by Frances Pye
And he was running out of time. So far, Nigel, his editor, had been relatively patient, giving him as much time as possible to pursue the Sean thing, but he was getting restless with the lack of progress and had begun to make noises about calling him off. Okay, Clive could still go after the story, but it would be on his own time and he didn’t have a great deal of that.
Hence the garbage. He’d already been through Terry’s—nothing at all interesting apart from more boxes of soothing chamomile tea than he could imagine anyone consuming in a week, but though Clive wanted that to mean that Terry was in some kind of emotional state, he had to admit that it was nowhere near conclusive evidence and, in any case, didn’t help him find out why.
Sean’s rubbish had been a bit more of a challenge. Because he lived in an apartment building, he tossed his trash into a Dumpster and it hadn’t been that easy for the journalist to distinguish between Sean’s garbage and that of his fellow tenants. But he had managed to isolate two bags because of the envelopes contained within them. Judging by the number of empty beer cans and cigarette packets, Sean also seemed far from happy, but again, it didn’t help Clive much.
So now he was trying Jules and Lily.
He drove home to his penthouse in a converted 1920s warehouse, carried the bags inside, spread a large plastic sheet over his wooden living room floor, and tipped out the contents of Jules’s three. It seemed to be mostly paper and plastic. Tissue paper, carrier bags from baby stores, cardboard boxes that apparently had once contained a changing table and a sterilizer and a Moses basket. Interesting. It seemed Jules was expecting a child. Interesting but no real help. Unless the baby was Sean’s, and there was no indication that that was the case. Although the idea of Jules playing around with Lily’s squeeze and getting pregnant appealed to him a lot; he loved the notion of his ex-wife being made a fool of in that way. And it would make a great piece. He could see the headline now: “Lily’s Lover Lays Away.”
But his editor would demand at least some evidence if he were to run with the story, and all Clive had was supposition. He set to work on Lily’s bags. He wasn’t expecting to find anything. Other people might not know that he stole garbage, but she did. He’d gotten his lead on that bitter ex-lover of hers that way, and since then she’d been very careful about what she threw away. So he was surprised to find a carrier bag from a shop in Soho amongst all the anodyne bottles and newspapers and eggshells.
A sex shop. Clive hadn’t been for some time, but as he remembered it, the Pleasure Chest sold everything from handcuffs to harnesses, from vibrators to Viagra. What would Lily want from there? It could be a joke, of course, a silly gift for one of her friends or coworkers. But what if it weren’t? What if Lily had developed a fetish for leather or become an S&M freak or discovered a taste for dressing up as a French maid? That wouldn’t explain what Sean was doing with her friends, but it would be the most wonderfully humiliating story to print. Britain’s latest celebrity, in chains.
So where to go from here? Well, he could try the shop, but they were unlikely to tell. Those places needed people to believe that they kept confidences. And there was no point in asking Lily, although the idea of doing so at a gala evening or open press conference made him salivate. He was going to have to try to get close to Sean.
fifty-four
“Hi, this is Terry. Leave me a message. Or I’ll never call you back. And that’s a promise.”
“Hello, Terry? I hoped you might be home. I just wanted—”
“Hi, Sean. Mum’s not in.”
“Oh, hi, Paul. How’re things?”
“Great. What about that massive game on Tuesday?” And Paul was off, his enthusiasm for Charlton and the Worthington Cup win in midweek absolutely unstoppable.
Sean stood in the supermarket aisle, next to the packets of pasta and beans and half listened, murmuring appropriate yesses and nos whenever he felt they might be needed, but his mind was on Terry. He’d been determined to leave her alone for a full two weeks after his first call. To give her a chance to contact him when she was ready. And hard though it had been—and it had been, very—he’d managed to resist phoning her for eight days.
Until he went to the supermarket. He’d never have imagined that something as simple as buying a few tea bags and a pot of jam would set him off, but he kept passing things that said “Terry” to him. He’d kept his resolve past massive signs advertising Mr. Sainsbury’s latest organic produce, large packets of tofu, and rows and rows of herbal teas, but when he’d reached the pasta, he had crumbled. Dried couscous might not be everyone’s idea of romantic, but Sean found it irresistibly evocative of her flat, her kitchen, that night, and the kiss. He’d grabbed his mobile and dialed her number, knowing it by heart. Only to get Paul.
