MILLIE'S FLING (27 page)

When Nat had driven off earlier, he had got as far as the outskirts of the town before turning round and heading back. He was being ridiculous, he’d told himself. Overreacting. It was perfectly possible that Hester had gone out with Jen and Trina and ended up crashing out at their place.

In fact, it made absolute sense.

Any minute now, she could arrive home in a taxi.

He’d come this far, Nat reminded himself, a couple more hours wouldn’t hurt.

He may as well wait.

Now he wished he hadn’t. As Hester and the tall dark-haired stranger disappeared into the house, Nat glanced at the clock on the Renault's dashboard and realized that he could have reached the Bristol turn-off on the M5 by now. He also knew that some men in his situation would leap out of their car, hammer on the front door until it was opened, and throw a lightning punch at the stranger who had spent the night with their girlfriend. But Nat knew that wasn’t the answer.

What good would that do? The other man wasn’t to blame. From the way he and Hester had been laughing together, he clearly hadn’t kidnapped her and forced her to spend the night with him against her will.

His heart knotted with pain, Nat turned the key in the ignition for the second time that morning and drove off down the road.

Feeling wretched and knowing she looked it, Millie almost jumped out of her skin when she heard activity on the front doorstep. For a split second her hopelessly optimistic imagination conjured up a happy-ending scenario. It was Hugh, complete with a massive,
massive
bouquet of flowers, coming back to beg her forgiveness and tell her that he hadn’t meant a word of what he’d said earlier—

‘Coo-eee! Wake up lazy bum, I’ve got a surprise for you!’

But it was only Con, Millie discovered when she stumbled out of bed and along the landing.

‘And I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she told Hester. ‘Nat's been here.’

Silence. Hester's eyes widened.

‘What?’ Eventually she spoke. ‘You mean… like a ghost?’

‘No. It was the real Nat. He drove down to surprise you.’ Millie pointed to the note scrawled on the back of the pizza flyer, now propped up on the hall table. ‘But you weren’t here, so he's gone back.’

Hester, her face crumpling in disbelief, wailed, ‘Oh
God
!’

‘Just as well I don’t fancy you,’ Millie grumbled, peering at her reflection in the Mercedes’ rearview mirror. ‘I look an absolute fright.’

‘Just as well I don’t fancy
you
,’ Con cheerfully remarked. ‘And what I don’t understand is why you’re looking so wrecked anyway. I mean, it's not as if you stayed up all night drinking and dancing on the tables.’

Millie only wished she had, it would have been a great improvement on staying up having a disastrous one-night stand.

But if there was one person she could safely confide in, it was Con.

‘Someone came round,’ Millie admitted, ‘after the party. I made a fool of myself. I thought I meant something to him, but I was wrong. It wasn’t a relationship he was after,’ she said sadly. ‘Just a quick shag.’

‘Oh dear. Now you owe Hester two hundred pounds,’ said Con.

Honestly, Hester was such a blabbermouth.

‘I can’t tell her. If I do, she’ll want to know who it was.’

He looked entertained.

‘Don’t tell me you slept with her boyfriend.’

‘No!’

‘Lucas, then.’

‘NO!!’ Even more outraged, Millie gave him a thump.

‘Ow!’ Rubbing his arm, Con said with a grin, ‘I don’t know what's so terrible about that. I’d sleep with Lucas Kemp.’

‘Where are we going anyway? I’m not up to anything energetic.’ Millie gazed without enthusiasm at a couple of sturdily booted hikers striding past as he reversed the borrowed Mercedes into a space in the car park of the Ocean View Hotel.

‘I thought we’d start with breakfast,’ said Con. ‘After that, we’ll go down to the beach.’ He nodded cheerfully at the curving stretch of golden sand below them.

Millie winced. The curving stretch of golden sand was two miles long.

‘I’m definitely not up to walking.’

‘In that case,’ said Con, ‘I’ll just have to sit and ogle the surfers. While you catch up on some sleep.’

