One Thing Leads to Another

For Rachel

Contents

Cover

Title Page

PART ONE: summer

chapter one: The Beginning of Summer and a Pact is Made

chapter two: A Promising Encounter on the Piccadilly Line

chapter three: La Vita è Bella

chapter four: Geordie and Jessica have Dinner at Tommy Byng’s

chapter five: La Vita è Bella Part Two

chapter six: Ponderings on Love

chapter seven: Money – Or the Lack of It

chapter eight: A Sunny Afternoon in Richmond (and a Bit in Borehamwood)

chapter nine: Summer Games

chapter ten: In the Footsteps of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman

chapter eleven: Stag Party

chapter twelve: Families

chapter thirteen: Playing Away

chapter fourteen: Jessica Eats Modern European

chapter fifteen: Eddie Fussle Gets Married

PART TWO: autumn

chapter sixteen: Long Weekend in Cornwall

chapter seventeen: Jessica’s Turn to Feel Disgruntled

chapter eighteen: Flin’s Annus Grows More Horribilis

chapter nineteen: Nadir

PART THREE: winter

chapter twenty: Ring in the New

chapter twenty-one: Jessica Starts to Realize her Plan

chapter twenty-two: Birthday Surprise

PART FOUR: spring

chapter twenty-three: A Life Beyond London

chapter twenty-four: It’s Always Good to Pause and Reflect

chapter twenty-five: Renaissance

chapter twenty-six: May 24 and Back at the Atlas

postscript

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

Copyright

About the Publisher

chapter one The Beginning of Summer and a Pact is Made

Outside in the pub garden, it was still light, and surprisingly warm. It was the first time they had been able to sit outside that year, and the three of them were making the most of summer’s arrival.

‘OK then,’ said Jessica, laying her hands decisively on the table and looking at Flin and Geordie in turn, ‘we’re agreed. Yes?’

Geordie looked at Flin, nodded, and looked back at Jessica. ‘Agreed.’

‘Great. At last.’ Jessica smiled, and stood up. ‘I’ll ring the landlord straight away.’ She took her mobile phone out of her bag and walked away from their table.

It had been a trying few weeks. Initially the prospect of finding a new house had seemed quite exciting, but after sacrificing two Saturdays and several evenings trudging round gloomy, soiled houses, all three of them had become extremely disenchanted with the whole procedure. Nothing they’d seen had ever quite fitted the bill; even the house they’d finally agreed on wasn’t perfect, but for a year, they’d decided, it would certainly do. And the location – Barons Court near to the west road out of town – was certainly a big point in its favour.

‘Give it a lick of paint and it might look really quite nice,’ Geordie suggested hopefully.

‘Sure, it’ll look great,’ Flin agreed.

‘And I could easily put up a few shelves and bring a few bits and pieces up from home.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Flin. Geordie’s enthusiastic DIY-talk was cheering him up. He really wanted their new house to be as homely as possible and not like the down-at-heel digs he had lived in before; after all, they weren’t students any more.

Jessica switched off her phone and walked back over to them. ‘Ninety-three Turneville Road is ours.’ She grinned triumphantly. ‘We’ve got to sign next week and then we can move in the week after next.’ She kissed them both happily. ‘I can’t wait – it’s going to be such fun, the three of us.’

‘And Geordie’s already got great plans for improving the place,’ put in Flin.

‘Brilliant, darling – what a little DIY king you are. I honestly don’t know where we’d be without you.’ Jessica gave Geordie another kiss. Their decision had cheered her enormously and she felt suddenly more affectionate towards her two friends.

‘And you two are going to help,’ Geordie added, sternly.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Flin flippantly, then reminded Geordie it was his round.

Having returned with more drinks, Geordie sat down and lit himself a cigarette. ‘Thank God this is sorted out. Moving in will be fun. I need a bit of excitement in my life.’

‘Me too,’ added Flin.

‘Not much going on otherwise. Same old job, still no girlfriend,’ Geordie continued.

‘We’ll be a house of singletons,’ put in Jessica brightly. Flin and Geordie both glanced up from their pints dubiously.

