The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit)

by Gyland, Henriette

  Back in the crowded drawing room the head waiter announced that dinner was served, and the guests milled into the dining room, a large rectangular room with French windows overlooking the garden. The windows were curtain-less but indoor bamboos served as natural screening. Another set of dazzling chandeliers lit a long table covered in crisp white linen and decked with flowers, crystal wine glasses, fine bone china and enough silver to make a dent in the national reserves.

  Helen found her seat and was just about to pull in her chair when a familiar voice – a very familiar voice – said, ‘Here, let me do that for you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Jason?’ Helen swung around in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He shrugged and sat down beside her. ‘Well, it would seem I’m your dinner partner.’

  ‘That’s just crap!’

  ‘That I’m your dinner partner? I’m so sorry. Here I was, hoping that we might—’ He spread his hands wide with a mock hang-dog expression.

  Helen elbowed him in the side. ‘Pack it in. You know what I mean. When I left, you looked like you were settling in for the evening. And now here you are, dressed—’

  She took in his dinner jacket, crisp white shirt and slicked-back hair. She’d noticed several times how good he looked in jeans, but in a suit he was the embodiment of success and power, and she experienced an odd constriction in her chest. She’d always had a suspicion he was completely out of her league. Now she knew for sure.

  ‘—well, all smartened up. How did you get here so quickly? And who invited you?’

  ‘I have a fairy godmother.’

  ‘Oh, please!’

  A waiter interrupted them with a basket of bread rolls. Helen shook her head. Bread was one of those food stuffs her medication transformed into the taste equivalent of wood chippings. Jason accepted one and broke it into smaller bits, making a frightful mess on his side plate and the white table cloth.

  Helen watched him out of the corner of her eye. Only a person used to going to this sort of party wouldn’t worry about his table manners. The thought put her on her guard.

  ‘My father sent a car for me,’ he said finally.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I could join him. He likes me to accompany him to business dinners because Mum can’t leave the dogs, or so she says. I usually say no thanks.’

  ‘Your father is here? Which one is he?’

  Jason bent his head towards someone further up the table and continued to munch on his bread roll. Helen knew who he meant before she turned to look – she’d felt his gaze on her ever since she came in the dining room.

  ‘That’s him over there. Salt ’n pepper hair, sharp suit.’ As if acknowledging the description, Jason’s father held up his glass in a silent salute. Again Helen met the cold stare and gave a little involuntary shudder.

  ‘Yes, he has that effect on people,’ said Jason.

  ‘You said he was just a self-made business man.’

  ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. He’s a crook.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes me,’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t like anyone. I wouldn’t take it personally.’

  The starter arrived, a fancy concoction of seafood in a fragile basket of pastry encircled by a white sauce which had been artistically swirled into a pattern on the over-large plate. Pretty, but her appetite had vanished. She picked at the food, managing only a few bites, and then rearranged it artfully on her plate so it looked as if she’d at least tried to eat it.

  ‘So if you don’t normally accept his open-invitation to these things, why are you here tonight?’

  Jason put his fork down, touched his napkin to his lips, and turned to face her. ‘Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  He smiled. ‘You.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I knew you’d be here, and I thought it might be nice to spend some time together.’

  A diversionary tactic. She wasn’t going to fall for it. At the same time she couldn’t help feeling just a little bit tempted to believe him. ‘But how did you know I was going to be here and not at some other dinner party?’ she insisted.

  ‘I called my dad. He confirmed your name was on the guest list.’

  That sounded plausible enough, but it didn’t explain why, the moment she’d met the eyes of the man who’d then turned out be Jason’s father, she’d had a nasty feeling he knew exactly who she was.

  ‘Did he say anything else about me?’ she asked.

  ‘No, why would he?’

  ‘No reason.’

  Jason took a sip of his wine. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  Plenty, she thought. ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Why you are here? The kind of people my father rubs shoulders with don’t usually bother to socialise with lowly assistants.’

  The waiter cleared their plates away, and the interruption gave Helen a chance to think about her answer. Could she trust him? As soon as the thought entered her mind, she realised that this wasn’t a case of whether she could trust him or not. She’d done nothing wrong – not yet anyway – and her connection to Arseni was just that, a connection. It was more a case of whether she dared to open up about herself to him, to anyone.

  She had to learn to do that. To expose herself a bit more, and to hell with the risks. Take a chance.

  ‘I only met him recently,’ she began, ‘but as it happens, the host is my uncle. Arseni Stephanov.’

  Jason stared at her as he mentally connected the dots. Stephanov, Stephens. Here was the link between Helen and the woman called Mimi in the newspaper clippings, whom both Helen and the host were somehow related to. It wasn’t a quantum leap, and it made total sense. If you wanted to start a new life while keeping a part of your identity, choosing a name close to your own was a reasonable compromise.

  What he didn’t quite get was why she was here at all, if the point of changing her name had been to distance herself from her family in the first place. With the kind of money on display, this guy could obviously pull strings all over town, could probably get her any high-flying job she wanted, yet she chose to work in a really lowly one.

