A Year of New Adventures Read online

  I tiptoed around as though there was a sleeping tiger behind the door and put the crockery down with exaggerated care. I dropped a teaspoon and waited with bated breath in case he came out roaring, but nothing happened and I slunk back into the sitting room.

  ‘No sign of our celebrity?’ Nancy said in a stage whisper.

  I shook my head. ‘Perhaps he’s writing.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s gone to bed.’ Helena said.

  I fought back the mental image of Oliver Forest in bed and asked Nick how his novel was progressing.

  We all chatted happily enough until after ten-thirty, which was plenty late enough for me, and then Helena and I set the breakfast table in stressed silence in case we disturbed him. Shortly afterwards I went upstairs. I was quite exhausted. And this was just the beginning.

  Helena came up a few minutes later and rummaged around in her suitcase for her pyjamas and her sponge bag. We were sharing a bathroom with Elaine, so we did a bit of polite dodging backwards and forwards until we were sure she had finished her nightly rituals and was safely tucked up in her bed.

  I wanted to talk to Helena but as usual she was snoring gently in minutes, the product of an untroubled mind, whereas I lay in bed, unable to sleep at all.

  I tried to put Oliver Forest out of my thoughts, but instead I remembered what we’d talked about at lunchtime. I knew everyone was right. My life did need an adrenaline shot. What could I do to make my life more exciting?

  I needed a list.

  I know, a ten-point plan!

  I sat up and reached for my notebook and the pen that lights up in the dark that Helena had given me for my last birthday. What would someone put on an ‘adventure list’? Climb mountains? Hmm I’m not really great with heights. Explore foreign lands? That takes money. Learn how to do something dangerous … Did adventurous have to mean dangerous? I’d prefer it not to. Not only was my budget limited, if I was honest, what I really needed was to take a few more adventurous leaps in my own life. Maybe if I kept to things that were easy to achieve I might actually do it … because there was no way I was going cliff jumping! Right then …

  1) Go on an expensive unexpectedly cheap holiday. Somewhere I’ve never been. Take masses of brilliant photos that are not obscured by other people’s heads, own finger, or phone case. Win photographic competition.

  2) Lose a stone before 1) happens by starting a new clean-eating regime. Raw vegetables instead of chocolate. Fruit instead of ice cream.

  3) Declutter wardrobe in manner of impossibly stylish woman. Put all remaining clothes into order using limited colour palette so I don’t look as though I’ve dressed in the dark. Become known as elegant, sophisticated person whose clothes fit. Get measured for bra.

  4) Declutter kitchen cupboards. Check use-by dates on all items and discard where appropriate. Do not replace on the off chance I will be using a lot of ground nutmeg any time soon.

  I paused to think and chewed the end of my pen.

  5) Get second bedroom cleared of all junk. Ditto garden shed. Do not scream and hop about; woodlice are harmless. Find out what purple flower thing in garden is.

  6) Find a proper job that pays proper money, has a pension scheme, and paid holidays.

  7) Do 6) first. Before all the other things.

  8) Get a tattoo. A really small one I can hide.

  9) Consider eyebrow waxing.

  10) Rethink shoes. Ugg boots – while comfortable and cute – are only suitable for children and people who go to the supermarket in pj’s. Wear heels more often so am forced to be elegant and stand up straight and not scuttle around like a beetle on speed.

  I read back through the list. It sounded manageable, but also a bit outside my comfort zone – when was the last time I had allowed myself to imagine I could ever be stylish? I’d never been stylish. But wasn’t that the point? And a tattoo? I wasn’t even sure I approved of them.

  And could I start a new career? Even just thinking it made me shiver with anticipation.

  Maybe it would be possible. But doing what? For the moment I needed to concentrate on tomorrow. I was going to make a Victoria sponge and a chicken carbonara sauce. And two quiches for lunch.

  Would Oliver approve of that?

  Real men don’t eat quiche.

