(2012) Evie Undercover (32 page)

H
e felt
her
eyes on
him
,
and he look
ed
back down
at h
er
.

‘You’re thinking about the stars in
Italy
, aren’t you?’
s
he said.

H
e laughed. ‘You must be psychic.’

‘No.’
Sh
e smiled
up
into
his
face
and
moved even closer to him
. ‘As I’ve said before, j
ust on the same wave length.’

H
e l
ean
ed
down
and
kissed her hard on the lips.

The same stars that shone
on Umbria and Hampstead shone also upon Holland Park.

Night had long
since
fallen by the time
that
Gabriela shut the lid of her laptop
,
got up from her computer chair
and
closed
the magazine
that had been lying on the desk next to her. She p
ress
ed
it flat with her hand and carefully align
ed
it with the computer.

She took
a small step back
and
stared at the magazine.

Then on a sudden impulse, she leaned over and ran her fingers slowly
across
the garish red letters that screamed out
from its cover
. With a
thin smile of pl
easure,
she s
traighten
ed
u
p, switched off the desk light,
and went out of the office and across the hall into the sitting room.

The moment she entered the sitting-room, she saw
the
empty coffee cup
on the top of the glass table
where
she’d left it the night before.
Next to it,
the
magazines were
still
in an untidy heap.

T
hrough no fault of her own t
his had
not been a normal day, she excused
herself.

From the m
oment
she’d returned home the night before, her
routine had been disrupted
. On a normal day, she would never have allowed anything to be ou
t of place in her apartment, b
u
t this day had been different. O
n this day
she’d had
something
to do that was
more important than
a
momentary
disarray
.
But she had now finished
the writing she was doing, and had checked several times that it was to her satisfaction, and she
w
ould
restore order
the f
ollowing
day.

Yes, it was f
inished. A sense of anticipation stirred
within
her. She slid the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left hand, curled her finger
s over the backs of her hands and p
ress
ed
her palms together, squeez
ing
hard until her knuckles were white.

She couldn’t wait for the next few days
to arrive
, and for the weekend, and
for
the Monday after that. The thought of seeing her plan in action
,
watching it bear fruit
,
filled her with ice-cold excitement, and she was impatient for the week to begin.

Re
stlessly, she dropped her hands
,
went over to the window
and s
t
ar
ed
up at the sky, strain
ing
hard to see into
the dark void beyond the stars
.
As she watched, the
blackness of night
gave
way to
the faces of the principal
players in the events that w
ere going to
be acted out
in
the
course of the
following two weeks
.

But
h
ers was the starring role!

She almost laughed out loud. Yes, she had the starring role
, but no one would ever know it.
A
n
d that didn’t matter
; not at all
. I
t w
as
more than enough for her
that she
would be
the only person
to kno
w that
she’d been
the author of her own good fortune.

She sighed as she turned
away from the window
. It had been a long day, a day in which she’d had much to do, and she was now tired.
But there was one more thing
to be done before she
could reward herself with sleep, and that
was
to
note
down
what
she must do in the coming week
, as she did every Saturday
.

Taking her slimline diary and a gold-topped pen from her bag, she perched on the edge of the sofa and started to list
what she must do
on each of the
following
seven
days.

Top of the list was to ring Evie on the Monday or Tuesday evening
without fail
. That w
ouldn’t be a problem
, though
–
she would be starting at the design firm on the Monday morning and there was bound to be something that
she’d need to know that evening,
and
that would give her
a
plausible
reason to telephone
Evie
, or
maybe
even to visit her.

And she must telephone Eduardo. He’d called her twice that day, bu
t she hadn’t taken the calls
;
s
he’d been much too busy to stop what she was doing to talk about Evie, which was all he w
ould want to do, she was sure
. T
he sooner he got over
that silly crush, the better
. However,
she must
ring him in the morning
. When she did so, she’
d
be sure to
tell him how close Evie and Tom had become. She would leave it
unti
l quite late in the morning, though – Eduardo did not get up early on Sundays.

