EX Files

by Jane Moore

  Tony stood back and let his parents enjoy the moment, then once the initial buzz had subsided, he walked round the table and hugged Mark and Kate. “Congratulations to both of you,” he said. “I can’t think of two people better suited.”

  They all sat down again, except Derek, who left the room, returning with a bottle of Laurent Perrier rosé champagne and five flutes. The cork popped and ricocheted off an oil painting of Jean’s grandfather, Albert, looking particularly stern and statesmanlike.

  “So,” Derek started pouring, “let me guess. You’re going to sneak away to some far-flung desert island, get married, then come back and tell us all about it.”

  Mark and Kate looked at each other. “Well, it crossed our minds to do that,” she said.

  Jean looked as if she’d just been told the family puppy had been run over.

  “But,” Kate continued, “we decided that because Jean had been deprived of a big wedding in France, we might as well push the boat out and go the whole hog in England. Big hair, big gowns, big church number. Late September, we thought.”

  It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in, then Jean’s face lit up. “Seriously?”

  Mark nodded. “Yes, Mum, and we’d like you to grant us the honor of being our wedding planner.”

  “Oh, God.” Derek slapped a palm against his forehead. “You have just sentenced me to the next three months of napkin and place-card purgatory.” He groaned. “That’s it, I’m booking a long golfing holiday.”

  Mark turned to Tony. “And as we’ve decided to go the more traditional route this time, I’d like you to be my best man.”

  His brother looked taken aback. “Are you sure? What about Brian?”

  “I’ve already spoken to him and he’s fine about it. He says it’s not really his thing anyway. He’d rather just get pissed and have no responsibility.”

  “Mark, what did I say about swearing?” Jean gave him a mock frown.

  “Mum, if you think that’s swearing, don’t ever visit me in the restaurant kitchens.”

  Kate spluttered. “God, yes, I made the mistake of doing that once.”

  Tony tapped a finger on the table. “Now that we have the wonderfully good news out of the way, I was hoping someone might bring the conversation back to business,” he said, and Mark groaned. “Give me the finer detail on how my investment is doing.”

  Jean took Kate’s arm. “Come on, dear, let’s adjourn to the living room. We want to hear all about the proposal, don’t we, Derek?”

  Derek, who had planned to stay behind and listen to the business talk, knew a whip when he heard one. “Yes, dear, we certainly do,” he said wearily. He followed them out of the room, and Mark brought Tony up to speed on the restaurant.

  Hawkins Bar and Grill occupied a corner site in Mayfair, which Tony said was ideal because people could park outside in the evenings rather than competing for spaces in the more overcrowded Soho and Covent Garden areas nearby. Its proximity to his new flat also meant he could use it as an evening canteen. When they took it over, it already had kitchens and the general layout of a restaurant, but they had gutted and refitted it in modern, minimalist style with beige suede banquettes and teardrop ceiling lights. They wanted it to be a popular hangout known for its great food, but not too stuffy or élitist, so monosyllabic doormen in trench coats and wraparound shades had been ruled out from the start.

  Every restaurant can do with a lucky break, and theirs came when the hot new singing star Burgundy Brown had brought her latest boyfriend there for a romantic dinner. Shortly afterwards, the Sunday Times’s notoriously fickle A. A. Gill had given it an above-average review, and they were away.

  It was packed most nights, but particularly at weekends, and although another new restaurant had opened nearby, the business was still ticking over nicely.

  “So, your investment is safe and sound.” Mark stretched across his parents’ dining table and picked up a piece of bread from Kate’s side plate. “Now, shall we stop being so antisocial and go and join the others?”

  “In a minute.” Tony poured them each a large brandy from the cut-glass decanter in the center of the table. “First, I want to hear the inside track on the proposal while Kate’s not in earshot.” He prodded Mark in the chest. “You’re bloody lucky to have got a second chance with such a great girl.”

  “I know.” Mark’s face had brightened at the gear change from business to his new fiancée. He made a good job of running the restaurant because he loved cooking, but the business side of things left him cold. “There’s not much to tell, really. Once we got back together, there seemed little point in hanging around. I’d fucked it up once, and I certainly wasn’t going to let her go again.”

  “Why did you split up in the first place?” asked Tony. “You’ve never really gone into detail before.” He didn’t let on that Kate had filled him in during the wedding weekend in France.

  “I was a total idiot, that’s why.” Mark took a mouthful of brandy. “We’d started arguing a lot, which anyone sensible would have put down to work pressures and a bit of a rough patch, but I took it to mean we were unsuited.” He slapped his face. “Duh! What an arsehole.”

  “Can’t dispute that,” said Tony, with a grin. “So you stuck your head into the sand for a few months, and then you met Faye?”

  “Yep.”

  “Have you had any contact with her since?”

  “Faye?” Mark glanced at the door, anxious that Kate might hear.

  Tony nodded.

  “Just a couple of phone calls early on,” he replied. “She wanted to meet up to check that I was OK and explain herself further, but I didn’t see the point. The relationship was off and I didn’t see that talking about it was going to change that. She left a couple more messages, but when she didn’t hear back she gave up.”

