It Had To Be You: An absolutely laugh-out-loud romance novel Read online

  ‘Is it good?’ he says.

  ‘You haven’t seen it?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ve seen Four Weddings, but not that one.’

  ‘Oh you have to watch it!’ I tell him. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Avoiding naked women mostly.’

  ‘Stay and watch it then. I’ll start it again.’

  ‘You sure? How much have you watched?’

  I’m an hour in, but I tell him only twenty minutes. I skip the DVD back to the start and reach under my bed for the tatty old cardigan I sometimes wear when I’m reading at night. It’s only got one button left on it, but if I fasten it, at least my boobs’ll be covered.

  Henry shuffles up the bed so he’s sitting next to me and I start the film again and we watch Julia Roberts dazzle as Anna Scott and then Hugh Grant weaving his way through Portobello Market.

  ‘We should go there,’ Henry says.

  ‘We should,’ I agree. We hardly ever go anywhere. We’ve got pretty much everything we need exactly where we are.

  Chapter Seven

  I’m in the park. The sun’s hot on the back of my neck. My hairline prickles with sweat. I can see him – Dan – on the bench. I breathe in as I start to walk towards him. He doesn’t look at me, but I know that he’ll be happy when he sees me; joy is bubbling up inside me. I call out to him and he turns and smiles. I think. I can’t quite see his face because the sun’s in my eyes.

  I’m walking, but I’m not getting any closer. But I’m not worried. I know he’ll be there waiting for me whenever I get there. And then I wake up.

  * * *

  I’m re-alphabetising the cookery section when I hear a ping from my phone behind the counter and I can’t get across the shop quickly enough.

  ‘You’re not meant to leave your phone on the till,’ Henry calls from the stockroom. It’s been super quiet so far this morning, so we’ve just been listening to the radio – we like to start the day competing over PopMaster on Radio 2 – and tidying up.

  ‘I know,’ I call as I grab my mobile. I’d tucked it behind the pen holder so it wasn’t out on display or anything. Henry’s paranoid since one of the Saturday staff had her phone nicked by a customer and officially we’re not supposed to have our phones with us at all – they’re meant to be switched off and in our bags or coats in the pathetic excuse for a staff room, but no one takes any notice of that particular rule.

  ‘Shit,’ I say when I see I’ve got a text from a number I don’t recognise. And then I notice the time is 11.11 a.m. Freya told me about a girlfriend who used to make a wish at 11.11 and even though Freya thought it was hilarious, I’ve done it ever since. I close my eyes and whisper ‘Please let it be him’ under my breath before swiping the text open.

  Hey. This is Dan. From the park. Hope u remember. Want to get a coffee?

  Ken Bruce is playing ‘Get Lucky’ and I close my eyes and dance a bit. He actually texted. I knew he would – he had to, because of the dream – but he really, really did. When I open my eyes again, a customer is standing in front of me and I shriek. ‘Sorry!’

  The customer – a young woman wearing a blue crocheted beanie – grins at me. ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘I just got some good news…’ I say, gesturing vaguely at my phone, before shoving it back behind the pens. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I’m looking for a book for my nephew,’ she says. ‘He’s seven.’

  I take her over to the kids’ section and show her a few books and only after she’s bought a Roald Dahl gift set and left do I take my phone back out again.

  Hi, I type. And then I stare at the screen.

  ‘Tea?’ Henry calls out from the stockroom.

  ‘Please.’

  I’m still staring at my phone when Henry brings my tea. I’ve typed and deleted a selection of responses, all of them rubbish or embarrassing or both.

  ‘What’s up?’

  I glance at him and back down at my screen. ‘I, um, met someone. Yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I put my phone on the counter. The text box says Of course… but that’s all.

  ‘You know my dream?’ I say, pulling the stand with the gift cards towards me and taking out a handful so I can sort them into matching pictures. ‘The, um, recurring one?’

  ‘The guy in the park,’ Henry says. ‘I am familiar, yes.’

