Christmas on Primrose Hill (16 page)

Scott sat back in his chair, regarding Mike warily. ‘As I said, I’ll have to speak to the special relations team and see who’ll best fit. We’ll take all these requirements into consideration – London-based, outspoken.’

‘Great,’ Jules said, pushing back her chair. ‘Well, then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start getting the press conference set up. We need to have it sorted for later on today.’

‘Today?’ Scott laughed.

‘This is the Fifth Dare of Christmas in the campaign, Scott,’ Jules shrugged. ‘Time’s not on our side. And if we want to set up a schedule of events for the celeb and Blue Bunny Girl, then we need to crack on. There’s only a week left.’

‘Yes, right, I see your point.’ Scott nodded, his eyes narrowed in confirmation. He gave a more decided nod. ‘I’ll put a memo out and confirm with you after lunch.’

‘Great.’

Ten minutes later they were sitting in the taxi on the way back to the office, Mike pensive and quiet as Daisy rang round the big hotels scouting for a venue and Caro got the latest figures updates from Tested. Jules was already drafting the press release. Nettie was quietly going through the messages on her Twitter account.

Yet again there were more than she could count, more than she could possibly read, and she flicked through them with silent detachment. The more she received, the less she felt they had anything to do with her. They were responding to the Blue Bunny, not her; all the things she was doing wouldn’t be half so funny or amusing if it was just her doing them. She would just be any random brown-haired girl planking on a postbox or having a bathful of ice emptied over her, but factor in the giant and very blue bunny costume and the tenor changed completely. It was bizarre, ridiculous, inane. Cool.

She caught sight of a red number one in the top corner of the page, attached to a blue envelope icon.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, showing Jules.

Jules looked up, her gaze distant, her mind still on the draft she was writing. ‘Huh? Oh, a direct message.’

‘Why’s it not with all the others?’

Jules sighed. ‘Jeez, you really are a relic. It’s a private message that can only be sent if you are following that person and they are following you.’

‘Oh. So it’s safe for me to click on, then?’

Jules sighed again, visibly weakened by Nettie’s technical illiteracy. ‘Yes. Your iPad won’t explode; the network won’t crash; North Korea won’t send out a hit squad. It’s perfectly safe.’

Nettie shot her friend a sarcastic smile as she clicked on the red number. ‘Thanks. I was just
checking
.’

She looked down at the message.

‘
Very good. #bond.
’

She blinked, and then blinked again. It was from him, Jamie – a picture of him on stage somewhere, lights everywhere, beside the tweet, that all-important blue tick telling her it was him.

She held her breath and looked around the cab in utter shock, but everyone was busy and preoccupied, and she looked back down at the message again, feeling sick and excited and giddy all at once, as though it was perfectly normal to receive a private message from someone like him on a Friday morning. She remembered the gold flecks in his eyes, the smell of smoke, how his eyes had rested on her mouth . . .

Hesitantly, she replied, ‘
Thanks.
’

She winced as soon as she pressed ‘send’. Oh God. Take it back. Could she take it back? It was so boring. Dull. She was @BlueBunnyGirl, for heaven’s sake. She should have said something witty or sarcastic. Or just ignored him. Anything but ‘thanks’, like a good girl at the table at Sunday lunch.

She sighed and looked out of the window. She was no good at this kind of thing. Jules and Caro and Daisy would all have the sass and fire to reel him in, but she didn’t know how to converse with a famous person, how to flirt with a man like him.

She went to close the screen, but to her surprise there was another red number one in the corner.

Already?

She looked around the cab again, wanting to catch Jules’s eye, but she was absorbed in her press release, no one paying her the slightest bit of attention and completely oblivious to the fact that a bona fide star was – technologically, at least – in the taxi with them.

She clicked it open.

‘
You’re a lot braver in the suit.
’

Nettie frowned. Well, just what did he mean by that? ‘
Braver than what?
’ she typed back, forgetting to try to be cool.

She pressed ‘send’ again, chewing on her thumbnail anxiously as she waited for the reply. Oh, please let him be online right now. She couldn’t bear to wait. What on earth had he meant?

