Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? (25 page)

As Woody got busy with the sausages, she wandered over to the shelves for some casual spying.

‘So … Austin, eh?’ She made diversionary conversation as she searched for a picture of Jennifer. Sue had said the place was littered with them. But the first few frames were just of coffin dodgers.

‘He’s not the man of the movies,’ Woody replied darkly as he started slicing some bread.

‘D’you reckon Chelle’s in with a chance?’ Her eyes skipped to the next shelf – and suddenly her heart stopped dead. There was a picture of a woman – laughing into the camera, eyes sparkling, hair glossy brown, face entirely absent of make-up. And she was beautiful – totally, ravishingly beautiful. Roxy’s stomach hit the soles of her feet.

‘With Austin?’ Woody was looking right at her. ‘I hope not,
for Chelle’s sake. But that’s not really the question you want to ask – is it?’

‘It isn’t?’ Guiltily, Roxy inched away from the shelf. Had Woody just seen her snooping? Did he actually just read her mind? How did he know she wanted to ask about Jennifer? He was looking at her with a strange expression – brooding and kind of pissed off. Roxy shifted uncomfortably – the sausages sizzled loudly – and then mercifully her eye fell on a pile of CDs. She quickly pretended to immerse herself in their covers. There was a very long moment – and then Woody turned back to the pan.

‘So, d’you reckon Austin
really
had a thing about Sue?’ she babbled, trying to lighten the mood. She tried not to think about the woman with the glossy brown hair and concentrate instead on Woody’s CDs:
Nirvana, Muse, David Bowie …

‘Probably,’ Woody said normally. ‘Sue was incredibly famous back then. And incredibly beautiful.’

‘She still is!’ Roxy mumbled in protest. ‘All she needs is a makeover.’
Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry..
. DEBBIE HARRY! ‘God, Woods, your CD collection’s really …’

‘Really …?’

‘Cool!’

‘Don’t sound so surprised.’

‘I’m not! It’s just … I kind of expected …’

‘Wall-to-wall ballads?’ He smiled. ‘Just because I
sang
shit doesn’t mean I
listen
to it too.’

‘Your stuff wasn’t shit.’

‘Oh, come off it, Rox.’

‘But I loved your shit! “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?” was ace!’

‘“Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?” was dire.’

‘OK, so maybe it
was
a bit cheesy …’

‘Cheesy? It whiffed like a blue-veined Stilton!’

‘But you sang it really well!’

‘I sang it like I had a rod up my arse.’

‘Why do you find it so hard to take a compliment?’

‘I don’t. I just don’t like to have smoke blown up my backside.’

‘No extra room, with that rod?’

‘Exactly!’

They grinned at each other before Woody scooped the sausages out of the pan and on to the bread.

‘Sauce?’

‘I thought you’d never ask!’

Woody laughed and shook his head. He put a dollop of ketchup on her sausage and handed her a plate. In another room, his phone started ringing. He headed out to answer it.

As soon as he’d gone, Roxy kicked herself. She officially No Longer Fancied Woody. So why the hell was she flirting? And
why
had she been checking Jennifer out? Woody’s girlfriend was none of her business! But, even as she scolded herself, she still had to resist the urge to scoot back to the shelf for another peek. With an iron will, she stayed in her seat and instead took advantage of Woody’s absence by stuffing her ketchuppy bread in her pocket. She didn’t care if the sauce stained the Lululemon – stains were easier to get rid of than carbs.

‘Hi, Cressida.’ She could hear Woody on the phone. ‘No … no, really, it’s no bother … Look, I’m just having breakfast – I’ll pop over straight after … It’s probably just a fuse or something … Yeah, OK. See you in thirty.’

He returned to the kitchen and sat down.

‘What are you? Cressida’s Mr Fix It?’ Roxy asked as she took a big bite of sausage and nearly moaned.
Damn
, Woody was right; the sausage bit of his sarnie was mint!

‘Cressida’s a woman born out of her time,’ he replied. ‘Anything electrical and she’s flummoxed. I quite often go over to help out.’

‘But she must have loads of money! Why doesn’t she get a handyman?’

‘Maybe it’s not the fixing bit she’s after.’

‘Meaning?’

Woody shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s the company she needs.’

Roxy swallowed with a frown. ‘Are you saying Cressida’s lonely?’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘But she always seems so …’ Roxy groped for a word.
Bossy? Controlling?
‘… Self-sufficient.’

‘Everyone needs mates, Rox. And, from what Cressida says, friends are pretty scarce in politics.’

Roxy chewed on her last bit of sausage. Cressida, lonely – who’d have thought it? She stood up and took her plate over to the sink. But, as she turned back towards Woody, she noticed a half-open door leading to a utility room. In the middle of
the utility room was a washing rack, and hanging out to dry were a dozen … She gasped.

‘Bloody hell, Woods –
are they your old vests?’

She pointed at the washing in shock.

‘They make good rags for the windows.’

She gasped again, almost choking on the double intake of breath.

‘But … but … but they’re your
vests
, Woody! They’re famous – pop history! They should be in a museum of rock, or the Hard Rock Café – not used to wipe grubby windows!’

