Love Read online

  Praise from London for

  Love: A User’s Guide

  “A novel for anyone who ever thought, ‘If only I could meet Rufus Sewell/Colin Firth/Ralph Fiennes.’ ”

  —The Times (London)

  “The rags to riches story of the year … [A] sparkling story of young love, fame and fashion.”

  —The Resident

  “A quirky look at twenty something female angst with an uncommonly happy result—the hunk actually loves the heroine back.… A wry commentary on how a girl’s wildest dreams can suddenly and unexpectedly come true … It is a book about wanting, and we’re not just talking about white weddings here—we are talking Manolo Blahnik dagger heels, an account with Harvey Nicks and a Ralph Fiennes lookalike making your morning coffee. The great thing about Naylor’s novel is that it also wakes you up to smell the stuff.”

  —Publishers News Daily

  “Tasty, rich, bad for you, it’s a read as luxurious as a pound of Belgian chocolates.”

  —Open Book

  “A funny, sexy, bubbling bestselling debut.”

  —World Books

  A Fawcett Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1997 by Clare Naylor

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline PLC, in 1997.

  Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  http://www.randomhouse.com/BB/

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Naylor, Clare, 1971–

  Love : a user’s guide / Clare Naylor.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Ballantine book”—T.p. verso.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-46421-7

  I. Title.

  PR6064.A92L68 1999

  823′.914—dc21 98–49247

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  Orgasm. It was the most perfect word. Eliciting all it could, easing meaning out of every syllable. O … a large perfect Oh, the softly parted lips, the promise of the never-ending union. Gas … gasp, a shuddering intake of breath, a sensation to savor and the arching curving back as you sink into the mmmmm … the bliss. Yes, it was a great word, Amy thought. She’d had a fair few in her time, some deft and delicious, others more hit-and-miss affairs; she’d been thinking about that word all morning as she basked in the afterglow of sex like early morning sun on her face. What she doesn’t know, but we do, is that there are greater and better things to come (as it were) for Amy, more Ohs than she can dream of, enough gasps to take your breath away, and an abiding mmmmm of satisfaction that would keep any girl smiling. Yes, there’s a lot for her to look forward to, only she doesn’t know it just yet.

  Amy crawled on the floor looking for a pin to hold together the spare wisps of silk in the model’s organza creation. Her boss rushed forward and tugged it from her hand.

  “Come on, come on. OK, Amy, the shoes are wrong, pass me those blue Patrick Coxs.”

  Amy groveled on the floor a bit more.

  “Cloud or duck egg, Lucinda?”

  “Those, those. Here, pass them here.”

  Another Monday morning, another undernourished teenager to be got up in the spirit of the lazy days of summer. Amy shivered in the biting February chill of the studio. Carefully ironing between the beads of a pair of Lacroix harem pants, she lapsed to thoughts of herself as a Matisse muse, reclining plumply on a chaise longue, fauvist colors warming her bare breasts, one hand propped above her head, a harlot’s smile flickering about her lips, and the divine beaded Lacroix creation adorning her gently rounded, golden-tanned stomach. And Luke Harding—she knew it had just been a one-night stand but she couldn’t resist casting him in the role of libidinous painter (sorry, Matisse). When Luke could no longer keep a steady brush he strolled to her side and placed indolent, painterly kisses all over her courtesan form …

  “Amy, the Lacroix, quick. Today purleasse.”

  Lucinda was a bitch from hell on a shoot but then so were all fashion editors. They had the artistic sensibilities of the photographer to worry about—“more tits, darlin’, pull it down a bit” (this was Vogue, by the way, not Big and Bouncy)—and the poor model who bit her lip and cried as she exposed an inch more of her pigeon chest; the makeup artist who sulked at the model’s spots and shouted if the shell pink of the clothes clashed with the navy blue lipstick he was about to apply; not to give credence to a multitude of hairdressers and PR girls on the end of the phone demanding the aforementioned shell-pink number back for a Marie Claire shoot in an hour’s time. This made for a pretty hellish time for the editor, but it was perdition for the lowly fashion assistant, i.e., Amy, who was the only emotionally balanced person in attendance. Allegedly.

  Postnightmare, Amy and Lucinda sat nibbling the remains of the model’s lunch. Cucumber isn’t really a square meal but it provided an excuse for them to natter purposefully and wind down from Lazy Days of Summer hell. Lucinda kicked off her scarlet satin Manolos and grilled Amy about the weekend and the smart wedding she’d been to. She was a girl who knew her social onions, so a wedding of society pages’ significance was always a treat. Who was there? Did Lady Blah get pissed again? What possessed the bride to wear Ozbek and most importantly who snogged whom? Amy deliberately filled in each of the former first.

  “Miranda looked like an angel, naturally,” Amy began.

  “Naturally,” echoed Lucinda.

