A moment later, she was outside again, looking worried. The others were discussing what had just happened. Pete the Greek had left hurriedly and was already disappearing toward Highgate Hill, with his blonde trailing disconsolately behind. “I can’t get through to Maddy. It goes straight to voice mail again, so I’ve just asked her to call me. Where the hell is she? Something’s not right. I’ll just leave a message on her voice mail at home too . . . Colette! What are you doing there? I thought you’d be in London or somewhere. What? So you’ve no idea at all? . . . Right. Well, if she calls you again, can you ask her to call me? Yeah, anytime, anytime at all.”
Izzie’s heart was pounding in her ears and she knew she was sweating despite the chill in the air. She flipped her phone closed and put it back in her bag, then looked round at the faces watching her expectantly. “That was the nanny. She’s at home with the kids. Maddy went off on Friday afternoon and said she wasn’t sure when she’d be back. What on earth’s going on?”
Maddy felt her mobile buzz in her pocket. Izzie again. This must be the third call this morning. As she had done so many times since the calls had started yesterday, she pressed the cancel button. She felt bad. The least Izzie deserved was an explanation for her disappearance, but just at the moment she couldn’t face talking to her. Then after a moment she dialed home.
“Everything okay?” she asked Colette. “Good. No, tell Will he can’t have any chocolate until after lunch.” Suddenly a voice boomed out on the PA system, so grabbing her bag she made a dash for the ladies and an empty cubicle.
“Pasco feels a bit hot? Give him some Calpol and keep an eye on him. It could be teeth, but if you’re not sure, take him to the doctor in the morning.” Someone in the next-door cubicle pulled the chain. “Sound of water? Er, I’m just about to have a bath actually. Yes, very echoey . . . these friends have a big house. Fabulous bathroom. Big enough to have a party in.” She could hear two women come into the loos, talking loudly. “Better go, Colette. Someone else wants the bathroom before me. Speak to you later.” She clicked off the call, then slowly and deliberately turned off the phone.
Back in the main concourse, she looked up at the board. Slipping her phone into her bag, she pulled out her ticket and boarding pass and headed for passport control. It seemed ages since she’d been on a plane. How she’d missed all the rigmarole of check-ins, taxiing, and that sensational thrill of taking off.
She’d never been on a trip like this before though.
Finding her seat in club class, she stashed her overnight bag in the overhead locker and settled down. The man beside her looked up and smiled briefly before returning to his paper. She couldn’t have expected anything more. She’d left in such a rush this morning and, wiser after recent experience, she had made damned sure she was wearing her Ruralist “uniform” to the nth degree: dung-brown boiled wool suit, buttoned to the round-collared neck, box pleat skirt, and her flattest, frumpiest pumps, all covered up with her woollen shawl. It had pained her to buy it, but, boy, it had done her some mileage. She’d stuck in a couple of Florence’s cotton flower clips she’d found on the side in the kitchen to keep her hair back off her face, innocent of makeup. All she was missing was the guitar and she’d be good and ready to arrive at the von Trapp mansion.
Pulling out the newspaper, she braced herself, hoping that the picture hadn’t been brought forward a day and, relieved to see it hadn’t—or at least not in this paper—she tried to concentrate on the news. Instead, her voice shouted at her in her head: What the hell are you doing? Is this really what Peter meant by a “vat load of craftiness”? Somewhere in her thoughts Simon’s face kept appearing, too, shaking his head with disappointment at her. But everything hangs on this, her rational brain kept butting in. Even if her momentary lapse on the terrace last week stymied the sale, they could wave good-bye to the company’s future. Who on earth would be fooled by the Paysage Enchanté message when it was being peddled by a fag-smoking, wine-drinking slut who let her son play Game Boys and her daughter prance about in dainty pink high heels and an obscene T-shirt?
She dropped the paper and groaned, watching the tarmac fly past out of the window. She couldn’t be sure whether the lurch in her stomach was the takeoff or the nausea she’d felt every moment of the day and night since the paper called on Friday.
