It Felt Like A Kiss

Chapter Thirty-six




By the time Ellie and Inge reached the tiny bar on Hoxton Square, just across the road from the White Cube gallery, Tess and Lola had already arrived, scored a table and ordered a round of Tom Collins.

After the Tom Collins, Ellie had a Ward Eight – rye whiskey, lemon juice and grenadine – which made her pull faces as she determinedly drank it down. Then she moved on to a Tantris Sidecar, a deadly concoction of cognac, calvados, cointreau, Chartreuse and syrup with more lemon, and third time was the charm.

Everything was soft focus in the dimly lit room as Ellie blearily looked around. Most of the people she’d called had turned up, even on a Monday night when the BBC said it was going to rain, because these were the people who were always on her team. Once Billy Kay and On The Sofa had been discussed for all of five minutes, Emma, Laurel and Tanya wanted to talk about a girls’ weekend in New York before Rosh Hashanah to find some really fit single, Jewish men (‘I mean, there have to be some’) and was Ellie interested? Lola had an interview for a part-time job as a taxidermist’s assistant, Tess had been given her very own in-ear microphone that afternoon and offered a permanent contract, and everyone else wanted to talk about how Portland was the new Brooklyn.

The world was carrying on same as it ever did.

‘Hello you,’ said a voice, and Ellie looked up from pensive contemplation of her empty glass to see Laetitia, one of Lola’s friends, smiling at her as she brushed something off her shirt. ‘You’re having a bit of a rough month, aren’t you?’

‘Roughest month ever,’ Ellie agreed. Her speech was ever so slightly slurred but her senses were still razor sharp. ‘Is that … are those … you’re wet! Is it raining?’

‘It’s like something from the Old Testament,’ Laetitia said, holding up a damp strand of hair for Ellie’s inspection. ‘I got here just before it really unleashed.’

Ellie nudged Tess, who was sitting next to her and talking animatedly to one of Inge’s male flatmates about something that involved having to stroke his arm a lot. ‘It’s raining,’ Ellie said. ‘Can you believe it?’

‘About bloody time,’ Tess said, without even looking up. Laetitia had gone to get a drink, two Japanese girls were taking a preening picture of Piers for their style blog and the cousins were all transfixed by the screen of Laurel’s iPad.


No one noticed when Ellie slipped out of her seat and up the scarred wooden stairs. She had to flatten herself to the wall to make way for two sodden people who seemed to think they had right of way, then she was opening the door.

The rain was coming down in a gushing fall of fat drops that bounced on the pavement on impact. Ellie stepped over the fierce stream of water sluicing into the gutter. The five seconds it took to take those five steps outside was long enough to soak her. Her white dress, even her bra and pants were drenched, feet slipping in her wedge sandals, but as she stood there, arms outstretched, face turned upwards, it felt like a fresh start.

The dirty hands of the Kay family had left smudgy grey fingerprints all over her, and the rain was washing them away.

The rain also melted the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. Crying because she had to let go of those childish dreams of the father who never was, and the father that there could have been, but mostly because Ellie knew that every man she ever loved would always be a little bit less than the man she’d walked away from this afternoon.

She’d done the right thing, so why did it feel like the end of everything that was good?

Her grief was interrupted by the shrieks of two girls as they ran across the square, ducking this way and that as if they could dodge the drops. Ellie wiped a wet hand across her wet face, her make-up all but a faint memory by now, sniffed and was just about to worry about what prolonged exposure to rainwater would do to her straightening treatment when she saw a figure walking slowly through the sheets of driving rain.

She squinted as the figure came towards her. He was shielded by a behemoth of an umbrella so his suit was absolutely bone dry, as was the garment bag draped over one arm.

He stopped when he was within five metres of Ellie and said something that was lost in the dirge of the deluge.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ellie yelled, closing the gap between them so he could hear her. ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘Ari told me,’ David said. He stared at her in disbelief. ‘You’re absolutely soaked.’

Ellie shook dripping rats’ tails of hair out of her face. ‘Never mind that. Why would Ari tell you where I was?’

‘Because when I told her I was in love with you, she took it better than you did.’

Ari’s track record when it came to affairs of the heart was pitiful, so Ellie wasn’t going to let her mother’s opinion sway her.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ she said. David was so close that she was now standing under his huge record-company-logoed umbrella and it was hard to keep her body from straining towards him. Not just from want, but because it seemed a shame to let him get damp when he‘d managed to stay dry so far. ‘But thanks for bringing my garment bag over.’

‘Everything’s changed. I’ve changed,’ David said, but they were just empty words from an empty man.

‘Nothing has changed.’ Ellie shook her head again and he shuddered as he got hit with a smattering of spray. ‘There’s nothing you can say or do that’s going to change who we are or the reasons why we are never, ever going to work.’

