Honeycote (16 page)

‘Let’s make this the last time.’

Mickey could see her nipples clearly through the sheen of her dress and wasn’t sure whether it was the cold or desire. He decided on the latter, judging by the way her eyes were wide, her breath shallow. He thought he’d better not decline – he’d got away pretty lightly, after all, and once more was hardly going to make any difference.

In the event, however, nature took its toll. Whether it was nerves, the drink, the cold or the fact that Kay seemed particularly and terrifyingly voracious, he couldn’t be sure, but for the first time in his life, Mickey couldn’t manage it.

On the dance floor, the DJ had gone into smooch mode. As Eric Clapton struck up, everyone under thirty abandoned the floor with groans, while everyone else clutched indiscriminately at the nearest member of the opposite sex. James melted when Lucy insinuated herself into his clasp.

‘I haven’t a clue where Mickey is,’ she said dreamily. Drink made her languid, unbearably sexy. James pulled her to him and moved to the music. Eric said it for him: she looked wonderful tonight.

Behind them, Caroline had hooked another unsuspecting victim with her feather boa. James prayed she’d last to the end of the song before she got any bright ideas about an impromptu lap dance…

Kelly was in a strop. She couldn’t find Patrick anywhere. He hadn’t paid her any attention all evening and now he’d disappeared. Someone mentioned that they’d seen him heading for the gazebo earlier, and she picked her way over the lawn like a fastidious flamingo, her diamanté stilettos sinking two inches with every step. There was somebody in the gazebo all right. She peered into the darkness. It wasn’t Patrick, though. Pink with embarrassment when she realized who it was – and what they were doing – she tottered her way back up to the terrace.

7

White and tight-lipped, Patrick had got Sophie out of the hotel as quickly and discreetly as he could after she’d been sick. His dad, he knew, would get a cab later – he could take Lucy, Mandy and Georgina. They were all still happily bopping away and wouldn’t want to go. He carried her out to his car. She soon came round when the cold air hit her and he struggled to get her into the front seat. Twice on the way home he had to stop and let her be sick again, but he didn’t once reproach her as she sat in the front seat quietly sobbing. By the time they got back to Honeycote House she was looking more like her old self. Dreadful, but her old self. Her make-up had worn off, her hair had collapsed and she was wearing Patrick’s dinner jacket draped round her. They hadn’t had time to stop and look for her coat.

He took her into the kitchen and appraised the damage. She was still drunk, but he thought she’d probably got rid of every last trace of alcohol in her stomach, if the dry retching on the last stop was anything to go by. Patrick debated whether to let her go straight to bed and thereby ensure the worst possible hangover, which would hopefully prevent her ever getting into such a state again. But he thought she’d probably suffered enough punishment already for something he didn’t consider to be her fault, so he forced her to drink four large glasses of water and wash down a brace of paracetamol before helping her up the stairs to her bedroom.

Before tonight, Patrick would have had no qualms about stripping Sophie down to her underwear and sticking her into bed. But the memory of how he had felt about her earlier that night, before he’d realized who she was, still returned to sicken him. She was incapable of getting herself undressed, so he decided that the best thing was to shove her under the duvet fully clothed. If the dress got ruined, so what? He certainly didn’t care if he never saw her in it again.

He tucked her in gently and looked down at her. She’d fallen asleep straight away and he sympathized in advance for the way she’d feel in about eight hours’ time when she came to. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent down to plant a kiss on her cheek. A caring and very brotherly kiss.

As he looked round the room he noticed with distaste the female detritus cluttering Sophie’s dressing table. Tubes of fake tan and Immac and glue for sticking on eyelashes and fingernails, bottles of perfume and dozens of lipsticks, hairspray, dirty cotton wool balls and tissues. To him it looked like a stripper’s dressing room, and he felt an urge to sweep it all into the bin. Then he realized he was being ridiculous, positively Victorian. But he still couldn’t help feeling a surge of anger. He could never look at Sophie in the same light again.

