‘What are you going to do now?’ she said after they’d had the world’s longest hug.
‘Look for a new job. Simon and I are being very sensible about it.’ Nic allowed herself a wry smile. ‘I suppose that’s one positive thing about having an affair with a proper grown-up.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know, maybe I need to take time out and take up knitting or something. Join this “home-spun revolution” Poppet keeps talking about.’
‘It’s “home-grown”. And you’d be terrible at knitting.’
‘I know, but something’s got to give. I spend half my life in luxury hotels and I’m never on holiday. My hair’s falling out with the stress, but I can’t take the time off work to go and see a trichologist. We walk round thinking we’re owning it when actually we’re just other people’s puppets. Well I did, anyway.’ She sighed again. ‘I dunno, I might start my own business.’
‘Do you need anyone to come and work for you?’ Lizzy thought about it. ‘Scrap that, if you were my boss I’d be terrified of you.’
Nic gave her a rueful smile. ‘Poppet told me about what happened at work. And all that stuff with Elliot. Lizzy, I’m so sorry I’ve been wrapped up in my own stupid crap.’
Lizzy gave a desolate shrug. ‘It’s OK. There’s nothing to say really.’
Nic’s phone started ringing. ‘It’s probably Poppet,’ she said. ‘Making sure that we haven’t torn each other apart.’
She pulled it out of her handbag and looked at the screen. ‘I don’t recognize the number.’
‘Oh God, do you think Pops has got so pissed she’s lost her handbag again? I don’t think I can go through the trauma of hearing how much it costs to replace her make-up collection!’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ Nic put the phone to her ear. ‘Hello?’
Lizzy watched her friend’s face as she listened to the person on the other end. First Nic’s eyebrows shot up, then she looked angry, and then she opened her mouth as if she wanted to jump in and say something, before shutting it again.
‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll ask her.’
Nic put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Amber. She wants to talk to you.’
‘What?! How the hell did she get your number?’
Nic shook her head. ‘She has to speak to you urgently.’
‘Well, I’m not talking to her!’ It was lucky Lizzy wasn’t standing up because she would have been knocked off her feet by the woman’s front. Had Amber actually rung up to rub Lizzy’s nose in it?
Nic went back on the phone. ‘She doesn’t want to speak to you.’ There was another long pause as Nic listened.
‘She says she has to speak to you in the next five minutes,’ she told Lizzy.
‘Well, I don’t want to speak to her, like, ever!’ Lizzy whispered violently.
‘She says you’ve got it all wrong and things aren’t what they seem!’ Nic whispered back. ‘You know what, Lizzy? Six months ago I would have told the girl to take a running jump, but I’ve realized that things aren’t always in black and white. Maybe you should give Amber the chance to explain?’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Lizzy snatched the phone off Nic. ‘Yes?’
‘Lizzy?’ It was Amber’s well-spoken voice, slightly breathless.
‘This is Lizzy,’ she said, determined to keep an icy composure even though she felt like being sick. ‘What do you want?’
‘Look, I realize that Elliot and I aren’t your favourite people right now …’
Lizzy snorted mirthlessly. ‘What gave you that impression?’
‘Oh God. He’s handled this whole thing
so
badly.’ Amber gave a nervous laugh. ‘He’s always been like this when it comes to anything emotional. Turns into a complete mute.’
‘I don’t need you to ring up and tell me Elliot’s handled this badly,’ Lizzy said coolly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind—’
‘Please don’t hang up, Lizzy,’ Amber pleaded.
‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.’
‘Elliot’s asked me to pass on a message and it’s imperative that you listen. You have to turn on your television right now.’
Lizzy glanced at Nic. ‘Why? I don’t understand—’
‘There’s no time to explain! Turn to the ITV News now. Just trust me, OK?’
‘She’s saying she wants us to turn over to ITV!’ Lizzy whispered faintly.
Nic grabbed the remote control. The
News at Ten
was on. Lizzy’s heart skipped a beat as she saw Elliot sitting across the desk from the presenter Mark Austin.
‘That was our economics correspondent, Elliot Anderson, on the latest controversy over mortgage debt. Thank you, Elliot.’ Mark turned back to the camera. ‘Coming up …’
Lizzy watched as Elliot leant across the desk. ‘Mark, if I could just interrupt.’
The newsreader’s eyebrows momentarily shot up.
