Strictly Love (18 page)

‘I think it's Jasmine,’ Emily said. Oh great. Just the kind of high-profile case she didn't want.

‘That's the one.’ Mel snapped her fingers decisively. ‘Her dentist pulled out a tooth and there's been a breach of confidentiality, so we're suing the pants off him. Here are the details.’

She shoved a file at Emily, and Emily opened it gloomily.

Jasmine Symonds v Mark Davies.

She did a double take. The page swam before her eyes.

Jasmine Symonds v Mark Davies.

It was there. In black and white.

Oh my god,
she thought,
Mark was the dentist.
Now what was she going to do?

Chapter Twenty-two

 

‘Sorry, did you say something?’

Shit, she must have spoken her thoughts out loud. Emily tried to gather what was left of her wits about her. Her heart was pounding. She couldn't take this case. There was no way she could prosecute Mark. But if she didn't and said why, Mel would immediately say she had a conflict of interests. Hell, she might even lose her job. And at the moment, she couldn't afford to. Why hadn't Mark mentioned the case to her? she wondered anxiously. What else might he be keeping from her?

‘I don't think I can take this case after all,’ said Emily, her voice coming out in a squeak. ‘I mean, it's probably quite complex, and I do have a lot of other stuff on …’ Her voice trailed off. She knew Mel would never buy it.

‘I see. I take it you still want to be a senior associate,’ Mel said with silky sweetness, her talons tapping the desk. ‘We only want team players here. Are you a team player or not?’

Emily thought back over the months she'd spent working late while Mel swanned off to expensive dinners with clients. It was on the tip of her tongue to scream how unfair it all was, but she knew that would cut no ice with Mel. Mel didn't give a toss about things being unfair. She just cared about results and would get them in the most ruthless manner possible.

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Emily.

‘If you want that promotion you take the case,’ said Mel.
‘I don't think you understand quite how important it is to us. Andrew managed to cock up on the last case involving a client of A-Listers, and they represent rather a large portion of our business. We cannot afford to lose them as clients. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Crystal,’ said Emily miserably.

‘Good, because if you're not on side, I'm sure I can find someone else to fill your shoes.’

Emily stalled. Maybe there was a way around this. Maybe. Though God knew what it would be. ‘Do I have to give you an answer now?’

‘You have till tomorrow afternoon,’ said Mel, waving her away.

Emily flew out of the room in a state of semi-incoherent rage. How could this be happening to her? How? All those years trying to haul herself up the ladder. All that hard work she'd put in. And now, when it was within her grasp, she was facing the worst moral dilemma of her life.

Of course she shouldn't take the case. She knew Mark was innocent of any wrongdoing. He must be. And she was hopelessly compromised. But there was the small matter of her financial situation, and the fact that her cosy little country cottage seemed to eat money. Last year she'd had to put in a damp course, and it was only a matter of time before she was going to have to replace the roof. Every time the wind blew, another tile seemed to come off. Morally she should say no, but practically it wasn't going to be easy.

She wondered how Mark would react. She knew what he'd want her to do. She knew what she wanted to do. But could she do it?

Katie was cleaning. She'd washed windows and dusted surfaces; she'd scrubbed baths and poured bleach down loos; she'd cleared out cupboards and hoovered carpets. She'd reorganised her
cupboards –
again
. She'd been at it all week. The events of the weekend had made her feel out of control. Cleaning was a way of regaining that control. Molly solemnly watched her from her high chair where she was banging the saucepan and spoon that Katie had provided to keep her amused. It was giving Katie a headache, and she'd already picked the wretched things up half a dozen times, as for Molly part of the game also involved throwing them on the floor. So the kitchen surfaces that Katie was attempting to clean had taken twice as long to do as they should have.

She stood back and looked at her handiwork. The stainless-steel cooker and sink gleamed back at her, returned to their former glory after a weekend with Charlie's haphazard cooking and lack of cleaning.

‘There,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘At least that looks better.’

