A Wild Affair (6 page)

Helen shrugged uncomfortably. “Yes. Although my producer says she needs to tone it down a bit. The language, you know. And the … advice.”

“You mean her view that girls who wear flat shoes might as well be lesbians as far as men are concerned?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face.

“That and a few other things.” Helen grimaced. “I don't see why, really. I mean, the whole beauty of Ivana is that she never edits what she says. She speaks from the heart, you know. She tells it like it is.”

“She certainly does,” I said, remembering the time she forced me to run around Regents Park shouting “I'm Wiiiiiild.”

“I tell it like is? Yes. That is best way.” I turned to see the curtains surrounding my little cubicle being pushed back and Ivana appeared, all five foot one of her, resplendent in a skintight plastic dress and five-inch heels. “Ah. This dress. Is better than other one. Other dress was chip and nasty. This one okay. Good.” Satisfied, she took the only chair in the cubicle and sat down. “I hef one question though.”

I looked at Helen uncertainly.

“You do?” she asked.

Ivana nodded, her eyes pinned on me. “You merry Mex, yes? Still Mex?”

“That's right,” I said, patiently, motioning for Helen to start unbuttoning me. Ivana was best kept away from hushed environments and places where mothers and daughters tended to gather. Giles could see the dress another day, I decided. Right now, exiting the Wedding Dress Shop was my highest priority.

“Yes, that is vat I thought. So why, I ask myself, is he out with other woman?”

I swung around and stared at her. “Other woman?”

“Saturday night,” she said, studying one of her long, red fingernails. “In restaurant. I em there with client, I turn, I see Mex, with lady.” She looked up. “Very sexy lady. Very elegant. Better hair than you. Much better.” She was looking at my ponytail scathingly.

“Max was out with a client on Saturday night,” I said tightly, willing Helen to go faster with her unbuttoning. He'd told me it was a man. Not a woman.

“Ah, client,” Ivana said. “Like me.” She smiled, her face losing its harshness for a few seconds. Then she looked back at her nails. “Did not look like client,” she continued. “Clients do not wrep arms around men at end of dinner, I think?”

I looked down at her sharply. “He wrapped his arms around her? He was probably just being friendly.”

“She wrep arms, not him. But he return favor.” Ivana was sounding less bullish now. She moved toward me and put her hand on my shoulder awkwardly; the whole “sisterhood” thing didn't come naturally to her. She looked at me for a few seconds, then opened her mouth again. “I think she is bitch,” she said. “I can tell this things.”

“Whatever,” I said. “But it's not what you think.”

“It look like what I think,” Ivana said, moving away and looking rather insulted.

Helen had stopped unbuttoning and was looking at me in alarm. “Shit. You think Max is …?” She met my eyes and shook her head. “No, of course he isn't. Sorry.”

“You should be,” I said, angrily swiveling the dress around so that I could finish unbuttoning it myself. “Max was out with a client, end of story. If she was hugging him it's probably because she was so happy to be doing business with him. He's very talented.”

Ivana raised an eyebrow.

“And you can stop making faces,” I told her. “Not all men are pigs, Ivana. Not all men are distracted by cleavage or think that skintight plastic is the last word in sexy. Max loves me. For who I am. Okay? Okay?”

I was two inches away from her; I realized that I was blinking away tears. Ivana saw them, too; she moved her head back slightly.

“Okay,” she said, putting her hands up. “Okay. I take it back. No boom-boom. Just business.”

I bristled at Ivana's voice, which made even “business” sound dirty and suggestive. But I wasn't going to listen to her. Max wasn't like other men. I trusted him. I did. Even if he'd said he was out with a man. There would be an explanation. There had to be.

“Yes, just business,” I said, tightly, wishing I could be as sure as I sounded.

“Hello!” A head poked around the curtains—it was Vanessa, the shop assistant.

“Hi!” I said, too enthusiastically.

“So, that's the dress, is it?” She helped me out of it and put it over her arm. “It is lovely,” she enthused.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

She smiled, conspiratorially “And you're going to actually get married this time, are you?”

She was joking. I knew she was just joking. We'd laughed about my last wedding on the phone when I made the appointment. But right now, it wasn't funny. It wasn't funny at all.

