Sheer Mischief

by Jill Mansell

  “Nobody else does,” Maxine retorted sulkily. “I don’t see why I should have to be the one who makes all the allowances around here.”

  “You aren’t the only one,” he countered, his tone brisk. “I’ve answered the phone three times this evening, haven’t I? And I’m passing on the message, even though I don’t approve of what you’re up to.”

  “What I’m up to?” She looked astonished. “Tell me, what am I up to?”

  “Oh, come on,” Guy drawled. “It isn’t too difficult to figure out. Bruno, I presume, is Bruno Parry-Brent. I might not know him that well, but I’ve heard enough to know what he’s like. And now he’s panting down the phone after you. Or as near as damn it.”

  “It’s none of your business why he’s ringing up,” Maxine countered furiously.

  “Of course it isn’t. I just thought you might have had a bit more sense than to get involved with a married man. He’s hardly ringing up to check table reservations, is he?”

  “He isn’t married,” hissed Maxine. This was ridiculous; now she sounded like Janey. “And I’m not involved with him! I don’t even like the man.”

  “Oh please.” At this, Guy rolled his eyes. “If they’re male, you like them. If they’re female, Bruno likes them. Let’s face it Maxine, the two of you are a perfectly matched pair.”

  • • •

  “Come out with me tomorrow night,” said Bruno.

  “No, I don’t want to go out with you tomorrow night.” Maxine, who had deliberately waited until Guy was in the room before returning Bruno’s call, spoke the words slowly and clearly. For good measure she added, “Or any other night. Bruno, I’ve told you before—I’m just not interested.”

  “I know.” He sounded amused. “But I am. And the harder to get you play, the more interested I become.”

  Maxine shot a triumphant glance at Guy, who was reading the paper and eating the children’s raisin cookies. “The answer’s still no.”

  Guy, apparently engrossed in his horoscope, didn’t react.

  At the other end of the line, Bruno laughed. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the saintly act doesn’t suit you? Come on now. You owe me one night out at least. Have you any idea how much it cost me to get the nail varnish cleaned off that car seat?”

  “Serves you right,” said Maxine briskly. “And no, I don’t owe you anything. If you’re so determined to go out tomorrow night, I suggest you take Nina.”

  Guy ate another raisin cookie.

  “She’s gone to stay with her sister in Kent.”

  Maxine almost blurted out: “Take Janey, then, instead,” though why she should bother to protect her gullible sister’s reputation from Guy she didn’t know. Instead, she said smoothly, “Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone else to keep you company.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Bruno replied good-naturedly. “It’s just that you were my first choice.”

  “What a shame you aren’t mine,” Maxine retorted. “Goodbye.”

  When she hung up, Guy lifted his head from the paper. Returning his gaze with pride, Maxine said, “There.”

  “Totally believable,” he remarked drily, shaking the last raisin cookie out of the box. “The best piece of acting I’ve seen in years.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sunday mornings were funny creatures, Thea decided. Waking up alone on a Sunday morning, as far as she was concerned, was downright depressing. In the first months after the breakup of her marriage, she had spent each week dreading those few hideous hours above all others. Solitary Sunday mornings, like solitary Christmases, were the absolute pits.

  And then there were the other kind…

  “What are you thinking?” asked Oliver, leaning across and brushing a croissant flake from her cleavage.

  Thea smiled at him. “That there really isn’t anything more wonderful than lying in bed on a Sunday with fresh croissants, lots of newspapers, and a superb lover.”

  “Does that mean I trail in third?” he protested. “Behind food and the Times?”

  “No.” As she kissed his cheek, the newspapers crackled between them. “They’re nice, but they aren’t crucial. Having you here is what makes it so wonderful.” Her smile widening, she pushed back her long, white hair. “And, of course, there is the even more wonderful added bonus…”

  Oliver smirked. “That I’m a superb lover.”

  “Actually,” said Thea, “it’s that you’re so good at crosswords.” She chuckled in delight. It was the most gorgeous day, but she didn’t even want to venture outside. Oliver was here with her, and that was all that mattered.

