by Wendy Holden
The girl looked witheringly at him. "Hey, don't get me wrong. What was dumb was that most people were so goddamn stupid they couldn't tell whether they'd been sold an eighth of grass or an eighth of dried lawn."
Mark stared. No doubt about it now. That degree of denseness confirmed all his suspicions about her accent. Public school, definitely.
He slugged back the rest of his champagne. "You know," he slurred, "you remind me of myshelf at your age."
The girl looked considerably less flattered than he had expected. Yet it was true; the memory of his eighteen-year-old self looking at eighteen-year-old girls and wondering what it would be like to screw them was flooding back strongly.
"No, really," Mark continued, "you do. What are you doing here, anyway?" he pressed.
"Meeting someone."
"Who?" Shuffling unsteadily closer, Mark slapped a clammy hand on her back. "Boyfriend?"
"No, not boyfriend. Someone I haven't seen for a while." She paused. "Thing is, they don't know I'm coming. Hey, look," the girl suddenly exclaimed, "isn't that Matt Locke over there? Down in the corner?" She pointed excitedly. "Oh, God, I think it is. I love him." Her laconic manner having completely evaporated, she was staring ecstatically into the distance as if she had spotted Leonardo DiCaprio and Prince William rolled into one.
"Matt Locke?" Mark echoed unsteadily. "What, you mean Matt Locke? The livesh on the moor and never comes out of his houshe Matt Locke?"
The girl, thrilled, was bouncing up and down beside him. "God, how fab. I mean groovy," she added hurriedly, reining in excited schoolgirl and replacing it with laconic L.A.
Mark peered hard in the direction in which her finger was pointing. This was difficult, considering there suddenly seemed to be two of everything. Could she really mean those…that thin, scruffy youth sitting in the corner of the tent? The candle flame illuminating his features revealed nothing at first, but then he smiled at his companion and Mark recognized the famous face. "Christ. Looksh in a bit of a bloody shtate, doeshn't he?"
The girl looked at Mark in disgust. "Haven't you heard of casual chic, man? Matt's far too cool to go in for this fancy-dress crap, obviously." Her eyes ran contemptuously up and down Mark's costume. "It's a good idea anyway. Everyone knows he's supposed to be reclusive. He probably doesn't want to be recognized, and no one apart from us seems to have worked out who he is. He's practically on his own." She threw a scornful look round the inebriated crowd. "Anyway, this gang wouldn't notice if the queen came and mooned them."
Mark cleared his throat and tried to look sober. "At least his girlfriends look good." He screwed up his eyes again. They were very glamorous, those two girls sitting next to the alleged star. They wore suits—surprisingly similar suits; perhaps they were twins—that showed a lot—a lot—of cleavage. The type of thing Rosie would look good in. If, Mark's lips twisted, she could ever be bothered.
"Whaddya mean, girlfriends? There's only one of them."
Mark tried hard to focus. The two women gradually fused into one. One who looked, for some reason, familiar. It was difficult to see her face, what with her hair dangling everywhere and the flickering candlelight, but something about that mass of blond hair and the line of her cheek reminded him of…Rosie? Hang on a minute…
"Thatsh not hish bloody glamorosh girlfriend. Thatsh mine."
The girl looked at him with respect for the first time.
This breakthrough went unnoticed by Mark, the inside of whose head was tossing with an explosive mixture of champagne and jealousy. "Oy!" he yelled, lumbering over like an angry bull whose motor skills and sense of direction weren't everything they could be. "You lot." There seemed to be four people now. Two sets of identical twins.
Hearing something loud coming her way, Rosie looked up sharply. Relief shuddered through her when she saw Mark, albeit in a costume from the further side of fancy-dress common sense. "My boyfriend," she said to Kevin, and scrambled to her feet. "Mark!" she gasped. "Darling! I've been so worried about you, disappearing like that. I was frantic. Where have you been?"
