The dawn was arriving much later now the year was so close to the autumn equinox. At seven thirty it was only just light and in spite of the continuing heat, there was no more pretending that the year wasn’t fast heading towards the cold season. Bella was up early and ready for the day after a restless night in which she’d flipped about in her sleep, first feeling too hot, then thirsty, then too cold. She’d wandered around, thinking and brooding, staring out of the window at the empty avenue below and startling herself with her own reflection in the big mirror.
Her eventual 2 a.m. reply to Saul’s email was short; she’d simply written that she hoped they’d get a few minutes together some time today during the filming. His instant response (had he kept his iPhone next to the pillow, anxious to hear from her? The part of her brain that didn’t want to give up on him rather liked to think so) was that he really hoped they could do much better than that. She felt the same – if he was going to come out with some terminal let-down truth, she would obviously prefer it not to be in front of friends, family and film crew.
Does all this relationship agonizing ever stop, she wondered as she made her way round the terrace with the garden hose, watering the plants in their pots. Did her mother get moments like this with Dennis, or did a time come when everything was straightforward, grown-up and complication-free? It didn’t seem much to ask, once in a lifetime, to hook up with a man who had no tricksy little secrets, but Bella hadn’t come across one of those in years, so perhaps they were heading for extinction.
The garden was still lush and leafy, partly thanks to the slotted-in extra plants from Green Piece. She gave those an especially large drink, feeling she was their babysitter and that she was responsible for making sure they were returned to their home thriving and well. Her own flowers hung on from high summer, still blooming prolifically but with seedheads forming now; new flower heads were smaller, as if the plants were flagging, and petals were dropping.
Nasturtiums tumbled untidily, trailing from their pots across the paving; the deep-pink cosmos – thanks to regular deadheading – still had many buds ready to open, but the nicotiana were setting seed and their leaves were starting to look a bit yellow. She thought about the ones whose heady scent had wafted in from Saul’s roof garden as she lay in his bed – they too would be turning, dying down and producing smaller, less showy blooms on ever weaker little offshoot stems. Her nicotiana had bits of twig and grass cuttings and grit clinging to their sticky, resinous leaves. Saul’s would have the oil-slick-coloured feathers from rooftop pigeons on them.
‘It’s a bit chillier out here these mornings, isn’t it?’ Shirley appeared at the kitchen door, watching Bella. She was wearing a dark-blue velvet dressing gown, managing to look elegant even straight from bed. How did she do that? Bella’s hair never seemed to be as sleek as her mother’s, which fell straight into place at the first touch of a comb. On nights such as the previous unsettled one, Bella’s hair went sweatily damp, then fixed itself into mad random angles so that by the time she woke up it was sticking up all anyhow. Today her fringe had a crazy sideways kink in it and some of the back was matted like an old doormat, but it didn’t matter – this was make-up and hair day. They were all to be whizzed up to a film-set salon near Waterloo so they’d be glammed up when they returned to the house for a final dress-up and the end of the show. This time tomorrow, she told herself, this chaos would all be over and they could all get back to some kind of normal life and no-one would be hanging around like the fashion police, sneering at the Wrong Cardigan.
‘Sorry, do shut the door if you want to,’ Bella told Shirley. ‘Are you cold in there?’
‘No, it’s OK, I’m fine. Coffee? I’m just making some.’
‘Oh tea for me, I think. I’ll come in now; I’ve finished the watering.’
She switched off the outside tap, wound the hose back on to the reel, then came back into the house and washed her hands. The terrace was shinily drenched and all the plants dripped, but the heat-promise steaminess of early May and June mornings was no longer there. It simply looked as if there’d been rain.
‘There are millions of spiderwebs but not so many snails,’ Bella commented to Shirley. ‘Is it the time of year or the dryness?’
‘Probably both. They’re a mystery, slugs and snails. I expect you can look up on Google where they go in winter. Off on cruises, like affluent pensioners, I expect.’
‘On which note, when do we get to meet Dennis?’ Bella asked. ‘Don’t you want him to meet us? I know Alex isn’t here so it’s not the full turnout, but I’m dying to check him out myself.’
Shirley raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow. ‘Do you want to see if he’s suitable? If his intentions are properly honourable?’
‘I didn’t doubt that they are. It’s wonderful that you’ve found someone at last, for …’ Her voice trailed off. Well, it had to be for love, didn’t it? What else could it be?
‘I hope you weren’t going to say “companionship”, Bella,’ Shirley teased her. ‘Because how wrong can you be! Do you think there’s a cut-off point at which everything shuts down and that magic attraction turns into something dulled and non-physical, non-emotional, so that you express how you feel by, I don’t know, visiting National Trust houses? Making cakes?’
