Chapter Thirty-One
Anika catches her reflection in the sleek lacquered wall at the bottom of the stairs leading into the restaurant.
She can just about make out the wild look in her eyes.
There’s a hum of chatter and a low pulse of beats coming through the expensive speaker system, and Anika also notices the hostess frostily eye her and her oversized bag.
She unthinkingly grabbed her everyday handbag on her way out of the flat before the screening, and she clutches it over one shoulder now, eyeing the woman back.
The hostess tucks her long, dark hair behind one ear.
‘Is there anything you’d like to leave with us?
’ she asks. Anika would like this woman to leave her attitude at the door.
When Cam declines, she glances again at Anika, then says, ‘Of course. Right this way, then. The rest of your party haven’t yet arrived. ’
She deposits them at the large round table in one corner and they both wait for her to offer something more as she begins to turn on her heel. When she doesn’t, Cam clears his throat. ‘Can we grab some drinks menus while we wait?’
The hostess at least has the decency to seem a little chastened. ‘Yes, of course.’ She steps away for a moment, returning with the menus. ‘Some water for the table? Still or sparkling, or …’
Cam nods, replying, ‘Both,’ with an indulgent smile.
Anika finally feels her muscles relaxing as Cam turns to her, flipping open the drinks menu.
Even though she has one in front of her, too, he puts it on the table between them and then takes off his suit jacket to hang on the back of his chair.
She leans in towards him, absorbing the potent warmth of his body and trying to keep her breaths moving evenly.
Cam has only got more magnetic with the passing of the years, but, alongside the increasingly heightened sensuality to every interaction with him, Anika feels the deep pull of a heartfelt connection, too.
This is nothing like the throwaway sexiness of her encounters with Mo or Hattie.
It’s much more. So much it’s almost scaring her, but she also wants to poke at the feelings to see what happens, like the oddly delicious pain of a bruise reminding her she’s alive.
‘Let’s get you something to drink,’ Cam says to her. The masculine, spicy scent of him is heady and as she turns to nod at him, she finds his dark eyes slanting towards her, his face close like he’s reading her thoughts. She’s about to answer him when a voice interrupts.
‘Ah! There you are!’
They don’t spring apart, instead pulling away from one another reluctantly.
It seems the rest of their ‘party’ has arrived.
Cam gets to his feet to give a tall, dreadlocked man a tight embrace.
‘Brother. It’s nearly time, yeah? Huh!’ the man says, holding Cam away for a moment and shaking him gently, his handsome grin showing straight white teeth.
‘Max, this is Anika,’ Cam says, gesturing downwards and locking eyes with her again. ‘Anika Lapo, this powerhouse is our director and my best mate, Maxwell Lumumba.’
Max takes her hand and kisses the back of it, then winks at Cam. ‘Anika,’ he says with a spoonful of knowing that elicits an affable punch in the arm from his friend.
‘Good to meet you. Amazing job with the film,’ she tells Max sincerely, and he gives her prayer-hands.
Cam’s manager, Asante, nods another greeting towards Anika with a smile.
He’s pulling out a seat for a mixed-race woman with a shaggy-bob wig cut just above her shoulders and a spray of freckles across her face that in combination make her seem both friendly and severe.
She sits down beside Anika with a quick businesslike smile, and they’re joined by a petite white woman with chic glasses pushed up into her greying hair, and a ruddy-cheeked man in a blue suit with the receding, blonde-highlighted hair of someone attempting to cling to their youth.
‘Here comes the money,’ Cam quips as they all sit down, nodding to everyone else.
He claps Asante on his shoulder as seems to be their ritual, and the others all laugh at what Cam said, rather than refute his assertion.
‘Everyone, this is Anika Lapo, an old friend and new partner in crime.’ As he speaks, he runs his palm briefly across Anika’s shoulder blades, in a way that to everyone else would seem nonchalant, but for her is an invitation.
A dance move. Hiding the thrill she feels where he’s touched her, Anika greets them all, but, under the table, she edges her crossed leg so that her foot ever so lightly grazes the leg of Cam’s trousers.
He’s talking to the man across the table, but she can sense that he feels it, like static sparks.
They all order cocktails and then the blonde man, who Anika learns is Nathan Norton, an investor with a big interest in music, films and ‘the business of Cam Asiedu’, orders a load of tasting platters for the table.
