by Jill Mansell
‘This is so romantic,’ Miranda sighed. ‘And…?’
‘I said, “He certainly is, seeing as he died three years ago.”’
Miranda wrapped her arms around her knees in delight. ‘Then what?’
‘Well, he just stood there for a minute, grinning at me. Then he said, “In that case, I’d love an aspirin and a cup of tea.”’
‘Oh! Did he mend the bike as well?’
‘I suggested it.’ Florence snorted with laughter. ‘He told me he wasn’t the fixing kind. When things got broken, he bought new ones.’
‘And did he buy Bruce another bike?’
‘Certainly did, four days later.’ Florence waggled her left hand at Miranda. ‘And so I wouldn’t feel left out, an engagement ring for me.’
Having disposed of the rest of the bottle, Florence contentedly closed her eyes and said, ‘Okay for five minutes while I have a little snooze?’
Miranda sat back, stretching out her legs and propping herself up on her elbows. In this position she could enjoy the faint warmth of the sun on her face and view the kites performing their colorful acrobatics in the sky.
Squinting in the sunlight, she surveyed the panoramic view spread out before her. There in the distance was St Paul’s Cathedral, pointing up into the sky like a silicone-stuffed Hollywood breast. And there was Big Ben. To the east stood Canary Wharf, and the old Caledonian market clock tower. To the west, the chimneys of Battersea power station and the Trellick Tower. Heavens, it made you realize how vast—and how eclectically beautiful—London really was.
But the unaccustomed brightness of the sun soon made her eyes water. To give them a rest, Miranda turned her attention instead to a battered green BMW being driven slowly along the road below her. Idly she followed its progress until it braked and reversed into a parking space. Seconds later the passenger door was flung open and a boy aged around five or six jumped out on to the grass verge.
Miranda watched the driver emerge from the other side, open the car’s boot and take out a yellow and white kite. From this angle his face wasn’t visible, but at a guess he was around thirty, dark-haired like his son and wearing a white rugby shirt and faded jeans.
Another Sunday father, thought Miranda, bringing his child out for a spot of kite-flying then whisking him off for a burger at McDonald’s before depositing him back with his mother at the designated time.
Hampstead Heath was full of them.
The spiralling divorce rate had done the fast-food business no harm at all.
As Florence dozed peacefully beside her, Miranda watched the boy yell out instructions to his dad. Dad was evidently no expert; as they edged their way up the hill, he unraveled the nylon line and made two or three unsuccessful attempts to get the kite airborne.
Miranda smirked as he threw it up again, this time narrowly avoiding decapitation. She heard his son yell out in disgust, ‘You’re useless! Come on, let me have a go.’
They were closer now, moving towards her. The man said, ‘Charming manners, Eddie, you take after your mother.’
‘She says you’ve always been a hopeless case. You can’t even put a shelf up straight.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to. Anyway, your mother’s not so clever herself,’ he retorted. ‘Ask her how many times she’s damaged the car trying to reverse it into the garage.’
Miranda watched the boy impatiently seize control of the kite. Playing one adult off against the other, she thought, feeling sorry for him. Poor little lad, caught in the middle between two warring parents.
It couldn’t be much fun.
Except…wasn’t there something oddly familiar about the father’s voice? A familiarity that for some reason didn’t quite fit with the visual image of the man twenty yards in front of her, now struggling to untangle a section of line which had somehow managed to knot itself around both legs?
Miranda sat up, hugging her knees and pushing her beret to the top of her forehead in order to get a better look. She was sure he wasn’t a visitor to the salon.
Damn, where have I heard that voice before? she thought with mounting frustration. And why do I keep feeling something isn’t right?
The kite, miraculously, made it up into the air. The boy let out a whoop of delight and galloped a few yards further up the grassy slope.
‘You did it, you did it!’
‘Now who’s useless?’ his father demanded with a triumphant grin.
‘Don’t let it crash!’
‘It’s okay, I’ve got the hang of this now. A genius, that’s what I am, and you can tell your mother that when we get back.’
The wind was taking control, carrying the kite towards the top of the hill. Following his son, the man moved closer to Miranda. Next to her, Florence snored peacefully in her wheelchair. Glancing across at them, he smiled.
The moment his dark eyes locked with Miranda’s, she knew.
Oh no, it couldn’t be.
But it was.
It was him.
The beggar from the Brompton Road.
Her whole body stiffened in disbelief. Incredibly, he was still grinning at her.
He hasn’t recognized me, thought Miranda. He spends his life sitting on his bum watching the world go by. For God’s sake, how can he not recognize me?
Outraged, she shoved a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. The orange beret, already tipped to the back of her head, promptly slid off.
At last, with her spiky blue-and-green-tipped hair revealed, the penny dropped. His broad smile faltered and faded. The kite was momentarily forgotten.
The kite, taking advantage of this lapse in concentration, swallow-dived to the ground.
‘You let it crash!’ wailed the boy, racing after it. ‘You’re supposed to keep the line tight. Come on, pay attention, make it fly again!’