  I nod. I remember the first time I told Henry about it. I hadn’t been working or living with him for long, but we were talking about dreams and it just came out. And he had said, ‘You can’t possibly believe you’re really going to meet him?’

  ‘I met him,’ I say now. ‘Yesterday.’

  I carry on staring at the cards, even though they actually didn’t need sorting at all. I’m not sure anyone’s even bought one since the last time I sorted them.

  ‘Where?’ Henry says.

  I put the card holder back. I can’t even fake tidying it any longer. I flick the till open to check if we need a new receipt roll but that’s fine too. Bugger.

  ‘Yesterday. In the park. When I went out for milk.’

  ‘Right,’ Henry says. ‘OK. And… how did you know it was him?’

  ‘Because I just knew. I’ve been having that dream for ten years. I saw him there and… of course I knew it was him.’

  ‘And you talked to him?’

  I pick up my tea and blow over the surface, watching it ripple. ‘Yes. And I asked him if he wanted to get coffee sometime. And he just texted me.’

  ‘Wow,’ Henry says.

  I glance at him. He’s got a little frown line between his eyebrows that he gets when he’s confused.

  ‘I know. But now I don’t know how to reply.’ I gesture at my phone.

  ‘Well what did he say?’

  ‘Hey-this-is-Dan-from-the-park-hope-you-remember-want-to-get-a-coffee,’ I say without even looking.

  ‘Right,’ Henry says. ‘So how about, “Of course I remember you. I’m free after five today. You?’’’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But isn’t that a bit… I mean, should I let him know that I’m free today? Don’t I want him to think that I’m, you know, busy and important and in demand?’

  ‘Lie?’ Henry says, smiling slyly. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I buy into all that playing games stuff. If you like him and you want to go out with him, why not just tell him that?’

  ‘Because it might scare him away.’

  ‘And if it does scare him away then he’s not the right guy for you anyway, right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, sliding my phone towards me with one finger. ‘I just… I know we’re going to be together, we’re meant to be together. So I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that.’

  ‘Or,’ Henry says. ‘If you are meant to be together, there’s nothing you can do that will jeopardise it, so you might as well be yourself.’

  ‘Ugh,’ I mutter. ‘That’s the last thing I want to be.’

  Shaking his head, Henry picks up a box of books from the new delivery and starts sorting through them, separating out the different genres and holding up the occasional romance he knows I’ll want to read.

  I type in exactly what Henry suggested, but I still don’t send it. Instead, I stare at it until my eyes water.

  ‘So you really think he’s your dream man then?’ Henry says a few minutes later, without looking up.

  ‘Literally,’ I say. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I mean… just because you dreamt about him, doesn’t mean he’s right for you, does it? Maybe he’s a Tory. Or he goes dogfighting at the weekend. Or he’s a member of a water sports forum.’

  I start to ask what’s wrong with water sports – I’m picturing myself on the back of Dan’s jet ski, zipping across the ocean – but then I realise and I blush. I glance at Henry and notice he’s blushing too. Serves him right.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But I need to know. And I don’t know why I would have had the dream if I wasn’t at least supposed to get to know him.’
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br />   ‘You know what I dreamt last night?’ Henry says. ‘I dreamt I was in the bath and it fell through to the living room and when the plumber came out to fix it, it was Piers Morgan. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.’

  I frown. ‘I think that one means you’re feeling insecure. And the Piers Morgan bit means you have issues with authority. Probably something unresolved with your father.’

  * * *

  I tell myself I won’t send the text until I’ve served at least five customers, but when it gets to noon and I’ve still only served two – and one of those was looking for directions to the Tube – I give in and hit send. And then I have to sit down for five minutes, taking deep breaths.

  I leave my phone behind while I walk up to the Indian deli on the corner and get two battered aubergine slices for my lunch and then keep walking up to the park. Force of habit. I sit on the bench where I met Dan and eat the first of the aubergine slices, the oil running down my hands, the spices making my tongue tingle. I save the other one for Henry. He always pretends they’re disgusting, but snarfs one every time I buy them.

