Kiss

by Jill Mansell

  ‘What?’ Sam straightened and turned to face Gina, who had spoken the words in a tone that was almost nonchalant. ‘She was here yesterday.’

  ‘She doesn’t live here any more,’ repeated Gina with a shrug.

  Sam was frowning. Vivienne, hearing the click of the front gate, peered through the dining-room window and said, ‘Well it doesn’t matter, because she’s here now. Quick, Sam - plug it in and make it do something intelligent!’

  ‘Don’t plug it in.’ As Katerina’s key turned in the door, Gina’s gaze flickered momentarily towards the fireplace. Hurling her wedding ring into it earlier had given her enormous pleasure. Emptying the contents of Katerina’s carefully annotated A level files on top of it and watching the whole lot go up in flames had been even better.

  ‘So tell me,’ she enquired evenly as Katerina entered the room, ‘how long have you been screwing my husband?’

  Katerina froze. Simon, who was one step behind her, almost fell over.

  Shit, I don’t believe this, thought Sam.

  ‘Tell me,’ Gina repeated with mechanical slowness, ‘how long you’ve been . . . sleeping with him.’

  Oh God. Katerina, clinging to the door handle for support, met the steely grey gaze and experienced a surge of nausea. She hadn’t wanted this to happen. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Gina. She didn’t want anyone to be hurt . . .

  But it had happened and there was no escape. Gina knew. The game was up. She wished she didn’t feel so sick.

  ‘Not long,’ she replied in a voice that was barely audible. ‘A few weeks, that’s all. Gina, I’m so sorry—’

  ‘You aren’t sorry. You’re a lying bitch,’ hissed Gina, her grey eyes narrow with hatred. ‘A lying, hypocritical, back-stabbing bitch.’

  Katerina looked as if she was about to pass out. Since Simon was clearly not planning on being any use at all, Vivienne rushed forward and caught her, putting her arm around Katerina’s thin waist and guiding her into the nearest chair. Shocked by Gina’s venomous outburst, astounded and inwardly enthralled by the revelation, Vivienne was having to make a lightning reappraisal of Izzy’s daughter. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ she murmured sympathetically. The poor kid was evidently no match for Gina at full throttle, for the moment at least. She needed someone on her side.

  ‘I still can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Sam. Since he knew Katerina rather better than Vivienne, he was even more stunned. Instinctively, however, he moved towards Gina, who had just been through the worst six months of her life and who was now being delivered yet another body blow. Andrew and Katerina, for heaven’s sake.

  Simon, who had been looking forward to Le Gavroche all day, and who had been forced by his mother into wearing his father’s best tweed jacket for the occasion, jumped a mile as the front door swung open and shut once more. The next moment he broke into a sweat; Izzy had brought Tash Janssen back with her. Oh God, oh God . . .

  ‘Goodness!’ Izzy exclaimed, surveying the frozen tableau before her. ‘Hasn’t it gone quiet all of a sudden!’ Grinning at Vivienne and pointedly ignoring Sam, she went on cheerfully, ‘You must have been talking about me.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ It came out as an agonised croak. The expression on Izzy’s face changed and in a flash she was at Katerina’s side.

  ‘Sweetheart, your exam! Was it awful? It couldn’t have been that awful, you’ve worked so hard for it . . .’

  ‘Your daughter isn’t upset about her exams,’ Gina cut in icily. ‘She’s upset because I’ve found out about her sordid affair with my husband.’

  Katerina was clinging to Izzy. Sam placed his hand on Gina’s arm. From his position in the doorway, Tash let out a low whistle. This was interesting.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Izzy frowned, her gaze shifting enquiringly from Gina to Vivienne. Was Gina having some kind of breakdown? And if so, why was everyone simply allowing it to happen? How could they stand there and let her hurl accusations at poor Kat when they were so patently untrue?

