Never Too Late (18 page)

It was only when she’d hung up that Evie remembered

she was going to Simon’s for dinner, that she wouldn’t be

home until late. Damn! She’d ring Olivia later, when she

was sure to be home, and have a talk then.

As it happened, she never got a moment to herself all

afternoon. When Davis came back from lunch, he called

her into his office to get through the mound of paperwork

on his desk. He looked tired, as if he’d been burning the

midnight oil. His plump face was larger than ever after the

inevitable excess of Christmas, the treble chin spilling over

on to the collar of his shirt. But there were giant hollows

under his eyes, yellowing hollows that gave his rounded

face a strangely sickly look. He was ill, Evie realised with a

sense of shock.

After an hour spent going through paperwork, he

seemed worn out.

‘I’ve some important letters to send to our key customers

about the changes in accounting we’re introducing,’ he

said. He sat back in his chair, his face sweating. ‘I know

what I want to say but …’ He looked at her pleadingly.

‘Could you draft them, Evie?’ he asked. ‘You know how to

do it better than I do.’

She nodded. She’d been in Wentworth Alarms for

twelve years and knew as much about the running of the

company as he did. She’d been his assistant for seven of

those years, from the moment it became apparent she was

wasted in reception.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll handle it. Davis,’ she added

hesitantly, ‘do you want to go home? You look tired.’

‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Something I ate the other day, I’m

still not over it …’

‘Food poisoning. That really takes it out of you,’ Evie

agreed, not believing for one second that her boss was

suffering the after-effects of food poisoning. He looked so

wretched, so ill, it had to be more than that. But if Davis

wanted her to believe he merely had a sick stomach, she’d

go along with the subterfuge. ‘I’ll deal with this and you

should go home, via the chemist’s maybe to get something

for your stomach,’ she said idly. ‘Or even go to the doctor

and get a shot. It never hurts, does it, to get an injection to fight the nausea? Rosie had a very sensitive stomach when

she was little and the only answer when she got really ill

was to go to the doctor for an injection.’

He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘Yes, maybe I’ll do that,’

he said finally.

When he’d left, Evie spent the rest of the afternoon

working on the letters. Her mind was half on her work

and half on her boss. There was something wrong with

Davis, that was for sure. He’d never been the healthiest of

individuals but he looked so ill … As she typed and

answered calls, Evie worried about him. Widowed

recently, he had nobody else to worry about him. Hopefully

the doctor would notice how dreadful he looked and

do some tests.

It was five-twenty-five when the sound of Lorraine

turning off her word processor with a sigh of relief made

Evie look at her watch again. She’d have to race if she

wanted to get through the rush-hour traffic to Simon’s

house by half-six. But she had five minutes to spare to ring

Olivia.

Pulling on her coat with one hand, she dialled the

familiar number with the other. The phone rang and the

machine clicked on again. Strange, she thought. Olivia was

always at home at that time, getting dinner ready for

Stephen. She was an incredible cook and whenever Evie

dropped in on her way home from work, the scent

emanating from Olivia’s kitchen was always enough to put

off the most dedicated dieter. She wasn’t the sort of

woman to knock together a sausage casserole with the

contents of her store cupboard and a tin opener. She went

for the whole works, gorgeous and elaborate meals that

made your mouth water.

And Evie knew that half the time, they ended up in the

freezer because Stephen was working late and couldn’t get

home in time. If Evie had been married to him they’d have

ended up in the bin - or all over his face when he arrived

home late for the tenth time in a row.

His voice came on the answering machine again and

Evie grimaced. ‘Sorry I missed you earlier, Olivia,’ she said.

‘I’m going to Simon’s tonight so I won’t be home but

please phone me tomorrow so we can have a chat, ‘Bye.

Chin up.’

She didn’t know why she’d added that bit at the end.

‘Chin up.’ It wasn’t as if Olivia had said anything was

wrong, but in retrospect Evie was sure there was.

Olivia stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom and let

the phone ring. She heard Evie’s voice coming from the

machine in the hall but didn’t move to pick it up. Instead,

she stared closely at her reflection. Her mother was right,

she was deathly pale. She needed something to warm her

up, she decided. Like plastic surgery or an injection of

personality.

People often said she was beautiful. Everyone did, in

fact. But beauty didn’t mean anything, Olivia had no

respect for the beauty she was supposed to have, she

hadn’t earned it or worked for it. It wasn’t the same as

being vivacious and witty like Rosie or clever and kind like

Evie.

It was just there: high cheekbones and perfect lips.

Nothing more, nothing deeper. It was shallow. Architecture.

A lovely facade when she really needed internal lights

and something people were interested in. Evie was pretty,

feminine and cute with her little nose and her undulating

walk.

But that wasn’t what made Simon love her. It was what

was inside: her personality and her drive. Beauty was

nothing really if you lacked all the other important things

and Olivia lacked them all. Even her own husband wasn’t

interested in her. To him, she was just a lovely cold doll he

took down from the mantelpiece when he felt like looking

at it.

‘Mummy,’ said a small voice. Olivia looked down to see

Sasha peeping around the bedroom door, her eyes even

huger than usual. ‘Emily got marker on the couch. Pink

marker,’ she added. ‘I told her she wasn’t allowed to bring

them out of my room but she did.’

Olivia felt herself go as white as Stephen’s precious

leather couches. Those bloody markers were almost impossible

to erase when they got on something. He would have

a fit if he found out, unless she could remove the mark

before he got home. She just prayed it wasn’t somewhere

noticeable and that it was small. Very small.

‘Don’t worry, Sasha,’ she said calmly, bending down to

kiss her daughter on the forehead. ‘Well sort it out.’

