The Valentine's Card (16 page)

The door opened before Marek’s hand reached the bell pull, and they entered a wide hall that managed to incorporate a suit of armour, a Sam Taylor-Wood photograph of a weeping Daniel Craig, a venerable oak staircase and quite a few famous people.

It’s dreamlike,
thought Orla,
to recognise people you’ve never met.
A good dream or a nightmare she had yet to decide, as she held up her chin, a sign of insecurity that Sim would have recognised and answered with a squeeze of her hand – or, possibly, her buttocks: parties brought out the devil in him.

Orla exchanged a furtive look with Marek as a young actress, more famed for her beauty than her talent, strolled down the stairs, glass in hand. A singer Orla had once queued to see trotted past, chirruping, ‘Off to the loo!’ over her shoulder to a languid man who fronted a prestigious BBC4 series on the renaissance.

‘It’s like,’ Orla
whispered to Marek, as they weaved through the scrum towards a tray of champagne, ‘those dreams when you meet the Queen and you’ve got no knickers on.’

Marek’s expression revealed that he never had such dreams.

Debonair in a dinner jacket, foxy cap of hair glinting, Reece descended on them and twirled Orla out of her coat, handing it to an anonymous serf who manifested at just the right moment. ‘You’ve made my night,’ he said in an undertone before greeting Marek. Orla detected the faintest trace of reserve as he said, ‘I’m so glad she used her plus one. She needs looking after.’

‘Does she?’ The comment seemed to amuse Marek as much as it irked Orla.

‘Come on, chaps.’ Reece ignored the question and turned, his hand on Orla’s back to guide them through ceiling-height double doors. ‘Let’s throw you in at the deep end.’

The party pulsed with conversation so animated it verged on the manic. Orla felt an adrenaline rush, as if she were standing on tiptoe before a bungee jump. The room was generous in its proportions and venerable in its decoration (Louis XIV flirting with Andy Warhol against Chinese papered walls), and lit by countless tea lights and candles: Orla pitied whoever had stooped and stretched to light them all.

‘Did you bring it?’ Reece murmured as they followed the magic path that opened up for them through the guests.

Orla opened her bag to afford him a peek of pink.

‘So, you really are
ready?’ Reece’s eyes seemed sad.

‘I am. I turned a corner out of the blue.’

‘Is it to do with …’ Reece inclined his head minutely in the direction of Marek, who was tailing them. ‘I couldn’t believe my ears when you said you were bringing somebody.’

‘It’s nothing to do with him.’ Orla saw Reece didn’t believe her and let it lie: she didn’t entirely believe herself. ‘It’s to do with me.’

‘Here’s a cosy perch to people-watch.’

Reece motioned to a high-backed velvet chair the colour of rotten plums, seating himself on the arm when Orla sat down. Marek stood to one side, weighing Reece up with a sidelong glance.

‘Now,’ he said discreetly, bending his head to Orla’s, ‘what’s the plan? I hope, darling, you’ve decided against reading it.’

Orla nodded.

‘May I be there? In case you need me? I don’t want you facing it alone.’

Reece seemed intent on disappearing Marek. ‘OK,’ nodded Orla. ‘I’d like that.’

‘It’s a privilege. And Sim would want me to make sure you were in one piece afterwards. Shall we say in one hour? Do it with some ceremony?’

‘Sure. Is Ant here?’ Orla couldn’t talk of Sim tonight. She was far too brittle, far too riddled with doubts about every aspect of this evening.

‘She’s somewhere, getting off with the help, feeling up a producer. I’m sure she’ll break from the undergrowth at some point.’

Reece must surely be tipsy to talk like that. Orla took a closer look at his brilliantly cold eyes and reconsidered: perhaps he was on something. She was vague about what that might be – she was the kind of woman who took Calpol with misgivings – but she’d endured enough veiled references to ‘naughtiness’ and suchlike from Sim to intuit that there had been some drug-taking during his last months. She’d always despaired of his weakness, noting his feigned nonchalance when Charlie’s arrival was whispered at parties. She also noted his animation, his altered pupils, his energetic chattiness and his maddening sniffs soon after. Orla had allowed him this subterfuge, but alarm bells had insistently rung about him running wild in the fleshpots of London without her.

‘What’s your
strategy?’ asked Reece, baffling her. ‘I mean, do you want me to introduce you around? I can get you to some key people, let them know you’re Sim’s lady. Even though he’s not here, everybody’s talking about him. He’s the biggest star at this party, which is, as we well know, just how he’d want it.’

