Devilish Delights, page 13
Still smarting, I began wishing I’d taken Viv’s advice. If I’d turned up uninvited, to find, as I had originally suspected, this was parents’ night, Maxine and I could have taken ourselves off for a meal together, and had a lovely girly evening. She could have cried on my shoulder about Didi’s folks’ attitude and I could have confided in her my feelings for Alex and the weirdness of the situation, leaving him to referee his folks.
I was even beginning to feel a tiny bit sorry for Jarratt – his early evening buzz back at the hotel was fast disappearing. Film rights to his novel, his fantasy lookalike woman close to hand, only son starring in a West End musical – then estranged wife entered stage right, and … little did he know, there was worse to come. What a mess.
After we zoomed up in the lift to the restaurant, we waded across acres of soft black carpet towards a window table with the city lights sparkling below. At least we had a table with a view, if all else failed. Maxine, presumably urged by Alex, took a seat beside the window and a waiter held the chair out so I was next to her. Jarratt, rather rudely I thought, whipped out the chair opposite Max and sat down, leaving Alex to usher his mother into the seat opposite me.
Terrific. At least I was placed near Alex because he took the chair at the end of the table, facing the window. I didn’t know whether this table plan was part of some master set-up nor did I know how I was supposed to keep my hands away from him. The pink cloud of joy I rode on whenever I thought of him was lapping at my thighs and I had to turn and gaze at the delectable London skyline in order to take a calming deep breath. As I turned back, Alex let his napkin fall to the carpet and bent to retrieve it. He slid one of his fingers up my bare leg from my ankle-bone to just behind my right knee.
Electrical meltdown. Our eyes met and everything that could lurch inside me did just that. The great thing was I could tell he felt just the same as I did.
‘How kind of you to let me come tonight,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your new role.’
‘Why, thank you, Laura. You’re very kind too.’ He was doing serious but his eyes were the giveaway. He may well have been enjoying this charade but then he got paid to act for a living.
I noticed Ianthe’s beady eye on us, her bread roll crumbling under the pressure of those slender, diamond-encrusted fingers. Jarratt was leaning towards Maxine, talking her through the menu – recommending different dishes. Her reaction impressed me. She must have eaten in some classy places but she made no effort to put him down. In fact, Max herself looked very classy, in a ruched cream top and long, narrow, chocolate-brown skirt. Her corn-bright hair was piled on top of her head. With looks like hers she needed little make-up off stage.
It was Ianthe’s turn to tune her antennae. Emboldened by my dry martini, I met her gaze, to be rewarded by the glimmer of a smile, as she leant one elbow on the starched pink tablecloth, propping up her chin, as if making it plain she knew exactly what all this was about.
Well, I wished I did. I wondered if we were going to go through the whole of this farce, with me playing the part of Jarratt’s friend and Maxine as what? Alex’s girlfriend? Or were we just five people having dinner? If this were a play, or a scene from a novel, wouldn’t each character know precisely what his or her part required? For a writer, Jarratt seemed very obtuse and although I knew I should really have stayed patient, it was becoming more and more difficult. This situation had gone on long enough. I was angry with Alex too. How could he possibly blurt out now that he and I already knew one another?
The waiter returned. Everyone ordered seafood, a speciality of the house. Little silver picks and implements for dissecting lobster arrived, together with finger bowls laced with lemon slices. Everyone seemed thankful for the diversion. Dry white wine, cold as a mountain spring, was poured from a bottle with a label Maxine recognised. As it happened, she knew that vineyard.
‘You’ll love this wine,’ she said. ‘I got very drunk on it once and I wasn’t the only one. A gang of us were staying in a chateau just down the road from the vineyard where this is produced. My uncle and aunt have a timeshare in Burgundy.’
Ianthe and Alex made polite noises to show their interest and, as the starters appeared, people chilled a bit. Even I relented, and enjoyed the quiver between my thighs as Alex played footsie with me under the table.
‘I didn’t know Didi then,’ confided Maxine, who was at least one glass ahead of me by this time. ‘I had my eye on my brother’s girlfriend. I knew she didn’t really want to be with him, but it was difficult to get her on her own – until we were out for dinner one night and Mark, my brother, fancied the pants off one of the waitresses, a gorgeous redhead, who was really coming on to him.’
