Black and white photographs of Noah were dotted around the reception desk, and April felt the tears stinging her eyes. She’d had very few photos of him, and those she did have had been put away to show Bee when she was old enough to understand.
His image drew her like a hypnotised snake. These must be recent pictures, obviously taken against the rugged French landscape, but Noah hadn’t changed. His gorgeous battered rugby player’s face still brooded, his shirt was well-worn denim, his jeans were faded.
Swamped with lust and memories, April turned away from the desk. She wanted to go home. Even if Noah turned up he’d probably have forgotten her, or worse, he’d remember her and not want to know. She must have been mad to do this. Then she remembered the dream: the cottage – and her and Bee and Noah living like a proper family – in Ampney Crucis – and knew that she owed it to Beatrice-Eugenie at least to try.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ The caftan-wearer rounded the nearest set of screens and beamed kindly. ‘Is there a particular painting in which you’re interested?’
‘Um – no, not exactly. Er – I just wondered if – um – that is, what time Noah was going to be here?’
The caftan woman nodded knowingly. She was obviously used to dealing with Noah Matlock groupies. ‘Mr Matlock will be giving a little talk at midday, after which I’m sure he’ll be delighted to answer any questions.’
Not mine, he won’t, April thought. She worked some more saliva into her mouth. ‘I don’t actually want to ask him sort of arty questions.’
The caftan-lady tapped her orange lips with a podgy forefinger. ‘Well, I’m afraid Mr Matlock won’t have time to sign autographs or anything. This is for serious art lovers only.’
Not for serious ex Noah lovers, then April thought. She shrugged. ‘Oh, right . . . well, I’ll just sort of wander for a bit.’
The orange caftan lady tsked a bit at the term ‘wander’. However, one of the balding suits seemed to want to write a cheque, so with a final disparaging glance at April, she wobbled away.
Midday, April thought. She couldn’t wait until midday. She’d burst all over the vinyl floor long before then.
More people were arriving now, and April scurried between the display screens, staring at the rather violent daubs of colour. Probably done when he was cross, she reckoned, wondering if he had the same blazing, blinding fits of temper with the loft-liver as he’d had with her. The rattle of glasses and the cool smell of cucumber made her peer round the screen. Waitresses were laying a centre table with French wines, French bread, and rustic salads. The balding people swooped down on them.
April, pretty sure that she was going to be sick, sidled round the next set of screens.
‘. . . gets to be a bit of a chore sometimes, to be honest ... I just want to paint – this sort of public stuff is a drag – especially with the plebs asking pathetic questions . . .’ Pause for laughter. ‘Oh, no – don’t write that down! What? Oh, no – she prefers to stay at home when I’m on the tours . . .’
April felt the floor whooshing up to meet her. Sweatily, giddily, she clung on to the nearest screen.
Noah, with his back to her, was talking to a rather drab woman in a limp grey cardigan who was taking notes.
Peeping back round the screen again, she swallowed. The brown hair was still unruly, almost curly, down to the collar of the denim shirt; the buttocks and thighs, like a fly-half’s, were squeezed into stretch denim; the shoulders were broad . . .
The journalist closed her notebook with a sycophantic smile, just as several of the balding suits trundled round the screen.
Noah’s shoulders stiffened. ‘Question time later, gentlemen . . . Right now I’m going to fortify myself with some of that delicious-looking wine. What? Oh, yeah, thanks – I’m very proud of them, too. They’re good, aren’t they?’ Now completely giddy with desire, April propelled herself forward, bouncing off one of the suits.
‘Hey!’ Noah swung round. ‘Careful! Mind where you’re – Fucking hell!’
‘Hello, Noah . . .’
All April’s carefully rehearsed lines flew out of the gallery window. She’d forgotten how huge he was. Feeling dwarfed by his physical presence, and knowing that the suits were all staring, she tried a smile. It didn’t work. Noah, looking completely poleaxed, seemed as tongue-tied as she was.
Clearing her throat, she attempted to speak normally. It came out squeaky. ‘Er – it’s nice to see you again . . .’
‘Is it?’ Noah blinked. ‘Oh, yeah, right ... You look – well, great. Yeah.’
