Accidental Mistress

by Williams Cathy

  So three days later she set off for London under strict instructions to have a damn good time and see if she could sniff out any bargains that they might want to stock for the following summer.

  The place, when she arrived, was jammed. The big flower shows, she knew, were always packed, but she had not expected quite such a crowd for what was, after all, an élite event with only certain categories of flowers and plants on display.

  At the entrance, she thought that she would never make it, not having to contend with throngs of people pushing against her when all she really felt like. doing was having a long sleep, but once she was inside the crowd thinned out and she began to have a proper, thorough look at everything.

  There were roses, but peculiarly shaped ones or else unusually coloured ones, and there was any number of foreign flora, with their wild, exotic hues strangely amplified by the ordinary surroundings.

  The huge hall was filled with heady, sweet scents and the sounds of people exclaiming over something or other. She had taken a little notebook with her and as she stopped in front of each plant she sized it up with a view to possible stocking, and took the appropriate notes.

  She was being swept along on the tide of people moving from one display to the next, when she picked up the well-bred tones of one voice, and as her head snapped around their eyes met through the crowd and Lisa had a swaying feeling, as if she was about to fall.

  She heard a woman say, ‘Are you all right, dear?’

  She nodded distractedly, about to push on, when Caroline’s voice said from next to her, ‘What a surprise. Lisa something or other, isn’t it?’

  ‘Freeman.’

  She could feel the blood soaring through her and she had the same giddy feeling she used to have now and again, earlier on in her pregnancy, when she suddenly stood up and felt the ground swaying gently under her feet.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten.’ Caroline’s face was as tanned as it had been when they had returned from the West Indies and she was wearing a glamorous green trouser outfit which seemed far more appropriate to a cocktail party than a garden exhibition, but Lisa could remember that about her choice of clothes. They were never casual. They always seemed just a little too grand for the occasion.

  ‘How are you, Caroline?’ she asked faintly. At least her voice sounded all right, but she knew that her knuckles were white and her hands were tightly balled into fists at her sides.

  ‘Just fine.’ The green, feline eyes swept over her, and she said, smiling, but with an unpleasant undertone, ‘I see that congratulations are in order.’

  Did I really think that she might not noticed? Lisa thought. She felt sick as though the air had suddenly become too hot and was pressing down upon her, making her sweat.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And how many months?’

  ‘A little over four.’ She tried to smile, as though this were routine stuff for her—a few pleasantries with a passing acquaintance—but she could feel the tension in her body like a rush of freezing water through her veins.

  ‘I see.’ Caroline looked at her with those hard, glittering eyes. ‘And where is your husband? Here with you?’ she asked, and Lisa didn’t answer. What was there to say?

  ‘Are you enjoying the display?’ she eventually asked, a little wildly.

  ‘Usual dull affair,’ Caroline answered. ‘Here with Mummy, actually. She’s terribly involved in this sort of thing and she dragged me along to help out.’

  ‘Well...I hope you have a nice time.’ Good heavens, what pointless small talk, when all I want to do is get away and hope that she doesn’t put two and two together, she thought. ‘I really must be going...’

  ‘I tried my luck with Angus, you know, but he wasn’t interested. I think you were right when you said that he saw me as an underage minor—despite my attempts to persuade him otherwise.’ She was smiling, the same repellent, cold smile that frightened Lisa. ‘But in a way I’m jolly glad nothing came of it. He said that he was utterly uninterested in any kind of long-term relationship with any woman. He was terribly polite about it. I personally think that that sort of thing would cramp his lifestyle, don’t you agree?’

  Lisa shrugged.

  ‘Dear Angus moves in the fast lane,’ she continued. ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if he had to slow down because of some disaster? I mean...’ She leaned forward confidentially. Lisa felt the brush of the green silk against her arm. ‘Here’s a thought... You’re a little over four months pregnant. He could be the father, couldn’t he? If you two had had a fling... Not that I’m saying you did! But the timing’s there, isn’t it?

  ‘Do you know, if the Press ever discovered that he had fathered an illegitimate child and not taken responsibility, they would have a field day? He has such a high profile, and some of his largest advertising campaigns are quite morally based. What a thought.

  ‘Still...’ she appeared to give this some thought ‘...I personally would find it very amusing if he was brought down a peg or two. Rejection isn’t a word I understand.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t mean that, Caroline,’ Lisa said with growing horror at the implications of what the other woman had said. ‘I’m sure you’re not a vindictive person.’

  ‘Of course I’m not! But there’s always something a little sweet about revenge, isn’t there? You never said, by the way—are you married?’

  Someone jostled her from behind. Lisa had never felt so grateful to an inconsiderate, passing stranger in all her life.

  ‘I really must get on,’ she said, bravely meeting Caroline’s eyes and not looking away. ‘I’m being pushed by people who want to have a look at your mother’s display. Do congratulate her from me. It’s a beautiful selection of flowers.’

  She wouldn’t have guessed that she could be so articulate when her mind was whirling around like a spinning top, going faster and faster.

