Pillow Talk Read Online Free PDF Page A

and waves. Sandy rather than blond.
But it wasn't him as a package that I fancied. In fact, I didn't ever really fancy Arlo – I bypassed that stage and fell in quiet love. Fancy was too vulgar a reaction to being serenaded. I remember loving him in an instant because he was singing to me, because, somehow, he had written that song for me. And the magic between us must have come from him not knowing he'd written it for me until he saw me that day and me not knowing what it felt like to be at the centre of someone's world until just then. I think he felt that way too. But I don't know because he never said and I never asked.
Is she walking all alone
Is she lonely in the flowers.
But this voice, today, is not Arlo's. It's his song but it's not him. Though no doubt his voice will have changed over the intervening seventeen years, it won't have changed into this. It'll probably have just deepened a little, lost a slice of its purity, gained a little worldly gravel to its timbre.
Whatever happened to Arlo Savidge?
I remember feeling woozy, a little breathless, that lunch-time. It was so thrilling – me, a Lower Fifth Year, being the focus of a Sixth Former. It was, I suppose, the most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for me. Rob took me to Claridges for my thirty-second birthday in December, but that was ostentation, not romance; we'd only been together a few months. And he bought me a pen from Tiffany for Christmas and red roses on Valentine's Day. But all of that is relatively easy if you can afford it. Back then, Arlo only had pocket money yet he created something unique and beautiful and precious. And lasting.
I wonder if he has ever stopped to wonder, over the years, whether I've been walking all alone, whether I've been lonely in the flowers? Rob sent me flowers last month after that blazing row when he stood me up but when they were delivered I buried my nose in them and as I inhaled their heady scent I sobbed. I felt desperately alone in those flowers.
Things seem to be quite good at the moment. Or at least, they're getting better.
But just perhaps, just say things were better way back then. They say that our school years are the best years of our lives. Do I agree? Is that true? Is it still too early to tell? But I think back to all I achieved, to the colourful mix of my schoolmates, to the eccentricities of my teachers. Have I ever been part of such an intense mêlée of uniqueness since? We had school uniform – yet though young and not quite formed, we all stood distinct. When I went to college, all we students shared an unofficial, interchangeable uniform of our own which made everyone blend and bland. Slouchy grouchy stressed and broke. I don't even know where Arlo went to university. Maybe he's a super rock god in America. Perhaps he jacked it all in and is an accountant. Maybe he's an impoverished musician in a garret in Clerkenwell. Or perhaps he's a middle-class husband with 2.4 kids. Perhaps the litheness and the curls are gone and he has a paunch and a bald patch. I don't know. But how beautiful that his music will always exist. What a legacy. It's on the radio. It's finishing.
‘ That was Rox and a hit from five years ago, “Among the Flowers”. Beautiful. And it's approaching midday so it's over to Annie for the news and weather. ’
Did you hear that? It was a hit five years ago. Where was I back then that I never heard it? Nowhere in particular. It just passed me by. How odd. Am I that square not to know what was top of the sodding pops five years ago? I have heard of Rox. But I didn't know they covered Arlo's song. I wonder how they came by it? Are there other bands out there covering his other tracks? Is he some hugely successful songwriter? Why am I even wondering about any of this? I saw him so rarely, if I think about it.
My school and Milton College used to join up for activities like choral society and pottery and drama club. I was never outgoing enough to go for drama club, and choral