A Hopeless Romantic (22 page)

“Oh,” she said eventually. “But—look, Nick—”

“This isn’t a come-on,” said Nick in amusement. “Seriously, this isn’t my dastardly way of taking advantage of you.”

He laughed at her, his voice soft in the velvety darkness. Laura stepped away from him, feeling embarrassed. She didn’t want him to think—she couldn’t bear the idea he thought she might be angling for something, that this was some ploy of hers. Especially not when they’d had, well, the perfect evening, she thought. She didn’t want to spoil it, the memory of it, and now she had.

“I know—of course. Really—”

She couldn’t see his face, but his voice said in a kindly tone, “Look. I’m your only friend in Norfolk, aren’t I?”

“You are actually my best friend in Norfolk,” said Laura.

“Well, there you go,” said Nick. “Come back, and we’ll get you a cab or find you a room.”

“It won’t be a problem?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Nick gravely. “There’s about thirty-five bedrooms, Laura, I’m sure we can find somewhere for you to sleep.”

She gave a snort of laughter, then clapped her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean that! I meant, you won’t get into trouble, will you? It’s okay for you to—to ask some—some random gir—person back and give them a room for the night?”

“Yes,” he said. “I promise you, it won’t be a problem.”

She shivered. Nick put her wrap around her shoulders and said, “Come on, then, new best friend. Come back to mine. You’re getting cold and I’m not standing here all night. You can pick up the car in the morning.”

Laura was mightily amused. “‘Come back to mine,’ eh? You make it sound like you live in a flat next to the post office. And how do I explain what happened to my parents? And how do I explain I’m staying the night, without them getting totally the wrong end of the stick?”

Nick started walking ahead of her. He said shortly, “Well, you make something up. What did you tell them tonight?”

“It’s really only a five-minute walk?” said Laura, following him. “I don’t believe you. The bloody driveway alone took ten minutes.”

“We’re round the back; this is the edge of the estate to the north,” said Nick, leading the way. “The fields over there are corn—the combines are arriving soon, in a couple of weeks, you know.”

He strode ahead in silence, Laura following. What a curious mixture he was, she thought, admiring his rear view dispassionately. Face to face, he was diffident, closed-off, flippant. In repose, or when he thought he wasn’t being watched, he was a different person, almost two sides. One, the polite, almost remote man who could make you laugh and was endlessly flippant, never serious. The other, the broad-shouldered, outdoorsy country boy who talked enthusiastically about animal husbandry, whose face and attitude were more relaxed, more human, almost. It was hard to believe they were the same person, and it was strange that she felt so comfortable with him.

“Thanks,” she said suddenly. “I’m sorry. About this.”

“My pleasure, Laura.”

“If we bump into Charles—” she said abruptly.

“I’ll make something up,” said Nick. “Don’t worry. I’m not a slave there. I’m allowed to bring people back, you know. But you’re right. Best if no one sees. People will only gossip.”

They had reached the gate beyond the pub’s garden. He unpad-locked the bolt and drew back the tall, solid wooden door.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” said Laura, but as he said, “Mind the—” she stumbled into a tiny ditch, a hollow on the other side of the door. Nick caught her hand.

“Sorry,” he said, putting her on her feet again and releasing her. “Must get that sorted out, you know. I keep meaning to talk to the guys about it. You okay?”

“Absolutely,” said Laura.

Their feet made scraping sounds along the dry earth of the pathway. An owl hooted in the woods to their right. Ahead of them the path swung round by the trees, and as they walked past them Laura drew her breath in.

“The house. Look. It’s…”

There in the moonlight, the side view of Chartley Hall appeared in front of them, like a proud lady in profile. The stone gleamed in the moon’s light, but the windows were dark. Ahead of them lay a formal garden, knotted with rows of black yew. It looked old, forbidding, magnificent—and nothing like someone’s home.

“Nearly there,” said Nick. “I love this view.”

“It’s beautiful,” Laura said simply. “Beautiful. You must—” She stopped.

“What?” said Nick.

“Well, it must be quite lonely sometimes.”

