‘Was that before or after today?’ Jay asked quietly.
I laughed bitterly.
‘Before,’ I said. ‘It was when that stupid article came out. That one little article made so much trouble for us, didn’t it?’
‘You got it… The power of the press, something you should know all about in your job.’
That stung, but I let it pass. Jay leaned back in his chair, looking at me with a sombre expression.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to carry on breaking your promise to him?’
‘If you still want me to, after hearing all that.’ I glanced away for a moment and then back at him. ‘I don’t normally break promises so easily, Jay,’ I said, quietly.
‘I believe you,’ he said. And much as I respect your father, I would like you to continue betraying his trust, to see me – as long as you really think I’m worth it.’
That handsome face, with its playboy tan, looked quite vulnerable for a moment. So I got up, sat myself on his knee and held him really tight.
The rest of the weekend was charmed. It was a huge relief to have got the Ham business off my chest to Jay, so I could just surrender myself to enjoying his company and this novel game of playing house.
I have to confess, I was so wrapped up in him and the little bubble we had created that I completely forgot to ring Freddie to say Happy Birthday until it was nearly noon on the Sunday. And I’d switched all my phones off.
‘There you are!’ said Ham, who picked up the phone after one ring. ‘I’ve been calling your home phone and mobile all morning and of course you never pick up that work phone, do you? I was so worried I was ready to drive back to town, if you hadn’t called by lunch.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ I said. ‘I’m just so wrapped up in what I’m doing here, I forgot to put my phone on this morning. Anyway, how’s the birthday going? How did the tepee go down with Freddie?’
I was getting so good at these not-the-whole-truth lies, I amazed myself. It was a strange kind of comfort not to be telling actual brazen porkies about being in the office, although I knew inside that such semantic details would be immaterial to Ham if he knew what I was really wrapped up in.
I had a brief word with the birthday boy, who was in a state of extreme excitement, and then I was free to go back to the only thing I really cared about at the moment. The beautiful man who had just been rubbing my neck and was now tenderly kissing it…
After a leisurely brunch cooked by Jay in Chloe’s kitchen, we decided to go out for another walk in Hyde Park. We should have been warned when the first people I saw on opening Ham’s front door were my friend Becca – the Cartier PR – and her sister, Toria, who lived just round the corner in Chepstow Villas.
They were good friends of mine; we were all single girls and we often met up at the weekend for breakfast and a long walk, which is what I presumed they were on their way back from.
It would have been a disaster, I realized, if they’d seen us. They both would have recognized Jay immediately. It was Becca’s job to know who he was and Toria was a banker who’d spent a few years working on Wall Street – she probably knew his dad.
And Jay and I had agreed the night before that the only way it was going to work was for us to maintain absolute secrecy. If we didn’t want my father or the paparazzi to know what we were up to, we basically couldn’t tell a soul. As Doughnut liked to say: ‘The only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone.’
Luckily, I managed to jump back inside the door before Becca saw me and after that fright, we decided it was safer to leave from my house, where we could emerge discreetly at the end of the mews.
By the time we got into the park, I had forgotten the near miss and was just revelling in Jay’s company on the beautiful spring afternoon. We lay down in the rough grass for a while, my head on his stomach, not even talking much, just happy and easy together.
As usual on a sunny Sunday, there were lots of families in the park, and I was rudely shaken from my reverie when a football hit me on the head, closely followed by the grinning toddler who had kicked it.
His parents rushed over to apologize, and I told them not to worry. He was a very cute little boy and I was reminded for a brief poignant flash of how sweet Marcus and Freddie and Toby had been at the same age. I tweaked his cheek and he giggled wildly.
‘Do you want to have kids, Stella?’ Jay asked me, after they’d gone.
‘No,’ I replied firmly. ‘No way. No kids, no husband, no people mover, I don’t want any of that.’
Jay was so surprised he sat up.
‘Are you serious?’
I nodded. I was.
‘Yοu don’t secretly hanker for the full happy-ever-after, orange-blossom scenario, like every other woman on earth?’
‘I like orange blossom the way it’s meant to be,’ I said. ‘Still on the tree. Preferably still in the ground, somewhere nice in the Mediterranean, with a cold glass of wine not far away.’
Jay smiled at me.
‘You are a very singular girl,’ he said.
‘That’s how I like to be,’ I said. ‘And that’s how I want to remain – singular.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a lame joke, I meant it the other way – unusual.’
‘I know you did, but it fits me both ways. Most people don’t believe me, but it’s true.’
I paused for a moment. This was very personal stuff for me. I’d copped a lot of flak about it over the years, because no one believed me, and it had rather put me off talking about it. I normally just sidestepped those kinds of questions, but Jay’s own family set-up was clearly so weird, I didn’t mind telling him some of the dirty truths about mine.
‘Do you want to know why I feel this way?’ I said, eventually.
‘I sure do.’ He grinned at me, wickedly. ‘I wish more women did, it would make life so much simpler. God, I hate that thing when you just know they’re designing the towel monogram on the first date.’
I smiled to myself. All of my girlfriends were like that. A man just had to look at Becca and she was planning the Conran Shop wedding list. I’d seen just how quickly it put them off her too.
