One Summer Night At the Ritz by Jenny Oliver Read Free Book Online Page A

phone out his pocket. ‘Heidi won’t mind, it’s a casual thing…’
    ‘Yeah, you’re getting no better.’ Jane crossed her arms across her chest.
    ‘Look, by the time you’ve had a quick browse of Fortnum’s, I’ll have dealt with this,’ Will said as he pointed towards the tower of jams just inside the shop doors as he held the phone up to his ear.
    Jane just shook her head thinking what a patronising idiot he was as she walked straight past the entrance of Fortnum’s and then, when she saw a break in the traffic, nipped across the road away from him.
    He caught up with her in the Royal Academy.
    ‘What was wrong with Fortnum and Mason’s?’ he whispered into the quiet.
    ‘You wanted me to go in there.’
    Will laughed and a couple of people turned round from where they were browsing the Summer Exhibition.
    ‘So where are you going next?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, keeping her eyes on an abstract oil painting that wasn’t her thing at all rather than look at him.
    ‘I was thinking I could show you around,’ he said.
    ‘No thank you,’ she said, slowly shaking her head as she peered forward to study the lines of the picture.
    ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ she said again, shaking her head again. And then she moved to the next picture and spent an equal amount of time looking at it.
    She could feel Will getting antsy next to her. ‘You don’t have to stay you know?’ she said.
    ‘Oh come on, look, I’ve said I’m sorry—’
    ‘No you haven’t,’ she said, peering into the cabinet of a bronze sculpture.
    ‘What?’ He frowned.
    ‘You haven’t said you’re sorry.’
    ‘Oh.’ Will raked a hand through his hair. ‘Well…’
    Jane waited. It was clear he rarely apologised.
    ‘I’m sorry, all right?’ he said after a moment.
    She laughed. ‘Alright.’
    ‘So can I show you around?’
    Jane frowned. ‘I’m not really sure I need showing around? I have places I want to go.’
    Will scoffed. ‘They’ll all be tourist traps.’
    ‘Why do you care so much where I go?’
    ‘Because I’ve given up my evening for this and I don’t want to be stuck inside looking at mediocre art.’
    ‘This is the Summer Exhibition,’ she said. ‘And I never asked you to come with me.’
    ‘Yeah I know,’ he shrugged. ‘But it looked nice. You leaving the hotel, having a free evening exploring London.’
    ‘You watched me leave the hotel?’ She’d assumed he wouldn’t give her a moment’s thought and the idea of him doing so gave her a flutter of confidence.
    ‘Yeah, why?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Jane said, a little smile on her lips as she walked as casually as she could to the next room that was hung floor to ceiling with lots of small pictures. ‘Except you didn’t have a free evening, you had a dinner with someone called Heidi,’ she said, starting to look at the first tiny painting in detail.
    ‘Yeah but that’s sorted. Are you seriously going to look at every single one of these?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘But it’s such a nice evening outside. Come on, there’s a city to walk.’
    It did sound appealing, like her flaneur dream, and, if she was honest, the amount of pictures to look at in this room alone was almost overwhelming. As if he could sense her wavering he started to walk really close behind her and said things loudly like, ‘That’s rubbish. That’s OK. At last, a good one. Who picks these? That’s actually not that bad. No that one’s awful,’ so that people started turning and tutting and Jane had to bash him on the chest to stop but he carried on even louder, half-laughing, which made her laugh and, in the end, had to leave out of sheer embarrassment.
    Out on the pavement Will looked like he’d won another battle between them, grinning cockily like she’d now follow him anywhere. So Jane paused, got her A to Z out, which made him laugh, and said, ‘I’m going shopping in Selfridges.’

Chapter Ten
    Selfridges was in the