Kiss (24 page)
Authors: Jill Mansell
‘Then you are a miracle worker. I can’t believe the difference you’ve made to the old place.’
Gina couldn’t believe the difference he was making to
her
. Since Andrew’s departure she had been physically incapable of reacting even faintly normally to the attentions of any man. Not that there had been a great deal of opportunity, but the odd friendly word or appreciative glance had left her icily unmoved. She was immune to the opposite sex.
her
. Since Andrew’s departure she had been physically incapable of reacting even faintly normally to the attentions of any man. Not that there had been a great deal of opportunity, but the odd friendly word or appreciative glance had left her icily unmoved. She was immune to the opposite sex.
But here, now, long-dormant hormones were unaccountably slithering back to life at a rate of knots . . .
‘I’m sorry, how rude of me,’ said the visitor, delving in his jacket pocket and pulling out a large, folded envelope. ‘You’re busy and I’m wasting your time. My name’s Ralph Henson and I came here to return a contract. I’ve read it and signed in the appropriate places. All Doug has to do now is bury it . . . except that there doesn’t appear to be anywhere left for him to bury anything.’
Gina, glad of something to do and relieved to discover that her legs still worked, turned back from the D to J filing cabinet with a bulky, charcoal-grey file. ‘It all goes in here, from now on.’
Ralph grinned. ‘Amazing. More than a miracle.’
‘Gosh, ITV,’ said Gina, gazing at the contract.
Nervy but attractive, thought Ralph, admiring the excellent cut of her sleek blonde bob as she bent her head to return the file to its rightful place in the cabinet. Better still, his name obviously didn’t mean anything to her.
‘I know,’ he said with a modest shrug. ‘The producer warned me that once the series goes out, my life will never be the same again. I don’t really know whether to celebrate or panic.’
‘But that’s amazing.’ Gina’s eyes shone. ‘You must celebrate.’
‘OK.’ Ralph, rising to his feet, rested his hands lightly on the edge of the desk. ‘But only if you’ll celebrate with me. Tonight.’
Gina could smell his aftershave. She knew she must have misheard him.
‘What?’
‘Dinner at Bouboulina’s. Eight o’clock,’ he said steadily. Touching her left hand with his index finger, he added, ‘You aren’t married; I checked first.’
‘But . . . but I don’t know you,’ she stammered. Nothing like this had ever happened to her in her life before. One minute she was harmlessly fantasizing, the next it was becoming scarily true. ‘And you don’t know me.’
Ralph, who had thought he’d known Izzy Van Asch, simply shrugged. ‘Sometimes that’s the best way. All you have to do is say yes.’
‘No,’ said Gina, panic-stricken.
‘Are you scared of me?’
‘No!’
‘Then say yes.’
She closed her eyes for a second. What would Izzy do now? Was going out to dinner with an attractive man such a huge ordeal, after all? And which would she most regret later: accepting the invitation or refusing it?
‘OK,’ said Gina, before she had the chance to start panicking all over again. ‘OK, yes.’
‘That’s better.’ Ralph, who had overheard Izzy cajoling Gina into lending her some money and had watched Izzy leave the building ten minutes earlier - she was being towed along the pavement by some massive dog and looking extremely pleased with herself - couldn’t wait to see her face when he turned up at her house this evening. Pulling a battered Filofax from his other pocket, he picked up a pen. ‘Just give me your address and I’ll pick you up at eight sharp.’
For once, Andrew didn’t even notice the state of the bedroom. Pushing aside a towelling robe and a box of tissues, he sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. Behind him, Marcy wiped her eyes and reached for his hand.
‘Oh darling, I’m sorry.’ The words came out jerkily, between sobs. To her relief the tears flowed on cue. ‘It happened yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t feeling terribly well all morning, then after lunch I started to get these terrible cramping p-pains. It all happened so . . . quickly.’ Encouraged by the fact that Andrew was holding her hand, she allowed her eyes to fill up once more. ‘By the time the doctor got here, it was all over. The b-baby was gone.’
