Perfect Timing

by Jill Mansell

  Poppy had fantasized once or twice that beneath the Clark Kent exterior was a Superman waiting to burst out, but she knew deep down there wasn’t. From time to time Jake would find himself being chatted up on the stall, usually by women a few years older than himself in search of someone to mother. It was so sweet watching him because he obviously didn’t have the least idea what to do with them. Eventually, Poppy would take pity on him and intervene, allowing Jake to melt gratefully into the background.

  He had never said as much but Poppy assumed he was gay.

  ‘Thanks.’ Poppy reached up to take the steaming mug of tea Jake had brought down from the café on the top floor of the antiques market. She had enjoyed her week stripping in the pub in Portobello but it was nice being back here on the stall.

  For a Friday afternoon the market was quiet. In between customers, most of them browsers who preferred to be left alone, Poppy had been reading up on Georgian teapots. Jake, just back from the monthly sale at Lassiter’s Auction Rooms in Bermondsey, began unpacking a box of assorted silver photograph frames.

  ‘Look at that.’ Balancing her tea on the flat, glass-fronted jewelry cabinet, Poppy picked out one of the larger frames with its photograph still in place. The sepia-tinted print, dated 1925, was of a stiffly posed family. Mother, father, and assorted children stared unsmilingly up at her. ‘They all look like their father. Minus the moustache.’

  ‘You could polish up these frames if you like,’ offered Jake. He pointed to the hallmark on another frame. ‘Date?’

  ‘George the something.’ Poppy wasn’t in the mood for hallmarks. She looked again at the sepia print. A small knot began to tighten in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Fifth,’ said Jake. ‘George V.’ He frowned. ‘You seem a bit… are you all right?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘You don’t look quite with it.’

  Poppy broke into a grin. In his dark green cardigan full of holes, his blue and white striped shirt, and brown houndstooth check trousers, if anyone was looking not quite with it, it was Jake.

  ‘Sorry, I was thinking.’

  Jake, who had heard about little else for the past week, said, ‘About the move I suppose.’

  ‘Actually no. I was wondering if I look anything like my father.’

  ‘Ah.’ He had heard about this too, over the course of the last three months. ‘Well, I can’t help you there.’

  ‘I want to find him,’ said Poppy, the words coming out in a rush. Quite suddenly it mattered more than anything else in the world. She felt like an alcoholic begging for a drink. ‘I know I probably won’t be able to but I have to at least give it a try. I have to—’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Poppy had been um-ing and ah-ing about this for weeks. Jake’s only experience in the matter was of an adopted schoolfriend who had managed to trace his natural mother then been traumatized by her refusal to meet him. Some things, Jake felt, were best left unmeddled with.

  But Poppy had made up her mind. ‘I must. It might be impossible. But it might not. He could be living just round the corner from me. Imagine if he was and I didn’t know…’

  ‘How are you going to do it?’

  She nodded in the direction of the phone books stacked up beneath his cluttered desk.

  ‘There are seventeen A. Fitzpatricks listed in the London area. I’ll start by phoning them.’

  ‘Try and be a bit discreet,’ said Jake. He wouldn’t put anything past Poppy. She was liable to turn up on their doorsteps armed with a do-it-yourself DNA testing kit.

  The few details Poppy had been able to glean about her father had come from Dina, who had in turn learned them from her mother-in-law Margaret McBride. According to this thirdhand information, her mother had met Alex Fitzpatrick at a country club on the outskirts of Bristol. She was working there behind the bar and he had played the trumpet in the resident jazz band.

  Alex had moved down from London to take the job, because even if the pay was peanuts, it was better than nothing at all. He might have been poor but jazz was his great love; it was what he lived for.

  Laura Dunbar, so legend had it, was finding married life less enthralling than she had been led to expect. Meeting Alex Fitzpatrick, who kept nightclub hours, drank Jack Daniels on the rocks, and laughed at the deeply suburban lifestyles of the members of Ash Hill Country Club, had knocked her for six.

