Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (18 page)

As she now reached the top floor and Daniel’s flat, the scent of barbecued meat and boozy conversation floated down to greet her. Only Daniel would decide to barbecue in this weather. Willow took a deep breath and was about to go in when her phone rang. It was Sam—she had forgotten to call him. Hesitating, she thought about not taking the call, but if he couldn’t get through to her, he could come by, and if he came by he’d discover she was out and . . . Willow answered the call.

“Sam,” she said.

“So? Have you found out who did it? Is she ready to come back?”

“No, and I don’t think so, not yet,” Willow replied, turning longingly toward the sound of laughter and clinking glasses coming from somewhere within Daniel’s flat.

“Willow, what’s the point of her being with you if . . .”

“The point is she isn’t sleeping in a doorway because she can’t stand being with you,” Willow snapped before she could stop herself. “Look, Sam, what happened? How did she go from that little girl to . . . to this?”

There was a long silence.

“I don’t know,” Sam said eventually. “I just . . . I suppose I wasn’t there. I suppose I . . . I’ve been busy with the business.”
It was nothing like an explanation, but Willow supposed it was the nearest she was likely to get to one while standing on Daniel’s doorstep.

“Look, I know she sounded like she knew what she was doing, but I think the whole reason she ended up in this situation is because she’d been trying really hard not to think about anything. I’m not sure if she really knows what adoption means, if she’s ready to deal with it.”

Sam barked a mirthless laugh. “But she’s ready to deal with becoming a mother?”

“Maybe, if she felt like she wasn’t alone.”

“She isn’t alone. I told her I’d get a nanny, sort out school . . .” Sam sounded frustrated. “Why would she think that she’s alone? I’d never force her to do anything she’d always regret. I live with enough regrets of my own.”

Willow was silent for the moment or two it took her to absorb the tacit insult.

“I’m going to take her to the doctor on Monday and see if I can’t make an appointment for her to meet with a social worker.”

“But you can’t, surely she needs a parent to be there for that.”

“Well, I thought I could say I’m her step—”

“No, you can’t say that. You aren’t.” Sam sounded adamant.

“She won’t let you take her.” Willow was just as forceful. “For whatever reason, she really doesn’t want to be around you at the moment, Sam.”

“Then we’ll both go. And that’s that.”

“Fine.” For a frozen second Willow wondered how Sam and his daughter had come crashing back into her life so completely; how two people that she had considered ruled out of it were now so firmly back in, to the point that they were making arrangements. Perhaps that was attributable to the shoes
too. Ever since she’d put them on she’d felt her heart beating, ticking like a clock. The trouble was she had no idea what it meant, if anything. But she rather hoped it wasn’t the ticking of a clock counting down to detonation.

What would Sam say, she wondered, if he knew where she was standing right now? He never had liked her friendship with Daniel. Sometimes she speculated, hoped even, that he might even feel jealous. She should have known better.

“Babe!” Daniel caught sight of her, on a run to the kitchen for more alcohol, no doubt. “What are you doing loitering on the doorstep like Mata Hari and what the fuck are you wearing?”

“I’ve got to go,” Willow said hurriedly. “I’ll call you.”

“Is that—”

Willow cut him off. “Good-bye.” Slipping her phone into the pocket, she shrugged the sound of his voice out of her head at exactly the same time she dropped the coat sexily off of one shoulder, framing herself in the doorway, shamelessly vamping it up for her friend.

“Wow, I don’t know who you are, but I know I like you.” Daniel whistled as he looked her up and down. “What have you done with my boring best friend, you animal-murdering fiend?”

Willow’s beaming smile faded just a tad and then, taking a breath, she pushed Daniel aside and strutted past him, twirling first one way and then the next, her confidence growing as she saw him laugh, his eyes sparkling.

