River Deep (47 page)

Maggie literally backed down off her tiptoes and huffed at Louise’s acquiescence.

‘Either way, he won’t come tonight. She won’t let him, or he won’t want to, and maybe it’s for the best. I was stupidly building my hopes, but it’s better to know now and just get on with the whole most-important-night-of-my-professional-career-to-date thing. It’s Sarah’s fault. I blame her fully.’

Louise picked the discarded dress up off the floor and returned it to its hanger, glad to be off the top of Maggie’s hit list.

‘So you’re definitely sure you’re not buying this dress?’ she asked.

Maggie looked at her closely. ‘Definitely sure,’ she said. ‘It’s just not me. It’s too tight, it’s too red, it’s too much.’

Louise nodded and pursed her lips in thought before saying, ‘I’m sorry, Maggie.’

Maggie raised her eyebrows. ‘What for?’ she said.

‘For trying to get you to buy a dress that makes you look like a hooker.’ Louise held out her hand. ‘There was a little bit of me that thought you might be after Christian, still, with all your niceness and your policy of openness, and it’s wrong, but I thought, well, I know how Christian hates tarty women …’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Maggie said, looking pointedly at Louise’s cleavage.

‘OK, I deserved that. But now, seeing you … I can see there’s no way you’d go after him now. So I’m sorry, really honestly sorry. Let’s call it a proper truce this time. Can we start again?’

Maggie took her hand. ‘Again again?’ she said with half a smile.

‘Well, if a thing’s worth doing …’ Louise said with a shrug.

‘Come on,’ Maggie said to her. ‘We’ve been gone nearly an hour. Time’s up.’

‘But what are you going to wear?’ Louise asked her.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got millions of clothes. It just doesn’t seem that important any more.’

Pete thought he’d found approximately the same piece of ground that he’d lain on with Maggie all those weeks ago, looking at stars and talking about Stella. It was soggy and damp now, and run through with deep scars of mud where dogs and children had skidded chasing footballs or autumn leaves. Looking up at the same sky, now covered with densely woven cloud leaning low above the horizon, Pete felt that if he could only stretch up high enough he’d be able to touch them, to part the sky and see those stars again.

When he’d been here before with Maggie, there had been not a shadow of doubt in his mind about how he felt for Stella, maybe because her influence over him had burnt so brightly within him that it had chased out any possibility of shadows until finally she was too far away to be able to reach him. In just a short space of time, everything he had imagined he felt, the frailly built construct of her image, had fallen into tiny pieces at his feet. Pete sat down on the muddy grass and, drawing his knees up, dropped his head into his hands.

He was angry with Stella, angry that she had squandered every single chance they had had until there was nothing left. And angry with himself for not seeing a year or two or three ago that there would never be enough chances for them, that ‘for ever’ wouldn’t have been long enough for them to get it right. And he felt sad, incredibly sad. Part of him couldn’t help but feel that he had failed her. The first time he had set eyes on her laughing in the moonlight, he’d promised himself that he would be the one to save her, and he had failed.

Large drops of rain began to hit his cold hands and his bare head, and because although he wanted this to happen, he wished it didn’t have to hurt anyone, and because the end of this part of his life, though necessary was so painful, Pete began to cry until his tears were lost in the pouring rain.

Maggie held her breath and looked around at the newly refurbished bar of The Fleur. It shone and glittered underneath the spot lighting, and shimmered a little, like a mirage. Except that it wasn’t a mirage, it was real. It had happened, and Maggie had made it happen. Oh, and Sheila, and Jim, and her mum and dad a bit, and then Christian at the last minute, and ever so slightly Louise. Not to mention Keisha and CMS Commercial Builders and Fitters. But mainly it had been Maggie. It had been Maggie’s vision and her ideas, and somehow, though immersed in the mess of her personal life, she had still managed to pull it all together.

‘Just imagine,’ Maggie thought, raising her eyebrows as the idea occurred to her, ‘what I could have done if I hadn’t just been chucked by my long-term boyfriend and then immediately spurned by the first other man I met?’ Then Maggie realised that if that had been the case, she’d still be sharing a flat with Christian, still doing sex in the same three positions and still filling invoices, and would never even have had the
chance
to be spurned by Pete. For a while now, Maggie had accepted with good grace the changes in her life, even embraced them – but it was only at this moment, standing on the brink of a new age for The Fleur, that she could say that Christian leaving her was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

It had woken her up and shaken a new kind of drive and confidence into her that she thought she had lost, that she’d actually forgotten she’d ever had. Maggie smiled and breathed in, puffing out her chest with pride.

