Love on the Rocks (37 page)

No, he thought. Look what had happened last time he’d been overbearing.

‘Fine,’ he said wearily, getting to his feet.

She smiled up at him, her blue eyes watery.

‘Thank you for the jumper. It’s lovely.’

Then bloody wear it!
he wanted to shout, suddenly knowing it was going to be shoved in a drawer.

‘You’re welcome,’ he replied wearily, dutifully, and walked out of the house.

‘Less than two weeks today!’ said Lisa, looking at the calendar. ‘I can’t believe it. Will we pull it off, do you think?’

‘You don’t have to worry about the party,’ Victoria assured her. ‘I do this kind of thing in my sleep.’

‘It’s my worst nightmare. I hate giving parties.’

‘Just stick to getting the hotel ready. That would be the real crisis – if all the guests turned up and there was still a skip in the drive and decorators everywhere.’

‘We’re right on track,’ Lisa assured her. ‘They’re doing the carpets on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday as well if they overrun, which they will because the stairs are fiddly. Then the furniture arrives on Thursday. Which leaves us another whole week to hang the curtains, put up pictures, train up the staff . . .’ She trailed off, looking panicky. ‘Oh God . . .’

‘Trust me. It’ll be fine.’

George came in with the post. It never arrived until gone midday, another aspect of Devon life which took some getting used to. Sometimes the postman didn’t wander up till gone two, if he’d been waylaid at the Mariscombe Arms.

‘Bills, bills and more bills.’ He chucked most of the letters on the desk and picked up a large A4 envelope. ‘I expect these are the proofs for the brochures.’

Victoria hovered over him as he slid his finger carefully under the flap.

‘I can’t wait! I hope they’ve done a good job.’

He pulled the contents out carefully.

‘Oops,’ said Victoria, backing away.

‘What is it?’ asked Lisa. ‘Have they made a mistake?’

‘Have a look.’ George dropped the contents on his desk in distaste.

It was a sheaf of colour photographs. Of Lisa. Lisa with her top off, smiling invitingly for the camera, in nothing but a pair of bikini bottoms. Lisa cavorting in a pair of high heels, licking an ice cream. Lisa bending over to pick up a beach ball, her rear stuck up in the air. Her hair was longer, almost to her waist, and she was about ten years younger. But it was undeniably her.

As Lisa looked at the photos, her face drained of any colour. Then she grabbed the envelope, shook it open, then tore it apart, looking for a clue as to who could have sent them.

‘You kept that quiet,’ said George accusingly.

‘They weren’t a secret,’ she insisted. ‘I’d have told you if I thought it was important. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about them.’

‘You’d forgotten that you’d posed naked?’

‘Topless.’

‘Topless. Sorry.’ His voice dripped sarcasm.

‘There is a difference.’

‘Oh, is there? Well, sorry, but I’m not up on the finer points of pornography.’

‘This isn’t porn!’ Lisa’s eyes flashed with fury. ‘This is the sort of thing that’s in national newspapers every day. It’s perfectly acceptable.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion, surely?’

Lisa squared up to him.

‘I’m not ashamed.’

‘Then why haven’t you ever mentioned it?’

‘I don’t know! It was a long time ago. It was what I had to do at the time.’

‘Take your clothes off for money? Very nice, I’m sure.’

Lisa’s voice was trembling. ‘I was seventeen. All I had going for me was my looks. I’d failed my exams, because my mother had just died. I had to stand on my own two feet and this was the quickest way of doing it.’

George looked at the photos again with distaste, unswayed by her defence.

‘It’s not the first thing most seventeen-year-olds think of.’

Lisa looked as if she had been slapped.

‘I didn’t have the benefit of a private education,’ she spat back. ‘I didn’t get the chance to go to university. I couldn’t become an architect or a lawyer.’

‘Not everyone who leaves school at sixteen ends up taking their clothes off for money.’

‘Well, I’m sorry if it offends you.’

‘You could at least have done me the courtesy of telling me.’

‘Like you told me you were married?’

Lisa kept her voice light, but her barb hit its target.

‘That’s entirely different,’ George snapped.

‘How is it different?’

‘It just is.’

‘For Christ’s sake, George. Back off.’

