Simply Divine (18 page)

'You edit Champagne's column rather, er,
enthusiastically,
from what she tells me,' Saul continued glassily.

Jane took an indignant swig. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean,' said Saul softly, his relentless gaze holding her own without blinking, 'that you sometimes even
remove
things she wants to put in.'

'You mean I don't let her plug your flats and gyms the whole time?' Jane snapped, conscious of a churning in her stomach that had nothing to do with the artichokes. 'Well, I'm sorry, but we have a readership to consider. I think they deserve slightly more than just an extended commercial for
your
business interests.'

'Since when did anyone give a toss about the
readers?
drawled Saul, a sardonic smile playing about his lips. 'There are more important interests to consider. Champagne's, for instance. Not to mention yours.'

'I don't follow,' said Jane.

Saul raised his eyes to heaven and gave her a patronising smile. 'Put it this way,' he said, as if talking to the profoundest idiot. 'I happen to know quite a few things about Champagne.' He pressed his face conspiratorially closer to Jane's. Her nostrils filled with the scent of discreet but expensive aftershave. 'You wouldn't believe what she gets up to in the bedroom, for example,' he whispered. She gazed, fascinated, into his hypnotic eyes. 'Not the sort of things nice girls do at all. I've got photographs, naturally. Think what a shame it would be if they found their way into the, ahem, gutter press.' He

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paused, and calmly took another sip of wine.

'You
wouldn't?
stammered Jane. It never occurred to her to doubt that he had the photographs he spoke of. He probably had the soundtrack as well.

'Of
course
not,' Saul smiled. 'Depending, of course, on the sort of, um,
editing
that Champagne's column receives from now on.'

'You mean if I don't plug your businesses you'll give the pictures to the tabloids?'

'I see we understand each other perfectly.' Saul pressed a cool, slim hand on her own hot one.

'What on
earth
are you two whispering about?' boomed Amanda, trying to sound jolly but feeling rather strained. For the past ten minutes she had been struggling with the realisation that Saul Dewsbury had apparently been persuaded to come to dinner to see, of all people, Jane Bentley.
'Do
tell the rest of us,' she shrilled. 'We're dying to know.'

'Oh, nothing,' stammered Jane.

'Change places for pudding, everyone,' ordered Amanda, piling the plates together and cursing under her breath as she remembered too late her recently-acquired new rule that plates should be taken out individually to the kitchen, as stacking them makes it look as if one is not used to having servants.

Saul was now sandwiched between Nicola, who lost no time in berating him about the colour of the towels in his new health club, and Tally, who began to tell Amanda the latest dramas from Mullions. Jane was hugely relieved to escape the Siege Perilous next to Saul and sit herself next to Mark Stackable who, anticipating the Inevitable Question, immediately started explaining in great detail exactly what it was he did at Goldman's. As she listened,

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Jane noticed that Saul had stopped listening to Nicola. Much to the latter s annoyance, he was now blatantly eavesdropping on Tally's conversation with Amanda.

'How old did you say your house was, Natalia?' he suddenly asked her. He then launched into so many questions about periods, ageing and background that the place began to sound positively menopausal.

'Is Mullions listed?' he asked Tally lightly.

She shook her head. 'Too run-down and patched up,' she said, 'and we can't get grants to restore anything unless we can raise half the capital ourselves. So selling's the only option, really.' Tally sighed. 'Some more people are coming to look around tomorrow, in fact. Jane's coming up to lend moral support.'

'It's not listed as much as listing,' supplied Jane, who by now had drunk four large glasses of Telegraphe and was feeling wittier than Oscar Wilde. 'I always told Tally it would be the ruin of her.'

Beside her, Mark Stackable sniggered. Jane looked at him in delight. He was young, handsome and no doubt extremely rich. It seemed unbelievable that he had a sense of humour too. Amanda, meanwhile, seemed to have lost hers. She was passing round the petits fours with a face like a cat's bottom. Jane leant towards Stackable trying to expose as much of her cleavage as possible.

'Tell me more about yield curves,' she breathed.

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'So what happened?' asked Tally. 'What did you do after I left?' They were standing in the kitchen at Mullions, which, thanks to the absence of Mrs Ormondroyd and the presence of a number of dusty sunbeams, was loqking uncharacteristically cheerful. The light, albeit muted, flooded like headlights on full beam into Jane's leaden eyeballs. It wasn't merely the mother of all hangovers she had. It was the mother-in-law.

'You don't want to know,' said Jane, slumping at the sink. 'Have you any Nurofen?' She wondered miserably if Mullions' plumbing was up to the demands she might be about to make on it.

'But I
do
want to know,' said Tally, gentry but insistently. 'You looked near to death when we left this morning and you haven't said a word apart from the occasional "Stop the car, I need to be sick." Now fess up, do.' She placed her mug lightly down on the kitchen table. The noise reverberated round Jane's hypersensitive brain like a thousand slamming doors. She groaned.

'Did anything happen with Mark Stackable?' pursued Tally. 'You were getting on like a house on fire after I left.' She looked hurriedly around at the beamed ceilings and acres of oak kitchen table and quickly touched wood. 'Or

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perhaps I shouldn't say that. Anyway, you were both shouting your heads off during the Hat Game.'

'What about you and Saul Dewsbury then?' Jane retaliated weakly. 'He gave you a lift back, didn't he?' She must be feeling vaguely better. Until now it had not even occurred to her to wonder what had happened after Tally had taken her flat keys and disappeared with Champagne's saturnine lover.

'Yes, well, I couldn't wait all night for you to leave,' said Tally. 'And Saul drove me to the door. That's all,' she added firmly. There was no question that she wasn't telling the truth. Tally never lied.

