A Rather Curious Engagement (7 page)

As for me, I was the kind of freelancer who invariably ended up working when other people didn’t want to, like holidays and summers, so the idea of actually having a whole, luxurious summer vacation really was a grand indulgence.

“I think it fits right in with the Plan,” I said.

“And at the summer’s end,” Jeremy said, warming to the idea, “we can sort out all the other things we need to decide.”

Now, I want to say, here and now, that I was all for getting away from London and taking time off, even before Lydia appeared on the scene, literally darkening Jeremy’s doorstep. But now that she’d shown up, I figured we had all the more reason to vamoose.

Fortunately, since Jeremy was clearing the decks to take this time off, his work required him to do even more of those quick business jaunts to Brussels and Frankfurt and Antwerp, to schmooze his clients and prepare them for his hiatus. This kept him out of his bachelor apartment, and out of Lydia’s reach; and whenever he was in town, we always met at my flat. I was managing the trust when Jeremy was away, and I was counting the weeks until the auction.

I began to feel that we were on a lucky streak. The townhouse deal wasn’t easy, but Martin and I managed to pull it off with just a few minor skirmishes involving other buyers who finally backed off. The other apartments weren’t really filled with the kinds of “mod-cons” that buyers in this part of town expect. Doris and her husband, who lived upstairs, had such a small kitchen, and a leaky roof, that we were able to get a good price for it rather quickly. And downstairs, Gladys and her husband, inspired by the sale of Doris’ place, were now eager to sell and then move into their daughter’s house, rent-free, in Canada. Gladys’ ground-floor flat had old-fashioned plumbing and fixtures, which desperately needed updating, so this kept the selling price a bit lower than it might otherwise have been. The accountants and lawyers were actually a big help here; I think they felt protective of us now.

Jeremy and I e-mailed each other and commiserated over what needed to be done to bring the townhouse into the twenty-first century. To me, the house represented our future careers, and I sensed that, in launching an independent enterprise, how you end up depends a lot on how you begin. Therefore I wanted to make the place really work for us, by reviving the lovely, old-fashioned period detail yet making certain it had all the vital things we’d need to work from there. The wiring was ka-fluey, for instance. (All of it. Phones, electric, Internet.) And of course, whenever you’re remodeling, sooner or later somebody suggests knocking out a wall.

In this case, it was on the first floor, and it would combine two small rooms into one nice large sitting room, perfectly positioned between my office and Jeremy’s. I envisioned this big room as the place where we’d catch up with each other at the end of the day, as a bridge between our work and our personal life. And finally, Jeremy could have his garage in the basement, so he wouldn’t have to park on the street anymore. The house was solidly built and could take this level of renovation.

Good, I thought, that meant we had a strong foundation— metaphorically as well as concretely. Because it was clear to me that at summer’s end, we would be coming back here to make big decisions, not the least of which was whether our working and personal relationship was going to really last.

So. I guess you could understand why, just days before we were going to depart for the auction in Nice, I, still immersed in paving the way for our future, got a bit of a shock when I telephoned Jeremy at his apartment (where he had stopped off to unpack his business-travel suitcase and pack up his things for our summer off)—and, a woman answered the phone.

“Hall-ooo?” she said in her posh, well-rested way. I tried to tell myself that I’d dialed the wrong number, and got someone else’s high-end, neurotic ex-wife. But I knew it was her.

“Where’s Jeremy?” I said brusquely.

“And who may I say is calling?” Lydia said, and then giggled helplessly for his benefit. I heard him call out, and she said, “I think it’s a wrong number, darling,” just to stick it to me.

“Lydia,” I said in my best worldly-heiress voice, “this is Penny. Put Jeremy on.”

“Ooh, can’t do it,” she said. “He’s in the shower. But I’ll tell him you called.”

I won’t even mention all the expletives that ran through my mind. Fortunately I didn’t have to say them, because I heard Jeremy say plaintively, “Lydia, who is it? The office?” Then it dawned on him. “Is that Penny?”

“ ’Bye now,” she was saying, but Jeremy must have made a grab for it.

“Penny,” he said, quickly and contritely. “Is that you?”

