The Runaway Princess (7 page)

“You’re very honored,” I blurted out. “It took ages for Badger to get on with Ted. I had to make him carry frankfurters all the time—he was like the Pied Piper of Fulham, what with the dogs following us around. But without the jazzy tights, obviously.”

Leo bent down to pet Badger’s ears, and glanced up, apparently not put off by my nervous waffling. “Ted’s the tall guy who stopped Rolf from falling off the balcony? Very strong? Bit cross?”

“That’s Ted, yes.”

“Does Rolf owe him some plants too? Or a rare tree or something?”

“No.” I kept a watchful eye on Badger, but he was upside down now, offering Leo his muddy tummy to tickle. The tart. “Ted’s agricultural interest is strictly nine-to-five. He really only got into it so he could do some covert metal-detecting. He’s convinced that there’s a Roman hoard out there with his name on it.”

“And has he found much?” Leo got up, and Badger sniffed his trousers, which I was relieved to see weren’t shredded.

“Three bags of assorted coins and more clay pipes than a civil war reenactment,” I said. “But he lives in hope. At least we haven’t found any dead bodies. And it leaves me free to get on with the actual gardening side of things. I do the planning. And the planting. And the design.”

Now that we were actually looking at each other and talking, I felt the same strange mixture of nerves and relaxation I’d felt on Saturday night. I was panicking about what to say, but somehow it was coming out all right—and more than that, Leo seemed
interested
.

“Did you leave these?” I gestured toward the pots.

“Yup. Five pots of Dream Seeds, to replace those lost in action.” Leo grinned, giving his professional City appearance an
unexpectedly
boyish twist. “I don’t know if they’re at the exact same stage as the ones you had on your balcony, but I don’t think your client’s going to know the difference, is she?”

I blinked in amazement. “But where did you find them? I’ve been on the Internet all week trying to track some down! I can’t even find out what they’re called. They’re so secretive about where the course is and how much it costs—all I could dig up was that it’s one of those ones celebs go on when they don’t actually want to be photographed.”

“It’s on a private island. And it costs a fortune. Between you and me, my contact’s been on it so often she’s virtually got a whole hedge of these things,” said Leo, dropping his voice conspiratorially.

“She must have a lot of dreams come true.”

He looked wry. “Funnily enough, no. Which is odd, given that she’s already got pretty much everything most women would wish for. I sometimes think she goes on it to get ideas for things
to
wish for.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I liked the confiding way he said it. I wondered, awkwardly, if the “contact” was his girlfriend. Oh … nuts.

He was staring at me with a smile flickering on his lips, as if
I’d
 done something amazing—even though he was the one who’d just magicked these plants out of nowhere. I felt my face tingle.

“I don’t know how to thank you enough,” I babbled. “Did she mind giving them up? I mean, how did you get them? Did you pop round to hers and say you needed some dreams coming true, so could you take some cuttings?” I widened my eyes. “Does she think you’re having some kind of midlife crisis now?”

Leo had a nice, relaxed sort of laugh. “There were a few phone calls back and forth. I think it would have been easier to fly there myself and get them—I mean, these guys more or less got their own seat in business. The pots aren’t quite the same, but I guess you could say you replanted them as a Christmas present?”

“Oh, no, they’re nearly ident—” I stopped, and stared.
He flew them in?
He was so normal to talk to that I’d forgotten that Leo was the sort of guy who hung out with princes like Rolf. Rolf had probably flown those girls in on Saturday. On a private jet. Or something.

“Anyway,” he went on, leaning against the railing, “I was hoping you’d be here—I wanted to talk to you about something else, and I wasn’t sure how to get hold of you.”

My heart bumped in my chest. “Oh?”

“I’ve got this garden. It’s a bit of a project, and I’ve been told to get some professional advice on it.” His blue eyes crinkled. “And as you’re the only gardener I’ve met recently, I wondered if you had time to advise me. I can’t guarantee there’s much worth metal-detecting, but there’s quite a bit of planting.”

My heart stopped bumping so hard. A garden. Of course.

Well, maybe that one plant he’d saved had been mine. I
had
wished for a new client. Maybe wishing for Palace View had been overambitious.

“Of course I’ve got time, I’m always on the lookout for new clients. I mean, new challenges.” I fished my phone out of my pocket, and hoped I hadn’t made it sound as though all Ted and I did was play amateur archaeology. “When’s a good time for you? Morning, afternoon?”

