Seven Week Itch

by Victoria Corby

  Honestly, a man who looked like that didn’t need to have any other social attributes, I thought, as he went to fetch us a white wine and a half of bitter respectively, and then brought myself abruptly back down to earth as various other essentials in a man besides looks occurred to me, such as non-hairy hands and decent table manners. Luke definitely passed in both those areas. And I insist on regular sock-changing too. As far as I could tell without getting too close, he scored a perfect ten there as well.

  Over our drinks we did some exchanging of life stories. He was engagingly self-deprecating about his previous career as an accountant. I was sure he couldn’t have been as incompetent as he made out, though it was difficult to imagine anyone as exotic as Luke doing something quite so mundane as number-crunching. He was also impressively open about how he accepted an allowance off his grandmother so he was free to keep a watchful eye on her and manage her affairs. Most men would have been far too proud to admit it. It was nice of Luke to care so much about his grandmother, most men thought taking care of relatives was a job for the females. What a find he was; good-looking and good-hearted. In fact, about the only shortcoming I could find in him was that he was a friend of Martin’s, and I supposed that was more of an error of judgement than a character fault.

  ‘And what’s the freelancing?’ I asked. ‘Not accounting, I take it?’

  ‘God no!’ he said with a grimace. ‘I sort things out for Nigel on an ad hoc basis, sort of troubleshooter I suppose.’

  That sounded impressive. ‘What is Nigel’s business? I got the idea that most of it was in America.’

  Luke drained his glass. ‘Only some of it. He’s in property mostly, development and management - rentals and the like, mainly in Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham, though he’s got one or two projects going in the States as well. He doesn’t do badly out of it,’ he said, looking bored with talking about Nigel and gestured towards my glass. ‘Another?’

  Naturally, I accepted and he went off to the bar. ‘Have you seen Rose yet?’ he asked as he sat down with the refills. ‘How is she?’

  I was used to my friend being the centre of attention when we were together, she simply assumes that she’s going to be the focus and like a magnet she is, but frankly I could have done without her making an invisible third while I was trying to wow Luke Dillon. Was he using me as a means of getting to her? So he wasn’t looking at me as if I was the most attractive thing he’d ever seen – though men don’t usually behave like that in pubs, which is why your average woman prefers dimly lit restaurants, but that certain light didn’t go on in his eyes when he mentioned Rose’s name either. He was probably just making conversation. After all, she was a friend we had in common.

  ‘I went over and had supper with them the other night. She was on great form, though I could have done without her telling Jeremy and Hamish some of the stories about what we got up to at school,’ I added darkly. ‘She made them all sound as if it was my fault, when in fact she was always the prime mover.’

  Luke looked at me from under half-closed eyelids. ‘Hamish?’ he queried softly. ‘His name seems to crop up a lot in your conversation. Were you were telling Nigel a tactful little porkie when you said you weren’t particular friends with Hamish Laing, by chance?’

  ‘I was telling the absolute truth. He dropped in with some papers for the estate and stayed on, that’s all.’

  ‘For the estate?’ Luke repeated vaguely as he used his beer mat to mop up a small spill by his elbow

  ‘Hamish handles all its legal work now.’ Emboldened by a glass and a half of Portuguese white I leant forward, ‘Frankly, with the way Nigel looked when Hamish’s name was mentioned, I would have sworn on my grandmother’s grave I didn’t know him, even if we’d been having an affair to rival the steamiest pages of the Karma Sutra.' As Luke laughed I added, ‘So tell me. What is it between those two?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked guardedly.

  ‘It’s obvious Nigel can’t stand him, and I gather Hamish isn’t ready to fall on Nigel’s neck and swear undying friendship either.’

  Luke looked at me with dancing eyes. ‘Have you ever heard about what happened to the cat, Miss Gardener?’

  ‘So it’s something confidential,’ I said with resignation.

  ‘Nigel doesn’t like people gossiping about him. You must understand I have to respect that.’ My face must have shown I found this a very disappointing attitude, for he sighed and said, ‘All I can say is Hamish was acting for one of Nigel’s companies, and, to be honest, it was a complete cock-up. Nigel lost a lot of money.’

