by Jill Mansell
‘That was Doug,’ snapped Izzy, ignoring her. ‘The concert organisers in Rome have just informed him that if I don’t get over there tomorrow night they’re going to sue the pants off me for breach of contract.’
‘Oh, I get it now.’ Katerina grinned. ‘Bugger, bugger and damn is a firm of solicitors.’
‘I could always have you adopted, you know.’
Gina, sitting down at the kitchen table, interceded. ‘Is it really so terrible?’ she asked cautiously, in case Izzy rounded on her as well. ‘I thought you were looking forward to going to Rome.’
Izzy was exhausted. Weeks of working punishing hours in the recording studios had taken more out of her than she’d realised. The dozens of interviews and personal appearances had been mentally draining too, since she always had to guard against saying the wrong thing and permanent perfection didn’t come easily, particularly when the subject of Tash Janssen was so often on every interviewer’s lips. She was tired of smiling and endlessly being diplomatic. She was tired of working, sometimes until midnight, with her brilliant but unbelievably picky producer. The only thing that hadn’t been tiresome had been the prospect of a week in Rome, which was somewhere she’d always longed to visit, but that had had to be cancelled when Gina was taken ill.
And this is all the bloody thanks I get, she thought mutinously. So much for making the great sacrifice and promising to look after the invalid. Here was Gina, sitting opposite her, wearing violet eyeshadow and urging her to bloody well go anyway.
‘Don’t be cross,’ said Gina, bewildered by her obvious irritation. ‘I’m trying to help, that’s all.’
‘You’re ill,’ replied Izzy bluntly. ‘I thought I was supposed to be the one trying to help you.’
Finally understanding, Gina’s face cleared. ‘And you have,’ she said with genuine gratitude. ‘More than you’ll ever know. But you’ve made enough sacrifices already, and you can’t possibly let those Italians sue you. I’ll be fine,’ she added persuasively, thinking of Sam but smiling at Izzy. ‘Really. It’s only going to be for a few days, after all.’
‘Ah, but a lot can happen in a few days,’ put in Katerina, sighing with pleasure as she tasted the first spoonful of still-warm chocolate fudge.
Izzy, somewhat mollified, said, ‘Such as?’
‘Mum, I know what you’re like with Italians.You could go over there to do the concert and come back married.’ Rolling her eyes for emphasis, she added solemnly, ‘To a devastatingly attractive Roman solicitor called Buggeri . . .’
The last time she had packed her suitcase for Rome, Sam had ended up making love to her on top of it.
Izzy felt it suitably ironic, therefore, that Gina should have chosen this particular evening and this moment in which to confide her earth-shattering decision.
The difference, of course, was that this time she was having no fun at all.
‘. . . so you see, I know it sounds crazy, but I really do love him,’ Gina concluded, while Izzy, like an automaton, continued to pack. ‘Oh God, it’s such a relief to be able to tell you this! But do you think I’m crazy?’
Unable to speak for a moment, Izzy shook her head. How could falling in love with Sam Sheridan be crazy, when she’d done the very same thing herself? And how desperately she wished now that she hadn’t insisted upon keeping their relationship a secret.
‘You really should be using tissue paper,’ said Gina, eyeing the haphazard jumble of silks and cottons spilling over the rim of the case. ‘It stops things getting creased.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Everything that’s happened, you see, has made me rethink my life. Particularly now that I might not have much of it left.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Izzy numbly, but this time Gina wasn’t being self-pitying.
‘I’m just trying to explain,’ she went on, willing Izzy to understand. ‘Whenever you’ve wanted something, you’ve gone out and got it. I’ve always admired you for that. And here you are, happy and successful . . . you have everything you could possibly want! So I’ve decided to be like you. I love Sam and he’s what I want. I would have been too scared to tell him before, but now I know that life’s too short to be scared.’ She shrugged, with more bravado than she felt. ‘The worst he can do, after all, is turn me down.’
Except that he can’t, thought Izzy, her expression bleak and her stomach a clenched knot. Because you’ve got a brain tumour and Sam’s practically your dying wish. So he doesn’t really have a lot of choice.
Chapter 52
Knowing that she was entirely responsible for her own misery wasn’t making Izzy feel any better. Last night she had dreamt that during a fearful confrontation she’d told Gina she couldn’t have Sam because he loved her. Gina, utterly distraught, had drowned herself in Izzy’s weed-choked fish pond and Sam, in turn rounding on Izzy, had icily informed her that Gina was the only woman he’d ever really loved anyway.
It was all very disturbing and she had woken up in floods of tears, only to realise that what actually had happened was just as hopeless. Gina had begged for reassurance that she was doing the right thing and all she’d been able to do in return was agree. How, after all, could she deny her friend that last chance of happiness when she had already endured a year of such awful misery and despair?
It would have been so much easier, as well, not to have had to face Sam and pretend that nothing had happened, but even that small luxury had been denied her. By sheer chance, an urgent business meeting had prevented him visiting Gina the previous night and when he’d phoned to explain, she had told him of Izzy’s imminent departure. Izzy, consequently, hadn’t had any choice in the matter when Gina had happily informed her that Sam would pick her up at nine-thirty the following morning and drive her to the airport himself.
