Guilty Feet (24 page)

Libby caught her arm again. She could see that Aisling wasn’t bluffing, and they were only a short distance from the car now.

‘All right,’ she said with a deep sigh. ‘You win. But I need to get my chequebook from the car.’

‘That’s OK,’ Aisling said calmly. ‘I’ll come with you. You can tell him you owe me for the window cleaner, or something.’

Aisling waved happily at Nigel as she moved round to the passenger door with Libby. And Libby, who knew when she was finally beaten, mumbled quietly to herself.

‘One fricking expensive window cleaner,’ she seethed.

***

I arrived home at just after eleven o’clock and found Giovanna with my dad on the sofa. Nothing too terrible was going on, I was relieved to see, but it did make me think how less than perfect our living arrangements were.

I made some tea, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries took it off to my bedroom. I called Cass from there and told her about the girls, and the book Dan had written, and how this was a chance to make a name for herself with them. She didn’t sound particularly interested, but just in case she decided to act I threatened her with her life if she mentioned my name to Dan.

‘I’m not supposed to know about it,’ I said when she asked me why she shouldn’t do that.

There was a small suspicious pause.

‘How
do
you know about it?’

‘He told Sarah about it.’

‘Not
recently
, I hope?’

‘Ages ago,’ I could truthfully tell her.

I’d woken her up, apparently, and she grunted now and put the phone down on me. And then I did what I often did when I got home late from work. I read all the e-mails that Dan and Sarah had exchanged. Then I moved on to my own Hotmail account, where I could see that a couple of messages were waiting—not from my mother, I was relieved to see, but from Matt.

I said that I’d hold you responsible if she turned out to be a nightmare, didn’t I?

Which was not a promising beginning to message number one.

Well, I do and she is. She’s been moving my furniture about, telling me what to eat, when to come home and how much exercise I should be taking. She’s been throwing out clothes she doesn’t regard as suitable for ‘a man in my position’, and last night she told my girlfriend it was high time she stopped dyeing her hair in order just to please men. My girlfriend (a natural blonde, by the way) now refuses to come round to my place again if my mother is there!

Wise girl, I thought.

I tell you, Jo, f I didn’t know she was going home in ten days (and believe me I’m counting), I’d leave myself.

She’s got a new friend, by the way. A nutty neighbour who’s been filling her head with all things Californian... She took her off to a seminar two weeks ago on How To Survive Divorce and it’s turned her head. She’s been to several now, with different themes, but they add up to much the same thing—ALL MEN ARE BASTARDS (her darling son excepted of course!) and you should see what she’s wearing! She’s ditched all the things she arrived with and has replaced them with dungarees and cheesecloth... She looks like an aged hippie and talks like a throwback from the women’s movement.

And he signed it
Deeply
disturbed
of
Santa
Monica
. The second message was a follow-up to the first.

I
don’t
really
hold
you
responsible
.
In
fact
I
am
filled
with
admiration
that
you’ve
managed
to
live
in
the
same
country
as
her
and
stay
fairly
sane
.

Much
love

Matt

PS
Send
my
love
to
Dad
.

I thought about printing the messages off and showing them to Dad, but, apart from not wanting to disturb him and Giovanna, it seemed rather disloyal. So I tapped a quick reply to Matt, telling him to hang in there, and closed down for the night.

And when I finally drifted off to sleep it wasn’t my current boyfriend that I dreamt about. It was Dan.

***

Dan and Aisling were having a late-night beer in his flat. ‘Don’t you think we should warn him?’ Dan said of the unknown man Libby was moving in with.

Aisling shook her head. ‘He looked as if he could take care of himself,’ she said confidently. ‘And, now that you’ve got some compensation, it really isn’t any of our business.’

The cheque was in front of them on the coffee table and Dan still couldn’t believe it.

‘There must be a lot more to you, Aisling Carter, than meets the eye.’ he said with a flick of his dark eyebrows.

‘I was pretty magnificent.’ She beamed. ‘And my timing was impeccable. I’m pretty damn sure she wouldn’t have been quite so co-operative if lover-boy hadn’t been around.’ Dan lifted his bottle by way of a toast.

‘Well, however you did it I’m extremely grateful.’

Aisling tilted her head on one side and looked at him intently.

‘I can’t take all the credit, though. It wouldn’t have happened if Jo hadn’t rung me.’

Dan didn’t reply. He still felt bad about ever believing that Jo was responsible, but there was something else she’d done which he found hard to forgive, let alone explain.

Aisling sipped some beer from the bottle Dan had given her and made a face.

‘This stuff is as bad as your coffee and your liqueurs.’ Dan took a slug of his own beer and shrugged.

