Page 5 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually (Actually #1)

I dashed into the restaurant just as the first course was being served.

Hastily I apologized to our Japanese guests and slipped into my seat while David frowned at me from across the table.

As I took a good swig of the wine which the waiter had very efficiently poured into my glass the moment I sat down, I noticed that David was doing something strange with his hand.

It was almost as if he’d got some sort of nervous affliction.

He kept brushing his hand across the side of his head in very small, swift movements—almost as if he didn’t want anyone else to see.

I looked at him oddly— what the hell was he doing? It was a most effeminate gesture, like he was trying to smooth his hair down. But David’s very short hair was, as always, immaculately presented, so I couldn’t understand what he was up to at all.

I turned my head to one side as I tried to figure it out. But David just continued to get redder and redder, and his eyes wider and wider as he stared across the table at me. Now he was actually flicking his head to one side—back across his shoulder .

He looked like a very camp advertisement for hair conditioner.

“Escuss, Miss,” the Japanese man sitting next to me said as I turned toward him. “I think Mr. David is trying to tell you this.” He reached into my hair and pulled out a very large piece of fluffy white popcorn.

“Oh…oh right. Er, thank you,” I said, nodding at the Japanese gentleman.

“My pleasure,” he said, giving a small bow in return.

I turned to look back at David who’d stopped doing his Black Beauty impression, but now was doing animal impersonations of a different kind as he growled silently across the table.

I sighed and took another large gulp of my wine.

Perhaps tonight just wasn’t meant to go well …

After the popcorn incident, the gentlemen from Japan were very pleasant and polite to me in the little bit of conversation we had together through the rest of the evening, but they were there primarily to talk business with David, and talk business is what they did all through dinner.

The topic of their conversation was, strangely enough, my favorite subject, but it was the business side of the cinema they were discussing not the fun part, and they weren’t really interested in a little company that supplied popcorn makers to local cinemas.

I tried to sit there being the dutiful hostess for David’s sake—looking pretty and smiling in all the right places—really I did.

But I soon got bored and I began to look around for something to amuse myself as I sat there.

None of the waiters looked like movie stars; neither did any of the other diners.

I’d tried to accept my Oscar earlier in the evening and that had got me into trouble.

Plus, I felt Johnny Depp should probably wait for another night when we were less likely to be disturbed.

And unfortunately for me, there were not even any snails on the menu, so I couldn’t have any fun shooting them across the room and calling out “slippery little suckers” as a passing waiter expertly caught them in his outstretched hand à la Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman .

Eventually it was all over, and we bade farewell to our guests. As David and I saw them into taxis bound for their hotel, the last of the Japanese men, the one who had pulled the popcorn from my hair, paused next to me.

“I thank you, Miss Scarlett, for vey pleasant evening,” he said. “But I think you would be enjoying the Romeo and Juliet story more than the King Lear —yes?”

I smiled at him. “Yes, Mr. Yashimoto, I think I probably would like that one better.”

He nodded. “I thinking this is so. Mr. David is good man, Miss Scarlett, but you are special lady too. I am thinking Mr. Shakespeare vey right when he say, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ Hmm?”

I stared at him for a moment. “Er, yes, you could be right there, Mr. Yashimoto. I’ll bear that in mind, thank you.”

“You are vey welcome, Miss Scarlett,” he said and bowed.

I watched with David while he was driven away in his taxi, the words ringing in my ears. Whatever did he mean? I may not have remembered any of the Bard’s other quotes from tonight, but I certainly remembered that one.

** *

“The Japanese chappie said that to you?” Oscar asked, aghast. “How very odd!”

“I know, isn’t it? Have you had enough yet?” I asked apologetically. “I did warn you it was a long story.”

“You mean there’s more?” His mouth dropped open.

I nodded. “Oh yes, much more.”

“Then do you know something, darling?” Oscar said, a solemn expression appearing on his face.

I shook my head. Had he had enough? I’d been babbling on for quite a while now.

“If there’s more story to be told, then we’re definitely going to need— more biscuits!” Oscar cried, as he leaped off the sofa and hurried back to his kitchen for supplies.

***

The taxi journey back to our house that night was very quiet. David didn’t seem to be in the mood for pleasant chitchat.

And when we got home things weren’t much better.

“Look, David, I’ve said I’m sorry about earlier,” I said, straightening up a plug socket that was hanging off the wall by its wires before I could plug the kettle in.

I thought if I made David his favorite hot drink of baby marshmallows in drinking chocolate before we went to bed, it might make up for tonight’s minor disasters on my part.

“But I thought it went quite well in the end. The Japanese men all seemed to enjoy themselves.”

“No thanks to you,” David mumbled as he undid his tie and threw it on his Black tonight was about my job.” I corrected myself. “My business , actually.”

“I’m not just talking about tonight, about taking the call from George; I’m talking about everything. About the daydreaming for instance, like you were in the theater this evening.”

I opened my mouth to protest.

“Don’t tell me you weren’t, Scarlett, because I know that look on your face. God knows I’ve seen it often enough.”

I folded my arms. But I couldn’t deny what he was saying. And OK, yes, I may be a bit of a daydreamer—but I wasn’t a liar.

“It’s not so bad when you’re a bit bored; I suppose we all have our own ways of passing the time when life becomes dull, and trying to live your life like a movie is certainly different. It’s when it starts to encroach on our lives together that I have a problem with it.”

