For legal purposes, we are required to include this note from Graham Glenn:
Piss off, Penelope Beckett!
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Visit Me
You Are Not Alone
Soundtrack
My card, darling… Go on, email me. I’ll write back.
One over, please.
Copyright 2016 by Fisher Amelie
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Fisher Amelie.
Fisher Amelie
http://www.fisheramelie.com/
First Edition: July 2016
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Printed in the United States of America
To my readers, with incredible gratitude and love.
Denial
[ dih-nahy-uh l ]
noun
1. An assertion that something said, believed, alleged, etc., is false.
Penelope Beckett is in denial. No, not the river in Africa.
Graham’s hand sat on my waist. His long, slender fingers wrapped around the bone of my hip. He tucked me into his side and I almost melted into him. I imagined myself a stick of malleable butter, vulnerable to warm fingers slipping over the surface of my skin. Wherever he pressed, I would fold readily, happily. Wherever he touched, I would mold myself, eager and pliable and at his command.
“Who are we meeting up with?” I asked him, gazing up as we walked toward the Chelsea Potter, a pub around the corner from our shared London flat.
“Just a few of the lads,” he offered.
I sighed. “So Oliver will be there then,” I said.
He pulled me into his arms and laughed. “Yes, love, Oliver’ll be there.” He let go of me. “What exactly do you hate about him so much then?”
“I don’t hate him. Not at all, actually. I’m just not a fan, Graham. He’s a womanizer,” I argued for the millionth time since I’d met Oliver Finn.
Graham laughed, wrapped his arm around me again, and kissed my temple. “The women never seem to mind,” he jabbed with his posh London accent.
“Graham,” I protested, pulling away from him. He wouldn’t have it, though, and pulled me back into his embrace. “There’s something about him I don’t trust,” I explained.
“He’s a nice enough bloke. Let him be, Penelope.”
“He’s charming, yes, but there’s something there he’s not letting us in on, and it’s damaged. Nobody’s that reckless without a reason.”
“Why do Americans always break down a person?” he teased. “Not everyone has a secret past. Not everyone is that complicated.”
“I know that. I’m just saying Oliver seems to be covering up something he doesn’t want anyone to know about, and he does it by sleeping with every woman who will throw a look his way.”
Graham laughed. “Let it be, Penelope.”
I sighed and relented. “Fine, okay.”
We approached the pub’s green creaky door.
“Give us a kiss then, love.” He bent me back and kissed my lips then ushered me inside.
He tucked a loose hair from my French twist behind my ear. I rolled my eyes at this tiresome habit. He liked me well kept, always put together, never a hair out of place. Graham let me go when he approached his friends and stuck his arms out at his sides.
“Lock up your sisters, lads, I’m here!”
Whatever.
“Graham!” they all sang at once, slinking their chairs in closer to one another and pilfering a lonely chair at a nearby table for Graham.
“Sorry, Penny,” Oliver teased, “you’ll just have to settle in my lap. How’s that then?” he asked, sitting back, his arms extended.
“Shut it, Oli,” I said, perching myself on Graham’s lap.
Graham stood up quickly, almost pitching me onto the floor. If Oliver hadn’t caught my arm, I would have done just that.
“Careful, mate,” Oli bit out at Graham, his brows furrowed.
Graham looked down at me, had the decency to look sheepish, and grabbed me by the upper arm to help me up. “Sorry, love. Be right back,” he said, distracted. “Forgot a few of my work chums were coming ’round. I see a few of them now. Let me catch up.” He looked down at me. “You’ll be all right here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, taking his chair.
Oli pushed my chair in for me while Graham sprinted for the door.
“Easily distracted,” I explained to Oli, my cheeks a little pink with embarrassment.
“Like my granny’s miniature poodle, that one,” he offered, making me laugh.
Oliver peered over at the bar.
“Who’s on the docket tonight?” I asked him, perusing the girls myself, trying to decide which one he’d go for. I spotted a blonde with big boobs in the corner. “Let me guess,” I told him, gesturing toward my pick. “Her?”
He strained his neck trying to see who I’d chosen in the busy pub.
“Who? Kate Moss wannabe?” he asked, laughing.
“Well, yeah,” I answered. “Most boys would think she’s kind of a catch.”
“Nah, not my type.”
“Oh, as if you have a type?” I scoffed.
“I’ve a type, Penny,” he stated with strength.
I swallowed at his tone. “I’ve never seen you discriminate, Oli.”
He smiled that charismatic, devilish smile that got him all the girls and the intensity between us dissipated. “I’m an equal opportunity lover,” he threw out like a baseball pitch.
I readied my bat. “That you are. On a completely unrelated note, have you been tested?”
He pretended to be wounded by my jab. “Clean as a whistle.”
I shook my head at him. “You’re lucky then.”
