Chapter Forty-Nine
This year
Aurora
‘Does Ollie talk to you much these days?’ I ask Liv in a bar over drinks, six months later. We’re cramming in Christmas drinks before she goes back home to Northumberland for a week.
Ollie and I haven’t spoken in so long. Neither of us has been grown-up enough to send a follow-up message after the phone call when he hung up on me.
Ben has no idea why Ollie’s wound up, and Liv’s response when I rehash all this over drinks with her, near her office in Spitalfields, is simply, ‘It’s Ollie.
He doesn’t talk to anyone. Why do you think we broke up? ’
‘I thought it was because he was boring,’ I state, not feeling remotely like defending Ollie right now.
‘Yes, many reasons. That was one. It just wasn’t right.
But we’re still friends. Sort of. We talk from time to time,’ Liv says.
‘But I don’t tell him my deepest, darkest secrets and he doesn’t tell me his, so it’s not a close friendship.
It’s a blasé, at-least-we-can-be-in-the-same-room kind of friendship. ’
‘Civil,’ I state.
‘Civil,’ Liv echoes. ‘Like you and Ben.’
‘Yeah, I suppose. But I thought Ollie and I were more than that.’
‘I thought that about you too,’ Liv replies, giving me a direct look.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The two of you were always off in a corner somewhere, having a talk. You always looked so serious together, as if you were dealing with the worries of the world. Usually at parties, when the rest of us were trying to have fun.’
I remember many of those occasions in the early years of our friendship. Usually because Ben was being too … Ben.
‘I was quite jealous actually,’ Liv says, not making eye contact.
‘Were you?’ I ask quietly. ‘You didn’t need to be. There was nothing going on between me and Ollie.’
‘I know. But I didn’t like how he looked at you.’
My breathing slows. ‘How did he look at me?’
‘Please. You must have seen it. You must have.’
Ben told me something similar, back in the day. I was incensed that he’d say such a thing while we were breaking up. Was it true back then? Is it now?
Ollie always looked at me in the same way – there was never anything that made me suspicious.
I shake my head.
‘Really?’ Liv asks and seems genuinely puzzled by this. ‘It’s water under the bridge. I can forgive him for fancying you because neither of you did anything about it. You broke up with Ben, and Ollie didn’t try to do anything about the fact you were single, so …’
‘So …?’
‘So Ollie either doesn’t fancy you and it was all in my head. And Ben’s head. Which it wasn’t. Or Ollie’s too afraid.’
I double-take. ‘You knew Ben felt that way too?’
‘Yeah. I knew,’ she says and looks into her glass.
‘Oh,’ I reply quietly. And then I pick up on the other thing she said.
‘What’s Ollie too afraid of?’ I almost whisper. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
‘Ben’s wrath; you turning him down; me telling him I knew you were probably the reason why he wasn’t ever as into me as I was with him.’
So much sad information. I can’t work out what I’m more concerned about: Liv’s fears from long ago, or how grounded they sound and how I feel about it now. ‘You’ve been sitting on this for a really long time.’
‘Years,’ she says. ‘I can say it aloud now. To you. Which is progress. I’ve moved on.
I think Ollie’s happy and still seeing someone.
And you’re with one of the hottest men on the planet.
’ She practically shouts this last sentence, which means that most of the people sitting at tables around us turn and look at us.
I sink lower in my seat out of embarrassment.
‘Liv!’ I reprimand her. ‘Shh. Please. And it’s early days. It’s only been a few months.’
‘Sorry,’ she replies.
Then it happens: the thing I never thought would ever happen to me.
Someone brazenly holds up their phone and takes my picture.
They put it away again, studiously not looking at me.
Although it happened in LA with Sam, this feels different.
We’ve been on dates a few times over the last few months when he’s come over to London and we’ve been photographed, but so surreptitiously that I didn’t know it was happening.
The pictures the next morning are always a shock, but we look good, holding hands while walking in the park or choosing books together in Waterstones.
I never know when I’m having my photo taken on the sly, whereas this is so obvious, so close, such a brazen invasion of privacy, and I’m so stunned I don’t speak, don’t do anything. I simply sit still.
Liv stares in the girl’s direction. ‘She just took your photo,’ Liv declares in horror.
‘Yes. She did.’ I don’t know what to do. What can I do? Nothing. The girl is sitting, chatting with her friend as if nothing’s happened, avoiding looking at me.
