by Jill Mansell
Will pounced as she was carrying the plates to the sink.
‘Oooh!’ Dina shrieked with laughter and almost dropped the dishes. She pressed her forefinger against her lips. ‘Sshh.’
‘You’re the one making the racket,’ Will grinned, ‘not me.’
Now she was pinned up against the fridge. Dina could feel the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles pressing into her own bare stomach. She shivered with pleasure. He had a perfect six-pack. When you were married to someone with no visible muscles at all, you appreciated these things.
‘What if Claudia wakes up?’
‘She won’t. She was snoring when I came down.’
‘She’ll know you’ve been up to something. You reek of garlic.’
‘So do you.’ Will’s eyes didn’t leave hers. His hands roved around her naked midriff. He sighed and his breath warmed her neck. ‘You know, you are one hell of a sexy lady…’
Claudia had been dreaming about weddings when she was woken by the sound of a shriek followed by a burst of muffled laughter. Caspar and one of his girlfriends, she thought sleepily, or Poppy and Dina arriving back from their night out.
Moments later she woke up properly, her heart racing. Will had gone. And his side of the bed—she patted it frantically—was stone cold. He hadn’t just popped to the loo, he had gone gone. Home.
Claudia sat up. She felt sick. He’d crept out, making sure not to wake her. She must have said or done something terrible.
Oh God, what if she was hopeless in bed?
She almost wept with relief when she switched on the bedroom light and saw his clothes were still there. No matter how much of a disaster you might be in bed, Claudia reassured herself, people didn’t bolt in horror in the middle of the night without stopping to throw their trousers on first.
When she reached the kitchen doorway Claudia wished he had.
What was happening instead was far worse.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ yelled Claudia, and they sprang guiltily apart. Dina, the trollop, pulled down her practically non-existent skirt and combed her fingers hastily through her disheveled hair. Since it was moussed to the limit, her hand got stuck halfway. Dina wrenched it free, reached for a cigarette instead, and with an air of defiance, lit it up.
‘How could you?’ Claudia hissed at her. ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care how many people you hurt?’
‘Oh I get it,’ said Dina, ‘this is all my fault. I crept upstairs, knocked on your bedroom door and whispered, “Psst, any decent blokes in there? Fancy coming downstairs for a bit of a chat and a snog?” Well, I didn’t, so there.’ She looked half insolent, half amused. ‘For the record, I was minding my own business when Will came down and joined me. We had a laugh, we had something to eat. We got a bit carried away, that’s all.’ Dina examined her cigarette, took a drag, and breathed out a great plume of smoke. ‘So don’t make out I was the one who started this, because I wasn’t.’
The little tart didn’t even have the grace to apologize. Claudia longed to give her a slap.
‘You could have tried saying no.’
‘Jesus, will you calm down?’ Dina raised her eyebrows in despair. ‘It’s not as if we were actually at it on the kitchen table. It was only a kiss, okay?’
Will had so far said nothing. Claudia realized she didn’t dare look at him. How could he, she thought miserably, how could he do this to me? Is getting his end away really all he cares about?
But betrayals weren’t only to do with sex. Something else Dina had said clicked into place. Claudia sniffed the air, belatedly recognizing the significance of what she could smell.
Garlic, garlic…
‘You had something to eat,’ she said slowly. ‘It’d better not have been my lasagna.’
Will spoke up at last.
‘Sweetheart, you told me it was left over from lunch. You said it needed to be eaten.’ He shrugged good-naturedly.
‘Not by her!’ howled Claudia.
‘Well, how were we to know that? Come on now, no need to get yourself into a silly old state.’
‘A silly old state? A silly old state! You were all over her!’ As he turned, Claudia glimpsed his left shoulder. ‘You’ve got scratch marks all over your back! I thought you loved me—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Will stiffly, ‘but did I ever say that?’
Dina decided to be helpful.
‘Look, if you’re one of these hyper-jealous types, maybe it’s just as well you found out early on what he’s like. You can get treatment for it, you know.’
‘For what?’ Claudia stared at her.
