The Only Boy For Me (11 page)

After a short silence Chris comes on the radio. ‘Um, guv, this guy is seriously pissed off now. Can’t stress that enough, really. Have we got enough to call it a day, because I really don’t want to be the one to tell him you want to go again.’

Barney agrees they can come back in for real now. We all huddle around the camera, and try not to look at the boat. It starts to pour and the waves are getting gigantic. The boat finally ties up, and the boatman gets off and storms towards us looking murderous. He is huge – I hadn’t quite realised this before – and we all cower behind Barney. Just as he is about to reach us, an enormous wave breaks over the side of the harbour wall and drenches us all. Barney is soaked from head to foot, and stands dripping water, holding out his
hand saying, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry.’ Luckily this sight cheers the boatman up no end, and he begins to laugh.

We promise to pay for the damage to the boat, and invite him to join us at the hotel for a drink. He accepts, but makes us promise to tell everybody that Chris was steering, because this is his home port and if word gets out that he drove his own boat into the harbour wall he’ll never live it down. I brief the crew and make sure that everyone knows this is the line to take, and after their initial disappointment that Barney is not going to get punched they all start teasing Chris about what a crap job he did steering straight into a wall. We start to pack up, and plan to rush back to the hotel in convoy, with the aim of getting dry, and then drunk, as quickly as possible.

The client has been sitting in the car during most of this, and Lucy says he is now bored and wants to go back to London. Mack asks if he can have a lift with us back to the hotel, as he doesn’t want to go back in that car with that idiot client under any circumstances. Barney thoroughly approves of this and takes Mack off with him in his car, which I imagine is not quite what Mack had in mind but he makes the best of it. He begins telling Barney how he has always wanted to work with him, and just had to come down and watch a genius at work. This goes down very well indeed and Barney is beaming as the car drives off.

The crew pack up in record time as it’s now really freezing and tipping it down. We get back to the hotel and I feel sure I’m in the first stages of hypothermia, but hot coffee and brandy help. Mack says George and Kevin have been giving him very funny looks and sniggering a lot. I don’t get a chance to answer this because Barney starts talking about what to do this afternoon. We need the actor
to walk up from the harbour, up the cobbled streets to the front door of a cottage, but preferably not in torrential rain. It looks like this afternoon will be a washout, so we plan to start bright and early tomorrow morning, and if it’s still raining we will just have to make do.

Barney says he’s off to have a sleep and the crew are all in the restaurant having lunch, so Mack and I have a quick cup of coffee in the bar. He’s due to leave in a couple of hours, but suggests he might invent a reason to stay another night. I regretfully decline, because if I don’t get some sleep soon I’ll collapse. In the end we agree that we’ll speak once we are both back home, and then George and Kevin wander into the bar and sit watching us. I begin writing things down in my notebook to make it look like we’re having a meeting. Mack tears out a sheet of paper, writes something and folds it up. Then he gets up to leave, and winks out of sight of the boys. As he walks out I read the note which turns out to be his home number, mobile, pager, email and direct line in the office. I want to rush off and call Leila to check the significance of this gesture. Instead I have to sit and chat to the actor, who comes in and wants a lot of fuss made of him because he got wet. Also he doesn’t like boats, has been sick twice, no one told him anything about throwing ropes at the casting, and now he’s got a blister on his hand. George and Kevin sit sniggering behind his back, and generally make it very difficult for me to keep a straight face.

When I’m safely ensconced in my hotel room, I call home. Charlie has just got back from his fishing trip, very pleased with himself because he caught a trout.

‘That’s fantastic.’

‘Yes. Actually Grandad got it on his rod, but he said he needed my special strong arms to help him. He’s getting old,
you know. And Nana is going to cook it for us, and we’ve got ice-cream. Shall we save you some?’

‘No thank you, darling, you eat it all up, I can have some next time.’

‘Yes. When are you coming home?’

‘Tomorrow night, darling.’

‘And will there be a surprise when you come home?’

I’m tempted to say yes, your mother will be in a light coma with strange marks on her back. But I know he actually means a toy, so long negotiations follow over what this might be. I’ve already bought some Lego, to save the trauma of trying to find something in a motorway service station. But of course he doesn’t know that so he runs through all possible options with prices ranging from about £10 to well over £1,000.