The two of them turned to stare at Victoria. In the heat of the moment they had almost forgotten she was there.

‘The question isn’t whether Lisa was right to do this. Or whether she should have told you, George. The question is, who sent them?’

There was a deathly silence. Lisa finally spoke.

‘I wonder?’ she said sarcastically and swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Victoria caught up with Lisa just as she was about to go out of the front door.

‘Lisa!’

Lisa just looked at her, her face expressionless.

‘I know what you’re thinking. But it wasn’t me who sent those photos. I promise you.’ Victoria screwed up her face, looking genuinely worried. ‘I don’t want George back. I did him far too much damage the first time around. Irreparable damage. And I think you’ve been fantastic for him.’

She put out a hand to touch Lisa’s arm.

‘He always wanted something more when I was with him. He hated his work. But he was too busy wasting his time on me to spend any time realizing his own ambitions. Lucky for him someone came along who wasn’t so self-obsessed. You’ve let him realize his dream.’

‘Just a pity about my murky past,’ said Lisa bitterly.

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said. I think he was just a bit shocked. He is a bit of a prude, George.’ Victoria gave a low, throaty laugh. ‘I think the photos are fantastic. Trust me, if I’d got the body for it, that’s what I’d be doing now.’

Lisa just about managed a smile. She realized that Victoria was doing her absolute very best to be genuinely nice, something she probably didn’t do very often.

‘You wouldn’t want to do it, if you didn’t have to,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘But thanks.’

‘Come on,’ said Victoria, putting a conciliatory hand on Lisa’s arm. ‘I think you two should talk about this. Don’t let somebody’s petty prank spoil what you’ve got.’

‘No.’ Lisa was firm. ‘I think I’d like to be on my own, if you don’t mind.’

She wasn’t going to cry in front of Victoria, no matter how nice she was being. She slipped out of the door, down through the garden, and scrambled down the rocky path to the beach, remembering with a bitter irony the first time she and George had climbed down it. It seemed a lifetime ago.

In which case, the photos must have been done two lifetimes ago. As Lisa trudged along the beach, all the memories came flooding back. That hideous, horrible frightened feeling, of being all alone, of having to make her own way in the world. Of thinking that if this was what she had to do, then she’d do it. She’d only been seventeen. OK, so that wasn’t a scandal in itself, but it hadn’t been an easy decision to make. And she’d had no one to confide in. No one she could weigh up the moral issues with. Never had she wanted her mother more. But then, if her mother had been there, she wouldn’t have found herself in that situation.

She’d seen an advert in the paper, asking for models to come and audition at a local hotel. She decided to go, just for a laugh, though she didn’t hold out much hope. She’d worn a pair of jeans, a low-cut top and boots, her hair loose. Everyone else had been done up to the nines, in tight dresses and high heels and full make-up. The queues were endless. Lisa had been about to leave, convinced she would get nowhere. As she went to push open the door of the function room, a hand had grabbed her arm.

‘I hope you’re not going anywhere, sweetheart?’ a swarthy man in an Italian suit had asked, his white teeth glinting.

That was her first brush with Tony Lavazza. He’d whisked her upstairs immediately. Fast-tracked her, he called it, to a suite where the shortlisted candidates were sitting round drinking white wine and soda while they were scrutinized by Tony and his associates. In the end, only Lisa and another girl called Candy had been signed up.

Her assignments had been straight to start with. Some modelling, some promo work, often quite dull and dreary. She did some knitting patterns and a jodhpur catalogue. Lots and lots of exhibitions. Then came the offer of some glamour work. Which by then Lisa knew meant topless. Tony kept insisting it was just a bit of fun.

‘It’s seaside postcard stuff. Saucy. Think
Carry On
. Or Benny Hill.’

Neither of these examples meant anything to Lisa. But the substantial fee they were offering did. And in the end, it was the money that convinced her. She could earn as much in one session as she did in a month. You couldn’t argue with that. Her teeth had chattered on the first shoot. Not with cold, but with fear. She had been racked with nerves. In the end, the photographer had forced a few glasses of Pernod and blackcurrant down her. Funnily enough, it had worked. Her qualms dissipated and before long she actually got caught up in the spirit of the shoot. Everyone had been delighted with the results, and there and then Lisa decided it was just mind over matter. She didn’t need to get drunk. It would be far better if she kept her head and found her own way of relaxing. That way no one could ever take advantage of her.

