Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘No,’ said James, slowly, ‘even then surely she wouldn’t have decided not to go through with the wedding. Surely. It’s just – oh, I can’t believe it, Julia. I can’t believe any of it.’

  Julia shrugged. ‘Well, the facts speak for themselves, I think. I can only tell you that I think this is the happiest outcome. Under the circumstances. For us all. Even you. And of course you will remain quiet about it. About what I did.’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ said James. ‘Why should I? I shall make quite sure that everyone knows –’

  ‘Yes, James? Yes? Knows what?’

  And then he realized that of course he would have to remain silent; that he was trapped into silence by the possible truth of the story, and indeed by what was unarguably the truth of much that had happened anyway; that Cressida had in fact run away, on her wedding day, to marry someone else, for whatever reasons, had betrayed and savaged them all, and the more of the story that could remain in obscurity the better.

  ‘I’m going,’ he said heavily. ‘Home to Maggie. To tell her – I don’t know what. Does – does Josh know about all this?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s such a fool, James. He’d just start babbling it out. And he wouldn’t understand. Nor would Oliver. Oliver is so much happier this morning. Really, James, you should be grateful to me. She is no loss to any of us. I know it’s painful to recognize, but if she never comes back, that will be a very, very great blessing.’

  ‘Julia,’ said James, ‘Julia, I don’t know how you can even think that, let alone say it. You must surely know that to a parent a child is always welcomed, always loved, whatever it has done. We forgive our children anything, anything at all. If we are human. Which I begin to doubt you are. Goodbye, Julia. I hope we never have to meet again.’

  Chapter 33

  Harriet 11:30am

  ‘How about if I slept with you?’ said Harriet pleasantly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said how about if I slept with you. You know, went to bed with you, had sex, that kind of thing. Would that make any difference? Change your decision?’

  ‘Miss Forrest, I do assure you – that is, I –’

  ‘Well, would it?’ She smiled sweetly at him.

  He was visibly flushed, beads of sweat on his pale forehead. He shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Miss Forrest –’

  ‘I’m told I’m not entirely without talent in that area. It wouldn’t be that bad – oh, Mr Carter, don’t look so frightened. I find it insulting. Of course I’m not serious. Well, I don’t think I am. I suppose if you’d agreed to a further two million I might have been. But I can see you wouldn’t. Sorry, Mr Carter. Bad joke. Bad.’

  Geoffrey Carter visibly relaxed. He wiped his forehead with his initialled handkerchief, eased his slightly over-floral tie. He had not enjoyed the past half-hour; the past half-minute had been very bad for him indeed. The training he had been given in business banking had just about equipped him for telling highly attractive and patently emotional young women that their business futures were over for the foreseeable future; what it had not equipped him for was to deal with sexual propositioning.

  Harriet smiled at him. The past half-minute had quite cheered her up. ‘I understand. You’re only doing your job. And throwing good money after bad is clearly not what the bank would see as doing it. Oh well. What next?’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I have no alternative but to appoint a receiver.’

  ‘And what precisely will he do? This receiver?’

  Geoffrey Carter cleared his throat. ‘Well, he’ll arrive at your company some time later today.’

  ‘Today!’ said Harriet, thinking of her staff, her beloved, loyal, self-sacrificing staff, who had taken salary cuts, worked uncomplainingly harder as she laid the less vital amongst them off, refused, in two cases, tempting offers, who had no idea that this final awful thing was to happen. ‘Why today? Why so soon? It’s brutal. Horrible.’

  ‘I’m afraid this is a rather brutal world, Miss Forrest. But, well, you see, the thing is that in some cases people have been known to dispatch their employees with equipment and other assests, such as company cars. Now I’m sure you wouldn’t think –’

  ‘What a good idea,’ said Harriet cheerfully. ‘I’d never have thought of that. Thank you, Mr Carter. Don’t look like that, it’s all right, I’m only joking.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. And he will also want the keys to the building. He will lock it up, to safeguard it. We will also, of course, be calling in any personal guarantees, which includes your flat, and inform your debtors and creditors.’