I manage to get some sleep, and then check in with Barney who says I am to meet him at eight tomorrow morning as it’s still pouring. He’s going to watch telly and sleep, and the crew are all in the bar doing the hokey cokey and drinking like fish. I’m allowed to go to sleep as well, but only after I have made it clear to Chris that the crew are to use their own money for booze from now on. I sort this out and collapse into bed, but manage to remember to book a wake-up call for seven am. The morning goes very well, although a few of the delegates from the hotel spot us and try to loiter in the exact part of the cobbled street where the actor is due to walk. But they soon get bored when Tom Cruise doesn’t show up. We also eventually manage to persuade the owners of the cottages adjacent to the one we’re using to stop looking out of their windows and waving.

I don’t get home until midnight, and after a brief chat with Mum and Dad fall straight into bed. Mum says a nice-sounding
man phoned, and said he’ll call back tomorrow. I hope it was Mack and not the plumber, who was supposed to have fixed the outside tap but failed to turn up. The phone rings. It’s Mack.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi. Hang on, how did you get my home number?’

‘Well, I called Lawrence. God, he’s really wet, isn’t he? I told him I’d left a vital folder down at the hotel and wanted to know if you’d found it.’

‘Oh, very clever.’

‘Yesh, Moneypenny, and I thought of it all by myself. Is the kid asleep?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh good. Then we can have a nice long chat.’

‘No we cannot. I need to go to sleep.’

‘Oh. I do very good phone calls, you know.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you do. But I’ll be asleep any second now, so it’d be a bit of a waste.’

‘Oh alright. Look, if I offered to take you out to dinner would you start all that dreadful swearing again?’

‘I might.’

‘What, come out to dinner, or start swearing?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Charming. Just what I was afraid of. A simple yes or no would do, actually.’

‘OK. Yes to both.’

‘Great. Friday night. I’ve got the kids for Easter, so it’ll have to be the week after next. Meet me at work at eight and I’ll take you to dinner at the Ivy. Have you got a little black dress? It’s pretty posh, you know.’

‘OK, OK, I get the message, Friday at eight. You want to take my little black dress out to dinner. I’ll bike it over to you. Do you want to borrow high heels as well?’

‘Oh yes, definitely high heels.’

‘OK. I’m writing this down. Black dress, high heels, bike them to you at the office for eight. Now go away and let me sleep.’

‘Sweet dreams.’

If this relationship is going to work I’ll have to teach him to end telephone conversations by saying goodbye rather than simply putting the phone down. Fall asleep feeling very chirpy, although I’m already debating exactly what to wear. The only little black dress I own is very old and is now two sizes too small, due to the combination of having Charlie and eating countless packets of chocolate Hobnobs. I can only wear it if I don’t sit down, so it might not be ideal for dinner unless I can arrange for us to go to a buffet somewhere. I’ll ring Leila and arrange an emergency shopping session.

Spend the next few days catching up with chores and having endless conversations with Barney, who is editing the Cornish film, which he says will be an award-winner if he can persuade the fucking client not to insert twenty fucking seconds of fucking pack-shot into a thirty-second film. I find myself standing in Safeway’s trying to calm Barney down, with call waiting bleeping on my mobile. I hadn’t actually realised I had a call-waiting facility, and don’t know how to use it. I manage somehow to press a secret button which means Mrs Jenkins from the PTA suddenly launches into a conversation with Barney. I end up having to offer to bake Easter fairy cakes for the cake stall on the last day of term, just to get her off the line. Barney is furious. ‘Who was that mad fucking woman going on about cakes? For fuck’s sake get a new phone.’

I have lots of talks with Leila and Kate about the
potential pitfalls of embarking upon a passionate affair with Mack, should this turn out to be on offer. They both heartily recommend getting as much action as possible while it’s available, because you never know when you’ll get another chance. But I keep dwelling on the potential pitfalls if a brief affair turns into something more long-term. Apart from worrying about Charlie’s reaction, I know Mum will launch into mother-of-the-bride fantasy land at the merest whisper of a man. I find myself daydreaming about Mack in a variety of unlikely locations, and having panic attacks at the thought of seeing him again. I’d forgotten quite how tricky it all gets. Try very, very hard not to think about it, and fail.

