Page 128 of Me and Mr. Darcy

Watching him disappear back into the bakery, I make up my mind to quiz Stella when I go back inside. At the moment I don’t want to interrupt her as she’s busy in the stockroom sorting out the new orders. Which reminds me. When I got back from my trip one of the first things I did was check the new batch of Pride and Prejudice for blank pages, but they were perfect, every last one of them, and I know, as I personally went through them all. Plus I checked our database and there was no record of any returns. Weird, huh? I must have got the one faulty copy.

And do you want to know something else that’s weird? I always kept that copy in the side pocket of my bag, but when I got home and came to unpack, I found a different copy. One with all the pages intact. I guess I must have lost mine, or mistakenly given it to the hotel in Bath and accidentally picked up one belonging to someone else on the tour.

Unless there’s another explanation – a weird, wonderful, suspend-your-disbelief explanation – that maybe, just maybe, this is my original copy. You see, I have this theory . . .

There’s this bit in the book when Mr Darcy leaves Netherfield in November and goes to London with the Bingleys for the winter. It’s at the end of Volume I, well, actually, it’s the first few lines of Volume II if I remember rightly, just after the ball. Elizabeth doesn’t see him again until Easter. That’s months. During that time nobody knew what he got up to, where he went, who he met. He could have done anything. Met anyone. Dated anybody.

Like, for example, a girl from New York called Emily.

Is that why the rest of the pages were blank? Because he met me? Because that day at Chawton Manor, when we were both visitors from completely different places, our two worlds collided and we somehow managed to bump into each other? I don’t know how it happened, or why it happened, but it happened. And as a result of that trigger, a whole set of changes were set in motion . . .

At the time I didn’t stop to think about what the consequences might be of me and Mr Darcy. I was too busy being swept off my feet by a man I’ve been dreaming about since I was twelve years old. Too caught up with living out my fantasy, and that of every other woman like me. But now, in hindsight, I have thought about it, about what would have happened if I really had fallen in love with him, if we’d somehow stayed together.

My mind begins unravelling the story at a rate of knots. Mr Darcy would never have returned to Netherfield, made the trip back to his aunt’s in the hope he’d see Elizabeth, declared his undying love, been refused and written her that letter. And Elizabeth wouldn’t have had Mr Darcy coming to the rescue when her sister Lydia eloped with Wickham, she wouldn’t have been able to come to her senses and realise she was wrong, and she wouldn’t have been able to say yes when he asked her to marry him.

And therefore the rest of the story would never have happened. The pages would have remained for ever blank. There would have been no greatest love story of all time. No Elizabeth and Mr Darcy. No Pride and Prejudice as we know it. It would have ceased to exist. And it would have been all my fault. And, like the ripples produced by a stone hitting the water, the effects would have been far-reaching. The implications staggering.

Just imagine. There’d be no Colin Firth in the lake scene, no Matthew Macfadyen striding through the mist, no Mark Darcy for Bridget Jones.

At the thought of all those millions of irate Bridget Jones fans, I feel slightly sick.

But Mr Darcy did go back. Which explains why the pages aren’t blank any more. He returned to his life, forgot about me and by doing so created one of the best love stories there’ll ever be.

Sounds incredible?

Hell, it does. But perhaps we all need to believe something incredible once in a while. Just like I’d like to believe that the silk scarf I found outside Winchester Cathedral really is Mr Darcy’s and not some random stranger’s. I still have it. I keep it in my underwear drawer. Unfortunately it doesn’t smell of that sexy cologne any more. I had to wash it after blowing my snotty nose on it and now it smells of Bounce fabric conditioner. But still, sometimes I like to take it and tie it around my neck and fantasise a little . . .

But only a little of course, and then I put it straight back in the drawer.

‘Hey, Em, can you sign these delivery forms?’

Stella’s holler grabs my attention and I zone back to see her standing in the store doorway, wearing her raspberry-pink cape and waving a bunch of forms at me. I smile. She hasn’t taken that cape off since I gave her it. That’s three weeks straight in a raspberry-pink cape. Her neighbours have taken to calling her Red Riding Hood. Not that she cares. She’s in seventh heaven – or should I say Topshop heaven?

‘Sure,’ I yell back, and draining the last of my coffee, I run across the cobbles towards her. ‘So,’ I smile, reaching her and following her inside the store, ‘spill the beans.’

‘What beans?’ she asks innocently, guilt written all over her face.

‘About you and Freddy,’ I prompt, leaning against the section of the trestle table that’s right in the path of sunlight streaming through the doorway. It feels warm on my back.

‘There’s nothing to spill,’ she continues, and thrusts the forms at me. ‘Here, you need to sign these, boss.’

I take them from her. ‘Don’t try to butter me up by calling me boss. That’s two nothings. One from you and one from Freddy.’ Grabbing a pen, I scribble my signature. ‘And two nothings make a something – it’s like a double negative.’

Stella purses her mouth and surveys me thoughtfully. I can tell I’ve really got her with the double-negative thing.

‘Oh OK,’ she sighs, throwing her hands up in the air like a Jewish mother. ‘I give in. We’re dating.’

I look at her, a mixture of delight and disbelief. ‘Stella! That’s fantastic! Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You know I think Freddy’s great. Jeez, when did this all happen?’

‘When I got back from Mexico,’ she says, allowing herself a small smile as she remembers. ‘He was waiting for me when I got back and he’d made me this great cheesecake, as he knows it’s my favourite, and we just stayed in, and ate too much, and chatted and—’ She breaks off and shakes her hair, the tips of which she’s recently dyed black. ‘It made me realise just how much I’d missed him while I was away. Even before Scott turned out to be such a loser, I missed him. I thought it was just ’cos we lived together, we’d gotten used to each other, but it was more than that.’

Joining me in the little patch of sunlight, she turns to me. ‘You know, we’re pretty good together,’ she confesses.

‘Er, hello,’ I say indignantly. ‘Who’s been telling you this for months?’

She grins sheepishly. ‘I know, I know, I didn’t listen . . .’

‘So what’s it like, having sex with your husband?’ I ask, elbowing her.