Sins (39 page)

‘I’ve got some great news for you.’

‘You’re opening another salon?’ Rose guessed, but he shook his head.

‘Nope, it’s something much better than that. I’ve asked Patsy to marry me and she’s said yes.’

There was a horrible vacuum inside Rose’s body, as though the ability to feel anything had been sucked out of her by the ferocity of her shock.

She should have guessed that this would happen, and if she hadn’t then it was her own fault for being an ostrich and hiding herself away from what had been inevitable from the first time Josh had raved to her about his new girlfriend.

The vacuum was rapidly filling with the most intense, unbearable pain.

‘Well. Congratulations.’ Her lips felt stiff, the words unwieldy. Did her voice sound as strained as her smile felt? What did it matter if it did? Josh was hardly likely to notice in his elated state. He was beaming from ear to ear, and looking so happy that Rose badly wanted to crawl into a corner where she could give in to her own misery. Here it was again, her old enemy–self-pity.

Of course he had fallen in love with tall, blonde Patsy, who was typical of the type of girl he went for, and she was a fool for ever thinking that one day he would look at her with that besotted adoration in his eyes that she could see in them now.

‘I would have told you before but, well, everything’s happened so quickly. It was only when she said that she was thinking of moving back to New York that I realised that I didn’t want to lose her. And guess what? I brought her here to propose.’

Fresh pain seared Rose. This was
their
place–their special place–it always had been.

‘To be honest I was scared silly that she’d turn me down. I mean, why should a gorgeous girl like her take on someone like me?’

Because you are good-looking, sexy, kind, fun, and successful, the answer to every girl’s prayer, Rose thought, but of course she couldn’t say that. She knew him well enough to know how quickly he would pounce on even the smallest hint that she was accusing Patsy–who in Rose’s opinion had a very keen eye for an opportunity that would benefit her, and who was as emotionally as cold as a fish unless it suited her to appear otherwise–of not being good enough for him.

But then again there was the possibility that she could simply be misjudging Patsy because she was so very jealous.

Josh was plainly waiting for her to say something else. Rose took a deep breath.

‘Great…Er, have you decided when you’re going to get married yet?’

How hard it was to say those words, as painful as stabbing a knife right into her own heart.

‘As soon as we can. I want you to be there, naturally, although Patsy says she’s a bit worried in case having you as a witness brings us bad luck. She’s only joking, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Rose agreed, keeping to herself her belief that Patsy was not joking at all.

‘Patsy is full of plans for us. She knows all about what went wrong with me and Judy and she says she’s
determined to get really involved with my work so that it doesn’t happen to us. That’s another reason why I’m glad we’re seeing one another tonight. You see, there’s something Patsy wants me to discuss with you.’

He was looking uncomfortable again, Rose recognised. Whatever it was Patsy wanted him to discuss with her it obviously wasn’t something she was going to like.

‘If she doesn’t approve of us having dinner together once a month—’ she began, mentally casting around for something that Patsy might want to change.

‘No, it isn’t that. Well, not directly, although…Well, the thing is, Rose, Patsy feels that there’s no reason now why you and I should be business partners any more. And looking at it logically, she’s right. Like she says, I don’t really need…’

‘Me?’ Rose completed his sentence for him. Her voice sounded brittle, she knew, but that was exactly how she felt. Brittle and vulnerable and dangerously fragile. She was close to breaking down completely and bursting into tears. This was the last thing she had been expecting. No matter what, no matter how many girls, or indeed wives, came and went in his life she had felt secure that she would always have the closeness that their being partners afforded her. But now, thanks to the shrewdness of the woman who had taken the role in his life she had longed for, even that comfort was going to be denied her.

Was Patsy’s concern really about the partnership or had she perhaps sensed Rose’s true feelings for Josh?

