by Jill Mansell
‘Probably because she fancies me.’ Miles Harper winked. ‘Oh dear, don’t tell me you’re jealous.’
‘Daisy Schofield was meant to be at a cocktail party. She cancelled, said she was ill. Or rather you did,’ Miranda pointedly remarked, realizing that the mystery man who had spoken to Elizabeth Turnbull on the phone must have been him. She frowned. ‘You lied. Wasn’t that a bit of a mean thing to do?’
‘You went to the party, I take it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it dull?’
Miranda hesitated. She’d been okay; she’d met Greg. But if she hadn’t, it would have been crashingly dull.
‘There you are then.’ When she didn’t immediately reply, Miles Harper shrugged, unconcerned. ‘That’s why she didn’t go.’
‘But she was a celebrity guest.’ Miranda wanted to make him understand. ‘You wouldn’t like it if you organized a charity event and nobody else bothered to turn up.’
‘Oh.’ He had the grace—at last—to look ashamed. ‘I didn’t know it was for charity.’
Miranda wasn’t sure whether or not she believed him.
‘Anyway, what are you doing here?’ Changing the subject, she wriggled the angora sock on to her foot. ‘When I saw the two of you in the pool, I thought you were Tabitha’s latest toyboys.’
Miles laughed.
‘Johnnie dragged me along, that’s all. He’s an old mate of mine and Tabitha’s his godmother. Five minutes after meeting her,’ he went on, ‘I realized the middle of the swimming pool was the safest place to be. I’m telling you, that woman has seriously wandering hands.’
‘Weren’t you scared she might jump in after you?’
‘She told us her hairdresser was on his way over, so she mustn’t get her hair wet. That,’ he told Miranda with a crooked smile, ‘was when I dived in.’
‘If you can handle a Formula One racing car, I’d have thought you could cope with a middle-aged nymphomaniac.’
Miles considered this for a second.
‘The difference is, Tabitha doesn’t have brakes.’
Downstairs once more, with her soggy clothes bundled into a Harrods’ shopping bag, she was formally introduced to Johnnie, Tabitha’s godson. He dutifully apologized for giving her a ducking. Miranda in turn admired the splendid bump on his forehead, inflicted by the melon. Then it was time to roll up the sleeves of her borrowed white sweatshirt and help Fenn with the defoiling of Tabitha.
‘Aunt Tab, we’re off.’ Johnnie poked his dark head around the bathroom door as Miranda massaged conditioner into Tabitha’s scalp.
‘Have fun, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ Tabitha’s head was bent over the basin. ‘And where’s Miles? I haven’t had my goodbye kiss yet.’
‘His manager called. He’s outside, on the phone.’ Johnnie’s wink indicated that Miles had legged it to the sanctuary of his car. ‘By the way,’ he addressed Miranda, ‘we’re off to a party at the Unicorn Club tonight. Miles wondered if you’d like to come along.’
Astonished, Miranda stopped massaging. She felt her cheeks go pink with pleasure.
Miles Harper was actually inviting her to a party?
Well, maybe not asking her himself, but getting his friend to invite her.
Golly, was that exciting or what?
She had been beaming idiotically at Johnnie for a couple of seconds before her brain clicked in, reminding her why she’d been in such a good mood this morning and why she was already looking forward to tonight.
Talk about rotten timing.
‘I’d love to.’ Miranda’s insides crumpled with regret. ‘I mean, I would have loved to. But I can’t, not this evening. I’ve already…er, got something on.’
‘Okay.’ Johnnie sounded unperturbed. It clearly didn’t bother him either way.
But it bothers me, Miranda thought frustratedly.
‘What a shame, it would have been great.’ She plastered a bright smile on to her face. ‘Maybe another night? I mean, I’m usually free. In fact, any other evening and I’d definitely be able to make it.’
She clamped her runaway lips together. Oh dear, how desperate could a single girl get? Now she sounded like Bev.