Andrew took her in his arms and held her while she sobbed quietly against his chest. ‘You should be in hospital,’ he said, stunned by the news. ‘You should have
phoned
me, for God’s sake.’
phoned
me, for God’s sake.’
‘The doctor examined me, made sure I was OK,’ whispered Marcy bravely. ‘And I didn’t want to disturb you . . . I knew how important your conference was. There wasn’t anything you could do, and I wanted to be on my own to have time to come to terms with . . . what had happened.’
‘You should have phoned,’ repeated Andrew, stroking her hair and wondering how it was possible to feel this numb. Guilt warred with relief that she hadn’t tried to contact him, but for the loss of the baby he was unable to summon up any emotion at all. A child wasn’t something he’d ever wanted in the first place, and even knowing that Marcy was pregnant, he’d found it curiously difficult to envisage the end result.
Except that now, there would be no end result. Which meant that his fate - Marcy, marriage and fatherhood - was no longer sealed. Katerina . . .
‘Poor darling,’ he said absently, his mind racing on ahead. ‘Can I get you anything? What would you like?’
Sex would have been nice. Marcy wondered how soon she could decently resume that side of their relationship. The prospect of weeks of enforced celibacy wasn’t exactly cheering.
‘I’m OK,’ she said, her voice husky from crying. ‘How did your conference go, anyway?’
‘Hmm?’ Andrew was still lost in thought. He had arranged to meet Kat later this evening; clearly he wouldn’t be able to do so now. He could scarcely abandon Marcy, but dare he run the risk of phoning her at Gina’s house to let her know of the change of circumstances?
‘The conference,’ Marcy repeated, nestling into the curve of his arms and thankful that he hadn’t asked any further difficult questions. ‘Was it a success?’
An image of Katerina, sitting up in bed sipping her morning coffee and smiling at him, flashed through Andrew’s mind. Naked, happy and utterly desirable, she was everything he’d ever dreamed of.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, wondering whether the telephone cord would stretch as far as the bathroom. ‘It went very well. Very well indeed.’
Chapter 25
Izzy hadn’t decided whether to be amused or annoyed with Ralph for playing such a filthy trick. On the one hand, it was flattering to know that he still cared, yet on the other it was poor Gina who was being used, and who was going to be hurt, and Izzy herself who, in turn, would have to suffer the inevitable consequences.
The decision was made for her in a flash when she answered the door at a quarter to eight. Ralph, in all-too-familiar acting mode, did the faintest of double takes and said in astonished tones, ‘I don’t believe it! Izzy . . . ?’
‘Oh, cut the crap, Ralph.’ Grabbing his arm, she hauled him briskly inside. When they reached the sitting room she closed the door and leaned against it, taking in the sharp, charcoal-grey suit, pale pink shirt and . . . ugh . . . grey shoes. When he lifted his arm to push back a lock of hair she even glimpsed a flash of gold bracelet. Thank goodness Sam wasn’t here.
‘Now look,’ she began, her voice low and her expression deadly serious. ‘Gina will be down here any minute, and because she doesn’t know what a bastard you are, she has spent four hours getting ready to go out with you. She hasn’t so much as looked at another man since her husband left her. This is her first date in probably fifteen years. So I’m just warning you, if you hurt her, you’re in big trouble.’
‘But—’ said Ralph, looking injured and inwardly cursing the failure of his plan. He had been relying on the element of surprise; it simply hadn’t occurred to him that Gina would tell Izzy the name of the man who had invited her out to dinner.
‘But nothing.’ Izzy was listening to the sound of Gina’s footsteps on the stairs. ‘Just remember that if you hurt her, I shall personally kill you.’
‘Did I hear the doorbell?’ said Gina. Her nerves had miraculously vanished and she was feeling quite giddy with excitement. At that moment the phone rang.
‘Ralph and I were just introducing ourselves,’ Izzy explained. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll answer it. You two go off and have a lovely time. And make sure he takes you somewhere expensive,’ she added, giving Ralph the benefit of her most innocent smile. ‘He looks as if he can afford to show a girl a good time . . .’
