Busy Woman Seeks Wife

by Annie Sanders

  Chapter 25

  Alex deleted Saff’s apologetic text without even reading it. It was the fifth one she’d gotten from her. She’d started to read the first two and then couldn’t bear any more. She tossed the phone back into her bag.

  Things were wonderfully quiet tonight and she’d been able to have a shower, then eat ice cream out of the tub and have total control of the remote for the first time in ages. Her mother had called, leaving a message on the answering machine asking how she was, but Alex had ignored the interruption. They could all go to hell, she thought defiantly, and poured herself another glass of wine. She channel-hopped for a while, but it was all rubbish about D-list celebs making exhibitions of themselves, so she cast an eye over the flat. Her things were everywhere, a pile of this evening’s running clothes on the floor in front of the machine, washing up on the side from breakfast. There was even a layer of dust she could see on the coffee table. The order of the past few weeks had disappeared, but then so had her mother’s presence, which was a relief. In its way. And anyway, things being so tidy all the time had begun to get on her nerves.

  She looked at her watch. Only ten o’clock. Bliss. Perhaps she should make the most of having an early night? Lord knew she could do with one. Sloshing water over her face and cleaning her teeth, she slipped into a tank top and underwear and, turning off the hallway light and pulling the door of her mother’s now empty room closed, Alex climbed into bed and picked up her “to do” list. She still had to settle the order of interviews with the main stars appearing at the launch, and there was the relentlessly pushy woman from Today! magazine to deal with who would not give up until she had secured an exclusive with Bettina Gordino. Alex ticked off various things as she scanned down the list. So much still to do. She could do with some rest.

  Half an hour later she was still lying on her back and listening to the noise of a barbecue in a distant garden. People shrieking with laughter. How selfish. The bed felt rumpled next to her skin, not smooth and cool as it did when the bed had been made up with fresh sheets by… by Frankie. Alex turned onto her side and punched the pillows violently to plump them up. Oh well, it was a pain that she’d have to change them herself now but all good things come to an end. She sighed and closed her eyes.

  Damn him, damn her mother and damn Saff, she railed fifteen minutes later as she stood in the kitchen, dropping a tea bag into a cup. Most of all, damn Saff. Her mother had always been tricky. So mercurial. Everyone else seemed to find her endlessly entertaining—even Frankie had clearly fallen under her spell—but to Alex it was shallow, done to impress people, done to be adored. And who was left sorting out the chaos she left in her wake? As for Frankie, well, she didn’t know him. He was good-looking all right, but an actor? God help her! He was probably as precious and difficult as the Bean or the sports stars she spent her time mollycoddling. Alex helped herself to the last biscuit in the tin. Okay, so he could cook but what did that prove? So could any fool.

  But it was Saff’s deception that really hurt. If she couldn’t trust her then who the hell could she trust? They’d known each other since they were in pigtails, they’d shared boyfriend pains, Alex was godmother to Millie (and about eight other people’s children, but such was the lot of the unmarried thirty-something—people always imagined being a godmother would somehow compensate for not having your own).

  Alex tipped the remains of the cup into the sink, rinsed it out under the tap, and turned it upside down on the empty drainer. If she couldn’t trust anyone, she’d just row her bloody boat on her own and, slamming the bedroom door behind her, she slumped into bed.

  “Right, Cam, a meeting!” Alex knew she was barking orders but there had been an early text from Gavin the next morning wanting an update, and it had unnerved her. Why was he asking now? He’d never done that before. “Gavin is on the warpath,” she explained, turning on her computer as Camilla sat down on the chair opposite her desk.

  “I know—I was in early and he was hovering around your desk, looking at your papers.” Camilla tapped her pen with her teeth. She looked very fresh and quite tanned in white T-shirt and pink cotton capri pants.

  Hovering? That was out of character for Gavin. He was twitchy, yes, but he never hovered. Alex felt her stomach clench. What was this all about? “Did he… did he say anything?” It didn’t seem right to sound so paranoid but she had to ask and Camilla would know what she meant.

