Maggie caught her friend’s arm just as she was about to turn away. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, looking into her eyes.
‘Me? Yeah. I mean, hungover but yeah,’ Sarah said making a considerable effort to sound bright and breezy.
‘OK.’ Maggie paused. ‘Let’s do something tomorrow, you, me, Becca and Sam. A picnic or something?’ she called out as Sarah retreated into the salon.
‘Yeah, the kids’ll love that.’
Sarah turned back to her client. Maggie stood for a moment longer and examined Sarah’s profile as she bent over the woman in front of her. She was always so tough – hard as nails, Sheila would say. The kind of woman never to let anything get to her. But Maggie thought she’d seen a tiny tear in her tissue-paper armour, a tiny glimpse of something else – something lonely, frightened. Maybe it was just the hangover and the thought of having unprotected sex – that would scare Maggie rigid. But maybe it was something else, something that was always there to be found if Maggie would only look hard enough.
‘I’ll ask her tomorrow,’ Maggie resolved, and as she walked back up the road towards the station she began practising being Carmen Da Vinci, events organiser, girl about town and international spy.
‘Carmen, hi!’ Maggie blinked behind her shades as Louise bent to kiss her on each cheek. ‘Sorry I’m late – I got a bit delayed on the tube.’ She sat opposite Maggie and looked around at the busy street, full of café tables and Soho’s Saturday crowd all glammed up to the nines, poised for an eventful Saturday night.
Maggie’s heart sank. Louise looked incredible, really beautiful. Her skin glowed and glittered in the sunshine and her curves filled out her white V-neck vest and pink Capri pants in exactly the right places. Even the gay men were checking her out, although probably for make-up tips.
‘Have you been here long?’
Maggie shook her head and pushed her shades up her nose. She had in fact been sitting in the full glare of the midday sun for twenty minutes, long enough for her skin to become slippery with sweat.
‘You look like you must love the sun, anyway. What is your background? Spanish? Italian? Anyway, you look great!’
Louise sat opposite her, and as she stretched her arm above her head to attract the attention of the waiter, Maggie, along with most of the rest of the café clientele, assessed the rise and fall of her breasts during this manoeuvre, trying to guess if they were real or fake. Maggie had to concede that they were probably real, just as Louise had said. This impressed her, but whether Christian cared one way or the other she had no way of knowing. He’d always told her he wasn’t into big tits and arses. Had he been lying? Let’s face it, he had set a precedent for dishonesty.
‘What are you having? I’ll have an iced tea, I think,’ Louise told the entranced waiter. Her teeth sparkled as she talked, just like the diamond pendant that hung around her neck.
Maggie eyed it suspiciously, and before she could stop herself she found herself asking. ‘Did Christian buy you that? I mean, it’s so lovely!’ She had not managed to cover her defensive tone, and she hoped that Louise would interpret it as just plain envy. Christian had never bought her anything very much – aside from the sofa, and he still had that.
Louise’s fingers sprang to her neck and she gave a little girl’s laugh.
‘This? Yes, I feel so lucky. I mean, he takes me out to dinner and he pays for the rent on the flat …’
Maggie tried to clamp her lips into a tightly fashioned smile, but it was no good. ‘He pays your rent?’ she all but growled.
‘Oh yeah. When he first offered me the job, I told him I was worried about how much it cost to rent in London. After all, I’d always lived at home in Cheltenham. And he just got out his chequebook and wrote me a cheque for a thousand pounds right then and there. He said I should use it as a deposit and that I could consider accommodation a perk of the job. He said he’d need a London stopover anyway when Fresh Talent was fully operational. Of course I didn’t realise then that he intended us to be sharing a room!’ Louise giggled again and closed her eyes as if remembering something Maggie didn’t want to guess at. ‘It wasn’t long after that that he made his intentions perfectly clear, though!’
