Sheer Mischief

by Jill Mansell

  “Maxine, listen to me.” Speaking without emotion, he leaned back in his chair and rested his clasped hands on the kitchen table. “By the time Josh and Ella are grown up, I will certainly be dead. If my doctor is to be believed, I’ll be dead by Christmas. I don’t believe him of course—he’s a notorious scaremonger—but I have to accept that there may be something in what he says. Maybe next year people can cross me off their Christmas card list, but not this year.” He paused, then shrugged. “Anyway, let’s not get maudlin. I’m only telling you this because I need you to understand why I’m so anxious to see my grandchildren again.” Fixing his steady gaze upon her, he added, “And why I need you to help me.”

  “Oh hell.” Maxine shook her head in despair. “Now I do wish you were a door-to-door salesman. Then I’d be able to say no.”

  • • •

  Josh and Ella were safely tucked up in bed by the time Bruno arrived at Trezale House. Since Maxine’s idea of a romantic dinner à deux was SpaghettiOs on toast, he had brought the ingredients for a decent meal with him. While he busied himself in the kitchen slicing onions and mushrooms for the stroganoff, she sat happily drinking lager and relaying to him the events of the afternoon.

  “Yeeeuck! What are you doing?” she screeched as Bruno, having listened in silence for a good ten minutes, abandoned washing the leeks in order to cup wet, cold hands over her ears.

  “Collecting the rest of your brain,” he explained carefully. “I thought maybe we should save it. These medical experts can do wonders nowadays… If you’re lucky, they might be able to slide some of it back in.”

  “Ha ha, very funny.” Unabashed, Maxine wriggled out of reach. “OK, so when Guy finds out he’ll have me hung, drawn, and quartered, but wouldn’t anyone else in my position have done the same?”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Standing back, gazing down at her with a mixture of amusement and disbelief, Bruno drawled, “You really are full of surprises, my angel. How can anyone so smart be so incredibly dumb? How could you—of all people—fall for a line like that?”

  “Like what?” The tiniest of frown lines bisected her eyebrows. Confusion registered in her dark-brown eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “And you told me Janey was the gullible one.” He couldn’t resist it. The fact that razor-sharp Maxine had a hitherto unsuspected weak spot was totally, blissfully endearing. She was, he thought with a triumphant grin, never going to live this down.

  “Oh come on,” she protested as realization finally dawned. “Bruno, no! That’s sick.”

  “Maxine, yes!” Mimicking her outraged tone, he stepped smartly back to avoid a kick on the shin. “Look, I might not have met the man, but you’ve already told me what he’s like. What did Guy say—his father was a ruthless businessman who’d stop at nothing to get what he wanted? If he wants to see his grandchildren and you’re telling him he can’t, then he’s going to have to come up with something spectacular to make you change your mind. What could be simpler than the old imminent-death routine? It might not be terribly original, but it usually does the trick. And it worked, didn’t it?” he concluded with a cheerful I-told-you-so grin. “My poor darling, you’d better dig out that bulletproof vest and superglue yourself into it. There’s no telling how Guy Cassidy’s going to react when he finds out what you’ve done this time.”

  “Oh shit!” wailed Maxine, appalled. What she’d done this time had undoubtedly cost her her job. Traveling with Oliver Cassidy in the unimaginable luxury of his silver-gray Rolls, she had longed to ask more questions about the illness which was soon to rob him of his life. But she hadn’t, for fear of appearing nosy and because it simply wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed with a virtual stranger. Instead they had talked about Josh and Ella; her soon-to-be-screened toilet-roll commercial; the wild beauty of the Cornish coastline; the stupid, sodding, totally uninteresting weather…

  Josh and Ella had been thrilled, of course, to see their grandfather waiting at the school gates. Maxine, quite choked by the poignancy of the situation, had almost been forced to blink back tears. How could anyone with even half a heart, she thought, possibly deny a dying man the chance of a last meeting with his only grandchildren? They had returned to Trezale House to spend four blissfully happy hours together. Oliver Cassidy had even professed to adore the fish fingers and SpaghettiOs she’d served up, although he hadn’t been able to eat a great deal of it. At the time, she had assumed his lack of appetite must be connected with the illness.