“It is,” said Nick. “Yes, it is.” He was silent, standing still. “Right,” he said after a moment. “Here we are.” And they walked down the gentle slope past the woods to the monolith in front of them, toward a side door in the center of two wings. It was as if the house were swallowing them up, taking them in its jaws, Laura thought, and she craned her neck, looking up to the roof, as Nick unlocked the door and held it open for her. They stepped into a small hallway with a staircase, wood-paneled and painted green, ghostly in the nighttime light. It was tiny, incongruously small, given the vast shell that lay beyond it.

“God, this is weird,” said Laura.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when I stagger back from the pub late at night, the walk home is slightly different,” said Laura. “More rubbish bins in my way. Lot more empty fast-food wrappers. A few people lying on the curb, you’re not sure if they’re alive or dead. That kind of thing.”

“Well, this is weird for me, too,” said Nick, leading the way up the stairs. “When I stagger back from the pub, I don’t usually have some pyromaniac girl with me who keeps hitting me and can’t drive because she’s drunk too much and she’s forgotten the car right outside the pub that she drove there.”

“Oh…” Laura cast around for the appropriate response. “Shut up.”

“Well done,” said Nick. “Excellent comeback.”

They reached the top of the stairs. Ahead of them was a prim, neat, very long corridor. Laura looked around, almost disappointed not to be confronted with some magnificent vista, a sweeping staircase, a vast airy ballroom, or some such. Nick could obviously sense this, because he said, “Sorry. I should have given you the guided-tour version, shouldn’t I, rather than just rushing you up the back stairs. This is my front door, you see.”

“Oh, no,” said Laura. “Please, don’t worry. I had the guided tour today.”

“And you hated it. I remember,” Nick murmured, then put his fingers to his lips. “I hear something. Come this way.”

They walked down the long corridor, and the unmistakable sound of someone coming up the stairs behind them could be heard, echoing toward them. Someone down below, a rather tentative voice, said, “My lord? Is that you?”

Laura looked at him in alarm, and without warning, Nick opened a door and virtually pushed Laura inside.

“This is my room,” he said apologetically. “Charles is just down there, they must think it’s him. Sorry about that, don’t want anyone to see us, don’t want you to have the third degree and all that.”

“Goodness, no,” said Laura.

“Okay,” said Nick. He glanced around, ran his hands through his hair. The room was big, high ceilings, painted white, virtually without any decoration or personal touch whatsoever. There was a clock radio, a portable radio, a mahogany chest of drawers, and a door leading to a bathroom. A dressing gown hung on the back of the bathroom door. It was, in short, a very typical boy’s room.

“Look,” he said. “I think what’s best is if you sleep here, and I’ll kip somewhere else. I don’t want to plonk you in another room only to find someone trying to hoover you up tomorrow morning. They’re pretty fascist around here about hoovering. But they don’t ever bother me in my room. Is that okay? Can you sleep here? Sheets are clean on today, which is great.”

“Yes, of course,” said Laura, giving herself up totally to the adventure of it all. “No problem.” She was suddenly very tired. She reached up to take her wrap off, but Nick leaned forward and unwound it from her shoulders. It slid off and he handed it to her, and then he kissed her on the cheek. It was a strange moment; it felt like a strange gesture, intimate yet not intimate, and there was a silence as both of them stood there, rather embarrassed. Laura looked up to find his eyes on her.

“Okay, best friend in Norfolk,” she said after a while. “Thank you, thanks a lot. I’m sorry about this.”

“No problem at all,” said Nick. He walked over to the dresser and took out a big old T-shirt, which he handed to her. “Here. You can borrow this.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry this is all a bit cloak and dagger. I just don’t want you to have any hassle. I’ll knock on the door after eight sometime, is that okay?”

“Great,” said Laura.

He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. “All right,” he said. “Sleep well. Don’t rifle through my personal possessions, and if you do, ignore the hard-core porn.”

“Sure, sure,” said Laura. “No judging. Night.”

“Night,” he said, and smiled at her as he shut the door behind him.

The wine, the walk, the unexpectedness of the day—Laura barely managed to text her parents and take off her shoes and skirt, before falling into bed and into a sleep so deep she didn’t think till afterward how strange it was that she was here, and how strange it was that it didn’t feel strange.

