Think, Della, think. Go right back to the beginning. She herded her thoughts in order.
It was last July when Jimmy suggested they get an office junior. An East European girl, he had definitely specified. Had Jimmy deliberately ensured that Della saw him salivating over the other two applicants? Had she thought at the time that it was odd he hadn’t been in the slightest bit interested in the young, leggy blonde? Jimmy would have eyed up anyone and yet he had remained impervious to Ivanka – why hadn’t that sounded a warning bell in her? Because she was too pleased to see that Ivanka obviously hadn’t floated his boat, that’s why. In the end it had been she who had insisted on choosing Ivanka without realising she had been expertly manipulated into her choice. Jimmy Diamond had done her up like a kipper.
In the six months since she had been there, Jimmy and Ivanka had been nothing but polite and professional with each other, veering on the side of frosty. Jimmy hadn’t joked around with her, although he had excused that by whispering to Della, ‘She’s a cold fish, that one.’
Della reached for the office diary and found the entries where Ivanka had been either off ill or on holiday. There was a Friday in November when Ivanka had rung in sick with a stomach bug – Jimmy was supposedly in Nottingham that day at a meeting. Or was he? Della rifled through the receipts in the brown envelope and found that Jimmy had actually been in a swanky London hotel on that night – in a double room, of course. And he and A. N. Other had been to the theatre, because there were two ticket stubs for Les Misérables. The Tuesday in January when Ivanka was off, apparently in the grip of period pains, tied up with a receipt for one night in a five-star suite in York, plus dinner (lobster and chateaubriand) plus his and hers massages in the hotel spa. There was more.
It had been going on since before Ivanka had joined Diamond Shine, Della knew. That’s why she came to work here. Jimmy didn’t take women to the theatre. He didn’t even take his wife there. He took women for meals and to cheap hotels. And he was careful to do it with females who wanted the same no-strings-attached flings. But strangely, Della hadn’t been asked to book him any rendezvous for about ten or eleven months now. She’d taken that as a sign that he had finished sowing his wild oats and was finally settling. That he might want a relationship that was deep and meaningful and monogamous. That he might turn to her for it.
There was a wad of bank statements going back two years pertaining to a high interest account and a current account. Exactly seven months ago, the latter started showing an amount of one thousand seven hundred pounds leaving on the first of every month to go to Ivan Szcz. Ivanka. He was either topping her wage up on the sly or paying for services rendered – probably both.
Then, folded with last month’s statement, Della found it. A receipt for a diamond ring.
An engagement ring.
Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling the cry of shock. There was no mistaking who it was for, either, because there was an instruction to engrave it with the words: J & I TRUE LOVE.
The awful truth dawned on her that Jimmy and Ivanka were in a committed relationship; well, as much as you could be when you were married to someone else. Jimmy wouldn’t have employed someone he wanted to shag and leave; he was serious about her. A hot column of fury coursed through Della’s centre and she wanted to hit something hard and release the pressure of it. How could he do this to her? How could he have used her like this? She was virtually running his company whilst he was bonking the office junior. So what was the long-term plan? Oh, it really didn’t take that much working out: he was paving the path for Ivanka to replace her. What a blind, gullible idiot she had been.
Ivanka. For a nineteen year old, she was a crafty one, thought Della. She had slipped under her radar as if she were a buttered stealth bomber. Della flicked away the single rogue tear which rolled down her cheek. How dare they? A sudden picture shot into her head of Ivanka and Jimmy laughing at her behind her back. That skinny, frumpy woman nearly three times the age of Ivanka, totally oblivious to the goings on under her long pointy nose. She imagined them planning the scene they’d acted out so faultlessly that morning. Oh how they must have enjoyed it; otherwise why didn’t Ivanka just ring in sick rather than go to all the pretence of playacting the poor vomiting victim? There was no other explanation than they wanted to see themselves get away with their deception first-hand, pull the wool over her eyes, make a fool of her, show each other how clever they were. Well, they wouldn’t be laughing for much longer. Della was going to put a very big bomb underneath Jimmy Diamond’s secret little world and she’d start by telling his stupid wife exactly what he was up to.
