Miranda's Big Mistake

by Jill Mansell

  ‘You’d better learn,’ Danny drawled, ‘if you’re planning on being Miles Harper’s new girlfriend.’ His tone was pitying. ‘Are you sure he’s going to be faithful to you?’

  ‘Why are you being so horrible?’ Miranda accused him.

  Humoring her hadn’t worked. Danny decided to be blunt.

  ‘I’m not being horrible. I just don’t believe it’s going to happen.’

  If it didn’t happen, Miranda thought, she was definitely going to have to leave the country. Oh well, in for a penny, in for an awful lot of pounds.

  ‘You know what? I think you might be a tiny bit jealous.’ Leaning forward, she patted the back of Danny’s hand, mimicking the patronizing concern he had shown earlier. ‘Never mind, chin up, I know it isn’t easy finding a girlfriend but these things take time. One day it’ll happen to you too.’

  ***

  Three rubbish skips were lined up in the road outside Fenn’s new flat, much to the horror of his well-to-do neighbors.

  ‘You know you’ve thrown out a truly terrible bunch of carpets,’ he told Chloe, ‘when you dump them in a skip and two days later they’re still there.’

  ‘It feels like such a waste.’ Chloe joined him at the window. ‘Couldn’t you donate them to some deserving cause?’

  The skip looked as if it was bulging with dead zebras. Fenn winced.

  ‘Where did you have in mind? Regent’s Park Zoo?’

  Turning back, leaning against the windowsill, Chloe surveyed the stripped room.

  ‘Another week and this place will really come together. You won’t recognize it. The last chap who lived here definitely wouldn’t recognize it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Fenn. ‘That’s the general idea.’

  The decorators, still in the process of stripping the wallpaper and sanding the wooden floors, had left hours earlier. The rolls of new paper, chosen by Fenn and Chloe and delivered that afternoon, were stacked in a corner of the room along with a dozen cans of paint in assorted shades of sage-green, lavender and grey-blue. Between them, choosing the color scheme had been an effortless process. They shared the same tastes to an astonishing degree. When Chloe had finished browsing through a foot-thick book of curtain samples she had pointed to the exact swatch of silvery-green material that Fenn had decided on himself.

  ‘It’s going to be great,’ she told him happily. ‘All you have to find now are the rugs.’

  ‘Chinese. I was going to have a look in Harrods on Sunday.’ Fenn paused. ‘I don’t suppose…?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Chloe. ‘Honestly, I’m enjoying every minute of this. I won’t know what to do with myself when it’s finished.’

  Fenn felt much the same way. Soon he was going to run out of legitimate reasons to invite Chloe round to his flat. He sighed inwardly, recalling the telephone call he had received last night from his sister. Tina, three years older than him and so blunt she made Miranda sound diplomatic, lived in New Zealand and hadn’t been back to Britain for over five years. For this reason, when she had demanded to know what the bloody hell he was doing renting a flat in snotty Holland Park, Fenn had judged it safe to tell her.

  Ten thousand miles, that was far enough.

  Besides, if he didn’t tell someone, he might actually explode.

  ‘Okay, you want the truth? Because there’s this girl I know, and she lives in Notting Hill, in the same house as my salon junior. And giving the junior a lift home from work gives me the chance to see this other girl.’

  Tina, predictably, snorted with laughter.

  ‘And if you’d moved to Hampstead you wouldn’t have been able to do that? Jesus, Fenn, you’re priceless. Spending an absolute fortune moving into a flat you don’t even like…that’s the maddest thing I ever heard. If you’re so keen on this girl, wouldn’t it be simpler to just ask her out on a date?’

  Great idea, now why didn’t I think of that? Smiling to himself, Fenn shook his head.

  ‘Can’t do it.’

  ‘Of course you can! Blimey, you’ve been out with, like, a million girls. You must know the routine by now.’

  ‘It’s not that straightforward.’

  ‘Oh, I get it. You mean she’s married. Fenn, you plonker. Who needs that kind of grief?’

