Gifted and Talented (24 page)

‘And then you can show me to mine,’ Sara ordered in a brisk voice that had a hint of impatience in it. ‘I could really do with a shower, if the en suite has one; but if not a bath will be fine.’

‘Now, just hang on a minute . . .’ Diana was about to tell Sara, in no uncertain terms, that they should go to a hotel, when her eye caught, down the road, a pair of slowly moving car headlights approaching. Someone was driving up, looking for something. An address? Was it Richard?

It seemed so. As the car slowed down outside her house, Diana wanted simultaneously to scream with frustration yet hide that frustration at any cost. The last thing she wanted Richard to witness was her rowing on the doorstep with Sara Oopvard. Sara was certain to be as obstructive and unreasonable as possible. Diana looked helplessly at her unwanted guest, not knowing what to say.

Sara unhesitatingly seized her chance. She now sailed into the hall, past an open-mouthed Diana, her high heels clacking on the boards. Milo followed her sulkily, shoulders slumped, staring into his screen.

Diana could see Richard – she was sure now it must be Richard – parking behind Sara’s white and pink monster. His lights flicked off.

She shot into action. Bedrooms, bedrooms . . . She had a mere few minutes to settle in her guests, get them out of the way. Infuriating though it was, she would simply have to move Milo and Sara into her bedroom for the night. She would move in with Rosie. There was no time to do anything else; she had to go out. They would have to sort it all out in the morning. She thundered back up the stairs.

‘Rosie!’ Diana gasped from the landing as she rushed about finding towels and duvets. ‘You can manage pesto and pasta for everyone, can’t you?’ It was Rosie’s signature dish, rustled up by her on the many occasions when Diana had been too tired to cook.

‘Of course, Mummy.’

‘Pesto and pasta!’ Sara shrilled in horror from the sitting room, where she had parked herself in the one armchair and produced a magazine from her bag. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t do carbohydrates.’

Rosie smiled sweetly. ‘You could always have just pesto, Mrs Oopvard.’

Sara seemed about to issue a sharp reply when her open mouth closed suddenly. Her eyes had left Rosie and were now appraising, through the sitting room window, the person coming up Diana’s garden path. In the limited light of the nearby streetlamp, he appeared both tall and good-looking – and dark, which especially appealed to Sara. Her last husband, that
bastard
Henrik, had been short and fair – in the hair sense, if no other.

Of course, this man probably lived on the council estate too – a neighbour, possibly. She was not interested in him in any serious way. And yet he could probably show a girl a good time, Sara thought, licking her lips and grinding her hips slightly into the seat cushions. He looked very fit and muscular. Not unlike some of the gardeners whose services she had enjoyed in the past.

And there was something else about him. Proud bearing, you might call it; a noble savage sort of thing. He might be on jobseeker’s allowance, or whatever it was called, but he had practically the same air of authority she recognised from her former wealthy London neighbours. The high court judge and the newspaper editor, say.

He was a distressed gentleperson, perhaps. As he reached the threshold, Sara raised herself unsteadily and sailed towards him over the underfelt, armed with her most dazzling smile. ‘Can I help you?’ she inquired magnificently.

Overhead, Diana could still be heard thundering about, looking for sheets.

Richard looked in astonishment at the female in heavily maquillage, wobbling before him on ridiculously high heels. ‘Do excuse me,’ he said, alarmed. Of course. It made sense now. He was in the wrong street. That ludicrous car he had parked behind could not possibly have belonged to Diana. ‘I’m in the wrong place,’ he added.

‘Aren’t we all, darling?’ Sara riposted with a giggle that sounded like gunfire. ‘Personally, I’ve never been on an estate in my life, unless it’s got butlers and stables. I expect it’s the same for you,’ she added in the spirit of social
esprit de corps
.

‘Not really,’ Richard said, surprised. What was this strange woman talking about? Hurriedly, he turned to leave.

‘Hold on,’ Sara gasped, batting her eyelashes wildly. ‘Perhaps I can help you.’ She paused for a few minutes before adding; ‘Were you looking for someone?’

‘I was looking for Diana,’ Richard said stiffly.

‘I thought so,’ Sara said. ‘And
poor
Diana does live here, actually.
Dreadful
business,’ she added, shaking her head pityingly.

