Sapphire (25 page)

Cal carried on, ‘Don’t let it make you put your barriers up, Sapphire, not all men are like Ryan.’

‘Or like Alfie,’ Sapphire added. ‘Maybe it’s not them, it’s me,’ she tried to sound as if she was joking, but she wasn’t. She felt at an all-time low.

‘Bollocks, you’re a beautiful, generous, clever, sexy woman. Any man would be lucky to have you,’ Cal retorted.

‘Thank you, Cal, I’ll be ringing you at regular intervals to hear that again.’ Sapphire tried to pull herself together, this was after all, Cal’s night. At that moment the PR woman came over and claimed Cal’s attention. Sapphire moved away and observed her friend as he shook hands with various guests. He was so passionate about his football academies and so determined to give kids from disadvantaged homes a chance. It was admirable and inspiring. Why weren’t there more men like Cal? If only she could fancy him! she thought jokingly, besides he was a one-man woman, still longing for his Angel.

Earlier he had told her what a nightmare Christmas had been. Angel and Honey had come back to the UK to spend it with her family and to give Cal the chance to see his daughter. But then Angel’s new partner, Ethan, had insisted on coming too. Cal said it had been torture seeing the couple together and he had only got through it by focusing all his attention on his daughter. ‘How did Angel seem?’ Sapphire had asked, wondering if Angel still had feelings for Cal.

‘Blissfully happy,’ Cal said abruptly. And Sapphire, seeing the pain in his eyes, had changed the subject.

‘He’s good at talking the talk isn’t he?’ Sapphire turned to discover an attractive dark-haired man next to her.

‘Gavin Wright,’ he stuck out his hand and Sapphire shook it, introducing herself in return. She recognised him as a former teammate of Cal’s from Chelsea. Now he
was one of the pundits on
Match
of
the
Day
. Sapphire found herself talking to him for the rest of the night. He was very charming – not flash like Ryan, but old school, a gentleman. He was good-looking with warm brown eyes and handsome, rugged features but Sapphire felt as if her mojo had been switched off. Ryan had sapped it from her. Still, at the end of the night she gave Gavin her number when he asked for it and agreed to go out for dinner sometime with him in London. And as she said goodnight to Cal he whispered, ‘Gavin is very taken with you. He’s one of the good ones, Sapphire. I promise.’

‘Cal, I’m really not interested in any kind of relationship at the moment.’

‘Just don’t shut yourself away, Sapphire, you don’t want to end up like me.’

The night out with Cal had been a distraction from her biggest concern at the moment, which was the state of the business. Usually she would have expected a full diary of hen weekends, but in January she only had two bookings which almost went down to one when one bride to be called her to pull out. Sapphire practically begged her not to cancel, offering her all kinds of discounts.

‘It’s not just the cost when we’re in Brighton,’ Lisa, the bride to be told her, ‘It’s getting down there from Birmingham by train; it’s going to cost us loads. I just don’t want to give my mates that expense. We’re having the hen weekend in Birmingham instead.’

In desperation Sapphire tried to think of something, anything, to entice them to come. She was desperate to hold on to the booking and then, thank God, inspiration struck, ‘What if I arranged for you all to be picked up, so you didn’t have to pay any travel? I could hire a minibus.’

‘And we wouldn’t have to pay anything for it?’ Lisa said cautiously.

‘No, I would cover the cost.’ There was a pause, during
which Sapphire crossed her fingers, please, please let Lisa take up the offer!

‘Yeah, we’d be up for that.’

Sapphire put the phone down with a feeling of relief. Now, there was just the matter of a minibus and paying for a driver. When she went round to her mum’s later that day, for once she found herself being more open about her worries. Now her mum had Jason, she didn’t seem quite so self-obsessed and so doom and gloomy about everything.

‘You should ask Clayton – he’d probably be glad of the business.’

Sapphire had already thought of him and rejected the idea – the memory of Jay laying into her on Christmas night was still too fresh in her mind.

She muttered that she probably shouldn’t but Christine wasn’t having any of it and insisted on phoning him herself. ‘There you go,’ she said to Sapphire a few minutes later, ‘all sorted, he’ll pick you up at midday on Friday.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Sapphire said gratefully.

‘And, the offer is still there if you need me to help out in the boutique – you know I would do it for nothing.’

