by Fiona Harper
‘I was saying that—’
She started walking, eyes fixed on the stairs down to the platforms. ‘No. Still can’t hear you. Listen, text me the details of this thing and I’ll…’
She trailed off as she jogged down the steps, phone still clamped to her ear. When she got to the bottom she looked at the display. Only one bar of signal, and as she walked towards the barrier even that disappeared.
Thank goodness. She couldn’t have had that conversation with him. But she also couldn’t bear to tell him one more lie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Alex stared at the huge collection of bones. For some reason Saffron had decided that instead of a Sunday afternoon installed in a favourite cafe with a steady stream of lattes and pastries on tap, she wanted to come to the Natural History Museum. They stood in the grand entrance hall, studying the diplodocus skeleton that had silently guarded it for more than a century. Alex didn’t know if you could tell much when the muscles and skin were gone, but if he had to guess, he reckoned that the dinosaur looked a little hacked off.
He turned to Saffron, who was studying the tail bones quite intently. He could tell she wanted to reach out and touch them, but wasn’t sure if she should. Which was odd in itself, because Saffron usually just did whatever she felt like.
‘My dad always promised he’d bring me here,’ she said softly, ‘but he travelled a lot. He was always so busy.’ She turned to smile up at him. ‘Can you believe I’ve lived within a mile of this place my whole life and I’ve never once been? Not even on a school trip.’
Alex just grunted. He wasn’t really in the mood for chit-chat. He hadn’t seen Saffron since Thursday lunchtime in Kensington High Street. She’d been doing some media thing on Friday, and he’d had another wedding yesterday. He knew he could have made the time to see her if he’d wanted to, but he’d been too angry. He was still angry, but there were things he needed to say to her, the kind of things a person needed to say face to face.
And he found he couldn’t keep it all bottled up a moment longer. Not now she was standing beside him, acting as if she hadn’t a care in the world, that everything was the same way it had always been between them.
‘Where did you go for lunch on Thursday?’ he blurted out, surprised by how deep and booming his voice sounded in the high, vaulted space.
Saffron froze for a second, but then continued her inspection of the diplodocus’s tail. ‘I told you. I went to see my father.’
She moved a little further down the chain of bones, so Alex followed. ‘In St John’s Wood?’
She sent him a cross glance. ‘Yes.’
‘At noon?’
She put her hands on her hips and turned to face him, scowling. ‘Yes.’ Then she gazed upstairs and set off at a trot. ‘Come on. I’ve had enough of dusty old bones. It’s the gems I want to see. That’s why I wanted to come in the first place.’
Alex stared after her for a second, his jaw gradually growing more and more tense. Then he stuffed his fists in his pockets and followed her with long strides. Saffron, despite the ridiculous height of her shoes, managed to keep just in front of him until they reached the room with the precious-stones display.
‘Look at the size of that emerald!’ she exclaimed, pointing to a green rock the size of a baby’s fist. ‘I’ve never seen one so big. But I can never quite decide if I like emeralds or not. They’re rather green, aren’t they?’
Alex didn’t have an answer for that.
Saffron moved on to the next case, which was full of sparkling clear stones. ‘I think, despite the pretty colours, I’ll always prefer diamonds,’ she said, sighing. ‘There’s something so classic about them, don’t you think?’
He didn’t even have time to grunt his response before she turned and gave him a look that reminded him of his mother. ‘Are you even listening to me?’ she asked. ‘You might need this information one day. You know, the kind of gems I like…’
Actually, Alex didn’t give a hoot whether she thought emeralds should be pink with blue stripes and sapphires were only fit to use as kitty litter. He had more important things on his mind, things he wasn’t going to let her flit away from again quite so easily.
‘If you were meeting your father for lunch at twelve in St John’s Wood, why did I see you forty-five minutes after that in Kensington High Street?’