A pity that it wasn't possible to clean out the parts of your life you wanted to run away from, she thought. She'd embarked on this orgy of cleaning partly to help her forget, to ensure she wasn't thinking about Rob twenty-four-seven, but it hadn't worked. Not one bit. Every time she shut her eyes his face swam before her. She could hear him laughing at her for her cleaning obsession. Charlie laughed too, but not so kindly. And all she could think of was that scene by the river, where she'd sat and held Rob's hand and comforted him. Or the look in his eyes at the end of the rumba. Charlie had
never
looked at her like that.

Stop it. Stop it
. She had to get these thoughts out of her head. Rob was just a distraction. She'd let herself fall for someone who was paying her attention, instead of her husband who'd lost interest. It was up to her to regain that interest. Somehow she had to persuade Charlie that she was the sexy, beautiful woman Rob so clearly thought she was.

Molly threw the saucepan again and laughed gleefully as it hit the floor with a satisfying clang. Katie went to pick it up and knocked the calendar off the wall. She idly flicked through it,
noting birthdays she mustn't miss and appointments she had to keep. The answer was staring her in the face. It was Charlie's fortieth birthday in August. He'd been as miserable as sin about it, claiming not to want to celebrate. If she organised a surprise party for him, then surely Charlie would realise how much she really loved him, and everything would be all right. And if there was a voice in her head which insisted on telling her she was clutching at straws, well, she was just going to ignore it.

Rob sat in the staffroom marking his Year Eight essays on Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada. If he had to read another essay which stated that Philip had dissed Elizabeth he was going to burst a blood vessel. He was all for taking a modern approach to his subject, but there were limits.

He sighed and put down the essay he was looking at, and stared out of the window at the Year Ten boys playing football and the girls trying to skive off netball. Rob couldn't have given a monkey's about Elizabeth I at the moment. All he could think about was Katie. All he had thought about since the weekend was Katie. He was still horrified by how much of his soul he had laid bare on Saturday night. Rob the prankster, Rob the joker. Christ, he'd nearly been in tears. All those years of not talking about it, and suddenly he'd had to blurt it all out. And now he felt all at sea.

What Rob wanted, with a feeling that was more painful than anything he'd ever experienced before – even losing Suzie – was for Katie not to be married. For years and years he had perfected the art of not falling in love – of leaving women as soon as his heart was even remotely compromised. And now he was putty in the hands of the one woman he couldn't have. Maybe Katie was right and he should think about counselling. He decided he would look into it at least.

Rob had never been in the business of breaking up marriages. He'd never needed to, having always found a steady source of
willing singletons. But Katie was different. He was different when Katie was around. She'd got under his skin in a way that he could never have thought possible. After all those years of being determinedly single, suddenly he didn't want that any more. But was it too much to ask for at his age, to find a woman he loved and one who was prepared to love him? He'd watched Emily and Mark with considerable envy at the weekend. They had something that had eluded him for years. Something that, until he met Katie, he'd never thought he'd find again And now he had. But he couldn't have it. He felt like a kid in the toyshop with no money. Life was sometimes incredibly unfair.

‘Emily, this is an unexpected surprise,’ Mark said. Emily had said she would have to work late for the next couple of nights, so they had agreed to meet again later in the week to go out for a meal. Even though they'd only said goodbye that morning, he'd been missing her badly and wondering whether he should call on her. The minute they'd parted he'd been feeling stressed that she might have second thoughts. He desperately needed the reassurance of seeing her again. ‘Do you want a drink? I could open a bottle of wine if you like.’

‘That would be nice.’ Emily looked different somehow. Awkward. Ill at ease. She responded stiffly to his embrace. Oh God. Maybe she'd come to tell him she'd changed her mind.

‘Is everything all right?’ Mark asked as he ushered her into the kitchen. His heart was pounding. The weekend had been so perfect, so special. He didn't think he could stand it if she'd come round to say it was all a ghastly mistake.

‘Red or white?’ asked Mark, picking up a bottle of each.

‘So long as it's alcohol, I don't care,’ Emily said.

She had picked up a bit of Blu Tack from the table, which she was twisting nervously round and round.

‘Come into the lounge,’ said Mark. Emily was so different, so on edge. It was making him nervous.