Hugh was having his worst day in months. Disgust and self-loathing were churning inside him like some volatile combination of chemicals. Sleep was out of the question. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to sit down, or eat anything, or even drink a cup of coffee. Finally, out of sheer desperation, he had left his house and started walking, with no idea where he was headed. Maybe physical exhaustion would help.

Not that he deserved help, after what he’d done.

He hated himself.

He was no better than an animal.

He had betrayed Louisa.

It wasn’t Millie's fault; Hugh knew that. And he felt bad about
the way he had treated her. But if he was being honest here—and he was, brutally—Millie's hurt feelings weren’t uppermost in his mind right now. All he could picture was Louisa's face, his beautiful wife's face, and she was no longer smiling back at him, because he had hurt her feelings a damn sight more than he’d hurt Millie's.

Eight months, thought Hugh, closing his eyes and failing to block out the image of Louisa. It had only been eight months since she’d died—God, eight months was
nothing
—and here he was, sleeping with another girl, carrying on as if his own wife had never existed.

Even the most cold-hearted husband, surely, would wait a year.

Hugh rubbed his aching temples. He’d never imagined he could be so callous, so unfeeling. As far as he was concerned, it was a betrayal of their entire marriage. All the old emotions, locked away for so long, had rushed back last night like clamoring hormonal teenage girls screaming with delight as they launched themselves at the latest boy band. He hadn’t been able to think straight, let alone shoo them away. Millie had been all he’d wanted. And at the time it had been fantastic; guilt simply hadn’t entered into the equation because he hadn’t so much as
thought
about Louisa.

It had just been so great to feel normal again. Like a genuine, fully functioning member of the human race, instead of the emotionally frozen widower whose young wife had been so tragically killed.

And it
had
been great, Hugh admitted, until his conscience had kicked in like a whole truckload of mules. Moments after Millie's doorbell had rung, in fact, and she had hurried downstairs to answer it.

That was when it had suddenly occurred to him that the person at the door might be Louisa, come to challenge him and demanding to know what the bloody hell he thought he was playing at.

He hadn’t seriously expected it to be Louisa; he wasn’t completely mad. But the idea had been more than enough. Guilt had
engulfed him like an icy tidal wave. Eight months—what was the
matter
with him? Eight months was nothing more than an insult.

He may as well have gone out straight after the funeral, picked up some girl in a bar, and taken her home for all the difference it made.

Actually, thought Hugh with renewed self-loathing, that might even have been an improvement, because then at least it would have been sex, pure and simple, with no emotions attached.

‘Oi!’ shouted a fat holidaymaker as Hugh cannoned into him. ‘Watch where you’re going, will you?’

Hugh hadn’t been watching. In fact, he didn’t have the faintest idea where he was going. It made no difference to him and he neither knew nor cared. All he wanted to do was keep on following the stony coastal path, until he walked himself into some kind of oblivion.

The next moment he spotted the sign saying ‘Tresanter Point,’ and realized that he’d reached the infamous section of cliff top so popular with would-be suicides.

Shaking his windswept hair out of his eyes, Hugh approached the edge and peered over at the angry mass of foam churning around the black jagged rocks below.

Well, not that kind of oblivion, obviously.

With a glimmer of amusement, Hugh decided he’d been rotten enough already to Millie without adding that one to her conscience. He imagined her discovering that the day he’d slept with her, he’d killed himself.

Hardly the ego-boost of the year.

FISTRAL BEACH REALLY WAS
the
place to go if what you were after was a spot of ogling. Con Deveraux, leaning back on his elbows and enjoying himself immensely from behind the shield of his sunglasses, admired the taut, athletic bodies of the surfers in their licorice-slick wetsuits. There were hundreds of them, arranged in meandering rows just beyond the breakers, bobbing up and down like seals in the emerald green water, waiting for the next perfect wave to come along and sweep them away.

Rather like the boys at the gay clubs he occasionally frequented, all eyeing up the talent and wondering—when someone caught their eye—if he might turn out to be their Mr. Right.