Mark reeled as the blood came to a boil in his head. She had the bloody cheek to ask him where he'd been? When here she was, practically in flagrante with a bloody pop star? A man whose riches and success were beyond Mark's wildest dreams? Even if said superstar did look like a builder's laborer, Mark knew he looked nowhere near as ridiculous as he did himself.
The loss of the column had had a worse effect on Mark than Rosie had feared. He looked more than agitated. Ferocious, even. And drunk, quite possibly. "I'm so sorry about 'Green-er Pastures,'" she whispered, touching Mark's arm and, in doing so, setting light to the blue match tip of his fury.
Vicious with drink and jealousy, he exploded. "Shorry?" he bellowed. "You don't look like you're bloody shorry."
Definitely drunk, Rosie thought. Drunker than she had ever seen him, in fact. This was no time to row about why he hadn't left a note. Aware of Kevin watching closely, she took both Mark's hands, hoping the gesture would bring him to his senses. "To be honest, I'm not all that sorry," she said, intending to launch into a speech about there being more important things in life than by-lines. "I'm glad—"
At this, Mark erupted spectacularly for the second time. "Glad?" he screamed, ripping his hands out of her grasp. "Glad, are you? Glad! Yes, you look pretty bloody happy. Sitting there with your tongue down his bloody throat"—he stabbed a finger angrily in Kevin's direction—"while I sweat down to London and grovel to save my bloody job."
Rosie felt as if a bucket of icy water had been flung into her face. "What?" Tongue? Was Mark joking? She looked incredulously into his red-veined and furious stare and concluded swiftly that he wasn't.
"We were just talking—"
"Talking?" yelled Mark. "Ugandan bloody dish cushions, more like. All that shtuff about never knowing who anybody bloody famoush is when you can shpot a shelebrity in dishguise at fifty paces. Even if"—Mark looked contemptuously at Kevin—"he looksh like a fucking tramp."
"Thanks a lot," muttered Kevin.
Rosie reeled backward. Had Mark gone mad? Had he lost his mind as well as his column?
"Shelebrity—I mean, celebrity?" She looked down at Kevin and then incredulously back at Mark. "But he's not anyone famous. He's Kevin."
Kevin? Mark felt as if his head was about to blow off with fury.
"Kevin?" he roared. "Just how shtupid do you think I am? Thatsh Matt Locke there. And you know bloody well it ish."
Rosie's face went white with shock. Or guilt, thought Mark savagely. She looked in horror at Kevin, who gave her a strained and apologetic smile.
"Guilty as charged," he muttered.
"But I didn't know, I mean, I had no idea…" Rosie looked desperately at Mark. "And in any case, I wasn't—"
"Oh, no. Thatsh why you've got your bloody titsh out." Mark stabbed his finger violently into Rosie's sternum.
At this, Kevin/Matt got swiftly to his feet.
Despite the fact that a red mist consumed his peripheral vision, Mark was aware that a small crowd had gathered behind him. Boiling with violence, he itched to hit something; glaring at Rosie, he started to raise his hand.
"Nice boyfriend," he heard Matt Locke drawl a nanosecond before a hard and accurately aimed punch landed with devastating force on his nose. As Mark crashed to the ground, Rosie screamed and buried her face in her hands. "One, two, three," yelled the crowd, cheering as if they were at a boxing match.
Rosie peered through her fingers at where Mark lay out cold in the sand among the cigarette butts. One of his feet twitched. He was alive, at least, unless that was rigor mortis.
"You hit him!" she shrieked at Matt.
"Yes."
"How could you?"
"He'll come round in a minute," Matt said lightly. "More's the pity."
A few seconds later the crowd had dispersed. A rival attraction had appeared at the other side of the tent. Samantha, eyes blazing like fireworks, was chasing a dripping and terrified-looki
ng Guy through the party.
"Heavens," Johnny murmured to Larry as they headed toward the action. "I thought I'd seen all the violence I wanted in The Godfather. But it's got nothing on this."
"Didn't realize you were in The Godfather," said Larry jealously.
