Page 94 of The Importance of Being Emma
He laughed. ‘No problem, I’ll be glad of the excuse to be in the office for hours on end. Missing Tamara, are you?’
I hesitated, debating whether to tell him about Tamara in case it made him even more stressed; I decided to get it over and done with.
‘Actually, we broke up a couple of months ago.’
‘Ah.’ He didn’t sound particularly surprised. ‘Sorry to hear that, but it’s best to find out now. I mean, I did wonder if you were planning to settle down—’
‘Definitely not. Not with her or anyone else. Anyway,’ I said in a brisker tone, ‘let me have the flight details as soon as you know them. In the meantime, I’ll get Mrs Burn to give the house an early spring clean.’
After the call I lay back, hands clasped behind my head, thinking about the implications of returning to India ahead of schedule. On the work front, it was unfortunate; there were a couple of initiatives I’d have liked to see through to completion, particularly the Parkinson contract. But this paled into insignificance beside the impact on my personal life; within one or two weeks I’d be thousands of miles away from the future Mrs Emma Churchill, in a place that could trigger no memories of her.
For the first time in a long while, I felt almost cheerful.
* * *
~~EMMA~~
Although our offices were closed for two weeks over Christmas and New Year, Harriet returned to Highbury after only a few days with her family. When she called me up to announce that she had something to show me, my thoughts went immediately to the earrings that Flynn had bought. He’d gone back to the Lake District until New Year, still refusing to tell me what he was up to with the BBC, but I wondered if he’d left them for her at her house.
I wasted no time in inviting her over. We sat next to each other on the sofa in the drawing room, warming ourselves in front of the fire and agreeing that, this year, we’d both have preferred to spend Christmas Day somewhere else. She explained that she’d have liked to stay in Highbury and looked wistful, no doubt imagining a romantic encounter with Flynn. But I didn’t elaborate on my situation, the strain of seeing Mark and the repercussions — or lack of them — from that night at Forbury Manor. I merely said that I hadn’t felt as relaxed as usual with my family.
Eventually she produced what she’d come to show me. It was a little jeweller’s box. I tried to suppress a sense of déjà vu — even though I could see it wasn’t the one Flynn had given me so half-heartedly. She prised it open and thrust it under my nose.
There was no need to act amazed; I would never have guessed what it contained, ever. ‘Um, what exactly are these?’
She made a face. ‘This is’ — dramatic pause — ‘my life.’
I was even more confused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘What I mean is, thiswasmy life when I fancied Philip. Daft, innit? But now I’ve moved on, so I thought we could burn these, symbollocks like.’
‘Symbolic,’ I said automatically; then, ‘No, symbollocks is far more appropriate where Philip’s concerned. But you mustn’t burn any of them until you’ve told me what they are.’
She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa, cocked her head on one side and studied the contents of the box.
‘We’ll start with this.’ With an embarrassed smile, she showed me a little bottle of Tippex.
I stared at it blankly.
‘Don’t you remember?’ she screeched. ‘Philip was in our office and I’d spilt a bit of coffee on those mock-ups you’d spent ages over and my Tippex was all dried up so I couldn’t use it. And you didn’t have any so Philip brought some and said we couldkeep it. I put it in this box and I used to take it out and touch it, becausehe’dtouched it.’
‘I do remember it now.’ I bit my lip. ‘And I’m ashamed to say I had two bottles of Tippex in my drawer all along. But I pretended there wasn’t any, so that he’d run round after you.’
She shrugged, replaced the Tippex in the box and picked up a folded piece of yellow paper. When she opened it out, I saw that there were a few words scribbled on it: ‘milk’, ‘Rice Krispies’, ‘Anusol’.
‘Philip’s shopping list.’ She frowned. ‘What’s Anusol?’
I couldn’t help giggling. ‘Dad’s got some, it’s for piles. Poor Philip, now he’s got Gusty — which must be considerably worse. Where on earth did you get this?’
‘At his house after the photo shoot, it was next to the computer. He mustn’t have wanted us to see it ’cos he threw it in the waste paper basket, but I fished it out when I went back for your camera.’
There were some other ‘relics’: the stub of a pencil, well chewed; a half-eaten chocolate bar; and a rather suggestive doodle on a scrap of file paper.
She gave a deep sigh. ‘And now I’m going to chuck the whole lot on the fire.’
‘Not the Tippex, it’s flammable!’ I snatched the bottle out of the box. ‘Actually, there’s quite a lot left in here, don’t you want to keep it?’
A steely look came into her big blue eyes. ‘No. It’s all got to go.’
