by Jill Mansell
Hugo’s mouth twitched.
‘You’re very sweet. Nevertheless, maybe we should be making our way back to the house. Before people start to wonder where we are.’
Claudia waited until Jake had taken her mother’s empty glass and disappeared in search of a refill. She was over in a flash.
‘Hello darling, fancy bumping into you again so soon,’ said Angie. Claudia had been scowling at her from a distance for the past ten minutes. She unclipped her evening bag, took out a mirror, and calmly redid her lipstick. ‘I must say, I can quite see why you’re so keen on Jake. What a poppet.’
A poppet…
‘You always have to ruin everything,’ hissed Claudia, ‘don’t you?’
‘Ruin everything?’ Angie looked surprised. ‘Baby girl, I had no idea there was anything to ruin. I assumed he was a free agent. I’m sorry, are you saying you and he are a couple?’
‘You know I’m not!’ Claudia spoke through gritted teeth. ‘You just come out with the most embarrassing remarks, like, “I’ve heard all about you.”’ Viciously she imitated her mother’s words. ‘That was a lie for a start. I’ve never told you about Jake.’
Angie’s smile was pure Cheshire Cat.
‘I didn’t say you had. Caspar did, while I was sitting for my portrait. He told me all about your crush on Jake.’
Bloody Caspar.
‘But that was months ago.’ Angie shrugged. ‘Let’s face it, sweetheart, if he was interested, he’d have made his move by now.’
Since there was no answer to that, Claudia scowled and said instead, ‘So what were you talking about?’
‘Oh, money mainly. Jake’s little windfall…’
‘How typical.’
‘…how to spot gold diggers…’
‘Well, you’d know about that,’ Claudia said bitterly.
Angie looked at her. ‘You should try smiling occasionally, darling. It does wonders.’
‘Don’t—’
‘Just a suggestion. Ah, there’s your father. Speaking of gold diggers, who is that frightful creature with him? He looks as if he needs rescuing.’
As Angie drifted away, Claudia wondered if the evening could possibly get worse.
Chapter 51
Bursting for the loo, Dina excused herself seconds before Angie reached them. She slipped into the downstairs cloakroom, relieved herself, then studied her flushed reflection in the small mirror above the basin.
Hugo Slade-Welch had called her delightful. And sweet. He fancied her like mad, she knew, but was holding himself back because he thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do.
Dina, whose maxim when it came to make-up was more-is-more, rummaged around in the bottom of her shoulder bag. She applied an extra layer of metallic Bahama Blue eyeshadow, another generous coat of blue mascara, and redid her lipstick. When someone tried the door handle she called out, ‘Hang on a sec,’ but as her mouth was in lipstick-receiving mode at the time, the words came out oddly. Hey, Dina marveled, I sound dead posh.
But there were evidently two people on the other side of the door. A woman, in a low voice, was saying, ‘…but darling, where on earth did you find her? Talk about cheap and tacky. I can’t believe you brought her over with you from the States! I mean, she’d still be in quarantine…’
When Dina heard Hugo’s unmistakable laugh, she froze.
‘Angie, didn’t anyone ever tell you? You’re supposed to mellow with age.’
‘I am being mellow. I could think of far worse things to say about her. Come on, Hugo, spill the beans. Who is she and where did you pick her up? King’s Cross?’
Dina’s hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped her lipstick in the basin.
‘Do I look as if I found her anywhere?’ she heard Hugo reply with amusement. ‘She found me. I hadn’t been here more than ten minutes when she latched herself onto me. Her name’s Dina, she knows Poppy and Claudia and she’s spent the last hour telling me how much she loves older men, especially ones who star in Hollywood movies. She made me autograph her chest, she told me I should try a splash of Pepsi in my Scotch. As for cheap and tacky,’ he added dryly, ‘you couldn’t be more wrong. She told me herself, her boob tube cost seventeen pounds ninety-nine at Top Shop.’
Dina didn’t know why this should be so funny but it clearly was. Angie snorted with laughter and Hugo joined in. She clutched the sides of the basin as Hugo, recovering himself, went on, ‘And when I said I was due to play Othello at the Royal Court next year, she said yeah, Charles Dickens is brill, she’s seen all his films but Oliver! is her favorite.’