‘Whoopee,’ said Flin.

Jessica tucked a strand of her newly shortened hair behind her ear and said, ‘OK, I’ve got an idea. We move in on the twenty-fourth of May and we’ve got the house for a year. By the same date next year we should all make sure we have better jobs and are in steady relationships. We should make it a special goal.’

‘But that’s always my aim,’ said Geordie. ‘I spend my whole time wishing my work wasn’t so boring and yearning for a girlfriend.’

‘We should make it a competition though,’ added Flin, warming to Jessica’s notion. ‘I mean, I’m obviously in more or less the same boat as you, Geordie, but if we had a definite time-scale to work to, then perhaps it would make us try harder.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jessica, ‘we should make a proper pact, right here, right now.’

‘I s’pose we could,’ said Geordie glumly, ‘although you two have such a head start. Jessica, you nearly always have a boyfriend.’

‘Nonsense – they’re just flings. I haven’t been out with anyone properly for ages, and anyway, I’ve never, ever been in love. By next May,’ she announced emphatically, ‘I want to be head over heels.’

‘And Flin’s always in love and he has a great job,’ continued Geordie.

‘Rubbish,’ said Flin. ‘Firstly, Claire and I split up nearly four months ago, and secondly I wasn’t really in love with her anyway. And film PR might seem fun to you, but the pay is dismal.’ He grinned at them both. ‘By next May, I want someone to be in love with me, and I want to be better paid, so at last I’ll be able to keep up with you two.’

‘And I want to be promoted too,’ said Jessica, ‘and working on much more exciting accounts, not just low-fat microwave meals.’

‘OK,’ said Geordie resignedly, ‘I don’t mind going along with this, although ideally I’d like to be doing a job I enjoy and both be in love and have someone love me by the end of next week.’

‘Pressure’s on already,’ laughed Flin.

‘That’s the whole point, darling,’ said Jessica, ‘it’ll focus our minds.’

‘And a bit of competition never hurt anyone,’ continued Flin, slapping Geordie heartily on the back.

‘What’s the prize?’ said Geordie dejectedly. ‘If it’s a competition, then there’s got to be a prize.’

‘All right,’ said Jessica, ‘the prize is free drinks all night. On May the twenty-fourth next year, we meet back here, at the Atlas, and whoever hasn’t fallen in love or been promoted has to buy the other two drinks all night. I think that’s fair enough, don’t you?’

‘What happens if none of us wins?’ added Geordie.

‘Then we still meet here, but everyone buys their own and we discuss what we’ve been doing wrong.’ Jessica looked at her two friends and raised her glass. ‘A pact has been made and we’ve got our house at last. Cheers to that, darlings.’

And two and a half weeks later, the three of them moved in. Flin managed to persuade Geordie to pick him and his belongings up from his sister’s house (where he had been staying temporarily for free), and Jessica and Geordie successfully transferred their belongings from their tiny two-bed flat in Hammersmith. It was a beautiful early summer’s day. The trees in the street were full-bodied with fresh deep-green leaves, lending an air of calm serenity to their new home. Inside, the sunshine brightened the whole house, and all three felt a renewed sense of expectation for the year ahead. It was going to be a good year.

That evening, with bags and boxes all around them, they once again toasted the challenge they had set themselves. They were in buoyant moods, the ordeal of moving house finally over. The early summer sun and new home helped create a creeping sense of confidence. It was as though by merely agreeing to the pact, they were sure to achieve their goals.

chapter two A Promising Encounter on the Piccadilly Line

Flin thought it the most wonderful serendipity bumping into Poppy again. They had been at primary school together and hadn’t seen each other for – yes, they agreed, it must be – sixteen years. In fact, it had been she who had recognized him as they stood wedged up against each other on the Piccadilly Line. It had taken Flin a moment to place her, but he felt justified in that: it seemed scarcely possible that the haughty girl who’d been his childhood object of hate could have blossomed into someone so … well, gorgeous. A carriageload of silent commuters shared their reunion. Oblivious to the glances and raised eyebrows, Poppy asked him a barrage of questions. What was he up to? Where was he living? Were his parents still in Wiltshire? It was so good to see him – and after all this time, he hadn’t changed a bit; she’d recognized him at once. Well, she certainly had changed, Flin thought to himself, and very much for the better. As the train pulled into Leicester Square, Flin moved to leave her.

‘I think it’s brilliant having found you again after all these years.’ She beamed at him, bright teeth and full, luscious lips. ‘Will you come to my party? It’s in Sussex.’

‘I’d love to.’ Flin meant it. She kissed him goodbye.

‘You must come,’ she cooed as the doors closed.

As he stood on the escalator well-I-nevering to himself, he supposed her invite was nothing more than conversational gush, and assumed he’d be lucky if he saw her again before another sixteen years had gone by. But much to his delight, that very same afternoon as he was writing up some production notes, she called.

‘Poppy! Hi!’ he exclaimed, startled. ‘How did you find me?’

‘Easy as pie!’ she told him triumphantly. ‘You told me who you worked for and there aren’t any other film companies with that name.’

This time they exchanged numbers and addresses properly. ‘Actually, I’ve just moved in,’ he told her, ‘last weekend, and you’re the first person I’ve given my new address to.’

‘I’m honoured,’ she replied, laughing. ‘Invite me to supper and I can be the first person to see it too.’

‘OK,’ Flin said, ‘as soon as we’ve made it respectable, you’re on.’

In the meantime, she told him, she was going to put an invite to her party in the post immediately. ‘And you must promise me you’ll come,’ she insisted once more.

‘I promise,’ he assured her, leaning back in his chair and smiling. What an encouraging start to the competition. He needed this excitement in his life and was fantasizing as to where it might lead when Tiffany put her head round his cubicle.

‘Daydreaming again, Flin?’

‘Hm? Yes, well, something funny’s happened. I was just thinking about it.’

‘Oh yeah? Let’s hear it.’

Flin told her. ‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

‘Play your cards right – who knows? Sounds to me like she’s making a hit on you though.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah, I reckon. Anyway, keep me posted.’

Flin liked Tiffany. She’d only recently come over from Australia, but already he considered her his best friend in the department. He got on well with the others, but they all seemed a bit neurotic, especially his boss Martina, who, Flin had once been told, even put her shrink on expenses. There was no side to Tiffany though – or at least none that he’d seen. And they gossiped about everything: Flin told her all about his friends and the various dramas in his life, and she told him about hers.

It was good to be in their house at last and now with Poppy suddenly reappearing things seemed to be looking up. He had a good feeling about it – almost as though fate was lending a hand: new house, new girlfriend; it simply had to happen. Living with his sister had been very restricting. Both Sam and her boyfriend Will were very easy-going about Flin staying, and he adored his older sister, but however welcoming she and Will might be, Flin was conscious that it was their house and that he was nothing more than a guest there. And now he’d moved in with Jessica and Geordie, his oldest friends – it was going to be such fun, just like the old days when they were living near each other at home and spending all their time together. And so much better than his last house. He’d had a lucky escape there: the lease had originally been for a year, but when Eddie had decided to get married, they’d all agreed to move out after six months. It had been such a relief. Flin liked Eddie a lot, but his friend Bomber – well, just thinking about him made him wince. Putting Bomber immediately out of his mind, Flin punched in Geordie’s mobile number.

With only four or five miles to go, Geordie knew it might take him another hour to get home. It was nearly four o’clock and he could not understand why narrowing the M4 from three lanes to two should, at this time of day, cause the traffic to grind to a standstill. Each time this happened, he felt an overwhelming sense of frustration descend upon him. It was such a waste of his life. He had begun the journey in Manchester and from thirty miles north of Birmingham to thirty miles on its other side the motorway had been one huge contraflow. Those sixty miles had taken him the best part of three hours; the whole journey, so far, six hours. Ridiculous. He whacked his hand on the steering wheel. In the car next to him was a man in a light grey suit picking his nose, blankly devoid of emotion.

Geordie was not a great fan of London. He knew this was largely because he was still comparatively new to the place, but everyone seemed so rude. He hated being shouted at by overly aggressive cabbies, carved up by monstrous buses and jostled and accosted on the streets; he liked to be able to walk in a straight line along the pavement. Right now, in the throes of yet another hold-up on the roads, he was feeling particularly disgruntled. London may have been voted the coolest city in the world, but this did little to sway Geordie – he preferred a country pub to a London bar any day.

None the less, most of his friends seemed to live there, and although there was so much about the capital that he disliked, he knew he was basically quite happy and that it was too early to move out. That could wait, although he did have some sense of a grand plan: he would continue to work in London for another year or two, obtain some crucial experience in the IT industry, and then get the hell out into a business of his own. Working for Burt Kwang at FDU might be boring, but Geordie knew he had to put up with it: give his presentations, visit clients, learn about the industry and not let Burt’s indifference to him get him down. It was a case of going through the motions until the right opportunity appeared. In the meantime, he had the new house to think about. He needed to borrow some tools from his father to make the shelves and get the place painted. And he needed to sign up to a new tennis club now that the rugby season was over. He might be tall and fairly thin at the moment, but too much sitting about in his car without exercise would soon change that. Anyway, he liked feeling healthy.

After successfully blocking out an aggressive-looking BMW from cutting in ahead of him, Geordie flicked back a lock of his drooping blond mop and then looked in his mirror. At least he was ahead of the massive queue behind him. He glanced down at his phone, and was wondering whether he should call someone when it rang.

‘Guess what?’ said Flin in muffled tones from the hands-free microphone.

‘What?’

‘I’ve bumped into a gorgeous old friend from home and she’s invited me to her place for the weekend.’

‘Bastard! How’d you manage that?’

Flin told the story of his encounter for the second time.

‘Bastard!’ Geordie said again. ‘I knew you’d be first off the mark. And we’ve only been in the house half a week.’

‘Well, yes, obviously the pressure’s really on for you now.’

‘This better not stop you from helping out with painting the house.’

‘Course not, but if you think I’m going to turn down a weekend in the country because you want me to do DIY, think again.’

Flin’s upbeat mood did nothing to improve Geordie’s. What was wrong with him? Why this lean patch? If anything, it used to be the other way round: he was constantly going out with someone while Flin less frequently did. This was because Flin was nearly always chasing after people who were completely unobtainable. Whenever Geordie pointed this out, Flin would invariably reply, ‘But I’m in love, and I can’t help how I feel.’ It had been the same at school, Geordie remembered. Flin had been madly in love with a girl in the year above who simply wasn’t interested. Meanwhile, Kate Rodgers had been desperate for him. Flin had forever had plenty of girls after him: after all, he was a popular person, always had been. Geordie felt ever so slightly jealous of his oldest friend’s easy charm and ability to be liked by just about everyone. Even when they’d been little, Flin had been that little bit more popular than him, and nothing had changed since. Still, it had been great coming back from travelling into an even wider circle of friends, and for that he largely had Flin to thank.

Geordie had never really thought about being in love. He supposed he had been; certainly he’d told previous girlfriends he was. It had seemed the right thing to say. At any rate, he’d enjoyed a steady string of sleeping partners: Alex and Sophie in his first year, then Susannah for over a year, and finally Nell, whom he only split up with because he was going travelling and he didn’t want to have to feel guilty if he met anyone else. But since coming back, nothing.

Catching his own face in the mirror, he suddenly noticed a line had developed down one side of his face, etched between his nose and the corner of his mouth. Where had that come from? He was sure it hadn’t been there last time he looked. Had he really already reached that stage in life where the ageing process was beginning to set in? And his spindly round glasses were smudged and getting loose. This was too much: he was twenty-five, stuck in a traffic jam on the M4 and wrinkling. How had he let his life lead him onto this course? What had he been thinking when he left university? The truth was: Not a lot. The options open to a graduate with a lower second in zoology had seemed a bit limited, and since he had a bit of family money, he’d decided he might as well delay the career for a year or two and explore a bit more of the world instead. He flew east first, to Thailand and then on to Australia and New Zealand, where he skiied and surfed and hung out, and then worked for a bit in a bar. From there he moved on to conquer South America, finally pausing for just over a year in Buenos Aires. He’d loved Argentina; and the cost of living was so cheap, meaning he could work little and play hard. There were plenty of Europeans and Americans out there too, providing him with friends. He had a girlfriend there too: a lovely Argentinian who’d dazzled him with her Latin allure.

At some point, however, Geordie had realized that he was going to have to get on with life. So, to the relief of his parents and friends, he’d come back to England and almost immediately moved up to London, on the lookout for a ‘proper’ job. Jessica had been looking for a new place to live, so he’d moved in with her. And here he was, he thought to himself, his career under way, sitting in a traffic jam on the edge of London and rapidly ageing.

He felt faintly depressed. Having exorcised his wanderlust, his life now felt mundane. The lack of girlfriend was just beginning to really get to him. Christ, he hadn’t even had sex for over a year. What was it? Was he becoming boring? He was certainly feeling bored. Or was it just that it was harder to meet people these days? How did you meet new girls? Walk into a bar and start chatting someone up? Hardly. He thought about all the girls he knew. Most were spoken for; of those that weren’t, either he’d already been out with them, or didn’t fancy them, no matter how desperate he felt. And others, like Jessica, were just friends and always would be. This competition was all very well, but just how was he going to achieve these goals? Rooting around in the glove compartment, he found his much loved ELO Greatest Hits. Best not to brood. In the safety of his car, he could listen to whatever he liked, and sing as badly as he liked without anyone complaining – he liked ELO even if no one else did. Singing along the wrong words to ‘Mr Blue Sky’, he felt his good humour slowly return.

Geordie had phoned Jessica to relay Flin’s news, but she found it hard to feel too excited. She knew what Flin was like, knew that he always jumped in head first without pausing to think and that often his early enthusiasm came to nothing. And anyway, she could tell that Geordie was only phoning her because he was bored: he always repeated himself when he had nothing to say, and on this occasion told her for the second time that day that he and Flin would be out all evening. Still, she was quite pleased about that: it had been a bad day at the office and she felt in need of some quiet time to herself. Of course she adored Geordie and Flin, but they could be so noisy and exhausting sometimes.

Arriving back at the flat, she made a beeline for the sink, washed her hands, then applied a generous amount of hand-cream and morello cherry lip-balm, and poured herself a large glass of wine. Then she kicked off her shoes, switched on the television, and lay full-stretch on the sofa, checking through the post. Letter from the bank – boring; some mail for Geordie – boring, boring. But then an envelope that always cheered her up – her weekly edition of Bunty. Her friends found it extraordinary that someone who was normally so elegant and poised at all times should still subscribe to such juvenile drivel. But Jessica had read it ever since she was about ten, tenderly bought for her each week by her mother: it was comforting and she liked the assured regularity of this weekly package.

Leafing through pages of schoolgirl drama was as soothing as ever; after that she was looking forward to what she considered essential ‘me-time’ – time in which to unwind, have a bath, read a magazine or two and not talk to anyone. To her annoyance, though, she found she couldn’t stop thinking about Richard Keeble. How dare he make a pass at her! Then to make matters worse, Rob was still trying to sit next to her, even though she’d told him nearly a month before that nothing further was going to happen between them. Despite looking as immaculate as the moment she had left the house that morning, she now felt soiled and unclean. Even the restorative powers of lip-balm and hand-cream had failed her on this occasion. It was too much.

Richard Keeble always flirted with the younger girls. Although forty-something and acne-scarred, he was convinced they loved being chatted up and that his particular line of amusing cuff-links and bright ties made him a consul of contemporary chic. Rumour had it that he had had his way with one of the receptionists at last year’s Christmas Party, but Jessica could not have possibly cared less – she found him utterly repellent. That morning, however, she had been trapped by him between the third and ground floor as she was on her way to a meeting.