Another Way

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ he said, pushing her gently back on to the cushions,

  ‘Oh well, in which case...’ she said and after that there wasn’t much time for talking,

  *

  Ellie heard a clock chime in the distance. The glow from the fire was warming the glass in her hand. Theo appeared in the doorway, beckoning silently to her.

  ‘Come on.’ His voice was unsteady. ‘The film’s over, I’ll drive you home before they come looking for us.’

  With that, entwining his fingers in hers, he led from the room a very shaken Ellie who had still to come to terms with the fact that she had no resolutions left to defend. And she must be totally, irreparably mad. But it also, on another level she couldn’t quite reach, seemed utterly the right thing to have done.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Sunday was a daze. Vaguely aware that Oliver and Jill were exchanging worried glances, it had taken the twins hurling themselves on her to get Ellie’s attention.

  She had retained just enough common sense to take herself off for a long, solitary walk on Sunday afternoon to sort out her own feelings before she confided in anyone or indeed risked anyone suspecting and asking her for explanations she was incapable of giving.

  There had been a phone call earlier from Clive, guessing who had been trying to ring him, and for the first time, Ellie had to confront reality. Surely that’s what last night had been? An escape from reality, a stupid dream, an impetuous, thoughtless action.

  Rubbish. That’s what had happened with Clive, high on excitement and relief and the pleasure of getting out of that awful black hole which had threatened to suck her in and take her away altogether.

  That isn’t what happened with Theo. And, dear God, what was she thinking of? She had once criticized Judith for sleeping with every man who took her fancy, and here she was casting inhibition to the wind, and consigning caution to the bottom of the sea for exactly those reasons. It was little consolation that in the last few months, if the occasion demanded, lying and hypocrisy had come breathtakingly easily to her.

  If she had been drunk the night before she couldn’t have had a worse hangover.

  The overcast, leaden sky, the stiff wind threatening to become a gale later, the sheer effort of walking in such difficult conditions hadn’t helped for one second to clear her head.

  If this was love, it was a bloody painful business, she muttered, drawing a curious look from an elderly couple straining against the wind walking their dogs. It wasn’t hard to understand the physical attraction she felt for Theo, but it was everything else about him that she knew made him so right for her. His sense of humour, his wit, the way he could read her expression, and a stability he offered that was largely absent with Clive and had never even existed with Paul.

  When she looked back on it, she had done very little to discourage him from thinking she was fair game and would not spurn anyone’s advances if it helped her career, but she knew instinctively he respected women, liked them, liked her.

  But how much did he like her? Impossible to think he wasn’t attracted to her. At least she knew that. But what else?

  He said they should get to know each other slowly. Ellie, sitting on her favourite rock idly throwing stones at the grey, swollen sea, sighed and knew he was right. Being in love is like being a little bit mad. And she knew she must be mad.

  But there was now nothing she could do. She didn’t want to think about Clive, away in Dublin, unsuspecting, so beautiful and kind and clever, who had pulled her up by the roots and made her believe in herself again, to be herself again.

  Even less did she want to think about Oliver and Jill. They had been so excited at breakfast about their success the previous evening. The MP Gregory Merton, along with Charles Peterhouse, the historian, had both pledged their support to Oliver’s campaign.

  In return Ellie had lied and told them that the evening with Theo was entertaining but uneventful and had spared them the details of her private meeting with him later. They wouldn’t understand, not yet.

  She wasn’t sure that she did herself.

  Gregory, they laughed, had even asked quite kindly after her and was clearly anxious to improve his image. Charles was genuinely concerned. Both, of course, were influential locally. While neither of them personally knew Conrad Linton, they knew his interest in Willetts Green was now nil since he had discovered the delights of Australia, and warned Oliver that he would simply sell to the highest bidder.

  ‘The only thing we can do,’ Oliver continued, seemingly unaware that Ellie’s breakfast remained untouched and that the second cup of coffee Jill had poured for her had, like the first, simply gone cold, ‘is to save the land from redevelopment whoever owns it. We must just make sure that if Theo Stirling gets it — and he’s bound to — that we prevent him doing anything dreadful with it. Or even better, anything at all. At least that way we might be able to hang on to the hotel. What do you think, Ellie? Ellie, are you listening?’

  ‘Hmm? Yes, marvellous,’ she said automatically and didn’t see Jill raise a significant eyebrow at Oliver.

  After that Ellie went for a walk because she could not find the words to tell them that the man they were trying to outwit was not like that.

  Why is that, Ellie?

  Because he isn’t, that’s all.

  That doesn’t make sense, Ellie.

  To me it does.

  This man wrecked Pa, and threatened you, and is about to damage Oliver.

  I know.

  You know? And you say he isn’t like that?

  I’m in love with him and I don’t see how I can work against him.

  You are what?

  Ellie looked out over the rocks to the curve in the bay and beyond that to the house where Theo was probably, right now, departing for London.

  No, she couldn’t tell them. Not yet.

  *

  She had half expected to hear from Theo when she reached her flat on Sunday night, although he had said it would be Monday afternoon before he called her.