It was an unfairly beautiful November morning too, brightly sunny and glittering with frost like something out of a Disney cartoon. Still haunted by her earlier dream, Izzy gazed silently out of the car’s side-window at the dazzling blue-whiteness of Hyde Park and didn’t even notice they were slowing down until Sam had brought the car to a full stop.
‘What?’ she said, startled, as he switched off the ignition.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ replied Sam, his tone dry. Leaning across her, undoing her seat belt and opening the passenger door, he added, ‘Come on, we’re going for a walk.’
Anticipating somewhat warmer weather in Rome, Izzy was wearing a pink-and-green striped blazer over a short pink dress. She shivered as an icy blast of air invaded the car, but all Sam did was hand her his own scuffed leather jacket and motion her to get out.
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ he said eventually, when she had trudged along beside him in silence for several minutes.
It was the last thing Izzy felt able to do. Instead, she gave him a brittle smile. ‘I’m cold.’
‘You’re playing some kind of game,’ he countered, not returning her smile. ‘And I want to know what it is. Even more, I’d like to know why you’re doing it.’
And I want to tell you, she thought miserably, more than anything else in the world. But I can’t, because that would mean betraying Gina’s confidence. It wouldn’t be fair.Worse than that, it would be downright cruel . . .
‘Look,’ she said, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of the leather jacket and quickening her pace in order not to have to meet his unnervingly direct gaze, ‘I’m really not playing games. I’ve thought a lot about . . . what happened the other night, and I know now that it was a mistake.’
‘Oh, right.’ Even though she couldn’t see his expression, the sarcasm in Sam’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Of course it was. The biggest mistake ever. I thought of writing to Clare Rayner myself—’
‘Don’t start,’ she said unhappily. ‘I’m trying to explain, that’s all, and you aren’t making it any easier.’
A hand on her arm stopped her in her tracks. Frosted leaves crunched beneath Izzy’s feet as Sam swung her round to face him.
It was unfair. Everything was unfair. Even the fact that Izzy knew her nose and cheeks were red with cold yet Sam’s face remained as smooth and brown as a ski instructor’s was unfair.Why on earth, she thought with mounting resentment, couldn’t he at least go blotchy like everyone else?
‘Look,’ she said, trying again. ‘When it comes to mistakes, I’m an expert. I can spot them a mile off. And I’m fed up with making them . . . so for the first time in practically my entire life I’m trying to do the sensible thing instead.’
She stood her ground as Sam stared at her in disbelief.
‘Maybe,’ he said finally, ‘you should define sensible.’
This wasn’t easy. She hadn’t had time to practise. And it had to sound believable . . .
‘I don’t want to make any more mistakes,’ said Izzy, pushing her hair away from her face with a defiant gesture. ‘Sam, we’re an unmatched pair. Look at how Vivienne drove you up the wall with her untidiness and the way she couldn’t cook a meal to save her life . . . I’m just like her, only worse! I know that if we even tried to make a go of it we’d end up hating each other. It simply wouldn’t work.’
‘I think it would.’
‘Only because you’re being pig-headed,’ she retaliated. ‘And because you’ve probably never been turned down before.’
‘I’ve certainly never heard such feeble excuses before.’ He was almost smiling now. ‘Got any more, or was that the entire repertoire?’
‘I’m being serious!’ Izzy shouted, infuriated by his refusal to believe her. ‘We have no future, so what would be the point of even pretending we have?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So that really is all you’re worried about? The fact that you can’t cook?’
‘No.’ Slowly, she shook her head. ‘We have no future because I’m thirty-seven years old. I have a grown-up daughter and a career that’s finally taken off. You want a nice little wife, and children of your own.’ She paused, giving the words time to sink in. ‘And that’s what you should be looking for, Sam. A wife.’
He wasn’t smiling now. ‘Perhaps that’s what I am doing.’
‘No, you aren’t.’ Izzy, who’d had no idea he was this serious, briefly closed her eyes. Gina was all but forgotten by this time. She was no longer making up excuses; this was the unvarnished, unpalatable truth and not even Sam could argue with it. ‘I’ve had my family and it’s too late to start again now. I can never give you what you want, Sam. That’s all there is to it. I’m just too old . . .’
‘We don’t have to have children,’ he said, but the words didn’t sound entirely convincing. Izzy, her eyes already watering with the cold, swallowed hard in an effort to dispel the lump in her throat. It was all so terribly sad; here she was, receiving what virtually amounted to a proposal of marriage from the nicest man she had ever known, and there was absolutely no way in the world she could allow him to talk her into saying yes.
‘But you’d always want them,’ she said miserably. ‘And sooner or later you’d resent me for not being able to give you what you wanted. It’s no good, Sam; I can’t make myself younger and I couldn’t bear to be a stop-gap, a temporary diversion until the right woman comes along. You have your life to lead and I have mine, and the next thing I have to do is catch my flight to Rome, before frostbite well and truly sets in. So, if we could just get back to the car . . .’