  “Well, he sort of asked me for an update. I said we had everything under control for the event, of course, but I have to say”—she lowered her voice—“I’ve never seen him like this before. It’s as if… well, I don’t know how to say this, but it’s as if he sort of doesn’t trust it to go without a cock-up.”

  “Mmm. Well, we’ve had our glitches but let’s just make sure nothing else goes wrong, hey?”

  Alex dealt with some pressing e-mails and was about to call Maurice the caterer for an update when her phone rang. “Alex, it’s Rowena.” Alex’s heart sank. The Today! journalist was not so much a terrier for a story as a Rottweiler. She came straight to the point without her usual gushing preamble. “Can you assure me of Bettina Gordino? Only I thought you said we would get an exclusive and now I hear that Scorch have secured it ahead of us. You know I asked about this straight after the PR briefing the other day—of course, you couldn’t be there, which was a shame, but I was assured by Camilla she would be ours.”

  “Well.” Alex finally managed to stem her flow. “I haven’t been told about this. I’ll get back to you.”

  “What do you mean I was told?” Alex could feel the panic rising as she asked Camilla a moment later.

  “I told you that Scorch had made an earlier play for the interview the morning after your Milan hitch. Don’t you remember?” Camilla frowned with concern. “Oh, Alex. I said it the same time as I mentioned the Express wanting to talk to Malcolm Sanferino for their American football special. Have you not done anything about it?” She paused and looked at Alex’s aghast face.

  “Oh bollocky bollocks.”

  “You’d better make some calls before Gavin gets wind of it. I’ll call the Express for you if that would help?”

  “You are an angel,” Alex gulped, and dialed Scorch.

  She managed to pacify them and was being savaged again by the Rottweiler when Peter dropped a note in front of her that read launch running order? and walked off. Camilla mouthed to her, and pointed to her watch theatrically. Alex raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Meeting. You haven’t forgotten have you?”

  Holding the phone slightly away from her to protect it from the Rottweiler’s vitriol at her lost exclusive, Alex flicked up her schedule on her PC. There it was: 11:30 at the launch venue in Brixton. Holy shit. But that was supposed to happen tomorrow. Wasn’t it?

  “What in God’s name is going on?” Gavin wasn’t even seated and fidgeting—his normal stance. This time he was standing over her desk, hands on hips and voice raised for anyone to hear. There was silence in the open-plan office, and Alex could see out of the corner of her eye that people were hovering, pretending to do things.

  “You’re missing interview requests, press briefings, and now venue meetings. Great, yeah, you got Gordino but what bloody use is she prancing up and down if we fuck up the publicity for her? And missing the Express Sanferino exclusive… that is just bloody ridiculous.” How had he known about that? Alex wondered fleetingly.

  This was torture. Alex looked across the room at anyone who caught her eye and looked away quickly. Could she just resign now, walk away and perhaps join the Foreign Legion so she would never have to see any of them again?

  Gavin leaned over her desk and said quite quietly now, “If you screw this up, Alex Hill, I won’t so much murder you as skin you alive. My arse is on the line here and I will sacrifice yours to make sure I’m okay—do you understand?” Alex couldn’t look at him. “Now just get out of here and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  By the time she had gotten home an
d slammed the front door, she was ready to punch someone. What in God’s name had happened? She was usually punctilious about things—obsessive even—and, when it really mattered, things were going wrong? She didn’t need Gavin to tell her how important this launch was. Did he need reminding that this whole thing had been her idea? It had been she who had suggested an apparel line that people could wear as normal clothes, a classic range that would cross cultures and sexes and leisure pursuits—and now not only was it about to go tits-up, it suddenly wasn’t her idea at all. Gavin had purloined it and made it his own. Alex began to make herself a cup of tea but, when she opened the fridge, there was no milk. Damn. Bloody bloody damn.

  She dialed Todd’s number. He’d be in the office now. “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Hi, babe. Everything okay?” His voice, all the way from New York, sounded close by.

  “No, not great.” Alex slumped down on the sofa. Through the kitchen door she could see the dirty running clothes from yesterday still festering in a pile.

  “Mmm, I heard.”

  Alex sat up. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I had a call from your right-hand girl. I gather Gavin has asked her to contact all the press to confirm interviews. I asked her what the problem was—well, knowing you has to have some advantages”—he laughed deeply—“and she just said there had been some glitches.”

  “Glitches?”

  “That’s what she said, babe.” Alex hated the way he called her that. A babe she wasn’t. “You have made sure all the US interviews are lined up, haven’t you? I mean, I’ve made some pretty firm promises, Alex, and I can’t afford to have screwups.”

  Well, thanks a bunch for asking how I am, thought Alex, reassuring him as convincingly as she could and terminating the call, claiming she had another to deal with.

  And indeed she had. For the next two hours texts and calls came in, including one from Maurice explaining some holdup with fruit delivery for the statue, one from the factory in Turkey wanting information about Bettina Gordino’s size for her special apparel for the launch, and one from Camilla asking if she’d passed the press-pack copy that had to go to the printer. Alex had and said she would e-mail it over, but half an hour later she was still looking for the file on her laptop. It had been there yesterday. She went through her history. Where was the goddamn file? Camilla called again. “Give me a minute,” Alex said, trying to hide the panic in her voice.

  “Alex, they have been on the phone twice already. They need it now. It’s a complicated bit of binding apparently, and they say if they don’t get it tonight it’s going to be touch and go if they can have it proofed and printed in time. Would you like me to try and put something together here?”

  “No,” she said, more violently than she meant to. “I’ll sort it out and get back to the printers directly.” Alex had the intense feeling that her life at that moment was like trying to hold on to a slippery fish that was fast escaping her grasp. She could see it swimming away from her and she would be left on the bank with nothing in her hands. She felt sick. If she had lost this document then she would have to rewrite it and pronto. So without even blinking she sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with her laptop in front of her and set to, trying to remember what on earth she had written in the press pack the first time around.

  The doorbell interrupted her thoughts a little while later. Alex looked at her watch—it was a bit earlier than she would normally be home, so who on earth would know she was here? “Hello?” she asked irritably, picking up the intercom handset.

  “Alex, it’s Frankie.”

  Frankie? What did he want? “What do you want?”

  His voice crackled into the flat. “I think I might have left a sweatshirt of mine on the back of the kitchen door, and I’ve still got your key, which I wanted to drop back. Would you mind if I… if you’re not too busy?” Reluctantly she pressed the buzzer.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to be home actually.” Frankie ducked his tall frame in through the door.

  “So what were you going to do?” Alex asked sharply. “Just let yourself in?”

  Frankie at least had the decency to look sheepish. “Well, yes actually. I thought you might never let me in to get it and it is one of my favorites, so I was going to collect it and then drop the key back through your letter box…” Alex was aware he was some way taller than she was. Standing in the close proximity of the hallway made it feel even smaller. His pale blue T-shirt had a surfing logo on the front. His shorts were beige and, glancing quickly, she could see his legs were strong and lightly hairy. She looked up into his face. She couldn’t quite make out the color of his eyes but she thought they were brown and flecked with gold.

  “Bloody cheek. But then you’re good at that, aren’t you? Just doing things without people knowing. I suppose you’d better come and get it—seeing as how you know my kitchen so well.” She turned into the sitting room and stood with her arms crossed, not trusting herself to say anything else. Frankie walked past her hesitantly into the kitchen, and she kept her eyes firmly on the rug in front of her.

  “Er.” He came back through, the sweatshirt in his hand. “You may have noticed that the little control button has come off the toaster. I was going to mention it but…”

  “But what, Frankie?” she said, louder than she meant to. “You were going to put it in one of…” She almost said “our” but it sounded too intimate. “One of your little notes. But I happened to turn up didn’t I, and mess up your little ménage à trois? How inconvenient that must have felt, hey, Frankie?” She moved closer to him, trying to cover up the urge to howl and rail at him with anger. “Do you know what it feels like to be fooled Frankie? And by people you trust?”

  Frankie’s voice was low. “No, no, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Do you think sorry really covers it, Frankie? Am I meant to thank you for getting the washing machine mended? For doing my washing? For ironing my knickers? Can you imagine what a violation that feels like?”

  “Alex, Ella couldn’t do it—she got the job she’d been dying for, and your mother needed looking after.”

  “Oh yes, Ella. She played along beautifully, didn’t she? And the dinner party. In my house! People I’d invited and half of them were in on the little joke, weren’t they?” Oh God, Max too. She’d forgotten about Max. “Were you hiding in the broom cupboard? Were you, Frankie?” She hadn’t realized but she was holding on to his arms. She dropped her hands quickly.

  “No. No. I was outside.”

  “Christ.” She turned away.

  “Alex,” he said gently after a moment. “I know what we did was unforgivable but all I can hope is that I helped. It is my fault about Saff. She turned up one day, and we asked her not to mention it because we knew that you’d fire me and she knew your mother needed caring for. I think she still does. I think she needs…”

  Alex turned on her heel. She could feel a tear slip down her cheek and brushed it away irritably. “Yes, Frankie, she needed caring for, because”—careful Alex—“because my mother always needs things. She takes up all the emotional oxygen. You can be stifled if you stay around her too long. You may have had the pleasure of her company for a few weeks, but there are things you don’t know about her and I will be the judge of just how much help she… needs. And you don’t happen to be the person who I employed to help anyway.” Alex stopped herself before she went too far. “Now, I don’t have time for this. I have a press pack to write, for the second sodding time as it happens, for an event which is probably the most important in my career and which is rapidly turning into a massive disaster.” She sank down into her previous position in front of her laptop and turned determinedly towards it. “Now please leave.”

  Frankie stood there towering above her for a moment, looking at her very intently, then turned and went quietly out the front door.

  The flat was very still and, she admitted grudgingly, felt strangely emptier than ever.

  Chapter 26
/>   Frankie pulled the door of the building closed behind him and turned into the road. Well done, you idiot, that went brilliantly. The perfect and unexpected opportunity to talk to her about how dejected her mother had been looking and he’d blown it. Her mind was clearly made up about the Bean and all he’d done was make her more angry. He shook his head. It was none of his business anyway. Why should he play peacekeeper? He kicked a Coke can violently across the road and headed home.

  He could hear the phone ringing as he struggled with the lock. “Hello?” he gasped, grabbing it from where Ella had left it on the sofa, and listened to the rasping smoker’s voice at the other end. “They want me there when? Yes, St. John’s Wood again? Yep, no problem. Any particular piece they want prepared? Yep, yep, okay. I’ll be there. Yeah! I know. I can’t believe it! Thanks, Marina, you’re a star!”

  “Er, no, Frankie,” his agent replied, but he could hear the smile. “That’ll be you. And, Frankie, just do whatever you did last time. They obviously liked it, so stop putting yourself down, okay? And if you could land the part, I’d be most grateful as I could do with a holiday on the commission! But I won’t book it just yet, hey? In case I lose my deposit!” And she laughed so much she was reduced to a coughing fit.

  Thanks for your vote of confidence, thought Frankie, replacing the phone, and then stood staring at it for several seconds before letting out the most jubilant whoop of excitement and embarking on a frenzied victory dance around the flat. He suddenly had a feeling that anything was possible. He’d have to call Ella. He’d have to call his dad. He’d have to call the Bean. He’d have to call Saff. He even felt like calling Alex, not that she’d want to hear from him. But maybe if he did, she’d realize that things could turn around for her as well. And, really, if it hadn’t been for her, he’d never have met the Bean in the first place, and he wouldn’t be in this situation now! Maybe he’d even send the Bean some flowers. Yes, that’s what he’d do. She’d like that.