I paused. Leo’s suit was quite a traditional one, with none of the flashy details some of Jo’s friends adopted, so he probably worked in the City, without time to take off for garden consultations. This had to be his lunch break. How long had he been here? “Or is evening better?” I added, in case he thought I was staring.

Did that sound like I was fishing for a date?

My mind gave up and went blank.

“Evenings are better. Let me look at my diary and get back to you,” said Leo. “I’ve got quite a complicated couple of weeks coming up, and I’d hate to arrange something and then have to cancel. I just wanted to check that you had time to see me.”

“There are easier ways of getting hold of a gardener than hanging outside her house with plants.” I couldn’t help feeling a little flat that it was my green fingers he wanted, not … any other bit of me. I tried to cover it with a jokey tone. “You could have asked Rolf for our landline. He must have it—he’s been calling Jo enough.”

An expression I couldn’t quite identify flashed across Leo’s face and then vanished almost at once. If I hadn’t been staring at him like a love-struck teenager, I’d have missed it.

“Has he? I haven’t seen him since the weekend, to be honest. And I didn’t want to ask him for your number because …” His mouth twisted up. “Well, you’ve met Rolf.”

I started to agree, then realized I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. What? He was embarrassed to be seen calling me?

Leo saw my confusion and hastily added, “I mean, I … I didn’t phrase that well. Sorry. I meant, I don’t do everything with Rolf. I like to keep some areas of my life straightforward.”

“Fair enough,” I said, only partially mollified.

“So?” Leo’s thumb was poised over his phone, and I rattled off my work mobile number, and e-mail, and then our home landline too.

“You could let Rolf know that Jo’s not listening to the messages, by the way,” I said while he was saving them. “The first two were okay, but they got a bit … stalky after that? Maybe a nice bunch of flowers would be a better gesture.”

“Good suggestion. I’ll let him know,” said Leo, then checked his watch and grimaced. “I wish we could have that chat about the garden now over lunch, but I’ve really got to dash. I’m supposed to be in a meeting in Canary Wharf in ten minutes.”

“That’s okay, I’m supposed to be in a garden in Buckingham Palace Road in fifteen.”

“Buckingham Palace Road?” He looked impressed. “You win. Are you fitting corgi doors?”

“Oh, it’s just weeding,” I said automatically, then remembered I should have told him I was doing something more upmarket, as befitting his garden plans. Doh.

“Anyway,” I hastened on, “I should be thanking you. I can’t believe you went to so much trouble with these plants. My client’s back on Friday—she’ll be nearly as thrilled as I am to see those.”

“My pleasure.” A warm smile spread across Leo’s handsome face, and I could only just make myself keep meeting his gaze. “I’ll be in touch. About the garden.”

There was a second’s awkwardness—should I offer my hand to shake?—and then he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. A tingle spread through me, under my thermals, across my skin, and then Leo bent down, ruffled Badger’s ears, and, with a backward wave, dashed to catch a passing black cab.

I put the pots carefully to one side on the step, where they wouldn’t be kicked over, then hurried to the front door, where I fumbled with my keys because my hands were shaking so much. I knew I was smiling like a madwoman from the ache in my cheeks, but I froze when I saw my reflection in the big mirror over the hall post table.

My hair was somehow greasy
and
flyaway, my face was flushed, and my clothes—oh, God, my clothes looked in a worse state than Badger did, and he’d been rolling in everything the park had to offer.

I stared at myself. Why hadn’t Leo
said
anything? How polite
was
he that he hadn’t mentioned the fact that I looked like I’d been sleeping rough in someone’s shed for three weeks? My glowy mood shriveled with embarrassment, and then my phone buzzed.

Just checking I’ve got your number right, and to give you mine. Great to see you just now—glad we’re forgiven! Look forward to talking soon re the garden. L

My heart raced. He must have texted from the taxi—he hadn’t even waited the two days Jo said most London men waited before they got in touch, just to mess with your head.

But then, Leo was completely unlike any man I’d met in London before. He was very posh, but he was easy to talk to. He wore a suit, but he didn’t mind scaling scuzzy fire escapes for broken plants. He was gorgeous, but—actually, there was no
but
there. He was just gorgeous.

