Seb grinned. ‘Actually, if you want a bit of sex, there’s even some cross-dressing going on in Twelfth Night.’
‘It’s not sexy, cross-dressing, though, is it?’ I frowned, concentrating hard. ‘I thought it was about disguise and hiding. You’re not playing the one who burps, are you?’
‘Sir Toby Belch? No, not this time, sadly. He’s very funny, though.’
‘Or the one that wears yellow socks?’ I hiccuped gently and contemplated him. ‘I see you more as Hamlet, you know.’
Seb smiled inscrutably. ‘I guess most of us “thesps” like to think we’ve got him in us.’
I was steeling myself to ask whether Seb would like another drink when he stood up. ‘I’ve got an early start.’ He smiled at me as I bit down the disappointment, squinting up at him. ‘So, Maggie Warren.’ He was very gorgeous, and I was a bit drunk. I might be ruined by Alex, but I was still capable of rebounding heavily. It was definitely better that Seb left immediately. There was no telling what I might do when I was in my cups. My C cups. I started to smile.
Taking my hand, he held it for a minute. Or perhaps it was my imagination; perhaps it was a mere second. His skin was very cool against mine, which was burning hot. ‘It was nice to meet you.’
I stood up too. ‘Oh, yes. Likewise.’
He stared at me for a second, and then he grinned. ‘And watch out for that dance floor. It’s got a mind of its own.’
This time I did blush. ‘Oh yes, I will. I mean, it was Bel. You know Bel when she gets going. She knocked me over.’
But he’d already been swallowed up by the heaving throng, which was getting wilder by the minute. I gazed after him – and then suddenly Bel and Johnno were standing before me – or, rather, Johnno was standing, holding a slumped Bel upright. ‘Bit tired and emotional, you know. I think I’d better take her home.’
‘Who was that?’ she slurred.
‘Seb. Sebastian Rae. The actor.’ His name sounded unwieldy on my lips.
‘Oh yes,’ she nodded, then turned a gentle green. ‘You know, I actually really don’t feel too good. At all, actually.’
After Johnno had removed Bel in some haste, I realised I had little inclination to join the hysterical shrieking fracas that was the last hour or two of a good party. There was really no one left who I even wanted to talk to. For one insane moment I contemplated calling Alex. Because of that, I knew I must go home to bed. Grappling with my coat and bag at the cloakroom, Charlie wafted up beside me and scooped up the confetti packets I’d just knocked off the side. ‘Oh.’ I gazed at one sadly before plopping them back in the bowl. ‘We forgot to throw the confetti.’
‘What a shame,’ Charlie said insincerely. ‘Need a lift, darling?’
‘It’s the wrong way, isn’t it?’ I concentrated on not slurring. ‘A cab’ll be fine, thanks, Charlie. There’ll be loads around I expect.’
‘Suit yourself.’
It was freezing outside, the frenetic hubbub of nearby Piccadilly not lessened by the late hour. On the edge of the kerb I shrugged my coat round my shoulders and looked hopefully for a taxi, for the usual hustlers hoping for a fare. Of course, tonight there were none to be found. The cold air made me realise just how tired and hazy I really was, and I was suddenly desperate to be home now; for the quietness and serenity of my own room and the sanctuary of my father’s house.
A car snapped on its headlights, catching me in the blazing beam. I put a hand up to flag it, and in response he snapped his lights again to full-beam. The glare was so strong it blinded me. I threw my arm up to shield my eyes against the light, relieved to have found a cab, stepping towards the edge of the kerb to wait for him to pull up alongside me.
There was a huge roar as the car over-revved. ‘Easy, tiger,’ I was about to mutter, but through the glare I could make out that the vehicle was moving – fast now, too fast – driving directly towards me.
Confused, I took a step back. Disoriented by the headlights, I staggered in my spindly heels. I could smell the diesel now as I smacked into the lamppost behind me, and somehow I lost my balance and suddenly found myself falling, falling forward toward the acrid stench of fumes. I shouted something in desperation, I don’t know what – but I knew I was about to go under the wheels, wheels that moved relentlessly toward me –
‘I’ve got you.’
