Simply Divine (39 page)

'Really?' said Jane sourly. 'One of them sends you her love, anyway. The blonde in black plastic.'

'Oh yes. Camilla.' Tom dropped two teabags into a couple of chipped mugs that he held in one hand and poured on a stream of boiling water with the other. 'Poor thing. It's a dreadful story. Upper-middle-class family, promising student at Oxford, got fed up, ran out of money, came down here and became a prostitute. Doing well now, though. Runs that place like clockwork.'

'She runs it?' gasped Jane, amazed. 'But she only looks about ten.'

'She's nineteen,' said Tom. 'Going on ninety. And very funny with it. Some of the stories she tells are hilarious. You wouldn't believe who goes up there. Several MPs, for a start.'

'Really?'

'Oh yes.' Tom extracted the teabags from the mugs. 'Camilla has to be very careful. Not all of them are in the best of health. If she comes on too strong with the whips and masks, she could cause a by-election. When the Tories were hanging on to a majority by their fingernails she could have brought down the government. And the things she tells me about what she does you wouldn't believe.'

'Like what?' asked Jane, genuinely curious.

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'Well, one of Camilla's favourite tricks, apparently,' said Tom, not quite meeting Jane's eye while she, for her part, wondered how apparently 'apparently' was, 'is to take a mouthful of Coca-Cola before giving someone a blow job. Apparently you get the most amazing sensation.'

Silence followed this astonishing piece of intelligence, They were not, Jane realised, in
Brief Encounter
any more,

'Look, shall we start the interview?' she asked, hoping to get the conversation out of the rather embarrassing siding it seemed to have got stuck in and remembering why she was here. She may as well try to salvage something, if not her dignity or the relationship, then at least a few hundred words of page-filler for
Fabulous.
'I haven't got much time, you see,' she added. 'I've got an advertiser's lunch.'

Stepping into Victoria's Manolo Blahniks, Jane had discovered, involved more than just sitting in the office hammering out feature ideas. She had also to turn up to the ghastly events known in the trade as 'lipstick lunches — launches of new beauty products by the magazines advertisers. Jane's heart sank at the thought of the one that lay ahead — for a perfume called Orgasmique. Ghastly name for a scent, she thought. Who in their right mind would want to go round smelling of sexual activity all day? Who indeed, she thought, forcing herself not to gaze too longingly at Tom's invitingly rumpled mattress. Had someone spent the night there with him?

'Shall I sit here?' she asked, deciding to take charge and lowering her bottom on to the rickety chair at the desk. She felt absurdly formal standing up in her high heels and neat suit.

'I . . .' said Tom as Jane's tailored rump made contact with the chair, wouldn't sit there,' he finished as the chair

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seat slid away beneath and left her sprawled on the floor, skirt around her waist, giving Tom a gala performance of her underwear.

'Sorry,' said Tom, lingering rather longer than perhaps he should have done on the contemplation of her La Perla. 'Everything in this place is falling apart, I'm afraid. The only really safe place to sit is the deck, and even that's a bit dodgy in places. Tread softly, for you tread on my floor, as Yeats didn't say.' He sat down on the mattress.

Jane rearranged her legs. 'Well, you told me a bit about your career before,' she said determinedly, switching to interviewer mode to cover her embarrassment. 'What are you working on now?' she pressed. 'Did you ever get round to writing that bonkbuster?'

Tom raised his eyebrows. He shook his head. 'No. I never did, sadly.' His sexy, sleepy eyes crinkled with amusement. 'Still, it's not too late to start.' He looked at her speculatively. There was silence again.

Jane sighed. She knew that, despite her best efforts, she was going nowhere with this interview. She was wasting both her time and his. Tm afraid I've got to go,' she said, struggling to her feet and shoving into her bag the notebook in which she had only just started to write. Tm late for this dreadful, boring lunch, and it's all my fault because I got here so late. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be so hard on yourself,' said Tom easily, drawing on a newly-lit cigarette. 'It really doesn't matter.'

That much was abundantly clear, thought Jane, stumbling in her high heels up the rotting stairs on the way out. Tom could obviously take her or leave her. Leave her, preferably. She felt desperate with disappointment. Tom had been ambiguous to the point of incomprehensibility. Only the thought of Camilla loitering outside stopped her

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from dissolving into tears as she picked her way down scruffy passageway.

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Chapter 2
4

Fortunately, the lunch provided Jane with the opportunity to drown her sorrows in a great deal of champagne. She had hung on to every word the Orgasmique Nose had to say about the top and bottom notes of his new perfume. He had seemed the only stable thing in a whirling, Bollinger-fuelled world. Flattered by her apparent rapt attention, the Nose had been charmed.

Damn Tom. Who needs a man when you've got a career? were the alternate trains of thought occupying Jane as she lurched drunkenly from side to side in the taxi on her way back to the office. When she eventually, after much reeling, gained her desk, she noticed the office was practically empty apart from Larry.

'Wheresh everyone?' Jane asked. It was, after all, ten to four. Even
Fabulous-length
lunches should be drawing to a close by now.

'Tish has gone shopping,' said Larry. 'And Tash and Tosh are seeing their psychics.'

Their
pshychics?
slurred Jane. 'What on
earth
for?'

'Well, psychics
are
the shrinks of the nineties,' said Larry. 'Anyone who's anyone goes to one, basically.'

'Do
they?' said Jane.

'Absolutely,' said Larry blithely. 'I wouldn't be without

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mine. So
entertaining,
for one thing, hearing all about your future. Psychics are so
relaxing
in that way. They do all the talking and thinking for you and you don't have to bang on tediously about your childhood to a psychologist like we all did in the eighties.
So
exhausting, trying to remember whether it was Uncle Jasper or Uncle Henry who groped you in the gun room.'

