by Liz Harris
‘I doubt I’ll be going anywhere with Tom,’ she wept. Gabriela tightened her grip on Evie’s shoulders.
‘Are you crying because Tom has just told you that he is unable to see you tomorrow? If you are, it will only be because he is too busy, there could be no other reason. Or has he said that there is some other reason, and is that why you are crying?’
‘No, it’s nothing to do with Tom. Well, it is, but not like that.’ She turned to Gabriela, her face bleak. ‘Oh, Gabriela, I’ve been really, really stupid and I don’t know how to get out of the mess I’ve got myself into. I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, I do. For this minute, anyway. You say we are close to where you live, so we shall go there, sit down and have a coffee, and you will tell me what has happened. Then I shall tell you what you should do, and you will soon be full of smiles again. Come now, Evie. You have been a good friend to me all week. It’s my turn now to be a good friend to you. Let me help you with your problem. Now, where is your house?’
With Gabriela’s arm still around Evie’s shoulders, they started walking again.
Chapter Nineteen
Run, Evie, run!
‘You make yourself comfortable while I get you a drink,’ Gabriela ordered. ‘Have you any wine? I think that maybe you need something stronger than coffee. You have obviously had a terrible shock and wine will be the best thing for it.’
‘A glass of wine sounds good. Thanks, Gabriela. You’ll find some bottles over there in the corner.’ She indicated a small wine rack under the window. Gabriela went and took two bottles from it.
A few minutes later, she returned from the kitchen with the bottles and two glasses. ‘This will help you feel better,’ she said as she sat down opposite Evie and poured them each a glass.
Her tears slowing down, Evie wiped her eyes again.
Gabriela pushed one of the wine glasses towards Evie and picked up her glass. ‘I believe it is right to say Cheers,’ she said, ‘when it is the first time you are in a place. Cheers!’ She waited for Evie to raise her glass, and together they began to drink their wine. After a couple of sips, Gabriela put her glass back on the table.
‘You’re right,’ Evie said. ‘The wine’s hitting the spot. Good thinking, Gabriela. With this, plus what I’ve already had at Wagamama, I’ll sleep like a log tonight and I’ll see things more clearly in the morning. Cheers, indeed!’ She took another drink, and sat back, clutching the glass in her hands.
Gabriela raised herself slightly, leaned across the coffee table and re-filled Evie’s nearly empty glass.
Evie raised her glass to her lips again, had another drink, then put the glass down on the table and looked across at Gabriela. ‘You know, you’re being really nice, and all I’ve done is made you have a later night than you wanted, and change our plans for tomorrow.’
Gabriela gave her a warm smile ‘I’m here for a year, Evie,’ she said. ‘There will be other Saturday mornings at Camden Lock. You are what is important now. Nothing else matters.’ She picked up her glass and took a small sip. ‘Cheers!’ she said, raising it again with a little laugh. ‘This time it is because I see your face looking better now. I think you are now feeling that things are not so bad as you first thought.’
‘Wrong. Things aren’t bad – they’re fucking awful. I’ve screwed up big time. Oops.’ Evie pushed herself upright and stared at Gabriela. ‘Naughty me. That was rude of me. I shouldn’t talk like that in front of you. ’Snot polite. Cheers anyway.’ She clanked her glass against Gabriela’s before cradling it against her chest once again. Some of the wine spilled on to her top. ‘And that’s not polite either,’ she muttered looking down at the wet patch. ‘Naughty wine.’ She wiped the damp spot with her hand. More wine spilled. ‘Only one thing to do,’ she said with a giggle, and she drank the rest of the wine in the glass and put the glass back on the table.
Gabriela filled it again.
‘Now that you feel a little better, this is perhaps the time to tell me what has happened to upset you so much.’
Evie sat back against the sofa and sighed deeply. ‘There’s not much to tell. I’ve got myself into a pickle – that means into a mess, you know – and I can’t see how to get myself out of it. It’s a nasty mess, mess, mess. But you mustn’t worry, good friend Gabriela.’ She waved her finger vaguely in Gabriela’s direction. ‘I’ll sort it out, one way or another. I know I will.’