Maggie swallowed the last of her coffee in one hot gulp. If Louise was telling the truth – and she had no reason to suspect otherwise – then Christian had set her up in her own flat before he’d even made a move on her. That made it all premeditated, as if infidelity – any infidelity – had always been on his mind, not just some hopeless attraction he couldn’t walk away from. No wonder he’d had to tell her so quickly. He wasn’t being noble and thoughtful; he must have known she’d spot it in the accounts eventually. Why? What had she done that was so wrong that it would drive him away like that?
‘Yes, the necklace was from him.’
Maggie returned her attention to Louise, her last words still stinging painfully in her ears, and realised she was still fingering the pendant tenderly.
‘It was his first gift to me. It’s not a bad one, is it? He said when he saw it he knew it would suit me perfectly. You know, Carmen,’ Louise continued with a small secret smile, ‘I’ve had quite a lot of boyfriends. But there’s something about Christian that’s much more special than all the attention and the presents he gives me.’
Maggie swallowed hard – she knew what was coming.
‘It’s that he makes me feel that it’s really me that he loves. Not just the packaging, but really me. The inside me. That means a lot.’ Louise gave Maggie a direct, solemn look. ‘And that’s why, Carmen, I can’t lose him. To anyone.’
Maggie nodded and sat back in her chair. Apparently Louise did need Christian as much she did. Maybe even more.
‘So what do you think?’ Louise made it clear she wanted to change the subject. ‘Do you think Christian was with Maggie last night?’
Maggie flinched as Louise spat her own name at her. She leaned forward a little and met Louise’s eye.
‘No,’ she said with palpable certainty. ‘I know he wasn’t with Maggie all of last night.’ She wanted Louise to believe her, for what it was worth.
‘Really?’ Louise bit her lip. ‘How come you’re so sure?’
Maggie thought for a moment.
‘Because if he was lying to you he’d have come up with a better excuse. Something like the meeting went on longer than he expected and he got too drunk to travel, or he missed the last train home. Something like that.’ Maggie recalled two of the excuses that Christian had given her during the beginning of his affair with Louise as she had made him his morning coffee and toast, being all sympathetic about his late nights. ‘He wouldn’t have said “I went for a walk and a think”. I mean, even a man knows that saying something like that is bound to make you crazy and start you asking questions. You did absolutely the right thing to be so cool about it. He won’t have been expecting that.’
Maggie noticed Louise visibly relax, the tension seeping out of her face and limbs. She warmed to her subject.
‘No, he was just being a typical dumb-arsed man and “walking” and “thinking” like he doesn’t already know what’s right for him, like it’s not staring him in the face!’ she exclaimed, making Louise laugh and nod her head vigorously.
‘Exactly!’ Louise said. ‘Sometimes I just want to go up to him and shake him by the shoulders and shout “Why don’t you know what’s right for you?”
Maggie laughed, letting her guard slip ever so slightly. OK, completely.
‘Yeah, I know I just want to get right in his face and tell him straight. It’s me. I’m the one who’s right for you, you idiot!’
Maggie’s laugh faltered to a stop as she saw Louise’s expression freeze.
‘You want to say?’ Louise questioned her, looking justifiably confused.
Stifling the urge to say the first thing that came into her head, Maggie struggled to string together her story before the end of the sentence and settle on an approximation of the truth. Any more out-and-out lies a
nd she was bound to blow it.
‘Oh yeah, but not to Christian, duh! I don’t even know him!’ She wondered if the hint of Becca had possibly been a bit over the top. ‘Nooo. Actually, I haven’t mentioned him before, but there’s this bloke I’m seeing. Pete, his name is. And well the thing is,’ Maggie said. ‘The thing is that he’s engaged, but his fiancée upped and went to the other side of the world for a year the day after he proposed to her …’
‘No!’ Louise was open-mouthed.
‘I know! It’s obvious she’s just stringing him along, but he can’t see it. He loves her, apparently.’ Maggie rolled her eyes for dramatic effect. ‘We’re supposed to be having this no-strings-attached sex thing, but I know I could make him twenty-five times happier than her. He just can’t see what’s right for him, do you see?’ Maggie finished.
‘Oh, I do see,’ Louise said. ‘Christian and I were supposed to be having a no-strings-attached sex thing and then we just went right ahead and fell in love anyway. Couldn’t help it. How come you never mentioned him before?’
