Nothing to Lose (11 page)

‘Gets it from his gramp,’ she said admiringly. ‘He could still chuck out an entire pub on the Old Kent Road when he was well into his eighties.’

Sebastian returned within minutes, running his fingers through his hair. The layers immediately fell into place, April noticed, indicating that the cut had probably cost more than she earned in a month.

‘Barred for life,’ he informed his mother. ‘None of his party seemed at all sorry to see him go.’ He raised his eyebrows towards April. ‘You’re not hurt?’

‘No. Furious and insulted, that’s all. Thanks.’

‘No problem.’ Sebastian smiled along the bar at Brittany. ‘Pour us a couple of Godfathers then, and we’ll say no more about it.’

April’s hands shook as she heaped ice into two squat crystal-cut glasses. Martina, having had a quick whispered conversation in Brittany’s perfect peachy ear, had tottered off to spread more sunshine and happiness throughout her empire. Pouring two measures of bourbon and one of amaretto over the heaps of ice, April wondered what Sebastian was going to say no more about: her thumping the fat man – or the flouting of the tenancy agreement? She had a pretty awful feeling it wasn’t going to be the latter.

‘Thank you.’ Brittany accepted her glass with a smile – a genuine smile that made her, April realised with irritation, even more beautiful. ‘Seb told me about the trouble with that customer. How awful for you.’

‘It wasn’t pleasant,’ April admitted, warming towards Brittany for this show of female solidarity, and pushing the second Godfather across the bar to Sebastian. ‘But as your boyfriend so kindly pointed out, dressed like this, it’s all I can expect.’

Brittany frowned at Sebastian. ‘I hope you didn’t say that at all. That’s like saying every woman who wears a short skirt is asking to be assaulted. If I thought – ’

‘Hey!’ Sebastian held up his hands in supplication. ‘Back off, both of you. All I meant was that to certain lowlifes, a pretty girl in a fantasy costume is fair game. It’s not April’s fault – it’s my mother’s for making her wear that bloody outfit in the first place.’

April, torn away to serve Dirty Harrys to a selection of the QPR reserve team, wanted to punch the air in triumph. Oh, please God, she thought, gleefully crushing ice, let Sebastian be the one to tell Martina that for her next stint behind the Copacabana’s filigreed bar, April would be dressed as a librarian.

‘Anyway,’ Sebastian leaned across the bar towards her, studying the contents of his glass, ‘your clothing wasn’t really what I wanted to discuss with you. I’m far more interested in talking about your secret life . . .’

Strange really, Sebastian thought, as he stared from his sitting-room window, how defensive April had become. Almost as though she’d had something to hide. The poor kid had looked scared to death when he’d started talking to her. Did she really consider him to be that much of an ogre?

He had no idea why the abortive conversation with April should have suddenly come into his mind on this overcast Sunday morning, ten days after that embarrassing night in the Copacabana. Probably, he thought, leaning his hands flat on the sill and gazing down from the third floor of Marliver House – which he privately called Tacky Towers – on to acres of turf regimentally striped like the Wembley pitch, it was because of Jix.

Jix, dressed like a rainbow wraith and looking as always like a refugee from Glastonbury, was currently strolling about the Gillespie garden – which was overloaded with neon roses, and dotted with gazebos and decking and water features – with Oliver. Jix and April were somehow inextricably linked in Sebastian’s mind. They were always together. Were they an item? He employed both of them and owned their homes, and yet he knew nothing much about either of them.

The night that he’d ejected the objectionable drunk, April had parried his questions about the greyhound, and the – what he’d considered at the time – friendly chat regarding the toddler, who had surprisingly turned out to be Jix’s child. Her answers had been firm and monosyllabic, not encouraging any further probing. Almost as though she had anticipated his questions. He’d tried, for the first time in his life, to unbend with someone who relied on him for their living, and had got very short shrift.

He knew April had been outraged by that greasy sod touching her, and who could blame her? Sebastian had been furiously angry that his mother had insisted that the all-female bar staff wore those French maids’ outfits, and very ashamed that he, as a Gillespie, had condoned it. Had he taken that anger out on April? Transferred his guilt? He shouldn’t have let it happen, should he? Chucking the groper out after the event wasn’t really good enough. The situation should never have been allowed to arise.

