Charlie Glass's Slippers (29 page)

I take another swig of water from the tooth mug. I wish to God it were vodka. “Frankly, if I can get through any kind of sex, tantric or otherwise, without hideously embarrassing myself, I’ll count it a victory.”

“
Get through
sex? With Jay? Charlie . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Call me a lunatic, but don’t you think you ought to be trying to actually, you know, enjoy it?”

I see my own blank face, gargoyle eyes and all, reflected back at me in the mirror opposite.

“And why would you embarrass yourself?” Lucy continues. “Because you’re not a super-bendy supermodel?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Charlie, don’t you think that if Jay
wanted
to have sex with a super-bendy supermodel, he’d have brought one of them away for the weekend, instead of you?”

“But he might change his mind. When he sees me . . . with nothing on.”

“Charlie. Believe me. No man would change his mind when he saw you with nothing on, as you so quaintly put it.” She takes a rather deep breath. “You know, you do seem to have gotten a bit . . . well, obsessive these days. About your appearance, I mean.”

“I’m not obsessive!”

“Okay, okay. Overly concerned, perhaps.”

“I’m not overly concerned, either!”

“I’m not criticizing, Charlie. I’m just saying, you don’t have to be so determined to make everything absolutely perfect.”
She takes a second deep breath—deeper, even, than the first this time. “I mean, just because your dad abandoned you when things were less than perfect in his own life, it doesn’t mean all men are—”

“Dad didn’t abandon me!” I’m not sure whether to be more astonished by this pronouncement or by the fact that the conversation has segued, somehow, from tantric sex into amateur psychoanalysis. Has Lucy formed some kind of a league with Ferdy’s dad or something? After all, Martin was the one who re-categorized Dad’s breakdown as “going off on his travels.” It feels rather like they’re both trying to slowly brainwash me into believing that Dad, while they’re happy to concede was charming and great company, was also a surefire cert for any Bad Father of the Century award that might be knocking about. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Okay, maybe
abandoned
is too strong a word.”

“It
is
too wrong a word! Jesus, why does everyone find it so easy to forget that Dad had a breakdown? And okay, maybe it would have been nicer for me if I’d been able to go and live with him when he got back from Morocco . . .”

“Rather than living in misery with your wicked stepmother, you mean?”

“But he had a career to focus on! What should he have done? Get a job as a bank clerk or an insurance salesman, just so that he could have worked normal hours and not needed to jet around the world all the time?”

“Look, Charlie, calm down.”

“I’m perfectly calm!”

“I’m just saying that maybe your obsession . . . your
concern . . .
with being so perfect for Jay, maybe it’s less to do with Jay’s liking for bendy supermodels and more to do with the fact that you’re scared he’ll do a runner if the smallest thing upsets or offends him.”

“Dad didn’t
do a runner
. And he wasn’t
off on his travels
,
either,” I add, just in case she really is in league with Martin. “He had a breakdown. And it wasn’t over anything trivial, in case you’d forgotten. It was because of Mum dying.”

Lucy holds up her hands, either in surrender or just to bring an end to the topic. “Fine. I’m just saying. Your grooming regime looks pretty hard-core to me.”

“Yes, well, tonight isn’t just some fantasy, Luce. Some glorious fairy tale, with Prince Charming sweeping me into his arms and carrying me away to his castle. I’ve
actually got to get naked
with Prince Charming. Oh, and have I mentioned that this particular Prince Charming is accustomed to going out with supermodels?”

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“My point is that I wouldn’t be here with Jay now if I still looked the way I used to.”

“Maybe not.” Lucy shrugs. “But you definitely
don’t
look the way you used to. Nothing like it, in fact. So if you can’t let your old hang-ups slide just for long enough for you to have a rip-roaring time in the bedroom with a man like Jay Broderick, then that’s just plain wrong. I mean, if you knew the kind of workaday, unsatisfactory sex most women have to have with their boyfriends, desperately trying to get them to do something more exciting than a quick fumble under the duvet every second Thursday, and once on Saturday mornings . . .” Lucy stops talking quite suddenly and gets up from the side of the bathtub, busying herself with re-zipping her wash bag.

“Er, Luce?” I’m concerned by what she’s just said. “Are you . . . talking about Pal?”