‘Well it might explain a few things about the WI,’ Bella quipped. Shirley didn’t look amused.
‘OK, sorry. Keep ignorant mouth shut, Bella,’ she told herself. ‘But I suppose I did assume something kind of declined with the menopause. Is that not what happens? Doesn’t it all feel more … restful? I’m really beginning to see the point of the word “contentment”.’
‘If anything does expire with the menopause,’ Shirley said tartly, ‘then you haven’t got that much mileage left in you either, my girl. I bet you hadn’t thought of it that way, had you? You and Saul – I could see from your face you were up in the air about him early yesterday, then pacing about half the night, and now you look like someone’s slapped you with a herring. Why can’t you just get on with it? Stop waiting for everything to be so damn perfect. Nothing starts that way; you have to want it, make it happen.’
‘Right. Compromise, then. Yes, that would work. Let me see, I’m a woman who serially picks men with background baggage, I can only get a job if I learn how to dress better, my ex-husband is telling me I have to move house …’ Bella switched the kettle on again. Endless tea – the British way of coping with everything from a grazed knee to massacre.
‘Oh Bella, do stop sounding so defeated!’ Shirley sounded exasperated. ‘Not compromise at all; the opposite. Go with your instincts and stop analysing. You don’t seem to get it yet that time is the most precious and finite thing. Stop wasting it.’
‘But …’
‘No buts. You like Saul, don’t you? He likes you. So what are you looking so fraught about?’
‘The fact that he’s married – or has been married, to Daisy? And didn’t actually get round to mentioning it, even though they’ve both been here in the house for the past however many days it is now? I’ve just made yet another of my man mistakes. I give up.’
Shirley shrugged. ‘Not necessarily a mistake. I bet you haven’t asked him about her, have you? And besides – Daisy and Dominic. I already told you, any fool can see they’re besotted with each other, even if neither of them have quite fathomed it out yet. Why else would he put up with her? Why else would she trail him around with her when she can quite obviously do the whole job perfectly well on her own?’
‘Of course I’m going to ask him. I was giving myself some time to …’ Bella began.
‘… to fume and steam and get yourself into a stew imagining the worst,’ Shirley interrupted. ‘That’s what I mean about wasting time. Even Molly’s got the hang of this bit about men. She needed a push, but she’s gone and sorted things out with her boyfriend. You can learn a thing or two from her.’
‘Ah now, Molly – have you told her about you and Dennis getting married? I didn’t say anything to her because I thought you’d probably want it to come from you.’
‘No, I haven’t told her yet. I didn’t think it was tactful till she was a bit happier. Later today, I will. I’ll bring Dennis over as well.’
‘Oh good – but I hope he won’t mind all the upheaval here. Daisy’s decided we’ve got to have a party in the garden later, so we can be filmed being “natural” in our lovely made-over looks.’
‘Excellent – we’ll gatecrash. It’ll be fun. And Bella?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Don’t let them cut your hair too short. And don’t go any blonder either. You’d look terribly harsh. Now – I know you’re all wound up and probably feel as if you’ve swallowed a clay boulder, but you’re looking peaky and I’m starving. Let’s have a bacon sandwich to go with this tea.’
Yes, let’s, Bella thought, switching on the grill and feeling a bit more cheerful at the thought of comfort food. And later, if it came to a tussle at the salon about her hair, she’d get the hairdresser to give Shirley a call. Even Nicky Clarke wouldn’t dare cross her.
‘And we get a cab back as well? I could get used to this!’ Molly said to Bella as they went into the hairdressing salon tucked away behind the South Bank complex. Molly had been very chatty in the car, completely revived after the previous misery. She’d come flying into the house looking radiant and glossy late the previous evening, as Bella was about to go to bed.
‘All on again, is it?’ Bella had guessed as Molly almost skipped across the kitchen to forage in the fridge.
‘Mmm. Yum. Yes – me and Giles. It’s all cool. And Aimee’s not pregnant. Stupid cow. She was just being jealous. You’ve got to feel sorry for her.’
‘Have you? That’s very generous.’
‘Yeah, well, sad, desperate people will do anything to get what they want. But then it can all go wrong for them.’
‘I think that’s called karma, Moll,’ Bella told her.
‘Not nice, whoever you are,’ Molly decided.
Molly, in her revived mood, was now loving the luxury of being driven to an area she’d normally get to by train. ‘It makes me feel all celebrityish,’ she said, bouncing around a bit. Well, here was one whose mood had changed overnight, Bella thought, pleased for her daughter. Lucky her, and long may her beautiful glow of happiness last.
