Colin hated to see his daughter’s distress, but he needed to know the source of it.
‘No she won’t.’ He put an arm round her. ‘She won’t, because I won’t tell her you told me. What is it, Chelsey?’
Eventually, reluctantly, she told him.
‘She was fired from the gym a few months ago. She hasn’t been there for ages. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.’
‘I see.’ Colin digested this information, rapidly putting it into context, taking in all the implications. No wonder Karen had been so on edge. He sat down on the end of Chelsey’s bed. ‘Well,’ he carried on carefully. ‘She probably needs a bit of time on her own, to think about what she’s going to do.’
Chelsey put her hand to her hair and started twirling a strand around her finger. A nervous habit, Colin thought.
‘Is there something else?’ he asked. ‘You can trust me, Chelsey. Honestly. I understand your mum gets cross with you, so I won’t let you get into trouble.’
This, he realised, was the start of their relationship proper. From now on, he was going to have to gain her trust, if they were going to get through this.
‘I expect she’s going to Hot Legs,’ she said finally. ‘She works there sometimes.’
Colin felt a chill. Hot Legs.
He knew about it, of course. Who didn’t? The infamous ‘gentlemen’s club’ on the edge of the Chinese quarter in town – although there was nothing gentlemanly about it, in his opinion. It was open twenty-four hours, with non-stop dancing girls. He had never been there, although he’d heard stories of the scantily clad beauties who performed at your table in front of you for twenty pounds. The thought made him queasy. He didn’t belong to the school of macho who got off on that kind of thing – but there were plenty of men who did. Faithful husbands, family men, for whom the thrill of a naked girl gyrating between their legs proved too much of a temptation.
They were fools, thought Colin, to be taken in by the charade, to be seduced by the pouting lips and come-hither eyes. To him it was a sordid transaction. Why would you want to buy sexual promise? An empty encounter?
Worse than that, though, was the thought that Karen had been reduced to this, if what Chelsey was saying was true. And how appalling that she thought it was okay for her daughter to know.
‘How long has she been working there?’ he asked Chelsey lightly. It was important not to show his shock. He wanted to get as much information out of her as possible.
‘Ages,’ said Chelsey. ‘Her friend Sharanne is the manager there. She calls her when they’re short. It’s good money,’ she assured him. ‘She can get two hundred pounds in a night. And it’s cash.’
She was eleven years old. She shouldn’t know any of this. Sickened, Colin thought of Michelle at eleven. Her head had been filled with ponies and puppies and cupcakes, nothing more sinister. Okay, so eventually pop music and make-up and boys had filtered through, but in a controlled and healthy way.
Yet while in some ways Chelsey seemed so much younger than Michelle had at the same age, here she was talking about her mother effectively selling her body for cash in a matter-of-fact manner that chilled Colin’s heart to the core.
‘Have you been there?’ he asked.
‘A couple of times,’ she told him. ‘If she goes there in the day, I hang out in the changing rooms till she’s finished her shift.’
‘What do you do?’
Chelsey shrugged. ‘Play on my DS. Watch the telly.’
Colin felt his fists clench. His daughter, his flesh and blood, subjected to that kind of immoral degradation. He couldn’t bring himself to ask any more questions. He didn’t want to know, not just yet. He wiped his forehead. It was coated with beads of sweat, oozing globules of shock and fear and disgust.
To him, the biggest surprise was that Karen had even got a job there. He would have thought her too old; well past her prime. But he supposed that with the right make-up, the right costume and subdued lighting, she would pass muster. She had the moves. She had the right look in her eye. He knew that well enough.
He had no idea what his next move should be. Karen doing a runner had been one thing, but this revelation raised the stakes even higher. He needed to keep his head; keep calm. Make some phone calls.
Alison. He couldn’t think about Alison just yet.
And his priority was still Chelsey. This weekend had always been about her, and it still would be, if it killed him. Absolutely none of this was her fault. He took a quick glance at his phone to see if there was a message from Karen, either conciliatory or explanatory, but there was nothing.
