The One You Really Want (3 page)

Helpfully Rennie said, ‘Want a hand?'

‘You're hilarious. Go and sit down in the living room. And don't eat all my Thornton's truffles.'

As she shampooed her hair and soaped her body in the steaming shower, Carmen marvelled at Rennie's attitude to life. He had more energy than anyone she'd ever known, working hard and playing harder, always joking, incapable of not flirting with practically any girl who happened to cross his path. And, being Rennie, an awful lot crossed his path.

Rennie Todd, her brother-in-law. Spike's younger brother. Apart from their smiles, no two brothers could have been less alike. Closing her eyes as rivers of shampoo cascaded down over her face, Carmen pictured Spike, her beloved husband, with his sparkling grey eyes, dark blond hair and tendency towards pudginess. Whereas Rennie crackled and fizzed with energy, Spike had always been the quieter, calmer member of the band, the couch potato physically. He'd thought more deeply about things, written songs with profoundly meaningful lyrics. Rennie, Carmen was fairly sure, had never had a profound meaningful thought in his life.

And he was still alive, that was another pretty significant difference between the pair of them. Rennie was dazzlingly alive and Spike was dead.

Out of the shower, Carmen roughly towel-dried her hair and wrapped herself back up in her dressing gown. With a bit of luck she now smelled of Jo Malone tuberose rather than Eau de Shelter.

In the living room, predictably, Rennie had made himself entirely at home. Stretched out across the navy sofa, he was busy finishing off a tube of Pringles, flicking through TV channels and simultaneously chatting on his mobile. Grinning across at Carmen, he said into the phone, ‘Sorry, darling, have to go now, the nurses are bringing my grandmother in to see me . . . hello, Granny, you're looking well . . . OK, I'll give you a ring, bye now.'

‘Thanks a lot.' Reaching over, Carmen snatched the remote control from him, because Rennie could flick channels for England and it drove her insane.

‘Sorry.' He grinned up at her, unrepentant. ‘Her name's Nicole, but the lads call her Clingfilm. She was desperate to spend Christmas with me. I had to come up with a decent excuse.'

It wasn't only where TV programmes were concerned that Rennie had the attention span of a gnat.

‘Couldn't you just have told her you were visiting your tragic old sister-in-law? Wouldn't that have been boring enough?'

‘You're joking. Nicole was a huge Spike fan. She'd have wanted to come along and meet you,' said Rennie. ‘That's why I invented a granny-in-a-nursing-home in Stockton-on-Tees. That's better.' He sniffed approvingly as Carmen shoved his feet to one side and sat down. ‘Same stuff Spike used to buy you.'

‘It's my favourite,' said Carmen. ‘Unlike some people, I don't get bored of something after three days and rush off to try something new.'

‘Touché. And if I wanted a big lecture I could have stayed in Illinois and listened to my manager. Anyway, it's Christmas and we mustn't bicker. Guess what I did this afternoon when I came here and discovered you were out?'

This was one of those completely unanswerable questions, so Carmen didn't even attempt to answer it. With a lazy shrug she said, ‘Who knows?'

‘Sat down on your front step.' Rennie raised his eyebrows at her, miming outrage. ‘Now, bearing in mind that this
is
Fitzallen Square in the very
poshest
part of Chelsea, I'm sure you'll agree that this is an appalling thing to do. I fully expected to be harangued by retired brigadiers, ordered out of the square by SAS troops swinging down from helicopters - Jesus, I'll never understand why Spike wanted to live in a place like this.'

He did, though. It had been that very air of pompous gentility that had attracted Spike, the thought of shocking the residents and sending them into a blind panic at the prospect of sharing their elegant Georgian square with a member of a heavy rock band like Red Lizard. The sunny, seven-bedroomed property, arranged on four floors and immaculately renovated throughout, was the last place anyone had imagined they'd choose to settle.

It had appealed to Spike's sense of humour. He'd bought the five million pound house as a joke. But within a few months he and Carmen had both fallen in love with it.

‘So the SAS swooped in,' said Carmen.