‘Jealousy. They can sort it out these days, you know. With medications.’
Claudia spent the rest of the weekend in bed. Alone.
Will had lost patience with her on Saturday morning. He had told her, wearily, to give it a rest, to grow up, to say hello to the real world. Then he had dressed himself, bent over Claudia in bed, and given her a perfunctory good-bye kiss.
The garlic fumes had almost knocked her sideways.
‘Ciao, sweetheart,’ said Will. ‘It was fun while it lasted. And don’t worry, I’ll say hi if we ever bump into each other again.’
Claudia hadn’t the heart to argue. She’d been so sure Will Smyth would turn out to be The One. Bloody men, she thought as she huddled miserably under her duvet. First Caspar had to go and sleep with her mother. Now Will had shown his true colors too. Why did they have to be so unfussy, so… indiscriminate? Weren’t there any men out there for whom one woman was enough?
Poppy, who had slept through the night and missed the whole thing, was amazed by Dina’s lack of shame.
‘Come on,’ Dina shrugged, ‘I did the silly bitch a favor. He wasn’t her type anyway. She’s better off without him.’
This was undoubtedly true, but there were ways and ways of finding these things out.
‘You still shouldn’t have done it. She was crazy about him.’
‘All the more reason.’
Exasperated, Poppy said, ‘I don’t know what you thought you were playing at.’
‘Oh, this is good.’ Dina grinned, unrepentant. ‘Coming from the girl who danced with a stranger at her bachelorette party and ended up canceling her wedding.’
‘Hardly the same thing.’
‘Isn’t it?’ demanded Dina. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You really want to know what I was playing at? I was playing at having a bit of fun, just like you. I was playing at doing something out of the ordinary. Getting myself a life.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t get a wallop round the head. Anyway,’ said Poppy, ‘you’ve already got a life.’
‘I’m bored with that one. I don’t want it anymore.’ Dina had spent ages practicing her Sienna Miller pout in front of the mirror. She did it now. ‘I want one like yours.’
‘You’ve got a baby.’
‘I’ve got a whole family,’ Dina wailed, ‘not to mention enough in-laws to fill Wembley sodding stadium. That’s what’s wrong with my life!’
‘But—’
‘Poppy, you don’t know how lucky you are, not having any relatives.’ She shook her head to show Poppy she couldn’t possibly understand. ‘I’m telling you, they wear you down.’
Chapter 29
It had only been a fortnight since Poppy’s last visit, but the change in Alex was shocking. His mind was still clear—he even managed to crack a couple of feeble jokes at Rita’s expense—but his body was shriveling away.
It was a heartbreaking sight.
One of the round-the-clock nurses hired to look after him hustled Rita and Poppy out of the room after just a few minutes. Alex needed morphine and rest.
‘I need a stiff gin,’ Rita sighed when they reached the kitchen. She sat down heavily and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Then she looked up at Poppy. ‘The cancer’s everywhere. They’ve given up on the chemo. There’s no point. All they can do now is control the pain.’
They drank massive gin and tonics.
Rather unsteadily, but feeling that she should, Poppy made a plateful of cheese and tomato rolls.
Rita managed a couple of mouthfuls then gave up and smoked five cigarettes, one after the other, instead.
‘Anyway, enough about us,’ she said half an hour later. ‘Time to change the subject. Come on, Poppy, cheer me up for Gawd’s sake. Tell me what you’ve been getting up to in the last couple of weeks.’
Poppy told her all about the Wilhelm von Kantz painting, which was due to be auctioned at Gillingham’s next week. The Daily Mail was running a feature on how the lost work of art had been discovered. Dorothea de Lacey’s grasping daughters were wild with fury, foaming at the mouth and threatening to sue the auctioneers who had handled the sale at Chartwell-Lacey Manor. Thanks to their incompetence, the sisters had raged at the journalist who had gone to hear their side of the story, they had missed out on a fortune.
‘It’s quite good, saves us having to feel guilty,’ Poppy explained. ‘If they’d been nice, we would have done. But they sound like complete witches. The journalist told me he’d spoken to practically the whole village. Not one person had a decent word to say about them.’