So after that, it was easy. The photographers were usually a laugh, and because she was good at her job it was a fairly painless process. Certainly easier than standing on your feet all day handing out leaflets. Although it was rather an irony calling it glamour work, because glamorous it was not – there was never anywhere proper to change, she usually ended up doing her own hair and make-up in the toilet mirror and she had to remember to bring a sandwich if she wanted lunch. She never knew where the photographs were destined – catalogues and calendars and magazines – but she didn’t care because she was earning.

Meanwhile, she saved furiously. At the end of three years, she had enough for a deposit on her first flat. When she was quite certain she was secure, that even if she had to take a job as a secretary she would still be able to afford her mortgage, she told Tony no more topless. He was hopping, of course. But he couldn’t do without her. She was incredibly popular. And she had the sort of looks, the sort of body that meant it didn’t really matter if she was clothed. She almost looked more inviting with her kit on. So he’d agreed. And as the years passed by, she became more and more choosy about her assignments, until it was her calling the shots.

But somehow, her past had caught up with her.

As she walked, Lisa realized that the azure blue sky was clouding over. The weather on the coast could change in an instant. Blue skies could become black, and black blue. A heavy mist could roll across the beach in seconds. A bit like life, really, she thought moodily. Everything had been sunny that morning. She had been full of excitement that they were only two weeks away from their launch. But now she felt filled with gloom.

Who had sent the photographs? And why? Of course, the prime suspect was Victoria. But Lisa was certain that her protestation of innocence earlier was quite genuine. She could tell when someone was trying to cover something up: the girls she had worked with over the years were adept at fibs and equivocations; the mistresses of deception. She would have been able to see straight through Victoria if she had been lying.

Maybe it was a set-up? Maybe it was George? Perhaps George, too cowardly to dump her, was deliberately sabotaging their relationship in order to bring about a break-up that would leave him with clean hands? And allow him to get back with the real love of his life?

Now she really was being paranoid, decided Lisa. There was one very obvious suspect, with motive and opportunity and access to the photos, and that was Tony Lavazza. Egged on, no doubt, by Milo. She imagined them cooking up the plan in some flash bar in Birmingham, falling over with laughter at the thought of their revenge. It would be typical of their nasty, small-minded attitude to life. They were the type to bear grudges. They would never wish anyone well. They would both be eaten up by the fact she had walked out on them. They only knew how to take.

Lisa felt vaguely comforted by the possibility that it was them. What further damage could they do, after all? She decided that their vendetta would probably stop there, that they would have got a sense of satisfaction from their anonymous package which would hopefully quench their desire for revenge.

Big, fat raindrops started to fall. She looked up and realized she was more than halfway down the beach. Huge black clouds had rolled in over the horizon. She’d been so immersed in her own black cloud she hadn’t noticed how far away from shelter she was. This wasn’t going to be a quick shower. There was absolutely nowhere to take cover. As the rain began in earnest she shivered. Within seconds her sleeveless top and knee-length skirt were wet through.

A huge, tawny dog came lolloping up to her. Through the sheeting rain she saw his owner come closer, whistling furiously. Then she recognized him. It was Bruno.

‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘This is torrential. Come inside while it lasts.’

He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. Lisa saw she was at the bottom of the dunes just outside his house. She looked doubtful.

‘I’m OK,’ she insisted. She wanted to be on her own, not to have to be polite, no matter how welcoming the prospect of Bruno’s shelter was.

‘You’re crazy. You’re going to catch your death.’

She could barely hear him through the downpour. But she knew he was right. Her soaking skirt flapped round her legs, stinging her as viciously as small boys armed with wet towels in the school changing room.

The next moment Bruno was beside her, taking her arm.

‘Come on,’ he insisted. ‘Come and get dry. I can drive you home afterwards.’

Short of wriggling out of his grasp and running off down the beach, there was nothing she could do. It was at least half a mile back up to The Rocks, and she didn’t fancy attempting the cliff path in this maelstrom.