The Goddess Rules (14 page)

As Mirri and Kate walked home, arm in stumbling arm, the weather broke for the first time in days. At first there was a light misting of rain; then, as they walked barefoot, shoes in hand, along the street, drinking in the heavenly smell of newly damp earth and revived grass and moistened air, it began to rain more heavily. They had been the last to leave the restaurant. Jonah had finally given in, after Mirri had made it clear that there would be no hammock action tonight, and Leonard and Robbie had drifted off home when they realized that they had blisters on their feet and meetings to attend in the morning. Tanya reluctantly went with her husband when he mentioned for the fifth time that he had to work tomorrow. The only person left, after the music was finally turned off, was the manager, who had wearily nudged Kate and Mirri out of the door before he bolted it. It was late and his wife would be furious enough when she heard who had been dancing on his tables past midnight. He couldn’t have had Mirri and Kate falling asleep on one of the banquettes. As wonderful as that might have been for all concerned.

“Did you ask Jonah to kiss me?” Kate asked Mirri, who had paused momentarily to remove a sharp pebble from between her toes.

“Only so that he might have the pleasure.” Mirri held Kate up so she wouldn’t topple over. “And a little bit so that you might see how a real man kisses.”

“He is so unbelievably sexy,” Kate tried to whisper, but her judgment was shot to pieces with all the champagne so it was more of a husky yell.

“That is just the tip of the iceberg, as they say.” Mirri put her arm through Kate’s and they continued their halting progress home.

“Is he amazing in bed? Or in a hammock, I mean?”

“He is pretty good, yes.” Mirri laughed. “Would you like me to arrange something?”

“What you mean . . . ?” Kate’s mind was bubbling over with the possibilities.

“In France the young men do this often. They take a wonderful, older lover so that they might learn. I think this would be useful for you. Have a competent, handsome lover so that you set yourself a standard, so that you learn to appreciate good lovemaking with a man who also appreciates you,” Mirri continued.

“Oh my God, I couldn’t.” Kate giggled excitedly as the rain poured harder on them and they were forced to quicken their pace just a little so as not to be swept away into a storm drain.

“The thing is, darling, you think that this is all about sex. You think to yourself,
Oh that Mirabelle Moncur, she is a sex maniac and all she thinks about is cock.
”

“Well no, I don’t think that. I mean not very much,” Kate blustered. Just when she thought she was on Mirri’s wavelength, the woman had a way of catching her off guard with her candor.

“You don’t?” Mirri sounded surprised.

“Yes, actually, I do. Well, I did. Now I know there’s more to you.” Kate hugged her new friend closer.

“But it’s not about sex. It’s about being appreciated. The Slug, he doesn’t see you. He doesn’t know how beautiful you are.”

“He’s often said that he thinks I’m pretty.” Kate remembered fondly, and thanks to the emotional Bubble Wrap that the drink had afforded her, she didn’t feel the pain.

“Pretty is no good.” Mirri sat Kate down on the bench at the top of the hill and looked intently at her. Thankfully the rain had eased off a little, and though they were distinctly damp and both women’s hair hung in rat’s tails about their faces it was warm, summer rain. “A lover will see the real beauty. A lover will look at your breasts and if they are like tiny apples he will adore them. Or if they are enormous and resting on your stomach he will think that they are remarkable. If you have a mole on your shoulder he will notice it and take time to kiss it. He will feel the rough skin on your elbow and imagine you resting on it as you gaze out a window from your desk. He will bury his face in your hair and will be in heaven at your scent. This man will really see you. And every woman is a work of art. Every woman is beautiful and should be seen.” Mirri sat back and looked out at the lights across London.

“That sounds very . . . well, very French, I suppose,” said Kate, whose English blood ran thick enough to ensure that whenever someone spoke about
things like that,
in a way that was very straight-faced and earnest, she wanted to hide behind a pillow or take a large sip of Earl Grey to disguise her embarrassment.

“You don’t think this is true?” Mirri asked, slightly disappointed in Kate’s response.

“I just think that if a man told me I had boobs like apples I’d probably laugh,” Kate said apologetically.

“You would not.”

“I would, you know.” One of the reasons Kate liked Jake was that he could laugh. At Kate. At himself. At the whole thing.

“So English.” Mirri waved her hand dismissively. “What are we to do with you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Kate promised. “Although if you were offering a sampler of Jonah Sinclair then I don’t think I’d say no.”

“You would fall in love with him and this would be a disaster.”

“You’re right. I’d definitely fall in love with him,” Kate agreed. “In fact, I’m already a bit in love with him.”

“Is there anybody else?” Mirri asked as they walked back through Leonard’s garden gate.

“Not even slightly.”

“Oh dear.” Mirri was completely dispirited now.

“It’s okay. I have a lot of work to do. I’ll just keep away from men and focus on my pictures. That way you’ll get a much better portrait of Bébé, that’s for sure.”

“Yes, maybe you are right. Good night, my darling.” Mirri kissed Kate on both cheeks and looked at her closely. “So young and lovely. It is such a waste.”