She felt her cheeks begin to redden and she started to cry again.
‘This is all your fault.’ Her words ended in a hiccup. ‘You being so nice has started me off again. Don’t be nice to me. Be mean and nasty. I order you.’
‘Please tell me what’s wrong, Evie,’ Gabriela said gently. She went round the table and sat on the sofa next to Evie. ‘Seeing you so unhappy is making me unhappy, too. Please let me help you. In this next year, I may need help from you. But how can I ask you for help if you will not let me help you now?’
‘It’s just such a silly thing really.’ Evie shook her head from side to side, dismissively. ‘I’m probably fussing about it and I shouldn’t be. I can fuss for England. Rachel and Jess will tell you.’
‘You said it’s something to do with Tom. What did he do?’ Gabriela’s voice was warm and sympathetic.
‘He didn’t do anything. It’s what I did to him. Or was supposed to do to him. But I won’t.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, if you really, really want to know, a magazine sent me to work for Tom, not an agency. I wish it had been an agency. The magazine – well, it’s a filthy rag, really - wanted me to find out if something they suspected about him was true.’ She cocked her head to one side and stared at Gabriela. ‘Does that make sense? Maybe it does, I don’t know.’ She looked back at her knees. ‘Anyway, I’d only just joined them, but I was given the job because I could speak Italian. Not many people speak Italian as it’s not taught in schools, you know? Don’t know why ’cos lots of English people go there.’
‘I’m guessing that Tom was about to go to Italy and needed an interpreter.’
‘Brownie point! You’re a good guesser, Gabriela. There was I, on the staff, able to speak the lingo. The editor couldn’t believe his luck.’
‘And Tom didn’t know anything about the magazine?’
‘Good God, no! He thought I was an agency temp.’
‘I take it this magazine – this filthy rag, as you call it – is one of those celebrity magazines that are so popular here?’
‘Celebrity gossip, muckraking, whatever. Yup, one of those. I’d only taken the bloody job because I was desperate to work for a magazine and that was all I could get. I’d been trying for over a year. It’s amazing how you can kid yourself that working for a rag like that will help you to get a job on a top magazine. It’s amazing, but I did just that. Even more amazing, I thought I’d be able to do the job without writing anything nasty about anyone. I must have been mad. Mad and stupid.’
‘But you now know that this is not for you, so you can leave … what did you say the magazine’s name was?’
‘Pure Dirt.’
‘… so you can leave Pure Dirt and keep on trying to find work on a better magazine. I don’t understand why you are crying.’
Evie leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. Tears fell down her cheeks. ‘It’s not that simple,’ she said at last, her voice wobbling. ‘I want to be the person who tells Tom why I really went to Italy with him. It must be me …’ Her voice trailed off and she paused.
‘Which is the right thing to do,’ Gabriela prompted.
‘So when I spoke to the shitty editor last Tuesday, I told him I’d send in the story at the end of next week, on Friday. Friday’s the day we originally agreed. But really I was going to pack in the job on Friday, and tell Tom the truth on Friday evening or on Saturday. Not tomorrow night. I absolutely don’t want to tell Tom tomorrow. I mustn’t. But now I must.’ She looked at Gabriela. ‘Does that make sens
e? It doesn’t, does it?’
‘I think something has happened to alter your plan. Something to do with the phone call. Am I right?’
‘Spot on. It was the editor on the phone. He wants – no, he insists on having the story on Wednesday morning at the very latest. They need to plan the layout with the text, he said, putting in photos and all that. At least that’s what he says. He’s going to publish the story a week on Monday. That’s the day that Tom starts his next big libel case, you know. He said anything I find out after Tuesday can go into a follow-up article in the next edition. It means I’m stuffed, Gabriela.’
Gabriela picked up Evie’s glass of wine and handed it to her. Evie took a sip. ‘Really stuffed,’ she repeated into the glass.
