by Clare Naylor
“We were, weren’t we?” Mirri had tears on her cheeks. “Darling, do you remember that ghastly boyfriend you had. The one who cut his toenails at the breakfast table.”
“Frederico.” Leonard erupted into a fresh fit of mirth. “He was my bit of rough. I fancied him as a lorry driver.”
“And there is poor Yves Saint Laurent in the corner, too shy to speak to anyone.” Mirri pointed to the screen.
“And Jean Paul and Talitha.” Leonard added. Kate assumed that they meant the fabulous Gettys. And as they laughed and reminisced, Kate found herself feeling just the tiniest bit bluesy. She doubted that when she was sixty a friend would ever bring out a home movie and they’d split their sides with laughter at the fun they’d had. Mirri was certainly right about one thing: Nobody knew how to have a good time anymore. They were all dying to move on to the next installment of success—better car, high-flying job, bigger flat, ideal husband, perfect number of children in the right schools. Did anyone really stop and smell the roses anymore, let alone drop a thousand of them from a helicopter? Well, Kate certainly didn’t. All the same it made her determined to find a few movie moments in her own life from now on. If she spent a second more worrying about what she wasn’t doing, then she’d never do anything anyway. If that made any sense.
As Leonard and Mirri cried their way laughing through Verbier, Kate sneaked out to unearth a packet of cheesy Wotsits and a few olives. When she crept back into the room Leonard pulled out Verbier and slipped in another.
“I don’t know what this one is, it just says June 1971,” he said and sat back as the screen once again flickered to life.
“Oh, I hope it’s that birthday party that you all had for me at the Chelsea Arts Club,” Mirri said, sitting forward in her seat, “the one where the future king of England put his hand up the skirt of a French harlot. Or so the newspapers said.” Mirri clapped her hands together delightedly. And then stopped abruptly when what appeared on screen instead was the outside of a church, the doorway framed with white roses and an impossibly glamorous couple locked into a kiss.
“It’s Tony’s wedding,” Leonard remarked. “He was a handsome bugger, wasn’t he?”
“Stop it,” Mirri suddenly said, almost inaudibly.
“What’s that, darling?” Leonard asked, not having heard her hushed order properly.
“Please stop the thing. Now,” she said, and reached for the remote control from Leonard’s hand. “I have to leave.” And with that Mirri flicked off the television, handed the remote back to Leonard, and walked from the room with a look of abject misery on her face. “I will wait outside for my lift. Bonne nuit.” Kate and Leonard were left in shocked silence for a moment or two. Just watching the space where she’d been sitting.
“What on earth’s the matter with her?” Kate asked.
“Well, it’s Tony’s wedding . . . but I can’t think why it upset her like that.” Leonard looked shocked.
“Maybe she’s still in love with him. She’s let slip that there’s someone she’s been in love with for years, but I didn’t think it was Tony. She’s definitely hiding some real sadness, you know. I’ve noticed,” Kate said quietly, once she’d heard the front door close.
“Oh, she probably just looked fat in her frock at Tony’s wedding and didn’t want us to see.” Leonard said. “Which is just as well because I must get down to my figures.” That said, he handed the remote control to Kate and went back to his office.
Kate ate an olive and flicked through the TV guide. But as she was about to switch on some crummy documentary, she couldn’t resist pressing the PLAY button again. She turned down the volume in case Leonard overheard and sat close to the telly, her finger hovering above the STOP button, and watched the tape. At first it was just Tony’s wedding and lots of amazing people in short skirts and men in floppy velvet suits. Really it was like a Vogue shoot. Or an avant garde movie of the Swinging Sixties. Lots more laughter and a whole heap of cigarettes, as on the other tapes, and no sign of Mirri or Leonard. But then, as the camera drifted by a small crowd of people leaning on a Mini Cooper in the street, she saw Mirri, wearing a knit dress that barely skimmed the top of her thighs, with her hair hanging golden and hippieish around her shoulders. She looked about as un-made-up as Kate had ever seen her from that era, and more beautiful than ever, too. And beside her, talking intently, focusing every bit of his attention on her, was a man with curly dark hair and almond-shaped, dark eyes. Mirri was giggling like a schoolgirl at whatever he was saying; the pair looked seventeen. Though really, they would have been in their early thirties, Kate worked out. But why Mirri didn’t want to watch this particular piece of footage was beyond her. She looked great, her frock didn’t make her look fat, and she was having fun. And then, on screen, a pretty, neat girl with a Jackie O bouclé suit came over to Mirri and the man and hooked her arm proprietarily through the man’s arm. Mirri looked the girl up and down for a moment or two and then turned to another man next to her and said something to him. And then the camera drifted away again. On to a cluster of elderly guests in ridiculous hats, who were clearly the parents of the piece—the outsiders.
