‘Sleep is a waste when I’ve got you next to me.’ He hooked his hand around her waist and tried to pull her back under the covers. ‘Come back to bed,’ he smiled.
‘Honey, I can’t. I’m due at the Forge later and I’ve got to go up to Primrose Hill, see Georgia, return some stuff.’
‘That won’t take long.’
‘I have to go home and change first,’ she said, standing up and pulling on her knickers.
‘You’re still pissed off, aren’t you?’
‘Dan, I have things to do today.’
He swung his legs out of bed and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her.
‘When can I see you again?’ he said, nuzzling his lightly stubbled chin against her shoulder. ‘If it makes you happy, we’ll take it slow, but right now, I want to spend every night until I leave for Washington just like last night.’
‘That might be an expensive undertaking,’ she smiled, realising immediately that he could actually afford a room at Claridge’s from now until next Christmas just from the interest on his trust fund.
‘What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?’ he said, planting light kisses on a strip of her neck.
‘I think Cheryl wants me to work.’
‘Take the evening off. Tell Cheryl I’ll pay her staff wages for the night if I can get to spend it with you.’
She turned around to face him.
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Gideon mentioned he’s having a house party,’ he said, playing absently with his cock. ‘He has this great place in Docklands. We could go to that, then go to my mum and dad’s for this lunch thing they always have on New Year’s Day.’
‘No, no, no. I think I need to be kept away from your parents for a while.’
He stepped towards her and held her face in his hands.
‘Amy, I love you. I want to be with you and my family have to understand that. They’re not all bad, but if they make you uncomfortable, then say the word and we’ll just go to the party and spend the first day of the new year in bed at my place. We can call in pizza and watch crappy movies all day long. How about it?’ he said, stroking her nipple.
‘That sounds like a plan,’ she smiled, as they turned around and fell back on the bed.
The sunshine had pushed its way through the clouds by the time Amy emerged from Chalk Farm tube. It was still cold, her breath puffed in front of her and the frost on the pavement sparkled, but she had a spring in her step. In fact, it could have been pouring with rain and she would have felt like doing a Gene Kelly-style whirl around a lamp post. After leaving the hotel, she had been back to her flat to change and had a suit bag containing Georgia’s magic dress draped over her arm. She was back with Daniel, she had friends who cared – she felt on top of the world.
She stopped at the florist in the village and bought a nice bunch of tulips and rose verbena. As an afterthought, she popped into the newsagent’s to buy a Kit Kat. Usually she would have denied herself chocolate – in fact she had been denying herself pretty much everything since she was eleven, since her seriousness about ballet demanded that she stay flyweight and slim – but since her trip to Manhattan, things had changed. Not only did she feel lighter, more confident in her skin; she felt that there was a future ahead of her, a future with Daniel and maybe, just maybe, a future that didn’t involve dancing. Or at least one that might not involve Amy obsessively logging and justifying every calorie going into her body.
She was just turning into Georgia’s street and savouring the illicit joy of the chocolate when she spotted someone familiar. Early thirties, wearing jeans, a thick fisherman’s sweater and a stripy college scarf, he had the sort of brooding good looks of a Heathcliff or a Mr Rochester. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she had seen him before – some BBC period drama? she wondered to herself – before she realised it was Georgia’s relative Will.
He had obviously recognised her too. She watched him hesitate in his tracks, then, as he realised that a confrontation was unavoidable, slow his pace.
‘Hello,’ she said awkwardly when they were a few feet apart.
He stopped and nodded.
‘All right?’
‘Amy, Georgia’s friend,’ she said, feeling a little embarrassed.
‘I remember,’ he said tersely.
‘Happy Christmas,’ she said brightly. ‘Or should we be saying happy new year by now?’
‘I thought it was all happy holidays in the States,’ he replied in a tone that suggested that Americans were colonial heathens.