“…and Rufus’s goal. Did you see that? I thought it was going wide, but the way it snuck in round the keeper, that was awesome. Awesome…” And Paul continued on his favorite subject. Any other time, Sean would have entered into this wholeheartedly, but not today.
“Paul, Paul, hold on a minute. Listen, I’ll call you later or tomorrow, we can talk about the Cup, okay? Only, I’m in the supermarket and a lot of people are looking at me as if I’m some kind of nut, hanging around the lentils and talking on the phone.”
“Sure. No worries. Tomorrow.”
“Can you tell your mum I called? I’d just like to talk to her for a moment. And no, before you ask, it’s not about you.”
“About you, then? And her?” Paul hadn’t mentioned it to either of them, but he was hoping that Sean and his mam would get together. On bonfire night, he’d deliberately left them alone and he had a feeling something had happened. But then nothing. He’d been expecting Sean to be around more often, but instead he hadn’t seen him for almost two weeks.
“None of your business, young man.”
“Aaah, come on. You going to ask her out on a date?” Yes, yes. Go on, Sean. You can do it, mate. If I can ask Sally, you can ask my mam.
“Just get her to call me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“’Bye, then.”
“’Bye.”
Sean turned off his phone and began to wend his way to the checkout. Maybe he’d done the wrong thing, maybe she’d think he was hounding her, but he didn’t think two calls in as many weeks could be seen as hounding. Anyway, he’d done it now. He crossed his fingers, hoping she’d call back. He needed to apologize to her, and he couldn’t do that on a machine or through Paul. He was desperate to see her, to say he was sorry face-to-face. To judge how she reacted. And somehow make it up with her.
He piled his shopping on the conveyor belt. The magazine rack in front of him was loaded with OK! and Hello! magazines, all full of celebrity weddings and parties and openings. Even though one of the covers was emblazoned with a picture of Lily, taken by a paparazzi as she was coming out of a restaurant, and a headline hinting that her companion, Jerry, the director of We Can Work It Out, might be her latest lover, Sean looked right through them, his thoughts still on Terry.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” a voice behind him said.
“What? Sorry?”
“I said, she’s amazing. Lily James.” It was a tall, good-looking man with slightly graying hair and dark blue eyes who was standing in line behind him, buying a large pack of water. He had a copy of the magazine in his hand and was pointing at the image of Lily on the cover.
“Oh. Yes. Yes, she is.”
“That We Can Work It Out is incredible. I wonder if she can be that funny in real life?” The woman in front of Sean finished paying. He moved up to stand opposite the till. The man behind him carried on. “I mean, how wonderful it would be to come home to her after a long day’s hard work. They say a good sense of humor is the most important thing.”
The young woman behind the counter rang her bell for help; Sean’s carton of milk was leaking and needed to be replaced. They were going to have to wait. Wanting to be polite, Sean said, “Yes, yes, I hear it is.”
<
br /> “I once met that actress out of Brookside. Can’t remember her name. I’d love to meet our Lily. Wouldn’t you?”
Finding the whole conversation bizarre in the extreme considering that he was at that moment going out with the woman his unsought acquaintance seemed so keen on, Sean managed to mutter a noncommittal, “I suppose so,” while praying for the boy who’d gone to get the milk to return on the double.
“Yes, she’s really something. Really something.”
“Here. Sorry for the delay, sir.”
The milk arrived and in the bustle of paying his bill and refusing a loyalty card and bagging his groceries, Sean was able to escape the conversation about Lily.
Clive stood at the checkout counter, furious with himself. What on earth had made him think he was going to get anything out of Sean that way? Of course the man wasn’t going to start telling the family secrets to someone he met in a queue at a supermarket checkout. Clive thought of himself as a true professional, but that was the most amateurish attempt to get information out of a target he’d ever heard of. He’d been way too eager and so had blown his one chance to get close to Sean. Now he’d have to think again. Even though they’d had only a brief conversation, Clive was convinced the builder would recognize him if he tried again in a more auspicious place and in a more promising fashion. Damn. Back to the beat.
fifty-five
“Are you all right?”