Kate watched a moment or two more of the film and then flicked it off. She suspected that she’d seen all she needed to of Mirri. Certainly she’d seen enough to get an inkling of what might be causing her faraway looks. It was undoubtedly a man, and very likely the man in the film, but what had happened, or not happened, between them was still very much a mystery.
Chapter Sixteen
Jake hated to lose. If he lost a hand in poker, his eyebrows would knit together and the players on either side of him would edge away. If he lost an entire game, he would go into a deep funk for days. Losing was something that didn’t happen to him very often, and he wasn’t good at it. When he got his text message back from Kate saying that she wouldn’t have dinner with him, he’d been at rehearsals with the new keyboard player for his band. She was a New Yorker called Simone and she looked like Nico. She had white-blond hair in thick bangs, and her thighs were reassuringly sturdy beneath her small kilt.
“Jake, do you mind if I get out my tambourine and play on a couple of the tracks?” She strode over to where he was sitting, chatting to the drummer.
“Yeah, whatever you like, Simone.” He gave her a wink intended as a friendly dismissal and watched her as she walked away, tapping her tambourine occasionally and filling her skirt perfectly. Ordinarily he would have given her more time. In fact, ordinarily he’d have given her one, probably, but he was still smarting from Kate’s message. Yesterday when he’d seen her cycling like a demented fairy down Ladbroke Grove, he’d assumed she really was just in a hurry and that she’d call him later. But now, as he slid his phone into the back pocket of his jeans, he wondered whether there really was something wrong. She had never once turned down an invitation to dinner with him. And the idea that she might have done it after he’d sent her J. J. Cale was unimaginable to him.
For the first week after Kate had told him to get lost and he’d felt like shit, he assumed that he’d been partying too hard. Then, when he still didn’t want to get out of bed a week later and he couldn’t find any enthusiasm for anything, he’d begun to think that he had a mystery virus. He contemplated going to the doctors until his aunt suggested that maybe he was sickening for something—or someone. Someone with toffee-brown hair, gold-flecked eyes, and a penchant for painting. Someone who had picked Jake up every single time he was down. Who had laughed at his jokes, told him he was sexy when he didn’t feel it, and listened to his every moan and paranoia as if it mattered more than anything else in the world.
“Come on, Catherine,” Jake told his aunt, who was just a bit fed up with coming home from lunch and having to unearth her nephew from beneath the ashtrays and booze bottles that littered her sitting room. “You know how things are with me and Kate. I like her and in my own way I probably love her. But she’s not The One.” Aunt Catherine, who knew a thing or two about love even though many
years had passed since she’d last been in love, kept her mouth shut and said nothing.
She did, though, give Jake a look that said it all. It said, Oh please, Jake, you can’t be so stupid that you still talk about The One? How about the greatest girl you’re ever going to meet, who has untold patience for your pathetic, selfish ways and still wants to be with you. If you don’t think she’s The One then you’d better hotfoot it to Selfridges right now and grab yourself one of those mannequins from the window who have perfect bodies and faces, no personality and will be whatever you want them to be. Jake had glared at Aunt Catherine after she’d given him this look and gone to the pub.
