‘
The grass will be damp,’
protested Camilla, following him
to the door.
He grinned.
‘Even better. I adore women with wet bodies.’
‘And Loulou
could be back at any moment.’
Piers
regarded her sternly. ‘Are you making excuses?’
‘
Of course I’m making excuses,’ said Camilla, wincing as
she sat
down on the wooden bench beneath a bower of honeysuckle. ‘I ache in every
muscle and I don’t even have the strength to walk straight. My poor old body
isn’t used to all these .
attentions.’
‘Oh God,’ he groaned, collapsing beside her with an air of
defeat. ‘Enforced celibacy. I don’t know whether I can stand it.’
‘
It’ll be good for the
soul,’ Camilla said comfortingly and
Piers laughed, his gypsyish dark
eyes narrowing just as Matt’s
always had, an
unexpected dimple in his left cheek enhancing
his smooth brown features.
‘
I’m more interested in
good bodies than good souls,’ he
said, tucking his free hand
companionably between her knees
where the
white silk had fallen away. ‘But since your poor old
body is clearly off-limits, we’ll just talk
instead. Tell me all
about yourself. Tell me about your love life . . .
before me, of course.’
Normally reticent to the point of
abruptness, Camilla mar
velled at his power to relax her. Leaning back so that the sun’s
rays warmed her cheeks, she said, ‘Until
last night, the only men I’d ever slept with were two husbands and a single
one-
night fling.’
And instead of laughing or saying, ‘Whose
husbands were
they?’
as some men might have done, Piers leant across and
kissed her earlobe.
‘
How delightfully
innocent and refreshing,’ he murmured.
‘You make me feel very honoured.
Now tell me all about
you.
I
want to
know everything about you, from the very, very
beginning.’
’Is
this a
joke?’
demanded Loulou,
stiffening and drawing back like an angry, bewildered animal.
Mac saw the snapping, fiery light in her silver-grey eyes
and knew at once that she was beyond reasoning with. Nevertheless, in
desperation, he tried.
‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘we both know now that we should
be
together. I
want
you; nothing’s
been right for me since we split
up,
but because I
had
to carry on somehow, I did. I’m living
with
Cecilia and –’
‘You said last night that you didn’t love her!’ hissed
Loulou, edging still further away from him.
‘
And it was the truth,’ he
continued. ‘I’ll tell her it’s over
between us, I
swear I will. You and I can be together again .
we can even get
married again if that’s what you want . . .’ He hesitated, then added firmly, ‘But
I can’t tell her just yet.’
‘
Because it’s her birthday next month?’ yelled Loulou
with vicious mimicry. ‘What kind of bullshit is this! Everyone
has fucking
birthdays, for Christ’s sake . . . you hardly ever
remembered
mine when
we were married.’
‘On Cecilia’s twenty-first birthday her mother died of
cancer,’
said Mac slowly, deliberately
heightening the contrast between
his
own even tones and Loulou’s hysterical shrieks. Torn between
his
desperate love for her and the heavy weight of obligation he felt towards
Cecilia, he struggled to find the right words.
‘She’s so paranoid about birthdays – believing each year
that something awful will happen – that she plans them weeks and
weeks ahead. I promised her that this year we’d
take a trip on
the Orient Express.
Lou, I don’t want to do this any more than
you want me to, but I simply can’t break that promise. Cecilia isn’t
strong like you and she couldn’t cope with it if I dropped
her now – can’t
you understand that?’
‘
Oh, poor fragile
Cecilia,’ ridiculed Loulou, pushing open
the window and taking several deep
breaths. ‘For a start, she’s a
top model –
the
top model of the moment – and you don’t get to
a position like that without fighting for it. She’d
give Mike
Tyson a run for his money,
that’s for sure. But what
really
gets
me,’ she continued, reaching for her leather dress and black
jacket
and rapidly climbing into them, ‘is the fact that you’re backing out
again,
using
her as an excuse to get away. I don’t believe you, Mac. It’s just so much more
bullshit. Why the hell can’t you be honest, be like all the other men and
simply admit that you fancied a quicky with your ex?’
Mac sank back against the pillows, defeated. Loulou was
moving fast now, stuffing her suspender belt and stockings into her handbag and
sliding into her spiky high heels.
‘
Who knows,’ she
continued, coming to stand at the foot of
the bed with her hands on her
hips and an expression of deep
disdain
masking the grief and pain, ‘I may have gone to bed
with you anyway,
just for the hell of it, so there wasn’t even any need to swear all that
touching, undying devotion.’ Then she stepped back again. ‘Now fuck off out of
my life and go back to
your poor, gentle,
wimp of a girlfriend. Wish her a happy
birthday trip from me . . . and I
hope you both drown in Venice.’
Then, leaving him no time to react, she picked up his
clothes
from the chair and hurled them out
through the open window.
His shoes followed one at a time, distant
splashing sounds three
floors down indicating
that they had travelled further, landing
in the hotel garden’s carefully
tended lily pond.
‘
Like that,’ pronounced Loulou with a mixture
of fear and satisfaction as she darted towards the door. ‘I hope you fall into
the water and bloody well
sink!’
Chapter 52
’If you weren’t my father,’ chided Natalie, watching from
the
depths of the squashy leather settee as
Sebastian made rapid
notes in a file and replaced his calculator in the
appropriate
compartment of his briefcase, ‘I’d
think you were a stuffy old
man.’
