To the Moon and Back

Chapter 31




This evening’s dinner was more pleasure than business. Bob Nix was a big, brash, Texan billionaire financier with whom Zack had done deals in the past. Looking to extend his circle of contacts, he had invited a dozen business people plus their partners along for drinks and dinner in the Clarence Room, one of the sixth floor’s private suites.

The atmosphere was noisy and relaxed. If you took J. R. Ewing and pumped him full of air with a bicycle pump, you’d end up with Bob. Red-faced and looking about to burst at the seams, he was as loud and jolly as you’d expect of a Texan billionaire. In his late fifties, six foot five without his Stetson, and with glow-in-the-dark veneers, he towered over his wife Bibi, who was young and super-glamorous in a Dolly Partonish way. But she was as welcoming as Bob. Within minutes of complimenting Ellie on her hair combs, she’d discovered they were exactly the same age; in no time they were chatting away about fashion, music, shoes, and makeup.

‘So are y’all a couple?’

‘No, no, I just work for Zack.’ Luckily Zack was deep in conversation with someone else by the fireplace.

‘Hey, you can work together and still be a couple.’ Bibi’s eyes sparkled. ‘That’s how I met Bob! I was his personal trainer.’

Ellie wiped the mental picture of Bob in tight shorts doing grunty sit-ups from her mind. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen. Zack only hired me because he knew it wouldn’t. Plus I have a boyfriend.’

‘Oh right. Sorry. Zack’s pretty cute though.’

I know he is. Aloud Ellie said, ‘So’s my boyfriend.’

Bibi laughed. ‘Hey, don’t mind me, I’m just a hopeless romantic! Bob and I are so happy together I spend all my time trying to fix other couples up.’ She caught the glimmer of surprise in Ellie’s eyes. ‘Ah, see? Y’all thought I was a gold-digger, didn’t you! But I’m not. He’s the love of my life. And I’ve signed a prenup. If we break up,I walk away with nothing but my pride.’

‘Good for you.’ Inexplicably, Ellie’s eyes began to prickle. Oh God, she was a hopeless case.

‘And the keys to the safe, obviously. Joke!’

Over dinner, another businessman’s wife asked Ellie if she could recommend a good Botox doctor in Harley Street.

Ellie said, ‘Sorry, I’ve never had Botox.’

The wife, whose name was Kara, said, ‘Oh my God, why not?’

‘I’m twenty-nine.’

‘Jesus, you’re leaving it late! I started when I was twenty!’ Kara, who had a face like a boa constrictor, leaned forward and flared her nostrils with difficulty. ‘By the time I was your age I’d had six procedures… eyes, ears, plus a full face-lift!’

‘And you had your knees done,’ her husband chimed in. ‘What is it you always say? Nothing worse than a woman with pudgy knees.’

‘You’re telling me.’ Kara mimed gagging. ‘I mean, we were in Tuscany with the Mainwarings over Easter and you should have seen Kizzy’s knees. So pudgy and gross, I felt nauseous every time I looked at them!’

‘OK, darling, calm down,’ said her husband. ‘Some people prefer the natural look.’

‘Well, they shouldn’t.’ Kara shuddered. ‘It’s just wrong. They should have more consideration for others.’

She actually meant it. Ellie longed to ask Kara’s husband if he’d had his knees done too. Across the table she caught Zack’s eye and struggled to keep a straight face.

The conversation turned to Tuscany, where everyone else appeared to have holidayed. Several of them owned villas there. Bob said, ‘How about you, Ellie? Where d’you like to vacation?’

‘Has everyone visited San Gimignano?’ Kara was on a roll now, her snake eyes with their barely-there lids flickering around the table. ‘It’s fifty kilometers from Florence, a completely feudal medieval village with this massive wall around it. We stayed at a farmhouse nearby and just did nothing for a month. Totally idyllic.’

‘Ellie?’ repeated Bob.

She smiled at him. ‘I like Cornwall best.’

‘Corn-waaaall?’ He made it sound like a wall made of corn. Mystified, he shook his head. ‘Bottom left-hand corner of England, am I right? Can’t say I’ve ever been there.’

‘Oh, you should.’ Ellie put down her wine glass. ‘It’s beautiful. My favorite place is Looe, it’s just—’

‘Loo?’ Bibi clapped her hands in delight. ‘You mean like the toilet? Oh, wow!’