‘I think you should get dressed and we’ll go down to breakfast,’ he said, injecting a cheerfulness into his voice that he didn’t feel. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’
When she got back to their room, Claire was amazed to find that Luca was already up. She must have missed him on her way back. Maybe he was in the kitchen? Unusual, she thought, but actually she was relieved. She’d been dreading seeing him, having to fake enthusiasm for what had happened the night before. She felt drained, unable to muster so much as a smile.
His presence was everywhere in the room. Steam from his shower, wet towels and last night’s clothes on the floor, a rumpled bed – okay, the chambermaids came and made it every morning, but did he have to leave it in quite such disarray? – and two empty coffee cups.
She picked up his shirt from the day before and breathed in its scent. The smell of him still affected her deeply – a mixture of excitement and uncertainty mixed with the desire for sex. The adrenalin he made her feel never seemed to fade. It was what had attracted her in the first place; the sense of danger he exuded. His unpredictability. The polar opposite of Nick. Maybe that was what had drawn her to him. Luca was so overpowering that he had wiped out the memories and given her something else to fill her head.
Only now, the two men in her life were jostling for pole position and she had no idea what she wanted. She looked at herself in the mirror. Who was she? Who was Claire Marlowe? She thought she had reinvented herself entirely and built a new persona – the strong, independent businesswoman, one half of a power couple intent on making their mark on the world. But no – the events of the last twenty-four hours showed her that the former Claire was still in there, the softer, more vulnerable girl who had once yearned to be part of the Barnes family unit; who had once thought she had found love and her future and the meaning of life, until fate had decided otherwise.
Yet even without the arrival of Nick to add to her confusion, everything was happening too quickly. With Trevor and Monique driving the project, and Luca a wildly enthusiastic passenger, she felt she was being swept along. No real consideration had been given to her opinion, she realised. They had praised her to the hilt, lauded her achievements, insisted they couldn’t roll the project out without her, but they hadn’t paused for a moment to ask if it was what she really wanted. She knew they considered it a no-brainer, but in truth her misgivings were many and deep. And that was without even taking Nick into consideration.
She sighed as she got dressed in some presentable clothes. She had to make her mind up one way or the other by the end of the weekend. No one else was going to do it for her.
As she pulled on her cardigan, her ring caught on the sleeve. She looked at it. She couldn’t take it off yet – Luca would be crushed. She’d go and find him, she decided. She’d ask him if they could keep quiet about their engagement for the time being; tell him she was going to put the ring back in its box until they could make an official announcement. It was going to be impossible for her to make a decision if the happy news was broadcast all over Pennfleet. After all, if it was public knowledge, it would be even harder to walk away. If that was what she decided to do in the end.
When Chelsey presented herself, dressed and ready for breakfast, Colin felt profoundly depressed. The clothes she was wearing were cheap, too tight, garish. Her T-shirt, which bore the logo ‘I love boys and shopping’, strained across the pup
py fat on her belly and yet again didn’t meet the top of her leggings, which were trimmed with scratchy lace. He was, he realised, embarrassed to be seen with her dressed like this, in case anyone thought he considered what she was wearing attractive or appropriate in any way. But what on earth could he say to her? He didn’t know what else she had in her little case, but everything he had seen so far seemed to come from Primark and be two sizes too small.
He said nothing, of course, but led her down to the dining room. When she made a beeline for the table containing cereal, fresh fruit and baskets of morning goods, he predicted that she would reach for the box of Coco Pops, and she did.
‘Do you know what?’ he said to her gently. ‘I think the people here have gone to a lot of trouble making this fresh fruit salad. Why don’t we both try that? You can have boring old Coco Pops any day of the week.’
Chelsey looked uncertainly at the bowl of freshly prepared fruit, a colourful mélange of pineapple, melon, kiwi, strawberries and grapes.
‘I’m not sure about that,’ she said, pointing at the kiwi.
‘Well,’ said Colin, ‘if you don’t like it, I’ll have it, because kiwi is my favourite.’
And he scooped them out two generous helpings into white bowls.
They sat at a table by the window.
‘This is so nice. We never eat breakfast usually,’ Chelsey told him. ‘Mum always has black coffee and a cigarette.’
‘Surely you don’t go to school with no breakfast?’
‘I get an Egg McMuffin on the way. From the drive-through.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Colin was appalled. ‘What about tea? Does she cook you your tea?’
‘We have ping dinners.’
Colin frowned. ‘What’s a ping dinner?’
Chelsey mimed putting something into the microwave. ‘Ping!’
‘Right.’ It was, thought Colin, lucky for Karen that she wasn’t here. What the hell was she playing at? He could already imagine her excuses. Hear her whining ‘It’s all right for you.’
And maybe it was all right for him. What did he know about the cold, hard reality of single motherhood? But then, he reminded himself, most single mothers didn’t have over a thousand pounds a month paid into their account without question. They often had to fight for every penny they got from the fathers of their children. He had never missed a payment, never quibbled, never begrudged a penny of it. But he did resent the fact that clearly Karen wasn’t spending the money on Chelsey, although she would no doubt argue otherwise. ‘Have you any idea how much it costs?’ He could already hear her shrill demand ringing in his ears. What the bloody hell was she spending it all on?
Definitely not Chelsey’s wardrobe.
It was, he decided, time to make some changes.
‘I thought we could go shopping this morning,’ he suggested. ‘I haven’t really got any holiday clothes, and I know all girls love any opportunity for a new outfit.’
He smiled at her. She considered his suggestion, then shrugged.
‘If you want,’ she said. ‘We need to take the DVDs back as well, don’t forget,’ she reminded him, anxious.
‘So we do,’ he said, and he loved her just a little bit more for worrying. ‘Then what would you like to do? We could take a boat down the river. Or go to the beach. Or the Eden Project?’
Chelsey sprinkled sugar all over her fruit while she thought about this. Colin had to sit on his hands to stop her. Then she gave him the most heartbreakingly sweet smile.
‘I don’t mind. It’ll be fun whatever.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I love it here.’
Colin spooned up some pineapple. They were going to have the best day ever, he would make sure of it. He knew he was on borrowed time, that by this evening he would have to think seriously about Chelsey’s future, but it wasn’t going to spoil their time together. He was in limbo. He wasn’t going to think about Karen. Or Alison. Or Ryan and Michelle.
Chelsey deserved to be the centre of someone’s world for once.
Dressed and resolute, Claire took a deep breath and headed down the stairs. As she rounded the last flight, she stopped dead in her tracks at the sight that greeted her in the hall below.
On the table in the middle of the reception area was an enormous arrangement of flowers – a wild tangle of deep cream roses mixed with ivy and larkspur. Next to it was a tower of champagne coupes piled on top of each other, and several bottles of vintage Dom Perignon rested in a bucket of ice under the table. A bunch of pale-pink metallic balloons hovered overhead.
Claire frowned. Was there something she had forgotten about – a wedding party booked in? No way would she have overlooked something like that. Someone had clearly organised all this behind her back – but why? She’d only been gone half an hour – it must have been a military operation. She looked around for further clues, and her heart sank as she realised that the only reason for organising this behind her back was to surprise . . . her.
She walked down the last few steps, her heart thumping, and her worst fears were realised as Trevor and Monique sneaked theatrically out of the dining room, smiling from ear to ear. Monique edged her way across the room looking coy, her arms spread wide.
‘Luca told us over breakfast earlier. Amazing news. Congratulations. You must be so thrilled.’
‘This is just a little gesture.’ Trevor indicated the table. ‘We thought your guests would like to share in your good news.’
Claire was speechless. This was a nightmare. Surely she was going to wake up in a moment and realise it was her imagination working overtime? But no – Trevor had grabbed a bottle and was opening it with ceremony, and Monique was grabbing her hand, demanding to look at the ring.
