Bloody sodding everything.
He’d been everything I liked in a man. Or I thought he had been for a few days, which was longer than some of my previous relationships, which, let’s be honest, were three-legged donkeys from day one even though I clung on to some of them like grim death.
Gabriel had been handsome, well-mannered, charming, solvent (if the limo was anything to judge by), intelligent (he did say he was lawyer) and fantastic in bed. Not necessarily in that order of course. And despite the champagne slinging at our first meeting, he’d seemed to like me too. I think. Or at least he’d found me attractive enough to take to bed. And then of course, just as I was starting to go a bit silly over him, I’d found out what he was like. Divorced (not that it mattered) and, if Marnie was to be believed, not as straightforward as he seemed.
He had been sensational in bed. But did that matter? Was that really significant? Was he always sensational in bed with every woman he managed to persuade to join him?
Probably.
But was anything about it meaningful?
No, probably not.
Oh well, what did matter? That I had found him sexy and irresistible or that we had enjoyed each other’s company? And he’d saved my sister from a scary situation. That had been quite something. I wished I’d known so I could have thanked him.
I finished my gin and tonic and got out of the bath. Then I went and poured another drink and sat and sulked in front of the television for a couple of hours watching some crap programme about life in the country and a charity’s battle to save some frigging beetle.
I suppose I should have gone back to my own bed at the end of the garden but it was dark outside now and raining. So when I had exhausted the rather restricted choice of TV channels my parents were happy to live with, I went up to my old room and switched on the electric blanket while I cleaned my teeth.
The Reine de France would have left Southampton by now, taking another fifteen hundred passengers off on an adventure. Someone else would be sitting at ‘our’ table. Amil would be fashioning towel swans for another couple. The boys and girls of the dance troupe would be flashing their eyes and teeth at a new audience. I wondered if they were doing the tribute to Cabaret again and firing up a different group of elderly gentlemen?
I got into bed and lay looking at the painted bookcase under the window that still held my battered collection of childhood paperbacks. Pony stories, boarding school adventures, and a whole shelf of unrealistic romances where the girl (bright, kind and lovely but misunderstood) takes her glasses off and the handsome boy dumps the class flirt, falls in love and proposes.
I wondered what Gabriel was doing. Had he gone to a hotel? Was he unpacking his cases and sending his clothes to the laundry?
I thought for a moment I was going to cry. Perhaps it was the gin; it has that effect on me sometimes.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cobbler
Sherry, Maraschino Liqueur, Sugar Syrup, Pineapple and Orange Juice
I woke up the following morning feeling completely disorientated. Where was I? I wasn’t on board ship. I wasn’t in the flat I had shared with Karen. I wasn’t in the dull little bedroom in the granny annexe with its louvered wardrobe doors and striped curtains that didn’t quite close. I seemed to have slipped back several years to my childhood and finding In the Fifth at Malory Towers facedown on the floor didn’t help either.
What day was it? For the life of me I couldn’t work it out. I went to find my phone and realised it was Saturday. Thank heavens. I wasn’t due into work until Monday; everyone had assumed we would need the weekend to get over our jet lag. (Of course we didn’t have jet lag, the ship’s time had gone forward by an hour every day to take care of that.)
I went downstairs to find a carton of long-life milk in the pantry, took some bread out of the freezer, made toast and tea and took everything back up to bed. I had things to do and, following the diktat from Marnie Miller’s talk, I certainly didn’t need any more alcohol; I needed to unpack my badly packed cases and get my laundry done. And then go shopping for some food. And do a load of domestic stuff. A day of unparalleled boredom stretched ahead.
I was tempted to phone my sister but India would probably still be in bed frolicking around with Jerry. I guessed she wouldn’t welcome a call from me complaining about having no fresh milk.
I thought about yesterday morning, waking up on the Reine de France. Was it really only yesterday? It felt like an age. I remembered the endless stream of breakfast foods that appeared every morning in the food court. The variety and choices. A cross-faced woman complaining in shrill outrage yesterday morning because there weren’t any blueberry muffins. The numberless polite and smiling staff who took all the debris and washing up away.
