Nothing to Lose

by Christina Jones

  ‘April –’ Antonio poked his head out from the kitchen, surrounded by clouds of fragrant steam, ‘can I have a word, cara?’

  She closed the door behind her. Nine massive dinner plates were arrayed on the counter. Two turkeys sat golden and fragrant on their carving dishes, and there were half a dozen vegetable tureens piled high.

  ‘This is amazing!’

  ‘But our uninvited guest isn’t.’ Antonio sharpened the carving knife on a steel with swift, vicious movements.

  ‘Oh, I know you had to bring him – Jix explained. And if he’s your choice, then so be it. But a word of warning: if he upsets anyone here today I will slit his throat, OK?’

  April nodded silently. She didn’t doubt it.

  Antonio tested the blade of the knife by running it along his finger. April almost expected to see the flesh fall neatly apart.

  ‘Noah Matlock was a moody bastard long before you came to join him here.’ Tonio didn’t look at her. ‘He was always arrogant and often unpleasant. You were good for him, cara, and he was nicer with you around. But you should have let sleeping dogs lie. You should never have tried to get him back. We all know him very well, don’t forget. His fame has only made him worse. Now, smile, princess – for the bambino’s sake – and we’ll have a happy Christmas meal all together, won’t we?’

  ‘Yeah, of course we will.’ April smiled dutifully. ‘I just wished you’d said all this earlier, though. Like when I first moved in with Noah years ago. It would have saved a lot of trouble.’

  ‘And would you have listened, cara? No bloody way. You’re a woman and you loved him. You wouldn’t have listened to anyone, would you? Now, remember the smile, and grab that nearest dish of veg. It’s Christmas.’

  The meal went far better than April could have imagined. By the time she’d returned from the kitchen, everyone was at least talking. Sofia had poured the first of many bottles of wine, they’d pulled crackers, at Bee’s insistence, and everyone round the table, including Noah, was wearing a paper hat.

  In true Italian tradition, the feast lasted for ever. The food was amazing, the wine plentiful, and the mood grew more merry and relaxed. April noticed with amusement that whenever Noah started bragging about his paintings, someone always cut in and talked him down.

  They exchanged presents across the plates, and Bee had twenty times more than anyone else. Noah, of course, didn’t have any. April gave him a sideways glance but he didn’t seem to mind too much. Jix wound his Doctor Who scarf round his neck, wearing it throughout the meal, flicking it artlessly over his shoulder with a Diana Dors motion every time it looked like trailing in his gravy. It was only at the stage where they were all trying manfully to cram mince pies and cream down on top of everything else, that April realised Jix hadn’t given her a present.

  She sighed over the silliness of men – did he really think she cared? – and because Antonio and Joel and Noah were by then all having cigars with their coffee, she lit a cigarette.

  Jix and Noah glared at her with twin stares of disgust and she laughed out loud for the first time that day.

  It was dark when they all staggered back towards number 51. With Joel and Rusty on either side, Jix wrapped his scarf round Daff’s face for the short outside journey, and they parted in the hallway, peeling off to their respective flats with almost cheery Christmas greetings.

  Noah slumped on the sofa. ‘That was much better than I’d anticipated. Wonderful food.’ He patted the cushion beside him. ‘Come and sit here.’

  ‘In a moment. Bee’s nearly asleep – I’ll put her to bed. Oh, and I’d better let Cairey out for a wee in the yard first. He must be bursting – Oh!’ April stood in the kitchen doorway. He’s not here – and I closed the door so he can’t be in the bedroom.’

  Noah looked over his shoulder. ‘What? Oh, I put him out in the yard just before we left. I thought it was best.’

  April yanked open the back door, cursing Noah under her breath. ‘Come on, Cairey, poor boy ... You must be so cold . . . I’ve brought you the biggest doggy bag you’ve ever seen – turkey and sausages and bacon and – ’

  April stopped. The yard was empty. Cair Paravel had gone.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Jasmine sat beneath the glittering chandeliers and waited to wake up. As everything since before Christmas had passed in a sort of dream, she saw no reason why New Year’s Eve should be any different.

