‘A lesbian? Yes, I did this morning. But it’s the oral sex thing I can’t be doing with. I think kissing and touching and all that, well, you know, I could take it or leave it. But as soon as I thought about, you know, going “downstairs”, nope, it’s not for me.’
Mrs Kim’s serenity might have rippled just momentarily, Maggie wasn’t sure.
‘I was going to say a touch jealous,’ Mrs Kim finished kindly. ‘But I’m glad you’ve cleared that up.’ As Maggie’s blush radiated outwards from her blazing cheeks to the tips of her toes and the crown of her head she offered Mrs Kim her credit card, fervently praying that it would have enough credit to pay for the work.
‘No need, dear.’ Mrs Kim waved the card away. ‘I’ve opened you a business account, so you can pay me at the end of the month. I’ve seen what you did at Fresh Talent. I know you’ll make good.’
Maggie smiled at her gratefully and tucked the card back in her wallet.
‘Well, that wasn’t really me. But thanks Mrs Kim. I won’t let you down, I swear.’
She collected her plans and hesitated for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt, would it, just to ask Mrs Kim? She seemed so grounded, somehow, practically mystical. Maggie wasn’t up on her eastern religions, but she thought Mrs Kim might be a Buddhist, and Buddhists usually had something pretty Zen to say on most things didn’t they?
‘So, um, Mrs Kim? What would you do about her? The other girlfriend, I mean?’ Maggie asked her. She still thought of herself as Christian’s girlfriend, even if he didn’t. For once Mrs Kim’s small smile broke into a big grin.
‘That’s easy,’ she said sagely. ‘I’d rip the bloody bitch to pieces!’
‘She actually used those words?’ Sarah asked her incredulously. She was sorting out the colour trolley while Luce was helping Becca and Sam to put rollers on a dummy head. It was training morning, but Luce had a hangover so Sarah had let her off anything harder in the hopes that when they opened for clients she wouldn’t fry anyone’s head under the dryer or give someone an impromptu bald spot. Again.
‘Those exact words,’ Maggie replied. ‘And she looked like she meant every word she said. I was almost scared. I mean, you know, if Louise fell under a bus then I wouldn’t be mourning, but … well.’ Secretly Maggie felt the same way as Mrs Kim, but for once she decided to keep her more inappropriate thoughts to herself.
Sarah shrugged. ‘Well, you know the world is populated by millions of people, all with their own private stories. Maybe Mr Kim did the dirty on her with a lady boy and she’s got them both in the cellar. Maybe she was a ninja before settling in St As.’
Maggie frowned. ‘I think you’re mixing your Asian countries pretty liberally there, Sarah. But I get the general idea.’ Maggie shrugged off the memory of the steely glint in Mrs Kim’s eye and went back to the more important topic. ‘Anyway, she made me think, and she’s right. Not about killing her; about the fact that I’m insane with jealousy.’
‘Well, duh. I could have told you that,’ Becca interjected helpfully.
Maggie ignored her. ‘What I mean is, that I need to confront my demons in order to conquer them.’
‘Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer!’ Sam added happily. Maggie smiled at him and Sarah worried about how he’d even heard of Buffy.
‘Sort of, Sam,’ Maggie said. ‘What I mean is, I need to know what I’m up against so that I can be better than her. I need to see her again. And this time I need to see her in person.’
And that was how it happened that an hour or so later Maggie was standing face to face with Louise.
Chapter Fifteen
When Pete woke up that same morning, the first thing he thought of was that he was late. He leapt out of bed, walked into his tiny wardrobe, backed dizzily on to his bed again, and rubbed his hands through his hair and roughly over his face. Eventually the corners of the room stabilised and he took an experimental squint at his alarm clock. Five-forty-two a.m. Bollocks. Pete lay back on the bed and looked at the now familiar landscape of his ceiling. He knew he wouldn’t be going back to sleep. For some reason, these days, whenever he woke up with a hangover it didn’t matter how shite he felt, sleep always eluded him. He’d just have to kill time until he had to go and face the ungrateful fuckers that were his students, his eyes growing ever more hollow and his skin increasingly waxy. Stella would never sleep with him when he was hungover, which was a shame as shagging was about the only thing he felt up to then. A nice long, lazy, friendly shag with someone he loved. But even if Stella was here she wouldn’t be up for it, he mused, so he might as well forget about the whole concept.