  But the machine simply spilled out messages from Jed — off to New York on a flying visit, see her Friday. Amanda, just for a gossip. Roger Nelson. A number where he could be reached. God, Lucy couldn’t have been discreet at all. Oh well, couldn’t be helped. Two from Paul — where are you? Will call later.

  Extraordinary how Paul didn’t even cross her mind any more when once he had dominated her days and she had imagined herself in love with him.

  Now she knew that this heady, all-consuming, all-powerful feeling for Theo was something she had never experienced before, not with Clive and certainly not with Paul, and at that moment she believed she would never experience again.

  *

  Jerome had to speak to her twice the next morning when they met for their weekly conference before she responded. If she had been more locked on to their meeting she might have noticed the undisguised annoyance that flicked across his face and the slightly clenched teeth as he waited for her to comment on his suggestions for interviews.

  No good being sarcastic, he quietly seethed, not wanting to repeat the scene with Ian Willoughby when the boss had politely informed Jerome he wanted Ellie back. You just couldn’t tell with her now what she might do.

  She was a very different woman to the courteous, sophisticated one who had walked out of his office with such contempt a few months before. Not that she was any less courteous, just not prepared to allow the conversation to wander away from the point, no gossipy foreplay before the meeting, no quiet wit putting a high profile name in perspective.

  Lucy eventually stopped putting calls through to her office and Rosie, popping her head round the door at ten thirty to see if Ellie was free for lunch, found her leaning against the window just staring out.

  By the time Theo called on Monday afternoon and asked her to dinner, it was doubtful if Ellie would have noticed the building falling down around her.

  He picked her up from her flat at seven thirty and took her to what
Ellie was vaguely aware was a small, local Italian bistro. She wouldn’t have cared if they’d had fish and chips on the Embankment.

  They talked about their friends. She told him about Paul. How she was relieved he was no longer part of her life. About Jed, and how she had rushed Gemma to hospital, about feeling restless with journalism.

  He told her that he never thought about travelling, it was just something he did, that he rarely read press cuttings, just the business section. And of course Jed’s column to see what she was up to.

  He told her about Harvard, and how it was so much easier to work in New York because in that city that is what everyone did. You didn’t really ‘live’ there.

  She told him about Aunt Belle’s visits and how much she had come to like Alison. She noticed he didn’t make any comment. He said both his sisters were now married, one in LA and the other in New York. His mother longed to be a grandmother.

  Over coffee he linked his hand in hers and asked her about Clive.

  She shook her head quickly. No, not yet, Clive was special, still a no-go area for discussion.

  For a minute Theo looked intently at her and then shrugged and changed the subject. She didn’t ask him about his brief marriage to Serena and certainly not his relationship with Debra. And he didn’t volunteer any information about that either.

  So instead Ellie switched topics and told him she had almost given up journalism because it had been sort of difficult when she left Focus. She gave him a side-splitting account of Jonquil, mimicked Taylor and shyly told him that his flowers had arrived just after she’d met Gemma, and now she thought it was almost unbelievable that all the people who had once filled her life had gone and all these new, nicer, braver, brighter people were in it.

  He said he hoped he was one of them.

  When the phone call came for him and he told her there was a problem in New York that had to be sorted out that night, she had to insist his driver was sufficient escort to get her home.

  ‘I’m business too,’ Ellie had teased him and thought she would expire with happiness when Theo laughed into her eyes and said he was going to enjoy all the overtime.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll cancel everything,’ he said, briefly kissing her as he closed the door of the car and his driver swept her back to her flat.

  It was curiously enough Debra’s call that snapped Ellie out of her trance-like state.

  The call came at midday on Tuesday. Debra said she thought it would be ‘useful’ for both of them if they met.

  Ellie had no stomach for meeting her after Saturday night, but then she wasn’t sure about anything anymore, except how she felt about Theo.

  ‘My dear,’ came the drawling voice. ‘I find I am not required for any fittings today, I wonder if you would care for lunch? Or if you already have arrangements, a drink before lunch? Please say yes, I have been so upset thinking I may have put my foot in it on Saturday.’

  Debra refused to be put off. Eventually Ellie simply shrugged and gave Debra the benefit of the doubt — after all, she did sound genuinely concerned — and agreed to a drink before lunch.

  Letty had phoned early in the morning to say the response from women to Ellie’s frank admission that she had been a victim of redundancy had been so strong, they wanted her to do a live studio discussion with a group of women who had been plunged into the same dilemma but who with varying degrees of success had got themselves out of it.

  ‘We’re going to emphasize how to stay positive. One of the women we’ve got coming in actually ended up buying her old company. They’re terrific women.’

  Ellie thought it was a brilliant idea and calculated that if she got the seven o’clock train down first thing Wednesday morning, she could spend as long as possible with Theo. Funny how in the space of two short days, she was planning her schedule around him. It gave her such a warm glow to think of it, she almost didn’t need her coat.

  Now that she wasn’t pinned down to the office, she was able to take off mid-morning to collect some cosmetics Amanda had asked her to pick up that she couldn’t get in Wiltshire, and to buy presents for Amy before Gemma and Bill left for Scotland to spend the holiday season with their families.