“What? No! I’m talking about men
in general
.”

“Okay. It’s just . . .”

“I mean, obviously Pal and I have been together for an absolute age now, so of course our sex life isn’t what it used to be. That’s just totally normal. And he’s so busy with work,
and training at the gym . . . and you know, it’s actually pretty offensive of people to assume that just because he’s Scandinavian, he must have this insanely high libido.”

“I wasn’t assuming that.”

“It’s the
Swedes
who are constantly up for it, with their naked saunas and their dodgy birch twigs.
Norwegians
actually have very low sex drives, Pal says. So I don’t mind at all, or get upset or anything, when it looks like he just isn’t interested in having sex with me. I mean, as long as he fancies me enough to make me pregnant one day, way in the future, obviously . . .” Her face is pink now, and almost as shiny as my left eye. “Anyway, weren’t we talking about you? Because you’re the one who really needs to chill out about all this sex stuff, Charlie. Let go of all these ridiculous inhibitions. I mean, you’re primped and plucked to absolute perfection, as far as I can see. You’re risking permanent injury to your sight. You’re
jogging
, for crying out loud. What’s the point of all that, if you can’t just shag Jay Broderick senseless—”

Quite suddenly, the little door next to the shower, the one I thought must lead to a dressing room, opens up, and Ferdy’s head appears around it.

“Oh!” all three of us gasp, in unison.

“Shit!” Ferdy says, turning beetroot purple, though whether because he’s just walked in on two girls in a bathroom or because one of those girls was talking about shagging his host to the point of insensibility, I don’t know. “I mean, I’m really sorry! I thought this was our bathroom.”

“Oooh, are we
sharing
a bathroom?” Lucy heads over to give Ferdy a hug hello and peers over his shoulder into what clearly isn’t a dressing room, but a guest bedroom that also adjoins this bathroom. “God, that could be awkward after one too many drinks this evening! And I should, er, warn you that Pal might make quite a few strange-sounding noises when he’s getting ready in the morning. He does these special stretching
exercises that make him, well, grunt a bit . . . Oh, God, that’s my YoHoHo phone!” she suddenly yelps, as a mobile rings her
“Life on the Ocean Wave”
ringtone from out in the bedroom. “I promised Pal I wouldn’t bring it this weekend . . .”

Ferdy is staring at me, now that we’re alone, in this intense, fixated kind of way that almost makes me start to wonder if Jay could possibly be right about his feelings for me after all.

He takes a deep breath. “Charlie . . .”

“Where’s Honey?” I chirrup, partly to break the intensity of this moment, and partly to remind him that he has a girlfriend. More to the point, a borderline psychotic girlfriend, who could, at this very moment, be lurking behind him with a blunt instrument.

“She gets carsick on long motorway journeys. I’m picking her up at Ludlow train station in half an hour. Charlie.” He comes through the doorway now, right up to me, and gazes down at my face. “What’s happened to your eyes?”

Ohhh
. My
eyes
. That’s what he’s been staring so intently at. Not because he’s secretly in love with me.

“Oh, I’m fine! Just an allergic reaction to some dye.”

“You’ve been
dyeing your eyes
?”

“No, no! My eyelashes! You know, just so you don’t have to waste time faffing around with mascara and stuff.”

“Ah. I didn’t know about that, actually. Just think, all these years I could have practically halved my morning beauty routine if I hadn’t been layering on the mascara.”

I laugh. Ferdy grins. Then I remember I’m still looking swollen and shiny, so I stop laughing and shove my sunglasses back on.

“They don’t look that bad, honestly, Charlie. Not so much so that you need to hide away behind your sunglasses.”

“Well, I don’t want to put anyone off their dinner later! Anyway, it’s only until the Zyrtec has had time to work.”

“You mean the hay fever tablets? Actually, Charlie, I think
you’d be better off with something like Piriton. That’s for more general allergies, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh, no!” I’m dismayed. “I’ve taken the Zyrtec now! Anyway, I’m not sure anyone will have any Piriton around here.”

“Well, don’t worry, is all I’m saying. It’d be a shame to ruin your . . . uh . . . romantic weekend with Jay over something like a little allergic reaction.”