Sasha didn’t look convinced. ‘Daddy will be cross,’ she

said anxiously.

‘No, he won’t,’ Olivia replied, doing her best to inject

confidence into her voice. She took Sasha by the hand.

‘Show me where the mark is and I’ll sort it out.’

Evie sat in her car on the way to Simon’s house and day

dreamed.

‘She was wearing a beautiful evening dress and an ocelot

coat, and didn’t look like a teddy bear in it. Instead, she

looked like a famous movie star en route for a premiere, more

glamorous than Sharon Stone and utterly untouchable.

‘Madame, let me take your coat?’

His voice was like the rest of him: cultured and elegant. But

the formal dinner jacket he wore with such panache contrasted

with the shock of dark hair that reached his collar and

curled gently around the nape of his strong neck. Everything

about the stranger’s dress was conservative, yet his rippling

black curb and the gleam in his dark eyes showed a different

side to his nature, a wilder and dangerous side.

Evie moved her head graciously. ‘No, thank you, I prefer to

wear it. The evening has grown cold.’

Standing on the balcony of the stately house by Lake

Geneva, the air had indeed grown cold and she could feel

herself shiver in the spaghetti-strapped black silk dress.

She wasn’t sure why she was there in the first place, why

she’d accepted the invitation from the mysterious Count

Romulo to a party in his home when she didn’t know the man.

He was a playboy, her friends told her eagerly, as they

accepted their own invitations. Whatever that meant, Evie

thought. She shivered again, conscious of the handsome man

in black watching her.

‘Come inside, you are cold.’

‘It’s too noisy,’ she said, thinking of the crowded room of

people, all eager to meet their host.

‘There’s a quieter room upstairs.’ He indicated a spiral

staircase to one side of the balcony, hidden by a bay tree in a huge planter.

‘Should we be making ourselves at home like that?’ Evie

asked, arching one eyebrow.

‘It is my home,’ he said simply. I am Count Romulo. I

threw this party to meet you …’

Evie loved Simon’s town house. She loved the pastel

walls, the neat collection of classical CDs, the pot plants he

cared for so carefully and the pale carpet that covered every room, apart from his white-tiled en-suite bathroom which was a bit clinical for her taste. Of course, she

couldn’t see Rosie ever fitting into Simon’s pristine home.

His immaculate bachelor pad wasn’t built for a rangy

teenager who draped coats over the banisters, left opened

magazines on every available surface and leg hairs in the

sink, and liked to lounge on the sofa watching TV, eating

breakfast cereal and talking to her friends on the phone all

at the same time.

Evie and Simon hadn’t finalised what they were going to

do about living arrangements when they got married. She

didn’t think his house would be suitable for all three of

them, because it was so small. But she somehow couldn’t

see him living in her home either.

The more she thought about it, the more Evie became

convinced that they’d have to sell both houses and buy

something else. Which would mean a big mortgage. She

hated the thought of being in debt. What would happen if

Simon left her or if he died? Where would she be then?

Broke and on her own, the way she had been seventeen

years ago. She shivered at the memory.

‘Evie!’ Simon opened the door wearing a butcher’s

apron over his white shirt. He’d taken off his tie and

opened the top two buttons of his shirt, making him look

young and vulnerable. With his sandy hair standing up

where he’d raked it anxiously, he looked more like thirty

one than forty-one.

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the

mouth, smelling rather than tasting onions on his breath.

‘What are you cooking?’ she asked, as she followed him

through into the pale green kitchen.

‘Roast chicken, chips and deep fried onion rings,’ he

replied, glasses steaming up as he peered cautiously into

the deep fat fryer.

‘Lovely,’ Evie murmured, thinking regretfully of the

calorific content of a deep fried meal. She had told Simon

she was desperate to lose a few pounds, but he’d obviously

forgotten in his enthusiasm to use the deep fat fryer his

mother had given him for Christmas.

Still, it was glorious to be pampered, to have somebody

else cooking dinner for her. Rosie never made dinner if she

could possibly help it, and when she did it was beans on

toast with yoghurt for dessert.

Are we having apple fritters for dessert to continue the

deep fried theme?’ Evie inquired with a chuckle, wrapping

her arms around Simon from behind and hugging him.

He laughed. ‘I never thought of that or I’d have bought

some. I can’t help it that I can’t cook,’ he added apologetically.

‘You can’t go wrong with this stuff He dislodged Evie

as he hurried over to the oven to check the chicken, which

turned out to be roasting in a pool of grease.

‘Simon! That’s swimming in fat,’ she exclaimed. ‘Drain

most of it away. It’ll taste disgusting.’

‘I didn’t know how much to put in,’ he mumbled,

holding the tin uneasily with a pair of hideous pink lobster

oven gloves. ‘I’ve never done an entire chicken before, only

chicken breasts.’

‘Here, let me.’ Evie took over, expertly handling the

heavy roasting tin. ‘You should have made something simple,’

she scolded as she rescued their dinner from drowning.

‘I wanted to impress you.’ Simon stood miserably by the

sink, still wearing his lobster gloves. ‘I can’t dial up the

Chinese takeaway every time you come to dinner.’

He looked so forlorn that she relented.

‘You don’t need to impress me,’ she said firmly.

After dinner, they sat and watched TV, Simon’s arm

around Evie’s shoulders. She leaned against his chest

comfortably, slipped off her shoes and curled her feet up under her on the couch. He flicked channels until he came to a documentary on the most thrilling car chases of all

time. As the world had only had cars for the past century,

Evie thought the series title was a bit misleading but she

said nothing. Car chases bored her to tears.

After fifteen minutes, she’d seen enough helicopter