‘So this chap of yours,’ said Rita, ‘this Jake. Pretty eligible now, is he?’
She was looking more cheerful, Poppy noted with relief.
‘Don’t start matchmaking. There’s nothing like that between me and Jake.’
‘All right, what about Caspar?’ Rita thought Caspar was wonderful. Stupid name, but that wasn’t his fault. Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘There’s definitely nothing like that between me and Caspar.’
‘That’s your trouble, there’s nothing like that between you and anyone,’ Rita pointed out with characteristic bluntness. ‘You want to get yourself sorted, girl. Get yourself a decent bloke and settle down. Find one and grab him before someone else does.’ She gave Poppy a sly look. ‘Are you sure this guy Jake wouldn’t fit the bill?’
The auction of the von Kantz at Gillingham’s was over in no time flat. Four telephone bidders battled it out, and in less than ninety seconds it was all over.
If Poppy had nipped to the loo she would have missed it. She clutched Jake’s arm as the auctioneer’s gavel fell. Dead Hamster on a Patio had just been bought by a New York collector for seven hundred and seventy thousand pounds.
‘How do you feel?’ asked Ross Wilder, the journalist from the Mail who was sitting next to Poppy.
‘I need a pee.’
‘Congratulations.’ He shook Jake’s hand.
‘How do you really feel?’ Ross murmured in Poppy’s ear as they made their way out of the auction rooms.
‘Look,’ said Poppy, ‘since I started working for Jake, all I’ve ever done is muck things up and lose him money. Now, for once in my life, I’ve done something right. I couldn’t be happier,’ she told him firmly. ‘Nobody deserves it more than Jake.’
She meant it, she really did. And Ross was almost sure he knew why.
‘You and Jake,’ he said, nodding encouragement, ‘tell me, are you two an item?’
Jake was walking ahead of them. Poppy caught up and tapped him on the shoulder. His green shirt had a nylony slither to it.
‘Ross wants to know if you’re going to make an honest woman of me.’
‘Honest?’ Jake looked incredulous. ‘Remember a certain cheese and pickle sandwich? You still owe me fifty pence.’
The nurse gave Alex his midday morphine injection. He eased back against the pillows and felt the pain blessedly melt away. With it came the irresistible urge to sleep but he wouldn’t. Rita was sending the nurse down for her lunch break, shooing her away so they could have some time alone together. It was like having a bleeding minder, he thought frustratedly. These days they never seemed to get a moment to themselves.
He had to stay awake awhile at least…
When he woke up, Rita was sitting in the armchair next to the bed reading a newspaper. The play he’d been half-listening to on the radio earlier had finished; a boring lecture about economics burbled on instead.
For several minutes Alex lay there, just watching her. His woman. He loved her so much. They had been such a good team.
God, he hoped she wouldn’t drink herself to death when he’d gone. He hoped she’d meet someone else, in time. He wanted her to be happy again.
Rita looked up. Her face softened.
‘You’re awake. What are you thinking?’
‘That you could do with a visit to the hairdresser. Your roots need doing, girl.’
‘You always were a smooth-talking bugger.’
‘I mean it. You could give that Nicky Clarke fellow a try. You fancy him, don’t you?’
‘Not so much as I fancy you.’ Rita smoothed his hair away from his forehead. ‘How are you feeling? Anything you need?’
Another wave of exhaustion swept over him. Alex squeezed her hand and felt his eyes close.
‘You’re here, aren’t you? You’ll do.’
Rita bent over to kiss him. The paper on her lap slithered off her knees and onto the floor.
‘Why the Daily Mail?’ he said as she gathered it up. ‘You don’t usually read that one.’
‘It’s got the piece in it about Poppy and that painting she found.’ Rita held up the relevant page. ‘I was going to show it to you. The reporter reckons there’s a bit of a thing going on between her and Jake. Did I tell you how much that painting went for in the end?’
Alex didn’t have the energy to study the article himself. His eyelids were closing again.