“God, less of the young,” Kate pleaded, “I’m twenty-nine.” She walked toward her shed door as Mirri sat down on the hammock to have her last cigarette of the day. “Thanks, Mirri, you’re a star.” Then Kate laughed. “Really.”

Chapter Ten

Kate was flung out of her dreams with such violence that for a few moments she had no notion where she was or what was happening. And when, seconds later, she realized that the calamitous, terrifying noise that had woken her seemed to be right outside her shed she merely froze. Something was in the garden. And it wasn’t any mower or pneumatic drill or leaf blower on the face of this earth. It was entirely alien, and she was petrified. She listened for distant screams but heard none. Finally she wrested herself from the grip of fear and her sheets, which were wrapped around her body like a mummy, and tiptoed nervously across the shed, stubbing her toe on a discarded gold sandal. But as she leaned down to clutch her throbbing foot the noise began to fade. It seemed to lift and drift away until it was just a distant whir.

Kate approached the door with trepidation. And finally, relieved that the noise had all but vanished, she unlocked the door and put her head outside, unsure what kind of carnage or alteration would greet her. Her first thought was that it was snowing. For the air was filled with fluttering whiteness. She couldn’t see Leonard’s house because the sky was alive with snowflakes. Then she realized that they weren’t snowflakes; it was the blossom from the apple trees and it was scattering madly and slowly drifting to the ground. Above it was still sky. A breathtaking cerulean sky that promised another day of sundresses and laziness. And when Kate looked down at the grass, at the snowfall, or blossom petals, settling, she saw only roses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of long-stemmed red roses. It was the oddest and most magical sight she’d ever witnessed. And for a moment or two she stood stock-still in her nightdress at her door and gazed at the scene without making any sense of it. It was quite simply sublimely beautiful and she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

Then she noticed, at an upstairs window of Leonard’s house, which came into view as the blossom dissolved into a pale carpet on the lawn, Mirri leaning out and laughing delightedly.

“Katie, isn’t it marvelous?” she yelled across, waving an arm at Kate.

“What on earth is it?” Kate called back, as she took her first footstep out onto the snowscape, careful to avoid stepping on the roses.

“Pick them up. Take a hundred,” Mirri offered. So Kate bent down and began to pick up the exquisite, elegant stems and collect them into a bunch. “I’ll be down in a moment.” Mirri vanished from the window and Kate picked up a few more before realizing that she’d be here for several days if she were to gather the whole lot. Where on earth had they come from? What had that apocalyptic sound been that had woken her up? She took her bunch of flowers and sat down on the grass. She looked up to the blossom trees to see whether they were now bare and mean looking since they’d shed so many flowers. But no; miraculously they seemed to be as snowy white and frothy as ever.

“He hasn’t done this for years. But I think when he heard that I was in London he couldn’t help himself. For old times’ sake.” Mirri was crossing the garden with two mugs in her hand and her satin dressing gown tightly done up for once.

“Who did this? How?” Kate asked as she raked her fingers through the petals and sniffed one of the wildly scented red roses.

“Tony. An old lover of mine.” Mirri settled down on the grass next to Kate and deposited the mugs on the ground. “Early Grey for you, builders’ tea for me.”

“An old lover. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Kate said, for once without any rancor.

“When we were together he would do it every day.” Mirri picked up a rose and carelessly pulled off a velvety red petal to smell.

“But how did it happen?”

“You didn’t hear the helicopter?” Mirri laughed.

“I had no idea that’s what it was.”

“Ah yes. He would make my gardener at home crazy by swooping down over my breakfast table in his noisy helicopter and flinging a thousand red roses everywhere. It took hours to clear up and we never had enough vases. Too too much.” She shook her head with resignation. “But a lot of fun. No?”

“It’s incredible. Do you think he’s still in love with you?” Kate asked, wondering how two people’s lives could be so very different. Quite apart from the fact that Mirri was stunningly beautiful. It was more than that, Kate realized. It was about joy and expectation. Mirri expected magical things to happen to her, things beyond the realms of most women’s wildest imaginings, and she got them. Kate expected nothing of the sort. And guess what? Here she was sitting on the rose petals of another woman’s dreams.

“He’s not in the least in love with me,” Mirri proclaimed. “He has a beautiful wife and grown-up children. But he’s generous and he loves to do nice things. I shall have him to lunch later and you’ll meet the man who lost me the best gardener I ever had. Since then my rhododendrons were never the same.”

“You’re very lucky,” Kate said pensively, sipping her tea and inhaling the glorious fragrance, which was beginning to fill the air as the morning sun warmed the petals of a thousand flowers.

“I know. I have been blessed. Now, how about you work on Bébé today and I make us a picnic? We must escape Leonard because he’ll behead me when he sees what has happened to his poor garden. And I heard one of the neighbors yelling that her tulips were flattened.”

“Great idea,” Kate said. “As I said last night, I’m ready to throw myself into work. Lose myself.”

“Then we’ll take Bébé with us. You sharpen your pencils and I’ll prepare.”

“It’s a deal,” Kate said, tipping the last of her tea back and standing up. “Would you mind if I took some for the shed?” She held out her handful of rose stems.