And, as far as he knew, April and the other girls were still wearing the costumes behind the bar because Martina had insisted on it. Would April be happier being allowed to wear jeans? Did she mind being dressed up as a male fantasy in an attempt to sell more cocktails to punters who chucked them down their necks like lemonade?

He shrugged. What did he really know about April? Stuff all. What the hell did he know about women like her? What the hell, to be honest, did he know about most things? How much had he learned in his thirty-three years about life outside the confines of the Gillespie empire?

Cushioned from ever really having to earn a living by the success of the Gillespie Guzzler vending machines, privately educated to a standard never once called upon in his capacity as Stadium Manager, gifted an entire street of properties on his coming-of-age, he’d never been brought into contact with the real world.

And much as he’d have liked to talk to April further about the greyhound and the child, it hadn’t been his real reason for making conversation. One of the stadium’s security guys had mentioned to him that April worked in the Italian restaurant, and helped Jix with Oliver’s debt-collecting too. It had intrigued and bothered him. He’d really wanted to ask her how she managed to juggle three jobs, and if she needed a pay rise in the cocktail bar.

He knew he could easily have persuaded his mother to increase April’s salary by a couple of pounds an hour, if it would mean she didn’t have to get involved in the more murky areas of Oliver’s empire. Maybe that was it: the debt-collecting. Maybe April hadn’t wanted him to know that she was part in that. Not that he could blame her – he wasn’t too keen on it himself.

The little girl had been pretty, though, and had sparked – what – on that hot afternoon? A sort of jealousy that Jix, years younger than he was, and a hippie wide boy, should have already experienced the joy of fatherhood? Probably. He’d known Jix for ten years, ever since he’d first been employed by Oliver as a teenager, and never once had they discussed women or football or anything on a personal level. And somewhere in that time Jix had become a father – and none of the Gillespies had known.

Sebastian sighed again. He’d like to have a child. He’d give it a proper life – not a cushioned and cosseted and pigeonholed one, but a life with choices and freedom. Jix would, by his very nature, offer his daughter a life like that . . . And the greyhound had made them – April, Jix and the little girl – look like a real family.

Sebastian liked greyhounds; he loved all animals, but again he’d never been close to any. Animals had never been allowed at home, and the dogs at the Stadium were mere accessories. They were probably as important to him, as a businessman, as – oh, a good single malt was to the manufacturer of pure crystal glasses. A necessary accoutrement; nothing more.

So, really, he thought, that whole day had been the catalyst; seeing Jix and April together with the child and the dog, and then doing his Sir Galahad bit with the drunken slob in the evening. All the minor irritants and dissatisfactions had been brought to the surface by those two simple events. Everything that was wrong with his life had suddenly sort of concertinaed together.

‘Sebby! You’re not ready!’

He gritted his teeth and turned from the window as his mother barged into the room. She never knocked. The only way to keep her out of his flat was to lock the door and he always forgot. She insisted on treating him as if he were twelve.

‘Yeah, I am. It’s only lunch, Ma. It’s not black tie.’

‘It’s lunch,’ Martina said frostily, ‘with Rod and Emily Frobisher. Not to mention Brittany. We want to make a good impression – and jeans and T-shirt are not acceptable.’

He grinned at her. ‘It’s either jeans or nothing. Take your pick.’

Martina, dressed in a stretchy outfit in sugar pink, with frills at neck and cuffs, and wearing more heavy gold jewellery than Big Ron Atkinson, obviously thought she looked the last word in chic. Knowing that Brittany’s mother favoured the stark classic lines of Chanel, Sebastian wondered if he should say something. He decided against it. He was pretty sure that the Frobishers would find enough nouveau riche bad taste in the Gillespie mansion to keep them in after-supper small talk for years. Martina’s dress sense probably wouldn’t even get a look in.

‘Dad’s just sorting out the luncheon seating with Jix,’ Martina continued, her sharp eyes darting around the room.

‘The forecast says it’ll be sunny later. We’ll still eat in the garden.’

‘And I need a tuxedo for that, do I?’

‘No need to be sarky, Sebby. A nice pair of slacks and an open-necked shirt will be fitting.’ Martina cast a glance into the bedroom. ‘And you haven’t even made your bed!’

‘Ma, leave it out, I’m not a child.