Johnnie, nodding, checked his watch and backed out of the bathroom door.
‘Okay, right, see you around.’
‘You blew it,’ Tabitha said flatly when he had gone. ‘Darling, you must be mad. With people like Miles Harper, you don’t get a second chance.’
Miranda poured an extra dollop of conditioner into her hand and gloomily resumed the scalp massage. Typical. Six whole months since her last boyfriend, and now this had to happen. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing her for pinching Greg from Bev.
‘So what is it you’re doing tonight?’ Tabitha persisted with annoying cheerfulness. ‘Flying over to LA for the première of the new Tarantino movie? A cozy dinner for two at the Ritz with Leonardo DiCaprio?’
‘I met this chap on Wednesday night,’ Miranda mumbled. ‘It’s our first date.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say they’d probably go for a couple of lukewarm beers and a limp pizza.
‘Would I have heard of him?’
‘No. He works in insurance.’
‘Good grief.’ Tabitha burst out laughing. ‘And you turned down Miles Harper for that!’ Rather heartlessly, in Miranda’s view, she went on, ‘I only hope he’s worth it.’
Remembering suddenly how unreliable men were and how often she had been let down in the past, Miranda wondered if Greg would even turn up tonight.
Feeling distinctly uneasy, she murmured, ‘So do I.’
Chapter 14
Chloe had known she was making a big mistake when she phoned her mother the night before. But some things—no matter how much you didn’t want to do them—had to be done.
‘What do you mean, he’s left you?’ Pamela Greening had barked when she had finally managed to stammer out the words. ‘Chloe, don’t be ridiculous, is this your idea of a joke? Why on earth would Greg want to leave you?’
Quailing in the face of her mother’s wrath, Chloe had promptly chickened out of telling her about the baby. Instead she had mumbled something feeble about not getting on and things not really working out.
‘My God, that boy has a nerve! You just wait until I get my hands on him, I’ll make him realize—’
‘Mum, please, there’s nothing you can do,’ Chloe had begged. ‘He’s gone. It’s not the end of the world. Marriages break up all the time.’
‘Not in our family they don’t,’ her mother had grimly replied. ‘Never before in our family.’
‘Well, one has now.’
‘You give up too easily, my girl. You always have.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Chloe had yelled, exasperated, ‘what was I supposed to do, tie him up and lock him in the broom cupboard?’
‘Now you’re just being stupid. There are ways and means, Chloe. If you want to keep your husband there are always ways and means.’
Her mother had sounded almost crosser with her than she was with Greg.
***
That had been last night. And now it was about to get worse.
As she rounded the corner, Chloe saw the familiar outline of her mother standing on the pavement outside her flat.
‘Mum, you didn’t have to do this. Truly, I’m fine.’
‘You’ve put on weight.’
No kiss, no reassuring hug, thought Chloe. No words of comfort either.
Oh well, no change there.
‘A bit.’ She sucked in as much of her stomach as she could.
‘Come on then, where’s your key? Three hours on the coach, this trip’s taken. You can make me a cup of tea before we get down to business.’
‘What business?’ Fumblin
g, Chloe fitted the key in the lock. The flat wasn’t hideously untidy, but her mother wouldn’t be impressed when she spotted last night’s saucepans still lounging in the sink.
‘Greg, of course.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t even try and talk me out of it, Chloe. That lad stood up in church and made public vows. Marriage is for life,’ she wagged a terrifying finger at her daughter, ‘not for as long as it suits him. He needs to be reminded of that,’ she announced ominously. ‘And if you won’t do it, I will.’
After a long day at work, Chloe was exhausted. To give herself a bit of breathing space, she went on ahead into the kitchen.
‘I’ll make that pot of tea. If you’re staying the night, you can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa.’ Since her mother was carrying a small suitcase, she guessed this was the plan. ‘But you aren’t going to be able to lecture Greg about his wedding vows,’ she called over her shoulder—quite bravely for her—‘because he isn’t here.’