Mirri looked at Kate as though she were mad. “What do
you
think?” she asked, so Kate took her flowers and retreated to her shed.

Kate was gathering together her pencils and a wedge of paper large enough to really get to grips with Bébé’s ears and whiskers and all the details she needed to master before she got to work on the portrait itself. But just as she was about to bring along a packet of biscuits she realized that she didn’t know the first thing about her subject. In fact, she’d been so involved with her whole Jake crisis since Mirri arrived that she’d barely noticed Bébé at all.

“He’s a cat, Kate. Not a Labrador,” she chided herself and so instead of taking the biscuits picked up her purse. She was about to step into her combat pants when she noticed at the back of her wardrobe an old satin slip dress that Tanya had once left behind when she’d stayed the night at Leonard’s. It was technically a nightdress and it was definitely made for seduction and not fixing drains, but Kate thought she’d give it a trial run anyway. Then she slipped on her sparkling flip-flops, in the daytime no less, ruffled up her hair à la Mirri, and ran out of her shed. She felt odd but she was only slipping down to the shops, so if she felt exposed or too slutty she could always hide in a doorway or dash home again, she figured. She would just run to the fishmonger’s and then back. She usually made a concerted effort to befriend her subjects, and she was great with animals; they loved her. With cats she had a canny way of letting them come to her, being just a little bit cool, catching their eye and looking away. But with the Bébé sitting she’d been so ridiculously distracted that she hadn’t tried to win his affection at all. It was time to change all that.

Kate locked the shed behind her and went out the side gate of the garden, hoping to avoid the paparazzi who would be drinking from Styrofoam cups of coffee on Leonard’s front wall. She sneaked a peek around over the back gate and then, certain that the coast was clear, unbolted the gate.

“Going somewhere, beautiful?” From behind one of the trees on the avenue, coming toward her across the road, was Jake.

Kate paused for a second and then, closing the gate behind her, proceeded to walk down the street toward Regents Park Road. “I’ve got to run an errand,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Baby, I’m sorry.” Jake jogged to catch up with her and walked alongside her.

“What on earth for?” She looked ahead and thought about whether she should get prawns or whitebait for Bébé.

“For not coming to your birthday,” he said in a really saccharine voice. Which was incredibly helpful to Kate. One thing she hated on men was cutesy voices. Especially when they intended to be contrite.
Why not be a man and face up to what you’ve done in a grown-up voice?
she thought.

“Kate, I’m sorry. Truly. Will you give me the chance to explain?”

“I’m actually in a bit of a hurry, Jake.” She was a little shocked at her own lack of emotion, she had to admit, but it felt amazing. Slightly out-of-body and as though she were acting, but still incredibly empowering.

“Angel, don’t be like this. Can we talk? Can we go for a coffee?”

“Jake, if you want to talk then call me up like normal people and ask me. Don’t sneak around in the street outside my house assuming that I’ll be in.”

“You’re always in.” Jake laughed. Clearly her social life was a joke to him. He wasn’t wrong, either, which was the galling part. Kate rarely went out without Jake.

“Well, now I’m out.”

“Where are you going? I can come with you.” He was breathing a little heavily as he struggled to keep up with her practically sprinting pace.
Ha, all those cigarettes,
she thought. She hadn’t turned to look at him once.

“The fishmonger’s,” she snapped. She wished she hadn’t had to say that. She wished she were leaving the house to do something other than buy seafood. But someday soon she would be, she vowed. It had been nobody’s fault but hers that she had subjugated her life and fun to Jake’s for three years.

“I see.” Jake laughed jovially. He was beginning to annoy her, shuffling and panting at her side like this. And she hadn’t even begun to remember his crimes of last night, or she might have thwacked him over the head with her purse. Which was full of small change and gratifyingly heavy.

“Listen, Jake.” She finally stopped and turned to look at him. Mistake. He looked sexy. Done in. Rumpled. With a smile about his lips. Kate steeled herself and looked at his shoulder. “There was a place for you at dinner last night. You didn’t show up. Regardless of whether you were my friend, my lover, or some person on the street that I’d invited, it was incredibly bad-mannered of you not to call and say you couldn’t make it. This isn’t about us. There is no us. There really never has been. If there had then I would have been able to ask you to have dinner with me without being terrified that I might scare you off. You wouldn’t have flinched and gone into a filthy mood every time I forgot myself and called you my boyfriend. If there had been an us you might have once, just once in three years, given a damn about my feelings. But you didn’t. So there is no us. And I am fine with that concept. But you were simply rude last night for not calling to say you couldn’t make it. Though if that’s what you’re trying to apologize for, then fine. Apology accepted. See you around.”

Kate looked into his eyes and nearly burst into weird, hysterical laughter because he was so completely shocked. But instead she took advantage of the moment to break free and disappear very melodramatically around the corner onto the next street. She listened for footsteps or panting behind her, but she could hear nothing. She was a bit disappointed that she didn’t hear some low-pitched keening as if from a wounded animal, but ah well, it was Jake after all, and she hadn’t really expected that. She’d never expected anything from him before, so keening and wailing now might have been too much to handle anyway.