The only trouble was, he was best friends with the one man my best friend absolutely, definitely didn’t want to talk about.

I looked at my smeary face in the hall mirror and decided that from now on, I might start wearing a bit more makeup for work, just in case.

L
eo must have spoken to Rolf about the phone calls, because they stopped that night.

The presents, on the other hand, started the next day.

“You have to admit, Rolf’s persistent,” I said, looking at the enormous box on the kitchen table, spilling pink and black tissue and ribbons over the jaunty plastic tablecloth.

It was a very big box for what was inside. The silky underwear we’d eventually unearthed from the multiple layers of tissue would have fitted into a medium-size Jiffy bag and still left room for a gift card and a pair of tights.

“Persistent, yes,” said Jo, picking up the fragment of lingerie with a finger. “In the sense that the
common cold
is quite persistent. And I don’t count this as an apology. I’m not sure if it’s
actually
making things worse.”

“Is this really a pair of knickers?” I asked, curious. “Technically speaking?”

Rolf’s apology undies were a world away from my own Marks & Spencer reliables. They were more elastic than material, and I wasn’t even sure how you’d put them on, since it was all holes.

The box of knickers had arrived after Jo had left for work that morning, and then sometime in the afternoon, Mrs. Mainwaring had taken delivery of a Jo Malone scented candle the size of a bucket, with a solid silver lid. While we were having supper, Dickon had knocked on the door to pass on one of those ludicrous sledge-size padded boxes of Swiss chocolates that I thought only existed in Doris Day films, delivered by courier. All with cards that Jo wouldn’t even let me see “for the sake of your innocence.”

She made a snorting noise, balled up the thong, and squashed the ribbons and tissue paper back over the lot. “The fact that Rolf thinks I’d be won over by this sort of lingerie tells you everything about both him and the sorts of girls he normally goes for. I am not a girl who can be impressed with stripper thongs. Even if they did cost a couple of hundred quid.”

“A couple of—?” My mouth dropped open. “Are they made from gold thread or something?”

“And the rest,” said Jo. “Anyway, Rolf’s got to learn to take no for an answer. I’m not interested in a man who talks about himself in the third person. Why would I change my mind just because he thinks he can guess my bra size?”

“Did he?”

Jo looked momentarily discombobulated. “Yes. And I don’t know how, because he never got as far as … Anyway, no! No, no, no! It’s extremely bad behavior and only makes me more determined to ignore him.”

“He must really like you, though, to go to all that bother,” I said, thinking of the thoughtful way Leo had not only found the plants but delivered them himself. They were now installed on Grace’s balcony, where I’d spent several happy hours simultaneously tidying up and rehearsing the conversation I’d have with Leo when he called to talk about his garden. Which he hadn’t. Yet.

“Amy!” Jo’s eyebrows vanished into her fringe with disbelief. “Men like Rolf have La Perla on speed dial. It’s not that impressive. And he doesn’t
really like
me either—he just can’t stand the thought of being turned down. He’s not used to it. It took me nearly a month to end it with him in the first place. I kept telling him we had nothing in common, and he kept saying, ‘Oh, tiger, you’re playing hard to get! Grrr!’ and sending me enormous teddy bears with diamond earrings on.”

I boggled my eyes. “Your problem with that being?”

“The problem being that I didn’t
want
them.” Her ferocious expression softened. “Princes, even very low-level ones, don’t understand normal women. They don’t understand that you can’t
buy
your way into someone’s heart. That’s why we should leave them to date loopy supermodels with entitlement complexes and other princesses who are just as mad as they are.”

I said nothing. The most I usually had to worry about with the men Jo tried to set me up with was, were they going to make me pay for supper, and could I ever fancy a man who called it “sups” in the first place?

Jo’s face suddenly brightened. “Ooh! I meant to say, I saw my friend Poppy outside Callie Hamilton’s. She’s having a party at the Chelsea Arts Club this Saturday—she’s put us both on the guest list.” She nudged me. “Come on, I’ll lend you my red dress.”

I liked the Chelsea Arts Club. It had one of those unexpected city gardens that felt like stepping off the street into Narnia, all quiet corners and tea lights and undergrowth that rustled with artists. But what if Leo called, and asked me to come over on his day off?

He isn’t going to ask you to check out his garden in the
dark,
I reminded myself.