But when they sat down, and Mark persuaded her that they really had to watch another episode of
Spaced
, she seemed back to normal again. She snuggled up to him, and he felt himself relax. But after about half an hour, Emily wriggled out from under his arm, put her head in her hands and said, ‘I can't do this.’

‘What?’ Mark was alarmed now. She looked desolate, and there was a slightly desperate look in her eye that didn't bode well.

She paused again, and said, ‘Mark, I've got something to tell you.’

Here it is, thought Mark. Here's the moment when my dreams go up in smoke.

‘Oh?’ he said with pretended lightness.

‘Well, the thing is,’ Emily was twisting her hands round and round, ‘I've got a dilemma. I went into work today and my boss gave me a new case. If I work on it, it could mean promotion. More money, maybe.’

‘That's great, isn't it?’ Mark looked puzzled. Maybe it was in the Outer Hebrides.

‘Not really,’ said Emily. ‘She wants me to work on your case.’

‘Oh.’ A cold chill spread through Mark. She had to have said no. She must have said no. There couldn't be another response, could there?

‘you've said no,’ Mark said. ‘Haven't you?’

‘I haven't said anything yet,’ said Emily. ‘Why didn't you tell me about it?’

‘Because that's the shitty, crappy part of my life, and you're the good bit of my life. Only you're not, are you? Not now.’

‘Believe me, Mark, I didn't know,’ Emily said. ‘Well, I knew Jasmine was suing a dentist, but not who it was. Not until today. And I came straight here to talk to you about it.’

‘What is there to talk about?’ asked Mark. ‘We're going out. You can't work on a case against me. It's unethical.’

‘I haven't said no.’ Emily looked thoroughly miserable now.

‘Why the bloody hell not?’ Mark was almost speechless.

‘Because if I say no, I'm going to lose my job,’ said Emily.

‘Then get another one,’ Mark told her. ‘I don't know many lawyers who are out of work.’

‘I'm getting top whack, though,’ said Emily. ‘I'd be hard pushed to find that elsewhere, and I'm struggling with the mortgage as it is. And there's my mam's loan. I can't just give up my job without anywhere to go.’

‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘So you're not prepared to do this for me.’

‘No, I mean, yes. Of course I don't want to work against you,’ said Emily. ‘But I can't afford to lose my job. I haven't got anything to fall back on.’

‘Then find a way, Emily,’ said Mark, getting up. ‘If you really loved me, you would.’

‘Of course I love you!’ said Emily. ‘How could you think I don't? Why do you think I'm so upset about this?’

‘Are you? Really?’ asked Mark. ‘If you were, you wouldn't put money above me. I can't believe you're even considering taking this case. And after all that rubbish you gave me about your dad.’

‘Don't you dare bring my dad into this.’ Emily jumped to her feet angrily. ‘It has nothing to do with the things I said about him.’

‘Doesn't it?’ Mark shot back. ‘There you were telling me how shallow and crap you realised your job was, and it was only your dad dying that made you see the light. But you didn't change jobs for him, and now you won't for me.’

‘If that's the way you feel, then perhaps I'd better go,’ said Emily.

‘Perhaps you'd better,’ said Mark angrily.

Emily picked up her things and walked to the door. She looked absolutely shattered and a part of Mark wanted to stop her and say it would be all right. That they would get through it. But he didn't stop her. How could it possibly be all right now?

‘You're wrong, you know,’ she said as she left. ‘Just because I'm thinking about practicalities, it doesn't mean I don't love you.’

And with that she was gone, and Mark was left staring at his wine glass, feeling like the biggest fool on the planet.

Chapter Twenty-three

 

Emily sat at her desk and looked blankly at the file before her. Her eyes felt raw and swollen from crying, her mouth was dry and her head was thumping. She had slept very little the night before and had already endured several comments from her colleagues about looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. She felt like it too.

Symonds v Davies
.

Why did it have to come to her?