‘Well,’ I started. ‘The reason I want to stay singular, is that since I was a little girl, I have watched women come and go through my father’s life like they were rented on short leases. And I’ve seen what can happen to women who have been traded in, once they get past a certain age.’
I was thinking about Margot, of course, but there were others. Ham had worked his way through quite a few mistresses and girlfriends, as well as the actual wives. I’d seen some sad cases over the years. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t joking when he said men were bastards.
‘So,’ I continued. ‘I’d rather just be on my own right through than get used to playing happy houses and then suddenly be thrown out to survive by myself.
‘I mean, I don’t want to be alone all the time,’ I added, I didn’t want to put him off completely. ‘I’m not a hermit, I want to have boyfriends, lovers, companions, whatever you want to call it, I just don’t want it to be tied down and formal. I like things to stay fluid.’
‘But what about kids,’ said Jay, his eyes narrowing. ‘You really don’t have that urge? Isn’t that inescapable biology for women?’
‘Not for me,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I’m surrounded by children, so I don’t need to have any of my own, to get that kiddie hit. And, as I told you, there’s another baby on the way in the family this year and before he or she is even grown up, my other siblings will start to produce the next generation of children, so I’m never going to go short of baby energy.’
Jay was looking a little sceptical.
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I love my big-sister role – it’s got all the advantages grandparents talk about. You have all the love and fun of kids, the cute drawings, the cuddles and the school nativity plays, but then you get to give them back. And you don’t have to do the maths homework, either.’
‘And, the other thing is,’ I continued, ‘as I’ve already told you – I’m really into my career. I love my job, I love newspapers and I don’t want to give that up for kids.’
‘Well, surely you don’t have to, these days,’ said Jay.
‘No, of course you don’t, lots of my female colleagues have kids, but I’ve studied the working mother thing close up with my stepmother Nicola – she’s the previous wife, the mother of the two youngest boys – and it’s not pretty. She nearly went bonkers trying to do all that juggling when they were small.
‘Of course, she did have all the stepchildren to cope with as well, plus the large child who is my father – but for a while there I don’t think she was a good publisher, or a good mother. So I think you have to make a choice: work or breed. I’m going to work.’
‘Phew,’ said Jay. ‘That’s pretty tough.’ He got a cheeky look in his eye. ‘But at least I don’t have to worry about the towel monograms with you then…’
‘I’ve already got monogrammed towels, Jay,’ I said. ‘My initials – and I’m not changing them.’
‘You’re a one-off,’ he said, starting to tickle me.
‘Yeah, and I’m staying that way,’ I said, pretending to fight him off and loving it.
After that we went for a long walk, right over to the Serpentine and back, and stopped to take a break on a bench near the statue of Peter Pan. As we sat there, Jay took his sunglasses off, so that he could get some sun in his eyes – the best cure for jet lag.
Suddenly, with no warning, he snatched away his arm, which had been round my shoulders, jumped up from the bench and started walking away. I was so surprised I jumped up too, but then an instinct told me to sit down again. I watched Jay out of the corner of my eye, as he strode off. After a few minutes, my phone rang. It was him.
‘It’s me,’ he whispered. ‘I just saw someone I know and I think they spotted me. Stay where you are for now. I’ll call again in a minute. And keep your sunglasses on.’
I sat there for what seemed like ages, feeling rather lost. I kept checking my phone, but there was no sign of a missed call, or a text. Time continued to pass and I was just starting to wonder if I should head for home, when Jay appeared again, breathless.
‘Oh boy,’ he said. ‘They did spot me and it was very hard to get out of chatting to them. I am so sorry. I just couldn’t get away – they are really good friends of my best friends, if you see what I mean, so I couldn’t just brush them off.’
‘Did they see us?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so. Kelly asked me who I was sitting with and I just said, no one…’
He glanced away for a moment.
‘I hated denying you like that, but it is the only way for now, isn’t it?’
‘Well, between my dad and the paparazzi, I think so.’
He shook his head. ‘Sometimes, I think your dad might be right about me. Not worth the trouble.’
He sighed deeply, then he put his arm round me and gave me a squeeze.
‘Come on, beautiful, let’s go home.’
It was after four by the time we got back to my place and I was starting to get a bit nervous. Ham and Chloe and the rest of them would be back sometime that evening, but I didn’t know exactly when, and it was making me edgy. I knew Ham wasn’t going to burst into my house or anything, but it felt just too sneaky to hide Jay away in there, so close.
In the end I called them, ostensibly to see how the party had gone, and found out that they had decided not to come back until Monday morning, which was very handy for me.
Just the same, we didn’t go up to the big house to make dinner that night, but sat in bed eating a chicken tikka I’d unearthed in the bottom of my freezer.
‘There you go,’ I said. ‘Microwaved food’s not so bad is it?’
‘Not if you have a nice side salad to go with it,’ said Jay, disappearing under the covers.