There was a deafening and profound silence between them. The gallery browsers who had discovered the food and drink were clattering glasses and rattling plates. April suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to throw her arms round Noah and kiss him to death.
‘You’ve – um – done very well . . .’ She indicated the hessian screens. ‘You must be proud – that is – pleased . . . ’
‘Yeah. It’s gone well. Er . . .’ He looked round as though wanting to escape, but failing to find a bolt hole, simply shrugged. ‘And you? What are you doing with yourself?’
‘This and that . . .’ April knew that to talk to him properly, to be able to tell him that he was a father, it would have to be away from here. ‘Are you and . . . ?’ She couldn’t mention the loft-liver; anyway she’d never known her name. ‘That is – are you in England for long?’
‘A week or so.’ Noah looked her up and down. ‘And no, Anoushka has stayed in France. You know, you do look exceptionally pretty ... Tell you what, if you’d like to hang about until this little do is over, maybe we could have a drink together? Just for old times’ sake?’
‘Oh, yes!’ April forgot all about being cool. She forgot the agony of his leaving, the nights she’d cried, the struggle to survive, the awfulness of having a baby alone. She was here, and Noah was here, and he was seducing her with his eyes – and the dream was going to come true. ‘Yes, that would be wonderful.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Oooh – this is the life.’ Clara stretched out in her deck chair on the beach hut’s veranda, a depleted glass of Chardonnay dangling from one lethargic hand. ‘I can’t believe that it’s officially autumn. It must be even hotter today than it was in July.’ Lazily, she raised the glass in salute. ‘God bless global warming and all the little holes in the ozone layer.’
‘The end of September’s always the best time for a heatwave,’ Jasmine agreed. ‘Most of the tourists have gone, and the beach is practically deserted – not to mention the Crumpled Horn.’
Clara drained her glass, dropped her Raybans down over her eyes, and surrendered herself to the sun. Jasmine, having dared to bare her legs in a pair of cut-off jeans and most of her upper body in a vest, swigged the last drops from a bottle of Old Ampney ale, propped her feet up on the balustrade, and settled down into her canvas chair.
September, as well as being warm enough to warrant It’s A Scorcha!’ headlines in the tabloids, had also, for Jasmine, been wondrously idle. True to form, Damon and his boys were running well behind on the refurbishment of the stadium, so she’d had little to do. Well, she thought, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d had nothing at all to do as a bookmaker, but absolutely tons to do otherwise.
There’d been the showdown with Andrew – not to mention her parents – and then her meetings with Peg about putting Ampney Crucis well and truly on the map once the Benny Clegg Stadium reopened. And, of course, there’d been Sebastian.
‘So . . .’ Clara’s voice was drowsy, only just audible above the sleepy rush of the waves and the crying of the gulls. ‘You’ve heard from him again, have you?’
Jasmine smiled to herself. ‘I had another letter this morning. ’
‘How quaintly old-fashioned,’ Clara yawned. ‘I don’t know anyone who writes letters any more. Everyone uses e-mail or mobile phones.’
‘As I haven’t got e-mail and he doesn’t have my mobile number,’ Jasmine said, ‘he would have found that a bit difficul
t. Anyway, he likes writing letters. So do I. And he sends me doughnuts on same-day delivery.’
‘Christ! Coals to Newcastle or what? Why on earth should anyone send doughnuts to you – when you have a standing order for supplies from the Crow’s Nest Caff?’
‘These are different ones – any that he finds that have unusual fillings or toppings. He sent me coffee and walnut ones last week.’
Clara sighed. ‘God, the last of the true romantics. Whatever happened to bunches of roses and buckets of champagne?’
‘I prefer doughnuts,’ Jasmine grinned. ‘They’re far more personal.’
Meeting Sebastian in St Edith’s graveyard on August Bank Holiday Monday had been a revelation; meeting him again later at the stadium had been like a dream. A dream, Jasmine had to admit, which had turned a bit sour when she’d realised that he was the delectable Brittany’s other half. But then, as he wasn’t thinking of her, plain old Jasmine, as a serious contender in the romance stakes, Brittany Frobisher hadn’t been overly important in the equation.
