Sure enough, he exited the ballroom a minute or two later, a look of undisguised irritation on his face. Taking her arm, he led her out of the building. ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we?’ he said. ‘I think you and I need to talk.’
22
Charlie, to his credit, maintained a polite silence until they’d both got into the car. He even opened her car door for her, but Holly knew something was coming. She felt hot with mortification again as she recalled just how much she’d let Miles wind her up. But that didn’t stop her from being angry with Charlie, too, for not coming to her defence. Charlie had just stepped in and placated that slimy bastard without so much as an enquiry as to what had riled Holly in the first place.
‘That man’s a tosser!’ she said furiously. ‘He just won’t leave me alone.’
Charlie said nothing; just kept his eyes on the road ahead. It had started to rain, and he flipped the wipers on to clear the screen. With his left hand, he reached over to turn on the demister, and Holly felt a jolt as his palm brushed her knee, which was close to the gearstick. She wasn’t going to give into that right now, though; she was still too angry.
‘He thinks he’s got the right to tell me what to do about everything. It’s so frigging patronising.’
She glanced at Charlie, but in the darkness of the country lanes between Stavenham and Willowbury, all she could see was his profile, jaw set as tightly as it had been before his speech.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Holly, frustrated by Charlie’s silence, raised her voice again.
‘I think you’ve said enough for the both of us tonight,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘I really don’t think there’s much more I can add.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I think you know.’ He kept his eyes steadfastly on the road.
‘Oh, I see,’ Holly snapped. ‘I’ve said something I shouldn’t, to someone I shouldn’t, and now I get the passive-aggressive treatment? Very grown-up, Charlie. Is this how you treat everyone who disagrees with you?’
Still silence. Charlie reached over and changed gear as they turned one of the many sharp corners on the road, and Holly scooted her knees defiantly out of the way.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ she tried again, softening her tone.
This, finally, seemed to get through to him. ‘Holly, I’ve got a job to do! I can’t get into an ideological debate every time someone says something I don’t agree with. I’ve got to generate enough goodwill to make these very wealthy people part with their cash to support the party. That way, I get to make the changes I want to make. Changes that are good for the whole community, not just a few. What don’t you understand about that?’ Charlie raked a hand impatiently through his hair and swerved to narrowly avoid a cat that had strayed out onto the country lane, obviously mid-hunt.
‘I’m not stupid, Charlie, I get that you’ve got to smile and pretend to agree for the sake of the party line, but do you have to be quite so nice to those money-grabbing tossers who’d happily see your new home town cut in half by having the M5 slapped straight through the middle of it?’ Holly, aware she was raising her voice, tried to curb herself. Frustration, and irritation that she could still fancy Charlie quite so much in the midst of a row was making her rash. Not to mention a few glasses of cheap Prosecco. Had she been in a better mood, she’d have made a joke about the affluent party members not being able to run to some decent fizz for their fundraising gig.
‘Well, if you know that, then why the hell did you have to rile up one of the biggest party donors this side of Wells? If Tom hadn’t stepped in and smoothed the waters, he’d have pulled the plug on it.’
‘There’s more to life than money, Charlie, or have you forgotten that?’
‘Not when you’re trying to actually change what matters.’ Charlie was pulling up outside Holly’s home, now, and the phrase hung in the air between them. ‘You can pick up all the plastic bottles and bags you can carry, but, ultimately, I rely on people like Miles Fairbrother to help me to fund the real changes, and you mouthing off to him about his business is the absolute last thing I need.’
Holly, stung, shook her head. ‘Well, I guess that’s told me, then. I mean, what’s the point of doing anything if it achieves nothing?’
Charlie, sensing he might have gone too far, tried to grab her hand. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Of course what you do matters. I’m just frustrated. Can I come in? We can talk about this.’
She couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness of the car.
‘I think you’ve said all you need to say, and you’re obviously not going to listen to me. Goodnight, Charlie.’
She picked up her evening bag from the footwell of the car and was out of the passenger door before he could respond further. Slamming the car door behind her, she felt his eyes on her back, until, evidently exasperated, he started the engine of his BMW and drove off.
As she walked up the path to her door, she felt at once deflated and angry. She couldn’t wait to get out of the dress, and although she’d entertained notions of Charlie being the one to unzip it, she was too cross now to fantasise. She’d known this dinner was a bad idea from the start, and it had shown her quite clearly that she and Charlie would never see eye to eye, no matter how sexy she found him.
Thrusting open her heavy wooden front door, she did her best to slam it behind her, to let out some of the irritation, nearly decapitating Arthur in the process, who was attempting to sneak in and find a warm place to sleep.
‘Sorry, my lovely,’ Holly said, picking him up and cuddling him to her. ‘Looks like you’ll be the only male sharing my bed tonight, and for a while yet.’
Slinging her bag down on the hall table and stepping out of her deeply vertiginous heels, she wandered off to bed.
Charlie, still seething, reached his house and drove swiftly into the parking space outside it. Pulling the key from the ignition, he slammed his car door shut and hurried up the path to his front door. He was twitching with irritation, laced with a deeper desire for Holly that, even though they’d parted acrimoniously, still throbbed inside him.
How could she have been so tactless? Honestly, the woman was like an unexploded bomb at times. A smaller voice whispered that he’d been an idiot to have put her in that position in the first place – after all, he knew how far apart they were ideologically, but he’d just assumed that she’d suck up her principles for his sake. That was clearly his first mistake; he had no right to assume anything of her. Why should she have to stay silent just because airing her opinion might make his life tricky? That was not the right way to conduct any relationship.
Pushing open his front door, he pulled out his phone in the lame expectation that in the two minutes it had taken him to drive from her place to his, Holly might have texted him. Even though he knew she wouldn’t have, it still struck him in the gut when that was confirmed by a distinct lack of messages.
Sighing, he grabbed a glass of water and headed upstairs. He should probably email Tom and touch base before he went to bed, but he just wanted to black out and forget the evening. As debut dinners in the constituency went, this one had been memorable – in the end, for all the wrong reasons.