‘That’s exactly how I’d describe it,’ Kara drawled. ‘We were invited down there once. What a nightmare. The place was full of oiks.’

The fork in Ellie’s hand was loaded with seafood in a saffron sauce. The temptation was enormous. ‘I go there.’

‘So you’ll have seen them. Wearing knotted hankies on their heads and drinking cans of lager on the beach. Screaming babies, kids dropping ice creams, souvenir shops…’ Kara’s upper lip did its best to curl.

‘Well, I’ve never been to Italy.’ Ellie looked at Zack, wondering if she should be saying this. ‘But I’m fairly sure they have souvenir shops in Florence. And babies that cry.’

‘Oh well, we’re all different.’ A thin smile of satisfaction stretched itself across Kara’s face. ‘Some of us are probably just suited to Tuscany more than others.’

Bibi said, ‘We tried it once, Bob, didn’t we? Bored the backside off us. Give me Disney World any day.’

Ellie could have hugged her. Kara looked as if she’d been bitten by a mongoose. The waiter arrived to refill their glasses. Across the table, Zack’s mouth was twitching.

Hopefully this meant she wasn’t about to be sacked on the spot.

At the end of the evening Bibi hugged her goodbye. On impulse Ellie stepped back and removed the jeweled combs Bibi had admired earlier. ‘Here, you said how much you liked them. I want you to have these.’

‘Oh God, I can’t believe it, that’s so kind of you! Hang on…’ Bibi said, ‘let me give you something too.’

Hastily Ellie stopped her. ‘No, you can’t do that.’

Well, she could, but the item Bibi was struggling to unfasten was a multicarat diamond tennis bracelet, which was a slightly embarrassing exchange for a couple of combs from Primark that had cost one pound fifty each.

***

They left the hotel at eleven fifteen. In the taxi Ellie said, ‘Sorry about the thing with Kara. I hope I haven’t got you into trouble.’

Zack was finding it almost impossible to tear his gaze away from her. In this light her eyes were huge. Her hair, no longer fastened up in a semichignon, now framed her face and her chin was tilted at a determined angle. Her expression was unrepentant; she was apologizing for possibly causing problems in the business sense but not for saying what she’d said.

‘Doesn’t matter a bit. She’s a crashing snob, and I wasn’t wild about her husband either. I didn’t know you were such a fan of Cornwall.’

‘Oh God, I love it. Ever since we started going down there when I was a kid. We used to stay on a caravan site between Looe and Polperro. Then after that it was camping holidays with friends, sometimes on the south coast, sometimes in Newquay. Other people were flying to Spain and Greece, but I still preferred Cornwall.’ The cab swung around a sharp corner and Ellie clutched the door handle to stop herself sliding against him.

Zack wished she would. ‘And then you met Jamie.’

‘I did. And he loved Cornwall too. We used to get down there three or four times a year. It’s where we spent our honeymoon, in this brilliant little hotel in St Ives. We used to talk about moving down there one day. It was our dream.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But that didn’t happen.’

More than anything, Zack wanted to comfort her. Never mind that problem-solving was his thing; this wasn’t a problem he could magic away. For a second, as Ellie shook back her hair and he breathed in her now-faded perfume, he wondered what she’d do if he kissed her.

Jump out of the cab, probably.

OK, better not try it.

Aloud he said, ‘Anyway, you were right about Florence. It might be a beautiful city but it’s boiling hot and crawling with tourists.’

‘Is it?’

‘Oh yes. And you get hassled by beggars. Really smelly ones.’

They were heading along Portland Place now. He’d managed to make her smile again. Thank goodness he’d taken control of himself and hadn’t gone for the kiss. That would have ruined everything.

Ellie tilted her head. ‘So how about you? Ever been to Cornwall?’

‘I have.’

‘OK, silly question, everyone has at one time or another. Did you like it?’ She waved a hand in apology. ‘Sorry, bit abrupt. It just drives me demented, people like Kara criticizing the place whenI love it so much.’

‘I did like it. I still do. It’s where I grew up.’ He saw her expression change, her mouth fall open.

‘Seriously? You never told me that!’

‘I didn’t know I had to.’ Something relaxed inside him; at last, a connection, and it had been there all along. ‘My family still live there. I head down whenever I can.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Perranporth.’

‘I know Perranporth! Just down from Newquay! Oh my God, I know Perranporth!’ Her eyes were shining, her whole face was lit up.