‘It won’t take a moment.’ Elliot gazed straight into the camera. ‘This is a message for Lizzy Spellman. I really hope she’s watching the news for once and not
The Kardashian Christmas Special
, because otherwise I’m going to be making a real idiot of myself for no reason.’
‘Oh my God,’ Nic breathed.
‘Lizzy.’ Elliot’s green eyes gleamed brightly. ‘I know you don’t want to talk to me right now and I don’t blame you. But please believe me when I say it’s not how it looks, and I love you, Lizzy, and I want to explain. Will you meet me at the place I said I’d only go to over my dead body? In say, thirty minutes?’ He gave Mark Austin an apologetic smile. ‘That’s it. Thank you.’
‘Well, that was a bit unexpected,’ the ITV anchor said smoothly. ‘Lizzy Spellman, whoever you are, I hope you’ll go and meet Elliot. Coming up next …’
Nic clicked the TV off.
‘Oh my God!’ they both screamed at each other.
‘What do I do?’ Lizzy shouted.
In her excitement Nic had dropped the phone and switched it on to loudspeaker. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Amber’s disembodied voice crackled into the room.
‘Go!’ Nic urged. ‘I’ll deal with the ex-fiancée!’
‘But … what …’
‘What are you waiting for?’ Nic grinned. ‘Go and find him, Lizzy!’
Lizzy jumped up. ‘I’m going!’ she said ecstatically. ‘Oh Nic, what does he mean, it’s not how it looks?’
‘You’ll have to ask him!’
‘He said he loved me!’
‘I know!’
‘He hasn’t been having an affair with Amber!’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Oh, I am going to
kill
him. Why didn’t he just tell me that?’
‘In his defence, you haven’t been the world’s most contactable woman lately,’ Nic said dryly.
‘I’ve got to get out of here!’ Lizzy rushed over to the door.
‘Lizzy?’
She stopped and turned round. ‘Yes?’
Nic waved her hand in front of her nose. ‘You might want to clean your teeth first.’
Lizzy’s heart was pounding as she came out of the tube station. Had she understood Elliot’s message? Was this the place she was supposed to meet him?
Leicester Square was like the Notting Hill carnival in full swing. Lizzy fought her way through the hordes of tourists, drunks and rickshaw drivers towards M&M’s World. She couldn’t see Elliot standing outside the entrance. All she could do was wait.
Ten minutes later she was beginning to lose hope. Either she’d got it wrong, or Elliot wasn’t coming. Her BlackBerry was still currently in three pieces on Poppet’s sideboard, so she couldn’t even call him.
Note to future self: being a drama queen is pointless and completely inconvenient.
Lizzy scanned the jostling crowds again. There was no sign of him. She was about to start trudging back to the tube when something caught her eye. A familiar, unmistakable sight was bobbing towards her above the sea of heads. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’
Elliot walked up to her wearing a pink Happy Halo on his head. The Halo clashed horribly with his hair.
He smiled cautiously. ‘Seeing as these things brought us together in the first place, I was hoping they’d work their magic again.’
He looked so adorable and ridiculous that Lizzy felt herself starting to melt, but she had to be strong. She stayed where she was, keeping distance between them. ‘What the hell is going on, Elliot?’
He sighed heavily. ‘I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’
‘You certainly have,’ Lizzy said icily.
‘Can we go somewhere quieter to talk?’
She folded her arms. ‘I’m perfectly fine standing here.’
Elliot looked like he was about to protest, but then thought better of it. ‘OK. You’re right. I have been seeing Amber behind your back. But not like that,’ he added hurriedly when he saw Lizzy’s face. ‘Oh God,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve made a right pig’s ear of this.’
He took a deep breath. ‘I have been seeing Amber.’ He corrected himself again. ‘I’ve been
meeting
with Amber, but just as friends. She was in trouble and she needed my help.’
Lizzy didn’t say anything. The stage was all his.
‘The thing is … the thing
is
, Lizzy.’ Elliot looked Lizzy straight in the eye. ‘Amber’s pregnant.’
Lizzy stared at him. ‘I’m sorry, could you run that past me again?’
‘Amber’s pregnant.’
There was a long drawn-out silence. ‘You
… bastard
,’ Lizzy hissed.
‘Wait, it’s not mine!’ The deelyboppers wobbled violently.
‘What do you mean it’s not yours? Whose is it then?’
