So Now You're Back (37 page)

Lizzie's arm came round her shoulders. ‘Why are you crying, Mum?'

‘I think I've done something really idiotic.' She scrubbed the tears away with an impatient hand, but more tears just kept coming, the sadness overwhelming her again as her daughter's arm tightened.

‘Which is?' Lizzie asked.

‘I've fallen in love with him again.' She sighed, the breath backing up in her lungs.

Good God, don't you dare start sobbing now.

‘Ignore that,' she said. ‘I'm being ridiculous. It's just the
pressure, that's all. It can't be true. I can't possibly be in love with him. Not after twelve days.'

Any more than he could possibly be in love with me.

‘Why are you trying to argue yourself out of it? Being in love's not a bad thing, you know.'

She looked round to find Lizzie smiling at her, the grin on her face so sweet and so pleased and so sure.

Oh, baby, it's so much simpler when you're young.

‘I know he can be a total idiot at times,' Lizzie continued. ‘But he's a guy, so you've got to make allowances for that,' she added, the hope and encouragement in her expression not doing much to calm the churning waves still buffeting Halle. ‘But he's mostly a pretty terrific dad. And I bet he'd make a pretty terrific boyfriend if you gave him half a chance.'

Halle sniffed and coughed out a half laugh, unsure whether to be mortified or just impossibly touched that she was now getting dating advice from her daughter.

And not really having a clue where she was going to go from here.

Well, whatever happens next, one thing's for sure. Luke Best has managed to turn me into a complete basket case again.

‘OK
, guys, we're here. According to his CV, Trey lives at number 6A.'

Lizzie's stomach bounced at her mum's overly bright tone as they parked in front of the narrow Victorian terrace. Lizzie noted the peeling paint on the plasterwork, the rusted bike buried in the long grass of the communal front garden and the broken gate that led down to the basement flat, which had burglar bars on the front window.

She'd never given any thought to where Trey might live, but it was hard not to notice the massive gulf between the immaculate grandeur of her family's six-million-pound Georgian house in Notting Hill and this run-down building located in the un-gentifried end of Kensal Rise, which had probably been split into council flats a generation ago, and hadn't seen much work done on it since.

Her guilt over initiating their kiss that morning multiplied a few thousand times.

It had been impulsive and immature and selfish. Trey needed this job. And she'd put him in a tough position, jumping him the way she had.

Aldo hopped out of the car. He skipped from foot to foot,
as if he had a thousand Mexican jumping beans down his pants. ‘I'm gonna go ring his bell.'

‘Aldo, wait!' Her mum managed to grab his sleeve before he could race off. She peered back across the driver's seat at Lizzie, keeping a firm grip on Aldo's arm.

‘Lizzie needs to talk to him first,' her mum said, the look of total faith in her eyes warming Lizzie from the inside.

‘But I want to see him, too,' Aldo whined.

‘We'll speak to him in a bit,' her mum said. ‘But Lizzie has things she needs to say to him first that you might not want to hear.'

‘Kissing stuff?' Aldo gagged on the horror of it.

Her mum's lips quirked. ‘Possibly.'

Lizzie smiled at Aldo's forceful ‘yuck'. Her stomach muscles twisted uncomfortably, though, as she climbed out of the car.

This was likely to be the hardest conversation she'd ever had in her life. And she wasn't sure she could pull it off. Her track record when it came to having mature and sensible conversations pretty much sucked.

Her mum gripped her hand. ‘Do you need any advice?'

Lizzie nodded, realising she wanted her mum's advice more than anything.

‘Be honest with him. However hard that is.' She squeezed her fingers and then let go. ‘Take as long as you need. Aldo and I will wait in the car till you're ready for us.'

‘Thanks, Mum.'

Lizzie headed down the basement steps to Trey's front door, tuning out Aldo's cry of protest as their mum loaded him back into the car.

She pressed the bell and heard it buzz loudly inside the flat. The blinds on the bay window were drawn, so she couldn't see in. Maybe he wasn't at home any more.

The thought of a reprieve didn't make her stomach settle, though. Then she heard the sound of footsteps and the click of the latch. And her stomach went into free fall.

Trey appeared in the doorway. His eyebrows leaped up his forehead, his expression not happy or horrified, just stunned. ‘Lizzie, what are you doing here?'

