Chapter Eleven #2
Olly was inspecting the whisky in his glass.
‘I’ve been aiming for someone I’d be expected to be with; someone with their own life who wants a person like me.
Who wouldn’t mind the long hours, the fact I’m not there half the time.
Someone self-sufficient, who could plan the parties they want, play tennis at the weekend, do fine without me. God, this sounds weird, doesn’t it?’
‘Certainly does, Brideshead,’ I said. ‘All very cucumber sandwiches and croquet on the lawn. You seem to want someone who doesn’t really care about you. So yes, weird. Marriages of convenience aren’t so common these days, I believe.’
‘A marriage of convenience with some dirty sex thrown in sounds pretty good to me,’ he said, and knocked back his whisky. ‘Fancy another?’
‘Tiny bit,’ I said, really wishing he hadn’t said the words ‘dirty sex’ while he had his rich brown eyes fixed on me. But, if challenged, I could say the blush was from the alcohol. The way things were going I’d have to stop wearing blusher in the office.
Olly sloshed three fingers’ worth of gold liquid into my glass.
‘I don’t know what you mean when you say “expected to be with”,’ I prodded, after another fiery mouthful. I was clearly plastered but this observation pinged only distantly in my mind and was easily ignored.
Olly looked at his glass and sat back in his chair.
‘My mother said she always saw me with a practical, no-nonsense country lass, preferably from a monied background. She thinks that would suit me.’ He barked into his drink.
‘What she really means is someone like her. She came from money and always said she married down. My father struggled to live up to her expectations – he was a workaholic, too; is, I should say, since he’s transferred all of his zest for employment into the game of golf.
My mother holds everything together, keeps the home fires burning, organises dinner parties etc etc.
I thought I was different. But maybe I was wrong. ’
I said nothing. This was beyond my experience.
Over the past few days, a camaraderie had built up between me and Olly, but now I felt it fading.
We were not alike. As he toyed with his glass, I noticed his cufflinks: gold, set with blue stones, probably sapphires.
The faint hit of his musky aftershave suddenly smelt ridiculously expensive.
One bottle was probably worth a month’s grocery bill to me.
I twitched my hand to my mobile, and checked Dad hadn’t called me.
‘But enough about me.’
I glanced to see Olly’s eyes had settled on me. I raised my eyebrows questioningly.
‘What’s the deal with Jack Dillane?’ he said lightly. ‘He was clearly punching. What was the attraction?’
I swallowed hard. Tried to think of a witty deflection and came up blank.
‘He was charming, I guess.’ The question turned me inwards.
Yeah, he was charming. Handsome. Irreverent.
Sexy. Good at love-bombing, great at romantic gestures.
Until the compliments turned to criticisms; until the teasing turned sour.
‘Lizzy.’ Olly’s voice broke into my thoughts and I flinched. ‘Sorry. Are you okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, pushing back thoughts of Jack and smiling. ‘So, how come you’re only aiming for a girl in pearls now?’
It was a clumsy change of subject, but he gallantly accepted the baton.
‘Rebellion, I guess,’ he said, trying, and failing, to suppress an embarrassed smile.
‘And let’s just say, before I joined the Army I wasn’t exactly fighting women off.
’ He leaned forward and whispered, ‘I was a bit nerdy. Book smart but not streetwise.’
‘Shut up!’ I cried. ‘Spare me the mock humility.’
He laughed properly then. ‘Aye, it’s true. Then the Army happened. I was focused on my career – still am. And, oh God, this makes me sound really sad.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Okay. I wasn’t used to having offers, I guess.
The idea of a woman being interested in me was novel and enjoyable.
Possibly, gratitude isn’t the best basis to start a relationship on.
And once people see past the whole gym-body thing, maybe I’m not as fun as they think.
My last girlfriend thought I’d spend the whole time taking her to parties and exciting jaunts. Confession. I hate parties.’