‘Tastes fine to me.’ He smiled at her, curled up on the sofa next to him, her feet tucked comfortably behind her. She was wearing a cosy red sweater, and now that she’d disposed of those hair extensions she looked very fetching. He found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss her.

‘How are things going with Steve?’ he asked.

‘Things are going just fine,’ she said with a gleam in her eye.

‘So is it serious?’ he asked casually.

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she said, frowning a little now. ‘And how come you’ve changed the subject? We were talking about Jo a moment ago.’

‘You were,’ he said.

Aisling looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Do you know what I think is really creepy?’ she said. He shook his head cautiously.

‘I think Libby dyed her hair red so that she could look as much like Jo as possible. She’s gone back to brown now.’ He sighed. That possibility had not escaped him. But what bothered him most right now was the fact that Aisling wouldn’t stop mentioning Jo.

‘The book should be in the shop any day now,’ he said, trying again for a change of subject.

‘That’s quick!’ she answered, surprised. She looked at him curiously. ‘You never did tell me who or what it was all about.’

He grinned. He’d had a change of heart about things of late. He’d decided there was no sense in being pretentious about his work. If the music of boy bands provided pleasure for so many people, who was he to complain? Especially if writing about one of them helped pay the rent.

‘VantagePoint,’ he said, only slightly embarrassed. He would have to get used to it, because he’d even agreed with the publishers to put his name on the cover now.

She smiled at him wryly. ‘I can see why they want to put it out quickly,’ she said, and he nodded. The band had been at the number one spot for two weeks already, and speculation had increased about them still being there at Christmas.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, and then Aisling suddenly shifted in her seat and moved closer to him. She looked at him for a moment, and he looked back at her. And then, to his surprise, she leaned closer and kissed him full on the lips. And because it was what he thought that he wanted, he kissed her back, but the truth was he could have been kissing a potato for all he felt.

‘I thought so,’ she said as she withdrew her mouth from his. She shook her head and sighed. ‘Now, I don’t care how long this takes, Dan Baxter, but I’m not moving from here until you tell me exactly why you keep avoiding talking to me about Jo.’

It took her a good twenty minutes of very hard work, but he eventually told her. And when she heard what had happened she hooted with laughter.

‘But that is so cool,’ she said, when she’d stopped hooting. ‘And don’t you see what it means?’

‘It means that she wanted to make a fool out of me,’ he said.

She let out a groan of exasperation. ‘No, foolish man. It may have gone awry and got out of hand, but I’m sure it started because she just wanted
contact
with you any way she could. I’ve seen her, don’t forget, and I could tell she still cared about you.’

‘Strange way to show it,’ he said moodily.

Aisling moved away and frowned suddenly.

‘You don’t suppose she sent that last message from her business address deliberately, do you? I don’t mean
deliberate
deliberately, I mean
subconscious
deliberately. Like deep down she wanted to be found out.’

‘Why the hell would she do that?’

Aisling shook her head, as if astonished by his stupidity. ‘So you’d call her at long last, of course, and give her hell.’

Chapter Nineteen

Dad suggested that we had a special late breakfast together on Saturday morning. He did it all himself, including scrambling eggs to go with some very nice smoked salmon he’d bought from the local deli. He’d picked up some fresh Colombian coffee as well, and to add to the sense of occasion I manhandled the kitchen table over to the sitting room window. It was fairly dismal outside, but for the first time ever I could appreciate the value of a river view. It was all about having someone to share it with.

‘I’m thinking of driving over to the house later,’ he said as he poured some coffee for me. ‘I need to get some more of my things.’

I looked at him dubiously over the table.

‘I’m not sure there’s room here for any more
things
,
’
I said.

I cast my eye round the room, which was beginning to fill up with cardboard boxes. Dad had been paying regular trips to his former home and always came back with several containers. It had occurred to me that he could have moved back into the house while my mother was in California, but it was as if he was trying to cut his ties from the place entirely.

‘I know it’s difficult,’ he said with a shrug, ‘but I need to do as much as I can before your mother gets back.’

‘Before she finds out it’s serious with Giovanna, you mean?’ He nodded sheepishly. ‘I don’t suppose she’s going to be too happy about it.’

Neither did I, but that wasn’t the point.

‘We’re going to have to sort ourselves out,’ I said, seizing the moment. I’d been trying to think of a way to tell him it was time to move on and now was my chance. ‘This place is getting too small for us both and, well, there is a... er—’ I hated saying it, but I couldn’t stop now ‘—a privacy problem.’

‘Exactly,’ Dad said, putting down his knife and fork and giving me his full attention. ‘And I’ve been thinking about that.’

‘You have?’

He nodded. ‘You’ve mentioned a couple of times that you don’t like it much here.’

‘True.’

‘Well, I do, and I’ve been considering taking over the lease when yours runs out—if you don’t choose to renew it yourself, that is.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said forking some overcooked scrambled egg, trying to avoid the burnt bits. ‘But that’s not for ages yet.’

