‘Hey!’ Sebastian held up his hands in supplication. ‘Back off, both of you. All I meant was that to certain lowlifes, a pretty girl in a fantasy costume is fair game. It’s not April’s fault – it’s my mother’s for making her wear that bloody outfit in the first place.’
April, torn away to serve Dirty Harrys to a selection of the QPR reserve team, wanted to punch the air in triumph. Oh, please God, she thought, gleefully crushing ice, let Sebastian be the one to tell Martina that for her next stint behind the Copacabana’s filigreed bar, April would be dressed as a librarian.
‘Anyway,’ Sebastian leaned across the bar towards her, studying the contents of his glass, ‘your clothing wasn’t really what I wanted to discuss with you. I’m far more interested in talking about your secret life . . .’
Chapter Eight
Strange really, Sebastian thought, as he stared from his sitting-room window, how defensive April had become. Almost as though she’d had something to hide. The poor kid had looked scared to death when he’d started talking to her. Did she really consider him to be that much of an ogre?
He had no idea why the abortive conversation with April should have suddenly come into his mind on this overcast Sunday morning, ten days after that embarrassing night in the Copacabana. Probably, he thought, leaning his hands flat on the sill and gazing down from the third floor of Marliver House – which he privately called Tacky Towers – on to acres of turf regimentally striped like the Wembley pitch, it was because of Jix.
Jix, dressed like a rainbow wraith and looking as always like a refugee from Glastonbury, was currently strolling about the Gillespie garden – which was overloaded with neon roses, and dotted with gazebos and decking and water features – with Oliver. Jix and April were somehow inextricably linked in Sebastian’s mind. They were always together. Were they an item? He employed both of them and owned their homes, and yet he knew nothing much about either of them.
The night that he’d ejected the objectionable drunk, April had parried his questions about the greyhound, and the – what he’d considered at the time – friendly chat regarding the toddler, who had surprisingly turned out to be Jix’s child. Her answers had been firm and monosyllabic, not encouraging any further probing. Almost as though she had anticipated his questions. He’d tried, for the first time in his life, to unbend with someone who relied on him for their living, and had got very short shrift.
He knew April had been outraged by that greasy sod touching her, and who could blame her? Sebastian had been furiously angry that his mother had insisted that the all-female bar staff wore those French maids’ outfits, and very ashamed that he, as a Gillespie, had condoned it. Had he taken that anger out on April? Transferred his guilt? He shouldn’t have let it happen, should he? Chucking the groper out after the event wasn’t really good enough. The situation should never have been allowed to arise.
And, as far as he knew, April and the other girls were still wearing the costumes behind the bar because Martina had insisted on it. Would April be happier being allowed to wear jeans? Did she mind being dressed up as a male fantasy in an attempt to sell more cocktails to punters who chucked them down their necks like lemonade?
He shrugged. What did he really know about April? Stuff all. What the hell did he know about women like her? What the hell, to be honest, did he know about most things? How much had he learned in his thirty-three years about life outside the confines of the Gillespie empire?
Cushioned from ever really having to earn a living by the success of the Gillespie Guzzler vending machines, privately educated to a standard never once called upon in his capacity as Stadium Manager, gifted an entire street of properties on his coming-of-age, he’d never been brought into contact with the real world.
And much as he’d have liked to talk to April further about the greyhound and the child, it hadn’t been his real reason for making conversation. One of the stadium’s security guys had mentioned to him that April worked in the Italian restaurant, and helped Jix with Oliver’s debt-collecting too. It had intrigued and bothered him. He’d really wanted to ask her how she managed to juggle three jobs, and if she needed a pay rise in the cocktail bar.
He knew he could easily have persuaded his mother to increase April’s salary by a couple of pounds an hour, if it would mean she didn’t have to get involved in the more murky areas of Oliver’s empire. Maybe that was it: the debt-collecting. Maybe April hadn’t wanted him to know that she was part in that. Not that he could blame her – he wasn’t too keen on it himself.
