the world who, with great gusto in the moment, made plans with almost everyone she came into contact with, knowing full well that she would email to cancel in due course. Why was it so hard to say straight out, ‘I’m sorry, Kurt, but no, I can’t be a judge’? Why did it feel so right to say, ‘Oh, God, I’d love to,’ and then sneak in the ‘can’t’ bit later on? Olivia would have liked to ask Charlie; she knew no one else who’d be willing to discuss it with her. Dom certainly wouldn’t. She suspected it had something to do with being eager to please others, but even more eager to please herself.
Her mobile phone rang, and she picked it up, determined not to make an arrangement with whoever it was, even an arrangement she wanted to make and would not cancel. She needed to purge her diary of all the fake appointments before she made any more real ones.
‘It’s me. Chris Gibbs.’
‘Hello, Chris Gibbs. Oh, my God, that proves it! A watched pot really does never boil. You’re only you because I was expecting you to be Kurt Vogel from the Dortmund British–German Society. All the times I was expecting it to be you, it wasn’t – and now here you are.’
‘Have you still got a spare key for Charlie’s place?’
‘Why, has something happened?’ Olivia was immediately anxious.
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Then why do you need a key?’
‘I thought it’d be a good place to meet,’ said Gibbs.
‘You and me?’
‘No, you, me, Waterhouse and Charlie, when they get back. For their wedding reunion evening.’
What the hell was she supposed to say to that? ‘Wouldn’t that be . . . a bit awkward?’
She heard a snort. ‘Joking,’ said Gibbs. ‘Yeah, you and me. I haven’t seen you for . . .’ There was silence as he worked it out. ‘. . . about forty-four hours. I’m thinking of making it my new mobilising grievance.’
‘You usually don’t see me for forty-four hours,’ Olivia reminded him. ‘You’ve spent most of your life not seeing me, and you’ve been fine.’
He made a joke, a whole joke. And he’s quoting me. Again.
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Gibbs.
She couldn’t meet him at Charlie’s house. Have sex in the bed Charlie shared with Simon? It didn’t bear thinking about. She reached for a pen and wrote ‘Olivia Gibbs’ next to where it said ‘Name’ in her diary, on the personal details page. It looked good, well balanced: the roundness of the two capitals, O and G . . .
Should she scribble over it? She’d wanted to know how it would feel to write it, that was all. She ought to cross it out now. On the other hand, Dom would never look, not even if someone held the diary in front of his nose. The great thing about Dom, from a deceiving him point of view, was that he was interested in almost nothing.
‘What do you reckon?’ said Gibbs.
‘No. Absolutely not.’ If only she could be so forceful with Etta from MUST magazine.
Olivia had no willpower, and thought people who had it and used it on themselves were weird. Luckily, she had fear and anxiety in abundance. She couldn’t have agreed to what Gibbs was proposing without feeling as if she’d crossed a line she was terrified of crossing, even with the safety net of pos-sible future cancellation in place.
‘All right then, a hotel,’ he said.
‘What about your work? What about Debbie?’ She turned to the ‘Notes’ section at the back of her diary and wrote ‘Olivia Gibbs’ again, in neater handwriting. She wrote it underneath in capital letters.
‘My problem, not yours,’ said Gibbs. ‘If you don’t want to come to Spilling, I’ll come to London.’
‘If you want a . . . a girlfriend, you should find one closer to home,’ Olivia told him, praying he wouldn’t take her advice. Why give it, then?
‘Why should I?’ said Gibbs. ‘There are only two people I’ve ever met who don’t bore me: Simon Waterhouse and you. I don’t want to shag Waterhouse – that leaves you.’
‘I thought I did bore you,’ Olivia felt obliged to point out, in case he’d forgotten. ‘You said I was like a colour supplement.’
‘I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know what to make of you, that’s all.’
She heard a crunch. Was he eating an apple? ‘That Los Delfines place,’ he said. For a worrying moment, Olivia feared he was about to suggest they meet and have sex at Charlie