‘Aren’t you going to do something?’ Liv asks in disbelief.
‘Like what?’ I enquire, puzzled. ‘Wrestle her phone off her? She’ll just take another photo while I’m doing so. It’s only because I’m with Sam. I didn’t think I was famous enough for this, to be honest. And now I definitely don’t want to be.’
‘Too late,’ Liv says, ‘it’s happened. Or rather it’s happening. People – women – love Sam Charlton. Some more than others, as that girl clearly follows him online and knows who you are.’ Without warning, she stands up.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Sit down.’
‘No,’ Liv replies and walks over to the young woman.
‘You took my friend’s photo,’ she declares. I notice Liv is not asking; she’s telling. ‘Hand it over.’
The girl’s mouth drops open. ‘What?’
‘Hand. Over. Your. Phone.’
‘N … no,’ the girl says but she’s not denying the accusation.
‘I’m her lawyer,’ Liv fibs. ‘There are legal steps we can take, once I find out who you are, which won’t take me long. Or you can delete the photo, then go into your deleted items and remove it from there too. The clock is ticking. Get on with it.’
I’m cringing massively, while also wishing I was more like Liv. Where did this powerhouse come from? The girl does as instructed, hand shaking; she taps on her phone and, by the end of the ordeal, her cheeks have flamed red. I half expect her to get verbal with Liv, but she doesn’t at all.
‘Well done,’ Liv says. ‘You know it makes sense. Now fuck off.’
‘Oh my God,’ I moan into my drink with mortification. Posh Liv has turned into some kind of gangland heavy, worthy of a Guy Ritchie movie.
The girl blinks, stands up and she and her friend stare me out and then move towards the door.
‘Liv!’ I say in awe as she sits back down. ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’
‘I can. But I’m not going to be around to do that all the time. You’re on your own after this one, I’m afraid.’
I’m too in shock to string another sentence together.
‘Maybe you and Sam will fade into obscurity and you won’t have to worry about it happening again,’ Liv says hopefully, but a sympathetic smile tells me she hasn’t quite worked out what she’s said. ‘When are you seeing Sam next?’
‘He’s coming to London again next week.’
‘Then you’ll have to get used to it, I’m afraid. Pictures – pictures everywhere,’ she says, signalling for the waitress so that we can get another round.
‘Maybe Sam and I need to start hanging out in secret.’
‘Juicy,’ Liv says. ‘Can I meet him this time?’
‘Let me see how I feel, after I meet up with him again. It’s very, very early days.’
‘It’s been six months. And you’re weighing up if you want to keep seeing him? You know you’re living my dream scenario, don’t you?’
I can’t help but laugh, because it is mad.
All of this is totally mad. But now not only do I have to contend with people getting snappy with their phones when I’m trying to eat bar snacks, but I also keep thinking about Ollie.
What Liv said has really got to me. She was worried about me and Ollie back then.
And back then I’d have been absolutely appalled at the idea of me and Ollie.
But now. Oh God, why do I keep thinking about this?
What is it that’s doing this to me? Why can’t I control this weird, weird little feeling of … of I don’t know what.
‘So you’ll come along? You’re in the country?’ Liv asks.
I have no idea what I’ve missed. ‘Sorry … come to what?’
She inhales impatiently. ‘To my birthday party. I’m planning nice and early. It’s going to be at a gorgeous Italian restaurant.’
‘Lovely. Count me in. Send me the details and let me know what’s on your birthday wishlist.’
‘A heap of the cosmetics you’re currently advertising.’
‘Oh, I get loads of that for free. What can I actually buy you?’ I ask.
‘You get it all for free?’ she asks, shaking her head slowly. ‘Really?’
I nod. ‘You can come over, make a night of it, try everything on and take whatever you fancy. They’ll send me more, if I ask.’
Her mouth hangs open in disbelief. ‘I either really want to be you right now. Or I want to hate you. I can’t work out which.’
‘Please don’t hate me. Love me for ever,’ I beg with huge puppy-dog eyes.
‘I will love you for ever. But only if you bring Sam Charlton to my party. Otherwise you’re dead to me,’ she replies mock-seriously.
‘Consider it done,’ I say, somewhat reluctantly, as I have absolutely no intention of bringing Sam to a cosy dinner party and I wonder, only seconds later, how I can get out of it.