And anyway, Sebastian had just been so easy to talk to, and he’d understood her sadness, and – and it was a huge plus, of course – he was, without doubt, the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life.
Clara had been hopping mad at missing out on this tall, lean, tanned vision, with his floppy brown hair and ice-blue eyes, and his lovely crooked grin, and the freckles on his nose . . . Clara, it must be said, was now getting a little bit tired of hearing about them.
‘It’s the sort of thing you should have done years ago,’ she’d groaned when Jasmine was telling her about how sensationally wonderful Sebastian was for the five hundredth time. ‘When we were at school. Getting crushes on the most glamorous boys in the sixth form, writing their names on your pencil case, doing that love word-puzzle thing where you cross off corresponding letters of your name and his – that sort of thing. Even if you knew they wouldn’t look at you twice.’
‘Cheers,’ Jasmine had said sharply. ‘I do know where I stand, without you having to remind me.’
‘Oh, God, Jas – sorry. I didn’t mean –’
‘Yes, you did. Brittany Frobisher is constantly in the Top Ten Most Beautiful Women in Britain. Sebastian is stinking rich – not to mention drop-dead desirable. I’m well aware that I’m none of those. We’re just friends.’
And they were, Jasmine thought now, feeling the sun tingle on her bare arms. They’d been strangers who had become friends in the cemetery when he’d been so kind about Grandpa, and were still friends again later when she’d dropped the drinks in Peg’s office. That had been so embarrassing, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been out in the kitchen, mixing the lemon barley, thinking about Sebastian, mourning the fact that they’d never meet again then she’d walked into the office and – well!
And in the month since, he’d written her lovely chatty funny letters, with little cartoon drawings around the edges illustrating some of the things he’d been doing – and he seemed to do an awful lot. She’d been rather disturbed to discover that his parents were the Gillespies who owned the monstrous art deco greyhound stadium in Bixford. It seemed that this very fact – plus, of course, his involvement with Brittany – would rule the Benny Clegg Stadium out of any sort of contention for the Frobisher Platinum Trophy. However, because she hadn’t wanted Sebastian to be cast as the villain of the piece she hadn’t mentioned this to Peg or Allan or Roger. Neither had she mentioned Ewan’s brief to seduce Brittany, should it be necessary, to Clara.
‘And so,’ Clara wriggled down her skimpy bikini top even further, ‘what does Andrew make of all this postal snogging?’
‘It’s not like that – unfortunately. And after what Andrew said about my parents he knows he’ll be treading on very thin ice if he even thinks anything controversial in future.’
‘Jas – sweetie – I know I’ve said this a million times, but you had the perfect opportunity to dump Andrew that night. Why the hell are you still with him?’
‘I don’t know really,’ Jasmine sighed. ‘It’s just that when he’d suggested we buy a house together it seemed well, cruel, to tell him that I didn’t think I even wanted to stay with him. I mean, it’s not his fault, is it?’
Clara slithered down in her chair. ‘Give me strength! You’d forgive Attila the Hun for indiscretions! Of course it’s Andrew’s fault – he’s a complete prat. And you’re not stupid; you surely must realise that he’s only hanging on to you because you’re suddenly a lady of substance.
Jasmine cheerfully patted her ample thighs. ‘I’ve always been that.’
Clara sighed heavily. ‘You know exactly what I mean, Jas. He’s a money-grabbing toad. Now, unless you’re going to talk about the glorious Sebastian, please shut up and let a dynamic career woman catch up on her sleep. Oh, and – ’ she lifted one frame of the Raybans and squinted across the veranda – ‘I do hope you’ve realised that Mrs Seb Gillespie sounds a damn sight better than Mrs Andrew Pease?’
‘Oh pul-eease!’ Jasmine pulled a face. ‘Now who’s being infantile? Not to mention anti-feminist. I’m always going to be Jasmine Clegg.’
And that, she thought, was probably the whole sad truth. The showdown with Andrew, weeks ago now – on the day that she’d heard her mother cooing from behind the windbreak – had certainly changed the relationship. She’d lost her temper completely, and absolutely refused to share the feather mattress or the poppy and daisy duvet ever since. However, Andrew was still clinging on tenaciously to their engagement, and Jasmine was still dithering over the pros and cons.