She opened the file, thinking she might as well get a feeling for what she was dealing with. After what Mark had said yesterday it didn't look like they had a future together. If he thought the worst of her, maybe she should live up to his expectations. And yet she felt heartsick as she read through the file and saw Jasmine's bleating self-justification about what was really something so deeply insignificant in the scheme of things as to be risible – if the consequences for the man she loved weren't so serious.

Because the more she read, the more Emily realised that Mark was in big, big trouble. Whoever had rung the News of the Screws had done so after-hours from the practice phone, and there was a statement from one of Mark's colleagues that he had been working late on the night in question. In another statement the same colleague claimed that Mark had been shooting his mouth off in the pub about how Jasmine didn't have perfect teeth at
all. Emily frowned. Now that didn't sound a bit like Mark. But then again, although he'd been merry in her presence, she hadn't seen him that drunk. Maybe he
was
different then.

Jasmine's statement was to the effect that she had had trouble with Mark in the past, and had had to complain about a filling in a back tooth that had fallen out. She then went on to say that he had lied to her about needing a crown on her tooth. She'd gone along for a regular check-up and he'd told her she needed a root canal, but on the day in question he had just taken out her tooth without a by-your-leave, and had ignored her pleas to save the tooth for the sake of her career. With a sigh, Emily rang the number in the file for Jasmine's PA and set up a meeting. Maybe she could find something to help Mark if she ran through the statement one more time.

Reading further, Emily discovered there was also reason to believe that Mark Davies should have declared a conflict of interest as his ex-wife worked for
Smile, Please!
, Jasmine's sponsor, and there was a good chance the leak came out that way.

Emily frowned again. Mark hadn't said much about Sam, but she'd got the impression they weren't on the best of terms. What if she were around more than Mark had said? No, she shook her head, Mark wouldn't lie about something like that. He had too much integrity.

Wouldn't he?
A nagging voice wouldn't go away. She couldn't help remembering the business with his kids. Mark had lied to her about that. Plus he hadn't mentioned the court case. After all, Emily had only known him for a few brief months. What did she
really
know about him? Had she any idea at all as to whether he was a good dentist or not?

True, the person making the complaint was the dumbest of dumb fame-seekers, but sheesh, everyone had to have a chance to have their voice heard. Just because she, Emily, didn't particularly like Jasmine, it didn't mean that Jasmine wasn't telling the truth.

Emily shut the file, her head spinning. She didn't want to think that Mark could be in the wrong, but Andrew had begun to build a fairly convincing case against him. And after yesterday it looked like she'd blown it anyway.

Boyfriend or job? Job or boyfriend? It looked as though she'd lost the boyfriend, so she might as well keep the job. However badly Mark thought of her, he couldn't hate her more than she hated herself right now.

‘So Emilysh left you?’

Rob blinked over his fifth pint at Mark. He felt he might have asked this question before. And, bafflingly, his glass seemed empty again. ‘I need another drink,’ he said.

‘Other way round,’ said Mark. ‘This one's mine.’

He was a bit behind Rob, who'd started early that evening, going straight from work to the Hookers. All week Rob had retained that feeling of being all at sea, and tonight he wanted to reach solid ground. If he was going to sit and be miserable, he might as well be miserable on his home turf.

‘Don't you think you've had enough?’ asked Barry.

‘No,’ said Rob. ‘We're drowning our sorrows. Trying to forget women.’

‘Women.’ Mark looked sorrowfully into his pint. ‘I don't think I'm ever going to understand them.’

‘You don't want to waste your time trying to understand women,’ said Barry, the veteran of two failed marriages, pouring out two more pints. ‘Complete waste of time, that. So what's the problem?’

‘Mine's married, his is a cow,’ said Rob.

‘No, she's not,’ said Mark, 'she's just confused. I need to – to unconfuse her. Then everything will be all right.’

‘You're too trusting, mate,’ said Rob, ‘you should have listened to your old Uncle Rob.’

‘If I hadn't listened to you in the first place,’ said Mark, ‘I
wouldn't have gone to those sodding dance lessons and I wouldn't be in this mess.’

‘That is a slur,’ said Rob, trying to defend himself, then having the oddest feeling that he didn't have a leg to stand on. In fact, when he tried to stand up he didn't have two legs to stand on and he slumped to the floor. He looked up to see Jim and John looking down at him.

