White smoke streamed out of Emma’s nose as she choked. ‘You didn’t get him in mid...’ she exclaimed, and had to stop to cough a bit more.
‘Well into the warm-up stage,’ I said with a giggle. ‘Considering how long it took James to get to the door it must have been a re-dressing job. Lucky I didn’t arrive a minute or two later, then he’d have been in a really bad mood.’
‘You know him?’ That was one of the elements I’d skated over. I was sure Darian would have withheld all her muted sympathy if she’d twigged it hadn’t been a complete stranger I’d burst in on. Besides it made for a better story. ‘James... James?’ Emma mused. ‘Not your stepbrother James, was it? The one you dislike so much?’
It was my turn to look at her in surprise, then the fog of mystification in my brain blew away to leave a horrified clarity. One inebriated evening I’d waxed loquacious about coming back from school the summer I was fifteen to my new stepfather’s house. The first thing I’d seen was James, in a pair of cut off shorts and nothing else, mowing the lawn. I’d abruptly lost interest in ponies, film stars and D’Artagnan and taken to mooching around in too much eye make up while reading romantic novels. That was when I wasn’t creating fantasies where some improbable situation occurred and James was forced to look at me properly for the first time. He would then breathe huskily, ‘I had no idea you were so beautiful, Laura.’ I even tried drowning in the swimming pool in front of him, but instead of diving in to save me he just told me to stop splashing about, I was making his book wet. But since Emma wasn’t nudging me suggestively or winking she must have drunk even more than me and could only remember the bits where I’d gone on about how impossibly bossy he can be.
‘Yes, that James, but even he wouldn’t put me back on the street to be pounced on by a sex maniac just because I get on his goat sometimes,’ I said. ‘And it gave him an excuse to lecture me about how stupid I’d been.’
‘From what you say he’d have happily given up the opportunity to lecture you just this once.’ We looked at each other and then spluttered with laughter, holding our hands over our mouths and glancing towards the door in case of a stentorian demand to know exactly what we were up to.
Luckily the muffled snorts and grunts went unnoticed, for though Darian seems blissfully unaware of the real use to which the file room is put, she knows very well that filing is normally no laughing matter. By the time I’d finished telling all to Emma, who being a kindred spirit can easily understand that there are fates worse than death but not many fates worse than being shown up in front of someone like Serena, the plate of biscuits between us was empty. I looked at it, wondering who had eaten them, and sucked a bit of chocolate off my teeth.
Emma cocked her head. ‘I think I can hear the dulcet tones of our leader calling you.’
So could I, unfortunately. I grabbed a fat file at random and walked out, smiling sweetly at Darian as I passed and asking innocently, ‘Did you want me for something?’ I sat down at my desk. ‘Sorry I’ve been so long, it took ages to find this, it was buried right at the back.’ I opened the file ostentatiously and picked up a piece of scrap paper as if I was about to start making notes.
Darian glared at me suspiciously but must have decided it wouldn’t be politic to nag me today. She smiled at me with all the synthetic sweetness of artificial sugar but fortunately didn’t follow it up by coming over and offering to help me with what I was doing. She might have wondered exactly why I needed the report on consumer reaction to three new flavours of soft drink that had been commissioned in the 1970s to aid me in answering a query about how to avoid bags under the eyes.
The news of my adventure had spread like wildfire through the agency, and like Chinese whispers gained quite a lot and changed direction slightly in the re-telling each time. I had a constant stream of visitors with supposed queries, but really just wanting to know if it was true I had fought off a man and a Rottweiler, KO’d him with a karate kick, if he had dragged me down a side street, and was it really the case that he had been in the middle of slicing my clothes off with a knife when a car had slewed to a halt and my rescuer had leaped out? They were quite an eye opener about the sort of occurrence people thought was par for the course for London and made me miserably aware that I hadn’t paid enough attention at self-defence classes - I had no idea how to do Thai kick boxing, but then I don’t suppose Thai kick boxing is much use in a sports car. Darian’s resolve to be nice to me because I’d had a Traumatic Experience was pretty tried by the end of the morning. As it is she thinks I talk too much and don’t have a serious enough attitude to my work without adding disrupting the work of the whole agency to my list of sins. I tried to tell her that everyone was coming to me and I’d prefer to be left in peace; she said things like that only happened to me, which isn’t quite fair.
