Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [68]
At that, a disgusted glance shot around the office like an electric current. Lisa may well have found the missing transparencies, but she’d done bugger all else for the previous two days.
Lisa had been vaguely aware that Oliver had had a girlfriend, but it came as no surprise when the news broke that he was once again single. She knew she was next in line. Though they flirted like mad with each other, they were never coy. Their solidarity was so obvious, it would have been disingenuous to deny it.
So obvious was it that Flicka Dupont (assistant features editor), Edwina Harris (fashion junior) and Marina Booth (health and beauty editor) hatched a plot to cut her out of her share of a basket of free John Frieda shampoos, on the basis that she was getting enough perks.
The expected day finally dawned when Oliver showed up at Chic, made straight for Lisa and said, ‘Babes, can I take you for a drink on Friday night?’
She hesitated, about to play hard to get, then thought better of it. With a shaky laugh she exhaled, ‘OK.’
‘You were going to make me suffer, weren’t you?’ he exclaimed.
‘Uh-huh,’ she nodded solemnly.
They both screamed with laughter so loud that, three desks away, Flicka Dupont muttered, ‘Please!’ and had to twiddle her finger in her ear to dislodge the ringing.
Flicka later sniffed to Edwina, ‘I don’t envy her.’
‘Gosh, neither do I!’
‘He’s a loose cannon.’
‘A pain in the bum,’ Edwina agreed.
They plunged into silence.
‘I’d quite like to have sex with him though,’ Flicka eventually admitted.
‘Would you really?’ Edwina had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
On the appointed Friday night, Oliver and Lisa went for a drink. Then he took her for dinner, where they had such fun that afterwards they went to a club and danced for hours. At three a.m. they went to his flat and had breathless, long-awaited sex, before snatching a few hours’ sleep. The following morning they awoke in each other’s arms. They spent the rest of the day in bed, talking, dozing and intermittently savaging each other with passion.
That evening, sated, they voluptuously rose from their lovers’ nest and Oliver took Lisa to a fairly crappy French restaurant, its only virtue that it was walking distance. Lit by red candles stuck in wine bottles, they fed each other tasteless mussels and tough coq au vin.
‘It’s the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted.’ Lisa licked her fingers and gazed across the table at him.
On the way home, they got swept up into an Armenian wedding that was being held in the local church hall. ‘Come, come,’ an expansive man invited, as they drifted past. ‘Celebrate my son’s happiness.’
‘But…’ Lisa protested. This was no way for a style warrior such as herself to spend Saturday night! What if someone she knew saw her?
But Oliver said easily, ‘Why not? Come on, Lees, might be fun.’
Drinks were pressed into their hands, and they sat in a bubble of dream-like ease as all around, young and old in embroidered, flouncy peasant clothes, danced strange polka-like jigs to shrill, speedy bazouki-style music. An old woman with a headscarf and a thick accent pinched Lisa’s cheek affectionately, smiled from Oliver to her and said, ‘In laff. So in laff.’
‘Does she mean I am or you are?’ Lisa asked anxiously, belatedly realizing that she might be wearing her heart on her sleeve too much.
‘You, lady.’ The old woman gave a gappy smile.
‘Naff off,’ Lisa muttered.
Instantly Oliver exploded into laughter, his beautiful lips stretched around his rows of strong, white teeth. ‘Touchy!’ he teased. ‘Must be because you do love me.’
‘Or maybe you love me,’ she replied huffily.
‘I never said I didn’t,’ he replied.
And though it wasn’t the kind of thing she normally went around feeling, there, in the unexpectedness of that surreal, beautiful wedding party, Lisa felt as though they’d been touched by the hand of God.
On Sunday morning, they’d awoken coiled around each other. Oliver bundled her into his car and belted up the motorway to Alton Towers, where they spent the day daring each other to