Andrew had dared to suggest, that night, that Jasmine must have been totally mistaken about Yvonne and – even more outrageously – that it was her father who was having an extramarital fling. Philip, according to Andrew, who said he’d been treated to chapter and verse by a heartbroken Yvonne, had been having an affair for years, and that was the real reason behind the separate bedrooms. Andrew had found out about it, he’d said, when he’d called at the Chewton Estate house and found Yvonne in tears over another potential public humiliation at a council dinner, and had been sworn to secrecy. Yvonne, he’d maintained, hadn’t wanted Jasmine to know.
Jasmine, however, had scoffed at the whole idea. She’d knownit was her mother’s voice on the beach, and she’d heard her mother whispering into the telephone, hadn’t she? And who in their right mind would ever fancy her father? And Andrew had to admit that Yvonne hadn’t actually been able to name names, but that the Ampney Crucis gossips had had Moira Cook, councillor for Parks and Cemeteries, down as the main contender for some time.
Moira Cook, as Jasmine had sharply pointed out, was practically in her dotage and had been spotted buying incontinence knickers in the Bournemouth branch of Boots. Anyway, Jasmine had said frostily, both Yvonne and Philip were far too old to be even thinking about sex, let alone doing it. The whole concept was disgusting.
‘Then why not ask them yourself?’ Andrew had snorted, red in the face. ‘Get it straight from the horse’s mouth!’
‘Not a nice way to describe my mother,’ Jasmine had smiled in the darkness. ‘Even if it is quite apt – and especially not after you said she was top totty.’
‘I did not! I said a lot of my workmates said they wouldn’t mind giving her – that is – um – thought that she was very attractive – for her age, of course . . .’
And then after they’d argued about that, she and Andrew had argued even more about spending her bookmaking profits on buying a prenuptial house. She’d maintained fiercely that she was more than happy in the beach hut – and Andrew had retorted that he would never be able to hold up his head at the dealership again if he had to live in a shed.
And that, Jasmine thought cheerfully, watching the waves roll gently onto the pale sand, was how they’d left it. The tiny diamond remained on her engagement finger, mainly because, thanks to Sebastian’s exotic doughnut supplies, she’d recently gained a few more pounds and nothing short of bolt croppers would remove it. In fac
t, she reckoned, it would probably take bolt croppers to remove Andrew from her life too.
She had, a few days after Andrew’s revelations, asked both her parents, separately of course, if there was any truth in the rumours. Their reactions, if she hadn’t been quite so personally involved, had been quite interesting.
Philip, in the Crumpled Horn, demanding to know where Jasmine had heard such salacious rumours had then choked on his shepherd’s pie and turned purple and had had to be revived with three fingers of whisky. Once breathing again, he’d said that he and Yvonne had been happily married for over thirty years, and that he would never, ever, cheat on his wedding vows. Jasmine, knowing that he cheated on his expenses and his tax returns, hadn’t been totally convinced. However, the thought of Philip, pompous and pot-bellied, rolling naked with the crepey Moira Cook did seem to be way beyond the bounds of even the most fevered imagination.
Yvonne, in her turn, had said that yes, she may have said that Philip was an unfaithful bastard to Andrew on that occasion, but she’d been in a temper with Philip at the time because he was away on another golfing weekend, and she was quite, quite sure that Moira Cook, or any other council crone come to mention it, wasn’t in the frame. When Jasmine had rather unwisely suggested that Yvonne, too, may be having a bit of a fling, her mother had giggled and said that unless Mel Gibson moved to Ampney Crucis she was afraid she’d be staying monogamous.
It had all been rather unsatisfactory, really. And now, Jasmine thought, watching the gulls sweep lazily over the shoreline, picking off tiny crabs caught in the shallows of the receding tide, even she was wondering if she may just have been mistaken about the voice from the windbreak. She hadn’t imagined the telephone call, though. It was all rather perplexing, but as her parents didn’t seem to be on the verge of divorce, she’d decided to let matters lie. She had far more important realities occupying her mind to waste time on speculations.
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