The little girl had been pretty, though, and had sparked – what – on that hot afternoon? A sort of jealousy that Jix, years younger than he was, and a hippie wide boy, should have already experienced the joy of fatherhood? Probably. He’d known Jix for ten years, ever since he’d first been employed by Oliver as a teenager, and never once had they discussed women or football or anything on a personal level. And somewhere in that time Jix had become a father – and none of the Gillespies had known.
Sebastian sighed again. He’d like to have a child. He’d give it a proper life – not a cushioned and cosseted and pigeonholed one, but a life with choices and freedom. Jix would, by his very nature, offer his daughter a life like that . . . And the greyhound had made them – April, Jix and the little girl – look like a real family.
Sebastian liked greyhounds; he loved all animals, but again he’d never been close to any. Animals had never been allowed at home, and the dogs at the Stadium were mere accessories. They were probably as important to him, as a businessman, as – oh, a good single malt was to the manufacturer of pure crystal glasses. A necessary accoutrement; nothing more.
So, really, he thought, that whole day had been the catalyst; seeing Jix and April together with the child and the dog, and then doing his Sir Galahad bit with the drunken slob in the evening. All the minor irritants and dissatisfactions had been brought to the surface by those two simple events. Everything that was wrong with his life had suddenly sort of concertinaed together.
‘Sebby! You’re not ready!’
He gritted his teeth and turned from the window as his mother barged into the room. She never knocked. The only way to keep her out of his flat was to lock the door and he always forgot. She insisted on treating him as if he were twelve.
‘Yeah, I am. It’s only lunch, Ma. It’s not black tie.’
‘It’s lunch,’ Martina said frostily, ‘with Rod and Emily Frobisher. Not to mention Brittany. We want to make a good impression – and jeans and T-shirt are not acceptable.’
He grinned at her. ‘It’s either jeans or nothing. Take your pick.’
Martina, dressed in a stretchy outfit in sugar pink, with frills at neck and cuffs, and wearing more heavy gold jewellery than Big Ron Atkinson, obviously thought she looked the last word in chic. Knowing that Brittany’s mother favoured the stark classic lines of Chanel, Sebastian wondered if he should say something. He decided against it. He was pretty sure that the Frobishers would find enough nouveau riche bad taste in the Gillespie mansion to keep them in after-supper small talk for years. Martina’s dress sense probably wouldn’t even get a look in.
‘Dad’s just sorting out the luncheon seating with Jix,’ Martina continued, her sharp eyes darting around the room.
‘The forecast says it’ll be sunny later. We’ll still eat in the garden.’
‘And I need a tuxedo for that, do I?’
‘No need to be sarky, Sebby. A nice pair of slacks and an open-necked shirt will be fitting.’ Martina cast a glance into the bedroom. ‘And you haven’t even made your bed!’
‘Ma, leave it out, I’m not a child.
But he was, Sebastian thought sadly. He was Oliver and Martina’s only child, and everything was still laid on for him as it had been all his life. His clothes were washed and ironed, his meals cooked, his life organised. He only had himself to blame if Martina spent every day snooping round his rooms – like she had when he was a teenager home for the holidays and she had
a fear that he was into pornography or dope or both. It was his own fault for not moving out years ago.
It had been so easy, after university, moving back into Tacky Towers, and not having to do a thing. Oliver and Martina, generous to a fault, had given him six rooms converted into a self-contained flat. He had his own front door, a new car each year, holidays, everything else on tap, access to the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the gym in the cellar, the solarium in the attic. How ungrateful was he then, to envy people like Jix and April, who lived alone and scrimped and saved and worked hard and budgeted for their lives?
How could he tell his parents, who thought that showering him with money and material possessions would make him happy, that he envied them the poverty of their beginnings, and almost lusted after the hardship of their past? Wouldn’t it really have been more fun to have started with nothing, and to have slogged and sweated for the dream – or was that just a safe option now when viewed from his privileged position? Was it so wrong for him to be itching to leave the Gillespie Stadium, the property-owning, the security of his home, the claustrophobia of his family, and strike out on his own?
Martina had now opened his wardrobe and was rattling through the hangers, surveying his shirts with her head on one side like an inquisitive lurid-coloured bird. God, he thought, any minute now she’ll be spitting on a hankie and wiping my face.