  ‘I will, yes, of course.’ Caroline stepped back and offered her profile for inspection. ‘And I shall also tell her how glad I am that I was forced into coming here. After all, how else would we have met? And I’m so glad that we did. Aren’t you?’

  There was no point in even trying to enjoy the flowers now, but she trudged through the rest of the displays, taking notes, even though the blooms had all merged into one great, gaudy mass of colour.

  By the time she made it back to her flat, she was spent.

  Her mind played and replayed that conversation with Caroline. Every way she looked at it, from whatever angle, she couldn’t escape or misread the insinuations behind the words. Caroline wanted her revenge on Angus. She had made a pass at him and had been courteously turned down and rejection, as she had said herself, was not a concept she found easy to swallow. What better revenge now than to see him forced into a fatherhood he didn’t want?

  She didn’t sleep that night. Normally, the minute her head hit the pillow she was out like a light, but not now. She tossed and turned and created a thousand and one scenarios in her mind and then unconvincingly tried to tell herself that she was being foolish, that Caroline’s words had been no more than a vindictive threat.

  But it hardly worked. She was, she realised by the end of the week, waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring, standing on the edge of a precipice, waiting to fall.

  By the end of two weeks, she was beginning to hope that he had maybe lost her address somewhere, and he would never find her through the phone book because she was ex-directory. She tried desperately to remember if she had mentioned where she worked, but for the life of her she couldn’t.

  By the end of three weeks, she no longer looked at the telephone with the wariness of someone expecting the worst.

  Autumn had now pushed the last vestiges of summer away. The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn red and gold and fall to the ground. She extracted her waterproof jacket and her coat from cold storage, only to realise that they would never last the course of the pregnancy. In fact, not many of her clothes still did fit her. She had had to carefully f
old her jeans and put them away and now she began sewing some maternity clothes, which she did without joy, simply with the determined knowledge that she had to. She couldn’t afford the luxury of buying an entire wardrobe of maternity wear.

  She stopped worrying about Angus because no news was good news. She stopped dwelling obsessively on that conversation with Caroline because if she was going to create trouble then she would have done so by now. She also stopped jumping every time the phone went and then tiptoeing to answer it, as if one false move and it would attack, like something out of a tacky horror movie.

  On a cold, blustery Friday evening, she heard the doorbell ring and went to answer it without a second thought.

  Her friend Judy had taken to calling round at the end of the week. Sometimes they went out for a cheap meal, but more often than not they just sat and chatted.

  Her shock on seeing Angus standing outside her front door was so profound that she felt her entire body stiffen, as though someone had waved a magic wand and turned her into stone.

  She stared at him without saying anything. Shock had not galvanised her into action. It had done the opposite. It had deprived her of her power of speech; it had thickened her mind so that she could hardly think; it had frozen every nerve in her body.

  She had been wrong. She had not remembered everything about him. She had forgotten, for a start, how intensely powerful his presence was, how the arrogant sweep of his dark features gave him a brooding, mesmerising look. She had forgotten that peculiar, penetrating clarity of his eyes, the deepest of blues that revealed nothing.

  ‘Surprised, Lisa?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ At least she could speak now, even though it was only in a whisper. At least she could think even though her thoughts were flying around in her head like a swarm of bees unexpectedly released,

  ‘What do you think?’ There was no lazy charm in his face. His mouth was a narrow line and he wasn’t smiling. She knew that what she was seeing was the cold, hard steel beneath the velvet. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me inside?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He reached out and pushed the door back and stepped inside, leaving her to shut the door behind her and stand there, with her hands behind her back. He didn’t look around him. He turned and faced her, with his hands in his pockets.

  Now that her nightmares had finally materialised, she found that she didn’t have a clue what to do, what to say. She stared at him mutely and he gave her a savage, cold smile.

  ‘Haven’t you got your little speech ready, Lisa?’

  ‘What little speech? What are you talking about?’ Her heart was beating so fast that it felt as though it would burst at any moment.

  ‘Did you think that I wouldn’t come around?’ he asked, with the same cold, cruel smile on his mouth. ‘Were you beginning to worry that your little plan might go astray?’

  ‘What little plan? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me!’ he bellowed, and she cringed back against the door, grateful for the support it gave her.

  ‘I’ve been away in America. Caroline was waiting for me the day after I got back.’

  Lisa walked shakily into the living room, across to the sofa and sat down with her hands on her lap. So it hadn’t been an empty threat after all. Had she really imagined that it had been? What an optimistic fool. Caroline was not the sort to make empty threats, not when she could taste the honeyed sweetness of revenge.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ His mouth twisted into a cynical sneer. ‘And there’s really no need to go on acting the innocent with me. Just tell me how much money you want.’

  ‘Money?’ She looked up at him with utter bewilderment.

  ‘Yes, money. Or were you hoping that I would skirt round the subject in a more tactful way? When you cut through the waffle, it has such a nasty ring, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I won’t be bullied by you in my own house.’

  ‘When did you devise your little plan, Lisa?’ he asked in a dangerously soft voice.

