by Sue Margolis
Barbara grimaced at her mother. “There were cushions, too,” she protested. “And curtains.”
Faye gave a shrug and said she didn’t remember any cushions and curtains.
“Anyway, Hugh,” Barbara went on, “I really want to thank you for agreeing to be our wedding planner. It was all getting a bit too much for me on my own.”
“You can say that again,” Mal muttered, stabbing a melon chunk.
“What was that, Mal?” Barbara said, narrowing her eyes.
“Nothing. I just said it looks like rain.”
Flick, who remained as sensitive as ever to the atmosphere chez Fishbein, suddenly produced a sheet of paper out of her bag. “Look, everybody,” she cried, “I’ve done some sketches for Cyn’s bridesmaid dress. I had a mooch round the shops, but everything seemed so restrained and boring. So, I thought, why not design my own?” She passed the paper over to Cyn, who was sitting next to Hugh and Harmony. The sketches were all pretty much the same—variations on the hooped lace meringue Cyn had been dreading. “I thought apple green would be just perfect.”
Cyn dug her fingers into Hugh’s thigh.
“Come on, gorgeous,” Hugh whispered, “at least it’s one up on purple.”
“How do you work that out?”
He ignored her. “Yes, these might work,” Hugh said to Flick.
“Thank you,” Cyn hissed. “Thank you very much.”
“Although,” he went on, “I’ve been having a few thoughts about the wedding and I was thinking maybe we should keep it very simple.”
“I like simple. Simple’s good,” Mal said, eagerly. “In fact the simpler the better.”
Barbara dug him in the ribs and told him not to fill up on bread because there was chicken casserole coming.
“I know it’s a cliché,” Hugh said, “but less really is more.”
“Oh, you are so right, Hugh,” Barbara simpered. She turned to Flick. “I really think we should take our lead from Hugh. Simple elegance should be our catchphrase.”
Flick looked a tad deflated.
“As it’s a spring wedding,” Hugh continued, warming to his theme, “I thought we should go for soft yellows and creams with touches of fresh spring green and maybe a hint of blue to remind us of the clear blue summer skies to come.”
Barbara was practically swooning. Even Flick seemed to have come under his spell. “Gosh, that does sound awfully romantic,” she said, reminding Cyn of Jenny in her therapy group. Flick turned to Jonny, who was sitting at the far end of the table. “What do you think, darling? You haven’t said much.”
Jonny didn’t answer. His head was down and he appeared to be deep in concentration.
“Darling?” Flick repeated.
“Wonderful. Great,” Jonny mumbled without looking up.
“What’s wonderful?” Flick said.
“Whatever you just said.”
“I didn’t say anything. Hugh did.”
“Jonny,” Barbara said, “do you mind telling us what you are doing down there?”
“OK, I’m sorry,” Jonny said, placing a copy of the Law Society Gazette on the table. “It’s just that this whole wedding thing is starting to get me down. There’s just no letup.” Mal said he would drink to that.
Flick looked as if she was about to burst into tears when the doorbell rang.
“Who’s that?” Mal frowned. Grandma Faye said they could all sit guessing, or he could get up and open the door. He went out into the hall. Barbara got up and hovered by the dining room door. “Ooh, I think he’s here,” she cried.
“Who?” Cyn said.
“Our refugee. We weren’t expecting him for another couple of days. Thank goodness I did that big food shop yesterday.” She was bursting with excitement and turned to Faye: “Mum, please don’t say anything to embarrass him. Remember, he’s a stranger in a strange land.”
At that point Mal walked in dwarfed by a six-foot-six, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan god, whose denim jacket barely concealed an Arnie six-pack and hod carrier’s arms.
“Everybody,” Mal said, “I’d like to introduce Laurent Cinnamon.”
Everybody was taken aback by the sight of Laurent Cinnamon, but Barbara more than most. Her expression practically screamed disappointment. Cyn had no trouble reading her mother’s thoughts: this wasn’t how it was meant to be. Laurent was meant to be black, not Dulux Brilliant White. She’d desperately wanted to show off her brave black revolutionary (preferably complete with tribal markings and African caftan) to all her lefty, Guardian-reading friends and make them feel jealous and inadequate because they weren’t doing their bit for mankind, like her. Now this chap had turned up looking like a Von Trapp son on steroids.
