by Jill Mansell
“You should try giving the drink a rest yourself,” Celeste told Suzy. “All that extra weight would just drop off you, I’m sure.”
“What a coincidence, I was just thinking the same thing,” Suzy retaliated sweetly, “about you and mascara.”
Because Celeste went through gallons of the stuff. Gallons.
Harry, leaping gamely into the breach like the good police officer he was, said, “So, Celeste, do you work?”
“Me? Heavens, no!” Celeste laughed prettily. “Being Jaz’s girlfriend is a full-time job.”
“In other words,” said Suzy, “she’s bone idle.”
Even Jaz couldn’t let this pass.
“You mean unlike you,” he commented drily, “who worked like a Trojan throughout our marriage.”
“That was different,” Suzy shot back. “You were drunk all the time! You needed looking after.”
“And you were Florence Nightingale?” Celeste turned to her in triumph. “From what I’ve heard, all you ever did was eat chocolate and go shopping. Although frankly, I’m amazed you could ever find clothes big enough to fit you.”
Harry coughed loudly and began to look alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” Jaz reassured him. “They’re always like this. So where did you two go tonight?”
Clearly relieved to hear a sane voice, Harry said, “The Pineapple Bar.”
“To see Lucille,” Suzy chimed in. “She was working there.”
“Really? Doing what?”
“Bartender,” Harry said swiftly.
“I suppose she drinks as well.” Celeste sounded pitying. “I don’t know. I just wish people could realize there’s more to life.”
“Like wrapping ribbons around their heads and trying to pass themselves off as boxes of chocolates?” said Suzy. “Actually, she walks dogs too. Who knows—if I ask her nicely, maybe she’ll take you out.”
“I just feel so sorry for her.” Celeste fluttered her eyelashes sympathetically at Harry, then shrugged and sipped her lukewarm coffee. “Imagine the disappointment of meeting your long-lost sister for the first time and discovering it’s you.”
Chapter 7
“I didn’t realize you two hated each other that much,” said Harry, when the front door had closed behind them.
“Oh, we don’t hate each other.” Suzy flapped her hand dismissively. She and Celeste loved to goad each other, but the great thing was that neither of them ever took offense. “I just wish Jaz could have found himself someone…better.”
Harry looked doubtful. “Are you still in love with him?”
“No!”
“Sure?”
Honestly, thought Suzy, what’s the matter with people? Why do they always think that?
“Of course I’m sure,” she said patiently. “And before you ask the next question, no, I am not jealous of Celeste.”
Harry considered this for a couple of seconds.
“OK, maybe not. But is Celeste jealous of you?”
They had reached his car. Suzy turned to face him, her mouth tilting—gosh, all by itself!—up toward his.
“You sound like Columbo,” she murmured. “And nobody’s even been murdered.”
“Hmmm.” Reaching toward her, Harry carefully lifted a tendril of dark blond hair out of her eyes. “Yet.”
* * *
Jaz knew her too well. He had left the door unlocked.
“Well?” said Suzy, bursting back into the drawing room. “What d’you think?”
“It shouldn’t matter what we think,” Jaz told her. “It’s what you think that counts.”
“Except I can’t always be trusted to get it right,” said Suzy, “on account of me having such terrible taste in men. I mean, look who I once married.”
Jaz laughed. Celeste, picking idly at the silver nail polish on her toes, said, “I thought he was OK. Cute.”
“Cute?” Suzy gazed at her in horror. “That’s a nice thing to say about a puppy. It’s a terrible thing to call a grown man.”
Celeste shrugged and tried again. “OK, he’s good looking in a pretty kind of way. Like the guy in that movie we saw on TV the other night.” She gave Jaz a nudge. “Really old movie…ooh, what was his name? He played a fairground worker, and you told me his friend in the movie used to be in some band.”
“That’ll Be the Day. David Essex,” said Jaz, not quite daring to meet Suzy’s eye.
Innocently, Suzy said, “So the friend who used to be in some band was…Ringo Starr?”
