Sheer Abandon (54 page)

Nothing had happened, no reporter had arrived on her doorstep, no accusing voice had come on the phone, no angry child had come into her life. It was going to be all right: she allowed herself to think that now. It had died down, as she had told herself it would. Everything was safely and neatly parcelled up again; the past in the past, the present in the present.

But there was one thing straddling the two—and that was Ed.

He simply wouldn’t go away. He called her and texted her endlessly. He had been in reception at Wesley her first day back. He was patient, reasonable, not aggressive, not difficult; he said he wasn’t into stalking her or pestering her, he just wanted to know she was all right.

A pattern had developed: he would call her every other day or so on her mobile and as many times at home; he sounded surprisingly cheerful, absolutely calm, asking how she was. And she would tell him she was fine, that there was nothing wrong, that he had to forget about her, and he would say it was impossible, until he knew why he should. He would ask her what she was doing, and she would reply that she was working or going to Binsmow, and after a few more pleasantries, he would tell her that he would call her again soon and hang up. It was all very agreeable really: only it hurt more than she would have believed.

She missed him—horribly.

But she was surviving. Everything did seem perfectly all right. And a blank, bland, sexless life seemed a small price to pay for that.

“I’m fine, Ed,” she said, picking up the phone now, slightly reluctantly, “really fine. Thank you.”

“Good. And are you going to this bash tonight?”

“What bash?” she said carefully.

“The big party that Gideon Keeble and his girlfriend are giving. To celebrate their wedding. I read about it in the
Mail
, about how you have to have a security number to give the guy at the gate so you can get in.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Why should I be going to that?”

“It said the whole of the Centre Forward Party was going. I assume that includes you.”

“No, Ed, it doesn’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I shall call tomorrow and see how you enjoyed it.”

She knew whatever she said, he would. “Bye, Ed,” she said firmly.

“What do you think then?”

Kate walked into the sitting room, where Nat was waiting for her. She was wearing an extremely short silver-sequinned shift dress, almost backless, with a silver chiffon sash round the dropped waist. Her long legs were encased in white tights, and her shoes were silver also, high-heeled with a bar across the instep. Her hair was in a long, loose plait, draped across her right shoulder; she wore a silver band on her forehead, dangly, glittery earrings, and a slave bangle in the shape of a snake coiled round her upper arm. Her huge dark eyes were heavily made up, with long, overtly fake eyelashes, and her mouth was a slash of red against her white skin. She carried a vast white fur stole draped over one arm. There was a silence. Then he said, “You look pretty—cool.”

“Nat! I’ve been three hours getting like this. You have to do better than that.”

“Oh, OK then. You look great.”

“That’s better. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“This OK, is it?” he said anxiously. “I don’t look like a tosser?”

“Not a bit. Did you have that suit before?”

“Course not. I bought it, didn’t I? What’d I want with a dinner suit?” She considered his life and saw his point.

“Well, it suits you. You look really, really sexy.”

“Yeah?” He studied himself closely in the small oval mirror over the fireplace. “So where’d you get that dress, Kate, it’s well nice.”

“A fancy dress place Fergus took me to.”

“Oh yeah?” Nat scowled. He wasn’t keen on Fergus; he thought Kate took too much notice of him.

“What about your hair, I suppose Fergus did that an’ all?”

“Don’t be silly, Nat. He’s not a hairdresser. No, Gran did it.”

“Yeah? She’s all right, your gran. She still coming?”

“Of course. She’s coming in the other car with Mum and Dad and some old bloke she calls her date. She’s really excited. Mum and Dad aren’t exactly looking forward to it,” she added. “Dad’s really miserable.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Nat confidently. “He can stick with me.”

It was a tribute to Fergus’s powers of persuasion that Kate was going at all, let alone her parents. They had been completely horrified when the invitations arrived, one for Kate and partner, one for Mr. and Mrs. James Tarrant. Jim had told Helen to put theirs in the bin where it belonged, that Kate would go over his dead body and wild horses wouldn’t drag him there.

“Well, you’ll have to die then,” said Kate calmly, “because I’m going. I’m not missing this, not for anything.”

“No harm can possibly come to her,” Fergus told them, earnestly. “This will be a grown-up party; in fact she’ll probably be bored in no time. But it will be wonderful for her to go, and a lovely reward for working so hard at her exams. And isn’t that great, Jocasta inviting you, too? You’ll have a wonderful night, I promise you. She told me she was asking Kate’s grandmother as well: I think that’s a very nice touch.”

Finally, because Kate was so determined to go, they all went. She couldn’t go alone, with Nat and Sarah and Bernie, Helen thought, and it was asking too much of Fergus to look after her. There was no way Jim would entrust her to Jilly—“She’d be selling her into the white slave trade before the end of the night,” he said.

As time went by, Helen was actually beginning to look forward to the party, just a little. It sounded so glamorous. Fergus had helped her with hiring a costume, a very nice silver shift dress, and Jilly had suggested she have her hair pulled back into a loose chignon, wear long glittery earrings, and carry a long cigarette holder. After all, as she said to Jim, no one would expect anything of them, they wouldn’t have to talk to anyone frightening, except of course Jocasta’s new husband, who was, after all, their own generation. And he must be a very respectable person; Kate had told her that he and Jocasta were going to the concert and fireworks at the Palace for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. That had clinched it, really, for Helen. They could just sit there and eat some food, which she was sure would be very nice, and watch. It would be like going to the cinema.

Jilly was beside herself with excitement, trying on and rejecting dress after dress, discussing her hairstyle endlessly with Laura at Hair and Now in Guildford, over old copies of
Vogue
, practising the Charleston in her sitting room. The invitation had said, “Mrs. Jillian Bradford and partner” and she had agonised over who to take, finally settling on Martin Bruce, who had been best man at her own wedding and was a recent widower.