Florence woke up from her doze with a start. Next to her, using the arm rest of the wheelchair for leverage, Miranda was scrambling to her feet. Florence heard her say in a low voice trembling with fury, ‘You cheat, you bloody despicable liar, how can you live with yourself?’
Florence brightened at once. Well, well, this was a turn-up for the books. She’d never heard Miranda have a go at anyone before.
Peering around Miranda’s quivering form, Florence eyed with interest the object of her rage. Tall, dark-haired and rather good-looking—if currently a bit shell-shocked—hmm, not bad at all. In excellent shape, too, from what she could see.
One of Miranda’s hapless ex-boyfriends, Florence guessed. Presumably one who’d done the dirty on her. Well, no wonder she was upset.
‘Look, I can explain—’ he began, but Miranda held up both hands to stop him.
‘Oh, please don’t, we already know what a great actor you are.’ She spat the words out with contempt. ‘Tell me, is that why you and your wife split up? Did she find out how you were spending your days and kick you out? Does your son know he has a con-artist for a father?’ She longed to yell the accusations at the top of her voice but the boy was only yards away. For his sake, Miranda managed to control herself.
The man, looking startled, followed the direction of her gaze. Turning back to Miranda, he said with a placatory half-smile, ‘I promise you, I really can explain. For a start, I’m not married. And Eddie isn’t my son, he’s—’
‘Daddy, come and help me!’ howled the boy, now firmly entangled in the kite’s line. ‘You’re wasting time—Mum said we had to be home by four.’
‘You’re damn right you can explain,’ Miranda hissed, kicking the brakes off Florence’s chair and yanking her in the direction of the path. ‘You can explain why you take my money and eat my prawn sandwiches when you clearly earn more than I do.’ She was flinging the words over her shoulder as she jolted the wheelchair over the uneven ground. ‘And you can explain why you drive a BM
W,’ she bellowed. ‘Because you make me sick!’
‘Wait,’ he called after her, but further up the hill his son was yelling for him and Miranda was by this time scooting downhill with the wheelchair at a rate of knots.
Relieved to reach the bottom in one piece, Florence said sympathetically, ‘The best-looking ones are always the biggest bastards.’
She patted Miranda’s thin arm, sensing it was best not to mention the two rather good Waterford crystal wine glasses they had left at the top of the hill. ‘What happened, he forgot to mention he was married?’
Poor, impulsive Miranda, she deserved better than that. Still, if she wanted to impress a man, she really should learn to cook, Florence privately felt. When you invited someone round for dinner, you couldn’t expect them to be too bowled over by a prawn sandwich.
Chapter 6
Chloe, flicking without much enthusiasm through a magazine in the doctor’s waiting room at ten to nine on Monday morning, came across an article detailing the break-up of some minor celebrity’s marriage.
In the accompanying photograph the woman—an actress in her late thirties—was looking suitably devastated in full make-up and a short clinging dress that showed off…well, practically everything.
The article was headlined: EVERY NIGHT I CRY MYSELF TO SLEEP.
Lucky you, thought Chloe, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion. I cry every night but I still can’t sleep.
How much could she seriously be expected to sympathize, anyway, with a woman who clearly didn’t cry much at all? She was wearing mascara, wasn’t she? Her eyes weren’t permanently swollen like a frog’s. Furthermore, she had a teeny-weeny waist.
Hating her, Chloe threw the magazine back on to the pile. She shifted on her uncomfortable molded plastic chair—moulded for someone with a far smaller bottom than hers, by the feel of it—and eased a finger under the safety pin straining to hold together the waistband of her loosest skirt.
There was a poster tacked up on the wall opposite her. It said: Postnatal Depression?
I’ve got pre-natal depression, thought Chloe. Ha, beat that.
‘Chloe Malone,’ the tinny voice of the doctor announced over the intercom, ‘to room six.’
In the space of the next five minutes, everything became astonishingly real. Armed with the date of Chloe’s last period, the doctor twiddled a circular chart contraption, consulted a calendar, then pronounced, ‘Your baby is due to arrive on Tuesday the third of December.’
Chloe gazed at him. He spoke with such absolute certainty.
Heavens. Move over, Mystic Meg.
‘Call it an early Christmas present.’ The doctor smiled at her stunned expression. ‘So, everything okay? Husband happy about it?’
Uh oh, here we go.
‘He left me five days ago,’ Chloe said, and waited to burst into tears.
The doctor looked as if he were waiting for her to burst into tears too.
Chloe wondered why it wasn’t happening.
Instead, the doctor’s words, Your baby is due to arrive on Tuesday the third of December, kept dancing through her mind.
Somehow, miraculously, they seemed more important than the brutal ones Greg had flung at her last week.
‘He’s never wanted children,’ Chloe told the doctor, marveling at the steadiness of her own voice. ‘But it’s okay, I’ll cope.’
Well, cope might be putting it a bit strongly. Somehow muddle through was probably nearer the mark.
‘In that case, let’s pop you on the scales,’ said the doctor.