  The Frobishers’ house – no, she shook her head. Wrong word. Stately home? No, wrong shape. Small palace? Not that, either. She played with the bread roll sitting in the centre of her side plate. OK, yes, the Frobishers’ castle – that was it – was like something she’d been taken to see on school visits.

  It had suits of armour in the hall, and portraits of ancestors, and dead animals on the walls, and sweeping staircases, and about six million oak-panelled rooms with fireplaces big enough to conceal Rutland.

  All twelve representatives of the Benny Clegg Stadium had hired a minibus for the journey from Ampney Crucis to Surrey and had booked overnight rooms in a nearby Travel Lodge. Now, sitting between Bunny and Gilbert round a Camelot-sized circular table in the banqueting hall, Jasmine tried not to stare at the splendour. It was very difficult.

  There were four main tables – for the four Platinum Trophy short-listed stadiums – with five smaller tables for the greyhound organisations and the press and other interested parties, dotted between them – and the top table on a sort of raised platform. Ampney Crucis had the table immediately to the right of the Frobishers’ podium, while Bixford were to the left. Pullet’s and Bentley’s, the other contenders, were in the far corners. Peg had got quite excited about this, but Jasmine thought it showed no preference in the pecking order – probably just Brittany’s clever way of being able to keep an eye on Sebastian and Ewan at the same time.

  The Gillespie contingent hadn’t yet arrived, although, with the exception of the top table, most of the other tables were already full, and a rather wispy-looking man in a shiny David Essex suit and a red neckerchief was mournfully strumming classics on a six-stringed guitar and looking as though he was about to run out of repertoire.

  Aware that everyone round the Ampney Crucis table was surreptitiously watching her for the first sign of irrational behaviour which might just indicate a full-blown mental collapse, Jasmine refused to meet their eyes.

  After storming out of the Chewton Estate house, with her mother and Andrew in hot pursuit crying that she’d got it all wrong, and the neighbours’ net curtains going up and down like marionette strings, Jasmine had eventually shaken them off and fled back to the graveyard.

  Pouring it all out to Benny – with some tasty four-letter epithets – she’d felt marginally better. Then she’d gone to the Crumpled Horn, put ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ on constant replay, and downed five pints of Old Ampney without stopping. Staggering back to the beach hut, she’d drawn wobbly moustaches on her mother’s photos and ripped up Andrew’s and fallen into a rather giddy sleep on the sofa.

  Clara had arrived noisily at the hut after lunch, intent on taking Jasmine to do some last-minute Sunday shopping, and had been treated to hung-over chapter and verse. Being Clara, she’d immediately made a lot of black coffee, added a Lenin beard to Yvonne’s photos, set fire to the remains of Andrew’s, and dragged Jasmine off to buy a shock frock for the Frobishers’ do. Retail therapy, Clara had insisted, was exactly what was needed.

  Which was why, Jasmine thought, she was sitting in a castle, merely feet away from the only man she’d ever love or at least she would be when he arrived – wearing something floor length and skintight in scarlet satin which pushed her breasts out like the figurehead on a sailing ship and was split to the thigh. Oh, and the fact that it had cost at least the winnings on five races hadn’t added to her happiness much either.

  Everyone else had been wonderful when Clara had told them the dire Yvonne-and-Andrew and Philip-and-Verity news. They’d rallied round, and made sure that Jasmine was l
eft alone when she wanted to be, and not when she didn’t. Christmas Day had been and gone in a sort of blur, and Philip and Verity, holding hands, had bravely arrived at the beach hut on Boxing Day to explain the situation. As Jasmine knew more about the situation than they did, it was a rather strange conversation. And her father had got quite agitated about Yvonne and Andrew, but Verity had giggled, and patted his knee in a calming, motherly way.

  After their visit, Jasmine had to admit that her father looked happier than she’d seen him look for years, and Verity was nice and comfortable – and at least her father would now never run short of warm hand-knitted woollies.

  The banqueting hall was noisy: splinters of far-flung conversations rising and falling, chair legs being scraped back across flagstones, and cutlery being knocked to the floor with a clatter. The wispy guitarist had just started rather recklessly on ‘Una Paloma Blanca’. Jasmine could just see the whole place erupting vociferously into the more popular version and considerably lowering the Frobisher tone.

