in trouble—’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Jonny said, and, although he didn’t want to hurt Thom’s feelings, he said it crisply enough to stop the discussion.
Thom was a Californian, and Californians talked about everything. Despite Jonny’s own years on the west coast of America, he was still English, and he still knew that some things were best kept private.
A woman came down the train aisle with a trolley of coffee and tea. They gave it to you free in first class, a fact Jonny never would have discovered without Thom and his insistence on travelling the best way possible. ‘Coffee, thanks,’ Jonny said when she stopped at their seats, and his eyes wandered back to his laptop. When the coffee didn’t arrive, he looked up.
The woman was staring at him, half a smile on her face. She was cute, with blonde hair scraped back into a pony-tail. Her cheeks flushed slightly as she said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t usually ask things like this, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’
‘Now that you ask, Jay’s been in—’
Jonny interrupted before Thom could start on the list of magazines and advertisements he’d got Jonny jobs modelling for. ‘I don’t think we’ve met, no. Sorry.’
The woman looked from Jonny’s polite smile to Thom’s grin, and then back to Jonny. ‘Oh. Well, here’s your coffee, and if I can get you anything else …’ Her voice, though shy, was unmistakably flirtatious.
‘Just the coffee is fine, thank you.’
Thom snagged a can of cola as the trolley passed, and settled back in his seat, shaking his head sadly. ‘You disappoint me, my friend. That was your perfect chance. Stewardesses are hot.’
‘She wasn’t a stewardess. This is a train, not a plane.’
Thom leaned out into the aisle and looked after the woman. ‘Uniform is still pretty cute from behind, though.’ He turned back to Jonny. ‘Do you know how many women are hot for models? And how many of those models are actually straight? You’re a rarity and you should be shagging everything in sight.’
‘Thom, I want to hook up with a woman because I have something in common with her, not because she’s seen me in some magazine.’
‘You mean you want a female computer geek.’ Thom took a long drink of his cola. ‘That’s fortunate, because, with the amount of time you spend on a computer, I bet the only sex you’re getting is virtual.’
‘You know, Thom, I’d be much more offended by what you’re saying if I didn’t personally know that you haven’t had sex since the last leap year.’
‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. You’re living up in the middle of nowhere and you spend all your time online. When we get to London, how about I set you up with somebody?’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’m meeting somebody already.’
Like his evasion of Thom’s questions about his financial situation, this wasn’t quite the whole truth, and Jonny felt a stab of guilt. It was a measure of how much the circumstances of the past few months had affected him that he was being deliberately misleading.
‘I mean, I’m going to try to meet a friend,’ he corrected himself. ‘You didn’t give me a whole lot of notice that I was coming to London.’
‘A friend.’ Thom looked interested. ‘Is this a sex friend?’
‘No. She’s a friend. I’ve known her since I was a kid, but we fell out of touch, and we only started emailing each other a few months ago when I got back to England and found her on the web. She lives in London.’
‘A virtual girlfriend. How do you do that whole cybersex thing? I never really understood it. Do you, like, describe what you’re doing to each other, and then use toys, or—?’
Jonny had to laugh at Thom’s single-mindedness. ‘We’re not having cyber sex. I used to have a huge crush on her, but that was when we were kids. I haven’t seen her since we were about eleven years old. And she’s engaged. She’s just—’
He tried to think of how to describe it. Jane was his friend, but it was more than that. Even though they’d never met up, over the past few months Jane’s emails had been just about the only thing that kept him sane.
‘She’s got a great sense of humour, and we seem to have a lot in common. We email four or five times a day.’
‘Oh.’ Thom’s playful interest had been replaced by something more serious. ‘She’s the one you tell things to, huh?’
The one you tell things to. Yeah, he wished. How many times had he sat down and written to Jane, typed all of his problems and worries and disillusion into the computer to send to her … and then deleted the whole thing before he sent it?
It was too painful to say. Even not out loud, even to someone he didn’t see in person. Even to someone he cared about.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’s got a fiancé, so there’s never going to be anything between us.’
‘Man, you’ve got to be crazy. There is no way her fiancé is as good-looking as you. You just snap your fingers, she’ll drop at your feet.’
‘Thom,’ Jonny said warningly.
‘Okay, okay. I was just saying. I get it, you’re deeper than that and you’re a decent guy who doesn’t break up relationships. I think you’re insane, but that’s nothing new. You do like her despite the fiancé, though, right? Tell Uncle Thom.’
‘I’ve wanted to marry her since I was nine,’ Jonny admitted. ‘But I’ll settle for dinner—if you give me any time off from posing for a camera.’
Thom pulled out his palm organiser and began tapping through it. ‘Well, we’ve got shoots scheduled for most of the day on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but you should have some time free in the evening to meet your lady friend.’
‘And to do my real work. I’ve got a deadline for a book in three weeks. HTML for Utter Beginners.’
‘And to play. There are some mega parties you need to go to, especially mine on Friday. First, though, you and I are having lunch with the creative director from Pearce Grey, the advertising agency who’s hired you for the Franco campaign. Her name’s Jane Miller. You’ll like her.’
At the name, Jonny sat up straighter and smothered a chuckle.
He knew Jane Miller. And he definitely liked her.
In fact, he’d wanted to marry her since he was nine.
‘Sounds perfect,’ he said, pushing his glasses back on and clicking open his email program on his laptop. He’d already emailed Jane once today, this morning before he’d caught the train, but this called for another message.
‘Just one thing, Jonny?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Put in your contact lenses before we get to London, or I’ll call you Clark Kent by mistake.’
