It Started With a Kiss (23 page)

To see my friends reunited gave me the biggest boost. At least I didn’t have the breakup of The Pinstripes on my head on top of everything else. Now all I had to do was  weather the storm of my unwelcome sudden celebrity …

‘I’m
sure
I know you,’ the lady in the supermarket queue for the self-service checkouts said again, screwing up her eyes and leaning her head to one side, as if this was going to aid her memory.

I smiled politely, wishing I’d gone to an out-of-town store instead. ‘I don’t think so,’ I answered, hoping this would be sufficient.

‘Have you been on the telly? Ooh, I know – were you on
Casualty
last week?’

Please get bored and leave it
, I pleaded, but the woman in the cerise velour tracksuit obviously wasn’t on the same ESP frequency. Time to try another angle: ‘Um, I think that till’s free now …’

‘
Million Pound Drop
?
EastEnders
?’

What next,
Crimewatch
?
Wife Swap
? At this rate I would be here until Christmas until she had named all the television programmes she’d watched lately. Looking into my basket I was dismayed to see nothing that could legitimately aid my escape from this conversation, unless you counted poking her in the eye with a baguette or throwing tampons at her as possible options.

This was the fifth such conversation I had endured today and it was beginning to wear thin. The problem with celebrity status, I was discovering, was that although people recognised you, they didn’t necessarily know where from. Consequently, they had to embark on the same thought process every time: did we go to school together, are you from work, do you know my husband, do you know my mother, are you my sister’s best friend, have you been on an advert, are you off the telly, have you been on
Big Brother
, were you in
Heat
magazine last week …?

A week after ‘Cayte-gate’ (as Wren christened it), the instances of people thinking they recognised me showed no signs of slowing. It had happened everywhere – from the trains I caught, to the shops I had visited during the week, including one very embarrassing incident in M&S while being measured for a new bra. I was at the point of seriously considering having a t-shirt made up with Cayte’s article emblazoned across it to save me from this random game of
Guess Who
.

Jack told me that the day after the
Daily Mail
columnist covered the article, ‘#desperatewoman’ was briefly a UK trending topic on Twitter and the subject of several phone-in debates on local and national radio shows.

My uncle and aunt, as ever, managed to find a positive spin on the situation, with Auntie Mags assuring me that all publicity was good for spreading the word. I wanted to share her enthusiasm but, as far as I was concerned, the reality of being recognised was proving decidedly less positive than the promise of what it might lead to. But I was about to discover how wrong I was …

Almost two weeks after the article, I received a breathless answerphone message from Uncle Dudley:

‘Bab! It’s me. I think your journalist friend might have done you a favour. We’ve just had an email that could possibly be the break we’ve been hoping for! Call me back as
soon
as you get this …’

I couldn’t believe it.

‘Well?’ Auntie Mags asked, as Uncle Dudley hovered by her side in
Our Pol
with a be-cosied teapot in hand. ‘Is it …?’

I focused on the laptop screen again, my heart thudding so hard it was threatening to crash clean out of my chest. I’d been wrong before; could I trust my eyes now? The image was a little out of focus, and taken from side-on, but it was
him
, I was sure of it.

‘I think so,’ I said finally, as Uncle Dudley cheered and did a little jig, almost showering Auntie Mags with scalding hot tea.

‘Dudley Parker, calm down! It’s just a photo, for heaven’s sake.’

But this was so much more than just a photo: it was almost clear, conclusive proof that the man I wanted to find was real. This time, it wasn’t the back of his head in a grainy monochrome CCTV still – it was my handsome stranger in glorious Technicolor. His russet hair, the faint line of stubble along his chin, his beautiful hazel eyes gazing out at me, and the lips of his broad mouth parted slightly, as if startled by the camera shot.

‘Where did she get this?’ I asked, my voice trembling as the thrill of seeing him again reverberated through me.

‘The lady said she was changing her mobile phone, so was sorting through her stored photos and videos and found this. She’d forgotten she had taken it, apparently. That woman your chap’s looking over the shoulder of is her best friend and she’d taken the photo while they were Christmas shopping. It’s a fluke that he happened to turn around just as she took the photo.’

‘It’s a bit blurry,’ Auntie Mags said, squinting at the image on Uncle Dudley’s laptop. ‘Are you certain that’s him?’

I nodded, my palms suddenly sweaty. After the frustration of an apparently cooling trail and the still-sore bruises of Cayte’s article, this was an unexpected breakthrough.

‘Did she give a phone number at all?’ I wanted to know more about how the photo came to exist, just to be sure.

‘Way ahead of you, chick.’ Uncle Dudley handed me a scrap of paper. ‘Give her a ring now, go on!’