‘And I know Newquay. I used to spend whole weeks at a time on Fistral Beach.’

Ellie clapped a hand to her chest. ‘I love Looe to bits, but Fistral Beach is the best for surfing. Full of oiks, obviously.’

‘Oh, I like being an oik.’

‘Me too. Better an oik than a lizard.’ She pulled a face, mimicking Kara’s stretched skin and yanked-back, reptilian features.

Zack said, ‘Shall I tell you why I finally broke up with Louisa? Because she wanted us to join some friends at a villa in Tuscany for a child-free, fun-free, oik-free fortnight.’

‘No!’ Ellie burst out laughing. ‘Is she related to Kara?’

‘You know, it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, that was it. That was my breaking point.’

‘I call it a narrow escape. Start going on holidays like that and you’ll end up reading books by Salman Rushdie. OK, I’m being a bitch now. Tell me to shut up.’

‘Not only reading them,’ said Zack. ‘Discussing them. In interminable detail.’

‘When you’re not talking about wine-tasting and vintages, and how your favorite Montepulciano has undertones of Marmite and top notes of Shredded Wheat.’

‘With just a touch of peanut butter and a dash of deodorant.’

‘Will you just listen to us?’ Ellie’s eyes were dancing. ‘We are complete oiks.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Tell me about your family in Perranporth.’

‘My parents still live in the house where we all grew up. It’s far too big for them now, but they don’t want to move.’

‘Sea views?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I wouldn’t want to move either. What are their names? Sorry,’ Ellie flapped her hand. ‘Being nosy. You don’t have to tell me that.’

He wanted to tell her, almost as much as he wanted this cab ride to go on forever. ‘Why wouldn’t I want to tell you about my family? They’re embarrassing, but they’re not that embarrassing. My mum’s Teresa, but everyone calls her Tizz. My dad’s Ken. They ran a landscape gardening business up until they retired a couple of years ago. And I have three sisters who all live in Cornwall. Claire’s in St Ives, she’s married with three children. Steph’s living with her chap in St Austell and they have twin girls. And Paula’s in Helston with her two, a boy and a girl.’

Ellie was suitably impressed. ‘Wow. So you’re an uncle, big time.’

‘Just a bit. Five girls and two boys aged between three and eleven. When we all get together it’s not what you’d call peaceful.’ Zack could feel himself smiling; it was the effect even thinking of his noisy, hyperactive, extended family had on him. ‘And there are dogs too. You should see us when we hit the beach.’

‘I hope you hand out earplugs to all the poor people trying to read their Salman Rushdie books in peace.’

‘Nobody reads Salman Rushdie on Fistral Beach, that’s the joy of it. We’re all oiks together.’

‘I could have seen you there.’ Ellie was shaking her head, marveling at the idea. ‘We could have been there at the same time. Isn’t it weird to think that? You might have thrown our ball back to us when it landed in the middle of your sand castle.’

‘I might have kicked sand over your picnic.’ Zack didn’t believe this. The first time he’d seen her outside the Ivy that day, his reaction had been so intense he was pretty certain their paths had never crossed before. But the idea that they could have been in such close proximity was still a heady one. OK, not heady, because back then she would have been with her husband, and he would more than likely have had some girlfriend or other in tow. Still, as she’d pointed out, it was a surreal thought.

As if reading his mind, Ellie said, ‘I’ve got loads of photos at home of us down there. Wouldn’t it be incredible if your family was in the background?’

They were almost home now, heading along Albany Street; in a couple of minutes they’d be back in Primrose Hill. Zack wasn’t feeling remotely casual but thank God it came out that way. ‘I don’t know what Jamie looked like.’

Ellie smiled. ‘He was lovely. I can show you photos.’

‘I’d like to see them.’ Casual, relaxed, no pressure.

‘You mean tomorrow? Or tonight? Because you can come back now if you want. I could get the albums out, show him to you. You can see what he was like.’

‘Would that be difficult? I don’t want you to feel pressurized.’

‘I just invited you, didn’t I?’ Her face softened. ‘I love talking about Jamie, telling other people about him. He was my husband, he existed, I was so proud to be married to him. Just because he isn’t here anymore doesn’t mean pressing a delete button and forgetting he was ever here.’

God, she was beautiful.

‘If you’re sure,’ said Zack.

Ellie nodded. ‘But you have to promise me one thing. When you see him, no laughing at his skinny legs.’