He couldn’t remember anything after his second whisky last night. Well, he could remember bits and pieces, like fragments of a foreign-language film playing without subtitles. He remembered the unforgiving fluorescence of the kebab shop. And at some point he thought he’d put his head between his knees and … no, he must have imagined this bit – but for some reason he thought he remembered Falcon holding his forehead as he chucked up over some poor sod’s garden fence. Pete shook his head and smiled guiltily to himself. He’d not done stuff like that in years. Years and years, not since Stella and her taste for fancy bars and champagne cocktails.
There was something else, though. Something else tugging uncomfortably at the edges of his consciousness that gave him a deep sense of disquiet. He played back his haphazard trip home in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t find anything too terrible there. Embarrassing, yes, but not terrible. He thought he remembered coming in, bumping into Angie in the hallway, and Falcon gripping her ample hips with his hands and pulling her giggling into his room. What then? Well, then he must have come up and got out of his kecks and …
‘Oh fuck.’ Pete’s stomach lurched and he clapped his hand over his eyes. ‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Please, please let me have dreamt it. Please, please let me have dreamt it.’ He leapt off his bed, his head banging like a drum, and raced to the PC. ‘Oh fuck, it’s on, it’s still on. Fuck.’ Pete stared at the frozen screen saver. He tried to control, alt, delete it but it was firmly stuck and he knew he’d have to reboot the whole thing. ‘Maybe I left it on before I went out,’ he said with faint hope.
With trepidation Pete logged on to his email and waited. There were no new replies, and for once he was relieved. With one eye closed he opened his sent mail and all his worst fears were confirmed. There it was, sitting there. A message to Stella sent at twelve-twenty-two a.m. He’d written to her when he was drunk. When he was absolutely mind-numbingly bladdered. When he was as fucked as a bloke with a brainectomy. As tempting as it was to just leave it, or delete it, Pete knew he had to know what he’d written. If it wasn’t too bad, maybe he could try some damage limitation. Suicide maybe. After all, people are always much more forgiving of the dead.
Dear Stella, Pete read. So far so good.
Christ, I miss you so much. Why haven’t you written to me? Why haven’t you been in touch? How do you think it makes me feel, you on the other side of the world when we’re supposed to be getting married and nothing, I’ve heard nothing from you. Pete closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed the urge to vomit. After the literally bitter moment had passed, he forced himself to look again.
Ha, ha! Just joking. Actually, things here are really great!! I had the interview for the film job today and got it. The bloke said I was so experienced that he gave me a better job than the one I went for, better paid even. Next month I’ll be working with Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts. Pete cringed. On the one hand he was grateful that his plastered self had checked the pitiful gushing (although he had failed to delete it). On the other hand he wished with his whole being that he hadn’t decided to make up a load of crap he could never live up to, just to impress Stella. He read on anxiously. I have made a lot of friends here. Falcon, who is in a band that is about to break the States. He is also the new Damien Hirst. Angie is the blonde I live with. She’s a right goer. Oh. And I met this girl called Maggie. We have a lot in common and are beco
ming really really good friends. I think you would like her – she’s got these huge dark eyes and a sort of Audrey Hepburn thing going on. She’s really funny and a good laugh too. Well, maybe you’ll log on soon.
I do miss you, baby.
Pete xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pete read the email again and again and gradually his feeling of panic subsided. OK, so, it was pretty bad, but not as bad as it might have been. Yes, he’d started out pathetic, but he’d retracted it. Yes, he’d made up a shitload of bullshit, but now he’d said it out loud to Stella, his inspiration, maybe he could really make it happen? Although he wasn’t sure about the Bruce Willis bit. And as for describing a girl he’d hardly known as his new best friend, well …
On the second or third time Stella had left Pete, he hadn’t fully understood their relationship and, thinking she had really gone for good, he had started seeing someone else, the girl from work called Candi. Really she’d been called something like Maureen, but had changed her name to Candi at secondary school and still dotted her ‘i’ with a love heart. Pete liked her – she was pretty flaky, but funny. She had a slight fragility, which appealed to him, and he liked her red hair and white skin. She didn’t get close to Stella and how she made him feel, but they had been good friends and happy lovers. Pete had thought that, given time, his pain over Stella might even have faded to a bearable background level.