“Actually,” he said as she swirled around, “that moth-eaten old thing really suits you, you were obviously born for old-style glamour. You look great, honey.” He picked up one of the numerous cameras he always had lying around and took some shots of her while she struck as many over-the-top glamour girl poses as she could think of, careful not to look like she was
taking herself too seriously. “There’s something else, though, something different about Miss Willow Briars. What have you done? Have you done your hair?”

Willow beamed and then gracefully slipped the coat off to reveal the yellow chiffon dress she had found in Monsoon on her shopping trip with Chloe. It was a pale, lemon-yellow chiffon, the sort of yellow that only a natural blonde can really wear, with silver beading under the bust and along the hem. As soon as she had seen it, Willow wanted it, but the size fourteen had already gone. Nervously Willow had tucked the twelve over her arm, unable to look the clerk in the eye as she handed her a tag for a changing room, in case she laughed out loud at Willow’s hopeless optimism. Willow felt a little, well, not thinner exactly but more shapely, but still there was no way that she could have dropped a dress size in a week. Maybe, though, just maybe, if the cut was right, the material a little stretchy, there weren’t any buttons to pull or a zip to get stuck . . . she might be able to squeeze herself into it and not look too terrible.

No one was more surprised than Willow when the dress slipped over her head and seemed to fit her like a glove. It was probably a little tighter on her than the designer had envisioned, but she liked that it gathered in under her bust, neatly framing her cleavage, skimming her waist and thighs to the knee, showing off the bottom half of her legs that looked so much longer in the magic shoes, which Willow had been careful to keep on as she slipped the dress over her head.

Willow pouted at Daniel as he took one last photo. Who knew exactly how far these shoes could turn her luck?

“It’s good to see you looking so good, Will,” Daniel told her. “Have you met someone?”

“No, I’ve met some
thing
—new shoes! Well, new to me shoes. Take a photo of them, please!” Obligingly Daniel dropped to one knee and took a shot of her pointed foot.

“Wow, even I can tell those are good shoes. You need to be careful looking so hot. Serious James is on the roof trying to work out what to say to you.”

“Oh no.” Willow groaned, her delight at soliciting several minutes of undivided attention from Daniel dimmed by the prospect of struggling through a conversation with sweet but shy James.

“You could do worse, you know,” Daniel teased her. “He’s got a good job when he’s not trying to be a comedian, which, considering he finds social situations mostly horrific, is something I’ll never understand. He’s a decent guy, and Kayla says he’s got the whole sexy-geek-chic thing totally down. One of her model friends has been trying to get him to date her ever since they met at some do or other, I forget which, and he’s driving her mad by not being in the least bit interested.”

Willow thought she might remember the girl. Back when Daniel and Kayla were quite new, and before autumn had set in so thoroughly, he’d had one final summer roof party. Holly had come down for it, and as far as Willow could remember they’d sat on a step drinking far too much chardonnay while she lusted after Daniel and Holly glared at him. James had briefly come over to say hello but had left just as hurriedly after saying something along the lines of, “Wow, hot twins. Every man’s dream!”

Willow and Holly had giggled like girls after he’d left red-faced and shamed by their stone-cold expressions of maidenly disapproval. She did vaguely remember a girl in a hot-pink dress doing her best to flirt with James, which was difficult because no one had ever taught him how to flirt. It seemed that his discomfort and embarrassment translated into model talk as “playing hard to get.” Maybe that wasn’t fair, maybe this girl liked him because he was nice, technically too nice to be Daniel’s friend at all.

“
And
he is smitten with you, that’s why he’s turning down hot model action.”

“Who says so?” Willow questioned him.

“He does . . . ever since your date—”

“Date? What date?” Willow exclaimed.

“You had coffee. I haven’t stopped hearing about it.”

Willow blinked. “We bumped into each other in Starbucks and chatted over the milk and sugar counter for a few minutes. It wasn’t exactly a date!”

“Well, whatever it was you were witty, clever and beautiful, apparently. You should be pleased, Willow, James thinks you are the world’s most beguiling woman!”

