Page 54 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
Oh! He kept throwing these curveballs at her and Sophy didn’t know if she should try to catch them or duck her head. She was disappointed, but also insanely flattered. ‘I’m not really the sort of person who’s capable of breaking someone’s heart,’ she said wistfully. Not that she wanted to run around causing that kind of havoc but it would be nice to know that, for once, just once, someone was pining for her.
Charles took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers and, like it was a reflex action, Sophy immediately raised her head again so she was looking into his eyes. His face, soft and tender, as he looked back at her. ‘I know that I shouldn’t flirt with you as muchas I do but I just can’t help myself. You’re funny and you’re kind and you’re open to new experiences, to welcoming new people into your life. Also, indulging those new people when they’re banging on about semi-precious stones and oxidisation. And you’re very beautiful, Sophy, you must know that.’
Sophy scrunched up her all-right-but-certainly-no-oil-painting face because she didn’t know that. On a good day, she thought she was pretty. On a not-good day, she hoped she was passable but, compared to Cress’s effortless, ethereal beauty or Phoebe’s traffic-stopping, striking looks, then no, she didn’t know that. Not at all. Then there was a lifetime of having the word ‘ginger’ hurled at her as an all-purpose term of abuse.
As if he could read her mind, Charles put down his brandy on the coffee table in front of them so he could run his fingers through her hair, hold it up to the light. ‘There are colours here that I don’t even think we have words for,’ he said softly. ‘Your hair is as extraordinary and vibrant and beautiful as you are.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ Sophy whispered. ‘If you keep saying things like that then it’s my heart that will get broken when I have to leave.’
Charles kept stroking the same strand of hair as if he was entranced. ‘Also, talking of breaking things, Johnno would smash my legs if I did anything to hurt his little princess.’
That was a mood-killer if ever there was one. Sophy freed herself from Charles’s soothing touch so she could loll back on the sofa and laugh. ‘As if I’m Johnno’s little princess. He’s always been the most hands-off father and he would never resort to physical violence in the unlikely event that I was suffering.’
‘Really?’ As ever, Charles quirked one eyebrow to devastating effect.
‘Yes! Really!’ But then Sophy remembered that Johnno had threatened to pay Egan a visit after their split and that he’d even threatened to call in to the official receivers to get back her outstanding wages. Then there’d been the time when she’d worked in that awful pub and the manager had kept sexually harassing her and then sacked Sophy when she’d told him to cut it out. Johnno had paid him a visit and put the fear of God into him. ‘Well, maybe not your legs,’ she conceded. ‘Maybe just a couple of fingers.’
Charles lifted his hand and waggled the fingers in question. ‘I do like having fully operational digits,’ he said. Then he stopped smiling and looked at Sophy in the same way that he’d looked at Mirror Sophy wearing the black velvet dress. It was a rapt, hungry, even a little desperate, look. ‘But I think I’d like kissing you even more.’
After that, kissing was inevitable. Sophy couldn’t even tell who kissed who first. They leaned into each other, like magnets unable to resist the rules of physics.
There was some face-stroking. Sophy realised that she’d wanted to trace the beautiful angle of Charles’s cheekbones with one fingertip ever since she’d first met him, and his hands were back in her hair. But only to cup the back of her head and draw her closer; not that Sophy needed to be drawn – she was already there, eyes fluttering shut for that first shocking brush of her lips against his.
They were sweet, soft kisses like butterfly wings. Kisses just for the sheer glorious sake of them. Kisses because why the hell not?
Sophy found herself sliding backwards until she was lying on the sofa, which worked out very well because it meant that Charles slid too so he was lying on her, hard and lean where she was soft and yielding. The kisses became fiercer, more passionate, tasting of brandy and expectation, but, though they kissed for what felt like hours (because it was hours), it was just kissing. Hands touchedand caressed only the non-erogenous bits (although it seemed to Sophy that her entire body had transformed into one gigantic erogenous zone), clothes stayed very much on and, like a hero and heroine in an old Hollywood film, they both kept one foot on the floor at all times.
When it was so late that they heard a church clock somewhere strike the midnight hour, Charles took Sophy by the hand up the stairs and walked her to her bedroom door, and, with one last gentle, gentlemanly kiss, wished her a good night.
Chapter Twenty
The next morning Sophy felt as shy as a debutante at her first cotillion as she came down the stairs to the smell of coffee brewing. Charles was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs and he looked so pleased to see her, as if he didn’t have any regrets about what had happened the night before, that Sophy decided that there was nothing to feel shy about.
He even kissed her hand but didn’t make any move to kiss her lips again. That was for the best. Sophy had spent a sleepless night replaying a greatest hits of the night’s kisses but, as dawn had started to streak through the dark sky outside her window, she came to the sober realisation that the kisses were a one-off.
You couldn’t keep kissing someone like that, even with a foot on the floor at all times, if you were going to be emigrating quite soon.
‘Last night, it was wonderful, more than I could ever have hoped for, more than I dared dream,’ Charles finally said, when they’d had a cup of coffee each and were fortified enough for the difficult conversation ahead. ‘But it’s not that I don’t want to, because I do…’
‘But I’m going to Australia in a few months and to keep on kissing… well, it wouldn’t be fair on either of us, would it?’ Sophy finished for him.
Charles threw her a grateful look. ‘It sucks though.’
It was such an unCharles thing to say but Sophy was in complete agreement. ‘It really does.’ And then she thoughtabout the night before and how Charles had kissed and nibbled and yes, sucked a tiny patch of skin behind her left ear and Sophy wasn’t capable of saying anything else until the toaster popped out four slices of toast and she could ask him if he wanted jam and butter or just jam on his.
Packing their bags into the boot of the Mercedes and then driving out of Bath felt to Sophy as if she was leaving a world that only existed in dreams and was now heading back to grim reality. Never had a Monday felt so Mondayish.
But then Charles lightly brushed her leg as he changed gears, and shot her a smile that was much sweeter than the two pieces of toast and jam she’d just had, and Sophy decided that everything was going to be all right.
They stopped outside of Reading to call on a vintage dealer Charles knew, who met them at his lock-up, a garage in a breaker’s yard that was full of clothes and accessories, but everything reeked of petrol so they made their excuses and left.
It was after three when Charles pulled in to the kerb, outside the neat little three-bedroom semi in Hendon that Sophy currently called home.
‘This is me,’ she said unnecessarily, making no move to unclip her seatbelt and get out of the car because then the spell really would be broken.
‘This is you,’ Charles echoed and, as if he couldn’t help himself, he stroked a hand through her hair one last time.
‘I should get going… I have so much to do.’ Again, Sophy made no move to get going or do anything other than sit and stare at Charles, who seemed hypnotised at the feel of her hair against his fingers.