  Alex had a gravelly Cockney drawl, a quick wit, and a career in what could just about be called show business. He also made Laura laugh, which mattered more than anything. She fell in love with Alex Fitzpatrick, ignored the fact that he had a wife waiting for him back in London, and threw herself headlong into a recklessly indiscreet affair. It became the talk of the country club. It wasn’t long before everyone knew, including Mervyn Dunbar.

  But Mervyn, who loved his wife, sensed that if he kicked up a fuss he would only lose her. Electing to sit it out and pray that nature would run its course, he grimly feigned ignorance instead.

  Six weeks later, as the summer season was drawing to a close, Alex Fitzpatrick’s wife was watering a hanging basket when she fell off a stepladder and broke her leg in three places.

  Alex explained to a devastated Laura that he had to go back to London. His contract at Ash Hill was pretty much up anyway, and now his old lady needed him. They’d had a laugh, hadn’t they? They’d had a great summer together but now it was time to move on. She had a husband; he had a wife. Of course he’d loved Laura, but this was how things were. No need to get all dramatic over a bit of harmless fun.

  Laura was devastated but she had her pride. To be fair to Alex, he had never talked about leaving his wife; she had just hoped he might.

  Hiding her true feelings, refusing to cry in front of him, Laura kissed Alex good-bye. When she discovered three weeks later that she was pregnant she knew at once who was the father. She had been far too busy making love with Alex to have any energy left for Mervyn.

  Mervyn, who wasn’t stupid, was equally aware of whose baby it was. When he’d wanted nature to take its course he hadn’t meant in this fashion.

  But at least he had his wife back, which was what Mervyn wanted most of all. He also privately suspected that he might not be able to father children of his own as a result of a nasty attack of teenage mumps. Maybe in time, he decided, he would be able to forget who the biological father of this child really was. Maybe he would learn to love it as if it were his own.

  Poppy knew all this because her mother had confided as much in her small circle of friends, one of whom had been Margaret McBride. Pride had prevented Laura from ever contacting Alex Fitzpatrick to let him know she was carrying his baby. Instead, she had immersed herself in the business of becoming a born-again good wife.

  When Poppy had been born Mervyn had, in turn, tried his hardest to experience true fatherly feelings. The trouble was, they hadn’t been there. And he had been unable to summon up any.

  But the secret of Poppy’s parentage had been kept, from herself if from no one else, and her mother’s tragic death had only compounded people’s determination to preserve it. To lose one parent was terrible enough, they whispered to each other. Imagine the effect it could have on a vulnerable twelve-year-old to discover that the one you had left wasn’t a real parent at all.

  If only they’d known, Poppy thought ruefully, how glad I would have been to find out.

  But it was time now to go into action. She had waited long enough. Since she’d moved to London, wondering who her real father might be had knocked everything else out of her mind—even Tom. The sooner the noisy Australian from the basement flat stopped yakking to every friend he’d ever had and got off the communal pay phone, the sooner she could make a start.

  When he had at last finished, Poppy ran downstairs and bagged the phone, kneeling on the dusty floor with her list of A. Fitzpatricks in one hand and a pile of twenty-pence coins in the other. Her heart pounded against her ribs as she began to dial. Imagine, within seconds she could actually
be speaking to her father…

  Each time the phone was picked up at the other end, Poppy asked in a businesslike voice to speak to Alex Fitzpatrick. Ten minutes later she was three-quarters of the way through her list, having got through to an assortment of Alans, Alistairs, Alisons, and Andrews… even an Ahmed.

  Then she struck lucky.

  ‘Alex?’ said a middle-aged sounding woman. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve just missed him. May I take a message?’

  Poppy gulped. This really could be it.

  ‘Um… maybe I’ll try again later. What time do you expect him home?’

  ‘Well, nine-ish. He’s gone to scouts.’ The woman began to sound nervous. ‘Is this about Ben’s birthday party last week? Oh dear, you aren’t Lucy-Anne’s mother are you?’

  Another ten minutes and she was finished. Not only a crushing disappointment, Poppy thought mournfully, but a waste of an awful lot of twenty pences.