Elliot took a deep breath. ‘The baby is Marcus’s.’
Lizzy was speechless for a moment. ‘
What?
’
Elliot had a rueful smile on his face. ‘I thought you were going to revert to form and headbutt me.’
‘This isn’t a fucking joke, Elliot,’ she snapped. ‘Friends or not, you’ve been meeting your ex-fiancée behind my back. That is not cool when we’re meant to be in a relationship!’
By this time all the diners in the Aberdeen Angus restaurant opposite were watching them through the window.
‘You have every right to be angry,’ Elliot said. ‘I should have been honest with you from the start, but Amber swore me to secrecy until she’d worked out what she was going to do.’ He looked directly at Lizzy again. ‘I didn’t want you to start worrying that something was going on. It was a really bad call.’
She acknowledged the apology with a tiny nod. ‘So what about Amber and Marcus?’
‘They slept together a few nights after we’d split up. Amber was distraught, and Marcus was just waiting there on the sidelines. A few weeks later she found out she was pregnant.’
‘Sorry, but where do you come into all this? If I was Amber, I would have gone to one of my friends, not my ex-fiancé.’
‘Amber
was
my friend. She still is.’ Elliot sighed heavily. ‘That’s how this whole sorry mess started in the first place.’
‘What do you mean, this whole sorry mess?’
‘I always thought Amber was what I wanted. But as soon as we finally got engaged I knew things weren’t right. But instead of talking to Amber about it straight away, I withdrew from her. I thought if I bottled things up then somehow they’d just go away. I should have finished it then, instead of letting it drag on.’
Lizzy couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. ‘Sorry, you’re saying that
you’re
the one who called off the engagement?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
‘Why let everyone think you were the one who got dumped? The
MailOnline
was calling you “Angsty Anderson”!’
‘I didn’t want to say anything out of respect for Amber. I’d put her in that position by not being honest with her sooner; I’d do what it took to get her out of it. Her people wanted to put out the line that it was Amber who’d finished things, and I wasn’t going to start shooting my mouth off about it.’ Elliot shook his head. ‘I certainly didn’t want to get caught up in all that gossip mag crap.’
But you did get caught up in all that gossip mag crap
, Lizzy thought.
You took all the name-calling and speculation to protect the person who had always been your best friend.
‘I don’t get it, Elliot. You always said that Amber was the kind of woman that every man dreams about being with.’
‘Everyone, it would seem, except me.’ He smiled tiredly. ‘Amber is an incredible woman, but we work better as best friends. We should never have got into a relationship in the first place. Both of us can see that now.’
‘So let me get this right,’ Lizzy said. ‘You’re saying that all these years you
thought
you wanted to be with Amber, but when you finally got with her, you realized that you didn’t want to be with her after all? Why get engaged then?’
‘I was in this stupid state of denial. Everyone was gunning for us, and I thought it would make things better. All it did was make things a hundred times worse.’
‘And they say us women can’t make up our minds.’ Lizzy let out a long sigh. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just tell me all this in the phone call?’
‘I just panicked,’ he admitted. ‘All I could think about was how badly I’d handled it. By the time I’d got my wits about me you’d put the phone down.’ He gave Lizzy a wry smile. ‘And you’ve been refusing to speak to me ever since.’
Lizzy wasn’t letting him off just yet. ‘But I saw Amber going up to your apartment!’
‘She came round to tell me that she and Marcus had decided to make a go of things. I was happy for her. For her and Marcus. I always told her he wasn’t good enough, but what the hell did I know?’ Elliot shook his head. ‘Marcus has always loved her. It’s more than I could have ever given her.’
‘So you and Marcus have kissed and made up?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. I still think he can be a prick, but he probably thinks the same about me.’
They exchanged their first smile. ‘I cocked things up,’ he told her. ‘You don’t know how sorry I am.’
‘I think I do now,’ she said softly.
A drunken man stumbled past and glanced off Lizzy’s right side. Instinctively Elliot put his arm out to protect her. ‘The last few days have been the worst of my life. I can’t imagine being without you.’ He gazed at her. ‘There’s just this …
magic
about you. I never believed in all that crap about fate and the thunderbolt moment until I met you. You’ve taught me so much, about walking on the lighter side of life and seeing the good in people.
I’m
a better person because of you.’ Elliot shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you know that I emailed a BuzzFeed link about giggling penguins around the office the other day?’