‘Breathe, Rox; your lips have gone blue.’

‘But …’

Woody walked over to the rack.

‘Here – if they mean that much to you, have one.’ And he tossed one over. Roxy caught it and turned it over in her hands in despair.

‘It’s not even white any more!’

‘They’ve moved on – new careers and all that.’ Woody grinned. ‘Look, I’d love to chat about my cruel mistreatment of vests but, sorry, Rox – I’m going to have to chuck you out. Cressida’s waiting and I need a shower.’

‘Course,’ Roxy mumbled as she was shepherded over to the door. She threw one last glance towards Jennifer’s photograph. And then she was out on Woody’s doorstep, his vest in her hand, using every Jedi mind-trick in the universe not to imagine him in nothing but a towel.

Simon frowned and stepped into the blast of the gym’s polar air-conditioning. He hated the gym and everything about it.

For a start, the music was terrible … and so terribly loud! It didn’t make sense; at the times he visited – one thirty until three, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – the place was a morgue … almost literally! All the young, thrusting, vital people were at work, so the gym was empty save for the local ‘resting’ thesps (total of one) and a few doddery pensioners, freewheeling on the bikes, a star-jump away from death. If asked, they’d probably have preferred a bit of Dean Martin. In fact, Simon had a theory that the gym was empty
because
of the music. The old folk were the only ones who could tolerate it – and only because hearing aids came with an off switch.

But the truth was, in his own perverse way, Simon revelled in the awfulness of the gym. Ever since puberty, he’d had an innate weakness for self-flagellation. Secretly he
welcomed
the fact that his gym trips lumped him with society’s infirm. After all, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t go at another time (in the mornings, perhaps, with the yummy mummies). And he could always
invest in an iPod. But Simon believed that, if he was going to be miserable, he might as well go the whole hog and make himself really,
really
miserable.

Like a condemned man, he headed over to the rower.

By three thirty, Simon was pink, pumped and parked outside the school gate. In the distance he could see the stirrings of lilac blazers as the children started heading for home. But Scarlet and Euan always took at least fifteen minutes to make the two-minute walk from classroom to people carrier, so he let his mind drift back to last night’s meeting and the dreaded arrival of the world’s favourite Mr Jones. And smugly, he smiled.

Simon had expected Austin to be many things – egotistical, arrogant, aloof – but not fat. For the first time, Simon pondered his own waist fondly. Yes, there was no denying it, Roxy was right: the great Austin Jones was a lard arse. It was strange … he didn’t look overweight on screen. But when your status hit the top of the alphabet, maybe nobody suggested a diet. Maybe the crew just made allowances – filmed from flattering angles, cracked out the slimming lens.
Did Austin
– Simon wondered with a shake of excitement –
film in a corset?
Not that it really mattered … spare tyre or not, he obviously had more pheromones than an alley cat.
And
a nose to die for. And what eyes! So vulnerable on screen, but so dangerous in the flesh. Despite the deep well of antagonism he felt towards the man whose career he should have had, Simon began to wonder whether
he
wasn’t the only victim of casting injustice. Maybe Austin
had
retired prematurely after all. Not because
of all the housewives who’d had their hearts broken, but because now the world would never get to see what Austin could truly achieve. In a flash, Simon had a vision of what Austin might have been – a Coriolanus, a Heathcliff, a Lear …

The left rear door of the people carrier slammed shut.

‘Hello, Euan. Good day at school?’

His son wedged on his headphones and selected an angry-sounding tune.

The right rear door slammed too.

‘Hey, Scarlet; is that Venetia I can see over there? I can barely make her out under all that make-up. Her foundation must be two inches thick!’

‘Just drive, Dad,’ Scarlet commanded icily.

Simon peered at his daughter in the rear-view mirror. The smile she’d worn moments earlier, as she’d larked on the pavement with her friend, was gone. In its place was the impenetrable teenage expression that glowered at him daily, sucking out his every ounce of positivity, and flavouring his every meal with acid indigestion. For a moment Simon contemplated fishing for a morsel of conversation, a few small words of familial communication about his daughter’s day. But then he thought better of it. It was best to do as Scarlet ordered.

He crunched his car into gear and just drove.

It was ten o’clock in the morning, and Roxy was already hard at work at the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of
Heat
. Her strategies were nearly complete. All she needed were a few more ideas for the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

She frowned.

Cressida was tricky. She didn’t have any of the obvious things going for her: youth, looks, popularity, killer legs, a moderately famous boyfriend, a large Twitter following – and the helmet hair didn’t help, either. But there must be
something
she could suggest. After all, everyone had hated Widdy before
Strictly
.

She flicked past ‘Torso Of The Week’ and on to the TV pages.

What were Cressida’s plus points?

Well, she obviously had an egghead brain – how else had she been a top political whatsit? And, judging from the pics on her wall, she had some serious A-list connections too. Roxy paused, excited. Maybe there was something in that. Had Cressida ever poked Obama? Had Mandela ever written on her wall? Did Cressida even
have
a wall?

Roxy put down the magazine and pondered.