by Jill Mansell
‘Not exactly a problem for me…’ Caspar was looking doubtful.
‘Well then, that’s fine. If you’re worried about my daughter,’ said Angie with a careless shrug, ‘don’t tell her. This is a private business transaction between consenting adults. Claudia doesn’t need to know.’
After a rotten day at work and a rain-drenched dash from the tube, Claudia wasn’t thrilled to come home and find Caspar and Poppy gossiping together in the sitting room, cozily sharing a packet of Jaffa Cakes and showing no sign whatsoever of doing anything about the mountain of washing-up in the sink.
She was even less enchanted when she spotted the empty bottle of Pouilly Fumée up on the mantelpiece. Two glasses stood side by side on the low coffee table next to the carton that had earlier contained her favorite cappuccino mousse.
Next moment her attention was distracted by something more awful still—
‘Ugh—UGH!’ screamed Claudia, shuddering with fear and revulsion. She pointed at the carpet beneath the table. ‘SPIDERS!’
Caspar craned his neck to see. He grinned, leaned over the edge of the sofa, scooped them up and lobbed them at Claudia.
‘Don’t get in a flap, they’re only tomato stalks.’
‘Oh.’ Claudia was still trembling. ‘You really are the living end…’
‘Sweetheart, I wouldn’t have thrown them at you if they’d been spiders.’
‘Not that,’ Claudia wailed, glaring at him. ‘They were my tomatoes. This,’ she jabbed a finger at the empty carton, ‘was my cappuccino mousse. And I was saving that wine for a special occasion!’
‘This afternoon was a special occasion.’ Caspar thought of the six thousand pounds. ‘That’s why I opened it.’ Then, since Claudia was looking very cross indeed, he added, ‘I’ll buy you another one.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Claudia hadn’t inherited her mother’s gift for looking good when wet. Her hair was a mess and her navy mascara had run dramatically down her face. Turning to include Poppy in the diatribe she went on, ‘You didn’t even leave enough for me to have a glass. You had to jolly well drink it all.’
Poppy had only arrived home from work ten minutes earlier herself. She looked indignant. ‘It wasn’t me, it was—’
‘Anton. From the gallery.’ Caspar indulged in a bit of improv, sensing that now was not the time to tell Claudia her mother had been round. ‘He dropped by to show me the brochure for next month’s exhibition.’ Ad-libbing shamelessly he went on, ‘It looks completely brilliant. Anton says it’s already attracting interest from dealers in Japan—’
The phone rang. Claudia picked it up.
‘For you.’ Tight-lipped, she handed the phone to Caspar. ‘It’s Anton. Calling from New York.’
Caspar, well and truly caught out, grinned. ‘Told you Concorde was fast.’
‘I’m not one of your girlfriends,’ Claudia said bitterly. ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’
Chapter 9
‘Didn’t I tell you Angie Slade-Welch was trouble?’ said Caspar when Claudia had disappeared upstairs to have a long hot sulk in the bath.
‘You could have turned her down,’ Poppy protested. ‘You could have said no.’
He pulled a face. ‘I’m not famed for my ability to say no.’
‘Well, I just hope she’s worth it. You haven’t even seen her with her clothes off yet.’
‘I don’t think there’s any danger she’ll fail the audition.’ Caspar was doodling in the margins of the Radio Times. Glancing up, catching the expression on Poppy’s face, he began to laugh. ‘Well I’m sorry. I’m just being honest. You were the one who asked how my day had been. If you’re going to disapprove, I won’t tell you anything in future.’
‘I’m not disapproving. I’m interested. It’s the big difference between men and women, isn’t it? You don’t have to love someone, or even like them very much, but if you’re a man you’ll still sleep with them.’ Poppy tore open a packet of chips with her teeth. ‘It’s a bit of entertainment, a nice way of passing the time. Like doing card tricks or playing Trivial Pursuit.’
‘I’m not completely indiscriminate,’ Caspar protested. ‘And okay, I might not be in love with these women, but I do like them. Claudia’s mother knows the score. She doesn’t expect anything more than a fling. She certainly doesn’t love me.’