She didn’t move until her brunch had been served (and ignored) and the movie began. It was some thriller nonsense with George Clooney, but even his come-to-bed eyes couldn’t engage her interest. All she could see were someone else’s eyes staring back at her. He’d sounded surprised when she’d called on Friday afternoon, but with the ease of someone getting so used to the art of deceit, she managed to convince him that she’d had the trip planned for ages, how this was the only flight she could get (well, that part was true at least), how her brother was so looking forward to seeing her on Monday, and that it made such good sense to deliver the contracts by hand. Yes, he’d said, he’d come back from the weekend early and would be at JFK to meet her at lunchtime.
“Bye, Maddy,” he’d said deeply down the phone. “See you then.”
Now as she looked out of the window at the candy floss of cloud beneath them, so clear you could almost stick your hand out and touch it, she wondered what she planned to do now the arrangement was made. Would he be free for the rest of the day? What about family? God! Perhaps he had a wife? The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. He might simply drive her back to her hotel, take the contracts, and drive back to his apartment—somewhere deeply fashionable, no doubt—and be greeted by a pretty wife with her station wagon and three blond beautiful children. She’d have stayed on a bit longer at the beach house, Maddy imagined, to make the most of the day, and would unpack the weekend bags efficiently in their gorgeously stylish kitchen, and ask him if it had been a complete bore to have to break up the weekend and drive to the airport on a Sunday. She’d be beautiful, too, no doubt about that, perhaps an ex-model he’d met through the business, with long glossy dark hair and a fabulous figure. No. Maddy shook her head. She’s an overweight battle-ax with varicose veins and a penchant for double cheese bacon burgers. Unlikely.
She must have slept for a couple of hours, because she awoke to hear the cabin crew announcing the time it would be when they landed in New York. Adjusting her watch, she glanced up to see if the loo was vacant, then took down her bag from the hold and wended her way down the aisle. She locked the door, dumped the bag on the lid of the loo and faced herself in the glaringly bright mirror. She breathed in and then out slowly through her mouth, dropping her shoulders, delved in her bag, and laid out makeup, razor, and tweezers neatly in a row as if about to perform an operation. All ready, she set to work.
When she sat back down in her seat half an hour later, the man beside her glanced up at her return, but this time there was no vague assessment and dismissal. He looked fixated, then with slow deliberate ease, he took in the smoothed bobbed hair and the flawless makeup (she’d had to spit on her mascara it had dried out so thoroughly through lack of use). His gaze wandered down over her breasts, outlined clearly under her soft pink shirt, and over her waist and then to her thighs, where the short wraparound silky skirt stopped, and down, down her long tanned legs to her spiky brown Jimmy Choo shoes. His eyes wandered back up to her face, and she smiled at his obvious appreciation. She clearly hadn’t lost her touch.
“Special meeting in New York?” he said with a Stateside drawl.
“Oh yes,” she purred. “Very special.”
She was, however, out of practice with the heels, and had to maneuver her way off the plane, down through the boarding tunnel and out onto the JFK concourse with studied care. She’d forgotten how high heels made you wiggle your bum suggestively, and she felt like an updated version of Marilyn Monroe in the railway station scene from Some Like It Hot. It was all very hard work and, by the time she got through to arrivals, she had to rearrange her face from intense concentration to the sexy, devil-may-care impression she wa
nted to make. I hope he’s here, she thought, because I don’t think I can keep this up much longer.
She wasn’t disappointed, and she saw him, head and shoulders above the crowd of people awaiting arrivals, before he spotted her. He was looking away somewhere over to the left, which gave her time for a serious panic attack. She felt her arms turn ice cold. There he was, dressed casually in long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his hands jammed firmly in his pockets, and the grim reality of her journey was made real.
His head turned back toward the stream of travelers and she saw him scan the group. She stopped and stood still, her Louis Vuitton overnight bag in her hand and her Prada “good-luck” handbag over her arm. His gaze flicked over her and onto the people coming through behind and around her. Zap, then they were back and focused right on her. Slowly, like a cat, he smiled and she knew that he had got whatever ill-advised message she had wanted to convey. No going back now.