‘Don’t be like that.’ Josh sounded genuinely upset. ‘You and I will always be friends. Nothing can change that.’ He had reached for her hand before she could stop him
and the familiar feel of his fingers curling round her own brought a lump to her throat. Inside her head she could hear the words of the Rolling Stones’ hit record about last times, and her whole body was starting to tremble. Frantically she pulled her hand away from his in case he asked her what was wrong.

‘I’ve so much to be grateful to you for,’ he told her.

Rose couldn’t allow that. ‘You don’t owe me anything. We’ve helped each other,’ she reminded him.

She could see in his face his relief that she wasn’t going to get emotional. Her role in his life was that of a friend, not the woman he loved.

‘Patsy’s right, I should have done something about repaying you before now,’ he was saying. ‘The salons are doing really well, and I can easily afford to buy out your share. It isn’t fair of me to keep you tied up in a relationship with me when you could be using your investment somewhere else.’

Of course it’s fair, she wanted to tell him, the words screaming inside her head like a toddler having a tantrum. I want to be tied to you in every way there is. What isn’t fair is you marrying Patsy and what she’s making you do.

‘What Patsy really wants is for us to have a fresh start and for me to open a salon in New York.’

So this was it. The end of everything.

‘Follow in Vidal’s footsteps, you mean.’

If she was being bitchy and hurting him, then so be it. But instead of taking offence he nodded eagerly.

‘He’s doing really well over there and Patsy says there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do the same. She’s got some
contacts in New York and, of course, her family. You’ll have to come over and see us once we’re settled. And no excuses–after all, Ella’s over there.’

Obediently Rose picked up the hint she suspected he was dropping. ‘I’ll tell her what you’re planning, shall I? She’s a junior features editor at
Vogue
, as you know, but I’m sure she won’t mind mentioning you to the Fashion Department.’

This was the worst evening of her life, worse in its way than the night Arthur Russell had nearly raped her, because, after all, that night she had ended up in Josh’s arms.

It was over, the evening and her poor silly futile dream. Josh was signalling for the bill, eager to get home to Patsy, Rose thought miserably.

Ella sat in the window of her brownstone walk-up, trying to get some air in the stifling heat that was Manhattan in June. She was supposed to be working on the wording for an article for the Christmas issue of
Vogue
entitled ‘The Giving of Art’. It was about artists’ patrons. But how on earth was she supposed to be able to think about Christmas and snow when the heat was causing sweat to trickle between her breasts?

She had fallen in love with New York from the minute she had arrived in Manhattan in the winter of ’fifty-eight. In those early months she had explored it from end to end, walking most of the time, at least where it was safe to do so, learning about its past and its present, embracing the brio and the passionate attitude of its residents. Feisty, outspoken, brash but never boring, from Broadway to the Bronx, from Central Park to Staten Island, Ella loved it all for everything it was, but most of all for the way it had taken her and forced those changes on her that had turned her from the awkward, uncomfortable, plain girl she had been into the New York woman she was now, a woman who could bargain
for what she wanted, who could summon a New York cab, who dressed with confidence. She had gone to parties at Studio 8, and Upper East Side apartments, she had eaten pastrami on rye at diners downtown, and gourmet meals at the Plaza, she had sunbathed in the park in summer and skated on the frozen ponds in winter. She had ridden its subways and walked its avenues. It had given her confidence in herself, and in return she had given it her heart. She’d fallen in love with it so much that she’d started forgetting about taking her diet pills, and then realising that she didn’t need them. New York kept her slim, a healthy natural slimness that had set her free from her bad memories about her weight. Yes, she loved New York, but right now the city felt empty and dull. Because Brad wasn’t in it?

She put aside her notebook. There was no point in trying to work any more; not now that she had let Brad into her thoughts.

She could have accepted his invitation and gone to the Hamptons with him for the weekend, she reminded herself. But then he’d have expected her to sleep with him, and she couldn’t do that.