  But everyone was letting it happen. And Vivienne, her customary smile now absent, was nodding at her as if silently to confirm that what Gina had said was correct. With mounting unease, Izzy said, ‘Come on! Is this some kind of joke? Kat doesn’t even know Andrew.’

  ‘Oh, she knows him all right.’ Gina, shaking slightly, wished someone would pour her a drink. ‘She knows him in every sense of the word. Apparently, they’re in love with each other, and just as soon as he manages to dump Marcy, Katerina’s going to be moving in with him. It’s all terribly romantic . . .’

  Izzy gripped Katerina’s hands. Slowly, evenly, she demanded, ‘Is this true?’

  ‘No.’ Katerina shook her head, pleading with her to understand. Her voice broke as she went on, ‘Well, not all of it. I’m not seeing him any more. It’s over, now.’

  ‘But you have had an affair with him?’ Izzy had to make sure she’d got it absolutely right. ‘With Andrew Lawrence?’

  The picture of misery, Katerina nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Sam was prepared for almost anything, except what happened next. The slap resounded through the air and Katerina’s head jerked backwards, the imprint of Izzy’s hand white on her cheek. Even Gina looked appalled.

  ‘How could you have done it?’ Izzy shrieked, oblivious now to their audience. Her dark eyes were ablaze, her whole body rigid with fury. ‘You stupid, callous, cheating little bitch!’

  Before she could slap her again, Sam intervened. Izzy, it seemed, had sailed through the last seventeen years without ever having had to deal with the problems traditionally associated with motherhood. Now, however, shocked and appalled by her daughter’s lapse - and by the evidence that she was not, after all, perfect - she was unable to control herself.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, drawing her away as Katerina burst into tears and Vivienne attempted to comfort her. It occurred to him that Izzy’s reaction was a touch hypocritical, anyway. She wasn’t exactly the greatest example in the world for any daughter to follow.

  ‘It is not OK!’ yelled Izzy, struggling without success to get free and close to tears herself. ‘It’s disgusting! We live in this house,’ she went on, turning to face Katerina once more and almost choking on the words, ‘and you’ve abused that privilege in the worst way possible. You’re nothing but a shameless slut. Oh God . . . I’m so ashamed of you . . .’

  In the throes of her misery, Katerina had nevertheless assumed that the one person in the world who would understand her situation, and who would automatically defend her, was her mother. As she had supported Izzy through years of unconventional living, subterfuge and chaos, so she had expected comfort and understanding in return. But that hadn’t happened. Izzy had let her down. Even more unbelievably, for the first time in her entire life, she had slapped her.

  ‘I’m not a slut,’ she shouted back, her long hair swinging as she jumped to her feet. ‘You’re the one who sleeps with drug-crazed rock stars, for God’s sake. If anyone’s a slut, it’s you!’

  Tash, both amused and faintly bemused by the goings-on, had seconds earlier been thinking he could use a joint right now. At this, he raised one eyebrow and smiled, earning himself a look of undiluted disgust from Sam.

  ‘How dare you lecture me on my morals?’ Katerina’s fists were clenched with fury at her sides as she continued her tirade. ‘You’ve never even behaved like a proper mother! Real mothers listen to their children and look after them. They have real homes. Sometimes they even have husbands. Why couldn’t I have a mother like that?’ she wailed, dimly aware that she had gone too far, but unable to take it back now. ‘Why did I have to get you?’

  The appalled silence which greeted this final, terrible insult was broken by the drainlike rumbling of Simon’s empty stomach. Utterly mortified, he hung his head and mumbled, ‘Sorry.’ Tash, standing beside him, was once again unable to disguise his amusement.

  ‘You aren’t the one who needs to apologise.’ Izzy, still shell-shocked, turned to Simon. ‘Oh, you poor boy . . . how coul
d Katerina have done this to you? It must be so terrible for you, finding out like this . . .’

  Oh God, oh God. Abruptly, Simon found himself embroiled in the very centre of the deception. Crimson-cheeked, he tried to look cheated-on, but Katerina soon put paid to that.