Skirting those around him, he met her as she passed through the barrier, and without saying a word, she held out her overnight bag to him. I may feel like a tart, she thought, but he can treat me like a lady.
“Well, hi,” he said slowly, and putting down the bag, put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Her nose filled with the smell of soap and beach.
“Have you had to drive a long way?” she asked with mock innocence.
“Not too bad on a Sunday morning. At least some New Yorkers sleep in. Let’s find the car.” He strode off, and it was all she could do to keep up. Those ghastly flat shoes had their advantages after all.
She imagined some large car, the make of which would elude her completely, but was surprised when he unlocked the door of a silver Porsche Boxster. Not exactly a practical family car, she caught herself thinking. She slid as demurely as she could into the passenger seat, letting her skirt open a little over her thighs, and surreptitiously slipped her feet slightly from her shoes. Not too much that they would swell and she’d be unable to get them on again, silently thanking Giselle for teaching her the finer points of social survival. He slipped in beside her.
“Where are you staying?”
“Sixty Thompson in—”
“Soho. Yes, I know it well. Excellent choice.” She heaved a sigh of relief. Her Friday call to a New York girlfriend had paid off, though she was pretty pissed that she wasn’t to be included in Maddy’s flying visit.
He drove fast, as she suspected he might, and made little attempt at conversation. How could she ensure he wasn’t going to drop her, pick up the contracts, and shoot off to domestic bliss, leaving her high and dry before her flight home tomorrow? The whole idea was to keep him as occupied as she could, but if the worst came to the worst there were more painful ways to bemoan your ruined career than a night in New York. She gazed out of the window, to avoid looking at his big brown hands on the steering wheel as they headed down the Van Wyck Expressway toward Manhattan. God, how she loved this city. It always thrilled her—not quite as much as Paris, granted, but infinitely more than London. New York was sex. Fast, dirty, and exhilarating. Except, of course, that it was full of Americans.
He broke the silence. “So what time are you meeting your brother?” Brother?
“Oh, Crispin”—well, he was kind of brotherly—“er, he doesn’t come back until tomorrow, so I’ll meet him for lunch.”
“Where does he live?” Oh, Christ. She scrambled through her memory bank. What the hell was Ruthie’s address?
“Um, out near Queens. Not very salubrious, but he lives with his girlfriend who’s a designer. They’re visiting friends for the weekend.” Keep it vague, Madeleine, before the hole gets too damned deep to dig your way out.
“Right.”
“But I thought,” she plowed on, “I could give you the contracts today, then it’s done. I’m very grateful you could pick me up. I hope I haven’t pulled you away from an exciting weekend.”
He kept his eyes on the road but smiled. “Oh, nothing I couldn’t leave. It’s a long time since I spent a Sunday in town anyway. Bit of a novelty.”
They talked vaguely about the New York Maddy knew, and she asked him about the office and where he lived—even more fashionable than she had imagined—until they pulled up in front of the hotel. Suddenly she wasn’t sure how to handle it from here.
“Shall I check in and then bring down the contract?”
He turned off the engine and rested his hands on his thighs, turning toward her. “Well, you’ve dragged me away from the beach. Let’s at least have some tea, or whatever you Brits do in the afternoon.”
She smiled, unable, she suspected, to keep the triumph out of her eyes. “Okay.”
“I can leave the car not far from here. You get yourself settled in, and I’ll be back in half an hour in reception. And, Maddy,” he added, “lose the heels.”