‘Dreadful?’ Panic leapt within Richard. Had something awful happened to Diana? Was that why this ghastly woman was here? He felt real worry and realised with surprise how passionately he cared.

‘Absolutely.’ Sara shook her head mournfully. ‘Diana was my neighbour in West London,’ she announced, pausing for this to sink in. He was, it had to be said, looking most satisfactorily surprised. ‘But then,’ Sara bent forward, lowered her voice and shook her head pityingly, ‘her husband left her for his secretary.’

More fool him, Richard thought.

‘And Diana got
nothing
in the divorce, absolutely
nothing.
’

‘She got her child,’ Richard pointed out. That there had been a divorce was no surprise, of course; he had guessed as much. But why was this woman – in those ridiculous sunglasses – talking about Diana in this way on the doorstep of her own house? Was she mad?

He was now seriously concerned. Where was Diana? He tried to look behind this woman, but she kept striking poses and tossing her hair about so it was difficult to see anything else.

‘Her
child
!’ Sara let fire another volley of mirth. ‘What the hell use is
that
? She’s got no money!’

Fortunately, at this moment, a pair of legs in dark trousers came running down the stairs behind. As Diana appeared, looking flustered, Richard felt a warm, powerful, wave of relief.

‘Richard!’ Diana exclaimed, her delight at seeing him so intense that nothing else, suddenly, mattered. She was glad of Shanna-Mae’s foundation. The fact she was blushing furiously would be well concealed.

‘You can use my room now, Sara,’ she muttered to the figure in sunglasses who she vaguely sensed was behind her.

Sara, however, had no intention of going upstairs. She was standing in the hall alternately pouting at Richard and fixing Diana with a steely, inquiring beam. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

Diana braced herself. ‘Richard, this is Sara Oopvard.’

‘Upward?’ Richard repeated incredulously.

‘Oopvard,’ Sara corrected, pushing her lips out suggestively. ‘Oop-vard. It’s Dutch. My husband, I should say
ex
-husband,’ she went on, with an inviting smile, ‘was Dutch.’

Diana interrupted hurriedly. ‘This is Professor Richard Black.’

She had anticipated that Sara would nod, shake hands and go upstairs.

Sara nodded and shook hands, but she did not go upstairs. ‘
Professor
?’ she repeated, evidently stunned.

‘He’s a professor of neuroscience and the Master of Branston College, one of the university colleges . . .’ Diana explained briefly, anxious to limit Richard’s exposure to her ghastly and unwelcome guest.

Sara was thankful for the recent Botox injections enabling her to maintain a serene expression. This – this
dish
– who she had supposed a mere horny-handed son of toil, was actually head of a college? A more perfect solution to her difficulty could not be envisaged. She saw herself already, sweeping across the college lawns in a ballgown, her laughter tinkling into her champagne flute.

Hurriedly, she marshalled her forces. So what if he was here to see Diana? Prising him away from her would be easy. Diana had always been a drip, the way she’d let Simon walk all over her.

Even so, it had not escaped her notice that Diana, who had formerly erred on the plump side, now looked positively lithe and that her make-up, also formerly cack-handed and applied in a rush, looked positively professional. Ironically, considering her appalling circumstances, she looked the best she ever had. Had she looked like that for Simon, he probably wouldn’t have left her in the first place.

Diana had her head down now, however. She looked the picture of embarrassed misery, Sara was satisfied to see. The professor, on the other hand, was looking at her with a steely glint in his eye. Sara fired at him a dazzling grin that he did not return.

‘Ready?’ Richard asked Diana.

Sara put her head on one side and shook out her glossy mane for Richard’s benefit. ‘Going somewhere nice?’ she inquired breathily.

Diana looked nervously at Richard, who looked impassively at Sara. ‘We’re going out for supper,’ he said flatly.

‘Really!’ Sara exclaimed, her eyes on Diana. ‘And leaving dear little Rosie behind?’

‘Shanna-Mae’s babysitting,’ Diana said, cross to be bounced into defending herself. What business was it of Sara’s? The suspicion that Sara was up to something was growing within her.

‘May I ask where you’re going?’ Sara beamed unwaveringly.

Richard’s eyes flashed briefly at the ceiling. ‘Out for dinner.’

