The Four of Us (29 page)

As she opened the kitchen door, they were met by the smell of a freshly baked loaf.

He breathed in deeply, as if on the seafront at Brighton.

‘Would you like a slice?' she asked, glad she'd started the day in a bread-making mood.

‘I'd love one,' he said fervently. ‘I haven't had a slice of fresh home-baked bread for years.'

Standing with her back to him, she began slicing the crusty loaf.

He cleared his throat.

She reached for the butter dish, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

‘I didn't only call round to make sure you were happy with the units I put in,' he said awkwardly as she took a knife out of her cutlery drawer. ‘I really came round to … to …'

Still with her back to him, she began spreading butter on to the thick slice of bread she had cut, her smile deepening.

‘… to ask if, perhaps, you'd like to go to the cinema with me one evening?'

Biting her lips to prevent herself from grinning, she slid the buttered slice of bread on to a plate and turned to face him.

‘W-e-ll,' she said, trying to sound doubtful. ‘I'm not sure …'

The agony in his blunt, black-lashed eyes was so intense she didn't have the heart to tease him any further.

‘I'd like to,' she said, aware of a sensation of excitement deep in the pit of her tummy; an excitement she hadn't felt in years. ‘I'd like to, Ted. I'd like to very, very much.'

They went to see
Star Wars
at a cinema at the Elephant and Castle, had a fish and chip supper afterwards and enjoyed every minute of their evening together. A week later, they went to the cinema again, this time to see Sylvester Stallone in
Rocky
. Afterwards, as Ted walked her home, she asked him if he fancied seeing a French film that was on at the National Film Theatre.

‘Is it one of those highbrow, intellectual films?' he asked in alarm.

‘It's had good reviews,' she said cautiously.

‘Well, if you want to see it, Primmie, of course I'll be happy to go. The only thing is …' He hesitated, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘The only thing is,' he said again, ‘if it's one of those foreign films with sub-titles I might not be able to follow it very well.'

‘Of course you will.' She hugged his arm reassuringly. ‘The subtitles will be in English, not French.'

‘Yes, well … that's just it, Primmie.' They were about to turn off Jamaica Road into a side street and he came to a halt beneath a street lamp. ‘You see, Primmie love, I don't read very well.' Beneath his thick thatch of curly hair, his eyes were apologetic. ‘In fact, I can hardly read at all.'

‘Oh!' For a second she was so taken by surprise that she didn't know what to say. Then she saw that, besides apology, there was also fear in his eyes – fear that she would now think less of him; that she would no longer want to go out with him.

‘It doesn't matter,' she said swiftly, not wanting him to think for a second his not being able to read very well meant her feelings towards him had altered. ‘Or, at least, I know that it
does
matter, in lots and lots of ways and especially to you, but it doesn't matter where you and me are concerned. Do you understand?'

His relief was so obvious and so intense that it brought a lump into her throat.

‘That's good to know, Primmie,' he said thickly.

Her arm was still in his, her face upturned.

He cleared his throat. ‘You mean the world to me, Primmie. You know that, don't you?'

She nodded, aware that in the short time they had known each other he'd come to mean the world to her, too.

For a long moment their eyes held and then he drew her closer towards him, wrapping strong arms round her, lowering his head to hers, kissing her with exquisite tenderness.

She knew then, with his first kiss, not only that he loved her – really loved her – but that she loved him; that she would always be able to trust in the strength of his gentle, compassionate nature; that, unlike Simon, he would never let her down and that one day, in the not too distant future, they would marry.

All that summer their courtship continued. In July, when she went to Whitstable for a week with her father, Ted drove them there and brought them home again. In August they went to Brighton together for a few days. In September, on her birthday, he asked her if she would marry him.

It was then that she told him about Destiny.

He was appalled.