I sat up in bed, looking out at the wet garden, munching my toast and trying to get motivated to do something other than feel a bit sad.
Ridiculous. For heaven’s sake buck up.
I’d had a great couple of weeks; I’d seen parts of New England I’d never expected to see. I’d had some lovely meals and explored the world of cocktails. I’d learned how to fold towels into elephants and arrange fruit. I could waltz badly and foxtrot worse. I’d not been seasick or contracted food poisoning. I’d had the best sex of my life. Now that’s what I called a holiday.
I dressed and went to sort out my laundry, shoving the first load into Mum’s washing machine. Well, she had washing tablets and I didn’t. She even had ironing water and I didn’t know she ironed.
I thought about my parents, still out in Australia enjoying temperatures over eighty degrees and checking under the loo seat for poisonous spiders. I sat hunched on a bar-stool with another cup of tea in my mother’s immaculate kitchen, everything working, everything to hand. Washing tablets, bin liners, toothpaste, gin. The family joke, that my mother was the most disorganised, domestically resentful woman in the world, was such a farce. She obviously wasn’t.
A thought of shocking magnitude hit me and I sat up a bit straighter. Would I ever get to be as orderly as she obviously was? Did it come with time? You forgot to buy loo roll once too often and suddenly some fifth gear kicked in and you became an adult with shopping lists and a proper purse with money-off coupons in the back? Was this a Spring-Clean Your Life moment? Yes, it was.
I was nearly thirty and I was still living with my parents. India was a few weeks away from her wedding and becoming Mrs Jeremy Sinclair and probably nine months away from motherhood (or at least I hoped she was). Despite this we both still had keys to our parents’ house and thought nothing of taking food out of the freezer or alcohol and barbeque charcoal and shampoo. My mother had even been trying to address the problem of my lack of a boyfriend by suggesting monumentally unsuitable candidates from the golf club. It was time I wised up and stopped drifting.
What would my parents have thought of Gabriel Frost with his grey eyes and broad, muscular shoulders and his voice and his clever hands and the way he smiled, how he had nibbled my neck, his tongue brushing –
Shut up, Alexa. This isn’t helping.
Instead of leaving my mug in the sink I washed and dried it and put it back in the cupboard. Then I tidied up my bedroom and changed the sheets and put the dirty ones plus the towels I’d used (and left on the bathroom floor) into the washing machine. There wasn’t a cabin steward to take care of it and it would be unfair to expect my mother to clear up after me.
Then I went back to the granny annexe and, for the first time, found a notebook and actually made a shopping list.
*
I went back to work on Monday. It was cold and raining and, as is often the case after an hour, it felt like I had never been away. Charlie Smith-Rivers, the branch manager from Exeter, had been holding the fort and it showed. The office was tidy, there were no in-trays filled with bits of paper or mosaics of Post-it notes across the top of every computer screen.
He held out a sheet of paper to me as I struggled out of my coat.
‘I just wanted you to see what’s been going on,’ he said with a wolfish smile, ‘while you’ve been dancing around the pool in your bikini.’
I took the sheet of paper and scanned through it. There was no doubt he’d done a great job in our absence. But it didn’t make him any less irritating. He was the sort of man who wore a cravat in his leisure moments and referred to his wife, Irene, as ‘the little girlie’.
‘Don’t be daft, Charlie, I’ve been to New York, Nova Scotia and then across the Atlantic. Not exactly bikini territory.’
He turned round as the door pinged. ‘Ah, how wonderful, and here is the blushing bride-to-be!’
Blimey, India was on time for once.
She came in, dropped her umbrella in the stand and sat down with a heavy sigh at her desk.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ she said, ‘I thought you were back in Exeter this morning?’
Subtle subtext: why are you here annoying us?