  How stupid to think finding her father would be that simple.

  The next morning, bright and early, Poppy arrived on the doorstep of 15 Cornwallis Crescent.

  ‘Please, it’s only ten o’clock,’ groaned Claudia, opening the door in her blue and white terry cloth dressing gown.

  Poppy looked hurt. ‘Caspar said any time I liked.’

  ‘Caspar would.’ Claudia was gazing askance at the two modest suitcases on the top step. ‘He doesn’t even hear doorbells before noon. That can’t really be all you’ve got.’

  ‘I do what the glossy magazines say to do,’ said Poppy. ‘I may not have many clothes, but I always buy the best.’

  They both knew this was a big lie. For lunch at The Marigold, Poppy had turned up in cut-off black jeans and a Rocky Horror tee-shirt.

  Claudia said gloomily, ‘God, I hope Caspar knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Oh look, I’m here now.’ Poppy picked up her suitcases. ‘And whether you like it or not I’m moving in. We may as well be friends.’

  ‘Real friends,’ Claudia pointed out, ‘don’t wake you up at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.’ Carrying her cases through to the kitchen, Poppy heaved the smaller of the two up onto the counter and began unzipping it.

  Next moment a multi-colored explosion of tights and tee-shirts hurtled out. It was like one of those trick cans full of snakes.

  ‘What—’ began Claudia.

  ‘Come on, cheer up and grab a couple of bowls.’ Having at last found what she was searching for, Poppy held them up. ‘This one’s to celebrate me moving in and this one’s your belated birthday present.’

  Claudia gazed at the two tubs of rapidly melting Ben & Jerry’s. Other people celebrated with champagne, she thought. Poppy Dunbar had to do it with Chunky Monkey ice cream.

  Chapter 8

  Three weeks later, on a wet Wednesday afternoon, the weather was so depressing that Caspar decided he couldn’t possibly work. This was the trouble with skylights and broad attic windows. When the rain came down, you knew about it.

  To cheer himself up—and take his mind off the fact that the painting he was supposed to be working on should have been finished a week ago—Caspar watched a bit of lunchtime Coronation Street and polished off the bowl of cherry tomatoes he’d spotted earlier in the fridge. Then he helped himself to a cappuccino mousse with whipped cream on top.

  By now, Coronation Street had finished and been replaced by one of those audience participation talk shows. This one was about shoplifting. A skinny woman in an orange wig stood up to announce that she was a professional shoplifter. Another boasted about having once shoplifted a three-piece suit. The talk show host said this almost deserved a round of applause and the audience, unsure whether or not they were supposed to clap, looked nervous and fidgeted in their seats. The host then introduced this week’s expert, a woman psychiatrist with a face like a bulldog, and Caspar fell asleep.

  He was woken up an hour or so later by the doorbell. Opening the front door, he found Claudia’s mother shivering on the top step. It was still pouring with rain.

  ‘Come in, you’re drenched.’ Caspar pulled her inside and ushered her into the sitting room. ‘Sorry, I was asleep.’ He switched off the television and made a token effort to plump up the squashed sofa cushions. ‘Claudia isn’t home from work yet. She’ll be back around five. Can I get you a drink?’

  Angie Slade-Welch smiled at the sight of Caspar, so streaky-blond and deliciously tanned, in his turquoise tee-shirt and white shorts. He looked like a beach bum, and not a day over twenty-two.

  ‘I knew Claudia wouldn’t be here.’

  She also knew that so long as you were prepared for it, a bit of rain didn’t go amiss. The damp, disheveled look suited her down to the ground. It was why, having been dropped off by her driver right outside the house, she had waited half a minute before ringing the bell. Plenty of Audrey Hepburn eye make-up and a fragile smile, and Angie could take on the world.

  As long as the mascara was waterproof.

  ‘You knew Claudia wouldn’t be home yet? Oh dear,’ said Caspar. ‘In that case, I hope you haven’t come here to ask embarrassing questions behind her back. My mother did that once when I was in high school. She cornered the French teacher, convinced that I was being led astray—’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He grinned. ‘But it improved my French no end. So, is that really why you’re here? You want me to dish the dirt on your daughter’s love life?’