Or, more likely, Mr. All Right for the Night.

Beside him on the dry sand, her head resting on his rolled-up, white Pernn sweatshirt, Millie slept. She was lying on her front, breathing deeply and evenly, and the lunchtime sun beating down out of a dazzling cobalt blue sky was having an effect on her bare shoulders. Already lightly tanned, they were starting to turn a delicate shade of peony pink.

As Con reached for the tube of suncream handily sticking out of her bag, his attention was caught by a familiar figure heading down the beach towards them. For a moment, Con couldn’t place him, then he remembered. Orla's party, last night. Good-looking, definitely. Straight, sadly. And evidently not in the happiest of moods—in fact, from the expression on his face you’d think someone had died.

As the fellow guest approached, Con dolloped warm suncream into the palm of his hand, rolled it across Millie's exposed back, and began to massage it into her skin.

A guest of Orla's was, after all, a friend of Orla's, and it never did any harm to act in a convincingly heterosexual manner.

Furthermore, the Band-Aid on Millie's right thigh was beginning to intrigue him.

By the time Hugh spotted Con Deveraux it was too late; Con was already removing his dark glasses and beaming up at him.

‘Hi! Saw you at Orla's party last night.’

It took less than a split second for Hugh to recognize the prone figure Con was languorously massaging with Ambre Solaire. Oh God, this was all he needed.

‘Don’t worry, she's asleep.’ Con lifted a silver-blonde ringlet and let it fall back into place like a dead limb. ‘See? Out for the count. This is the effect I have on the opposite sex,’ he went on cheerfully. Then, recalling Millie's reaction last night when she had seen this man watching her in the helicopter, he added with an air of innocence, ‘Know each other, do you?’

Hugh nodded.

I bet Millie wishes she didn’t know me.

‘So, any ideas about this little mystery?’ As he spoke, Con Deveraux was running a playful finger along one edge of the square Band-Aid on Millie's leg, just visible beneath the frayed hem of her white cut-off shorts.

‘You mean what's under there?’ Hugh shook his head. ‘Sorry, no.’

‘The more I ask, the more she won’t tell me.’

Me neither, thought Hugh, curious despite himself. The finger was easing beneath a corner of the bandage now, beginning to curl
it away from the skin. Thanks to the suncream, the stickiness of the plaster was no longer one hundred per cent.

‘Shark bite, that's what she said,’ Con confided gleefully. ‘Ha, it's a tattoo! Look, see that blue ink?’

He was loosening the Band-Aid millimeter by millimeter, with all the stealth of a safe-cracker. Realizing he was holding his breath, Hugh watched as—

‘OUCH!’ Con let out a yelp of pain as his wrist was seized in a vice-like grip. Millie, having rolled over and shot out an arm faster than a lizard's tongue, dug her nails in until he begged for mercy.

‘OW! I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY God, that
hurts
.’

Millie was gladder than ever that she had, for once, covered the tattoo with a bandage prior to last night's party—simply because tattoos and abbreviated Dolce & Gabbana dresses didn’t go together. Her blood ran cold at the thought that she had so nearly shown it to Hugh this morning.

‘Never try that again,’ she told Con. ‘Never even
think
of trying that again. Otherwise,’ with a pitying look, she increased the pressure on his wrist, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to kill you.’

It hadn’t been easy, lying there pretending to be asleep and mentally willing Hugh to leave. In the end, not wanting to face him had been overshadowed by the need to stop Con in his tracks. Now, glancing up at Hugh, she said briefly, ‘Hi.’

‘Hello, Millie.’

To his credit he looked ill at ease, but Millie wasn’t in a credit-giving mood. You big, selfish bastard, she signaled—telepathically. What are you doing here anyway? This is our beach, not yours. Get back to poxy Padstow where you belong, pig.

Okay, so Padstow wasn’t poxy, but the rest was spot-on.

Annoyed that he was still capable of getting her in a fluster, Millie elaborately patted down the edge of the Band-Aid and made a big production of brushing sand out of her hair.