  She smiled round the table. They all looked very swish – Clara in black, Peg in a sugar-pink chiffon copy of something Doris Day had worn to a 1957 awards ceremony, and Roger and Allan’s wives both in a sort of mustard paisley material much beloved for ‘posh frocks’ by ladies of a certain age. Gorf had brought his sister, Waffon, and she’d worn her best dungarees and a diamante bow tie. All the men were in evening dress – all hired from the same place – and all almost fitting, even Bunny’s, although because of his feet he’d had to wear plimsolls. Peg had said it didn’t matter a jot just so long as they were black and he didn’t fall over the laces.

  Ewan, of course, looked the most sensational of all in his suit – although by the way he and Clara were scrabbling at each other beneath the white linen tablecloth, Jasmine couldn’t see it staying on for too long.

  With a huge commotion, the double doors flew open and the Bixford brigade made their entrance. Jasmine held her breath. They looked, she thought, rather like the Krays on a day trip – tough, glamorous, and stinking rich.

  Oliver and Martina she recognised immediately from Sebastian’s descriptions. Oliver’s suit obviously wasn’t hired, and no doubt the cost of Martina’s frock – neck-to-ankle sprayed-on purple sequins to match her aubergine spiky hair – could have wiped out the national debt. The remainder of the party looked very East End and done up too. They all gave the impression that this late entry had been deliberately planned, strolling in, laughing and talking, relaxed. Jasmine, scanning them and trying not to show it, felt her heart plummet. Sebastian wasn’t with them.

  No doubt he was frolicking about in the acres of corridors with Brittany, already knowing that Bixford were going to walk off with tonight’s spoils, and totally familiar with every nook and cranny of both Brittany and the Frobishers’ home. Jasmine pulled her bread roll apart angrily, scattering the crumbs on the table cloth. Both Peg and Clara were watching her, so she swept them into her hand and hid them under the plate.

  The waitresses were circulating now; filling up wine and water glasses, pouring everyone a promotional pint of Frobisher’s beer – which Jasmine thought wasn’t a patch on Old Ampney – replacing bread rolls, flicking out napkins. They looked wonderful, an army of pretty girls in short black skirts and tight waistcoats, all smiling and moving as if on well-oiled castors.

  One of their waitresses, with tendrils of fair hair escaping from her bun, kindly replaced Jasmine’s roll and swept the crumbs from beneath her plate with an amazing sleight of hand. She didn’t smile, and her eyes were red-rimmed under the coat of make-up. Probably a man, Jasmine thought with sisterly solidarity. Bastard.

  Ewan, Jasmine noticed, jerked his head up when he saw the waitress and kept on staring. The waitress frowned. Jasmine growled at him for good measure, and nodded her head towards Clara. God, she was glad to be manless.

  Oh, no she wasn’t, she thought, a split second later as Sebastian came into the banqueting hall. He smiled briefly towards his parents, and then slid elegantly into his chair round the Gillespie table. Brittany would probably not be far behind, but until she appeared, Jasmine drank him in. The evening suit looked superb on him – even better than it did on Ewan. Clara had swivelled her head round and stared as soon as he’d arrived, and now looked wide-eyed across the table at Jasmine.

  ‘Wow. Hot or what?’

  Jasmine smiled smugly.

  ‘Jesus . . .’ Clara, still gawping at the vision of Seb scrubbed up, had her mouth open.

  Ewan, Jasmine was pleased to notice, had immediately stopped eyeing up the waitress and was belatedly attempting to bring Clara to heel.

  The doors opened again – it was like a posh pantomime, Jasmine decided – and this time the guitarist struck up the ‘Blue Danube’ as the Frobisher family glided in. Jasmine wasn’t sure of the connection, but possibly they just liked Strauss, or maybe the guitarist had forgotten the chords to ‘Jerusalem’. Emily Frobisher had her hand resting delicately on her husband, Rod’s, arm – Sebastian had filled Jasmine in on all the names in one of his letters – and they were followed by a phalanx of Frobisher minions. Brittany, glittering and breathtakingly beautiful in pale blue, brought up the rear.