‘We aren’t all as useless as you,’ her mother retorted. ‘I’m going to pay him a visit, aren’t I?’
Startled, Chloe looked around. Her mother was standing in the kitchen doorway like Wyatt Earp in a polyester shift, brandishing a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other.
‘You can’t do that!’
‘Just give me his address.’
‘I don’t have it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not,’ Chloe lied, her palms beginning to sweat. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
She did. Word had filtered through on the local grapevine that Greg had moved in with Adrian, but she’d had enough pride not to contact him.
Largely because there was no point.
And if there was anything more publicly humiliating, thought Chloe, than turning up on the doorstep of the husband who’d dumped you, begging him to change his mind and come back…well, it was having your mother do it for you.
‘I can always tell when you’re lying,’ said Pamela Greening. ‘Of course you know where he is.’
Chloe’s hands shook as she poured boiling water into the sugar bowl. Oh God, how much more of this could she take?
‘Mum, Greg’s gone. He didn’t tell me where. I haven’t seen or spoken to him for weeks. Now why don’t you stop interrogating me, put your pen away and just go and unpack?’
For a woman who wore Hush Puppies, Pamela Greening could certainly stomp her feet. Taking a deep breath, Chloe managed this time to fill the teapot. She was emptying the sugar bowl down the sink when the stomping grew louder. The floor began to quiver.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, thought Chloe wearily, what now? It was like something out of Jurassic Park.
The split second before she turned round, she guessed.
But since there was no chance of escape—not even through the tiny kitchen window, which would never accommodate her hips—she turned anyway.
Her mother was doing that Wyatt Earp thing again. Only this time she was clutching a copy of the paperback Chloe had been reading last night in bed.
Miriam Stoppard’s Book of Pregnancy and Birth.
At that moment Chloe quite envied Greg. She wished she’d never given her mother this address.
‘Oh yes.’ Bracing herself, she mumbled, ‘I forgot to mention it. I’m expecting a baby.’
Pamela Greening’s face went purple, then white, then purple again.
Finally she thundered, ‘Whose?’
***
It took Pamela no time at all to find out where her runaway son-in-law was now living.
Thirty seconds to look up the number of his insurance company in Chloe’s Yellow Pages.
Another thirty seconds to learn that Greg had left the office early.
Forty-five seconds to inform his startled secretary that it was imperative—yes, imperative—she be given his new address. ‘I don’t care what your company policy is. My name is Dr Blake and I’m calling from St Thomas’s Hospital. I need to speak to Gregory Malone regarding a matter of extreme urgency.’
At the other end of the sitting room, cringing on the sofa, it occurred to Chloe that her mother had been watching too many episodes of Murder She Wrote.
When it came to intimidation, Jessica Fletcher had nothing on her.
‘There.’ Pamela hung up the phone and stuck the address under her daughter’s nose. ‘You could have done that.’
Chloe watched her grimly shove her arms back into her sensible navy mac.
‘Oh no, you can’t do this.’
‘Watch me.’
‘It’ll just make things worse!’
The look her mother gave her was loaded with contempt.
‘You’re pregnant. He’s abandoned you. How much worse can it get?’
***
‘He’s not here.’ Warily Adrian clutched the towel around his hips. He dimly remembered Chloe’s ferocious mother from the wedding, when she had told him in no uncertain terms to stop dancing on the tables.
‘You mean he’s hiding upstairs, too frightened to face me? Tell Gregory his mother-in-law is here to see him and I’m not moving from this spot until I do.’
‘But he isn’t, I swear! You just missed him,’ Adrian insisted. ‘He left five minutes ago. You can search the house if you like.’
Pamela Greening eyed the stranger before her with distaste. If Gregory wasn’t there, she wasn’t about to put herself at risk by entering a house with a naked man in it.
‘What time will he be back?’
This, Adrian thought fleetingly, rather depended on whether or not Greg got lucky with whoever he was seeing tonight. But since Chloe’s battleaxe of a mother wasn’t likely to appreciate this information, he said, ‘I don’t know. Probably not too late.’