An arm grabbed mine and pulled me back. Charlie – Charlie was holding me up now, and I clutched him as the car roared past. With a screech of tyres it took off round the corner. I stared after it, Charlie’s signet ring biting into my naked arm. When he took his hand away, his fingerprints had stained my pale skin.
‘Bloody boy-racers,’ he swore. For once, his slicked-back grey hair was dishevelled, falling across his face. He pushed it back irritably as, dazed, I let him lead me to his silver Alfa. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’
‘I think – that car, it was driving straight at me.’
‘Don’t be so silly.’ He manoeuvred me down into the low seat. ‘You’re pissed. It was just some kid showing off.’
The lights of London slid by outside. Buckingham Palace was an oversized dolls’ house, the road around it a great red skating-rink, Big Ben as magical as ever beneath a silver moon. For a moment I imagined I was Peter Pan silhouetted against the clock-face, flying off into Neverland.
I heard my mobile ring in the depths of the bag at my feet, but by the time I’d hauled it out it had stopped and the screen just read ‘one missed call’.
And gradually, as my pounding heart slowed, I began to feel safe; like I was in a David Gray video, muffled from the cold, driving in a car so smooth it felt like floating in an armchair, anaesthetised from my own pain by alcohol – until suddenly I realised I was far from home. In Vauxhall, in fact – outside Charlie’s penthouse on the river.
‘I’ve had rather a lot to drink, darling, thinking about it.’ He smiled at me wolfishly and bleeped the security barrier with the control in one apparently steady hand. ‘I forgot you were staying out in the sticks. Come up for a snifter, and I’ll call you that cab.’
In the lift up to his penthouse, he moved a fraction nearer – or perhaps it was just the gentle bouncing of the shiny lift. I backed into the corner anyway, feigning interest in my appearance. My reflections in the many mirrors showed me rumpled and slitty-eyed from booze, and as the lift door pinged open I rubbed a fuchsia kiss-mark from my cheek. Charlie stayed close by me as we walked into his flat, as if he was worried I’d make a sudden break for it.
I gazed around, intrigued. All this time I’d known him, and yet I’d never seen his lair. It was so very masculine, such an archetypal bachelor pad, that I nearly laughed out loud. He put some music on, easy listening I think they call it, and dimmed the lights. Above the living fire, two naked women rolled on the stone-coloured wall, wrapped tightly round each other. I tilted my head, trying to focus on the print. Perhaps they weren’t rolling: perhaps they were fighting instead.
‘Like it, darling?’ Charlie followed my gaze as he propelled me towards a squashy leather sofa where my bottom was distinctly lower than my knees. He poured me a large Cognac. ‘Your sort of thing, eh, Maggie?’
‘God, no.’ I took a slug of brandy and nearly choked. They definitely weren’t fighting, I realised from this angle. ‘I’m pretty straightforward really.’
‘Really?’ His hooded eyes were gleaming like a snake about to strike. ‘You can never tell, darling. I thought I had you sussed until the summer. I thought perhaps you were game-on after –’
I changed the subject quickly. ‘No tiger-skin rug then, eh, Charlie?’
‘What?’ He frowned.
‘Oh, nothing.’ The brandy burnt my throat. ‘Can you ring that cab please? I’m knackered.’
‘I already did, darling.’ Charlie sat right next to me, inching his arm behind my head so I had to lean forward not to touch him. I could smell his hair-oil as I edged away until I was rammed up against the sofa-arm.
‘Does Jeffrey Archer still live ne
xt door?’ I asked rather desperately.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Fan of his?’
‘Hardly,’ I said indignantly. ‘Look, I think – if you just give me the number, I’ll call again. I really should be getting home now.’
But Charlie wasn’t listening; Charlie was preparing to pounce. Charlie, my supposed bloody mentor – who I’d worked with for years, who I’d never had to fend off before, despite his boringly lecherous ways. I’d never been his type – I wasn’t blonde or busty enough. Before I could move, he lunged; stuck his tongue into my mouth until I couldn’t breathe. It seemed to have a life of its own. I felt quite sick.
‘Charlie, for Christ’s sake! Get off!’ I managed to push him away, wiping my mouth frantically.