Dina didn’t move. Eventually, she heard Angie say, ‘Darling, whoever’s in that loo has obviously died. Could you be an angel and find me another drink? I’m going to have to run upstairs.’
When they had both gone, Dina looked up again at her face in the mirror. Bahama Blue tears ran down her cheeks and plopped steadily into the basin.
When the doorbell rang at ten thirty, Caspar answered it.
‘Bloody late as usual,’ he grinned at Patrick Dennehy, who was lugging a huge canvas-shaped parcel tied up with brown paper and a lot of frayed string. ‘What’s this, homework?’
Patrick was the evening class tutor at St Clare’s, which wasn’t the kind of career he’d dreamed of during his art student days but was still better than a government check. Since his arms were aching, he thrust the parcel at Caspar with some relief.
‘Kind of. Here, you can take these through. Presents for the girls.’
‘Great,’ lied Caspar. Patrick was an old friend but his paintings were crap, hopelessly modernist and quite without meaning. Still, it was a kind gesture. Caspar just hoped Claudia would be diplomatic when the paintings were unwrapped.
He had to clear a space in the sitting room for the opening ceremony. Neither Claudia nor—more surprisingly—Poppy seemed overjoyed to see Patrick there.
‘Try and look thrilled,’ Caspar murmured in Claudia’s ear. ‘It’s probably three black splashes and a blue triangle. Patrick’s only ever sold one painting in his life. And that was to his mother.’
It was like pass-the-parcel. Both paintings had been extremely thoroughly wrapped. By the time the last layers were ready to come off, the carpet was strewn with brown paper and a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch.
Claudia, who had thought the night couldn’t get any worse, realized it could. She screamed and tried to cover the painting up with a crumpled sheet of paper which had unaccountably shrunk.
A howl of protest went up from the audience.
Next to her, Poppy froze. ‘Oh shit.’
‘You bastard,’ wailed Claudia, swinging round to glare at Patrick.
‘You didn’t paint those,’ said Caspar, starting to laugh.
‘I didn’t say I had.’ Deeply offended by such a suggestion, Patrick failed to see what all the fuss was about. ‘One of my students did them. Mike Cousins. When I mentioned I was coming here tonight, he asked me to bring them along.’ He turned back to Claudia. ‘Mike bumped into you the other week, right? He was worried you might have got the wrong idea and thought he’d wanted you to buy the picture. He didn’t mean that at all; he just wanted you to have it.’
Claudia just wanted to die. One of Caspar’s friends had whisked the brown paper from her grasp, leaving the painting exposed for everyone to see.
And, dreadfully, everyone had. Some people were laughing, others applauding. Next to her, pink to the hairline and similarly humiliated, stood Poppy.
‘Mike wanted you to have yours too,’ Patrick assured her. ‘You don’t have to buy it. It’s a gift.’
To add insult to injury, Mike Cousins was an enthusiastic artist rather than an accomplished one. He had given Claudia a hint of a squint and a right breast larger than the left.
Poppy hadn’t fared much better—one arm was longer than the other and her hair looked like a wig put on in a rush—but at least she was thin. Depressingly, one aspect of Claudia’s figure Mike Cousins had got off to
an absolute tee was her awful undulating stomach.
Caspar came up and stood between them. He put his arms around Poppy and Claudia and said, ‘You both look great.’
Jake, over by the doorway, agreed. Seeing Claudia naked was something he had dreamed of. And he wasn’t disappointed. She looked beautiful, even more beautiful than he had imagined. He adored every curve, every perfect voluptuous inch of her…
‘Christ Almighty, who’s the blob?’
The voice, loud and slurred, belonged to a late arrival. Jake didn’t know him but he appeared to have tagged along with a group of Caspar’s friends. He leaned in the doorway, his arm draped around the waist of an anorexic-looking brunette.
‘Shut up,’ said Jake.
The bloke grinned. ‘Come on, look at it! What a whale! Imagine getting trapped under something like that.’
The room fell silent. Glancing across at Claudia, Jake saw the anguish in her eyes.
‘Move,’ he instructed the skinny girl.
She looked blank. ‘What?’