  “So you didn’t think you could be friends with her?”

  “Not really. We hadn’t been mates before we got together, so it wasn’t like I missed her friendship or anything. It wasn’t like it was with Kate or Jenna.” His eyes widened. “God, I knew there was something else I meant to tell you!”

  “What?” Tony was intrigued.

  “Guess who Jenna’s started seeing?”

  “I give up.”

  “Rich! You know, the policeman. They met at the wedding,” said Mark, smiling. “He rang her up afterwards and they’ve been seeing quite a lot of each other at weekends. She’s even talking about moving to London to be closer to him.”

  “Great. Well, at least the French weekend spawned one happy ending,” said Tony, a touch sarcastically.

  Mark rolled his brandy around the glass. “Two, if you count Kate and me. The whole experience made me see sense.” He took a swig and screwed up his face as the liquid burned the back of his throat. “Now that I’m back with Kate I could probably see Faye as a friend and not be bothered by it, but I couldn’t say the same for my fiancée so I think things are better left as they are.”

  “You’re probably right,” agreed Tony. “So you really haven’t seen her at all? That’s impressive willpower.”

  Mark shrugged. “Not really. I barely think about her, these days. I’ve seen her in a few magazines and, hand on heart, I felt nothing. It’s as if it never happened now, particularly as I’ve been so wrapped up in the restaurant and Kate.”

  “Ah, yes, Kate.” Tony gave his brother a warm smile. “So how did you two get back together? I got an overexcited, garbled version from Mum, but I want the man-to-man details.”

  His brother looked wistful. “God, I love her so much—real love, you know?”

  “Kind of.” Tony gestured for him to continue.

  “I didn’t get a chance to talk to her in France because I left rather quickly . . .”

  “I noticed.” He gave him a reproachful look.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. I just wanted to go away and hide for a while.” He brushed a speck from his shirt sleeve. “Anyway, I didn’t get to talk to her there, and when I
came back here I got rather bogged down with the drama of making endless explanations to everyone . . .”

  Although he didn’t usually smoke, he helped himself to one of Tony’s cigarettes “Once the initial humiliation of the wedding had died down, I still felt like shit. Then it dawned on me why.”

  Tony said nothing.

  “It was because I was missing Kate. It had nothing to do with Faye.” He took a long drag and blew the smoke into the air. “Then, one Saturday morning, I was lolling about the flat as usual with Brian, and I decided to do something about it.”

  “So you got on your white charger?”

  “Into a black cab, actually,” smiled Mark, “and luckily, she was at home.” He took a drag of the cigarette, with another nervous glance towards the door. “She took a bit of convincing to give me another chance, but here we are.”

  “Bloody great.” Tony clinked his glass against Mark’s. “Well, all I can say is, you’re lucky someone else didn’t snap her up in the meantime.”

  Mark had just taken another mouthful of brandy, and almost choked. He swallowed hard, then said, “That reminds me, you never told me Ted was gay! She says she told you in France.”

  Tony had the grace to look sheepish. “Yes, she did.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because she asked me not to, and because you were supposed to be marrying someone else the next morning, so I didn’t think you’d be that interested.”

  They lapsed into silence for a few moments.

  “You really are a bloody dark horse,” said Mark, finally.

  “It’s called discretion.” Tony waved his hand to indicate that was enough about him: he’d never been comfortable as the subject matter of a conversation.

  “That’s exactly what Kate said you’d say.”

  “When did she tell you the truth?”

  “While I was trying to persuade her to give it another go,” said Mark. “As you already seem to know, it turned out she had brought Ted to the wedding because she didn’t want to come on her own and he was the most handsome man she knew. Also, she could share a bedroom with him safe in the knowledge that there wouldn’t be any lunges.”

  Tony blew a smoke ring into the air. “I suppose she also hoped you might feel a teensy-weensy bit jealous?”

  Mark laughed. “Probably. And, if I’m honest, I was. Very. But when she told me he was gay and I realized she was single, I thought It’s now or never, and told her how I felt.”

  “Which was?”

  “That I still loved her, that I should never have behaved like such an immature idiot in the first place, and that, if she’d have me, I’d like us to get back together.”

  “Bloody hell. Don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  He shrugged “No point. I knew that she knew everything there is to know about me, so it was going to be a simple case of yes or no.”

  “And obviously it was yes.”

  Mark made a face. “Not quite. After leaving me in no doubt what she felt about my overall fuckwittery, she agreed to go out for dinner with me and said we’d take it a day at a time.”

  His brother pursed his lips. “Can’t argue with that.”

  “That was in November and, as you also know, we’ve been dating ever since. I wanted to ask her to marry me much sooner, but decided I’d wait until after the restaurant opened. I thought if we could survive the launch, we could survive anything.”

  “Regardless of that, she’s the girl for you,” said Tony. “I’ve always known it.”

  “So why didn’t you say something?”

  “Well, for the reason I was talking about earlier. I haven’t been part of your life for a while and didn’t feel you’d take much notice anyway.”

  Mark looked unsure. “I might have.”

  “Well, you didn’t take much notice when I told you Faye was the wrong woman for you!” Tony cuffed him.

