Sheer Mischief

by Jill Mansell

  “Of course you will,” said Mimi blithely. “And who would be absolutely perfect for the job? Janey.”

  “You’re shameless.” This time he was unable to hide his smile. “Do you know that? Quite apart from the fact that she has a shop to run, I’ve already told you, Janey isn’t my type.”

  Mimi, not believing him for a second, pulled the mohair cardigan more tightly around her vast bosom as a sudden gust of wind whistled down her cleavage.

  “You’re only a man,” she said, her tone comforting. “What would you know? You thought Serena was your type.”

  • • •

  “I have to get back,” said Maxine regretfully, stirring the surface of the water with her big toe and transferring an artful dollop of foam onto Bruno’s shoulder. “We can’t spend the rest of our lives lying in the bath. Besides, I’m starting to prune.”

  He reached for her hand and kissed her wrinkled fingertips one by one. “I don’t want you to go. Why don’t you give in your notice and come and live here with me?”

  “What, leave my job?”

  “I left Nina,” Bruno reminded her. “And my job. I’m not going to enjoy sitting around waiting for you to dash over here whenever you can manage to get a couple of hours off.”

  She grinned. “You’ve done it to enough women yourself, haven’t you? Now you can find out how it feels to be the one on the receiving end.”

  “I want us to be together,” he said crossly. “All the time.”

  He was sounding more and more like a fretful mistress. Leaning forward, Maxine gave him a kiss. “So do I, but then we’d both be unemployed. Besides, Guy’s been good to me—in his own way—and I can’t leave him in the lurch. Why don’t we just see how things go for a while before doing anything drastic?”

  “Well, thanks,” murmured Bruno, who felt he had already acted pretty drastically. But Maxine, in a hurry to get back to Trezale House, was climbing out of the bath and reaching for the larger of the two towels.

  “Don’t glare at me like that,” she said cheerfully. “You know what I mean. Look, I’ll have a word with Guy and see if we can’t come to some kind of arrangement. If he’s at home, maybe he’ll let me spend my nights here. And the kids are at school during the day…”

  “Such concern all of a sudden, for Guy Cassidy,” Bruno complained, watching as she eased herself into her jeans and bent to pick up her crumpled, white shirt. “He’s hardly likely to go out of his way to make things easier for us. He doesn’t even like me.”

  “Don’t worry.” Maxine winked. “I have ways of getting around Guy. Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.” He wasn’t used to feeling jealous, and he didn’t much like it. “That’s why I want you to come and live here.”

  “I don’t trust you either,” countered Maxine sweetly, doing up the last couple of buttons and knotting the shirttails around her waist. “So forget it. Because I’m not moving anywhere until you manage to persuade me that I can.”

  • • •

  Guy was leafing through a mound of contact sheets and eating a Marmite sandwich when Maxine rolled into the sitting room at seven.

  “You look as if you’ve just crawled out of bed,” he observed, taking in her tousled hair, bright eyes, and distinctly rumpled, white shirt.

  “It’s what you do when you’re in love.” She gave him an unrepentant smile.

  Josh and Ella were sprawled in front of the fire, their blond heads bent over a game of Monopoly. Glancing up, Josh said hopefully, “If you’ve been asleep all afternoon, I expect you’d like to play Monopoly now. I’ve nearly finished beating Ella.”

  Guy pushed the contact sheets to one side. “How was Janey?”

  “Happy.” Maxine rolled her eyes. “What can I say? He fed her some terrible line, and she fell for it. I just went along with the whole thing and pretended to be pleased for her.” Collapsing onto the floor next to Ella, who was biting her lip at the prospect of having to mortgage the Old Kent Road, she added, “But it was definitely the right thing to do. At the moment, she won’t hear a word against him.”

  “Hmm,” said Guy. “So I gathered. Your mother phoned earlier, wanting to speak to you.”

  Maxine pulled a face. If Thea had somehow heard about Bruno leaving Nina from outside sources, it was entirely possible that she was in for a lecture. Her mother was sensitive about such matters. “Oh.” She looked wary. “Did she say what about?”