Tish appeared with an armful of shopping bags to rival Champagne in her heyday. 'Uncle Jasper, definitely,' she grinned.

'I see,' said Jane, still wondering vaguely why girls on
Fabulous
were at all curious about what lay in store. If anyone could predict the future to within five pounds of their future husbands' bank balance, surely it was Tash, Tosh and Tish. From girls' school to upmarket former polytechnic to photocopying at
Fabulous
to marrying a suitable ex-public schoolboy, their lives had been programmed since birth. Her own future, on the other hand, might benefit from a bit of forewarning and forearming.

'Laetitia in the art department started it all off,' said Tish. 'Her psychic predicted that she would marry a tall, dark, handsome stranger whose name began with D. And she was bang on, apart from the fact that Laetitias husband's blond and his name's Caspar.
Strordinary,
don't you think?'

'Amazhing?
said Jane, knowing Tish would be oblivious to her sardonic tones. Tish was one of those people, to quote Julian Barnes, who thought irony was where the Ironians lived.

Jane stared down at her desk and began shifting papers from one pile to another, trying to stop her slowly-sobering thoughts straying back to Tom. There was no point

328

dwelling on him any more. He had made it pretty obvious what he thought about her.

The telephone rang. Jane reached for it. 'Hello?' she said.

'Hello,' said a voice both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. 'How did your lunch go?'

Jane caught her breath and tried to prevent her hands from shaking, her heart from giving out, her liver from failing and her feet from beating a tattoo on the floor.

'Tom! I mean Charlie,' she gasped.

'You mean Tom,' said the voice. 'So? How was it?'

'Oh, fairly ghastly,' stammered Jane, as her hangover now beginning to kick in. Her throat was dry and she felt slightly sick.

'We didn't seem to get very far with our interview,' 'said Tom breezily.

'No,' said Jane. 'We didn't.'

'Perhaps you'd like to finish it,' said Tom, utterly matter-of-fact.

Ye-es.

'Well, if you want to meet up again,' said Tom briskly, 'tomorrow evening would be best for me. I've got a short story to finish during the day'

Jane's stomach shot to the floor, bounced up and hit the ceiling and continued yo-yo-ing between the two for almost half a minute. Was she imagining things, or was Tom asking her out to dinner?

'I'd
love
to,' she breathed passionately. 'Er, I'd like to very much,' she repeated stiffly, aware that she was in danger of scaring Tom off completely.

'Well, I hope you like pasta,' he said. 'If you do, I know a great little place called San Lorenzo.'

Jane's eyes bulged. San Lorenzo. The Belgravia head-

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quarters of the ladies-who-lunch brigade, preferred pit stop of every passing international celebrity worth their hand-chipped sea salt. She had hardly thought Tom could stretch to that. Perhaps he was doing better than she thought.

She should have realised there was something odd when Tom suggested they meet outside Leicester Square Tube, rather than Knightsbridge. But the restaurant was indeed San Lorenzo, although not quite as Jane imagined it. This San Lorenzo was a tiny, old-fashioned Covent Garden Italian where the only ladies lunching — or dining — looked like ladies of the night. The menu was innocent of anything even approaching truffle oil and the waiting staff was made up of two elderly, boot-faced Italian waitresses who clacked around in sloppy mules with tea towels flung over their shoulders. The straw Chianti bottles on the walls were obviously there from the first time round and not as part of some post-ironic retro-kick. It was so traditional it practically got up and did a jig as they entered.

Having dressed for Belgravia, Jane felt slightly
de trap
in her new Joseph suit and cursed her extravagance at blowing a week's salary on a haircut at lunchtime. Tom, meanwhile, was wearing his usual uniform of battered leather jacket, tired jeans and another T-shirt from his collection of jumble-sale specials. This evenings one was emblazoned with the dates from a Whitesnake tour of 1981.

'Aaah, Meester Tom,' said the waitresses, their hatchet faces melting into expressions of starstruck charm as he led Jane into a tiled foyer of Barbara Cartland pink which, she noticed, clashed beautifully with Bob-Monkhouse-tan

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walls. 'Thees way,' fussed one, pulling out an oilcloth-covered table for Jane to get behind while the other arrived with a brimming carafe of black-red wine.

'Wonderful,' said Tom, grinning and rubbing his hands. The gnarled old waitresses had by now melted so much they were almost a puddle on the floor. They gazed at him adoringly as they handed over the menus.

'Wonderful fresh pasta tonight, Meester Tom,' said one. 'Bring back childhood memories. Like Mamma used to make.'

Tom smiled. 'You forget, Bianca, that I'm not Italian.'

'Ah, but Meester Tom you 'ave an Italian soul,' giggled the old woman. 'Romanteek. Artisteek.' She waved her arms expansively.

'And I don't want to bring back childhood memories either,' Tom grinned. 'Can't think of anything more ghasdy. I'd much rather bring back naughty adolescent memories.' He darted a teasing look at Jane, who blushed deeply.

'In that case,' said Bianca delightedly, 'you must 'ave the 'ouse speciality.
Polio alia principessa.
Chicken for a princess.
Eccof
She gestured at Jane and beamed.

'Two of those then,' said Tom. 'I hope you don't mind me ordering for you?' he said to Jane after Bianca had gone. 'But I promise you it'll be delicious.'

Jane couldn't have minded less. Having Tom order for her in this cosy, candelit, unpretentious place could not have felt more different from having Mark squeaking and grunting in his show-Japanese as he ordered ostentatiously from the menu at Ninja. Nor could the food, when it came, have been more different. Instead of fish so raw it was practically still breathing, the chicken arrived roasted to golden perfection.