“It’s not a romantic weekend!” I say, hastily. “I think the weekend is much more about the car stuff now, to be honest. And why didn’t you ever tell me you owned a vintage sports car, Ferdy? This is a whole new side of you I never knew existed!”

“It’s just something I tinker with from time to time. My dad’s uncle Mike left it to me in his will a few years ago. Honestly, Charlie, I’m a complete amateur on this whole front. I hope you’ll warn your boyfriend of that before he insists on challenging me to time trials!”

“Oh, I’m sure he won’t do anything like that.”

“He mentioned it the moment I pulled up on the driveway.”

“Well, I’m sure he doesn’t mean it
seriously
.”

“He wants a seven o’clock start tomorrow morning.”

“Probably just so there’s all the more time in the rest of the day for relaxing in the garden.”

“You’re determined to be positive about this, aren’t you, Charlie?”

“Afraid so!”

He grins. “Then how can I possibly argue?”

It’s the most relaxed I’ve felt around him since getting back from L.A.; almost back to the days of the great ice-cream trials.

“Charlie? Do you know if this place has Wi-Fi?” Lucy has appeared in the other doorway of the bathroom again, looking somewhat wild-eyed and panic-stricken. “This customer claims the website keeps crashing! I think it’s just her con
nection, but I really need to check, and Pal’s going to be so irritated if he thinks I’ve brought YoHoHo stuff away with me for the weekend . . .”

I say that I’ll go and ask Jay, just as Ferdy glances at his watch and mumbles something about really needing to go and collect Honey at the train station. So we all disperse from the community bathroom and head down the stairs towards the driveway, where Ferdy folds himself behind the wheel of a little green sports car, and I extricate Jay from where he’s talking to Pal over the open hood of his cream Jaguar, so that I can find out the answer to the Wi-Fi question without activating Pal’s YoHoHo radar.

• • •

The Zyrtec, thank God, appears to have done its job. By the time I’ve showered (in the even more huge and more beautifully appointed bathroom that’s attached to the even more huge and beautifully appointed bedroom Hannah has put me and Jay in for the weekend), changed into my dress for dinner, and done my makeup, my eyes have receded to almost normal proportions and almost normal coloring. I’m still dribbling the occasional tear, but if I’m quick on the draw with the tissues I’ve stuffed into my bag, I’m hopeful that nobody is going to notice. Anyway, with any luck nobody is going to notice even if I’m
not
quick on the draw, thanks to the fact that, only an hour into supper, we’re all what is technically known as Absolutely Hammered.

Before supper even began, Jay’s groundsman, Pete (who apparently doubles up as a barman when he’s not doing whatever it is that groundsmen do . . . tending the ground, I guess? In a manly sort of fashion?), mixed us round after round of martinis while all six of us sat out on the terrace, admiring the view out over the gardens. Then, as the sun began to dip behind the horizon, and we moved from the terrace into this
gorgeous wood-paneled dining room, we switched to refreshing ourselves from the many, many bottles of wine that Hannah had put out for us.

Now, as I drink deeply from what must be at least my fourth glass of red, on top of the three super-strength martinis I knocked back earlier, I’m actually starting to wonder what all my earlier panic was about. I mean, stressing out about sleeping with Jay Broderick? Getting into a tizz about the terrible hardship of having to go to bed with this absurdly handsome and sexy man who’s sitting beside me? What the hell was I thinking? The prospect of following Lucy’s recommendation, and shagging Jay senseless, is becoming more and more attractive with every sip of this delicious merlot. Though in all honesty, I’m so tipsy that pretty much everyone around this table is starting to look more and more attractive and delightful. There’s Lucy, for example, almost directly opposite me on the other side of the round table: my lovely, beautiful best friend Lucy, dressed rather dowdily again but nevertheless looking almost like her old self as she chatters away to Ferdy, glass of white wine in hand. And there’s Ferdy, of course, looking . . . Actually, I think I’d better not dwell on how Ferdy looks. But the booze that’s slowly making its way through my system is even making me feel warm and fuzzy towards Honey. I mean, obviously it would be even nicer if she weren’t regarding me with a crushed-puppy expression every time I smile in her direction, but you can’t have everything. Anyway, with Jay by my side, I feel like I pretty much
have
got everything.

He leans over to me now, ostensibly to refill my wineglass, but also to whisper in my left ear.