‘Hi there,’ he said, and the sound shot around the inside of her ear as if no one had ever spoken to her before.
‘H-hi,’ she managed in response. She knew she was staring but she could not help it. He was straight from a stately-home ceiling, the sort of figure seen writhing with gods and goddesses and lit by rays of fantastic light. Instead of a scrap of silk, he wore jeans, almost falling off his narrow hips, and a baby-pink gingham shirt tucked half in, half out.
He pushed a hand through his bright hair and took a step forward. ‘You don’t know where Amber is, do you?’ His voice was expensive, warm and low.
Isabel shuddered, rather than spoke her negative. Her voice sounded strange to her ears. Amber could be anywhere, after all. She seemed to remember a loud, imperious voice shouting something about Paris and a private jet, although it had been the middle of the night and she could have dreamt it.
He was leaning against the corridor’s exposed brick wall, arms lightly folded, looking at her. With nervous, birdlike darts of her eyes she gathered details: festival wristbands, an expensive watch. Pictures tumbled into her mind: a summer of rock concerts, nights under the stars, laughing girls with long legs, perfect teeth and shining hair. She felt a powerful twist of envy.
‘Couldn’t scrounge a coffee off you, could I?’ he asked.
She nodded and muttered and, with a shaking hand, unlocked her door. He followed her in, his tall, lean frame stooping. He seemed to fill the room. She plugged in the kettle; the noise, as it roared to its conclusion, seemed deafening.
‘I’m Jasper,’ he told her. ‘Jasper De Borchy.’
‘Isabel.’ Why was everything she said coming out in this silly, gaspy voice?
Jasper De Borchy. She knew the name. Amber’s escort for the first party – the one with the silver dress. Amber’s boyfriend, probably, although so many came and went it was difficult to tell and she was not in her neighbour’s confidence.
What must it be like, being kissed by this god? She could not suppress the question, although it wasn’t formed of words, but pictures. She looked down, chest pounding, cheeks scorched.
‘You’ve got very beautiful hair, Isabel.’
It was an easy compliment, just a pleasantry. In her rational mind she knew this. A bit cheesy, even, possibly. But that didn’t stop her looking up, red face and all, and her insides dissolving as he smiled. The sound of her name on his lips set the blood thundering round her body. Her hand shook as she measured out the Nescafé.
‘Thanks,’ he said, tawny eyes boring into her as he took the mug – as if he could see what she was thinking. As their fingertips touched, Isabel suppressed a shudder.
But then, through the pounding in her eardrums, came the unmistakeable, gravelly sound of Amber’s voice: loud, honking and right outside the door. She was on the phone.
‘Amber!’ Jasper called. ‘In here!’
Isabel stirred her coffee, hard, trying to stir away the wish that he had said nothing. That they had sat here in a silent conspiracy, waiting for Amber to go away again. What was the matter with her? That had never been likely.
Isabel’s door slammed back on its hinges, sounding like a pistol shot. The familiar figure lounged in the doorway, face plastered in make-up, long blond hair streaming about her shoulders. ‘Jasper!’
He shot to his feet, Isabel noticed longingly. A gentleman. Manners were so sexy.
Amber flung herself at him. There was a prolonged kiss, the suggestive murmur, a giggle. Isabel turned away, feeling unaccountably sick inside. What had she expected, though?
‘Who were you just shouting at?’ Jasper asked. Isabel, listening intently, thought he sounded amused.
‘My absolutely foul agent,’ Amber exclaimed. ‘Really on my case about this hideous newspaper column; seriously wish I hadn’t agreed to do it, but I’ve spent the money now.’
‘Oh, well,’ Jasper said easily. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’
‘Except that I’ve blown all my allowance already this month,’ Amber groaned. ‘I need to do this column, really.’
‘Why? How much does it pay?’
The sum she mentioned was so incredible it made Isabel gasp.
Jasper, however, merely looked amused. ‘What’s this?’ He pulled at the ragged hem of what was obviously yet another party dress.
Amber giggled. ‘You like my shredded chiffon?’