“Yes,” I snapped. “Yes, I'm going to get married. To Max. Whom I love.” I looked pointedly at Ivana. “Who loves me. And if anyone has a problem with that, they can just deal with it because I'm not bloody interested.”

There was silence as I pulled on my normal clothes, my normal clothes which now appeared drab and boring and which
didn't light up my face the least little bit. I found myself irrationally hating them.

“Of course you are,” Vanessa said, backing out of the cubicle. “I'll just leave you to … to …,” she said, not finishing the sentence, so desperate was she to get the hell out of there. I realized that's exactly what I wanted to do, too.

“I have to go,” I said, picking up my bag.

“Jess, is everything …,” Helen started to say, but I wasn't listening; I was already halfway to the door. I needed to get back to work, to Max, where everything would be normal, where there would be a perfectly rational explanation for Ivana's story, where Max would reassure me, and where I would be happy again.

It didn't take me long to get back to the office, but even so, by the time I pushed open the doors I had already calmed down quite a bit. I was obviously suffering from wedding nerves, I decided. There was no way Max was out with some woman on Saturday night. Or, rather, there was no way the woman wasn't a client. Ivana had totally misread the situation because that's what Ivana did—she saw the world in black and white, where men were only interested in “boom-boom.” She didn't know Max. She didn't know what we had.

“Hi, Gillie,” I trilled, walking toward the reception desk. “Is Max in his office?”

“Max?” Gillie shook her head. “Nope. He's out.”

“He's out?” I stared at her uncertainly. “But we're supposed to be having a Project Handbag briefing in half an hour.”

“Yeah, he wanted me to cancel that,” she said, peering at her computer. “He said he had to go out instead. Probably thought you'd get held up at the Wedding Dress Shop. So, chosen one,
have you? What's it like? Column? Full-skirted? Ooh, you should go full-skirted. You've got the waist for it.”

I sighed impatiently. I wasn't in the mood to discuss wedding dresses, column or otherwise. “Yes, I found a dress,” I said curtly. “But now I need to talk to Max. It's very important. Can you at least tell me where he is?”

Gillie shook her head blankly. “He didn't tell me,” she said thoughtfully, “but he did book a cab. I could call them and find out where he went. If you want?”

She was looking at me curiously now, obviously itching to know what it was I had to talk to Max about, what it was that couldn't wait until he'd gotten back from his last-minute lunch. I smiled serenely. “That would be great. Thanks, Gillie.”

“He's gone to Maida Vale,” she said a few seconds later. “I thought when he said ‘lunch’ he'd be going to a restaurant. But I don't think this is a restaurant.”

“What do you mean, it isn't a restaurant?” I asked agitatedly, then forced myself to smile. “I mean,” I said, my voice as light as I could make it, “can you give me the address?”

She gave me a Post-it note with the address on it: 42 St. John's Wood Road.

“Thanks,” I said, tightly.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

I nodded vigorously. Things
were
fine. And if things weren't perhaps as wonderful as I'd like them to be, Gillie was the last person I wanted to know. She was a human YouTube—if something of interest happened and Gillie found out about it, you could guarantee that detailed descriptions would have reached every single person in a five-mile radius within five minutes. “Oh, absolutely,” I lied. “Forty-two St. John's Wood Road is where one of Chester's key associates lives. I forgot he needed to get some signatures.”

“Okay then.” Looking slightly disappointed, Gillie looked back at her computer.

I hurried back out into the street where I looked around desperately for a cab. My phone was ringing; I pressed it to my ear.

“Yes?”

“Darling. It's Giles. Where are you?”

My heart sank. “Oh, God. Sorry Giles. I forgot. I … Something came up. Something …”

“Jess? Jess, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said halfheartedly, then sniffed. I was sick of answering that question, sick of knowing I wasn't answering it entirely truthfully, even to myself. “I mean no. Not really.”

“You sound terrible. Where are you?”

“I'm in the street,” I said, a lump appearing in my throat. “I'm looking for a cab. And there aren't any. And … And …” My chest was heaving; my voice was catching. “And …,” I tried again, but no more words would come, only strange barks. I sounded, I realized, a bit like a seal.

“Okay, stay right there. No, wait. Tell me where ‘there’ is. I'm coming to get you. Everything's going to be all right. Say it. Everything's going to be all right.”