  “In Technicolor detail.” Guy glanced across at the children to make sure they weren’t listening. “And it isn’t good news. She went around to Janey’s place this afternoon and told Alan exactly what she thought of him. It didn’t go down well at all,” he explained. “She and Janey had a screaming row, and Janey ended up booting her out of the flat.”

  “Hell.” Maxine heaved a gusty sigh. “Poor Mum. I suppose I should have warned her. Now we’ve got a family feud on our hands. Was she upset?”

  “Upset, no. Angry, yes.” He half smiled, recalling the colorful language Thea Vaughan had employed during the course of their forty-minute conversation. “But with herself as much as anything. She realizes now that she made a mistake.”

  “Daddy, can you lend me two thousand pounds?” asked Ella in desperation. “To stop me going bankrupt.”

  “She also warned me that I had all this to come,” Guy went on, shaking his head wearily. “Apparently, raising daughters is the pits. One calamity after another.”

  “That means no,” declared Josh, merciless in victory. “Good, you’re bankrupt. You’ve lost and I’ve won. Come on, Maxine, you’re next. I’m the racing car, and you can be the old boot.”

  “Good old Mum,” said Maxine. “She always was about as subtle as Simon Cowell.”

  “She certainly has character.” Guy grinned. “She sounded fun, though. I’d like to meet her.”

  “Now there’s a thought! Janey and I were only saying this morning that what you need is a woman in your life.” Maxine’s dark eyes glittered with mischief. “Maybe I should introduce you to my mother.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Janey was in the shop putting the finishing touches to a congratulations-on-your-retirement bouquet when Guy came in.

  “They’re nice.” He nodded at the autumnal flowers.

  “For Miss Stirrup, with love from Class 2C.” Having trimmed and curled the bronze and gold ribbons holding the bouquet together, Janey reached for the staple gun and clipped the accompanying card to the cellophane wrapper. “She’s a complete dragon. She was my English teacher, always sticking the whole class in detention when the weather was good and all we wanted to do was go tearing off down to the beach. I was tempted to write out ‘Have a Happy Retirement’ a hundred times,” she added with a grin. “And spell ‘retirement’ wrong, just to annoy her.”

  She was looking well and happy, Guy realized. The habitual working uniform of jeans and T-shirt had been replaced by a pastel-pink wool dress, which flattered both her figure and coloring. She was wearing makeup too, not a great deal but enough to make a difference. The overall effect was one of renewed confidence and cheerfulness. So far, he decided, everything appeared to be going well.

  But he still couldn’t bring himself to raise the subject of the long-lost husband’s miraculous return. Instead, sticking to safer ground, he placed a large manila envelope on the counter.

  “I’m just on my way up to London. I thought I’d drop this in before I left. Go on. Open it. It’s for you.”

  “Really?” Janey gave him a playful look. “What is it, more wages?”

  Guy smiled. “Afraid not.”

  “Oh!” As the photograph slid out of the envelope, she caught her breath. “Oh my God…this is amazing. I can’t believe it’s really me.”

  As soon as he had developed Friday night’s films, taken purely in order to test out the latest Olympus, Guy had known he had so
mething special. The particular miracle of photography, he always felt, was the fact that although technical expertise played a part, it was never everything. The best camera in the world, coupled with perfect lighting and the most compliant subjects, could produce adequate but ultimately disappointing results, whereas occasionally—and for no apparent reason—an off-the-cuff, unplanned snap of a shutter succeeded in capturing a mood, an expression, a moment in time to perfection.

  He had felt at once, even as he pegged up the still-dripping print in the darkroom, that this was one such success. It didn’t happen often, but it had happened last Friday, and the result was almost magical. Unaware of the camera, Janey had hoisted Ella into her arms in order to give her a clear view of Josh on the bumper cars. Their faces, close together, were alight with shared laughter. Ella’s small fingers, curled around Janey’s neck, conveyed love and trust. The only slightly out-of-focus background managed to capture both the excitement and noise of the fairground. Ella’s childish elation and Janey’s pride and delight in Josh’s prowess at the wheel of his bumper car were reflected with such astonishing clarity, it almost brought a lump to the throat. Unposed, unrehearsed, and using only natural available light, it was the kind of one-in-a-million shot all photographers seek to achieve. Guy, having achieved it, had known at once where its future lay.

