Year of Being Single (34 page)

‘Aren’t they!’ said Grace. ‘Marcia’s even worse than you described her! Fascinating to watch, though.’

‘Oh, never a dull moment with our Marcia!’ said Imogen. ‘Great fun to work with, but by God, sometimes you just want to strangle her with a pair of tights!’

‘Ha, I bet. Are you all right, Imogen?’

She was now a few steps behind Imogen as they weaved through tables of laughing and drinking diners. It was probably not the right moment to ask. Imogen turned her head and called back over her shoulder, ‘I’m fabulous, honey’ but Grace wasn’t convinced. She would have to try and talk to her later, maybe she’d be able to get it out of her on the drunken train journey home.

Frankie was standing outside the ornate cream door to the women’s toilets. From the back, it looked like she was smoking. Grace knew that she and Imogen both did, as rebellious teens, until the legendary night they’d almost set their tent on fire with a packet of Camels Imogen had brought back from Spain. Grace knew all the stories.

As they neared, they realised Frankie was on her phone.

‘Give them all a kiss from me,’ she said, and her voice softened. ‘I love you too.’

‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Grace.

Frankie turned, blushed and stuffed her phone into her shoulder bag. ‘Er…no one,’ she said. ‘Well, Rob, actually…’ she added, sheepishly, lowering her shoulders and putting her hands in her jacket pockets.

‘You’re back with Rob?’ said Grace, incredulous.

‘Er…yep.’

‘Traitor!’ exclaimed Imogen, shaking her head.

‘Well, what about you and the
gasman
?’ Frankie countered. ‘And come on, tell us the truth! I couldn’t see much of his face, but I’ve never seen a gasman who looks like that. The one we normally get looks like Blakie from
On the Buses
.’

Imogen laughed hollowly. Then she tried and failed to look indignant. Then she just looked sad. ‘Okay, you’ve rumbled me. It wasn’t the gasman. It was a mistake.’ And her face fell further. She looked down at her fabulous shoes as though she wanted to disappear into the ground.

‘Do you want to tell us about it?’ said Grace.

‘No! I can’t. Not today. Maybe in about five years. When I’m over it.’ Imogen looked awful, Grace had never seen her look quite like that before. Imogen sighed, then raised her head. ‘We’re not doing very well, are we? Grace, you’re the only one who’s kept to the charter.’

That stupid charter. It wasn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on. So much for her two best friends staying single. Then again, she’d hardly kept to it. Grace swallowed. Was it time to come clean?

‘Not exactly,’ she said.

‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ demanded Imogen.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What on earth’s going on in here, ladies?’ It was Marcia, looming behind them like a battleship. ‘I can’t sit and help Tarquin count his age spots all night! What are you doing? It’s like a scene from
Macbeth
. Are you plotting the downfall of the male species?’

‘Yes, we’re just sharpening up the birch twigs, Marcia,’ said Imogen. ‘And please don’t call us “ladies”, Marcia. I’ve told you that before.’ She shuddered. ‘It makes me think of misogyny and feminine wipes.’

Marcia hooted with laughter. ‘But you
are
ladies! Come on, back to the table! Chop chop! We can’t leave Tarquin there all by himself – before we know it he’ll be up at the piano doing a Liberace, Lord knows he’s got the temperament.’

They all went to the loo and headed back to the table, in a slightly inebriated troop. The truth will out, thought Grace. It always did. Frankie was back with Rob and she and Imogen had both been up to no good with men. So much for a year of being single. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Chapter Thirty-four: Imogen

The man on the piano finished playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and Imogen looked around her. The restaurant was crowded and buzzing. There were a lot of men with dates – their wives, their girlfriends, their mistresses? Mostly wives, she suspected. Marriage didn’t seem to be a dying art, no matter what anyone said. It was funny, she thought, how when men made a speech at a wedding reception they were always bursting with pride when they said ‘my wife’ for the first time – it always got an ‘aah’ and a round of applause – yet years later the same phrase become a mock-terrible thing that came with a tut and a grimace. My wife.
The
wife.

She wouldn’t ever be anybody’s wife, to be proud of in the first flush of marriage or affectionately scorned in the distant future. She didn’t even want to be anybody’s girlfriend now Richard had gone. She couldn’t see herself with a man again. She’d fallen in love, and she’d had her heart broken. She wasn’t planning on repeating either experience. Ever.