“Okay, Mum.”
“Do I look like your mom?” I asked him, a hand at my chest.
He looked at my hair. “That hair is tidy, Penny. My granny still wears it that way. Classic.”
Feigning outrage, my hand went to my head. “Graham likes it this way.”
Oliver pretended to straighten a jacket on his shoulders and pushed up an imaginary tie. “I’m Graham,” he mocked. “Pleased to meet you, madam.” Oliver studied my face and gasped. “Is that liner on your eye! For shame!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I agree he is a bit fussy.”
“Only a bit?” he snipped.
I smoothed my clothes as if Graham could be nearby, though he wasn’t, not that I could see anyway. “He is particular.”
“And you particularly dish yourself up like a little Graham doll.”
“What’s wrong with wanting to please my boyfriend?” I asked him.
“Nothing, if pleasing him doesn’t waste away at who you are,” he answered
curtly.
I felt my cheeks burn. His comment hit a little too close for comfort. “You think I’m betraying myself?” I asked in an unusual attempt at civility with Oliver.
All the color drained from his face. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Penelope. That was out of line.”
I nodded, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Instead, I turned toward the bar.
“That one,” I offered to him.
A new girl. A little on the short side. Sh had brown hair, pretty teeth, and a sweet smile.
“I’d try her on, yeah.”
“I knew you had a type,” I said, elbowing him.
“I said I’d try her on. I never said she was my type.”
Surprised, I asked, “What does your type look like, Oliver?”
He laughed, genuinely laughed. Like a gut laugh, and it shocked me a little. I’d never really seen Oliver do anything that didn’t show me how overly aware he was of himself.
“You don’t want to know my type, Penny,” he told me.
He stood up and headed toward the bar, but not before placing a hand on my head and ruining my twist.
“Oliver Finn!” I yelled at him.
“You’ll get over it easily enough,” he said.
I caught his arm and yanked him back toward me. I started to take all the bobby pins from my hair and gathered them into a pile on the table next to an old pint glass. “That was rude,” I told him.
“Yeah? What’s it matter to me then? You’ll be gone in a few months’ time. Just like the rest.”
I flinched as if he’d hit me and let my hands fall to my lap. He stood stock-still, his face blank.
I leaned over the table toward Graham’s friend Alfie and told him, “Tell Graham I’ll meet him at home later, will ya?”
“Sure, love,” he told me, engrossing himself in his previous conversation.
I stood up, left my pins at the table, and made my way toward the door. I felt someone’s hands, Oliver’s, grapple at my clothing, but I ignored them. I was going home.
Anger
[ Ang-ger ]
noun
1. A strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.
Graham Glenn is a proper prat whose philandering ways have courted the anger of one Miss Penelope Beckett.
Three months later…
“I love you so much, Graham. You’re my everything,” I told him.
“You’re drunk, darling. Hush,” Graham secreted into my ear.
Graham held me up, so he could have had a point. I attempted to boop his nose with my finger but missed. Yup, he was right. I looked up into his face. “Don’t you love me back?” I asked.
He looked at me with pity and the humiliation this caused sobered me slightly. I stood tall. Well, as tall as my five-foot-seven-inch frame could stand next to his six-foot-four one. “Oh,” I realized. “You don’t, do you?”
“I’m sorry, Penelope, but I’ve met someone else,” he said, wounding me into a clean, clear mind.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said, stumbling back. I rested my tired soul against a nearby lamppost, sinking down until my rear end met the larger base.
“I’m sorry, darling.”
My glassy eyes met his steady ones. “I moved all the way here for you.”
Standing collected and looking perfectly English, Graham tucked his scarf into his buttoned jacket. I studied my black tights. There was a hole at the knee. How did that get there? I wondered. My burgundy pleated skirt was wrinkled at the hem from where I’d gripped it earlier. I always did this when I was around Graham. It was unconscious, as if I was constantly bracing myself for news. It was an insecurity, or so I thought. Apparently that feeling was warranted. I looked at him again.
“I realize how inconvenient that is, darling,” he assuaged.
I fought the urge to vomit at his feet. “Please stop calling me that.”
He sighed as if I was a petulant child. “Penelope,” he called out. He always used my full name. That was Graham, always so formal. “I’ll need you out of my flat by Monday evening, preferably before I return home from work.”
Tears fell. “Where should I go?” I asked, incredulous.
“I’ll leave a few hundred pounds on our wardrobe,” he said. Our wardrobe. Our wardrobe kept running through my mind on a loop. “It should be enough to get you back to Dallas.”
I looked at him, wondering who he was, wondering what had happened to the man who’d begged me to join him in London, wondering where the one who promised me forever had gone.
He started to walk away, but I called out to him. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“To her house,” he answered. A bullet of the tongue that ran sharply through my struggling heart.