  And at eight o’clock in the evening, he had left. With heartbreaking innocence, Ella had cried, “Will we see you again soon, Grandpa?” and Maxine, a lump in her throat the size of an egg, had turned away. Josh, handling yet another fifty-pound note with due reverence, had said, “When I buy my computer, Grandpa, I’ll teach you to play Pokémon. If you practice long enough, you might even get as good as me.”

  “Maxine, how can I ever thank you?” Oliver Cassidy had smiled and rested his hand on her shoulder as she walked with him to the front door. Tilting his gray head, planting a brief, infinitely gentle kiss on her cheek, he added quietly, “You’re a very special girl, and I’m truly grateful. You’ll never know how much this afternoon has meant to me.”

  And the fact that Guy was bound to find out what had happened—because with the best will in the world, Ella was too young to keep a secret for anything exceeding fifteen seconds—didn’t bother Maxine in the least. She knew she’d done the right thing, and furthermore she was going to tell him about his father’s fatal illness. Surely, she thought as she stood on the step and watched Oliver Cassidy disappear down the drive in his Rolls, surely even Guy would be jolted into remorse when he learned the truth.

  “Oh shit,” said Maxine again as the irony of the situation struck her. For the last eight hours she had thought over and over again how desperately unfair it was that such a charming man should have to die. Now, riddled with self-doubt and the growing fear that maybe, after all, she had been conned in the most underhand manner possible, she found herself almost hoping he would. At least then, she thought fretfully, she’d be proved right.

  • • •

  On the way to school a week later, Maxine—hardly daring to raise the subject for fear of breaking some miraculous spell—turned to Josh and Ella and said in ultracasual tones, “You didn’t tell your dad about your grandfather’s visit, did you?”

  It was a statement rather than a question. Maxine knew they couldn’t have told him. She was still alive.

  Behind her, Ella promptly erupted into fits of giggles. Josh, in the passenger seat, looked immensely proud. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a secret.”

  “Oh come on, you can tell me,” said Maxine.

  Emma mimed zipping her mouth shut. “We can’t tell anybody. It’s an even bigger secret than the one about you smashing Daddy’s car into the gatepost.”

  “Look, I’m glad it’s a big secret,” Maxine explained patiently. “But I should be in on it. I was there, wasn’t I?”

  Josh considered this argument for a moment. After exchanging glances with Ella, he said earnestly, “OK, but you mustn’t tell anyone else. Swear you won’t, Maxine.”

  “Bum,” said Maxine, and Ella giggled again. It was her favorite word.

  “Grandpa said it had to be a secret,” Josh explained, “because if we ever told anyone else, you’d get the sack and we’d never see you again for the rest of our lives.”

  “Oh.” Overcome with emotion, Maxine’s eyes abruptly filled with tears. Thankfully, they had by this time reached the school, so she didn’t risk killing them all.

  “Well, it’s nice to be appreciated,” she said gruffly, curbing the urge to fling her arms around them and smother them in noisy kisses. If she did that in front of their school friends, Josh would certainly die of shame. She cleared her throat instead an
d attempted to turn the situation into a joke. “So that must mean you like me a little bit, then?”

  “I do,” Ella declared lovingly. “And Josh was glad too.”

  Maxine smiled. “Was he, sweetheart?”

  “Ella,” Josh murmured, his expression furtive.

  But the sheer relief of having finally been allowed to break the silence proved too much for Ella. Having extricated herself from her safety belt, she climbed forward between the front seats and adopted a noisy stage whisper. “Because Grandpa gave us extra money for not saying anything,” she confided, blue eyes shining. “Lots of money you didn’t even know about, but if we told the secret to anyone…except you, now…we’d have to give it all back.”

  “Oh.” So much for thinking she’d been the one they couldn’t bear to lose, thought Maxine. Mercenary little sods.

  “Josh is going to buy a computer.” Ella’s nose wrinkled in evident disgust. “Ugh, computers are stupid. I don’t want one!”