Maggie wondered what her chances of getting off for the double homicide of Louise and Christian would be if she cited temporary insanity. Slim to nil, she guessed regretfully.
‘Um, because, well, I’m older than you and I can handle it and besides we came here to talk about you, not me.’ Maggie smiled warmly and was caught off guard as Louise reached for her hand and squeezed it before letting it go.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I am so lucky to have met someone like you. Someone older and wiser and so kind. It’s not often you meet someone and you just know you can trust them, sort of instantly, don’t you think? Mind you, they say calamity – like getting trapped in an office – can bring people together.’ Louise giggled. ‘I wish I could get you and Christian together, then maybe you could talk some sense into him. You’re such an insightful person, I bet he’d listen to you.’
With murder out of the question, Maggie wondered what would happen if she had a heart attack right then. She’d probably die; it’d be a nightmare getting an ambulance across the centre of London on a Saturday. Still, anything was preferable to this stupid bloody ridiculous mess she’d got herself into.
Unable to take the pressure any longer, Maggie was about to confess when something unexpected happened. As if delivered direct from heaven, Pete dropped into the chair next to her with a cheery ‘All right? I didn’t think you’d be here for ages yet. It’s cool, though, because there’s only so long you can window shop in Agent Provocateur without looking like a perve!’ Pete was completely unaware of the open-mouthed awe he was attracting from every member of every sex in the immediate vicinity as he leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. He did look particularly fine, Maggie supposed, in his tight pale blue T-shirt with his skin all brown and warm and firm. She pulled herself abruptly out of that runaway train of thought and back to the problem in hand.
What was Pete doing here so early? She wasn’t supposed to meet him for an hour yet, and Louise was supposed to be well gone! Besides, even if she had been about to confess to Louise, at least that would have been her own (admittedly ridiculous) idea. The last thing she wanted was the humiliation of Pete accidentally blowing her cover for her.
‘You’re early!’ She sounded slightly accusatory, and Pete looked slightly taken aback.
‘Well, I thought as I was meeting you up here I’d come a bit early and check out the studios where I’ve got my interview on Tuesday.’ He nodded towards Wardour Street. ‘They’re just up the road. I thought it’d be a good idea to scope it out, try and beat the nerves and all that.’ He directed a quick smile at an entranced Louise, and then, as he did a double-take, Maggie witnessed him unleash the full force of his smile on the girl. His blue-eyed gaze almost burned a trail, Superman style, across the table top cluttered with purses and coffee cups, over Louise’s torso and directly into her come-to-bed eyes.
Maggie was surprised and more than a little disappointed that Louise didn’t spontaneously combust. She rolled her eyes churlishly and sighed. For the first time in her life she understood what people meant when they banged on about levels of attractiveness. Here were two people from the very top level displaying open admiration for each other. And the worst thing, or maybe the best thing, was that Pete had absolutely no idea that he was doing it, she was certain, because he just wasn’t the type to have a pulling look or a chat-up line. It must be some deep primaeval impulse within him to get hold of the nearest woman who looked the most likely to be able to breastfeed fifteen children, Stella or no Stella.
‘This is Pete.’ Maggie said flatly, emphasising his name as he reached out and took Louise’s hand. She found she wanted her to know that as far as she was concerned, Pete was spoken for.
Louise shot Maggie a quick ‘what-a-hottie’ glance, and Maggie remembered what mortal danger all of her plans were in.
‘Pete,’ she said quickly, ‘this is Louise, remember, who I was telling you about last night?’ She tried to weave a secret message into the sentence but ended up sounding as if she were talking to a slightly retarded four-year-old.
‘Oh yeah,’ Pete said brightly, and then he remembered what they had talked about. ‘Oh! Yeah.’ He nodded in a none-too-subtle way at Maggie. ‘Hi!’ he said again to Louise, as if she was now an entirely different person. Maggie wondered if she should have tested his undercover skills a bit more thoroughly before embarking on the night’s planned expedition, but she couldn’t think about that now, she had to think about the situation in hand.