Jake placed her to one side and punched the smirking heckler so hard he was catapulted through the doorway. Out in the hall, sprawled on his back on the floor, the man groaned loudly and clutched his face.
‘You’ve broken my nose…’
‘Good,’ said Jake. He wrenched open the front door, surprising two more late arrivals on the doorstep. ‘Now get up and get out. You too,’ he told the skinny brunette, who was kneeling beside her boyfriend, using the hem of her cheesecloth skirt to wipe the blood from his face. ‘Come on, out you go.’
The open-mouthed couple on the doorstep stood aside to let them past. When they had gone Jake said, ‘Sorry about that. You can come in now.’ To be on the safe side he added, ‘You’re friends of…?’
‘We aren’t really friends of anyone,’ replied the girl, who was plump and sensibly dressed. ‘We’re just looking for someone. Maybe you can help us,’ she went on, sounding like an efficient policewoman making enquiries. ‘Her name is Dina McBride.’
Claudia had disappeared upstairs. Caspar gathered up the offending paintings and dumped them in the broom cupboard out in the hall.
‘Well,’ said Tom icily, ‘that was fun. Anything you’d like to do as an encore? Rip your dress off, maybe, and dance on the table? After all, it’s hardly going to make a difference now. Everyone here already knows what you look like.’
His eyes glittered, reflecting his disgust.
Since there wasn’t much else she could do, Poppy attempted to brazen it out.
‘It was just a bit of life-class modeling,’ she said lightly, with a shrug. ‘I don’t do it anymore. I needed to earn some money to pay the rent. I thought I’d told you about St Clare’s.’
She hadn’t, of course she hadn’t. For this exact reason.
‘No, you never did. I think I might have remembered.’ Tom’s jaw was set like concrete. ‘Jesus. I wondered how you could afford to live in a house like this. How long ago did you stop doing it?’
‘February. Three months ago. Before I met you.’
‘And how have you been managing to pay the rent since then?’ His gaze flickered dangerously in the direction of Caspar. ‘In kind?’
After the von Kantz had sold at auction, Jake had doubled her salary. Tom knew that.
Poppy looked at him.
‘What are you trying to say, you don’t want me to move in with you? It’s all over between us? You don’t want to see me anymore?’
Tom didn’t speak for several seconds. Finally he shook his head.
‘Don’t be stupid, of course I still want you to move in. I love you, Poppy. More than words can say. You know that.’
The tiny hairs at the back of Poppy’s neck were standing to attention. Abruptly a lump came into her throat.
‘But—’
‘Come here,’ murmured Tom, drawing her to him and wrapping his arms tightly around her. ‘You silly thing. If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t care, would I? But I do care. You’re mine and I want to be the only man who sees you without clothes.’ He kissed her, lingeringly, then stroked her pale cheek. ‘I want to keep you all to myself.’
‘Um… excuse me,’ said Jake, embarrassed to be butting in. ‘Poppy, some people are here looking for Dina. I can’t find her. Any ideas?’
Extricating herself from Tom’s embrace, Poppy turned and came face to face with the man she had once so nearly married: Rob McBride.
Chapter 52
‘Rob!’
‘Hello, Poppy.’
She felt her mouth drop open. This party was in danger of becoming seriously bizarre. Who was going to turn up next, Elvis?
Rob was suffering from something approaching shell shock himself. The last time he’d seen Poppy had been on the morning of their supposed wedding. When she had scuttled off to London, he had imagined her living in some godawful studio. He’d certainly hoped it was godawful anyway.
But he had been wrong. Instead she was here, in this palatial house where wild parties were held, huge parties where gate-crashers got their noses broken and good-looking men strolled through the hall, clutching paintings of the girl he had once almost married. Only the one glimpsed by Rob had been no ordinary painting… in this one Poppy had definitely been naked.
To add to the air of surreality, he was almost sure the middle-aged man standing less than three feet away from him was the film star Hugo Slade-Welch.
‘Rob. It’s nice to see you again.’
He pulled himself together.
‘Yeah, you too.’ A small lie. It was downright weird seeing Poppy again. And that bloke over there definitely was Hugo Slade-Welch. ‘Sorry… uh, this is Alison.’ Awkwardly, he made the necessary introductions. ‘My fiancée.’