“That’s the one!” Celeste nodded happily.
“And this band he used to be in. Was it by any chance the Beatles?”
“Right again! Honestly, you’re like a total nerd, aren’t you, when it comes to old music?” Celeste’s tone was admiring. “It’s almost as if you’re forty-six, not twenty-six.”
“I’m twenty-four,” said Suzy.
“Oops, sorry. I don’t know why I always think you’re older. Must be the clothes.” Celeste shrugged. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Harry looks like the other one, the cute one. That David Wessex.”
Back to cute again. Terrific. Suzy turned impatiently to Jaz for support.
“So how about you?”
“Well, some people have said I’m cute.” Jaz grinned and stopped teasing her. “OK. The truth? He seems like a nice bloke. But…”
Holding her breath, Suzy watched him wiggle his hand in a noncommittal fashion.
“You don’t think he’s for me? Is that what you’re saying?” she demanded indignantly. “For heaven’s sake, you couldn’t be more wrong! He’s perfect.”
Jaz gave her a quizzical look. “Really?”
“Really.”
“In that case, fine.”
He wasn’t going to argue with her, Suzy realized.
Time to go home.
* * *
She had lied, of course. Harry wasn’t perfect.
But he was almost perfect. Say 90 percent, thought Suzy, gazing up at the darkened bedroom ceiling. Which, these days, is frankly about as good as it gets.
Oh, it was no good. She couldn’t sleep. Rolling over onto her side, she flicked on the bedside light and grabbed the TV remote control. This was one of those tired body, racing brain scenarios—Suzy knew from experience—that meant she didn’t have a hope in hell of getting to sleep.
Something was bothering her.
And that something was the missing 10 percent.
The crucial 10 percent, preventing Harry Fitzallan from being perfect.
And the reason it was bothering her so much, Suzy realized, was that she didn’t have a clue what could possibly be lacking.
Crikey, didn’t Harry have it all? Good looks? Great body? Intelligence? Wit? Charm?
So why, why did she keep finding herself secretly wishing that he could be a little bit more…a bit more something?
It was no good; her mind remained blank. Harry was certainly missing something, but she didn’t know what. Sincerely hoping it wasn’t his willy, Suzy aimed the remote at the TV and flicked through a few cable channels.
MTV was showing one of Jaz’s old videos, featuring him playing live in concert at the Birmingham NEC. When had that been? Five years ago? While we were together, thought Suzy, because I was there at that concert. And while Jaz was downing at least two bottles of Stolichnaya a day, judging by the look of him.
The camera spun into dizzying close-up, and the next moment, Jaz’s heavily lidded brown eyes filled the screen. Amazingly, despite the fact that he was clearly struggling to focus and needed to hang on to the mike stand for support, he was still giving a mesmerizing performance. Inebriated he might be, Suzy observed, but the star quality was still there.
That was the thing about Jaz, of course. He’d always had charisma by the bucketload. How else would he have
gotten away with it for so long?
The camera panned back again. As the climax to the song approached, Jaz ripped off his loose white shirt. Lithe and bare-chested, wearing only dark blue leather trousers now, he moved to the very front of the stage. The audience, going wild, reached out to him. Jaz paused, tossing his sweat-drenched blond hair out of his eyes. He held up one arm, smiled that trademark lopsided smile of his and—
“Oh, sod off.” Still annoyed with him, Suzy pressed a button on the remote with an executioner’s relish. Bloody Jaz, why should she watch him anyway, when he’d just been so mean to her? And how dare he criticize Harry, she thought indignantly, when he refused to take any notice of her opinion of Celeste?
After zapping her way through a couple of dozen more channels, Suzy settled finally for a documentary on face-lifts, in which a scary woman with skin like stretched plastic wrap was whining, “The thing is, I simply can’t bear the thought of losing my looks.”
But the TV couldn’t hold Suzy’s attention. OK, maybe Jaz hadn’t actually criticized Harry in so many words, but the implication had been there all the same.
That she Could Do Better.
