A Seaside Affair: A heartwarming, gripping read from the Top Ten bestseller. Fern Britton
in the members’ lounge he queued for a skinny mochaccino.
‘Hi, Ollie. What can I get you?’ asked the smiling woman behind the counter.
‘The usual, please, Lou. You still on for tonight’s show?’
It was Lou’s silver wedding anniversary and he had given her a couple of complimentary tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at Stratford’s RSC.
‘Oooh, yes. Graeme and I are really looking forward to it. You sure it’s OK?’ Ever so kind of you. We couldn’t afford those prices.’
‘My pleasure.’ Ollie gave her his winning beam of a smile. He hadn’t bothered to tell her that the tickets were comps. ‘We’ll be nicely warmed up for you after this afternoon’s matinee,’ he said, opening his wallet to pay for the coffee.
‘No, no, Ollie. On the house.’
He trousered the five-pound note speedily and thanked her. Just because he was an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company didn’t mean he was minted.
Collecting his coffee he threaded his way through clusters of tables and chairs to an empty two-seater brown leather sofa in front of a huge television screen showing highlights of a tennis tournament.
On the seat next to him was a copy of the Daily Mail. He flicked through it, only half engaged, until he saw a large photo of himself with a girl who wasn’t his girlfriend. Shit. The headline blared ‘Still Seeing Red, Ollie?’ Shit shit shit.
His phone began to vibrate in his back pocket. He pulled it out, wincing when he saw the caller ID, his pocket rocket rock star girlfriend, ‘Red’.
‘Hi, babe,’ he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. ‘Didn’t expect to hear from you this early. How’s Sydney? How’s the show?’
‘How am I supposed to do a show when my boyfriend is shagging around?’ was Red’s blisteringly chilly response.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Henrik just showed me the Mail Online.’
Ollie resisted the urge to swear. Red’s smarmy PA seemed to think the best way to ingratiate himself with Red and worm his way into her good books was to make her suspicious of everyone else. Unfortunately, he’d succeeded; Red wouldn’t hear a word against the little creep. When Ollie had been unwise enough to joke that Henrik was more PITA than PA, she’d turned on him, demanding, ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You know, Pain In The Arse – PITA. It’s a joke.’
‘Another of your stupid public schoolboy jokes, eh? Well, forgive me and my Wolverhampton comprehensive school denseness. Oh no, hang on – I’m not that dense, am I? I’m sixty-seventh on the Sunday Times Rich List, I’m number one in fourteen countries and I have an entourage of eight, including Henrik my PA.’
As a result, Ollie kept his opinion of Henrik’s latest helpful gesture to himself and instead tried to explain, but Red wasn’t listening.
‘I’m going to have to cancel the show tonight,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t go on stage knowing what an unfaithful shit you are.’ She was so loud, he held the phone away from his ear. Noticing people on nearby tables casting curious glances in his direction, he tried to muffle the sounds coming from the earpiece while holding the phone close to his mouth.
‘Red, honey, I love you. It’s just a picture of some girl who saw the show last night and was waiting at the stage door for an autograph. She was with her fiancée. He took the photo.’
‘Oh yeah? Then how come it got into the papers?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he uploaded it to Twitter or … maybe he sold it. I don’t know, honey. You have to believe me – I don’t even know her name. An autograph, a photo and then it was home to bed, on my own, dreaming of you.’
‘Yeah?’ she snivelled.
‘Yeah.’
‘So, you’d be pleased to see me if I jumped on a plane tonight and came home?’
He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round. One of the young actresses in the cast of The Merry Wives of Windsor, damp from a swim, was miming a cup of coffee. He shook his head, pointed to the phone and raised his eyebrows in despair. She nodded, pulling the corners of her mouth down comically, and went to the bar.
‘Ollie, are you still there?’ Red’s shrill voice boomed from the earpiece.
‘Yeah, yeah, sorry, there must have been some dropout on the satellite … I missed what you said.’ He hoped she’d forgotten what she had said.
There was a pause while she smothered the mouthpiece and spoke to someone at the other end. He couldn’t catch what she was saying, and was straining to make out the words when her voice suddenly came back loud and clear: ‘You don’t know the pressure I’m under here. There’s thirty-two thousand people out there, and just because they’ve had to wait a bit they’re booing. They don’t know how you’re breaking my heart.’
‘How long have they been waiting?’
‘Not long. Maybe two hours.’
‘You’ve kept them waiting two hours?’
‘No. You’ve kept them waiting two hours by being such a shit to me.’ Someone was calling to her in the background. She muted the phone for a moment, then came back on the line. ‘OK, OK, I have to go. I’ll skype you later. We need to talk.’
‘Yeah, honey.’ He groaned inwardly. ‘I love talking. Now go get ’em, tiger!’
Gemma, his actress friend, thumped down next to him, licking a splash of coffee from her wrist.
‘“Go get ’em, tiger”?’ She arched a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Sooo rock’n’roll.’
‘Oh, Gem, this long-distance, high-profile relationship stuff is not for cissies.’
Gemma took a sip of her cappuccino and wiped the froth from her lips with the tiny paper napkin. ‘Any kind of relationship would do me at the moment.’
‘Look at this.’ He handed her the newspaper.
‘Ah.’ She read the text. ‘Nice photo.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not you. The mystery girl. She’s very pretty.’
He snatched the paper from her and dropped it on the floor by his feet. ‘You’re not being very helpful.’ They sat and watched the tennis players on the screen for a few moments, then Ollie asked. ‘Are you a jealous person, Gemma?’
‘I haven’t had enough boyfriends to find out. Maybe I haven’t loved anyone enough to care. Don’t you get jealous of Red? All those male groupies hanging outside her hotels and following her around the world?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t love her enough then.’
‘It’s not that. I’m just not the jealous type. She wouldn’t do anything. She doesn’t get the opportunity on tour, anyway. She’s surrounded by her hangers-on and hustled from airport to hotel to stadium to hotel to airport. I’ve seen it. Our first date was at the O2. I went to watch her from the wings.’
‘Great date. Intimate.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Just saying.’
‘Yeah, well anyway, I watched her give her heart and soul to the audience. The way she worked with the band and her dancers, she blew me away. Then the minute she’s sung her last note she takes her bow and runs off stage. Her dresser is waiting with a big warm dressing gown to wrap her in. Her assistant dresser is waiting with a huge towel to wrap round her sweaty hair and then she’s just like, whoosh, straight through