As he settled into the chair beside her bed, he wondered briefly about Kay and whether it had been safe to leave her at the ball in her condition. But he felt quite confident that she would keep her side of the bargain. He smiled at the possibility that Lawrence would probably be in for the shag of his life when they got home. Anyway, he couldn’t go back to the hotel now. He had to keep a vigil at Sophie’s bedside. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t be sick again, but he didn’t want to risk it.

James slid the Aston Martin through his black wooden gates and hopped out to shut them. Time and again he’d wondered about remote control, but it went against the grain. They were paranoid and unspeakably naff, and what was two minutes, even if it was freezing. Caroline was practically unconscious in the front seat, drunk and dishevelled. He’d seen her feather boa go out of the door round someone else’s husband.

He shook her awake gently, praying the cold night air wouldn’t bring her round too much, that she’d just want to crawl into bed and sleep it off. He couldn’t bear the thought of her demanding sex. The trace of Lucy’s Diorissimo still clung to his dress shirt, reminding him that less than an hour before he’d held her in his arms. She’d put her head on his shoulder, held him close, as if taking comfort.

James knew he was romanticizing. Lucy had probably clung on to him because she’d had too much champagne. And he’d seen her get into the taxi with Mickey not half an hour before. They’d looked very much a couple – Mickey had draped his dinner jacket round her because she hadn’t brought a coat.

But screwing Caroline now would desecrate the memory; he’d somehow feel as if he was being unfaithful. He managed to slide her into his bed and pulled the blankets up under her chin, tucking her in firmly before she got any ideas.

Patrick was woken by the sound of the taxi dropping everyone off. He could hear Mickey and Lucy talking and laughing down the corridor, swapping notes on the events of the evening. He could bet his father was leaving one particular section out.

Patrick barged into the bathroom where Mandy was cleaning her teeth and glared at her across the black and white tiled floor.

‘You’ll have to keep an eye open for Sophie during the night. She’s been as sick as a dog – no thanks to you.’

Startled, Mandy put down her toothbrush.

‘Me?’

‘What the hell did you do to her tonight?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You made her look like a slag.’

‘She looked brilliant.’ Patrick was glad of her choice of adjective, for it highlighted the Birmingham twinge in her accent and took the edge off her attraction.

‘Everyone thought so.’

‘And how could you flirt with Ned like that?’

‘I wasn’t. We were just having a laugh. I don’t fancy him or anything.’

‘So you just did it to wind Sophie up?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. Sophie’s mad about him. No wonder she went and got blind drunk.’

‘Shit.’ Mandy look at him in anguish, and he was surprised that she sounded so genuine. ‘I didn’t know. Honestly. Why didn’t she tell me?’

Patrick wasn’t going to be taken in. He knew what women were like. Bloody good actresses when they wanted to be. This little bitch needed to be taught a lesson. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

For a few moments they stared each other out. Then Patrick let his eyes travel down Mandy’s nightshirt, down her long, lightly tanned legs and up again. Her nipples stood out like shirt buttons under the soft cotton, and as their eyes locked again he reached out and caressed one lightly with his thumb. She took in a sharp little breath, but didn’t move, and he knew that if he could feel her heart it would be pitter-pattering like a rabbit in a trap.

He took another step forward, until he was so close that he could feel her breath on his face. She looked up at him, wide-eyed and expectant, as he put his hands behind her head and pulled her forward to meet his lips. His first kiss was gentle, almost imperceptible, and she shut her eyes for a moment, savouring the taste and feel of him as an expert would a new wine.

Then in a second she was on him, drinking hungrily at his mouth like a newborn lamb on its mother’s teat. Patrick was surprised by the depth of his own response. He wound his fingers roughly in her long, dark, silky hair, so unlike Kelly’s, which was bleached, back-combed, gelled and sprayed until it felt like Shredded Wheat. Kay’s, too, was brittle through years of expensive and subtle highlighting. Mandy’s skin was baby-soft and Patrick had no fear of streaky orange foundation being left on his white dress shirt. He breathed in her scent, a faint, lingering trace of lemons, not a cloying assault on the senses; both Kelly and Kay were devoted to expensive, over-powering perfumes that lingered wherever they went. She was delicate, natural, beautiful, and suddenly Patrick wanted her very, very badly.