  ‘Let’s get everything straight, shall we? Simon is not - and never has been - my boyfriend.’ Then, because it didn’t matter any more, she added with an air of careless triumph, ‘Although he has, of course, been a great alibi.’

  Within the space of two seconds flat, poor cuckolded Simon became in-on-it-all-along Simon, partner in deception and now public enemy number two. The expressions on the faces of Izzy and Gina said it all.

  Sam, who had known Andrew Lawrence longer than anybody else in the room, wondered what the hell Andrew had thought he was doing. Separated from his wife, currently in the process of dumping his pregnant girlfriend and now involved in an affair with a hopelessly inexperienced teenager. It was sheer madness . . .

  Meanwhile, however, somebody had to do something before Izzy and Kat came to real blows. Taking his car keys from his pocket, he said, ‘Vivienne, take Kat back to the flat.’

  ‘Andrew’s flat?’ Gina intercepted in cutting tones. ‘Won’t it be a little crowded?’

  ‘Stop it.’ Sam quelled her with a look, then turned to address Tash. ‘Maybe you should leave us to sort this out.’

  Two things intrigued Tash. Firstly, Sam Sheridan clearly wasn’t too impressed by the fact that he had arrived here with Izzy, making him wonder whether there might not have been something undercover going on between the two of them until very recently. The set-up in this house, he reflected daily, was downright complicated.

  As for the other item of interest . . .

  ‘I was just leaving,’ he drawled, unable to resist the opportunity to say what had apparently not yet occurred to anyone else. Stepping towards Izzy, he kissed her briefly on the mouth. ‘Give me a call tomorrow and let me know what you decide.’

  Distracted and confused, she said, ‘Decide about what?’ ‘The deal.’ Carefully, he pushed a strand of dark hair away from her cheek. ‘You signed a contract with Stellar this afternoon, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to go ahead with it now.’

  Izzy was still puzzled. What on earth did that have to do with Andrew Lawrence?

  ‘Your daughter,’ explained Tash with a brief, sardonic look in Simon’s direction. ‘And those touching lyrics of hers. I think we can safely assume, in the light of all this, that she wasn’t dreaming of old Roy of the Rovers here when she wrote “Never, Never”.’

  Chapter 33

  ‘You can stay here with us,’ Sam told Katerina the following morning. Having slipped out of the flat at eight-thirty and returned half an hour later with a copy of Loot, her black coffee had grown cold beside her as she proceeded to study and circle the small ads. Pale, gripped with determination and refusing to even discuss yesterday’s calamitous showdown, she now chewed the top of her felt-tipped pen and shook her head.

  ‘Of course I can’t stay. You’re the good guys and I’m the social leper. Don’t worry, I’ll find something in no time.’

  ‘A rat-infested hovel,’ Vivienne put in, helping herself to a slice of the toast which Sam had made for Katerina, and which hadn’t even been touched. ‘Honey, you can’t do that. How will you live?’

  Hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, Katerina shrugged. ‘I’ll get a job.’

  Sam had already offered her money and been politely but firmly turned down. She was every bit as stubborn as her mother, he thought with a trace of despair; the only difference was that Izzy would have pocketed the loan without even blinking.

  ‘Let me phone Izzy,’ urged Vivienne, through a mouthful of toast. ‘Look, she was upset last night - she’ll be over that now. Oh please, let me call her.’

  ‘No.’ Bleakly, Katerina recalled the terrible things they had said to each other . . . the slap on the cheek . . . Izzy’s reaction when she realised that ‘Never, Never’ had been written not for Simon, but for Andrew . . . ‘I don’t want to see her. I won’t speak to her.’