  Matt said that the first and only time I made it for him. I should have known then it was never going to work out between us. He didn’t like salad either and only tolerated fruit as a decoration.

  Did Oliver eat fruit? And salad? Would he like the cake I was going to make?

  I clicked off my pen and lay down again, impatient with myself. I’d just written a list of all my big adventurous plans and I couldn’t stop thinking about a man! And an annoying man at that. Anyone would think he was the only guest here; the others were equally as important. Just because he was famous didn’t mean I should fixate on his needs.

  His needs.

  Did Oliver Forest have needs?

  What sort of needs?

  Was Pippa his girlfriend? Was she in love with him? All the evidence pointed to no.

  But maybe she was and that was why she was prepared to tolerate his moods?

  Not a chance in hell. Surely not, considering the way he spoke to her! Even I wouldn’t stand someone treating me like that and my self-esteem had been flattened over the years.

  Did he have a softer side when they were alone together? Was he sweet to her when no one else was looking?

  Perhaps he was bad tempered because he was missing her?

  Perhaps he was sex-starved.

  Was he good in bed?

  FFS! Shut up, woman!

  I thumped my pillow and tried to think about something else.

  It struck me that: 11) Finish the book and get it published hadn’t figured in my thinking at all. That was a bit of a surprise wasn’t it?

  There was no denying it: my work of so-called light-hearted Tudor romance had solidified into a turgid disaster over the last six months. I think it’s very hard to write about love when you’re not in love yourself. Perhaps I should shift to writing about revenge killings?

  There was a soft glow from the street light outside the house but at midnight it went out and the room was intensely dark. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I looked through the open curtain next to my bed and saw a clear, dark sky studded with stars.

  I tried the usual methods of getting myself to sleep. What would I do if I won the lottery? One million? Ten million?

  Nope, nothing worked.

  Perhaps I should try and read one of Oliver’s books?

  My eyes snapped open.

  Now that was a thought! I wondered if there were any rude bits? You know, sex scenes?

  For God’s sake, how childish was I?

  I could certainly remember some erotic scenes in the film; the sight of Channing Tatum with his shirt off was the only thing that made the film worth seeing in my opinion. Had Oliver written them, or had they been put in by Hollywood? I couldn’t wait to find out. I lay wide-eyed in the gloom and considered the possibilities.

  I’d not read many sex scenes by male authors. It wasn’t as though I went looking for them, but I was intrigued. Would Oliver’s style be realistic? Would his hero dump his submachine gun behind the bedroom door and do erotically slow and explicit things to some silky-skinned beauty who had been panting for him since their first meeting?

  Or maybe his sand-encrusted hero would be forceful and determined, sweeping women away on a tide of lust and pheromones? I could almost imagine him, pulling his scarf off his face with a devilish laugh and ripping her flimsy garments with his strong white teeth? Coo er, actually that sounded rather good to me.

  Or possibly he would close the bedroom door behind him in a flurry of asterisks.

  Perhaps by the end of the week he would be swapping tips with Vivienne about alternative names for body parts? Maybe I could sneak downstairs without disturbing anyone and get one of his books off the bookcase and find out? It suddenly seeme
d a really exciting prospect. And then I fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  The following day I woke late to find Helena had already dressed and gone downstairs. I hurriedly dragged some clothes on and ran a brush through my hair, wondering how I had managed to sleep through her departure. She wasn’t usually so considerate. If she was up then generally her view was I should be too.

  She was in the kitchen prising frozen croissants apart with a knife and putting them onto a baking tray. She had already sorted the juices and jams ready for people to come down for breakfast.

  ‘Afternoon,’ she said rather tartly.

  ‘Sorry. I slept really badly,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear you get up.’

  ‘I chucked a pillow at you and even that didn’t work.’

  I jerked my head towards Oliver’s room. ‘Any sign of himself?’

  ‘Nothing yet. I expect he’s still asleep. I’ve tried to keep the noise down.’