Then Stella had come back and trampled all over it. Pete had been amazed – astounded, actually – by how she had reacted to the news that he had someone else. Until that moment, until he’d seen her eyes blazing, seen her weeping with abandon, he hadn’t known that she loved him just as much as he loved her. He hadn’t known he had the power to make her jealous. After a stormy and passionate argument (well, more of a one-woman tirade), they had had the most incredible sex of Pete’s life. Stella had promised that she’d never leave him to fall into the clutches of another woman again. The next morning, still shaky from Stella’s passion, Pete had led Candi into a spare office and told her the news. He had been embarrassed and ashamed when she’d crumpled right in front of him. He’d wanted to reach out and hold her but didn’t know how to. Everything he said to her sounded trite and clichéd, but as much as he liked and respected her, there was nothing he could do to make things different. Stella was Stella and, well, everyone else was just everyone else. In the end he was relieved when she got angry with him, punched him hard in the shoulder and stormed out. She’d never come back to the studio and Pete had felt bad about that, because those sorts of jobs were hard to come by in Leeds. He phoned a bloke he knew at Granada, faxed him Candi’s CV and asked him to let her know directly if anything came up, making him promise not to mention his name. She’d got a job there about two weeks later so it had made him feel a bit better, but not that much, to be honest.
Even so, nothing, not even someone as sweet as Candi, held a candle to Stella’s fiercely burning supernova. Pete had promised never to hurt Stella that way again, and he never had. And he never would … but if she thought he had a really nice female friend, someone who might just be after him even if, say, he didn’t realise it? Well it just might make her come home a little sooner. Pete tapped his finger against the keyboard thoughtfully.
‘But am I a total shit for fibbing to Stella and using Maggie like this behind her back when I don’t even know her that well?’ An idea clicked in Pete’s mind as he switched off the PC. Stella had often told him the truth was there to be creative with, and since in this case he’d be doing it for him and her, it was really a romantic gesture more than lying. And if he really did make friends with Maggie, if he did get to know her, then it wouldn’t be that much of a lie. After all, they were in the same boat – she was still crazy over her bloke and desperate to get him back. So he’d be telling Stella practically the truth, while hurting or betraying no one. Problem solved.
Now all he had to do was find a way to bump into Maggie again.
Chapter Sixteen
‘I’m sorry, what did you say you name was?’ Louise asked Maggie pleasantly, with the slightest rise of her perfectly arched brow. For a moment Maggie panicked and almost bolted for the door. For a moment she nearly blurted out, ‘I’m Maggie, Maggie Johnson, Christian’s girlfriend! The one he dumped for you!’ but instead she breathed in and concentrated on the same slightly surreal sensation of certainty that had led her here in the first place. Noticing the Spanish ruffles on the sleeves of Louise’s red silk blouse, Maggie returned her enquiry with a brisk, businesslike smile.
‘I didn’t actually, but it’s Carmen … Carmen Da Vinci of, um, Renaissance Events. I’m overseeing the opening of a major new venue and I’m looking to bring in external caterers …?’
She took Louise’s proffered hand and shook it firmly, wondering if stealing the surname of the artist displayed across the bottom of a framed print on the wall over her left shoulder was a bit obvious, but new as she was to assuming identities and working undercover she had no time to consider the consequences of her snap decision, which was probably fortunate as no doubt it would include derision, humiliation and a short stay in some mental institution. In the event, Louise released her grip first and turned on her high heel without so much as a second glance at the interloper.
‘So have you come for a brochure, or do you actually have a specific event in mind?’ Louise asked her, looking at the boxes of stationery still unopened at her feet.
‘Oh, just a brochure at this stage.’ Maggie replied.
‘Well, then, follow me, Carmen. The office is not quite finished yet, but at least we can talk in there in peace and quiet without a whole load of builders ogling your arse!’