But a few days later, when the mystery virus, which he was now convinced he’d picked up in India last summer and it had been lying dormant in his system since then, was still making him tired, irritable, and gloomy, he had seen Kate come flying over the hill out of nowhere. And he’d felt momentarily better. He’d said hello to her then gone back into Rough Trade and bought a bunch of new vinyl. He’d even cleared up his ashtrays and thrown a few whiskey bottles into the recycling bin when he got back to Catherine’s. And though he was fantastically lacking in self-awareness, even Jake had to admit that it was looking more and more likely that Kate might just be The One.
Any suspicions he had were confirmed later that night when he and the band were hanging out in Catherine’s flat and Jake went to his room to find the lyrics he’d been working on during a bout of insomnia. He was rummaging on the bedside table when he heard the door open. He glanced up and saw Simone standing in the doorway. Naked. She was dangling her panties on the end of her little finger and smiling like Eve might have done as she plucked the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Her bangs fell heavily over her eyelashes and Jake had to admit that she looked every bit as succulent in the flesh as she did in that kilt.
“Hey, Jake,” she said, and rested against the closed door. “The boys were boring me.”
“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” Jake said with a faint grin.
“We could amuse each other.” She pouted.
“We could.” His look told her that he wanted her. She walked slowly toward him, her round thighs and fruity breasts swaying irresistibly.
But fifteen minutes later, Simone was less seductive. She was a bit bored, a bit offended, and, more than anything, confused. She knew what a hot little number she was, so what was the deal with Jake? She’d heard he was a rocket in bed and she’d heard that he was available. But right now his goddamned rocket was still on the launching pad. She huffed and sat up.
“It’s fine. Probably shouldn’t get involved with someone I work with anyway,” she drawled in her sultry New York accent.
“What can I say?” Jake ran a hand through his hair and gave her an apologetic shrug. “I think you’re fucking gorgeous. I guess I’ve just got other things on my mind,” he said as he cursed Kate’s fucking text message. What the fuck was she playing at anyway? If she wanted him to come crawling around she was going the wrong way about it, because right now he was just pissed off.
Kate stopped shuffling from foot to foot as she waited in the foyer of Tate Modern because she was afraid that if she didn’t, she might look like a line dancer. She’d put on her cowboy boots—well, Janis Joplin’s cowboy boots, to be precise, the ones that Jake had bought for her—because she’d left her only pair of gallery-worthy sandals under Leonard’s coffee table last night. She hadn’t wanted to go and collect them this morning lest she run into Mirri. Kate had been asleep on the sofa when Mirri came home last night and their paths hadn’t crossed but she’d heard on the house grapevine—that is, Leonard—that all was not well with Mirri. Whether it was a Jonah thing or a video nasty thing, they couldn’t tell.
Whatever it was, Mirri had been sitting on her windowsill chain-smoking all morning. When Leonard had approached with black coffee, she had just blown smoke in his face; she was still there when Kate stole out the side gate at lunchtime. Which was how Kate came to look so inappropriate for her meeting with Louis. She was wearing a too-short denim skirt and an old gingham shirt because all her clean, decent clothes were sitting in the ironing basket in Leonard’s laundry room and she hadn’t dared risk the dash indoors. An encounter with the temperamental goddess would leave her either bruised or extremely late for Louis. Still, when Leonard had come down to the shed to cower for a moment or two, Kate couldn’t resist delving a little deeper.
“Leonard?” she had asked as casually as possible as she cleaned her teeth.
“Yes, my dear.” Leonard was on his hands and knees on the floor and appeared to be examining the rug. “Gracious, did you know that this rug is eighteenth-century Persian?” he asked excitedly.
“Yes.” Kate hoped he didn’t get snail slime on his best tartan trousers. “You told me that when you gave it to me.”
“Did I? Good heavens.” He lay the corner of the carpet back down. “How generous of me.”
“Leonard, how well do you remember Tony’s wedding?” Kate asked as he creaked to his feet and parked himself in the armchair to catch his breath.
“Very well indeed. I was an usher, you know,” he said proudly.
“And Mirri?” Kate stood over the sink and rinsed her mouth out. “Did she have a boyfriend at the time?”
