Charlie Glass's Slippers (26 page)

Half an hour later, I’m back in my basement kitchen, sautéing my perfect little dice of carrot, celery, and onion in some of the butter, and chopping the rest of the butter into cubes ready for the mashed potato that will form the topping of my shepherd’s pie.

It’s not even that I want to
eat
a shepherd’s pie as such, although I can’t deny that it’s been on my mind (and deep in the soul of my rumbling belly) ever since Jay first brought it out of the hamper. It’s more that I want to cook it. That I just want to cook, full stop. To fill my kitchen with the soothing smells of softening vegetables and browning meat, to enjoy the gentle rhythm of chopping, and mashing, and stirring. I used to make a lovely shepherd’s pie in the old days, for Dad, and seeing as (again) it was one of Mum’s favorite recipes, cooking it always made me especially happy.

Not that I’m not happy in other ways, these days. Who wouldn’t be happy when they’ve just had a glorious make-out session with a man like Jay? When they’ve just been invited for a weekend with him in the countryside? When they’ve spent the afternoon working on a glamorous photo shoot? When they’re thin, and well dressed, and well coiffed—everything a girl is supposed to be.

Obviously
I’m happy.

It’s just that I miss some of the other stuff that used to make me happy, too. I miss shepherd’s pie.

It’s funny, but now that I’ve started cooking, I can’t seem to stop. I wouldn’t admit it to just anyone, but this is way more fun than the photo shoot was, and it’s nice to feel confident that I know what the hell I’m actually doing. As soon as the shepherd’s pie is browning in the oven, I take some flour and eggs, dig out some frozen butter from the back of the freezer, and start to make pastry. I find a serviceable tin of golden syrup in the cupboard, locate a couple of lemons, and realize I can make the pastry into a treacle tart. I’m tempted to make a fresh custard to go with it, but by the time the tart is in the oven, the shepherd’s pie is ready to eat, so I sit down at the table, help myself to a proper-sized portion—okay, maybe more like two—and dig in.

After all these weeks of rabbit food (in amounts that would
annoy any self-respecting rabbit) the taste is, quite literally, ambrosial.

Jay is going to have to be even better in bed than I think he is to give me an experience that will top this.

Despite eating slowly, and savoring every delicious mouthful, my plate is empty before I know it. I clear the kitchen while waiting for the treacle tart to brown, then, when it’s ready, cut a respectable slice, put it onto a plate, and go to sit on the banquette beneath the skylight, for maximum sensory enjoyment.

Truly
maximum sensory enjoyment, though, calls for a scoop of ice cream.

Luckily I didn’t throw out every single one of Ferdy’s polystyrene containers when I cleansed the flat of (almost) all temptation after I got back from America. I happen to know that there’s a carton of his scratchy umbrella ice cream lurking behind the frozen peas; not the absolute perfect pairing with treacle tart, perhaps, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Not, as I sit back down beneath the skylight with my plate of treacle tart and my scoop of ice cream, that I feel all that much like a beggar. I feel sated, and content, and at ease with myself in a way I’d almost forgotten.

All right, there aren’t enough miles along the Embankment for the loathsome run I’m going to have to endure to work this off. There isn’t a pair of trainers sturdy enough for the amount of lunges I’m going to have to do, between now and Friday, to prevent this gourmet late-night snack from taking up permanent residence on my thighs and bottom.

But right now, I’m just glad to feel like Charlie again, for a while.

chapter seventeen

O
h, my
God.
You’re
inviting me to a weekend in Shropshire?”

“Yes, Lucy. For the third time, in fact, yes.”

“With you and your hot new billionaire boyfriend?”

“He’s not my new boyfriend. And he’s not a billionaire.”

“But he is extremely hot, though.”

“Yes. He is extremely hot.”

Hence the Amazon page I’ve got open on my laptop right now, from where I’m preparing to order every sex manual I can get my hands on. I’m still mortified, even the following morning, by the fact that I
kissed Jay on the forehead
last night. Seriously, what the hell was I thinking? Not content with turning down the prospect of more than mere kissing at his birthday party and then again last night, I also seem masochistically determined to make him think of me as motherly and chaste. Whereas what I really want him to think is that I’m dynamite in the sack and up for anything.