Sarah and Bernie and two of the more reliable boys they went round with, Cal and Kevin, all invited by Kate, had pretended to be cool about it at first, but as the days went by and the column inches about the party grew, they gave up and became very excited. The rumour that Westlife were going to do a spot really pushed them over the top. OK, they were a bit naff, but still they were—well, they were Westlife, for God’s sake. There. In the flesh. To dance to. It wasn’t exactly bad.

“Right,” said Nat, as the doorbell rang, “that’ll be our car then. S’pose we’d better go.”

He was interestingly composed; nothing really fazed him. His attitude to life was very attractive, Helen thought: she had become quite fond of him over the past few weeks. He was cheerful, good-natured, and, in a rather idiosyncratic way, nicely mannered. He was also touchingly thoughtful and clearly devoted to Kate. Helen hoped she wasn’t being naïve in her confidence that they weren’t sleeping together.

Clio was still wrestling with her hair when the first cars started coming up the drive. She had a wild desire to run away. Jocasta would never miss her now—she was standing on the steps of the house in a state of high excitement, greeting, kissing, laughing, hugging. She had done her duty after all, Clio thought, calming her all day and just occasionally wandering round the grounds, marvelling at what imagination, combined with money, could accomplish. Jay Gatsby would have been very satisfied with this.

A massive marquee stood just to the rear of the house, with lanterns strung across the trees above it; there was a jazz band on a platform on one side and a white grand piano, complete with pianist in white tie and tails, on the other. A fountain, made of outsize champagne glasses, played on the terrace; and beside that stood Gideon’s pride and joy, a black-and-silver twenties Chevrolet. A photographer was on hand for any guests who might wish to pose in it. Several cocktail bars, complete with barmen, were dotted about the grounds; a flashing sign on a gleaming black-and-silver deco-style structure said
CASINO
, and next to it, something that declared itself to be a cinema.

Girls in long white crepe dresses wandered languidly about with borzois on leads (“Actually not Gatsby at all, more thirties, but never mind,” Jocasta said to Clio), men in Al Capone suits and slouch hats carried trays of drinks, and gangsters’ molls, with too much makeup and floozies’ curls, offered cigarettes and lighters. After dinner, and before the dancing, there was to be a treasure hunt, a great twenties craze.

It was a perfect evening, warm but not hot, the sky starry, a nearly full moon hanging obligingly in it.

She had met Gideon, and of course she had been totally charmed by him. She could see so easily how Jocasta would have fallen in love with him, how it had all happened. Warm, easy, tactile, and extremely attractive, not only good-looking, in his untidy Irish way, but with that crackling energy and capacity for intent concentration on whomever he was talking to. Clio felt she could have fallen in love with him herself. For a person as romantic and emotionally hungry as Jocasta, he had obviously been irresistible.

Just the same, she thought, observing him over the twenty-four hours, watching as he appeared from time to time, then vanished again, completely uninvolved in the party, in what was going on, while striding about the house, mobile clamped to his ear, jabbing at his Palm Pilot, summoned frequently by the PA he had installed at the house for the day to deal with some crisis or other, to take calls, sign faxes, read e-mails, was this really the husband Jocasta needed?

When the first few months were over would she just become part of his empire, another dazzling acquisition to be displayed and admired, but no longer the absolute object of his attention? Clio feared for Jocasta.

And now the party was about to come to life; all the brilliant, famous, distinguished guests would appear, and Clio felt as close to terrified as she could ever remember. The dressmaker had done her proud, made her a pale blue chiffon dress, ankle-length with a drifting skirt, set off with long ropes of pearls; and her hair lent itself perfectly to the period, curved obediently into Marcel-like waves, held back from her face with a pair of diamanté clips.

But her spirit didn’t quite match it. She sprayed herself lavishly with scent, touched up her already brilliant-red mouth—and then sank back on her bed, feeling dreadful. Who ever could she talk to, who on earth would she know? God. What a nightmare. She couldn’t do this, she really couldn’t.

And then she had the idea. She could leave now. She would just quietly slip away: no one would miss her. Least of all Jocasta. It was perfectly brilliant. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She could call for a cab once she reached the lane that led to the house; it would be easy.

She smiled at herself in the mirror with positive pleasure. Deciding to stay in her costume—she might meet Jocasta on the stairs or something if she changed—she picked up her bag and the fox stole she had hired and cautiously opened her door. The corridor was deserted; she was nearly at the bottom of the stairs, when she heard her name.

“Clio, hello! How lovely to see you.”

It was Fergus, smiling up at her, wonderfully handsome in white tie and tails; he came up to her, caught her hand, and kissed it.

“You look marvellous. A real twenties femme fatale! What a lucky man I am, to have caught you on your own.”

She smiled at him rather feebly, wondering what she might do next.

“Would you like to take a turn round the grounds with me? Once everyone arrives, we won’t be able to see for looking.”

“Well, I…” This was hugely tempting; Fergus was the opposite of demanding company, so easy and charming and funny. She might begin to feel part of the evening with him, even enjoy it a bit, and then when he found someone better, which he surely would, she could slip away.

“Or,” he said, “do you have a beau waiting for you to come down and join him? I expect you do.”

“Fergus, I don’t have any beau anywhere,” she said laughing, “and I’d love to take a turn with you. I’ve been sitting up there in my room, feeling quite scared.”

“You ridiculous woman,” he said, “what have you to be scared of? It’s going to be fun, just you see if it isn’t. And did you know we’re on the same table for dinner? With old Johnny Hadley, diary writer on the
Sketch
. He’s the best fun in the world and has so many scurrilous stories. We’ll all have a wonderful time together. Come along, my darling, and let’s take a tour. Now, did you get that hospital job you were after?”