Sapphire (27 page)

But suddenly Jay was pulling away from her, was fumbling to get his clothes back on.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sapphire exclaimed. Talk about anticlimax.

Jay sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. ‘This should never have happened.’

Sapphire moved to touch him, but he flinched as she put her arm round him, ‘Jay, we still want each other, I don’t see the problem.’

‘I’m seeing someone,’ Jay’s reply was barely audible; for a second Sapphire wasn’t sure if she’d heard him.

Sapphire clutched the duvet to her. ‘You’ve got a girlfriend?’ she asked.

He nodded, and said again, ‘This should never have happened, I’m sorry.’

He got up and slipped on his jeans and jacket and, still not looking at her, said, ‘I’m going to get a coffee, clear my head.’

And with that, he left the room, leaving Sapphire reeling. She wanted to run after him and say, ‘Forget your girlfriend, it’s obvious we’re meant to be together.’ Instead she curled under the duvet, a ball of misery in the pit of her stomach. Jay was out of reach for her more than ever now. And suddenly she realised that there was more than a physical attraction at stake here: she was in love with Jay.

‘
SO WHAT DO
you think?’ Christine asked as Sapphire dragged herself into the boutique two days later. It was her mum’s first day working for her. She had finally accepted her offer to work for free. Sapphire looked round the boutique. Her mum had clearly been busy – the stock had all been neatly arranged and she had put up a Valentine’s Day window display. It actually looked really good. Christine had gone for a naughty-and-nice theme, with one model arranged in pretty pink lingerie and the other in a saucy black lace number complete with a whip in her hand. She had also hung up several of Sam’s gold butterfly necklaces. Sapphire had no idea her mum had such a good eye for design.

‘It looks great, Mum, but maybe lose the whip.’ Sapphire replied.

‘Oh I don’t know – there’s a lot of money in bondage, I gather. But if you like I can swap it for a dildo.’

God her mum really was getting into the swing of things. ‘Or maybe a rose? I don’t want to attract the wrong kind of customers,’ Sapphire replied.

Christine nodded and as she removed the offending item, Sapphire wandered aimlessly round the boutique. Valentine’s Day was just a couple of weeks away and usually she loved the run-up – the boutique always did well. But right now she was having a hard time caring.
The realisation that she was in love with Jay and the revelation that he had a girlfriend had floored her. She felt like bursting into tears one minute and then at others she would be filled with such intense longing. She had spent the night she returned from Birmingham going through all the text messages Jay had ever sent her, torturing herself by reading them, and then she had taken the engagement ring from the back of her dressing table. She had opened the red velvet box and gazed at the ring. It was beautiful, elegant and classic. How had she ever thought otherwise? She had slipped it on to her finger where it fitted perfectly. And that made her burst into tears – Jay must have found out the exact size of her ring finger. She thought of how brutal her rejection would have seemed to him. She gently kissed the ring, and murmured, ‘Sorry Jay,’ and then put it back in the box. But later she found herself opening the box again and this time she put the ring on a long gold chain which she then fastened round her neck – the ring cool against her skin at first and then warming up. Since then she hadn’t taken it off, she was wearing it now, and from time to time instinctively she put her hand up to her neck to check it was still there, though the ring was tucked out of sight below her jumper. She sighed. Valentine’s Day was another cruel reminder of the fact that she didn’t have Jay. Who was his girlfriend? She wondered as she went into her office to check her emails. Probably that pretty blonde she’d seen him with just before Christmas.

‘I meant to say, someone called in for you this morning,’ her mum said, popping her head round the doorway. She handed Sapphire a card, adding, ‘He was foreign, Eastern European, I think.’

‘What did he want?’ Sapphire asked, sounding sharp in her nervousness.

‘He just said he had some business to discuss with you.
He looked very wealthy. Maybe he’s useful. He was very charming, full of compliments about the boutique.’

Okay, so it was great having her mum help her out in the boutique but no way did Sapphire want her interfering with the rest of her business and absolutely no way did she want her to have anything to do with Markov. But she didn’t want to alarm her mum so she simply said, ‘He’s in business with Ryan, so I’m not exactly keen to see him.’

She hoped that would be enough for her mum to leave the matter; instead Christine said perkily, ‘Well, you never know. Sometimes you have to be open to new things. Look at me and the rut I was in and now here I am working, I’ve got a boyfriend and we’re going to go to Venice which is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go.’