  “It was Josh’s parents’ place down in Surrey, there was a kind of wood nymph theme I think, I couldn’t quite work it out. I thought the bridesmaids had wings but the woman I sat next to at dinner said they were just weird veils. Anyway, they looked lovely.” Lucinda lapped up the details. “And the house was amazing but most of us stayed at this hotel down the road.” Amy suppressed a smile at the memory of the hotel. “And Josh cried during his speech, which was quite cute, I suppose.” They both gave a perfunctory nod on the understanding that, yes, it was cute, but not something they’d put up with in their own husbands. Once Amy had exhausted her repertoire of ways to describe lace and hats, she broached the subject closest to both their hearts and blushingly admitted to having a bit of a ding-dong with some guy called Luke she’d fancied for years.

  “Woweee, ohmigod, you didn’t? Tell all!” Lucinda exploded.

  Amy flushed with pride and hid her delight behind a slice of cucumber. “Well, his name’s Luke Harding, I haven’t seen him for year
s but—”

  “Not Luke Harding with the very little bottom?” Lucinda furrowed her brow.

  “Well, I suppose so, now that you mention it. Why?”

  “Ohmigod, quel rat!” darted Lucinda. She was imbued with the spirit of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and could often be heard shrieking Holly Golightly phrases with a little less grace than la Hepburn.

  “Because, darling, he’s been living with my friend Kate forever. Oh. My. God. Poor Kate.”

  Amy choked, horrified. She wiped the traces of spluttered Evian from her chin. “I knew he had a girlfriend, but … God, Luce, not your Kate.”

  Lucinda nodded so hard her rouge noir lipstick became a fuzzy streak of color against her alabaster face. The effect was like fairground lights from the Big Dipper. Amy felt sick.

  “Yes, my Kate. Shit, darling.” She paused, sternly contemplating the infidelity. “Was he good in bed?”

  They were hysterical with tears and Evian all over the place when the photographer walked back in, stifling the deluge of tales relating to Luke Harding’s willy. He looked at them, turned round, and left. Cue more laughing like drains.

  CHAPTER 2

  As she sat in the studio later, picking up pins and Polaroids, Amy mulled over the weekend. It must have been the hat, she thought.

  Cecil Beaton, yes, the hat sealed it, a still from the Beaton hall of fame alongside wasp-waisted, arched-eyebrowed beauties of the past. Amy stood back from the mirror and felt pleased with today’s look. Her black trouser suit fell around the lean lines of her body; her shoes, a wild black-and-white animal print, and her new black hat, wide brimmed and striking, invited that finishing touch, two fresh white roses.

  Her pride in her outfit would have been frowned upon by her growing coterie of those “for her own gooders”: those friends who seemed rather cross that at the age of twenty-four she was beginning to blossom. Her artistic flair lent her appearance, already fine and aristocratic, a flicker of eccentricity which was at once endearing and glamorous. Her friends, Amy felt, preferred her as the long-limbed teenager, bending her knees beneath her billowing skirt to conceal her height, laughing tomboyishly with the lads. Now, they thought, her ego was a little out of control, she was way too involved in the one-too-many novels she’d read, and saw life a little too rose-hued for their liking.

  She picked up her handbag, fraying at the seams, and shot downstairs to the waiting minicab. Miranda had been a friend for many years, always very beautiful, with luxuriant black locks and lips of such curvature and plumpness that only a handful of mathematicians in the world could have solved the equation of their rare shape and symmetry. Today, Miranda was getting married to Josh, a fitting match for such a sublime young woman.

  As Amy stood in the church, her hat obscuring her eyes but her berry mouth duly responding to the emotion of the ceremony—a spectral smile at the gentle fluffing of the lines and a worried retraction of her lips at the prospect of “till death us do part”—she was only vaguely aware of the attention she attracted. Only vaguely aware in the way that all women are constantly a bit alert to the impression they are creating, the ticktock of self-perception taking up a little corner of their brain. So that as they cry hysterically they dab desperately with a tissue, hunting down wayward smudges of mascara; when pursued by a wailing police car they glance discreetly into the rearview mirror in order to assume the correct aspect of gravitas. It comes of being brought up to worry first about the cleanliness of your knickers before giving a thought to the fact that the ambulancemen are rushing to gather your limbs up off the road.

  After the terrifying soul-searching part of the ceremony was over, the sermon, which always dwelled on love and made every couple present reach for one another’s hand as a gesture of remembrance, guilt, or fear, the part which made one tremble at the magnitude of the vows and wonder at the sanity of the marital pair, Amy glanced around the church and some rows behind recognized a face from her seventeen-year-old past. Luke Harding. A few years ago her younger, lankier self had felt little shame in pleading for invitations to parties where he’d be. She’d sit as alluringly as possible on a sofa somewhere, subtly gesturing to him with her eyelashes or toes, or some such part of her anatomy, discreet enough for her brazenness to have careered over his head. By eleven o’clock Luke was usually ensconced in a nearby armchair with a stouter, more peroxide version of Amy, his wandering hands cruelly drawing her attention to her own comparative lack of voluptuousness. The evenings had always ended thus.

