Two's Company

by Jill Mansell

  Pandora tried not to feel sick. They’d been laughing at the script because it was so bad. In the pit of her stomach, the baby gave a small, sympathetic kick.

  “Never mind,” Donny put in, meaning to be kind. “You don’t find these things out until you give them a try.”

  “No.” She dredged up a smile.

  “Let’s face it.” His own good humor restored, Sean ruffled Pandora’s short hair. “Gorgeous you may be, but Ellen DeGeneres you’re not.”

  Chapter 30

  Cass’s earlier lament that everyone was leaving home didn’t extend to Terry Brannigan. He might, for the sake of propriety, have rented a studio apartment in nearby Kentish Town, but all it really did was house his few belongings. Terry spent every spare moment at Cass’s house, not because it was a hundred times nicer than his own depressing flat but because it had Cass in it.

  Terry’s love for her was as unwavering as ever, but fear of rejection had so far prevented him doing anything about it. She seemed to adore him, but that, Terry kept gloomily reminding himself, was Cass’s way. What if she didn’t? Dare he take that chance and risk losing everything?

  It was a problem that had been tearing Terry apart for weeks. The only thing that seemed to help—cheering him up and dulling the pain of uncertainty—was vast quantities of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Half a bottle every night and he was happy again, reassured that Cass loved him every bit as much as, if not more than, she had once loved Jack.

  Tonight, after rather more Johnnie Walker than usual, Terry decided it was high time he did something about it. He had to let Cass know how he felt. If he waited much longer, he was going to find himself winning the Guinness World Record for “greatest length of unrequited love.”

  Terry was waiting by the front porch when Cleo and Cass arrived home after visiting Pandora.

  “I don’t believe it.” Cleo, who was driving, was tempted for a moment to put her foot down. Even if she couldn’t quite bring herself to run him over, she could spray him painfully with gravel. “It’s almost eleven o’clock, and your fan club’s waiting on the doorstep. Can’t you just give him your autograph and send him home?”

  But Cass was already waving to Terry through the car window.

  “He’s lonely, that’s all.”

  “Not to mention boring.” Cleo was suddenly glad she had to be up at five in the morning for a shoot in Edinburgh. She yawned. “Oh well, if you’re going to be nice to the old soak, I’m going to bed.”

  * * *

  “Coffee?” asked Cass, reaching up to take a pair of blue-and-yellow cups down from the glass-fronted wall cabinet.

  Terry fingered the quarter bottle of whisky in the pocket of his raincoat. Cass had a distressing habit of running out of liquor in the house and forgetting to buy more. Even more alarmingly, sometimes she hadn’t run out of liquor at all; she just thought he’d had enough and tried to sober him up with coffee instead. It was why Terry had brought along a little something of his own. He’d just have to slosh a good measure into his cup when she wasn’t looking. After all, he definitely needed something to spur him on.

  Cass thought at first it was a joke. For the past half an hour, everything had been perfectly normal. All she’d done was carry their empty coffee cups through to the kitchen, dump them in the sink, and kick off her shoes on her way back to the sitting room. When she reached it, the cookie tin was still perched on the arm of the sofa, but Terry, who had been sitting next to it, was no longer there.

  The next moment, almost as if he had been deliberately lying in wait behind the sitting-room door, he pushed it firmly shut, took both Cass’s hands in his own, and said urgently, “Tell me you love me. Please, Cass. Now.”

  “What?” She smiled, searching his face, waiting for the inevitable punch line.

  But Terry was staring at her, his expression intense. The smell of stale alcohol was strong enough to make Cass flinch. “It’s not a joke. I’ve waited so long for you to say it.” He squeezed her hands so hard Cass felt her knuckles scrape together. “My darling, you must know how I feel about you. How much longer do you expect me to wait? Just tell me you love me, please.”

  “Oh, but…”

  As Cass, horrified, opened her mouth to protest, Terry groaned and pulled her into his arms. His mouth, wet and whisky-sodden, clamped down on hers. She felt his teeth graze her lower lip. It was an inexpert kiss, a desperate one, and fond though she was of Terry, she couldn’t bear to let it go on.