Oh dear, how dainty. That was what you did in the supermarket with a bag of seedless grapes.
‘I’m only seven weeks and I’ve put on loads of weight already.’ Chloe kicked off her shoes, embarrassed, and shuffled over to the scales. ‘I can’t stop eating, I just feel so hungry all the time.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just try and eat healthily.’
How healthy was pecan toffee ice cream? And bags of licorice allsorts? Not to mention strawberry Angel Delight.
‘Morning sickness, that’s what I need.’ Chloe sounded rueful. ‘I keep waiting for it to happen and it just won’t.’
Amused, the doctor tut-tutted.
‘My wife’s pregnant. If she could hear you now, she’d hit you round the head with her sick bag. You stay as you are,’ he advised Chloe good-naturedly. ‘You’re a lucky girl.’
Was he a real doctor?
Or, Chloe wondered, an escaped lunatic masquerading as one?
Me, a lucky girl?
***
‘You’re late,’ said Fenn.
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ As she swung round to face him, Miranda caught a glimpse of her frazzled reflection in one of the salon mirrors. Well, was it any wonder she was looking frazzled? ‘Oh, but Fenn, you’ll never believe what happened!’
Excuses? Fenn had heard them all.
‘Don’t tell me. You were seized by a gang of kidnappers and held hostage,’ he guessed, ‘until they found out nobody was going to pay to get you back, so they let you go.’
‘Oh ha ha.’ Miranda was clearly miffed. ‘I’m being serious.’
‘The tube was held up. Body on the line.’
Always a trusty standby. It was a wonder London still had a population, the number of times Fenn had heard this one.
He got glared at.
‘No.’
‘Okay, a puppy ran out into the road and you had to rescue it.’
Fenn was grinning. Miranda could have hit him. The puppy excuse was a standing joke in the salon. The really frustrating thing was, it had once actually happened. It was one of her few genuine excuses and nobody—nobody—had ever believed her.
‘If you must know, I’ve been looking for that beggar,’ she announced. Fenn might be a pig, but she was bursting to tell someone. ‘You know, the one who sits outside the shoe shop?’
‘You mean the beggar you gave Alice Tavistock’s money to?’ Entertained, Fenn raised an eyebrow. ‘The one you keep insisting isn’t a beggar because he never begs?’
‘Okay, okay, don’t rub it in.’ Impatiently Miranda waved the interruption aside. ‘Anyway, it turns out he isn’t a real beggar at all. He’s not hungry and he isn’t homeless—he’s a total fake. I saw him yesterday on Hampstead Heath wearing normal clothes. He was with his son, flying a kite. And you’ll never guess what kind of car he drives.’ Her dark eyes flashed with renewed outrage as the words tumbled out. ‘Only a BMW.’
Fenn tried not to smile. Poor Miranda, she was positively fizzing with indignation. All her illusions, so brutally shattered.
‘Well, it happens.’ His tone was mild.
‘I gave him a scarf and that pair of gl—’ in the nick of time she stopped herself, ‘er…glasses, an old pair of sunglasses.’
Nodding slowly, Fenn said, ‘I see, sunglasses. Always useful.’
‘I can’t believe I was so stupid. The whole time he must have been laughing at me. Can you believe it?’ Miranda seethed. ‘A bloody BMW.’
‘So did you say anything to him yesterday?’
‘Well, a bit, but his little boy was there. Anyway, I’ve thought of a whole load more things to yell at him today.’ In fact she had lain awake half the night coming up with bigger and better insults. In the end there were so many she’d had to write them down. ‘Look, here’s my list.’
It was a big list. Fenn could just imagine her standing over the poor fellow in the street, bawling, ‘Wait, wait, I haven’t nearly finished yet!’
‘Well, good,’ he told Miranda mildly, ‘but I’d prefer it if you confronted him in your own time, not mine.’
***
He wasn’t there at lunchtime.
‘Look on the bright side,’ said Bev, whom Miranda had dragged along
for moral—and physical—support. ‘At least you won’t have to share your lunch anymore.’
This didn’t console Miranda. There was a nasty feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. She was beginning to suspect she’d blown the whole operation.
‘I bet he’s moved to another pitch.’ Gloomily she shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘Damn, I should have kept my mouth shut yesterday.’
There again, keeping quiet had never been her forte.
Bev was just relieved that she’d be getting back to the salon with her expensive false nails intact. She wrapped a consoling arm around Miranda’s shoulders.
‘Hey, cheer up. Maybe you’ve frightened him into going straight.’
***
By ten to six the last client had left. Miranda was in the back room unloading the tumble dryer and folding a mountain of violet towels—the Fenn Lomax signature color—into neat piles.
Well, neatish.
When Bev put her head around the door there was an odd expression on her face.
‘Someone’s here to see you.’
Miranda looked at her. It was actually a really weird expression; Bev seemed half enthralled, half perplexed.
‘Who?’
‘He didn’t say. And he doesn’t know your name either, he just asked to speak to the girl with the magpie hair.’