She’d have to tell Frankie and Grace everything. She couldn’t believe Frankie was back with Rob, and Grace had been seeing someone as well! They were all a disgrace. And
she
was a heartbroken disgrace.

Marcia had ordered three bottles of Veuve Clicquot and Imogen sipped slowly from her champagne flute as she surveyed the scene. She couldn’t bear to get drunk; she didn’t want to get maudlin and end up sobbing on anyone’s shoulder. Instead she’d taken solace in the amazing food. She’d had seared scallops with bacon and pea puree, followed by beef Wellington with dauphinoise potatoes and spring vegetables. She was halfway through a sublime chocolate almond fondant. This could be the way forward. The only way forward. She’d be fat and miserable. Happy bloody birthday.

The piano was still silent. There was a man with his back to the restaurant, half obscured by a palm and leaning down to the pianist. The pianist nodded. Imogen rolled her eyes. Some champagne-soaked idiot saying
Play it Again, Sam
, no doubt, or requesting something by Michael Bublé. Git. She put down her glass and returned to her fondant.

As she demolished the last mouthful, she looked up in surprise. She could hear the opening strains of a song she knew well. Blur, ‘The Universal’. That was strange. And quite a departure from Frank Sinatra and the hits of The Carpenters.

She looked over to the piano again and dropped her spoon. It glanced off her plate and clattered to the floor. A passing waiter picked it up and whisked it away into the front of his apron.

‘Sack the juggler!’ giggled Marcia.

‘Oops!’ said Frankie. ‘Butter fingers. Hey, are you okay, Imogen?’

‘I really don’t think I am,’ said Imogen, staring straight ahead.

‘Drink some water,’ suggested Grace. ‘If you’re feeling a bit sloshed it’ll dilute the alcohol.’

‘I don’t think water can help me,’ said Imogen.

Walking towards their table, in blue jeans and a white, open-necked shirt – his eyes glinting, his hair just right – was Richard.

She froze. Her heart was going like the clappers. She’d only ever seen him in a suit, or his birthday suit. In jeans he looked sublime. He was like a mirage before her – Colin Firth coming out of the lake in
Pride and Prejudice
, Brad Pitt sitting by the side of the road in
Thelma and Louise
, Tom Selleck being anywhere and doing anything at all…

‘Blimey,
he’s
good-looking,’ said Frankie, a quizzical look on her face as though she was trying to remember something.

‘Isn’t he?’ said Imogen in a near whisper. Damn, damn,
damn
him for being so gorgeous. What the
hell
was he doing here?

Marcia and Tarquin both flicked their heads round.

‘Christ on a bike!’ said Marcia. ‘Sexy man alert!’

‘What about
me
?’ said Tarquin, eyeing Richard up and down.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Marcia. ‘Same meat, different gravy.’ The woman was practically salivating.

‘Is he coming over to
us
? Do you know him, Imogen?’ said Grace.

‘Yes,’ whispered Imogen. And there, suddenly, he was, in front of her. Her perfect man. Her imperfect man. If only he’d been what she wanted him to be. He was the best-looking man she’d ever seen.

‘Hello,’ said Richard.

‘
Hi
,’ said Marcia. She was both doe-eyed and fluttering her eyelashes like a camel.

Frankie was nudging Imogen, and hissing, ‘Who
is
he?’ Imogen ignored her.

‘Hello,’ said Richard, again.

‘Hello,’ said Imogen hesitantly. Then, accusingly, ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t answer my calls,’ he said, his rumbling American accent cutting through the clatter and chatter of the restaurant. She could hear nothing else. ‘So Nigel and I drove to your house.’

‘Oh,’ said Imogen.

‘Oh!’ said Frankie, agog. She was clutching onto Grace as though in the presence of a deity. ‘Hang on, are you the gasman?’

‘I guess I am,’ said Richard. ‘Are you
Frankie
?’

‘I am,’ said Frankie, looking pleased as punch.

‘I’m Grace,’ volunteered Grace. She started fluffing up her hair then seemed to think better of it and lowered her hand.

‘Hi, Grace,’ said Richard. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’ Grace smiled. Frankie grinned. Marcia was ramping up her cleavage with both hands and attempting a duck pout.

He turned back to Imogen. ‘So, you weren’t home – obviously – and I was about to leave when a couple pulled up in a car. The lady seemed pretty keen to find out who I was. She asked me a ton of questions.’

‘Fiat Panda?’ said Frankie.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Richard.

‘Were they in a Fiat Panda? A black one?’

