Charlotte Butterfield - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

They’d been dating for four months, which, ok, wasn’t a huge amount of time for deep feelings to form, but when you knew, you knew. She’d met him at the horse races, which sounded a lot posher than it actually was. When she’d accepted her client’s invitation to join them at Cheltenham for the day, she’d envisaged a box, a silver tray with unending rounds of canapés being passed around and fancy hats. In reality she was shoehorned into a minibus with fourteen men who started drinking even before the bus pulled out of Victoria coach station at 9am.

Freddie was sat directly behind her and kept pulling bits of her hair out of her bun somewhere around Oxford. She’d swung around in anger ready to launch into a spit-laden tirade only to see the most piercing blue eyes smile back at her. As much as she tried to act stern, her remonstration was laced with flirty overtones. ‘Please don’t do that, I don’t like it,’ she’d said.

‘Please don’t wear your hair like that then,’ he’d fired back. ‘You’re far too cute to have a hairstyle like a granny.’

Cute. He’d said she was cute. She’d have preferred beautiful, stunning, even hot, but cute was ok. Cute was better than sweet. At five foot three, she’d even had a man pat her on the head before as he passed by in a pub, which admittedly ended in her throwing her wine over his retreating back. But when Freddie had called her cute, she didn’t mind. In fact, as she swivelled around in her seat to face him, the rest of the journey was a lot more enjoyable. They’d spent the whole day together drinking, laughing, placing bets, shouting for the winners, and when his hand rested on her thigh on the journey home, she didn’t move it. And when he escorted her home that night and she invited him in, and they sat on her sofa, she didn’t move it either. And by then it was even higher up.

Two busy months of dating followed: pubs, parties, back to her flatshare, pubs, parties, back to hers, they’d settled into a sociable pattern that was rudely interrupted by his boss asking him to decamp to Mumbai, Jaipur, wherever the heck she was, for three months. It was a huge deal, this secondment. What a responsibility, of course she could excuse him a certain amount of brevity in his email correspondence, what type of girlfriend would she be if she didn’t?

Her neck gave off an audible crack when she moved her head, and she knew she couldn’t put off opening her eyes for much longer. As soon as she did, she looked up and shot out of bed faster than she’d ever moved before. The fan was attached to the ceiling by a threadbare wire that was making the four sharp blades sway in a large circle right above where her face had just been.

While she waited for her heart rate to return to normal, she ran her toothbrush under some bottled water and thought that at some point in the future, this was going to make great dinner party conversation. ‘So how did you two know you were destined to be together?’ one of their new friends, probably someone from the Montessori nursery their kids would inevitably go to, would ask, and Freddie would ruffle her hair and say, ‘when this beautiful, crazy woman risked her life chasing me across India,’ and they’d kiss over the marinated scallops presented in their shell and everyone would go ‘ahhh’.

Yes, she thought decisively, this is a pivotal moment in our relationship, now I just need to find him.

The near-death experience with the fan meant checking out of the hotel was a necessity so she had no choice but to drag her suitcase behind her, over the pot-holed pavement, spilt food and animal excrement in between the hordes of people pouring into and out of the station next door. The noise of the traffic was deafening, and yet above it Leila heard the strains of Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You belting out of a nearby shop and it gave her the steely determination to see her mission through.

Leila looked down at the piece of paper that the receptionist in Mumbai had scribbled the address of the Jaipur office on. ‘Excuse me’, she said, touching the sleeve of a man standing chewing something by a faded orange rickshaw, ‘Do you know this place?’ She offered him the scrap of paper. He stared at her. Then looked down at the writing, his head moved, and he motioned for her to get in the cab and swung her suitcase into the tuk tuk after her with practised ease.

He perched on the saddle in front of her and started peddling into the oncoming traffic. ‘Jesus! Oh my God! Careful, what the—’ Leila’s expletives were drowned out by the chorus of angry horns surrounding them. They slowed to let a couple of goats weave between the traffic prodded by a child with a big stick and no shoes. The rickshaw finally stopped outside a large, modern building and the man pointed. She gave him a fistful of rupees, the denominations of which she hadn’t got the hang of yet. He started dancing on the spot, making her realise that she might have just given him enough to feed his family for a year.

After a brief exchange with yet another commiserative receptionist, Leila found herself back on the street clutching yet another piece of paper with yet another hastily scribbled address on it. Apparently Freddie had called in sick today.

Of course he had.

Because nothing on this god-awful trip could be that easy. Of course he couldn’t have been at his desk and come down to see her in that fancy lobby and twirled her around so her feet left the floor.

Her long black hair was stuck to the back of her neck, but she didn’t want to put it up as Freddie loved it down. The humidity had also made her make-up quite literally slide off her face in the last three hours, but none of that mattered, she was ten minutes away from seeing her future husband.

Room 114 was at the end of the corridor. There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, but Leila knew Freddie wouldn’t mind being woken up by her, even if he was sick. Her heart pounded. This was the moment. This is when he would realise how serious she was, and that he loved her. Her fingers brushed the mistletoe in her pocket as she knocked on the door a couple of times, then heard his voice angrily shout, ‘It says do not disturb!’

‘Freddie, it’s me!’

She could hear commotion inside the room, a table perhaps being knocked over – probably in his hurry to get to the door – voices suddenly coming to an abrupt hush – the TV no doubt being muted. Then the door opened a fraction and Freddie peered around it, wearing a dressing gown.

‘Layles!’ She hated him calling her that, always had done, but never found the right time to tell him. Now wasn’t the time either.

‘Freddie!’ She paused, waiting for the door to open more, or for him to invite her in, or for him to come out, or anything other than the two of them looking at each other through a two-inch gap. ‘I’m in India!’ She added completely unnecessarily.

‘So you are! Wow! Um, how did you find me here Layles?’ Still the door remained barely ajar.

She sighed and gave a self-deprecating laugh, ‘I’ll save that story for later, it’s a cracker. Now open the door, let me come in!’

Freddie looked very quickly over his shoulder and shifted a little, ‘Um, you know what, now’s not really a good time…’

‘Your office told me you were sick, don’t worry, I won’t pounce on you, I promise, I’ll just keep you company until you feel better. It’s Christmas tomorrow, maybe you could then call the office and take a couple more days off and we can make up for lost time, I’ve missed you so—’ Her words tailed off as she saw a movement in the slither of room she could see behind him. ‘Is there someone in the room?’ she asked, pushing the door tentatively against his weight behind it.