‘Are you actually going to say anything, Maggie? Or are you going to stand there gawping like a fish out of water while we stand around like lemons? I’m gasping for a drink!’

Maggie jumped and looked at Sarah, who was standing with crossed arms a few feet in front of her. Oh yes, she was supposed to be making a little speech before they opened the doors on the launch party guests.

‘Er, right. Yes, sorry.’ Maggie looked around her at everyone who stood in the bar. Her mum and dad stood just to her right, her dad’s hand on her mum’s shoulder. Jim stood to her left, leaning against the new bar with the same kind of new confidence that Maggie thought she’d discovered in herself. Sarah had come early to do her hair, with Marcus, both of them laughing like a couple of kids the moment they’d got here. Keisha stood by the kitchen doors, her arms crossed across her whites like a gourmet gangsta rapper. Sheila was there, of course, in her best finery, and finally Christian and Louise, dressed in red, looking a million times better than Maggie ever would have.

‘Um, I just wanted to say that, well, everyone in this room has been so important in helping us get The Fleur back off the ground. These last few weeks have had their ups … and downs.’ Maggie tried hard not to look at Christian but did anyway. ‘If someone had told me when this all began that all of the people that are standing in this room right now would be here, and what’s more would be my very dear friends, I wouldn’t have believed them!’ Maggie caught the eye of one of the Fresh Talent waiters she’d borrowed for the evening. ‘Um, except for the waiters, that is, because I don’t really know them. I’m sure they’re super, but anyway …’

Sarah rolled her eyes and performed a theatrical yawn at Marcus as she leaned back against his chest.

‘But
anyway
,’ Maggie scowled at Sarah, ‘
none
of this could have happened without all of you. Most especially Sheila. Sheila, my family has known you for most of our lives, and during that time you’ve never stopped surprising us! Stumping up the cash for The Fleur was the biggest surprise of all, and I really hope you’re pleased with your investment.’

Sheila, who was sitting on the other side of the bar for once, took a long drag on her cigarette, which she had inserted into a long black holder for the occasion.

‘Ain’t nothing, Mag,’ she said, with a very pleased smile, through a curl of smoke, shrugging so that the sequins on her black beaded top glittered.

Maggie shook her head. ‘No, it is something, Sheila.’ Maggie glanced round at her family. ‘It’s everything, and I want you to know that we love you, Mum, Dad, Jim – all of us – love you very much.’

Maggie smiled and glanced around the room.

‘Talking of family, a lot of positive things have come out of my return to The Fleur, a lot. But the main thing is that I’ve made some really good new friends, friends I think I’ll just get closer and closer to as time goes on. I got to make friends with my family again after a very long time, and … I’m sorry if that sounds soppy, Sarah, but that’s how I feel.’ Maggie put her arms as far around her family as they would go. ‘Mum, Dad, Jim, I’m so glad that I’m home again.’

‘Hip! Hip!’ Christian started the cheer and everyone else joined in with the hoorays as best they were able to without laughing.

‘Right then,’ Maggie said, breaking free from the embrace. ‘We’re open for business!’

‘You should drink more,’ Sarah said, leaning closer to Maggie so that she could be heard over the hum of the crowd. ‘If you drank more and worried less, you’d have a better time!’

Maggie shook her head at her ever so slightly tipsy friend.

‘That’s easy for you to say. You and Marcus stuck in traffic is your idea of having fun these days. Anyway, this isn’t about having fun, it’s about making sure everyone else is having fun.’ Maggie looked anxiously around her. ‘Do you think I should go and say hello to that journalist, or do you think I should just leave her to it?’

Sarah glanced over at the woman who was seriously flirting with Declan.

‘I think she’d kill you if you went over there. She’s scored!’ Sarah leaned her elbows back on the bar. ‘Maggie, for God’s sake, relax will you? Everything’s going really well. The food’s great, the atmosphere’s fantastic, the champagne’s flowing. Everyone turned up! I don’t know what you’re worried about.’

