Page 12 of The Plot Twist

‘I mean, I don’t expect your bosses would take too kindly if you’re not there to help tidy up.’

Amusement played around his lips. ‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I think this is all part of the service.’

Allie blushed and stared at his lips as they parted in a smile and made her wonder what it would feel like to press hers against them. She felt herself go even redder.

‘OK,’ Will finally said, breaking the tension, ‘it was a pleasure to meet you, Allie, I hope I get to see you again.’

Allie watched him walk back the way he came. She had half a mind to chase after him and … what? Tell him that she thought him the most beautiful person at the party and confess that she’d like to kiss him? She could just imagine the look of absolute disapproval on the face of Jake Matthews if he caught them kissing in the corridor. Not to mention the fact she had A BOYFRIEND, she reminded herself once again. Instead, she sighed and started searching in her bag for her coat check token, all the while thinking about Will and his eyes and his lips, and the way her body responded when he touched her. She blushed furiously again as she handed over the token and waited for her coat to be retrieved.

ChapterTwo

Allie put her key in the lock of the door to her flat, grateful that for the moment at least, she still had the means to pay for a taxi home. She did what she always did when she got home, which was to pat her front door, say hello to one of the most important things in her life and offer up a little gratitude that it was hers. This ground-floor flat had been in her life for the last five years, and for those five years it had been the only thing to have brought her constant pleasure. She never fell out with it, even when the plumbing went wrong. She never had to wait for it to call, second-guess what it was thinking, wonder if she was seeing it enough or too little. And she didn’t have to worry that it wouldn’t be there when she needed it. She shook off the thought of her beloved childhood home, and all the memories it contained, which her mum had sold, seemingly hours after Allie had left for university. Allie had paid the deposit for her flat with the advance from her second publishing deal and it had been the true love of her life ever since. On the ground floor of a converted Victorian villa, she had two beautiful bedrooms, one of which she used as her writing space, and a small but sunny private back garden. It was big enough that she could sit outside and enjoy the sunshine but small enough that she didn’t actually ever have to worry about doing anything grown up, like gardening. And the garden had the added bonus of sporadic wifi connectivity; so, Allie could shut herself out there in good weather and write without the temptations of Google, Snapchat or just plain old online shopping.

Allie stepped through her front door and immediately bent to take her shoes off. She leaned against the pale grey wall of her hallway and rubbed one ankle and then the other, her mind wandering back to the corridor of the V&A and the way Will had held her as she adjusted her sandal. Much as she loved the scuffed walls of her flat, she couldn’t deny that he was a step up in terms of places to lean against.

As she straightened up, she noticed that the light was on in her kitchen, Allie was sure she hadn’t left it on. It had still been broad daylight when she’d left for the party. Pausing between wondering if she was going mad or was about to be attacked by an intruder, she grabbed the only weapon she had to hand with which to defend herself. Armed with one scrappy silver sandal and thinking that this was the second time this evening she had contemplated defending herself with a shoe, she burst into the kitchen brandishing it.

‘Dom!’ Allie exclaimed, lowering her sandal. She stood in the doorway, wondering if the normal reaction to discovering that your boyfriend had decided to surprise you was trying to attack them with footwear. She supposed that she should rush towards him, kiss him, be thrilled that he had come all the way over here and let himself into her flat, using the key that she really regretted ever giving him. She checked herself for any of those feelings and just registered irritation: about the key, about the surprise and about the fact that she wouldn’t just be able to fall into her own bed, on her own, taking all the covers for herself.

‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

Dominic stood up from where he had been sitting on the two-seat snug sofa which faced the wood burner and Allie could immediately tell that this was not a booty call – something was up. Dominic had never been the sort of boyfriend who would think to surprise her after an evening apart. Nor had he ever been so into her that he would show up with one thing on his mind. Depressingly, Allie allowed herself to realise that she felt exactly the same way about him. Dominic was fine, their sex life wasfine, but who wanted fine? Fine wasn’t inspiring her to write. Fine wasn’t going to be her hero. Allie was beginning to realise thatfinewas not going to dislodge her writers block, she needed to be swept off her feet.