‘Just wanted to welcome the weary travellers home again,’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘Ha ha ha, and now you have the wedding to look forward to. He’s a lucky chap, your Jerry. Youth is wasted on the young, eh?’
‘Thank you so much, Charlie, I can see you’ve done a fantastic job.’ I waved the sheet of paper at him. ‘All this progress in such a short time. I think we ought to have a team meeting, India,’ I said, fixing Tim, the other member of our staff, who was cowering behind his computer screen, with a meaningful look.
Tim rolled his eyes, ducked even lower and started madly typing.
We finally persuaded Charlie to leave after half an hour, India almost forcing the door closed on his questions about the wedding and had she missed Jerry and was it nice to be back together again?
Tim looked out over the top of his screen. ‘Has he gone?’ he asked.
I watched Charlie saunter down the road and into his ancient Bentley.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Thank God, the last two weeks have been a trial, I don’t mind admitting. My aunt says I’m not sleeping properly.’
I looked at my watch; it was nearly ten o’clock.
‘Poor Tim, let’s get some doughnuts and then start our meeting,’ I said.
‘No!’ India yelped. ‘I’ve put on five pounds! Haven’t you? I’m like a big fat tub of lard! I’ll never get into my wedding dress if I carry on like this!’
She sat up straight and pulled at some non-existent flab around her middle.
I hadn’t actually dared get on my own scales but undoubtedly my work trousers were a bit tighter than I remembered them being. But I actually wanted and needed a doughnut. I hadn’t had any breakfast because I’d been awake for most of the night and of course fallen into a deep sleep round about six o’clock.
I slipped Tim a fiver and sent him off to the bakery down the road, with India’s call of nothing for me, thanks echoing in his ears.
I started reading the hundreds of emails that had lodged in my inbox during my two weeks away. As usual there were dozens of stupid fake coupons for shops I never went into and a couple of notifications about my long-lost uncle/aunt/friend/work colleague who had died in Poland leaving me a fortune/gold mine/artwork/house. Jolly careless my long-lost relatives.
I even had a frisson of anticipation, wondering if Gabriel had sent me an email.
Of course he hadn’t. He didn’t know my email address. Duh.
Across the other side of the office India was snorting with amusement at some of her emails. I expect they were from Jerry with a load of lewdness and shared advertisements for wedding lingerie, concerning which he’d been more involved than India had expected.
‘He’s such a fool,’ she murmured. ‘Honestly, he’s supposed to be in court this morning. What’s he doing sending me this stuff?’
‘More balconette bras and thongs?’
‘I’d be trussed up and oven ready in some of these,’ she said, ‘and, let’s be fair, if he thought I was wearing that one he’d be completely unable to concentrate. D’you want to see?’
‘Um, no thanks, Indie, I’ll pass if it’s all the same.’
We locked eyes and giggled. Things had definitely changed. I could feel it in the air and even after a rotten night’s sleep I felt happier, lighter.
The phone rang and India answered it. By her expression I thought I could guess who it was. An incredibly annoying couple who wanted to buy a house they couldn’t afford, who thought the vendors might eventually be persuaded by their rather insulting offers.
There was a pause while Mr Harvey wittered down the phone at her.
‘Well, the Mitchells had three valuations and they all agreed … no, it’s not a conspiracy … yes, you’re right, it is an expensive property, I will agree … the trouble is … the trouble … the trouble is they are in no hurry to move … yes, but sometimes life isn’t fair. Right, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
At that moment Tim came back through the door with a nice-looking brown paper bag with grease stains already seeping through it.
‘Doughnuts,’ he said. ‘Two of the little beauties.’
‘What! Didn’t you get me one?’ India pouted.
‘Of course I did, only teasing. I never listen when you tell me not to buy you cake. I got six actually.’
I went out to make coffee in the kitchenette and when I got back they were both on phone calls.
I sat down at my desk and suddenly felt that awful, deflated, post-holiday feeling you get on the first day back in the office. When you realise it really is all over. That I was back to real life and the cumbersome beast lumbering towards us that was my sister’s wedding.