“Bonsoir,” Laurent said, with a wave and a broad Chiclet smile. By now everybody was on their feet, hands outstretched.
“Laurent, welcome to our home,” Barbara managed to gush. She immediately began fussing about whether he was hungry and whether he had a problem with honeydew melon.
“Le melon—eet is wonderfool. J’adore le melon.”
“Please say if it isn’t. I can offer you papaya, pineapple, mango, guava, coconut . . . And are you warm enough? Our wretched climate must take a lot of getting used to. I could find you a woolly. Or maybe you’d like me to turn the heating up?”
“Non, I am fine, really. Except maybe I could use la toilette?”
“Of course, of course,” Barbara said. “I’ll show you to the downstairs cloakroom.” As Barbara led Laurent to the door, Harmony fell back onto her chair. “Wow, will you look at that?” she whispered, her glazed eyes locked on Laurent’s disappearing, peach-perfect butt. “Is that perfection or what?”
“It is,” Hugh replied, “and what’s more, it is all mine.”
“For Chrissake, ’Ewge, don’t be ridiculous. He isn’t gay.”
“Er, hello, stone-washed denim jacket over stone-washed jeans. I think so.”
“Rubbish. He’s just got provincial taste, that’s all. Didn’t you see the way he looked at me as he came in? He is so straight.”
“What? With a name like Laurent Cinnamon? Please.”
“He’s from bloody French West Africa, what do you expect him to be called? I’m telling you, he’s straight.” Harmony turned to Cyn. “Cyn, tell ’Ewge that Laurent is definitely straight.”
Cyn said she wasn’t sure. “But don’t you fancy him?” Harmony said. “I mean you’re always saying how blonde, gentile-looking men give you the hots.”
“Not like they used to,” she said wistfully, thinking about Joe’s dark hair and eyes. “Plus I don’t go for muscle-bound hunks. Laurent is way too Tarzan for me.”
“Well, he can call me Jane and invite me to his tree house anytime,” Harmony said. She turned to Hugh. “A fiver says he’s straight.”
“Right, you’re on.”
At this point Barbara came back carrying a chair for Laurent. “Put Laurent next to me,” Grandma Faye said. “Come on, budge up, everybody. Let’s make some room.”
When Laurent returned, Grandma Faye smiled and patted the empty chair. Cyn could tell she was smitten and wishing she was a decade or six younger. “It’s funny, Laurent,” she said, taking his hand, “coming from Africa, I think we were all expecting you to be a bit more cinnamon colored.”
Like Hugh, Laurent seemed to take an immediate liking to Grandma Faye and appeared not to be remotely offended by the cinnamon remark. Over Barbara’s chicken casserole and some fried plantain, which she managed to whiz up in ten minutes, he explained that his ancestors had been French Catholic missionaries who had gone to Tagine in the eighteenth century. “Zey fell in love wis ze place and stayed on. Many missionary families did. Zese days zere are quite a few white people. But we all get on. Zere is no, ’ow you say?, racial tension.”
“Is it very beautiful?” Harmony said, leaning in toward him, chin in hand.
Laurent began swirling wine around in the bottom of his glass. “Tagine ees very poor, but it ees parad
ise on earth. Ze sun is always shining, ze beaches are made of soft, white sand. At dusk, eet feels like warm silk under ze feet. Ze sea is liquid turquoise and jade . . .” His voice trailed off. “Zen ze trouble began.” He said that Tagine—which was about the size of Wales—had been ruled for fifty years by an ineffectual but benevolent dictator called Henri Elysian. “When Elysian died, ze military simply seized control. Zey kill hundreds of people—anybody who opposed zem and got in zeir way—doctors, nurses, teachers. Suddenly Tagine ees in the grip of zees madmen who are robbing ze people. Zey ’ave increased taxes, ze hospitals ’ave no medicines, schools have been burned down. People are going hungry and ze very young and ze very old are dying.”