‘But it is only Friday today. There are still four more days before you must send a story. Is it necessary to speak to Tom tomorrow night? Can you not leave it in case you have an idea?’
She shook her head. ‘Tomorrow, it must be. He’s so busy that I won’t be able to see him again before next weekend.’
‘But anyway, you haven’t anything to give the editor, have you? Whatever they suspected about Tom will have been wrong, will it not? There cannot be anything in Tom’s life that is worth publishing. He’s an upright man. And as there is nothing to publish, there will be no need to say anything to Tom tomorrow. Is that not so?’
Evie turned away and looked down at the table. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gabriela open the second bottle of wine, lean across and refill her glass. She must have spilled more of her wine than she’d thought.
Gabriela sat back and delicately sipped from her glass. ‘This is a pleasant wine,’ she said. ‘Quite pleasant.’
‘Good or bad, it’s helping. It’s just what the doctor ordered. Here’s to you, Dr Gabriela.’ She raised her glass. ‘You knew exactly what I needed tonight. Down the hatch. D’you know that English expression? It means down the hatch.’
‘Tom’s life will have been blameless, I’m sure. You will have found nothing that could be of interest to your editor.’
Evie gave a dismissive shrug. ‘’Smazing what rags like Pure Dirt can do with teensy weensy innocent little things. So he and Zizi went out to dinner a few times. That’s all it was. No affair, just dinner with a friend. But that slob of an editor would say they’d been sleeping together during the trial. Think how it would look, Tom telling the court that Zizi had a stainless reputation and hadn’t been having an affair outside her marriage, while all the time sleeping with her. Pure Dirt would love the irony in that! It would all be lies, but he couldn’t prove it. Not good.’
‘Firstly, what Tom does is no one’s business. And secondly, Tom could bring a case against the editor for lying, could he not?’
‘It would be very difficult to prove. I’ve seen enough TV shows about lawyers to know that a barrister would ask him in court if he’d ever had a candlelight dinner alone with Zizi, and he’d have to say yes. Even if they didn’t have the photo proof, he wouldn’t lie – not Tom. The man would then point out Tom’s history of dishonest behaviour as a young barrister and everyone would believe that he had slept with Zizi during the trial. Tom would look bad and Zizi would probably have to return the money she’d won from Pure Dirt. After all, they’d shown she wasn’t such an angel after all.’
‘What do you mean, dishonest behaviour? Did Tom do something he shouldn’t have done when he was young?’
‘Something that would only seem important to other lawyers, but that wouldn’t stop my scumbag of an editor from making it sound like the crime of the century.’ Evie put her glass heavily on the table, and filled it again. ‘I must go to bed after this. Thanks to you, Gabriela, I shall sleep like a baby tonight.’ She leaned back, clutching her glass.
‘What did Tom do?’
‘Something about when he was getting ready for his first solo libel case, and he read something he shouldn’t have read. It had been sent to him by mistake. He should have sent it back without reading it, but he was so keen to do well that he broke the Bar rules.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Nothing happened. No one found out. He won his case and his career got off to a brilliant start.’
‘What Tom did with Zizi is not so serious. He has behaved as many men behave. Nor is the fax so very bad. This is so awful what these papers do.’
‘There’s a hidden agenda. Do you know what that means?
‘Yes, I do.’
‘The editor wants to wreck Tom’s career. He hates him as Tom’s got the better of him in court on several occasions. That’s the truth. Believe me, he’d go to town on the Tom and Zizi story. Yes, he would. And he’d make the fax thingy sound horrible.’ She waved her glass in the air. ‘The two together could be dynamite in his slimy hands.’
‘These things Tom has done are such unimportant things. We all do silly things in our life. But I know what you mean about these celebrity magazines. I’ve glanced at the ones we bought – everything in them is written in big letters and made to sound very naughty and very sensational.’
‘Naturally I’m not going to tell the editor anything at all about Tom. I was just trying to play for time so that we can go out together at least once – just once – without risking anything coming between us. But now, when I come clean to the editor on Tuesday, there’s a real risk that he’ll explode and go straight to Tom and paint me in the worst possible light. I can’t let that happen so I’m going to have to tell Tom the truth tomorrow, even though I know it’ll ruin everything.’ A tear rolled down her cheek.