  It was almost as if she’d deliberately disassociated herself. Like Jason did from his own father. Maybe they had more in common than he’d thought.

  ‘That might explain why my father doesn’t like you,’ he joked.

  ‘Why? Like I said, I’ve only just met him and—’

  ‘And you’ve only just moved into my house,’ Jason pointed out. ‘I have a confession to make. When I asked about the guest list, my father wanted to know why I was interested in you, and I had to explain that you lived in the house. He wasn’t too happy about that.’ Derek must have worked it out. Or spied on him and the others in the house. Or both. Always one step ahead of his wayward son.

  ‘What do my family connections and living in your house have to do with each other?’

  ‘He probably sees you as a bad influence on me. Turning away from moneyed family is a sore point for him.’

  She turned her head and looked down the length of the table at Derek, who was deep in conversation with the lady on his right.

  Jason knew better. He sensed his father’s awareness and knew Derek’s apparent concentration on his dinner partner was a cover for studying everyone around him, including his own son.

  When Jason had first entered the crowded reception room earlier, he had spied his father across the room talking to someone whom he took to be a business contact. A woman, attractive, well-to-do, but too old to be one of his father’s lovers. It didn’t appear to be a pleasant conversation, and in the end the woman left as if she’d heard enough.

  Derek Moody hadn’t looked in his son’s direction, but something about his body language, a slight shift in his posture perhaps, told Jason his father knew he’d arrived. Most children would have welcomed this sort of awareness in their parent; for Jason i
t felt as if an invisible net had been cast around him. Involuntarily, he’d taken a step back and accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter.

  And then he’d seen where his father’s attention had shifted to. Helen, half-hidden by a large house-plant, as much out of place in this joint as he was.

  Sitting next to her now, the devil took hold of him, and as he felt his father watching without actually watching, he leaned closer to Helen and blew gently at the base of her neck.

  Make what you will of that, you old goat.

  Helen gasped. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Getting your attention.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because I’ve thought of one other reason my father doesn’t like you.’

  ‘Yeah, what?’

  Jason took a hearty swig of his wine glass. Dutch courage, he thought. Boy, do I need it. ‘Because I like you,’ he said.

  She stared at him, in that inscrutable way of hers he’d come to respect.

  ‘Why should it bother him that you like me?’

  He couldn’t back down now. She’d never trust him if he did, and it had become important to him that she should. Not only that, but she had an uncanny ability to see right into his soul. If he fobbed her off with banalities, she’d know he was lying.

  So, he decided to tell her something he’d never told anyone other than Lucy and Trevor.

  ‘There was a girl once,’ he began. ‘Like you in many ways, blonde and tanned. And very different in others. I was twenty-three, got her pregnant, and wanted to marry her. Do the right thing, you know.’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘But my dad didn’t think she was good enough for me, so he paid her off and she chose to have an abortion. I suppose a part of me still grieves for the loss of that baby. A life that … could have been. Silly, really.’

  She regarded him silently, and he turned away from those beautiful, all-seeing eyes. Swigging from his wine again, he suddenly felt a little woozy. She must think him a right tosser.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Gently she prized the wine glass from his fingers and put it back on the table. ‘That you had to go through something like that. No one ever thinks about what it might be like for the man. But why should it be any different?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Briefly he put his hand over hers, touched by her understanding. Then again, why shouldn’t she be? Helen came across as far more mature than many girls her age and had what he could only describe as an intact core self, despite the tough times she must have been through. Her words to him showed that, simplistic though they were, and he wanted to safeguard it.

  ‘You’d better stay out of his way, though,’ he said.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Like you need to tell me that.’

  Helen experienced a shiver of unease. She remembered Letitia’s reaction to Jason’s father earlier; she clearly wasn’t the only one who wished to avoid him.

  Jason had no need to worry on that score. She’d do everything she could to stay away from this man.

  Their main course arrived, whole quail served with tiny new potatoes and stir fried vegetables arranged in a narrow stack, again encircled by gravy in a beautiful pattern. The combination of seeing the small bird along with the hard lump of uncertainty in her stomach made Helen lose the rest of her appetite.

  ‘What I want to know is, if Stephanov is your uncle, and you have access to all this’—he made a gesture indicating the opulent dining room—‘why do you choose to live in squalor?’

  That question she could answer. ‘It makes me feel at home. Why do you?’

  Jason responded with a frown, then he attacked his dinner with savage stabs of his fork and didn’t say anything else on the subject.

  Something had changed. It was subtle, but it was there. He’d said he liked her, and she’d felt it too, it wasn’t just words, but it still wasn’t clear what he wanted from her, or if he wanted anything at all.

  Instincts had made her hold back, and she’d been proven right: she would have to be extremely careful if she was to walk this continued tightrope between her life in the house and outside it.

  When dinner was finally over, she told her uncle she was tired and left. It had started to drizzle, and she stopped at the top of the steps to breathe in the London air, that not completely unpleasant mixture of wet tarmac and traffic fumes.