Jules was leaning against one of the Corinthian columns that stood on either side of the main entrance to her father’s club. All day she had been feeling weird at times, slightly off balance, with an odd sort of griping in her stomach. She had put it down to nerves at seeing her mother, and the fact that it had flared up again just as she was about to walk through the swinging door of the club suggested to her that she was right.
She pushed herself away from the column and swung around. Her Conservative MP brother, Philip, was coming up the steps, his beautifully dressed, beautifully manicured wife, Carolyn, on his arm. Jules made an effort at a smile. “Philip. How nice to see you. I’m fine. Just a momentary stagger at the idea of Diana.”
Philip, a tall, well-rounded man with a red, country-squire’s face and a loud, cheerful voice, leaned forward to kiss his sister. “We’re all here. We’ll look after you.”
Jules couldn’t help but smile at that. Over the years, her siblings had tried again and again to protect her from her mother, but Diana was like a hurricane or a landslide, absolutely unstoppable once started. But she said nothing, accepting her brother’s support in the spirit in which it was offered.
Jules and Carolyn air-kissed. Philip’s wife was the perfect Tory MP’s helpmeet. She made a keen cup of tea, gave very, very good charity balls, and looked great in hats. She was never anything but charming whenever the two women met, but Jules was always slightly suspicious that the warmth had more to do with Carolyn’s interest in the eventual destination of a childless sister-in-law’s money than it did in genuine affection. Still, right now, she’d take anything she could get.
AN HOUR later, all her worst fears had come true. Lady Dunne was at her most appalling. When Jules had first seen that they had a private room, she had been relieved not to have to go through the ordeal of the evening in front of other people. The idea of her mother saying cutting things whilst the rest of the tables in the communal dining room strained to hear her words filled her with the deepest despair. It had happened before, time and again, and Jules had hideous memories of the half-hidden smirks and snickers on curious strangers’ faces as Diana reviled her daughter in public as an unfeeling, ungrateful prima donna who had been nothing but an embarrassment to her family since she was born.
However, almost immediately Jules realized that she would have been better off in the main dining room. There being no one but the family around removed the few curbs that the presence of strangers might have placed on Diana’s knife-edged tongue and gave her the freedom to say anything she wanted. And say it she did. Right from the moment they arrived, she attacked her daughter with all the subtlety of a spitting cobra.
Jules had been determined to do nothing to provoke her. Though she knew from past experience that what she did meant very little, she still tried. She dressed ultraconservatively, in an irreproachably plain dark navy suit that she’d bought in Peter Jones for just such an occasion, kept as far away from her mother as possible, never ventured an opinion or made an unnecessary comment. In short, she tried to be invisible.
But it never worked. As far as Diana was concerned, Jules was a Day-Glo lime green and orange exclamation mark of a person, an unavoidable insult to anyone of taste and discernment. Anyone like Diana. No corner could hide Jules, no dull clothes could veil her, no reserve could mask her presence.
Ian Dunne had tried his best. He’d arranged the table very cleverly. Or so he thought. He and Diana were supposed to be at opposite ends, with Jules on his left, as far from her mother as possible. Except the club had put them in the room with a round table. It was a beautiful chamber, its walls hung with antique, hand-blocked wallpaper, its table and chairs a rich, glowing mahogany, its curved bow windows looking out onto a tiny rose garden. But it meant that Diana was just across the table from Jules. Close enough to kiss. Or bite.
And she bit. On the way into the club, she had seen Michael Hungerford, Jules’s one-time fiancé, at the bar, and that one quick glimpse of the man she had longed to boast of having as her son-in-law had been enough to arouse her fury. Over the starter, a platter of smoked salmon, something even the club couldn’t burn or overcook or turn to mush, she started to lay into Jules.
