Beautiful People (49 page)

    James's back blurred as the tears rose. But she could still see how it radiated loathing. Loathing of her. And he had loved her so much. Devotedly and absolutely, Vanessa knew, stung by the additional knowledge that she had never really appreciated it. Had not only taken it utterly for granted but had occasionally affected to doubt it, as when she had toyed with the idea his interest in Emma went beyond the strictly professional.

    As if! James's interest in Emma, Vanessa now knew—had always known, in fact—was gratitude for the effort and enthusiasm she brought to the job of looking after their children. Their children! The children he obviously adored, but which she had never really allowed him to spend any time with, so desperate was she to force him, against his will, up the greasy Foreign Office pole. And yet, even despite all this, James had never wanted another woman. He had adored her. And she had treated him like a dog.

    He was a gentleman to the backbone. He had borne her tempers, her spite, her unfairness without complaint. He had never judged her, try as he might sometimes to discourage her.

    Vanessa had never known pain in her heart like this. Guilt, regret, self-loathing were infinitely more agonising than anything physical she had ever suffered, the births of the children included. The children! As she crossed the bridge, the formerly proud Vanessa, broken and pathetic, all her former fire gone, contemplated throwing herself over it. Had the water below been anything more than a tricklesome stream, she would have.

    If only she had listened to James about Emma. If only, Vanessa thought in silent anguish as they walked up into the village their children were last known to have been in, she had never let Emma go.

"Emma! Emma! Where have you been?" Hero and Cosmo were chanting as they choo-chooed round the tables.

    "We've missed you."

    "We've had no one to play trains with. No one to play Snakes and Ladders with…"

    She glanced at the children and back at Orlando, puzzled and delighted, her eyes framing the question.

    "I found them in the square," he explained. "No one was with them."

    "No one…?" Emma gasped. "They had no nanny?"

    "Well, there is a nanny, but…"

    "We've had no one to play Uno with," Hero was complaining. "Totty doesn't know how to play Uno…"

    "Totty?" Emma was gripped immediately by a terrible force. "Totty…?"

    It was, Emma thought afterwards, as if merely speaking the name had summoned an evil spirit. For, at that very moment, Totty rounded the corner and stormed through the restaurant, blonde hair streaming in her wake, legs flashing vengefully in a tiny miniskirt, scrappy breasts heaving behind a barely there black top.

    Orlando stared at the long-legged blonde. He didn't recognise her, but he knew the people with her horribly well. Swaggering between the tables, laughing hysterically, came two stunningly unattractive youths in jeans and loafers with big bouncy hair and enormous teeth. Orlando now remembered where he had heard the name Totty before.

    Totty, it seemed, was in nowhere near as good a mood as her companions. She ripped off her sunglasses to reveal eyes flashing in fury. "What are you two doing here?" she roared at the children. They backed away, frightened.

    Orlando felt sick. He had absolutely no idea what to do. His instinct was to fell Totty to the ground, but obviously that was out of the question, especially with the children present. He realised miserably that his extensive and expensive education may have included balloon debates and school parliaments, but it had conclusively failed to teach him how to handle an occasion of this nature.

    Emma's, however, had been more successful in this respect. "Don't speak to the children like that!" she growled, controlling with only the greatest of difficulties the urge to clamp her hands round Totty's long, brown neck and squeeze hard. She struggled to comprehend the unbelievable yet apparent fact that Totty Belvedere had succeeded her as Cosmo and Hero's nanny. What had possessed Vanessa? And James, who had always seemed so kind and sensible…

    Totty looked at Emma. There was, the other girl felt, something of the hypnotizing snake in the eviscerating stare. She watched Totty's face twist with contemptuous recognition. "Just fuck off, okay?" she snarled. "This is my job now. Not yours."

    "Not anymore, damn you," shouted the shaking voice of James as he hurtled through the tables, a shattered, weeping Vanessa stumbling behind him.

"News picture desk, please, darlin'," said Ken. "Tell 'em it's Ken from Mega."

    "Okay," came the disembodied, nasal tones of the receptionist.

    There was a scrape and a scramble at the other end as the call was put through.

    "Yeah?"

    Ken recognised the graceless voice of the news picture editor. Dick "'Dastardly'" Richardson. "Wotcha doin' comin' through to me, mate?" Dastardly demanded, irritated. "It's Showbiz you want, innit?"

    "Not this time," said Ken lightly, flicking through the images at the back of his digital camera. "These pictures are news."

Her face was so beautiful; the long sweep of lashes like the hairs on sea urchins, the tiny ears that actually really were shell-like, reminding him of the tiny, tasty clams he liked to use for vongole, the ones the French called palourdes. But this was no time to stand staring at her. She had fainted. She needed help.

    "Fast work, Chef!" grinned Nino, the commis chef and the latest, youngest recruit, his naughty dark eyes full of laughter as Marco entered with Darcy in his arms. Rodolfo had brought her up from the carpark. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," Rodolfo had remarked as he handed her over, shaking his head.