Chapter 6
Della in angry mode was a frightening spectacle. By the end of the afternoon, she had ripped the office apart looking for further proof of Jimmy’s deception, but all the damning evidence had been concentrated in his locked drawer. Oh, she couldn’t wait to see the look on his wife’s face. That stuck-up madam had it coming to her. On the few occasions when Della had to ring Jimmy at home and Connie had picked up the phone, Della could feel her disdain dripping down the line in her direction that one of Jimmy’s minions had dared to ring their mansion. Likewise, whenever Connie had to ring the office to get hold of Jimmy, Della couldn’t help playing delaying tactical games, taking ages to find Jimmy and put him through or saying that he was busy and asking who was calling, when she knew all along that it was his wife. Alas these exchanges happened more often than not, because Jimmy refused to have a mobile phone. He said that he would never be a slave to a lump of metal. That was obviously an excuse to keep himself elusive because in the envelope of receipts was one for a pay-as-you-go phone and the number, which Della noted down. Oh my, Della was looking forward to seeing Mrs Constance Diamond’s perfect little bubble of superiority well and truly popped.
When Della was satisfied that everything was back in place, except the envelope of evidence which was in her bag, she picked up her keys and took one last look behind her. She wouldn’t be in tomorrow, or ever again. And she wouldn’t answer Jimmy’s calls – she’d just leave him to work out why she had left. He would be in a total mess without her at the helm. Good.
Just as Della opened the door to go, the phone rang. Della made an instinctive movement to pick it up, then stopped herself and let the answering machine handle it.
‘Hi, it’s Cheryl. I’ve just had a fight with Ruth Fallis because I caught her nicking stuff out of Edith Gardiner’s house . . .’
Hearing enough, Della closed the door. Let Jimmy and Ivanka deal with that. It would be a nice welcome home for them on Tuesday morning.
Chapter 7
‘Jimmy, darlink. Put some oil on my back,’ Ivanka drawled lazily from her face-down position on the sunbed as she tilted her left hand from side to side so the sun glinted on the substantial solitaire diamond ring she wore on the third finger.
‘Of course, my angel,’ said Jimmy, jumping to attention and squirting some coconut-scented liquid into his hand to warm it slightly before it hit Ivanka’s soft, young skin.
She purred as he rubbed in the oil and copped a crafty feel of the side of her boobs.
‘I can’t believe we’re here,’ said Jimmy, lifting his head to look at the sun which was freakishly hot for the end of February. Was it really only that morning that he’d been standing in his office putting his foot down with Della?
‘I can’t believe that we are here as an engaged couple.’
‘Well, we are, honeybuns,’ said Jimmy. In the throes of passion, he had stupidly agreed to buy her a ring to prove that his intentions towards her were honourable. Well, as honourable as they could be, becoming engaged to a nineteen year old whilst still married to his wife of twenty-four years.
‘It’s beautiful diamond. I love it,’ crooned Ivanka.
‘Only wear it when we are out, don’t go and forget and put it on in the office.’
‘Of course,’ said Ivanka impatiently, clicking her tongue. ‘I am not idiot, Jimmy. And I will say proper t
hank you when we go back to the hotel.’ She twisted her head and licked her lips and he felt a stirring in his groin.
‘This is the life,’ he said, wanting to scream it from the nearest rooftop. He knew how Shirley Valentine felt now. He’d been forced to watch that tripe with Ivanka one evening in a London hotel and had thought it unbelievable that anyone could refuse to go home after her holiday had ended, but today – for the first time – he really got it.
He weighed up the possibility of doing exactly that on Tuesday as his hand glided over Ivanka’s back. Della could run his office quite easily without him. He’d have to pay her a bit extra, but she’d do anything for him. Della Frostick was a dried-up twig of a woman starving for affection and all he’d had to do was throw her the odd compliment or stare at her for what was longer than necessary to make her fall in love with him. She would move the world for him if she could, or fetch his slippers in her mouth because she was as loyal as a dog. The image of Della on all fours with his stinky moccasins between her teeth made him giggle to himself. He trusted her with everything; well, that wasn’t strictly true, because though she saw most of the company bank statements, she didn’t see all of them and she didn’t know that he was shagging the office junior. Or that he had proposed to her a month ago, mid blow-job.