Everyone comes to me for Easter lunch. Mum and Dad have bought Charlie the biggest Easter egg I’ve ever seen. In fact it’s the size Mum always refused to let us have when we were children. My helpful little sister Lizzie has done the same. She offered to do lunch this year but she and Matt, both being architects, live in minimalist heaven in a huge converted warehouse in Whitechapel. The entire place is done in shades of white, and I simply can’t stand the strain of taking Charlie there. I wish I’d agreed now, because getting chocolate stains off white sofas would serve her right for buying such a big egg. I tell Lizzie about Mack and she says it’s about time I had some fun, and when can she meet him? I’m not even sure if I’m going to meet him again if my current level of panic continues, so I beg her to change the subject before I start having palpitations, and we talk about her work. Her latest clients are very rich but totally mad, and keep changing their minds.

‘Honestly, they’re driving us nuts. If they alter the plans
for the kitchen one more time, I’m going to get the builders to brick them up in the utility room.’

‘Good plan. That’s bound to have new clients flocking to your door.’

‘Yes, but it’d be worth it.’

Charlie eats so much chocolate he practically needs to be sedated after lunch. We go for a walk in the woods, and there are bluebells everywhere. The scent is marvellous, and Charlie insists on stopping to chat with the sheep in a nearby field, who all have lambs busy bouncing round like Zebedee from
The Magic Roundabout.
Mum starts telling us what she plans to pack for our holiday in Spain, which is only a few weeks away now.

‘Do you think it would be handy if I brought my toasted sandwich maker? It’s very light.’

Lizzie and I exchange glances, as we both know she’s not joking, and try to convince her not to bring any major items of kitchen equipment or the plane will never get off the ground. We get home and eat the special cakes Charlie has made for tea. They’re sort of chocolate nests, some more nest-like than others, but they taste delicious and we all have far too many and then feel sick. Everyone then beats a hasty retreat before the second sugar high of the day can kick in. I spend a hideous couple of hours trying to stop him from causing major structural damage. Finally he’s so exhausted he only registers a faint protest as I bundle him into bed.

‘Mummy, we had a lovely day, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, darling. Now go to sleep.’

‘Yes and the cakes I made were brilliant, weren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘I could make cakes and sell them like you did at school,
but I could keep all the money and buy a dog, couldn’t I, Mummy?’

‘No you couldn’t. Goodnight, Charlie.’

‘I hate you, Mummy. I really do. Goodnight.’

The day of my dinner date with Mack finally dawns, and I feel very nervous. Kate has offered to have Charlie to stay the night.

‘I’ve put pyjamas and everything in his bag, and also his special blanket. He’s almost given it up but he might want it tonight.’

‘OK. Although I doubt they’ll sleep at all.’

‘True. Thanks, Kate, he’s really excited. I’ll do the same for you, anytime.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing. Anyway James is thrilled. He was so excited this morning he even tidied up his room. Now look, off you go and have a fabulous time. Charlie will be fine. I promise I’ll ring you if he starts throwing up or anything.’

‘OK. Although it’s me that’s likely to be sick. I feel so nervous it’s ridiculous, but it’s so long since I’ve been on a date date, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’ll be fine. Oh, that reminds me, I thought you might like to wear these. They always brought me good luck – well, apart from Phil of course.’ With this she pushes a small black leather box towards me, looking very embarrassed. Inside is a pair of beautiful earrings, with
green stones which I have a horrible feeling might be real emeralds.

‘God, they’re beautiful. But I’d be bound to lose one or something.’

‘Don’t be silly. I want you to wear them. At least my earrings will be having a hot date even if I’m not.’

I give her a hug, and promise to ring later, and race up to town to meet Leila. She drags me into countless shops and we finally find a little black dress which doesn’t make me look like I am six months pregnant with triplets. It’s black velvet, and costs a fortune. I also buy some fantastic black suede shoes, so high I can’t actually walk in them. But they are beautiful. Then Leila insists we get our nails done and starts lecturing me about underwear while the manicurists smirk. Eventually I agree to buy a new bra to shut her up. I feel like a trussed-up chicken. I also feel a burst of defiance coming on and ask Leila why I can’t just wear something ordinary and if he doesn’t like it he can bugger off.