What She Wants (76 page)

bedroomed, which will be perfect if you ask Sharon to share with you.’ ‘Great,’ Nicole said happily. ‘When can we see it?’ ‘Tonight at six. I’ll pick you up from the studio. And the second bit of good news is that Sam Smith is back from the US this weekend and her assistant has pencilled you in for lunch on Tuesday.’ ‘Thanks for organizing that,’ said Nicole. ‘I’ve something important to ask her.’ She blew a kiss down the phone to Darius and went into the studio, determined to be professional. And she was, right down to the moment when the journalist asked her what her favourite colour was. Unable to help herself, Nicole convulsed helplessly, as the journalist, who couldn’t have been much older than she was, looked on in amusement. ‘I’m sorry,’ the journalist smiled. ‘That was last week’s interview, the Bimbo Questionnaire. You suit the questions to the subject. If you get someone with a room-temperature IQ, what are you going to ask them? Explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?’ Nicole laughed heartily. ‘I’d like to pass on the favourite colour question but I don’t think I want the Einstein one either.’ ‘You can never tell until you meet someone,’ the journalist said. ‘I think you might like the intelligent questions better. So, what do you think of this whole music star thing?’ Thinking of the enormous changes in her life and the stresses of her new job, Nicole grinned. ‘It has its moments,’ she said.

After the heat of Vegas, London felt deliciously cool. Sam breathed in the air as she emerged from the Heathrow Express at Paddington and thought that it was nice to be home, although she was sorry she hadn’t got even a hint of a tan. Originally, she’d planned to go straight home, have a

long shower and unpack before going over to Jay’s flat and picking up the kittens. But in the taxi from Paddington, she began to think about how lonely the apartment would be without Spike and Tabitha and she changed her mind. She’d get the cab to wait while she dropped off her luggage and then go immediately to Jay’s. ‘Sure, that’ll be fine,’ Jay said when Sam phoned her to check if that was all right. ‘We’re having a lazy Friday evening in. Greg’s about to go and get a Chinese takeaway. Do you want to join us?’ ‘No,’ said Sam, not wanting to impose. ‘I’ve eaten.’ ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ Sam told the cab driver, as he pulled up outside her house. She hauled her suitcase from the cab and rushed up the path. Pausing only to swap her light suit jacket for the worn denim one that hung on the cast iron coat stand inside the door, she rushed back down the stairs to the waiting cab.

Jay’s apartment had been redecorated, which made Sam realize just how long it had been since she’d been there. The big living room had been a sunflower yellow for ages but now the walls were covered in a warm apricot shade that matched the tapestry throw flung across Jay’s threadbare old couch. ‘I like the new look,’ Sam said enthusiastically. ‘Sam, it’s been like that for ages,’ Jay laughed. ‘I’m almost bored with it already.’ ‘Oh,’ Sam said stiffly, sitting on the couch. Tabitha appeared from under the coffee table and climbed onto her lap joyously, purring deeply. ‘Tabby, baby, how have you been?’ Sam crooned delightedly. ‘Where’s Spike?’ ‘Probably sulking,’ Jay said with a smile. ‘She missed you terribly, although she’d hate you to find out.’ ‘Was she off her food?’ Sam said anxiously, feeling like a bad pet owner.

‘Off her food, yes. Off our food, no. Do you know that she puts her paw in anything she fancies and if it’s on your plate, tough.’ Sam had to stifle a grin. ‘Sorry, Jay. I didn’t think she’d do it with anyone but me. She loves human food and thinks that cat food isn’t suitable for creatures like herself.’ The door opened and Greg arrived with both a brown paper bag and an overpowering scent of Chinese food. Sam felt her taste buds spring into action because she hadn’t actually eaten. ‘Hi Sam.’ Greg gave her a peck on the cheek and then turned to Jay, whom he kissed gently on the mouth as if he hadn’t seen her for months. They were still in that stage of love that meant being apart for five minutes made them weak with desire. Sam remembered being like that about a zillion years ago. ‘Did you get chicken balls?’ asked Jay, when she and Greg finally unlocked lips. ‘Yes, love. As if I’d forget anything you asked me for.’ They kissed again, slowly and languorously. Sam busied herself tickling Tabitha’s chin. In any other circumstances, she’d say ‘go rent a room’ but she was in their home, after all, so she should be the one to go in order to let them eat their Chinese in post-coital bliss. There was no way they’d last until after eating to make love. ‘I should go,’ she said, getting up. ‘No, don’t,’ said Greg halfheartedly. ‘Stay and eat with us,’ pleaded Jay, one arm still round Greg’s neck, her fingers stroking gently, while his hand trailed up and down her back. Last Tango in Shepherd’s Bush, Sam smiled to herself. ‘I’ve got loads to do,’ she said, and she wasn’t lying. She had to unpack, put the washing on, dust the apartment because it was bound to be musty after a week, oh, loads of things had to be done. ‘Well if you’re sure …’ Jay’s voice trailed off. ‘Very sure,’ Sam said firmly and brightly.

