Who's That Girl (41 page)

But he wasn't joking, was he? I
did
stand him up. I
didn't
get the address in time, did I?

The shrill burbling of my phone cuts into my thoughts and I glance at the screen:
Julian
. Immediately my mind swings like a pendulum back to Vanessa and her phone call yesterday, the several messages I left with Julian's secretary telling him to call me back. I clip on my earpiece.

'Hello?'

'Hey, Charlotte, it's Julian. I got a message to call you.'

I hesitate for a split second, wondering how I am going to put this, how I am going to broach the subject, then give up. 'The game's up. I know everything.'

'About what?' he replies innocently.

'Julian, don't try this with me!' I cry impatiently. 'This is me you're talking to, remember, your friend. I've known you too long - I can tell when you're hiding something.'

There's a silence, then, 'Oh God, have you told Vanessa?' He sounds stricken.

'No, of course I haven't told Vanessa, but if you don't, I will.'

The lights turn green and I start edging forwards.

'I was just waiting for the right time,' he bleats.

'The right time?' I exclaim in disbelief. 'Of course there's never going to be a right time!' I think about Vanessa and feel a surge of loyalty. 'Julian, I can't .believe you could do something like this!'

'Well, I had to do something,' he protests. 'I don't know if Vanessa told you, but we've been having a few problems—'

'
Of course
Vanessa's told me,' I cut him off. Honestly, do men really have no idea that girls tell their friends
everything?

'And I admit I haven't exactly been the best husband of late. Work's been a nightmare.
I've
been a bit of a nightmare.'

'You're using work as an excuse?'

'Well, no, it's not an excuse, I was trying to explain… Look, a colleague of mine just announced his marriage is over, he's getting a divorce, and when he told me, it gave me a wake-up call, which was long overdue—'

'God, I can't believe it!' I gasp furiously, not letting him finish. 'You're all as bad as each other!

And to think I always stuck up for you!'

'Well, um, thanks, Charlotte,' he replies, only now he's sounding a little defensive. And no wonder, I think, hotly. 'I'll take that as a compliment.'

'A compliment! You bastard!'

There's silence.

'Charlotte? Are you all right?' he asks after a moment.

'No, I'm not all right,' I gasp. 'Vanessa loves you. She'd do anything for you. And you go and repay her by having a sordid little affair.'

'An affair?'

I'm expecting him to be angry, sad, defensive… so I'm more than a little shocked when he suddenly bursts out laughing. 'You think it's funny?'

'I think it's fucking hilarious,' he replies dryly. 'Me, be unfaithful to Vanessa? She'd chop my balls off and eat them for breakfast. With ketchup.'

I feel the stirrings of doubt. 'But… I saw you at Boots. You had condoms…'

There's a prickle of embarrassment on the other end of the line, then a deep sigh. 'OK, I confess. I'm guilty of planning to have sex with my wife, Your Honour.'

'And my assistant saw you coming out of the Dorchester with a key to a suite.'

'Yup, guilty of booking a suite for a dirty weekend with my wife.'

I can feel the probable fast turning into the possible.

'And then there was the Agent Provocateur receipt.'

'Yup, guilty of finding my wife sexy and buying her naughty lingerie.'

I fall silent, absorbing it all. I'm getting the feeling I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

'I love my wife, Charlotte.' Julian's voice turns serious. 'When ray colleague at work told me about his marriage falling apart, it brought me up short and made me look at my own marriage. It made me imagine for just a moment what life would be like without Vanessa, made me realise what a bloody idiot I've been, that I've been taking her for granted…'

As he continues talking, I realise I've definitely jumped to the wrong conclusion.

'… and so I wanted to treat her, spend time together, get to know each other again. I know it's not going to work like magic overnight, but it's a start.'

I feel stupid and delighted all at the same time. 'Oh my God, she's going to love it!' A smile bursts across my face. 'So when are you going to tell her?' I ask, turning off at the diversion and zipping down my usual short cut.

There's silence on the other end of the line.

'Julian?' I glance down at the screen on my phone and see it's blank. We've got cut off. Still, it doesn't matter. At least I know they're going to be OK, I think, feeling a glow of happiness as I glance back, up at the road.