  I looked at the kitchen clock; it was nearly eight o’clock – breakfast time – and I could hear someone coming downstairs. It was Nancy, swathed in a strange voluminous garment of various shades of purple topped off with a jaunty cerise beret. She was certainly eye-catching.

  ‘I can smell coffee,’ she said. ‘Exactly what I need.’

  Helena put a tray of clean mugs and a freshly filled cafetière on the table in front of her and Nancy helped herself.

  ‘So? Any sign of our celebrity?’ she hissed.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Helena said.

  I went to fetch the milk and yogurt from the fridge only to find they were already on the table. I began to fidget. I remembered last night, wondering what sort of erotica Oliver was into. The thought still made me feel rather odd.

  How casually could I go into the dining room and take one of his books from the shelf?

  ‘Was everything cleared out of the dining room last night?’ I said airily. ‘I’ll go and check we didn’t miss anything.’

  I took a damp cloth, went into the dining room, and pulled the curtains back to let in the pale morning sunshine. The room smelled of old beams and dust and I would have opened the window if I had been tall enough to reach the catch. There were a couple of wine glasses on the mantelpiece to take and I wiped a handful of crumbs off the table. Then I went to the bookcase and pulled out The Dirty Road.

  The cover was pretty much what I had expected. A dark-haired man, his forehead smeared with dirt, squinting against the sun, a scarf around the lower half of his face. It’s called a shemagh by the way – I looked it up. In the background there was a well-endowed woman in need of a bra fitting, crouched on the ground looking hopefully towards our sandblasted hero, and what looked like an oil refinery on fire in the distance. So far so predictable.

  I heard a burst of laughter from the kitchen and the unmistakeable sound of Vivienne’s hooting laugh. I winced. Oliver would love waking up to her racket.

  I stuffed The Dirty Road up my jumper and dashed up the back stairs to put the book under my pillow for later.

  In my absence everyone, except Oliver of course, had arrived. It’s like being on holiday; at home you’d skip breakfast and have two cups of coffee but in a hotel you feel honour bound to go for it. This morning we were offering Danish pastries and croissants and by the looks of things our guests were hoovering them up as fast as possible. Jars of apricot and raspberry jam were flashing around the table at high speed and the new block of butter was covered in stab marks and flakes of pastry.

  Helena was already making more coffee and the chat was all wonderfully lively and book-related. Which is one of the great things about writers: they will talk for hours about their work in progress and other writers will listen and make helpful suggestions. Everywhere else people’s eyes glaze over and they ask when your book is going to be in Waterstones.

  ‘No sign of Oliver?’ I asked as I took a new batch of croissants to the table.

  ‘Not a squeak. Do you think he’s dead?’

  ‘Well if he is I’m not going to look. Not after the last time!’

  ‘Oh yes, you never did tell me what happened,’ Helena whispered. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I made a complete tit of myself in every sense of the word,’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ Helena’s face screwed up in confusion.

  ‘I fell over and spilled a jug of water. Remember? I was soaking and you thought I’d had a shower?’

  ‘Yes that sounds like you. More coffee, Nick?’

  Helena sailed off to where Nick was sitting happily larding slabs of butter onto his croissant and she topped up his mug. They exchanged a shy smile and I shook my head at her. Everyone knows you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, don’t they? I speak from bitter experience; I went out with an electrician once and my immersion heater never worked properly again after he mended it.

  At last everyone was sorted and we sat down to join them, eager to hear everyone’s plans for the day.

  Nancy was going to resume her plotting; Vivienne was still busy with the handcuffs scene and was wondering if it was possible for her heroine to unlock them with a safety pin in her teeth. Vivienne admitted when she was seventeen she had once successfully picked a lock with a crochet hook so she could get at her father’s sherry.

  ‘I’d quite like to go up the church tower tomorrow if anyone fancies it?’ Nick said.

  Helena jerked in her chair with the prospect.

  I saw Vivienne and Nancy exchange a meaningful look.