  They swerved sinuously between the tables, smiling at everyone, having a few polite words with some, managing to climb on to the podium and take their top table places without the slightest stumble. Jasmine watched, and reckoned they must do this sort of thing all the time. Anyone normal would have teetered on that top step.

  Brittany was seated between her parents, and had the microphone in front of her. Jasmine raised an impressed eyebrow; Brittany was certainly in charge of this whole shebang, then. She wasn’t just the pretty packaging for Rod Frobisher’s multimillion-pound business. Ewan nearly fell off his chair, trying to turn round and smile at her, Jasmine noticed with some disgust. Fortunately, Clara noticed too, and started nibbling his ear.

  At some unseen signal, the waitresses swarmed in again, once more topping up glasses and sliding Parma ham and warm leaves with croutons on to each plate. Their red-eyed waitress still looked miserable, but managed to be very efficient. Again, Ewan looked at her intently. This time, the girl looked back at him and almost smiled. Jasmine wanted to slap them both, but especially Ewan. This was neither the time nor the place.

  Just as she was advising Bunny on the best way to tackle his croutons and explaining that the lettuce was supposed to be hot, Sebastian crouched down beside her.

  ‘I didn’t see you straight away. God knows how I missed you in that dress, though,’ he smiled up at her as Bunny merrily skittered croutons across the table like marbles in a pinball machine. ‘You look amazing.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll probably pop out of it the minute I move. You look really nice too.’ Her mouth had gone dry and her stomach started looping the loop. ‘And your mother is staring.’

  ‘There’s probably some social law about gossiping with other tables while starters are being served. She’ll look it up. Thanks for your Christmas card – and these . . .’ He stuck out a leg and pulled up a couple of inches of his black trousers, displaying Jasmine’s gift of a pair of Union Jack socks that tinkled out God Save the Queen if you rubbed your ankles together. ‘They were my best present.’

  I ate my doughnuts,’ Jasmine said. ‘Before Christmas.’

  ‘Good. They’d have probably gone off if you’d saved them. So, how was it? Your Christmas, I mean.’

  ‘Not bad. I broke off my engagement and my parents split up.’

  ‘Christ.’ Sebastian stared at her. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘About as serious as you can get.’ Jasmine smiled at the concern in his eyes. She also had a mad urge to lick his freckles. ‘Um, my mum and Andrew were – that is, are – having an affair, you see, and my dad moved out because he was having an affair too, and is living with his secretary. She’s quite nice, actually, and she knits.’

  ‘You’re joking – aren’t you?’

  Jasmine shook her head and h
eld up her left hand. ‘See – no ring. I’d finished with Andrew before I knew about the affair, which makes me feel a lot better. Andrew is history – except, as Clara kindly pointed out, he may one day be my stepfather . . .’

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  ‘You just said fucking.’ Bunny frowned crossly at Sebastian. ‘That ain’t fair. Mizz Dunstable said I wasn’t allowed to.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Sebastian held up his hands to Bunny. ‘I shouldn’t have either. My apologies.’

  ‘That’s all right. Apology accepted.’ Bunny grinned, instantly losing his grip on a cherry tomato. ‘Ooh! Fucking thing!’

  ‘You’d better go back to your seat,’ Jasmine said to Sebastian. ‘Your parents are looking murderous.’

  Seb stood up. ‘They’ll see it as fraternising with the enemy. We’ll fraternise on the dance floor later, shall we?’

  ‘For commiserations or congratulations?’

  ‘I was thinking more for pleasure. And you’re sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Really, truly. But thanks for asking.’

  Jasmine watched him return to his table. So, she noticed, did most of the women in the banqueting hall, especially Brittany.

  Sorbets came and went, so did roast meats on beds of thyme and sorrel mash with baby vegetables, and more sorbets, and crème brûlees, and coffee and petits fours – along with bottle after bottle of wine. Jasmine and Sebastian smiled at each other frequently. So did Ewan and Brittany. And Brittany and Sebastian. Somewhere in between the second sorbet and the pudding and all the smiling, the waitress with the red eyes disappeared.