Vanessa had recently handed in her notice as she was going to go travelling for a year and Sapphire was thinking of not replacing her as a cost saving. She would never have considered having her mum work for her in the past but lately they had been getting on so much better and Sapphire was starting to realise that she needed all the help she could get.

‘Thanks, Mum, I’ll see how it goes,’ she replied.

Christine looked at her daughter, a serious expression on her face, ‘Just don’t feel that you always have to do everything on your own. I can help you.’ She paused. ‘I know I haven’t always been a great mum.’ Sapphire was about to protest, but Christine wouldn’t let her, ‘No, I
was too busy thinking about myself for far too long. But I want you to know that I am here for you now.’

It was quite possibly the nicest thing Christine had ever said to her and Sapphire was about to tell her so when her phone rang.

She frowned as a number she didn’t recognise flashed across her screen. Oh God, it was probably another hen party cancelling. With a feeling of trepidation she answered. But it was Gavin, the sexy ex-footballer asking if she would be free to go for dinner the following night. Sapphire was all set to say no, and then she thought, why not? Her confidence had been so bruised by Ryan she could do with feeling better about herself. Also she was still obsessing about Jay. Dinner would be a distraction from all that.

‘So is he nice?’ Jazz asked later, when Sapphire revealed her plans. ‘I’m not sure if I know which one you mean, all those footballers look the same to me – unless they’re Ron – that Spanish one, in which case phoarr big time!’

‘Yeah, he’s very good-looking, and he seemed nice, but then, so did Ryan.’

Jazz rolled her eyes. ‘No, Ryan never seemed nice, babe, he always had flash bastard written all over him. We did try and tell you.’

‘We did,’ Sam seconded, from where she was lying stretched out on Sapphire’s sofa. She’d just finished a fifteen-mile run and claimed to be knackered, but to Sapphire she looked amazing. She had lost even more weight and now must easily be a size ten.

Sapphire flipped open her lap top, ‘I’ll just Google Gavin and you can give me your verdict.’ A few seconds later Gavin’s picture filled the screen. ‘What do you reckon, girls?’

Jazz and Sam wandered over. ‘Very tasty,’ Jazz. ‘Hot’ from Sam, who then added, ‘You lucked out there, babe.’

Sapphire rolled her eyes. ‘It’s just a dinner date and I’m only going because I could do with a night away from Brighton – every time I go out I keep worrying that I’m going to run into Ryan and the temptation to kick him in the nuts is still very strong.’

‘Ugh, don’t do that, you’ll have to have physical contact!’ Jazz shuddered.

Both she and Sam had been appalled to hear what Ryan had done. Sapphire almost felt bad telling Jazz, she had such a sweet nature, but Sam hadn’t seemed that surprised and that made Sapphire feel even worse about ever going out with him in the first place.

Gavin had booked a table at Gordan Ramsay’s restaurant at Claridge’s – a restaurant Sapphire had always wanted to go to. Inside the luxurious space with its Art Deco style she felt temporarily cut off from her worries, in a bubble of wealth, protected from the harsh realities of everyday life. She had dressed to impress in a sexy asymmetric mini-dress in midnight blue and Gavin had as well in a sharply cut suit. He looked good and was as easy company as he was on the eye.

The first half of the evening was actually fun, Gavin was quite flirtatious, and kept giving her the old eye contact. Sapphire waited in vain for some response to kick off inside her, but nothing happened. She was forcing herself to flirt. Good-looking as he was, she might just as well have been having dinner with a wrinkly old man. When his leg brushed against hers there wasn’t even a flicker; when their hands touched as they clinked glasses, nothing. I really have lost my mojo, she thought miserably. Then later the conversation became more serious. ‘I think we have something in common,’ he told her over brandy. ‘I got divorced last year and Cal tells me you did two years ago.’

‘Yeah, it’s not exactly a club I thought I would be
joining when I got married,’ Sapphire replied drily.

‘Me neither,’ Gavin replied. ‘And what makes it more ironic is that my ex-wife insisted that we get a magazine to cover the wedding. I feel like ringing them up and asking them why they don’t do divorces too – they could do photospreads of the ex-wife and her new lover, living it up in style in my old house.’ His jaw clenched. It seemed to Sapphire that Gavin still had plenty of baggage when it came to his failed marriage. He seemed to collect himself. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to go off on one.’

But the comment cast a shadow over the night and Sapphire felt sad both for Gavin, who was obviously haunted by his failed marriage, and for herself and for her longing for Jay. Both of them drank quite a bit, and at the end of the meal Gavin suggested going back to his hotel for a nightcap. Why not? Sapphire thought.