Although Saffron still had her nose pressed against the glass of the display cabinet, and her back was to him, he saw her eyes widen and her mouth drop open in her reflection in the glass. She must have not realised he could see her, because he also watched her close her mouth again and set her jaw in a most determined way.
Her voice when she spoke, however, was neither hard nor determined, but bright and breezy. ‘You know me…I’m always running late.’
She was getting better at it. Lying. The thought made his stomach churn. On the rare occasions she did fib, she usually just lost her temper if she got caught out.
He waited until she glanced up at him, even though she was pretending to inspect the gems in the case and it was a good minute before her curiosity got the better of her. He needed to be in control of at least some part of this situation. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said flatly.
That was what he’d said to Vanessa when she’d had second thoughts a couple of months after she’d ditched him, tried to convince him she wanted to give things another go. He’d just come out with it. He found the blunt truth was a great antidote to all the lies and fantasies she’d woven around him.
He still saw her around town sometimes and wondered how he could have been so wrong. When she’d been with him, she’d said she liked the great outdoors, had developed an interest in photography, had been sweet and warm and open. Now, if he ran into her, it was like meeting a completely different person with her face. Hiking? Don’t make him laugh. The closest Vanessa probably ever got to hiking these days was running across the pavement from a designer boutique to a cab when it rained.
She’d found herself the rich husband with the name in the Domesday Book she’d always wanted, lived between a London town house and a Georgian stately home in Wiltshire. The man was obviously more malleable than he had been or more ready for a trophy wife who loved the things he’d inherited more than she did him.
He had to give her credit for one thing, though. She’d obviously been completely committed, even going to the gym so she could keep up with him on the long treks across Dartmoor to photograph some of the rocky tors. Her deception had been total and complete. And if there was one thing he’d promised himself once he’d brushed himself down and picked himself off the floor, it was that he was never going to let another woman lie to him again.
Saffron was looking at him now, with those big blue eyes open and pleading. He didn’t care. He’d been prepared to stand by her and support her through her family crisis, but not any more. If she had someone else on the side, let him do it. He felt no loyalty to her at all now.
‘Who were you with?’ he asked, his voice low and controlled, even though inside he felt anything but.
She shook her head. Her phone must have gone off, because she reached into her pocket and pulled it out, checked the message then looked back up at him. ‘It’s none of your business.’
Without thinking, he snatched the phone from her hand. Not very gallant, he knew.
He checked the message alert that was still visible on her lock screen. ‘“Meet up on Monday. N”,’ he read out. ‘Who’s “N”?’
Saffron grabbed her phone back. ‘I told you,’ she said, her brows pinching together. ‘None of your business.’
He recognised that look. She hadn’t been able to keep cool, calm and collected up for very long. She might be getting better at lying, but she was still a novice. This was the face she pulled when her father asked her to do something she didn’t want to do, a sulky, childish pout. That didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. He knew she’d dig her heels in until she got what she wanted—and despite her daddy’s reputation for being a b
all breaker when it came to his multinational media empire, she always did.
He turned away and walked a few steps, running his hand through his hair. Suddenly, he just couldn’t be bothered any more.
‘Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, then you’ve got your wish,’ he told her. ‘We’ve had fun, Saffron, but I can’t do this any more, not if you’re going to lie to me—’
‘No!’ A distressed squeak escaped her lips. She hadn’t expected him to take that tack. Not many people stood their ground with her.
‘Then be a grown-up and take responsibility for your actions,’ he continued, discovering he had quite a lot to say now he’d got going. He shook his head. ‘Whatever you say, you’re not ready for a long-term relationship. You don’t care about anyone but yourself, not really. You float around in your Saffron bubble, thinking you can do whatever you want, use people however you want, and I’ve got news for you—I’m the man with the big sharp pin, and I’m getting out.’
Now she really did look like a child. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears. She stepped forward, whispered ‘no’ again…
On another day he might have taken pity and pulled her into his arms, but not today. He folded his arms and stepped back when she moved towards him.
