Reversing Over Liberace (30 page)

“You find a perverted pleasure in everything.”

“True.”

“Cal, look, I've still got nearly ten grand left in the bank. We could make a start on getting this place fit to live in before the winter, couldn't we?”

He gave a peculiar chuckling laugh. “Um. Willow. Have you been listening to me? I head up the best-selling anti-hack business in the world. Me and the boys, we save companies billions of dollars, not to say the world from nuclear meltdown and Doctor Who from the Daleks.”

“So?”

“Do you have any idea how much they pay me? On average? I know things that could bring whole continents to their knees, ways to bring down the yen, the pound, how to transfer the funds of multimillion corporations into a Swiss bank account with my number on it. Believe me, they pay to keep me sweet.”

“But.” I looked around me at the crumbling plaster and the spongy beams. “Why do you live in a flat in York? And drive such a horrible car? And surely you could afford someone to come and help keep this place up, someone you don't mind knowing about what you do?”

Cal looked into my face, hooked my hair behind my ears. “Because, Willow,
I don't care
. Didn't care. When Hannah left me all the pleasure in it went
fooof
. The money was coming in and what could I do with it? I bought a flat with fewer stairs, but I
like
being in York. Love the place. And same with my car, you should have seen the one I had
before
. After that, what was there to spend it on? And if I'd found someone on the strength of how much I earned, what kind of relationship would that be? Money is not important, Will. I've grown up without…well, you can see what I grew up with, can't you? And Mary wouldn't take any. I paid to refence the field down by the river, but she'd had her stroke by then and she couldn't complain fast enough to stop me, so.”

“So it never was about the money. Selling this place to me.”

“
No
! I'd have given it to you, if I thought you'd take it. But if I had, how would you have run it, mmm? You would have had to carry on working at the paper for at least a couple of seasons just to fund your startup, and you'd probably have come to resent it, having to travel out here to dig and plant and stuff and then spend all week working to spend your weekends doing the same again, no. If you'd taken this place on your own, you would have come to hate it. But together…”

“Big finish music, maestro.”

“What?”

“You're starting to sound like a romance novel.”

“Sorry. All right then. But together, we can spend all our spare time arguing over where to plant parsley. Better?”

“There's no point arguing with you. It's like trying to juggle jelly.”

“Ha. Come on. Let's go and walk the acres and you can tell me about your plans. And don't try telling me that you haven't made any. I know what you're like, Willow. You'll have been drawing up little planting maps since the first time you saw the place.”

Maybe Ash had told him about the magazines.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Sunday afternoon, down by the river. The air was humid and heavy, lying over us like a damp flannel as the band set up the equipment. They'd brought a portable generator and a kind of small marquee, all paid for by Jazz, whose job, doing something unspecified and probably unspecific in an accountant's office, seemed to have paid some kind of bonus.

I lay on the grass and sweated like a horse. Ash was helping to hump speakers around, wearing a tiny vest and shorts and probably, knowing Ash, a film of baby oil just in case a tasty punter should wander by. Even Clay had been dragged away from his great allotment plans for the afternoon, with the promise of free beer (in a cool box under the shade of the marquee, again courtesy of Jazz, I was
definitely
in the wrong job) and Bree was somewhere on the periphery, trying not to catch anyone's eye.

I had a kind of fizz of anticipation in my stomach that owed nothing to my forthcoming performance. Yesterday, while Cal was occupied with some technical stuff, I'd browsed through some of the files we'd copied from Luke's laptop, reminding myself what a complete louse the man was, with his mass-produced I'll-love-you-forever letters and his varying accounts of what his job actually entailed. He'd been everything, from a hair-stylist-to-the-stars in LA (only needing the money to open his own salon over here) to a racehorse syndicate manager (just needing the money to buy his own dead cert horse and put it through training). Whilst I was surfing through the emails, sniggering at some of the more flowery phrases, I'd found a record of an online conversation he probably hadn't even known had been archived. I wouldn't have taken much notice, except that the date was familiar.