“Darling, that’s like asking me to remember the runners in the Derby of the same year. She always had boyfriends. Hundreds of them. Oxford practically gave out degrees in keeping up with Mirabelle Moncur’s love life.”
“Okay, well, was there someone special? Maybe someone she had an affair with who was . . . unavailable or turned her down?”
“Nobody turned her down. Ever,” Leonard said emphatically. “Not even me. What are you trying to get at, my dear?”
“Was there ever a man who broke her heart?” Kate wiped toothpaste from around her mouth with a towel and sat on the bed. No point in trying to be discreet anymore; Leonard was sublimely unhelpful even when he was trying his best. Trying to worm secrets out of him would have left her more clueless and confused than when she’d begun. “Or maybe someone who turned her down?”
“There was Nicholas. But I’m not sure he turned her down. I think he was engaged to be married to somebody else when they met. Just one of those things. Though I think she was rather fond of him.”
“Nicholas?” Kate leaned forward on the edge of the mattress.
“Nicholas Sheridan,” Leonard said as he squinted his eyes with the effort of remembrance. “Not her usual type. Very quiet. I liked him but it would never have worked, she’d have tired of him before breakfast.”
“Why didn’t it work out?” Kate asked.
“Darling, you’ll have to ask her yourself. I really can’t remember.”
“Do you remember what he did? For a living?”
“He was a terribly good architect, now that I come to think of it. Built some wonderfully clever thing in Madrid. But like the best Englishmen, he was much more successful abroad,” Leonard said wistfully.
“And he was engaged to someone else?” Kate looked at her watch and realized she had to leave right now for her meeting with Louis. She grabbed her purse, messed with her hair, and tracked down her cell phone.
“No idea what happened. Only that I wasn’t invited to the wedding, if there was one,” Leonard said. Kate often thought that he measured out his life in parties and antiques—anything that didn’t slide neatly into one of those categories was likely to fall by the wayside.
“Oh well . . . feel free to hang out here as long as you like, by the way,” Kate told him as she made her way out the door. “Just don’t kill my snails. It’s bad luck.”
“Sorry I’m late.” Louis rushed through the door at the Tate Modern and gave Kate a fleeting peck on the cheek. “I got stuck with a journalist from the Telegraph who wanted to know all about my show. I told her we had something very striking up our sleeves.”
“We?” Kate asked.
“You’re not going to turn me down
, are you?” Louis looked concerned.
“No, of course not. Only I’m just the worker bee,” Kate said.
“Couldn’t do it without you.” He touched her elbow and guided her through into the main room. “I’ll show you where the piece is going to be.”
Kate followed Louis up to the second level of the gallery. The space was huge, and walking with Louis—who had a special pass around his neck and cut through the crowds with authority and ease—made her feel just as she had at his flat yesterday. She felt distant from him—as she had when she’d seen him in the magazine and was somehow intimidated by him. There was something about him that made her feel slightly in awe. Which was ridiculous. He was Louis. But as she strode past the works of art and installations by his side she saw him as other people seemed to see him—a tall, strikingly attractive man with his naughty-boy black hair over his eyes, jeans that were slightly too dirty, and a scruffy, gray T-shirt. He looked bigger than usual, that was it, Kate decided. He had real presence. From his wrist hung a silver chain bracelet that she’d never noticed before. Maybe he’d been given it by one of the overachievers. Though on second thought maybe he’d always had it and she’d never noticed before. Still, there was something about the way it hung at the top of his hand that made him look magnificently in charge.
“What do you think?” Suddenly they seemed to have arrived. Kate had to back up and take notice of the room.
“Wow,” she said as she focused her attention and saw instantly what an incredibly huge, important thing it was that he . . . they . . . were going to be doing. “Fuck.”
“Exactly,” Louis said, moving deeper into the room, with its north-facing window. “In fact, now I know why I got you here.” He turned to Kate and looked earnestly at her.
“Really?” she asked. Completely and utterly unsure what he was about to say. And of course it didn’t occur to her for any more than a microsecond that he was going to say something unfeasible like to tell you I love you.
