‘Yuk, I don’t like cauliflower,’ declared Ella, her tone fractious.
To the child’s astonishment Maxine replied, ‘Neither do I,’ and promptly lobbed the offending vegetable out through the kitchen window. ‘Let’s have frozen peas instead.’
‘We like Big Macs,’ said Josh hopefully the following evening.
Maxine, who had been burrowing through the contents of the freezer in search of fish fingers, because she knew how to cook them, closed the door with relief. ‘OK,’ she said to Josh’s amazement and delight.
Berenice had always been a stickler for proper, home-cooked meals. ‘But don’t tell your father.’
Guy phoned every evening. Maxine, hovering unseen in the doorway, eavesdropped shamelessly whilst his children sung her praises. Nannying wasn’t so bad once you got the hang of it, she decided, priding herself on her success. And letting the children stay up until midnight had been a stroke of genius; no more horrendous six-thirty starts. She couldn’t imagine why more households hadn’t cottoned on to such a perfect scheme.
‘Everything all right?’ Guy would enquire, when she was summoned to the phone for interrogation. ‘Perfect!’ Determined to impress the hell out of him to pay him back for ever having doubted her, she boasted, ‘They’ve been absolute angels.’
Josh and Ella, sitting on the stairs, collapsed in giggles. said Guy, not believing her for a second. ‘In that case you’ve got the wrong children. Return them to the spaceship and make sure the real ones are home by the time I get back.’
‘You didn’t tell Dad you’d reversed his car into the gatepost,’ Josh reminded her when she had replaced the receiver.
Maxine’s smile was angelic. ‘Don’t you remember, darling? That stupid man in the Reliant Robin drove into the back of the car whilst we were parked on the seafront.’
‘No he didn’t. You reversed into the gatepost.’
‘Fine.’ She picked up the phone once more. ‘I’ll call and tell your father now. Oh, and maybe you’d like to explain to him how you managed to smash the kitchen window with your sister’s Sindy doll ...’
Josh’s shoulders sagged and he waved his hands in a gesture of defeat. He might have known he didn’t stand a chance against an expert like Maxine. ‘OK, OK. Put the phone down.
You win.’
But whilst being with the children was fun, it had its restrictions. Maxine found herself yearning for adult company. By Thursday she realized she was even looking forward to Guy’s phone call from Paris, and felt absurdly put out when he spoke to Josh and Ella, then hung up.
‘He was in a hurry,’ Josh explained. ‘He said some people were waiting for him and he had to go out.’
‘How nice for him,’ said Maxine sourly. It was five o’clock and the evening stretched ahead interminably. All she had to look forward to was beating Josh and Ella at Monopoly and maybe the added thrill of washing her hair.
Janey, who enjoyed washing her hair, was in the bath when the phone shrilled at six o’clock. Inwardly cursing but unable to leave it to ring – there was always that infinitesimal chance that it might be Alan, after all – she climbed out of the bath and made her way, naked and dripping bubbles, into the sitting room.
‘Big favour,’ Maxine beseeched, on the other end of the line. ‘Big, big favour. How would you like to save your poor demented sister’s life?’
‘Not very much.’ If Maxine was planning a moonlight flit from Trezale House, Janey didn’t want her flitting back to the flat. With a trace of suspicion she said, ‘I thought Guy was away this week.’
‘Exactly,’ declared Maxine, then giggled. ‘What a strange thing to say. I wasn’t asking you to play hired assassin.’
That was a relief, Janey supposed. Shifting from one foot to the other, she watched the bath bubbles melt into the carpet. ‘So what do you want?’
‘I’m suffering from cabin fever,’ cried Maxine with suitable drama. ‘If I don’t get out of here for a couple of hours I won’t be responsible for my actions. And Colin’s just phoned, inviting me to have a drink with him.’
‘I’m in the bath,’ complained Janey.
‘No you aren’t, you’re in the sitting room. Sweetie, it’s not too much to ask, is it?’ Maxine switched into wheedling mode. Josh and Ella would absolutely love to see you again. And you know how brilliant you are at Monopoly ...’
It really was a gorgeous house. Janey, kicking off her shoes and stretching out across the long sofa, gazed around appreciatively at the beamed ceiling, matte burgundy walls and glossy, rug-strewn parquet floor. Maxine and her incurable mania for clutter had reduced her own small flat to chaos but Trezale House was evidently large enough to handle it. The style of the sitting room was elegant but at the same time relaxed. The paintings hanging on the walls vied for space with a selection of framed photographs, expertly lit. Thanks to Jessica Newman, Paula’s mother, the antique furniture was lovingly polished, the indoor plants immaculately tended. Janey was pleased to see that her own flower arrangements were still looking as fresh as they had the previous Saturday.
But it was midnight, the children were in bed and she was starving. ‘Help yourself to anything,’ Maxine had declared, the expansive sweep of her arm encompassing the contents of the entire kitchen. That had been at seven-thirty when Janey hadn’t been hungry. Now, checking her watch and marvelling at her own gullibility — Maxine had promised faithfully to be back by eleven at the very latest — she padded barefoot into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Josh, who was the most appalling cheat, had beaten her at Monopoly and a girl deserved some compensation, after all.
Abandoning her diet, she’d just finished piling a dinner plate with French bread, pâté and a hefty slice of Dolcelatte when a car snaked up the drive, its headlights dazzling her as she peered out through the kitchen window.
Maxine was back at last. Too hungry to stop now, Janey gave her a wave and picked up the already opened bottle of red wine which had been left balancing precariously on the edge of the windowsill. She wouldn’t have bothered if she’d been on her own, but now that Maxine was here they might as well finish it up between them.