He glanced across at her, genuinely
puzzled. ‘I’m an
efficient, properly
organized
young
man. The fact that I have a
grown-up daughter is merely an accident of nature; it doesn’t
mean
I’m old.’
‘
OK,’ shrugged Natalie
conceding the point, ‘but it’s a
Sunday
and all you’ve done since you got up is drink black
coffee and work. Don’t you ever take any time off
and have
fun?’
Sebastian recapped his fountain pen
and sat back in his
chair.
‘I enjoy working. That’s why your mother and I have
always got on so well together; she
has her career and I have mine, and we aren’t afraid of either hard work or the
success
which results from
that. We’ve always understood each other’s priorities.’
‘
Well, I’m bored,’
Natalie countered, her mouth turning
sulkily
downwards. ‘Working with pages of figures isn’t my
idea of a great time.
And Roz – Mum – doesn’t do half as much
work
as you do. I bet she only pretends to be like you so you’ll
be
impressed.’
‘
Roz doesn’t need to try and impress me,’ said
Sebastian slowly, stalling for time. Really, this girl had an alarming knack
of making rash statements which were uncomfortably
incisive.
To change the subject, he
said, ‘And I
do
have "fun" as you call
it, but it’s not
exactly the kind of fun one can have when one’s daughter comes to stay.’
‘
Sex!’ said
Natalie with such disgust that he almost smiled. ‘You don’t need those women.
What’s wrong with my mother?’
‘I’m in Switzerland and she’s in London. It tends to
hamper one’s spontaneity, you know.’
Natalie changed tack, shifting on to
her side and giving him
her most beguiling smile. It was too much like Roz’s not to
have an effect and Sebastian began to suspect that he was
being cunningly manipulated against his will.
‘That gives you
more
chance to be spontaneous,’ she
cajoled, observing the look of discomfort on her father’s face. ‘It’s only
eleven o’clock; we could be in London by
mid-afternoon. And
that really would
be an ultra-cool, ultra-spontaneous thing to
do.’
‘Out of the question,’ he said firmly, not realizing that
his
fountain pen, not properly capped, was
leaking black ink through
his best Turnbull & Asser shirt pocket. ‘Nothing’s
organized.’
‘Don’t be so stuffy and
boring!’
cried Natalie,
leaping to her feet. ‘We drive to the airport, we catch a plane, we take a taxi
to Camilla’s house. There, I’ve organized you.’
‘But . . .’ began Sebastian hopelessly, knowing that he’d
been beaten and wondering why it was so easy to be assertive at work and so
impossible now.
‘
Stop it, Dad,’ said
Natalie swiftly. ‘Go and get your
passport and stop arguing. And look on
the bright side; this is going to be the most wonderful, spontaneous surprise
ever for Mum.’
‘She doesn’t like surprises,’ grumbled Sebastian, reaching
uneasily for his keys and pushing back his chair. ‘She’s like me; she prefers
everything to be planned.’
Natalie
grinned, hugged him and gave him a kiss.
‘
But sometimes things happen which aren’t planned,
and
they turn out OK,’ she said gleefully. ‘Like me.’
As Camilla sat outside, shielding her
eyes from the bright sun and
watching
Marty and Toby cavorting around the garden she reflected that it was difficult
to be happy when everyone else seemed hell-bent on plunging themselves into
misery. Loulou, slippery with oil, was stretched out on a yellow sun-lounger,
sulking like mad and intermittently listing aloud all Mac’s bad points.
Charlotte, who was according to her the only girl in the
whole of London missing the Britney Spears concert
at Wembley,
was out-sulking even Loulou. Rocky, having exhausted himself
chasing Marty around the garden, was now suffering
from
heatstroke and lying gloomily in the shade of the weeping cherry
tree.
And Roz, tense and irritable because
there had still been
no word
from Natalie, was upstairs packing to leave for
Gloucestershire. At lunchtime, having finally weakened, she
had rung Sebastian’s number in Zurich and there
had been no
reply. Snappy, rejecting Camilla’s reassurances, she was
desperately on edge.
No-one, it had rapidly become apparent, was the least bit
interested in hearing about Camilla’s new man. Even Lili, her cloudy black
corkscrew curls tied up in a daffodil yellow bow, had looked unimpressed when
Camilla had pulled her on to her lap for a cuddle.
‘
Wanna play with Rocky,’ she protested, pouting
and scrambling back down. Moments later, after tugging Rocky’s ears so
strenuously that he whined and shot inside the house, Lili burst into noisy
floods of tears which only added to the general mood of doom and gloom. Marty
ran over, visibly upset, and tried to
kiss
Lili better but outraged by the interruption, she screamed
even more loudly and pushed him away with agitated,
out
stretched hands. Confused and hurt by the rejection, Marty, too,
started to cry.
‘
Jesus, what a racket,’ complained a good-natured, wonder
fully familiar voice and Camilla almost leapt out of her seat,
her heart
thumping like a tom-tom.
‘
Piers! What on earth
are you doing here?’ she said breath
lessly, aware that Roz had appeared
at the open french windows, an expression of deep interest in her dark eyes.
‘
Couldn’t wait until
Wednesday, I’m afraid.’ He shrugged
and
laughed at her unconcealed amazement, then solemnly
handed her a
canister of Ralgex. ‘For your poor old muscles, sweetheart. It smells terrible
but it’ll stop them aching.’