‘Ma, I’m wearing jeans. Brittany will be wearing jeans. Probably Rod will be wearing jeans.’
‘Christ! I hope not!’ Martina squawked, pausing between a black polo shirt and a denim jacket. ‘Your father is wearing his new Paul Smith.’
Sebastian shook his head. Oliver, portly and looking like an East End market trader, could kill Paul Smith’s suave and sophisticated styling stone dead.
‘And which particular two-birds-and-one-stone job is this lunch supposed to be?’
Martina arched etched orange eyebrows. ‘Are you hinting at a hidden agenda, Seb? You know as well as I do that this is just us, as a family, meeting Brittany’s parents.’
‘Oh, yeah? Brittany and I have seen each other – what? Half a dozen times? And how come that you haven’t needed to meet the parents of any of my former girlfriends?’
Martina refused to look fazed. ‘OK, so it’s imperative – absolutely imperative – that we get the Frobisher Platinum Trophy at Bixford. We’re up against Walthamstow and Wimbledon and every other damn track in the country. But that’s by the bye. Should it come up in conversation over lunch, however, it’d be very handy . . .’
Sebastian smiled ruefully. ‘So you’re expecting Brittany and me to plight our troth over the consommé, are you, thus making the Platinum Trophy a definite?’
‘Nah.’ Martina momentarily forgot her vowels. ‘Not that it wouldn’t be a bit of a coup. And you’re not thinking along those lines, I suppose?’
‘Not at all. At least, not yet. Brittany is good fun and good company – and very beautiful, but – ’
The bit after the but was left dangling. There was a crash from downstairs, followed by thundering footsteps, then Oliver exploded into the flat.
‘Bastard caterers! They’ve sent salad cream!’
Sebastian bit back a grin, while Martina went into the sort of hand-wringing routine that normally accompanied national disasters of cataclysmic proportions. In any other house in the country, surely, the larder would offer up salad cream or mayonnaise or both? Were his parents the only people who relied totally on outside caterers for even the simplest lunch party?
‘I’ll go to the 8 ’til Late and get some mayo, shall I?’ His parents looked at him as though he’d just suggested the ritual slaughter of all new-born infants.
‘You?’ Oliver puffed out his cheeks. ‘What the hell do you want to go to the shop for? We have people to do that. I’ll get Jix to do it as soon as he’s done the table and stuff.’
‘I’d quite like to go. Get a paper. You know . . .’
Martina looked shocked. ‘Get a paper? From the 8 ’til Late? We have all the newspapers delivered. They’re in the conservatory.’
Sebastian knew. He also knew that the broadsheets would remain on pristine view while his parents devoured the News of the World and the Peoplein private. Oh, God. He didn’t want to be having this lunch with the Frobishers; he wanted to be like other men of his age and have a family and privacy. He wanted to wander down to the corner shop and buy a Sunday newspaper, and go to the pub and discuss football and cricket and cars and sex.
He gathered up his car keys from one of the mirror-varnished side tables. Even the furnishings in his flat had been organised and supplied, wall-to-wall, by outside designers. It was his own fault. As with everything else, he’d allowed it to happen simply because he didn’t have the energy, interest, or inclination to do otherwise.
‘I’ll go and see if Jix needs a lift to the shop, then.’ And before his parents could protest, he was leaping down the gold and marble spiral staircase, three steps at a time.
Outside, the air was sultry and warm and hung with perfume. The roses exuded heavy, heady scent, and the grass was damp and earthy. Jix was dragging wooden chairs round the oblong table, adjusting the umbrella, plumping the matching navy and white striped cushions.
‘Do you need a hand?’
Jix stopped, pushed his hair away from his eyes, and blinked. ‘Sorry?’
‘I wondered if I could help.’
With a shake of the head, Jix pushed the last chair under the table. ‘No, thanks. Your old man would have my guts if he thought I’d asked you.’
‘But you didn’t bloody ask me – I offered.’ Sebastian frowned. ‘Anyway, they need mayo. I’m going to get some.’
Jix shook his head again. ‘I’ll go. It’s what I’m paid for. I’m a gofer. A fixit. Are you trying to do me out of a job?’
‘Of course I’m not. I’m trying to be – well – friendly.’