  ‘We’re not very good with steps either are we, Nancy?’ Vivienne said.

  ‘And it’s a bit wet for me,’ Elaine said.

  Helena tried to appear casual. ‘I’d love to … if you didn’t mind …’

  ‘No, it would be lovely,’ Nick said, his freckled face flushed with pleasure, ‘so I’d better get on with some actual writing today. I promised myself I’d get past fifty thousand words this week and I’ve got a way to go.’

  He jammed in the last of his breakfast, made some half-hearted attempt to help Helena tidy up, and went off upstairs to get his laptop. Several cups of coffee later the others followed suit and Helena and I were left to clear away the breakfast things. It was nearly nine-thirty.

  ‘What about Oliver?’ Helena said.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll arrange some things down this end of the table and wait and see if he comes out.’

  I set to with my cloth, wiping up jam and making the table look reasonably attractive again. Helena loaded the dishwasher and washed the baking trays. Still there was no sign of him. I rinsed out a cafetière, loaded it up with fresh coffee, and put Oliver’s hideous bucket-mug next to it. Then we both went upstairs to get our laptops and tidy ourselves up. I for one had a blob of apricot jam on my shirt.

  ‘So you’re off with Nick Fitzgerald again?’ I said.

  Helena tried and failed to look cool.

  ‘We’re just going to look at a church and go up the tower,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Not as though we’re going clubbing is it? OK if I grab a shower?’

  ‘Of course, and I don’t think he’s the sort to go clubbing any more than you are,’ I said, scrabbling in my suitcase for a clean shirt. There were three, all of them a bit crumpled. I never seemed to get properly unpacked at these things. The week always ended with my clothes in a big untidy heap as though someone had stirred the contents of my suitcase with a giant spoon.

  Helena on the other hand had hung all her tiny clothes up in the wardrobe and filled two drawers. Perhaps that’s why she always appeared neat and crisp and I usually looked as though I’d just come back from a jumble sale?

  (Point 3 on my to-do list would soon sort this out.)

  Anyway, it was early days so I still had a chance of appearing relatively tidy. I had yet another cake to make too – better get on with it.

  Downstairs the kitchen was pretty much as we had left it except the cafetière and the bucket-mug were missing. I think there were also a couple of pastries fewer. So Oliver had taken the opportunity to come
out, grab some breakfast, and disappear back into his room again. Honestly, we weren’t so bad were we? Did he really need to sneak about avoiding us? How childish.

  I worked on in silence for a while until the cake was in the oven and I was taking the first batch of cookies out when Oliver’s door opened.

  He stood there for a moment watching me and then he held out his cafetière towards me accusingly. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just shook the cafetière towards me as though I was psychic. I wiped my hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I said.

  I knew I was being stroppy. I knew exactly what he wanted. Personally, I would have thought he’d had more than enough caffeine for one day and it was only ten-fifteen.

  ‘What do I have to do to get this refilled?’ he said.

  I went over to where he stood, and took the coffee pot from him.

  ‘You could ask nicely?’ I said with a saccharine smile. ‘It’s usually a good starting point.’

  ‘I assumed you would have been a bit more on the ball by now?’ he snapped and went back into his room, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘Well you know what they say about assume,’ I muttered.

  I made coffee, put it on a tray, took it with some of the fresh cookies to his door, and knocked.

  ‘Yep.’

  Do come in, thank you so much.

  ‘Your coffee and some cookies.’

  How kind.

  ‘I don’t want those,’ he said. ‘You women are obsessed with cake and biscuits. Take them away.’

  You women?

  He hadn’t even looked up from his laptop. I felt rather like tipping the whole lot over him. Except it would probably result in a legal claim for actual bodily harm; not a good idea if you think about it.

  International bestselling author in burns unit.

  ‘I swear she did it on purpose,’ said Ross Black, his face and both hands heavily bandaged. In the background I was being led away in handcuffs.

  I put the tray down on the table, picked up the basket of cookies, and turned to go.