‘Don’t say that!’ Her voice was thick with tears. ‘I am ready. I am. I’ve got it in me to go the distance, and I’m going to prove it to you! To everyone!’
She looked so passionate, so fierce, he almost believed her.
‘Relationships are based on trust,’ he said. ‘What can I trust you to do, Saffron? Turn up late? Forget the important events in my life? Sure, I can trust you to deliver those things on a regular basis…’
Her eyes widened, as if she’d never even considered her actions could be seen as insensitive. Alex almost laughed. She’d just proved his point very nicely. He found it fuelled his anger enough to keep going.
He shook his head. ‘But I can’t trust you in the things that count. And you know what that means—’
‘No!’ Saffron rushed towards him and flung herself at him, latching her arms around him like a baby octopus. ‘Don’t say it! ‘
He didn’t want to be rough with her, so he peeled one arm off at a time. It didn’t do him much good. As soon as he went to work on the second arm, she grabbed hold of him again with the first one. After a couple of frustrated attempts he stopped. People were looking, and this was getting them nowhere.
He looked down at Saffron. Her eyes were red and puffy, her nose was starting to drip and she looked totally and utterly miserable. Something inside his chest squeezed. He couldn’t make his mind up whether she truly was devastated by the prospect of what he hadn’t actually managed to say yet or whether this was just another part of the charade. His gut told him the former, but his gut had been wrong before.
Whichever it was, he found he wasn’t as steaming angry as he’d been minutes earlier. What was it about women’s tears? They were as effective as acid when it came to eroding a guy’s resolve.
She swallowed and looked him in the eye. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Alex, but it isn’t true. I’m not seeing anyone else.’
She might have her arms round him, squeezing herself to him, but he felt as stiff as a wooden pole. ‘Then who is this “N” person?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you.’
He began to pull away.
‘But I have a good reason for not telling you, I promise,’ she said, begging him to look her in the eye, to see the truth of her words in her face. Maybe he was a big sucker, but he saw it there in her eyes. ‘Just give me another chance, a week or two, and I’ll be able to tell you everything!’
He started to shake his head, but then the tears started to flow thick and fast. She released her grip and started to sob into her hands. ‘P-please,’ she said, hiccuping slightly. ‘I need you…’
Alex had been witness to more than a few tearful outbursts from Saffron, but usually these were a mixture of sulk and show, designed—albeit subconsciously sometimes—to get what she wanted. The hanky she often dabbed to the corners of her eyes rarely suffered more than a molecule or two of moisture. He’d never seen her like this before. Had never seen her cry so hard the snot came out her nose and her face went all pink and crumpled.
Something inside him snapped and he stepped forward and put his arms around her. He might be going crazy, but he was starting to believe her.
Eventually, she stopped sobbing and looked up at him, her eyes hopeful. He didn’t know what to tell her, so he didn’t say anything. She stood on her tiptoes, pressed a soft kiss to his lips and linked her arm through his.
He let her pull him along as they both stared silently at the sparkling stones inside the cases, using the time to gather themselves back together after the emotional outburst. Alex saw colours and light, but he didn’t make sense of much else.
There was one thing that was really clear to him, though, especially now he’d got some distance from losing his temper and could analyse the scene for what it had really been. It was like taking a snapshot of something in the moment, never really sure how it would turn out, then being able to study it later, to see which bits were light and dark, see what was in focus and what was fuzzy.
He’d been angry with Saffron, yes, when he’d been on the verge of finishing with her, but he realised now that it hadn’t been the overriding emotion. When he’d thought Saffron was cheating on him, that he’d had the escape route he needed, all he’d felt was a wonderful sense of relief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mia took her glasses off and relaxed back into the office chair. Nicole, who’d been sitting at Peggy’s desk while Mia went over the accounts on her computer, leaned forward. ‘How does it look? Have I missed anything?’