  ‘She isn’t married. Well, okay, technically she still is, but they’re separated.’ Fenn paused. ‘The thing is, she’s pregnant.’

  There, he’d done it at last. And what a relief to finally say it aloud, after bottling it up for weeks.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ shrieked Tina down the phone. ‘You got her pregnant and her husband found out? No wonder he left her!’

  ‘Tina, hang on a second—’

  ‘And you aren’t interested in actually marrying her yourself but you want to keep in touch for the sake of the baby. Oh, now it all begins to make sense. So you’re going to be a dad,’ she marveled. ‘Bloody hell, this is a turn-up for the books. You do realize it’s going to cost you zillions in child support?’

  ‘It’s not my baby,’ said Fenn, when he was able to get a word in.

  A long and expensive silence ensued. He’d never heard Tina at a loss for words before.

  ‘Fuck a duck, Fenn,’ she groaned at last. ‘So whose kid is it?’

  ‘Her husband’s.’

  ‘You’re in love with some girl who’s pregnant with somebody else’s baby. Now I know you’re mad.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Chloe.’

  ‘And how does Chloe feel about this?’ Tina’s tone was cutting.

  ‘She doesn’t know.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  What could he do? It was hardly the most normal situation in the world.

  Frankly, it was bizarre.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ***

  ‘Any more thoughts about the bedroom?’

  ‘What?’ Chloe’s words brought Fenn back to the present with a thud.

  ‘Curtains or blinds, you haven’t decided yet.’ She pushed her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Come on, let’s take another look.’

  Without wanting to, Fenn replayed in his mind the rest of last night’s conversation with his sister.

  ‘Drop her,’ Tina had commanded. ‘Drop her like a hot potato.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘A hot potato crawling with maggots.’ He had heard the urgency in her voice. ‘Fenn, we’re talking major disaster here. For God’s sake, get out while you still can, before anything happens.’

  Too late. It already had. Fenn led the way through to the master bedroom. What did Tina know, thousands of miles away in New Zealand? She had no idea.

  Chloe was sitting on the end of his king-size bed, shaking back her hair and giving the two windows her undivided attention.

  ‘I think blinds, you know.’

  ‘Your fringe keeps getting in your eyes,’ said Fenn.

  ‘Not those awful frilly blinds,’ Chloe made frilly movements with her hands, ‘like Scarlett O’Hara’s knickers.’

  ‘Why don’t I cut your hair?’

  Chloe was already busy flicking through a sample book. She found what she was looking for and held it up.

  ‘Silver and beige, and keep them really plain…oh.’ Belatedly, Fenn’s words registered and her hand flew guiltily to her fringe. ‘My Dulux look, you mean? I meant to have a go at it last week but Miranda borrowed my nail scissors to trim the flex on her hair dryer and—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this.’ Fenn felt as he imagined a surgeon might feel, upon being told that a patient had decided to dig out his own appendix with a rusty knife and a spoon.

  Spotting the shudder, Chloe pulled an apologetic face.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not usually
such a pleb.’ She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Trying to economize, that’s all.’

  ‘Will you let me do it for you?’ said Fenn.

  Chloe was overjoyed.

  ‘I’m hardly likely to refuse an offer like that, am I?’

  ***

  In all his years of hairdressing, this was a first for Fenn. As a rule, female clients fancied him like mad and flirted with him shamelessly. Less often, deciding that he liked the look of one of these clients, he would flirt back, take her phone number and possibly ask her out.

  This, though, was a whole new experience, and it was making it hard to concentrate. For the first time since he had known Chloe, he was actually running his fingers through her hair, touching her neck, resting his hands on her shoulders…

  He could look and now he could touch but he certainly wasn’t allowed to flirt. She was six months pregnant with another man’s child, Fenn reminded himself. She would be horrified if she knew how he felt about her.

  ‘Cut loads,’ Chloe was saying eagerly, making scissors of her fingers and showing him how much she wanted lopped off. ‘Not a crew cut or anything, just to the shoulders.’