The taxi driver wasn’t keen on having two cats in his cab, even if they were in their cat boxes. Jet-lagged and miserable, Sam fixed him with a venomous glare. ‘I told the guy I booked the cab with that I was transporting two cats in their boxes,’ she hissed, ‘so if you’ve a problem with that, take it up with him.’ ‘Keep your hair on,’ said the driver in alarm. At Sam’s house, he didn’t get out of his seat and let her move the boxes and the big bag with their beds and toys in it out without any help. When everything was piled on the pavement, Sam paid him. ‘What about a tip?’ he said, outraged, because she’d paid the exact fare. ‘Never leave the house without an umbrella,’ said Sam evilly. ‘That’s the only tip you’re getting from me.’ He was still mouthing furiously when he drove off. Sam moved her cargo into the front garden and then brought the two cat boxes up first. If somebody stole anything, they’d only get the bag of toys and their sleeping cushions, not her beloved kittens. Once the cat boxes were safely in the apartment, she ran down for the other bag and, for the first time, allowed herself to look at Morgan’s house. The For Sale sign was still there, only now another board was glued on top of that: Sold. Sam was so lost in thought when she climbed the stairs to her apartment, that she never even noticed Mad Malcolm’s CD player blaring out ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ at top volume. Noisy neighbours were the least of her problems. When the kittens were fed and played with, Sam realized she had to buy some groceries. She’d given them the last tin of cat food and they were not keen on long-life milk, which was all she had left in the fridge. Shrugging on her faded denim jacket, she walked briskly down the road to the local shop, passing her favourite local restaurant as she did so. The Greenwich Emporium served organic food with the emphasis on healthy eating, ‘apart from the enormous carafes of wine,’ as Morgan always joked when they ate

there. The owners, George and Felicity, were constantly urging people not to bother having a mere glass of house wine when they’d be sure to have more and therefore a carafe would be better value. This wasn’t the hard-sell: it was common sense. Nobody in the Greenwich Emporium ever had just one glass of wine. All of which undid the goodness of eating organic food, Morgan would say politely to Felicity, who would blush frantically, touch her hair in a selfconscious way and have to rush away to see to another customer. ‘You only like coming here because Felicity fancies you,’ Sam had said once, only half-teasing. ‘If you’d learn how to cook, we wouldn’t have to come here at all,’ he’d said in an indignant voice. ‘This is only paying me back for the four meals,’ he emphasized the word four, ‘I’ve homecooked for you.’ ‘Home burned, you mean.’ ‘That’s well done in restaurant parlance,’ Morgan said gravely. ‘Vegetables aren’t supposed to be well done.’ ‘Whatever.’ Sam looked sadly in at the candle-lit interior of the Greenwich and thought of the many happy evenings they’d spent there. It all came back to Morgan. She’d never get over him, she was sure of it. On the way back from the grocery shop, she had to pass the restaurant again. George was at the door, welcoming in a group of diners. ‘Sam,’ he roared as he spotted her weighed down with grocery bags. ‘How are you?’ She had no chance to rush across the road and yell that she was late for something, so she had to stop, let George hug her and demand to know why he hadn’t seen her or Morgan for ages. ‘Felicity thinks you’ve gone off her chicken and aubergine special, but I said that was rubbish, you loved it and you were just busy.’

‘Very busy,’ Sam agreed and changed the subject. ‘How about you? Is the restaurant busy?’

George grimaced. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘Jammed on Fridays and Saturdays and only ticking over for the rest of the time. Sorry, shouldn’t be bothering you with this.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Sam said genuinely. ‘I hope you’re not considering closing down. It would be a huge loss to the area.’

George shrugged. ‘I hope it won’t come to that, but things are tight. If it wasn’t for Felicity’s organic jams and chutneys, we’d be out of business. She sells a tonne of that stuff in her friend’s deli in Richmond.’

They said goodbye and Sam walked the rest of the way home, pondering George’s business worries. Tabitha was delighted to see her and so was Spike, who’d regally decided to forgive her mistress for going away for a week on the grounds that she’d been grocery shopping and there might be cat treats hidden among the boring packets. Tabitha weaved around Sam’s ankles, while Spike poked her perfectly shaped little head into the bags looking for something she’d like.

