Solo

by Jill Mansell

  I’m sorry, the note inside read. I shouldn’t have blown my top. Get well—and come back—soon. Ross Monahan.

  You bastard, thought Mattie with tears in her eyes as she shredded the note into a dozen pieces.

  Bastard, she thought as she stuffed the pieces into an almost empty coffee jar and pushed it into the bottom of the kitchen trash can.

  Bastard, she thought furiously, ripping the cellophane away from the flowers and inhaling their sickly perfume. The bouquet was too large to dispose of in one go; she would have to separate it and wrap each section in newspaper.

  “Bastard,” she said aloud as she dropped the newspaper-wrapped parcels into the trash can and emptied the messy contents of the kitchen trash over them for good measure.

  She would protect Grace from that selfish, conceited, careless bastard of a man, she vowed as she replaced the lid of the trash can with a crash. If it killed her.

  Chapter 19

  Holly, flicking through the newspaper, found what she was searching for and perched on the arm of the chair in order to discover her destiny in comfort.

  “I’m going to have problems with my financial situation but will otherwise enjoy a day filled with pleasure and fun,” she announced in theatrical tones for the benefit of her fellow workers, taking their early break in the break room. “What utter rubbish! I’ve never had a financial problem in my life, and how the hell am I supposed to enjoy a day filled with pleasure and fun when I’m stuck here on a sixteen-hour, double shift?”

  “Mrs. Polonowski’s a fortune-teller,” supplied Lucy, one of the young chambermaids. “She read my tea leaves the other week and told me that I was going to get engaged to a handsome man. Well, that very night,” she went on, with mounting excitement, “I met Derek down at the Red Lion. And the next day I found that diamond ring inside one of the pillowcases in Room Six…”

  Holly recalled the ring, a spectacular square-cut yellow diamond belonging to an equally flamboyant Australian opera singer who had created merry hell when it had gone missing and who had given Lucy a fifty-pence reward for finding it. The connection, she felt, was on the fragile side, but the bit about the handsome man was definitely promising. That kind of fortune-telling was right up Holly’s street.

  Rosa Polonowski, who worked as a dishwasher in the hotel kitchens, needed little persuasion to be lured away from her sink for a quick cup of tea and a spot of impromptu palmistry in the break room. A garrulous lady in her late sixties who had arrived in England after the war, she had steadily increased her command of the English language during twenty-five years of fortune-telling with a traveling fair. No longer Madame Rosa, she continued nevertheless to employ her talent; it was a surefire way to make new friends, and if those new friends were thoughtful enough to reward her for her trouble with a glass or two of sweet sherry, so much the better.

  She took her time over Holly’s hand, holding it between her own gnarled fingers and admiring the elegant watch that adorned her wrist.

  “You are lucky girl,” she said in her heavily accented English. “So lucky, you will have much happiness. But zer is problem, my darling. Bik problem for you with ze men.”

  You’re telling me, thought Holly with a faint smile, but she said nothing.

  “Bik problem to decide which man you choose,” continued Rosa Polonowski with a beady glance up at Holly’s face. “Two bik men, one dark and one fair. So different and yet both in secret loff for you. Ze dark one, he never smile. A true dark horse, you understand. One dark horse and one bik brown bear, see. And when you have made your choice you vill be so happy. You haf children, two children, and much good health.”

  Holly, so excited by now that she could barely speak, whispered, “But which one do I choose? The dark one? Is he really in love with me? Is he the one I’m going to marry? My God, I can’t believe it!”

  Rosa Polonowski forbore to mention that she hadn’t said anything about any marriage. She patted Holly’s hand and smiled, revealing incredibly crooked teeth and a great many gold fillings. “Zat I do not say. You haf your own choice to make. You clever girl. You make good choice, I know.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Polonowski,” cried Holly, quite overcome by the thrilling possibilities. “This is incredible. And everything you’ve told me is absolutely right, only I didn’t know—I couldn’t know—that he was already in love with me. But now that I do know…”

  “Holly, what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in here?” roared Max, erupting into the room like a thunderstorm and scaring the wits out of almost everyone there. Only Holly, mesmerized by Mrs. Polonowski’s stunning revelations, didn’t react. With renewed fury, Max grabbed her hand—the very hand that had just revealed her starry future—and yanked her unceremoniously off her stool.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he barked, shoving her toward the door. “There’s a line of guests at reception, the phone’s going wild, and your coffee break ended fifteen minutes ago, so will you take that inane smile off your face, pull yourself together, and get back to bloody work? If this happens again,” he added fiercely, “you’re going to lose your job.”