‘Oh my goodness – that’s just beautiful. And so you. He’s so clever . . .’
Claire looked up to see Luca gazing proudly at her.
She dredged up a smile. With Monique holding her left hand, and Trevor pressing a glass of champagne into her right, she held out her cheek for a kiss. Luca must have been in on this. He didn’t look in the least surprised to have had his reception area hijacked. What was he playing at? Grand gestures weren’t really his thing.
By now Trevor had filled four glasses. And to make matters worse, here was the stag party coming down the stairs, dressed up for a day on the water, Nick in their midst. Trevor beckoned them all over to the champagne tower with a flamboyant wave.
‘Come on, everybody – there’s plenty for everyone. You can’t beat a glass of fizz to kick off the weekend . . .’
He busied himself filling more glasses and distributing them around. The stags fell on the offer with delight, not the types to turn down an offer of free booze. Except Nick, who hung back, looking slightly bemused. Claire didn’t want to catch his eye. She turned away, and was grateful to see Angelica coming in through the door.
Angelica was looking round in astonishment. Trevor grabbed her and pulled her into the mêlée.
‘You’re just in time for the toast.’
‘Toast?’ Angelica looked at Claire for enlightenment, but before she could say anything, Monique brandished her hand in glee.
‘Look! Isn’t it just the most beautiful ring you’ve ever seen?’ she gushed.
Angelica’s eyes widened.
‘You’re engaged?’
Claire nodded.
‘I think she’s a bit overawed,’ said Monique. ‘She hasn’t said a word!’
‘To . . . Luca?’ asked Angelica.
‘Who else?’ Monique looked more excited than Claire.
Trevor clapped his hands.
‘Everyone, I want you all to raise your glasses and drink a toast to our wonderful host and hostess, who have just announced they are going to be married. I feel so proud and excited to be part of this happy day. It’s what life is all about – true love. And I think you’ll all agree they make a wonderful couple.’
He held his glass aloft.
‘To Claire and Luca.’
‘To Claire
and Luca,’ chorused the assembled crowd.
As Claire held her glass to her lips, Luca slid his arm around her shoulder. Through the crowd she searched for Nick and met his eyes, trying to convey her desperation and convince him that she had been trapped. She wanted to explain how events had overtaken her, tell him she was going to find some way out of this mess if she could, at least until they could have a proper conversation, but Luca was holding her tight, laughing, kissing her neck, and she could do nothing but stand there with a frozen smile as Nick turned and walked away, striding across the hall towards the front door.
‘We’re taking the day off,’ Luca was saying. ‘Trevor has asked us out on his boat.’
‘We can’t have the day off!’ she protested. ‘The hotel’s full . . .’
‘It’ll look after itself. Fred and Loz have got the kitchen under control; we’ll be back by three so I can start to prep for tonight, and Angelica can keep on top of things – can’t you, Angelica?’
He turned to Angelica, who wasn’t sure what to say. She could see that Claire needed rescuing, but how could she refuse?
‘Of course.’ She gave a helpless shrug.
‘I need to talk to you,’ said Claire to Luca, desperate.
‘We’ve got all day,’ he told her. ‘Go and get changed. I’ve got the kitchen to make us up a picnic basket. We deserve a day off.’
‘I’ve even organised the weather for you.’ Trevor waved an airy hand at the glorious sunshine outside.
‘We can top up our tans and talk soft furnishings.’ Monique, who was a deep Cuprinol brown and didn’t look as if her tan needed topping up at all, was bubbling with excitement. ‘The men can talk figures.’ She pressed her hands together, her fingers laden with the hallmarks of the Parfitts’ marriage – engagement rings, wedding rings, eternity rings, all carefully chosen to complement each other and display their enormous wealth.
What on earth could she say?
‘I’ll be five minutes,’ said Claire, wondering if she could squeeze out of the skylight and run away across the rooftops, and how long it would be before they noticed she had gone.
The Long Weekend Page 19