So the dress was supposed to look like that. Isabel had assumed it was Coco’s handiwork, dating from before the dog’s disappearance. Even that didn’t seem so terrible now, with Olly on her side.
Although, now she came to think of it, the idea of Olly seemed less wonderful than it had . . . Now that Jasper was smiling at her.
‘Isabel looked after me,’ he was telling Amber. ‘In your absence.’
‘Couldn’t help it, darling. When Karl calls, we all drop everything.’
Amber, surely, had been conscious of her all along. But it was apparently only now that she really saw Isabel, really focused on her. She gave her a huge, beautiful and apparently genuine smile. ‘Darling! Haven’t seen you for ages! Where have you been?’
A host of caustic replies sprang to Isabel’s lips.
‘Come next door for a drink,’ Amber commanded, cutting her off. Isabel knew she should refuse. Did she want to re-enter the web? But it took just one honey flash of Jasper’s yellow eyes to change her mind.
Amber’s room, as before, was a sea of shoes and dresses and the jewellery box lay upturned. Pearls were tangled in the twists of a skull-printed scarf.
Pop! A small explosion. Amber brandished a bottle, the foaming wine spilling down the gold-foil neck.
Jasper sat on the floor, his long legs crossed before him, his back against the clothes-heaped bed. His eyes were on Isabel and seemed full of suggestion, somehow. Her insides twisted in excitement.
‘Here,’ commanded Amber, shoving a glass at Isabel. ‘Sit down,’ she added, waving towards the tangle of clothes and jewellery. Isabel lowered herself, gingerly. Amber made room for herself, throwing up a pair of transparent heels and catching up a ruby bracelet on the end of one of them. It flew through the air like a ring of fire.
Isabel had gulped more of the wine than she meant to. Sheer nerves had made her do it. Now she felt giddy. The champagne had hit her empty stomach like a lit match hitting petrol. Her limbs felt shaky and her cheeks burned hot. Jasper was still looking at her, a thoughtful smile playing about his mouth. She could almost feel the little sparks of electricity jumping between them. Amber and her complaining voice seemed suddenly far away.
‘And now I have to write this wretched column,’ Amber was lamenting. She took another slug of champagne and plonked herself down beside Jasper, wriggling companionably beside him. They both stared at Isabel and she felt exposed, inadequate. There was something detached and pitiless about such beauty. It was like being in two very strong spotlights.
‘What is it about?’ Isabel asked, remembering what Olly had said about piercing political analysis and trying, suddenly, not to smile.
Amber gave a careless shrug. ‘Oh, you know. My life at university.’
‘But you’re never at university,’ Jasper pointed out, flicking a conspiratorial look at Isabel. ‘You’re always at parties in London.’
‘That’s crap!’ Amber tossed her hair. ‘Actually, I’ve just been at a shoot in Paris.’
Jasper caught Isabel’s eye again. This time she smiled back, but looked down quickly. Her heart thumped in her ears.
‘They’re going to call it “Blue Stocking” and have a picture of my legs in navy fishnets across the top,’ Amber was adding, yawning.
‘Deep stuff, then,’ Jasper commented teasingly. He was trying to make her laugh, Isabel knew, and she stared at the carpet, squirming with the fierce urge to oblige
him.
‘Fuck off,’ Amber squeaked. ‘My agent says this column is, like, a potential breakthrough for me. There could be a novel deal, a film deal – you name it. And there better be, after the fly-on-the-wall got—’
‘Squashed?’ suggested Jasper, a gleam in his yellow eyes.
Isabel felt her shoulders begin to shake.
But now Amber was laughing too. She was beaming, her eyes dancing. ‘But I’ve just had the most wonderful idea!’ she exclaimed in her throaty rasp. ‘Darling, sweet, adorable Izzy, you could write my column for me, couldn’t you?’
‘What?’ Isabel’s ability to react quickly had deserted her, along with any idea of what to say. She looked helplessly from one to the other. ‘But . . .’
‘But you weren’t there?’ Amber supplied brightly. ‘You don’t live my dazzlingly exciting life? No matter, babes. I’ll tell you all about it. Well – the printable bits!’