  Was that what Hamish had screwed up? Yet, Jeremy, who despite his good humour was no fool, had deliberately moved his business to Hamish. Surely he wouldn’t do that with someone who was incompetent, even a good friend. There had to be more to it. I eyed Luke speculatively, hoping to get him to expand on this interesting subject, but he distracted me most effectively by murmuring that he was glad I wasn’t tied up with Hamish. The unspoken meaning behind his words was so unmistakable that I immediately went shooting off into daydream city, half my mind hanging on every word he was saying, the other half speculating in the most delicious way about the future.

  ‘I got an invitation to some charity do at Moor End Hall next month, in aid of that specialist learning centre for mentally handicapped adults,’ he said as we were draining our second glasses. ‘I know I should support good causes like that, but I’m not sure if I could stand a whole evening. I’ll send a donation - if I remember,’ he added with a rueful smile. ‘The last one of these things I went to was full of the dullest and worthiest people in the county - the ones I try hard to avoid - and we had to watch a very amateur fashion show, modelled by women who should have known better than to display themselves on a catwalk. Then we were served with a fork supper provided by the ladies of the committee, comprising gluey rice salad and coronation chicken which was long on the coronation and short on the chicken.’

  I laughed at his expression of disgust. ‘This one is going to be a wine-tasting, so your visual sensibilities needn’t be offended,’ I said, ‘and the wine is coming via Jeremy’s cousin, who’s a wine merchant, so it should be quite drinkable. Although I’m afraid at the moment we’re still in for the ladies’ committee’s offerings for the fork supper, but Rose is being pretty tough about it. She’s already put her foot down about Mrs Richardson doing something interesting with the cut-price ham she can get from the Cash and Carry.’

  Luke looked like he didn’t want to contemplate what you could do with cut-price ham. ‘Rose’s really becoming the county lady if she’s already getting involved in charity affairs. Next thing we’ll know she’ll be running the local pony club.’

  ‘I doubt it; she gave up riding when she decided it was making her bottom spread. But this isn’t by her choice. Flavia promised the chairlady of the committee they could hold the event at the house without consulting Jeremy and Rose, and then announced that as Rose is now the mistress of the house she has to do all the liaison with the charity, which basically means most of the organisation for the party. Rose was not happy to come back from honeymoon to be told that in under a month she has two hundred people turning up for the evening,’ I said with great understatement, remembering how she had sounded off during supper. ‘Especially as the chairlady keeps on saying how very kind it is of Flavia to allow them to hold it there.’

  ‘Are you going to be there?’ asked Luke. This was accompanied by such a meaningful look I’d have promised to be at the South Pole on New Year’s Day if that was what would please him.

  ‘My life won’t be worth living if I’m not. Rose has already put me down to sell raffle tickets.’

  ‘I’ll buy raffle tickets off you any day,’ said Luke, with another of those stomach-clenching, toe-curling, spine-quivering looks. I was quivering so much I was going to start resembling a jelly if I wasn’t careful. ‘You can put me down for several books.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, smiling a
t him. ‘So you’re going to come?’ An event which I’d been anticipating with a certain degree of gloomy anticipation suddenly seemed as if it might be fun after all. ‘I’m sure you’ll find it more enjoyable than you thought it was going to be.’

  ‘If you’re going to be there, I’m sure I will,’ he said simply, in a manner that was very bad for my fantasy levels. My daydreams were skyrocketing upwards. ‘And I’ve always wanted to have a look at the house, I’ve heard it’s rather impressive.’

  ‘Big, certainly,’ I said. ‘And the setting’s lovely too.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a pretty part of the world.’ He frowned. ‘Didn’t I hear a rumour about a new village or something being built in the estate grounds. Three hundred houses and a shopping centre? That’s going to spoil things, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s a slight exaggeration,’ I said. ‘There’s talk of a new estate nearby but Rose doesn’t know it’s going to go ahead.’