‘Don’t take any notice of Izzy,’ she heard Gina saying as she left the room. ‘She’s only joking.’
Izzy picked up the phone in the kitchen and said, ‘Hallo?’
Andrew hesitated. It wasn’t Gina, but was it definitely Kat?
‘Hallo,’ repeated Izzy in neutral tones, still planning in her mind a suitably apt murder.
On the other end of the line, Andrew anxiously waited for her to say something else so that he might glean a clue as to the identity of the voice, and Izzy, who could hear him breathing, rapidly answered his prayer. In a voice rigid with disdain, she said, ‘Piss off, pervert,’ and hung up.
Definitely not Kat, thought Andrew.
If Joel McGill was as tall, dark and handsome as she had imagined, thought Izzy, then he must be hiding beneath one of the tables. For no man fitting that description - in even its loosest terms - was visible to the naked eye.
She was not, however, going to let that put her off. Since nobody in the audience was wearing a jacket emblazoned with the famous yellow-and-white MBT logo, nor even a discreet badge proclaiming, ‘I am an A&R man,’ she had simply sung her heart out and ensured that even the least interested and most unlikely looking customer had been singled out during the course of the set for special attention and a dazzling smile.
Now, for the penultimate song of the evening, she stepped down from the stage and moved towards the nearest tables, where a group of businessmen had been applauding with particular enthusiasm. Behind her, Terry the pianist struck up the bluesy opening chords of ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’, and the audience, recognizing the song, broke into renewed applause. The regulars among them knew that this was one of her particular favourites. For her finale, Izzy would return to the stage and belt out ‘Cabaret’ and every spine in the house would tingle because the power and passion in her voice made it impossible not to.
The evening had gone well, the audience were appreciative and Izzy was enjoying herself as she swayed among the tables. When the song was almost over she began to make her way back towards the stage, smiling as she did so at one of the quieter-looking middle-aged businessmen. She was mid-verse when she let out a scream. ‘OUCH!’
The quiet, middle-aged businessman’s hand, which had shot up the back of her skirt and pinched her thigh, was gone again in a flash. Izzy swung around, stared at him, saw his leery smile. She continued singing, as if the hesitation had been deliberate, and coolly ignored the nudges of his companions.
‘Last song, now,’ she murmured into the microphone, and nodded to Terry to indicate that she was staying where she was. The audience applauded once more as Terry moved smoothly into ‘Cabaret’, and Izzy, giving the quiet businessman an encouraging smile, prayed harder than she’d ever prayed before in her life that he wasn’t the man from MBT.
As she sang her way through the opening verse, she moved closer to him, swaying her hips like Liza Minelli and reaching out until her fingers were only inches from his shoulder. He was grinning up at her now, his yellowed teeth revealed and his face glistening with sweat.
It was like ripping off an Elastoplast, all over in a flash. Izzy, dancing away, was up on the stage almost before he realised what had happened.
‘. . .
Life is a grey toupee, old son, come to the grey toupee
. . ’ she sang joyously, waving the trophy above her own head like a big hairy handkerchief, and the audience, many of whom had witnessed the businessman’s initial crude assault, rocked with laughter. The ensuing cheers almost brought the house down. Izzy bowed and tossed the toupee back to its apoplectic owner, whose friends were laughing more loudly than anyone else.
Life is a grey toupee, old son, come to the grey toupee
. . ’ she sang joyously, waving the trophy above her own head like a big hairy handkerchief, and the audience, many of whom had witnessed the businessman’s initial crude assault, rocked with laughter. The ensuing cheers almost brought the house down. Izzy bowed and tossed the toupee back to its apoplectic owner, whose friends were laughing more loudly than anyone else.
‘Since I doubt very much whether I still work here,’ Izzy announced cradling the microphone in both hands, ‘I shall just say that I hope you enjoyed the show. You’ve been a wonderful audience.Thank you, and good night.’
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