“Who is she?” I asked him, just to keep him near me.
It all felt so abrupt.
“A girl from work.”
Graham’s work friends ran through my head, spinning until it landed on one face in particular.
“It’s Chloe, isn’t it?” I asked him.
He rolled his shoulders. He always did this when he was uncomfortable. I had my answer before he even spoke.
“Does it matter?” he asked. I didn’t answer and he sighed. “Yes, it’s Chloe.”
I nodded my head. Chloe. Ample-chested, round-hipped, heart-shape-faced Chloe. Blonde Chloe. French Chloe. My-total-opposite Chloe.
“I can see the appeal,” I told him, standing up. I smoothed my skirt, examined my Mary Jane heels, tucked in my cream silk blouse, and caught the loose pieces of my hair, tucking them back into my French twist. I jerked my fingers back. I only wore my hair that way because Graham insisted I wear it that way. My hands found my hair once again and pulled the pins out, letting them fall to my feet, raining little black pieces of metal. I shook my long black curled hair and let it spill over my shoulders.
Graham rolled his eyes at me. “Does that bother you, Graham?” I asked. “No longer yours to fuss over, though. Not anymore.”
I shooed him away with my deep red lacquered nails, a color he picked out. He stood there, instead, and watched me. In an act of defiance, I untucked my blouse, unbuttoning it at the top, and exposed my nude-colored camisole. My hands reached up my skirt and yanked down my thigh-high black hose, letting it droop at my ankles over the straps of my heels.
When I reached for the tied belt at my waist, Graham gritted out, “Pull yourself together, Penelope.”
“Or what?” I asked.
He huffed. “Fine, look the fool you insist on acting like.” We stood for half a minute, but it felt like an hour. His eyes softened and he reached for my elbow and for some reason, I let him. He leaned into me and kissed a cheek softly. “Goodbye, Penelope.”
“Rot in hell, Graham Glenn.” I smiled.
He left me with the last word, which wasn’t as satisfying as I’d have liked.
When he walked out of sight, I crumpled onto the bottom step of a nearby row house as I cried into my hands. I heard a group of boys exiting Chelsea Potter and heading my direction. I pulled up my hose and buttoned my blouse to avoid unwanted attention, but it did no good. My pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes invited their voices regardless.
“’Allo, love! Lookin’ for a bit of company tonight?” one asked.
“No, thank you,” I told them, running a hand through my hair as I attempted to avoid eye contact.
“Oh, come now, darlin’! I’ve a nice warm bed for one such as yourself,” another teased. His friends laughed while I cringed.
“Lovely bird, sing us a song then!” a particularly drunk one rang out.
“Bit dodgy ’ere all on your lonesome, in-it?” the first boy who’d spoken asked.
More laughing.
“I’ll keep ya safe, Yank. Come wit me then,” a cockney accent promised.
“Shut it, David!”
Please, please, please, just walk on, boys.
I shook my head at them and buried my face in a vei
l of hair. It worked. Sort of.
They turned toward me as they passed and catcalled but eventually rounded the corner.
The little fraidy-cat adrenaline rush they gave me dried the tears. I bolted upright, desperate to get back to my flat. Well, my former flat. Graham’s flat.
I walked back toward the pub to flag down a cabbie. A black cab swooped in for me and stuck his hand out of his window to open my door for me. I climbed in and he shut it behind me.
“Where to, love?” a middle-aged man with a giant mustache and even bigger smile asked.
“Robinson Street, please.”
He shot forward and neither of us spoke for the short ride, which I was appreciative of.
As he approached our street, no, Graham’s street, I leaned forward and placed my hand on the edge of his open partition window. “Number seven, please?”
He slowed down and noticed the state of the road. I cringed. “’Fraid you’ll have to walk, love. No way of gettin in n’ out there. Construction and all that.”
“That’s fine.” I sighed, throwing a few pounds through the window and opening the door before he could get to it.
When I got out, the tears renewed tenfold. I found myself leaning against the wrought iron fences of a few terraced houses. Just get home. Just get home, I kept telling myself.
“It’s not your home, though,” I confessed to the wind, which brought on a whole new rush of tears.
Blubbering like a giant baby, I was too distracted by my pain to remember my neighbor’s exposed sunken terrace garden, a ten-foot drop onto concrete.
Of course was all I remembered thinking as I tumbled down the rabbit hole.
I woke to the sounds of beeps and machines running. My eyes felt sluggish and difficult to open, so I decided I didn’t want to and fell back asleep. The next thing I remember was a soft hand on my shoulder and a quiet voice at my ear.
“Dearie, can you hear me?” a woman asked. I felt another person busying around me, pulling at me from different places. I peeled my eyes open into slits, ignoring all my instincts to keep them closed. “The drugs make you sleepy, darling, I know, but try to wake up a little?”