Christmas on Primrose Hill (44 page)

‘That wasn’t me. It was a freak thing that took on a life of its own. I had very little say in any of it.’

There was a small silence. She watched a faraway plane flash in the jet sky.

‘Well, you turned up, didn’t you?’

She raised an eyebrow, the expression in her eyes bleak. ‘Before you attribute any nobility to my actions – if that’s even possible in that bloody costume – I thought I was going to get fired. You, on the other hand, did it all for your brother,’ she added pointedly.

But he was undeterred. Seemingly tonight was all about her. ‘So? You still put yourself on the line. You’ve risked injury, embarrassment, humiliation . . . the very real threat of falling in love with me.’

‘Ha!’ The laugh was a curt dismissal. She didn’t have the appetite for jokes tonight.

‘You are a cruel mistress, you know that?’ He rested his arm on the back of the bench, propping his head in his hand, his eyes on her as he shook his head. ‘Besides, I knew what I was getting myself into. The second I clapped eyes on you, I knew I’d risk pretty much anything to get you.’

‘Well you must be regretting it now,’ she muttered after a pause, her chin down, eyes on her feet as she scuffed them lightly in the snow.

‘No.’

She gave him a sideways look. ‘No? Not even after Watergate?’

He laughed at her pun. ‘I figured you were pissed off about the photos of me and Coco – which was the point. The record label’s been trying to encourage a thing with me and Coco for months. I played along for once.’

‘And how. They couldn’t believe their luck when you said what you said on
The One Show
,’ she said bitterly.

‘Because you were driving me nuts, Nettie!’ he said passionately. ‘Don’t you get it? Nothing’s ever happened with her. I just wanted to make you jealous. I wanted to see if you even gave a damn.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Be careful what you wish for, right?’

‘Oh.’ Her heart missed a beat. ‘Well actually, it wasn’t the photos. Well, not
only
, the photos. I was pissed off that you called me a groupie.’

He pulled a face. He looked upset. ‘You heard that?’

She looked away, giving a careless shrug even though her heart was pounding again.

‘Look, I was trying to get Coco off the scent. She knew I was getting involved with someone and I didn’t want her knowing it was you. Discretion isn’t her strength.’ He shifted position slightly, turning to face her. She remained silent. ‘Anyway, how could I be sure you weren’t one? After you ran out, I didn’t know what to think. I was half expecting a selfie you’d taken in the bathroom to pop up on Instagram.’ He saw her expression. ‘What? You think it’d be the first time it’s happened? You gave me nothing else to go on.’

She looked away but he reached over and hooked her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him. ‘Listen, I’ve been in this industry a long time now. I got my first record deal at seventeen. Every week a different country, a different hotel—’

‘A different girl?’ she asked tartly.

‘Yeah. And it gets old.’ His eyes fell to her mouth, making her breath quicken, but his hand dropped down and he pulled back slightly.

She saw him notice the brass plaque between them. She watched him read it. ‘
For Sian Watson, who loved to sit here. Much missed.
’

She looked away before he could pin a look on her again, wrapping her arms around herself as she shivered. She hadn’t been warm enough today.

He looked at her for a moment, before standing up. ‘Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m taking you home.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t go home. The press are there.’

‘Welcome to my world,’ he said dryly. ‘OK, then, you can come back with me. But I’m warning you now – I’m going to kick you out before you can run out. I’m not going through that again.’

She stared up at him, a smile twitching on her lips. How had he come into her life, this man? This extraordinary man who commanded armies of fans across the planet but wore the adulation lightly, who tracked her down in a city of millions and made her feel like the only person in it, her guardian angel in black denim, with eyes the colour of olives.

She took his hand. ‘Well, I couldn’t possibly risk that. You’d better take me home, then.’

He tucked her arm under his so that their bodies were close as they walked down the path. ‘You know if you’d just told me, things could have been different?’ His voice was low. ‘All that misery this week—’

‘Yeah, but then you’d have pitied me. No, thanks.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘I much preferred being an enigmatic mutant bunny.’

He laughed. ‘I don’t pity you. It sucks, yes, big time; I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But if I had to choose between thinking you’d run out on me because you were just up for the glory shag or because you’ve got to find your missing mum, I’d take the missing mum every time, thanks.’