Alex was trying unsuccessfully to stop Maxine blowing her cover. When she cottoned on, she glanced guiltily at Jarratt and at Ianthe. But Jarratt, performing intensive surgery upon a crab’s claw, didn’t appear to have noticed Maxine’s slip. I doubted whether he’d even heard her. With a fatal kind of fascination, I watched Ianthe pull the head off a langoustine, and before she popped the succulent flesh into her mouth, she smiled at Max for the first time.
Like a tiger stalking her prey, she purred, ‘Do go on, Maxine. You’re a born raconteur.’
When Ianthe winked at me, I wondered if this meant I had a friend in Alex’s mother. And, if so, was I about to make an enemy out of his father? Did Ianthe want Jarratt back? Did Alex book an original two seats for the show then have to reserve one extra when his father informed him he was bringing a guest? As neither of them had known the other would be present, perhaps Alex had hoped they’d sit together in the stalls and rekindle their former attraction. Of course, my arrival in London had put paid to that. Or, was Alex hoping, by playing along with the “Jarratt and his bit of stuff” scenario, to rattle his mother’s cage and make her all the more determined to rescue her marriage? If only this was one of my fantasies – then I could pull the strings and put everyone in the right boxes.
It was fortunate Jarratt was such a bon viveur, if that was the right way of putting it. I imagined he’d typecast Maxine as an airhead whose chatter he might as well tolerate until he was ready to grace us again with his scintillating conversation. There was certainly not a lot of communication between him and Ianthe. In fact, Jarratt seemed to be totally ignoring her. Alex, doubtless well accustomed to picking up on his parents’ moods, hastily changed the subject by asking Jarratt what he thought of his interpretation of the PM’s part.
This was masterly in one way, because it took the pressure away from the rest of us. The shells, claws, and squeezed quarters of lemon from the first course were whisked away and another bottle of wine arrived. The waiter, naturally, served the ladies first. Maxine was unusually subdued and I wondered how much longer we could all continue this dinner of the damned.
‘Just pour,’ said Ianthe with an air of authority I could only dream about achieving. To my horror she nudged Jarratt’s elbow and asked him to change seats while we awaited the main course. He nodded and did as he was told.
‘Now, Laura,’ she said. ‘While the boys are bonding, do tell me why you’re here with my husband and not my son, who you quite obviously have the hots for? And Maxine, let’s cut the crap, shall we?’
Two cute waiters arrived, with our main courses held high on silver trays. My lips were in freeze mode again. I glanced at Alex but he was concentrating on something his father was saying. His mother’s attack bounced off a wall of silence. Whatever I stammered out would be wrong. I just knew it.
I applied my attention to the stir-fried prawns, newly arrived in front of me. My glass was refilled by one of the cute waiters. Maybe I should just drink, eat, and let them all get on with it. Maxine was obviously following that particular stage direction.
Across the table, Ianthe, obviously bored by my lack of reaction to her question, sidled closer to Jarratt. She brushed an imaginary speck from his lapel and though he looked uncomfortable he said nothing. Alex watched with interest. When he looked at me and winked, I indicated with a slight shake of my head that I really didn’t want to know. He wasn’t winning me over that easily.
Stress was certainly not spoiling Maxine’s appetite. What was more, the little smoothie was leaning over to thank Jarratt for his food guidance.
‘Jarratt has always been interested in good food,’ purred Ianthe. ‘He’s not completely useless in the kitchen, is he, Xander?’
Had somebody else joined this dinner from hell? Whoops, for a moment I’d forgotten Alex was just a stage name. But it was the name he’d given me when he’d introduced himself that first night and I couldn’t think of him as anything else. I wondered what it was like to answer to two names.
‘Well, apart from the time he got pissed with that gay TV chef, I can remember that crazy dinner party one Christmas holiday. You know, when nobody noticed the slow cooker was switched off.’ Alex glanced at his father who was buttering a roll and pretending not to listen. ‘The beef in red wine was half-cooked and stone cold so Pa was delegated to find burgers and buns in the freezer. Someone rustled up a salad.’