Honestly, what a nerve.
Then again, thought Suzy, what else are we meant to expect from someone like Jaz? Someone who finally cleans up his act, kicks the booze, turns into the kind of brilliant human being you’d always wished he could be while you’d been married to him…and then goes and bloody wastes it all on someone as ridiculous and utterly pointless as Celeste?
Suzy switched off the TV, closed her eyes, and mentally ran through the list of appointments she had lined up for tomorrow.
Then she smiled to herself, wondering what Harry would have to say if she told him that sometimes she daydreamed about sleeping with Jaz and accidentally on purpose letting Celeste find out.
Not because she wanted to sleep with Jaz, particularly.
Just for fun.
It was only a harmless fantasy, after all. You were allowed to do things like that in your fantasies.
For a start, it would wipe the kittenish, look-who-I’ve-got, aren’t-I-clever smile off Celeste’s face and put an end to all that unbearable smugness.
And second, Jaz had always been pretty spectacular in bed, even when he was plastered. If he was that good drunk, Suzy had often pondered, what in heaven’s name was he like when he was sober?
Well, you couldn’t help wondering, could you?
* * *
The Lennoxes were both out at work all day. Eager to sell their five-bedroomed detached house on Mariner’s Drive as quickly as possible, they had handed the spare keys over to Suzy and assured her that she was free to show prospective buyers around whenever she liked.
“Smart front door,” Mrs. Lacey-Jones noted with approval when they pulled up outside the house in Suzy’s Rolls.
“Very.” Suzy nodded too, glad that the Lennoxes had taken her advice. The first rule of house selling was still to repaint your front door. Preferably a glossy dark blue. And polish up any brass hardware. Because first impressions count, and people decide whether they’re interested in a property within half a second of clapping eyes on it.
Rather like when you clap eyes on a new man.
Inside, their footsteps echoed across the polished oak floor. Colonel Lacey-Jones strode about in his equally glossy brogues with his hands clasped behind his back. His military mustache twitched with approval at the sight of the garden through the drawing room windows. Mrs. Lacey-Jones, who also had a hint of a military mustache, not to mention a bottom every bit as broad and tweedy as her husband’s, said, “Jolly nice decor.” She ran a hand over the Georgian writing desk to her left. “You can tell the house belongs to a good family.”
“Oh, yes, and they’re absolutely charming,” lied Suzy. Stuck up and patronizing, more like. Still, sensing that Mrs. Lacey-Jones would be impressed, she said, “Esther Lennox is the head of the WI.”
“Really? Oh, but I’ve met her!” Mrs. Lacey-Jones, clearly delighted, bustled up the stairs after her husband. “Marvelous, marvelous woman! Now look at this wooden paneling, Herbert. Excellent. Ah, now which bedroom would this be?”
Having reached the first door along the landing, her hand was already grasping the doorknob.
“Actually, it’s a bathroom.” Suzy consulted her list of details. “South facing, large and sunny, free-standing bath, you’re going to just love it—”
“AAARGH!” screamed Mrs. Lacey-Jones as the door swung open.
“Call the police!” Colonel Lacey-Jones bellowed, pushing past her and grabbing the nearest weapon at hand, which happened to be an onyx-handled lavatory brush. “Go on, Daphne, dial 999—I won’t let them get away!”
“Oh my God,” moaned the girl in the bath, covered in goose bumps and trembling with fear. “Don’t do it. Please don’t call the police…”
As she shook, the chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles rattled against the sides of the enamel bath. The man in there with her scrambled to his feet and reared up like a grizzly bear, causing Mrs. Lacey-Jones’s pale eyes to bulge almost out of her head.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” he roared.
Having recognized the girl from the formal graduation photograph in pride of place on the mantelpiece downstairs, Suzy smiled brightly and said, “We’ll probably look back one day and laugh about this.”
Colonel Lacey-Jones, lavatory brush still held menacingly aloft, turned and gave her an incredulous stare.
“Well,” Suzy amended, “maybe not quite yet.”