‘Me too,’ I murmured, regrettably out loud.
‘And I can be intense. Focused on work.’ He gave me a glance. ‘Apparently that’s really boring.’
‘Tricky,’ I said, attempting to sound detached.
‘The woman I met last night’– his voice was soft, and he was looking into the middle distance – ‘covered all the criteria. She also seemed to like the idea that I’m very work focused.’
I put my glass on the table, and it landed more heavily than I’d intended. The soft light in the room played over Esme’s whisky selection. ‘So, what’s the problem?’
He glanced at me. ‘There was no’– he clicked his fingers – ‘spark.’
I exhaled more noisily than I’d intended. ‘The spark thing, it’s overrated. And how can you tell, really? On a first date?’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You can tell immediately.’
‘Nope,’ I snapped. Why so frazzled, Lizzy? ‘There are a hundred different factors that might affect the outcome of a date. Nerves. The kind of day you’ve had. Whether it’s raining. The reverse-halo effect – a cognitive bias—’
‘Thank you, professor,’ he said grittily. ‘I gave it a chance. I even went for a kiss.’
I found myself unexpectedly breathless. ‘And how was that?’ I managed.
He made a slow thumbs down gesture, the ends of his mouth turning down, emoticon style. I choked my laugh into my drink. When I’d recovered, I was annoyed to see the enjoyment glittering in his eyes.
‘Poor Jemima,’ I announced to the room. ‘Are you sure the problem wasn’t you?’
It was his turn to choke into his drink. ‘Are you implying I’m a bad kisser?’
‘No, no, no.’ I was. ‘It’s just, as a technical exercise, a good kiss is fairly straightforward. And it might be you. I don’t want you blaming Jemima for something that’s not her fault.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Also, I didn’t say it was her fault. A bad kiss is blameless, most of the time.’ He put his glass down and leaned forward. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Hit me with it. What makes the perfect kiss?’
I felt perfectly, drunkenly, in control. ‘It has to be gentle, but firm, hen,’ I said, doing an approximation of his Scottish accent. ‘No tonguing straight away.’
He laughed: that magical sound, again.
‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘you’re asking a question really, aren’t you? And you just have to listen to the other person’s answer.’
He held up a hand. ‘I don’t need a diagram or an essay paper on this. You do it, if it’s so easy. Come on, Brinks. Put your money where your’– he took a breath – ‘mouth is.’
It seemed like a reasonable idea at that moment.
Perfectly logical. Even if my thoughts were spinning.
Any warning indicators were dulled by the way the whisky had warmed my blood, the general feeling of relaxed (drunken) goodwill in the room.
I drifted forward, glimpsed his (perfectly fine, actually quite nice) mouth. Then looked up.
We locked eyes. Neither of us looked away – or, it seemed, could look away.
We were inches from each other. His eyes were that dark, unknowable brown, flecked with the colour of the whisky – a burnished gold-citrine – but they were growing darker by the moment as his pupils expanded.
Oh, I thought, Olly’s eyes are drinking me in. But I didn’t move. Couldn’t move.
‘Your eyes,’ he said, softly, ‘are the colour of—’
‘Pond water?’ I said, and sat back so hard in my seat I almost whiplashed myself. He stayed where he was, leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, looking faintly dazed.
‘Sea glass,’ he said. ‘I was going to say sea glass. I found a beautiful piece on Jura.’
‘Enough of the charming anecdotes,’ I said, slipping my shoes back on and getting up to briskly shut Esme’s whisky collection behind its marquetry doors.
‘We’re drunk.’ I turned back to the laptop and clicked Ctrl+P.
‘I’ll send this to print. Then in the morning we can look at it with fresh eyes.
I know it’s old-fashioned, but I always think it helps to read it on the physical page, don’t you agree?
’ I was babbling, and I didn’t wait for his reply, sweeping out of the room and across the darkened office, into the corridor that housed the printer. I needed air.