But her feet remained firmly planted to the ground, as did Dominic’s. Until he started shifting nervously from one foot to the other and then Allie knew what this was. She knew he was here to end it with her, and the overwhelming emotion she experienced wasn’t sadness but annoyance that she hadn’t got there first. A combination of inertia and just not caring enough had allowed her to drift along in this relationship until she suddenly discovered that there wasn’t enough connection to really call it a relationship anymore. She looked over at Dominic, stood there in his suit, his banker striped shirt slightly crumpled, his tie loosened around his neck. He hadn’t even taken his jacket off, so he was obviously planning a speedy exit.

As Allie stood and watched him, she wondered what she had ever really seen in him. What she had initially thought of as a solid torso would, she knew, soon run to fat. His face, which she had once thought of as boyishly handsome, now just looked shiny and red, and his blonde hair was receding fast. Give him a few more years and he’d probably more closely resemble Boris Johnson than the blonde, rugby-playing man she had met in a Richmond pub almost two years ago. She wondered if she had time before he ended things with her to break it to him that the whole thing had been an accident. She wasn’t even meant to be in that pub; a broken-down train and delays on the line had propelled her towards a place that both served alcohol and had working toilets. And that was where he had been, several pints in and watching some completely incomprehensible – to Allie, at least – rugby match with his friends. The alcohol had made him bold enough to offer to buy her a drink, and the delays on the line had made her accept. And now here they were, two years later, with really nothing to show for it.

He had thought her sexy and quirky (his words, not hers) when they met. He’d never dated anyone who didn’t have an office job, actually Allie thought he may not have ever dated anyone who didn’t work in finance. But he was strangely proud of her ‘alternative’ choice of career, probably because she had been mainly solvent, self-sufficient and owned her own flat. It really said it all that this was what Dominic was looking for in his ideal woman. And Allie had been looking for her happy-ever-after and had been sufficiently disheartened by her earlier attempts at finding it, to consider that perhaps it was lurking in the mind and body of a city boy Durham grad.

Dominic ran one hand through his hair, causing that side of his hair to lie flat against his head while the other side stood up in a messy blonde thatch. Allie had to stifle a laugh. She wanted nothing more than this conversation to be over, for Dominic to leave and for her to be able to get into her bed on her own. If she laughed at him, she might have to tell him why and how she really felt about things and that would just prolong what was already a painfully awkward situation.

‘Allie,’ Dominic started, ‘I, erm, I have something I need to say.’

Allie considered putting him out of his misery, telling him that she already knew, that she felt the same and could they please speed things up a little so that she could get into her pyjamas. But she was also curious to see just how Dominic might spin this, so instead she crossed her arms, regarded him coolly and allowed him to flounder a little longer.

‘I feel like we’ve grown apart.’

Allie raised one eyebrow. He was going down that cliched path.

‘I feel like we both want different things.’

Her other eyebrow shot up and she had to stop herself from telling him that she was fairly sure they had wanted different things all along, but that somehow during the last two years she had lost herself sufficiently enough to consider that maybe she really did want summer outings to Henley, autumn weekends at Twickenham and a plan for 2.4 children and a loft conversion somewhere out past zone six.

‘It’s not you, it’s me.’

Allie did a little cough and put her hand to her mouth to cover the expression on her face. Dominic shuffled awkwardly and Allie wondered if he’d find it easier if she cried.

‘So erm, no hard feelings right?’

Allie exhaled heavily. ‘Oh, Dom, really? That’s the best you can do?’

Dominic shrugged and tried to meet her eye but failed. ‘I’m not very good at this.’

‘What? Breaking up with your sort-of girlfriend? Ending an already dying relationship?’ she questioned archly before feeling bad as the air seemed to go out of him.

‘It’s fine, OK?’ she reassured him. ‘I’m fine. Just, you know, disappointed, I guess?’ Allie had been feeling disappointed in Dominic for the past two years but this was the first time she had allowed herself to voice it. ‘Maybe you should just go,’ she suggested, Dominic half opened his mouth as if about to say something else but she cut him off. ‘Look I’m really tired, so maybe we can work out any practicalities another time?’ As she said it she thought how few practicalities they really had to sort out, how depressingly un-entwined their existences were.

Dominic nodded slowly and gave Allie a small sad smile and for the first time she felt a pang of something. Not sadness, exactly, but nostalgia for the feeling of being attached to someone, having someone to talk to at the end of each day. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

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