Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘W hat do you think?’ Jess was twirling away in front of the mirror, making enough noise that it would be seemingly impossible to ignore her, but Allie was doing her best to try. She was staring out of Jess’s window, seeing nothing but the manuscript she had left on Will’s doorstep a few days before.
‘Allie? Are you listening to me?’
Allie snapped to attention. ‘Yes, absolutely. I definitely think we should.’
‘Should what?’ There was an icy pause.
‘Oh alright. I’ve no idea. I wasn’t listening.’
Jess flopped down onto the bed almost causing Allie to fall off. ‘Thinking about Will?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘No news then?’
‘Jess. You know I’d have told you if I’d heard from him.’
Jess lay back on the pillows and arranged the elaborate feathering of her black dress around her. If Allie had been thinking of anything other than the fact she had not heard a peep from Will since she had left her manuscript and her heart on his doorstep, she would have teased Jess about how many black swans had died to make her dress. But Allie barely noticed, her heart felt too heavy to make any well observed quips.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘Will, of course. What do you think it means that he hasn’t contacted you?’
Allie lay back next to Jess, moving some of the feathers to avoid crushing them as she did so. ‘I want it to mean that he’s away. Or that the manuscript got stolen. Or that he picked it up and put it on his Tbr pile and hasn’t quite got round to it yet but that sometime over the next few months he might just have the time to put his feet up and read my love letter to him.’
‘Al?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry about what I suggested about Martin. Before. That he was some kind of daddy substitute for you.’
‘S’OK.’
‘No, it’s not. I know how much your dad meant to you, and how important his memory is. I shouldn’t have said it.’
Allie exhaled. ‘Maybe you had a point. I guess I’m always thinking about what Dad would have thought about my life. Whether he would have been proud of me. I’ve never told anyone this before…’ She paused and then took a deep breath in. ‘The last thing he ever said to me was that he hoped me and Martha would find a love like he and my mum had.’ Allie paused, her throat thick with tears. ‘For a long time, I didn’t think I’d have that kind of luck, that I should just settle for someone like Dominic. And then I met Will. And he was everything I think my dad was talking about. I feel like he brought me back to life. That sounds so silly.’ She felt Jess shake her head next to her on the bed. ‘But he made me believe that happy-ever-afters could really happen and that maybe I had found mine. And now he won’t talk to me, not even after everything I wrote. So yeah, I guess I’m hoping that maybe he just hasn’t got around to reading it yet.’
Jess took Allie’s hand in hers and squeezed it tight.
* * *
Allie stood in front of the huge doors to the V&A and bit her lip. She shivered, more from the memories of how she felt when she left here last time than from the cold air, which was nipping at her exposed legs. If she had the energy to care, she would have been regretting the short dress that Jess had persuaded her into, but all her energy was focused on putting one foot in front of the other and pushing all thoughts of Will from her head. She had put her plan into action, she had almost killed herself writing two books: Martin and Angie’s love story, which she had delivered to them, and a second romance, a twist on her and Will’s meet cute. But she had made up the ending of that one before she had discovered how it truly ended. And now here she was, rethinking the whole thing, thinking she should have trusted her gut, realised that happy-ever-afters really only did happen in books, and she should have been honest with her readers and told them that actually the girl doesn’t always get the one she wants, that true love doesn’t always win out, and that sometimes it would be easiest just to write a murder mystery and be done with it.
‘Come on.’ Jess took her hand, simultaneously pinning a name badge on Allie’s front as she did so and pulling her in through the front doors. It was a Chanel retrospective that Jess had cadged preview tickets for and as such it was quieter than it would be when it finally opened to the general public next week. Jess grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne and thrust one into Allie’s hand, ushering her through into one of the darker galleries, where the iconic Chanel dresses were encased in glass domes.
‘Where are we going?’
‘They’ve got the first little black dress here that she ever designed. It’s not shown very often. I want to get a glimpse before everyone else gets here.’
Allie allowed herself to be pulled by Jess, eventually coming to stop in front of a glass case, standing in isolated splendour in the darkest of all the galleries. Allie could barely see anything past the case itself and as it was, she was mesmerized by the dress inside. So simplistic in design, yet so chic. Allie tugged at her own hem, wishing she had the effortless style that Chanel embodied.
‘Tell me about your book,’ Jess said into the semi-darkness.
‘What?’
‘You normally tell me about your books. But you haven’t told me anything about this one. The one you left with Will.’