But he was, Sebastian thought sadly. He was Oliver and Martina’s only child, and everything was still laid on for him as it had been all his life. His clothes were washed and ironed, his meals cooked, his life organised. He only had himself to blame if Martina spent every day snooping round his rooms – like she had when he was a teenager home for the holidays and she had a fear that he was into pornography or dope or both. It was his own fault for not moving out years ago.

It had been so easy, after university, moving back into Tacky Towers, and not having to do a thing. Oliver and Martina, generous to a fault, had given him six rooms converted into a self-contained flat. He had his own front door, a new car each year, holidays, everything else on tap, access to the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the gym in the cellar, the solarium in the attic. How ungrateful was he then, to envy people like Jix and April, who lived alone and scrimped and saved and worked hard and budgeted for their lives?

How could he tell his parents, who thought that showering him with money and material possessions would make him happy, that he envied them the poverty of their beginnings, and almost lusted after the hardship of their past? Wouldn’t it really have been more fun to have started with nothing, and to have slogged and sweated for the dream – or was that just a safe option now when viewed from his privileged position? Was it so wrong for him to be itching to leave the Gillespie Stadium, the property-owning, the security of his home, the claustrophobia of his family, and strike out on his own?

Martina had now opened his wardrobe and was rattling through the hangers, surveying his shirts with her head on one side like an inquisitive lurid-coloured bird. God, he thought, any minute now she’ll be spitting on a hankie and wiping my face.

‘Ma, I’m wearing jeans. Brittany will be wearing jeans. Probably Rod will be wearing jeans.’

‘Christ! I hope not!’ Martina squawked, pausing between a black polo shirt and a denim jacket. ‘Your father is wearing his new Paul Smith.’

Sebastian shook his head. Oliver, portly and looking like an East End market trader, could kill Paul Smith’s suave and sophisticated styling stone dead.

‘And which particular two-birds-and-one-stone job is this lunch supposed to be?’

Martina arched etched orange eyebrows. ‘Are you hinting at a hidden agenda, Seb? You know as well as I do that this is just us, as a family, meeting Brittany’s parents.’

‘Oh, yeah? Brittany and I have seen each other – what? Half a dozen times? And how come that you haven’t needed to meet the parents of any of my former girlfriends?’

Martina refused to look fazed. ‘OK, so it’s imperative – absolutely imperative – that we get the Frobisher Platinum Trophy at Bixford. We’re up against Walthamstow and Wimbledon and every other damn track in the country. But that’s by the bye. Should it come up in conversation over lunch, however, it’d be very handy . . .’

Sebastian smiled ruefully. ‘So you’re expecting Brittany and me to plight our troth over the consommé, are you, thus making the Platinum Trophy a definite?’

‘Nah.’ Martina momentarily forgot her vowels. ‘Not that it wouldn’t be a bit of a coup. And you’re not thinking along those lines, I suppose?’

‘Not at all. At least, not yet. Brittany is good fun and good company – and very beautiful, but – ’

The bit after the but was left dangling. There was a crash from downstairs, followed by thundering footsteps, then Oliver exploded into the flat.

‘Bastard caterers! They’ve sent salad cream!’

Sebastian bit back a grin, while Martina went into the sort of hand-wringing routine that normally accompanied national disasters of cataclysmic proportions. In any other house in the country, surely, the larder would offer up salad cream or mayonnaise or both? Were his parents the only people who relied totally on outside caterers for even the simplest lunch party?

‘I’ll go to the 8 ’til Late and get some mayo, shall I?’ His parents looked at him as though he’d just suggested the ritual slaughter of all new-born infants.

‘You?’ Oliver puffed out his cheeks. ‘What the hell do you want to go to the shop for? We have people to do that. I’ll get Jix to do it as soon as he’s done the table and stuff.’

‘I’d quite like to go. Get a paper. You know . . .’

Martina looked shocked. ‘Get a paper? From the 8 ’til Late? We have all the newspapers delivered. They’re in the conservatory.’

Sebastian knew. He also knew that the broadsheets would remain on pristine view while his parents devoured the
News of the World
and the
People
in private. Oh, God. He didn’t want to be having this lunch with the Frobishers; he wanted to be like other men of his age and have a family and privacy. He wanted to wander down to the corner shop and buy a Sunday newspaper, and go to the pub and discuss football and cricket and cars and sex.