Diana was growing increasingly anxious and irritated. Why wouldn’t Sara go upstairs? Or even into the kitchen, where she could hear Rosie getting out the dried pasta and trying to chat to Milo. ‘What’s your favourite lesson at school?’ she was asking.

‘
Favourite?
’ was the incredulous reply.

Sara seemed to follow Diana’s thoughts. ‘Pasta,’ she said again, shaking her head. ‘Carbohydrate’s just the
worst
thing for my digestion. If
only
there was something else I could eat . . .’ She shrugged helplessly at them both and Diana tried to suppress the feeling of rising dread, of impending doom.

‘I
know
!’ Sara added, with sudden, spontaneous excitement, as if the glad thought had only just occurred. ‘Why don’t I come out to dinner? With you?’

Diana sat in the car, full of admiration for the cool way Richard had dealt with Sara Oopvard. No, she could not come to dinner with them, Richard had explained. He needed to be alone with Diana. He had something personal to discuss with her.

As even Sara could not argue with this, she had subsided, eyes spitting sparks of resentment. Diana was reminded of a snake settling back into its coil. And now, instead of making an unwelcome third at their evening together, Sara was spending the evening on the Campion Estate with Milo, Rosie and Shanna-Mae.

Diana felt guilty sympathy for her daughter and her friend. The two of them had been planning to experiment with making face cream in the kitchen; Shanna-Mae intended eventually – or perhaps next week, who knew? – to launch her own range of beauty products. They were also intending to hold make-up sessions in the bathroom where mirrored tiles – some cracked, admittedly – on the door and walls offered a range of viewpoints for various effects. Instead, as she and Richard had left, Rosie had been fighting for space on the kitchen table with Milo’s range of hand-held devices while Sara had set about using all the available hot water in what would no doubt be a prolonged bath. Diana hoped Sara would spare her Penhaligon’s bath oil, a rare survival from her old life and one of the few luxurious items she owned.

Diana darted a glance at Richard’s profile – handsome, sharply cut, preoccupied – as they drove along. She felt a wild fluttering within. He was telling her that the car was not his, that it belonged to the Bursar and he had borrowed it for the evening. It smelled both unexpectedly and markedly of cigarettes, as if the Bursar spent long periods sitting in it, smoking furiously. Diana now fixed her gaze on Richard’s hands at the wheel and wondered how it would feel to have them caress her. They were long, delicate, deliciously sensitive-looking.

Richard was staring straight ahead. He was babbling, he knew, about the Bursar, but something was bubbling within him and he felt – most uncharacteristically – almost chatty. He strained to stop himself before he told her what was at the very top of his mind: that he had hardly slept for thinking about her; that her gentle brown eyes, the shining folds of her hair and the soft, creamy curves of her face – as well as other soft, creamy curves elsewhere – had haunted what dreams he had managed. He had awoken with an ache he had thought long gone; he had imagined all desire in him to have died with Amy. But for the first time in many months he had wanted a woman – Diana, in particular. The thought of her had haunted him all day as well; so much so that he wasn’t sure he had packed up his last experiment properly. This was unheard of; his concentration was usually absolute. They would have to call in at the labs before going to the restaurant, at any rate.

They were turning off the dark road, through a pair of brick gateposts. The headlights picked out the entrance to a car park. He swung into a space and switched off the engine. ‘It’s the labs. Just something I have to check on. Come with me, if you like.’

His tone was warm, excited. Diana smiled back. She was, she realised, being invited into the inner sanctum – the red-hot centre of his preoccupations. That he was far more interested in his work than in her was obvious, but his enthusiasm was such that she scarcely minded. She unstrapped her seat belt eagerly. ‘I’d love to.’

He smiled, touched. ‘Sure? It’s only a lot of worms.’

‘Worms?’

He expected her to look disgusted; instead, she looked something closer to charmed. ‘I love worms,’ Diana said. ‘They’re great gardeners.’

The laboratory was an older, more graceful building than Diana had imagined, with beautiful cast-iron Art Deco doors. ‘Department of Neurology’, read the sign on the wall next to them. Richard was already inside and she had to hurry to catch up. He threw some friendly words at the uniformed guard and Diana, scurrying after him across the expanse of marbled floor, shot an apprehensive look at him too. ‘Evening, Madam,’ said the guard, grinning and touching his white peaked cap. She blushed.