‘I thought you liked a bit of danger, darling.’ Entirely unperturbed, he pushed his hair back with the signet-ringed hand and topped up his brandy from the decanter on the coffee table. He didn’t spill a drop; nor did he replenish mine. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy that, Maggie.’
I stared at him. Then I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed until I cried. And then when I cried, I found I couldn’t stop. My make-up dripped in black rivulets onto the cream leather, my nose began to run. Charlie shifted slightly in his seat. Then he stared out of the window at the lights of London, at the glitter of the night Thames and the majestic Tate Britain opposite, twiddling his ring.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, as I began to calm myself, fishing out a monogrammed hanky and offering it to me. ‘Perhaps that was rather crass. I must say, though,’ he patted my leg through the thin silk of my crumpled green dress, ‘I’ve never found you so attractive. You’ve got a kind of vulnerability these days that I’ve never noticed before’.
I blew my nose loudly. ‘That you thought you could exploit, you mean.’
‘Hardly, darling. I’m not a predator.’ He stood now and reached for the phone. ‘Where’s that bloody cab?’
Charlie didn’t say goodbye as I fled into the lift, and he banged the door shut so hard behind me that it rattled in its frame.
The next morning, feeling hungover and rather queasy, I took Digby to Greenwich Park in an attempt to clear away the cobwebs of the previous night. I tramped up the hill to the Observatory and then across the wild and matted grass to look down on the city, seriously worried about the implications of rebuffing Charlie, especially in the circumstances. I was distracted by the delighted squeaks of a tiny blond boy in an enormous green coat, kicking through the autumn leaves beneath the chestnut trees. The top layers of the pile were a gorgeous mixture of golds and reds, russet and shades of orange. But underneath, as Digby joined the toddler to scavenge there for treasure, there was just nasty rotting mulch. I called the dog away as the boy’s father scooped him up, and wandered home again.
Opening my father’s gate, I stopped in my tracks, confused. Had I got the wrong house? I stopped to listen, a sickening pain searing through my stomach.
For the first time in years, the piano was being played. My mother’s image twirled through my foggy head, and for a peculiar moment suspended in the midst of memory, I thought she might actually be in there.
I dropped the newspapers I’d just bought and flew up the path. Someone was playing the piano and my flesh was crawling with loneliness and need and the knowledge that no one was here to catch me any more, to salve the wounds.
I ran towards the music, gasping and breathless as I took the stairs two at a time to reach the fluid climbing notes, but when I flung the study door wide open, the room that no one ever visited, empty except for my mother’s piano looming large and obsolete, it was only Jenny sitting there, playing a jolly waltz. Jenny beamed up from the piano-stool, her fringe very shiny, her rosy cheeks as round as apples – but when she saw my face, she trailed off.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said a little nervously, ‘you don’t mind, do you? You did say it was all right.’
But it wasn’t all right. Had I really said that?
‘It just – it seems like such a waste.’
It hadn’t been played for years; even I couldn’t bear to any more, although I had tried.
‘I couldn’t resist any more.’
I knew it would be wrong to yell don’t touch. I bit my lip hard. ‘You carry on.’ Managing a feeble smile, I shut the door carefully behind me. Alone on the landing I put my hand to my mouth and brought away blood. Bemused, I wiped it on my coat. Then I went to the kitchen to make some lunch. There was half a bottle of Shiraz open on the side. I shoved a pan of parsnip soup onto the hob and stood there clutching a glass of the dark red wine and I felt stupid and bereft again, like I had when I was thirteen. How stupid I was: I’d forgotten Jenny taught music, of course she did – that’s how she’d met my father, teaching at his school. Of course she’d bloody play. Although I put the radio on loudly to drown the music out, I could hear how out of tune my mother’s piano really was. As I slathered bread with thick yellow butter, I realised it was finally time to leave.
I took a deep breath and rang my ex-boyfriend.
Chapter Twelve
My dad and Jenny came for Sunday lunch on the weekend I moved back into the flat in Borough Market. My dad said it was a sort of housewarming, but I knew really it was to check up on me, to make sure I was coping.
