by Jill Mansell
What good would that do? The other man wasn’t to blame. From the way he and Hester had been laughing together, he clearly hadn’t kidnapped her and forced her to spend the night with him against her will.
His heart knotted with pain, Nat turned the key in the ignition for the second time that morning and drove off down the road.
Feeling wretched and knowing she looked it, Millie almost jumped out of her skin when she heard activity on the front doorstep. For a split second her hopelessly optimistic imagination conjured up a happy-ending scenario. It was Hugh, complete with a massive, massive bouquet of flowers, coming back to beg her forgiveness and tell her that he hadn’t meant a word of what he’d said earlier—
‘Coo-eee! Wake up lazy bum, I’ve got a surprise for you!’
But it was only Con, Millie discovered when she stumbled out of bed and along the landing.
‘And I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she told Hester. ‘Nat's been here.’
Silence. Hester's eyes widened.
‘What?’ Eventually she spoke. ‘You mean… like a ghost?’
‘No. It was the real Nat. He drove down to surprise you.’ Millie pointed to the note scrawled on the back of the pizza flyer, now propped up on the hall table. ‘But you weren’t here, so he's gone back.’
Hester, her face crumpling in disbelief, wailed, ‘Oh God !’
‘Just as well I don’t fancy you,’ Millie grumbled, peering at her reflection in the Mercedes’ rearview mirror. ‘I look an absolute fright.’
‘Just as well I don’t fancy you,’ Con cheerfully remarked. ‘And what I don’t understand is why you’re looking so wrecked anyway. I mean, it's not as if you stayed up all night drinking and dancing on the tables.’
Millie only wished she had, it would have been a great improvement on staying up having a disastrous one-night stand.
But if there was one person she could safely confide in, it was Con.
‘Someone came round,’ Millie admitted, ‘after the party. I made a fool of myself. I thought I meant something to him, but I was wrong. It wasn’t a relationship he was after,’ she said sadly. ‘Just a quick shag.’
‘Oh dear. Now you owe Hester two hundred pounds,’ said Con.
Honestly, Hester was such a blabbermouth.
‘I can’t tell her. If I do, she’ll want to know who it was.’
He looked entertained.
‘Don’t tell me you slept with her boyfriend.’
‘No!’
‘Lucas, then.’
‘NO!!’ Even more outraged, Millie gave him a thump.
‘Ow!’ Rubbing his arm, Con said with a grin, ‘I don’t know what's so terrible about that. I’d sleep with Lucas Kemp.’
‘Where are we going anyway? I’m not up to anything energetic.’ Millie gazed without enthusiasm at a couple of sturdily booted hikers striding past as he reversed the borrowed Mercedes into a space in the car park of the Ocean View Hotel.
‘I thought we’d start with breakfast,’ said Con. ‘After that, we’ll go down to the beach.’ He nodded cheerfully at the curving stretch of golden sand below them.
Millie winced. The curving stretch of golden sand was two miles long.
‘I’m definitely not up to walking.’
‘In that case,’ said Con, ‘I’ll just have to sit and ogle the surfers. While you catch up on some sleep.’
Hugh was having his worst day in months. Disgust and self-loathing were churning inside him like some volatile combination of chemicals. Sleep was out of the question. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to sit down, or eat anything, or even drink a cup of coffee. Finally, out of sheer desperation, he had left his house and started walking, with no idea where he was headed. Maybe physical exhaustion would help.
Not that he deserved help, after what he’d done.
He hated himself.
He was no better than an animal.
He had betrayed Louisa.
It wasn’t Millie's fault; Hugh knew that. And he felt bad about the way he had treated her. But if he was being honest here—and he was, brutally—Millie's hurt feelings weren’t uppermost in his mind right now. All he could picture was Louisa's face, his beautiful wife's face, and she was no longer smiling back at him, because he had hurt her feelings a damn sight more than he’d hurt Millie's.
Eight months, thought Hugh, closing his eyes and failing to block out the image of Louisa. It had only been eight months since she’d died—God, eight months was nothing—and here he was, sleeping with another girl, carrying on as if his own wife had never existed.
