‘I didn’t think you were seeing anyone?’
God, nothing got past him, did it?
‘I’m not.’
He sighed, seemingly frustrated. ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me, then.’
I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds so that I could think straight. I was going to have to come clean and tell him at least part of the truth.
‘My ex-boyfriend has met someone else. And it’s all happened very quickly. So quickly that maybe there was an overlap, if you know what I mean?’
‘Right,’ he said, as though he still didn’t get it.
‘And he’s splashing photos of the two of them acting all loved-up across his Instagram feed.’
There, I’d said it, and it sounded even worse in the cold light of day. How could Charlie do this to me? What was it about this girl that made him want to shout about her from the rooftops? Already? And to not consider my feelings while he was doing it?
‘Sounds like you’re well shot of him,’ said Marcus, his Manchester accent coming out thicker than I’d noticed before. I supposed with all the international travel it had been softened over the years and only came out in force when he felt ... what, exactly? What was he thinking of me right now?
‘Yeah. It’s a bit crap, but I’ll get over it,’ I said, weirdly feeling tears well up in my eyes like a tsunami. God, please not now. Not in front of Marcus. The professional boundaries of our roles may already have been blurred by the whole fake dating set-up, but that didn’t mean it was appropriate for me to start howling in front of an interviewee. I’d literally cried more in the last three weeks than I had in the rest of my life put together, and it did not sit comfortably with me. Bloody Charlie.
Marcus shifted on his seat. He was probably finding this exceptionally awkward since I was pretty sure he never cried about anything ever, mainly because every emotion he had seemed to manifest as anger. Maybe I could try that myself – it would be much less humiliating and having a good shout at Charlie might do me the world of good.
‘You okay?’ said Marcus half-heartedly.
‘Yes,’ I said, sniffing. ‘Sorry.’
‘There’s no need to apologise, Ava.’
If he carried on being this nice to me, the tears were never going to stop.
‘So yeah, there you have it. The exceptionally superficial reason behind why I’m happy to pretend to date you,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood. Marcus was probably feeling like celebrating, not comforting a tearful woman he barely knew.
‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, you can’t get much more superficial than faking a romance to get your brand sponsors back on side, can you?’ said Marcus.
This was a good point. He didn’tseemmoney-obsessed, but that’s all sponsorship deals were about, wasn’t it? Or was there something more behind it? Some gentle digging might be required to get to the bottom of that one.
‘On a different note, my boss at the magazine is loving the exposure,’ I said, attempting to make myself look less like a jealousex and more like an ambitious young woman who simply wants to open all the doors she can. ‘She’s bumped your profile up to the September issue, and is giving us six pages instead of four.’
Although, if we did go through with the pretending-to-be-into-each-other thing, I was going to have to find a way to reconcile the moral code of being a journalist writing an impartial piece on a celebrity with being photographed cosying up to him. Would people really take me seriously if they thought I was sleeping with him? I bit down hard on my lip, dragging the image of what that might look like from my mind. Not helpful. It was just, when you saw an elite athlete close up, itwaskind of breathtakingly impressive. And yet, I reminded myself, he had a terrible attitude and the kind of aggressive, testosterone-fuelled manner I really couldn’t stand. There, I could still be objective! Just because I was going to pretend to fancy him didn’t mean I would go easy on him, not at all!
Marcus stretched out his arms, lacing his fingers behind his neck.
‘I’m still not entirely sure we’re doing the right thing,’ he said.
‘I feel the same way, obviously,’ I said, secretly trying not to take what he’d said personally. He probably couldn’t stand the idea of having to spend more time with me than was strictly necessary.
‘I like to be straight up with people,’ said Marcus. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a case of what you see is what you get with me.’
‘That’s definitely coming across,’ I said.
‘In which case ... what are we going to say to people? People we know?’ he asked.
‘As little as possible? We let the pictures – if there are any – do the talking. We don’t have to confirm or deny anything, we can just be sort of ...’
‘Enigmatic?’ he suggested.
‘Exactly. Leave them to fill in the blanks. That way we don’t have to out-and-out lie. Which, for the record, I don’t feel comfortable doing either.’