  “True,” Mark mused. “And, God, you were right.”

  He made a little bowing action with his head. “Thank you. And don’t call me God, Tony will do.”

  “Anyway—will I ever get to the end of this story? I proposed to Kate in Antigua last week. I had organized a table for just the two of us on the beach, so I think she kind of suspected what was coming. She did a good job of looking surprised, though.”

  “Were you sure she’d say yes?”

  “Pretty much. We always used to have quite an unpredictable relationship, but it’s different this time. Although we’re both still quite independent, we don’t play as many stupid games with each other. It’s much nicer.”

  Tony sighed. “Glad to hear it. And, once again, I’m thrilled to bits for both of you.”

  “Thanks, bruv. Now let’s go through and join the others.” He stood up.

  “Hang on.” Tony’s expression had become serious. “There’s just one other thing I need to talk to you about.”

  Friday, September 19

  11:25 a.m.

  Adam arrived back at her flat and threw the spare keys into the china bowl by the door. “Fuck me sideways, you’re really famous!” he said, with typical understatement.

  “Is it in, then?” she said, feeling a flutter of excitement in her stomach.

  He walked over to the living-room table and threw down the big pile of newspapers he was carrying. “You’re in practically every one of them, except the stuffy old FT. And . . .” he paused for dramatic effect, “. . . you’re on the front of the Mail.”

  Faye flipped it over and, sure enough, there was a large color photograph of her with the caption: “Faye Parker, the new face of Visage makeup, see page 7.” “Bloody hell.” She looked at Adam wide-eyed. “I knew getting the Visage contract was a big deal, but I didn’t realize it would get this much coverage.”

  Adam sipped the coffee she’d made while he was out at the newsagent’s. “Two things in your favor, love.” He held up a finger. “One, there’s fuck-all else happening in the world.” He held up another. “And two, it means they can pour piss all over Bonnie Wallis for losing the contract because of her drug problem.”

  Faye started to flick through the other papers. They had all used variations of the same picture, taken at yesterday’s press conference to announce her as the new face of Visage, a makeup company that rivaled Revlon and Estée Lauder.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” she said.

  “That you’ll make shitloads of money and have even more gorgeous men throwing themselves at you?” replied Adam, his face deadpan. A drip of coffee fell from the base of his cup and onto his T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the words “My sexual preference is not you.”

  “No,” she said. “It means I can never leave the house without makeup in case there are some paparazzi lurking outside, waiting to get a picture of me looking dreadful.”

  “Darling, apart from the piggy-eyed moment not long after Nat dumped you, I have never seen you look dreadful. In fact, come to think of it, I hate you.”

  “I hate you too,” she said, blowing him a kiss. “Now, the big question is, what have you got for me to wear tonight?”

  That evening, there was going to be a huge party to celebrate twenty-five years of Visage, and the powers-that-be had made it abundantly clear that Faye was to be there, wearing something that ensured them the maximum possible coverage in the next day’s newspapers. Adam would accompany her, but before that he had to secure her a drop-dead gorgeous dress for the occasion.

  Luckily, his job with Couture meant that his ancient Filofax was stuffed with the home numbers of every important fashionista you could think of. Faye had tried to drag him kicking and screaming into the new millennium by buying him a Psion, but he’d let the battery die and it had junked all his numbers.

  “I’ve got you four options, but I think the one you should go for is from Gucci’s new collection,” he said, munching a croissant. “Everyone goes for black at these things, so I think you should wear a brighter color to make you stand
out.”

  Faye nodded her agreement. “So what color is it?”

  “It’s greeny-blue. I thought it would bring out the color of your eyes. There’s not much of it, but I’ve brought lots of toupee tape with me so you won’t fall out.” A thought struck him. “Mind you, maybe you should fall out. It’s a great way to get into the papers.”

  “Very funny.”

  Although she had posed in lots of scanty outfits in the studio, Faye was quite prudish when it came to going out in one. The studio was work and she had to wear what she was told to, but what you chose to wear to a party was your own business and said so much more about you.

  “It can only be a matter of time before someone wears a couple of Dairylea Triangles and a bottle top to a party,” she said, “but it’s not going to be me.”

  “Spoilsport.” Adam stood up and stretched his arms above his head. “Mind if I have a quick bath before lunch?”

  “Quick?” She raised her eyebrows. “In your case, that means about two hours.”

  He feigned a hurt expression. “I can’t be that long. It’s eleven-thirty now and I’ve booked us into the little French place down the road for one o’clock. Then we can come back here and start getting you ready.”

  “They’re picking me up at six bloody thirty because there’s a private reception first and I have to do lots of handshaking with Visage executives.”

  “Oooh, you’re a girl who knows how to have fun.” Taking one of the color supplements with him, he headed for the bathroom.

  Faye sat there for another half an hour, scanning the papers. Although she’d been in column items before, she’d never experienced blanket coverage like this, and it felt weird to read about herself. Across the articles, her age changed three times, and one even referred to her having dated a male model she’d never met. In truth, the man she spent most of her time with now was Adam. They’d always got on, but their relationship had undoubtedly strengthened in recent months.