“You’ve got ten seconds to tell me why you’re in the shower with That Person in your apartment,” I said calmly.

“I was not in the shower,” he said indignantly. “Is that what she told you?”

He must have made a face at her, because I heard her giggle again.

“Yes, we’ve been having oh-so-much-fun playing cat and mouse over you,” I said. “Why is she there?”

“She wanted some legal advice,” he said, sounding as if he knew perfectly well what I thought of that.

My voice took on a phonily casual tone. “Oh?” I said, still trying to sound like the sort of elegant woman who’s so confident that nothing threatens her. “And did you ‘recuse’ yourself, and refer her to another lawyer?”

“Well, I had to hear her out first, to see who to refer her to,” Jeremy said, a shade irritated with her, or with me, or with both of us, or women in general.

“She must have been frustrated all these months while you were away on business trips,” I said with a light laugh. “She must have been crouched over by the elevator waiting for you to show up again.” I expected him to reproach me, but when he didn’t, I knew that I’d guessed fairly correctly. “God, she did, didn’t she?” I marveled.

“Just about,” he admitted.

“My advice is, pack your duds and shoo her out of there and bolt the door and don’t look back,” I said crisply.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly, dog that he was. Then I had a horrid thought, imagining his open suitcases lying about, a telltale sign for Lydia to see that he was going on an extended trip.

“You didn’t tell her where we’re going, did you, Jeremy?” I asked pleadingly. “You didn’t tell her about our Plan, with our future enterprise and the yacht, and our great gap summer and . . . ?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “She did notice the suitcases, and asked for a number where she could reach me, because of this ongoing legal matter she’s got—”

I didn’t even wait for him to finish. I snapped, “Let her call through to your office, like all your other clients!”

“I did better than that,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

At his surreptitious tone, I had the creepy idea that she might be listening, and that he suspected this, too. “Please hurry out of there,” I said, as winsomely as I could. “For my sake, all right?”

“I’m coming on wings,” he promised.

I braced myself for a delay, and excuses about London traffic. But Jeremy arrived pretty quickly, with all his suitcases stuffed in the trunk of his car, and he came bounding up the steps.

“So,” he said without ceremony, “want to know how I brilliantly handled the whole Lydia debacle?”

“Brilliantly?” I said as lightly as I could. “You let her into your apartment; you let her answer your phone. Brilliant? Hmmm . . .”

“She’s got some legal tangles about money and property with that Brazilian dude,” Jeremy explained.

“Did you refer her to Harold or Rupert?” I asked. Harold was a senior partner in Jeremy’s firm, and Rupert was Jeremy’s right-hand man.

“Neither,” he said. “I asked a mutual friend of ours, who works for a completely different firm, to look in on her.”

“Our friend?” I asked. “Who?”

“Not you-and-me ours,” he said hastily. “A close friend of mine from university. Bertie. Lydia knows him and trusts him, because he’s her crowd.”

“Did she go for it?” I asked, trying not to feel excluded by this “our crowd” business, yet I felt my heart bobbing up and down as if it had suddenly been chucked overboard and was clinging to a lifesaver to stay afloat.

“Yes, and she had to admit it was the perfect solution.”

This did nothing to allay my suspicions of Lydia’s motives, but I didn’t comment.

Jeremy added teasingly, “I thought I’d get heaps of praise for the way I handled this thing. Feel free to shower me with adulation anytime now.” He peered at me. “You’re upset,” he noted. (Genius. ) “Darling,” he said softly, “I can’t go around acting like I don’t know Lydia, or am afraid to be near her.”

“Why not?” I said in a small voice. “I have forsaken all my previous beaux.” I hesitated. “Jeremy,” I said, “It
is
really—over between you two, isn’t it?”

He said, very honestly, “Yes, of course. But somehow, you have to work at divorce almost as much as you worked on the marriage. To make a real break of those emotional bonds, not just a fake one.”

“Bonds?” I asked faintly. “Do you still have them?”

By now I’d begun to recklessly break all my rules about dealing with men. For instance, Rule Number One: Never ask a question that you think you don’t want to know the answer to.