‘Wait, before you do, have some of this …’ Auntie Mags placed a plate in front of me with a thick slab of sticky ginger cake ‘… for courage.’

‘Here goes nothing.’ Smiling at both of them, I dialled the number.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, can I speak to Natalie, please?’

‘Speaking.’

I gave my aunt and uncle a thumbs-up. ‘Hello, this is Romily Parker. You very kindly sent me a …’

I didn’t get the chance to finish.

‘Ooh hello!’ Natalie screamed down the phone, half-deafening me. ‘I am, like, your biggest fan!’

‘Are you?’

‘Absolutely! I’ve been following your blog since the end of January – I’m so excited about your quest!’

‘Erm, thanks …’

‘All my friends love you too, and we all wanted to scratch that Cayte Brogan’s eyes out for what she wrote about you. You’re not desperate at all. You’re just looking for your handsome stranger. It’s
so
romantic! Is it him in my photo? I’m going to be
so
chuffed if I’m the one who found him for you!’

Winded by this barrage of support, it took me a moment to process everything Natalie had said. ‘I think it is, yes, tha—’

‘
Wheeeee-e-e-e-e-e-e-eeee!
’

I held my mobile away from my ear as Natalie’s cele bratory scream split the calmness of
Our Pol
’s interior. Elvis, shaking mournfully in his dog bed by the cooker, looked alarmed and buried himself under Uncle Dudley’s old lumberjack shirt that he had stolen from the washing pile.

‘I’m going to tell
all
my friends! This is so exciting!’

‘Can you remember anything about the day you took the photo?’

Natalie paused for breath long enough to regain some of her faculties. ‘I was in town shopping with Cass – she’s the girl in the photo – and we ended up in the Christmas Market about half past two. We were mucking around and I took a photo of her – that’s all I remember. Like I said in my email, I didn’t realise that the bloke was in it until yesterday when I found it again. I remembered the description on your blog. He fitted so perfectly that I knew I had to send the pic to you.’

Seeing him again meant more to me than I could adequately express. ‘Well, thank you so much, you’ve been a fantastic help.’

‘It’s the least I could do,’ Natalie replied. ‘Me and my friends have had so much fun following you so far. You are going to keep going, aren’t you?’

I smiled at my aunt and uncle who were nodding frantically at me like a pair of Churchill dogs. ‘Of course I am.’

‘
Wow
.’

‘I know.’

‘No wonder you’re looking for him. Even given the blurriness the guy is
sex on legs
…’

I wasn’t sure I would class him exactly in those terms, but Wren’s summation was justified. ‘He is gorgeous, isn’t he?’

‘Gorgeous doesn’t begin to cover it, hun. Put it this way, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.’

I smiled into my toasted teacake as the lady at the next table in George shot her a filthy look. ‘Delicately put.’

Wren grinned. ‘I say it like it is, me. Seriously though,
he-e-llo
! Well, that’s one in the eye for bitch-face anyway.’

‘Wren!’

My best friend was unapologetic. ‘She deserves it. Trashing your dreams like that to move her poxy career on. Tell you what though, you’re a better woman than I am: if she’d pulled that stunt on me she’d be making a close inspection of the bottom of this canal by now. You know Tom’s dumped her, don’t you?’

‘I had heard.’

‘Mind you, he’s miserable. I’m thinking of friends of mine I could set him up with. So,’ she squeezed my hand, ‘how are you?’

Apart from still being regularly recognised in the street, I was feeling more positive than I had in a long time. I had survived the aftermath of Cayte’s article and been rewarded with an almost-clear image of my stranger. I had spent almost seven months of the year working from memory – and had fallen foul of it twice with Sebastian and Mark – so it was wonderful to be able to see PK and remember just how gorgeous he looked.

It was no coincidence that I had received his photo just after the shock and humiliation of ‘Cayte-gate’. This, I decided, was destiny’s way of getting me back on track. I 
must
be fated to find him again.

D’Wayne brought some better news for The Pinstripes the  following week, having secured two late bookings – one in September, one in October. As for July and August, things were looking decidedly sparse, but D’Wayne’s brother offered some promotional weekend work for any  of  us wanting to earn a little extra money. In the event,  only Charlie and I accepted, turning up at his cramped office at eight am on an overcast Saturday morning.

‘Have you any idea what this is going to entail?’ Charlie asked me as we walked from the small car park at the back of the office complex towards the entrance.

‘None at all. D’Wayne said it was a “brand awareness” job, whatever that means.’

Charlie rubbed his chin. ‘Perhaps it’s manning one of those stands where you give out free samples of a product. That’s fine by me – I don’t mind doing that for seventy quid on a Saturday.’

Colson McDougall was a shorter, squatter version of his younger brother, with the same wide grin and air of self-assurance, but slightly less hair.