“Have you ever tried tantric sex?” I ask Lucy now, peering at the cover of a book called
Tantra for Beginners
on Amazon.

“You mean, like Sting?”

“Oh, God, I don’t want to do anything if it’s painful.”

“No, like Sting the singer. Isn’t he supposed to be indulg
ing in tantric sex every five minutes? Or more to the point, every five days?” She sniggers. “Why are you reading about tantric sex, anyway? You don’t need to have tantric sex with Jay Broderick, Charlie. I think he’ll be more than happy with plain old vanilla.”

At the word
vanilla
, my stomach lurches with hunger. It doesn’t help that I’m sitting within grabbing distance of the leftovers in Jay’s picnic hamper, which I cleared away when I got into the store this morning. After all, all I ate for breakfast (and all I’m planning to eat for lunch) is a miserable pot of vanilla Müller Lite. After last night’s overdose of shepherd’s pie and treacle tart, I’m in self-enforced starvation mode in order to shed valuable ounces in time for the weekend. But also, if I’m being really honest, because on my way into the store half an hour ago, I walked past Chill,
where a blackboard sign outside was advertising the flavor of the day as Thriller in Vanilla. I remember Thriller in Vanilla
from back when I was still taste-testing Ferdy’s ice creams: the smoothest, most luscious real-vanilla ice cream you’ve ever tasted, flecked with thousands of speckly vanilla seeds and best served, on Ferdy’s recommendation, with warm dark-chocolate sauce and a sprinkling of chopped nuts. The mere thought of it—especially after the sugar-and-cream hit from the scratchy umbrella last night—makes my saliva glands ache with desire. Actually, it makes my entire body ache with desire. I can remember Ferdy pottering around my kitchen the evening he brought that ice cream over, breaking up the Lindt chocolate bars he’d brought with him and chatting while he melted them over a simmering pan of water. When the chocolate was melted, he added double cream, and a tiny shot of rum, and the merest pinch of sea salt, and then he poured the whole glorious concoction over large scoops of the ice cream . . . He ended up with this cute little ring of dark chocolate around the edges of his mouth, and I spent the rest of the evening alternating between being too shy
to mention it and being only another shot of rum away from vaulting the table and removing the chocolate marks with my own lips . . .

“Anyway, look, just say you’ll come to Shropshire, Luce, please?” I beg her now, following Amazon’s
Customers Who Bought This Also Bought
link to a veritable smut-fest of erotica. My fingers hover, for a moment, over clicking on the Kama Sutra, before I decide that I’d be crazy to try running before I can walk. Or rather, from the look of the couple on the cover, getting both legs behind my ears before I can barely manage one. “Jay’s going to have friends there, and I don’t want to be outnumbered.”

“Charlie, I’d love to, honestly, but Pal doesn’t . . .”

“He’s invited, too!”

“Oh!”

“I know he might not want to drag himself all the way to the country for the weekend, but there’ll be fresh air, and loads of space for him to do his training . . .” I don’t add that actually I suspect that the minute Lucy mentions this weekend to Pal, he’ll be packing his bags and jumping on the fastest train to Shropshire. And that it will have far more to do with his desire to mingle with a multimillionaire than his desire to do his fartlek training in the open countryside.

“Well, he’d probably really enjoy that . . . I’ll ask him, okay?”

“Brilliant, Lucy. Thanks.”

“But hang on—you still haven’t told me more about last night! Did he take you somewhere amazing? Did he kiss you again? Did he—”

“I’ll tell you everything later,” I promise. Because, let’s face it, the whole shepherd’s pie/blighted childhood saga is a bit tricky to go into over the phone. Anyway, Maggie is getting to the store in five minutes for a meeting with Leo and Suzy, to give her input on their upcoming designs, so I need to go over
the road to the Cypriot café and get some coffees and croissants in readiness for their arrival.