  “I don’t know much about this kind of thing,” said Janey, who was still studying the print intently. She hesitated, then glanced up at him. “But it is good, isn’t it? I mean seriously good.”

  “I think so.”

  “It has…impact.” The fact that she was featured in the picture was irrelevant. Shaking her head, she struggled to express herself more clearly. “You can…feel it. I don’t think anyone could look at this photograph and not respond. And how strange, we look like—”

  “Like what?” Guy prompted half-teasingly, but she shook her head once more and didn’t reply. Against the darker background, which had created a kind of halo effect, both Ella’s hair and her own appeared white blond, and the camera angle had managed to capture a similarity in their bone structure. But the fact that they looked like mother and daughter was sheer chance, a mere trick of the lens, and far too embarrassing to voice aloud.

  Instead, she said simply, “I love it. Thank you.”

  “And now I have a favor to ask.” Guy, who knew exactly what had been going through her mind, was amused by her reluctance to comment on the apparent resemblance between Ella and herself. “I was approached by a children’s charity a couple of weeks ago. They’re mounting a national appeal, and they’ve asked for my help.”

  “Raising money?” He had given her the photograph. Janey, happy to return the favor, was eager to help. “What can I do, keep a collecting tin here on the counter? I did a stint once, rattling a tin on a street corner for the RSPCA.” With a grin, she added, “I did brilliantly too. It wasn’t until three hours later I realized most of my shirt buttons were undone. All those men stuffing pound coins into my tin had been getting an eyeful of my boobs, and there I was saying thank you and thinking what lovely, caring people they were.”

  “All these months I’ve known you,” Guy drawled, “and I never figured you for a topless model.”

  “It was almost worse than topless.” Janey cringed at the memory. “I was wearing a really awful old bra held together with a safety pin. Talk about mortifying.”

  “Well, you can rattle a tin if you want to, but that wasn’t what I had in mind.” Leaning against the counter, Guy tapped the photograph with a forefinger. “You see, they asked me to come up with the advertising poster for the campaign. With your permission, I’d like to use this.”

  She stared at him. “You’re joking.”

  “Why would I joke? It’s perfect. As you said yourself, you can’t look at this picture and not feel something. With any luck,” he added with a wink, “the public will look at it and feel compelled to donate pots of money.”

  At that moment, the door to the shop opened behind him. Guy could almost have guessed without turning around that the waft of Paco Rabanne aftershave and accompanying footsteps belonged to Alan Sinclair. Janey had gone two shades pinker, and her hand reached automatically to her hair.

  But he turned anyway, taking his first look at the man who had caused her such untold grief. He saw what he had expected too: blond, boyish good looks, an air of laid-back charm, the kind of features typical of a man who knew he stood a greater than average chance of taking risks and getting away with them. The urge to launch right in and tell Alan Sinclair exactly what he thought of him was compelling, but it was a luxury he was unable to allow himself. Thea had tried, and failed spectacularly. For once in her life, he reflected, Maxine had been right.

  “Darling…I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” Janey sounded both pleased and flustered. “Guy, this is Alan, my husband. Alan, meet Guy Cassidy…um, Maxine’s boss.”

  Guy was not a vain man. He nevertheless knew from experience that other men, upon meeting him for the first time, instinctively mistrusted him with their own wives or girlfriends. Even if the women didn’t appear overtly interested—although, he had to admit, they frequently did—the men grew jealous. It was going to be interesting, he decided, to see how Janey’s husband would react.

  Alan, however, appeared disappointingly unfazed. There were no gritted teeth behind the cheerful smile as he shook Guy’s hand.