David handed Ellie her garment bag by way of reply and she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret. Actually, it was less a twinge and more like a sucking chest wound. He could at least try to plead the case for the defence, but he was more interested in suddenly placing the upturned umbrella down on the ground where it would fill up with rainwater and be no use to man or beast.

Like her, David was soaked through in a second. His expensive suit clinging to his lanky frame, hair flat to his skull and she could see the rain trickling down his cheekbones and dripping off the end of his nose.

‘Have you gone completely mad?’

‘I’m in, Ellie! I’m all in,’ he shouted, and he took hold of her wrists and gave her a gentle shake. ‘You’ve got me, all of me, 24/7, if you’ll have me.’

Her heart sped up for five frantic beats but, for once, her head was made of much stronger stuff. ‘I won’t have you. Yes, it’s wonderful when it’s just the two of us but it’s never going to be just the two of us, is it?’

She tried to pull away from his hands, but he held her tight. It was so hard to tell what he was thinking when there was a wall between them. Not even a metaphorical wall, but a wall of water.

‘I’ve quit my job,’ David said. ‘I’ve cleared out my desk.’

She couldn’t have heard him properly. She shook her head again. ‘You did what? You didn’t. You wouldn’t. You said—’

‘But I did. I resigned, effective immediately.’ He looked a little smug at her expression of stunned disbelief. ‘I have absolutely no prospects now. I’m a lame duck. You have to take me under your wing.’

Ellie had to do no such thing, but she was going to kill her mother the first chance she got. ‘You know you’ll easily find a new job with some other firm of corporate soul-suckers.’ David opened his mouth to protest, Ellie was sure of it, so she placed a finger against his lips. ‘Though you could use your legal skills for the greater good or set up on your own to help people not get tied into punitive—’

She clapped her hands over her mouth, because she was doing it again, without even thinking about it: trying to fix someone.

‘If I do have some prospects, then surely that’s a good thing and if I don’t have prospects, then I’m a lame duck, and Ari did say that lame ducks were your type,’ he said with a winsome smile that didn’t suit him and was ruined by the fact that the rain was washing it off his face.

‘I can’t believe that you’d do that, quit your job, for me. Your career means everything to you,’ she reminded him, in case he’d had a swift blow to the head and forgotten what his priorities were.

‘There are very few things that mean more to me than making senior partner,’ David said and this time his smile was a little unsteady to match the tone of his voice, like he was heading into unchartered territory. ‘But you’re one of them. You’re top of the list.’

‘Look, I’m halfway to falling in love with you too but I’m not sure that you can change, however much you might want to,’ Ellie argued. ‘You could still end up breaking my heart and I don’t want to be like my mother. I don’t want to waste the rest of my life refusing to let myself love anyone else.’

‘Ellie, stop it,’ David said. Ellie squinted through the rain at him, then looked down at the hand he placed over her heart. ‘I promise I won’t break this.’

‘You can’t make that kind of promise …’

‘I can,’ he said simply. ‘I can guarantee I’ll piss you off and I’ll make you so angry that you’ll get that funny little vein pop up on your forehead, and yes, there are times that I’ll be a sanctimonious f*cker, but I won’t break your heart.’

He talked a really good game and it would be so easy to just give in but … ‘You can’t decide to change and then be changed. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘For crying out loud, Ellie!’ She wondered if he was using the stern voice because he suspected that it turned her on. ‘I’ve walked away from my job, which means I’ve walked away from Billy Kay. He was coming between us. Now he’s not. So, tell me, are there any other obstacles I should know about that are stopping us from being together?’


‘No! Of course I want us to be together but—’

‘Or is it the thought of learning to cook at least one signature dish?’

Somehow he was making her laugh. ‘Well, if you’re between jobs at the moment maybe you could use the downtime to master the art of shortcrust pastry.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Well, it’s not a no.’ It couldn’t be this easy. Nothing was this easy.

‘Look, Ellie, I’ve quit my job for you and I’m standing in a puddle and my handmade leather shoes are ruined, and you were wet so I threw away my umbrella so I’d be wet too even though I hate getting wet. Now, will you please agree to my terms so we can go inside where it’s less wet?’

Ellie was currently encased in a prison of soaked and chafing cotton, but that wasn’t going to influence her decision-making. ‘Well, I’ll need to see the small print because you’re a devious lawyer but yes. Let’s go inside now.’

‘Yes to going inside or yes to being with me?’ Ellie had already started to move towards the nearest doorway but David blocked her path. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on at least a verbal commitment.’

‘This is why nobody likes lawyers,’ Ellie told him, and she didn’t know what the future would hold, only that she couldn’t bear the thought of a future without him. ‘Why don’t we just shake on it?’

‘I’ve got a much better idea,’ David said.

And then he kissed her.