‘Did you mean to do that?’ asked Jim – or maybe it was John

– with interest. Rob glared at them and tried to get up, but didn't seem to be able to.

‘Do you know, Jim,’ said John, ‘I don't think he did.’

‘I think you're right, John old boy,’ said Jim, laughing. ‘Do you need a hand, Rob?’

‘I'm fine.’ Rob gathered what remained of his dignity, pulled himself up and went to powder his nose. Moments later he was back with a vengeance. ‘And another thing –’ In the toilets he'd been hit by a blinding revelation. ‘I'm giving up on women.’

‘Me too,’ said Mark moodily. ‘They're bad for my health.’

‘I'll second that,’ said John, whose wife had left him for a limbo-dancing tattooist.’
Women
. They‘ve caused me nothing but trouble.’

‘I'll third it,’ said Jim, who'd never had a wife in the first place.

Dicey Derek nodded from the corner. ‘Women, who needs ‘em?’ he said. Derek's wife hadn't left him, yet, but rumour had it she was about to.

‘It's all their fault,’ chipped in Paranoid Pete, who would score highest in a least-likely-to–get-a-woman-this-decade competition. ‘Take my advice. You should never ever trust a woman.’

‘Oh my god,’ said Rob, looking around him and seeing his future all too clearly. He buried his head in his hands. ‘We're living that bloody song already. I'm not sure I can take any more.’

‘Hello, Marilyn?’ Katie felt the usual mixture of nerves and irritation that always accompanied phone calls to her mother in
law. Doyenne of the local WI, Ladies’ Captain of the golf club, leading light in the bridge club, organiser of charitable works, and naturally a paid-up blue-rinse member of the local Conservative party, Katie couldn't think of anyone she would rather not call for a chat.

The first time Katie had ever met her, over ten years ago now, newly pregnant with George (but sadly, in Marilyn's eyes, as yet unmarried to Charlie), Marilyn had looked her up and down as if appraising a prize racehorse. Katie had half-expected Marilyn to examine her teeth.

‘Of course, the new arrival will be in illustrious company,’ Marilyn had brayed when she'd got over the shock that she was to have an illegitimate grandchild, and proceeded to take Katie through the family tree, which could trace Caldwells back to the time of William the Conqueror and included a branch of the family said to be descended from Pitt the Younger.

Katie was left in no doubt that she had entered a family steeped in power, money and influence. She had as yet to recover from the sense of disadvantage that this realisation had engendered in her. Charlie, of course, missed such nuances, thinking Katie oversensitive when she mentioned that his mother made her feel inadequate. But she knew she wasn't imagining the disappointment that Marilyn felt in her son's choice of bride. For all Charlie's protestations, even after all these years she felt like a fish out of water, with their talk of stocks and shares, houses in Tuscany, the cost of public schools and expensive skiing holidays.

‘Katie, how delightful to hear from you.’ To Katie's over sensitive ears, it sounded as if her mother-in-law was anything but delighted. ‘We so rarely see you these days.’

Biting back a retort that they had in fact paid a visit to the ancestral mansions deep in the heart of Sussex a mere two weeks ago (in fact they were lucky if a month went by without a visit taking place), Katie forced herself to smile and say, ‘I've been
thinking about Charlie's fortieth, and I was just wondering if you were free on the first Saturday in August. It's the nearest weekend to Charlie's birthday, and I thought it would be nice to organise a party. He's been working so hard recently, I thought I'd do it for him as a surprise.’

‘That sounds wonderful, dear,’ said Marilyn. ‘Let me just see …’ There was a pause while she clearly consulted her calendar. ‘Yes, I think Stephen and I are free, I'll make a note of it. Would you like me to let the rest of the family know?’

‘Er, yes, that would be great,’ said Katie. ‘Although I was thinking of something quite small.’ Charlie wasn't big on birthdays and she didn't want to crowd him.

‘And have you thought of a venue?’ asked Marilyn, ‘because I'm sure I can organise something at the golf club.’

‘Oh, I was thinking of –’ Katie began.