Nobody interrupted him. Everybody sat in silence, trying to absorb the horror Laurent described. Harmony seemed to be particularly affected. Cyn could see her eyes filling up. “As long as I bloody live,” she whispered to Cyn, “I will never understand the evil in this world. What kinds of monsters kill babies?” Cyn, who was struggling to keep her own emotions in check, put an arm around Harmony.
Laurent was explaining how he helped set up an underground movement to fight the military regime. “We want to bring democracy to Tagine. As I’m sure you read in your newspaper, we eventually stage a countercoup, but eet fail. Nearly all of us die.” He was starting to choke on his words. “By some miracle, I was spared and now I am ’ere wiz you.”
“And most welcome you are, too,” Barbara said, placing her hand on top of his.
“I will help you present your case to the Home Office,” Mal said. “It’s clear that you have enemies in Tagine who would persecute you if you went back. I really can’t see it’s going to be a problem getting you asylum here.”
“Sank you. Sank you so much. What can I say?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Barbara said. “It is an honor to have you. Now, then, who’s for pudding?”
Barbara started collecting plates. Laurent immediately got to his feet to help her.
“Laurent, you really don’t have to,” Barbara said. “You sit down. Mal and I can manage.” But he insisted.
“So, Laurent,” Harmony said, shooting a quick look at Hugh. “Do you have a girlfriend back in Tagine?”
“Non. No girlfriend.” Hugh grinned a valedictory grin. “For the last few years zere ’as been no room in my life for women. But I live in ’ope.” Hugh’s face fell.
Laurent picked up some plates and followed Barbara into the kitchen.
Harmony turned to Hugh, hand outstretched. “Right,” she grinned, “I think that’s a fiver you owe me.”
Chapter 12
When Cyn arrived at Screen on the Green, Joe was at the sweets counter, buying popcorn. He was wearing a trendy short black raincoat with the collar turned up, which she thought made him look particularly sexy. She snuck up behind him. “Hiya.”
He spun round. His startled expression morphed into a broad smile. “I didn’t know if you preferred your popcorn salted, sweet or with toffee,” he said, “so I got all three.” He picked two cartons up off the counter. Underneath his raincoat, a packet of toffee popcorn was sticking out of his jacket pocket. She couldn’t help laughing.
“Now you see why I’m really in therapy,” he said, laughing along with her. “I suffer from this obsessive need to please.”
“Well, consider me well and truly pleased. Pleased and delighted. Thank you.”
“So which one would you like? Or we can share them all.”
She said sharing would be good. He asked her to take the carton sticking out of his jacket pocket. “It’s too big and I think it’s going to fall out any second.” As she rescued the carton, a piece of paper came with it and landed on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. She watched him as he unfolded it and stood reading it.
“Oh, God,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “This is all I need.”
“What?”
He handed her the piece of paper. On it was a handwritten note. It said Give me a call sometime, Clementine. Underneath she had listed her home number, her mobile number, her work number, her e-mail and her fax. “I think she wants to go out with me.”
Cyn burst out laughing. “You think?”
He carried on staring at the paper. “She must have slipped the note into my pocket during last week’s therapy session. Maybe I’m a bit dozy, but I never noticed.”
Cyn had a realization. Her mind shot back to the end of the therapy session when she’d noticed Clementine stop to wink at Joe. Afterward she’d run her hand down the side of his jacket. Clementine had been doing more than coming on to him, she’d been slipping the paper into his pocket. Cyn thought about telling him what she’d seen, but she didn’t want to give the impression she was bothered about Clementine flirting with him or that she had been spying.
“So what are you going to do?” she said.
“Well, I’m not planning to phone her, that’s for sure. The poor girl really does have problems. You can’t help feeling sorry for her. I’d like to let her down gently, though. Maybe I should just take her to one side after the next session and tell her it’s not on. I’d hate to humiliate her in front of everybody. On the other hand, I know what Veronica would say—that it would do her more good to face up to this in front of the group.”
