Free City Girl in Training by Liz Fielding Page A

‘I’m sorry about that. I’d hoped that by telling him the whole story, he might just see the funny side of it.’
    â€˜He didn’t.’
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘My mistake.’
    I could see how telling your lover you’d loaned his precious umbrella to some woman might not be the greatest move. My only surprise was that he hadn’t realised that for himself. ‘I’m really sorry.’
    Cal smiled. ‘Don’t be. Just help me choose a peace-offering. There’s bound to be a dealer in the Portobello Market and, with luck, we’ll find him a suitably precious replacement.’
    â€˜Oh, great,’ I said. Oh, knickers, I thought. A dealer wouldn’t be selling made-in-China knock-offs. He was going to be selling the real thing. Handmade in silk with a gold ferrule and seriously expensive. ‘Can we stop by a cash machine on the way?’ I asked.
    It looked as if I was going to need every penny of my daily limit.
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    â€˜Notting Hill?’ I’d been so impressed by the ease with which Cal negotiated the underground system, causing him considerable amusement as I’d related my own problems the day before, that I hadn’t even thought about where we were going. I’d been to London before—shopping, sightseeing, on school trips—but a glimpse of Buckingham Palace from an open-topped bus couldn’t compare with the movie-lent glamour of Notting Hill.
    â€˜It’s the nearest stop,’ he said, getting up as the train slid into the station. And I blushed at my open-mouthed excitement to be visiting the real-life film set of one of my favourite films, sincerely glad that Cal had his back to me and was oblivious to my awed excitement.
    â€˜Which way?’ I asked, looking around me, as we reached street-level.
    Cal glanced down at me. ‘That depends.’
    â€˜What on?’
    â€˜Whether you want to buy a book.’ And he grinned.
    Not oblivious, then. I don’t suppose he needed to look at me to know how I was reacting.
    â€˜Bother,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you hadn’t noticed my hick-from-the-sticks act.’
    â€˜Such a tourist,’ he teased.
    â€˜Only for the weekend. Next week it gets real.’ Then, because I couldn’t help myself, ‘Is there really a bookstore? Like in the movie?’
    â€˜There’s a bookstore, but not at all like the one in the movie. It’s well run, for one thing. And it specialises in travel books so you wouldn’t be interested, would you?’
    â€˜A book might inspire me,’ I said. And flapped my arms as I grinned right back.
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    We sat at a corner table in a crowded café in the middle of the antiques market and ordered the kind of traditional, cholesterol-laden breakfast that would strain my waist button to the limit.
    The waitress brought us coffee to be going on with. Cal ignored it. He just sat back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, regarding me as if I were some objet de vertu like those I’d seen in the crowded antique shops we’d passed. One he was seriously considering having wrapped up to take home with him.
    Just a product of my fevered imagination, of course. Heightened by a slow perusal of bookshelves crammed with travellers’ tales with Cal at my back, hand on my shoulder as he’d reached up for a book that had been out of my reach. With Cal buying a book of photographs of the Serengeti and having it gift-wrapped before putting it in my hands with the words, ‘Be inspired.’
    And then, his arm around my shoulder, keeping me close in the Saturday-morning crowd as we walked through The Lane, cheerful with Christmas lights and the sound of a brass band playing carols, until we reached the café.
    Now he was looking at me in a way that Don had never done and, imagination or not, my body was responding eagerly. Yearning to be unwrapped, looked at with pleasure.