Jo was peering at me. “What’s up? Are you worried we’ll run into Dickon? Not all painters demand that you strip, you know. Poppy usually asks her sitters to put more clothes
on
. Dog costumes, usually.”

I hesitated, and wondered if I should tell Jo about Leo. Then my eye fell on the controversial thong, and I decided against it.

“I’d love to. Sounds great. What are you going to do with those?” I nodded at the box.

“Do you want them?”

I nearly laughed. They’d barely go over my arm, let alone anywhere else. “As a novelty headband? Maybe. Not so much as knickers. Every time I bent over, I’d think of Rolf.”

“Eeeeuugh!”
said Jo. “That’s exactly what he wants!”

We stared at the box, as if Rolf’s handsome face might suddenly appear in the tissue like in a crystal ball.

“Let’s leave them on Mrs. Mainwaring’s doorknob,” she decided. “That’ll give them all something to talk about.”

*

G
race flew back from Aspen first thing on Friday, and when I went round there, I found her standing over her Dream Seedlings with a glass of white wine and a pile of crumpled tissues, sniffing back tears and chanting some sort of gibberish mantra to herself.

She looked so happy, though, that I nearly cried too. With
relief
.

“Oh, Amy! Amy!” she said, throwing her arms around my neck. “There’s been a miracle. Look!”

I said a million silent thank-yous to Leo while Grace touched the leaf of each plant with a tenderness that made me wonder whether that was her first glass of wine. And she was meant to be on a detox too.

“I can’t believe I made them grow so fast,” she hiccuped. “Me! After I killed that lovely strawberry plant and the roses. And that bay tree. Look how strong they are. They must be …” She covered her mouth and blinked hard. “Maybe it means my wishes are already coming true?”

“Looks like it!” I said.

I was crossing my fingers that Grace wouldn’t do some basic math and question how nonmagic seeds could go from seed to fairly sturdy plant in under three weeks, even with my green fingers waggling over them.

Grace gripped my arm and I let out an involuntary squeak, convinced she’d rumbled me.

“Amy, can I tell you a secret?” She bit her lip like an excited teenager. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

I’d been doing Grace’s gardening for nearly two years, and in that time she’d told me a fair number of secrets, most of them about her dad, who owned the flat, and Richard. And her therapist. And how she’d cheated in her A levels, and had Botox in her hands, and all sorts of other stuff.

“Promise,” I said.

“Richard’s bought the Palace View development!” she whispered. “He sealed the deal in Aspen. On the ski slopes. He crashed off a red run answering his phone, but it was okay in the end because there was a medi-chopper on standby anyway and the clinic had Wi-Fi so he could do it all by Skype.”

I clamped my lips together to stop myself from saying anything.

“And the sweetest thing was that while we were in the clinic, he arranged for me to have this amazing new chemical peel thing you can’t even get here!” She looked thrilled and touched her nose self-consciously. It was a bit raw-looking. “So that was fabulous too.”

“That’s great news, Grace,” I said. “I’m really pleased for him. And you.”

She sighed happily and pointed at one flowerpot. “So that’s one come true already.”

I knew at this point I should say something smooth like, “So, Richard’ll be needing a gardening service, I suppose?” but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

“Bodes well for the other wishes then!” I said instead.

Grace paused, then took one flowerpot—the one with the puniest plant in it—and handed it to me. “There you go,” she said. “You helped with the seeds, it should work for you too.”

“But you had a whole string of wishes!”

She made an uncharacteristically rude
prrthp
noise. “Face it, world peace isn’t going to happen with one puny seed. It’d need a whole tree. What are you going to wish for?”

I opened my mouth, as the various Amys in my brain argued among themselves.

Wish for a nice new boyfriend.

No, the gardening contract for Palace View.

Boyfriend.

Gardening contract. If you’re thinking of Leo, he’s a bit out of your league, love. He’s a crush. Not a potential date.

But he did such a nice thing, finding those plants. …

He felt guilty about Rolf kicking them off. And what about the New Year expansion plans? What about taking the business to a new level? Priorities …

“Amy? Are you all right?” Grace peered at me. “You’ve gone
all …
cross-eyed.”

“I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. “To be honest, Grace, I’d wish that Ted and I could do the gardening for Palace View. Do you think I could send a proposal to Richard? I’ve got some great ideas for landscaping. …”

Grace stared at me, then beamed. “Yes! What a great idea. That’s like … karma in action! I grew this plant, and now you can grow more plants for Richard!”