  He offered me the last peanut in the bowl, which I refused, and asked, ‘Why not? Are there problems with planning permission?’

  ‘I don’t think so, they need Jeremy to sell some land and he isn’t sure that he wants to.’

  Luke raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. ‘Doesn’t want to? Come on, every landowner dreams of winning the equivalent of the lottery by discovering he can get planning permission. Or he does if he’s in his right mind. I’d have thought Jeremy would grab a large cash injection with both hands and go singing all the way to the bank.’

  ‘Well, it’s quite close to the house and Rose isn’t keen either. She wants some low-cost housing, something which would be better for the community.’

  Luke snorted with laughter. ‘Since when has Rose been an environ­mentalist? Or a bleeding-heart liberal? Still, in the end it’s Jeremy’s land, isn’t it? He might have promised to share all his worldly goods, but I bet when it comes down to it he’ll decide anything to do with the estate is his and make up his own mind.’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed, ‘though I think he listens to Rose as well. If she stays adamantly against the scheme it’s going to be very difficult for him to go ahead.’

  He nodded vaguely, losing interest in theoretical building developments, and asked me something about how I was getting on at work.

  To my acute disappointment, my evening with Luke lasted for rather less time than it had taken to doll myself up. I’d hoped our drink would extend itself into a quick dinner at least, but he said he’d promised to drop in and see his grandmother before leaving for London. But any gloomy suspicions that he’d been undertaking a tiresome social duty he wanted to get over as quickly as possible were quashed when he said he’d ring me as soon as he got back later in the week and perhaps we could go out then. I didn’t play it cool about accepting that invitation either, though this time I did let him finish the sentence first.

  I let myself into the cottage, humming gently, dwelling dreamily on the moment when he kissed me goodbye under the light of a pale half-moon, still low in the sky. OK, so it wasn’t a passionate triple-violin job, more of a peck with attitude, but we had to start somewhere. It was definitely a move onwards from when he’d kissed my cheek in Market Burrough last week, and the way he’d looked into my eyes and murmured he wished he could stay a little longer made up for any amount of actual physical contact.

  The telephone rang as I was going to bed to indulge in some exotic fantasies. I picked it up afraid that it was my mother. Even a merely mildly horny daydream is killed stone dead with the first reproachful, ‘Hello, darling, I haven’t heard from you for ages.’ It seems to come with the maternal territory, along with Ovaltine and good winter coats. To my surprised pleasure it was Arnaud, who was just the tiniest bit indignant I hadn’t been there to answer the phone when he rang earlier that evening, and even less pleased when he heard that I’d been out for a drink with a man, though he managed to fit in some Gallic aspersions on the cold-bloodedness of English males who left women on doorsteps. Oh, and he’d been missing me. He had? I thought, stunned. He was going to try to arrange his next trip over to London with meetings on both Friday and Monday, so he could spend the weekend with me. Would I like that? I was astonished he’d even thought to ask. Normally, Arnaud made a, quite justified, assumption I’d fall in with whatever he wanted. Even if it wasn’t very convenient for myself. Well, I’d been doing exactly that for the last four years. Except I’d had to turn him down last time he wanted to see me, hadn’t I? And I hadn’t been in earlier this evening for his call. Rose had been telling me for ages that if I wasn’t going to chuck him at least I could stop running every time he crooked his finger, and it seemed she was right. It did bring results, I thought, as I assured him that indeed I’d like it if we spent the weekend together.