She laughed gently, joshing him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘It’s not
funny
.’

‘No. But I am glad that it’s a clear-cut case of “It’s not you, it’s me.”’

She laughed again. ‘Stop it.’

They walked in easy silence, their strides perfectly matched, their shadows long upon the bumpy snow. They reached the railings. ‘Do you need a leg-up?’ he asked.

‘Do you?’ she grinned, vaulting over easily and leaving him on the other side.

He looked impressed. ‘You’re good at that.’

‘I’m good at lots of things.’

He landed like a cat beside her, his eyes drawing her up with him as he straightened, as though there was some static charge around him that brought her body into alignment with his. He took a step closer, his hand finding hers again. ‘You know I told you I’m going away for Christmas? A friend of mine’s got a place in the Bahamas.’

She chuckled softly, dropping her forehead against his chest. ‘Oh God, you’re talking about Necker, aren’t you? I know you are.’

He shrugged, amused by her reaction.

‘It’s not normal,’ she laughed, suddenly worn out, pounding his chest lightly with her fist.

He smiled. ‘I want you to come with me. I’m flying out tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. Terminal five. What do you say? You, me, no complications. Let’s get away and start over, do it properly, away from all this madness.’

She stopped laughing, the moment’s levity gone in a flash. She looked up at him, feeling the usual tension ratchet tightly within her chest, holding her heart in a vice and threatening to crush it. Didn’t he understand? How could she leave her father alone at Christmas? How could she leave him ever? She was all he had left in the world now. There was no starting over for her, no escape, no new horizons. This was her life.

His eyes dropped from hers as he saw her answer. ‘Yeah, I thought not,’ he murmured eventually, finding her hand again and kissing it, before pulling her into a slow walk, tucking her arm beneath his. She could feel the warmth of him as they walked through the chill, and she briefly allowed herself to rest her head against his shoulder. She felt so tired suddenly. Her eyes closed as he kissed the top of her head.

They walked past the bookshop and grocer’s, the cafe and toy shop, turning to walk past the library and then, moments later, the square opened out ahead of them.

They stopped at the very edge, their eyes scanning for reporters.

‘Oh.’ She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting – a bank of them, lined up by the slide, waiting for the moment she opened the front door? Rows of tents on the grass, like some sort of asylum camp for the press?

‘Don’t worry. They’ll be back again by five,’ he murmured, tugging her onwards. ‘I know their routines as well as they know mine.’

They walked round to the yellow house on the back edge of the square, her right hand trailing lightly against the black railings. She was sorry there wasn’t further to go. She liked walking with this man. It felt good not to walk alone.

They stopped on the pavement outside. The house was dark, the wooden shutters downstairs closed. Jamie turned to face her, his left hand finding her right one. ‘So. You’re back safe and sound.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied. She watched as his eyes tiptoed over her features like fairy footsteps.

‘What shall we do about tomorrow? I’m happy to run the gauntlet and pick you up. I could be your decoy.’ He winked.

She knew how much he hated the paparazzi’s intrusive lenses and couldn’t decide if she was tickled or horrified by the idea. ‘I think that’s called fanning the flames,’ she smiled, before biting her lip. ‘No, you’d better go ahead and do it without me.’

His expression changed. ‘Why? It’s the last day. You have to be there.’

‘I need to stay with Dad.’ She saw him go to argue and cut in first. ‘He never asked for any of this, from Mum
or
me.’

Jamie was quiet. Even charity couldn’t compete with that argument.

‘Jules will do it. I bet she was great today, wasn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, she nailed it.’ He shook her hands lightly, his eyes on their clasped fingers before he looked back at her. ‘I want it to be you.’

‘I want it to be you, too.’ Her words were a whisper. She knew they weren’t just talking about the campaign now. ‘But there’s too much in the way.’

‘No, there isn’t. Not if you don’t want there to be.’

‘But it’s not about what I want. If my life was about what
I
wanted, I wouldn’t be living in a vacuum in my childhood home, waiting for a ghost to walk back through the door.’ Her voice cracked and she pulled her hand out from his, pressing the back of her hand to her top lip, trying to stop the swell of tears. ‘And even if my life wasn’t insane, yours is. You can’t pretend you’re just a normal guy, Jamie. You’re not. You cross the world twice in a week. You probably have stalkers! There’s no way we could support both our dysfunctional lifestyles.’