“Everything's … going … to be … all right,” I managed to say. “I'm outside work. I'm walking around the corner, though, because I don't want anyone to see me. He was out with another woman.” I was sobbing now. “Ivana saw him. And the woman called his mobile. I spoke to her.”

“Give me five minutes. Ten at the most.”

I nodded and shut my phone, shoving my hands in my pockets and turning to look into a shop window so that no one could see my tear-stained cheeks. I was being ridiculous; there was really no need to get this upset. Was there?

I don't know how long I was standing there. I barely even noticed I was staring into a jewelery shop window until I heard a cab pull up next to me, yanking me from my reverie.

“Jess?”

The door opened to reveal Giles sitting in the back. I wiped my face and managed a grateful smile as I jumped in beside him.

“So where are we going?” he asked.

“Forty-two St. John's Wood Road.”

He relayed this to the driver, then turned to me. “Now, what's all this about?”

I sighed. Suddenly, with Giles there, I felt rather foolish. “It's probably nothing,” I said. “Actually, it's definitely nothing. I mean, Max would never … He just wouldn't … It's just that he's been out loads lately and he's always getting these calls which he picks up and then disappears out of the room.” As I spoke, I realized that I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge these things until now, even to myself. “And then he was out on Saturday night and he said it was with a man but …”

“But it wasn't?”

I shook my head. “Ivana saw him with a woman. And she hugged him.”

“Ivana hugged him?”

“No, the woman,” I said, the smallest hint of a smile working its way onto my face.

“Just a hug?” Giles asked reassuringly. “Hugs are nothing.”

“Not when a woman drapes herself all over my fiancé they're not,” I said indignantly.

“And now?”

“He's at this address. And I don't know why. So I … I …”

“You're stalking him?” Giles grinned.

I smiled again, properly this time. It felt good. Then I laughed. “I
am
Bridezilla, aren't I? God, am I a totally paranoid freak?”

“I'm afraid so,” Giles said, po-faced. “But I believe that it is a bride's prerogative to be irrational and slightly obsessive. Goes with the territory.”

“Thanks for coming to get me,” I said, relaxing into the seat. “I don't know what came over me. I mean …” I looked out of the
window. “Maybe we shouldn't even go. I trust him. I don't want to be stalking Max, or spying on him.”

“Too late,” Giles said. “Look, St. John's Wood Road.”

Sure enough, we were turning onto a tree-lined street full of smart white stucco-fronted houses and large, formal apartment blocks, the kind that harried businessmen use, renting apartments by the day. The cab trundled down it, then pulled to a stop. “Number forty-two,” the driver said.

“Can you … drive a little way up?” I asked, nervously. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. If Max saw me, if he thought that I'd followed him, it would be horrible. Unforgivable.

“Here okay?” We were outside number 54. I could still see number 42, but just barely.

“Here's great,” I said. I knew what I should have said was “Actually, can you take us back to Clerkenwell please? I've changed my mind,” but I couldn't. However wrong it was, I was here now and I had to know.

“You'll wait?” I asked Giles.

“Course I will,” he said reassuringly.

I got out of the cab and, hiding myself behind cars, made my way down toward number 42. It was a nice-looking house, like the others on the road; nothing on the outside gave away anything about who lived inside it. Looking around warily, I crossed the road and peered into the window, but the front room was empty. Max was obviously in another room. An image of him in a bedroom with a woman draped over him flashed into my head but I forced it away. It was just so unlikely. Just so unbelievable. Just so…

A door opened—the entrance to the apartment block next door. I guiltily ducked behind a car.

I heard a woman talking. I was sure I caught the word “Max.”

My heart stopped. She wasn't at 42. Shaking slightly, I edged upward and looked through the windows of the car I was hiding
behind. Sure enough, there was a woman standing in the doorway, and Max was standing just outside. The apartment building was number 44–112. Gillie must have got the wrong number. Or maybe Max had given the cab company the wrong number, just to throw me off the scent, I thought with a thud. Then I shook myself. Max wouldn't do something so horribly premeditated. But maybe I didn't know Max that well after all. Behind him, just in front of the door, was a woman. Her hair was up, her clothes were beautiful, she looked incredibly glamorous. A client, I told myself firmly. She had to be a client. I inched forward to try to hear them, but it was no use—they'd have seen me, so I shrank back again and watched in horror as he took her hand in his and squeezed it.