  ‘Here, you mean?’ Fenn scooped the heavy blonde hair up into his hands and rested them against each side of her neck. God, even that simple action gave him a charge. He paused for a second, feeling the warmth of Chloe’s skin and breathing in the familiar light scent she wore. It would be so easy now, so easy, to bend and kiss the back of her neck—

  ‘FENN LOMAX, WHERE ARE YOOOUU?’

  Chapter 47

  Fenn and Chloe looked at each other in the mirror; the spell was well and truly broken. In the street outside, someone was yelling at the top of their voice and they both recognized who that voice belonged to.

  Wearily, Fenn went to the window and looked out. Fifty yards further up the road, Miranda spotted him and waved.

  ‘Honestly,’ she exclaimed when he let her in, ‘grumpy neighbors you’ve got around here. You should have seen the looks they gave me when I called out your name. I mean, I remembered the name of the road but I didn’t know what the number of your flat was.’ She shrugged. ‘How else was I supposed to find out where you lived?’

  Another boost to his popularity, thought Fenn. Zebra-print carpets and friends with disturbingly blue hair turning up to breach the peace and more than likely mug the first wealthy resident they came across.

  ‘You were pretty loud,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Well, if I’d whispered, you wouldn’t have heard me. So this is it, is it?’ Miranda darted past him, gazing around with bright-eyed interest. ‘I saw the dead animals in the skip outside. Hmm, wouldn’t have thought you’d go for a flat like this.’

  ‘It’ll be fine when it’s finished.’ Fenn’s tone was curt. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘Just thought I’d pop in.’ She gave him a playful look. ‘Are you okay? Not interrupting anything, am I?’

  Oh great, this was all he needed, Miranda waggling her eyebrows and doing her arch-psychiatrist bit.

  ‘No.’ Better warn her, thought Fenn. ‘I was just cutting Chloe’s hair.’

  In the sitting room, Chloe had hurriedly pushed the chair away from the mirror and shoved Fenn’s comb and scissors out of sight as guiltily as if they’d been about to launch into a bondage session complete with rubber masks and whips. In the few moments it took Miranda to barge into the room, she hauled out a wallpaper chart and began leafing industriously through it, an expression of deep concentration on her face.

  ‘I used to look like that when I was supposed to be revising for my GCSEs,’ Miranda observed. ‘As soon as you hear someone coming, kick the magazines under the bed, switch off the music, grab a textbook and look riveted.’ She gave Fenn a dazzling smile. ‘What I want to know is why Chloe’s doing it now.’

  ‘I thought you were staying in tonight,’ said Fenn.

  ‘Danny turned up. He said it was time we were friends again.’ Miranda’s heels clicked on the bare, sanded-down floorboards as she strode up and down investigating the room.

  ‘So?’

  ‘He took me out for a let’s-be-friends-again drink.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ said Chloe.

  ‘First he was a pompous, patronizing git.’ Miranda began ticking points off on her fingers. ‘Then he was totally insulting and rude, refusing to believe a single word I said.’

  ‘It wasn’t by any chance one of your excuses for being late, was it?’ said Fenn. ‘Didn’t happen to involve a stranded puppy about to be mown down by a juggernaut?’

  Miranda ignored this. She ticked off the third finger. ‘So we ended up having another fight and not being friends again after all.’ She shrugged to show she couldn’t care less. ‘I marched out of the pub, forgetting I didn’t actually have any money on me. But then I remembered you’d brought Chloe over here, so I thought I’d hitch a lift back with you.’ She gave Fenn a winning smile. ‘I won’t be any trouble, honestly. You two just carry on as if I wasn’t here.’

  ‘The thing is, Danny’s great,’ Chloe protested. ‘We all really like him. What I don’t understand is how you manage to get into these arguments with him in the first place.’

  ‘Me? Ha! Basically, he just opens his mouth and starts laying into me.’ Miranda looked indignant. ‘All I do is defend myself.’

  ‘So what was it he refused to believe?’

  ‘Something that was true!’

