‘Rather well, actually. I’ve found myself a decent chap at last.’
‘You haven’t!’
‘Thank you!’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘How about some more of that lovely tea?’ Leila said a little too brightly. ‘Pour me some, will you?’ She held out her cup. ‘He’s a reporter actually. His name’s Simon.’
Ginny nearly dropped the teapot. ‘Not Simon Parker?’
‘The very one.’ She allowed a genuine, if self-deprecating, smile to curve her lips. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came to see you, I suppose. To brag.’
‘So what were the other reasons?’
‘Only one. To come and see you.’ Leila should have said: to come and see if you and Billy really look like staying together before I finally throw in my lot with Simon. But she didn’t.
‘Come on, how did you and Simon get together?’
‘When Billy was selling up and he gave me the pick of the clubs—’
‘Did he? I didn’t know that,’ Ginny broke in, then added hastily: ‘But like I said, I don’t have anything to do with the businesses now.’
With a shameful kind of pleasure Leila noted the edge that had crept into Ginny’s voice. ‘I suppose he thought he owed me something for all those years. I was very loyal.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I chose Ginny’s. But don’t even think of asking why, I’d be much too embarrassed to answer.’
‘Leila—’
‘Don’t worry, water under the bridge, and before you ask, no it isn’t called Ginny’s any more. It’s called Leila’s. Far more classy.’ She chuckled lazily. ‘Anyway, Simon turned up one night. He was looking for you, but he found me instead. We got talking and I asked him if he still wanted a story. He did. And did I have a story to tell.’
‘You didn’t tell him everything?’
Leila looked horrified. ‘Edited highlights, darling! Edited highlights! But it still took months to get through it all and he was absolutely riveted. He treated events like . . . like . . . let me see . . . I know, like Johnno being killed, as if they were crossword clues.’ She stared directly into Ginny’s eyes. ‘Do you know he simply refused to believe it was a hit-and-run accident?’
‘I often wondered if that was anything to do with the Maltese gangs,’ Ginny said quietly.
Leila leaned back in her deckchair. ‘He never came up with that theory,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘But it’s possible, I suppose. Although Simon always thought Johnno was being paid off by someone close to home. For some mistake he’d made. Maybe—’
‘Whatever it was,’ Ginny cut in, ‘I know it was really sad, happening just two days after his wife had her baby.’
Leila did her professional smile again. ‘Perhaps he’ll get to the bottom of it one day.’
‘Isn’t he too busy playing that clarinet of his?’
‘Don’t!’
‘Is he just as bad?’
‘Let’s just say he’ll never be a Benny Goodman.’
They laughed, slightly more easily this time, and sat for a while in almost companionable silence.
‘He decided not to publish my story in the end.’
‘Why not?’
‘He fell in love with me instead. Wanted to keep me all to himself. That’s why he proposed.’
‘Leila!’
‘I know.’ She took a long draw on her cigarette. ‘I didn’t really take him seriously for a while. Plus I suppose there were things I had to be sure about.’ She paused as though she were thinking something through. ‘It took me a while, but I eventually said yes to him. Last weekend, actually.’ She held out her left hand and flashed a large, square-cut diamond solitaire.
‘So that’s an engagement ring?’
‘It is. Can you imagine, darling? Me, about to become a respectable married woman, marrying a man who is about to be made editor of the Evening News?’
‘Leila, that’s wonderful.’
‘It’s a start. But he’s still got his eye on The Times, of course.’
‘No, I meant about you getting married.’
‘It is a bit of a turn-up, isn’t it? And do you know, I’ve decided that on the big day I’m actually taking off the emerald green for once and I’m going to—’
The droning of a low-flying aeroplane drowned out the rest of Leila’s words.
‘Bloody row,’ Ginny shouted, shielding her eyes against the sun, as she sought out the culprit. ‘Who’d’s he think . . .’ But then her tone changed from one of protest to one of amazement. ‘Well, will you look at that?’
Ginny pointed at the clear blue summer sky, where the plane was now flying up and away in a wide swoop, high above their heads. Behind it snapped a long white banner, whipping and flapping in its trail. The inscription on it read: You never had it so good, love Mac X.
Ginny clapped her hands with delight. ‘I reckon he’s right there, you know, Leila.’ She grinned, raising her teacup by way of a toast. ‘We really haven’t had it so good, have we? All our dreams really have come true.’
Leila looked at Ginny and was about to say something, but changed her mind. Instead, she too lifted her cup in salute and smiled. ‘Let’s hope so, sweetie, let’s hope so . . .’
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Epub ISBN: 9781448185221
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
First published in Great Britain 1997
by William Heinemann
imprint of Reed International Books Ltd
Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3 6RB
and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto
Copyright © Gilda O’Neill 1997
The author has asserted her moral rights
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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780749321727
Dream On Page 40