  ‘I have a lot of both,’ said Harriet. ‘And if the debtors had behaved a bit better I wouldn’t be here now. Well, I might be, but – anyway, Mr Carter, thank you for at least listening to me. How long have I got?’

  ‘No longer at all, I’m afraid, Miss Forrest. You are legally obliged to cease trading as from now. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Mr Carter, you don’t want to go to the toilet or anything, do you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Geoffrey Carter. The sweat broke out again, this time under the armpits of his monogrammed cotton polyester City Style shirt.

  ‘There’s a last call I really would like to make. You don’t have to pay for it, I have a charge card.’

  ‘Well, I –’

  ‘Please Mr Carter, you’ve drunk all that tea. Just a few moments –’

  Geoffrey Carter began to feel he really did need the lavatory; a churning was taking place somewhere in his stomach. He took a deep breath. Harriet smiled at him encouragingly. ‘Mr Carter?’

  He stood up. She could have sworn he almost smiled. ‘Miss Forrest, I will just go and – ask my secretary to get the receiver on the phone. I won’t be more than a moment.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Carter. You’re a star. I’ll take you to lunch at the Caprice if – well, I’ll take you anyway.’

  Geoffrey Carter hurried out of the office; Harriet rang the studio. ‘Kitty? It’s me. Nothing from Cotton Fields?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, Harry. Nothing at all. Theo Buchan rang though. He’s ringing back. What shall I –’

  ‘Just tell him to go away and leave me alone,’ said Harriet. She felt totally dispirited; her emotions resembled a foot that had gone to sleep, as Nanny Horrocks used to call it. In time, no doubt, the pain would start, shooting, agonizing pain, but just now she felt nothing, only a great swollen numbness.

  Geoffrey Carter came back into the room, complete with secretary, presumably, she thought, more as chaperone than anything else. He looked at her warily, clearly nervous of what she might say or do next. ‘Right, Miss Forrest. I presume you have no further – observations to make?’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘none at all.’

  ‘I think that’s all then. I’ll call the receiver now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet, ‘er – thank you.’ She sat staring at him, as he lifted the phone, wondered if she was actually going to throw up all over the desk. She picked up the file on his desk: her file, labelled ‘Harriet Forrest – Harry’s Fashion Retail Business’, and the life of Harry’s began to roll before her eyes, in painfully slow motion: the tiny shop in Wandsworth, the twenty-four-hour shifts she worked all on her own, her head aching, fighting sleep; the exhilaration of her very first sale, the rapture of reading her first editorial: ‘Harriet Forrest’s designs show a clean-cut originality, an extraordinarily daring sense of colour. Do go and visit her small treasure trove of a shop, Harry’s, in newly fashionable Wandsworth High Street for coordinated casual classics …’

  And then there had been the next shop, and the next, full of eager customers, and the shock of excitement at realizing she really did have something to offer that people wanted; and hiring staff, doing cash flows, more sleepless nights, raising money, putting it to work, feeling the ideas burgeon, grow, more shops, bigger shops, her own small factory, the design studio, her first modest show – oh, that show, with Tilly gliding down the studio, laughing, o
n the catwalk that the four of them, she and Tilly and Rufus and Mungo, had built right through the night, people clapping, actually standing up and clapping.

  And then moving into Paris, Paris! home of fashion, the heady wonder of girls in Paris wanting, buying her clothes. By then there had been Theo too, taking hold of her life, turning it upside-down, loving her, driving her to all kinds of new intensities, making her happy as she had never been before, and disturbed and disorientated too, and then – shit – and then overreaching herself, getting into trouble. Real trouble. And it wasn’t the fault of the clothes, her lovely, witty, charming, beautifully cut, perfectly coordinating clothes, nor of Theo for distracting her, taking her mind from its total concentration; it was her fault, her fault for being vain and self-important and egotistical. She had let them all down, everyone who worked for her, who had lent her money, encouraged her, praised her, supported her; failed them through her own foolishness. She deserved this, she thought, this moment of absolute misery and humiliation, deserved it well.