She closed her eyes. How ironic it was that the cure to her fear of pregnancy–the contraceptive pill–and the madness she believed would follow it, which had prevented her from having sex, had come too late for her. If it had been available earlier, when she had been younger, then everything would have been all right. She could have gone to bed with Brad. After all, she wanted to. She had been attracted to him from the minute they had been introduced. Handsome, debonair, rich and
divorced, intelligent, with a good sense of humour, a highly acclaimed investigative journalist turned author, was it any wonder that she’d fallen for him? He confirmed everything she’d always secretly thought, which was that the men she’d mixed with in London were shallow and dull. None of them had ever made her feel as Brad did. If she had been the kind of person who said and believed such things, she could easily have thought that secretly she’d been waiting for him to come into her life.

She’d been first disbelieving and then thrilled when he had begun his subtle pursuit of her. But hard on the heels of her delight had come the harshness of reality. Brad was a liberal thinker, a man of certain strongly held views, one of which was the right of women to own their own sexuality. He had written some high-profile and acclaimed articles denouncing the kind of women who refused to join the sexual revolution and who clung to the old ethos of exchanging their virginity for a wedding ring. Traitoresses to their own sex, he had labelled them; contemptible and worthless, in the eyes of a truly liberated man.

Ella was still a virgin. Not because she had ever had any intention of using her virginity to blackmail a man into marriage–far from it. She had always sworn that she would never marry. It was her fear of having a child and then suffering the same madness that had destroyed her mother that was responsible for her virgin state.

Now, though, the contraceptive pill, which her New York gynaecologist was already prescribing for her because of the problems she’d been having with
her periods, meant that she had no need to fear an unwanted pregnancy.

She could, of course, explain to Brad just why she was still a virgin, but Ella was an eldest child, driven by a need to excel at everything she did and a fear of the humiliation of revealing herself as anything less than perfect. Brad was a sophisticated man in his thirties who would, she was sure, be a superb lover and who would expect the same expertise in any woman he made love to.

How could she reveal herself to him as a gauche, totally inexperienced virgin? She couldn’t! Not when her own carefully cultivated image was one of modern sophistication.

It was too late now to regret all the opportunities she had had, at those endless parties Janey had so often dragged her and Rose to back in London, to become sexually experienced.

She just couldn’t bear the thought of being in bed with Brad and seeing his expression change from desire to cold contempt or, even worse, amusement when he discovered the truth. She had visualised that happening so many times inside her head. The humiliation would be unbearable. She wanted to meet Brad on his own level; to delight and surprise him, to hear him saying how totally swept away he was by her power to arouse him past the limits of his self-control. She wanted so much to please and impress him; to be better than anyone else, to be the best; to hear him say that from now on she was the only woman for him and that no other woman could compare with her. That was what she wanted. Nothing less. And since she could never have
that then she must just put him out of her thoughts. If she could have waved a magic wand and transformed herself into the woman she wanted to be, she would have done so. But Ella knew from her childhood that there was no such thing as magic. For a long time after her mother had died she had gone to bed at night wishing that somehow during the night all the frightening things she knew about her mother would be magicked away and that when she woke up in the morning there would be a new Lydia, a Lydia who was normal and not mad. That had never happened. There was no magic.

Brad would soon get bored with pursuing her without the response he wanted. He would soon find someone else.

‘Do you know what I like about you?’ he had said to her shortly after they had first met. ‘I like that you are so together, so smart-assed and clever. I like that you’re a woman and not a silly girl. I can see in those eyes of yours that you know what being a woman is all about.’

She had fixed her gaze on the immaculate collar of his Brooks Brothers shirt and tried to be all the things he had just described whilst knowing that she was, in reality, none of them.

She had lived in New York for long enough now–the best part of a decade–to know that no one stayed in the city in the summer unless they had to, and even those that did hightailed it out the minute Friday afternoon came.

Everyone who worked in
Vogue
’s offices, or so it seemed, either had a place in the Hamptons, or knew
someone who did, and weekends saw those members of the staff who weren’t already working out of the city on an assignment heading for the fashionable summer retreat.