He beat me to it, producing two shiny copper coins from his wallet before I could open my bag. ‘Here you go. Don’t spend itall at once.’ He handed them over, with the semblance of a smile and started the engine.
I watched as he put the car into gear, his tanned, capable forearm scant inches from my knee and then held onto my breath a second too long as he put his arm across the back of my seat to reverse out of the car park.
I closed my eyes momentarily.
It wasn’t fair. With his tousled blond hair, twinkling blue eyes and that endearing slightly chipped front tooth which showed when he smiled, why did he have to be so damned irresistible.
The first time I met him I’d gone all gooey.
There’d been a card on the Student Union noticeboard:Available — lift share to Maidenhead area. Half petrol costs.It didn’t say people with chronic carsickness need not apply.
When he pulled up in his tiny Mini he had to ask twice if I was Olivia. My tongue had glued itself to the roof of my mouth. Wearing loose, faded jeans and a Diesel T-shirt, he’d unfolded his six-foot frame from the car and given my hand a firm shake. At that point I’d have said yes if he’d asked if I was Edna from Edinburgh.
Him being the perfect gentleman was an added bonus. He stopped three times on that first journey to let me heave up my breakfast.
You’d think I wouldn’t see him for dust after that but no, he kept offering me lifts, cementing a strong friendship. Let’s face it, you cover an awful lot of ground in a three-hour car journey and you can’t help but love a guy who brings you a new travel sickness remedy to try each time. We went through wristbands, Joy-Rides, ginger biscuits — which I later discovered are for morning sickness — and mint tea before discovering that, for me, clutching copper coins works best. In my defence, I’m OK on short hops, when I’m driving or in the dark, but any journeyas a passenger longer than an hour and my stomach starts to misbehave.
* * *
‘Any ideas, Olivia?’ asked Emily, once we were speeding along the M4.
‘Uh — sorry, I was miles away.’ I was concentrating on Windsor Castle on the horizon, another motion sickness essential.
‘Come on. Please help me,’ she wheedled. ‘Fiona wants a proposal for tomorrow’s meeting. I should have done it last week. It’s not fair. She’s always on my back.’
Fiona McIntyre, Emily’s boss and high-flying head of beauty public relations at Organic PR, didn’t suffer fools gladly or otherwise.
‘How am I supposed to think of a new way to launch lipstick?’ Emily asked, wrinkling her china-doll nose as if perplexed that the task had fallen to her.
I bit back the obvious, ‘Because it’s your job.’ Emily always got very stressed when she had to present her work to Fiona. Instead I said, ‘Well, what’s different about it? Can’t you just say it does what it says on the tube?’
Daniel didn’t join in. He seemed to be concentrating on his driving.
Emily gave an exasperated huff and shifted in her seat. ‘You’ve spent too much time working on construction accounts.’
She didn’t consider what I did to be proper PR. My job at Organic was very tedious compared to hers. She worked on glamorous beauty accounts and thanks to all the freebies she brought home, our bathroom could give Boots a good run for its money. Attending sparkly launches of new make-up and skincare products in the sorts of places where you’d rubshoulders with A-list celebrities sipping their mojitos was all in a day’s work for her.
Not me. I spent my days trudging around thirty-foot trenches wearing wellies three sizes too big. No comparison really. I can’t think of a single perk doing the PR for a major road-building company — unless you’re partial to the odd yellow hard hat.
‘The Marketing Director at Beautiful Babes Luscious Lips wants it to be an aspirational brand. The celebrity’s favourite. This lipstick’s going to be the summer’s hottest new product. Beautiful Babes isn’t selling to a bunch of guys with their bums hanging out of their jeans.’
‘Ooh, I don’t know. Think of it as a unique strategy. Transvestite builders. You’re targeting a whole new market.’ I caught Daniel’s eye and he gave me a tiny smile. I heaved an internal sigh of relief. His mood seemed to be lightening. I had no idea what had made him so cross earlier.
There was no reply from behind me. I turned around. Emily’s blue eyes had narrowed and her lips were twisted into a sneer.
‘This is serious, Olivia. I’m dreading going in tomorrow. If you aren’t going to help me, then just say so.’
Well, I didn’t want to look bad in front of Daniel, did I?
‘Sorry. Just stream of conscious to get me warmed up. What about... celebrity kissing? Yes ... get celebrities to wear the lipstick... then they put their lip prints on... shirt collars and... you auction the shirts off for charity.’
I grinned at her, my brain taking off as suddenly a whole raft of ideas popped into my head. I carried on with enthusiasm as I could see the shirts clearly in my mind. ‘You could do a launch... lots of models in short, white shirts. The tabloids would love it. There you go. One idea for free.’
‘Thanks, Olivia, but with respect,’ she said, not being respectful at all, ‘the celebrity auction thing has been done to death.’
I felt like a balloon that someone had just stuck a pin in. I was only trying to help.
‘Shame,’ said Daniel joining in. ‘Sounds fun. I wouldn’t mind going along.’