‘Guys! So pleased you could help me with this. It’s a new client and I’m keen to impress them, you know how it is.’

Charlie and I nodded.

‘Excellent.’ Colson handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Now, everything you need is in the box by the door and here’s your route. Good luck!’

‘I’m a
pizza box
.’

Charlie’s face was a picture as we trudged slowly out on to the street, car horns honking at us and amused passers-by stopping to point and laugh.

‘It could be worse,’ I smiled, adjusting the cardboard costume so it chafed a little less on my shoulders.

He stared at me like I was a lunatic. ‘How, exactly, could it be worse?’

‘We could be
pizzas
.’

Charlie shook his head and kicked a stone on the pavement in front of him. ‘I don’t know how you can be so cheerful considering what we look like.’ A car full of teenagers honked loudly as they leaned out of open windows to shout abuse. Charlie sent them a clear message back with some questionable sign language.

‘Oh come on, Charlie, you have to admit this is funny.’

‘No, I don’t. I look like a pillock and we have
eight hours
of this torture to endure. I officially have no dignity left.’

‘No, mate, I think you’ll find the tights gig and the bunny gig removed any scrap of remaining dignity you had this year.’

He had to smile at that. ‘Well at least I’m not making a bizarre spectacle of myself all alone,’ he said, knocking on the back of my pizza box.

Comedy promotional costumes aside, I relished the opportunity to spend some time with Charlie. As we chatted and joked, it was as if all the awkwardness and embarrassment of the last seven months had drifted away and we had rediscovered the easy friendship we’d enjoyed before. There was definitely something to be said for wearing large cardboard boxes to walk the city streets: it removed the usual boundaries of what we felt comfortable talking about. After all, when you’re both stripped of your dignity, circumspection seems pretty pointless.

We stopped for lunch at a canalside gastro-pub in the centre of town. Owing to our large and cumbersome cardboard appendages, we were obliged to sit outside, but thankfully the sun had decided to appear and the day was now drenched in glorious sunshine.

‘This,’ Charlie said, holding his glass of golden ale aloft like Excalibur, ‘is officially the World’s Most Deserved Pint.’

‘Indeed. Accompanied by the World’s Most Expensive Ploughman’s,’ I agreed, pointing at our £15 gastro-pub lunch.

‘Yes, well, seeing as CM Promotions is kindly footing the bill, it’s only fair. How long do we have left of this prestige promotional job?’

I looked at my watch. ‘Three and a half hours. Think you can stand the pace?’

His dark blue eyes flashed mischievously over the top of his pint glass. ‘What, having to work with you? Hmm, not sure.’

‘Loser. I can always let you finish the round alone if you’d prefer …’

‘You’re not going anywhere, thank you very much. If I have to degrade myself in public I’m not doing it alone.’

I watched Charlie as we enjoyed our lunch, loving the easy atmosphere and good-natured mockery as it ebbed and flowed naturally between us. I think he felt it, too; a satisfied smile settling on his face as we ate.

When we set off for our final stint, the conversation fell away into a comfortable silence for a while and I became aware of him casting glances in my direction as we walked.

A lady coming the other way chuckled when she passed us. ‘Are you deep pan or stuffed cheese?’ she laughed.

‘Thin and crispy, I’ll have you know,’ Charlie called back. His hand bumped against mine. ‘I like this.’

‘What? Being a pizza box?’

‘No, this –
us
. It’s good.’

I nodded. ‘It is.’

He sniffed and raised his hand as another car horn sounded. ‘You seem really different, Rom.’

This took me by surprise. ‘Oh?’

‘Good different. Happy. Confident. That kind of stuff …’ He laughed at himself. ‘Ever the eloquent drummer, eh?’

‘No – thanks, that means a lot. I feel different. It’s been a bit of a crazy year, but I know I’ve made some really important decisions and learned a lot about myself. Blimey, I sound like an
X Factor
contestant. Vote for me!’

‘I would – um,… but you’re too good for that show anyway.’

What was he going on about? ‘Thanks – I think.’

He halted and faced me. ‘The thing is, I’ve been an idiot about – you know – Christmas and that. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry. I should have noticed you before … I mean, who you’re becoming, not who you are in my head. I think what you’re doing with this whole quest thing is brilliant. Whether you find him or not, it’s just
you
through and through. And you deserve to be happy, Rom, I really mean that.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘That’s all I wanted to say.’

Wow. Out of all the possible conversation topics I could have envisaged for today, that one was never even on my radar. Unsure of how to handle what he had just said, I gave him a long hug – which is no mean feat when you’re both two-thirds cardboard.

After this, normal conversation service was resumed, but Charlie’s words buzzed about in my mind for the rest of the day.