The lady with the bob is Una Hayes, the head of the film-production company, and Susan Enticnap, with the glasses in her hair, ‘keeps Nate in line’.
Anika isn’t sure what that means, but smiles all the same.
‘So, Anika,’ the bobbed woman says once the waiter departs. ‘How do you know Cameron here?’
They glance at one another and Cam draws in a breath, but Anika beats him to it, halting him with a hand on his thigh under the table.
She intends it to be a pat, but it lingers almost involuntarily, enjoying that muscle again and feeling rewarded at the tension that tightens through it.
‘I was a sad little sweet-sixteen-year-old, just come back to London after my mum had divorced her suburban husband, and there was this intriguing boy who lived across the road. But he didn’t notice me, even though I had a massive crush on him …
’ Anika hears herself sounding flirty and confident, and internally thanks the diary again.
Cam is clearly about to intervene, but makes a surprised noise as she says the last part. ‘Oh. Rah, OK,’ he says, recovering. ‘But I did notice you, didn’t I?’ Anika waves her hands in front of his face to shush him and they all laugh at his exaggerated exasperation.
‘He thought my name was Anita.’ She takes it as another chance to touch him, patting his arm in humorous consolation. His forearm flexes and he turns to look at her.
‘True, might have remixed your name for a second there. I was bedazzled. Forgive me?’
There’s a silent dialogue going on between them even as she speaks.
‘OK, I forgive you.’ She takes a breath and turns away from Cam reluctantly, back to the table.
‘Anyway, one night there was a house party.’ She proceeds cautiously, keeping the mood buoyant.
‘Sad little me was hiding in what she thought was going to be the bathroom, but it was some kind of utility room. Then who bursts in but Kwame Cameron Asiedu here.’ They’re all watching, listening.
Asante is chuckling to himself with a surprised look at Cam, as though he hadn’t heard the full story.
‘Oh, yeah?’ his friend says.
Cam is looking at her too, his eyes twinkling, but then he glances over at Asante, then at Max, who subtly shakes his head at the bigger guy. ‘Wasn’t like that.’ Cam turns back to look at Anika. ‘It was your birthday,’ he continues softly. ‘Sweet seventeen.’
Anika falters at the emotion held in his gaze and her voice comes out more quietly.
‘Maybe he was paying attention, then.’ The laughter of the others at the table sounds distant, because she’s unable to pull her attention away from Cam.
Eventually, she turns back towards them all.
‘We talked for ages and I told him how I’d never been kissed.
’ She pulls a mock-pitiful face and they all laugh again, lapping it up.
‘Oh my gosh, I love where this is headed,’ Susan, the woman with the glasses in her hair, says. Anika draws a breath, but the story is interrupted by the arrival of their cocktails, followed swiftly by the food. Nevertheless, the guests at the table are eager for Anika to continue.
‘Anyway, long story short …’ She hesitates.
Am I just putting on a show? Is this being truthful?
Her voice lowers, becomes less shot through with the mirth of playing to a crowd.
She looks at Cam again as she speaks. ‘He kissed me. Just like that. Like it was no big deal. Like it wouldn’t …
be the thing that symbolised a change I’d want for myself, deep down, if I really admitted it.
Cam just … kissed me.’ She’s almost whispering now, his dark eyes shining down at her as if they are, once again, the only two in the room.
‘And not, like, a bullshit kiss. A beautiful one; an important one.’ She sucks in a long breath, looking round the table again.
‘My first kiss. This guy right here.’ That tone is back in her voice and they all clap, even stern-looking Una, who clasps her hands together at her throat and declares it the sweetest story she’s heard in ages.
‘So how did you flop it, G?’ Asante asks teasingly, biting into a spring roll.
Cam looks down for a second. ‘I don’t know, man.
Life. You know.’ He eyes his friend meaningfully.
Then to the others, he says, ‘We parted ways, unfortunately.’ Anika feels Cam taking the full weight of the history and holding it.
‘I did not stop wondering about her ever since.’ He turns his head towards Anika once more, unrelenting in his scrutiny, ignoring the growing tension of the others around the table.
Anika swallows hard, then reaches quickly for her drink.
Her head is swimming, but not because of the alcohol.
‘That’s … nice to know,’ she says, half to the table, half to Cam.