Even the most cold-hearted husband, surely, would wait a year.
Hugh rubbed his aching temples. He’d never imagined he could be so callous, so unfeeling. As far as he was concerned, it was a betrayal of their entire marriage. All the old emotions, locked away for so long, had rushed back last night like clamoring hormonal teenage girls screaming with delight as they launched themselves at the latest boy band. He hadn’t been able to think straight, let alone shoo them away. Millie had been all he’d wanted. And at the time it had been fantastic; guilt simply hadn’t entered into the equation because he hadn’t so much as thought about Louisa.
It had just been so great to feel normal again. Like a genuine, fully functioning member of the human race, instead of the emotionally frozen widower whose young wife had been so tragically killed.
And it had been great, Hugh admitted, until his conscience had kicked in like a whole truckload of mules. Moments after Millie's doorbell had rung, in fact, and she had hurried downstairs to answer it.
That was when it had suddenly occurred to him that the person at the door might be Louisa, come to challenge him and demanding to know what the bloody hell he thought he was playing at.
He hadn’t seriously expected it to be Louisa; he wasn’t completely mad. But the idea had been more than enough. Guilt had engulfed him like an icy tidal wave. Eight months—what was the matter with him? Eight months was nothing more than an insult.
He may as well have gone out straight after the funeral, picked up some girl in a bar, and taken her home for all the difference it made.
Actually, thought Hugh with renewed self-loathing, that might even have been an improvement, because then at least it would have been sex, pure and simple, with no emotions attached.
‘Oi!’ shouted a fat holidaymaker as Hugh cannoned into him. ‘Watch where you’re going, will you?’
Hugh hadn’t been watching. In fact, he didn’t have the faintest idea where he was going. It made no difference to him and he neither knew nor cared. All he wanted to do was keep on following the stony coastal path, until he walked himself into some kind of oblivion.
The next moment he spotted the sign saying ‘Tresanter Point,’ and realized that he’d reached the infamous section of cliff top so popular with would-be suicides.
Shaking his windswept hair out of his eyes, Hugh approached the edge and peered over at the angry mass of foam churning around the black jagged rocks below.
Well, not that kind of oblivion, obviously.
With a glimmer of amusement, Hugh decided he’d been rotten enough already to Millie without adding that one to her conscience. He imagined her discovering that the day he’d slept with her, he’d killed himself.
Hardly the ego-boost of the year.
Chapter 29
FISTRAL BEACH REALLY WAS the place to go if what you were after was a spot of ogling. Con Deveraux, leaning back on his elbows and enjoying himself immensely from behind the shield of his sunglasses, admired the taut, athletic bodies of the surfers in their licorice-slick wetsuits. There were hundreds of them, arranged in meandering rows just beyond the breakers, bobbing up and down like seals in the emerald green water, waiting for the next perfect wave to come along and sweep them away.
Rather like the boys at the gay clubs he occasionally frequented, all eyeing up the talent and wondering—when someone caught their eye—if he might turn out to be their Mr. Right.
Beside him on the dry sand, her head resting on his rolled-up, white Pernn sweatshirt, Millie slept. She was lying on her front, breathing deeply and evenly, and the lunchtime sun beating down out of a dazzling cobalt blue sky was having an effect on her bare shoulders. Already lightly tanned, they were starting to turn a delicate shade of peony pink.
As Con reached for the tube of suncream handily sticking out of her bag, his attention was caught by a familiar figure heading down the beach towards them. For a moment, Con couldn’t place him, then he remembered. Orla's party, last night. Good-looking, definitely. Straight, sadly. And evidently not in the happiest of moods—in fact, from the expression on his face you’d think someone had died.
As the fellow guest approached, Con dolloped warm suncream into the palm of his hand, rolled it across Millie's exposed back, and began to massage it into her skin.
A guest of Orla's was, after all, a friend of Orla's, and it never did any harm to act in a convincingly heterosexual manner.
Furthermore, the Band-Aid on Millie's right thigh was beginning to intrigue him.
By the time Hugh spotted Con Deveraux it was too late; Con was already removing his dark glasses and beaming up at him.
‘Hi! Saw you at Orla's party last night.’
It took less than a split second for Hugh to recognize the prone figure Con was languorously massaging with Ambre Solaire. Oh God, this was all he needed.
‘Don’t worry, she's asleep.’ Con lifted a silver-blonde ringlet and let it fall back into place like a dead limb. ‘See? Out for the count. This is the effect I have on the opposite sex,’ he went on cheerfully. Then, recalling Millie's reaction last night when she had seen this man watching her in the helicopter, he added with an air of innocence, ‘Know each other, do you?’
Hugh nodded.
I bet Millie wishes she didn’t know me.
‘So, any ideas about this little mystery?’ As he spoke, Con Deveraux was running a playful finger along one edge of the square Band-Aid on Millie's leg, just visible beneath the frayed hem of her white cut-off shorts.
‘You mean what's under there?’ Hugh shook his head. ‘Sorry, no.’
‘The more I ask, the more she won’t tell me.’
Me neither, thought Hugh, curious despite himself. The finger was easing beneath a corner of the bandage now, beginning to curl it away from the skin. Thanks to the suncream, the stickiness of the plaster was no longer one hundred per cent.
‘Shark bite, that's what she said,’ Con confided gleefully. ‘Ha, it's a tattoo! Look, see that blue ink?’
He was loosening the Band-Aid millimeter by millimeter, with all the stealth of a safe-cracker. Realizing he was holding his breath, Hugh watched as—
‘OUCH!’ Con let out a yelp of pain as his wrist was seized in a vice-like grip. Millie, having rolled over and shot out an arm faster than a lizard's tongue, dug her nails in until he begged for mercy.
‘OW! I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY God, that hurts.’
Millie was gladder than ever that she had, for once, covered the tattoo with a bandage prior to last night's party—simply because tattoos and abbreviated Dolce & Gabbana dresses didn’t go together. Her blood ran cold at the thought that she had so nearly shown it to Hugh this morning.
‘Never try that again,’ she told Con. ‘Never even think of trying that again. Otherwise,’ with a pitying look, she increased the pressure on his wrist, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to kill you.’
It hadn’t been easy, lying there pretending to be asleep and mentally willing Hugh to leave. In the end, not wanting to face him had been overshadowed by the need to stop Con in his tracks. Now, glancing up at Hugh, she said briefly, ‘Hi.’
‘Hello, Millie.’
To his credit he looked ill at ease, but Millie wasn’t in a credit-giving mood. You big, selfish bastard, she signaled—telepathically. What are you doing here anyway? This is our beach, not yours. Get back to poxy Padstow where you belong, pig.
Okay, so Padstow wasn’t poxy, but the rest was spot-on.
Annoyed that he was still capable of getting her in a fluster, Millie elaborately patted down the edge of the Band-Aid and made a big production of brushing sand out of her hair.
Then, pointedly, she nudged Con.
‘Time we were off.’
‘Me too,’ said Hugh.
So he could take a hint, that was something.
Good. Sod off then, you big warthog, said Millie.
Telepathically, of course.
‘Look at them,’ said Moira Deveraux, waving from the terrace as the orange Mercedes drew to a halt at the top of the drive and Con and Millie jumped out. ‘Don’t they make the perfect couple?’
Still struggling to take in Moira's devastating news, Orla simply nodded and gave her hand a squeeze. But Moira was right about Millie and Con; they really did seem perfect together. And it was all thanks to her.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Giles, watching in alarm as Orla's eyes began to swim with tears. ‘I’m stuck in the middle of a Harlequin romance.’
‘A happy ending,’ said Moira, who didn’t much like Orla's husband. She smiled blandly at Giles. ‘What's wrong with that?’
Two hours later as the helicopter rose into the sky, Orla blurted out, ‘She's got a brain tumor, you know. Just a few months to live… God, can you believe it? I had no idea. And she's such a lovely person!’
‘I know. Con told me.’ Millie carried on waving up at the sky as Giles, rolling his eyes, disappeared into the house.