But his reply was almost instant. ‘
Than in the flesh.
’

She stopped short at the words and their implied meaning, her heart at a gallop as the taxi chuntered down Tottenham Court Road, only a few minutes now from their office in Golden Square, and she prayed for a line of red buses to hold them up, as ever. She wasn’t getting out of this taxi until this conversation was fully ended and she knew what he meant – and how. There was no way he could have guessed who she was.

‘
How would you know?
’ she replied.

‘
We’ve met. Remember?
’ He was so quick she knew he had to be doing nothing else, right at this very moment – just chatting to her.

A nervous laugh escaped her and she slapped a hand over her mouth, just as the others looked up.

‘What?’ Daisy asked.

‘N-nothing,’ Nettie said, shaking her head. ‘Just, uh . . . some of these comments on Twitter. Ridiculous.’

Caro rolled her eyes. ‘Take them with a pinch of salt. There’s some real nutjobs out there.’

‘Right, yes, thanks,’ Nettie murmured, her eyes falling back down to Jamie’s words again. Jamie Westlake’s words. To her. Their private conversation.

She was about to reply when she saw there was another message from him. She’d been too slow off the mark.

‘
Personally would have liked to see more flesh. You’re too pretty to be all covered up like that
.’

Oh God! He was flirting with her? Now she really didn’t know what to say. Her hands hovered above the screen, rigid with nerves.

‘
You there?
’ he typed.

‘
Yes.
’

‘
Say something.
’

‘
You’ve got me confused with someone else.
’

‘
No.
’

‘
Why are you so sure?
’

This time he was the one who hesitated and for a minute she thought he’d broken off, been called away, lost interest.

‘
The dame wasn’t at the prem. I checked.
’

He’d made the connection! She ran her hands over her face. How could she have been rumbled already? White Tiger would freak if this leaked now that they wanted to tease the press with it. Jamie had six million followers!

‘
You there?
’ he typed again.

‘
No.
’

‘
You never told me your name.
’

‘
You never told me yours.
’ Oh, eek! She’d fired that off too quickly. It was a ridiculous thing to say. Of course she knew his name. Even if he wasn’t one of the most famous men in the Western world, his Twitter account was in his name, unlike hers.

‘
LMAO. You going to tell me?
’

‘
No.
’ Crap. Too hasty again. Why had she said that?

‘
Why not?
’

‘
Confidentiality contract.
’ Yes, better.

‘
Snap. I got one of those.
’

‘
We’re even, then.
’ No, no, no. Don’t encourage games with him.

‘
Let’s have dinner
.’

She stared at the words – hard evidence in black-and-white type, proof that Jamie Westlake wanted to eat. With her. Should she photograph them? she wondered. The grandchildren would never believe this bit. They’d think she was exaggerating, taking the story too far.

‘Nettie, you got any change?’

‘What?’ She looked up, astonished to find that the cab had stopped outside their office and everyone was getting out. Jules was looking at her in the manner of someone who had just spoken and was awaiting a reply.

‘I need a couple of quid and Mike’s already scarpered. Bloody typical, and don’t we just know he’ll question it when I put the expenses claim in?’ She leaned against the door.

‘Oh yes, right.’ Nettie rummaged in her coat pocket before having to give up and look in her bag instead. ‘Sorry, sorry, just bear with me . . . I know I’ve got some somewhere in here.’

By the time she’d scraped enough coins together, Jules in full flow about a proposed change to today’s meme in light of the hastily convened press conference, the screen had automatically gone into sleep mode. He was out of sight again. But not out of mind.

Chapter Ten

The Savoy came up trumps, offering one of their conference rooms for strictly two hours between a Christmas lunch that ended at 2 p.m. and a drinks reception that was kicking off at 6 p.m. It was far tighter than they would have liked, they said, but Daisy had done a ski season with the head of front of house and had given her word, pinky-promise, that there would be no sign of the eighty members of the press, photographers or indeed the bunny come 4.30 p.m.

It was hard to believe that at this precise moment in time. Inside the conference room, all was chaos. Jules was micro-managing Mike, who was offloading his stress from Scott as Daisy and Caro raced to get the branding and marketing materials up in time, including blowing up 150 white balloons that had to be arranged in an arch for Nettie and the White Tiger ambassador to stand under.

