We smile at that.
‘I’ll grieve for Rodney my entire life, Holly. I don’t want to get over him. He was my world, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a decent life now.’
If Jamie were here, he’d be saying, ‘Cry for a night or two, Holly, but then dry those tears and move on.’ While I’d be miffed if he only cried a night or two for me, I know, deep down, he’d want me to live my life because his was taken away.
‘I should be setting up some incredible foundation in memory of Jamie,’ I suggest. ‘Or go off on someEat Pray Loveadventure to find myself.’
‘You still can,’ Harriet says, ‘if your boss gives you time off.’
‘She won’t. She’s a right old dragon.’
‘I always thought you came back too soon,’ she says, gently.
‘I did once think about going on some kind of spiritual retreat.’
‘And?’
‘I might find out I’m even duller than I thought.’ I laugh. ‘And bad at yoga. I can’t even touch my toes.’ I tried mindfulness once and felt so relaxed that I kept on nodding off, which I discovered, regretfully, was not the point of the exercise at all.
Harriet comes over to my side and takes my face in her hands, her bracelets jangling. ‘You are young.’
‘Forty-four is not young.’
‘It is, compared to me. Youareyoung,’ she insists again, ‘young, beautiful and talented.’
‘Stop,’ I say, wriggling free from her grasp, though secretly enjoying it.
Harriet looks me straight in the eye. ‘When will you ever accept a compliment, Holly? You drive me mad at times. You can do anything you want. Though I’d rather you stay put and work for me. Do you think I’d hire someone dull and incompetent?’
Her kindness makes me feel tearful.
The trouble is, I don’t know what I want. ‘But the café is a start,’ I say, before telling her about the characters I have met so far, including Angus and Lauren. For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about Lauren. Where is her family? Does she have any? Or are they the root of all her problems? I realise now how much I want to see her again, how much I hope she’ll come back, even if the idea of working with her makes me apprehensive.
‘You worked for Clarissa Pope,’ Harriet reminds me. ‘Lauren will be a pushover.’
I see Clarissa in her pinstripe suit and trademark scarlet lipstick saying to me, the morning after I’d met Harriet at the press event, ‘What exactly have you done for me since you’ve been here, Holly? Sweet Fanny Adams. Document what you’ve done this week, by noon. On my desk. And get me my skinny latte,pronto!’
‘You know what, Clarissa, have mine!’ I’d said, splashing the remains of my cappuccino down the cream silk shirt of an open-mouthed Clarissa, and in front of an open-mouthed office. ‘And don’t even think of sacking me. I quit!’
It was like a scene in a Richard Curtis movie, where everyone cheers and claps, the baddie finally getting their comeuppance.
‘I did it,’ I told Jamie with pride later that day, when Milla’s kitchen was almost completed. While he was working, I used to grab every moment I could to see him. Never before had I shown such a keen interest in wooden floors, ceramic tiles and paint samples.
‘Crikey, remind me never to annoy you when you’re drinking coffee,’ Jamie had said, as I watched him pack up his tools for the night. ‘The guys will be in to do the last bits and bobs, we should be finished by the end of the week,’ he added, words that made me feel scared.
I looked at the pristine cupboards, the beautiful dark wooden floor, the modern lights hanging over the island, but all I could see was a room, a dark room soon to be without Jamie in it. He couldn’t leave. Not when I felt so excited by a life without Clarissa, potentially a new job and a future with Jamie. So, I decided to be brave and ask him out. What did I have to lose? Weirdly I knew he wasn’t going to say ‘no’. There was something inevitable about Jamie and me.
‘It’s a date,’ he’d said, resting his hand against the small of my back, and leading me out of the front door, saying he knew just the place we could go.
I can’t explain how it felt when he kissed me outside my front door at two in the morning. Mum always told me that when the right man comes along ‘you’ll know, Holly’. I thought she was being her usual irritating self, that she’d spent far too much time reading romantic novels, until that first kiss. It was a kiss that promised more.
We slept together that night. ‘Why wait when you know?’ I’d said, when we lay in bed, naked beneath the sheets, limbs intertwined.
I wipe the tears from my eyes.
With Jamie I was different. I took risks. I was brave enough to be myself. He loved me. Believed in me.
It’s time I believed in myself again.