  Henry gave me my first interview when I moved down to London. The manager, Julia, was supposed to do it, but she’d got held up on the Tube somewhere and, after keeping me waiting for forty-five minutes, phoned and told Henry to do it. He’d never interviewed anyone before and I think he was almost as nervous as me. He blushed the entire time and fiddled with one of his shirt buttons so much that it came off. He gave me the job there and then (to spite Julia, he told me once we knew each other better) and then, after I’d worked here a few weeks, he offered me a room in the shared house he lived in.

  I’d been living in a bedsit in Acton and I hated it. The landlord there basically wanted the money from renting out a room without ever having to accept that he had a stranger living in his house. So I could cook in his kitchen, but only between 6.30 p.m. and 7.15 p.m. (and I couldn’t leave any dishes so that included washing-up time too). I sometimes didn’t get home until almost seven and by the time Henry took pity on me, I’d had Marmite on toast for dinner five nights running.

  Henry’s house was so much nicer – SO much nicer – that I almost cried when he showed me around. Not only was it just a few minutes’ walk from the shop, there were no scary rules about when you could cook (or what you could cook – my old landlord had a fish ban). The only available room was pretty small – there was, is, only just room for my queen bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers; I can’t even have a bedside table ’cos the door would hit it – but I accepted it immediately. Henry borrowed a car, drove with me down to Acton and moved me out before my old landlord was even home from work.

  * * *

  When I get back to work, Dan’s replied.

  Do you know the coffee shop by the station? How about there at 5.15?

  Chapter Eight

  By five, I’m so nervous I think I might throw up. The shop’s been quiet so I haven’t had enough distractions and my imagination’s been working overtime. Henry and I have been taking it in turns to faff with stuff in the shop or sit and read behind the counter. I started reading a new US romance, with a beefy, long-haired man on the cover, nipples straining the silk of his shirt, but I couldn’t concentrate and ended up listlessly flicking through one of the glossy ‘anatomy’ books.

  I’ve reached the point where I think I’d be relieved if Dan cancelled – or if something happened that meant I didn’t have to go: a small but not serious injury or an easily contained but inconvenient fire, maybe – so I need to get out of here and over to the coffee shop before I bottle it altogether. I just keep telling myself I don’t need to be nervous, because this is meant to be. I dreamt him. I literally dreamt him. It helps. But not as much as you’d think.

  ‘Do you need to go home and get changed or anything?’ Henry asks me. He’s so bored that he’s starting taking shelves-full of books down and wiping over the bookcases. He keeps finding crisp packets and tissues lazy customers have shoved down the back of the books.

  ‘I… no. I mean, I wasn’t going to.’ I look down at myself. I’m wearing my favourite black skirt and top with pink Converse. ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘No,’ he says, without looking at me. ‘You look great. I just thought you might want to. I know what girls are like.’

  I laugh. ‘Do you?’

  The tops of his ears turn as pink as my shoes.

  ‘I might go and fix my make-up,’ I say. ‘Will you be OK on your own?’

  ‘I think I’ll probably manage.’

  The lighting in the tiny bathroom makes me look wan. And my eyes look wide and scared. I add another layer of eyeliner, fill my eyebrows in a bit more and reapply my lipstick. And then I run my wrists under the cold tap as I stare at myself in the mirror.

  ‘You can do this,’ I mouth at my reflection.

  And then I dry my hands and go.

  * * *

  The coffee shop Dan suggested has a deli in the front, and seating in the back, down two steps. As soon as I open the door, the smell of pastry and garlic and coffee hits me and I almost feel my body sigh. I’m glad he chose this place to meet. I’ve grabbed a takeaway coffee in here sometimes when I’ve been getting the Tube, but I’ve never sat in. I order a latte from the disinterested-looking woman on the counter and take it through to the back. While the front of the shop is bright and light, the back is moodier. There are no windows and the walls are bright with neon signs. There’s a white one that says ‘Dream’ in script, so I sit under it, smiling to myself. It’s a sign. Literally.

  There are only four tables down here and only one of them is occupied, by a woman reading a book and wearing headphones. I hope she leaves before Dan arrives, but at least she’s wearing headphones and won’t be listening to us. Or live-tweeting our first date conversation.

  I check my phone. It’s ten past. Even though the shop closes at five, there’s always a bit of admin stuff to do after. Henry had started cashing up when I got back from redoing my make-up and I half-heartedly swept the floor before he told me to just go ’cos I was making him nervous.

  I scroll Twitter, while glancing up towards the door every few tweets, and it’s only just after five-fifteen when Dan appears. Because he’s standing in the doorway and the light’s behind him, I can’t see him properly at first, just the light shining around him like a halo. My shoulders relax – I realise I genuinely wasn’t sure he’d turn up – and then the butterflies burst in my stomach again. This is it. He’s here. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.

  * * *

  ‘The interviewer was a bit of a knob, if I’m honest,’ he says, leaning back in his seat. ‘I don’t think he really knew what he was talking about. So he was asking me, like, stuff that I couldn’t possibly know, you know? And then when I tried to twist the question – you know that’s what they tell you to do? Like a politician? – he didn’t seem to like that either. So I don’t think I got it, no.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  He shrugs. ‘It wasn’t perfect, anyway. Good interview practice mainly.’

  I’ve almost finished my latte, but Dan hasn’t even taken a sip of his cappuccino yet because he’s been telling me about his interview. I still haven’t managed to work out exactly what the job was – or what he does or wants to do – but he looks even hotter than he did yesterday. When he came in, he was wearing a black beanie, which he pulled off to reveal such soft-looking hair it was all I could do not to reach out and stroke it back from his face. He’s wearing different glasses today, rounder than yesterday’s, and they suit him. They make him look sort of European. Or like a hot young lawyer forced to work on a case with the female colleague he has a secret crush on. Or something. It’s possible I read too many romance novels.

  ‘What is it you do?’ I ask.

  ‘Accountancy,’ he says, nodding.

  I’m not sure I’ve read any romance novels featuring accountants.

  ‘Oh, interesting,’ I lie.

>   ‘I’m still a trainee, basically. I’ve got more exams to pass. Well, there’s always more exams to pass.’ He laughs and I laugh too, even though it wasn’t funny.

  ‘What made you want to do that?’

  He looks confused for a second, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘My dad… he works in a factory. And he loves it. He’s got really good mates and he’s always worked there, you know? Right from school. And I just… I didn’t want that. I wanted something where I could make decent money. I thought about law, but… I don’t think I’m clever enough.’

  My cheeks heat up, but he’s not to know I’ve just been having a lawyer fantasy.

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s good, yeah,’ he says, his eyes brightening. ‘It sounds weird to say it’s fun, but it kind of is, sometimes. You know if there’s, like, some money missing and you search for it and then you find it.’

  I smile and he laughs. ‘Yeah. I know. That doesn’t really sound like fun. I want to get into forensic accounting eventually, that’s like investigating companies, what they’ve done with their money, how they might have lost or hidden some. It’s dead interesting.’

  ‘Sounds it,’ I say. And it does. A bit. ‘I do a bit of bookkeeping for my stepdad, Tom. The shop doesn’t pay that well, so he’s just helping me out really.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s lovely. And I know what you mean. It is interesting. Like if the figures are out and you go over it all again and get it to work out?’

  He nods enthusiastically. ‘That’s my favourite thing really. I worked on this case where…’

  As he tells me about a company who were meant to have sold their stock, but had actually stashed it somewhere and faked the figures – I think – I watch him. I like his face as he talks. He’s animated. His eyes are bright and he’s quick to smile. His eyebrows are expressive and he has long dark lashes. He’s got nice lips and I watch his mouth for a bit, before switching up to his eyes again in case he thinks I’m looking at his mouth because I want him to kiss me. Which I think maybe I do. But not right now. I really don’t want him thinking that accountancy chat gets me hot.