  He loves me, thought Holly, still in a daze. He’s tall and dark and he never smiles, but that doesn’t matter. Because now I know that Max Monahan, beneath that dark, terrifying exterior, really does love me…

  • • •

  Antonia stared moodily out through the drawing room windows at the rain-swept drive, along which Ross no longer drove. She could have screamed at the thin, blond stranger who had interrupted their reunion in the swimming pool; since then, she had hung around the hotel like a goddamn groupie and had been cut dead by Ross every time. And the pain-in-the-neck fact was that the more he ignored her, the greater her fascination with him grew.

  Bored and fractious, she slumped down lengthways across the pale-yellow, silk-upholstered sofa and picked up the newspaper Richard had left behind, folded open as usual at the boring financial section. For several seconds the only sound in the room, apart from the slow, echoing tick of the grandfather clock, was the rustle of irritably turned pages. Abruptly, the rustling stopped. Ross’s name leaped out of the gossip column like an explosion. Scanning the lines, Antonia experienced actual physical nausea as she read the sycophantically worded article proclaiming his impending fatherhood and his apparent devotion to the blond artist, Tessa Duvall, with whom he had attended prenatal classes in Bath.

  Dropping the newspaper to the floor, Antonia gazed once more at the deserted driveway. So the girl had been smart enough to get herself pregnant, she thought, closing her eyes and imagining the unfashionably dressed blond with her revolting, disfiguring bulge. And so far, it appeared, Ross was humoring her, presumably reveling in the excitement of impending fatherhood.

  But Antonia knew him too well to be seriously disturbed by what she had learned. Ross might have fallen prey to the apparent novelty of the situation, but the reality would soon pall, of that she had no doubt. Ross simply was not cut out for that kind of commitment. It was a shock, she concluded as the nausea slowly receded, but not a terrible shock. It wasn’t something to worry too badly about, simply because she knew Ross too well. In a few months, decided Antonia with smug satisfaction, he would be hard pushed to even remember the little tart’s name.

  • • •

  Mattie didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry when she’d finished reading the article in the newspaper.

  She felt sorry for the pregnant girl, of course. Tessa Duvall, blond artist, didn’t know what she was letting herself in for. Mattie wondered whether she had done it deliberately, hoping that Ross would in turn offer to marry her.

  But the news about the baby wasn’t going to be easy for Grace to come to terms with, either. Coming as it did on top of everything else, her sense of loss could only be heightened, and who knew how she would feel, having to watch and listen to Ross extolling the virtues of fatherhood?

/>   Since she steadfastly refused to change her job and move away from the hotel, however, there seemed to be nothing more that Mattie could do to help her.

  • • •

  “You’re famous,” crowed Holly, waving the paper in Tessa’s face. “Look, they’ve even spelled your name right. What a shame there isn’t a photo.”

  “Of me, flat on my back with my legs in the air?” Tessa raised her eyebrows. “Now that would put people off their food. I knew something like this would happen,” she went on, loading her brush with yellow ocher and applying it with quick, deft strokes to the canvas. “Ross must be regretting it now.”

  “It was Ross who showed me the article. He’s been reading it to everyone. Tess, he’s as proud as…as a new father!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Tessa, concentrating on her painting. “The novelty will wear off. He’ll be back to normal soon enough.”

  “You should get Rosa Polonowski to read your palm,” said Holly smugly, having already regaled Tessa at length with the details of her own dazzling future.

  “She wouldn’t be able to see it,” Tessa retorted, holding up her hands. “My destiny is well and truly sealed. By paint.”