  “Don’t…mmphhggh…stop it…”

  But determination had granted Terry new strength, and he wasn’t about to give up now. Inflamed by the physical contact he had dreamt of for so very long, he pressed his mouth over Cass’s once more and began pulling her toward the sofa. Once Cass realized he meant what he said—that he truly did love her—she would stop fighting it, he was sure. All he had to do was convince her.

  Cass wasn’t scared, but she knew she had to deal with the situation before it had a chance to get seriously out of control. As Terry propelled her across the room, the backs of her thighs hit the sofa. So intent was he on kissing her—and persuading her to kiss him back—that he didn’t realize what she was reaching for.

  The black-and-gold cookie tin crashed down on the back of his head, and Terry saw matching black-and-gold stars.

  “What the…?”

  Staggering beneath the impact, he overbalanced and fell backward across the sofa, ending up bum-first in a heap of tasseled cushions. The screw top on the whisky bottle in his jacket pocket had been less than firmly fastened. Even as Cass watched, an amber stain was spreading across the front of his crumpled trousers. She looked down at the tin in her hands and saw it had a fair-sized dent in it.

  “Oh dear,” drawled Cleo, who had heard the sound of tussling as she came downstairs for a glass of water. “I hope those cookies are all right.”

  * * *

  Terry was distraught. His worst fears had been realized. Not only did Cass not love him but he had made a complete and utter ninny of himself in the bargain.

  How he could have gotten so carried away was beyond him, but he had. Worse still, he had needed to be brained with a cookie tin to be brought back to his senses. Hideously ashamed of what he had done, Terry didn’t know which was harder to bear: Cass’s sympathetic understanding or Cleo’s smirking disdain.

  One thing he did know: his enduring friendship with Cass was over. Even if she could forgive and forget, there was no way he could ever forgive himself.

  Tears swam in Terry’s eyes as he gazed at Cass for the last time.

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to be polite. Why would you be interested in someone like me anyway? I’m just a decrepit old has-been who drinks too much.”

  “Come on now. This is silly.” Cass was worried about letting him leave, but when she put her hand on his arm, he flinched like a burn victim. “There’s no need to be upset. It was a simple mistake, that’s all. No harm done.”

  “No harm done?” Despite everything, Terry almost smiled. “You really don’t understand, do you? You have no idea how it feels to love someone…” Unable to go on, he shook his head and opened the front door. “I’m sorry, sorry about everything. You don’t have to worry either. You won’t see me again. And that’s a promise.”

  When he had gone, Cass sat down on the bottom step of the staircase and buried her head in her hands.

  Cleo, who had with uncharacteristic diplomacy retreated to the kitchen during the final emotional farewells, reappeared.

  “Look, Mum, maybe it’s just as well he’s gone. The last thing you need is hassle like that.”

  “Oh, but how the poor man must be feeling.” Cass sighed.

  “Imagine how you’d be feeling now,” Cleo briskly retaliated, “if he’d raped you.”

  “He wouldn’t have raped me.”

  “You don’t know
that.”

  Wearily, Cass shook her head. “Terry’s a good man. A kind man. To think after all these years, I didn’t have the least idea how he felt. And now I’ve rejected him, made him miserable—”

  “That’s hardly your fault.” Cleo was unforgiving. “Anyway, serves him right for being a prat.”

  “But this feels almost worse than splitting up with your father,” Cass wailed. “I don’t want to hurt someone else that much. I feel so guilty. At least when Jack left, I didn’t have to feel guilty. Oh God, do you think Terry will be all right?”

  “Course he will. As soon as he sobers up.” Cleo, who was hungry, retrieved the cookie tin from the sitting room. “Look at that,” she exclaimed in disgust. “How could you say no harm done? These cookies are beyond repair.”