Nettie herself had been given a rare reprieve from the action – seemingly Jeremy had been alarmed by her readiness to quit and orders had come from on high to Mike to keep her sweet – and was sitting in the lounge beside the vast pagoda that was positioned beneath the glass-domed roof. It looked like a giant green birdcage, more suited to the gardens in
The Sound of Music
than a London hotel, a beautiful curiosity that kept people entranced but aloof. A grand piano was set up in the middle, but Nettie kept wondering if anyone ever went and stood in the pagoda, if anyone had ever dared to sit down and play on the ivories. It seemed such a waste, to her, that something so beautiful and inherently joyful should be just for show.

She sat, still and unnoticed, amid the chatter and bustle of the hotel, the china tea set untouched on the table before her. In the lobby, photographers dashed past in jeans and boots, their black hard cases banging against their knees as they flashed their press passes and raced for the best position to set up. All the tables and chairs around her were taken with couples and small groups talking intently, peals of laughter curling up to the domed roof intermittently as glasses clinked and silver was laid against china – but nothing anyone else had to say could possibly compete with the reruns of the earlier conversation in her head: Jamie Westlake had made contact with her. Direct contact. Private. And she had given him the runaround, racing off like a startled rabbit.

OK, so it meant nothing in real terms. She wasn’t a fool; she knew he was only one step away from sexting her. No doubt he did this with fans all the time – it was the digital age, after all. Even groupiedom had changed – a quick, easy, impersonal way to get his kicks before moving on to the next girl. But still, she had it on her page in black and white, something to show her grandchildren fifty years from now: Jamie Westlake had asked her out to dinner.

‘Hey, Nets!’ The crisp shout jolted her out of her reverie and she caught sight of Em darting through the lobby towards her, one hand raised in a wave, long jean-clad legs flashing like switchblades as she expertly dodged the crowds with an unimpressed expression.

‘Jesus, what’s going on?’ she gasped, kissing Nettie quickly on the cheek and collapsing prettily on the chair. ‘It’s a bloody bun fight out there.’

‘We’re hosting a press conference for one of our clients in half an hour,’ Nettie said, immediately clicking into gear and pouring some now-lukewarm tea.

Em grimaced as she took a sip. As a stalwart of the graveyard shifts, she liked her tea burning hot, all the better for keeping her awake. ‘Sorry. I ordered when I got here,’ Nettie said apologetically. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d make it.’

‘Well, I nearly didn’t. A placental abruption almost scuppered my escape,’ Em sighed, raking her hands through her ponytailed hair. Even without make-up on, she wiped the floor with the other, made-up women in the room. ‘But an offer of afternoon tea, here, after I’ve worked eleven hours straight? I wasn’t giving that up without a fight,’ she grinned, squeezing Nettie affectionately on the arm.

‘So what did you do? How did you get away, then?’

‘Agreed to go for a drink with one of the other registrars if he covered for me.’

‘Wow. You must have been thirsty.’ Nettie could just imagine her throwing off her white coat and making the dash from Tommy’s Hospital to get here when she’d seen the text.

Em smiled, kicking Nettie’s foot lightly under the table with her own. ‘I wanted to see you, dummy. I haven’t seen more than the inside of the hospital for seventy-two hours. I
need
some outside stimulus.’ She reached for two of the eclairs on the porcelain plate and wolfed them down with the unselfconsciousness that comes with true hunger. Nettie supposed her friend had pulled another all-nighter again. No wonder she was as slim as a stem. She, on the other hand, had to almost sit on her hands to suppress the urge to join her in having one; that cream cake would be sitting on her hips in twenty minutes if she indulged.

‘So tell me your news,’ Em said, her mouth full and a charming dot of cream on the end of her nose. ‘Anything. Something to remind me of the world I’m missing out on.’

Nettie hesitated, wondering whether to share her secret. For once, there was so much going on in her life. The campaign had introduced an entirely new dimension – all the crazy stunts, the online following, Jamie’s virtual acquaintance . . . Nettie tried to predict how Em would react to the fact that Jamie was not just following her but had DM-ed her too. Delivering babies and saving mothers was important and crucial and noble and everything, but even life-saving doctors had to get their kicks, and this was properly exciting by anyone’s standards, most of all hers. After years of stagnation, suddenly her life had become jet-propelled.