Whiteout - Ken Follett [58]
“I’m just sorry you couldn’t do it more graciously,” said her sister.
“Oh, fuck off, Bella,” said Toni, and she hung up the phone.
Feeling depressed, she called the spa and canceled her reservation. Then she asked to speak to one of her party. After a delay, it was Charlie who came to the phone. He had a Lancashire accent. “Where are you?” he said. “We’re all in the Jacuzzi—you’re missing the fun!”
“I can’t come,” she said miserably, and she explained.
Charlie was outraged. “It’s not fair on you,” he said. “You need a break.”
“I know, but I can’t bear to think of her on her own in that place when others are with their families.”
“Plus you’ve had a few problems at work today.”
“Yes. It’s very sad, but I think Oxenford Medical has come through it all right—provided nothing else happens.”
“I saw you on the telly.”
“How did I look?”
“Gorgeous—but I fancied your boss.”
“Me, too, but he’s got three grown-up children he doesn’t want to upset, so I think he’s a lost cause.”
“By heck, you have had a bad day.”
“I’m sorry to let you all down.”
“It won’t be the same without you.”
“I’ll have to hang up, Charlie—I’d better fetch Mother as soon as possible. Happy Christmas.” She cradled the handset and sat staring at the phone. “What a miserable life,” she said aloud. “What a miserable bloody life.”
6 P.M.
CRAIG’S relationship with Sophie was advancing very slowly.
He had spent all afternoon with her. He had beaten her at table tennis and lost at pool. They had agreed about music—they both liked guitar bands better than drum-and-bass. They both read horror fiction, though she loved Stephen King and he preferred Anne Rice. He told her about his parents’ marriage, which was stormy but passionate, and she told him about Ned and Jennifer’s divorce, which was rancorous.
But she gave him no encouragement. She did not casually touch his arm, or look intently at his face when he talked to her, or bring into the conversation romantic topics such as dating and necking. Instead, she talked of a world that excluded him, a world of nightclubs—how did she get in, at fourteen?—and friends who took drugs and boys who had motorcycles.
As dinner approached, he began to feel desperate. He did not want to spend five days pursuing her for the sake of one kiss at the end. His idea was to win her over on the first day and spend the holiday really getting to know her. Clearly this was not her timetable. He needed a shortcut to her heart.
She seemed to consider him beneath her romantic notice. All this talk of older people implied that he was just a kid, even though he was older than Sophie by a year and seven months. He had to find some way to prove he was as mature and sophisticated as she.
Sophie would not be the first girl he had kissed. He had dated Caroline Stratton from tenth grade at his school for six weeks, but although she was pretty he had been bored. Lindy Riley, the plump sister of a footballing friend, had been more exciting, and had let him do several things he had never done before, but then she had switched her affections to the keyboard player in a Glasgow rock band. And there were several other girls he had kissed once or twice.
But this felt different. After meeting Sophie at his mother’s birthday party, he had thought about her every day for four months. He had downloaded one of the photographs his father had taken at the party, showing Craig gesturing with his hands and Sophie laughing. He used it as the screen saver on his computer. He still looked at other girls, but always comparing them with Sophie, thinking that by comparison this one was too pale, that one too fat, another simply plain-looking, and all of them tediously conventional. He did not mind that she was difficult—he was used to difficult women,