"I wasn't," confessed Johnny. "But I've seen it."
As she pursued her husband round the marquee, Samantha pushed all obstacles out of her way, heedless of the fact that they were Sholto's cherished handiwork and had cost a fortune. Petal-strewn mosaic miniature fountains, decorative tables, ornate vases, tasseled cushions, and inlaid mirrors all crashed, broke, or scattered in her wake. When, shrieking in fury, Samantha demolished a lanterndraped bower in its entirety, the crowd whooped.
"Mare's going very well," Johnny said to Larry. "Gaining on the stallion all the time. Oops, nearly fell at the water jump there," he added as Guy narrowly missed stumbling over the rose-petal-strewn fountain now strewn all over the floor. "I must say, I don't fancy his chances much."
"Don't fancy his anything much," Larry said, smirking, as Guy charged past, his red face purple with strain, drops of water flying from his dripping suit. "Someone else clearly does however. Apparently our divine hostess just caught him in the bathroom shagging one of the waitresses. Tried to drown him in the bidet, I hear, but he got away."
As the flames from the lanterns crashing in Samantha's wake began to lick at the marquees silken edges, Sholto sank his head into his hands.
"Escaped, did he?" said Johnny approvingly. "Good for him. What's that burning smell, by the way?"
The next moment there was a universal wail as Guy, glancing fatally back over his shoulder at Samantha, failed to see the stuffed sheep lurking at knee level and tripped violently over it. Seconds later, Samantha had grabbed Guy triumphantly by the collar and dragged him to his knees. Now firmly in Colosseum mood, the crowd cheered hysterically. "Jugular, jugular," yelped Johnny.
"I hope," Larry said heavily, "that you aren't going to try to convince me you were in Gladiator."
Yet, even as Samantha stood over him like Russell Crowe about to strike the death blow, Guy's attention seemed to be elsewhere. There was a gasp from the ring of spectators as, with what sounded like a howl of delight, he struggled to his feet and hurled himself at a young girl in a yashmak and a sequined bra several sizes too big for her.
"Heavens," murmured Larry. "Some people never learn, do they?"
"Daddy!" gasped Iseult.
"Darling!" croaked Guy.
"Bastard," hissed Samantha.
"Christ," said Matt Locke.
***
She had drunk far too much, Rosie realized the next day as she cautiously opened one eye. The light poured through the window with agonizing brilliance, albeit from a sky as gray as old underwear.
As Rosie yawned, the air stuck like Velcro to the furry insides of her mouth. Her brain felt tight and a migraine was skewering her right pupil. Everything seemed unusually blurred and out of focus; Rosie remembered her contact lenses were currently stuck to a saucer by the bed under a skin of soaking solution. By the time she'd finally gotten home, snapping them carefully into their container had seemed as out of the question as brushing her teeth.
The lumps in the mattress pressed into her back. She turned over and buried her face in the pillow, knowing, even as she did so, that it was a bad move. The churning sickness in her stomach instantly doubled in intensity; the ache in her throat got steadily worse. It seemed impossible; she felt too sick to be sick, but by the time the saliva had started to ache in the back of her throat it was clear that the game was up. Realizing she'd passed the point of no return, Rosie threw back the duvet and made a dash for the bathroom.
"Oh my God," she groaned. Facedown on the bathroom floor, she stared fixedly at the flotsam and jetsam—hairpins, shreds of loo paper, dust, earplugs—gathered beneath the lavatory pipe. The fragile networks of dirt balanced on fine frameworks of hair, disturbingly in colors belonging neither to her nor to Mark, loomed at her with the dread hyperreality of a truly vile hangover.
It was the earplug that brought what she was trying to avoid thinking about crashing into her consciousness. As the situation with the column had gotten increasingly worse, Mark had taken to shoving earplugs in his ears so that nothing—not even the Muzzles—could come between him and his muse. Mark. Uggghh.
Finally, Rosie retched.
