A Perfect Obsession (28 page)

‘Thinking about Leo?’ asked Sarah, with a look of girlish sympathy. The surprise of this broke Camilla’s train of thought. She felt instandy defensive, but before she could say anything, Sarah added, ‘I wouldn’t waste your thoughts on him, if I were you. He’s as bad as all the rest. Worse, in fact.’

Camilla felt dormant fears come suddenly, horribly to life. This was surely just a glib remark, an all-men-are-bastards throw-away line – wasn’t it? ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. She couldn’t help herself. She could have deflected Sarah’s remark, said something to turn the conversation away from Leo, but something made her pursue it.

‘First of all, tell me – tell me honestly.’ Sarah leant confidingly across the table. ‘Have you and Leo been having a bit of a fling recently?’

Without wanting to, Camilla replied, ‘Yes.’ She waited for a few seconds, then asked, ‘Is it that obvious?’

Sarah smiled. ‘We’ve all been there. We all know the signs.’

‘What signs?’ Camilla could feel her face burning up. She kept asking things she didn’t want to hear the answers to. She couldn’t help it. Everything which had been warm and summery and wine-filled had gone flinty and unpleasant.

Sarah leant back and, with the air of someone reciting a
well-worn story, said, ‘I’ll bet it’s been three or four weeks of bliss. You feel unutterably special, you have his company and his attention, he’s charming and funny, nobody ever made love to you the way he does, the best sex in the world … And suddenly it’s all gone off the boil, and you feel lost and confused, and you don’t understand what he’s doing to you.’ Camilla said nothing, stared at her glass. ‘Am I right? Of course I am. You’re just another of Leo’s victims, and London is littered with them, male and female.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Camilla, believing everything, wanting to get away, but rooted to the spot. She lifted her glass to her lips, but the wine tasted tepid and sour.

‘What? Boys as well as girls?’ Sarah laughed. Camilla no longer felt any kind of womanly bond with her at all, only a sick sense of mistrust. ‘You don’t know Leo as well as I do. Nobody does. Do you know, I’ve actually seen him when he’s so overcome by some desirable young man that he can’t help himself. Literally. That’s how close I’ve been, darling. And if you don’t believe what I say, ask Anthony. He’s another one of Leo’s cast-offs. You should start a club together.’

‘Shut up. I don’t believe any—’

‘You know yourself how attractive Leo is, how hard to resist,’ Sarah went on. ‘Are you telling me you’ve never noticed what a
very
special relationship Leo and Anthony have? Or had, I should say. Leo finally got him into bed a couple of months ago, and then dumped him just like that. It’s cracked poor old Anthony to pieces. Not that Leo cares. He just moved on to you.’

Camilla’s mind scrabbled for self-possession. Had
Sarah brought her here just to drop all this poison in her ear? Probably. It was pathetic how easily she’d let herself believe Sarah wasn’t as bad as all that. Of course she was. Worse. All this horrible stuff about Leo … ‘Sarah,’ she said, keeping her voice as even as possible, ‘whatever exists between myself and Leo is none of your business. If you’re saying all this out of spite because you have some sort of a thing about Leo yourself—’

Sarah’s laughter at this was so delighted, so genuine, that it stopped Camilla in midsentence. ‘Some sort of thing about him? Oh, that’s wonderful …’ Sarah shook her head. ‘Since we’ve been having such a wonderfully girly chat, tell me if this sounds familiar …’ She began to describe sex with Leo – at any rate, a random interlude – in vivid and intimate detail. Everything that was being described, Camilla had experienced. Sarah went on and on, her voice low and charged with erotic detail, inexhaustible in her description, making Camilla feel as though Sarah had somehow witnessed everything she and Leo had done together. ‘I know the kind of words he uses, the things he suggests … He’s a practised old Casanova, if you’ll forgive the cliché.’

‘Even if all of that is true,’ said Camilla, who had a feeling she might cry at any moment, ‘you’re only saying it because he doesn’t want you any more.’

‘Darling, I’m the only person he keeps coming back to,’ replied Sarah, picking up the bottle and draining the remains into her glass, ‘because I’m the only person who knows him for exactly what he is, and doesn’t care. Not like you. You really
do
care. Well, I’m sorry if I’ve wrecked your
romantic idyll, but from what I can gather, it was probably over, anyway. Don’t fool yourself into imagining any of it was ever genuine. From the moment he takes a new lover, no matter how loving and sincere his behaviour, dear Leo already has one eye on the exit. You’re no different. No doubt I’ll hear all about it soon enough. He does like to tell me about his various conquests. I still haven’t had the full details about Anthony, though.’ She raised her glass to her lips and smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to those.’

