Perfect Timing

by Jill Mansell

  Eek! Poppy’s blood ran cold. She hoped she hadn’t just been snogged by her uncle.

  ‘You mean he’s related to Alex?’

  Rita had begun vigorously Ultraglowing her neck and cleavage. She let out a bellow of laughter.

  ‘Good job he didn’t hear you say that! I meant my family, love. Derek’s a cousin of mine. Been a prat all his life, too. Ow, I knew I should’ve given that jiving a miss.’

  Poppy watched Rita flex her left knee as if it hurt.

  ‘You were dancing like a pro. I was impressed.’

  ‘Yeah, and it’ll give me gyp tomorrow.’ Rita carried on massaging the area below her knee. ‘I broke my leg a long time ago. In three places. Nasty business it was.’

  Of course, the fateful break. Poppy wondered what would have happened if Rita hadn’t had her accident. Alex wouldn’t have needed to rush back to London, her mother would have told him she was pregnant… who knows? He might have decided to stay with Laura after all. He might have divorced Rita and married her mother instead. And I, thought Poppy, would have had a whole different life, an unimaginably different life…

  ‘You’re miles away, love.’

  ‘I was. Sorry.’ Poppy shook her head and grinned. What had Rita been talking about? Oh yes, the leg. ‘I bet it put you off hanging baskets for life.’

  Rita looked at her strangely.

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  Hell’s bells, this was what happened when you didn’t pay attention.

  ‘You told me,’ said Poppy.

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago, at the Cavendish Club.’ She improvised wildly, banking on Rita’s fondness for a drink to get her out of this mess. ‘I told you about Claudia setting her heart on a couple of hanging flower baskets and Caspar offering to kidnap next door’s, and you said, “Bloody hanging baskets, I was nearly killed once, by a hanging basket.” And then you told me about falling off the ladder and breaking your leg.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Rita.

  ‘It was the night you were drinking tequila slammers with Harry Osborne. You must remember that!’

  ‘I remember the headache the next morning.’ Rita pulled a face, gave her hair a one-for-the-road burst of hair spray, and stood up. ‘Oh well, I’ll blame Harry for that. Ready to go back down, love? The dress looks terrific.’

  ‘This house is terrific.’ Poppy seized her chance as they headed for the stairs. ‘Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Couple of years.’

  It was no good, she had to ask.

  ‘So does Alex have… um… another job?’

  Rita glanced at her. ‘You mean how come we’re living in a place like this, Bethnal Green’s answer to Buck House?’

  ‘I know I’m being rude.’ Poppy tried to look ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m the nosiest person I know.’

  ‘That’s all right, petal. Only natural to be curious. No mystery to it anyway,’ Rita continued smoothly. ‘Alex was just in the right place at the right time during the property boom.’

  ‘Property? Buying and selling houses?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Then he invested in a high-risk land deal in Spain. Two years ago the deal came off. And we woke up one morning a few million quid richer than we’d been the night before.’

  The words sounded well-rehearsed, as if they’d been trotted out a few million times themselves. One thing was for sure, thought Poppy: Rita wasn’t telling her the truth.

  ‘Here we are.’ Proudly, Alex steered Poppy into the drawing room where an illuminated cabinet contained his small collection of Bristol Blue glass. One shelf was occupied by a set of four goblets, three lozenge-stoppered decanters, and a single spirit bottle.

  Poppy recognized the spirit bottle at once. There was another one, just like it, in the house where she had grown up.

  ‘Two hundred years old,’ said Alex, ‘can you credit it?’

  ‘Cheeky bugger,’ Rita retorted over his shoulder. ‘I am not.’ She winked at Poppy and said to Alex, ‘Have you told her yet?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘Me and Rita, we’ve had an idea.’ He grinned. ‘To make up for you losing your job.’

  Poppy’s heart began to race. She struggled to contain her excitement. This is it, she thought, hardly able to believe her luck, they’re going to offer me work! They want to employ me as a… as a…

  Poppy wasn’t quite sure what, but she didn’t care. She would clean, do odd jobs, mow the lawn, anything. Dammit, she’d even cook.