‘Hi, my mum's waiting in the car.' She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘With Aldo, because all three of us wanted to make sure you're really OK, after what happened this morning. And we all wanted you to know that we want you to come back to work. Not today, obviously, just when you're ready.' She was starting to babble, but she didn't care. Babbling was better than being struck dumb. ‘But I wanted to talk to you first because … I have some apologising to do.'

The heat in her face had hit boiling point, so she was glad to see that beneath his olive-toned skin, his face had gone a spectacular shade of magenta, too.

‘A
lot
of apologising to do really,' she added.

‘No, you don't,' he said, the words firm and succinct, as she noticed the reddened swelling at the side of his mouth and the nasty gash in his lip. ‘I'm the one who needs to apologise.' He glanced past her. ‘To your mum, and Aldo and your dad …' His eyes locked back on hers. ‘But most of all to you. What I did was totally inappropriate. Jesus.' He ran an exasperated hand through his hair, sending the short strands into cute tufts. ‘I still can't believe I was kissing you like that on your mum's sofa! Your dad should have hit me a lot harder.'

Her heart ticked into her throat. God, keeping her hands off him was going to be even tougher than she thought. He was so stupidly gallant, and totally adorable. But beneath the
surge of love—and lust—was the new and heady feeling of confidence.

Trey being Trey, of course he was taking all the responsibility for the scene this morning. She'd have to set him straight on that score. Because, seriously, did he really think that kiss had been his idea?

But how come she'd never realised before how much power she had? Using that power for good instead of evil was going to make life tough for a while. Not least because she now knew exactly how awesome Trey and his kissing skills were.

But when had anything good, anything worthwhile, ever been easy? And did she really want it to be? She'd recently discovered, not just from Trey, but from what her mum had told her about her and her dad's relationship, that real grown-up relationships were tough to negotiate for a very good reason. They involved two people whose needs and desires, whose hopes and dreams, all had to be met. Dancing through that minefield successfully without blowing your foot off en route was never going to be easy.

But at least she and Trey would be dancing through the minefield together. And if it was going to take much longer than planned to get to the other side, who cared? Because it was how they got there that mattered.

‘Trey.' Her heart swelled into her throat at his earnest expression. ‘I know we're going to have to cool it when you come back to work. Because it would make my mum super uncomfortable if she caught us kissing like that again. And Aldo would probably have a breakdown.' And the chances of them being able to stop at kissing were iffy at best. And the last thing she wanted to do was make his life harder.

‘Yeah, I know,' he said, the magenta on his cheeks darkening.

‘But before the no-kissing rule takes effect …' Lifting on tiptoes, she held his cheeks in her palms. ‘I want you to know, you're the best kisser I've ever met, and I'm completely bonkers about you.'

She pressed her lips lightly to his, mindful of his swollen mouth, keeping the kiss tender, and chaste, but filling it with all the affection she felt.

His hands settled on her waist, making her feel ridiculously cherished.

‘Same,' he murmured as they parted.

Her heart soared.

The shy smile he sent her turned to a wince as he touched his fingers to his split lip. ‘Ouch.'

She laughed and took his hand. ‘Come on, we better go talk to my mum and Aldo, before Aldo explodes.'

After she had led him up the outside stairs to the car and watched Aldo nearly knock him flat, she shared a secret smile with her mum.

She hadn't messed up. And she would do everything in her power not to mess up in the future. Because she was the Trey Whisperer now.

‘T
he most important thing is not to over-whip the cream.' Halle scooped the fragrant Baileys-scented cream onto the thin base of chocolate sponge, aware of the camera panning in for a close-up. ‘Because as much as we all love butter, cream is always preferable in your chocolate roulade.'

She let the babble effect take over as she scored the sponge at one end and wound the roulade in a perfect pin-wheel twirl of chocolate, cream and Christmas indulgence.

After another close-up, the director yelled ‘Cut' in her earpiece. The studio silence turned into industrious noise as the crew sprang into action to get ready for the re-set.

Della, the hair and make-up girl, rushed over wielding her powder puff. ‘Just a quick dab to get the shine.'

‘Is it just me or are the lights especially hot today?' Halle remarked as Della powdered her nose and forehead and then whipped her trusty comb out of the tool belt hung round her waist and began arranging the wayward strands of Halle's updo.