“It is unforgivable. He should be here, with us, a member of our family, not downstairs. It was a perfect situation. Perfect. Until you jilted him. The future Lord Ashcliffe, and you decide the day before the wedding that he is not good enough for you.” Lady Dunne’s high, sharp voice dripped with contempt for her daughter’s decision.
“It was a long time ago.” Alice, Jules’s older sister, tried to deflect some of the poison. Married to David, who was a wealthy gentleman farmer in Wiltshire, Alice was the mother of two strapping, healthy, privately educated sons. She was a conservative woman, happy with her country house and her family, uninterested in London or city society or the latest thing. She and Jules were as different as tea and champagne, but they had been close as children and Alice always tried to help. Even though she risked bringing her mother’s wrath onto her own shoulders by doing so.
Tonight, however, Diana was not to be deflected. “Even worse, he then marries Rose Holland. Allowing Jemima to crow over me for all those years.”
Lord Dunne got to his feet. “I’d just like to say how delightful it is to have you with us tonight. We see each other all too rarely nowadays. Let’s hope this is the start of many more dinners like this.” And he raised his glass of white wine. “To the family.”
“The family.”
“The family.”
Jules ignored the wine that had been put in front of her, picked up her glass of water, and took a small sip. Typical Daddy. He just wouldn’t let go of his idea of how they should all behave. His resolve was admirable in many ways—most other people would have given up long before in the face of such discouragement—but Jules couldn’t help wishing he was just a little less determined. And thus more willing to accept reality.
It was over the main course of overdone roast beef and soggy Yorkshire pudding that Diana started to go on about Jules running her own business.
“It’s not feminine. A little job before marriage, of course, that’s accepted, but to run your own company? My grandmother would have died of shame.”
“Juliet is a great success. We should be proud of her achievements,” Philip said. Jules held her breath. Diana was not going to like that suggestion.
“Proud? Proud? Of a traitorous little show-off like that? I am surprised you could suggest such a thing, Philip. Very surprised indeed.”
“How are the children, Alice? Is
Rupert still taking shooting lessons?”
“Very well, Daddy. Rupert is good, isn’t he, David? We’re thinking of buying him his own gun this year.”
And Diana was sidetracked again. But not for long. Over the dessert, a disgusting steamed currant and suet pudding, called for some long-forgotten reason spotted dick, she began again. This time on Jules’s divorce.
“No one in our family has ever been divorced before. Ever.”
“Mummy, I’m sure Juliet didn’t know she and Will would split up.” Jules’s younger sister, Elena, happily married to Charles, a successful architect, made a stab at defending her sibling.
But Diana was having none of it. “Nonsense, Elena. We told her when she married that man that it would be forever and she had better think more carefully, that he wasn’t our sort, but she made her bed and then refused to lie in it.”
“It is all in the past. I know Juliet suffered—” Philip chimed in.
Only to be cut off. “Juliet suffered? Juliet? What happened to her exactly?”
“Mummy. You know what happened. He…he hit her….” Alice was still deeply disturbed by Will’s behavior. In her comfortable world, men didn’t do that. It only happened to working-class women with drunken husbands and too many children and no money. Not to people like Jules. Having to accept that she was wrong, that there were abusers everywhere undercut her vision of life and made her feel insecure.
“I have sympathy for him.”
“Mummy!”
“Mother!”
“Diana!” Even Ian couldn’t ignore that.
“No need to shout at me. I know what I’m talking about. She probably deserved it. I read a book once that suggested that the woman is always to blame.”
Jules stopped herself from expressing her surprise at her mother having ever read anything that wasn’t Tatler or Country Life. She was proud of herself. She’d managed to get through most of the evening without addressing a word to her mother. She’d heard her pour out her venom and, for the first time, found she didn’t care what Diana had to say. It was tedious to have to listen to her and she could think of many things she would have preferred to be doing, but she wasn’t upset. Previously, she would have been on the verge of tears, concerned that Diana’s vitriol had a basis in fact. That she indeed was a stupid little show-off, a traitor to her family and her class. That she had deserved Will’s abuse.