“You sound as if that’s an impossible notion to comprehend,” Willow said, trying not to show how she felt about Daniel doing his best to fix her up with his friend. “Seriously, men.”

“Men?”

“Well, you are a man, right?”

“All man, baby.”

“And you’d rather go out with a model, any model, than me.”

“Um, is that a trick question?”

“Of course you would. So why? Why is he pretending not to fancy this model girl and pretending to fancy me, the fat chick?”

“Er . . . because he fancies you?” Daniel looked perplexed.

“No, because he thinks he can get me. Because he knows that a model is out of his league, but that I’m not.”

“Darling, you’ve got that wrong. James knows he can make out with a model. She keeps asking him out. It’s not that he can’t get her, although how that happened is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe. It’s that he doesn’t want her. He wants you.”

“Well, he can’t have me, the cheek of it!”

Daniel looked perplexed. “I really don’t get women, even you sometimes, and you’re the coolest woman I know, hardly like a woman at all.”

“Thanks!”

“That’s a compliment! Anyway, come up, come up. I’ve got lots to tell you and something to ask you and Kayla’s up there hinting about moving in and I have no idea how to tell her I don’t like her
that
much. By the way, you’re going to need that thing out there, it’s brass monkeys as you Brits inexplicably say.”

“If you want Kayla to stop thinking that you’re in a relationship, you could try stopping sleeping with her. That might help,” Willow whispered as she followed Daniel out of a casement window and onto his roof terrace. “The thing about women is that they tend to think that if you have loads of sex with them, spend all your free time with them, make them breakfast and let them wear your shirts, that you do like them that much, that you might even love them. It’s deluded, I know, but it’s the way we’re brought up.”

“Well, it’s just plain wrong,” Daniel whispered, pausing to pretend to examine one of his potted tomato plants. “I don’t want to finish things with her. I do like her. But I don’t want to live with her. She rarely has anything interesting to say and if she stays up too late she gets these bags . . . it’s like all the fat in her body collects under her eyes overnight.”

“Sometimes I actually think you hate women,” Willow muttered, forcing herself to smile at Serious James, who was leaning rather self-consciously on the low brick wall that surrounded the roof terrace and waving at Kayla.

“Well, that can’t be true,” Daniel said, patting her fleetingly on her bottom, sending a thrill up Willow’s spine. “I love you.”

And I love you too,
Willow thought as he walked away,
although I can’t think of a single good reason why
.

“Willow, how nice to see you!” Kayla, who had been turning prawns on Daniel’s barbecue while the light drizzle of rain beaded her hair, came to greet Willow, like a good girlfriend and cohost should, Willow thought.

“A barbecue at this time of year, crazy, right? The things we girls do for love. I’m freezing! You look lovely, though, fur is very trendy.” The poor girl really had no idea at all that she wasn’t Daniel’s girlfriend. And Willow knew from past experience that he wouldn’t tell her, either. When he’d gotten bored of her he’d just leave her to eventually come to that conclusion herself, after a series of missed calls and unanswered texts.

“It’s only while I’m cooking. We can go inside in a sec. Seriously, I thought the English loved the outdoor life.”

With her long legs—she was taller than Daniel even—and her burnt umber hair, Kayla was everything the average person on the street expected of a model, and she
was
nice, despite Daniel’s protestations. That was the trouble, she was too nice. She wanted things from Daniel that, when you added them all together constituted a future, and despite being forty Daniel still wasn’t ready to think past next week. He really was incredibly immature. He was the sort of man whom any sensible woman would avoid with a barge pole, but Willow had never been a sensible woman, and in fact she was so stupid that she let him unwittingly torment her without even getting any of the sex that he was so prone to spreading around. She consoled herself with the knowledge that he liked and respected her in a way that he never did his lovers, but even knowing him as well as she did hadn’t succeeded in stopping her from longing for him.