‘I suppose.’ Poppy shrugged. ‘It just seems weird.’
‘You’ve had a sheltered upbringing.’ Caspar drew a caricature of one of the ITN reporters, naked at his newsdesk.
‘I have not!’
‘What I’m saying is, you met this boyfriend of yours when you were seventeen. You went steady for a few years, got engaged, planned to get married… he’s probably the only bloke you’ve ever slept with.’
‘So?’ Poppy demanded hotly.
‘I just think you should get out and about a bit more,’ Caspar explained. ‘Live a little. Go to parties, meet new people.’
‘Sleep with new men.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Caspar sounded exasperated, ‘you’re twenty-two years old and you’re single. It’s what twenty-two-year-old single girls do.’
Poppy sighed. She only wished she could. It was over six months now since she had left Bristol and she was still unable to summon up so much as a flicker of interest in a member—any member—of the opposite sex.
She didn’t even know if it had happened as a result of meeting Tom or as a side effect of calling off the wedding to Rob, but happen it had. The way things were going, Poppy was beginning to wonder if, libido-wise, she would ever feel normal again. It wasn’t as if she was unhappy or depressed either, because she wasn’t. She just felt as if her heart had been snipped out and swapped for a block of ice.
And like the Cointreau lady, it was taking a hell of a time for the ice to melt.
Caspar was still watching her.
‘Well I’m sorry,’ said Poppy, ‘but I don’t want to run round London waving my knickers in the air. I told you before, I’m not interested in sex. I’m immune.’
‘I just hope it isn’t catching.’ He grinned and held up the magazine so she could see his latest effort. A caricature of her with manic ringlets, a halo, and a Just Say No tee-shirt stood alongside a wicked one of Claudia, looking hopeful, with Just Say Yes Please emblazoned across her vast bosom.
‘Poor Claudia. Be nice to her.’ Poppy, who had to be at work by seven, forced herself to her feet.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You told me I should go to parties and meet more people.’
‘I’m talking about places where you aren’t the one passing round the vol-au-vents,’ said Caspar.
‘Yes, well. I have an exorbitant rent to pay. And a pig of a landlord.’ Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Poppy grabbed the Radio Times and tore out the page he’d doodled on. Claudia wasn’t likely to appreciate the joke. She crumpled the unflattering caricature into a ball and threw it, just in time, into the bin.
‘Right,’ Claudia announced, smiling at them both. ‘I feel better now. Sorry I lost my temper before. Who’d like a cup of tea?’
Amazed, Caspar and Poppy both put their hands up.
‘I’ll make a big pot.’ Claudia beamed again, to prove they were forgiven. ‘And I bought some biscuits on the way home. Oh great, my Radio Times. Let’s have a look at what’s on tonight…’
‘Well?’ Returning at midnight Poppy poked her head round the sitting-room door. ‘At least you’re still alive. But will she ever speak to either of us again?’
‘I’m exhausted. I’ve spent the whole evening being nice,’ said Caspar. ‘Not that kind of nice,’ he added as Poppy’s eyebrows rose.
‘All that fuss over one lousy missing page.’ Working in the evenings meant Poppy barely got to watch any TV nowadays. She glanced across at it as the film Caspar had been watching drew to an end. The credits began to roll. The name Fitzpatrick made her heart leap for a moment but it was only someo
ne called Shona Fitzpatrick, one of the supporting actresses in the cast.
Sensing something was up, Caspar followed her gaze. He caught the name just before it slid off the screen.
Then he had a brainwave.
‘Why don’t you advertise on television for your father?’
Poppy looked at him. ‘Now that is a terrific idea. Why didn’t I think of it months ago? Hang on a sec,’ she patted her jeans pockets, ‘where’s my purse? I know I’ve got sixty or seventy grand here somewhere.’
‘Okay, okay. There is such a thing as free advertising,’ Caspar reminded her. ‘You could wait until the next big rugby international at Twickenham, make up a banner with Desperately Seeking Alex Fitzpatrick plastered across it, and streak across the pitch at half-time.’