‘Read it out to me.’
He kept his eyes closed while Rita began to read.
‘“…and Jake’s young assistant, twenty-three-year-old Poppy Dunbar.” Talk about not believing what you read in the papers,’ crowed Rita, ‘they haven’t even got her name right. It’s Dunn, for Chrissake, not Dunbar. And look, they’ve done it again—’ she pointed to a section further down the page—‘what’s the matter with these people? Why’d they keep putting Dunbar? What a stupid mistake to make.’
Some names you never forgot. Alex was glad his eyes were closed. His mind flew automatically back to almost a quarter of a century ago. To a country club on the leafy outskirts of Bristol and a beautiful girl called Laura Dunbar.
And then it all clicked into place.
Of course.
It explained everything.
Poppy was Laura’s daughter.
Alex frowned slightly. He wondered why Poppy had never told him. Then he remembered something else Rita had just said.
‘How old did they say she was?’
Rita double-checked.
‘Twenty-three. At least they managed to get that right. It’s her birthday in May. Anyway, pay attention. Let me read you the rest.’
She carried on but Alex didn’t hear another word.
Poppy Dunbar wasn’t only Laura’s daughter.
She was his too.
When Rita had finished she looked up. Alex was smiling to himself.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing,’ said Alex.
Chapter 30
Caspar had spent the afternoon at the Serpentine Gallery supporting an exhibition organized by a friend of his. He had been plied with wine and invited to a party that night by a tall, spikily elegant PR girl called Babs.
He caught the tube back to Kensington. As he made his way out of the station, he was spotted by one of the tramps he regularly gave money to.
‘Fifty pence for a cup of tea, sir?’ The tramp looked hopeful. Caspar normally bunged him a pound.
Caspar hunted in his pockets. Bugger, no coins. Lucky he was in a good mood.
He winked, gave the tramp a fiver and began to move away.
‘Hang on a sec,’ said the tramp.
When Caspar turned back, four pound coins were pressed into his hand.
The tramp, who had once been a bank teller, said, ‘Your change, sir.’
The phone was ringing as Caspar let himself into the house. It was
four thirty; Poppy and Claudia were both still at work. Miraculously, the ringing didn’t stop before he could reach it.
‘Hello?’ said Caspar.
‘Is Poppy there?’ said a quiet voice he didn’t instantly recognize. ‘I’d like to speak to her please. It’s Rita.’
Poppy arrived home an hour later. She burst into the untidy sitting room, hair flying, green eyes alight with happiness.
‘Let me tell you, I have had the most brilliant day,’ she declared with pride. ‘Jake let me bid at Lassiter’s and I got a Goldscheider face mask for seventy pounds! And a Barthelemy bronze for thirteen hundred—is that a bargain or what? Then we went to—’
She stopped abruptly. Caspar’s face was somber. He wasn’t interested in her terrific bargains.
‘What?’ said Poppy, suddenly afraid. Her knees began to tremble of their own accord. ‘What?’
‘Rita phoned.’ Caspar hesitated, then moved towards her. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Alex died this afternoon.’
He cradled her in his arms and let her sob.
Poppy got through half a box of tissues. Every time she thought the tears had stopped, they started again.
She was crying, she realized, for all those years she hadn’t known her father. All the time she had missed.
Caspar stroked her red-gold hair. He kept his arms around her and couldn’t help thinking back to Christmas night when he had so badly wanted to hold her like this.
That feeling hadn’t gone away, but now was hardly the moment. All he could do now was comfort Poppy and pray she couldn’t read his mind.
He made her a mug of tea, heaping in extra sugar.
‘I feel stupid.’ Poppy hiccupped, taking the mug and wiping her eyes with another tissue. ‘Getting this upset over someone I didn’t even know that well.’
‘It isn’t stupid. He was your father.’
‘I got to know Rita better than I got to know him.’ Poppy disconsolately blew her nose. ‘That’s another thing. When I see her at the funeral I can’t be this upset. She’ll think I’m downright weird.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Caspar. ‘People do cry at funerals.’