And then all of a sudden everything seems to slow right down, as if I'm watching a film in slow motion - frame by frame - only I'm in it. Smiling as I'm lifting my head, catching the blur of colour out of the corner of my eye, turning and seeing the truck heading towards me, hearing the horn blasting out, and pushing hard on the brake pedal. And now I'm opening my mouth to scream, knowing what's going to happen but knowing I can't stop it. I can't do anything. All this in a split second and then—

Boom!

Everything goes black.

Chapter Thirty-nine

'Urgh.' Groggily I open my eyes. Everything is blurry, kind of foggy. I can make out white shapes. It feels like there are weights on my eyelids.

'Oh thank the Lord! She's awake! She's awake!'

A shrill voice jolts me out of my wooziness. I flop my head sideways and come eyeball to eyeball with Beatrice. White-faced.

'Charlotte, you've come back to us,' she gasps, her voice tremulous with excitement. Eh? Come back to us? What does she mean,
come back to us
?

'Bea, what's going on?' I open my mouth to ask, but all I hear is a sort of weird croak. Hang on, what was that? 'Where the hell am I?' I try again, but all I hear is a coarse rasp. I feel a jolt of alarm. Oh my God, is that me?

'Nurse! Nurse, come quickly!'

Nurse
? Shit, where am I?

I try sit to upright and suddenly I get the most agonising pains shooting through my body.

'Argghhhh,' I yell out. And this time I really do yell out. Trust me, it's not a husky croak.

'Ooh, there, there, be careful now.' I see a figure in white coming towards me. For a moment I think I'm dead and it's an angel, but then I feel a pair of warm, plump hands easing me back down on the pillow and hear a strong Jamaican accent. 'You've had a bit of a nasty accident.'

'Huh?' I look at her blurrily, trying to make sense of what's going on. I feel as if I'm trying to crank my brain into gear, kick-start it like my old car with a flat battery, pushing on the accelerator until finally the engine fires. Only I'm pushing on the accelerator in my brain, pumping it furiously, and my brain's a total flat battery.

'You lie still now,' the nurse is saying, patting my arm gently. 'I'll go see if I can find the doctor,'

and she disappears out of my range of vision.

Which is when it registers.-I'm in bed. In a hospital. It's hardly toppling dominoes, but it's a start.

'How are you feeling?' whispers a voice.

I glance sideways again to see Beatrice. I'd forgotten she was there. Like I said, I'm a bit out of it.

'Um… I've been better,' I manage to quip weakly. My eyes have focused now and I notice she's got dark shadows under her eyes, and her usually neat bob is unkempt. She looks as if she hasn't slept for days.

'You gave us quite a fright,' she reprimands with a small smile.

'What happened?' I manage finally.

'You were in a car accident.'

'
A car accident
?' I repeat in shock.

'A head-on collision with a truck.' She nods gravely. 'The truck driver got away fine. You came off slightly worse - three broken ribs, a fractured left shoulder…'

So that explains the pain, I realise, instinctively trying to move my shoulder and experiencing a sharp throbbing.

'… a punctured lung,' she continues, counting my injuries off on her fingers, 'and a gash across your left temple, which required twelve stitches.'

Automatically I reach up to touch my left temple and find a bandage. Suddenly I realise how sore it feels.

'You've been in and out of consciousness for the last two days. You're on morphine.'

'Two days?' I look at her in astonishment.

'I've been on a round-the-clock vigil,' she says loyally.

I smile gratefully.

'You've been very, very lucky, Charlotte.'

I lie there in my hospital bed, trying to take it all in: the fact that I've been unconscious for two days, I've been in a head-on collision, I've got broken bones, I could have died… My eyes well up and without warning I burst into tears.

'Oh golly, here, take a tissue,' soothes Beatrice. 'It's the shock.'

I nod mutely and blow my nose with my good arm. 'Sorry, I'm being pathetic.'

'Don't be such a silly goose,' Beatrice tuts. 'If it was me, I'd be in floods. I mean, you could be dead, or horribly mangled, or disfigured beyond recognition and you'd have to have one of those face transplants I was reading about in the
New Scientist
.' She stops as she sees my expression.