‘Desperately Seeking Attention more like. Not to mention a chilly night in the cells.’ Poppy conjured up a mental image of herself without any clothes on, being chased around the rugby field by a lot of smirking policemen. ‘Anyway, I don’t have the chest for it.’
‘I’m trying to help,’ said Caspar, ‘and all you’re doing is making feeble excuses. How about advertising in the newspapers then? That needn’t cost much.’
‘I know, but it’s not very subtle either.’ Poppy had already considered this idea. ‘The thing is, I’m not looking for a missing person. I’m looking for someone who had—and probably still does have—a wife. The chances are that he has kids of his own. How are they likely to feel, discovering that he had an affair with my mother all those years ago? I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ said Poppy, ‘or be the cause of some awful showdown. Any way of tracking him down would have to be discreet.’
‘But you still want to try.’
Poppy was leaning against the sitting-room door restlessly turning the handle this way and that. She nodded.
‘More than anything. I want to meet him, even if he doesn’t know who I am. I just need to know what he’s like.’ She took a deep breath, frustrated by her own helplessness. ‘I might love him to bits, he might be perfect. On the other hand, he could be awful.’
‘Then again,’ said Caspar, ‘why should you be the only one around here with a parent who’s awful?’
Poppy looked shocked. ‘Your parents aren’t, they’re brilliant.’
‘I didn’t mean me. I’m talking about Angie Slade-Welch.’
‘Goodness,’ Poppy mocked. ‘So does that mean you won’t be sleeping with her after all?’
‘I said she was an awful parent.’ Caspar grinned. ‘I daresay she’s better in bed.’
Poppy went upstairs to catch a few hours’ sleep. She was running the stall single-handed tomorrow while Jake toured the auction rooms. Ever since she had shooed away a wasp with her rolled-up program and found herself the new owner of a twenty-foot refectory table riddled with woodworm, Jake hadn’t let her within screaming distance of a gavel.
Caspar, who wasn’t tired, spent the night working in his studio. He made great progress with the painting Angie Slade-Welch had admired earlier.
He wondered, as he worked, how long it would be before Angie made her move. That she would make a play for him wasn’t in doubt; it was more a question of when. Caspar squeezed the dregs of a tube of cobalt blue onto his palette, chucked the empty tube in the direction of the bin, and began blending the blue with viridian. Some women, enjoying the sense of anticipation, confined themselves to gentle flirting for the first three or four sittings. Others, eager not to waste a moment, made their intentions obvious straight away. Caspar had a bet with himself that Angie Slade-Welch would make her move at the end of the first sitting. She didn’t seem the type to hang around.
He then surprised himself by wondering whether or not he should go along with it. This was startling because it had never before occurred to him not to.
Caspar put down his brush. Reaching absently for a can of Coke he drank from it, his gaze fixed on the ink-black sky through the uncurtained windows, his thoughts elsewhere.
This was all Poppy’s fault. It was thanks to her that he was actually thinking of not sleeping with someone. Not because he had been lectured to, either, by some born-again do-gooder droning on about the evils of promiscuity. That was always guaranteed to backfire. That was, thought Caspar, enough to send anyone hurtling into the nearest bed.
But Poppy hadn’t done that. Nor was she a droning do-gooder. She had simply wondered what the purpose of it was when there was no love involved.
And now, for the first time in his life, Caspar found himself wondering if maybe she didn’t have a point.
The rain had by this time stopped. There still wasn’t a star in sight. Caspar wiped his paint-stained hands on his trousers and resumed painting, his brush moving more or less automatically over the canvas as he thought some more about Poppy Dunbar and the things she had said to him tonight.
The perfect solution, of course, would be to sleep with her.
Caspar grinned to himself and loaded a clean sable brush with cadmium yellow. He liked Poppy, had liked her from the first moment he’d met her. She had spirit and energy, and she made him laugh.
She also had amazing hair and a flawless creamy complexion which was certainly undeserved considering the rubbish she ate. These plus points, combined with yellow-green eyes and a curvy mouth that always seemed on the verge of a smile, meant she looked every bit as good as the models who were forever throwing themselves at him.