‘But you should know by now that all that fuss is nothing to do with me or who I am. It’s hype. It isn’t personal. It’s projection. You’ve seen that for yourself.’

It was true: the bigger her stats had become, the less she had felt it had anything to do with her. She had glimpsed enough of the insider’s view to know that fame was bigger than the personalities it cherry-picked.

She placed her hands on his chest, able to feel the rapid thump of his heart beneath her palm. ‘In my world, people walk out the door and they don’t come back again. Your job means you do that for a living. I just can’t be with someone like you.’

She stared back at him, unaware of the tear sliding down her cheek as she watched him absorb the futility in her words, the flat argument that would brook no response.

‘We can’t just . . . buy you a new mum?’

It was a terrible joke, the shock of it making her laugh, but in the next moment he had bent to kiss her, his hands cupping her head, his lips warm on hers, and she closed her eyes, committing the memory to her DNA and imprinting it on her heart. Because this was the end, this kiss, they both knew it now – the full stop to a love affair that had never quite been. Its potential had been colossal – life-changing, world-beating, an electrical storm that charged the air around them and had made anything seem possible.

But what they wanted things to be and how they really were was a breach too wide to span, and she pulled away, turning onto the garden path in silence. And without looking back, she let herself in to the yellow house.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Her eyes blinked open and stared at the subsidence crack on the ceiling. Christmas Eve. Historically her favourite day of the year. She had always preferred the sense of anticipation for Christmas than the actual day itself – even as an overexcited seven-year-old, running up and down the four flights of the house on her own, driving her mother mad as she pretended to look for the presents, she never wanted to actually find them; on the contrary, she lived in fear of stumbling across them as she pulled out the towels in the airing cupboard and threw the covers off her parents’ bed. To find the presents, to know what they were, would be to put a pin in the bubble. It was just knowing that the presents were already there, in the house, wrapped even – that sense of readiness, of standing on the precipice of perfect happiness, that enthralled her so much.

Nettie thought of the pin she’d put in the bubble last night and closed her eyes again. It had been the closest she had felt to that level of excitement in years. Possibly ever. As she had grown up, the big house with the three of them in it hadn’t grown smaller, quite the reverse. The older she’d become, the bigger the house had felt. She began to notice the four spare bedrooms – not their generous proportions or her parents’ bohemian taste, but the fact that they were never slept in, the water carafes by the bed gathering dust, magazines that had once been put out as a gracious touch now curling and stiff.

And this was how it would always be, this big house and only them in it. Three, reduced to two. Memories and history everywhere, with no sense of the future.

She lay in bed, her eyes on the ceiling, her ears on the gaggle of reporters outside and wondering if this was how
they’d
ever fantasized their Christmas Eves would turn out to be. Occasionally a flash would pop, weak in the morning light; judging by the round of ‘thanks’, she guessed someone had just done a coffee run.

She got up and walked to the window, peering out from the edge of the curtain.

Nearly twenty, she estimated, feeling oddly flattered that she had garnered so much attention, letting the curtain flutter back into place. She turned her back. Where had they been four years ago, these reporters, when she’d needed them? There hadn’t been so much as a sniff of interest then, when she’d walked into the kitchen her mother had just upped and walked out of. How could the same woman’s disappearance be of such urgent importance to the national readership now, four years on, just because she’d pulled on a fancy-dress costume?

She leaned against the wall, her eyes on the four walls that had been her kingdom for twenty-six years. It badly needed redecorating. Even if she wasn’t going to leave here, leave her father, they still had to adapt. The room still wore traces of her childhood, like morning-after make-up – she could see the grime mark on the walls where the Wendy house had fitted in the corner and where the wardrobe now stood; there was still a sun-bleached ring on the carpet from the rag rug she’d bought in Camden Lock to hide the nail-polish stain, traces of Blu-tack were still visible on the walls from her Justin Timberlake posters. These vestiges of the girl she’d once been clung to the room, mocking the young woman who sat in it still. She thought of the dingy flat with so much potential in Princess Road. Two and a half thousand pounds and she’d have been building a new home instead. And if she had got on that plane with Jamie, she’d have been in an entirely new world.