‘It
was
a black car,’ said Richard. ‘And the lady had some sort of a plant on her lap, if that helps.’

‘Mum and Dad!’ exclaimed Frankie. ‘I knew it! Then what happened?’ she said, pulling her chair nearer to the table.

‘They said you weren’t home,’ said Richard, turning back to Imogen. ‘They said you were out in “That London”, for dinner at a swanky hotel. She couldn’t remember the name, but said it was somewhere five star. Nigel and I rang round them all on the way up here, until I found you.’

‘I booked us in the company name,’ said Marcia, loudly. She now had her chest displayed proudly on the table. ‘Always claim it on expenses, duckie,’ she said to Tarquin.

Tarquin nodded, as though making a mental note. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Richard.

‘That’s what I tried,’ continued Richard, ‘when I got nowhere with Henderson. I thought it might be a business dinner.’

‘No,’ said Imogen. ‘I’m with my friends. People who
care about me.
’

A very barbed remark, but Richard was refusing to cut his fingers on it. He looked round the table genially. ‘The famous Single for a Year Club?’ He smiled.

‘Three of us,’ said Imogen, brusquely. ‘Not these two.’

‘God, no!’ said Marcia and Tarquin in unison.

‘Although we’ve disbanded,’ added Imogen. She stuck her tongue in her cheek and looked pointedly at Frankie and Grace. Frankie raised her eyebrows in return, as if to say, ‘You can talk!’

‘It’s Imogen’s birthday,’ said Grace.

‘
Is
it?’ said Richard, looking surprised. ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea. Happy birthday.’

‘Thanks,’ said Imogen sourly.

‘Look, can I sit down? I feel a bit of a
plank
standing here.’

Richard
was
drawing a lot of attention to himself. A lot of people were gawping at him. A lot of women and quite a few men. And he’s learnt another new English phrase, thought Imogen. He sounded cute when he said it.

‘I don’t know, to be honest,’ she said.

‘Oh, go on,’ said Marcia, leaping up to pull out the vacant chair at the opposite head of the table. She jutted her huge bottom in Richard’s face as she did so, in what she probably thought was a seductive manner.

Richard ignored Marcia’s bottom and just stood looking at Imogen. Good God, he was virtually irresistible.

‘Imogen?’

‘Okay.’

He sat, and his solid right thigh brushed against Imogen’s leather-clad one. She made a point of shifting hers out of the way.

‘I’m pleased to meet you all,’ he said. And he leant and shook everyone’s hands around the table. He had a rapt audience. Frankie’s mouth had not stopped hanging open since he arrived. Grace was absent-mindedly twirling a long curl around her finger. Tarquin was doing some competitive preening by smoothing his ruffles with one hand, his coiffed hair with the other. And Marcia just looked like a glam version of Kathy Bates in
Misery
, the grinning Number One Fan, before things got crazy.

Richard faced Imogen. She was shaking slightly. She was trying not to look at him. She was desperately trying not to be caught up in his gorgeous web of lies again.

‘Imogen,’ he said, again.

‘Yup,’ she snapped.

‘I don’t have a child with that woman or anyone. I’m not with
that
woman.’

‘Okay,’ she said dully.

‘I was seeing her, back in New York, for a couple months. Just casually. She has a five-year-old son. She brought him along to the park once. As I say, it was all very casual. I think she was dating a few guys while she was in the city.’

‘Slut!’ interjected Marcia.

‘Let him finish!’ snapped Imogen. A tiny spark of something was igniting in her heart.

Richard stared down at his hands. ‘Look, maybe we could go outside someplace, you and me, and talk privately?’

‘No. Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of my friends.’ Imogen was rooted to the spot. She didn’t trust herself to go outside with him.

‘Okay, it was over between me and – Sarah – quite some time ago. Her contract finished and she went home to England. Until Ascot I hadn’t seen her since December.’

Sarah.
The name made her feel ill.

‘Are you
sure
?’ asked Imogen. ‘Are you sure there was no overlap?’ It was the most important question she’d ever asked.

‘Oh, I love an overlap!’ snorted Marcia.

‘Shut
up
, Marcia,’ said Imogen. She was leaning forward in her chair now, her fingers clasping the edge of the table.

‘There was no overlap,’ said Richard. ‘It was finished once she left New York. I wouldn’t do that. Even if I’d been seeing her when I met you – which I wasn’t – it would’ve been over that minute. Don’t you see? Once I saw you, I couldn’t think of anyone else.’