In the lift, Richard shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ceiling, his brows knit, evidently thinking of whatever it was he had come to do. Diana covertly examined his outfit; given the chaos of his arrival at her home, it was her first opportunity to do so. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt with a rich green scarf that looked like cashmere. A heavy, plain grey overcoat completed the look. The same rather distracted elegance as before, she thought, as if he had dressed in a hurry, but with unerring taste. His lack of vanity was very attractive. She felt a shiver of lust.

The lift doors opened; she followed him down a series of quiet, strip-lit corridors and, eventually, through a pair of doors.

He turned to her. ‘Welcome to my world!’ he said, with a touch of irony.

The room was large, empty and full of desks and computers. As they passed a large light box, Richard slowed. Ranged on the top of it were laboratory slides with what looked like pieces of wafer-thin brown meat on them, so finely sliced every detail of their marbling could be seen. ‘That’s a brain,’ he told her. ‘Look, here – that dot – that’s a neuron. They change shape and size with use. The person studying these is trying to show how you can quite literally see someone’s thoughts.’

Diana looked at the brown slices of brain. They reminded her of the smoked cod’s roe carpaccio she’d had in a London restaurant once. The comparison made her snort. She realised with surprise that the unimaginable had happened: aspects of her old life now seemed funny.

Then, halfway down the laboratory room, something in a high-sided plastic box made her jump. ‘Hamsters?’ Diana looked down at the squirming bodies in the vivarium.

‘Mmm,’ Richard said absently. He was at the far end of the room, bent over a desk. ‘One of my colleagues is looking at what makes them laugh.’

‘Laugh?’ Diana repeated. ‘I didn’t realise hamsters laughed.’

She grinned. Rosie was going to love that.

The wall before Richard was entirely covered with small, colourful, illuminated Perspex boxes. As Diana approached she saw each box contained several worms, their bodies glistening in the coloured light. She turned to him. ‘Don’t tell me. Worms laugh too?’

‘Not exactly.’ She listened hard as he explained.

‘So,’ she said slowly, when he paused to take a breath, ‘you put a smell in the green-lit box that they don’t like and later you take the smell away. They still stay out of the green box because they associate the colour with the nasty smell?’

‘That’s it.’

‘So what’s the point of that?’ Diana asked, more bluntly than she had intended.

Richard stared. Scholars at his level tended to be left to their own devices. ‘Well,’ he began, struggling with his instinctive indignation. ‘It’s to do with how the brain can be controlled by colours.’

Brain control sounded worrying. Didn’t it? Instead of nodding and subsiding, Diana forced herself onward. ‘Is that – well – ethical?’

She half-expected he would shoot her down in flames. But instead he smiled.

‘You’re quite right. There are controversial aspects. But we’re confining it to worms at the moment; the research is at a very early stage and will probably be used for mental health therapy in the end.’

Diana nodded seriously. She wondered, but didn’t dare ask, what the point of the laughing hamsters was. Perhaps later.

The Bursar’s car had not even disappeared around the corner of the estate before Sara had pushed Milo off the iPad and was on the internet researching Richard. Her excitement rose. On the various sites in which he appeared, the distinguished Professor Black was usually in his laboratory looking dark, handsome and thrillingly preoccupied by his high-powered and prestigious work. The only variation on this theme – clearly he had not exactly courted the attentions of photographers and, judging by some of his expressions, seemed rather to resent them – were shots of Professor Black looking impressive on a podium, addressing rapt students at various exclusive Ivy-League colleges.

The possibility – indeed the probability – that he was married had occurred to Sara. Not a problem. Married men were fair game, as the women who had snatched both hers and Diana’s husbands had shown. Nonetheless, it had been a great moment when Sara discovered that Richard was a widower: a sitting target.

The ex-wife – who featured in some of the pictures, too – didn’t look anything special, Sara concluded. Freckled face – unmade-up – with messy strawberry blond hair caught up loosely behind. Neither fat nor thin, although it was difficult to tell in the ancient jeans she had seemed invariably to wear. If that was what Richard Black had been used to, Sara had concluded, she herself could hardly fail to make a positive impression with her polished appearance, honed figure and blazing white teeth. Diana may have upgraded herself slightly and lost weight, but she was no match for the full gala Oopvard.