‘No, they
didn't
. That's just it. One of your neighbours opened their front door and asked if they could help me.'

‘Thinking you were about to launch into a spot of breaking and entering.'

‘Absolutely. I told them you were out, and said I'd wait on the step until you came back. So they said I couldn't possibly wait outside and why didn't I come over and join them for a drink? Well, at this point,
obviously
, I thought I must be having some kind of hallucination,' said Rennie. ‘What were these posh people thinking of, for crying out loud? Didn't they realise what they sounded like? Poor people, normal people, that's what. And here they were behaving as if they lived on a . . . a . . . council estate!'

‘OK, calm down. In that case I'll hazard a guess that it wasn't the Brough-Badhams at number sixty-two.'

Brigadier Brough-Badham and his wife, the Hon. Marjorie, had been so horrified when they'd first heard four years earlier who their new neighbours were to be, that they had started a petition. Neither of them had ever spoken a word to their deeply undesirable residents; the Brigadier bristled his moustache and the Honourable Marjorie looked down her anteater nose at Carmen whenever they passed each other in the square.

Actually, it was the thought of allowing the Brough-Badhams to think they'd won that had stopped her from moving away after Spike died.

‘It was your other neighbour, the one on this side.' Rennie jerked his thumb to the right. ‘Number fifty-eight.'

‘Funny name for a neighbour.'

‘Been reading Christmas cracker jokes again?' Digging her in the ribs, Rennie said, ‘I can't believe you've never met him. What a great bloke. When he invited me in, I thought you must know each other but he says not. He reckons you've been hiding from him.'

‘I have not,' Carmen protested with a fraction too much denial. ‘He only moved in three months ago, then he was off again, then I was away for a fortnight when I took Mum to Cyprus. You know how it is around here,' she ploughed on. ‘People are busy, out at work - our paths just haven't crossed, that's all. I haven't been hiding.'

This was true. More or less. Well, not counting the couple of times she'd seen her neighbour climbing out of his car and had ducked away from the window before he could catch a glimpse of her and wave.

‘His name's Connor O'Shea,' said Rennie.

‘Is it?'

‘Then again, I thought you might have known that, after he pushed that note through your door inviting you to his house-warming party.'

Bugger. The blood rushed to Carmen's pale cheeks.

‘So you see, it rather looks as if you have been hiding from him after all.'

‘Don't start nagging,' she said self-consciously.

‘Come on,' Rennie argued. ‘Someone has to. Sweetheart, it's been three years now. The old Carmen would have jumped at the idea of a party.'

‘But I'm not the old Carmen, am I? I'm the new Carmen now. And it's not as easy as you're making out.' She paused and watched him expertly remove the cork from the bottle of Veuve Cliquot - with a discreet hiss, just like a wine waiter. In the old days they'd opened bottles of champagne like racing drivers - it was a wonder there'd ever been any left to drink.

‘Great new neighbour. Friendly invite to a house-warming. I don't see the problem.'

‘Well, you wouldn't, would you? Because you're you.' Carmen sipped the champagne she'd been saving for her suicide attempt. Actually, it was really nice. ‘But I was married to Spike and now I'm not. He's gone and I'm the one that's left. The one nobody's interested in.'

‘Oh, come on, that's—'

‘Don't shout at me. I'm not fishing for compliments or going for the sympathy vote. It's just that whenever I meet new people and they find out who I am, all they want to talk about is Spike and what it was like being married to him. They think I'm lucky, because he left me everything in his will, which is pretty weird because I don't feel lucky. So that's why I didn't go to the house-warming party. And I know I should have at least replied to the invitation but I didn't and that's that. Sometimes I have the manners of a pig.'

‘OK, now I get it,' said Rennie. ‘That's why you spend all your time at that damn shelter. Nobody knows who you are, do they? Nobody there has any idea that you live in a place like this, that you were married to Spike Todd. They think you're just a normal girl in jeans and a sweatshirt who travels there on the tube.'

‘So? Is that so weird? They treat me like they treat anyone else,' said Carmen. ‘It's nice.'