Camilla felt unable to take any more. ‘I never realised until now what an out-and-out bitch you are, Sarah,’ she said unsteadily. ‘You enjoy hurting people, don’t you?’

‘You can look on it that way, if you like. Frankly, I think I’m doing you a favour. You’re so naive; you’d probably have gone on deluding yourself for months. At least this way you know now. He’s not worth making a fool of yourself over.’

Camilla got up and left. Sarah sat and finished her wine, contemplating the future, wondering how long it would be before she could reinstate herself in Leo’s life, and remind him once more that they really made a good couple. They were the same kind of people, after all, as she had reminded him on more than one occasion. He had never disagreed.

Rachel arrived at Stanton at eleven on Saturday morning, and unloaded Oliver and his belongings from the car. She watched as Oliver trotted to his father for a hug, and then moved straight on into the house, a familiar piece of territory. She stood awkwardly by the car, unable to share Oliver’s territorial feelings. This was not her home, never really had been.

‘He knows where everything is,’ said Leo, giving Rachel a smile. His glance lingered on her a few seconds longer than necessary, and she looked away self-consciously. She had chosen the simple blue linen sundress she was wearing with more care than she liked to admit.

‘I thought we’d go out for lunch,’ said Leo. ‘There’s a pub not far away with some swings and a slide, and rabbits and that kind of thing. Oliver likes it.’

‘Fine,’ said Rachel.

There was silence for a few seconds. ‘Come in and have some coffee,’ said Leo.

Oliver’s presence diluted the initial awkwardness, and lunch was easier than Leo had thought it might be. He could see that Rachel was in a stilted, unhappy frame of mind. If this thing was going to work, he would have to do his best to unbend her, render her more pliant. She had always been a slow starter, with a delicate, frigid reserve which he had once found something of a turn-on. He would have to thaw her out, slowly and gradually, over the afternoon, so that he could take her right back to where they had begun, and thus render Charles Beecham a totally lost cause.

By the time they had finished lunch, he had made her laugh more than once, and he could sense the warmth creeping into her manner, in her body language and in the way she glanced at him now and then.

‘Come on, let’s get back,’ said Leo, scooping Oliver on to his knee and tickling him. ‘Shall we go and feed the horses?’ Oliver nodded through his giggles. ‘Let’s ask Mummy if she’d like to come, too.’

They went back to the house and Leo chopped up potatoes and apples and carrots and put them in a bag which Oliver carried importantly on the way down the road to the field where the horses grazed. Rachel, walking a little way behind Oliver and Leo, was remembering a time during the first year of their marriage when things had seemed to be working, when Oliver was only a baby, and days had gone by quite happily. Was it so hard, she wondered, just to be a family? Did it take so much effort? These were the easy parts, though, walks in the country, days in the sun. Anyone could do that. The hard part, for someone like Leo, was being faithful, keeping your hands off the nanny, giving
up casual affairs with young men. Things he wouldn’t begin to try to do. But she had picked up certain remarks he had made over lunch, things which suggested he was slowing down, looking for more stability in his life … Was there a chance that someone like Leo regretted what he had lost, perhaps even wanted to try again? She watched as he hoisted Oliver on to the top of the fence and the little boy gingerly held out his palmful of apple and potato to the horse’s whiskery lips. It was stupid even to hope for such a thing, but a part of her couldn’t help it.

Leo turned and looked at her for a moment, squinting a little against the sun. ‘You look very pretty today, did you know that?’ Then he turned away again.

By half past three Oliver was growing tired, and Leo carried him back to the house on his shoulders.

‘Time for a nap, young man,’ said Rachel. She took Oliver upstairs to change his nappy and put him into his cot. Leo moved slowly round the drawing room, half-pulling the blinds so that the room was shaded from the afternoon sun. When Rachel came downstairs he was standing there, waiting, hands clasped behind his back.

Without the little boy’s presence, the atmosphere once again settled into vague awkwardness. Rachel crossed the room to the fireplace and picked up a photo of Oliver from the mantelpiece.

‘I haven’t seen this,’ she said.

‘I took it at Easter,’ said Leo.

She nodded. ‘It’s lovely.’