“It’s just that, you know the other person’s vulnerabilities, so while they’re driving everyone else crazy, you know that they’re suffering,” he explained. “At first, everybody, including me, thought Lydia was so sure of herself when we were all still in school—she seemed to have it all—beauty, breeding, charm. She always said I was her ‘rock,’ so everyone told us that we were perfect together.”

Aw, nuts, I had to ask,
I thought to myself. Jolly school memories. What fun.

“But out in the real world, she was more fragile than most people realized,” Jeremy was saying a bit guiltily. “We all took our time getting married—everybody was just having fun, starting up with our careers—and I had been living in Paris, working with a firm there for years. When I came back to London, I was weary of the single life, and Lydia was especially unhappy with it. I thought if she had another ‘safe haven,’ as school was, then everything would be all right. But it never was. It turned out that we were not really compatible at all. But even now, when it’s clearly over, it’s hard not to care when that person seems to be in trouble. I can’t just treat her as if she’s dead. It kills something inside you when you do that. Something you want to keep alive for, well, a certain redheaded person, for instance.”

Oh. That would be me, I guess. I’m quite susceptible to this sort of talk, but I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t being a gullible little dummy. Jeremy had never been this forthcoming about his past before. I gazed searchingly at his face, looking for any telltale signs of duplicity, deceit, or general dastardliness, but found none. I supposed I could, after all, trust this man I loved so much. Maybe. The trouble with loving a good guy is that he wants to be straight with everyone, so you feel like a rat when you wish he’d be a tad hostile to his “ex.”

“So. Let that be an end to it. And, I could do with a kiss now, as a reward for being a good, faithful dog,” Jeremy said.

“Hold on, dog,” I said. “I just want to know one thing. You didn’t give her
any
information at all about where we’re going to be . . . did you?”

Rule Number Two: Don’t interrogate. But I’m only human. This was no longer about whether Lydia still loved, or wanted to possess, Jeremy. I only cared if
he
still cared for her in some old-times’-sake way that she could exploit. And somehow it would have felt like a violation if he had told her of our Splurge.

“Look,” Jeremy said. “I’m weary of talking about Lydia. But the answer is: No, I did not tell her where we’re going. I said I’d be out of the country on a private sojourn. Well, I didn’t say it quite like that. But she got the picture.” Then his expression changed, as if he felt he’d just been enlightened.

“So that’s the whole reason you want the yacht and our summer off? You just want us as far away from Lydia as possible, don’t you?” he said with a knowing smirk.

“May I remind you,” I loftily told him, “that, originally, it was your idea that we take a sabbatical from work? Remember, when you chased me down at the museum and told me that you loved and adored me?”

“And I do,” he said, “despite your occasional skullduggery.”

“
My
skullduggery!” I said. “How about Lydia’s? Sneaking into your building, and then breaking into your apartment, lying in wait for you while drinking your whisky! You must admit, her timing is mighty suspicious.”

“No, no, really, it’s not about us,” Jeremy insisted. “It’s about her breakup with that guy, and she got homesick for London.”

“Pshaw!” I cried. “And I can prove it to you. I’ll wager five cents that the minute you leave London, she will, too. If, however, she is sincere, she’ll stay put even if you’re not around. But she won’t.”

Rule Number Three: Avoid saying anything bad about another woman, even when she appears to be exploiting everyone’s better nature for her own wretched purposes.

“You really don’t think she’s got a sincere bone in her body, do you?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s not about bones,” I said stubbornly. “It’s about tactics.”

“Well, not to worry,” Jeremy said reasonably. “In a couple of days she’ll set her sights on bigger fish than me. London is full of rich billionaires.”

I suddenly realized that we had just spent all this time talking of nothing but Lydia. If I wanted to dispel her influence, then I would have to stop worrying about her.

“All right, then,” I said in a more playful tone, “I am bound to conclude that you actually did, in difficult circumstances, acquit yourself admirably and loyally, and I do, indeed, wish to kiss you.”

Jeremy brightened immediately, and he leaned toward me expectantly for a reward of a kiss. And, I just can’t help it. It’s really quite alarming, the effect that man has on me. The moment I felt him coming closer, and caught a whiff of that nice Jeremy-smell, well . . .