Ianthe dropped her fork in her eagerness to help with the story. ‘I concentrated on getting the guests well lubricated with several bottles of wine so they wouldn’t care what the menu involved. Anyway, we proved something! It’s not the food that’s important, but the company.’
This earned an untimely giggle from Maxine, hastily smothered, while the rest of us kept our heads down. I was just wondering why Ianthe hadn’t resumed her interrogation of Maxine and me when Alex glanced up.
‘How are Jan and Nigel getting on with their buying trip? Have they been in touch?’
Jarratt must have been adding two and two together with little success. He laid down his fork and blotted his lips with his napkin. ‘But how do you know about the Crowthers going away? Is this something to do with your gig at the golf club?’ He was fixing Alex with a hard stare. He did have the most expressive eyes but sometimes they could wither you from three metres.
‘Whoops, that’s blown it. Glad I’m not the only one making faux pas,’ whispered Maxine. She was speaking to me out of the side of her mouth again. There could be a whole new career ahead of her as a ventriloquist. I’d certainly be up for the role of dummy.
My patience, already sorely tested, was exhausted. So much for my resolution to sit back and let them get on with it. ‘Alex and I have, er, met before,’ I announced.
Ianthe’s lips twitched as she picked up her glass. ‘Thought so,’ she said, patting Jarratt on the hand. ‘I can always tell these things.’
Alex kept his cool. ‘I was going to tell you, Dad,’ he said. ‘It was such a coincidence when I heard you were bringing Laura with you.’
‘But I merely informed you I was bringing a friend,’ said Jarratt.
‘Now, there’s a surprise,’ chipped in Ianthe. ‘How good a friend is she, darling?’
‘Hang on, Ma,’ said Alex, quelling her with a look. Wow! Respect. ‘Let’s not get all wound up about this. Coincidences happen all the time. Yes, Laura and I met at the golf club.’ He turned to his mother. ‘You remember the annual charity gig I always go home for? The ones Pa always says he can’t bear to attend.’
‘He used to go when I was living at home,’ said Ianthe with a smirk.
‘Only because you bullied me into it,’ snapped Jarratt. His hand shook as he lifted his glass to his lips. I guess he’d compromised himself by bringing me along. And Alex had definitely compounded the situation by inviting his mother to join the party though I couldn’t blame him for wanting to have her in the audience to watch him in the lead part. And, to be fair, he probably had assumed his father’s guest would be someone from his publisher’s office or else an old friend of the family.
‘So, just how well do you know Laura?’ Jarratt snarled.
‘I might ask you the same thing, Pa,’ said Alex, his tone deceptively gentle.
I looked from one to the other. Some might think it was every woman’s dream, to be fought over by two attractive males. But these two were father and son. And I was getting crosser by the minute because I felt I was the innocent party here and the way the discussion was going, I was beginning to feel like a scrubber.
Maxine patted my knee then grabbed one of the wine bottles and refilled my glass, Ianthe’s and her own. Ianthe was watching her two men like a tigress on heat and, amazingly, I started to see the funny side of it all. But not for long. Clearly, I’d taken too much alcohol on board.
Jarratt was speaking quite incoherently, it seemed. I heard him say something about keeping an eye on me, in fairness to Jan and Nigel – talking rubbish probably. If everyone knew how he’d been wooing me with sumptuous meals and gifts of expensive lingerie, they would, of course, only think the worst. If everyone knew I’d been modelling expensive lingerie, in privacy, and lapping it up, they would definitely assume the worst.
I was at Jarratt’s mercy and just a beat away from being exposed as a slapper. I could lose Alex’s love. More than ever, I felt there was something far more special than lust between us. But equally, Jarratt would be revealing something about his psyche that he might not necessarily want to make known. It was another heart-stopping moment.
All at once, I was sick to death of being organised by bloody men. I stood up. I picked up my glass and gulped down the contents. Suddenly our table became a tableau at Miss Havisham’s ill-fated wedding feast. Everyone was watching me. Bloody hell, I’d spoken my thoughts out loud. Well, fine. At this point, I really couldn’t have cared a toss about any of the people round that table.