Oh, he wished he could split himself in two because though he relished the thought of sharing his bed every night with Ivanka and her golden body, Connie was a nice, simple, warm, good-hearted, uncomplicated and undemanding wife. He could have his cake and eat it with Connie. She never questioned his comings and goings and, bless her, was too thick to realise that he’d had more extramarital affairs than Ken Barlow. Divorcing her wasn’t an option he had really considered until he got carried away and opened his big trap and asked another woman to marry him.
He was fond of Connie, really he was. She was good to him and she kept a clean, comfortable house. He didn’t know if it was love. They’d been together since they were teenagers and stuck with each other but he’d never felt that he wanted to bonk her continually, which was how he thought about Ivanka.
His hand smoothed Hawaiian Tropic over Ivanka’s yielding buttocks. It was all starting to become a problem. Ivanka was a pleasure model and he couldn’t picture her washing his smalls and becoming the new ‘Connie’. But he needed a Connie in the background. He frowned . . . he had juggled them all quite adequately for almost a year without anyone finding out; there was no reason not to think they couldn’t carry on as they were. Except they couldn’t really now, because Jimmy had bought Ivanka an engagement ring and had stupidly thought she would be pacified by that and not expect a marriage to follow soon after. Why could she not be happy with their snatched moments in the office when Della was out shopping in her lunch hour, their nights in swanky hotels, the presents he bought her . . . not making their relationship public had kept it edgy and exciting, couldn’t she see that? Anyway, sod it, there was no point in being here and worrying about the future so Jimmy did what he was expert at doing: ignoring the fact that his actions might have consequences. At least until he was forced into facing up to them.
‘I’m going for a dip, darling,’ he said, snapping the top back on the oil. He stood up and sucked in his stomach which was hanging a little too much over his budgie smugglers these days for his liking – but that was contentment for you. Too many five-course meals and champagne. It was a good job he was so energetic in the sack and some calories at least were burned off in the process.
Jimmy swaggered down to the beach, knowing that he still cut a good figure at forty-four, bare-chested and in a pair of short shorts: tall and handsome with twinkling eyes and a smile that could disarm a shark with a cocked machine gun. Jimmy Diamond had ‘likeability’ by the bucketload and boy, did he know it and use it. He’d learned the art of seduction from watching his dad sell second-hand cars. Stan Diamond had Cary Grant looks and a silver tongue that could have sold condoms to nuns.
And, as he got older, Jimmy, like his father, was acquiring those crinkles around the eyes that only added to his attractiveness, unlike what was happening to the eyes of Pookie Barnes who had grown bags so big you could have carried your shopping home in them. Pookie’s hair was thinning by the day as well, unlike Jimmy’s which remained thick and brown with no hint of a monk’s patch at the crown and only the merest hint of white at the temples. And Jimmy didn’t need Viagra as Pookie did. But then Pookie’s missus was twice the size of Connie and had a face like a squashed bat, so no wonder Pookie needed some medical intervention in that department.
Jimmy stood in the deliciously cool sea as the sun shone down on him and thought of that George Best story: there he was in a hotel room with Miss World and a bed covered in thousands of pounds that he had just won on the horses and the waiter who brought them in champagne to celebrate with had asked him, ‘So where did it all go wrong then, George?’ Jimmy Diamond felt like that at this moment. He laughed to himself. A wife who washed his clothes, a woman who ran his office like an oiled premium machine and was madly in love with him, a teenage sex-goddess for a mistress, a successful business, a stashed bank account, a nice car . . . where did it all go wrong, Jimmy?
Life at the moment was the best.