Her room was everything the Paysage Enchanté ethos wasn’t—cool, chic, understated thirties minimalism—and she reveled in it. Big wide bed with suede headboard and crisp linen sheets; white, brown, and gray tones everywhere, even on the tiles in the bathroom. She wandered about in excitement, opening cabinets to reveal DVD and CD players hidden away oh so discreetly, looking out of the window with its view over lower Manhattan and Soho, until she almost lost track of the time. Emptying out the contents of her bag, she shook out her clothes, and stripped down to her underwear, throwing everything over the chair. After a shower which would have merited an award for speed, and careful not to wet her hair, she dressed as fast as she could, reapplied her lipstick, and looked in the long mirror. Not bad. The go-natural regime they’d had to stick to all summer had left her with a good tan on her legs, which had survived their first shave for months, and now they glistened with the moisturizer she’d slathered on after the shower. You may be riddled with deception, but you’ve got a fine pair of pins, Madeleine Hoare, she told her reflection. Simon always thought they were her best feature. Don’t think about Simon.
Tom Drake was waiting in the funky, rectangular reception area, flicking through the paper. What if her picture was in there, she thought suddenly. Don’t be ridiculous. The Americans had never heard of her. He folded up the broadsheet and as appreciatively, if a little more subtly than the man on the plane, took in her low-cut white top, short wraparound skirt (this one in pastel beiges and pink—she’d loved them so much in Harvey Nicks last year she’d bought three in different colors) and down her legs to her low-heeled pumps.
Nonchalantly, she put her pink cashmere cardigan around her shoulders. “Shall we go?”
She hadn’t known what to expect. She’d hoped to God it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable and contrived. What she hadn’t imagined was that it would be fun. They walked together down Thompson Street in the warm afternoon sunshine, and just carried on walking. He took her for coffee and a muffin in Soho, then they strolled down to Ground Zero. He talked about the fact that he’d been out of the country on September 11 and what it had been like to return to the carnage. They took a taxi to Central Park, and found themselves stopping and watching a juggler entertaining children under the trees. They drank more coffee by an impromptu softball game, and all the time no mention was made of contracts, buyouts, cosmetics. He talked little about himself, just the odd fact here and there—he’d gone to Yale, his parents lived up near the Catskills, he had a sister who worked in Paris. Instead he turned the questions on her, and she found herself telling him about the children, the house, living in London. She almost let down her guard when he mentioned that he knew about Simon’s death, but skillfully turned the conversation round to neutral ground, like how much she loved Paris, holidays in Cap Ferrat, the weather. Anything rather than think about home, the business, the reason she was here.
At one point she almost came a cropper, when he asked her about her family. She told him briefly about her father’s death and Peter’s arrival on the scene. “He was a savior to my mother and me.”
“And your brother?”
“Oh no, he’s muc
h younger. He’s only my half brother, Peter’s son. Much, much, much younger than me.”
By seven the light was beginning to fade, and cars with dipped headlights sped past them as they made their way back to the hotel. What now? The shit would hit the fan in about seven hours, UK time, when everyone opened their newspapers at breakfast. That would be 2 A.M. New York time, and she was pretty sure someone from London would be hot on the phone to Tom Drake with the happy news that his new little acquisition was not all it appeared. If she didn’t get him to sign tonight, the deal would all be blown. Nondisclosure would be the least of their worries. Good-bye everything.
Time to launch Operation Drake. She stopped at the doorway and turned around to him, addressing somewhere between his chest and his chin. “Thank you, Tom, that was fun. Er, would you like to come in for a drink? I believe there’s a new rooftop bar. We could watch night fall.”
He was standing very close to her, hands back in jeans pockets, and looked down at her. “Let’s go one better, Maddy. Will you have dinner with me?”
She’d bought herself another few hours. It was all going to plan. They agreed to meet in the hotel’s bar at eight thirty—she tried to give him as little time as possible to reduce his chances of receiving any phone calls—and went into war-paint application overdrive. After a second shower—well, the room cost enough, she might as well empty the hot water tanks too—she lifted out her palest pink La Perla underwear (the only set she hadn’t let Izzie get her hands on—oh God, Izzie, what would you think of all this?) and slipped it on. She smoothed stockings over her legs and pulled on her short, black Lycra dress, standing in front of the mirror to check it didn’t show too much stomach now she was almost off the fags. Phase two: on went the foundation, the soft pink eyeshadow, the straightest line of eyeliner she could manage with shaking hands, then she dried her hair until it was smooth and sleek.
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 35