  Chapter 31

  Imogen was at her wits’ end. In the ten days since Sophie had moved in, the flat had become scarcely recognizable. It was like being invaded by an army of squatters, except they wouldn’t spend as much time hogging the bathroom.

  As far as Imogen could make out, Sophie ate fifteen meals a day and used every kitchen implement known to man to prepare each one. These she then dumped in the sink along with the plates of half-eaten food, which were undoubtedly too disgusting to finish.

  Imogen felt sick just having to look at the concoctions Sophie was capable of conjuring up. She cringed at the peanut-butter-and-chocolate-sauce splashes plastered across the wall behind the food processor. She marveled at the fact that she was the one expected to do all the dishes.

  “I’ll have a word with her” was Jack’s way of fobbing Imogen off, “but you have to give Sophie a bit of leeway, darling. She is studying for her GCSEs.”

  Imogen doubted whether Sophie could study anything with bloody heavy rock music blaring nonstop. Nor did she see why she and Jack should be banished to the bedroom at nine o’clock each evening when Sophie, instead of going to sleep as she was supposed to do, lay in solitary splendor across the sofa watching TV until after midnight.

  As the days wore on, Imogen began to suspect Jack’s precious daughter was doing it on purpose. When Sophie arrived home from school the next day with a box of frogs, she decided the time had come to speak out.

  “OK, Sophie, what’s the plan? Are you deliberately trying to make my life hell?”

  “Oh no, is that what you think?” Sophie looked dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, Imogen. Really I am.”

  This was half the trouble; despite the chaos she caused, Sophie was unfailingly polite and apologetic.

  “The frogs are part of my biology project. They won’t get in your way, I promise. I’m going to take brilliant care of them.”

  “Ribbit,” chorused the frogs in their Perspex box. “Ribbit.”

  “I’m not just talking about the frogs.” Imogen willed herself to stay calm. “This morning after you left for school, I spent an hour cleaning the bath, wiping marmalade off the television screen, and trying to get the smell of pickled onions out of the rug in front of the fire.”

  She forbore to mention just how much the rug—cream and white and nineteenth-century Persian—had cost.

  Sophie hung her head. “Sorry again. The jar slipped out of my hand.”

  “Yet your father insists you’re normally clean, tidy, and pretty much house-trained. Which makes me think all this havoc making is a bit of a put-on.” Imogen gave her a long, cool look. “And it isn’t going to work. So why don’t you just give in gracefully, go back home, and leave us in peace?”

  Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m not doing anything on purpose, honestly. Of course I’ll leave if I have to, but where would I go? Not home…” A single tear rolled down the side of her nose. “You can’t make me go home.”

  “I don’t see why you don’t want to.” Imogen’s teeth were clenched together so tightly, her jaw ached. “You’ve been perfectly happy there for the past fifteen years.”

  “So was Dad, but you didn’t mind when he left.” Sophie looked defiant. “I don’t see why I can’t leave too.” Then she heaved a sigh. “Anyway, I can see I’m not wanted here, so I’ll move out tomorrow. Will after school be OK? Say, five o’clock?”

  Imogen looked at her. “Where will you go?”

  “Don’t worry. I can look after myself.” Sophie wiped the lone tear from her cheek with the back of her skinny, white hand. “That cardboard box your washing machine was delivered in last week, is it still around? And if you could spare a couple of old blankets…”

  * * *

  Under the circumstances, Jack did the only thing he could do. “Right,” he announced, returning home the following day looking extremely pleased with himself. “That’s that sorted.”

  “What?” demanded Imogen.

  Sophie said nothing, simply looked at her father and blinked.

  “Get packing,” Jack declared. “I’ve rented a house in Wimbledon. We can move in tonight.”

  Imogen glanced across at Sophie.

  “What? You mean she’s coming too?”

  “Of course.” Jack determinedly ignored the tension in the air. “We’re all going. The house has five bedrooms, more than enough space for everyone. And,” he announced firmly, “I’ve arranged for a cleaning woman to come in five mornings a week. So that’s that. All our problems solved. Now maybe we can start to relax and enjoy one another’s company. Maybe,” he said, smiling at the two girls in turn, “the situation in the future could be less…fraught.”