At first I hadn't known why, then it dawned. The twenty-seventh of May had been the first day of our weekend in Cornwall. The weekend that Luke had sent me off out to enjoy myself while he stayed in our room and “worked”.

Worked, my arse. He'd been hooked up to the internet, trawling for his next target, and it looked as though he'd found her. Argento was (or so she said, wouldn't it be great if it turned out that she was a
he
?) living in Bristol, had recently broken up with her boyfriend of seven years and was beginning to put her life back together again. Luke had spent, the archive told me, five and a half hours talking to her. Perhaps grooming would be a more accurate description. He'd told her that he was newly single (his wife had, apparently, “left him for his best friend” and he was finding it hard to trust again), from Wales, and a personal fitness instructor. He'd obviously picked up on her clues. She felt “fat and undervalued” and was sure “her weight was what drove her boyfriend away in the end”. But she also mentioned owning her own home and having a private income…and he'd talked about being in Bristol soon.

Bloody hell, Luke Fry was good at what he did.

My name, shouted over a power chord, pulled me to my feet and onto the stage. The crowd wasn't large, mostly families dotting the grass, enjoying the sunshine and ice creams. As we drove into the first number, others joined in until, nearing the end of the set, there were about a hundred people singing and clapping along with “Waterloo”
.
Spread-eagled on a bank beside the river, Ash, Bree and Clay were sharing a beer. It was only then that it occurred to me to wonder where OC was. Was it too hot for Grace to be out and about?

An instrumental break allowed me a drink of water and a longer look over the crowd. I could see Cal leaning against the van that had brought the equipment, moving lazily in time with the music, drinking wine from the bottle. He saw me notice him and raised the bottle in salute. In answer I stuck my tongue out, then the band changed song and I hurried back to the front of the makeshift stage, picking up my microphone.

Feedback hummed in the air, as Jazz flipped a switch, turning off my mike and grabbing his own. “Just something, um, yeah, to wrap up the set, a song for my favourite girl in the world,” he announced. The rest of the band and I exchanged a look—this definitely hadn't featured in rehearsals—and Jazz began to play alone, picking a tune out on his keyboard.

When it dawned on everyone what he was playing, they all joined in, bass first, then drums, then lead guitar. It was an old song, one we'd performed when we'd first got together, but was now so old-fashioned that we'd discarded it from the act in favour of The Human League and some of the less complicated Spandau Ballet. As I swung into backing lyrics, with Jazz fronting up, I saw what had triggered it. OC was pushing the three-wheeled, all-terrain buggy over the grass, Booter and Snag on either side like overweight dwarf huskies pulling a sledge. We were singing “Miss Grace”—satin, French perfume and lace indeed. OC stopped pushing, staring up at the stage, up at
Jazz
, with an almost awestruck expression. She pulled Grace free of her restraining straps and held her against her shoulder, swaying her in time to the song. I was sure she was singing along. When the song finished, Jazz brought his mike up again.

“I'd like to introduce you to Grace.” He held out a hand. As one, the crowd swivelled until everyone was looking at OC and the baby. “And her mother, the most fabulous woman in the world. And I know it's soon, and I know you're not divorced yet, and I know everything's complicated but, Oceana, would you marry me?”

And the crowd, as they say, went wild.

I used the tumult to cover my escape, slipping off the stage sweaty and hoarse, and finding my brothers waiting for me.

“That went well.” Clay pressed a beer into my hand and I rolled the chilled can around my hot forehead.

“All to plan, anyway.” Ash shaded his eyes and looked over the crowd. “What's she doing now?”

“Crying, I think.”

“Stupid bloody woman, doesn't know when she's well off. He's a billion times better than that prick she was married to.”

“Excuse me? What
plan
? Did you and Jazz cook all this up between you?”

Even Bree smiled at that. “It was the best way. She needs romance.”

I looked over at Jazz, his hair standing away from his head with the static in the air and the heat, holding Grace against him with one hand, and OC with the other. They were surrounded by people, and they were both smiling. It looked perfect, even though sweat was dripping from the ends of Jazz's hair and Grace was making a face which indicated that a full nappy was on the cards.

