Don't You Want Me? (28 page)

‘What about girls?’

‘Oh,’ Mary laughs – ho ho ho – ‘well,
yes
. He was always a one for the girls, that’s for sure. And they were a one for him too. Can’t say I blame them. Lovely lad. Lovely head of hair.’

‘Quite. Was there ever, you know, any
trouble
?’

Mary’s round blue eyes gaze up at me, appalled.

‘Oh,
no
,’ she cries, ‘Mrs Midhurst, no. Nothing like that. Goodness me, no. Francis is a gent, always has been. Lovely manners. He has charm, you know, I’ll grant you. He’s a bobby-dazzler. And he did make the girls cry sometimes – they all wanted to marry him. It’s a small place, Mrs … Stella, you see. He was the pick of the crop.’

‘But nothing bad? Nothing
really
bad?’

‘No!’ she cries, scandalized at the very idea. ‘Heavens, no. Nothing like that.’

‘OK. Sorry about the interrogation, Mary. Sorry. And thank you. Thank you.’

‘Can I go back to my fish now?’ asks Mary.

‘Yes, please do.’

I fly back up the stairs, heart pounding, and fall on to the phone. I need to have a little chat with Dominic. Now.

‘Do we really have to do this now?’ says Dominic sleepily. ‘It’s half past six in the bloody morning.’

‘Too fucking right we do,’ I reply.

‘OK,’ yawns Dominic. ‘I lied.’

‘
What?
’

‘I lied,’ his disembodied voice says, sounding bored. ‘OK? I’m hanging up now. I’ll call you later.’

‘What do you mean, you lied? Why did you lie?’

‘I mean I made it up. Invented it. Span a falsehood.
J’ai menti
. Do you understand?’

‘But why, Dom?’

Dominic laughs. ‘I’ve got nothing against Francis. Did you hear about the exhibition, by the way? Fan-fucking-tastic.’ He pauses. ‘Not least because it’ll get him away from you. I think your set-up is overly cosy.’

‘Why did you lie?’

‘Why are you asking?’

‘Dominic, I am about two seconds away from really, really losing my temper. Just answer me, will you?’ I roar down the phone.

Dom seems to find my rage deeply entertaining: he allows himself another slow, lazy laugh.

‘Got the hots for Frankie, have we? Christ, Stella.’

‘
Dominic
.’

‘OK, OK. It’s very simple, Stella. I have these people in my working life. I’m surrounded by them: bloody provincials with two O-levels and a way with a brush. They can’t talk, Stella, in case you hadn’t noticed. They can’t
hold a knife as though it weren’t a pen. And that’s one thing. But the oiks spreading into my personal life – well, that’s quite another thing. I don’t want you shacked up with some Geordie yobbo. So I just told you something that I thought would encourage you to keep your distance. And,’ he adds languidly, ‘it worked.’

‘What are you talking about, Dom?’ I whisper. ‘You know Frank lives here.’ I could pass out with shock.

‘Well, if you must have the Geordie yobbo as a lodger, fine,’ Dominic says generously. ‘What I meant was, I’m not warmed by the prospect of having the Geordie yobbo in your bed. In our bed, to be technically accurate. Not that I have any wish to return to it, you understand. “Our” bed means the bed that I paid for. In my house. With the mother of my child. Which leads me to Honey.’

‘What about her?’

Dominic sniggers. ‘Do you really think, Stella, that I want my daughter to have some peasant for a stepfather? Some uneducated, inarticulate oik like Frank? As for his legendary promiscuity …’

‘Leave it.’

‘
The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine
,’ Dominic sings down the line, his voice echoing over the oceans, his accent grotesquely, cartoonishly distorted. ‘At least that wimp Rupert went to public school.’

‘You make me sick, Dominic,’ I tell him. ‘You make me vomit.’

‘See you,’ says Dom, the smile still in his voice. ‘Love to Honey.’

I throw the phone across the room.

And then I run,
run
to the bathroom.

‘That’s better,’ says Mary approvingly. ‘I love that dress.’

‘Did Francis tell you the name of the restaurant, Mary? Please, try and remember.’

‘Restaurant, restaurant … Oh, yes. He said something about the French place around the corner, if I remember rightly.’

‘Did he say what time he’d booked for?’

‘Nine o’clock, I think.’

‘What’s it now?’

‘Ooh,’ she says pulling up her woollen sleeve incredibly slowly. ‘Quarter to ten.’

‘Stay here, Mary, OK? Is that OK? Just please stay here.’ I grab my coat and keys and fly out of the door.

‘Have fun, pet,’ says Mary. I hope you find him.’