  Oliver, however, was still hungry. “If we’d stayed at the hotel, we could have called room service,” he grumbled.

  Remembering to buy the croissants and a jar of black cherry jam had stretched Thea to the domestic limits. Never having been the type to keep a fridge bursting with cold roasted chicken, smoked ham, good wine, and strawberries, she knew with certainty that the only items currently in occupation were three opened jars of mayonnaise in various stages of senility, a Body Shop eye mask for hangovers, and a mango. But what the hell, she decided comfortably. I’m an artist. I’m allowed to be a slob.

  “I don’t have any more food. We shall have to starve,” she told Oliver, lifting her face to his for another kiss. “There, you see? A prime example of why I must never marry you. I’m hopeless in the kitchen. Within weeks, you’d be a shadow of your handsome former self and screaming for a divorce.”

  “I would not!” He looked astonished. “We’d have a housekeeper.”

  “To cater to our every whim?” Thea mocked. “How exotic!”

  “I’m being serious. And meanwhile…” Picking up the phone beside the bed, he punched out the number of his hotel.

  “How marvelous,” Thea sighed when he had spoken to the restaurant manager and arranged for two three-course lunches to be sent over by taxi within the hour. “The power of the favored customers.”

  “The power of money.” Oliver dismissed it with a shrug. “It’s not such a big deal.”

  “It’s a big deal when it means you get to eat rack of lamb with fennel instead of dial-a-pizza,” Thea said happily. She might not cook, but she still adored exquisite food.

  “If you’re that easily impressed,” Oliver retorted, “I don’t know why you won’t marry me. Then you could eat whatever you liked, go wherever you liked…”

  As Thea sat up, the sheet dropped away, revealing her nakedness. Trailing the back of her hand across Oliver’s cheek, she felt the soft, bristly texture of his mustache against her skin. “Don’t be cross with me,” she chided, her tone gentle. “If I said yes, people would wonder if I’d married you for your money. I would wonder if I’d married you for your money! But this way it doesn’t matter, because I love you anyway. I’m already where I want to be, and I’m doing exactly what I want to do. As far as I’m concerned, this is as perfect as it gets.”

  • • •

  Oliver was in the shower when the doorbell rang. Thea, only vaguely decent in an embroidered black silk robe which showed off her splendid bosom, and with her long, white hair still hanging loose down her back, was padding barefoot around the kitchen in search of matching cutlery.

  As she headed for the front door, her stomach rumbled. Lobster mousse, rack of lamb, fresh fruit salad, and two bottles of Chardonnay were going to go down very well indeed. But three figures were silhouetted through the patterned glass, and none of them appeared to be carrying trays of sumptuous food.

  One outline was instantly recognizable; the other two were short. Thea groaned. It was too late to shrink back and pretend not to be at home. While she hesitated, she heard a young girl inquire in high-pitched tones, “So if she’s your mother, does that mean she’s really old?”

  “Ancient,” Maxine replied. “Over forty.”

 
Thea took a deep breath and opened the door. “But young at heart,” she declared, praying that Oliver wouldn’t choose this moment to break into song upstairs. “Darling, how lovely to see you, but you really should have phoned. I’m in a tearing hurry, about to go out…”

  “Just five minutes then.” Since it hadn’t for a moment occurred to Maxine that she might not be welcome, she was already halfway through the door, ushering her two small charges into the hallway ahead of her. “Mum, this is Ella, and this is Josh, and am I glad you’re home. We’ve walked all the way from Trezale House, and I forgot to bring any money with me. If you could lend me a fiver for cold drinks—”

  “I’ll go and find my purse,” said Thea, backing away. “Wait here.”

  “—and if Ella could just run upstairs and use the bathroom,” Maxine went on, scarcely pausing for breath. “She’s had her legs crossed for the last twenty minutes. It’s been painful to watch.”

  Damn, thought Thea, glancing down at the small blond girl whose knees were pressed tightly together. “Right, um…give me a couple of minutes first.”

