‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I’m blaming the copious amounts of wine. You know I’m not the best at daytime drinking.’
‘Hmmmn. I suppose that’s true,’ said Nick, softening.
I looked over his shoulder. Gino was standing by the door to the van with his hands pertinently placed on his hips.
‘We’d better go,’ I said.
Nick nodded, pulling his phone out of his pocket. ‘Let me just make a really quick call and I’ll be right with you. Don’t let that Gino guy go without me.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, smiling at him and starting back to the van.
There, that hadn’t been too bad. Nick and I had had a disagreement and I’d stood up for myself and nobody had died.
‘What a view, eh?’
I did a double take when I realised Aidan had replaced Nick and had somehow fallen into step beside me. I decided that the best thing would be to ignore him. It would look strange to everyone else if I suddenly started talking to him now. Not that I wanted to, anyway. Hopefully, after today, I could get through the rest of my trip without ever setting eyes on him again.
‘Look, don’t you think it would be a good idea for us to talk?’ he said, keeping his voice low.
I actually laughed out loud. Was this guy for real?
‘Oh, sonowyou think we should talk?’ I said, not trusting myself to look at him.
‘Please,’ he replied. ‘Just for a few minutes. When we get back to the hotel.’
‘Funny that you disappeared all those years ago without so much as a word and now we can’t seem tostopmeeting,’ I commented. ‘What’s that about?’
The van was just a few metres away. My family-to-be were inside, waiting for me to join them. This was the last conversation I wanted to be having right under their noses.
‘Just hear me out. Give me five minutes of your time,’ pleaded Aidan.
I had to stick to my guns. There was nothing he could say that would make me feel differently about him, or make the aftermath of what he did any easier. So what was the point?
‘No,’ I said.
I was nearly at the van. Just a few more seconds and I’d be clambering inside and Aidan would have to stop talking. I didn’t think he was going to throw me under the bus by saying anything in front of the others. He was an arsehole, yes, but he’d cared about me once (allegedly), so hopefully that would count for something.
‘I’ll be waiting on the bridge at the end of Via Tornabuoni,’ he said hurriedly. ‘The Ponte Santa Trinita. When we get back to the hotel.’
I tutted. He could wait there as long as he liked, there was no way I was going.
My legs felt shaky as I climbed back into the van. See, this was the effect he had on me, and I didn’t want it and I didn’t need it. So, no, even though part of me did want to find out exactly what had happened, just out of curiosity, I was not going to give him the satisfaction of going to meet him. I’d spent a long time getting over him, erasing him from my mind, and the best thing for me was to keep him there.
London
Two Years Earlier
We were gathered in the office for our usual Wednesday morning planning meeting and the whole team were expected to be present. Not turning up was punishable by … well, I wasn’t sure, because I’d always turned up. Even when I was ill and probably should have called in sick, I’d drag myself in, determined not to ‘let down’ my bosses. I didn’t know who I thought I was kidding – they probably didn’t notice whether I was there or not half the time, but it made me feel better, so I went with it.
‘Danish?’ said Lou, passing me a plate of dry-looking pastries. The free food was the only exciting thing about the meeting.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ I said, grabbing one and then passing the plate along to Kiely, the other assistant producer.
She’d only been at Holiday Shop for a few months and already she’d ingratiated herself with the SMT clique (headed up by Executive Producer, Mel). I worried constantly about whether, if a producer role did come up, it would go to her and I’d be savagely disappointed and uncontrollably angry. Not that I’d ever really lost it like that – I’d learned not to bother, it never got me anywhere – but I imagined that it would be something like this that would tip me over the edge.
‘Right,’ said Mel. ‘Shall we make a start?’
I opened up my notebook. I rarely wrote anything in it, but it made me look on-the-ball, I thought.