He tilted her head back for a moment to look into her eyes. Her pupils were huge with desire and he could feel her small breasts rise and fall against his chest in time with her quickening breath. He smiled, and she smiled back at him, rather unsure. He touched the pretty dimple that appeared at the side of her mouth with his finger, then delicately traced the outline of her mouth. Her eyes were half closed, like a cat in the ecstasy of attention.

Suddenly a picture of her face as she flirted with Ned sprang into his mind. Mandy need only have snapped her fingers and Ned would have been hers, slavering in adoration, while Sophie sat by watching in abject misery, her chicken marengo untouched as the adolescent pangs of unrequited love gnawed at her insides. Patrick thought Mandy had probably got exactly what she wanted all of her life. And now she thought she’d got him. He’d been seduced by her pretty packaging; the hard little heart wrapped in layers of pink tissue, tied with a ribbon and labelled ‘Take Me’. It was, admittedly, difficult to resist. But, unfortunately for Mandy, Patrick’s heart was harder than his penis. Just.

8

On the flight from Nice to Birmingham, Keith Sherwyn stuck his legs out into the space allowed him by travelling Club and sipped on a restorative brandy and ginger ale. He avoided the seasonal mince pie that reminded him Christmas was only just over a week away: all that French food, much as he’d enjoyed it, had left him with a slightly unsettled stomach. Derek Legge, the fellow in charge of refurbishing the Sheikh’s yacht, had insisted on taking him on a gastronomic tour of the south of France. The Sheikh was prone to sacking people overnight on a whim, so Derek was making the most of his expense account while he still had it and Keith had benefited from his profligacy.

It had taken considerable time to persuade Legge that black granite in all the bathrooms would slow the vessel down considerably. The Sheikh had his heart set on it and Derek suspected that being the bearer of bad tidings would be a sacking offence. Keith couldn’t help feeling that Derek blamed him in some way, but he couldn’t change the fact that granite was bloody heavy. Finally, under a Picasso and over foie gras at the Colombe d’Or in St Paul de Vence (Keith felt that the painting and the pâté were both overrated, but didn’t say so), he’d talked Derek into a resin substitute that wouldn’t sink the boat. He didn’t tell him that it was basically upmarket formica, or that his profit margin would be substantially higher as there would be less labour involved in installation. The Sheikh had, miraculously, agreed – speed, it seemed, was more important than surroundings – and after that it had just been a question of pinning down the accessories: taps, towel rails, toothbrush holders, et cetera.

For the past four days Keith had allowed himself to think of nothing but business. This had been a lucrative contract that needed attention to detail, so he’d been able to force himself to give it his undivided attention. Now, however, as the plane sped back over the Channel towards Solihull, which he knew would seem so soulless after the chic, bustling glamour of the south of France, Keith was left with little choice but to contemplate his disastrous personal life.

He stared out of the window at the white wisps of cloud scudding beneath them, and finally allowed himself to feel. He waited for the pain of abandonment to twist at his gut, the agony of desertion to tear at his heartstrings – but there was nothing. Not even a little stab of self-pity. He wondered if perhaps the brandy had numbed his feelings, but that was ridiculous – the shot he’d been given wouldn’t have made a toddler tipsy. He leaned further back into the padded headrest and tried to focus on his predicament. A glossy air hostess passed by him and smiled.

‘Looking forward to going home, sir?’

Disconcerted, Keith roused himself up and realized with amazement that he’d been smiling to himself, and that the only feeling filtering through was a secretive, schoolboy sense of glee at having escaped some sort of eternal detention. He raised his glass to the hostess.

‘I certainly am.’

He could go home and put on his favourite holey jumper, stick his still-shod feet up on the coffee table, drink beer out of the bottle and not worry about the rings it left, have the TV on as loud as he liked and completely ignore the telephone. Instead of being forced into his designer tracksuit and ‘house’ shoes, having to pour his beer into his shiny monogrammed tankard with matching silver coaster, having the TV drowned out by Barry Manilow or Garth Brooks and leaping up to answer the phone in case it was an invitation to the social function of the year. Even though they had an answerphone. Because, Sandra had explained to him severely and incessantly, some people didn’t leave messages if they thought you were out, especially if it was a last-minute thing.