Cyn said it was up to him. Although for personal as well as therapeutic reasons, she couldn’t help thinking that Clementine shouldn’t be allowed to get away with hitting on Joe, she loved the idea of him not wanting to hurt her. It made him seem even more sexy. “This is all too weird,” he said. “Here I am breaking Veronica’s rules to see you, while at the same time trying to work out the correct way to put off another woman in the group.”
If Cyn had been a bloke she would have no doubt said something like “Wow, mate, two women interested in you, don’t knock it.” But since she wasn’t a bloke and since she was also anxious for him to tell Clementine he wasn’t interested, she didn’t.
An usherette showed them to their seats. They were early. The trailers hadn’t even started. As they took off their coats, Cyn noticed how perfectly Joe’s fitted lavender-and-white check shirt showed off the outline of his upper body.
He had clearly noticed what she was wearing and told her how great she looked. She thanked him, but decided to say nothing about how she’d been up at six thirty that morning, clothes strewn over her bed, in an attempt to find an outfit suitable for the meetings she had with the two putative Droolin’ Dream directors and then for their date. After umpteen try-ons she decided everything was either too smart or too dressy. In the end she plumped for a coffee-colored, low-waisted A-line skirt. The heavy cotton had a wonderful satin sheen. It was dressy, but the color made it smart at the same time. She loved the way it hugged her hips and flared out into knee-length box pleats. She teamed it with a dark brown scooped-neck Lycra top with three-quarter sleeves. Pointy brown suede boots with spiky heels topped the whole thing off.
After spending an hour on her makeup and straightening her hair with her new ceramic straightening irons, she thought she looked pretty hot—both professionally and sexually. Her illusion was shattered when she got to work and Brian Lockwood, who was filling in for Graham Chandler, declared, “Ooh, look, everybody, Cyn’s come as a poo.” Several women came up to her to tell her that she looked gorgeous and not to take any notice because even though it was barely ten o’clock, Graham had already been at the Famous Grouse, but it did nothing for her self-image. That lunchtime she took a cab to Oxford Street and found a top, almost identical to the one she was wearing, in cream.
“Here’s your Barclaycard,” Joe said, taking it out of his wallet and handing it to her. He asked her about her day and she started telling him about her meetings with the directors. “One of them seemed particularly enthusiastic, so I’ve pretty much decided to go with him.” She wasn’t sure how it happened, but soon she was telling him about Laurent Cinnamon. When she told him how Grandma Faye informed Laurent that they had b
een expecting somebody a bit more cinnamon colored, he laughed so much that he almost choked on his popcorn.
“Joe,” Cyn said when he had recovered, “there’s something I need to ask you. I hope you won’t mind.”
He seemed intrigued. “Go on,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“My name?”
“Yes. I only know your first name.”
“Oh, right. Of course you do. I’m Joseph Dillon. Joseph Connor Dillon to be precise.”
“Pleased to meet you, Joseph Connor Dillon.” She held out her hand, which he took. “I’m Cynthia Ruth Fishbein.”
“Pleased to meet you, too.”
Joseph Dillon. Joseph Dillon. She was sure she knew that name from somewhere. “Your name seems familiar,” she said. “I’m trying to work out where I could have heard it.”
“Beats me,” he said with a laugh. He sounded genuinely perplexed, but she was sure she detected a sense of unease in his face.
“I love the name Cynthia,” he said, changing the subject. “It was my grandmother’s name. We were very close. I adored her.”
“I hated my name when I was a kid,” she said, “but I made my peace with it a while back.” She told him the Yoko story, which amused him no end.
“Oh, I’ve got something for you, too,” she said, starting to root around in her bag. She was looking for the handkerchief he’d lent her the other day when he rescued her from the rain. She’d washed and ironed it. “I know it’s here somewhere.” As she located it, her hand brushed against her mobile. It was vibrating. She quickly handed him the handkerchief and took the phone out of her bag. “Oops, forgot to turn it off.” She was about to hit end when Joe said she shouldn’t ignore the call on his account.
“You sure? It seems incredibly rude.”
“Don’t be daft. Quick, take it, before they ring off. By the way, thanks for returning the handkerchief. You really didn’t need to.”
She pressed connect.