Chapter 8
Jimmy’s house was detached but incredibly modest compared to what he could have afforded according to the profits on the company accounts, never mind the secret accounts she had just discovered, thought Della as her car nosed up his drive. And it was looking a bit shabby to her. The windows needed replacing, for one thing.
He was always pleading poverty with the girls whenever any of them asked for a pay rise, and Della had loyally kept schtum because he gave her a generous, at least by his standards, annual pay increase to make sure she did so. There was a car in the drive which she presumed must belong to Connie. A small, red Ford with a dented bumper and a fair bit of rust on the wheel arches, a far cry from Jimmy’s swanky motor. Della wondered what Connie would say when she found out Ivanka was driving around in a brand new sports car and chuckled to herself.
Jimmy’s daughter Jane was grown up and living with a man in Holland so it wouldn’t be as if she were smashing up a family unit. As for hurting Connie Diamond with what she was about to do, well stuff her. Connie Diamond was the woman whom Della tried not to think about, the woman who was the mother of his child. Despite his misdemeanours, she was still the woman he went to bed with every night and woke up with every morning, and the woman he spent Christmas Day with and to whom he signed anniversary cards (even if Della bought them for him). Della nearly turned green every time she thought about Connie Diamond but somehow it made it easier to think of her as cold, lazy, ugly and snooty. Everything that was undesirable in a wife, Della projected onto Connie.
Della had only seen Connie a handful of times, the last being over thirteen years ago, when the money really started rolling in big-time for Jimmy. Della had chosen to interpret her quiet, shy demeanour as stand-offish, her refusal of refreshment as snobbish. In her mind’s eye Della imagined the woman who was going to open the front door to her in a few moments: coiffeured and regal with shellaced nails, looking every inch the fat queen bee. She would be chilly and frigid and would bore Jimmy senseless, which is why he couldn’t keep it in his trousers and sought his pleasures in other beds. Well, however much Botox Connie’s forehead was pumped full of, what Della had to say to her would force her frozen face to react.
Della pressed her finger hard into the doorbell button and heard rich Westminster chimes coming from inside the house. Then she saw a hint of movement behind the blurred glass in the door and a figure approaching, a lock being turned. Then the door opened and a frumpy, plump woman in a shapeless dress opened it.
‘Could I speak to . . .’ At first Della didn’t recognise her and wondered for a second if she had the right house. She had been about to ask if Mrs Diamond was in, then she noticed the woman’s soft grey eyes and she knew this was Connie.
Blimey
moses, thought Della, surely not.
‘Connie?’
‘Yes, I’m Connie,’ came the reply. ‘Della?’
Connie recognised her immediately because Della had barely changed in the years since they had last met. Her brown hair was flecked with grey now, but she was still wearing it in the same style, scraped back from her thin angular face into a small immaculate bun above the nape of her neck. Della’s eyes were still as bright and dark and all-knowing. It had been her eyes that Connie remembered about her most – like a bird of prey, missing nothing.
The air that stood between these two women almost crackled with the wariness that each had for the other. Connie knew that Jimmy was an expert in making a woman feel special. Even her own mother had been enchanted by his ‘Jimmy charm’. Connie suspected that Della might have read too much into any flirting; she could tell from the way Della answered the phone that she was never pleased to have to put a call from his wife through to Jimmy.
‘Can I please come in? I have something important to say,’ said Della, her voice clipped and spiky. She didn’t expect Connie to nod and move aside so easily, but Connie was intrigued if nothing else.
‘Yes, please do,’ she said.
Della followed her boss’s wife down the hallway and into the small, square kitchen which gleamed with cleanliness. Then again, Lady Muck here had plenty of time to clean, being a lady of leisure, thought Della. Some people had to work for a living. Jimmy’s rich wife didn’t.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ Connie asked her, pulling out a chair from under the dining table. Della noticed it wasn’t exactly high end. She’d imagined Jimmy to have better taste; then again, it was probably his wife who picked the furniture. And she’d made a crap job of it. The shine on the wood couldn’t mask the cheap quality. Della’s eyes roamed around the kitchen, falling on the large double-layered box of truffles which was on the table. She recognised it.
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café Page 4