  Oh hell, thought Sophie, appalled by what she had done.

  Shit, thought Imogen, her heart sinking as she realized Jack had presented them with a perfect fait accompli.

  “Ribbit,” cackled the frogs in their Perspex box.

  * * *

  Sophie could have kicked herself for getting it so spectacularly wrong.

  “Now I’ve really messed up,” she groaned over a plate of shepherd’s pie in the comforting familiarity of her own home. She looked in anguish at Cass, who sat opposite her at the kitchen table. “Dad had even hired a van to get all our stuff over there in one go. When he was in Flooze’s flat, he could leave anytime he liked. Now, thanks to me, he’s taken a house on a five-year lease. It’s made them a proper couple,” she said woefully. “Five years…it sounds so permanent. All I’ve done is made everything worse.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Cass tried to pretend it couldn’t matter less, but the news had still come as a body blow. She, too, had been reassured by the thought that Jack’s move into Imogen’s mews flat had an air of temporariness about it.

  Now, however, Jack appeared to be committing himself, and Cass found herself feeling more and more alone. Her family was drifting away from her, and for the first time in her life, the radio show seemed more of a chore than an adventure. And Terry appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth. She had gone around to see him last night only to discover from the girl next door that Terry had moved out.

  “I asked him if he wanted to leave a forwarding address, but he said there wasn’t any point,” the girl had told Cass, impressed to think her ex-next-door neighbor had known someone so famous. She wrinkled her nose and smiled. “He was a funny old chap, wasn’t he? Not that any of us saw much of him, but he seemed quite nice. Drank like nobody’s business, mind you. Did he really have his own radio show once?”

  Blaming herself for Terry’s disappearance only made Cass feel even worse than she did already. What if he were to commit suicide or drink himself to death as a result of her rejection of him? What, she thought with a shiver, if he were already dead?

  “Don’t panic. I’m almost sure you wouldn’t get charged with manslaughter,” Sophie said soothingly when Cass confided her fears. “Just so long as we don’t say anything to the police about you battering him over the head with a cookie tin.”

  “Very funny.” Cass fretted. “I don’t know how you c
an joke about it. That poor man. He could be dead…”

  Sophie was eminently practical. “Come on. He’s not that stupid. You’ve been reading too much Romeo and Juliet.” With some relief, she added, “I think it’s definitely time I moved back home.”

  “Yes?” Cass’s spirits lifted at once. “What about the big house in Wimbledon?”

  “Leave them to it, I suppose.” Sophie shrugged. “I did my worst, and it backfired. Flooze was onto me anyway. She guessed I was doing all that stuff on purpose.”

  “Well, I’m just glad you’re coming back.” Getting up from the table, Cass enveloped her in a hug. “And even if it didn’t work, it was a nice try.”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” Sophie, who had been spending a lot of time recently on the phone to Cleo, gave her mother a small, controlled smile. “We haven’t given up yet.”

  Chapter 32

  “So you’re planning to spend the summer here in England.” Imogen, checking her notes and double-checking the tape recorder was running smoothly, knew she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. “But filming Crackshot is only going to take up seven or eight weeks at most. So what plans do you have for the rest of your time here?”

  Goodness, Dino Carlisle was handsome. Meeting him in the flesh, too, was even more of a revelation. Since the film parts in which he was invariably cast were of the invincible hero variety, Imogen had automatically assumed him to be a keep-fit fanatic, humorless, and possibly a bit thick. Instead, upon being shown into his sumptuous fifth-floor suite at the dauntingly swish Lanesborough, she had been quite bowled over by the welcome she had received and by the fact that Dino Carlisle was so very much more charming and approachable than she had imagined.

  “What are my plans for the rest of my time here?” He gazed across at her, the spark in his green eyes not humorless at all. “You mean my real plans or the ones we make up for the benefit of your devoted readers?”