‘Oh no, no, don’t introduce me to feckin’
key people!
’ Orla found it funny that Reece didn’t find it funny: this was where they diverged. He was an agent to his fingertips and she was, well, she was a
civilian
, as Sim called non-actors. ‘Just let me prowl around incognito.’

‘Food,’ snarled a deep voice. Marek’s white fingers found Orla’s and tugged her up from the velvet throne. ‘There,’ he pointed to a long table obliterated by dainty nibbles and nuggets arranged on platters and stands like an edible Caravaggio, ‘I’m starving.’ He inclined his head to Reece with a curt, curiously Ruritanian nod. ‘Excuse us.’

‘Remember!’ called Reece, after them. ‘Midnight. Find me.’

‘Marek!’ Orla shook
her hand free. ‘That was our host.’

‘He’s not my type.’

‘Reece has been a saint to me.’ Orla, nearing the buffet and feeling her spirits lift a little at the sight of all those carbohydrates, admitted, ‘Although, I have to say, he was chilly with you for some reason.’

‘Not chilly. Rude.’

‘OK, rude. I don’t know, perhaps, you know, Sim’s best mate and everything, he’s feeling … conflicted.’

‘You’re not being unfaithful. Sim isn’t here. I am
,
’ said Marek, a little too passionately for a man standing over a row of quiches.

But Orla’s conscience felt differently. It told her she was being unfaithful and that love doesn’t end with a piffling thing like death. She had lost her appetite. Was she the only romantic left on earth?

‘It’s boiling in here. Can we just go …’ Orla looked longingly at the plate-glass extension that ran the width of the house, peeled back to reveal a purple night hanging over the garden.

‘Sure.’ Marek turned regretfully away from the food. ‘You know, you shouldn’t get between a Polish man and his dinner,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m very tetchy if I’m not fed regularly.’

‘They’re just the canapés. According to the invite there’s a hog roast. That’ll be outside, surely.’

Marek picked up the pace, his hand on the back of her neck. Orla sped up too, to escape the hand. Its casual pressure had made her skin fizz. Outside on the stone terrace, the roast hog, with its primitive, stimulating aroma, was the belle of the ball, but Orla barely nibbled at the squashy roll Marek fetched for her.

‘I’ll have it – if
you don’t …’ he said, hopefully.

‘I don’t.’ She handed it over as they settled down on a wrought iron bench a little distance from the house.

‘I was very surprised by your call,’ Marek despatched the pork roll in a three bites.

‘I needed a plus one,’ Orla said, shrugging.

‘All these compliments. How does my ego cope around you?’

Checking to make sure he was joking – the pout was set to maximum – Orla thudded her palm to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Marek. That was so bad mannered.’

She remembered the car journey, his jokey,
This isn’t a date either, right?
Orla steeled herself to tell the truth and hoped the card wasn’t listening.

‘I did want a plus one, but I wanted it to be you. Marek Zajak. Because …’ She was uncertain how to phrase it. ‘Because you’re kind,’ she ended lamely.

Marek’s sooty brows descended. He looked as if she’d hit him. ‘Kind? That’s … a good thing but –
kind
? Is that all I am to you?’

‘No. I wanted to get to know you better,’ she said, all in a rush, as if confessing to murder. ‘There. God. Am I bright red?’

‘Like a tomato.’

There was that transformative smile again. Marek looked so glad it made Orla smile too. The soppy delight of smiling back at a man who’s smiling at you had been forgotten during Orla’s purdah.

‘I think we are a good fit.’ Marek said this so quietly that she had to draw her head nearer to his to hear.

‘Are we?’ She could only be evasive and non-committal. Orla was a fiancée
manquée
and one of the things that drew Marek to her, she knew, was how seriously she took such commitments.

‘Yes, we are.’ Marek
seemed sure about their fit and its goodness.

The hubbub receded. The night air made the tiny hairs on Orla’s arms prickle. She touched her throat, where a pulse leapt. Marek kept his eyes on hers.

A woman passing on silver platforms stumbled in the grass and gate-crashed their bubble, apologising as she nudged Orla’s hand and spilled her wine.

‘Sorry, oh look at you, I’m such a—’ Anthea’s solicitous babble ceased when she recognised Orla. ‘Good god,’ she said, ‘the little colleen.’

The actress wore a turquoise scarf tied as a headband and Orla had time to think two disparate thoughts concurrently –
A headband? Jaysus!
and
She looks amazing
– as she said, ‘Hi, Ant.’ The nickname came out tentatively and Orla immediately felt a fool.