  ‘Go on love, you tell her.’ Rita gave Alex a nudge.

  ‘The dress,’ said Alex kindly. ‘It suits you, love. We want you to have it. And no arguments; it’s yours.’

  Chapter 18

  The last time Dina had visited London had been on a school trip to the Science Museum which had bored her stupid. The highlight of that outing had involved eyeing up another busload of schoolboys from Birmingham, one of whom had thrown a doughnut at her in the Museum coffee shop. The lowlight had been getting a love bite on her neck from spotty Stuart Anderson on the journey home.

  But that had been yonks ago, when she was just a kid. This is far more like it, Dina thought gleefully. No more stupid school uniform. No bossy Miss Wildbore, head of physics, barking at her to pay attention. No Mr Killjoy-Carter telling her to wipe off that lipstick or else.

  Best of all, no baby.

  ‘You jammy thing, have you fallen on your feet here or what?’ Dina crowed with delight. She threw herself down on the sofa and gazed rapturously around the room.

  Poppy knew she had to find herself another job fast if she wanted to stay here. At this rate, she was going to end up a pub stripper after all.

  ‘Never mind my feet.’ She’d turn her attention to the job dilemma later. ‘What did Tom say to you when you saw him?’

  ‘Talk about uncool,’ mocked Dina. ‘Anyway, who said he said anything?’

  ‘But he did.’ Poppy knew Dina too well. She wouldn’t have been able to resist talking to him.

  ‘We-ell maybe. Good-looking, isn’t he? All that curly hair. And those brilliant eyes…’

  ‘I could always pull out your toenails one by one.’

  Poppy was too shattered to play games. She had only managed three hours’ sleep. She’d been hokey-pokeying and singing bawdy songs until five in the morning, in an haute couture dress.

  Dina gave in. ‘Okay. Well, I was there with Maggie and I spotted him right away. He was wearing a red and white striped shirt and white jeans. Brilliant bum, too. Well, I said “Hi” when we went past him to get to the bar and he didn’t twig at first, what with me being a bit of a different shape.’ Smugly, Dina patted her flat-as-a-pancake stomach. ‘So I reminded him who I was and he kind of lit up and got interested. Asked me what I’d had and how the baby was getting on. Then he kind of took a deep breath and asked how you were.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him nobody had heard from you for yonks. I said you’d called off the wedding and done a bunk. I’m telling you, you should have seen the look on his face…’

  ‘What kind of look?’ Poppy tried not to shriek. Dina was spinning this out on purpose.

  ‘Oh, kind of…’ Dina mimed it. ‘No, hang on, maybe a bit more like…’ She tried again, then shrugged. ‘Well, pretty much gobsmacked. So I told him, then, all about you turning up at Rob’s house the next morning, and how Rob wouldn’t believe you when you said it was all off, and how Margaret was flying off the handle and trying everything to make you change your mind because she’d never be able to live down the shame.’

  ‘What did he say when you’d finished telling him all that? Or,’ said Poppy evenly, ‘was it kicking-out time by then?’

  Dina looked offended. ‘He said if I ever heard from you, to give you his phone number and address.’

  ‘He gave them to you?’

  Yes, yes! This was better than Poppy had even dared to expect. She had to control herself, sit on her hands. The
temptation to frisk Dina, to rifle through her pockets for the precious information, was strong.

  ‘He gave them to me.’ Dina blinked. Nobody, thought Poppy, wore quite as much navy-blue eyeshadow as Dina.

  ‘Well? You’re here now, you can give them to me.’

  ‘Except I kind of lost the piece of paper. Well, the beer coaster,’ gabbled Dina. ‘You see, he wrote it down on the back of a beer coaster and I put it in the side bit of my white handbag, the one with the chain strap. So it wasn’t my fault,’ she went on defensively. ‘It’s not as if I chucked it in a bin or something, like on purpose. It just… fell out of its own accord.’

  ‘You’ve lost it,’ Poppy echoed. Trust Dina to raise her hopes and then dash them. Anyone with a grain of compassion would never have done it like that. Anyone with an ounce of common sense, for heaven’s sake, would have left out the whole bit about the beer coaster.