Her mum was not to know that being open to Markov was probably like inviting the Devil into your house.

Sapphire sat looking at Markov’s card. What the hell did he want? She had hoped that now she was no longer with Ryan she would have nothing more to do with him. She turned it over and read ‘Call me x’. She suppressed a shudder. What was the best response – to text him saying don’t bother me again or ignore it in the hope that he would get the message that she absolutely wasn’t interested? There was no knowing with someone like Markov – he didn’t seem to follow the rules of conventional behaviour. Ignoring seemed like the best idea. She ripped the card into tiny pieces and threw it in the bin. Then whilst supposedly checking her emails she went back to daydreaming about Jay.

Jazz then wandered in to the office. As it was coming up to Valentine’s Day she was channelling red and pink and plenty of love hearts – red nails, pink love heart hair slides and necklace and pink pumps. ‘What are you wearing tomorrow night?’

Sapphire stared at her blankly.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!’ Jazz exclaimed. ‘It’s Sam’s birthday!’

‘Shit, shit, shit! What am I going to get her?’ Sapphire wailed. ‘She always buys me such great presents!’

‘Just go to Topshop and get her some clothes – she’s now a size ten, can you believe it! I know that’s what she wants. All her clothes are way too big now, she says she’s living in skinny jeans.’

‘God I haven’t seen Sam for ages,’ Sapphire suddenly realised. ‘Over three weeks. Is she okay? I meant to tell her that I’ve sold five of her necklaces.’

‘It’s okay,’ Jazz said breezily, ‘I told her when we went out the other night.’

‘Oh,’ Sapphire replied, slightly put out that she hadn’t been invited.

Jazz looked slightly awkward and fiddled with her pink plastic love heart necklace. ‘She just wanted a chat about stuff like her diet. And she knows how boring you find that.’

She does? Sapphire thought she had always hid her frustration at having the blow-by-blow calorie countdown.

‘So, what’s the plan for tomorrow night – is it just the three of us?’ She tried to pull herself together. She really hoped so; she wanted to confide in Jazz and Sam about her feelings for Jay. She needed their advice.

Jazz rolled her eyes, ‘No, mate, it’s a big night out. Ben’s coming along with loads of Sam’s friends from work. We’re meeting for cocktails and then going for dinner at Zilli’s.’

Sapphire’s confession to her friends would have to wait.

She bought Sam a great new outfit – a red-and-white candy-striped strapless dress – something Sam would never have wanted to wear when she was bigger but
which was now going to look so cool on her. Sapphire would have loved to buy something new to wear to Sam’s birthday. She hadn’t bought any clothes for herself in such a long time in her anxiety about money. In the end, after staring vacantly at the clothes in her wardrobe, she went for her silver mini-dress. It didn’t look great, she’d lost so much weight lately that it practically hung off her. Her usually perfect skin looked sallow, however much make-up she put on, and her eyes seemed to have lost their sparkle. Somehow being in the party dress accentuated how rough she looked, so in despair she took it off and instead went for her skinny jeans, Uggs, long black jumper and her favourite Louis Vuitton animal print scarf round her neck. I may as well get some more wear out of it before I sell it on eBay, she thought bitterly. She tucked the long gold chain with Jay’s ring underneath the jumper. But as soon as she walked into the Star Bar she realised she was wildly underdressed. Sam looked gorgeous in a bright turquoise halter-neck dress; she resembled a luscious brunette Scarlett Johansson with her extravagant black eyeliner and perfectly red lips. By comparison Sapphire felt like Dorothy in
The
Wizard
of
Oz
stuck in dreary old Kansas before everything went Technicolor.

‘Happy birthday,’ Sapphire exclaimed, hugging Sam and handing over her gift. ‘You look beautiful!’

‘Thanks!’ Sam beamed back happily. ‘I feel fantastic. How are you, Sapphire?’

‘Good, thanks,’ Sapphire lied.

‘I thought you were going to wear your silver dress,’ Jazz said to her as she also joined the two women. Jazz had pulled out all the stops in a bright orange mini-dress and matching accessories.

Sapphire shrugged, ‘I know I look really shit.’

‘You don’t,’ Sam reassured her. ‘You always look good.’

‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ Sapphire replied. ‘But I can’t
believe how amazing you look, Sam! You are so going to get lucky tonight!’

Sam looked slightly awkward, ‘Actually, Sapphire, I’ve already got a boyfriend. We’ve been going out a month now.’

While Sapphire was thrilled for her friend – Sam’s single spell had gone on way too long – she couldn’t help feeling hurt that this was the first she knew of it. Something seemed to have happened to her friendship with Sam lately. They used to be so close. It was her work, she supposed. But as usual she put a brave face on. ‘That’s fantastic.’ Then she added cheekily, ‘I hope he’s a gorgeous fuck machine!’

Sam and Jazz seemed to freeze, expressions of appalled horror on their faces. Come on! Sapphire felt like saying, I’ve said way worse things before. And then she realised the reason for the looks as she turned to see Jay standing just behind her. For a mad second she thought he must have come to see her but then he moved next to Sam and put his arm round her and said wryly, ‘You always used to think so, Sapphire.’

Oh. My. God! Sam was going out with Jay! If someone had set out to deliberately torture Sapphire they could not have devised a more effective method than this. She felt her heart would break as she took in the sight of Jay looking more gorgeous and sexy than ever, just a few feet away from her, but out of reach.

Sapphire looked down at the floor and mumbled, ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea you were seeing each other.’

‘No, I’m sorry Sapphire; I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.’

Somehow Sapphire managed to lift up her head. Sam looked as mortified as she felt. Sapphire could not bring herself to look at Jay, though she was intensely aware of him and made an excuse about wanting to say hi to one of their friends.

Somehow she made it to the ladies’ without breaking down but as soon as she slammed the cubicle door behind her she leant against it and gave in to the tears. It seemed too cruel that just as she had realised that she was in love with Jay, one of her best friends turned out to be in love with him too. And why had Sam waited to tell her like this! The pain was turning into anger – at Jay, and at Sam. After a few minutes she became aware of a gentle knocking at the door,

‘Sapphire, are you okay? It’s me, Jazz.’

Sapphire sniffed and grabbing at some tissue began wiping her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she muttered, though it must have been obvious that she’d been crying.

‘Is anyone else out there?’ she asked; she couldn’t bear to be seen in such a state.

‘No, it’s clear.’

Sapphire opened the door and stepped out of the cubicle.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me!’ she exclaimed, suddenly angry at Jazz as well. ‘D’you have any idea how it felt finding out like that!’

Jazz bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, babe, I so wanted to tell you but Sam made me promise not to.’

‘But I’m supposed to be your friend! How could you all do this to me! God, isn’t it enough that I lose the man I love, but I also lose my friends as well!’

‘You love him?’ Jazz asked, sounding surprised.

‘Yes! And I don’t need a lecture from you about how I managed to fuck it all up completely.’ Sapphire caught sight of her dishevelled reflection in the mirror – mascara streaked both her cheeks and her eyes looked puffed up and red.

‘Sam and me didn’t know you felt like that about Jay. And Sam would never have got involved with him if she knew that,’ Jazz said quietly. ‘D’you want me to fix your make-up?’

‘What, so I can go and make polite conversation with my ex and my supposed friend? I’m not fucking staying.’

And with that Sapphire swung her bag over her shoulder and, not caring how shit she looked, marched out of the bathroom. She stormed through the bar, ignoring Sam who called out her name, and pushed open the door and stepped into the bleak February night. Then, she started running towards the sea, desperate to get home.

‘Sapphire!’ It was Jay calling her name. Sapphire carried on running. But it didn’t take long for Jay to catch up with her. He ran alongside her and put his hand on her arm to stop her.

Sapphire shook it off. ‘Leave me alone!’ she shouted, out of breath, furious, hurt, humiliated. But she stopped running.

‘Look, Sam wanted to know that you were okay.’

‘Oh yes, Sam, your girlfriend – the girlfriend you forgot all about the other week when we ended up in bed together. What was that about? Trying to humiliate me?’

Whoa! She was sounding far too emotional, but she couldn’t stop herself. Jay hung his head and seemed to have a problem with eye contact. ‘Sam wanted to tell you herself.’ He hesitated and seemed extremely uncomfortable. ‘And I’m sorry about what happened the other week. It was just circumstances. Please promise that you won’t say anything to Sam, I would hate to hurt her.’