  Fenn, who had found his scissors and was repositioning the chair in front of the mirror, murmured under his breath, ‘Now who’s being evasive?’

  ‘Go on.’ Chloe was intrigued by the fact that Miranda was prevaricating. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘Okay. I told him that I was seeing someone.’

  Chloe frowned.

  ‘But you aren’t.’

  ‘I am, actually.’

  Fenn gave Miranda a sharp look. He hoped this didn’t have anything to do with Miles Harper’s scene-stealing appearance in the salon the other day. No, no, it couldn’t possibly. Even Miranda wasn’t that gullible.

  It was curious, though, that she evidently hadn’t mentioned the Miles Harper incident to Chloe. Never one to hug an item of gossip to her chest, Miranda had for some reason certainly managed it this time. Fenn couldn’t help wondering why.

  ‘And that’s what you argued about?’ Chloe persisted. ‘Danny didn’t believe you when you told him you had a boyfriend, so you had a fight with him and stormed out of the pub?’ She took the towel Fenn had given her and pulled it around her shoulders, struggling to understand.

  ‘He said some horrible things about me,’ wailed Miranda. ‘I’m telling you, Daniel Delancey is a complete pig.’

  It went against the grain to even think it, but Fenn was reluctantly forced to admit that he was grateful to Miranda for showing up. Cutting Chloe’s hair without a chaperon could have been a risky business. At least now he was able to concentrate on the task in hand.

  It was, Fenn reflected, an unreal situation. Normally when he met a girl he liked the look of, they’d end up in bed together within a few hours. And yet here he was now, having met someone as untouchable as a nun, helplessly in love with her and not even allowed to kiss her.

  Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. All he had to do now was make sure nobody else found out that it had.

  ‘So who is this chap you’ve been seeing?’ said Chloe.

  Miranda shook her head.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t, okay?’

  Chloe gazed in horror at Miranda’s reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Not Greg!’

  ‘Oh, come on, do I look that stupid? Of course not Greg.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Wait unti
l Monday.’ Miranda had been insulted quite enough for one night; she certainly didn’t need another snotty lecture from Fenn. ‘I’ll tell you then, I promise.’

  Either that or emigrate.

  ***

  The phone rang at seven thirty the next morning while Miranda was on the loo. Typical. Knickers at half-mast, she almost broke both legs crashing downstairs to catch it on the third ring, because third rings were lucky.

  Snatching up the phone in the nick of time, she gasped, ‘Yu-yes?’

  ‘Hey, heavy breathing, my favorite kind. Don’t stop, do some more.’ Miles sounded cheerful. ‘You know, you could charge fifty pence a minute for that.’

  ‘Did you finish with Daisy?’ It was no good, she simply couldn’t be laid-back and casual about it—she had spent the night wide awake and with her heart on springs.

  ‘Still trying. I’m doing my best, but she isn’t taking it terribly well.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Miranda struggled to haul her knickers up; not easy with only one hand.

  ‘Trashing my flat.’ As Miles spoke, there was a crash in the background. ‘Jesus, and I’m supposed to be out of here by eight.’

  Miranda felt dreadful, as if it were all her fault. He had to be at Silverstone for the all-important qualifying laps and now, thanks to her, he had this to contend with, a madwoman smashing up his home.

  Another louder crash made her jump.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Miles.

  ‘Good luck.’

  He sounded amused. ‘With the practice laps, or getting rid of Cruella de Vil?’

  He’s doing all this for me, thought Miranda, her heart bounding like a gazelle.

  ‘Both.’

  There was a click on the line as someone picked up the extension.

  ‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ screamed a hysterical voice. ‘You’re bloody talking to her now! How dare you DO THIS TO ME, YOU BAST—’

  Abruptly the line went dead. Miranda put down the receiver and pulled up her knickers. There was no point trying to ring back—all she could do was go off to work, say nothing about this to anyone and wait.

  ***

  Nine hours later, Chloe let herself into the empty house and read the note Florence had left on the table out in the hall: