Charlie Glass's Slippers (13 page)

“Stefan? Are you crazy?” Pal looks irritated. “After what he did to Britta Jensen at Erik’s Christmas party?”

“Charlie will be fine.” Lucy is fussing over her blinis. “You can handle yourself, can’t you, Charlie?”

I shoot her a look that says this may depend on exactly what Stefan
did
do to Britta Jensen at Erik’s Christmas party.

“Oh, Stefan’s harmless,” Lucy says.
“Look, I just need peace and quiet in here for a couple of minutes, okay?”

The rising tone of her voice suggests I should probably just obey her instructions. Anyway, I don’t really have a choice, because Pal is opening the kitchen door and ushering me out towards the living room.

This is where the party is really happening. Though “happening” is a bit inaccurate. In all honesty, “party” is a bit inaccurate.

There are about two dozen smartly dressed, mostly blond and more-than-averagely-tall people standing around in Pal’s neat, gray-toned living room, sipping glasses of white wine and nibbling neat little rounds of rye bread with pretty toppings and engaging in what, if I spoke Norwegian, I could probably identify as extremely serious conversation. There are strains of something Vivaldi-ish coming out from a set of Bose speakers on a side table.

I may not have managed to get out to many parties while Dad was ill, but I do remember the parties Lucy used to throw, back in the old days, and this looks absolutely nothing like them. Lucy’s parties were usually inspired by a general theme—Mexican Fiesta, Mafiosi Wedding, Barbados Beach Barbecue—to which she would fit whatever lethal cocktail she’d made up for the night and whatever takeaway food best matched it. She was good at inviting an entertaining mix of people, too, chucking in old school friends and new university friends with a few random neighbors and a couple of long-lost cousins for good measure.

I suppose it is
possible
that Lucy picked Scandinavian Accountants’ Conference as her theme for the night. But it doesn’t seem terribly likely.

“Let me get you a glass of wine, Charlie,” Pal says, steering me towards the table that’s been lined with perfectly aligned rows of glasses and bottles of white wine encased in those foil chiller sleeves. “Unless you’re not drinking tonight?”

“Why would I not be drinking?”

“Well, you’ve obviously lost a
lot
of weight. So maybe you’re training for something. And I never drink when I’m training for something. Alcohol is just empty calories.”

“I’m not training for anything. And yes, I would like a drink. A large one.”

Which is probably a very bad idea, because alcohol really
is
nothing but empty calories. My blood runs cold, momentarily, at the mere thought of the number of lunges I’m going to have to do to get rid of them. And I know how crazy it is to be depriving myself of so much as a single blini when I’m perfectly happy to knock back booze by the bucketload. But this is Lucy’s fault. If she hadn’t invited Ferdy, I wouldn’t be feeling the need to knock back booze, by the bucket or any other kind of load.

“White wine?” he asks, lifting an open bottle.

“Red, please, if you’ve got it.” (Red is higher in alcohol, so I can consume fewer empty calories but still get comfortably sloshed; you can’t say I’m not being creative here.)

“No, it’s white only.” He starts pouring me a glass. “I can’t trust Lucy to go about the place pouring red wine for people! She’s such a . . . what’s that English expression . . . butterfingers?”

I manage not to take the glass from his hand, upend it over the pale gray carpet, and say
Is that what you mean by butterfingers?

“So, you must be doing some pretty hard-core gym work,”
he continues. “Are you running, are you rowing? It’s hard to get that kind of lean muscle mass without putting in the hours on the treadmill.”

“Actually, Pal, I think I’d better go and find the friend I came with.” I can see Olly again now, as a gap opens up between groups. He’s engaged in conversation with a pair of absurdly tall men, one of whom is wearing—without irony or embarrassment—an actual neckerchief. Olly is looking slightly desperate, bless him, though he shoots me a brave smile and gives me a little wave, much in the manner of a doomed soldier being sent off to war. “But thanks for the drink . . .”

“Now, what I’ve been doing in the gym lately”—Pal either hasn’t noticed I’ve spoken or (more likely) has just unilaterally decided that what I’ve said isn’t as important as what he’s about to say—“is some very intense fartleks.”

This is far, far more information than I want from Pal.

“Right. Oh, dear. Have you been eating more beans than usual or something?”

