He held up a pair of stockings. Black and sheer and sparkly, she had never seen hosiery as gorgeous. To her horror, he bent to help her put them on.
‘No, I’m fine, I can do it!’ she rushed, feeling the heat in her cheeks again as her brain presented her with a mini-play of Vladimir smoothing the stockings onto her legs, clipping the deep lace at her thigh. The ferocity of her imagination shocked her and by the time he had straightened up, the colour in her face would have matched ‘boiled lobster’ on a Dulux paint chart. He did a double-take of it and shouted over the screen, ‘Maria, i-a dat cu prea mult fard de obraz! She has too much blusher on!’
No one needed to know any Romanian to work out that what Maria screamed in return intimated that she wasn’t too fond of his criticism. Anna madly fanned at her face, trying to cool the blood vessels and persuade them to retreat.
Vladimir helped Anna into the dress he had made for the photoshoot, red velvet with a fishtail skirt. It was very plain and very gorgeous. He was silent as he zipped her up and smoothed the material over her back. She tried to rein in her imagination before her cheeks started cooking again. Then Vladimir held up the highest pair of blood-red shoes she had ever seen in her life. She would need oxygen after getting into them. Luckily she didn’t have to walk far in them, just stand there and look like a woman worth shagging for the camera. Yeah, easy. Actually, she did feel worth shagging in these clothes. Her legs felt about six feet long in these shoes.
‘Anna, how do you feel?’ Vladimir asked her.
‘Nice,’ she replied in a breathy voice.
‘Nice?’ he growled. ‘Nice?’
‘OK, I feel fantastic,’ said Anna, clicking her tongue at his indignation. ‘Can I see myself now?’
‘Nu,’ replied Vlad firmly. ‘Anna, I want you to remember how you feel.’
‘Oh ho, that sounds suspiciously like I don’t look as good as I feel,’ sighed Anna with disappointment.
‘Let me show you your mirror for today,’ he said. He beckoned her out from behind the screen and she did her best to walk gracefully in the stilt heels.
The jolly banter going on between the film crew dried up immediately. Maria and Leonid raised their heads to see her and their eyes widened so much their eyeballs nearly dropped out. Leonid dropped his camera and swore in his native tongue. ‘La dracu!’ Which was mirrored in English when Bruce said ‘Fucking ’ell!’ Maria was shaking her head now in total and utter disbelief – and then she actually smiled. It wasn’t much of one, admittedly, but then Maria didn’t look as if she would crack her face if she was being tickled by three feather-duster-bearing octopuses.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Mark. ‘Anna, you look . . . look . . . what’s the word I’m searching for?’
‘I’m not sure there is one,’ smiled Jane. ‘We might have to make one up. Marvefanwondertastic. Gorgemazing.’
Anna puffed out her cheeks. She was faced with so much evidence that she actually might look rather tasty that it battered through the barrier of her poor self-image and a pleasant warmth spread inside her.
Leonid greedily captured her image with the lens and even Maria seemed under her spell, moving in to pat shines away from Anna’s face when needed. Then it was necessary for Anna to lose the gown and stand there in some very moody shots in Vladimir’s fabulous, luxurious underwear.
‘Oh wow, Anna Brightside!’ smiled Jane, hands in prayer position by her lips. ‘You look totally gorgeous.’
Anna pouted and posed like a pro. She lapped up the feeling that she was sexy and curvy and womanly. She felt as if she could have pulled Johnny Depp if he’d been in the room. She was so spent at the end she needed a cigarette. Everyone broke into rapturous applause when Mark called it a wrap.
Vladimir handed her a goblet of wine.
‘Rest and enjoy,’ he said.
‘Let me get out of this corset, I don’t want to spill anything on it,’ returned Anna.
‘No, sit, please,’ insisted Vladimir, so Anna sank into a chair and Vladimir took the one opposite her, his large arms resting on his thighs. There was a light dancing in his eyes and the faintest hint of a smile playing on his soft, generous lips.
‘So, do you think it went all right then?’ she asked.
Vladimir stared hard at her, his brow creased in the middle. Then, when he realized she wasn’t joking, he threw back his head and laughed. He relayed in Romanian what she had said to him to Maria and Leonid and their laughter joined his.
‘M-a întrebat dac este destul de bun!’ Then Vladimir turned back to her. ‘Tu glumeti? You joke? It was fantastic. You were fantastic, Anna, a queen. O regin! I was right to wait until I had found you. I know this for sure.’
‘Blimey,’ said Anna, taking a big glug of wine. Her system was thrown into shock by this lifetime’s worth of compliments in one breath.
Soon the camera crew were all packed up and were almost ready to leave. Back-to-normal-life-land was just around the corner now for Anna. Back to being ignored by her own supercilious moggie and waiting for a boyfriend to finally make his mind up who had the superior tits – his fiancée or his teenage concubine.
Anna tipped the last of the wine into her mouth and then slipped into her ordinary clothes behind the screen. Bruce was waiting for her at the other side of it when she emerged.