He was appalled not at her having had a child out of wedlock, but at her having given Destiny up for adoption. And when she told him of her relationship with Artemis and how she had believed that with Artemis as Destiny's adoptive mother she would never lose contact with Destiny, but would always know how she was progressing and what she was doing – as well as having the reassurance that Destiny was happy – and of how those expectations had been crushed into extinction, he'd been more than appalled. He'd been horrified.

‘It isn't Artemis's doing,' she'd said, leaning against him as he'd hugged her tight. ‘Artemis is deeply distressed about it, but she has the kind of marriage where her husband makes all the decisions and expects her to abide by them. Causing waves over something Rupert feels strongly about is something she'd never have the nerve to do. She'd be too fearful of the long-term consequences.'

‘Things will be different when Destiny is a young woman, Primmie,' he'd said, his voice full of love and certainty. ‘And until she is, we'll have children of our own to love and care for. My Sheila couldn't have children and it was always a deep sadness to us. Now, though, you and me … why, we'll have hordes of children, Primmie darling. Ten at least.'

‘I think ten might be a few too many.' Her head had been against his chest, her voice still wobbly from the emotion that talking about Destiny always aroused in her, but there had also been relieved laughter in her voice. With Ted by her side, she could cope with anything. Life was good again, and when they were married it would be even better. There would be children, a whole houseful of them. In imagination, she could already feel their arms around her neck and their kisses on her cheek.

They married on the fourteenth of September, exactly six months to the day after they had met. It wasn't the kind of wedding she had once imagined she would have. Instead of taking place in an Anglican church at Petts Wood, the service took place at Woolwich Registry Office. Instead of an elegant champagne reception at the Bromley Court Hotel, there was to be a traditional south-east London knees-up for friends and family in the Territorial Drill Hall, Rother-hithe. And instead of her future home being a large detached house in Petts Wood, its enormous garden merging into a golf course with, beyond, nothing but a glorious vista of rolling fields and trees, she and Ted were going to start married life in a council house only a stone's throw from busy Jamaica Road.

As she made her vows and as Ted slid a plain gold wedding ring on to her finger, Primmie's only pang of regret was that Kiki, Artemis and Geraldine were not sharing the day with her. As for the far-off dreams of youth, they were as dust in the wind. What mattered – what would matter for the rest of her life – was the love she and Ted shared.

And she was deeply, profoundly grateful for it.

Kiki rolled over in bed and groaned. She was in London, bloody London, and the only ameliorating factor was that, for the next three days, Francis wasn't. She tugged off her eyeshades and peered venomously at the hotel clock. It was 10.15 a.m. Her flight from New York hadn't landed until 02.00 a.m. and so she'd had five hours sleep – maybe five and a half, at a pinch.

What time was she due at the studio? She rolled on to her back again and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Kit's expecting you to show by midday!' Francis had shouted after her, when, following another of their ferocious quarrels, she'd stalked out of their New York apartment and down the stairs to her waiting taxi.

Without moving off her back, she reached for the phone, waited for room service to answer and, when someone did so, said peremptorily, ‘Coffee, please. Gallons of it.'

Then she pushed herself up against the pillows, swung her legs from the bed, reached for an emerald silk kimono and, slipping her arms into it, walked across to the window and opened the curtains.

The view was of Marble Arch and near-grid-locked traffic crawling down Bayswater Road towards Lancaster Gate. Away to the left were the grassy green vistas of Hyde Park, its trees just beginning to turn russet and gold. Further left, on the southern side of the park, lay Kensington.

She chewed the corner of her lip. Even though she knew that the flat she had shared with Primmie, Artemis and Geraldine had long ago been sold, that Primmie was living in a council house in Rotherhithe, Artemis living in the Cotswolds and Geraldine … She tasted blood on her tongue and realized that she'd bitten her lip. She licked it away. That Geraldine was in all probability still living in Paris, the pull of the old flat in Kensington was almost palpable.