Having taken two phone calls, India now felt able to start googling bridesmaids’ dresses. She found outfits for the three flower girls pretty easily and then she started looking on my behalf. Which meant that nothing got done because she was too busy waving me over to come and look at what she’d found. In the end both of us were googling bridesmaids’ dresses and Tim was answering all the phone calls. After an hour or so we found a few possibles and India decided I would need to go out on Saturday and try them on.
I clicked off the myriad pictures of flouncy, frothy, slinky and downright ghastly dresses India had been suggesting so that I was only left with a generic news page open. And there she was. Right in front of me. Marnie Miller on the front page of the news. Looking all sad and pouty.
I gave a strangled scream and India looked up.
‘What?’
‘It’s Marnie bloody Miller! In the news.’
‘Well, she often is,’ India said, annoyingly calm under the circumstances.
I had clicked on the thumbnail to get the full story and yelped again.
There she was, in a demure grey dress with a white ruffled collar, her red curls tamed into a neat chignon so it looked strangely as though her head was being served up on a platter. And next to her, in a sharper than sharp lawyer-y suit, was Gabriel Frost.
‘You are not going to believe this,’ I said as I scanned down the page. ‘You are not going to frigging believe this.’
I didn’t quite believe it either.
‘Well, what is it?’ India said. She was about to come across to see when her phone rang.
I took advantage of my sister being distracted for a few minutes to read the full story and my heart plummeted like a plummeting thing. I could feel my mouth drying up – with shock I suppose.
‘Well?’ India said after a few minutes.
‘I don’t quite believe what I’ve just read,’ I said.
India took her phone off the hook and came racing across the room to look over my shoulder.
‘What?’ she said after a few dumbfounded seconds.
‘I know!’
Tim looked up from investigating his second doughnut, sugar all over his chops. ‘What? What’s happened?’
‘Marnie Miller is getting divorced!’ I nearly shouted.
Tim shrugged. ‘And this should mean something to me?’
I to
ok a deep breath.
‘Marnie Miller, you must have heard of her?’ Tim nodded. ‘Well, she was on our ship, giving talks about writing and spring-cleaning your life and getting rid of all the negative influences. If you did as she said you could be successful and happy and fulfilled. Not as totally fabulous as she is, of course, because she’s a brand not a human being, but pretty damn close.’ Tim looked bored at this point, so I got to the main event. ‘She was going on and on about how lovely her life was, how she had a gorgeous husband, Leo. How they had met and fallen in love, how perfect their life together was. This golden couple with their bloody gorgeous houses and shoe racks and their boat in the British Virgin Islands. Honestly it was like Hello! magazine on steroids. Well, it looks like they’re getting divorced and we had no idea!’
‘Good heavens,’ Tim said, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
India held up one finger. ‘She did have her lawyer with her. That should have been a clue, shouldn’t it? Gabriel Frost: he specialises in family law, which someone else said meant divorce. Of course!’
By now I was just googling Marnie Miller/divorce to see what would pop up. What popped up was another article from an American newspaper with a picture of Marnie Miller trying to hide her tears behind one hand as she made her way from her fabulous London penthouse flat into a blacked-out, waiting limo. And there was Gabriel with her, one arm around her, the other hand held palm out towards the camera in the classic protective pose.
‘International bestselling author and lifestyle expert Marnie Miller was tight-lipped last night as she left her London pied-à-terre. Rumours that she and her husband, Wall Street banker Leo Miller, were to divorce have been circulating for some days and were confirmed by a brief announcement from her lawyer Gabriel Frost (see picture). Heartthrob bachelor Mr Frost, one of London’s most high-profile and admired lawyers, has been her constant companion in the last few weeks and was with her when she arrived on the Reine de France at Southampton last week.’
So it was true? Wow.
I suddenly felt very cold and rather sick.
Come Away With Me Page 24