  She looked at Geoffrey Carter and his secretary, and they were blurred, and so was the paper as she looked down at it, and a great tear fell on her file and smudged the label. ‘Sorry,’ she said, groping for a tissue, blotting at the paper, and had just wiped her face with the same tissue when Geoffrey Carter’s other phone rang. She stopped, froze; it might, it just might be Cotton Fields. Miracles did still happen. Even to the undeserving.

  ‘Geoffrey Carter. Yes. Yes, she’s here. I’ll just see if –’ He looked at Harriet rather uncertainly. ‘It’s a Mr Buchan. Mr Theodore Buchan. He wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Tell him I’d rather die,’ said Harriet firmly, putting the file down.

  ‘Miss Forrest can’t speak to you at the moment, she’s – oh, I see. Ah, yes of course. Yes. Miss Forrest, Mr Buchan says he would like to put the necessary money into your company. Er – will you speak to him now?’

  ‘Tell him I’d still rather die,’ said Harriet and turned and walked out of the office, feeling that just for one moment the whole dreadful thing had been worthwhile.

  Chapter 34

  Tilly 12 noon

  ‘I hope you’re good at sweet-talking,’ said the cab driver to Tilly. They were sitting in a traffic jam on the A4. Heathrow was two miles away; it might as well have been two hundred.

  ‘I am,’ said Tilly, ‘but how long do you reckon now?’

  ‘Well – I could try the back doubles, go round the back of the airport. If we’re lucky, fifteen minutes. But there’s no telling really, you never know in this game. And that’ll be only fifteen before you fly.’

  ‘That’ll be OK,’ said Tilly. ‘I’ve phoned them, and I have an instant check-in gold card, you know? They know I’m going to be late. I’ve no luggage, it’ll be fine. Yeah, try the back doubles. And just keep going, OK? Never say die, that’s my motto.’

  ‘Wish it was never say fly,’ said the cabbie and spent the next five minutes patently enjoying his own joke. Tilly smiled politely and lit a cigarette; he turned round, looking pained. ‘Don’t do that if you don’t mind, love,’ he said, ‘I’m a non-smoker, there’s a sign up in the cab, and it makes me feel sick. Can’t concentrate, you see. And with the passive smoking and all that, I don’t want to –’

  ‘OK, OK. Sorry,’ said Tilly and stubbed it out again.

  She didn’t really feel calm, she felt sick and her head ached. What the hell was she putting herself through this for? Why was she tearing herself away from London, which she loved so much, and Rufus, whom she loved so much, to go and sign a contract to do a lot of boring things: beauty sessions were always the least fun, and there were going to be endless in-store events and God knew what else, personal appearances everywhere, videos: hell on earth. She must be mad.

  ‘No, I’m not actually,’ said Tilly aloud. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘What’s that, love?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tilly and spent the next ten minutes rehearsing the reasons for her lack of madness: James Forrest’s treatment of her mother, her intense, almost fanatical desire to be her own mistress, unarguably in charge of her own life, her recognition of Rufus’s undoubted parentage, and finally, and probably most importantly, her total unsuitability to be Mrs Rufus Headleigh Drayton. She had to go: she had no choice. And she could help Harriet, give her some money, and she’d get over Rufus much more quickly and – and – God, she didn’t want to go. She just didn’t want to go. ‘Fuck,’ she said aloud. ‘Sorry, Rufus. Sorry.’

  The back double way was clear; but then the tunnel was jammed. ‘You sure you’ve got this right?’ said the driver. ‘Sounds funny to me. Usually Terminal Four for the States.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s Air America,’ said Tilly irritably. ‘It’s OK, we’ll make it. Maybe I should get out and run.’

  ‘Don’t. You’ll be had up.’

  It was seven minutes to twelve when she finally shot into the departures terminal, tore over to the information desk. The girl was charmingly helpful. ‘That’s OK, Miss Mills, we’ve been expecting you. Just go right over to departures and through. Gate thirty-nine. Have a good trip.’

  The man at departures was slightly less helpful and a lot less charming. ‘Final call ten minutes ago,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tilly, handing him her boarding card. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘You should be, they’re practically holding the plane for you.’