Luckily for her blood pressure she was at Rainbow in the afternoon so she wasn’t there to witness how everyone came back a second time to confirm the details. Emma was researching how many mentions our competitors were getting, aka reading the papers, and I was passing her desk when a photograph of a pretty blonde on the gossip page caught my eye. I stopped, sure I recognised her from somewhere. It was Cressida Wynne, who had been christened ‘the loveliest girl in England’ by a besotted gossip columnist, and the sobriquet had stuck. I had never met her, but her face was instantly familiar as I’d seen her pictured with James many times. She’d been his girlfriend. His very serious girlfriend according to family gossip that had buzzed backwards and forwards like a swarm of bees. It had been rumoured that Cressida had been seen going around the General Trading Company with a wedding list look in her eyes and that any minute she would be shyly, but proudly, showing off a large diamond on her left hand. Then at a charity ball she was introduced to one of the sponsors, Count Stefano Buonotti, an Italian businessman, of, as the family excitedly whispered later, very dubious reputation, some twenty-five years older than her. He was very rich, apparently very charming, and after the death of his wife the year before was looking for a new one.
Six months later Cressida wafted down the aisle of the Brompton Oratory in a cloud of antique lace as the new Contessa Cressida Buonotti and departed to live in a castello near Milan, leaving James with egg on his face and a broken heart (according to his aunt who is of a sentimental nature). A lot of people doubted that James had a heart to break, but it was certainly true he hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since.
I put my hand on the page to stop Emma turning it over and leaned across to her to read the story. ‘Milan society is about to lose one of its brightest stars - for part of the year at least. The beautiful Countess Cressida Buonotti has told us that she and her husband Stefano have bought stately Hurstwood House in Derbyshire so Cressida can see more of her family, though they will be catching the summer sun in Italy. It suits Count Stefano too. He has the major share in a consortium that is converting several town houses in Kensington into what we hear will be the largest and most luxurious “country-style” hotel in London. Word is that it’s going to be called The Hurstwood.’
I wondered if James had seen this, and what he felt about having Cressida back in the country again, then realised she must have been back lots of times already. Someone as rich as that was bound to have a flat in London. He might even have been round to have drinks or dinner just to show they could all be civilised and still good friends.
Emma was huffing crossly about having her research material hi-jacked so I told her who Cressida was. She grabbed the paper back, stared at it, and whistled softly. ‘Your stepbrother must certainly know how to pull the birds. Was that Serena last night as gorgeous as this?’
I looked at Cressida’s picture. Even grainy newsprint couldn’t disguise the fact that she knocked most, if not all, of us for six. ‘Serena’s pretty stunning, but she doesn’t quite match up to this.’
‘Cor! What’s your James got to get girlfriends like that? And how come you’ve never tried to get your hands on him?’
>
Thank heavens for the amnesiac effects of alcohol.
‘You say he isn’t particularly rich, or stonkingly good-looking, which are usually prerequisites for really classy women like that,’ Emma flicked a finger at the paper, ‘so I suppose he must be really good in bed. In my experience that’s the only thing that can reconcile a rich woman to love in a hovel.’
James would have been very cross to hear his little house described as a hovel. Besides Emma’s experience is nothing like so great as she likes to pretend sometimes, so I took the rest of what she had to say with a mega pinch of salt. Though I have to admit I had speculated myself sometimes...
‘Actually he is quite attractive. Very attractive, I suppose,’ I amended in a mood of large-minded fairness. ‘But nothing like as good-looking as Daniel.’