‘I got cat treats, so you can stop looking,’ Sam said, scooping Spike up and cuddling her.

After showering, Sam padded into the kitchen in her bare feet and contemplated the fridge. The chicken breasts she’d bought for her dinner looked palely unappetising and she suddenly longed for one of Felicity’s delicious meals: succulent organic roasted chicken served with parsnip and carrot puree flavoured with nutmeg, tiny potatoes crusted with sea salt and aubergine cooked beautifully to Felicity’s special recipe, so soft that it melted deliciously in the mouth. Sam was almost drooling thinking of it. Her own attempts at cooking the chicken would be workmanlike at best. And then it hit her: why didn’t George and Felicity start up a gourmet takeaway for the days the restaurant wasn’t busy? Individual portions of their beautiful meals for the affluent people in the surrounding area, many of whom liked the idea of organic food but didn’t have the time or the inclination to

cook it. Sam knew plenty of people who’d be delighted to come home and do nothing more domestic than stick one of the Greenwich Emporium’s dinners in the oven. She vowed to mention it to them. They might not be interested, but it couldn’t hurt, could it? It might give them a new focus in business … And then it struck her: What if she completely changed her focus by advising people like George and Felicity? What if she left Titus and set up a company where she advised businesses in trouble? Solving problems was her forte. Faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, Sam knew there was nobody better at looking at it from every angle until she came up with a solution. She adored problem solving, and, with her business acumen, what better job could she do? All she had to do was decide if she had the courage to go it alone and set up her own business. Sam smiled to herself. She’d been going it alone for most of her life. It would come naturally to her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Matt hated his apartment. ‘Fully furnished modern one-bed available for a short let’ the advert had said. And it was fully furnished - by someone who clearly thought the original series of Star Trek was the last word in style. The bedroom was purple complete with a lava lamp, the livingroom-cum-diningroom had one wall wallpapered in a design even Austin Powers couldn’t have lived with, and there was simply no way you could get comfortable on the big square leather furniture. None of the canary yellow cupboards in the kitchen had handles on them and it had taken five minutes for Matt to figure out how to open any of them. The letting agent thought the apartment was the last word in modern design, said it was owned by a dot.com genius and pointed out that the neo-sixties and seventies look was really hot. But then, he was about twenty-four, Matt thought sourly, and didn’t remember lava lamps from the first time round. ‘I’ll take it,’ Matt had said miserably, as it was the last short let available and he’d hated all the others. The only plus was the dot.com genius’s enormous computer desk in the dining room, which was where Matt spent most of his time in the evenings, writing. He wasn’t working on the great novel, though. He was having fun. It had started out as the sort of witty e-mail he’d send to Hope if only they were still on speaking terms, a sort of comfort e-mail where he’d tell her about his day. Of course, Matt was painfully aware that if he’d been sending this type

of daily message to her in the first place, he might have realized she was falling for that greasy bastard up at the hotel and put a stop to it before the said bastard ruined his marriage. But he put that out of his mind. Thinking about Hope upset him too much. He thought about her all the time these days, feeling guilty and sad at the thought of what had happened between them. He knew that Hope would blame herself but Matt knew that his behaviour had certainly driven her to it. If only he’d been able to share the mental torture he’d gone through in Redlion, the depression he’d sunk into when he’d realized he’d made such a huge mistake and was a failure. If he could have shared that with her, then perhaps he wouldn’t have been so eager to run away back to Bath. And it had been running away. Faced with a sense of black depression and sheer failure, Matt had run like a small child running from danger. It had taken him weeks to get over it. His black moods meant he knew he couldn’t stay with Dan or Betsey; the only solution was to live on his own and sort himself out. Being a failure was Matt’s greatest nightmare, but, as he’d discovered, once you face your greatest nightmare, you can tame it. It had been tough, but he’d done it. The proud, slightly arrogant Matt Parker had gone and in his place was a wiser man, the arrogance replaced by a rueful knowledge of what he was really capable of. He was a husband, a father and an advertising man, not a Booker prize winner. And he was good at being an adman. Adam’s heart attack had been more severe than any of them had realized and he’d been ordered to recuperate for several months, which gave Matt the chance to do something he was good at. Working on his amusing e-mail diary at night had helped too. It was his way of relaxing: being witty as he told Hope or an imaginary someone about how the beer commercial people had gone to lunch with Dan (‘we’ll be back in an hour, we’ve got lots of meetings on,’ they’d said gravely) and come back four hours later utterly plastered and