He shifted his eyes away from me towards the window and I could sense that he was uncomfortable.

‘But I could sublet it from you in the meantime.’

I put the fork down and thought about this for a moment. Then it sank in.

‘You mean you want me to move out!’ My eyes scanned the pile of cardboard boxes again. ‘So that’s why you’ve been stashing so much of your stuff here!’

‘It’s not as bad as you’re making it sound.’ He managed to look at me now. ‘It just seems to make sense to me.’

And, although I wasn’t too keen on being evicted from my own flat, it made sense to me as well. But it didn’t stop me feeling slightly peeved.

‘I hope you’re not planning on moving me out before Christmas.’

‘Of course not,’ he said with obvious relief that it had gone rather better than he’d thought. ‘And as a show of good faith I’ll take over the rent from the beginning of this month, if you like.’

I did like—very much, as a matter of fact.

‘And I get to keep my room until I find somewhere else?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you to feel pressured at all. You must take as long as you need to find somewhere else.’

Which sounded fine, but I was already beginning to feel as if I was the guest, overstaying my welcome. We ate on without speaking for a while and then Dad, clearly keen to break the silence, asked me if I had any plans for the day.

‘Not really,’ I said a bit moodily. ‘Though I might dye my hair.’ I’d been thinking about trying out a new image and my hair seemed the obvious place to start.

Dad looked appalled.

‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

I shrugged, and then something occurred to me.

‘Mum says she has no idea where it came from,’ I said, tugging at my curly red hair. Did anyone in your family have a mop like this?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But it’s beautiful hair and you should be proud of it.’

‘But isn’t that a bit odd?’ I said, frowning as I picked up my mug of coffee.

Dad looked vague. ‘Some genetic throwback, I expect.’

Then something else came into my head, completely uninvited—a picture of Brian Dick. Not because he had red hair—which he didn’t—but because it suddenly occurred to me that if my mother had slept with him when she was married, she could have slept with anyone. I looked at my father across the table, and although he isn’t a particularly perceptive man—in fact, he can seem incredibly thick at times—his eyes widened.

We looked at one another for a couple of seconds, and then he grinned.

‘I don’t think your mother would be drawing attention to the colour of your hair if she’d—well, you know...’

‘Played away?’ I suggested.

‘Precisely,’ he said.

***

Despite what Aisling had said, Dan still felt a fool. Whereas he could maybe accept that Jo pretending to be someone else
might
just have been about making some contact, arranging dates with ‘Sarah’ and then flaunting her new man in front of him was much more difficult to come to terms with.

He’d arrived at his own conclusions, as a matter of fact. As far as he was concerned, it had just been her strange way of telling him that she had finally moved on. And maybe it was high time he did as well, which was why he’d agreed to go out with Aisling and Steve tonight. He didn’t relish the idea of playing gooseberry, but he certainly felt like a break from the flat.

The phone rang while he was in the middle of drying up a backlog of dishes, and Dan wondered if it was Aisling checking up on him, making sure he was still on for tonight.

Only it wasn’t.

‘It’s Cass,’ the voice said anxiously.

‘Cass?’ It took a while to sink in. ‘Oh, Cass! The one who helped Jo do her escape act, I presume?’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said.

‘The same Cass I thought was my friend and have never heard from since?’ He was smiling to himself as he imagined her cringing.

‘I was Jo’s friend first,’ she said unhappily.

‘And I bet she reminded you of that fact when she roped you in.’

‘She did, as a matter of fact.’

Dan laughed lightly at this, and then asked Cass to what he owed the unexpected pleasure of her ringing him now.

‘I understand you’ve written a book about some boy band or other?’

‘True,’ he said, ‘but how did you know that?’

‘Just something I heard through the grapevine,’ she answered quickly.

Dan thought about this for a moment. The only people who knew what the book was about were Aisling and
Sarah
Daly
, so he presumed that Jo was the ‘grapevine’. He wondered if she’d told Cass about Sarah.

‘I didn’t know you were a VantagePoint fan,’ he said.

‘I’m not,’ she replied indignantly. ‘I couldn’t even remember what their name was.’

‘Well, then, why are—?’

‘Because I know someone who is,’ she interrupted. ‘Three of them, as a matter of fact.’ She briefly explained her predicament. ‘They think that I’m boring, basically,’ she said of her boyfriend’s three younger sisters, ‘and I thought if I could get hold of some autographs—’

‘They’d think you were erm...
cool
?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I have to meet this bloke some time,’ Dan said, smiling. ‘He must be pretty special if you’re prepared to go to all this trouble.’

‘It’s you I’m asking to go to the trouble,’ she responded stiffly.