She smiled at Halle. ‘That's the problem with doing your Christmas Special at the beginning of August.' She spread her arm, indicating the array of ornately wrapped
presents with nothing inside them dressing the counter of the country kitchen they were using for the shoot. ‘It feels so wrong.'

Halle took a steadying breath, trying to tune out the sound of Bill, the floor manager, directing the two cameramen for their next shot. A runner arrived holding a finished and dressed chocolate roulade aloft, which had been made to Halle's specific recipe in the prep kitchen next door. He placed it on the antique table the props people had dressed beside the towering beribboned Christmas tree in the farmhouse's front parlour.

Halle flicked through the script in preparation for her final piece to camera while Della continued fussing with her hair, knowing she'd probably forget the lot as soon as she started speaking and end up winging it as usual.

Christmas in August was a hazard of her job, especially with her new book,
The Best Family Christmas,
due out in October. They needed to get a jump on her Christmas Special so they could access edited clips and release them on YouTube to publicise the book launch.

‘Perfect,' Della remarked, assessing her work. ‘You're good to go.' The make-up girl clasped Halle's hand. ‘It's going to be another hit. You look lush.'

Halle smiled, her nerves a lot steadier than usual despite being in the midst of a take. Because performing for a TV camera had one indisputable advantage. By heaping on pressure in the here and now, the pressure to perform professionally and entertainingly on the director's cue and not curdle her whipped cream, the one thing she didn't have time to do was think about Luke.

It had been two weeks now since their return from Tennessee. Two weeks since he'd walked out of her kitchen door, and although they'd had a few stilted email conversations
about Lizzie—and their daughter's momentous decision to apply to art college in Paris—that had been the sum total of their communication.

And it was killing her.

She missed him. She wanted to see him. To chat and tease and, OK, yes, she might as well admit it, to lick along the line of his happy trail until his belly muscles quivered.

She needed his relaxed, much more pragmatic approach to relationships, and parenthood, his ego-boosting advice, not to mention the chance to gaze at that buff body, in various states of dishabille. And know that it was hers, to do with as she wished.

But every time she'd come close to picking up the phone, on those nights at home after Aldo was in bed and she could hear Lizzie saying goodbye to Trey at the door, their conversation muffled and confidential and full of that unstated sexual tension that hummed in the air between them, she'd stopped herself.

He'd given her an ultimatum, a stupid false ultimatum that had been entirely unnecessary. Between him and her kids. She could see now that she'd blown the whole punch-gate incident out of proportion. Trey had come back to work a week later, the day after they'd all attended his mother's cremation in the imposing surroundings of Kensal Green Cemetery. Despite the hollow exhaustion wrought by grief, Trey appeared unharmed by Luke's unprovoked attack and eager to return to work. Even his lip had healed.

Luke had also contacted Lizzie and invited her to visit him in Paris in a couple of weeks to check out colleges. Lizzie had accepted the invitation enthusiastically and, from what Halle could gather, not a lot of grovelling had been involved. Even Aldo seemed to have forgiven Luke, peppering her with a load more questions about Lizzie's
dad, all of which had been curious and keen rather than resentful.

But even so, Halle couldn't bring herself to make the first move. And she knew, deep down, it had nothing to do with punch-gate, or the ultimatum or her children's reaction to him. Deep down it had to do with trust and accountability and equality in their relationship. And all those boring things she'd ignored the first time she'd fallen so heavily for Luke.

She'd always been the one to make the first move. The one to make the most compromises. Because she'd always loved him more than he had loved her. Or that was how it had felt at the time. She knew now there had been tangible reasons for that. That Luke as he was at seventeen, at twenty even, had been incapable of trusting anyone enough to love them fully and openly with no holding back because of the hideous insecurities of his childhood. But that didn't alter the fact she couldn't be the one to do the chasing again.

If she was, she would feel compromised—maybe not now, maybe not even in a month's time, but the inequality would be a part of their relationship again. She had to be able to trust him fully and completely. She had to know that he cared enough about her to put in the effort to make this work. And she couldn't have that if she was the one who made the first move.

In some ways, it might seem stupid and juvenile, a layover from their past. A tit-for-tat form of one-upmanship. But that was the way she felt. He'd told her he wanted more. But if he had really meant that, if he had really wanted to try, surely he could have contacted her and asked her again, properly.

