you have?’ she asked mid-chew, tucking her bare legs underneath her so he would see less of them.

‘The burger,’ he said, lifting the lid and sighing happily at the site of the huge steak burger, its brioche bun glistening under the lights.

He sat down next to her on the sofa, legs open, the gown just covering him, clearly uncaring how much she saw of him. She shifted slightly, having expected him to sit opposite.

‘That’s a damn good burger,’ he said as he took a bite, then turned and looked at her. ‘You know, I can barely remember why we’re together,’ he said.

‘You said you wanted to buy me off,’ she replied, licking mayonnaise off her lips as she put her chicken club down and picked up a chip.

‘Oh yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Not my finest hour.’

‘We should probably talk about the diaries – what you want to do. Do you want to meet Martha?’

He nodded as he chewed, ‘Yeah, I could meet her. I suppose what I don’t quite understand is why it’s you meeting me, not her or another relative.’

‘There are no other relatives. I don’t think.’ Annie glanced at the tray and realised that he’d ordered her a Coke as well. ‘Is this for me?’

He nodded.

‘Thanks.’

He shrugged as if it was nothing.

But it felt strangely intimate to Jane – that he’d picked her a soft drink – like they were teenagers at a sleepover.

She took a sharp, sugary sip that tasted of pure nostalgia. Of feet dangling in the river and Enid’s music playing. ‘I’m here because Martha didn’t want to bring it all up, I think, and I did. She said the past was always better left buried. I felt like I owed it to Enid to find everything out and then put it to bed. You know, she’d kept that government letter right with her at the cafe she worked at till she died. And the diaries – she’d buried them at the allotment.’

Will choked a laugh on his bite of hamburger. ‘She buried them?’

‘Yeah!’ Jane laughed. ‘So it just shows how important it was to her. It was her secret and I loved that.’

He looked at her and she looked away, picked up her Coke and felt a bit embarrassed for getting so excited.

‘Why did you love that?’ he asked, wiping his hands on a napkin and lounging back against the sofa, his arm outstretched along the back.

‘I don’t know? Everyone loves a mystery, don’t they?’

‘Clearly not Martha,’ he said.

‘Martha likes everything to be in its place. She doesn’t really like change and—’

‘And you do?’

Jane paused for a second wondering whether to just shirk off the question or to actually tell him the truth. Where else did one open up to someone if not late at night in a sumptuous hotel room, dressed in differing versions of dressing gowns, with just the low side-lights on and the bubbles of a Coca-Cola popping next to you on the table? If anything, she wanted to talk just so there wasn’t a silence, just because his hand was dangerously close to her back and he was looking at her with half interest in her story and half like he might lean forward at any moment and kiss her and if that did happen then she felt like she was so out of practice that she’d have no idea what to do. So she said, ‘My life’s been a bit weird. There’s never been an option to, like, change or not – it just happened.’

He didn’t ask why, as she’d assumed he would but instead said, ‘I’m terrible with change. Everything that’s happened to me has happened exactly the way it should. I’ve been programmed to like order.’

His hand had stopped tapping against the back of the sofa and, to her horror and delight, was toying with the hood of her jumper, occasionally stopping to stroke the loose strands of her hair.

Jane carried on as if it wasn’t happening. ‘You’d have hated my life.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged, careful not to move too much in case he stopped playing with her jumper, or stopped touching her hair, frozen in uncertainty of what was happening. ‘Because it was always unpredictable. My mum was particularly unpredictable.’ She laughed when she said it but it felt like a moment when a counsellor might lean forward and say something trite about Jane using humour to overcome issues of her past. ‘That’s why I’m here, you know.’

He wrapped a strand of hair around his finger. ‘Because your mum was unpredictable?’

‘Because Enid was probably the closest person I had to a conventional parent. And if you met Enid you wouldn’t really think she was conventional so I suppose that says something in itself.’

She looked at him and he nodded, concentrating on her hair and her neck. ‘Keep going.’

‘I can’t keep going because you’re distracting me.’

‘Sorry,’ he laughed. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

Will smiled. He sat forward from where he’d been lounging back and then seemed to pause for a moment as if thinking about what he was going to do. She was expecting him to kiss her. He turned so he was facing her, reached his hand up and stroked down the side of her face so she could feel the warm skin of his palm against her cheek. She was definitely expecting him to kiss her. His hand snaked round her back and she could feel the pressure of it through her jumper. He lowered his head and she angled hers up ready to be kissed. She hadn’t forgotten. But instead of the press of his lips, she felt the touch of his forehead on hers. Could hear him take in a breath and looked up to see his eyes shut for a second. She wondered if she should wait. If the kiss was coming next. But instead he stayed like that for a moment longer then drew her body round with his hand so she wasn’t sitting upright but was nestled in the crook of his arm, the angle making her have to tuck her legs up onto the sofa, her head resting on his chest so she could hear the thrum of his heart. She could feel the deep shudder of his breath as he leant back, tightened his arm around her and, after a couple of seconds, he said, ‘Carry on. Tell me about this unpredictable life.’

She didn’t really know what was going on. She felt confused and disappointed but, at the same time, strangely relieved. She shut her eyes and could smell the orange blossom scent of the shower gel, could feel the softness of the robe under her hand where it rested on his stomach and could sense the bareness of his chest just above her head.

If she didn’t talk, the fear was that this moment might end.

So she told him. And realised as she did that she had spoken so rarely about her life that it was like talking about someone else: This person, Jane, she did all this stuff. She used to sit with her mum in her workshop while she hand-printed the most glorious fabrics, her face set in a concentration that took her far from reality, where she wouldn’t speak or listen, got furious with an interruption, so this Jane learnt to sit in the corner in silence and wait. Wait for the rare, glorious good days of adventure. Then came school and the desire for normality. The desire to hide her life. The fear that her mum would remember to pick her up, the embarrassment of seeing her standing at the gates dressed in all her patterns and kaftans with wild eyes and crazy hair. This Jane would go home to cut the cloth and mix the dye. Every night, every morning. Then, older still, she was no longer fielding phone calls from school about missed days and her lack of packed lunch but irate designers waiting on their commissions while her mum refused to get out of bed. And soon she was going to the workshop herself, finishing fabrics that had only been half started. Would try and navigate the design from scraps of paper and piles of sketches. She would tie it all up and cycle it to whoever’s studio it was, their faces surprised to see this tall, skinny young girl rather than her mother. And her mother never seemed to question where the piece she had started ended up. Never seemed to know she hadn’t finished it. Was just relieved that it was done. Then soon it was this Jane creating the designs herself, assuming the identity of her mother who was getting too dark, her world too black, to do them herself. And people were commenting on the freshness of the work, the beauty of it, and this Jane started to feel pride in her creations, wanted to break out from her assumed identity and learn to be better.