‘You mean they're just as happy to pee on your shoes as anyone else's? I can see how nice that would be. If I came along with you, would they pee on my shoes too?'

‘So what does he do? This neighbour of mine.' Carmen was keen to change the subject.

‘You see? You're no different to anyone else. Connor O'Shea, big friendly Irish guy in his thirties - how has he managed to make enough money to live next door to you?'

Carmen punched him. ‘That's not what I'm asking.'

‘Of course it is. Admit it, you're dying to know. It's human nature,' said Rennie. ‘He's just bought a house in Fitzallen Square. He drives a Bentley. He has an apartment in New York and a villa in the south of France. So what do you reckon, could he work in the paint department of B&Q? Behind the counter at the post office on Finchley High Street? School caretaker, perhaps? Or maybe he's a clerical officer in the civil service and he spends his day flicking paper clips at—'

‘Right, that's it. I don't want to know,' said Carmen. ‘So don't tell me.'

‘Fine. Just making a point,' Rennie said innocently. ‘Could be a bank robber, come to think of it. Someone big in the East End gangland underworld thingy. Did he look a bit shifty to you, when you were secretly peeping down at him from your bedroom window?'

Bugger, was this another of Rennie's inspired guesses or had that bloody neighbour of hers spotted her and let on to him?

‘East End? I thought you said he was Irish.'

‘Ah well, begorrah, of course he
said
he was Irish.' Rennie adopted the most appalling Dublin accent. ‘But that could just be a cover, couldn't it? A front to steer people away from the truth. Rather like you, down at that shelter of yours.'

‘You don't have to stay here, you know. You could always go back to your Irish Cockney gang leader and spend the rest of the evening there.'

‘He's already invited us. He's got a house full of friends and family. We're welcome over there any time this evening,' said Rennie. ‘Then tomorrow they're flying off to Barbados for a couple of weeks.'

‘With their forged banknotes and sawn-off shotguns.'

‘If we do go round there, look after me. Whatever you do, don't let me flirt with his girlfriend. She's a minx.' Rennie shuddered. ‘I don't want to end up in the Thames wearing extra heavy boots. Not my idea of a Christmas present.'

Taking another sip of champagne, Carmen wondered whether this would be a good time to meet her mystery neighbour. Probably, with Rennie here, it was the ideal opportunity. She knew she should be making more of an effort. As he'd already pointed out, she never used to shy away from people and parties.

But in an odd way, Fitzallen Square's air of reserve - OK, downright unfriendliness - suited the way she'd been feeling. She was used to it now. Once you started smiling and saying hello to your neighbours you ran the risk of falling into conversation with them. After that, they started inviting you to boring residents' meetings or hideous cheese and wine parties. And from then on you really were on the slippery slope to getting entangled with the kind of people you really didn't want to be entangled with and knowing that all the time they were talking about you behind your back.

‘Not tonight,' said Carmen. ‘Maybe when they get back from holiday. I'd rather just stay here. What time do you have to leave?'

‘Charming. Trying to get rid of me already?'

‘No!' She hit him on the head with the empty Pringles tube. ‘Just asking a perfectly normal question. You turn up out of the blue, you eat my Pringles - if you're hoping for a Christmas dinner, you're out of luck, because I didn't buy any proper f—'

‘Hey, calm down, I'm not on the scrounge for a free meal. I came here to see you. And your Pringles obviously.'

‘There's another tube out in the kitchen.' Carmen was glad to see him, glad he was here. Deep down, she'd been dreading spending Christmas evening on her own. She'd volunteered to stay on at the shelter but they had told her, kindly, firmly, that eight hours was enough.

They spent the next couple of hours catching up on all the news, drinking, eating and intermittently flipping through the channels on TV. A festive re-run of
Fatal Attraction
prompted Carmen to tell Rennie the story of Nancy and the Christmas card from the jewellers.

Predictably, Rennie shook his head and tut-tutted. ‘What an amateur. Number one rule when you're buying anything like that, always pay in cash. And always,
always
give a false address. Ouch.'