Principles? Rosamund wasn’t sure she had any. Not real convictions anyway, she mused as she allowed Dominic Blake to hold the passenger door open for her.
She certainly hadn’t been robust enough with Sam about her relationship with Brian, and here she was, on a Friday night, about to go out with a practical stranger because it had seemed easier to just say yes.
Dominic walked round to the driver’s side and hopped in to the tiny interior of the racing-green Stag. The chassis of the car was so low-slu
ng that Ros thought her bottom might drag along the road, and her arm brushed against Dominic’s as soon as he sat down.
‘Well this is a change from the last time we met,’ she said as he fired the engine.
‘I was hoping you’d be a little less angry with me by now,’ he replied with a sidewards glance and a grin.
‘So that’s why I’m getting a one-on-one with the editor on a Friday night?’
‘You make my motives sound suspect.’
Ros looked at him – his smooth profile, his easy confidence at the wheel – and decided she was not going to let him think she was the sort of girl who would fall so easily for his charms.
‘I think you’re someone who probably needs to be liked,’ she observed, noticing that he’d had his hair cut since the last time they had met.
‘Or perhaps I think we got off on the wrong foot. And that I see Capital writers as friends. Besides, it was you who suggested meeting up, if I remember rightly . . .’
‘To discuss the article.’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
She sank back in her seat feeling embarrassed, wishing that the cabin of the car wasn’t quite so small, wishing she wasn’t breathing in his clean, fresh smell, a soft scent of soap and cologne.
‘So where are we going?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I don’t really know this part of town.’
‘Why, where do you live?’
‘Tavistock Square. Do you know it?’
‘Charles Dickens used to live there.’
‘You do know it,’ he smiled.
‘I like walking around London reading the blue plaques.’
‘How about here?’ he asked screeching the car to a halt outside a traditional-looking pub with hanging flower baskets.
Ros looked behind her and laughed.
‘We haven’t even come a hundred yards.’
‘Yes, but it’s cold and I need a drink.’
‘And you wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to show off your car.’
Ros paused for a moment at the doorway of the pub and looked inside. She had no idea what to expect of her local drinking den. After all, she had only lived in Primrose Hill for an hour and didn’t know whether this was a reputable place to drink or the local gangsters’ pub. But the scene inside was soft and warm, with tables of old men, beatniks and bearded intellectuals sitting alongside one another in a good-natured Friday night fug. In his navy Crombie coat, Dominic looked right at home.
As he went to the bar, Ros scolded herself for being so chippy with him. It had taken her a week to pluck up the courage to call him, but when she had done so yesterday, and pitched him an idea about the contraceptive pill transforming the economy, he had commissioned it on the spot. Her copy deadline had been two weeks hence, but she had gone back to Teddington and fired off one thousand words that evening, her thoughts and arguments pouring out of her and slotting together like the simplest of jigsaw puzzles, even though it was her last night at home. She had arrived at the DAG office at seven o’clock that morning to type it up, and when she had hand-delivered it to the Capital offices at lunchtime, she had felt pure exhilaration and the desire to do it all over again.
She looked up and saw Dominic chatting to the barmaid. He was only buying two pints of cider, but from the conversation he appeared to be having with her, it was as if they were old friends. As he returned to the table, Ros watched the barmaid’s eyes follow her most handsome customer.
‘So you liked the piece?’ she said, taking a sip of her pint.