Jix looked more frightened by this remark than anything. ‘Why?’
‘Fuck knows. How long have we known each other?’
‘We don’t know each other, Seb, that’s the point. I work for you. For your family. I live in your house. It’s been like that for ten years – why the hell have you suddenly decided that we need to be mates?’
‘I haven’t. Christ – I don’t know . . .’ Sebastian kicked at the perfect turf. ‘Maybe I’ve seen the error of my ways.’
Jix took a deep breath. ‘You haven’t been brainwashed, have you? Got at? Not by Jehovah’s Witnesses or someone? My mum had a bout of that. You know, with her agoraphobia she likes having people in. We couldn’t move for tracts and prayer sheets for weeks. Only got shot of them by telling them she’d turned Satanist.’
Sebastian grinned in triumph. There! He now knew something about Jix that he hadn’t before. Daphne had agoraphobia! They’d known there was something wrong with her, of course, but had always believed it to be arthritis.
‘Do you find it funny or something?’ Jix was looking po-faced. ‘Agoraphobia? Only it’s, not amusing for my mum, I can assure you.’
Sebastian quickly sucked the grin into tight lips. ‘God – no. It must be awful for her. For both of you. It’s just that you’ve told me something personal . . . Something else. Until the other day, I didn’t even know you were a father – ’
‘What?’ Jix jerked his head up, his mane of hair swirling with an astonished life of its own. ‘Who? Jesus! I never –’
‘It’s OK.’ Sebastian gave what he hoped was a man-of-the-world smile. ‘It can happen to any of us. She’s a pretty little thing too. I suppose you have access rights? That must be tough – just seeing her occasionally . . . What’s her name?’
Jix remained looking poleaxed. ‘Who?’
‘Your daughter. April told me all about her – Oh, shit. Maybe she shouldn’t have . . .’
Jix suddenly seemed to need to rearrange the six place settings. ‘She doesn’t live with us. She doesn’t even stay overnight. We know about the tenancy rules and everyth
ing. Don’t think–’
Bloody hell! Sebastian longed to sweep the crystal and bone china to the ground and stamp on it. ‘Jix, I’m only making conversation. I’m not interrogating you – ’
‘Bee. She’s called Bee. Short for Beatrice-Eugenie.’
Sebastian tried hard not to laugh. Well, hell, Sebastian wasn’t that great, was it? Especially not for someone who, despite the ministrations of various elocution teachers, still sounded as if he came from Stepney. ‘Oh, right. Are you a royalist, then?’
‘Nah, not really – um – but Bee’s mum thinks – that is, thought – that Sarah Ferguson got a raw deal. Er – that is, she reckoned that she was a bit of a star to dig herself out of the mess she was in. She – um – thought that Beatrice-Eugenie was like a fitting tribute . . .’
Sebastian grinned again. OK, maybe it wasn’t quite like propping up the bar in the Goat and Turnip with a bottle of Bud and discussing Chelsea’s dismal away form and the previous night’s conquests, but it ran a pretty close second. ‘And – er – are you still seeing each other?’
‘What?’ Jix gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Me and Bee? Of course. And look, Seb, nice as it is to chat, your old man’s got me on a deadline here and if you need mayo as well – ’
‘I’ll get the bloody mayo. And I meant you and – um Bee’s mother. Do you still see her?’
For some unfathomable reason, Jix seemed to find this highly amusing. ‘Oh, yeah – I see Bee’s mother all the time . . .’
‘More wine, Emily?’ Martina proffered the bottle across the table. ‘Or perhaps some fizzy water? That sushi was a bit saline.’
Sebastian, his knees – still in jeans – resting comfortably against Brittany’s bare ones, leaned back in his chair. Brittany, who was wearing a tiny cream slip dress, some slender gold chains and possibly nothing else, had cheered him up considerably. So far so good. Rod Frobisher had turned up in jeans and a CK T-shirt. Oliver had promptly gone to change. Emily, in white trousers and a severe navy overblouse, had sadly had no such sartorial influence on his mother. However, he had noticed that as the meal went on, Martina’s accent was more and more aping Emily’s clipped Home Counties tone.
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