  Ellie enjoyed shopping for Amy, packing a huge red stocking full of soft toys, outrageously coloured ribbons for her hair, and a Baby-gro with ‘Are You Ready For Me Scotland’ embroidered on it. London only days before Christmas was packed with shoppers. Christmas trees hung from the parapets of stores and filled out shop windows. Fairy lights and tinsel trailed the length of Oxford Street and the queue of small children waiting to see Father Christmas at Selfridges stretched for yards.

  Miles and Chloe would love it, she thought, pushing her way out of the store into the biting wind of Oxford Street and wondered if there was time to get them up here before Christmas at Delcourt started in earnest.

  As she turned round the corner at Marble Arch and started to walk down Park Lane a very pleasing image flashed into her mind of Theo and herself taking two small children to see Santa in his grotto, smiling and laughing at their excited faces. For some reason the two children in question weren’t her small nephew and niece. A sheepish grin spread across her face. And to think she once teased Amanda for doing much the same thing.

  The block where Debra retained her London apartment was no more than a stroll from Theo’s address and Ellie arrived, her cheeks rosy from the wind, laden down with Christmas shopping and ready to be civil to Debra.

  The door was opened by a young, painfully thin, raven-haired girl, who might have been described as pretty if it were not for the dark circles under her eyes. Ellie assumed she must be some kind of maid or secretary but she seemed vaguely familiar when she asked Ellie to wait.

  The room Ellie was ushered into was long, wide, high, completely decorated and furnished in white, with only vivid splashes of pink and green in the cushions and curtains to relieve the unrelenting starkness. She blinked at the sheer opulence of what was clearly an extensive apartment, dominated by a vast mirror at one end and some aggressively modern paintings on the other walls.

  It was not a feminine room, too strong, too bold for that, but it had obviously been created by someone with a great deal of money, who had bought art through an adviser, not through personal taste, and had allowed a fashionable interior designer to let his imagination run riot with the decor.

  Ellie had seen too many apartments like it, too many homes of newly made wealth or fame not to recognize the lack of the owner’s personality. She had also seen enough of Debra to know she was more interested in image than taste.

  The actress herself chose that moment to come in, not quite such a dramatic entrance as on the previous occasion they had met but effective enough.

  The weather as they approached Christmas was cold, and the day had started with a fine frost. Her navy single-breasted coat and pale grey cashmere scarf now lay on the sofa beside her. Briefly she wondered, as Debra arrived, how anyone could find the time, or the inclination to make such an effort.

  ‘So sorry,’ she gushed as she whirled through the door. A fur trimmed brown suede jacket screamed money. ‘I had to rush off to do a little shopping. Let me just get rid of these.’

  Debra’s long slender legs were tucked into matching suede calf-length boots that even at twenty paces Ellie could see must have cost nearly as much as the jacket. If at not quite midday, Debra was out to let Ellie know that in every way she could never fail to stun, she was wasting her time. She looked effortlessly expensive.

  As Debra sank into one of the white silk sofas, she reached out a perfectly manicured hand and pressed a bell. The raven-haired girl appeared. ‘Suki, my sweet, can you find that idiot Pedro and arrange some drinks?’

  Her next remark made the social smile on Ellie’s face fade.

  ‘And let me know when Mr Stirling calls. I wasn’t awake when he left this morning. He’ll be so cross with me — you know what he’s like first thing.’

  ‘Of course,’ smiled the
Suki person. ‘Don’t I know it, I keep out of his way until he’s gone.’ She departed.

  Ellie felt as though someone had hit her in the stomach. She wanted to scream, it’s not true. But Debra would never have said it in front of that girl unless it was. And anyway Suki had clearly seen him often enough first thing in the morning to assess his moods.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  ‘Have I told you that?’ is what he had said when she had assumed his involvement with Debra was more than tenuous. No, of course he hadn’t told her, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She had just wanted so much for it not to be true she had believed him.

  Now she knew now why he hadn’t called on Sunday night. Because he was asleep with Debra. Why he had to leave early last night. Because he was on his way to Debra’s bed.

  She realized that the actress had spoken to her twice and turned a stricken face to her.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ asked Debra. ‘You look rather cold. Let me get the heat turned up. Pedro!’

  Ellie swallowed hard as Debra summoned her houseman to adjust the heating. The flat was already sweltering.

  Concentrate, she told herself fiercely. Just concentrate on getting out of here. Then you can think. If it killed her she would not let this woman know what a fool she had been. Never would Debra be able to relay to Theo what a dreadful sense of humiliation had swept over Ellie at that moment.

  Ellie heard herself speaking in a voice that was normal, if a little curt.

  ‘I’m fine, just a rather hectic morning.’

  Keep going, she told herself. Lie, keep lying. It’s your only salvation.

  ‘I’m so pleased,’ smiled the other woman. ‘And delighted you’ve come over for a drink. I have been feeling rather awful since Saturday. You know Theo is a wonderful man, but so naughty — like most men.’ She gave a light laugh.

  ‘I’m afraid you have the advantage over me,’ Ellie replied crisply. ‘I’m afraid I hardly know him and I hope you won’t think me rude, but I’m not sure that I want to either.’