  I went to bed with that pleasant feeling you have when you feel yourself in demand from several quarters, not something that happens often enough to me, especially on the same evening, and I had some very nice dreams indeed. Disconcertingly, the male person who was doing such very interesting things wasn’t either Luke or Arnaud, but in the way of dreams I didn’t feel in the least guilty about it, just rather pleased with myself.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m not very good at letting sleeping dogs lie. Which is probably one of the reasons I don’t seem to do well in the jobs where women are supposed to remain decorative and not muddy the waters by asking questions. So yesterday I’d rung Rose and arranged to meet for lunch in Frampton’s answer to the brasserie phenomenon so we could have a serious talk. As far as I was concerned, she could either fess up about those mysterious hints about Luke, or shut up. But that had been before I’d heard from Luke. Now, as I shot down the High Street towards Chez Bruno, late because Stephen had decided to rewrite something at the last minute, I couldn’t help wondering if I was about to be given the third degree. I know how quickly the bush telegraph works in the country, so it was quite possible someone had already been on the blower to Rose to tell her I’d been closeted in the corner at the Dearsley Arms virtually having it off on the table last night with Luke. It wouldn’t put her in a particularly propitious mood for our discussion.

  She’d continued to be in a funny mood all during what was otherwise a relaxed dinner the other night, throwing in the odd remark about my various menfriends, commenting especially on Arnaud, and generally making it sound as if I was the next best thing to Mata Hari in the man-trapping stakes. I saw Hamish looking at me in slight bewilderment more than once, as if he was trying to square this honey-pot vision being created by Rose with the mundane reality in the wine-splattered trousers sitting next to him. It didn’t take a genius to work out she was in a thorough snitch about Luke and I wished I knew what the hell she was so antsy about.

  She was already seated at a table in the window, staring with disbelief at the menu, which was long on glasses of indifferent wine and short on inspirationally good French cooking. But the wine bar on the other side of the street, which did have a reasonable cook, usually had most of the office in it and the chances of a private gossip were practically nil. The tables were placed so close together that you weren’t only able to eavesdrop on the next-door table’s conversation with ease, but the one on the other side of that as well.

  I eyed Rose warily as I approached the table, fearing a storm. But she looked up with a smile that seemed perfectly genuine. ‘Am I glad to see you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Honestly, Susie, I knew it was going to be no picnic sharing a roof with that woman, but I had no idea how impossible it was going to be. Do you know she was around again last night, poking around the kitchen? She said she thought she might have left her best saucepan behind.’ She snorted indignantly. ‘As if that was likely. She cleared out everything, even half-full packets of salt. And then she said Jeremy shouldn’t be eating...’

  I hadn’t sat down yet. ‘Hello, Rose,’ I said across her diatribe and pulled out my chair, as unabashed she continued outlining the iniquities of Flavia who, according to Rose, was being thoroughly tiresome a
bout the arrangements for this charity do and, despite saying it was now nothing to do with her, was interfering in everything. Rose had, as she called it, ‘stuck to her guns’ about whether the local bank’s dance band should be invited to play for the evening (a.k.a. being thoroughly bloody-minded and refusing to concede a single point), while Flavia had said pityingly that she knew dear Rose was doing her best, but she wasn’t used to living in the country yet and didn’t understand how country people thought. Poor Jeremy, who had bravely stepped into the middle of this battle royal and tried to keep the peace between his womenfolk, had ended up being blamed by both sides for being too weak to properly support the correct point of view.

  ‘Why are you letting her get under your skin so much?’ I asked, as she ground to a halt while two rather limp ‘Provencal Country’ salads were placed in front of us. The chef must think the inhabitants of Provence live on semi-grilled goat’s cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. I wondered if something else, anything else, would have been a better bet. ‘Before you got engaged you were going out with Jeremy for how long, six months? OK, so you weren’t actually living with him, but you must have got some idea of what Flavia was like. You used to laugh at her.’

  Rose forked about her salad in a dispirited fashion, picking out a bit of bacon and examining it closely before she put it in her mouth. ‘That was before, wasn’t it?’ she asked gloomily. ‘Now I’m stuck with her for good, or as long as I’m married, in any case.’

  I stared at her in alarm. ‘Rose! You aren’t suggesting . . .’

  ‘Of course not!’ she said, promptly enough to quell my worst fears. ‘But I wish we lived in France,’ she added in a longing voice. ‘Then I could kill her and claim it as a crime passionnel. I lay awake for hours last night, planning ways I could murder her. You wouldn’t believe how much better it made me feel. Would you like to hear some of my sure-fire methods?’