He was just wondering whether to jack in the whole plan, when Patrick Liddiard barged past him, giving him barely a sideways glance, nearly knocking the glass out of his hand. Damien felt his resolve refuel. Fuck you, you arrogant bastard, he thought. You’re going to remember me all right. For the rest of your days.
He wandered out into the car park to make a call on his mobile. It was chaos: everyone had parked like complete prats. The first thing he’d do when it was his, he thought, was introduce valet parking. And a limo service. He crunched his way over the gravel to a darkened corner, away from the babble of voices inside.
‘Pebbles? It’s Damien here. I’ve got a little job for you. Just wondered if any of your boys fancied a day out in the country…?’
A few minutes later and the deal was done.
Suzanna was taking deep breaths to calm herself down. She told herself it was because she was nervous about the opening; sort of stage fright. But she knew jolly well that, although she was a little apprehensive, that wasn’t what was causing her insides to whirl like a Catherine wheel.
It was Patrick.
When she’d seen him arrive that evening, her heart had given a little leap of joy. He looked devastating, in a deconstructed linen suit, grey with the thinnest raspberry stripe. She’d slid her arms inside his jacket, put her hands on his waist, and he hadn’t stopped her. It wasn’t the sort of gesture you could misinterpret. It was unmistakably intimate. As their lips met, the feeling had hit her, suddenly and unexpectedly; a feeling that she remembered from long ago. What was alarming was it wasn’t lust, not as such. It was deeper, more subtle than that.
Shit, thought Suzanna. She remembered what it was now. It was the feeling you had when you first fell in love. The feeling that fleeting strangers in your deepest dreams sometimes gave you. The most intense feeling in the world. The feeling that you never wanted to end but that sadly, inevitably did, because it had such a short shelf-life; became, when the novelty wore off, diluted by familiarity and routine and duty.
The feeling she’d been remembering at Oliver’s graveside the week before. The feeling she so desperately wanted to recapture with Barney. Only now it had materialized unexpectedly somewhere else.
She stepped outside for a moment to take in the realization. The nicotiana Barney had planted outside the French doors were in their full evening scent, but combined with the lavender and the heat made her feel slightly ill. How the hell could this have happened? She tried to look at it logically, rationally. She still loved Barney, of course she did. She always would. But as she’d realized in the cemetery, with him she could never be her real self again. Barney brought with him the baggage of guilt and fear and regret and despair.
But Patrick. Patrick brought hope…
Inside, Patrick was thinking that perhaps he shouldn’t have kissed Suzanna quite like that.
All in all, he was quite a kissy sort of person. He kissed people all the time. Friends. Relatives. Lucy. Sophie and Georgina. People he socialized with. In the circles he moved in, a kiss was a meaningless gesture. A fleeting meeting of mouths didn’t really amount to much.
So why was he worried? He told himself the kiss had been a symbol of their mutual self-congratulation. It was one of those mad moments when two people who’d worked hard together became close. They were just… recognizing each other’s worth.
But it had gone on a fraction too long. And it had been definitely, definitely on the lips. It was the sort of kiss that, under a different set of circumstances, would have led to other things. He’d felt her start to melt into him, which was when the warning bells had clanged in his head. Suzanna was fragile, damaged, needy. He mustn’t give her the wrong signals.
He reflected how much he’d changed over the past few months. Not so long ago, he would have thought nothing of a quick leg-over with anyone who was up for it. He’d learned a big lesson from his father, whose inability to keep it zipped up had nearly cost them the whole brewery. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Giving Suzanna one would be asking for trouble, when they’d worked so hard to bring it all together. Anyway, he liked Barney. He wasn’t going to screw another man’s wife behind his back, not when he had genuine respect for him.
Patrick smiled to himself. He was becoming honourable in his old age. What with the impending mortgage, and impending godfatherhood as well, he was in danger of becoming positively grown up.
He went off to find Mandy. She looked fantastic, in a black dress and high heels, her hair long and shiny. She was talking to the editor of the local county magazine, professional as ever. He suddenly felt a stab of guilt that she’d been somewhat sidelined over the past few weeks. She’d kept her head down and stayed out of the way. He went over and joined her.
She gave him a look that was odd. Wary? Accusing? He wasn’t sure. Shit – she hadn’t seen him kiss Suzanna, had she? He hoped not. Even though it had meant nothing.
On her fifth trip to relieve her bladder, Sybilla finally cornered Suzanna in the loos. ‘Right, young lady.’
Suzanna looked at her with wide, innocent eyes.
‘What?’
‘What is it with young Master Shagworthy?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Patrick. I’ve seen the way you look at him.’
‘Sybilla – he’s a colleague. We’ve been working closely together – ’
‘A bit too closely, if you ask me.’
‘I’m married; he’s got a girlfriend; I haven’t had time to shag him, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. For a start, he’s nearly ten years younger than me.’
‘Who said anything about shagging?’
‘I thought that’s what you were implying.’
‘So you’ve thought about it, then?’
‘No!’
Suzanna hoped she sounded convincing. Sybilla pointed a perfectly manicured finger at her.
‘If you screw things up with Barney, don’t come crying to me. You’ve been warned.’
That was the trouble with Sybilla. She was terrifyingly perceptive. But not actually psychic. Suzanna realized with a jolt that if she’d sussed her out within hours of arriving in Honeycote, other people weren’t going to be too far behind.
Sybilla carried relentlessly on. She was like a dog with a bone.
‘I know you too well. You’re not going to find happiness by running away, Suzanna. For God’s sake, when are you going to face up to it?’ Suzanna shrank back from Sybilla’s piercing gaze. ‘You’ve got no idea what you and Barney have achieved, have you? It’s completely amazing. You’ve done all this, the two of you. You’ve pulled it all together. It’s fantastic. Just don’t, please, please don’t, fuck it all up because you’re a coward. Because you’re an ostrich, and because you think falling in love with a boy ten years younger than you’ – that was spiteful, but she had to be spiteful – ‘is going to help you forget Ollie and make it all right. Because it isn’t. It’s going to make it ten million times worse in the long run. Trust me.’
Sybilla turned on her spiky heels, elegantly for one in her state, and stalked back inside, leaving Suzanna in semi-shock. For a second she felt furious – how dare Sybilla talk to her like that, make those assumptions? Then she realized that every word she had spoken was the truth. Sybilla might be a silly, superficial cow a lot of the time, but she had a deadly perspicacity, and she shot straight from the hip.
She was right. Patrick was ten years younger than her. And he had a girlfriend. And she had a husband. Any little sparkle between them she felt – or imagined she felt – was just the idle fancy of an emotionally unstable, pretty nearly middle-aged woman. What on earth would he see in her anyway?
Mandy worked the room like a true professional. She wanted to show them all how good she was at PR, that in fact she was better than any of them at charming journalists and editors and people that mattered. So they’d all be sorry when she fucked off…
‘What’s in a kiss?’ she kept asking
herself. Mandy had been retouching her lipgloss, when Suzanna’s pregnant friend from London had left the cloakroom. She’d seen Suzanna and Patrick in the mirror, and their lips meet, just as the door closed behind Sybilla. The two of them had gone on to resolutely ignore each other all evening. Which, thought Mandy, was as much a sign of guilt as anything.
She seethed inwardly, and went on to greet the restaurant critic of the Eldenbury Advertiser.
‘I do hope you’ll come and give us a review,’ she smiled. ‘Please contact me if you want to book a table. Unless you prefer to come anonymously.’
The critic leered, making it pretty clear that what he wanted was dinner with Mandy. She smiled graciously and moved on to charm the vicar.
Ginny was waiting for Keith to fetch her a drink when she felt a finger slowly and deliberately tracing its way down her spine. She didn’t need to turn round to know who it belonged to. She lit up like a string of fairy lights. She swallowed as Bertie buried his face in her neck teasingly.
‘You look fucking gorgeous. They do rooms here, don’t they?’
Ginny tried and failed to look stern, but couldn’t take the smile off her face. The smell of his cologne, as scents are so cruelly wont to do, brought back the memory of that doorstep kiss with a frightening clarity. She tried to keep her tone light, but came over as arch.
‘I haven’t seen you for a long time.’
‘I’ve been in France. I go every year for a couple of weeks. Go racing. Bit of buying. Bit of selling. You know the sort of thing.’
Yes, thought Ginny. I can imagine. He was looking… divine. He was in cricket whites, slightly rumpled, hair dishevelled – as if he’d walked straight off the pitch, which well he might. You couldn’t be sure with Bertie. He was such a poseur, he might just be wearing them because he knew he looked utterly irresistible.
‘How’s the ironing going?’
He was scoffing the canapés as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.
‘Actually, I’ve got you to thank for that. It’s doing incredibly well.’
He stopped in amazement.
‘You don’t mean you really went ahead with it?’
‘I certainly did.’
Ginny felt proud. She was, as she predicted, clearing a couple of hundred pounds a week and it wasn’t really eating into her spare time. She could do fifty quid listening to Woman’s Hour. It was hardly work at all.
‘Well, that’s great. I’ve got absolutely piles of laundry after being away. I’ll bring it round to you tomorrow.’
He gave her a dazzling smile, patted her on the shoulder and disappeared off to greet a friend. Ginny felt rather flat when he’d gone. He’d flirted with her one second, overtly propositioned her, then treated her like a skivvy the next. She sighed. She was just too old to cope with a helter-skelter every time they met.
As Keith came over with another glass of Pimms, she felt awash with fondness. Keith was reliable. He wasn’t a roller-coaster ride. He was… safe. She sipped her drink and looked around, absorbing the atmosphere. There was no doubt the pub was going to be a roaring success. And she felt proud that Kitty and Sasha were the hit of the evening. They were playing on the fact that they were identical for once. They’d both tied their hair back into a plait, bound at the bottom like a horse’s tail, with black ribbon tied in a big, fat bow. They wore black jeans, white pumps and the black T-shirts Barney had had made up for all the staff, inscribed with the pub’s name in white across their chest. Snow-white aprons that reached nearly to the floor were tied round their waists. In line with the house rules they wore no jewellery, no nail varnish, and just subtle make-up – a sweep of mascara and rosy pink lipgloss on their full lips. They worked tirelessly all evening, filling glasses and passing canapés, answering questions, taking bookings, calling Jim the Taxi for people who’d overdone it on the complimentary booze.
The noise was monumental, like a West End bar on a Friday night, not a remote pub out in the sticks.
Ginny congratulated Keith. ‘You must be so relieved.’
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘There were a few hairy moments. But I knew they’d do it. I’ve got a great team. Now it’s all over, I think I might treat myself to a break. A long weekend in Paris or somewhere?’ He looked at her almost for approval.
‘Sounds lovely,’ murmured Ginny. She wasn’t quite sure what he was saying. Was he suggesting they both go? She could certainly cope with a weekend away, but wasn’t sure about the implications. Presumably a weekend in Paris did not mean single bedrooms and meeting up for brioches in the hotel dining room. Was Keith hinting that their relationship went up a gear? For some reason this made her start to panic. She decided the easiest thing to do was change the subject.
‘I hope the neighbours won’t complain about the noise.’
‘I don’t suppose it will be like this every night. And they shouldn’t moan – if this is a success, it will push the value of their property up. That’s all anybody seems to care about these days.’
He didn’t seem to mind that her reception to his invitation had been lukewarm. Ginny needed to be very clear in her head about where she stood, before she went dashing off on Eurostar to the George V with Sasha’s fake Louis Vuitton holdall.
Kelly and Anastasia had a wonderful evening together. A real girlie time. Kelly had given her a proper manicure and had painted her fingernails and toenails sparkly silver, then tied her hair up into a French pleat. Then she’d taken her up to her bedroom and read her Angelina Ballerina.
The little girl put her arms round her neck and hugged her hard.
‘Will you come again?’
Kelly didn’t like to make promises she couldn’t keep.
‘We’ll see.’
She sat with Anastasia until the little girl was fast asleep. Then she went back downstairs. The lounge was amazing. An enormous U-shaped leather settee, with steel legs – a bit minimalist for Kelly’s liking, but it was actually very comfy. A champagne carpet, incredibly soft. And a flat TV screen the size of a small house. A row of DVDs in alphabetical order sat on a chrome shelf next to it. Kelly picked out Pretty Woman – it was her most favourite film ever. She prodded the remote, trying to get the machine to work, and got the fright of her life when the curtains closed instead.
Foiled by the high-tech equipment and not wanting to break it, she amused herself looking around for evidence of Star’s mother, but there was none. No photos. No stuff that could conceivably belong to a woman. She wasn’t snooping, just curious. Rick hadn’t really given her any details about Damien’s private life. But Star couldn’t have appeared out of nowhere.
The phone rang, making her jump out of her skin. She thought she’d better answer it, in case it was Damien checking up on her.
‘Hello?’
A husky, slightly slurred voice on the other end responded after a confused pause.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m the babysitter.’
‘Yes, of course you are.’ There was a cynical chuckle. ‘Well, this does put an interesting light on things. Tell him I called, will you?’
The phone went dead. Kelly put the receiver down her end thoughtfully. The woman hadn’t left her name. But then, she didn’t really need to. Kelly knew the bitter tones of an ex-wife when she heard one.
When Damien got home, Kelly gave him a bottle of nail-varnish remover.
‘I painted Star’s nails. They probably won’t like it at school, so you can take it off with this.’ She grinned. ‘I didn’t think you’d have any in the house.’
‘Was she good?’
‘Ever so. She’s lovely. You’re very lucky.’
Damien felt proud. And he was grateful to Kelly. It was nice for Anastasia to have a woman about the place. Someone soft and caring, who’d take an interest in her. Not like her bitch of a mother.
‘Would you like a drink before you go?’
Kelly hesitated. She was knackered. She’d got one of her most demanding clients in first t
hing in the morning. But Damien was looking at her anxiously. He obviously wanted a bit of company. And this was an opportunity too good to miss. She knew she was only the babysitter, but stranger things had happened. Look at Pretty Woman…
‘Go on then. I’ll have a cup of tea.’ She sat down on a chrome bar stool. ‘How was the opening?’
‘Packed. Looks like it’s going to be a success.’
Kelly’s face gave nothing away. And Damien didn’t let on that he knew about her one-time relationship with Patrick. He’d seen the boy there, lapping up all the glory. Never mind. He’d be able to surprise her soon.
They shared a pot of tea, and Damien listened while she chattered about her salon, about how the girls she employed drove her mad because they were sloppy, didn’t do things the way she wanted, thought nothing of bunking off when they had a hangover. Damien admired her. She was a grafter and he had respect for that. He had tried to give her thirty quid for babysitting, but she’d insisted that was far too much. Even twenty was overdoing it.
‘I haven’t exactly had to do much. And it was nice to get out of the flat.’
‘If you won’t let me pay you, I won’t be able to ask you again.’
‘I’ll babysit for Star any time.’
The problem with that, thought Damien, was the only reason he was likely to want to go out was with Kelly. He didn’t quite have the nerve to ask her out; it was early days yet. He’d get her to babysit a couple more times, even if it meant going to sit in his car somewhere for a couple of hours. Then he could come back and chat to her, get to know her.
As Damien walked Kelly out to her car, she turned.
‘By the way, somebody phoned for you. A woman. She didn’t leave her name.’ She paused. ‘But she didn’t sound very happy about me being there.’
Making Hay Page 29