‘I never said thank you for giving Jane an injection of sense,’ he said. ‘You saved her job and probably some of ours too.’ He gave her a fat kiss on her cheek. And then Mark appeared with the world’s biggest bouquet. ‘From us all,’ he said. ‘Some flowers for a woman who has totally blossomed before our eyes.’
Anna burst into tears for all sorts of different reasons. She was totally overwhelmed by the gift, but also she would miss these Saturdays so much. The thought of never again hearing fierce Romanian conversations and wondering what they were all about hurt her like a physical pain. But all that paled into nothing when she thought of never again feeling Vladimir Darq’s hands on her shoulders, his breath on her skin.
‘You’re going to love the show,’ smiled Jane as she climbed into the crew van. ‘We’ve got surprises!’
‘That sounds ominous,’ Anna replied with a grimace.
‘Trust us,’ said Jane. ‘You’ve been wonderful. Stay gorgeous.’ And they drove away with waves and smiles and blown kisses and Anna wiped at her leaky eyes and waved back until her arm was sore. Then Leonid and Maria kissed her, three cheeks each, and vigorously shook her hand. She would even miss Maria pulling her this way and that and arguing with Vladimir. Vladimir.
The car pulled up to take her home. She didn’t want to go. She had to go. It was all over now. Vladimir lifted up a smart black case.
‘As promised,’ he said. ‘An exclusive set of Vladimir Darq lingerie designed for you.’
‘Thank you. I shall treasure them,’ replied Anna, hoping her voice wouldn’t embarrass her by crumbling. She daren’t look up at his pale blue eyes flecked with gold and ringed with black. She wasn’t sure she would hold it together if she did.
‘Anna, I will be in touch,’ he said, opening the door for her. Yeah, ’course you will, she thought. He bent and put a kiss on her cheek. His lips were soft and cool but the place where they touched her burned all the way home.
Grace and Niki and Christie ate their meal outside. The evening was warm enough but Niki had lit the huge chiminea in the garden which kicked out a lot of heat in their direction when the air started to cool. Citronella candles kept the insects away from the king prawn and avocado salad starter, the gruyère and mushroom chicken and the summer pudding and clotted cream. After devouring Grace’s homemade chocolate mint ice-cream truffles, Niki left his sister and Grace together in the garden with a cognac each while he apologized for being a typical bloke because he wanted to check up on the sports results on the TV.
‘He likes you very much,’ said Christie, as soon as her brother was out of earshot. She was a lot further down her glass of those very large cognacs than Grace was.
‘I like him too,’ said Grace.
‘No, I mean he likes you.’
‘Christie Somers, listen to yourself. You sound as if you’re at school, matchmaking.’
‘He sparkles when you’re around. Of course he wouldn’t dream of making a move on you while you’re a guest in our house, he’s far too gallant,’ Christie trilled. ‘Gentlemen are such a mixed blessing in that respect.’
‘Tut. You’re imagining things.’
‘I’m my father’s daughter and I know my psychology, Ms Beamish! I think he’s scared a lot of women off by being too good-looking and too nice. They can’t quite believe he could be real. Funny creatures, aren’t we, women? Even if we find what we want, we’re too scared to believe it and run from it.’
‘Yes, aren’t we?’ said Grace.
‘Except I was the exception to the rule and didn’t,’ said Christie. ‘I ran to love with my arms open wide and it was wonderful. I can see you two together quite easily, you know.’
‘Christie, stop it.’
‘Did you ever love Gordon, Grace?’ Christie asked, suddenly serious.
‘No,’ Grace admitted after a long and thoughtful pause. ‘I wanted to. I think I could have, given the chance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought we’d be like an arranged marriage couple; you know, that we’d grow close together. But he had . . . problems . . . sexually. Right from the beginning. With me anyway.’ Grace knew her tongue was loosened by the wine and the brandy but she didn’t care. It felt so cathartic to talk about things she had kept bottled up inside her for so long. ‘He managed it just the once, but it was difficult. He said it must be my fault because he’d managed to give Rita three children and for a long time I thought he must be right.’
‘Oh, Grace, how cruel.’ Christie touched her arm.
‘I once got some leaflets from the doctor about impotence and he went mad. I wasn’t allowed to ever speak about it again. He never tried to touch me after the first few attempts, he just moved into the bedroom opposite.’
Christie shifted forward in her seat. ‘But wasn’t he tender with you at all? Didn’t you try other things?’
‘I don’t know if he had a low sex drive or if he’d stamped down on it so hard because he wanted to kill it and spare himself the indignity, but no, there was nothing like that. No embraces, no kisses. Obviously I never got to find out what his love life was like with Rita. I tried to ask but, as you might imagine, I didn’t get very far into the first sentence. Piecing things together though, I don’t think sex was high on his agenda with either of us. I presume he saw it only as part of his manly duty and with three children to show to the world, he’d proved himself to be “a true male”. Gordon was very good at not acknowledging things that threatened to dent his ego.’
‘Grace, how could you have stood it?’ Christie shook her head, unable to comprehend such a dry desert of a marriage.
‘I would never have left Gordon and risked not seeing the children again. I know he would have ripped them away from me had we ever split up.’
‘What about when they were old enough to make their own minds up though?’
Grace gently rotated the brandy in the glass and looked into it as if she were staring into a crystal ball, but one that could decipher her past rather than her future.
‘I don’t know. I was acclimatized after so long. I just stayed; the desire to up and go occasionally visited but I never had the guts to see it through. It’s a poor answer, I know.’
‘What an incredibly sad story. All that unborn love.’
Grace swallowed hard. ‘I wanted to love him, so much. I was grateful to him for the children but also I wanted to have a real marriage and be a proper family. He was a very attractive-looking man when he was younger, serious and aloof and grown-up, and he intrigued me. We used to work for the same company – he in another department. I felt sorry when the office gossip reached me that he’d lost his wife and had young children. I couldn’t have children of my own, you see. I was only a young woman when I had to have a hysterectomy. And one day he bumped into me, literally, in a corridor and we began talking and he asked me out for a meal. He was very correct, respectful – or so I thought.’ Grace gave a bitter little laugh. ‘After the second date, I met his children and his mother and I fell in love with them all on sight. He needed a wife and companionship and I desperately wanted a family and so we married and sealed the deal. I thought I could make everything all right.’
‘Were you a virgin, Grace?’
‘No,’ said Grace. ‘I had one lover before I married. A good, caring man. Maybe it would have been better if I had been a virgin. Then I wouldn’t know what I was missing.’
‘You poor thing,’ said Christie softly.
‘Please, Christie, that isn’t the whole of the story. The children were worth everything. I love them so much.’
Christie sighed. ‘I thought I’d been so short-changed when Peter died. You make me realize that I wasn’t after all,’ she said eventually.
‘Do you think you’d ever marry again?’
Christie shrugged. ‘Who knows what the future brings? But Peter Somers is a hell of a hard act to follow. I sometimes curse him for that.’
‘Were you very happy?’
Christie smiled, her eyes glassy with affection. ‘He was the most wonderful man: kind, passionate, funny. He was my heart. Funnily enough, I met Peter at work too. He was my married boss, older than me. He was living in a sexless, childless, unhappy marriage and I loved him away from his wife. Grace, do you remember that day in the pub when Anna said some thing about women who mess around with married men deserving all they got? For a long time I thought I was cursed because I broke up his marriage. But I would have done it all again to have him. And in a way I’m lucky because some people never find the love of their life but at least I can say I did. For a while. My punishment is that I’ll never find anyone like him again and I wouldn’t want to take a lesser man to my bed. We all pay for our sins in the end.’
‘Could you have children?’
‘I presume so, but I don’t know for sure. We thought we had all the time in the world. We planned to have them late on when we’d got our travelling bugs out of our system, but he died before then. We missed our chance.’
‘Oh, Christie.’
‘Life makes no guarantees – I accept that, I’ve had to. There are certain things, like children and longevity, that are privileges, not rights. All we can do is play the hand we are dealt. Another cognac, Grace?’ was Christie’s reply to that. ‘Let’s toast our health and our future happiness and a Malcolm-free existence in the office. My God, I know it’s evil but I hope the lazy bastard gets kicked out soon.’
Grace accepted the turn of conversation and poured them both another cognac which they drank together in comfortable silence. The way only good friends, close friends, can do.
Chapter 65
Dawn burst into the office on Monday morning with the force of someone who has been rehearsing a speech for hours and cannot hang on to it any longer.
‘OK,’ she started her announcement to everyone. ‘I’m having a hen night but, and don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t want to look rude by not inviting you but I know it’s going to be awful and I wish I could get out of it but it’s my future sisters-in-law who are organizing it and they’ve got really rough mates and the big fat woman who’s making the bridesmaids’ dresses is going as well and it’s all going to be really awful and embarrassing and I don’t want—’
‘Will you chill!’ said Anna. ‘And you’d better take a few breaths because you’re turning blue around the gills.’
Dawn collapsed into her chair and her head fell into her hands. ‘They’ve organized it for a week on Saturday. Please tell me you’ve all got something on. If I’m going to have a hen night at all with you there, I’d prefer it just to be like Anna’s birthday – all of us having a meal at the Setting Sun together.’
Dawn burst into tears and her work-mates immediately swarmed around her, which made her feel even more pathetic.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, preparing to lie as Raychel thrust the office box of tissues under her nose. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. They were fine; she’d done a good job.’
‘Oh well, that’s lovely then,’ said Grace. She noticed they were all exchanging worried glances above Dawn’s head. ‘Everything will come together soon, just you see.’ You must miss your parents so much at a time like this, she thought, but didn’t say because she knew it would probably upset Dawn even more.
Dawn nodded, biting her top lip hard to stem the stupid tears. She was thinking about her parents too. What on earth would they have said, seeing her in this state about what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life?
She wasn’t the only one with a glum Monday-morning face. Anna was very quiet and her thoughts so preoccupied that Grace had to ask her four times if she wanted a coffee.
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