  “Is that the shower?” Maxine, listening to the distant sound of running water, gave her mother an inquiring look. “Who’s upstairs?”

  “No one.” Thea gathered her black robe around her and moved toward the staircase. “I was just about to jump in. I’ll go and turn it off.”

  “Out,” she hissed moments later, grabbing Oliver’s soapy arm and dragging him out of the shower. “My daughter and your grandchildren are downstairs, waiting to use the loo. You’ll have to hide in the bedroom.”

  “Bloody hell!” Shampoo cascaded down his face and chest, half blinding him. Stubbing his toe against the edge of the door, he cursed once more beneath his breath as Thea pushed him, naked, onto the landing. “I knew we should have stayed at the hotel. How long are they here for?”

  “As long as it takes to pee.” Thea, stifling laughter, steered him toward the bedroom. “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of them. Stay in here. And whatever you do, don’t sneeze.”

  By the time she returned downstairs, Maxine and the children had moved into the front room. Maxine, glancing out of the window, said, “If you ordered a taxi to pick you up, it’s already here. Shall I go out and tell the driver he’ll have to wait?”

  “I’ll do it.” Thea hurried toward the door but the taxi driver was already out of the car, reaching into the back seat and sliding out a vast wicker hamper.

  “Can I go to the bathroom now?” cried Ella, frantic with need.

  “First left at the top of the stairs,” Maxine replied absently, her gaze still fixed on the driver as he struggled up the path with the hamper. “Mum, what’s going on? Have you adopted a puppy?”

  “I’ve invited someone to dinner.” Thea looked shamefaced. “He doesn’t know I can’t cook, and I wanted to make a good impression, so I ordered the food from a restaurant.”

  “Good heavens,” said Maxine, because Thea had never worried about making a good impression before. “I hope he’s worth it.”

  “Don’t worry.” Thea smiled to herself, because Oliver was worth millions. “He is.”

  • • •

  “Do you know, Maxine, your mother wasn’t telling the truth?” Josh remarked as they made their way back along the beach.

  Maxine licked a blob of chocolate ice cream from her wrist. “No?”

  “She hadn’t had a shower when we got there,” he continued seriously, “and her hair was dry. But when I went up after Ella, there were wet footprints all along the landing, and blobs of shampoo on the bathroom carpet.”

  “Gosh.” Maxine looked shocked. “You mean—?”

  Josh, who was deeply interested in becoming a detective when he grew up, nodded. “Somebody else was upstairs.”

  “I knew that,” Ella piped up, anxious not to be outdone. “I went into the wrong room by mistake and there was someone hiding under the duvet in a big bed.”

  Josh was a particular fan of Inspector Poirot. His expression serious, he said, “Were they dead?”

  “Well, I could hear breathing.”

  “That’s a relief, then,” said Maxine cheerfully. “At least he was alive.”

  Josh stared at her. “Why did you say ‘he’? How do you know it was a man?”

  She grinned. He wasn’t the only one to be intrigued. For the first time in her life, Thea was being secretive, and there had to be a particularly good reason why.

  “I don’t know,” she told Josh. “Lucky guess.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Janey, hampered by the tray of flowers in her arms, was about to push open the door of the restaurant with her bottom when it was done for her. She tried not to look too taken aback when she saw that it was Nina.

  “Oh…hi,” she said quickly, terrified that her voice sounded artificial. Nodding down at the tray, brimming with delphiniums, pinks, and snowy gypsophila, she added stupidly, “Just delivering the flowers.”

  “Bruno told me to expect you,” Nina replied. “One of the waitresses dropped twenty-eight dinner plates last night, so he’s gone out to get replacements.”

  She was wearing a long, droopy dress of pale-blue cheesecloth, several silver necklaces, and flat, hippyish sandals laced around the ankles with leather thongs. No matter how many times Janey had tried, she simply couldn’t envisage Bruno and Nina in bed together. She couldn’t even imagine them sharing the same laundry basket.