‘You and Con. This is fantastic.’ Orla gave her a hug, then dragged a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed her cheeks. ‘Look at me, blubbing like a baby. But you’ve made Moira so happy. Imagine being told you’re going to die… it certainly puts your own life into perspective. There's me, getting twitchy and neurotic whenever Giles is late home because I’m so scared he might have found someone else… I mean, how utterly pathetic is that? When all the time JD and Moira are discussing funeral services… honestly, I’m so selfish I’m ashamed of myself, I’ve got a marvelous husband who loves me to bits and I don’t deserve him!
Millie blinked. Was this a joke? But it seemed not; Orla was busy fumbling in her skirt pockets for her cigarettes and lighter and there wasn’t a punchline in sight.
Having lit her cigarette, Orla tucked her free arm through Millie's. ‘Come on, let's go up to my study and you can fill me in on everything that's happened. And I shall be wanting all the naughty details!’
Her eyes had by this time brightened at the prospect of lots of salacious gossip and plenty of material for her book. Millie sighed inwardly. The trouble with Orla was she couldn’t keep quiet about something longer than she could hold back a sneeze. It was a physical impossibility for her—as she’d so ably demonstrated by blurting out the news of Moira's brain tumor practically before the helicopter had had a chance to get off the ground.
Millie definitely wasn’t going to tell her about Con being gay.
Nor did she have any intention of mentioning any of last night's shenanigans with Hugh, not least because she wouldn’t put it past Orla to decide that here was a situation ripe for a spot of meddling and to promptly start meddling for all she was worth.
Or more likely, giving her the mother of all lectures and shrieking, ‘For heaven's sake, only a complete twerp would fall for a line like that… how could you be so stupid?’
Either prospect sent shivers of mortification down her spine.
Five thousand pounds, thought Millie, painfully aware that Orla wasn’t getting her money's worth. Once again she was editing her own life. Actually, there was an idea. Wouldn’t it be great if you could go back and edit to your heart's content, gaily snipping out and discarding any bits that made you shudder and cringe…? Somebody should definitely invent that.
‘Con's brilliant company. We get on really well together. We had breakfast at the Ocean View Hotel, then spent a few hours
mucking about on the beach.’
This much had been true. Millie, swinging her legs against the side of Orla's desk, glanced out of the upstairs window at the lovingly tended rose garden. ‘Oh, and Richard-the-gardener kissed me last night. He kisses like an Aquavac!’
Excitedly, Orla scribbled on one of the charts pinned up to the left of the filing cabinet, then searched for a different colored felt-tipped pen and dashed to another chart above the desk.
‘Fabulous! Did Con see him kissing you? Was he madly jealous?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of kiss anyone would be jealous of.’ Millie pulled a face, just recalling it was enough to make her feel queasy. ‘Richard was very drunk.’
‘He really likes you, it's sooo obvious. Oh, I knew this party would get things moving.’ Orla sounded triumphant. Here, clearly, were the beginnings of an entertaining little subplot. ‘So how did you feel when he kissed you?’
Honestly, she sounded like a psychiatrist.
‘Wet.’ Millie watched the felt-tipped pen flying over the chart; Orla's handwriting really was beyond belief.
‘And what about Hester?’
‘I’ve never tried kissing Hester. She’d probably bite me.’
‘I meant did she get anywhere with Lucas last night? You could tell she was pretty smitten.’ Orla paused, her greeny gold eyes dancing at the possibility of intrigue. ‘But this falling-asleep-by-the-pool business sounds pretty suspicious to me.’
‘And her boyfriend drove down from Glasgow to see her,’ said Millie.
‘No! When?’
‘Last night. He slept in his car outside our house.’
‘Oh good grief! And Hester didn’t come home! But that's… dreadful.’’ Orla, who had been about to say it was fantastic, stopped herself in the nick of time. ‘Nat, isn’t it? So what did he say when Hester finally turned up?’
‘Nothing. He’d gone by then. Driven back to Scotland. Not thrilled.’ Millie pulled a face. ‘Still, look on the bright side. At least he wasn’t still there when Hester rolled up in your Mercedes with Con.’