Unfortunately, the only problem with Halle's Last Stand was that it required Luke to make the first move. And, after two whole weeks of virtually no contact, she was beginning
to believe that she would be waiting around forever. Much as she had done once before.

As they shot the final set-up and Halle waxed lyrical about the magical quality of family Christmases, whatever type of family you had, the melancholy of the past fortnight began to overwhelm her. Would she be wrapping presents alone again this Christmas Eve while her kids were in bed? Why did that make her feel bereft, when it never had before?

The director called it a wrap, and she thanked everyone before slipping away as the sound technician, Jeff, started to chop up the three different roulades they'd had baked for the taping to share among the salivating crew.

Clare, the wardrobe girl, handed her a change of clothes as she headed out to the trailer they'd set up for her round the back of the farmhouse in Cambridgeshire. Sweat gathered under the armpits of the heavy velvet dress she'd worn for the Christmas Special as she walked through the farmhouse's kitchen gardens, the sunshine blazing through the orchard of pear and apple trees.

She closed the trailer door and dropped the summer dress wrapped in dry-cleaner's plastic on the small daybed, then crossed to the dressing table. After firing up the kettle, she clicked on her laptop and checked her emails.

Her heart bobbed into her throat as she scrolled through everything that had come in since yesterday and spotted the subject line ‘Monroe Article for Review'.

But the flash of hope, of anticipation, died when she realised the email didn't come from Luke, but from his agent, Stan Chalmers.

She opened the email, scanned the contents. The article Luke had written was attached. The article on their couples' retreat in Tennessee. The one he'd promised her he'd give her a chance to review.

The melancholy, which had been sitting like a lump of unleavened dough in her belly for a fortnight, swelled to epic proportions. She grabbed a couple of tissues from the dispenser and blotted the thick camera-friendly mascara to stop it running down her cheeks in rivulets and making her look like a victim of the Black Death.

Bloody hell. How come he can still turn me into a gibbering wreck with one careless act?

She sniffed. But she knew this act wasn't careless. It was deliberate.

It wasn't an act of betrayal. She'd always known he would write this article. That this had been a job for him, first and foremost, not an excuse to take a soggy, fraught trip down memory lane. And end up having too much make-up sex.

But somewhere along the way she'd hoped, stupidly hoped, that what he'd blurted out two weeks ago meant he had become as invested in their future as she had. But, obviously, all that talk about taking things further, doing more than just bonking each other senseless for old times' sake had been just that. Talk. Said on the spur of the moment so she'd let him stay.

And here was the evidence, sitting in an email attachment. An email attachment that he hadn't even been thoughtful enough to send to her himself.

Slowly and methodically, she used the eye make-up remover and then her cleansing creams to remove the pancake foundation and eye gunk that Della had applied four hours ago. She peeled out of her Christmas dress, stepped into the trailer's tiny shower cubicle and had as long a shower as was possible standing under the feeble, lukewarm spray.

After changing into the muslin dress, she brewed herself a cup of mint tea. Then took the laptop, settled on the
trailer's narrow plaid upholstered couch and pressed the download button on the email attachment.

The blue monitor line filled as the article downloaded.

So this was finally the end? Not just of her and Luke and their chances for a future together, but the end of all those foolish hopes that had once burned so brightly between them and, despite all the mistakes, all the hurt, all the anger and all the misconceptions over the past sixteen years, had come out of hiding in Tennessee.

She felt an odd sense of detachment, the melancholy dulled to the low persistent ache of a loss too huge to really comprehend as she clicked on the attachment.

Then she read the opening lines of Luke's article:

Twenty minutes later, Halle snorted dramatically into the last of her tissues as she read the final lines.

Wiping her eyes with the wadded-up tissue, Halle grabbed blindly for her mobile phone and keyed in a message to her PA.

Mel, I need to get from Cambridge to Paris, TODAY.

Then she texted her daughter.

Lizzie, can u & Trey hold the fort this evening? I'm making a flying visit 2 Paris 2 proposition ur father!!

She laughed delightedly when Lizzie's reply popped onto her phone two seconds later accompanied by a pair of clapping hands surrounded by confetti.

OMG! Way TMI Mum!?! But g4i! xoxo