Sara’s hopes soared. That such a prize had fallen into her lap! Into Richard’s, too, as he would soon grow to appreciate. A glamorous, metropolitan and sophisticated woman such as herself would be a considerable asset to him as he entertained, after all. As for Milo, growing up in a university atmosphere with an internationally feted neuroscientist as his stepfather was bound to have a positive impact on his up-till-now modest academic achievements. He would hardly be able to help becoming a towering genius himself.

All that remained was to bring Richard round to her plan. Sara decided to devote the rest of the evening to plotting how this might come about and drifted back upstairs to the bath she had abandoned earlier.

She was irritated to see that Diana’s nine-year-old daughter, who had much too direct a stare for Sara’s liking, was back up there, leaning over the basin with her fat friend. Make-up and brushes were perilously balanced on the top of the loo and along the edges of the tub.

They seemed to be discussing someone.

‘I think he’s nice,’ Rosie was saying. ‘I know Mum thinks so too. She’s been excited about it all day, even though she’s been trying not to show it. And she went all red when he got here, you could see it even under the make-up.’ She chuckled.

‘He’s hot,’ the fat teenager opined. ‘For an old person,’ she added, critically.

They were, Sara deduced, discussing Richard.
Her
Richard. Indignation mounted within her. ‘Hey,’ she said crossly, storming into the bathroom. ‘I’m having a bath, OK?’

‘Sorry, Sara.’ Rosie backed away from the basin immediately. Sara could not help noticing that, even with only one eye made up, the girl already had a fawnish prettiness.

‘We thought you’d finished,’ Shanna-Mae said.

‘Well, I hadn’t, so scram,’ Sara snapped ungraciously.

Rosie and Shanna-Mae collected their belongings and went downstairs. They surprised Milo in the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboards.

‘What are you doing, Milo?’ Rosie asked calmly.

He turned, his dark face twisted in a scowl. ‘What’s it to you?’ He squinted to look at her better. ‘And what’s up with your face, anyway? Looks like someone’s punched one of your eyes out.’

Rosie ignored these last remarks. ‘If you need something in particular, I might be able to help you find it.’

‘Looking for the Krispy Kremes,’ Milo snarled, evidently unused to having to explain his actions.

‘They’re in the fridge,’ Rosie said. ‘There’s one for each of us.’

An incredulous grin spread over Milo’s face. His eyes, slightly lopsided, gleamed. ‘No, there isn’t,’ he said. He opened the fridge door, reached for the plate and tore off almost half of a chocolate one with one bite.

‘That’s very mean of you,’ Rosie said immediately. ‘They were brought as a present for us and we don’t get things like that very often. Any more,’ she added, as an afterthought.

Milo looked scornful. ‘So what?’ he demanded. ‘Your mum shouldn’t have walked out on your dad.’

Rosie was white, her face incredulous. A black fire crackled in her eyes. ‘Stop that!’ she said in a low, dangerous voice.

Milo merely smirked in reply. ‘Although my mum says that, if your mum had made more of an effort, your dad wouldn’t have started screwing around . . .’

‘Shut up!’ Rosie screamed, and launched herself at him. Shanna-Mae, however, was too quick for her. Despite her size, she was unexpectedly fast on her feet and had grabbed Rosie round the waist with her powerful arms. Rosie was held, suspended, above the carpet, kicking and flailing, clawing the air as if to slash the skin from Milo’s face.

‘Just ignore ’im,’ Shanna-Mae counselled, shooting a look of disgust at Milo. ‘’E ain’t worth it.’

Rosie allowed herself to be lowered, shakily, to the ground. With a final glance of loathing at her tormentor, she left the kitchen. Milo looked after them, grinning broadly, his cheeks stuffed with doughnut.

With Shanna-Mae shuffling after her, Rosie returned to the sitting room. ‘We can do our make-up here,’ she suggested.

‘OK,’ Shanna-Mae agreed. Her plump face fell slightly. ‘Shame about them Krispy Kremes. I’ve never had one before.’

Rosie beamed at her. ‘Never mind, Shanna-Mae. One day, when you have salons across the world, you can have as many Krispy Kremes as you like.’