There’s a problem with this plan, however: the Cypriot café is closed. A handwritten sign attached to the inside of the glass door declares, in large letters that are somehow as bad-tempered as the owner herself,
CAFÉ CLOSED POWER CUT
.

The nearest Starbucks is a five-minute walk away, the nearest Pret a Manger even farther than that.
Dammit
. This is the first time Maggie’s been to the store, and I wanted to be a decent hostess. I guess I’ll just have to nip to the newsstands on the next block and get some bottled water and
(
not for you, Charlie, not for you!)
Kit Kats instead.

Oh, hang on. There’s always Chill.

I know it’s open, thanks to the Thriller in Vanilla
sign out the front, and I know they do coffee. Which, if I know Ferdy, is probably really excellent coffee. I know I’ve been avoiding it, because I’ve been avoiding him, but maybe if I just saunter past, I’ll be able to tell if he’s there or not.

I think I’m in luck! I can see through the glass windows that there’s only a skinny young guy behind the counter. So I decide to take the risk, stick my head through the doorway, and ask him in a bright and breezy tone of voice, “Is Ferdy in this morning?”

“Nah,” he replies.

Perfect! I go in and close the door behind me.

It’s the first time I’ve been inside the branch since it opened, and I have to admit that Honey’s done a pretty nice job on the décor. The color scheme is pistachio-green and strawberry-pink, already getting the taste buds geared up for a full-on ice-cream experience as soon as you walk in. There’s a small customer seating area, mostly furnished with comfy pistachio-green booths and a couple of bistro tables, and the entire back section of the shop is taken up with the huge freezer and a green-and-pink-painted counter, where you can
sit at a high stool to drink coffee or just to pick out your ice cream. The flavors are printed in swirly lettering on a large menu mural on the back wall: everything from the Thriller in Vanilla
that was getting my stomach growling earlier to Lemon Meringue Crunch and—my heart gives a funny little flip as I notice this one—Mint Choc Stracciatella.

“Was Ferdy expecting you?” the skinny guy behind the counter asks now. The name tag on his crisp white T-shirt informs me that his name is Jesse. The same Jesse, presumably, who was helping out with the stall at Jay’s party. “I can try his mobile and see where he is, if you like?”

“Thanks, but no need. I’ll just try and catch him later,” I fib. “In the meantime, can I have two cappuccinos, please?”

“His girlfriend’s around,” Jesse offers, “if you want to speak to her instead?”

“Honey? Oh, no, no, no. Just the coffees . . .”

“Honey?” He’s stuck his head through the doorway behind him and is calling up the stairs. “Someone here for Ferd!”

“But I’m not! I’m not here for Ferd at all! Actually, I think I’ll forget about the coffees, too!”

But it’s too late. There are fairy-light footsteps tripping down the stairs, and a moment later, Honey appears at the bottom of them.

She’s looking sweeter (and more Disney princess-like) than ever, in pale-pink skinny jeans and a gray T-shirt with a print of a rainbow on it, her blond hair freshly washed and fluffy.

“Charlie!” she squeals when she sees me.

“Honey! Er—hello!”

She bounces across the shop floor and throws her arms around me in an excitable—and astonishingly tight—hug.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” I puff, when she lets me go.

“Oh, I’m helping Ferdy do up the upstairs. He’s turning the
first floor into an office and hoping to let the top floor out as a little flat. But more importantly, what are
you
doing here?”

“I just popped in to get some coffee . . .”

“She was looking for Ferdy,” Jesse helpfully explains. “I told her I could try his mobile if she liked.”

“No, I wasn’t looking for Ferdy. I just wanted some coffee for this meeting I’m having at my store in a few minutes.”

“Charlie, don’t be silly!” Honey wags a finger at me. “You know, if you came here to see Ferdy, you should just say so!”

“I would, if that was really the reason I came, but . . .”

“There’s no need for you to feel you need to lie to me about that kind of thing!”

“Well, I’m glad, but I’m really not lying . . .”

“Fibbing, then!”

“No, not fibbing, either.”