The scheduled Alitalia flight from Heathrow wasn’t as busy in November as it would have been in season. Izzy, thankful to find she had a double seat to herself and praying she wouldn’t be recognised, shielded her eyes with sunglasses and wept quietly all the way to Rome. She’d done the right thing . . . the sensible thing . . . and it hurt like hell. All she could do now was remind herself that any kind of future with Sam would, in the long run, only result in more pain than even this.
Despite making a terrific effort to pull herself together, Rome’s magnificence and beauty were wasted on her today. Even the maniacal manoeuvres executed by her excitable taxi driver as he zig-zagged and hooted his way across the city failed to dispel her gloom. Izzy, whose eyes were still swollen behind her dark glasses, gazed dismally out at the sunny streets, until the taxi eventually pulled up outside the Hotel Aldrovandi Palace where she would be staying for the next few days.
But her schedule was tight, there was work to be done and she had little time to appreciate the style and splendour of the five-star hotel. A note at reception from the concert organisers informed her that at four o’clock someone would be arriving to take her to the hall for sound checks and rehearsals. As soon as she reached her room, which overlooked the Borghese Gardens in all their glory, she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower.
When she emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Tash was waiting for her.
‘I don’t believe this,’ said Izzy flatly. ‘How the hell did you get into my room?’
The seductive smile was so familiar, her departure from his life might never have existed.
‘Sweetheart, in Italy I’m a national hero,’ he drawled. These pretty little chambermaids will do anything for me.’
‘I knew an Italian man once,’ she retaliated in withering tones, making quite sure the towel wrapped around her body was firmly secured. ‘He had no taste either.’
He looked reproachful. ‘Izzy. No bitterness, please! I’ve come here to make the peace. I’ve missed you.’
She shivered. His words were uncannily similar to Sam’s, when he had turned up on her doorstep just a week earlier. And now here was Tash, as dark and dangerous as a panther in his black sweatshirt and jeans, giving her that look of his and so confident of his own irresistibility that it didn’t even seem to have occurred to him that she might say no.
‘No,’ said Izzy, sparing a glance at her watch. ‘And if you’ll excuse me, I’m in a hurry.’
But all he did was make himself comfortable in one of the plush velvet chairs. ‘Of course you are, angel. I’m here to take you to the hall myself. We have a run-through rehearsal at four-fifteen, after all.’
There was something going on. Warily, Izzy said, ‘We?’
‘Did they forget to tell you?’ He raised his dark eyebrows in mock amazement. ‘My manager organised it a couple of days ago. I’m the surprise guest. Halfway through the set, you launch into “Never, Never” and after the first verse I appear on stage to tumultuous applause and screams of ecstatic delight from several thousand nubile Italian virgins. We sing, we hug, we kiss . . . we hit the front page of the papers . . . sweetheart, that’s show business!’
‘No,’ repeated Izzy, realizing that he had orchestrated the entire thing. ‘I won’t do it. I don’t want you there.’
‘Ah, but the organisers do. And if you refuse now, you’ll have two massive lawsuits to contend with.’ Tash shrugged, then smiled again. ‘Copies of the amended contract were sent to your agent forty-eight hours ago. With his customary inefficiency, no doubt, he forgot to read them. You should get yourself a smart manager, Izzy, if you want to get ahead in this world. If you wanted to, you could even share mine.’
He was loathsome, but he was also right. Izzy, recognising a fait accompli when she heard one, knew that she had no choice but to go along with the revolting, publicity-courting charade. Out of sheer desperation, and to make him realise just how much she despised him, she said quietly, ‘How’s Mirabelle?’
Tash, however, didn’t even flinch.
‘Funny you should say that,’ he replied in cheerful tones. ‘When I saw her yesterday I mentioned the fact that I was flying over here to do a gig with you.’ He paused, then added triumphantly, ‘She said, “Izzy who?” ’
Chapter 53
Sam, unable to quite believe that a day which had begun so dreadfully could get this much worse, was unable to speak. At almost exactly this time last week the room in which he was now trapped had contained an expensive assortment of exe
rcise machines and he had been telling Izzy in no uncertain terms to stop wasting money and get her life into some kind of order.
Today, no exercise equipment remained. Banished to a small box-room on the top floor of the house, it had been replaced by conventional bedroom furniture and an incumbent invalid. Izzy, having taken his advice and refused point-blank even to consider the possibility that they might have a future together, had buggered off to Rome instead in order to further her career.
He, meanwhile, now found himself having to face rather more than just the music.
His sensation of claustrophobia intensified as Gina clutched his hand with thin fingers, forcing him to return his attention to her.
‘. . . and I realise that maybe I’m not being fair to you,’ she continued rapidly, ‘but I’m just not brave enough to go through this by myself. I’m not scared of dying . . . but I am scared of dying alone. And that’s why I had to tell you how I feel about you. I love you, Sam. And I need to know how you feel about me, because I don’t think I’m brave enough to get through it on my own. Good friends aren’t enough . . . I need someone who loves me . . . to be with me.’ She faltered, her eyes brimming with tears, her grip on his hand tightening with the effort of maintaining control. ‘Otherwise it would be . . . unbearable . . . I don’t honestly know if I could go on . . .’