But Poppy wasn’t throwing herself at anyone. She had erected an invisible barrier around herself, a kind of aura that sent out the signal: Definitely Not Interested. This was a natural enough reaction, considering what she’d gone through earlier in the year. Caspar had never experienced it himself because he’d never had to endure any form of emotional trauma, but he was perfectly prepared to believe it existed. He’d heard about all that stuff on Richard and Judy.
The thing was, it was beginning to intrigue him now. He couldn’t help wondering if he could make Poppy be interested in him.
What a brilliant challenge that would be. He needn’t bother with a pushover like Angie Slade-Welch; he could concentrate all his attentions instead on Poppy, who would be so much more fun to sleep with.
Caspar was painting faster and faster. The more he thought about it the more the idea appealed. He would be helping Poppy over her ice-block, as she called it. Mentally they were well matched. Physically—he just knew—they would be perfect. Damn, they’d be great together…
Watery sunlight streamed through the windows of the studio as Caspar put the finishing touches to the painting on the easel before him. He stretched, glanced at his watch—eight thirty—and wandered downstairs.
There was a plate of toast, thickly buttered just the way he liked it, on the kitchen table. Exerting tremendous self-control Caspar left it there and began breaking eggs into a frying pan instead. Moments later Poppy shot into the kitchen half-dressed to fill up the kettle and wrench the lid off the biscuit tin.
She looked stunned when she saw him.
‘What are you doing?’
Caspar, who would have thought it was obvious, said, ‘Cooking.’ Proudly, he added, ‘Eggs.’
‘I mean what are you doing up? It isn’t even nine o’clock.’
‘I haven’t been to bed. Damn—’ Showing off with the fish slice he managed to break two yolks.
Poppy looked puzzled. ‘Why on earth not?’
‘I’ve been working.’ He paused, meaningfully. ‘And thinking…’
But Poppy was late for work. The kettle hadn’t boiled because Claudia had unplugged it to make way for the iron. The iron was still there. With a mouth full of chocolate biscuit and her back to Caspar so he wouldn’t see her knickers, Poppy seized the opportunity to get the worst of the creases out of her skirt.
‘Most people take their clothes off before they iron them.’
She turned and grinned at him.
‘Most people take their clothes off the minute they walk into your studio, but it doesn’t mean
I have to. It isn’t compulsory.’
The skirt, being small, didn’t take long. When Poppy had dragged a pair of tangled black tights out of the tumble drier, helped herself to another handful of biscuits, and located her black suede shoes under the kitchen table, she blew a kiss in Caspar’s direction and made a dash for the front door.
‘Hell,’ Caspar sighed, staring down at the eggs in the pan. Poppy had distracted him. They were hopelessly overdone.
‘Yuk,’ said Claudia, coming into the kitchen with her coat on.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘How on earth did you manage to burn them?’
Caspar was starving and there weren’t any eggs left. Nor, he discovered as Claudia finished her mug of tea, were there anymore tea bags.
‘You haven’t eaten your toast,’ he said before she left.
‘Oh… I wasn’t hungry…’
When the front door had banged shut behind her, Caspar snatched up the toast he had so heroically resisted earlier. But it was too late, the butter had begun to congeal. The toast was soggy and stone cold. So much, thought Caspar, for being considerate and exerting self-control.
It didn’t take much longer for his second good resolution to bite the dust. What had seemed such a great idea last night was—in the cold light of day—becoming an altogether dicier prospect. As he went through the plan again and realized just how fraught with pitfalls it was, Caspar felt his resolve begin to drain away. By the time he’d finished the last piece of horrid toast, he knew for certain he couldn’t go through with it. There were heaps of reasons why not.
Poppy was a friend, for a start, a cheerful tenant he’d be sorry to lose should the plan backfire. Also, any kind of goings-on between the two of them would be bound to upset Claudia. She would hate it.
The major stumbling block, though, was Poppy herself. She might not be interested. She might not want to be won over either. She might say no and mean it, and he would really hate that.
He would hate it even more if she laughed.
Damn, thought Caspar, why take the risk? Knowing Poppy she’d laugh her socks off. And even if she didn’t, what could ever come of it anyway? He didn’t exactly have the greatest track record in the world.