Last night. The party. Matt. She placed her arms around the lavatory bowl and heaved again. There had been little else to do in the end but leave Mark lying in the marquee. He looked comfortable enough, once she had pressed the Eight Mile Bottom Amateur Dramatic Society into helping her move him onto a pile of cushions.
"Reminds me of Spartacus," one of them had remarked, looking down admiringly as Mark slumped, bare-chested, over the cushions in the candlelight.
"You definitely weren't in Spartacus," snapped another.
"I'm not saying I was. But it does remind me of it."
Mark had not, Rosie now realized, come home. The cottage was utterly silent; she had slept in their bed alone. Feeling nausea rise up again, Rosie resisted thinking about any of the previous night's events. She felt too ill to make sense of it, if sense there was to be made. Yet, like a rearing horse fighting the bridle, her thoughts pulled violently in the direction she did not want to go.
Mark had been more drunk last night than she had ever seen him, but even if it had been the champagne talking, the champagne had made some unforgivable remarks. The relationship was over. He had blown his last chance. She had put up with enough. More than enough.
Funny how flat she felt, having finally accepted what had probably long been inevitable. Shaky, yes, but that was mostly the hangover. Resigned, really. Calm, almost. As dull and leaden as the skies outside the window. The pain seemed more in her head than her heart. But perhaps it had not sunk in yet.
As a riptide of agony hit the front of her cranium, she groaned faintly. It was now so obvious what a fool she had been. Occasionally irritated, yes, but essentially blind to Mark's flaws, she had been crushed into submission by his powerful personal PR machine—the one that assured her she was living with a genius who must be deferred to in all things. Until last night, that was. Even Mark's good looks—always, if she were honest, the most attractive thing about him—had lost their power. He had looked less than godlike, snarling and spitting at her with drunken fury. He'd looked fatter too. Florid, bloodshot, puffy with alcohol and hate. Ironic how coming to live in the country had made him look far more like a hack than he ever had in the city.
She might at present be blundering in a myopic blur, but the scales had well and truly fallen from her eyes. What a waste of time he had been. And to think she had turned down Jack in order to endure last night's humiliation…
At the sound of the telephone ringing downstairs, Rosie raised herself off the bathroom floor slightly, then slumped back down, head swimming. It was hardly likely to be Jack. Even at the height, such as it had been, of his wooing her, he had never called for fear Mark might answer. It was Bella, more probably. Wanting the lowdown on last night's party. Well, she felt low and Mark had been knocked down. That was all there was to it. End of story. As well as everything else.
But was it? One thought flashed repeatedly at the front of her brain like the beam of a lighthouse. Could she go up to Spitewinter and ask Jack if he still wanted her? Dare she? From the longing way he had looked at her on her way to the party, there seemed no doubt as to what the answer would be. Not yet though. If ever. Rosie forced the thought, along with her feelings of nausea, determinedly down and went to make a cup of tea.
Among the clanging and seething in her brain, she discerned the familiar screech of tires.
"Well," said Duffy, striding into the kitchen. "You survived, then." As he drew out a chair, the noise of the legs on the concrete floor scraped down Rosie's brain. Still not tiled, she thought, looking down at it. To think of the plans she and Mark had once had for
the cottage.
She swallowed hard, her head bent over the sink as she filled the kettle to disguise the sudden tears.
"Sounds like the blooming First World War to me, that party does," chirped Duffy. "Fancy Matt Locke smacking your chap on the nose like that."
Matt Locke. There had been all that business as well. Yet the additional embarrassment of having not recognized an internationally famous pop star, despite having spent much of the evening talking to him, hardly seemed to matter now. A mere detail, compared to last night's wholesale destruction of the rest of her life. Even so, Rosie's fists clenched slightly at the thought of Matt Locke. If it hadn't been for him, none of it would have happened. She would have found someone else to talk to, he wouldn't have hit Mark…
"Gone to the hospital, has he?" Duffy asked, darting a swift glance around the kitchen.