This was not the way things were meant to go at all. Isabel looked appealingly at Jasper. He could rescue her from this situation with one word. She sensed that Amber was in awe of him, his cool authority.
But Jasper’s golden eyes, meeting hers, were encouraging. ‘I would,’ he said. ‘Shut the old tart up.’
Amber squealed in mock indignation as she elbowed him, diamonds glittering on her wrist.
‘But . . .’ Isabel said again.
The look Amber now turned on Isabel was mournful. ‘And of course,’ she said, ‘Coco’s still missing . . .’ Her face fell; she pushed out her plump lower lip.
Feeling the familiar screw turn, Isabel looked resignedly down at her hands. It’s only once, she thought. And if Jasper wanted her to . . .
‘OK,’ she said, looking up and being rewarded by two dazzling smiles. At the exact same moment, the mobile in her bag beeped.
‘Message!’ Jasper said. ‘Boyfriend, is it?’ His eyes twinkled suggestively.
Isabel reddened – for the millionth time, it seemed. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she muttered.
Olly was putting his suit on and thinking of Isabel. Had she got his text? he wondered. She had not yet replied; she was in the library, probably. That she was mad keen on her work was obvious. Keener than he had ever been himself. He’d been sufficiently inspired, the next day, to ask David for some tips on metaphysical poetry, which seemed Isabel’s particular favourite. The deeply erotic verse his landlord had given Olly to read had intensified the situation. His ardour was now a blazing fire.
Well, he’d better forget all that for the moment. Roving hands, melting souls and all that. Today he must concentrate. He had an interview with the Hagworthingham Chronicle, a regional newspaper in Lincolnshire which seemed the last one in the country not to be owned by the De Borchys and therefore not about to shut down.
After slipping on his trusty suit, carefully inspecting it for marks, he went downstairs. Thumping music could be heard from Hero’s room. Another day off school, he guessed. As he passed her door, he noticed the addition of a row of ‘Help For Heroes’ stickers and, perhaps because of this new activity – or the noise – the black and yellow radiation sign had slipped to reveal something beneath.
He peered at the small white china plaque with ‘Hero’ in flowing black script positioned next to a tiny pink rose. It was the sort of nameplate little girls had on their doors and this blast from the past, evidence of the child Hero had been, struck Olly as oddly moving. That she had ever been anything other than a furious black-clad teen, scowling through smoke rings, seemed incredible.
He knocked on the door, ignoring the usual obscenity. Hero was lying on the bed, as usual, staring at her laptop and smoking.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ Olly shouted through the noise and the acrid swirl of cigarettes and joss sticks.
‘Whose side are you on?’ Hero blasted back. ‘You sound like my effing parents.’
Olly opened his mouth to say that Dotty and David did a better job of being parents than Hero did of being a daughter. He shut it again, however. It wouldn’t help.
‘You’re wasting your education,’ he told her.
‘So what?’ Hero returned. ‘What’s education ever done for you?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ he informed her with dignity, ‘I’ve got an interview.’
This news was sufficiently astounding to make Hero prop herself up on one elbow. ‘Really? Don’t tell me,’ she added scathingly. ‘Editor of the Daily Telegraph?’
‘Better than that,’ Olly flipped back. ‘The Hagworthingham Chronicle.’
Hero cackled and returned to her laptop.
Dotty was at the kitchen table, gazing into space over a coffee mug with ‘Doubt Everything’ printed on it. She looked as if she was taking the advice literally. Her mouth was turned down and her forehead wrinkled. She looked, most uncharacteristically, devoid of hope.
‘What’s up, Dotty?’ Olly asked, abandoning the idea of breakfast after one look at the kitchen clock. It was later than he had thought; he would buy something at the station. ‘Lintles due, are they?’
Dotty shook her head and gave a wry smile. ‘Martin,’ she said. Olly nodded. Martin was a management consultant: tall, middle-aged and meaty, with rimless spectacles and a bald head beneath his cycle helmet. Helmet off, he looked like a short-sighted egg. But, according to Dotty, he was as electric an interpreter of Bach as they came. He had, she added, only started playing again a year ago, after more than a decade of not even looking at his bow. It was never too late, Olly remembered her saying.