The seconds ticked by. ‘So,’ said Leo, ‘you didn’t finish telling me about Charles’s work out in the States.
Oliver was just about to decapitate a guinea pig.’

She put the photograph back. Would she say something now? He needed to know in which direction to play this.

His gaze moved to the neck of her dress. It must button up the back, he reckoned, thinking ahead to the moment when he would undress her and lay her down on the sofa. The way she turned to glance at him, lips parted, expression open, told him he would encounter no problem. Unless, of course, he said the wrong thing. That was always possible.

‘He has some long-term project. A big documentary series. It means a lot of money, which is good, of course, but he’s away a lot.’

‘You must miss him.’

A fly buzzed behind one of the blinds, then fell silent. ‘I suppose so,’ said Rachel.

She looked away, glancing round the room. That pale, tragic profile, thought Leo. How rarely she smiled, and even then it was never the full thing. He felt utterly unmoved by her loveliness, realised how little desire he had to kiss or touch her. She belonged to the past. But Oliver was the future, and she was not going to take that away from him. Just two slow paces towards her, a couple of soft words, the right look. That was all it needed.

Suddenly Rachel bent down to pick something up from beside the television.

‘What on earth is this?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me you like old Bette Davis films.’ Leo saw what she was holding. It was the copy of
Now Voyager
which Camilla had rented. Typical of her to forget it. There must be at least a tenner owing on it. ‘Or does it belong to some boyfriend
of yours? She is something of a gay icon, I believe.’

How odd, thought Leo, having imagined it might be he who would say the wrong thing. He watched as Rachel turned the video over in her slender hands. He thought about Camilla lying across him, dabbing her eyes with the edge of her T-shirt as she watched the film, while he stroked her warm, bare feet and laughed. He remembered taking her from the garden to his bed, and the incredible, perfect pleasure he had taken in their lovemaking, the tenderness she summoned up in him which he hadn’t thought existed. It was not difficult to bring her to mind, the way she smiled, entirely and happily, her endless questing after the heart of him, looking for ways to know him and make him her own.

He put out his hand. ‘May I have it please?’ Something in his voice made Rachel glance at him in surprise. She gave him the video and he said, ‘A friend of mine left it. A girl, as a matter of fact.’

Rachel lifted her head slightly, conscious that some delicate thread which had bound them all day had suddenly broken. ‘I suppose I should be relieved it’s a girl. I know how complicated your life can get.’

Leo looked down at the video. ‘It’s not really complicated at all. She’s someone I happen to love very much.’ The silence in the room took on a new dimension. ‘Tell me,’ said Leo at last, ‘when are you and Charles planning to go to the States? I have to know.’

Rachel sat down in an armchair. ‘How did you know anything about that?’ She knew she shouldn’t feel so astonished. Leo was always ahead of the game, his own and everyone else’s.

‘I heard about it through a friend, an American lawyer who works with Charles’ Californian attorney. It’s a small world. You should know that by now.’

‘Why didn’t you say something before? Why did you wait until now?’

Leo paced around for a moment, then sat down on the sofa opposite. ‘Surely that’s something I should be asking you. But if you want an answer to your question, I’ll give you one. When I found out, I tried to work out why you hadn’t said anything. I thought at first that you were afraid of how upset I’d be about losing Oliver.’ Rachel said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on Leo’s face. ‘Then I worked out that the reason you hadn’t said anything was because you hadn’t made your mind up yet whether to go or stay.’ He looked down at the video, turning it over and over in his hands. ‘I invited you here today because I thought I might be able to influence your decision.’

‘How?’

Leo let out a short, sighing laugh. ‘Believe it or not, I was going to make love to you. To make you stay. Keep Oliver here. I was going to tell you I thought we could try again.’

Rachel swallowed, her throat dry and constricted. ‘That would have been a lie, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘You would have let me believe that? You would have done that just to keep me here, so that you would be able to go on seeing Oliver?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Leo nodded. ‘I had thought I would do
anything just to prevent you taking him away. Only it doesn’t work that way, I now realise.’

‘Not because you’ve suddenly discovered some moral scruples, I take it,’ said Rachel.

‘That’s not quite the discovery, no.’

They sat in silence for some time. One by one, pieces fell into place for Rachel. She saw very clearly that Leo could quite easily have done as he had intended, and she would have let him. She would have believed him, she would have thrown away everything she and Charles had for Leo’s sake. For any lie, however flimsy. But Leo had been unable to carry it through. They had both found out certain truths in the past ten minutes.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘you would have been wasting your time, anyway.’