The offer of a drink was naturally code for another activity. And in the taxi Gavin put his arm round her and gently kissed her. It developed into a passionate kiss. Sapphire kissed him back, willing herself to feel something. But there was no absolutely no spark; instead she felt as if she was partaking in a master class in how to kiss, thinking about what she was doing and not once losing herself in the moment. She probably should have left then and there but somehow it seemed like too much effort and she ended up going up to his luxurious penthouse suite. Gavin poured them both a large brandy while Sapphire sat on the sofa. She was starting to get the spinny head feeling, but what the hell.

More kissing followed. Gavin unzipped her dress, caressed her exposed skin, expertly, she thought. He kissed her breasts, nothing wrong with his technique but as he moved over her body, Sapphire felt completely detached, as if she was staring down at herself from above. And suddenly she thought, do I really want to do this? It wasn’t about lust or desire or longing, it was partly
because she could and partly because she felt she had got herself in a situation where it seemed inevitable. But it really wasn’t what she wanted. Gavin’s caresses became more urgent with his desire, he lay on top of her and his body felt heavy and insistent on hers and suddenly she felt suffocated. There was only one man she wanted to make love with and it wasn’t Gavin.

He inched up her skirt. Sapphire reached out for his hand and stopped him, ‘I’m sorry I just can’t. It’s not you, it’s me.’

No doubt someone like Ryan would have tried to persuade her, would have been offended, but Gavin was a complete gentleman about the whole incident, giving her time to get herself together, and calling her a taxi. It seemed that Cal was right: Gavin was one of the good ones, the trouble was he did absolutely nothing for Sapphire.

But while she and Gavin knew nothing had really happened between them, it wasn’t the spin the tabloids put on their night out. Gavin was a big name and the couple had been papped leaving the restaurant and going into the hotel. Sapphire was mortified to see the pictures the following day, especially the one of them in the taxi where they were photographed kissing and her dress had ridden up, revealing an expanse of thigh. She hated to think that she might be seen as a wannabe WAG, desperate to bag herself a footballer.

‘You dirty girl!’ Jazz exclaimed, adding, ‘I hope Ryan saw that and realises what he’s missing.’

Jazz flopped down on the sofa in the office where Sapphire was going through her books, clearly up for a good gossip about what her friend had got up to the night before. Sapphire sighed and pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘He’s not missing anything, because nothing happened beyond that kiss in the taxi and a bit
of a fumble in his hotel room. I just couldn’t do it, Jazz. I think I may be turning frigid.’

‘Don’t be daft, you just didn’t fancy him. Or maybe you’re turning into a lesbian?’ she added cheekily. ‘I could line you up with a lovely lady.’

Sapphire did a major eye roll. ‘I do not want a lovely lady, nor do I want a lovely man. Thanks for the offer. I didn’t realise you had added pimp to your list of qualifications.’

‘Hmm I wonder if there are any female pimps?’ Jazz mused, checking her perfectly manicured nails. Today they were cobalt blue, accessorised with matching suede pumps and huge hoop earrings that a small bird could happily have perched on.

‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ Sapphire asked. ‘I’m sure there are lots of other beauticians out there who would bite your leg off for such a great job, with such a great boss.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m psyching myself up for Mandy’s nail appointment. She’s getting a divorce and she’s pretty bitter about it. She gives me a blow-by-blow account of every thing she hates about her husband, including some very intimate details. Did I need to know about the wart on his balls? Or how much he used to sweat when they had sex, I mean
perlease!
’ Jazz pulled a disgusted expression and flicked her white-blond hair back. ‘I really should get paid extra for all the therapy I have to do.’

‘Just smile and be nice to her,’ Sapphire warned her, ‘She might be annoying but she’s one of our most loyal customers.’

Jazz gave her the finger, showing off one of the impressive cobalt nails, and sauntered out of the room.

Sapphire quickly finished what she was doing, the books made for such depressing reading. She was going to have
to seriously consider her mum’s offer of help and she wouldn’t be able to pay her. She was struggling to pay the wages as it was and had taken a pay cut herself in order to give Jazz and Kiki the pay rises she had promised them in better times. She rifled through her bag, checking she had all the details for picking up the hens. Clayton was due at the boutique any minute with the minibus and she wanted to leave straight away.