I’m about to step outside when a text arrives from Mum who, despite it being 10.30pm, is clearly still awake.
Do you know anything about a washing-up bottle and some loo roll for Jacob?
‘Oh . . . fucking Gaudi,’ I mutter, though my beef has nothing to with the Catalan Modernists.
I dart out to wash my hands, then quickly exit the bathroom in search of somewhere quiet to call her. I cross a busy landing, saying, ‘Hi!’ enroute to various industry people – one of whom I realise immediately afterwards was a bloke inLine of Dutywho I’ve never met in my life.
I eventually find my way onto a large balcony that overlooks the whole of Hyde Park and the sparkle of London beyond. It seems to be occupied by a handful of smokers and one couple – or maybenota couple – getting amorous in the corner.
I lean on the thick stone wall and press call. She answers after a few rings.
‘I was heading to bed.’
‘Sorry – I was just responding to your text,’ I explain.
‘Oh, that,’ she says, through a yawn. ‘Yes, Jacob seemed to think he’d be in enormous trouble if he doesn’t take this long list of things in tomorrow. I told him it definitelywon’tbe tomorrow because you’d have organised it otherwise.’
I wince.
‘Lisa?’ she says, after a moment.
‘Well, the thing is . . .’
‘Please do NOT tell me I’ve got to find six rubber bands and an empty box of Pringles before 8am tomorrow? I was about to snuggle up with Richard Osman!’
‘No, you don’t,’ I say firmly. ‘Ofcourseyou don’t. This is my fault, so leave it with me. I’ll phone the school in the morning to explain.’
‘But Jacob seemed very worried—’
‘Honestly, Mum. Don’t give it a second thought. I’ll sort it.’
We have a brief conversation about how Leo spent the evening watchingFawlty Towerswith Dad, despite the fact that the last television programme he willingly watched with me wasTeletubbies. Jacob meanwhile has had a fun evening of jigsaws and fairy cake baking, before his homework was done on time without her even having to ask.
I end the call unable to decide whether my overriding feeling is gratitude or an acute sense of my own inadequacy.
‘Got a light?’
I look up to see a young guy in his early thirties draped languorously on the balcony. He’s strikingly handsome in a foppish, Cambridge Footlights kind of way, tall and tanned with a floppy, dark blond fringe. He’s undoubtedly ‘talent’, an actor I suspect, though I can’t recall seeing him in anything.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ I reply.
‘Ah . . . never mind,’ he sighs, leaning back on the wall with both elbows and sliding me an odd sideways smile. ‘I should probably vape instead anyway, but it just isn’t as . . .romantic, is it? You’d never have caught Don Draper with an e-cigarette.’
‘From what I hear, vaping is not especially good for you either,’ I reply, with matronly disapproval, as my thoughts immediately turn to Leo.
‘True,’ he says, with a long drawl that suggests he is very, verydrunk.
I’m about to leave, when he adds: ‘Are you an actress?’
I laugh. ‘Me? No.’
He pushes away from the wall and starts sauntering towards me in slow motion, his eyes fixed as if he’s looking down the lens of a camera for an aftershave advert. It’s partly the way he sashays that makes me realise what’s odd about the expression on his face. It’s... God what’s the word?Seductive.
I blink in frozen astonishment. When he’s right in front of me, he rests his elbow on the stone wall and I half expect the next words out of his mouth to be, ‘Martini, shaken not stirred.’ But, by now, he’s not looking at my face. Only my cleavage. In fact, his mouth is slightly parted, tongue near lolling, pupils wideningas if in a state of pure hypnosis. I follow his gaze downward and only then register that I might have gone alittleoverboard with my clove hitches.
As a result of my, admittedly excellent, knotting skills, my breasts are positively mountainous. In fact, they bring to mind thelastpapier mâché scale model Jacob’s enthusiastic art teacher organised – of Cheddar Gorge.
‘D’you know who you remind me of?’ he murmurs.