‘You look lovely,’ said Anthea. ‘And who’s this handsome creature?’ She held out a hand to Marek, who shook it firmly, and dropped it decisively. ‘You don’t hang about, you dark horse,’ she said, admiringly, to Orla.

‘What?’ Orla flinched.

‘Nothing, nothing, please don’t take fright and bolt like a wounded deer.’ Ant tapped Orla’s chin with a fan. (
A fan!
thought Orla.
A feckin’ headscarf and a feckin’ fan
.
And still she looks better than me.
) ‘I didn’t expect to see
you
here. You’re much too wholesome and Oirish for Reece’s annual debauch. I assumed it was client list only.’

‘Well, I guess, because
of Sim …’ Orla tailed off. She felt her cheeks burn. She was Irish, not Oirish, but she couldn’t protest; Anthea’s celebrity had such force that it left her thwarted and powerless.

Not so Marek. ‘Do you work in Reece’s office?’ he asked, very, very politely.

Anthea treated Marek to a glare Orla recognised from her mid-eighties biopic of Elizabeth I.

‘No?’ Marek pressed. ‘Then are you perhaps his moth—’

‘
Do
tell me you’ve brought the famous valentine’s card!’ Anthea barged across Marek’s question.

‘Famous?’ Somebody had turned up the volume of the speakers in the trees and the lanterns flared. ‘Did Reece tell you about it?’

‘Yes and I disapprove wholeheartedly.’ Anthea leaned in, sombre suddenly, her breath perfumed with gin. ‘Are you trying to keep the poor bastard alive? Let him rest!’ She swayed. ‘We all loved him,’ she said, blinking rapidly, ‘he was lovable. Lovely lovely Sim. So easy to love.’

The tribute sounded like an insult, the way Anthea said it. She looked up at Marek, who stood as straight and tense as a soldier. ‘Did you know your little girlfriend talks to an envelope?’

‘Orla is not my little girlfriend.’ Marek had leeched every ounce of good humour out of his face. ‘She can talk to a toilet seat if she wants to.’

Anthea ignored him, turned back to Orla. ‘Give it to me, darling, and I’ll tear it up for you.’

‘No. Really.’ Orla took a step back from this whirlwind of offence.

‘Is it in there?’ Anthea
eyed the beaded bag.

‘Look, it’s – can we just drop the subject?’ Orla heard herself jabbering. In her mind’s eye she saw herself punch Anthea – a cartoon
kerpow!
that would launch the actress into the koi pond – but ingrained good manners and a peculiar fear of what might come out of Anthea’s mouth next kept her polite.

‘You’re absolutely right, none of my business.’ Anthea shook her head and the scarf’s tassels danced
. ‘
But you’re a fool, Oirish, if you read that thing. And Reece? Well, the man’s a fucking vulture and I shall tell him so. Now. Where was I?’

She looked about her, then broke into a vivacious grin, waving her hand high and giddily in the air. ‘There’s the controller of BBC2. I
must
rescue him from that dreary bint.’

‘What a witch,’ said Marek with feeling when she was out of earshot.

‘She’s tipsy.’ Why she defended her, Orla couldn’t say.

Marek said nothing.

‘More grub?’ suggested Orla.

‘She interrupted us. We were talking about—’

‘Loo!’ interrupted Orla brightly.

With a sigh, Marek accepted the glass Orla pressed on him. ‘OK. You don’t want to talk about us. I get it. Go. I’ll wait here.’

Inside, a small door in the panelling gave on to a spacious room papered in
toile de jouy
, impossibly pretty, with a mirror so cunningly lit that it doubled as a time machine and offered Orla an airbrushed vision of herself ten years ago.

Closing the toilet lid, Orla sat down heavily. She took the valentine out from her bag.

There was chatter outside the door, the jangling laughter of women on their umpteenth spritzer. A tentative knock. A giggle.

Orla held the valentine in front of
her face. ‘Tonight isn’t the end. We can’t have an end, you know that, Sim, don’t you?’

A vision of Sim scuttled crab-like under her defences. Carrion, with earth pressing down on empty eye-sockets. Orla whined and squeezed her eyes shut, holding her stomach as if about to vomit.

‘You all right in there?’ An estuary accent more intrigued than concerned.

‘Fine. Won’t be long.’ Orla held the valentine to her cheek, swooning with need, wishing it were warm and real. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, a woman canoodling an envelope on a toilet.

This
, she thought,
is the shore that grief washes you up on
.