She’d said far too much about her association with Jeremy already, and she suspected Sasha would approve no more than Declan Malone.
She’d been quite glad to make her urgent need to shop for provisions an excuse to escape.
And now here she was, walking down the Portobello Road. At first she thought she’d come to the wrong place, because all she could see on both sides of the road were antiques shops. The displays of silver and crystal were certainly mouth-watering, but there was no sign of any food outlets.
She crossed a road, and suddenly found herself absorbed into an alternative reality. A rowdy, brash reality, where dozens of ethnic accents brayed and clashed. Where clumps of street musicians vied for attention with a non-stop assault on the eardrums. Where stall-holders bellowed incomprehensible special offers. Olivia was wearing her bag slung diagonally across her body under her jacket, and she kept a protective hand on it as she found herself almost borne along on a tidal wave of humanity.
She was used to crowds, for heaven’s sake. She’d lived and worked in Bristol. But here the noise and numbers suddenly threatened to overwhelm her.
She’d never seen a market like it. As well as all the fruit and vegetables on offer, there were innumerable stalls offering bric-à-brac, second-hand clothing—including a display of old fur coats and military uniforms from another century—books, jewellery and musical instruments.
The temptation to linger and explore was fierce, but buying food had to be her main priority.
She turned and fought her way back, diving into a supermarket with something like relief. She filled a basket with staples, then pushed her way up the road to a specialist bakery she’d noticed earlier, where tempting displays of every kind of bread and pastry were presented outside for customers to pick and mix.
Olivia chose some focaccia bread, with a mini-baguette filled with smoked ham and salad, which, with fruit, would serve as lunch. She selected apples, plums, tomatoes and peppers from a street stall, and then stopped at the old-fashioned butcher’s further up the road and bought a chicken and enough minced pork and beef to make a pasta sauce.
On her way back, she passed the end of a cobbled mews and paused for a moment, looking wistfully at the narrow smart houses, painted in pastel colours. One of them she saw, even had a ‘For Sale’ board hanging from its first-floor balcony.
As she hesitated a couple came out of the house opposite, walking fast, hand in hand, the girl looking up into her companion’s face and laughing. Olivia stepped back to let them pass, an intense pang of envy twisting inside her as she wondered what it would be like to live there with someone you loved.
She allowed herself to indulge a brief fantasy of being there with Jeremy. Wandering out to buy fresh croissants and oranges to squeeze for breakfast, while he stayed in bed with the newspapers. Then, later, going for a stroll together round the second-hand bookshops and junk stalls, choosing something for the house—a piece of pottery, maybe, or some glassware. Something to provide memories in the years ahead.
She stopped herself right there. At the moment there was no guarantee that she was going to share any time with Jeremy, she thought wretchedly. Not after her appalling gaffe at Lancey Gardens.
She shuddered as she walked slowly back up the hill, weighed down by her shopping and the remembrance of the morning’s confrontation.
Because she could just imagine the row there would be when Jeremy got back, she thought despondently.
Declan Malone had caught her off guard—flicked her on the raw—but that was no excuse. She’d behaved like an idiot, pushing herself forward like that before she’d sussed out the situation.
If only Jeremy had told her that he was holed up temporarily with his wife’s cousin. Instead, she’d gained the opposite impression—that he had his own independent flat, that he was making a life which she would be able to share.
I couldn’t have been listening properly, she admitted, with a sigh. Or else I simply heard what I wanted to hear.
Nothing, but nothing was working out as she’d expected. And she could well end up on her own in one of the world’s great uncaring capitals.
Or she could go back to Bristol, she reminded herself. No one apart from Beth knew why she’d come to London, and her flatmate was too kind and loyal to have spread the word. She could probably even get her old job back.
My God, she thought in swift horror, as she crossed the road to Lancey Terrace. That was real defeatist talk. Return to square one and occupy her familiar rut. When in fact it had been more than time for a change. For her to take hold of her life by the scruff of its neck and shake it.
She had a career—valuable job skills to offer. She could earn her living—pay her way. She’d come to London to share Jeremy’s life, not to become some pathetic dependent.
And whatever happened, she intended to survive.
Lifting her chin, she strode the last hundred yards.
Her shopping unpacked and put away, Olivia sat down to eat her lunch and take a long look round her. The flat was starting to look occupied, and she had her small portable radio to fill the silence. She’d noticed, too, there was a TV aerial in the room. And from the information that Sasha had thrown at her earlier about Notting Hill Gate she reckoned she’d be able to rent a set quite easily.
That will be my project for the afternoon, she thought. Keep busy—keep interested—and, above all, don’t brood.
She’d found a vase in one of the cupboards. She’d get some flowers to go in it. And some wine. If it turned out there was nothing to celebrate, then she’d drown her sorrows instead, she decided, squaring her shoulders.
She got out her A to Z of London, working out the shortest route to the Gate.
Sasha had told her she could find anything there, and that seemed to be true, she thought as she battled with the other Saturday afternoon shoppers. Like Portobello, it seemed to be fizzing with life. She gave herself time to look properly, lingering in front of boutiques and reading the menus of the various bistros, walking, inevitably, much further than she’d planned.
But if Notting Hill was to be her home, at least for the time being, she needed to get to know it. She wanted to look as confident and purposeful as the people who streamed past her, and feel it too.
She thought suddenly, I want to belong.
At a wine shop she bought some red Italian wine to go with the pasta, a decent Chardonnay for the chicken, and an optimistic Bollinger for her reunion with Jeremy, investing in a strong canvas bag in which to lug her purchases home, as most of her shopping was likely to be done on the hoof from now on.
She discovered a TV store without difficulty, and ended up buying a reconditioned portable with a reasonable warranty for far less than the cost of an annual rental, treating herself to a cab to get it back to Lancey Terrace. After all, she reminded herself, she couldn’t waste good job-hunting time waiting at the flat for a delivery to be made.
In spite of her personal reservations, there was a curious satisfaction in making her basement look like home.
But, when it came to it, the idea of spending her first evening in London concocting a pasta sauce for one held little appeal.
Up to now there’d always been people around her—family first, then friends, and flatmates. Always someone to laugh with, or moan to, or simply exchange the news of the day.
This was her first experience of being single in the city, and she needed to tackle it positively.
So she wouldn’t skulk in the flat, feeling hard done to. She would go out. Go to the cinema in the Gate, and have a meal afterwards. Make her first night in London an occasion.