  Poppy wasn’t yelling at her, but Dina could tell she was upset.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking perplexed. ‘I didn’t think it was that important. I mean, it wasn’t as if you called off the wedding so you could run away with this chap instead, was it? You said you were never going to see him again. I didn’t realize getting his number was such a big deal. You should have said.’

  I hadn’t realized it either, Poppy thought glumly. Until now.

  When she had said good-bye to Tom that night, she had still been intending to marry Rob the next day. The subject of phone numbers had deliberately not been raised because that would definitely have been tempting fate. When you felt that strongly about someone and you were marrying someone else, their phone number was a dangerous thing to know.

  But she hadn’t married Rob. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Tom either.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Poppy wearily. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t your fault. I should have said.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Just, if you ever bump into him again, could you take his number and not lose it?’

  ‘Oh, I won’t.’ Dina shook her head vigorously. ‘Bump into him again, I mean. He told me the brother he was staying with in Bristol was on the verge of emigrating to Australia.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘I did kind of glance at the beer mat,’ Dina was trying to be helpful, ‘before I put it in my bag.’

  ‘And?’ Poppy hardly dared to hope.

  ‘It said Notty something. Maybe Nottingham. Or Notting Hill.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Poppy, ‘not a clue.’

  A hyperactive six-year-old would have been easier to handle than Dina. By Sunday afternoon, Poppy was on her last legs and down to her last fiver in the world. On Saturday, they had shopped. On Saturday night, they had visited more bars and clubs than she had known existed. On Sunday morning, Dina had dragged her out again, to Camden Lock market. From there they had moved on to Covent Garden. At four o’clock, they arrived back at Cornwallis Crescent. Dina had to leave at six to catch the coach home.

  The trouble with Dina, Poppy decided, was she looked as if she were giving every man she met a lascivious once-over. She was giving every man she met a lascivious once-over. The drawback was letting them know it.

  But Dina was unstoppable. She had been let off her leash for the weekend and was making the most of it. London was terrific; London was glamorous. It was also teeming with men.

  And she hadn’t had to change a nappy once.

  ***

  ‘That girl is so brazen,’ Claudia said scornfully when Poppy had dragged Dina downstairs to pack.

  ‘I know, isn’t it great?’

  Caspar loved it, of course.

  ‘It is not. She hasn’t stopped flirting with you since she got here. And all you’re doing is encouraging her.’

  He grinned. ‘Is that against the law?’

  ‘She’s married,’ Claudia reminded him. ‘And she’s got a baby.’ Acidly she added, ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘So, okay, chances are she isn’t a virgin.’ Caspar loved teasing Claudia. It was the perfect pastime for a Sunday afternoon. Well, maybe the second most perfect.

  ‘All this promiscuity. Don’t you get tired of it?’

  ‘I’m getting tired of being lectured to about it.’ First Poppy, now Claudia. Caspar was tempted to boast about turning Angie down but sensed her daughter might not appreciate it, seeing as she didn’t know about Angie’s clandestine visits to the house in the first place.

  Claudia was jealous. She knew this was because she’d been going through a bit of an arid patch recently, man-wise, but it only made Caspar’s lack of interest in her more hurtful. Not to mention the shaming debacle with Jake…

  Things just weren’t going her way right now. Claudia wished she knew what she was doing wrong. She flipped shut the copy of Cosmopolitan on her lap and gazed moodily at the model on the cover.

  ‘So who’s your ideal woman?’

  ‘Someone who doesn’t lecture me, who doesn’t go on and on and on about boring morals—’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Someone who doesn’t take me seriously.’ Caspar stretched. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t met her yet.’

  ‘But what’s your ideal type?’ Claudia was frustrated; she wasn’t going to give in. ‘I mean, short or tall, blonde or dark?’

  No mention, Caspar couldn’t help noticing, of medium-sized redheads.

  ‘I like all kinds,’ he said with unaccustomed tact. ‘Anyway, personality’s more important than looks.’