If Artemis's father had still owned it and if Primmie had still been living in it, then she would be staying there now and … and …

She tried to finish her train of thought and couldn't. All she knew was that if the flat and Primmie had still been in her life, she wouldn't find London quite as hateful as she did.

For a start, she had no friends in London. She never even saw Primmie. How could she, when Primmie was an office clerk living in a Rotherhithe council house and she was a rock star? There was just no point of contact between them. It would have been different – just – if Primmie had still been living in a spacious Kensington flat and been a high-flyer in an advertising agency – or even if Primmie had married Simon.

She tried to thrust the last guilt-ridden thought away.

Because she was in London, face to face with the obligation of meeting up with her father, it wouldn't go.

Still looking down at the crawling traffic she brooded over whether or not she had done Primmie a disservice when she had emotionally blackmailed Simon into not marrying her. At the time, it had seemed the only possible course because she hadn't been able to even begin imagining her father and Primmie having sex together – and the thought of Primmie becoming her stepmother had, five years ago, been horrific. Now it no longer seemed so very dreadful. Primmie as her stepmother would have been a hell of a lot better than the middle-aged nightmare he had married some months ago. And if Primmie had married Simon, she and Primmie would still have been in contact and her childhood home would still have been somewhere she wanted to visit.

There came a knock on the door and, without turning her head, she called out, ‘Yeah. Right. Come in.'

Behind her, the door opened and a waiter entered. Crossing to the sitting area of the room he set a tray bearing a percolator, cup and saucer, sugar and cream, on to a coffee table.

Kiki didn't acknowledge his presence. Her thoughts were too far away and too dark. Why was it that, though her life was now packed with people – fellow pop stars, bands, backing singers, hangers-on, fans – she had no friends? That Geraldine was no longer her friend was understandable, but Artemis, too, was now out of her life – and she missed Artemis just as intensely as she missed Primmie.

The problem between her and Artemis was, of course, Francis. Artemis had been totally unforgiving about her having, in Artemis's words, ‘stolen'Francis from Geraldine.

Having given up her modelling career to devote herself to family values deep in the heart of rural Gloucestershire, Artemis had behaved towards her as if her sexual relationship with Francis was a capital crime.

‘Surely it's better that we've come out into the open about it?' she'd stormed back at her in their one and only telephone call after the wedding day that wasn't. ‘Or would you have liked it better if Francis had gone ahead and married Geraldine and we'd simply carried on shagging each other as if his marriage made no difference?'

Artemis's response had shocked the socks off her. The friend she'd saved from the hooves of a police horse had called her a cow, a bitch, a whore – and had said that she never wanted to see her, or speak to her, again.

And hadn't.

As for Geraldine …

She bit the corner of her lip and tasted blood again. She'd had no contact with Geraldine since the telephone call she had made to her, from Rome, on the morning of the day Geraldine was to have married Francis.

The waiter had long gone and she turned round, crossed to the table and poured a coffee, bitterly reflecting on how much she had lost, and for how little. The heady excitement of her sexual relationship with Francis had palled once it was no longer illicit. Bored, she'd run true to form, finding additional excitement elsewhere. Francis had been insultingly unconcerned, but then, as she had speedily come to realize, Francis skimmed across the surface of life, never letting anything affect him too profoundly.

They'd stayed together as a couple because, with his being her manager and her being his one and only client, it had been as easy to do so as to split up.

She sipped her black coffee, eyed the clock, knew that she should telephone Simon to let him know that she was in London – and made no move to do so.

His reaction, when he'd realized she'd been having an affair with Francis through most of the time that Francis and Geraldine had been engaged, had been almost as extreme as Artemis's.

Francis's family problems had been even worse. His father had informed him he no longer wanted any communication with him and that as far as he was concerned he no longer had a son. Hopes she'd had of mammoth pop concerts at Cedar Court, with herself headlining, had been ground into dust and, even after all this time, just thinking about that unfulfilled expectation made her seethingly, spittingly angry.