  ‘Angus, please...’

  ‘Angus, please... what?’

  ‘What did Caroline say to you?’

  ‘What did Caroline say to me? What didn’t she say to me would be nearer the target. She told me that she was at the flower show, helping her mother, when you confronted her. She said that you couldn’t wait to tell her that you were pregnant by me and that you would make sure I paid through the nose for sleeping with you when there was nothing in it for you.’

  Lisa’s face whitened.

  ‘None of that’s true,’ she whispered.

  ‘So tell me, when did you decide to play your trump card? Did you lead me on until you knew that making love would result in a pregnancy?’ He stepped towards her and she stared at him with wide-eyed horror. ‘A bit of a gamble, wasn’t it? I suppose you figured that you had nothing to lose, though, didn’t you? If it didn’t work, if you didn’t fall pregnant, then you would slide back into obscurity. If you did, then all you had to do was engineer the right moment to meet Caroline, and that would be the easy part.

  ‘Clever of you to remember that her mother exhibited flowers. All it would have needed was a phone call to see whether she would be there on the same day as you, and if that didn’t work, then you could always bump into her somewhere else. Accidentally, of course.’

  ‘No! You’re not making any sense!’

  ‘Am I not?’

  ‘I had no idea that Caroline would be there! I didn’t phone to find out anything! I don’t know how you have the nerve to come into my house and accuse me of things...like that!’ Her voice had begun to waver and she had to grit her teeth together so that she didn’t break down and start crying. She took a deep breath.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and stared at her with a mixture of anger and doubt and sheer frustration. Then he began to pace the room, his movements restless.

  ‘It is mine, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused in front of her and said darkly, ‘I won’t be blackmailed into anything, I can tell you that right now. You say that you didn’t engineer a meeting with Caroline...’

  ‘And I didn’t confront her either!’ Lisa looked at him resentfully. ‘She confronted me! I wasn’t even supposed to be at that flower show but Paul couldn’t make it and he wanted me to go along and make notes. By the time I saw her, it was too late to... She guessed at once. She was elated. She said that she had tried to...that she had...’

  She couldn’t formulate the thought and she couldn’t tell whether he understood her meaning or not because he continued to look at her with that opaque, unreadable look that was so frightening.

  ‘She said that she wanted to make you pay for rejecting her.’ There, it was out, and she met his stare with bright, stubborn eyes.

  ‘And why should I believe you?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t!’

  There was a thick silence, then he said, with less rage but no more warmth, ‘I’m going now, but I promise you I’ll be back.’ He turned around and walked out, slamming the door behind him, and she collapsed back against the sofa. Now that she was alone, the unshed tears refused to come.

  She sat there while the gloom gathered around her and thought about every word he had said. She thought about the savage anger on his face as he had hurled those accusations at her. She knew that she shouldn’t be surprised, that Caroline was just the sort of girl who would feel no compunction about twisting the truth into something that she could make into a blunt instrument and use for her own benefit. But it still hurt that he could have accepted her as gold-digger so easily.

  How could he have thought she would use him as a passport to money?

  She fell asleep on the sofa and awoke with stiff joints the following day. It was just as well that it was the weekend and she didn’t have to go to work. Her body ached.

  She put her hand on he
r stomach and thought that the only sensible thing was happening there inside her, and then it occurred to her, with surprise, that over the past few months, while she had been busily saving her money and working out how she was going to cope with a baby, some part of her had slowly become used to the idea and that same part of her now felt more than protective about this child. It had moved from being a catastrophe to something which she now accepted and wanted very badly.

  She went and did her shopping and later, just after she had finished her meal, Paul dropped by. He was literally just passing in front of her house, and wanted to tell her that lunch the following day was off. Timothy had chickenpox and it now looked as though the other two were getting it. Ellie had spotted one sinister red bump on Jenny’s stomach and had gloomily predicted that it would have grown into several hundred by morning.

  Lisa smiled and listened, cheered up by this mundane conversation when she had spent the whole day in a state of heightened emotional upheaval.

  ‘We don’t want you getting ill,’ Paul said, smiling and patting her hand. ‘Not,’ he added with a wicked grin, ‘when winter stock is being delivered on Monday and you have to be there to supervise.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Lisa laughed. ‘So much for my welfare.’

  ‘Just joking.’

  ‘I know that!’ They continued chatting for a few minutes about their supply of shrubs, quite a few of which had been delivered three days previously and now seemed to be substandard, and he was just getting up to leave when the doorbell went.

  Lisa was still smiling when she opened the door. The sight of Angus standing outside drained the smile away from her face and she felt all the familiar apprehension flooding through her again. Every time she saw him, he seemed taller and leaner than she remembered, and more threatening. She remained standing in front of the open doorway, and followed the line of his eyes as they flicked past her to where Paul was slipping on his jacket.

  ‘Come at a bad time, have I?’ he asked cynically.

  Paul was now standing behind her, and before she could make any introductions Angus said in a cold, tight voice that contained an element of aggression. ‘And you are...?’