He saw her now raise her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. The thumping upstairs had intensified. ‘I don’t think the “Hands-Off” approach is working.’
‘Poor you.’ Olly began to sympathise. ‘I’m sure—’ he began, intending to say something comforting.
‘But it doesn’t matter,’ Dotty cut in, with spirit. ‘No,’ she added, slapping the sticky pine table and standing up, ‘it doesn’t matter at all.’ Determination flashed in her small, dark eyes.
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No.’ Dotty’s face was positively burning with resolution. ‘I’ve got a whole new approach and I’m going to start it today. The Commando Parent.’
Olly grinned. ‘You’re not going to wear underwear?’
Dotty gave him a shove with something of her old high spirits. ‘It means I’m in charge and I have natural authority.’
He could not help but admire her. She had persistence. ‘Gosh, Dotty. You don’t give up, do you?’
She looked him in the eye. ‘How can I?’ Dotty asked bleakly. ‘She’s my daughter.’
He felt suddenly, quite powerfully moved.
‘Well, good luck with it, Dotty,’ he said in a voice thick with emotion as he headed for the door. ‘I do hope it works.’
On the way to the station, his mind went back to Isabel. He felt sure the forthcoming interview would go well, that he would finally have a job, that she was his lucky charm.
The robin was back, hopping around, clockwork head jerking busily. He fixed Diana with his bright round black eye, darting forward occasionally when a tempting flash of worm revealed itself. ‘You can’t have them all,’ Diana told him. ‘They do some good work for me. Airing the soil, turning it over. Very good gardeners, worms.’
She realised, as she was speaking, that she was not alone. A pair of ankles in tan tights was standing before her. Diana looked up, heart sinking slightly. It was Sally again, the over-curious college housekeeper. She held a mug in her hand. ‘As you never come in for a break,’ she said, brandishing the mug, ‘I thought I’d bring you one out here.’
Diana smiled up at her. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ve got a flask –’ she gestured at her backpack, somewhere in the distance – ‘but thank you.’
‘Fresh is better than flask,’ Sally said stoutly
. She dug in her apron pocket and produced a plastic-wrapped packet. ‘Brought you a biscuit, too.’ She held the packet out and squinted at it. ‘Viennese crunch.’
‘Thanks.’ Diana turned back to her bulbs. Sally’s ankles remained where they were, however.
‘Funny bugger, isn’t he? Professor Black?’ Sally remarked, her tone sufficiently indulgent to arouse Diana’s suspicions. She looked accusingly at Sally. ‘You thought he was awful before.’
‘Well he seems to be making a bit of an effort now. Bit of a charm offensive, maybe. Some of the others even think he’s quite sexy.’
Despite herself, Diana made a discreet exploding noise, which could have been a cough or a disbelieving guffaw and was in fact a combination of both. She had seen the offensive. But none of the charm.
‘Quite Mr Darcy-ish,’ Sally was continuing.
‘Mr Darcy!’ Diana plunged her fork hard in the ground to relieve her feelings.
‘He’s quite famous you know,’ Sally went cheerfully on. ‘Some sort of super-scientist. The brain’s his speciality, I gather.’
‘Is it?’ Diana murmured, wishing Sally would go. So far as she could see, the Master’s speciality was rudeness.
‘Of course, you know his wife died,’ Sally added casually.
Diana looked up, shocked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sally said, gratified by the effect and the attention. ‘He lost her a couple of years ago. You didn’t know, really? Dreadful. Cancer. Mmm. She was quite young, too. They met at – where was it? – Harvard, is it? She was one of his students, apparently. That’s why he moved to England; couldn’t bear to stay in America. We all think –’ she waved a hand in the direction of Branston’s concrete bulk – ‘that it’s quite romantic, really. Gives him that sort of sexy tragic air, doesn’t it?’ She paused before adding, theatrically, ‘No children.’
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