    She was so light Marco could have carried her however her limbs were arranged. But he had no intention of missing the opportunity of making her embrace him. As she now dutifully draped her long, white arms where he requested, he felt not the triumph he had expected, but something rather more tender. She was so beautiful, so light, so pale, so helpless, like a child.

    He walked through the restaurant ignoring the winking brigade of chefs. He was, in fact, barely aware of them or of the excitement outside in the restaurant courtyard, where something between a fight and a reunion seemed to be taking place. For him, as he took her upstairs, the only thing that mattered was the beautiful burden he held.

    The wonderful dream was continuing, Darcy thought. She was lying on something yielding and squashy in a cool, shady room. Someone with kind, dark eyes was very close. She felt safe, loved. She smiled.

    Her eyes flew open. Recognising Marco, she gasped, jerking herself up into a sitting position and glancing round the simple, white room in alarm. "Where am I? What am I doing here?"

    "Relax. You just fainted."

    "Fainted?"

    Tumbling into her brain now came a clatter of recollections: the red car beneath the trees, Christian's muscular bottom, Belle's tousled head. She closed her eyes. The dream was a nightmare after all.

    "You've been running a bit too much," he said. "It's hot out there."

    "I have to run," Darcy said miserably. "My thinstructor says so."

    "Your thinstructor?"

    "The man who's helping me get thin."

    "'Helping you get thin? You have a beautiful body. Why do you want to get thinner?"

    Darcy sighed. "I don't know," she said, staring at the worn, yet clean floorboards. "I don't know about anything anymore," she added in a whisper. "I've made such a mess of everything."

    He did not break her silence. He sensed there was more to come. And indeed it almost was: Darcy breathed in, gathering her strength to launch into the whole sorry saga of the film, Christian, Niall, and Belle. But her shoulders slumped and her eyelids drooped. The effort seemed too much, the subject too long-winded and irrelevant now. Up here, with Marco, none of it seemed to matter. Even Christian. She felt above it and strangely distant.

    It occurred to Darcy that the only real, lasting joy she had experienced in recent weeks, perhaps even recent months or years, was here in this very place. She had loved sitting outside Marco's, listening to him rhapsodising over perfect razor clams or the ultimate arugula, or whatever was exciting him that morning, as she sipped coffee and watched the people going by in the square. And even better than the listening was the tasting. The cheese, the olives, the bread…

    His work was so creative. He made so many decisions every day, every hour. He was in complete control of what he did and had a clear view of what he wanted to achieve. A degree of self-expression she had always felt denied herself. It seemed to Darcy now that she had spent her life first being ordered about by her parents, then by Niall, then by directors, few of whose vision she had ever understood. She recalled the half-naked Lear and winced.

    Oh, what had she done with her life? What had been the point of it all? She had never been in control. Chance and the desires of other people had plotted her path, never her.

    She finished speaking and shot him a shamefaced look. She must have been talking for hours, banging on about herself, making him miss the lunchtime service altogether, probably.

    But there was no censure in the eyes that steadily held hers. They were so kind. It seemed to Darcy that no one had ever looked at her with quite such understanding.

    A warm glow spread through her, to her very finger ends. She wiped her eyes and smiled back.

Mitch looked at Greg Cucarachi sorrowfully. "It's unfuckingbelievable."

    "Tell me about it," replied the other.

    Mitch squeezed his eyes together. "Just…" Failing to find a word big enough to express all he felt, he put a plump, perspiring hand to his sweating forehead and let the gesture do it for him. "Your client Christian Harlow…"

    "And your client Belle Murphy…" put in Cucarachi, quickly.

    "Were driving somewhere in your client Christian Harlow's Ferrari, but your client Christian Harlow was going too fast to be able to stop when he saw…"

    "The scooter, yeah…" Cucarachi confirmed.

    "The scooter…the scooter…" Mitch could hardly get the words out. "But not, like, any old scooter. The scooter with Jack Saint on it. And not any old Jack Saint. Jack Saint the famous director…"

    "You got it," Cucarachi confirmed wearily. He was in Mitch's office, right opposite him, slumped despairingly in one of the chairs facing his desk. There was to be no goading today. The two agents were, for once—for the first time, in fact—united. United in a tragedy affecting both of them.

    "All that lost money." Cucarachi groaned. "All we'll get is the signing-on fee."

    "But that's a lot," Mitch pointed out encouragingly.

    Greg flicked him a look. "For you, sure. You had two stars in

this movie. I just had Christian Harlow." Mitch said nothing. He knew it was best not to intrude on private grief.

    "This picture was gonna make Christian a big star. It was his big break," Greg wailed, suddenly impassioned.

    "Yeah, and it was," Mitch returned dryly. "He's in a hospital in Florence with both his legs in plaster. And it was an even bigger break for Belle. Both arms and several ribs. She's gonna have to be entirely reconstructed."

    "Again," pointed out Cucarachi.

    "Darcy seems pretty relaxed about the whole thing," Mitch remarked. "Sorry about the accidents, sure. But much less worried than I thought about the film being written off."