‘Well, Carmen!’ Louise said, helpfully reminding Pete of Maggie’s pseudonym. She didn’t seem to think any further comment was required, and Maggie understood her implicit admiration for Pete. Maggie smiled wearily and noticed that now a full one hundred per cent of the café’s occupants were checking out her table in one way or another. And none of them were looking at her, she’d lay money on it.
‘So, Pete.’ Louise leaned towards Pete a little and Maggie noticed she used the tops of her arms to squeeze her ample bust together just a little to emphasise her already deep cleavage. ‘What do you do for a living?’
Maggie was gratified to see Pete’s eyes widen slightly with alarm as Louise focused on him. As for Louise, in love with Christian or not, it seemed that just being near an attractive man started her flirt ignition. It was hard to work her out. One minute she was poor, lovelorn, grief-stricken child, and the next she was a full-on nuclear reactor of sexual power. Pete, she noted with a sort of off-key pride, seemed to be more intent on explaining to her the intricate workings of something called Avid that he did on admiring her charms, and, while her smile remained attentive, Maggie noticed Louise’s eyes had begun to glaze over.
‘Anyway.’ Pete finished talking and disarmed Maggie in a single manoeuvre by dropping his hand on to her knee and squeezing it. ‘Do you want to get going? I know it’s only early, but I thought we could have cocktails at the bar while it’s still quiet and then go on for dinner. Seafood, maybe?’
Maggie stared at him and then at his hand on her knee. It didn’t feel as strange as Declan’s hand, which had been on exactly the same knee only a short time ago. In fact it felt sort of nice and tingly. She was beginning to wonder exactly how Pete saw her when she realised that … Pete from Leeds drinking cocktails and going out for seafood? He was far too much of a lager and curry man for all that nonsense.
Pete caught Maggie’s eye and raised an anxious eyebrow, confirming her suspicion that he was looking for the quickest way to get away from Louise’s unrelenting magnetism. He was actually scared of her. Typical, Maggie thought. No one is ever scared of me. He just wanted her to help him lose Louise.
‘Ooooh, where are you two going? Anywhere fancy?’ Louise asked Pete, clearly fishing for an invite and excluding Maggie from the question. She jumped a little in her chair as she said it and her breasts made the return journey a split second after the rest of her body. Even Pete couldn’t help noticing that
little ploy.
Maggie almost growled out loud. The little minx had already got her claws into one man in her life. She certainly wasn’t going to get Pete too.
Of course, if Maggie had been thinking straight she’d have thought that Louise’s obvious attraction to Pete was a way for her to distract her from Christian and get her to take her eye of the ball, whilst Maggie made her move on Christian and got him back for good. But Maggie wasn’t thinking straight. She was barely thinking at all.
‘Oh,’ Pete said cheerily. ‘We’re going to this bar up the road. I’ve never been before, but … Carmen says it’s really cool. It’s called The Drinking Den? Do you know it?’
Louise nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah! One of Christian’s mates runs it!’ she said.
‘You should come too,’ Pete said, clearly realising what he’d said only after it had left his mouth. He shot Maggie an apologetic look. She ignored him carefully, afraid of what her eyes might give away. She couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately stupid or just idiotically friendly, but right at that moment she could have killed him with her bare hands. Apart from the fact that he was supposed to be seeing her behind his fiancée’s back she had no way of knowing if Paul, the bar manager, had ever met Louise. If he had, and he saw Louise, Maggie, who was also known as Carmen, and Pete all together at the same time in the same place, everything would hit the fan all at once, and it wouldn’t be pretty. Maggie’s cover would be blown in two seconds flat and she’d have to retire to a nunnery. In Austria. No, she couldn’t let that happen.
‘Ah! But,’ Maggie jumped in quickly, ‘you said Christian is taking you out tonight, you know, for the big talk? You don’t want to miss that, do you? Or to let him down now when he might be wavering?’
Maggie couldn’t believe she was actually pushing her rival into the arms of her lover, but events seemed to be overtaking her and she was having trouble thinking on the spot, let alone keeping the one step ahead that she needed to.
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