  ‘I run fast. I’ll make it. Here’s my boarding card and here’s my – shit, where is it, where’s the bloody thing? Hold on, I have it, I have it, it never leaves this bag, it’s here, it has to be …’

  She turned the leather rucksack upside-down, shook the contents out onto the man’s desk; her wallet opened, coins spattered everywhere, mingling with the chewing gum, the make-up, the cigarettes, Polaroids from recent sessions, the odd battered Tampax – it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. But no passport. For her passport, she realized, staring at the mess on the desk, must still be in Merlin Reid’s Lagonda (placed, she remembered now, on the dashboard shelf as she rummaged for his second beer) and it was two minutes to twelve and she heard her name now on the tannoy: ‘Would Ottoline Mills, passenger to New York on American Airlines Flight 279, proceed immediately to gate thirty-nine.’ But the man was shaking his head, saying she couldn’t proceed anywhere, not without a passport, couldn’t go through, no, couldn’t even try, it was more than his job was worth. And so it was that as Rufus Headleigh Drayton came haring into the terminal, knocking over an elderly Asian cleaning lady and picking her up with most uncharacteristic brusqueness, as he looked up and saw the words ‘Flight Closed on Air American Flight 279 to New York’ on the indicator, and as he uttered a loud roar of despair that made everyone in the vicinity stare at him, and draw their baggage and their children closer to them, Tilly Mills appeared before him as if in a vision, clutching what looked like the contents of an entire rubbish bin in her arms, and said, ‘Fu – I mean good gracious, Rufus, what on earth are you doing here?’

  They went and rescued his Porsche from a double yellow line (no warden, the fates were famously kind to Rufus) and drove extremely fast and in complete silence out onto the hideous wastelands of the A4, rather more slowly up to the concrete mountains of what the traffic officials call the elevated section of the M4, and eventually reached the long car park that is the Cromwell Road extension, where finally Rufus spoke.

  ‘I still can’t believe you did that,’ he said.

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tilly, do I have to spell it out to you?’

  ‘Yes you do. Traffic’s moving, Rufus.’

  She got out a cigarette and lit it; Rufus sighed and wound down his window. ‘You know I hate you smoking in the car,’ he said, ‘I hate you smoking altogether, but particularly in the car.’

  ‘First the cab driver, then you,’ said Tilly. ‘I think I might get out and walk.’

  ‘If you like,’ said Rufus, glaring at he
r. ‘Shall I stop?’

  ‘You’d better,’ said Tilly, ‘if you’re not going to hit the car in front of you.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Rufus and hit the brakes just in time.

  ‘I’ve never seen you in a temper before,’ said Tilly thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ve never been angry with you before.’

  ‘But why, Rufus, why? Why are you so angry?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tilly. I can’t believe you’re that stupid. There are several things actually. First you just take this decision, all on your own, without consulting me, to sign this ridiculous contract and go and live in New York. Then you’re so bloody full of your own problems you don’t even notice I have some that I want to talk to you about. Plus you persist in this ridiculous obsession that a marriage between us couldn’t ever work, when you really ought to see that I’m the best judge of that. It’s outrageous, Tilly, the way you shut me out, just go on your own sweet way, do what you think is best. I’m absolutely fucking fed up with it.’

  ‘Rufus,’ said Tilly, ‘that’s the second time you’ve used that word in five minutes. I thought you hated it. You’ll be smoking next.’

  ‘I might be driven to it,’ said Rufus.

  Tilly was silent. She reached out to put the radio on; Rufus pushed her hand away. ‘And don’t do that either. I cannot face that bloody mindless rubbish you listen to.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Tilly. She was beginning to find it all rather funny.

  ‘And don’t patronize me.’

  ‘Rufus, I’m not patronizing you.’

  ‘Yes you are. That’s what all this is about. You deciding you know best for us without even consulting me. It’s horrible. It’s unkind and it’s insulting. I hate it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tilly, ‘I get the idea. Rufus –’

  ‘Just shut up,’ he said, ‘just don’t say anything.’