Maggie took in the scene around her. It was true – everyone was having a good time. In fact, in one corner a few people had started almost dancing to the Latin American music Maggie had chosen as background.

‘Not quite everyone came,’ Maggie said, sighing under her breath. ‘Not Falcon or Angie or … anyone.’

‘What?’ Sarah raised her voice and cupped her hand to her ear.

‘I said, what the hell, I’ll have another drink!’ Maggie called back and, taking the champagne that Sarah handed her, drank deeply, tipping her head back. When she returned her chin to its appropriate position, her head was swimming a little, so for a moment she thought she was seeing things. She blinked again and then once more for luck. No, she wasn’t hallucinating. It really was Pete standing in front of her.

‘Have you got something in your eye?’ he said. ‘You seem to be blinking a lot.’

Maggie shook her head, dumbstruck, and looked at the space where Sarah had been standing. She’d made herself very scarce indeed in double-quick time. Maggie forced the muscles in her throat to work.

‘Pete, gosh,’ she said, wondering when the last time was – if ever – that she had used the word ‘gosh’. ‘I didn’t expect you to come …’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Pete said anxiously.

‘No! No, no. Not at all. I’m … glad … you’re here.’ Maggie licked her suddenly dry lips and sipped her drink. ‘Um, do you want one? A glass of champagne, I mean?’ she asked him.

Pete wrinkled his nose a little. ‘Got any ale on?’

Maggie nodded and leaned over the bar, shouting her order to the new barman. Pete moved to stand beside her, seemingly looking everywhere in the room except for the few square feet that she occupied.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said, ‘you’ve done a really good job in here.’ He nodded over to where Falcon and Angie were deep in conversation, probably about Falcon being so rude to Justin that he’d refused to come with them tonight and told Angie he expected her to stay behind with him. Only she didn’t. ‘I think even Falc likes it.’

Maggie looked at Falcon and Angie, who seemed so intent on each other that they could have been standing in the middle of the M25 and wouldn’t have noticed.

‘How can you tell?’ Maggie asked, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘I can’t,’ Pete said with a rueful shrug. ‘I just can’t think of anything else to say.’

Maggie smiled at him, and he resisted the urge to either grab her right then or run away for good. He discovered what the expression ‘steeling yourself’ meant as he felt every sinew and joint in his body stiffen. He had to hold his nerve now, when he’d come so far. And this wasn’t something to rush – he had to get it right. He had to be all romantic and say the right thing. Oh bollocks.

‘Do you have to be out here?’ Pete blurted. ‘Being hostess, I mean, or have you got five minutes? Because I was wondering if we could … I mean, is there somewhere we could go to, um, talk at all?’

Maggie wondered if she had misheard him over the din of the crowd, but she nodded her head anyway.

‘Sure,’ she said, impulsively taking his hand and feeling in that second as if she had stepped into thin air as she felt the weight and warmth of it in her own. She led him through the crowd, stopping every few feet to exchange a few half-heard words with someone or to shake someone’s hand. They went out of the bar, past the kitchen and into the small, half-lit hallway with the stairs that led up to the flat. Should she take him up there, she wondered? What would it mean? What would he think it meant? She looked at him still not looking at her, and realised she had no idea what he was going to say. She had no idea what she was going to say, only that in the next few seconds each of them would have said everything that had to be said and it would all be over one way or another. Maggie sat down on the stairs, somehow losing the energy to climb them even if she had wanted too. After a second Pete joined her, sitting a step below her.

‘I’m glad you came––’

‘It’s good to see you––’

They both spoke together.

‘It’s good to see you properly, I mean,’ Pete repeated with a smile, looking fondly at Maggie’s left ear.

‘And you,’ Maggie said. ‘And how’s Stella?’

Pete dropped his head suddenly, slumping his shoulders.

‘She’s gone. This afternoon, after we saw you, we … well, she’s gone.’

Maggie saw his bowed head and his dropped shoulders and saw how sad he was.

‘Oh Pete, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that she’s gone,’ she said.

Pete shook himself a little and, taking a deep breath, looked up. He looked right at Maggie, right into those huge dark eyes, and felt like he was leaping into the unknown.