“Um, yeah. …”

“Wow, that’s your wish sorted out!” She clapped her hands to her newly-peeled face in delight, then flinched. “So, actually, you won’t be needing this. Maybe I can recycle it.”

And with a dazzling white smile, she took the plant pot back and placed it neatly back with its mates.

Grace wasn’t always as stupid as she looked.

*

I
spent the early afternoon digging over a garden in Fulham while rehearsing the off-the-cuff phone call I was going to make just before teatime, to update Leo about Grace’s plants. Technically, I didn’t need to, but I argued to myself that he’d want to know it had all been worth it.

Badger had long since got used to me chatting away to thin air, but he’d developed a long-suffering sigh when I went over the same conversation too often that bordered on the sarcastic.

“Hey, Leo, it’s Amy,” I started to the leafless cherry tree.

Was
hello
better?

“Hello, Leo, it’s Amy. Amy Wilde.”

No. Was that a bit too formal?

Remembering Jo’s drama school advice about smiling on the phone, I pulled a wide grin, and my voice came out shiny and bright. “Hi! It’s Amy!”

That sounded better. Mad, but miles better.

Underneath the wheelbarrow, Badger let out a low groan and curled up tighter on my fleece.

“Grace loved the plants.” I coughed and aimed my voice slightly lower. “Grace was so thrilled about the Dream Seeds. …” Better, more specific, in case he’d forgotten. “Can I take you out for a drink to say thanks?”

No. He could say,
No, it’s okay
. Or
No, I don’t drink
.

I was overthinking. Again. I shoved my spade into the soil, despairing. It was so easy to come across the wrong way. What would Jo do? She’d just ask. She’d have asked on Wednesday morning, straight off: “When are we going out?”

“You know what, Leo?” I drawled, leaning on my spade in a Jo impression—she was always using her surroundings as props to drape herself on, like someone in a Noël Coward play. “Can we go out for a drink? I would
love
to hear about some of the scrapes you’ve had to dig Rolf out of. And, besides that, you’re gorgeous and you don’t talk exclusively about your car or have an off-putting nose.”

My mobile rang in my back pocket and I nearly slipped off the spade handle in surprise. I fumbled it out with my gloved hands, and when I saw who was calling, the cool Amy vanished completely: it was Leo.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Should I be Amy? Or Jo?

I took a couple of deep breaths, counted to five (I didn’t want him to go to voicemail), and managed to gasp out, “Amy Wilde speaking?”

“Hello, Amy, it’s Leo. Is this a good time to talk?”

My face went red, as if Leo could somehow see me in my grubby jeans. His voice was very close in my ear.

“Yes,” I said, brushing soil off myself. I frowned at myself and stopped. “It’s fine.”

“Excellent. Two things, really. First, did your client notice the replacement plants? It was today, right?”

He’d remembered. He’d actually remembered what day I said Grace was coming back. A happy feeling rushed me.

“She didn’t suspect a thing,” I said. “She’s over the moon—I’ve never seen her so happy.”

“Wonderful!”

“In fact,” a voice that sounded a bit like mine added, “she was so happy she promised to put in a good word for me about another big contract, so thanks for that too!”

“Then I’m doubly pleased. In fact, that makes my second question even more urgent. I was wondering how you were fixed for Thursday next week?” he went on. “If you’re not doing anything, I’d love to have that chat about my garden. If you can still fit me in. I know Thursday is the new Friday.”

I hesitated. Grace, in a fit of confidence about her early days with Richard, had explained there were rules about this sort of thing. How many days’ notice you were supposed to give. How busy you were supposed to look. She made negotiating dates sound like haggling over a knockoff Prada handbag in a Turkish street market, but not as much fun.

What would Jo do? She’d say …

“Thursday? That’s Zumba.”

I closed my eyes in horror. Where had that come from?

“Zumba? Is that some kind of religious … event?” Leo asked politely. “Forgive my ignorance.”

I considered lying for a split second, but decided there was no point. I’d only make it worse. “No, no, Zumba’s a class that Jo makes me go to with her at our gym,” I confessed. “You’re meant to look like Shakira while you’re doing it, but I’ve seen us in the mirror, and we look like two pensioners with hip problems trying to take off a pair of trousers without undoing the fly.”