‘Who could be?’ asked Emma in a disparaging voice. She thinks Daniel trades on his good looks to get away with the sort of inconsiderate behaviour not allowed to us less-favoured mortals. I’d tried to point out she wasn't being completely fair. Daniel doesn’t ask me to clear up after him, but he takes being a writer very seriously so he tends to ignore things other people find important. I’m not that fussy, but I was brought up with certain standards of hygiene. I prefer to know how long the thing I’m treading on has been there and what it might have been originally.
Of course when Emma kindly offered to drive me home, thus making herself late for a hot date, I couldn’t very well ask if she would mind detouring by an extra twenty minutes so I could see if Daniel was at home to proffer an explanation about last night. There are limits beyond which friendship will not stretch, and jeopardising a chance at six foot two of good looks with a loaded wallet is one of them. My flat felt depressingly empty and Liv had already left for the evening performance.
I looked without much hope at the answering machine as Daniel doesn’t like them, and my heart leaped when I saw the red light blinking. But it was my mother ringing from Paris where she lives, just checking, so she said, to see if I was still alive. I felt a pang of the requisite guilt but she’d have to go on savouring fantasies of my imminent or recent demise for a bit longer. My mother is an excellent parent - long-distance variety. She truly adores her two daughters, but she prefers to leave the nitty-gritty of actually dealing with their problems to any responsible and suitable, or irresponsible and unsuitable, body who comes to hand. She’s certainly given us a large enough quantity of step relations to perform the function. But it would only take a few minutes of her form of maternal truth drug before I’d be spilling all the beans about last night. The inevitable panic that would follow, for my mother is someone who believes firmly in making a drama out of every crisis, with her ringing my father, stepmother, sister, aunts, ex-stepfathers - God forbid - and probably stepbrothers as well, urging them to do something about it, didn’t bear thinking about.
I got myself acquainted with a stiff drink and lay on the sofa, with Horatio stretched out heavily on my lap, watching something comfortingly mindless on the telly. I couldn’t summon up the energy to think about Daniel and for some reason my mind kept drifting to Cressida Buonotti and James. Whatever it was of his that had been hit by her marriage - pride, his heart as a sentimental aunt would have it, or whatever - it had been hit pretty hard. I’d bumped into him a couple of months afterwards and had been struck by an air of guarded self-control that had never been there before, as if it was hiding something deeper. I was probably letting my imagination run away with me but even so, I prayed that now Cressida was back James wouldn’t be tempted to do something stupid to prove he didn’t give a toss about her any more. Like proposing to someone else. I was fond of my ex-stepfather and his relations and knew I’d never be able to face another Lovatt family do again if Serena became part of the family.
CHAPTER 3
Sunday morning found me back up James’s road. I was looking forward to this encounter with all the enthusiasm I usually reserve for the three weeks’ worth of ironing that lurks in the corner of my room. On cool reflection I was more than a little worried about what Serena might have said to James when he got back to her but I had a duty to perform and almost anything was better than hanging around the flat, staring at the phone and willing it to ring with an apologetic errant boyfriend on the line. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move. I wasn’t the one at fault.
This time the door opened almost before I had time to take my finger off the bell and I wondered for a moment if I was about to do my second prat fall into James’s hallway in under a week. ‘You’re becoming a positively familiar sight at my door, Laura,’ he said in a level voice that didn’t give me a clue as to whether he was harbouring murderous thoughts about me. He was in a dark jacket and chinos and on his way out somewhere.
Even I could work that out; he had his car keys in his hand. ‘And what can I do for you today?’
I smiled placatingly and held up a carrier bag. ‘I brought the slippers back.’
‘You shouldn’t have bothered. There was no hurry.’
I cleared my throat. ‘There’s a slight problem...’ I fished in the bag and held up one slipper. It wasn’t a happy sight. The ears were tattered and it now had only half a tail; the other, still in the bag, was in an even worse state. ‘I’ll buy a new pair if you tell me where I can find them,’ I mumbled.
His eyebrows shot upwards. ‘What on earth have you been doing? Having dog fights?’