Chapter 8
“The poor girl was in shock,” Suzy told Donna back at the office an hour later. “She shares a house in Hotwells with six other people—it’s a total privacy-free zone. Her boyfriend lives at home with his parents and five brothers and sisters. They were just desperate for a few hours alone together.”
“And that’s what they like to do in their spare time, is it?” Donna wrinkled her nose in bemusement. “Blimey, some people. Going at it while you’re chained to the bath. I mean, how can that be comfortable?”
Suzy shrugged. She felt sorry for them.
“They weren’t doing anyone any harm. Well, until Mrs. Lacey-Jones walked in on them and almost had a heart attack on the spot.” Ruefully, she added, “Plus, of course, they’ve blown my chance of a quick sale.”
“Will you tell the Lennoxes what happened?”
“Oh, yes, great idea: tell the head of the Women’s Institute that while she and her husband are out of the house, her daughter sneaks in and cavorts in their bath with twenty feet of dog chain and some guy hairier than a gorilla. No thanks.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Donna.
Rummaging in her desk drawer for an emergency packet of malt balls, Suzy found one, ripped it open with her teeth, and added sadly, “Although it looks as if the daughter’s going to have to break it to them.”
Donna winced in sympathy. Her mother had once spotted her making out with a boy at a bus stop, and that had been bad enough.
“Really?”
“Well, the last thing Mrs. Lacey-Jones shouted as she stormed out of the house was, ‘I know your mother, you little trollop. Just wait until I tell her about this.’”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Donna looked hopeful.
Suzy, who had already tried and failed, crunched up a malt ball and said, “Yes. In future, always knock on the bathroom door, no matter how empty the house is.”
* * *
Returning to the office at five o’clock, Suzy found Rory at his desk rattling off letters into his Dictaphone. Martin Lord, his emerald-green silk tie askew, was scribbling appointments in his overcrowded diary.
“Hi.” Suzy swung her bag onto her chair. “I’ve just shown Marcus Egerton the apartment on Alma Road, and he’s put in an offer for one fifty. Did Donna t
ell you about it this morning?”
“She did.” Rory switched off his Dictaphone. “And I’ve had a call from Mrs. Lennox, withdrawing her house from our books.”
“Oh, damn.” Suzy sighed. “Thought she might.”
“She was in a bit of a state.”
“Imagine what kind of state her poor daughter’s in!”
“Ever been chained to a bath, Suze?” Martin Lord grinned at her. “I’ll give it a go if you will.”
The fact that Martin had a gorgeous wife named Nancy and two adorable small children didn’t stop him from flirting shamelessly with anything remotely female. It did nothing for Suzy but by all accounts worked wonders with the clients. Martin was a charmer, a ladies’ man through and through.
“I tell you what,” offered Suzy. “Why don’t I chain you to a bath? Then Nancy could pour boiling oil all over you, from a great height.”
He grinned.
“Doesn’t sound very erotic. Warm baby oil, maybe.”
Suzy, waggling her fingers at him, said, “Live maggots.”
“Chocolate spread.”
“Cows’ entrails.”
“Cointreau-flavored whipped cream, straight from the can.” Martin raised an eyebrow, James Bond–style. “Ah, now we’re talking.”
“Ants,” Suzy countered with relish. “No, superglue. No, no, witchetty grubs…”
“Oh, Nancy phoned earlier, by the way. While you were out.” Donna looked up from her computer screen. “She said to remind you to be home by seven.”
“Damn.” Looking bemused, Martin asked, “Why?”
“It’s your wedding anniversary.”
“Damn. We’re supposed to be going out to dinner.” Martin banged his forehead. “I said I’d book a table at Neil’s Bistro.”
Suzy marveled at his selfishness.
“How can you forget your anniversary?”
“I didn’t forget. I knew it was today. It just slipped my mind. Hell.” Martin sighed. “What do I do now?”
“Go home, I’d imagine,” said Rory.
“I’ve got an appointment with a client at eight o’clock.”