‘Leave it to me, dear,’ Marilyn interrupted. ‘We'll invite the Price-Joneses of course, and the Pritchards. Let me know who you want out of Charlie's friends and I'll do the rest from here.’

‘Er, thanks,’ said Katie, ‘but –’

‘What a wonderful idea,’ said Marilyn, ‘I'll get on to it right away.’

Katie put the phone down with a heavy heart. It wasn't what she'd intended at all, but Marilyn wasn't used to resistance, and Katie knew better than to try.

‘I suppose at least for once she's pleased with me,’ Katie told Emily after the latter had dropped in on the way home from work. ‘I can't ever recall her saying that before.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Emily asked, as she helped Katie to pick up the mess of toys the boys had left on the lounge floor, ‘only you seem a bit hyped up.’

‘Do I?’ Katie replied. She sighed and stared out of the window at her perfect garden. She looked around her perfect (once it was tidy) lounge, and thought about her perfect life. It seemed like such an effort to keep it all going, and she badly wanted to
confide in Emily that the whole thing was becoming more and more of a sham, but where to begin? Once she started talking she might never stop.

‘I'm just tired,’ said Katie. ‘Charlie's away such a lot, and we have so little time together. That's why I decided on the party. I thought it would be a nice surprise. I just hope I can wrest some control back from my mother-in-law.’

Emily laughed. ‘You're making me glad I don't have one,’ she said.

‘Well, that's probably about to change,’ said Katie. ‘You'll be meeting Mark's mum before too long.’

Now it was Emily's turn to look wistful.

‘I don't think that's going to happen now,’ she said. ‘We‘ve split up.’

‘Oh, Emily,’ said Katie, ‘what's happened? You seemed so happy at the weekend.’

‘We were,’ said Emily, and then proceeded to explain her dilemma.

‘I don't know what to say,’ Katie told her, getting up to pick up a toy truck she'd just spotted under the bookshelf. ‘But honestly, can you really sit there and do that to Mark?’

‘I don't want to,’ said Emily. ‘Of course I don't. But I need the money and I'm not sure I'll get another job that pays as well. It's the old golden handcuffs thing. They rope you in, get you hooked, pay you fantastically well, and then you look around and think, yikes, I can't afford to change jobs. Besides, I have to pay back Mam's loan as well. I can't let her down.’

‘Don't you think,’ said Katie carefully, plumping up a cushion before she sat down again, ‘that it's about more than money? What about principles?’

‘What are they?’ Emily looked bleak. ‘I think I lost the right to have principles the day I started this job. And I'm not sure I'll ever get them back.’

* * *

 

‘Oh for fuck's sake.’

Mark was beyond livid. He and Rob had spent the weekend on the wildest bender he'd had since his student days, his head was thumping and he was feeling like death warmed up. And now Rob had brought in the Sunday papers, and there, plastered all over the News of the Screws, was a story about Twinkletoes Tony with a mysterious blonde friend. Pages and pages seemed to be devoted to their shagathon sessions, which wouldn't have mattered at all, but the story was linked to Jasmine's troubles, and thereby led to him. They had even found a picture of him. It was from his student days and depicted him with spiky gelled hair wearing a loud striped shirt, and good God, was he wearing braces? Mark was only grateful that although it made him look like a goofy idiot, it was unlikely that anyone would recognise him from it.

But shit. He was in the Sunday papers, damn it. Through no fault of his own, but he knew how people's minds worked. They'd think him guilty of a breach of patient confidentiality just because he'd been in the papers, linked with the likes of Tony and Jasmine, both of whom would probably sell their grandmother to keep their spot in the limelight. His reputation could only suffer by association. Besides, Mark had an abhorrence of publicity. He preferred to keep his life private and out of sight. It appalled him that his name had been mentioned in the papers, even if only briefly.

The phone rang, and when he went to answer it his rage turned to ice-cold fury. Logically he knew it wasn't Emily's fault his picture was in the papers, but he wasn't feeling logical today, just hung over and angry.

‘Oh, it's you,’ he said. ‘I hope you're proud of yourself.’