‘Cat fights,’ I said unhappily. ‘Horatio won’t stop attacking them. He took exception to them when I first walked in wearing them - probably thought they were replacing him in my affections.’
‘So he went all out for revenge? Remind me not to get on the wrong side of your cat. But don’t worry about replacing them - Harry’s dog has already had a good suck and chew at them so your aggressive feline was just finishing off the job.’ He took the bag from me and casually slung it inside the door. ‘How’s the foot?’ he asked, turning back and giving me a critical once over. I got the feeling I didn’t pass. At any level.
‘Much better,’ I said brightly.
‘I’m glad some part of you is. The rest of you looks like it’s just been disinterred.’
‘Oh, thank you, James. You’re so good for a girl’s self-confidence.’ I reckoned I looked perfectly reasonable, certainly a lot cleaner and neater than when he last saw me, if run ragged by too little sleep and what there was of it punctuated by bad dreams. If they weren’t about giant slugs they were variants on a changing room with hundreds of Serenas all craning their heads as I tried to force myself into a size 10 dress. I didn’t know what was worse, waking up with my skin crawling with revulsion, or waking with the crippling humiliation of knowing I had to go on a diet immediately. OK, I was a bit pale and there were shadows under my eyes, but what are blusher and concealer cream for if not to use on days like this? It seemed they hadn’t worked.
He sighed in the way men do when faced with unreasonable women, took a breath and said, ‘Let’s start again. To anyone else you look like the normal Laura, pretty, bouncy, a bit tired maybe, but to someone who knows you you’re looking stressed into next week.’
Me, pretty? James had called me pretty? He didn’t pay me compliments. Long ago I was relegated to that corner of the universe which is occupied by sisters; strangely sexless beings who need protecting from predatory men but otherwise don’t have any of the normal female characteristics. They certainly aren’t ever looked at.
And of course I was stressed. The telephone wouldn’t ring. But I doubted James would be sympathetic about that. ‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have sat up so often gossiping with Liv,’ I said with a fine regard for the spirit if not the letter of the truth. It might be three days since our last session but there had been lots before.
James took this at face value, nodded and reached behind him to slam the door shut. I can take a hint. ‘I won’t keep you. I just wanted to drop the slippers in before Horatio destroyed them completely.’
/>
‘You didn’t think of shutting them away in a cupboard where he couldn’t get at them?’
I smote my forehead dramatically with my hand. ‘Oh dear! Now why didn’t I think of that?’ Probably because my cupboard was so full of clothes, most of which I don’t wear, it wouldn’t shut.
‘Because it was altogether too practical an idea?’ There was a smile in his eyes so I didn’t think he was being serious. He looked at his watch, frowned and jiggled the keys in his hand. ‘Look, a couple of guys I was at university with are having a private view of their pictures this morning. Why don’t you come with me? You might enjoy it.’
‘But I haven’t been invited,’ I said doubtfully.
James shrugged. ‘I have, and I was told to bring a friend. Besides they’d welcome you with open arms anyway. The more people there, apparently with a view to buy, the more successful they’re going to look.’
Another first. James had described me as a bloody nuisance before, several times. A friend, never.
‘Aren’t you taking Serena?’ I ventured. If she was being picked up on the way I was about to discover that I couldn’t delay attacking the ironing pile.
‘No, she’s beating the bounds at some family affair in the country.’
That was fine then. ‘How long have you two been going out? I haven’t heard anything about it.’
James gave me a narrow-eyed look. ‘Planning to be the first with the news on the family grapevine?’
‘Good God, no!’ I said instantly. ‘I’d have to explain how I came to find out and I’m certainly not telling any of them why I knocked on your door at midnight. You lecturing me was bad enough.’
He laughed. ‘You deserved it. It worries me sick to think what might have happened.’ It looked like he meant it too. ‘And to answer your question - not very long, so I’d rather keep aunt-type speculation out of it for the moment.’ I couldn’t blame him. ‘Well, are you coming?’
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