  “Heavens!” Putting the tray down, she wondered how quickly she could arrange the flowers and get away. “He must have been furious. He’ll be looking for a replacement waitress.”

  “It wasn’t her fault.” Nina, lighting a cigarette and sitting down to watch Janey at work, appeared unconcerned. “She was taking the stack of plates down from a high shelf in the kitchen and Bruno pinched her bum. She screamed and dropped the lot. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t a great deal he could say.”

  Here, thought Janey, was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. This was her chance to assuage her own conscience, to gain firsthand proof of the understanding shared by Nina and Bruno, to prove without a shadow of a doubt that what she was doing wasn’t wrong.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” she said, her tone ultracasual, her fingers trembling only slightly as she pushed cones of bottle-green oasis into each of the vases. “Bruno, I mean, flirting with other women?”

  Nina, looking amused, blew a perfect smoke ring. “By that I presume he’s been flirting with you.”

  “No…” Flustered, Janey felt the color rising in her cheeks. “Well, maybe a bit, but not me in particular.”

  “Of course not,” Nina replied mildly. “Just you and every other woman he sets eyes on. That’s Bruno’s way. I’m used to it by now…and it is only flirting, after all. Harmless enough stuff.”

  Janey felt her stomach begin to churn. What she and Bruno had been doing went way beyond a harmless flirtation. Was Nina bluffing, playing the part of the tolerant partner, or had Bruno been lying to them both? Not having the nerve to ask outright, however, she resorted to lies of her own.

  “My husband was the same,” she said, improvising rapidly, “but I found it harder to cope with than you do. I kept wondering if…well, if that was all it was.”

  “You thought he might be having an affair?” Nina looked interested. “And was he?”

  Despising herself, Janey shook her head. “I don’t know. If he was, he disappeared before I could find out.”

  “Of course.” Remembering, Nina nodded. The next moment she added unexpectedly, “But you only felt that way because you were jealous.”

  Janey looked up at her. “Aren’t you?”

  “I have no reason to be jealous.” Leaning forward, Nina stubbed out her cigarette. Clasping her hands together in her lap, she said simply, “I love Bruno. I trust him. And I know he would never be unfait
hful to me.”

  This was no bluff. Her calm belief in him was staggering. Feeling sicker by the minute, Janey said, “What would you do if he was?” Hastily she added, “In the future, I mean.”

  Nina gave the hypothetical question some thought. “I’d be devastated,” she said at last and smiled. “Goodness, it’s not something I’ve ever really considered. Bruno’s my whole life. It would mean he’d betrayed me and my love for him.” She paused, then said, “I could never forgive him for that.”

  Janey wanted to cry, because Bruno had betrayed them both and because her own newfound happiness had been nothing but a sham. She too had trusted him, had believed him when he told her he loved her. For the first time in almost two years, she had felt like a human being, experiencing emotions she’d thought she might never feel again.

  And it had all been an illusion, because Bruno didn’t have an understanding with Nina and had lied to them both in order to satisfy his own selfish craving for adulation and sex. Janey wondered how many other gullible woman had fallen into the same trap. Most of all, she hoped Nina would never find out.

  But ignorance was bliss, and while her own world crumbled around her, Nina’s train of thought was moving on to more relevant matters. Happily lighting up another cigarette and flicking back her long, straight hair, she settled herself more comfortably in her seat. “Come on, Janey, cheer up. No use dwelling on the past. You’re coming to Bruno’s party on Friday night, aren’t you?”

  Dumbly, Janey nodded. Her name was already on the guest list. She wouldn’t go, of course, but a last-minute excuse was easier than coming up with something plausible just now.

  “It’s going to be great fun,” said Nina with more enthusiasm than Janey had known she possessed. Then she sighed and added plaintively, “The trouble is, I haven’t a clue what to get him for his birthday. I’m hopeless at choosing presents. What do you think, Janey? Any ideas?”

  A monogrammed chastity belt, thought Janey. And a muzzle. Aloud, she said, “I don’t really know. How about aftershave?”