Page 80 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
‘Though I don’t know why I’m giving you the means to leave the country when we’ve only just started getting to know each other,’ Johnno said, gently cuffing Sophy’s chin.
‘You could come out too. Maybe for Bob and Jean’s anniversary or Christmas?’ Sophy suggested and Johnno nodded.
‘Yeah, definitely I’m overdue a visit back to the motherland,’ he said without much enthusiasm, and Sophy knew that he wasn’t going to follow through on it.‘You should probably get back to work now.’
‘You coming?’ Sophy asked as she gathered all the gifts he’d given her and put them back in the bag.
Johnno shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog.’
He was impossible. Sophy grinned. ‘Yeah, of course you do.’
There was time for one last hug and another fervent thank-you, then Sophy headed back to Aldwych to catch the 168 to Chalk Farm while Johnno was going in the opposite direction, across the river to whatever he had planned next.
Once she was on the bus, Sophy knew a moment of blind panic until she checked to make sure that she still had her passport and her certificate. And she couldn’t cart those plane tickets around in a carrier bag. She dug them out to transfer them to the plastic folder, but she couldn’t resist looking at them again. Just to make sure that she hadn’t imagined them.
No, they were real. Very expensive. But also very real. She’d be flying out from Heathrow, stopping for a few hours in Kuala Lumpur, then on to Adelaide.
It was then, and only then, that Sophy noticed the date on the outward-bound ticket.
Which was why she promptly burst into tears again.
Somehow Sophy got through the working day on autopilot, waiting for Freddy to call her back after she’d left him several messages, each one more urgent than the last.
He finally called back when she was walking home from Hendon station, to where she’d have to deliver the news to her mother. It felt like she was walking the green mile to the electric chair.
‘Freddy, did you know about these tickets?’ Sophy didn’t even waste time with hellos and how are yous? ‘It’s not that I’mnotgrateful, because I am.I’m so grateful that I cried. But is there any way I can defer the departure date?’
‘Oh, mate…’ She could hear Freddy tapping on his keyboard. ‘The thing is, Sophy, he was so proud of himself for organising the ticket and it’s a valid ticket, fully legit, but Johnno knows a bloke at the airline…’
‘Of course he does,’ Sophy sighed.
‘…who did him a deal on the understanding that the date for the outward-bound flight is set in stone.’ Freddy sucked in a breath. ‘He thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am pleased but this is much sooner than I was planning to go. Originally it was mid-August, then my gran’s hip operation got moved to mid-July and I thought I might fly out then. And then we thought it might get bumped up to the middle of June but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her.’ Sophy didn’t think it was possible but she was close to tears again. ‘I didn’t have a definite date.’
‘Johnno said that you’d love to go out earlier, to spend time with your grandparents before the op. If it’s about giving notice at the shop…’
‘It’s not,’ Sophy said because Phoebe would be delighted at Sophy giving early notice. She’d probably offer to come round and help her pack. ‘It’s just I have other commitments. Things I need to do. People I need to spend time with…’
She didn’t need to say anything more because Freddy said it for her. ‘Charles.’
‘What do you know about me and Charles?’ Sophy demanded, but then she remembered how Freddy had had a ringside seat to see Sophy sitting on Charles’s lap, the two of them kissing.
Freddy sighed like, once again, he didn’t get paid enough for this. ‘Mate,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Everyone knows about you and Charles.’
Everyone but Johnno, that was.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was one of the worst twenty-four-hour periods in Sophy’s recent memory, as she delivered the news to her nearest and dearest.
Caroline was white-hot furious. There were several breakages as she took out her anger, while loading the dishwasher, on defenceless glasses and plates, jamming them into places they weren’t meant to go while Mike whimpered in the background.
‘Typical of your bloody father!’ she snapped when she was capable of words. ‘He’s all about the big, grand gesture that always ends up being more of a hindrance than a help.’
‘He was trying to do a nice thing,’ Sophy said, wincing as her favourite mug was hurled into the dishwasher. ‘Itisa nice thing. And he’s spent thousands of pounds on the tickets so I can’t exactly throw it back in his face.’
‘Instead of spending thousands of pounds on a plane ticket that robs me of all the quality time that we were meant to have before I never see you again…’