  “Of course,” he said easily. “It’s really nice to meet you. Janey’s told me all about you and your family. I’m also a great admirer of your work.”

  “Thank you.” The boy had charm, thought Guy. And since he must be almost thirty, he wasn’t even a boy; it was simply the impression he gave of being not altogether grown up.

  “Look, darling. Guy dropped by to show me this picture.” Touching the back of Alan’s wrist in order to regain his attention, Janey pushed the photograph into his hand. “He wants to use it for a poster advertising a charity fund-raising campaign. What do you think? Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Alan studied the print for several seconds, clearly impressed. Finally, flicking back his blond hair, he nodded. “It is. Maxine must be over the moon. Fame at last.”

  Guy bit his lip. That was always the trouble with deserting your wife, he thought with derision. When you eventually came back, you didn’t always recognize her.

  “You idiot,” giggled Janey. “This isn’t Maxine. It’s me.”

  “Oh, right.” Unperturbed by his mistake, Alan took another look and nodded. Turning to address Guy, he said casually, “Very flattering. That’s why you’re so in demand as a photographer, of course. It’s all clever stuff.”

  Guy barely trusted himself to speak. No wonder Janey was so lacking in self-confidence, he thought bitterly. Between the pair of them, Alan and Bruno had sapped her of every last ounce of the stuff.

  “Flattery doesn’t come into it.” He had observed Janey’s crestfallen expression. His dark-blue eyes glittered as he removed the photograph from Alan Sinclair’s grasp. “The picture was there, waiting to be taken. All I did was capture it on film.”

  “Of course.” Apparently realizing his mistake, Alan shrugged and smiled once more. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t implying otherwise. And I think it’ll make a great campaign poster.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” sighed Janey. “This is so exciting.”

  “Not to mention well-timed.” Slipping his arm around her waist, Alan gave her a brief, congratulatory hug. “Maybe now we’ll be able to take that vacation after all.” He turned to look at Guy. “How much will she be getting for this?”

  Guy stared at him. Janey, whose color had only just reverted to normal, went bright pink all over again.

  “Alan, it’s for a charity campaign! The idea is to raise money. I wouldn’t be paid!”

  “Oh.” The disappointment was evident in his voice. This time, when he glanced down at
the print, it was without interest. “Shame.”

  “I have to go.” Guy looked at his watch. Janey was embarrassed, which was maybe no bad thing, although if anyone should be ashamed it was her husband. “Look, I’m presenting the idea to the organizers this afternoon. When they make their final decision, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Oh dear,” said Alan when Guy had left the shop. “Did I put my foot in it?”

  “Both feet.” Janey busied herself with a bucket of moss. She had two wreaths to complete before lunch. “I can’t believe you said that. God knows what Guy must have thought.”

  “It was a simple enough mistake.” He looked injured. “These models get paid thousands for a couple of hours’ work, don’t they? I was only looking after your interests. Why should you be ripped off just because you’re a friend?”

  “Well, nobody’s being ripped off.” Shuddering at the memory of the look on Guy’s face, she began packing the damp moss around the wire base of the first wreath. “It’s for a children’s charity. Nobody’s getting paid.”

  Alan had almost entirely lost interest by now. “In that case, I can’t imagine why you’re so excited about it. God, I’m starving. Is there anything to eat upstairs?”

  “Not unless you’ve bought some food.” Irritated by his manner, Janey’s reply bordered on sarcasm. “Since I’ve been working since five o’clock this morning, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to visit the supermarket.”

  He was immediately contrite. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Well.” In her agitation, she narrowly missed slicing her finger on a protruding wire. “Just don’t expect gourmet meals, OK? I’m not Superwoman.”

  “You are to me.” Alan gave her his most beguiling smile. Leaning across the counter and pulling her toward him, he kissed her soft, downturned mouth. “Don’t be cross, Janey. You know how much I love you.”

  She was still tense. He really had upset her. When she didn’t reply, he smoothed a wayward strand of blond hair from her cheek and said, “Come on, sweetheart. What is it? Is there something going on that I should know about?”