  The fact that she was currently receiving significantly more attention from Luke than he was bestowing upon the All things bright and beautiful being mouthed by the congregation was satisfying but slightly bewildering. Amy looked behind her to check that she wasn’t being shadowed by a Sun-In-haired lovely. No. She had his absolute attention, so she turned round and licked her lips seductively? No, she concentrated hard on her song sheet and mimed “the Lord God made them aaalllll” more convincingly than even the maiden aunts.

  Miranda’s father had just finished his recounting of his daughter’s adolescent peccadilloes (funny how all brides had at least one suitor with a motorbike and indulged a passion for black nail polish at some stage of their journey into womanhood—just as well Dad never knew the quarter of it), when Amy, lolling slightly back in her chair and cradling an icy flute of champagne against her burning cheek, felt a brush of warm air behind her left ear. Her facial muscles set rigid as a man’s voice whispered his invitation to skip the speeches in favor of a walk in the grounds. Her hand taken hold of, she had little choice but to follow.

  Luke Harding, she could hear them now, well, that’s what everyone’s after at a wedding, isn’t it? Who could blame him, they would say. Apparently his live-in girlfriend was away, probably just missing her. But Amy didn’t care; all those diary entries, the time she rescued his Lucozade bottle from the bin and kept it for two terms, all was vindicated, she thought, just for the soft breath on her neck. But then she would think that, couldn’t see the wood for the trees, he wanted a shag, couldn’t she see that? they said.

  They stood shaded by the imposing gray stone and ivy of the house, drinks in hand, resting against the trunk of an ancient plane tree. Amy could hear occasional bursts of laughter from the open windows of the house as the speeches continued. She could feel her face getting pinker by the second; champagne always did this to her. And there he was, blond, disheveled in black tie, and looking straight at her.

  “You broke my heart when I was seventeen, Luke Harding.”

  He laughed low, not displeased with the nineteen-year-old self which could have appealed to the heavenly creature who stood beside him.

  “No, really.” Amy smiled wanly. A beauty from birth would not have felt the need for such candor.

  Luke took her glass out of her hand and kissed her. Just like that. No messing. It was nice, she thought, a warm residue of champagne on their lips, light fingers resting on her bottom, the glass wavering precariously somewhere in between. But it was nothing to how it would feel later, when she played the little details back to herself, rewound the conversation and filled in the bits (champagne glass’s whereabouts, envious onlookers, etc.) she had missed due to her participation.

  The odyssey through the swirling red carpets of the hotel corridors in search of Luke’s room left Amy breathless. Finally, the elusive room 101. Oh hell, thought Amy, a portent if ever there was one. She tried to object but toppled against the door frame instead. The keys rattled the door open and they fell in, giggling as one of the roses dropped off her hat. She bent down to pick it up and he grasped her bottom so firmly she gasped and stumbled forward into the hotel room. Hotel rooms were absolutely her favorite thing, the anonymity which spelled illicit encounters and the joy of pinching little guest soaps, this was the life. Amy dropped backward onto a bed of such chintzy proportions that for a blurry, tipsy moment she feared herself in her grandparents’ bedroom. Luke shed his shoes with purposeful thuds and clambered on his elbows to
her side. They held one another’s gaze for a few hazy seconds and then continued where they’d left off. He tugged gently at the buttons of her jacket until he could feel the lace edges of her bra and then his hands disappeared beneath the linen in a frenzy of exploration. That old chestnut, Amy half thought. She felt an ancient flutter of terror as he reached for her breasts, the moment she expected the interloper to sit up and yell that he’d been conned, but that was then—now she was as well endowed as, if not better than, the next goddess, so she focused on the pleasant lurching of Luke and felt for his zip.

  CHAPTER 3

  Monday night was commonly laundry night in Amy’s Battersea abode, the kitchen windows steamed with an excess of clothes drying on radiators and boiling pans of rice. Her two flatmates had done their dark wash before she had time to add her jeans and now she was waiting patiently in a bid to get her whites in before she ran out of underwear altogether. She sat on the floor amidst a heap of washing (she’d been sentimentally avoiding washing what had fondly become her Harding knickers, but the time had come), and nursing a cup of tea, she related her latest notch to the distinctly moribund-looking pair occupying the only two chairs in the kitchen. They egged her on for details, eyebrows rising and plummeting in time to the symphony of her recollections.

  “You know, I’ve fancied him for so long that it had to happen, it was fate. Like Hardy’s poem ‘Faint Hearted in a Railway Station,’ you know, where he sees a girl sitting on a railway platform and knows if he doesn’t get off the train and speak to her, he could be altering his entire destiny. Well, we looked at one another and had to get off the train, as it were. Had to know if this was it.”

  Cath’s eyebrows crashed together as she frowned, all faux bewilderment. “And was it?”

  Amy heard the tone, felt the mockery, but chose to shrug it off.

  “Well, no. But it was nice and he’s got a girlfriend, so we can’t. But the point is now we know.”