‘Oh, Evie.’
‘I can’t let the editor tell him first.’ Gabriela handed her another tissue and she wiped her eyes.
‘You poor, poor thing. I can see that this is a difficult situation.’ Gabriela squeezed her hand in sympathy.
‘Don’t I know it?’
‘I don’t think you should tell him tomorrow, not if you want to make sure that you and Tom stay together.’
Evie stared at her. ‘What do you mean? What else can I do?’
Gabriela leaned forward. ‘You hold the cards, Evie. They are all in your hand – I think that that is the English expression – not in the editor’s hand. He wants the story that you have, or that he thinks you have, and this gives you the power.’
Evie stared at Gabriela thoughtfully, biting her lower lip. ‘I suppose it does. So what do you suggest I do?’ There was a flicker of hope in her eyes.
‘You should stay with your first instinct. You feel that you and Tom need an evening in which to get to know each other again, and you are right. This is very important and you do not want anything to spoil it for you.’
‘But the editor …’
‘You will tell your editor on Wednesday morning, or better still, on Tuesday evening, that you will not give him the story until Friday morning, which is what you first agreed with him. You will say that if he pushes you any more, you will take the story to a rival magazine. What can the editor do but wait until Friday?’
‘You think he’ll agree to wait?’ She put her thumb to her mouth and bit her nail.
‘I think he will. He will not want the story to go to another magazine, especially as you will be making it sound very meaty. And you are back to your original plan. You can relax and enjoy tomorrow night, knowing you don’t have to tell Tom the truth until next weekend.’
‘That’s bloody brilliant!’ she exclaimed, her eyes shining. ‘Absolutely fucking brilliant!’ Her wine glass shook in her excitement. Gabriela reached across, took it from her and put it on the table.
‘No, it is not,’ Gabriela laughed. ‘It’s easy to see what to do when one’s head is not in a turmoil.’
‘I can’t believe how different I feel! I feel happy. And a bit drunk, if I’m honest,’ she added with a giggle. ‘I owe you, Gabriela. Thank you, thank you.’
‘I’m very happy to help you. Now you must put all of this worry behind you. All you will have to do is make two telephone calls in th
e next week: one to the editor on Tuesday evening, telling him that he will have the story on Friday, and the other to the editor on Friday morning, telling him that there is no story and that you resign from the job. After that, you can tell Tom the truth. Tomorrow night, you can just enjoy being with him. As for tonight, I think it’s time you went to bed,’ she said with a laugh. She stood up.
Evie gazed up at her. ‘I’m so pleased you walked back with me this evening. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t.’
Gabriela smiled down at her. ‘Go to bed now, Evie. Sleep very well, and when you wake up, take yourself into Camden Lock. I’m sure you can find the perfect dress for what will be a perfect evening.’
Alone in her apartment later, Gabriela stood up from the sofa, the magazine she’d bought at the 24 hour shop on the way home still in her hand. She moved towards the door of the sitting room, leaving her empty coffee cup sitting on the table. She reached the door, went out of the room and crossed to the small office that led off the hall.
Her laptop was on the light oak desk and she placed the magazine next to it, ready for tomorrow. She paused a moment and glanced at the cover of the magazine. A smile of quiet triumph flickered across her lips and she let herself give way to a fleeting sense of excitement.
Never in her wildest dreams had she expected the day to turn out as it had.
What had promised to be no more than a rather uninteresting evening in a restaurant with Evie’s probably dull friends, a further stage in the tedious process of bonding with the girl, had ended up as an evening to remember: it was the evening upon which she had begun the process of erasing Evie from Tom’s life forever.
She, Gabriela di Montefiori, was about to take a giant step towards the goal that she increasingly craved. Let Evie Shaw have her moment with Tom for the present – his future belonged to her.
She straightened up and took control of her emotions. She needed a good night’s rest. Tomorrow would be here soon enough.