  Although she’d tried to push the thought aside, something about Jason’s father interested her, in the same way a large spider might. Clearly he did business with her uncle, but his connection to her aunt she could only guess at. Perhaps he was a customer of the auction house. She had seen for herself how her wheeler-dealer uncle liked to invest some of his money in art and collectibles, and it seemed a safe bet that Jason’s father, who was of a similar ilk, liked to do the same.

  Then again, Jason had also described his father as a crook.

  Helen nearly gave him the slip, but fortunately Jason managed to catch up with her on the pavement. ‘It’s raining. Let’s get a taxi.’

  ‘Taxis are expensive. I’m happy on the bus.’

  ‘But I’m not, and I’m in charge.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Since when?’

  ‘Since right now.’ He twirled her around and planted a kiss on her lips.

  Helen drew back with a slight scowl on her face. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I’m just glad I know you. Happy to be alive, that’s all. And out of there.’ He tossed his head in the direction of her uncle’s house, and, hiccupping loudly, he tried hailing a taxi. The driver ignored him.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she scoffed.

  He grinned. ‘A bit. Your uncle serves good wine, apart from that awful champagne. Yuck.’ He had drunk a fair amount and was feeling pleasantly mellow, especially now he’d escaped his father’s presence. He was also less drunk than Helen supposed.

  ‘Didn’t stop you knocking it back, I imagine.’ She wolf-whistled for a taxi, which did a U-turn and came to a halt beside them.

  ‘Impressive,’ he muttered as they bundled into the back.

  When they got back, the house was completely dark. Jason flicked the switch in the hall, but the bulb went out with a ping.

  ‘Bugger. I’ll have to sort that out in the morning.’

  An awkward silence fell, and he hoped she didn’t think he’d engineered for the bulb to pop. Making light of it, he said, ‘Well, thanks for seeing me home safely. It’s nice to know someone’s concerned for my welfare.’

  He felt rather than saw her smile. ‘Oh, you know, Women’s Lib and all that. It was fun. I enjoyed being with you,’ she added, then stopped abruptly as if she worried she’d said too much.

  ‘Are you having a laugh? I’ve been grumpy all evening.’

  ‘Only half the evening.’

  Laughing, he placed his hand on the wall beside her head, and looked down into the only thing glinting in the darkness, her eyes. ‘I suppose this is where we say goodnight.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  He remembered how she’d reacted to him the last time he’d nearly lost himself in her. That should have been enough for him to keep his distance. Instead, drunk partly on alcohol and partly on her presence, he had, before he knew it, done the exact opposite of what he’d planned to do, had moved up close and was kissing her with abandon.

  Forcing her against the wall, almost knocking the wind out of them both, he pushed himself between her legs, and let her feel just how much he wanted her. She responded by rubbing shamelessly against him, and the lust for her which he’d hoped to put a lid on just got ten times worse. Her lips were soft under his and quivered like he felt his own body shake with the effort of holding back.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she breathed before he shut her up with his mouth again. He had no awareness of anything other than her; her skin, her scent, the inviting movements of her hips, the way her breasts moulded themselves to the shape of his hand.

  His shock was therefore palpable when she shoved him hard in t
he chest, and he had to step back in order to regain his balance.

  ‘What?’ he gasped.

  ‘I like living here,’ she said, and the amusement had gone from her voice. ‘If we get involved, we might ruin that.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, feeling like a cad. ‘Do you know what, you’re more beautiful than you realise?’

  ‘That’s a bit patronising. How do you know what I realise about myself?’

  He smiled. ‘Good point. I just wanted to say that you’re very beautiful.’

  ‘How can you tell? It’s dark in here.’

  ‘I meant on the inside.’ He kissed her on the forehead and tore himself away while he still had some decency left in his bones. ‘Good night.’

  He left her with a sense that more needed to be said on the subject.

  She had eyes in her head, she knew she had lovely hair, a good body, and a pretty face, but even Fay with her magic wand and the loan of a velvet dress couldn’t change how she saw herself. Attractive on the outside, but inside she was like the elephant man, grotesque, twisted, and horrible.

  Closeness to other people meant at some point she’d have to tell them about her epilepsy, but when and how was always an issue. They either overreacted or ended up defining her purely by her condition, or both. Sometimes they even saw her as abnormal, like she did herself.

  A freak. The spaz kid. By pulling back she protected herself before it came to that.

  At the same time it was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

  She paused on the landing to touch her lips, which were still warm from kissing Jason, and smiled when she heard a scuffling sound at the top of the stairs.

  Lee, she thought. He might freak Charlie out, but it gave Helen a certain comfort knowing he was up there. It was almost as if he was watching over her.

  The feeling of comfort lasted until she opened the door to her room. Cool, damp air hit her, and she switched on the light and noticed the open window. She’d forgotten to close it. Or had she? She couldn’t remember, and not being able to remember whether she’d closed it or not made her flesh crawl.

  It was nothing tangible, more like a sense that the walls and the furniture had witnessed a violation of her privacy while she was out.