  ‘Not at all.’ The only love life Angie was interested in was her own.

  ‘You want to find out if she’s happy here?’

  Angie shrugged and shook her head. ‘No, but you can tell me if you like. She’s had a couple of moans about the new girl… what’s her name? Poppy.’

  Never one to boil a kettle when he could open a bottle instead, Caspar was relieved to discover an unopened bottle of Pouilly Fumée hidden behind the mineral water at the back of the fridge.

  ‘Ah yes, Poppy and Claudia.’ He filled two glasses and passed one to Angie. ‘The harem, as some of my not very witty friends have taken to calling them.’

  ‘And are they?’ Angie raised an interested eyebrow. ‘Your harem?’

  Caspar pulled a face. ‘They bear a passing resemblance. Claudia doesn’t trust Poppy an inch. Now I know what it would be like, keeping a wife and mistress together under one roof. Except,’ he added with a grin, ‘I’m not sleeping with either of them.’

  ‘How quaint.’ Angie could imagine how desperately Claudia would have liked to. She would leap at the chance. Caspar evidently wasn’t interested. Good.

  ‘In fact, neither of them are to my knowledge sleeping with anyone,’ he went on, ‘which means there isn’t really any dirt to dish.’

  ‘Some harem.’

  ‘So if it isn’t a rude question,’ said Caspar, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘I’d like you to paint me.’

  Angie crossed one slender charcoal-stockinged leg over the other. She was wearing an efficient-looking grey pinstriped suit today, tightly belted to show off her tiny waist. Unfastening her bag, she took out a calfskin-bound diary.

  ‘Um… no offense, but I’m pretty expensive,’ said Caspar. It was always better to come out and say it straight away, particularly when the potential client was someone you knew. Even friends-of-friends had an embarrassing habit of expecting you to do it for free.

  ‘That’s all right, so am I.’ Leaning closer, Angie gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘The thing is, I want the painting for Hugo. It’s his fiftieth birthday in December—’

  ‘If you want it finished by December I’m going to have to charge more,’ Caspar interrupted. ‘Look, it’s going to be six grand. I’m sorry, but my manager would shoot me if I said anything less.’

  Privately he was marveling at the choice of gift. How many men would want to so much as glance at a portrait of their ex-wife, let alone be given one for their birthday? What if he threw darts at it?

  �
��Six grand, no problem.’ Angie Slade-Welch was unperturbed. ‘He’ll be paying for it anyway.’ She smiled. ‘One thing I will say for Hugo, he’s a perfect gentleman when it comes to alimony.’

  Poor Hugo, thought Caspar. With four ex-wives to support, no wonder he kept having to fly over to Hollywood to star in the kind of mega-budget movies he despised so much. Small wonder too that none of the ex-wives had ever bothered to remarry. When the payoffs were that generous, where was the incentive?

  Caspar, who didn’t have anything as efficient as a diary, led Angie Slade-Welch upstairs to his studio. The back of the door was covered with pinned-up business cards and scraps of paper with names and phone numbers scrawled across them. Some had dates and times added in brackets. This was Caspar’s filing system. It was a miracle he ever got anything done.

  ‘Mondays are good for me.’ Angie was flipping through pages with beige, French-manicured nails. ‘Wednesdays… no, that’s aromatherapy. Um, Thursday afternoons could be arranged. Or maybe Friday mornings…’

  They haggled amicably for a few minutes. Caspar never felt like doing much at all on Mondays. Finally, they settled on three preliminary sittings to be going on with.

  ‘This Friday then.’ Caspar prepared to show her out. ‘No need to worry about getting your hair done, not at this stage. But bring a couple of outfits so we can decide what’ll look best. Nothing too fussy—’

  ‘Nothing fussy at all,’ Angie promised, her mouth registering amusement. ‘Did I not mention it earlier? I want this to be a nude portrait.’ She paused, waiting for his reaction. ‘That’s not a problem for you, is it?’