Just as well he was going out himself. He didn’t envy Greg one bit.
Before leaving the house an hour later, Adrian wrote a note on the back of a gas bill and propped it up in full view on the kitchen table.
Poor Greg, the least he could do was warn him that his mother-in-law was in town and on the loose.
At the end of the road, not taking any chances, Pamela Greening lurked behind a postbox. She watched Gregory’s friend let himself out of the house and head up the road in the opposite direction.
No sign of Gregory.
She rang the doorbell again, to check. Still no reply.
Never mind, she was in no hurry.
Grimly Pamela thought, I can wait.
***
It wasn’t a terrible anticlimax. Miranda had been petrified it would be, but it wasn’t. When she saw Greg climb out of his car outside the house—looking even more handsome than she’d remembered—she found herself leaning so far out of her bedroom window that she almost toppled out.
Grinning and waving like some besotted groupie, she yelled, ‘I’m coming down. You’re early.’
Not very cool, maybe, but who cared?
Certainly not Greg, who grinned and waved back, and shouted up, ‘I couldn’t wait.’
He took her to Le Vin Rose, an unpretentious candlelit wine bar in Bayswater packed with couples holding hands.
‘How’s your chest?’ said Miranda, and he undid the middle button on his shirt, revealing the scrawl of faded black numbers.
‘They won’t go. I’m tattooed for life.’
‘God, I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not.’ Smiling, Greg buttoned himself back up. ‘Some people are worth getting tattooed for. Did you tell Bev who you were seeing tonight?’
‘I couldn’t. She’s still suicidal because you didn’t ring her. How about you?’
‘Oh, I’m not suicidal.’
‘Git. I meant, have you told Adrian yet?’
‘No.’
‘Every time Bev mentions your name,’ Miranda blurted out, ‘I blush. Honestly, it’s mad. I feel so guilty, as if I’m sneaking around with somebody who’s married.’
‘You poor thing.’ Greg took her hand, curling his fingers protectively over hers. ‘So you’ve had a terrible day?’
The physical contact sent quivers of pleasure zooming up Miranda’s arm and down her spine. Heavens, it was ages since she’d felt like this.
‘Actually, it wasn’t that bad. I went for a swim with Miles Harper in Tabitha Lester’s swimming pool. He invited me to a party tonight but I had to turn him down because I was seeing you. Still, he was okay about it.’ She shrugged, flicking her blue-tipped fringe out of her eyes. ‘He took it pretty well, in fact.’
‘Same here,’ Greg confided. ‘I had Madonna in the office this morning, pestering me to take her out to dinner tonight. Had to call security in the end to get rid of her. No, Madonna, I kept telling her, I can’t see you this evening, I’ve already arranged to meet Miranda.’
Having opened her mouth to say yes, but he was joking and she wasn’t, Miranda promptly shut it again. Boasting wasn’t an attractive quality in a girl. Besides, what if Miles Harper did contact her? Much as she liked Greg, it was very early days. Being brutally honest here, if Miles rang the salon and invited her out again—and this time she happened to be free—well, she’d be there like a shot.
Instead, she said gravely, ‘Thank you. I’m glad you chose me.’
‘So am I. Glad you chose me, I mean. You wouldn’t want to get involved with Miles Harper anyway,’ Greg assured her. ‘You can’t trust blokes like that, they’d mess you around no end.’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘He’s seeing Daisy Schofield,’ he went on. ‘There was a picture of them together in the paper this morning.’
Miranda took a gulp of wine. She nodded sagely over the rim of her glass.
‘I saw it too.’
An hour later, Miranda’s stomach began to rumble noisily. Too nervous to eat earlier, she was now starving.
‘I’ve booked a table at L’Etoile,’ said Greg, ‘for nine thirty.’
‘You always say just the right thing.’ She could have kissed him. This was a definite step up from warm beer and soggy pizza.