“Oh,
Charlie
!” Her smile broadens. “Really, this whole situation would be so much easier if you just felt able to be honest with me about it!”

“Honey, I
am
being honest. Now—er—if I could possibly just get two cappuccinos to go, I’d really—”

“I know you were hanging out with his dad the other day.”

“What? No! I wasn’t
hanging out
. It was just a . . . a special day for both of us, that’s all.”

“Right. Well, I think I ought to be informed, don’t you, if you’re sleeping with my boyfriend?”

I’m too stunned to reply.

Behind us, showing a commendable degree of maturity for one so young, Jesse takes a couple of large steps backwards and disappears out of sight in the direction of what must be a stockroom.

“Well?” Honey’s smile widens. It’s an effect, coupled with her scarily blank baby-blue eyes, that reminds me of Chucky the evil doll from those terrifying horror movies. “It’s a perfectly straightforward question!”

“Honey, are you . . . are you crackers?” I say, with a laugh. This, I’m hoping, will be the right approach: lighthearted, gently joshing bemusement. “Of course I’m not sleeping with your boyfriend!”

“Are you planning to?”

“No, I’m not planning to!” My cheeks are suddenly heating up, which is diabolically bad timing. I
really
don’t fancy trying to explain to Honey that though I’m
absolutely not
planning to sleep with Ferdy, I have
entertained the notion
of such an event in the past. I’m not sure she’s in the mood to laugh with me, just now, about Fantasy Ferdy appearing on his Fantasy Horse from across a windswept moor. Let alone Fantasy Me and my torn corset. “Honey, seriously, why are you even asking all this?”

“Why are you blushing?”

“Because you’re embarrassing me! I only popped in for a cappuccino! Not the third degree.”

“It’s not the third degree, Charlie. I just want to know what’s going on between you and Ferdy.”

“But there
isn’t
any me and Ferdy.”

“A little hard to believe, when he talks about you the way he does!”

“How does he talk about me?”

Okay—that question was a big mistake.

Honey’s eyes are filling, immediately, with huge, watery tears.

“Oh, God, Honey, please don’t cry! All I mean is . . . Look, I don’t believe he talks about me in any particular way at all! Honestly! I’m not even sure we’re friends anymore.”

“Why? Because something happened between you?”

“No, because he seemed pretty pissed off with me after what happened at the party the other weekend.”

“Lucy’s party?”

“No, the party he was working at in Holland Park. The weekend after Lucy’s party. He must have told you about
what happened? The drainpipe? And how he had to help me escape when my dress split open?”

“He didn’t,” Honey whispers, looking more stricken than ever, “even tell me you were there.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure it was just an oversight. Not because he’s keeping secrets from you or anything . . .”

But it’s no good. Honey (who I think may have been taking lessons from Robyn on the drama-queen front) lets out a bloodcurdling wail and dashes back towards the stairs, scurrying up them as if her life depends on getting away from me as quickly as possible.

“Honey?” I call, helplessly, after her. “We really should talk about this . . .”

Obviously, there’s no answer. And I don’t want to risk following her up the stairs, just in case she’s waiting at the top to pour a vat of boiling oil over me.

“Was that two cappuccinos?” comes Jesse’s voice as he reappears from the back of the shop, just as seamlessly as he vanished in the first place. “Or just the one?”

“Neither. I . . . Forget about the coffee. I’m sorry.”

I’m shaking a bit, with the shock of it all, as I hurry two doors along and back to the store. When I open the door, realizing too late that I’ve forgotten to lock it, I see that Maggie has already arrived, and is sitting with her long legs up on the table waiting for me.

“Charlie Glass!” she says, a mock-horrified look on her face. “You bad, bad girl! What
have
you been up to?”

“What? I wasn’t doing anything! Honey’s got totally the wrong end of the—” I break off, as Maggie turns my laptop around to face me. “
Oh!
”

Thanks, presumably, to my recent search parameters on Amazon, an X-rated video pop-up has appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen. It features a three-second loop of a grimacing naked man doing something frankly dis
turbing to an (and I don’t blame her) even more grimacing naked woman.