  “That’s because you’re a girl,” he sneered. “You want a stupid horse.”

  Ella pushed him, then turned to Maxine, her smile angelic. “A real, live horse,” she said happily. “Called Bum.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Janey, lying in the bath, told herself she was being stupid. She was a mature adult, after all, not a child for whom a birthday was a real landmark. The importance of birthdays worked according to a sliding scale; as you grew older, their significance decreased. Heavens, it was almost fashionable to forget your own birthday…

  It was downright depressing, on the other hand, if everyone else forgot it too.

  But she had dug herself into a hole from which, it now seemed, there was no face-saving escape, because her birthday was tomorrow and to mention it casually in passing at this late stage would be too humiliating for words. The trouble was, Janey thought with a pang of regret, she hadn’t bothered earlier because she’d stupidly assumed everyone else would remember.

  She was still in the bath when the telephone rang. Seconds later, Alan opened the bathroom door. “Phone, sweetheart. It’s Maxine.”

  Superstition told Janey that if she climbed out of the water and went to answer it, Maxine wouldn’t have remembered her birthday. If she stayed where she was, on the other hand, it might suddenly click.

  “Ask her what she wants.” Slowly and deliberately she began to soap her shoulders. “Take a message, or say I’ll call back.”

  He reappeared after a couple of minutes. “She asked if you could babysit tomorrow evening. Guy had already said she could take a couple of days off, and she and Bruno have arranged to go up to London,” he recited. “But now Guy has to be somewhere tomorrow night, so he wonders if you wouldn’t mind doing the honors. He says he’ll definitely be home by midnight.”

  So much for superstition. Wearily, Janey nodded. “OK. I’ll call her back in a minute.”

  “No need.” He sounded pleased with himself. “I’ve already told her you’ll do it. She says can you be there by seven thirty.”

  Janey stared at him. “Well, thanks.”

  “What?” Alan looked surprised. “I knew you’d say yes. All I did was say it for you. Why, have you made other plans?”

  “No.” She closed her eyes. “No other plans.”

  “There you are then,” he chided, tickling the soles of her feet. “Grumpy.”

  Janey forced herself to smile. It was only a birthday after all. Not such a big deal.

  “How about you? Are you doing anything tomorrow night?”

  “Well, I was planning a quiet romantic evening at home with my gorgeous wife.” He rolled his eyes in soulful fashion. “Just the two of us—”

  “You could always come and help me babysit.”

  “—but since you won’t be here,” Alan concluded cheerfully, “I may as well meet the lads for a drink at the surf club.”

  • • •

  Janey, curled up on the sofa with a can of lager and a packet of Maltesers, was so engrossed in the book she was reading she didn’t even hear the car pull up outside. When Guy opened the sitting-room door she jumped a mile, scattering Maltesers in all directions.

  “Sorry.” He grinned and bent to help her pick them up. “So which is scariest, me or the book?”

  “You said you’d be back at midnight.” Still breathless, Janey glanced up at the clock. “It’s only half past nine. Oh no,” she said accusingly, “you haven’t walked out on her again. Tell me you didn’t dump her at the hotel…”

  When Charlotte had phoned Guy the night before and begged him to partner her at the firm’s annual dinner, he had made strenuous efforts to get out of it. But Charlotte had been truly desperate. Everyone else was taking someone, she explained, evidently frantic, and she’d been let down at the last minute by her own partner, who’d thoughtlessly contracted salmonella poisoning. “Oh please, Guy. I can’t possibly go on my own,” she had wailed down the phone at him. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to sleep with me. I know it’s over between us. But just this one last favor? Pleeease?”

  He hadn’t had the heart to refuse. But fate—for the first time in what seemed like years—appeared to be on his side. Within minutes of arriving at the hotel, Charlotte had disappeared to the loo. Finally emerging half an hour later, pale and obviously unwell, she clung to Guy’s arm and groaned pitifully, “Oh God, I think I’m going to have to go home. Tonight of all nights as well. Bloody chicken biryani. Sodding salmonella.”