Mia shook her head. ‘No. For someone who’s never had any bookkeeping training, you’re doing a solid job.’ Nicole slumped back into Peggy’s chair and stared at the fluffy pink pens in Peggy’s pen pot. ‘I was hoping I was wrong, that the future of Hopes & Dreams didn’t hang quite so squarely on Saffron’s proposal.’
Mia gave a weary shrug. ‘Sorry. Saffron’s job gives you a much-needed cash injection, but that’s only going to last a few months. You’re right that you need this proposal to go well so you can attract more of the same kind of business. What you really need is a big advertising push.’
Nicole’s shoulders sagged. ‘I just haven’t got the money for that.’
‘Well, here’s your solution,’ Mia said. ‘If the recession means that the ordinary Joes are mostly paying for ideas packages and not for the full-on service, then you’re going to have to go after clients who do have that kind of disposable income. Saffron’s proposal going well is the best kind of promotion you could have. I don’t doubt the story would hit all the gossip mags.’
Nicole nodded. She’d seen herself how Saffron, if she wanted to work with a magazine, could find ways to make a story run for weeks. ‘Wait there,’ she told Mia and nipped to the kitchenette. She returned with a bottle of wine she’d pulled from the tiny fridge and two clean mugs. ‘Emergency supplies,’ she said as she put the bottle down on the desk. She poured each of them a generous helping and glugged a few mouthfuls down immediately.
‘Well, that’s it. My life is officially going down the toilet.’
‘No,’ Mia countered, ever the voice of reason. ‘Your business has hit a rocky patch, that’s all. The rest of your life is fine.’
Nicole raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
Mia just gave her a steady, unflinching look that said, Then why don’t you tell me?
Nicole exhaled and shook her head. Where did she start?
‘I just got off the phone before you came in, but I thought I’d let you check the figures before I dropped the bombshell.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Mia said, but she was still calm and unemotional. Suddenly Nicole was glad that Peggy was off doing some last-minute freelance
design job for a big cosmetics company. Her old office mates had roped her in, needing an extra body, and they were planning on pulling an all-nighter to get a series of photos retouched. While Peggy was a fabulous cheerleader and all-round supporter, she did tend to get a bit dramatic, and what Nicole needed now was someone who could help her keep on an even keel, not wind her up then let her loose like a crazed mechanical toy. She’d made enough gaffes during this job already.
She kept her voice steady and even as she regaled Mia with her tale. ‘You know Alex got me that catering job?’
‘Mm-hmm…’
‘Well, I’d been calling Brian, the caterer, fairly regularly to cancel, but all I’d been getting was his voicemail. Since there’s no real magazine article, there’s no reason for me to do the job, but I still wanted to call and back out nicely. I didn’t want Alex to look bad because of me.’
Mia picked up her mug and took a sip of wine. ‘That makes sense.’
Nicole got up and paced to the other side of the room, then turned to look back at her friend. ‘Well, today I finally managed to talk to him.’
Mia brightened. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘You’d think. But when I finished saying my piece the guy went ballistic. It seems Alex pulled some pretty big strings to get me this gig.’
Gig.
Listen to her. She was even starting to sound like him.
‘It turns out that “Brian the catering guy” is actually Brian Roscoff.’
Mia’s eyes popped. ‘The Michelin-starred chef? The one who’s just taken over running the restaurant at the Wardesley Hotel?’
Nicole nodded. ‘Boy, that man has an extensive vocabulary. I’m surprised my phone handset didn’t turn blue! And once he’d finished ranting in general, he moved on to screaming about Alex, saying he’ll blacken Alex’s name on the London wedding circuit if this “favour” meant he was even one waitress short tomorrow.’
‘I have a horrible feeling I know where this is going,’ Mia said.
Nicole walked over to the purple sofa and dropped down onto it almost as dramatically as Peggy would have done. ‘Alex was just trying to help me out…’