Odette’s. He must have meant Odette’s, where Rupert took Cressida. It’s on Regent’s Park Road, where Louisa lives. Surely he can’t have asked …

No. I run out of the door, springing on my trainers, and keep running, like Forrest Gump. How can I have been so thick? I’m Forrest Gump myself, from my thick head to my bu-ttocks.

Five minutes later, panting like a dog, I push open the door of the restaurant. There he is, eating, at a table set for two, a bottle of wine in front of him. The silver on the table glitters in the candlelight.

‘Frank.’

He looks up; I register his surprise.

‘Stella.’

‘So bloody like you to deprive me of my dinner. Why didn’t you say?’

‘Nice to see you. I was going to. But then you kicked me out.’

‘Don’t be wanky, Frankie.’

‘Could we have another menu, please?’ Frank asks the waiter. ‘Here, have some wine.’ He passes me his glass.

I raise it. ‘Congratulations, Frank. Well done. I am very proud of you.’

‘Cheers.’

‘What are you eating?’

‘Onion
tarte tatin
. Want some?’

‘Yes, please.’

He puts a forkful into my mouth. I fleetingly wonder whether it would be bad form to hintfully fellate the fork.

‘So,’ says Frank.

‘So,’ I say.

‘Here we are.’

‘Yes.’

‘Want me to give you more pulling tips? Point out the dirty rides?’

‘Have you been casing the joint?’

Frank gives me an especially Frank look.

‘No, Stella. I’ve been eating my dinner.’

‘I must order mine.’

‘Naturally.’

‘I’m sorry about earlier, Frankie,’ I say thickly, addressing the menu. ‘I got this weird idea into my head. I …’

‘It’s OK, love,’ he says, raising his hand. ‘I understand. What are you eating?’

‘Steak. You don’t understand, actually …’

‘Don’t spoil it,’ he says gently, looking at me hard. ‘I like having my dinner with you.’

‘What I mean to say, Frankie – no, please listen – is, do
you think you could not point out the dirty rides any more?’

‘OK,’ says Frank slowly, still fixing me with his eyes.

‘Would you mind?’

‘No,’ he smiles, filling the glass the waiter has just brought.

‘I wouldn’t love it any more. And I wouldn’t love it if you brought strange girls home,’ I add. ‘I wouldn’t love strange girls in pants. In the bathroom. Frankly.’

‘Really?’ smiles Frank, and with his lovely smile an entire ocean of complications and what ifs and oh my Gods just seems to float away. ‘Mmm. I was getting kind of tired of them myself.’

‘Look,’ I say, a grin splitting my face from ear to ear, ‘I don’t know what’ll happen in the end. But after we’ve finished eating, could we just go home and …’

Frank looks down at his plate and then flicks his eyes at me. ‘Yes,’ he says, in his low voice, with his grey eyes, with his hard mouth that make me d-r-o-o-1. He smiles a smile that manages to be dirty and sweet at the same time. ‘Let’s eat our dinner and go home and go to bed and not come out till Christmas.’

We look at each other and carry on eating, probably faster than is seemly. ‘I don’t want pudding,’ I say, with my mouth full.

‘Bloody hell, Stella,’ he laughs. ‘Know what you mean, though. D’you think they’ll put the cork back in the wine for us?’

‘Corky shmorky. Let’s go home.’

We pay the bill and I get my coat and suddenly we’re out in the street. My hand’s in his hand and it stays there this time and it’s really sexy – SEXUS MAXIMUS, is
what it is, SEXUS VOLCANICUS, is what I want to scream – but I have to tell you, and I might be going mad, that sexy is not the only thing it is.

I turn to Frank and am about to speak, but then I think, No, I’ve said enough. He looks at me.

‘
Be
,’ he says. ‘Let’s go home, Stella, and just … be.’

‘Fog on the Tyne’, written by Alan Hull; reproduced by kind permission of The Charisma Music Publishing Co. Ltd/EMI Music Publishing.

‘You Made Me Love You’, words by Joseph McCarthy, music by James Monaco, © 1913 Broadway Music Corp., USA. (50%) Redwood Music Ltd, London
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1 8
BD
; reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. (50%) Francis Day & Hunter Ltd, London
WC2H
OQY
; reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.

‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, words and music by Peter Burns, Stephen Coy, Michael Percy and Tim Lever, © 1985 Burning Music Ltd and Mat Music. (73.33%) Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London
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6 8
BS
; (26.66%) Westbury Music Ltd, London
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9 8
DA
; reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd and Westbury Music Ltd. All rights reserved.

‘Kiss Me Kate’, words and music by Cole Porter, © 1948 Buxton Hill Music Corp., USA. Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London
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6 8
BS
; reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.

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First published 2002

Reissued in this edition 2011

Copyright © India Knight, 2002

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ISBN: 978-0-14-193870-7