by Frances Pye
“Children belong with their mother,” she said.
Mr. Moore put down his tea and reached out to pat Mara on the arm in mock sympathy. “My dear, it’s for the best, you’ll see. You can visit whenever you want.”
“No. Moo and Tilly are mine. I’m delighted you care about them, pleased that you want to see them and take them out. They need a family, but they live here.”
“Typical,” said Mrs. Moore. “Your daughters are at risk and all you can think about is yourself.”
“I’m sorry you’re disappointed.”
“Sorry? Is that all you can say? When Jake’s children are as good as living on the streets? My son trusted you to look after Moo and Tilly and you’ve let him down. In this country, we put our families first. I suppose you frittered away everything he left you on yourself.”
“He left me nothing.”
“He left you the house. Which you have let fall apart.”
“The house was mine. I paid for it. It was mine.” Before Mara could stop herself, the words were out. She could withstand Mrs. Moore’s racist jibes—she’d been dealing with those for years—but for her to suggest that Mara had betrayed Jake was too much.
“Yours? How could it be yours?”
Mara looked at the Moores, standing in front of her, their faces eager, their eyes alight with curiosity. No chance that they would ignore what she’d just let slip. She and Jake had always allowed them to believe that he’d paid for the house after he’d made a killing on the stock market, when in fact he’d been penniless. Driving limousines earned him enough to pay the bills, no more. He hadn’t even been sure he would inherit any money from his parents; the Moores had cut him out of their will when he and Mara married.
“Where would an uneducated Indian girl like you get the money to buy a house like this?”
“I…”
“Yes?”
“My…my family…” Mara blushed. She had never been able to lie.
“Family? What family? You have no family.”
“I do…I did….” Mara heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and sighed with relief. The Moores wouldn’t pursue this in front of Moo or Tilly.
“Mum, Mum, where’s our tea?”
“Here, loves.”
“Can we set up the PlayStation? Please?”
They looked so excited that Mara couldn’t bear to deny them. They had missed out on so many things others took for granted. “Only an hour a day, promise me?”
“We promise. Don’t we, Moo.”
“Yes. An hour. Promise.”
“Okay, then. Go and set it up.”
“Yay! Mum. Thanks.” And the girls dashed off into the living room to unpack the box.
Mrs. Moore leaned over to Mara. “Don’t think we’re going to let this drop,” she said.
“Even eleven years ago, that must have been a lot of money,” said Mr. Moore.
“And we’ll find out where you got it.”
“It was my family. I told you.” Mara blushed again. Why couldn’t she trot out smooth, undetectable lies like Lily and Jules and Terry seemed to be able to do?
Mrs. Moore smiled. “Then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? Shall we go and help Moo and Tilly, George?”
six
Lily strolled through the large tent, whispers rising in her wake. What’s she doing here?…Don’t look now, but Lily James just walked past you…. I don’t believe it…. Is that really her? Lily walked over to her table. Her newfound celebrity still made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t anything she’d actively sought. And it wasn’t as if she’d done anything important to get it.
Six of the eight gold-paint-and-red-velvet chairs around the white-linen-covered table were already taken by three middle-aged couples, the men in dark, respectable suits, the women in elaborate, brightly colored hats. All of them were gawking at Lily as if she were covered in green slime.
Ignoring their fixed stares, Lily smiled at the group, pulled out her chair, and sat down. “Hi, I’m Lily James,” she said brightly.
For too long a moment, no one spoke. Then, finally, a woman in a froufrou pink hat managed a shell-shocked, “How do you do?”
So that was how it was going to be. “Just fine, thanks. And you?”
No response. The woman’s courage seemed to have deserted her. Lily looked forward to an extended afternoon of stilted conversation. Followed by requests for her to be funny and stuttered demands for her autograph for children or nieces. Sighing inwardly, she turned to the small, weasel-faced man on her right. “So, what do you do?”
Sean glanced around. Most of the tables were filled, just a few late arrivals left to straggle in. He studied the elaborate calligraphic seating plan, found his table, and edged his way toward it between chairs and guests. There were eight places, all but one of them filled. He said a general hello, directed at no one in particular, then pulled out his chair and sat down. He turned to the person on his right, a Mrs. Anne Tarsky according to her place tag, and introduced himself. A woman in her fifties in a hideous black-and-green-striped dress, she nodded a greeting at him and then returned to her conversation with the forty-something dark blue suit on her other side. From what Sean could hear, they appeared to be deep in a discussion about breeding otter hounds.
He turned around to investigate his other dinner partner. In a pale gray suit and a tiny hat, more feather than felt, she was sipping a glass of champagne and being talked at by an intent little man on her left. Sean’s eyes moved to her face. God. Lily James. She looked amazing. Much better than on TV. The camera smoothed out her features and flattened the planes of her face so you never saw her high cheekbones. Her hair was not the simple blond it looked on-screen but an incredible mixture of beige and yellow and white and tan and brown and gold and ginger and every other color hair could be.
“…and so I worked out a plan for them to claim all of their honeymoon as a legitimate expense….” Lily nodded and smiled as the bride-groom’s apparently very talented accountant went on and on about his latest scam to save his clients money on their tax bill. Still, at least he was talking to her.