  • • •

  Grace wouldn’t have seen the article in the gossip column if she hadn’t bumped into Sylvie Nash that lunchtime in a coffee shop in Bath.

  “Grace, how are you?” exclaimed Sylvie, her arms entwined around her boyfriend and her short, black skirt hitched up to reveal a great deal of tanned thigh. “Heard the latest about Ross?”

  Sensitive to the name and swallowing hard, Grace shook her head. “No, what?”

  “It was in the paper today. He’s going to be a daddy! Lucky baby,” said Sylvie, who liked to keep her jealous boyfriend on his toes. She pouted and smiled at Grace. “Imagine having Ross Monahan as a father.”

  “Imagine,” echoed Grace automatically, moving toward the door. Desperation gripped her. She needed a drink, fast. And a copy of whichever newspaper had printed the news.

  “She’s a funny little thing,” murmured Sylvie as Grace sidled out of the café. “So quiet. She still doesn’t look well, does she?”

  “The quiet ones are the worst,” replied her boyfriend with a smirk. “I bet I could cheer her up, put a bit of color in her cheeks.”

  “Just try it,” retaliated Sylvie, bristling with jealousy. “And you’d find out what it feels like to have real color in your cheeks.”

  Chapter 20

  “My God,” shouted Holly, above the incredible noise of whirling propellers as the helicopter circled high above the racecourse. “I can’t believe how big it is!”

  “Ah, those words,” said Ross with a grin. “Music to my ears…” Holly burst out laughing, and Max stared pointedly out of the small side window, ignoring their ribaldry and wondering—not for the first time—how such a special and long-awaited day could have so rapidly deteriorated. What else, he ruminated, could go wrong now?

  But that didn’t even bear thinking about. Crazy Daisy, the all-black five-year-old with a mercurial temperament and all the determination of a crusader, meant the world to him. If anything should happen to her during the course of this afternoon’s big race, he didn’t know what he would do.

  He had hired the helicopter, a gleaming red-and-white, ludicrously expensive Bell Jet Ranger, for Francine and himself. When she had contacted him last week, all the old feelings had resurfaced. She was returning to England for a few days, she had told him, her husky, accented voice shimmering over the phone line from Normandy, and yes, she would adore to attend Ascot with Max to watch his horse competing in the race for the prestigious Amerson Cup.

  And then, the day before the race meeting, he had received not a phone call but an impersonal fax from Francine, bluntly informing him that she would not, after all, be able to come to England. Just that. No excuses, no apologies. He could only presume, bitterly, that some other suitor had arrived on the scene dangling a larger and more interesting carrot with which to entice her away.

  Hiding his disappointment, he had invited Ross to go with him instead. Ross, upon learning that the helicopter was a five-seater, had promptly said, “That’s great, we’ll take Tessa along with us.” And then, for some reason Max couldn’t fathom, Holly King had managed to weasel her way on board, and his carefully planned outing à deux had disintegrated completely. Holly kept prattling on about some fortune-teller and the vital importance of dark horses. She prattled on, full stop. Her ridiculous outfit, with its geranium-red lace and gravity-defying matching hat, may have been suitable for Ladies’ Day, but for a race meeting in blustery March it was ludicrously inappropriate.

  It was all bitterly disappointing. Max wished, now more than ever as they began their noisy descent, that he had driven up to the meeting instead. Alone.

  But when the helicopter finally came to rest on the wind-flattened grass and the doors slid open, even Max’s sense of irritation was banished. The electric atmosphere of Race Day and the buzz of excitement and adrenaline were irresistible. Ross lifted Tessa down, and Max turned to help Holly, who was teetering on the step in scarlet high heels. At least her overpowering scent would be diluted now that they were out in the open air, he thought with amused resignation, although in that dress there wasn’t a hope in hell of losing her in the crowd.

  Hanging on to Max, Holly jumped. By the time her feet touched the ground, her ruffled skirt was up around her waist, exposing emerald-green French knickers, pale, plump thighs, and bright-pink garter belts.