We spent the rest of the evening just lying there, flicking between channels and chatting. It was gorgeous. And amazingly, Jay liked to watch the same kind of things as me – mainly BBC World and the History Channel, although I did notice he lingered a little over the sports channels too.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ said Jay, after we’d watched a documentary about Mozambique. ‘We should go away somewhere. Then we could have some time together without worrying about being seen. We can go somewhere nice and obscure where we can hang out without having to act like amateur spies.’
He turned to look at me. I smiled back at him, it was a lovely idea.
‘Where shall we go?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I have a number of secret locations I like to go to, when I want to be left alone,’ said Jay. ‘I’ll take you to one of those, it will be a surprise. Now, where did I put the phone? I’m going to book it.’
‘When do you want to go?’ I asked.
‘Tomorrow?’ said Jay, completely serious.
In that moment, the chasm really yawned between us.
I pulled a face, because I didn’t know what to say.
‘I have to go to work tomorrow,’ I squeezed out eventually.
‘Really?’ said Jay, frowning. ‘Do you have to?’
‘Yes!’ I said laughing. ‘I told you yesterday, I’ve just had this big promotion, and I’ve got to get a whole new section together, plus I’m fighting a guerrilla war on my left flank. I can’t go anywhere. I’ve never been so busy at work.’
Jay looked crestfallen, like a disappointed child.
‘Can’t you – what do you call it? – chuck a sickie?’
‘No – I’ve just explained. I’m in the thick of it at the moment – and I love it anyway. I wouldn’t chuck a sickie, even if I could.’
He slumped back against the pillows.
‘Well, that’s a pain in the ass. What am I going to do here while you’re at work? I told those people I saw today I’m going back to New York tomorrow to get them off my back, so now I’ll have to hide out in the apartment all day tomorrow, until you get let out of the factory, then we can stay in and have home delivery. Wowee, what a wild life the rich and pampered lead. I wonder what’s on Ricki Lake tomorrow?’
We both laughed, but it wasn’t a very scintillating scenario, put like that.
‘Haven’t you ever had a girlfriend with a job before?’ I asked him.
‘Sure I have,’ he said. ‘But not one they wouldn’t pull a sickie on, to go away with me.’
He punched me playfully on the shoulder and I stuck my tongue out at him. I was on the verge of suggesting maybe he should get a job himself, so he would have something useful to do all day, but as he pulled me into his arms, I thought better of it.
The next morning, Jay was very sweet and understanding about sneaking off early. We agreed to speak during the day and to meet later at his place. Then I forced myself to go up and see Ham. I had to get it over with.
They’d just got back when I walked in and Chloe was like a human whirlwind, trying to get the boys ready for school, negotiating on the phone with Kristy about who was going to take responsibility for Archie, while Daisy clung to her legs.
I scooped the little girl up and Chloe beamed her thanks at me.
‘Hello, crazy Daisy,’ I said, kissing her on the nose. ‘Did you enjoy the party?’
‘I had cake,’ she said, nodding. ‘Two lots. It was nice. I like cake.’
‘So do I,’ I said in the same serious voice and nodding back.
‘Shall I ask Mummy if you can have some?’ she asked, her blue eyes wide. It was a big deal, cake.
‘Oh, yes, please,’ I said.
Freddie raced in and ran over to thank me for the tepee.
‘It was brilliant,’ he said.
‘We had breakfast in it,’ said Marcus.
‘Daddy wore an Indian chief’s hat,’ added Freddie. ‘It was really funny. Why weren’t you there?’
Two innocent little f
aces looked up at me, squinting a little. So they had missed me.
‘I had to work,’ I said lamely. They looked suitably blank.
‘You missed the best firework display ever,’ said Freddie.
‘And we had sausages for breakfast and tea,’ said Marcus.
‘I had about twenty-five,’ said Freddie.
‘I had forty-five…’ said Marcus and they ran off in a babble of upwardly spiralling sausage claims.
Ham was up in his dressing room – he thought it was important to keep clothes, and particularly shoes, out of the bedroom – packing. He was heading off to an architectural conference in Rome, later that morning.
‘Ah ciao, bella. Che bella ragazza,’ he boomed, when he saw me. He couldn’t really speak Italian, but he always said he felt Italian and got very excited when he was going there.
‘Five days of marvellous food,’ he was saying. ‘I can’t wait.’ He paused, choosing between two of his favourite brightly coloured shirts. Ham wasn’t one of those architects who wear grey shirts done up to the neck with no tie. In this instance, the gaudier of the two won. It was daffodil yellow. ‘I’ll miss all my ducklings, though.’
He looked up at me. ‘Keep an eye on Chloe for me, would you, darling? I don’t like leaving her this long when she’s pregnant, but I committed to this event last year. I’m making the big speech.’
He cocked his panama hat at me, then rolled it up and chucked it into his bag. Then mashing down the lid – he still travelled with an ancient Globetrotter suitcase and thought bags on wheels were for wimps – he snapped it shut and left the room singing ‘La Donna è Mobile’ very badly.
I was very grateful, at that moment, for Ham’s tendency always to look forwards, rather than back.
14
Heavenly though my domestic bliss with Jay had been over the weekend, I was quite relieved to get back into the more familiar territory of the Journal.
Cents and Sensibility Page 20