‘I’m out of here,’ I said, pushing my chair back. ‘Charades never was my idea of fun.’
Chapter Fifteen
I picked up my bag and slinked off, in best femme fatale style, to the room with the flapper silhouette on its door. Maxine found me in bits, just a minute or two later.
‘Blimey, Laura, you deserve a BAFTA for that performance,’ she said, disappearing into a cubicle to grab a wodge of loo roll. Meanwhile, I’d collapsed onto a stool, in front of the kindly mirror. But I was afraid to check my reflection. I hated men: especially the kind of men who caused my expensive non-run French mascara to do what it shouldn’t.
‘Here you are, sweetheart,’ Maxine murmured as she blotted my cheeks. ‘Have a good cry. Alex’s face was a picture. But they really aren’t worth it, you know. They are such bastards. Even when they’re not trying to be bastards they can’t help being bastards. Why do you think Didi and I got together in the first place?’
‘You mean you …?’ I stammered, blotting the next flood with the toilet tissue.
‘Oh my God, babes, I have fancied more guys than you can imagine. I even used to fancy Alex – the bastard.’
The expression on my face must have been a killer, because she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. ‘No, oh no, we’ve never got it together. It’s all right. Look, I’m sorry to disillusion you, honey, but in this business you get all sorts. Married, single, gay, hetero – they’re in every ensemble. But equally there are the Alex Conways. By that, I mean good-looking guys with real talent and heaps of personality. The girls just roll over. And I can’t stand that. But Alex is a good mate and, as I told you, I really think he’s got the hots for you.’
She looked at my face and corrected herself. ‘I mean, I think he thinks you’re not like all the others.’
A big, juddering sob worked its way through my diaphragm and she hugged me again. ‘If it works for you both, that’s fantastic and it proves it’s meant to be. But Didi and I – we only got together in the first place because we’ve both been let down by men so many times. And now – well, I just can’t imagine being without her.’
It was Maxine’s turn for tears. Good job we were in the kind of place that provided the little touches we girls take comfort from on nights out. I reached for the box of tissues and pressed about ten into her hand.
She gulped and thanked me. ‘Oh, come here and give us a hug,’ she said. ‘Laura … why don’t you and I just get in a taxi and go back to my place and get wasted? Let’s just leave them to get on with their own agendas. You can ring Alex later.’
‘Are you two young women all right?’
An amused voice percolated into my consciousness, just as Maxine and I were cuddling. We were simultaneously relaxed from the wine and hyped-up by the dynamics of the evening. One of Maxine’s hands had landed upon my right breast and I hadn’t even noticed until then. I was tenderly smoothing her hair back from her tear-stained face.
‘Fascinating,’ said Ianthe. ‘This evening just gets better and better. I really thought I’d worked out what was going on, but apparently not.’
As this remark provoked a fresh onslaught of tears from both of us, Ianthe plonked her svelte bottom on to a stool. Actually, that was unfair. She was far too much like an aging supermodel to engage in anything like a plonking action. And her reflection in the mirror was giving me a very sympathetic look.
‘I’m so sorry, girls,’ she said. ‘I realise both my men spell trouble but they’ve surpassed themselves this time. Look, those two are barely speaking to one another out there. They’re so obstinate. As for me, I’m fed up to the back teeth with healthy meals for one in my lonely apartment in Bristol, knowing Jarratt’s prowling around our gorgeous home like some feudal lord. Are you sleeping with my husband, Laura?’
When she struck, she certainly went straight for the jugular.
‘No, I most definitely am not!’ I shouted. ‘If you must know, I’m in love with your son. Why, I can’t think, when he appears to be a serial heartbreaker.’
Talk about plain speaking. Thank goodness everything was out in the open. But I was by no means whiter than white. Whatever justification I might come up with, I certainly mustn’t gab about those photo sessions. I felt my face burn as I saw myself schlepping around this woman’s home, even though I’d never, ever, wanted to jump into their bed. I could only imagine what she’d say to me if she knew about the happy snaps. This was such a mess.