Louise’s laugh was deep and throaty. Deep-throat, Maggie noted. Maybe it was her fellatio skills that had tipped the balance. She shrugged to herself and wondered if it was the hips instead. Louise had proper hips, the kind that curve out from the waist and finished in a rounded bottom. As Maggie frequently noted, her own hips were angular and flat. She had boy’s hips, and very possibly a boy’s bottom, although unlike Sarah she refused to spend hours analysing it over one shoulder in the mirror. Besides, Christian had always told her he liked her bottom. In fact he’d told her he loved it. Come to that, he had told her he loved her, so maybe it wasn’t that at all. Perhaps it was just Louise’s difference, her oppositeness, that drew him to her, because he was running away from the hugeness of their love. After all, he had said as much.
Maggie glanced around as she followed Louise picking through the boxes, cans of paint and ladders that still adorned the corridor, and smiled to herself. The official opening of Fresh Talent 2 had been scheduled for last Friday, but maybe, just maybe, the end of their relationship had created a tiny stir in Christian’s life after all, a slight ripple that had delayed things just a little, and it pleased her to think it. Or then again, maybe the builders were just behind schedule again – they had been for weeks. God knows she’d spent long enough on the phone chasing them. But Maggie tried not to think about rational explanations, because that would lead her down a very tricky route, one which would inevitably culminate in her asking herself exactly why she was in the office of her ex’s new girlfriend pretending she was somebody else. Even as the thought crossed her mind she could hear Sarah’s voice in her head demanding an answer, could see her as she had looked this morning, her arms crossed over her breasts, her lips set into a thin firm line reserved only for her children – and Maggie.
‘I am not taking you back there to have another bloody look at her. Apart from the fact that I have a business to run, you’ve seen her once. We agreed – all tits and legs and no class! What do you need to see her again for? Just let it go, Mags, for God’s sake. For your sake. I know it’s early days, but all this mentalist stuff, this obsessing – it’s not doing you any favours.’
Maggie had shrugged and told her friend that she was right, of course she was right. She had had the obligatory weep on Sarah’s shoulder, wondered to he
rself how it was possible to be so bored stiff with crying and yet still need to do it all the time, and then had left the salon, turned right up the street and gone to the station to catch the first train to the City, which took twenty minutes to arrive while Maggie stared blankly into space and eavesdropped on the private lives of two old ladies.
‘I said to him, Ron, I said, now stop all this silliness. I’m a married woman, my Bob’s still alive, just. You can’t go asking a married woman to gad about on cruises. Mary, he said, I have to have you, I don’t care what it takes! Silly old fool.’ Mary hadn’t been able to resist a small smile to herself.
‘He’d set his cap at anyone, that Ron,’ her companion had said sourly, and Mary’s smile had faded into the middle distance as she waited; she looked liked she’d been waiting all her life.
Twenty minutes, Maggie mused. Why am I still sitting here after twenty minutes when I could be, should be, going home? But her impulse to get on the train had given her the strongest sense of purpose she’d felt since Christian had told her about Louise. It was almost overwhelming, and at least, she noted, since she’d made the decision she’d stopped pretending to be Louise. That had to be a step in the right direction.
Maggie explained to herself once again exactly why it was perfectly rational for her to want to see Louise again and why she knew it would help her. She just knew she had to. She had to take her in, this woman, this irresistible force that had disintegrated at a single touch the one thing she thought was immutable. She had to look at her and really see her, because she had to know, she had to know, where she’d gone wrong, where, at exactly which point, she’d lost him. It was the speculating that was driving her mad. Knowing would keep her sane.
None of it was planned, of course; at least not her new career as a double agent. She’d got off the train and found her way to the new premises. She’d stood across the street with a studied air of nonchalance, going for the persona of a lost tourist or maybe an architecture student – anything that would give her a licence to loiter. As she’d waited she’d wondered again why she had never questioned Christian’s insistence that she didn’t need to visit the new place until it was completely finished. That really she didn’t even need to meet Louise, not until she’d settled in and found her feet. He’d said, ‘You know how fantastic you are, Mags, you’ll intimidate her.’ Maggie sighed and wondered whether if he’d put a huge neon sign up over their bed saying ‘I’M HAVING AN AFFAIR’ she would have ignored that too. But then she’d trusted him, and you don’t question a person you trust, do you? You expect them to tell you straight up how they’re feeling. But as he’d said himself that terrible morning on the sofa, Christian couldn’t bear to hurt her so she’d only got the message when one of the signs had come crashing down on her head.
River Deep Page 12