“
Fartleks
,” he repeats, pouring himself a very small glass of wine and leaning back against the wall, as if he’s settling in for a long chat. “It’s a kind of interval training, developed in Sweden. Haven’t you heard of it?”

“No, I can’t say I—”

“I start out with a steady ten-minute jog on the treadmill, followed by a five-minute recovery phase, and then I start a repetitive series of very fast one-minute sprints, interspersed with one-minute brisk walks. . . . Oh, I think you know those people who are just arriving,” he says, suddenly, nodding over my shoulder towards the door. “Weren’t they at your flat that time I came over for that dinner party?”

I turn around to look.

Lucy is coming through the doorway, carrying a platter of smoked salmon blinis and wearing an expression of sheepish fury. Behind her, holding hands, are Ferdy and Honey.

Holding hands
.

“I suppose you’d better come and say hello to Charlie,” Lucy is telling them. “Charlie, look who it is! And look who he’s brought with him.”

“Well, he really had to bring me with him!” Honey says. She looks, if anything, even more adorable than the last time I saw her, wearing another of her little skater skirts with an I Heart New York T-shirt, her blond hair in a springy ponytail. “I am his girlfriend, after all!”

I’m not sure who looks more shocked: me and Lucy, hearing this declaration from Honey; or Ferdy and Honey, as they come face-to-face with the brand-new me.

“Oh! My! God!” says Honey, after a moment. “
Charlie?
” She turns to look up at Ferdy, pulling on his arm like a little girl attracting attention. “This is the same Charlie whose dinner we went to?”

“Yes.” Ferdy’s mouth is half open. Though not, I have to say, in a very good way. He looks less like a man in the throes of desperate lust and more like a man suffering from severe constipation. “Yes, this is that Charlie. At least, I
think
it is . . .”

“Yes, it’s me.” I beam at them both, brightly, to make up for the fact that Lucy is still scowling. “It’s . . . great to see you both!”

“I had no idea you were back,” he says, looking more constipated than ever.

“Well, you didn’t even tell
me
she’d gone away!” Honey says, reproachfully. “One of your very best friends, Ferd, and you didn’t bother to mention that she’d gone somewhere.”

I’m not sure how Honey has formed the (inaccurate) impression that Ferdy and I are close enough to be described as “very best friends,” but it certainly can’t be because of anything Ferdy himself has said to her. After all, the fact that he didn’t mention that I’d gone away, coupled with the fact that
he didn’t reply to any of my emails, is pretty convincing proof that he barely thinks of me as any kind of a friend at all.

“And you know I’d been wanting to get in touch with Charlie,” Honey continues to scold him, “to thank her for being the one who got us together!”

This is news to me. “I got you together?”

“Yes! It was that night we came to your flat for that amazing dinner! I was all upset about my cat, remember? Well, we got so much closer after that night that honestly, Charlie, if it weren’t for you and that dinner, it might never have happened!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’d have found a way,” Lucy mutters. “Blini?” she adds, shoving her platter under Honey and Ferdy’s noses, with not inconsiderable violence.

“Er . . . yeah, I guess I’ll have a blini,” Ferdy says, sensibly accepting.

“So, Charlie,” Lucy goes on, “do you think Olly would like a blini, too? Olly’s the guy Charlie came with,” she goes on, before I can even answer. “See—that good-looking guy over there, talking to the guy in the . . .” She stops, seemingly unable to utter the word
neckerchief
. “. . . scarfy thing.”

“Oooh,
Charlie
, you’ve got a new
boyfriend
!” Honey squeals.

“He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just friends.”

“Friends with
benefits
,” Lucy says, with a meaningful look at Ferdy. “If you know what I mean.”

“
I
don’t know what you mean,” Pal says, irritably. “What kind of benefits are you talking about? Does the guy work for Social Services or something?”

“Hey, isn’t he the guy who came around that night of your dinner?” Ferdy asks, craning his neck to see Olly across the heads of the tall people surrounding him.

“Exactly! He’s been after Charlie for ages,” Lucy says. “Though of course he’s only at the front of the queue. A
very long
queue.”

Again, I know Lucy’s only trying to help, but she’s managing to make me sound like a bit of a slut. I don’t know if this is better or worse than the last time she tried to Talk Me Up to Ferdy and succeeded in making me sound like Mother Teresa.