Poppy smiled and nodded and said, ‘Hi.’ Dina had told her all about Alison, the nurse with the unfortunate ankles. Unable to help herself, she glanced anklewards. Yep, there they were. Alison’s legs, encased in woolly blue tights, went straight down. She was wearing sensible shoes with real laces.
‘Sorry, I’m a bit confused,’ said Poppy. ‘Did Dina invite you along to the party?’
‘I’d better explain.’ Rob was still staring goggle-eyed at Hugo Slade-Welch so Alison put herself in charge. It was what she was good at. ‘Ben didn’t want Dina to come here tonight. They had a major row and she stormed out. The thing is, as far as Ben’s concerned, this is the last straw. He’s in a dreadful state, but absolutely determined. If Dina doesn’t come home tonight, their marriage is over. He’ll divorce her. He says he never wants to see her again and he’ll fight for custody of little Daniel.’ Alison paused for a second. Ever practical, she added, ‘He probably won’t win, of course. The courts almost always favor the mother. But he does mean it. If we can get Dina back tonight, they can try again. Otherwise that’s it; Ben’s had enough.’
‘Oh Lord.’ Poppy bit her lip. If the remarks Dina had been making recently were anything to go by, they might as well book the solicitors now. She had a sneaking suspicion Dina would declare this the best news she’d heard all year.
‘So you see why we had to come. Sorry to have intruded on your party. We tried phoning a few times but it was always engaged. In the end, we thought we’d better drive up.’
‘Alison found the address in Dina’s diary,’ Rob put in. He didn’t add what else they had found in the diary. ‘Ben doesn’t know we’re here.’
Poor Ben. Poppy peered in desperation over the heads of the milling guests. She hoped Dina wasn’t nearby doing something horribly indiscreet.
‘She could be anywhere. Why don’t you two help yourselves to a drink now you’re here? Let me go and look.’
But she found Dina almost straight away, sitting on her own on a wooden bench at the bottom of the garden.
‘What happened to your makeup?’ said Poppy, joining her. Dina was sitting very still, gazing blankly ahead.
‘Washed it off.’
‘Have you been crying?’
‘No.�
��
Since it was obvious she had, Poppy proceeded with care. ‘Rob and Alison are here. They want to take you back to Bristol. Look, I heard about your fight with Ben. If you don’t go home tonight, he’s going to divorce you.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay what?’ Poppy leaned closer. Dina didn’t even sound like Dina. ‘Okay you’ll go back or okay he can have a divorce?’
Dina heaved a long sigh. ‘I’ll go back.’
This was so unlike her, Poppy thought there must be a catch.
‘Really?’
As Dina took out a cigarette her hands trembled. The brief flare of the match lit up her face. Fresh tears slid down her white cheeks.
‘Oh Poppy, I thought I could do it. I thought I could change my life, like you changed yours… for the better. But I can’t. It’s no good, I just bloody can’t. It worked out for you but it wouldn’t work for me.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Poppy frowned; an hour ago Dina had been in tearing spirits. She couldn’t imagine what must have happened to knock her down like this. ‘Has somebody said something to you?’ Claudia, perhaps? Surely not Caspar…
‘Not to my face.’ Dina’s voice wavered. ‘But it’s what they say behind your back that counts, isn’t it?’
‘Who?’ For a wild moment Poppy wondered if Caspar had been leading Dina on.
‘Doesn’t matter who. Everyone probably. Anyway, sod them.’ Dina ground her cigarette out with her heel and stood up. ‘I don’t care anymore. I’ve got a husband who loves me. And a baby. I may as well go back home.’
Worried, Poppy said, ‘Do you love them?’
‘Of course I do.’ Dina’s answering smile was bleak. ‘Oh, I know I said I was sick of it all, but that was when I thought I could find something better up here. Meet someone richer, more exciting. Like you did.’ She shoved her cigarettes and matches into her bag and looked down at the angry red mark on her chest. Hugo Slade-Welch’s scrawled signature had taken ages to scrub off. ‘But now I know I can’t, I’ll be all right. Might even have another baby. Ben’s been going on about a little brother for Daniel for months.’