‘It’s no trouble at all,’ he said. ‘So lighten up, will you?’ He’d just been informed that the band was to do some book signings the following day, as a matter of fact, so it only required a call to their agent. ‘How about I get them to sign a copy of the book? One for each of the girls?’

‘That would be fantastic,’ she said, sounding a lot more relaxed now.

‘Well, consider it done.’

‘Thanks, Dan, and I’m sorry again.’

‘No problem. Now, hang on while I fetch a pen and you can give me the names of these three scary sisters.’

***

I put on the full slap and clubbing gear that night. I’d decided against changing my hair after that talk with Dad, but I’d chosen my skimpiest black dress, heaped on the fake tan, painted my finger and toenails scarlet, and slipped into my four-and-a-half-inch heels. I felt fantastic.

Dad wasn’t quite so sure, though. He hinted that I looked like a bit of a slapper.

‘But you are going to wear a coat, though, aren’t you?’ he said when I poo-pooed his concerns and told him that most young women looked like I did on a Saturday night in Leeds.

‘You’ll catch your death if you don’t.’

‘Of course I’m wearing a coat,’ I said with a roll of my eyes.

‘And Marco is coming to pick you up?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Marco is coming to pick me up. He’ll be here any minute.’

He looked at me uneasily. ‘I was wondering if there’s any chance that he might stay over with you tonight?’

‘What
are
you suggesting, Dad?’ I said as I rushed around gathering up bits and pieces to put in my bag.

‘It’s just that I thought it might be nice to stay with Giovanna tonight.’

I stopped rushing around and looked at him. I wasn’t so sure about this. As far as Marco was concerned his mother was having a
platonic
relationship with my father. I don’t think it had even occurred to him that they might want to go further. He certainly didn’t know that they’d already spent at least one night together before he’d got back from Spain. I assumed it hadn’t been a one-off situation, though I didn’t like to think about how they’d managed things since then. It did seem a bit silly, though. With their home and ours we could easily have arranged to have one couple in each now and then. It would certainly be more comfortable for me than Marco’s car. But it still didn’t feel
right
.

‘I dunno about that, Dad,’ I said, and I suddenly realised that it wasn’t just about Marco’s possible reaction to discovering his mother was a sexual being. It was also about putting things on a firmer footing with Marco and me. If we started staying over at each other’s place it would make us feel more of a couple, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. ‘Do you think we could just leave it for a while?’ I added selfishly. ‘Until I know how I want things to go with Marco?’

Dad obviously misinterpreted this and assumed I meant that we hadn’t yet consummated our relationship. He was very apologetic, embarrassingly so, but it seemed easier to let him believe his daughter was as pure as driven snow than explain the complexities of my current mind set.

Anyway, there wasn’t time, because just at that moment Marco rang the flat bell and I grabbed my coat for the off.

***

The meal at Vine had been excellent, and because Nic’s firm would be putting it down to business expenses she’d insisted we chose precisely whatever we fancied and gave not a single thought to the prices on the menu. We also seemed to get through quite a few bottles of champagne.

Nic had brought along someone called Andy, who worked with her. He was a nice-looking bloke but when I asked her about him she said he was there merely to make up the numbers. She looked a lot more sophisticated than I did. She was wearing black, like me, but she wasn’t showing off quite so much flesh. Cass was continuing to branch out in the fashion department and was wearing a particularly fetching strapless lemon-coloured dress. She had a cardigan on top of it, as usual, but she really was getting quite daring. The men had pushed the boat out as well, and although I say it myself I think we made quite an attractive bunch.

We’d moved on to Zoot by now, as prophesied by Sid’s sister Darinda, and I kept thinking about the last time I was there, when I’d seen Dan.

I felt like dancing, but Marco didn’t. He’d been in a strange mood since he picked me up. I think he was still peeved with me for refusing to see him the night before, and things were going from bad to worse. I got the impression that he didn’t approve of the way I was dressed, which made me defiant and all the more determined to have a good time.

Nic seemed to sense what was going on.

‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll keep an eye on old grumpy-guts, here. Off you go now and dance with Andy.’ Which was very kind of her, I thought. Luckily Sid and Cass were up for some fun as well, which made a nice change, so while the four of us headed for the dance floor poor Nic had to stay and entertain boring old Marco at the bar.

It was a female DJ tonight, and she was doing her stuff from a high platform that looked out over the dance floor. She looked very young, and at twenty-six I was beginning to think my clubbing days were numbered. But I wasn’t going to let it bother me that night as I swayed beneath hypnotic flashing lights to a sound that Dan insisted was not real music. At least that was what he’d used to insist, but if he was writing books about the likes of VantagePoint these days, maybe he’d revised his opinion on that as well. For some reason this notion amused me, and because I was a little bit drunk on all that champagne it made me laugh out loud.