Chapter 39 #2
Blinking, Tilly stood in a daze and tried to get a grip.
As she watched Otto threading through the crowd with a sort of easy command, she inhaled and swallowed.
She'd clocked his confidence from the doorway, a word here, a hand on a shoulder there, but as he went up to the bar, this was next level. With the Catherine wheel continuing to fizz, Tilly wasn’t sure what to think.
Telling herself that he had not specially or specifically invited her and that he was being nice to her because he had to, she wondered how rude it would be to bolt and pull a parachute to get her out of there because, for sure, she was in deep water.
To be frank, she wasn’t really comfortable with fireworks going off every five seconds for someone who clearly felt sorry for her.
Less than a few minutes later, it was too late for a runner, because Otto was back with two glasses of the elderflower bubbles and a beam on his face.
Handing her one, he then propped himself against the end of a trestle table beside her and chatted.
‘There you go. Right, sorry about earlier. I thought you might have changed your mind when I didn’t spot you. ’
Tilly pretended to be confident, breezy, oh-so-happy. ‘No, no. I was chatting to someone.’
‘Oh, right, who?’
Tilly flapped her hand, wishing she hadn’t lied and closed one eye. ‘Yikes, sorry I’m not very good with names.’
‘So, how are you finding everything in the shed?’
‘Umm, yeah, good, mostly.’
‘Liking Darling?’
I like you. Come and see my shed. ‘Yes, so far, so good.’
‘Where was it you came from again? The Maldives was it, or Singapore?’
That was weird. Tilly was sure she hadn’t mentioned anything about her travels to Otto. ‘Technically, I came from Fiji, but yes, before that, the Maldives. Have you been there?’
'Not to Fiji, no. That sounds very fancy, but yeah, I’ve been to the Maldives a few times.’
Of course you have. Probably not around the back end in the staff quarters. ‘It’s not a bad spot.’
‘I bet you miss it.’
Tilly stopped herself from making a face.
She needed a tropical island like a hole in the head.
To be frank, she’d be surprised if she would ever grace the back or front end of one ever again.
No one wanted to hear that, though. It was probably better to let people believe the tropical dream. ‘Hmm, it was, umm, nice.’
‘You worked over there, did you?'
Tilly decided to omit the part of her travelling story where she had to shove a hibiscus clip in her hair, wear a brown uniform and tabard and nod as overly sun-damaged posh people asked her to do things.
Instead, she focused on the positive and more desirable aspect of her forty-eight months in the sun.
She heard herself chatting about the Maldives and the chef who'd taught her to conjure a feast out of a fridge of leftovers. She then seamlessly moved onto the delights of Singapore, the events, the heat that hit you like a wall the second you stepped off a plane. Keeping her chat light, funny, and so very, very much edited, Tilly was on a roll. The surprising thing was that her life with the rubbish bits filtered out actually sounded fairly interesting, and Otto seemed genuinely entertained. With his head tilted, he asked the odd question that showed he'd actually been paying attention and barely said a word about himself the entire time. As she realised her drink was nearly gone and that she’d been talking nonstop, Tilly noticed he’d not said much at all.
'And what about you? What's the story with you, then?
Beyond the oysters and shouting at trespassers. '
'Oysters mostly,' he said, with a small maddening smile, and turned it neatly back on her. 'What made you pack it all in, then? Four years, and then what, a Facebook advert?'
Just like that, they were back to talking all about Tilly.
Strangely, Tilly was thoroughly enjoying herself because, unlike Lennixx and God forbid Andy, this person actually seemed to be interested in her.
There was something rather lovely in being asked, after years of being the one who stood and waited while somebody else held forth.
All the while, though, as she blabbered on, Tilly was reading Otto like a book.
Like the failing-business thing, people watching was in her blood.
Her dad's voice murmured away at the back of her mind the whole time.
Watch what people don't tell you, Tils, that's where the real information is.
Standing there in the marquee in the lovely dress, rabbiting on for England, Tilly observed, and little pennies started to drop in click, click, clicks.
Little signifiers informed her that she was playing in a whole new ballgame.
As realisation dawned that Otto was out of her league, she wondered if she should back off right away.
If she was not very much mistaken, Old Money stood right in front of her eyes.
He had an air of ownership about him. This was not how-much-did-I-pay-for-the-logo-on-my-trainers land.
Nope. There was the watch, for a start. It was far from flashy, nothing you'd notice unless you'd spent four years among people who wore them, and Tilly had, and she clocked it, the quiet heavy weight of something that cost more than the Boat Shed's entire roof would, worn carelessly under a rolled-up sleeve.
All the way from Switzerland via Bond Street or the like.
Then there was the way he spoke. Far, far from plummy, so much so that at first you didn’t clock it.
Initially, you thought he was normal and just like you.
Then that changed, and you realised it was more confident than plummy.
Easy, unhurried, with the corners filed off, the kind of voice that came from somewhere expensive and several generations deep.
There was a throwaway mention of school that he stepped past so fast she almost missed it, the sort of school that didn't need naming because people like him assumed you'd know where it was.
There was the signet ring. There was the fact that the Carrington beds had his name on them, and that half the buyers in the marquee kept drifting over to pay their respects, and that he wore the whole thing as lightly as he wore the watch.
Sipping the elderflower fizz and nodding along to whatever Otto was saying, a Roman candle exploded inside Tilly at the same time as she shook her head.
There was no way in the world he was interested in her, as she already was in him.
The man most likely had women tripping over themselves to even talk to him.
He was old stock, probably bedding women and breeding horses, let alone oysters.
The grumpy man in the wellies, the mud and the chocolate labrador wasn’t this man at all.
As Tilly continued to talk like it was going out of fashion, she felt as if she was in two conversations at the same time.
One with an utterly gorgeous, jump-into-bed man and one with herself.
The Tilly in her head told her to finish the drink and leave.
At the same time, her heart painted glue on the bottom of her feet and rendered her unable to move.
As he went to the bar and came back with another refill and a little plate of nibbles, Tilly felt herself falling or flying. One of the two.
Oh yes, and oh, flipping no. Oh, no, no, no. Tilly Bloomwood, you absolute idiot. How had this happened? You're done for.