It felt extremely odd and rather uncomfortable to be there again, but I had little choice it seemed. Alex had just accepted a huge job in Glasgow, so our old flat above the cake shop in the market was sitting empty for the time being. I couldn’t afford to rent a new place as well as pay my half of the existing mortgage. In a series of terse and cursory emails and messages to one another, Alex and I eventually established I’d move back in alone while I worked out what to do next.
In an attempt to dispel the ghosts that had lingered since I’d arrived the previous night in a flurry of debris from the market’s busiest day, I put on a Beethoven violin concerto very loudly, made coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in and spent the morning cleaning the kitchen and conjuring up a lemon roast chicken with garlic potatoes, and a rhubarb crumble with homemade custard that even Nigel Slater would die for, whisking the eggs to within a second of perfection. Then I opened the wine ready for my dad’s arrival. I’d pulled out all the stops; I wanted to show Jenny there was no ill-feeling about the piano. I liked her a lot and, crucially, this time I didn’t want to be responsible for spoiling what might be my dad’s last chance of real happiness.
At the front door, Jenny presented me with a large cactus.
‘Oh, lovely.’ I hugged her, hoping fervently it wasn’t a symbol of something unspoken. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She smelled nice and homely; of shampoo and L’Air du Temps. Of motherly things. ‘It doesn’t need much looking after, that’s why I chose it.’ She was a little shy. ‘I thought it’d be perfect for you busy media types.’
‘So how do you feel about being back here?’ my dad asked later, polishing off the crumble as Jenny washed up.
‘It’s fine, Dad, really.’ I jumped up to collect the remaining plates. I couldn’t admit that the memories gouged agonisingly at my brain – that every time I moved across the room I saw Alex sprawled on the sofa sketching, his headphones on, winking at me as I happily threw together a bolognese or a chilli, humming to Mozart; that I felt his constant presence; that I waited for him to bound up the stairs with Digby snuffling at his heels and kiss me like he’d just remembered what living was all about. I couldn’t admit that some of the happiest days of my life had been spent here. I was desperately fighting the memories myself.
I fought a sudden rush of tears, keeping my head down as my father passed me his bowl. ‘I just need to get on with things now, don’t I? No looking back, that’s what you always say, isn’t it?’ My words were brittle and empty and I felt truly haunted actually – but my father’s look of apprehension faded.
‘That’s my girl.’ He patted my arm fondly just as I tripped over his chai
r-leg and dropped the crumble dish.
As I cleared up the shards of china, Jenny offered to take Digby out; she’d often walked him for me while I was recuperating. I hated this biting cold and I had work to do for next week’s shows so I accepted gladly. I suddenly felt exhausted and my leg hurt. I sank onto the sofa, closing my eyes, just for a moment …
I dreamed I was playing croquet with my mother on Pendarlin’s lawn, and someone was hammering the hoops into the ground and urgently calling my name. I woke up with a start, my sweaty face stuck to the leather cushion I lay on. It took me a second to realise someone really was knocking and calling my name.
Hauling myself off the sofa, the phone began to ring. I picked it up, my eyes still half-shut. A click; a dialling tone. Gormless with sleep, I dropped the receiver back into the cradle and staggered towards the persistent hammering.
‘All right, I’m coming.’ I flung the door back in bad temper.
‘About time.’ Alex pushed past me into the flat.
‘Come in, why don’t you,’ I said to the empty street, to the glowering grey sky, to the single tree stripped naked by November’s chilly wind and the train clanking overhead. ‘I thought you were in Glasgow?’
‘Going back on Wednesday. Can I get a cup of coffee?’ He was already bounding up the stairs into the kitchen. ‘It’s bloody freezing out.’ He blew on his hands.
I followed him more slowly, still hampered by my foot. ‘Hung over?’ I was waspish because I didn’t know how else to be; fighting myself already.
‘Hung over?’ Alex actually grinned, his long eyes creasing up. I used to love the way they did that. Oh God. I was fighting the part of me that wanted to run across the kitchen and launch myself into his arms, to breathe in his familiar smell, the smell I couldn’t get enough of in the old days. And I despised myself; I held myself in check, telling myself firmly it was my mind just playing tricks.
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