Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [125]
Now she just needed to tell Tom. So she was sitting in the bar on the stool, legs crossed, in the beautiful dress, with the beautiful shoes, and the knickers that matched, with the smooth legs and the makeup that had taken her an hour to put on, and the hair that had taken the hairdresser ninety minutes to make it look as though it had been put up in five. With her last thirty pounds until payday at the end of the week cooling in an ice-bucket next to her. Trying to resist the dish of oily olives in front of her (bound to drip and Susannah would kill her), and trying not to slip off the stool.
When he came in, it was the first time in her life that seeing him had made her heart do that flip thing that a thousand songs had been written about. She almost laughed. Smiles bubbled up in her. He looked sort of scruffy and a bit tired, but he looked like her Tom. And if he didn’t exactly stop dead in his tracks, he did go a little bit Richard Gere. ‘Blimey, Nat.’
‘Hello.’
‘This is nice. And you look… you look really beautiful.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Then he saw the champagne, and his heart did a little thing of its own.
The old, old friends who had never been short of things to say to each other were suddenly very quiet. The barman appeared and poured them both a glass, and Tom raised his to clink against hers. She couldn’t see what he was thinking. He looked excited and sparkly-eyed, but she wasn’t sure.
Natalie took a huge gulp and put down her glass. ‘I know we’re not quite at Z, Tom…’ He raised that mobile eyebrow of his. She had a sudden urge to kiss the scar. ‘… but you’ve won.’
‘I didn’t know there’d be a winner. What’s the prize?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I am.’ Shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean that. It sounded horrible. It’s not that I think I’m a prize or anything like that, quite the opposite, in fact. If I’m any kind of prize it’s probably the booby.’ She grimaced. ‘Didn’t mean that either. Stop talking, Natalie. Stop talking rubbish.’
He was smiling at her now. ‘Don’t stop.’
‘I mean… I mean you were right. And I was wrong.’
Tom didn’t want to let himself go ahead of her. He wanted her to say it. Not to torture her, but just because if he didn’t hear her say it he wouldn’t believe it.
She was pink-cheeked now and, despite the pretty dress, the extraordinary cleavage and the sexy shoes, and the immaculateness of her, he liked the pink cheeks most of all. ‘What are you trying to say, Natalie?’
‘Don’t you already know?’
‘I think I do. I hope I do. But you have to say it to me.’
‘I love you, Tom. I properly love you.’
‘Properly?’
She smacked his leg. ‘Don’t make fun of me.’
He put his hand on the hand that had slapped him. ‘I’m not.’
‘And if you love me or, frankly, even if you’re really fond of me, but actually agree that chemistry can grow…’
‘Are you still on about chemistry?’
‘I am… except this time… I have it. Big-time.’
‘Properly?’
‘Properly.’
He picked up her hand and kissed it, never taking his eyes off her face. He looked serious. ‘Well…’ And then the seriousness gave way, and his big Tom smile broke across his face, and that moment when they had been a different Tom and Natalie had gone, and they were back to old Tom and Natalie, except that they were new in so many ways. ‘Well, in that case, I have to say that I… properly love you too.’
They sat, stared and smiled at each other, then Natalie kissed him hard and they smiled some more.
‘So what’s your Y? Unless it’s W-H-Y, as in, why not give us a chance?’
‘That could have worked.’
‘But it isn’t?’
‘No.’ Natalie drew herself up to her full height on the stool, and shimmied with delight. ‘It’s Y for Your place or mine? And,’ she took the champagne glass from his hand, ‘this time we’re going to be sober, all the way through…’
July
Lucy
There was no need for this to be a secret, so why did she still feel so guilty, sitting here, waiting for him? It was a pretty incongruous venue. The coffee-shop in a crowded department store, mid-morning. Just before the end of term, it was full of mothers making