Allie sighed. Truth was, she wanted to tell everyone this story, she wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but she wanted it to end how she had written it, not how it seemed to be ending, with her stood alone rather than wrapped in Will’s arms. ‘It was supposed to be a twist on our story, on mine and Will’s,’ she started. ‘The meet cute is two waitstaff, at an event like this,’ she gestured to their surroundings. ‘She’s the stuck-up little know-it-all, who has a hot take on everything, who doesn’t believe in true love, who thinks romance is for losers. He’s the sweet sensitive one who does believe, who ends up listening to all her complaints about the company they both work for, about the size of the vol au vents they serve…’ Her breath caught as she said this. ‘About anything and everything she could complain about. And he listens, patiently, and some of the things she complains about are right – like the vol au vents.’ Allie gave a rueful smile. ‘And some of them she’s wrong about, but he listens nonetheless. Because it turns out that he’s not just the lowly waitstaff that she had him down as, but he runs the company, and just happened to be helping out that night, and was so mesmerized by this bossy, opinionated girl that he met – who was sometimes right and sometimes wrong – that he put himself down to work every other shift that she was working. But she gets scared, because she had stopped believing in true love, stopped thinking that a happy-ever-after would ever come her way and really didn’t believe she deserved one anyway. She thought that love died when the butterflies disappeared and hadn’t realised that her best friend was right, and that the butterflies couldn’t last forever but that if you were lucky, what you were left with was even more special. And so she keeps messing up, and keeps doing stupid things, things that any other normal boy would run a mile from. But he never gives up on her and he keeps believing in her and keeps showing her that love is real. Until little by little, very gradually, she starts to see him for what he really is, and she stops being so opinionated, and stops being so dismissive, stops trying to see him as just a means to an end, and just as he fell in love with her from the start, she falls back in love with him, and gives him her heart.’
There was a long silence. Jess reached for Allie’s hand in the semi-darkness and squeezed it and in a voice thick with tears said, ‘Thank you for telling me your story.’
Allie shrugged. ‘I just wish my real one ended the same way.’
‘It still could.’ Allie spun round at the sound of the low familiar voice.
‘Will?’
‘Hi,’ he said shyly. ‘Hey Jess.’
‘Wait, you two know each other?’ Allie stared between them trying to figure out just what was going on.
‘I should go,’ Jess said, picking Allie’s hand up and kissing it before walking quickly away.
‘Jess!’ Allie called after her retreating form.
‘Talk, Allie,’ Jess shouted back, ‘don’t just write it in a book.’
‘Will?’ Allie looked up into those beautiful grey eyes questioningly.
‘Allie?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Finishing our story.’
‘Oh.’ Allie’s stomach dropped.
‘Sorry, no, I didn’t mean… I guess I meant to say continuing our story. I should leave the words to you, you’re the writer after all, not me.’
‘But you never called, after I left you our story, you never came to find me.’
‘I was in York when you left it on my doorstep. It sat there for two days. And then when I got back I read it from cover to cover and Allie? It was weird. Good weird, but weird to see us written down like that. And weird to see the ending that I didn’t think we had a chance of finding after having met Dominic at that party.’
Allie groaned. ‘I’m so sorry about that. He’s definitely an ex. He got the wrong end of the stick and came to that party thinking we were getting back together. We’re not getting back together by the way, we never were, I want to make that completely clear.’
‘Yeah, I understand that now. But it was a confusing message to receive, and something that messed with my head a bit, especially coming after everything else.’
‘And what did you think to the ending of our story?’ Allie asked softly. ‘Because I left it there five days ago, so what’s been going through your mind since then?’ She held her breath waiting for his response.
‘Well, you can blame my delayed response on Jess.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply. ‘Why is it Jess’s fault?’
‘Because, and I’m going to quote her here, remember these are her words not mine,’ he said warningly, catching Allie’s eye and smiling, ‘“she might be a great writer, but she’s a terrible communicator”.’
‘What?! What does that mean?’
‘So, after you left your manuscript at my door, and after I hadn’t been in touch for a day, because I was in York.’ He arched his eyebrow at her. ‘Jess tracked me down and demanded a response. And of course, because I wasn’t at home, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. So, I booked the first train back, took a cab from Euston and sat up all night reading.’
‘And then what?’ Allie felt herself trembling under his gaze.
‘Then Jess got to me before I could come and tell you how reading your words made me feel. And she explained to me that you’d lost your faith in true love, and didn’t think that happy-ever-afters were real. But then you met me and changed your mind but were too pigheaded and messed up to act appropriately – again, her words not mine.’ By now he was grinning at her outraged expression. ‘So that by the time you’d finally realised how you felt about me, everything had gone so wrong that you felt you could only fix it with a grand romantic gesture. And that as a writer this meant writing not one, but two novels – one of which turned into our story – and then leaving that copy on my doorstep to read.’ He paused. ‘Allie…’ The way he said her name made her stomach swoop. ‘Look at me.’ She hesitated before she looked up into his eyes, his hand caught her waist and she could feel her heart racing.
‘Allie,’ he said again, ‘this is how you make me feel, this is how reading your words made me feel. This,’ he waved to their surroundings and then placed his hand softly around her back, ‘this is my grand romantic gesture. When I’d read your words, when I’d spoken to Jess, I realised I wanted to show you how I felt. Not by calling you or sending you a badly written text. Not by turning up at your flat uninvited. But by bringing you back to where it all started and telling you that I love your way with words, I love the start of our story, I can’t wait to read more, and I love you.’
Allie’s throat constricted, his words taking her breath away. ‘Shouldn’t we be outside? In the alley round the back if we’re really going back to where this all started?’
‘Allie,’ he growled her name and pulled her towards him. ‘Surely this is better?’
And as she felt his lips on her neck, his hands on her body and in front of a priceless, original, one-off Chanel black dress, she agreed that yes, this was immeasurably better than how it had started.