Evie and To
m. She paused. T
hey’d
probably
end
ed
up in bed that evening. Her lip curled in disgust – she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t like to think about that side of any relationship. She’d had to let Evie have her evening with
Tom – there’d been no choice
–
and there may even be one more such evening
,
but th
at
would be the last; of that
there was no doubt
.

She slipped the top back on
to
her pen
,
and
returned
the pen and diary
to
he
r
bag. Then she
got up, walked out of the sitting room and went into her empty bedroom.

Curled up in Tom’s arms, her eyes wide open, Evie listened to the sound of his steady breathing, helpless against the cold dread that was creeping over her
and
wrapping its icy tentacles around her heart.

Full of
regret and
apology, T
om had
told her that he had to work all
through the next day
, and that he had
conferences
ever
y night
in
the coming week and w
ouldn’t
be able to
see her
. But
he wanted to take her out again on the following Friday evening, and on the Saturday, and she’d said yes to both nights.
Friday
could be the last occasion
, though,
on which she’d see his eyes
crinkle with warmth as they gaz
ed down at her
;
on which she’d sink into his arms and feel them tightening around her,
sending a surge of electricity through her
;
on which she’d feel his bare skin
next to
hers.

Anguish tightened its
hold on her and
the night ticked slowly away.

Chapter Twenty-One

Th
os
e
storm
clouds gather
…

‘That Gabriela’s bloody brilliant, Jess,’ Evie shouted in the direction of the kitchen as

she threw herself on to the sofa in the communal area of the Camden Town house.

‘Does that mean you rang the editor and it was all OK?’ Jess asked, coming out of the kitchen
,
a cup in each hand. She
gave
one of the cups
to
Evie
and went round to the deep armchair on the opposite side of the
teak coffee
table.
C
lear
ing
a space on the table,
she
put her cup down
and
sat in the armchair.

‘Spot on. Gabriela phoned last night about somethin
g
she was unsure about after
her first day
at work
,
or so she said
–
really
I
think she just wanted to talk – and s
he said I should definitely ring the magazine tonight, rather than leave it till tomorrow morning
. That way
I’d avoid having yet another sleepless night. She’d picked up on the fact that I was tired from my voice, and she was dead right. I’ve been so worried about what the wanker would say that I haven’t
sle
p
t
properly for ages.
She thought I ought to have as clear a head as possible when I phoned him.
’

‘So
how did you start the conversation
?’

‘I said exactly what Gabriela suggested; that is, that he wouldn’t get the story till Friday morning.’

‘And w
hat did he say?’

‘Everything you would have expected. The shitbag’s got a limited vocabulary – virtually every word began with an
f
.
I had to
“
fucking well get the fucking thing into his fucking hands by tomorrow fucking morning
”
. You know the sort of thing. I just let him rant, and when he’d more or less finished shouting down the line, I put the phone back to my ear and told him that if he wasn’t prepared to stick to our original agreement, I’d take my story to someone else. I was sure that there’d be any number of takers for the juicy little number I’d got.’

Jess giggled. ‘You’ve got some nerve, Evie, I’ll say that for you. Perhaps you should have stuck to muckraking as a career.’

Evie laughed happily. ‘You should have heard the change in his voice. It was like chalk and cheese. By the time I hung up, he was more than happy to wait till Friday morning – they’d find a way to work round my schedule
,
no problem. I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about anything.’ She hugged her knees to her chest and grinned ecstatically. ‘Fantastic or what?’

‘Fanfuckingtastic
, I’d say. You’
ve done so well. That Gabriela is obviously pretty smart. Fancy her zeroing in right away on the fact that you were the one with the power.’

‘Or else she thinks like the sleazy element thinks. But whatever the reason, I’m soooo grateful to her.
It feels as if a huge weight’
s been lifted off me.’

‘So what happens next?’