“Well, I guess being proposed to from a stage in front of a crowd is
pretty
romantic,” I said, grudgingly.

Ash blew a raspberry. “Hark at her.”

“How about cliffs at midnight?” Cal strolled up alongside us. “Would that be more your style?”

“I don't know. Is Cliff's some sort of bar?” I took the wine bottle from him and somehow everyone else slipped away and we were encased in our own little bubble of quiet. “It would beat down on one knee by a heap of dogshit anyway.”

“Ah, anything would be better than being proposed to by a heap of dogshit.” We'd not long been out of bed and he looked it, all tousled and unshaven.

“God, you're sexy.”

“Look who's talking.” As he pulled me against his hard body (oh yes, he was sexually insatiable, I'm not sure who's up for casting in the role but they'd better be able to portray the appetites of Peter Stringfellow), I looked up over his shoulder and found myself fighting free of his embrace.

“
Shit.
”

“What?” Hurt, Cal took a step back, let his hands fall to his sides. “What did I do?”

“Not you, over there. It's Luke! What the bloody buggery is
he
doing here? He's supposed to be in Wales.”

“It's all right, he hasn't seen you. Us. He's far too busy with what he's doing.”

From behind the cover of Cal, I peered out to where Luke was standing. He'd obviously been walking past and got caught up in the crowd scenes surrounding Jazz's proposal. “He wouldn't be here on purpose, would he? No, the gig wasn't advertised. Jazz set it all up by himself. Well, I know now why, but he's
supposed
to be in
Wales.
”

No, Luke was not in Wales. Instead, he was with a dark-haired woman.
Nadine
. Maybe he had seen me, and was working on his cover story for when
I
noticed
him
. I couldn't take the risk. I took another few steps away from Cal.

“Christ, I'll be glad when next weekend is over.”

It was no good. I couldn't risk that Luke had already seen me. Thank God Cal and I hadn't been doing anything more than talking.

“Luke. Hello, I thought you were off to Wales this weekend.” It was the devil that made me walk over there, face stretched in a welcoming smile. I could have just made a call-me gesture across the intervening space. But a little demonic part of me wanted to know how fast Luke really
could
talk his way out of a situation.

“Willow, how lovely to see you. We were on our way somewhere and we saw the crowd and…decided to come over.”

“Yes, we've just finished. Hello, Nadine, fancy seeing you here, too.”

Oh, Willow, you complete bitch. Poor Nadine, she's done nothing to deserve this. But Luke had obviously primed her. “Hello. I'm talking to Luke about showroom things.”

I could have followed this up. I
could
have forced her to talk for ages, to elaborate on the story that Luke had told
her
he'd told
me
, whilst all the while knowing that she thought he was someone, some
thing
else. But she looked pale and her face was hollowed and scared-looking. She was wearing a summer dress and my already suspicious eye detected a small bump under the waistline.

“Look, Will, I'd better get on. Nadine is showing me where the council regulations say that I have to put my car park. There's been a bit of a mistake, you see. I
thought
I could have it round the side, but, apparently, I have to have it somewhere away from the surface drains.”

He was eyeing me up and down as he spoke and I had a brief shiver of guilt. Was it obvious from looking at me that I'd spent the previous night wrapped around Cal? Did I look sexually sated? I thanked God for the blush-red cheeks that the combination of performing and the oppressive heat had brought. But no, it was just Luke. Ogling my breasts as though he wanted to rip my bra off there and then.

“Talk to the face, cos the boobs ain't listening,” I muttered. “Nice to see you again, Nadine. I'll call you, Luke, okay?”

Nadine granted me a cool nod, sucking her cheeks in as she did so. Luke looked over at Cal. “I see you've brought a friend, too. You've got so many male friends, Willow, I'm surprised you've got time for me.”

Oooh, Mr. Clever. Not only had he managed to spin an on-the-spot story, but he'd managed to draw attention to Cal in such a way as to make me feel guilty. He'd ended his phrase with a self-deprecating little laugh, but I knew it for the warning it was. “You mention Nadine, and I'll point out that you seem to be running around with half the male population of Yorkshire.”