When she woke, funnily enough, Laura knew exactly where she was. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, taking in its appearance in the daylight that shone through the thin curtains at the far end, opposite her bed. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling deliciously relaxed, looked down at the baggy blue T-shirt Nick had given her. It said
THORSON TECHNOLOGIES
in huge red letters—trying to read it made the letters dance in front of her eyes. Out of the window she could see pine trees in the distance, a mass of greenish black to the north of the house. A wood pigeon was cooing somewhere nearby. Other than that, it was completely quiet. She snuggled down again and pulled the duvet over her. The bed was huge, the sheets smooth and clean. Laura stretched her arms and legs wide, and still couldn’t feel the edge of the bed. She made a star shape with her limbs, like a windscreen wiper under the sheets, and she was laughing to herself at the sheer randomness of it all when there was a knock on the door.

“Laura?”

“Yes,” cried Laura in a strangulated tone, getting tangled in the sheets.

“Er—are you decent?”

“Yes, yes! Come in!” Laura said chirpily.

The door opened about half a foot, and Nick’s head appeared around the door, his short, thick hair sticking up in tufts. He looked in, obviously rather afraid of what he might find. “Ah,” he said with relief, as he saw Laura was sitting up in bed, her arms crossed, under the duvet. He came in and shut the door behind him. She suddenly had a pang of fear—after all, it was a weird situation to be in. Perhaps this was all really embarrassing; perhaps she had in fact made a total fool of herself last night? Was there something she wasn’t remembering, some repressed memory where she’d licked him, or broken a Sevres vase?

“Hello there.” Nick smiled at her in a friendly way. He looked younger in the morning light. “You sleep well?”

“God, yes,” said Laura gratefully. She looked at her watch. “Blimey. It’s nine-thirty! I didn’t realize it was so late.”

She hadn’t slept for nine straight hours since…he couldn’t remember when. Over a year ago. She stretched again, smiling at him. “Thanks so much, Nick. I’m so sorry about last night—how completely emba—”

Nick raised his hand to cut her off. “Really, Laura, don’t apologize. It’s as much my fault as yours. I should be apologizing.”

“I threw you out of your room, though,” said Laura.

“No, I did. I’m a big boy. And it’s a big house, you know. I found a study farther down where I could lay my weary head. Two chairs pushed together will do me fine.”

Laura’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no! Really?”

“No, not really,” said Nick in withering tones. “The guest bedroom next door but one, actually.”

“Oh,” Laura said. “Ha-ha.”

There was a pause. Laura was suddenly aware of what a peculiar situation it was. She slapped her hands on the duvet and said, “Well. Thanks again. I’d better be going.”

“I’ve asked for some coffee to be sent up,” said Nick. “Thought you might like some before you go.”

“Oh, great,” said Laura. “Thanks a lot.”

“No problem.”

“I’m going to get dressed,” said Laura.

“Oh,” said Nick. “I’ll avert my gaze, then.”

“Well, it’ll only take a minute or so,” said Laura, as he turned around politely. She hopped out of bed and slipped the T-shirt off, put on her bra and skirt and cardigan, slid on her flip-flops, and pulled her tangled dark-blond hair into a messy ponytail.

“Are you decent?” Nick said after a while.

“Yup,” said Laura.

Nick turned round, amused. “That’s your daily toilette, is it?” he said. “Very extensive.”

“Absolutely,” Laura said. “It just saves time. Wear the same panties for a week and they double up as pajamas. It’s very handy. You get so much more done.”

“I bet,” said Nick. “Wow, you must be popular.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. There was a knock at the door and the sound of something on the floor outside. “Coffee, sir.”

“Ah,” said Nick. He waited a second for the sound of footsteps walking away before going to the door; Laura was amused to see that, while everything was utterly relaxed between the two of them, he was not quite so relaxed about anyone else knowing he had had a strange girl in his room last night. What would Charles say? she wondered, as Nick put the tray on the bed. She thought he was probably more austere about these things than his friend. Might not like it, even though it couldn’t be more innocent.

Nick handed her a cup of coffee. “Pastry?” he said, indicating a plate of delicious-looking croissants.

“It’s like a hotel here,” said Laura. “Wow!”

Her host was pouring some more coffee. “Yes,” he said. “Slightly different, though. You can check out anytime you want, but you can’t leave. Like the song.” He looked up and smiled, that disarming smile.

Laura didn’t quite know what to say. She looked out the window. “What’s that?” she said suddenly, standing up and going over to the window.