By the time the front door opened, Janey was comfortably ensconced once more on the sofa. Through a mouthful of pâté she called out, ‘And about time too! Come in here this minute and tell me what you’ve been doing to that poor defenceless cricketer. I hope you haven’t been tampering with his middle wicket ..
‘Absolutely not,’ said a cool male voice behind her, and Janey turned pale.
‘Oh God, I’m s ... sorry,’ she stammered, hideously embarrassed at having been caught out.
The attempted witticism had been feeble enough anyway, but at least Maxine would have laughed.
Guy Cassidy, however, wasn’t looking the least bit amused. Janey’s complexion, unable to make up its mind, promptly reddened. The dinner plate clattered against the coffee table as she shoved it hurriedly away from her, like a shoplifter caught in the act. It was ridiculous, she told herself; she had a perfect right to be here. She just wished Guy wouldn’t look at her like that.
‘Well,’ he said finally, glancing at the two brimming glasses of wine on the table and at the almost empty bottle beside them. ‘You appear to have made yourself at home. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’
Bastard, thought Janey. To add insult to injury, her hand shook like a leaf as she silently passed him the nearest glass.
‘And I suppose I don’t need to ask where Maxine is. Screwing some unfortunate cricketer, from the sound of it.’ Collapsing into one of the chairs opposite her, he consulted his watch. ‘It’s past midnight. Is this a regular occurrence?’
‘What?’
‘You, doing the babysitting. Has it been going on all week?’
‘Of course not!’ Janey retaliated. Outraged by the unfairness of the suggestion, she took a great slug of wine. There was really no need for him to take his irritation out on her. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to be flying back until tomorrow, anyway,’ she said in accusing tones, wishing she didn’t feel at such a disadvantage. He must have been travelling for hours, but in his olive-green cashmere sweater and white jeans he still looked as fresh as if he’d just got up, whereas she was only too conscious of the fact that she was wearing an ancient grey tee-shirt and leggings, and no make-up at all.
‘Maybe I wanted to check up on what happens when I’m away,’ he countered evenly, those unnerving dark eyes boring into her as she emptied her glass. ‘I hope you enjoyed that.’
By this time thoroughly fed up, Janey responded with a belligerent stare. ‘It was OK.’
He nodded ‘So it should be. That was a bottle of seventy-eight Châteauneuf du Pape. It cost two hundred and forty pounds.’
Chapter 11
Swarming tourists were all right in their place but unless they were prepared to put their money where their mouths were, Thea Vaughan was a lot happier when she had her beloved studio to herself.
All day long she’d smiled and silently suffered the endless stream of visitors who’d trooped in and out of the gallery. Most had temporarily tired of the beach and were simply seeking a diversion out of the sun. Some, treating Thea as if she didn’t exist, openly criticized her sculptures. Others, feigning interest, admired her work and engaged her in pointless, time-wasting conversation. Occasionally they fell in love with a particular piece and only balked when they saw the price tag.
So far this week she hadn’t sold a single sculpture. With the rent overdue, it was especially demoralizing. All those wasted smiles and dashed hopes. She was tempted to tell the next influx of ignorant, sunburnt visitors to get stuffed, just for the hell of it.
‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’
The visitor, a lone male in his early sixties, turned enquiringly inThea’s direction as she emerged from the back of the gallery where she had been making a fresh pot of coffee.
‘Not a word,’ Thea lied smoothly, having glanced down at his shoes. No holiday flip-flops these, but polished brown leather brogues of the very highest quality worn with traditional lighter brown trousers, a brown and cream checked shirt and a Harris tweed jacket. In these temperatures the man had to be on the verge of heatstroke. One simply didn’t tell the owner of such an outfit to get stuffed.
It was one of her better decisions.
The prospective customer was standing in a pool of sunlight beside the open window, thoughtfully stroking his moustache as he studied one of the sculptures of which Thea was particularly proud. The almost life-sized figure of a ballerina, sitting on the floor to tie the ribbons on her shoes, was priced at £3,000. Earlier in the day a skinny Welshman had elbowed his wife in the ribs and said loudly, ‘There now, Gwyneth, maybe I could put you in your slippers, dip you into a tank of concrete and flog you in some fancy gallery.’ The wife had cackled with laughter and Thea had gritted her teeth, longing to punch them both down the stairs.
To add insult to injury the sniggering couple had left Starburst wrappers strewn across the bleached wooden floorboards. Oh, the joys of cretinous bloody tourists .. .
But this man, even if he was a tourist, which she doubted, was in a different league altogether. Anxious not to put him off, Thea decided to wait for him to initiate any conversation.
Resuming her seat before the half-finished figure upon which she was currently working, she rinsed her fingers in the bowl of water next to it and continued moulding the clay over the wire base of the torso.
Within the space of a minute she became aware of the fact that the man was now watching her. Calmly ignoring him, she concentrated instead upon the job in hand. The naked female required breasts and she had to decide on an appropriate size for them. It was also tricky ensuring they didn’t end up looking like improbable silicone implants. The figure was of a middle-aged woman; they had to have the correct amount of droop.
Oliver Cassidy, in turn, was studying the interesting outline of Thea Vaughan’s breasts beneath her ivory cheesecloth blouse. She was wearing several heavy silver necklaces and no bra, and as far as he was concerned her figure was admirable.
He was drawn, too, to the strong facial features of the woman who seemed so absorbed in her work. With those heavy-lidded dark brown eyes and that long Roman nose, she looked almost like a bird of prey. The swirl of white hair, caught up in a loose bun, contrasted strongly with her deep tan, but although he estimated she must be in her late forties, the lines on her face were few.
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