  Holly was out to impress Max, but she hadn’t planned on going quite this far. Not so soon, anyway. With a shriek of embarrassment, she tugged her dress down to her knees and almost fell over because her heels had sunk into the soft ground. Ross roared with laughter.

  “If you were a gentleman you’d lend her your shoes,” protested Tessa.

  “If Holly were a lady,” Ross countered, “she wouldn’t own a flamingo-pink garter belt, let alone wear one.” Winking at Holly, he added, “In public.”

  • • •

  Over a light lunch in the Arundel Restaurant at the east end of the grandstand, Max’s mood continued to improve. He had been to visit Crazy Daisy, who was on great form, and whom the good-to-soft track surface suited to perfection. Ross was chatting to an old college friend and drinking champagne, and Holly and Tessa were poring over the racing pages of the Sporting Times, studying form and pretending to know what they were talking about. Holly, who was still obsessed with dark horses, wanted to put a tenner each way on Black Monday in the first race. Tessa, listing her own prospective winners, was taking more notice of the colors of the jockeys’ silks than of the horses’ prowess. Pink and lilac, to match her own oversized striped blazer and loose top and trousers, featured heavily among her selection. Women, thought Max with exasperation, had a bizarre logic all their own. Particularly Tessa Duvall. He still hadn’t made up his mind about her at all.

  • • •

  Tessa, despite her earlier misgivings, was also enjoying herself. When Ross had invited her to make up a threesome with Max and himself, she had laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea. An uneasy truce was one thing, but Max—whom she suspected was more taken with Francine Lalonde than he let on—hadn’t been in the sunniest of moods since his return from Amalfi. His occasional barbed comments and cynical looks served as a reminder of what he really thought of her.

  But even as she had been ticking off on her fingers all the reasons why her presence at the races would ruin everyone’s day, Holly had interceded.

  “But it’s fate, Tess!” she’d exclaimed, grabbing the sleeve of Ross’s jacket in her excitement. “Don’t you see? When Rosa Polonowski talked about my dark horse, I didn’t even know that Max had bought Crazy Daisy. And it’s doubly significant because Max is my dark horse… Oh, Tess, it could change my whole life. We have to go!”

  “We?
” queried Tessa, glancing across at Ross and marveling at Holly’s nerve. But Ross, recognizing that Tessa would go if Holly went with them, agreed at once.

  “No problem,” he said, grinning at Holly. “It’s a five-seater. And you have the day off anyway. That’s settled then.”

  Tessa frowned. “But won’t…?”

  “Leave Max to me,” said Ross, blithely ignoring the prospect of his brother’s wrath. “I’m sure he’ll understand when I tell him that it could change his whole life.”

  • • •

  After lunch they made their way through the crowds down to the first floor where the betting shops were situated. Tessa was shocked when she heard Ross placing his bets. She was putting a pound on each horse, and he was pushing piles of tenners across the counter, joking with the cashier and stuffing the betting slips into his back pocket as casually as if they were bus tickets.

  And he knew so many people, she thought in bemusement. They’d only arrived an hour and a half ago, and already he’d bumped into a dozen or so old friends and acquaintances.

  They simply led different lives, she reminded herself as they headed off to watch the first race. Different lifestyles, different values. And because of those fundamental differences they could never share a real relationship.

  So it was sad, but hardly a revelation. Vowing not to let it spoil their day, she allowed Ross to take her hand and guide her toward the crowded staircase.

  “Pregnant woman,” he announced, so that all around him could hear. “Come on, make way for the pregnant woman. Take deep breaths, darling, and time those contractions. And, for heaven’s sake, try not to give birth during the race.”

  • • •

  Crazy Daisy was running in the third race of the afternoon. Having won only one race so far this season, she was considered to be pretty much of an outsider at 66–1. Max, behaving like an anxiety-ridden father, told anyone who would listen that while, of course, she wouldn’t win, there was always a chance that she might be placed. When Colin Eames, Daisy’s trainer, visited them briefly in their box high above the grandstand, he whispered to Tessa that she should put her money on Hard as Nails, the 7–4 second favorite.