'Not that you
need
a face transplant of course,' she says quickly.

'I just don't understand…' I shake my head, groping my way back through the fog that's clouding my mind. At the press launch, finding the address, racing over to my old house, the diversion, the short cut, Julian.

'According to the police, you were going the wrong way down a one-way street.'

I stop blowing my nose and look at her incredulously. 'What? But that can't be…'

'Apparently, the one-way signs were obscured by trees. I've already put in a complaint with the council - it's a complete hazard.'

I feel my certainty wobble. It doesn't make sense, but thinking about it now, the cars were always parked facing one way and I never actually saw any other cars using that side street except…

'No, that can't be right,' I say with renewed certainty. 'I saw myself—' I stop myself quickly. 'I mean, I saw a girl driving an old Beetle in that direction.'

Beatrice looks at me sympathetically. 'I think maybe you're confused. That's one of the side effects of morphine, especially in the high levels you've been on.' She gestures to the intravenous drip I'm attached to. 'It can make you imagine all kinds of things.'

She's right about one thing. I am confused.

'It's a really powerful drug. I studied it at Cambridge,' she's saying.

'I thought you did maths and physics,' I say, feeling more befuddled than ever.

'Oh, I did, but I took a chemistry module just for the fun of it.' She smiles brightly. I look at her in disbelief. Yes, she really did just say that. That's not just the morphine talking.

'Morphine is the principal medical alkaloid of opium,' she continues breezily, 'and like other opiates, it acts directly on the central nervous system to relieve pain. However, one of the side effects can be incredibly vivid dreams. In fact the word "morphine" is derived from Morpheus, one of the Greek gods of dreams.'

'What? You're telling me I dreamed it?' I say disparagingly.

'Most probably.' She nods matter-of-factly. 'You've been murmuring all kinds of things in your sleep. Something about Lottie… Oily… clubbing.' She gives a little laugh. 'That's when I knew you must be dreaming. I mean,
you? Clubbing
? No offence, but when did
any
of us last go clubbing?'

Actually, now I'm thinking about it, it does sound totally implausible. Wearily I let my eyelids droop. Having just regained consciousness, everything seems a bit too much and I feel as if my brain's about to overload with all these revelations.

'But I wouldn't worry. It's perfectly normal,' she reassures quickly. 'In fact there are many reported cases of people experiencing wonderful dreams when taking morphine, including visions, hallucinations, even lucid dreams.'

My eyelids snap back open. 'What's a lucid dream?' I ask, frowning, then wincing as my temple throbs.

'It's when you feel totally conscious, yet you're really completely asleep,' she explains, helping herself to a mound of grapes next to my bed. 'You're dreaming, but it's as vivid as the "real" waking life. You can go anywhere, meet anyone, do anything. It's a sort of virtual reality.'

I suddenly remember the moment in the pub where I first met Lottie:
Unless of course this is all
some crazy dream and I'm going to pinch myself and wake up to find Bobby Ewing in the
shower. Or something like that
.

'It's actually incredibly fascinating.' She smiles.

I feel a creeping realisation. What is she saying? What does this mean? That everything I thought was real
isn't?
As the idea strikes, I feel my whole set of beliefs blown apart. Oh my God, does this mean that it really
was
all some crazy morphine-induced dream? That I didn't really meet my younger self? That none of it happened?

'So what about the press launch with Larry Goldstein? Did I dream that too?' My mind is reeling. I'm trying to make sense out of all this, but I feel totally disorientated. It's as if I don't know what's real and isn't real, what to believe and not to believe.

'Oh, no, that
certainly
happened,' says Beatrice firmly.

'And did I…?'

'Tell him where he could stuff his bleaching kit?' she finishes, giving me a small smile.

'Metaphorically of course.'

I manage my first smile of the day.

'Speaking of which…' She tugs out a trade paper. 'He released a statement saying he's decided not to expand into the UK at this time, due to the economic climate, and he's going to concentrate on his business in the States.'

As she passes me the paper, I look at the short statement. So Oliver's granddad's shop will be saved after all, I realise, feeling a beat of pleasure, followed immediately by a tug of sadness as I think about Oliver. I brush it away quickly. There's no point thinking about it. That's over.