She sensed the chair next to her being pulled out and felt someone sitting down. Then a nice, deep, sexy voice said, “I’m Sean Grainger.” It was the kind of voice that could prickle the hairs on your arms. Lily waited for the accountant to pause for a second in between Inland Revenue stories and turned to face Sean.
God. The face was even better than the voice. Gray eyes, dark, disheveled hair, a square chin, a wide, infectious grin. Lily stuck out her hand. “Hi. I’m—”
“Lily James. Yes, I know.” Sean wrapped her hand in his. “I…I love your hat.”
“Nice, isn’t it? A friend who’s into old clothes found it in a weird little shop in Muswell Hill. It’s forties, I think.” Good. He hadn’t tried to pretend he didn’t know who she was. For some reason, people seemed to think she’d be more interested in them if they behaved as if they’d been living on another planet for the last six months.
“You must be a friend of Roger.”
“I used to write sketches for him when he was a producer. Before he gave it all up to become a landscape gardener. I last saw him leaving the studio after a particularly awful taping, muttering the name of Capability Brown under his breath.”
Sean laughed. “I tormented the bride when we were kids.”
“Tormented?”
“Slugs featured a lot. Spiders too. I was a horrible little boy.”
“I bet you were.”
“But I’m safe now. I promise.”
“Are you? What a shame.” Lily smiled. Things were looking up. On the other side of the tent, she noticed a parade of black-tied waiters marching in time into the tent, trays of food held high. “Dinnertime. Here comes the vegetable terrine,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“It’s always vegetable terrine at weddings. It’s a rule.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. It j
ust is. In the last few years, it’s sort of taken over the world. First of all, it was weddings, then it started to slip over into awards dinners and christenings and birthday parties. It’ll be funerals next. Vegetable terrine—the perfect food. It’s safe, it offends no one, and it tastes of nothing.”
Sean grinned. “I think you’re wrong. Maggie had a lot of imagination as a kid. She’ll have chosen something more interesting.”
“What do you bet?”
“I don’t know. A tenner?”
“No, boring. A kiss.”
“Okay. A kiss it is. I’ll go for prawn cocktail.”
“Pathetic. Too seventies. Too…pink.”
“Quiche, then.”
The waiters were getting closer. “Which one? Quick.”
“Quiche. Yes, quiche.”
A plate with a green-orange-and-cream-striped slice was set in front of Lily. “I win. I win.” She leaned over, kissed Sean on the lips, then picked up her fork, took a taste, and grimaced. “And as bland as ever.”
Sean laughed. He was finding it hard to take his eyes off her. It wasn’t just that she was a star, although she was certainly that, but she was also fun. And sexy.
“So what do you do? Please tell me you’re not an accountant.” Surely not, Lily thought. Those muscles weren’t developed pushing paper.
Sean smiled. “I’m a builder. I redevelop industrial buildings. You know, New York–style lofts.”
“That’s great. If I didn’t love my house in Hampstead, I’d be tempted. All that space, all that light.”
“You should see my place in King’s Cross. One entire floor, on the canal, massive windows on all four sides.”
“Sounds fantastic. My production manager wanted to get one, only he said the stuff out there now was too small.”
“Don’t get me going. When I started, it wasn’t a loft unless it was at least two thousand square feet. Nowadays, contractors try to call any apartment in a school or factory or whatever a loft. But most of the time they’re just open-plan flats with some naked bricks and a bit of stainless steel in the kitchen.”
“And yours aren’t?”
“I’ve sort of found a niche in the market. Most companies are fighting over the large projects; I go for smaller stuff I can divide up into four or five large lofts.”
“Like?”
“I’ve just started on an old church hall in Putney. Edwardian building, about ten thousand square feet. It’ll split into five. There’s even some land attached, so a couple of the lofts can have gardens.”
“Wonderful.”
Sean had started at sixteen as a laborer on building sites, running errands, making tea, filling in wherever and whenever. After a few years, he could rewire a house, fit a full kitchen, and plumb a new bathroom; by the time he was twenty-five, he knew everything there was to know about construction.
He had always loved industrial buildings, had spent weekends wandering around the London docks out beyond Tower Bridge looking at the few Victorian warehouses to survive the war, dreaming of converting them into apartments. Eventually, he’d managed to scrape together the financing to buy a small nineteenth-century tobacco warehouse in Limehouse and turn it into four vast, luxurious lofts. He sold them for a substantial profit the moment they went on the market. He had invented a whole new industry.
But he’d learned that not everyone found his business as interesting as he did. And he thought he’d heard a sarcastic tone in Lily’s voice. Time to change the subject. “You live in Hampstead?”
“In the most beautiful redbrick house. You must come and see it.” Soon, Lily hoped. Preferably that night…
AS THE waiters cleared away the dessert plates, Lily watched Sean as he took two cigarettes out of his packet, lit them, and handed one to her. She grinned. “When I first watched Now, Voyager, I thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen.” She made a grand, sweeping gesture toward the roof of the tent. “‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.’ I used to long for a boy to light a cigarette for me.”