  ‘Oh sure, as if you’d ever go out with some old boiler just because she told great jokes.’

  Claudia abandoned Cosmo and started giving her nails their second coat of plum polish. Caspar couldn’t figure out for the life of him why women wore the stuff.

  ‘Depends how great the jokes are,’ he said, ‘and whether she laughs. Laughter’s sexy. Men like girls who laugh.’

  Right on cue, the sound of Dina gurgling like a drain drifted up the stairs.

  ‘Okay,’ Caspar amended, ‘men like most girls who laugh.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me I’ve been a miserable old cow lately?’

  ‘Well, the odd smile now and again might help.’

  Claudia looked doubtful. She tried one.

  ‘You mean like this?’

  ‘Ravishing.’

  She broke into a grin, blew on her wet nails, and chucked over a pen.

  ‘Go on then, get some paper. Write down all your best jokes.’

  Chapter 19

  Poppy gazed at the emerald earrings, pear-shaped and lavishly set in twenty-two carat gold. Jake was out at an auction and she wasn’t—strictly speaking—allowed to do any buying herself. But even she could see these earrings were special; if she turned them down, she could be missing out on a terrific deal. And where would be the sense in that?

  The woman selling the earrings was middle-aged and frail, with a genteel manner and a high-pitched quavery voice.

  ‘They were my grandmother’s,’ she explained to Poppy, ‘but the time has come to sell. I don’t want to, of course. Grandmother would be so disappointed… oh dear, but Christmas is coming and since my husband died it’s become harder and harder to manage.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Poppy, ‘my boss isn’t here at the moment. If you could come back tomorrow—’

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I really wanted to get it over and done with today. I’m afraid I find this whole business rather distressing.’

  ‘How much were you hoping to get for them?’

  The woman, close to tears, dabbed at her eyes with a pink hanky and shook her head. ‘I don’t know—whatever you think is fair. Maybe… two hundred?’

  Poppy reached beneath the counter and took out the cash box. The earrings were easily worth that. She smiled conspiratorially at the poor grief-stricken woman.

  ‘I tell you what. Let’s make it two hundred and fifty.’

  Jake was right beside Poppy the next day when the policeman approached the stall. He didn’t say anything, just held up a
photograph.

  ‘Nope,’ said Poppy, having studied intently the face of a buxom girl in a dark green ballgown. ‘Sorry, never seen her before in my life.’

  Next to her, Jake groaned.

  ‘Not the face, madam,’ said the policeman with the merest hint of a sneer. ‘The earrings.’

  ‘Oh bugger,’ wailed Poppy.

  ‘We caught her this morning, trying to off-load more stolen goods.’

  Poppy didn’t dare look at Jake.

  The policeman bent over to study the contents of the jewelry cabinet. Within seconds he spotted the earrings, marked at four hundred and fifty pounds.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll need to take these from you, sir.’

  Poppy stared at the policeman. Anyone could hire an outfit like that from a fancy-dress shop…

  ‘Wait!’ she yelled. ‘You can’t expect to waltz off, just like that, with a pair of valuable earrings! We’ll see some identification,’ she demanded hotly, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh Poppy,’ Jake sighed.

  The policeman flashed his card at her. He smirked.

  ‘What a shame you didn’t think about that before.’

  Jake was still speaking to her, but only just. The policeman, quite unfairly Poppy felt, had delivered a depressing lecture, warning her of the dangers of handling stolen goods. To listen to him, you’d have thought she was the mastermind behind the Brink’s Mat Robbery.

  The sight of Claudia colliding in the doorway with an impressively endowed woman in a fedora brought much-needed light relief to the afternoon. Their bosoms clashed. They ricocheted off each other like Sumo wrestlers. The woman in the hat glared at Claudia. Claudia, who felt she had right of way, glared back.

  Poppy collapsed in giggles, which didn’t help. Claudia had spent the last two hours planning her entrance and it hadn’t included this. Trust it to happen when she was seeing Jake again for the first time in weeks. Just when she wanted to look cool.

  Not to mention cheerful.