“Well, I’d love to go and say hi to him!” Honey says. “Find out all the gossip about him and Charlie!”

“Oh, brilliant, I’ll take you over there.” Lucy sounds more friendly towards Honey than she ever has before. In fact, she even hands Pal her platter of blinis, just so that she can slip an arm through Honey’s and start to lead her towards Olly. “Babe, would you mind taking those around before they get cold? You’re an angel—thank you.”

Which means—
thanks, Lucy
—that Ferdy and I are left alone.

We just sort of blink at each other, in silence, for a couple of moments.

I note that he does, as expected, look tall, broad, and appealing. He’s wearing nice jeans, and a dark gray T-shirt that matches the color of his eyes, and his dusty-brown hair is all sticking up in its usual haphazard tufts, making me wish I could just reach out and rearrange it.

“Um,” I begin, just as Ferdy also speaks.

“So!”

So
is, obviously, a lot more promising than
um
, so I give him the floor.

“It really is . . . it’s good to see you, Charlie.”

“You, too.”

“And you look so . . .”

I wait, with bated breath.

“. . . different!”

I know, in an instant, that Lucy was right.

Because I know, right now, that I didn’t do this big makeover
just
because I wanted to make something of my career. It must have been a little bit for Ferdy, too, if this crushed,
miserable feeling I’m getting right now is anything to go by.

Because I can’t deny that I was secretly hoping for something a little bit better than
you look so different
.

“I honestly don’t think I’d have even recognized you,” he carries on. “I mean, I was hoping that when you got back, you might be able to come to the new parlor and taste-test a few of the new flavors I’ve been working on. Mint Crisp. Coconut Choc-Chip. But you don’t look like you’ve been doing too much ice-cream tasting these past couple of months.”

“No.” I don’t want to admit that I’ll never actually be able to eat ice cream again. That merely thinking about Coconut Choc-Chip ice cream is enough to make me gain a stone. “Not much.”

“And it’s not just . . .” He stops. “It’s the hair, and the tan . . . Is that
fake
, by the way?”

“Um, no, as a matter of fact. It was pretty sunny in California.”

“Of course. Sorry. I just assumed . . . I mean, Honey’s always sloshing on fake tans, so I thought maybe . . .”

“Hey, speaking of Honey . . .” If nothing else, so that we don’t have to talk about fake tans any longer. “What brilliant news that you’ve gotten together! I’m really happy for you. She seems such a great person.”

“Yes. But how about you and this . . . Olly, is it?”

“Oh, God, no, we’re really not together!”

“I know, I know, you’re just—what was it Lucy just said—friends with benefits?”

I’m about to mount a strenuous denial of this when I realize that Ferdy is looking at me a bit oddly. He’s gone from looking constipated to looking as if he’s just eaten something that’s disagreed with him.

Either Lucy’s homemade blinis are less successful than they look or Ferdy is more bothered by Olly than I thought.

Well, I guess the only way I’ll know for sure is if I test out
the waters. I attempt to look coy, and take a little sip from my wineglass.

“Well, you know how it is,” I say. “Trying to navigate that tricky area on the edge of the friend zone!”

(
The friend zone
is something I read about in that same copy of the
Sunday Times Style
magazine where I read about Melanie Morgan and her luxury-shoe habit.)

Ferdy just blinks at me and repeats, rather blankly, “The friend
zone
?”

“Yes, you know—the, er, zone where you’re stuck being friends?”

“Hang on—is that the same thing as the queue?”

“It isn’t a
queue
,” I explain, patiently, “it’s a
zone
.”

“No, I meant that Lucy was talking about there being a queue of guys lining up to get their hands on you . . .”

“Oh, that! No, no,” I say, hastily, “there’s no queue.”

“I thought not.” He seems to visibly relax. He even smiles properly, for the first time since he’s arrived. “I mean, a whole queue of guys? I really don’t see it, Charlie.”

Which makes me feel just a little bit like finding the nearest quiet corner, curling myself up into a ball, and dying.

I mean, it’s bad enough that Ferdy so obviously doesn’t fancy me himself. But now he’s implying—no, he’s out-and-out
saying
—that he doesn’t think other men are going to fancy me, either.