Leo, who had simply been staring at the box and thinking about Camilla, glanced up. So she was going to take Oliver away. He had lost his nerve at the last moment, and this was the price. ‘I see,’ he said, and nodded.

‘I’m not going to the States with Charles. I’m staying here.’ Only now did she give in. She began to cry quietly. Leo crossed the room, fetched some tissues and handed them to her.

‘Does Charles know?’

She shook her head. At last she blinked back her tears. ‘Not yet.’

‘I’m sorry. I mean, I’m glad you’re not going away. I’m sorry about you and Charles,’ said Leo.

‘It wasn’t your doing. Not quite.’

‘No.’

‘Look … I think I’ll just go, if you don’t mind. There’s nothing more to talk about at the moment. I really don’t want to stay here.’ Rachel wiped her eyes and stood up. She took her car keys from the bookcase where they lay.

‘Forgive me … for what I had in mind,’ said Leo.

She nodded. ‘It’s not so much what you did, as what you didn’t do.’

Leo didn’t think he really understood this, and made no reply. Breaking the silence at last, he said, ‘I’ll bring Oliver back tomorrow at teatime.’

Rachel nodded. ‘Fine.’

He went to the door with her and watched as she got into her car and drove away.

When he dropped Oliver off the following evening, Charles was there, bleary-eyed from his flight, but cheerful. He even invited Leo in for a drink, but Leo declined. Clearly, Rachel hadn’t yet told Charles of her decision; she looked strained and spoke very little.

Leo got back into his car and sat for a moment before turning the key, trying to work out whether he was in any way to blame for the impending split between Charles and Rachel. He simply had no idea. Anyway, the important thing for him was to get hold of Camilla. He had rung her last night at her flat, only to be told by Jane that Camilla had gone to her parents in Kew for the weekend. He presumed she would be back in Clapham tonight. He needed to see her, to reassure himself that his casual behaviour of the past week hadn’t had too bad an effect on her. It was as easy to wound her as to make her happy, the work of an instant.
He now knew it was one of the things he loved most about her, and wondered how he could have been so utterly blind to it until yesterday.

Camilla had spent the weekend trying to come to terms with everything Sarah had told her about Leo. She had no doubt that all of it was genuine, that Leo was everything Sarah said he was. Sarah clearly knew so much about him, and what she said made sense. There had always been some instinct in Camilla that told her that a man like Leo – successful, wealthy, charismatic – was not on his own without good reason. Now she knew the answer. His ruthlessness in court, the charm which could turn to acerbity in seconds, the interest which could abruptly transform itself to indifference – those were the clues which should have told her their love affair would end as quickly as it had begun. Through the long hours of the weekend she thought it through, and it seemed pitiable that she should ever have imagined he really cared for her. Whatever the truth was, though, and even if she was to spend several wretched months getting over him, she would rather have kept certain beliefs intact. As it was, she was now left with the thought that every tender word, every gesture and idle, loving caress, had probably been a matter of calculation and fabrication. So she had nothing left at all.

The part that was truly beyond her understanding concerned Anthony. Her somewhat fuzzy liberal views about homosexuality, insofar as she ever thought deeply about the matter, told her that she should have no qualms about two men making love. But when she reduced it to real terms,
and to Leo and Anthony, it was not so much that it offended her, as that it lay outside her comprehension. Given what she knew of both of them, she couldn’t envisage it. She tried not to. It was no good telling herself that it didn’t make Leo an immoral person. If what Sarah had said was true, and if Anthony’s behaviour and apparent depression over the past months could be attributed to Leo’s callousness, then he was guilty of far worse things. And now she herself was included. She had no idea of how she was going to face him in court on Monday.

Leo rang the Clapham flat on Sunday evening, but Camilla still wasn’t back. He went to her room in chambers the following morning, but Simon said she hadn’t been in. When he spoke to Felicity, she said that Camilla had rung in to say she was going straight to court.

Not since Joshua had Leo felt such an apprehensive build-up of feeling. With every hour that had passed since Rachel’s departure, it had become clearer to him how much he had taken Camilla for granted. It now seemed to him unforgivable that he should have let her spend all last week thinking that he no longer wanted to see her. He had selfishly set his mind on achieving his own ends where Rachel and Oliver were concerned, and almost jeopardised everything.