“When I was a teenager, I dreamed of Lauren Bacall asking me to whistle for her.”
“I can do that.” She deepened her voice, spoke from her throat. “‘You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.’”
“At last. At last. Now I can die happy.”
“Who said anything about dying?” Lily smiled. She was finding it hard to contain herself. The thought of Sean’s powerful body, stripped of its elegant suit and naked in her bed, was mouthwatering. It felt like ages since she’d been with a man and she was ready for it. That body-to-body contact, the touch of skin on skin, of heat and hardness and power. Lily glanced over at Sean as he leaned back in his chair and took a puff of his cigarette. He was irresistible.
An hour later, Sean watched the triumphant lilac-clad bridesmaid catch the bouquet, Lily leaned over and brushed his hand. “How are you getting home?”
Sean’s skin leapt at Lily’s touch. He turned to look at her as his mind went into overdrive. Why the hell hadn’t he got the train? Could he lie and leave his car here, come and pick it up tomorrow? No, she’d never believe him. He glanced down at his best suit. He didn’t look like a man who had taken the train. Better tell the truth. Maybe he could ask her out for later in the week? “I brought my car.”
“Good. I’ll let my poor driver go and you can give me a lift home. You are going back to London?”
“Yeah, yes, of course. Of course I’ll give you a lift.” Was Lily suggesting what he thought she was suggesting?
Lily smiled to herself. Gotcha.
NORMALLY, LILY loved to show off her house. She’d taken such care with it, choosing the kind of warm, rich colors in the carpets, the curtains, the cushions on the chairs and sofas, even the art she’d recently started collecting that would complement the aged wood of the walls and floors. But she barely allowed Sean to take a peek at the hallway before she put her arms around him and lifted her head for his kiss.
The trip home had been a delicious nightmare. Delicious because of the anticipation of what she knew was to come. A nightmare because she didn’t think she could bear to wait for the time it took to get them from Hungerford to Hampstead. She couldn’t take her eyes off Sean’s hands on the wheel of his Saab, his fingers touching the gear stick, his eyes focused on the road ahead, his mouth slightly open, the tip of his tongue occasionally flicking out to moisten his lips. Then he would turn and look at her and she could sense that he was having the same thoughts.
But Sean was almost too scared to think. Scared to look forward, to presume anything. Lily could just have been flirting. Maybe when they got to her house she’d politely thank him for the lift and go inside. He glanced over at her, saw her staring at him, her eyes on his lips, on his hands. Surely he couldn’t mistake that look on her face?
It had been months since he’d been to bed with anyone. When the boys had first disappeared, he’d tried hard to block out the pain of their loss with sex. Lots of indiscriminate sex. He’d gone from date to date, from girl to girl, from bed to bed. But it had given him only temporary relief. After it was over, he just felt worse, the short-lived respite making his pain all the harder to bear.
So he had stopped. He realized now how much he’d missed it. And not only the sex; perhaps even more he’d missed the kind of closeness he had sometimes felt with Isobel after making love. He wouldn’t get that from a one-night stand with Lily, he wasn’t stupid enough to think he would, but maybe there’d be a ghost of it, a glimmer, a brief hint of real intimacy. If not, well, it had been months and his body was more than ready for a bit of uncomplicated, down-to-earth fucking.
When Lily asked him in and reached for him the moment the door was closed, he didn’t hesitate. He pulled her into his arms, lowered his head, and kissed her. Lily pressed herself against him, hard, getting as close as she could, crushing her body against his. Her fingers rummaged in his hair, pulling his head closer, his lips tighter, inc
reasing the pressure between them. Then he felt her hands loosening his belt, unzipping his trousers, reaching in, grabbing him….
SEAN LOOKED down at Lily as she slept. At her large and still-firm breasts, at her long, long legs, her multicolored hair, her strong, odd little face. He couldn’t believe her. He’d never been with a woman like her. Hell, he’d never imagined there could be one like her. She was so unreserved, so strong. So free.
As if she sensed she was being watched, Lily opened her dark, sleepy blue eyes. A slow, sensuous smile spread across her face. “Well, if you aren’t tired…”
seven
Terry bicycled slowly up Holly Hill, toward Lily’s house, standing high in the pedals, straining with the effort. In an attempt to lose some weight, she tried to cycle everywhere she could. But it didn’t seem to be having much effect; she was the same size she’d been when she’d bought the old bike a year ago. She consoled herself by believing she must be fitter even if she wasn’t thinner.
In an ancient wicker basket attached to the front of the cycle, Minnie sat on her haunches, facing front. As they reached the gate to the house, she lifted her head and yowled her delight.
Terry parked her bike by the door. Minnie leapt out of the basket and hit the ground running. She raced around the side of the house and into the back garden. Lily, Mara, and Jules were sitting around a shaded cedar table, drinks in hand, looking out over a long, smooth lawn and bright flower beds. At the far end, Moo and Tilly were playing on an old rope-and-log swing hung from one of the branches of a huge oak tree.
Lily held out her arms and Minnie jumped into them, lifted up her head, and licked Lily all over. “Minnie, Minnie, Minnie,” Lily laughed, trying to hold the little dog off.