  Guy, hiding his relief, had said goodbye to all the people he hadn’t even had time to be introduced to, helped Charlotte out to the car, and driven her home. Mortified at the prospect of throwing up in front of him, she had vehemently refused his offer to stay for a while and make sure she was all right. Food poisoning was a singularly unglamorous illness, and all she wanted was to be left alone.

  “Oh, poor Charlotte!” Janey tried hard not to laugh at the expression on Guy’s face. “She doesn’t have much luck, does she?”

  “Every cloud,” he replied with an unrepentant grin. “I didn’t even have to give her a good-night kiss.”

  Janey looked at her watch; it was still only twenty to ten. Now that Guy was here, she supposed she could go home too. But Alan wouldn’t be there, and the prospect of sitting alone in the flat on her birthday was infinitely depressing.

  Sensing her hesitation, Guy said, “Do you have to get back straightaway?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Good. I’ll open a bottle.”

  When he had finished pouring the wine, he picked up the paperback Janey had been so wrapped up in. “Hmm, so I was right. No wonder you nearly jumped out of your skin, reading horror stories like this.”

  She laughed. “I found it buried under a pile of comics in your downstairs loo. You should give it a try; it’s actually very well written. I was really enjoying it.”

  “As if Mimi didn’t have enough fans.” With a shudder, he dropped the book into her open handbag. “Take it home with you. She always sends me a copy of her latest bestseller, though God knows why. The covers alone are enough to give me a headache.”

  “You’re such a chauvinist,” said Janey cheerfully. “I like them.”

  “You shouldn’t need them.” Guy’s expression was severe. “Alan’s back. You’ve got your own happy ending now.”

  Janey fiddled with a loose thread on the sleeve of her pastel-pink cotton sweater. “Mmm.”

  Guy decided to chance it. Very casually he said, “Although I suppose it can’t be easy. Two years is a long time. Getting used to living together again must take a while.”

  She hadn’t breathed so much as a word to anyone about the difficulties they’d been having. She’d barely been able to admit them to herself, Janey realized. But there were only so many excuses you could make on someone else’s behalf. Alan was charming, funny, and affectionate. But the flip side was
beginning to get to her. Despite having been back for over a month now, he had made no real effort to find work. The amounts of money he borrowed from her in order to “tide him over” were only small, but with no way of repaying them they soon mounted up. Janey, watching her own bank balance dwindle, was at the same time having to spend twice as much as usual on groceries, while Alan appeared to spend his money buying drinks for all his old friends down at the surf club.

  “No, it isn’t easy.” Janey attempted to sound matter of fact about it. There was no way in the world she would admit the true extent of her problems to Guy, but she was tired of pretending everything was perfect.

  “I expect it’s me,” she went on, taking fast, jerky sips of wine. “When you’ve lived alone for a while, you become selfish. It’s always the silly things, isn’t it? Like suddenly having to make sure there’s food in the house, remembering not to use all the hot water, the toilet seat always being up when you want it down.”

  “Tell me about it,” Guy raised an eyebrow. “I share my home with Maxine. She might not leave the toilet seat up, but she drives me insane. You can’t move in that bathroom for cans of industrial-strength hair spray. At the last count there were eleven different bottles of shampoo up there, and she leaves great blobs of hair mousse all over the carpet.” He shook his head in despair. “It’s like walking through a field of puffball mushrooms.”

  “Why do you suppose I sent her up here to work for you?” Janey laughed. “I’ve been through that mushroom field. I was desperate.”

  She was starting to relax. Even more casually, Guy said, “But at least Maxine and I aren’t married.”

  Janey looked uncomfortable. “No.”

  “Look.” Taking a deep breath, he decided to risk it. “I’m on your side, Janey. Maybe this is none of my business, but I can’t help feeling there’s more to it than hot water and toilet seats. Alan was away for two years. You’ve both changed. There are bound to be problems. Just because he’s come back, you aren’t automatically obliged to be happy.” He paused for a second, his eyes serious. “These things don’t always work out. There’s no shame in that. Nobody would blame you.”