Fanny Blake - What Women Want

She looked beside the radiator where she always left her shoes, never having got round to organising a shoe rack in the wardrobe. To her surprise, the jumble that she had left this morning had been transformed into a neat row of six matching pairs. She opened her underwear drawer in the hope of finding tights she could wear with the floral skirt. As she pulled out a pair, a cascade of red confetti flew up and fluttered to the floor. Startled, she bent down and scooped up the pieces only to see that each one was shaped like a heart.

Suddenly she felt an unfamiliar sense of relaxation. How wonderful that this adoring and adorable man had come into her life and wanted to look after her. However in control of things she had appeared, there had always been an ever-present underlying fear that everything was about to fly apart. If he would do something as special as buy her clothes, tidy her shoes without being asked, and add a sprinkle of romance to her drawers (she smiled at the pun), what else might he be capable of?

She slipped the skirt over her head, then the T-shirt, pulled on the tights and one of the four pairs of heels she owned and almost skipped back downstairs.

Chapter 8

As her alarm cut through the clouds of sleep, Bea swam up towards consciousness and reached across the bed, congratulating herself on having remembered to change the sheets the previous morning. Not that she’d known what was going to happen then, of course. Anticipating the moment her hand would come into contact with a body of the male persuasion, she stretched out further, moving her arm up and down. Nobody. Suddenly awake, she opened her eyes. Definitely nobody. He must be in the shower. Or making them tea, perhaps. She curled round in the warmth of the duvet, luxuriating until he reappeared, piecing together for herself the previous day.

This time Let’s Have Lunch had got it right. As soon as she had seen him walking towards her across the airy, mini-malist Asian-fusion restaurant, she had known. A confident stride, a well-cut suit, brown eyes with a twinkle, a full head of hair, without a recessive gene in evidence, and, most important, an easy smile. If she half shut her eyes, there was definitely enough of a resemblance to Gabriel Byrne to make him extremely attractive. The second morning from hell since the arrival of Adam Palmer at Coldharbour Press had dimmed at the prospect of lunch in the company of Tony Castle.

She was not disappointed. There wasn’t a moment of awkwardness as they introduced themselves, not a moment of hesitation as they weighed each other up. Lunch sped past in a haze of laughter and conversation with an undertow of sexual tension that had made itself felt almost immediately, only to intensify the longer they spent in each other’s company. The dishes of sea bass with garlic, ginger and soy, oven-roasted lamb with fiery spices, flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce came and went, eaten almost unnoticed. Wine glasses were topped up with a never-ending stream of Sauvignon Blanc as they got to know each other. Lunch bled imperceptibly into the afternoon so that when Bea looked at her watch to see whether it was time to return to the office she was astonished to find it was already four thirty. It had hardly seemed worth going back for an hour, particularly when she briefly considered the glum faces that would surround her as they waited for Adam’s axe to fall. Her decision was made in a nano-second. She was having a good time. Why stop? If questioned, she’d just say she’d been with an author.

The graphic-design company in which Tony was a partner seemed to have little need of him either so, instead, they agreed that nothing would be nicer than to cross the river to Tate Modern. They wandered between the rooms, both of them less than half intent on the pictures on the walls. In the darkened space of a video installation, she accidentally brushed her hand against his. Did he too feel the jolt of electricity that had travelled between them? They emerged into the glare of the gallery, Bea feeling as though something in the world had shifted.

Rather than seeing more, they decided to stroll along the South Bank, stopping to watch the river traffic, leaning over the stone wall by one of the Victorian wrought-iron street lights in the shade of the giant plane trees, dazzled by the sunlight on the water. It was unusual for Bea to feel so relaxed in a stranger’s company but, she pinched herself, she really did. Tony must have kissed the Blarney Stone several times before he’d moved to London. His flow of conversation was effortless and amusing, his attention flattering, his company diverting. Everything she could have asked for in a date. As they took themselves into a small tapas bar, it dawned on Bea where all this was leading. And lead there it did.

The sex had been better than good, earth-moving, even. A half-smile slid across her face as she remembered how spontaneously and how well they’d connected. Her fear of embarrassment at getting her kit off in front of someone new had proved groundless. Tony hadn’t recoiled in horror at the sight of her body, stranger to the gym as it was. In fact, she seemed to recall, as her smile broadened, quite the reverse. Nor was she the inhibited sex-starved singleton she’d worried she might have become during the drought since Colin’s departure. To her surprise, she had found that her self-consciousness was disappearing with age.

What was keeping him for so long? Her thoughts were taking her in one direction and one direction only, and she was aware that there were a good forty-five minutes or so that could be put to good use before they both had to leave for work.

Not wanting to wake Ben by shouting, Bea edged herself out of bed, draping her faded but attractively Bohemian silk dressing-gown round her. Her attention was caught by the dust on the bedside table-top and the base of the light, all too visible in the sunshine leaking through the gap in the curtains. Not wanting Tony to realise her slummy side just yet, she grabbed the black cotton knickers she’d been only too pleased to abandon on the floor the night before and did a quick dust with them before hurling them into the laundry basket. Pleased with the result, she went to find him in the bathroom. To her surprise, the door was wide open. There was no sound of running water from inside, no steam misting the windows, as it did after the shower had been used. The blue and grey towels sat neatly folded, untouched. Turning to go downstairs, she noticed that Tony’s shoes were no longer where she remembered him slipping them off by the radiator in the hall. She couldn’t hear him opening cupboards, trying to find what he needed to make tea in a strange kitchen.

There was a good reason for that, as she discovered when she reached the ground floor and could see along the hallway to the long kitchen. Tony wasn’t there. He had gone. Gone without waking her, without saying goodbye.

Mystified, not to say disappointed, Bea decided to make herself a cup of tea to have in the bath where she would ponder this turn in events. Why would he have gone off without saying anything the night before? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had thought that mention of an early meeting the next day would interrupt the enjoyment of the moment. He had been right. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched, confident that he’d call her later in the day. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she began planning what they might do that evening. Or was that rushing things? But going that fast seemed to be working for Ellen, so why shouldn’t it for her?

Except that, clearly, it hadn’t. The rosy glow that had enveloped her on waking began to evaporate as realisation dawned. The bastard had legged it and, worse than that, he’d gone in the middle of the night with no explanation. She cast her mind back, trying to find one for him. Had he disguised his real reaction to her body? Had gravity, food, drink and childbirth taken the toll she feared? Should she have had the Brazilian she’d been meaning to endure and hadn’t quite got round to? Perhaps she was even more out of practice than she’d thought and it had showed. What had been so good for her might not have been so good for him after all. But he had touched her, reassured her, even complimented her.