  Vivienne gazed at the girl before her, dressed in an olive-green T-shirt and white shorts and with her long brown legs tucked beneath her on the chair. Until yesterday, she had envied Izzy her easy, uncomplicated relationship with her daughter. Now she couldn’t even begin to imagine what her friend might be going through. ‘Sweetheart, your mom loves you. She’s worried about you.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Katerina didn’t look up. Dangerously close to tears once more, she said, ‘Do you think I haven’t worried about her? I’ve supported my mother all my life. This is the very first time I’ve ever needed her to support me . . . and she didn’t. She’s let me down and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for that. She hates me for what I’ve done and I hate her back. From now on, she can do what she likes with her stupid men and her stupid music. I don’t care any more what kind of a mess she makes of it all.’

  ‘Forget Izzy for the moment,’ countered Sam, deciding to risk another outburst. Personally, he thought Andrew deserved castration at the very least. ‘What about you and Andrew?’

  This time Katerina did look up. He saw the sadness in her eyes, and the determined line of her mouth. ‘That’s what makes it so ironic,’ she replied bitterly. ‘I really had finished with him . . . put it all behind me. But now that all this has happened, I may as well carry on seeing him after all.’

  ‘Kat, get back into the car.You aren’t even going to look at this one.’

  It was three-thirty in the afternoon and Sam was beginning to lose patience. Katerina’s search for a bedsitter had led them from one unbelievably dreary address to another and the accommodation on offer had been so sordid he could hardly bear it. Still in a belligerent mood, she had initially been reluctant to allow him to accompany her, but he was bloody glad he had, otherwise the chances were she’d have been raped or murdered by now. Even in daylight the buildings were sinister. And now here they were in the depths of the East End outside 14 Finnegan Street, whose windows were cracked and opaque with grime and whose crumbling front wall was holding up a row of bleary-eyed, bottle-wielding tramps.

  ‘It’s cheap,’ Katerina replied briefly, ignoring him. ‘I can afford it.’

  Sam couldn’t let her go in alone. Locking the car, he put his hand on her shoulder as they approached the front door. ‘Look, you really can’t live in a place like this, temporarily or otherwise. I don’t understand why you won’t let me lend you enough money to rent somewhere decent.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Katerina threw him a look of resignation. ‘We’ve been through this before. I happen to know how you feel about lending money to a Van Asch.’

  She knocked at the door and read the graffiti sprayed over it. ‘Whoever wrote that can’t spell.’

  ‘You aren’t Izzy,’ persisted Sam. ‘This isn’t the same thing at all.’

  ‘Of course it’s the same thing.’ She half-smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be able to pay you back for years.’

  ‘But that doesn’t matter!’ Exasperated, he reached for her hand. ‘Come on, we’re leaving.There’s no one here.’

  As the door began to creak open, an overpowering smell of mould and cats’ pee billowed out to meet them.

  ‘Just a quick look,’ said Katerina, who had no intention of borrowing so much as a bus fare from Sam Sheridan. ‘Come on.Who knows, it might have hidden depths.’

  It didn’t have hidden depths. The depths were all there on display, from the damp-blackened walls to the hideously matted rug only half-covering bare floorboards. The furniture, such as it was, was unbelievably decrepit, the curtains were too small for the filthy window and the only light was provided by a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling.

  When the scrawny landlady offered Katerina the room and she in turn accepted, Sam couldn’t even speak. She was doing it deliberately, he now realised, and there was nothing on earth he could do to stop her.

  ‘Well?’ he dr
awled, when they were out of the house. ‘Happy now?’

  Beneath the calm veneer, Katerina was feeling slightly sick. Nothing seemed real any more. It was as if her body was making the decisions without consulting her brain. Finding work and somewhere to live were just things she had to do.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she countered with an offhand gesture. ‘At least everyone else will be happy.’

  ‘Oh yes, delirious.’ Revving the car’s engine and startling the tramps out of their collective stupor, Sam screeched away from the kerb. ‘They’ll all be thrilled, I’m sure, when they find out where you’re going to be living.’

  Katerina was gazing abstractedly out of the window. ‘It’s none of their business, anyway,’ she murmured. ‘And it’s been very kind of you, driving me around like this, but my problems aren’t actually anything to do with you, either.’