'Well, nothing happened with Mark Stackable either,' Jane muttered, pressing her hot hands to her throbbing head. 'At least, not what you think.'

'But you didn't come back to the flat,' Tally murmured. 'I left the window open for you, like you said.'

Jane felt her salivary glands working overtime. Was she about to be sick? And was there a dignified way of telling gentle, strait-laced Tally the ghastly truth? That Mark Stackable had not as much driven but lurched her back to his flat, taken her up into his bedroom and . . .

'Ugh, no, no.' Jane pressed both hands to her temples in an attempt to literally squeeze out what had happened next. Remorselessly, the pictures reeled fuzzily past on the blood-red screen at the back of her eyes. They had even edited themselves down to the most gory bits. The bits where Mark flopped her on to his bed and peeled her clothes off one by one. The bit where he had slowly pushed her legs apart. Then, the crucial moment, the bit where what wasn't supposed to happen had happened. It could not be held back. It had spurted everywhere.

Jane shuddered at the memory. She had practically

exploded.
First she had vomited all over
him.
Then all over his extremely smart Liberty waffle-cotton duvet. Then all over his sisal matting, which Jane knew from experience wasn't easy to get normal dust out of, let alone undigested artichoke mash.
'Nothing
happened,' she wailed to Tally. 'I threw up
everywhere,
fell asleep in a stupor and then snuck out and came home before Mark woke up. It was chaster than a night with the Pope.' It was true. A plateful of Amanda's artichoke mash had turned out to be the ultimate in safe sex. I should, Jane thought bitterly, recommend it to Marie Stopes.

'Oh dear,' said Tally sympathetically. Her eyes drifted faintly towards the back of the kitchen. Had she heard a faint thud? She prayed it wasn't Mrs Ormondroyd smashing yet more of the Sevres. Then she remembered it couldn't be. Mrs Ormondroyd was away for a few days visiting her ailing sister. Briefly Tally's thoughts seized on the idea of Mrs Ormondroyd coming to one's sickbed. 'How ghastly,' she added.

Jane nodded. Still slumped against the sink, she was beginning to grasp the enormity of what she had almost loved and certainly lost. She'd got within a Y-front of a night of wild passion with a glamorous and sexy man and it had all gone more pear-shaped than a skipful of Conferences. She hadn't been in a fit state for a one-night sit, let alone a one-night stand. And there wouldn't be a second chance, as she could never face Mark Stackable ever again. Jane hung her head in self-disgust. The run of bad luck with men that had started with Nick and hit its lowest ever point with Tom showed no sign of ending. She was, and looked set to remain, officially the most hopeless single girl on the planet.

The faint banging sound continued. 'Oh,' said Tally,

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light suddenly dawning. 'That must be the managing director of that gourmet sandwich company coming to look at the house. I'd better let him in.'

Jane greeted the news with an unpleasant swirling at the back of her throat and a nauseous lurch in her stomach. She hoped the visitor hadn't brought any of his wares with him.

Several hours later, after poking in every room and cupboard in the house, the captain of the sandwich industry told Tally that Mullions was a tad too small for the global staff incentivisation centre he had in mind. 'On the other hand, "The Mullions" could be a marvellous name for one of our products,' he remarked. 'It could be the flagship sandwich of our new Heritage range. I can see it now, roast pork with apple stuffing in sun-dried aubergine ciabatta with parmeggiano shavings and the merest hint of rocket and pecorino pesto. A real taste of Old England.'

'I'm not sure he was quite the right person,' Tally said after the sandwich Czar had left.

'On the other hand, he certainly wasn't short of bread/ observed Jane.

'Whatever is pecorino?' asked Tally. 'It sounds like a minor Italian painter.'

'Who did you say the next lot were?' Jane asked as a vehicle rounded the last bend and approached the house. Tally peered at the sheet of estate agents' notes on a marble-topped side table in the hall. 'Urn, Mr and Mrs Hilton Krankenhaus,' she said. 'Americans,' she added.

'You don't say,' said Jane, as they left the back door and dashed round to the front.

At the foot of the terrace steps, a plush and gleaming hi-tech people carrier was just disgorging its contents. The

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vast, sports-jacketed man had a head as shiny, pink and moist as boiled ham, whilst at least a third of the height of the fur-swathed, thin-faced woman with him was a mass of sculpted and teased hair. Not so much big hair, thought Jane, as skyscraper. Of a determined auburn, it looked as delicate and brittle as spun sugar.

As they approached, it became obvious that Mrs Krank-enhaus's face had more lifts than the Empire State Building. 'She's had so many tucks she probably farts out of the back of her neck,' whispered Jane. Mrs Krankenhaus's skin was stretched as tight as a drum across the bones of her face; it looked as if it would split if she laughed, although judging from her surgically fixed expression, there didn't seem much danger of that. Vast, knotty gold earrings the size of quails' eggs dragged down her wrinked lobes, and her eyes stared out like glass marbles beneath eyebrows that were a perfect, surprised semicircle of bright orange pencil.

The Krankenhauses evidently expected their arrival to be marked at the very least by the appearance of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in best
Remains of the Day
fashion. They looked at Jane and Tally with undisguised disappointment. Perhaps we should have put on Elizabethan costume, thought Jane. Then I could have looked as ruff as I feel.

'Hello,' said Tally, stepping forward towards the visitors and holding out her hand. 'Natalia Venery. How do you do?'

'Hilton P. Krankenhaus the Third,' bellowed the man, thrusting forward his unpleasantly clammy palm and almost yanking Tally's arm off. 'Well, let's not hang around, let's git going. Ah didn't git where Ah am today hanging around.' Neither Tally nor Jane had the faintest idea where