my life, going at it like a rabbit with my ex, Dillon O’Hara.
‘Am sorry for you,’ he’s going on, ‘that you are doomed never to be with your one true love …’
‘OK, I think doomed is a pretty strong way to put it. It’s just … the way the cookie has crumbled.’
‘… but this is no reason to hide away from the romance for the rest of life.’
‘I’m not hiding away from romance, Bogdan. And if you’re about to suggest that I’m doing anything of the sort, just because I’m not picking up the phone for a booty call with Dillon every night …’
‘Am not suggesting this. Well, am not saying this is bad idea …’ He looks serious – well, more serious than ever – for a moment. ‘But is time for you to be taking control of your own destiny. Am not saying has to be Dillon. But you are too young, Libby, to be coconut-shying away from men for ever. Too young and too pretty. And too nice.’
‘Oh, Bogdan.’ I feel a lump in my throat. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Is nothing.’ His eyes narrow, for a moment. ‘Do not be thinking that this means am forgetting about catastrophe in hair department.’
‘Heaven forfend.’ I pick up my bag. ‘And I promise you, Bogdan, just for saying all that, the very next time I meet a tall, handsome stranger – because they’re just crawling out of the woodwork, obviously – I’ll let him sweep me off my feet and give me the full fairy-tale ending I so richly deserve, OK? Just for you.’
‘This,’ says Bogdan, evidently not picking up on my attempt at irony, ‘is what am wanting to be hearing.’
Then he goes back to texting Aunt Vanya while I head down the stairs, out of the front door, and towards the main road to buy the milk.
I pull my phone out of my pocket as I go, so I can take the opportunity to FaceTime Nora back. She’s heading down to London later this week – a rare enough occurrence, unfortunately – to drop her daughter Clara off with her parents so that she and Mark can have a weekend away for their first wedding anniversary. We need to speak, even if only briefly (which, what with work and baby-feeding and what seems like endless hours trying to convince Clara that she actually wants to go to sleep, our calls always are, anyway) to arrange how and where we’re going to meet each other for the couple of hours that she’s here. A hasty coffee, a cheeky glass of wine …
‘Nora!’ I say, already feeling approximately six thousand per cent more cheerful as her face pops up on my phone. ‘I’ve caught you!’
‘Hi!’ she says – or rather, mouths at me. Her eyes are rather wide and she’s looking slightly terrified. ‘Hang on a sec …’ she adds, still mouthing, before vanishing from the screen for a moment. Everything goes rather wobbly, and then black, before she reappears a couple of moments later, still looking faintly terrified but talking normally. Well, in a loud whisper. ‘Sorry! I’ve literally only just got her down for a nap! In five minutes’ time a bomb could go off in her room and it wouldn’t wake her, but right now a pin might drop in the street outside and she’ll bloody wake up again. I’m just going,’ she adds, ‘up to the top-floor bathroom. It’s the opposite side of the house, so if I lean out of the skylight there, she won’t hear me talking.’
‘Lean out of the skylight?’ I’m slightly alarmed; I’ve only been to Nora’s new house up in Glasgow once, but it’s a four-storey townhouse with a paving-slab patio for a garden. ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, I do it all the time! And frankly, Lib, I’d rather risk plummeting to my death on the patio below than risk waking her up!’ Nora adds, cheerfully. ‘How’s everything down there?’ she asks. ‘I gather you had an evening out with Olly last night?’
‘Yes. Um, did he tell you that, or did—’
And suddenly, I’m taking off.
Literally, I mean: into the air. My feet are leaving the pavement, and I fly up, up, sideways and up … before landing – ow – on my backside on another bit of the pavement about five feet away.
I sprawl there for a moment, too dazed to really understand what’s happened, until I see a man’s face hovering over me.
‘Oh, my God! Are you all right?’
‘Hnh?’
‘Can you move? Can you talk? Do you think anything’s broken? Did you hit your head?’
I don’t know how to respond to any of these questions. So I just say, again, gormlessly, ‘Hnh?’
‘Oh, God, you can’t talk … I’m calling an ambulance … Esti, call an ambulance!’ he says, over his shoulder, to whoever it is who’s with him.
‘No, no, don’t do that!’ I sit bolt upright, and it’s only thanks to his sharp reactions that we don’t end up cracking our foreheads together.
He is, I notice the moment I sit up, incredibly handsome.
I mean, incredibly.
He’s dark-haired, blue-eyed and long-lashed, with skin the colour of vanilla fudge. It’s quite an astonishing combination.
I’m interrupted, though, in my reverie by the sudden appearance of the Esti he just called out to.
‘Everything OK here?’ she asks, sticking her head over the man’s shoulder. ‘What can I do?’
‘Don’t call an ambulance. I can talk! Fine I am. I mean,’ I say, correcting myself from talking like Yoda, or one of the characters from a Dr Seuss book, ‘really, I’m absolutely fine.’
‘But you went right over.’
His accent, like his delicious skin colour, is also hard to place. It’s a little bit American, a little bit British, a little bit … Dutch? Scandinavian? As he starts to help me to my feet, I can feel some impressive muscles in his arms and back. Which makes sense, because he’s wearing running gear and a jacket that says FitRox Training. He must be one of the trainers from the gym just along the road, the one Cass mentioned she’d trained at. And this Esti woman is, presumably, one of his clients – or, more likely, even another trainer, because she’s super-fit-looking, too, with Madonna-esque arms and Ninja Turtle abs visible under the edge of her cropped running top.
‘And you look a bit … pale.’ The personal trainer guy looks worried. ‘I think you should have a hot drink, something with sugar in …’
‘Oh, that’s OK, I was actually just on my way to get milk for tea.’
‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’
‘That’s all right, honestly.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m buying you a cup of tea. It’s the least I can do.’ He turns to point up to the main road. ‘Starbucks OK?’
‘Yes, sure, but really—’
‘Esti, maybe you could pop up and get some tea?’ he suggests, to super-fit Esti, who is still jogging, slightly annoyingly, on the