“I have no idea what you mean, David,” I said haughtily. Even though I had a feeling I knew exactly what he meant. I turned away from him and began to clatter mugs and spoons about on the kitchen worktop in an effort to deflect the conversation.

But David wasn’t going to be so easily distracted by a mug of hot chocolate tonight.

“So then,” he continued, “how many times do we watch a movie together and you sit there comparing me to the hero, Scarlett, hmm? I can’t be Tom Cruise or Daniel Craig or whoever else it is that night.

I’m me, David, not some superhero in tights. ”

It was a good job I wasn’t facing him just then because I almost laughed out loud at the image of David prancing about in tights.

Luckily I managed to suppress my laughter, and as I turned back to reply to his accusations, another thought occurred to me.

If David knew me well at all, he should have known that those were the two least likely Hollywood actors I’d have been comparing him to; they were hardly my favorites.

“David, I can honestly say I’ve never wanted you to wear tights,” I managed to say with a straight face. “And yes, maybe I have compared you to the odd film star on occasion, but that’s not a crime, is it? I bet most women do it when they’re watching a movie.”

“When they’re watching the movie, yes, but not later that day when their man is washing up or shaving or…well, do I have to spell it out for you?”

I swallowed hard. He knew about that?

“So,” I said, desperately grasping at something to change the subject with and to use as ammunition. This argument was becoming decidedly one-sided. The boiling kettle not only made me jump, but also helped me with my task. “How do you think it is for me living in this…this skip of a house?”

David looked blank .

“Well, I’ll tell you. It’s like living in a permanent episode of DIY SOS , without the hope that a bunch of purple-shirted experts are going to come along and rescue me from this Homebase hell.”

David looked completely shocked at my outburst.

“But I thought you liked our house project?” he asked in a small voice, as though I had just come along and knocked down all his sandcastles. “I thought you liked us doing up the house together?”

“No, you like doing it, David. You’re the one who likes the DIY and makeover programs, not me. I’d just have got someone in to do it all up for us if I’d had my way.”

“But that would have cost a fortune. We’re saving ourselves so much money doing it this way.”

“Are we?” I asked, looking round me. “Take that wall for instance. How many times have you re-tiled it now because it keeps going wrong and the tiles aren’t on straight or the grouting’s not right?

We’ve had to buy at least three new lots of tiles that I know of.

We might as well have just paid someone to do it right the first time. ”

“But I haven’t done tiling before,” David said, smoothing his hand over the tiles. “It isn’t easy to get right the first time.”

“All the more reason to get an expert in then.”

“But they charge so much, Scarlett. It’s just money down the drain.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, David, for someone who has money, you’re so tight with it!”

“I am not tight. I’m just careful. That is one of the first rules of good business, Scarlett. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. You should take note of that and then maybe one day your little business might be as big as ours. ”

Whether he’d meant to or not, with that one comment he’d now got me completely riled.

“No, David, you are not just careful . You are the Ian Beale of the cinema industry. What about our holiday last year?”

“Yes, and what about it? We had one, didn’t we? After I’d been made to sit through yet another of your girlie films.” David folded his arms and looked at me meaningfully as if he’d scored yet another point.

“David, we’d been watching Thelma & Louise , and I seem to remember you promised me a road trip?”

David nodded. “Yes—and?”

“And we ended up taking a dilapidated motor home around the Peak District for a week.”

“I got a good deal from this chap I know.”

“Exactly. It was hardly a road trip across America in a Ford Thunderbird, was it?”

David shook his head. “Scarlett, if you’re not happy with the way things are…”

“You know something, I’m not…but it seems I’m not the only one, am I?”

David looked at me. “Perhaps we both need to have a think about some things then?”

“Perhaps we do!”

“Look, I’ll go to the tile warehouse on my own tomorrow if you like. Give you a bit of space here to have a think.”

“No need. I’m going out with Maddie tomorrow so I’ll be out all day anyway.”

“Oh well—that’s good.”

“Yes it is. ”

“And should I sleep in the spare room tonight?” David asked, looking at me with big, sorrowful eyes that suggested he hoped I’d say no.

“I’d say yes if it was in a fit state to sleep in,” I said matter-of-factly. David’s face lifted for a moment. “But since it’s not, perhaps you could make up a bed on the sofa.”

And then it fell again.

“Oh, all right,” he said. “That’s probably for the best then.”

“Yes, I think it is.”

While David made himself a cup of tea, and then a bed on the sofa with a pillow and a sleeping bag, I perched on a stool in the kitchen and silently watched him.

I didn’t regret my decision for a minute, knowing the last person on earth I wanted sleeping next to me in my bed that night was Ian Beale.

***

Oscar burst out laughing.

“Oh my dear, I can quite understand why you’re here now. I would have wanted to escape from that DIY freak too. But how on earth did you find the house here in Notting Hill?”

“No, Oscar, that’s not the only reason I needed to get away—far from it. I’m coming to that. And to how I got the use of the house. If you still want me to tell you, that is?”

Oscar sat back against the sofa, wide-eyed.

“Well of course I do! Forget sleeping with Ian Beale. This is better than a Sunday omnibus of EastEnders , Hollyoaks , and Corrie all rolled into one!”