As she went through the polished steel door into the building, Bella’s butterflies returned at the thought of facing Saul and whatever it was he would be telling her about the him-and-Daisy set-up. She tried to calm her thudding heart, thinking how much she now wished that she and Saul had had a simple, explanatory phone conversation the night before instead. What was the worst he could have said? ‘Daisy and I are together but …’ But what? They had an ‘open marriage’? Did people still have those? Or he could have said that they weren’t together – in which case why had he left it till now to tell her they’d ever had a connection? If they’d talked it through hours ago, she would have had a chance of feeling calm by now. How silly of her to have put the moment off – how ridiculously flouncy, to use a favourite word of her mother’s.
The door was still swinging shut as Saul – who must have been waiting to pounce – grabbed Bella’s arm and pulled her outside to the street again. She caught sight of Molly’s face smiling at her through the steel door’s porthole window. Her grin was positively impish.
‘You’re abducting me,’ Bella protested to Saul. ‘I’m supposed to be having my hair and face all made over. And don’t they need you in there too?’
‘Yes, I’m abducting you,’ he agreed, holding her hand firmly and walking fast away from the building, towards the river. ‘They can start work on someone else and do you later. Not that you need it. And no, they don’t need me either for an hour. I’ve sorted it. Come on, let’s get away from here.’
Tourists thronged the South Bank; the queue for the London Eye was as long as in the holiday months of July and August, and everyone, to Bella’s eyes, looked as if they were having the most enviable stress-free time, cameras clicking, the line of people moving amiably and without impatience or complaint.
‘I wouldn’t get to talk to you alone in there with all the others around, so this was the only solution,’ Saul continued, still walking so fast Bella almost had to break into a trot to keep up. He was squeezing her hand tight, as if scared she’d run off.
A group of chattering Japanese tourists, each one pecking at a phone and oblivious to anyone in their path, separated them for a moment.
‘Not that in this crowd you could really count it as “alone”. Whoever said you can be more alone in a city than anywhere else had never done the South Bank on a warm autumn day. OK, come on,’ he said, setting off again towards the landing stage, towing her along with him. ‘I’ve had an idea.’
They were just in time. The safety barrier was about to go up before the ferry left. Saul quickly sidestepped the operator and he and Bella jumped on board.
‘Where is this thing going?’ Bella giggled as they raced through the cabin where the more cautious trippers were sitting with their guidebooks and their maps, past the bar and to a row of empty seats out in the open in the stern, like schoolchildren bagging the back seats on a bus.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ Saul told her. ‘I don’t care if it’s going all the way to the Thames Barrier and across to bloody France. I just wanted to get you to myself without you sliding out of range.’
‘Before you start,’ she interrupted, ‘can I just ask the only thing I really need to know?’
He hesitated. ‘I can’t stop you. But I’d prefer to get everything in the right order.’
They were passing Tate Modern and then the Globe Theatre – the latter looking tiny by comparison, like something cute built for dolls. ‘Wait, first I just want to know … are you and Daisy still married?’
‘No,’ he replied immediately. ‘Not for a long, long time. And it wasn’t really what you’d call a marriage.’
Bella bit back a very tart ‘And what would you call it then?’ and instead said carefully, ‘Look, I do understand some of it, in a way. It was something my mother said about after a partner you really, truly loved has died. About how you’d want to try to have that experience again, because it had been so wonderful and you want it back. It even sort of explains Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, a bit.’
‘Well, a little bit!’ Saul laughed, and then looked more serious. ‘But it wasn’t like that, not even slightly. That’s why I wanted you just to listen and not have me tell it all out of sequence. Daisy and I weren’t married after Lucy. That’s the thing. Daisy was before Lucy. About a hundred years ago – or that’s how it feels.’
The boat, having gone under Tower Bridge and out of the Pool of London regulations, suddenly picked up speed. Jets of water, spritzed up from the engine, blew back over Bella’s hair. She took no notice but felt slightly shivery from the cold spray. Saul put his arm round her and she relaxed against him, snuggling close. Because, as her mother had reminded her, why not?
‘Before Lucy?’ She was seriously confused now. ‘How come before? And I know you don’t want me interrupting, but why on earth didn’t you tell me all this before? You knew from what I said about Rick that I really can’t be doing with secrets and lies. An ex-wife, honestly explained, I’d have been fine with. Even Daisy.’
‘Even Daisy?’ Saul looked disbelieving.
‘Yes of course, even Daisy. But go on, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t say anything because Daisy asked me not to. It’s as simple as that. I’d promised her I wouldn’t mention it to anyone on the show, way before we started the Fashion Victims filming.’
‘But why? That’s a pretty unfair demand in this case, isn’t it?’
‘As it turned out, yes. But then I’m not in the habit of falling for people when I’m working. Or at all. Ever. Thing is – Daisy’s incredibly ambitious and clawed her way up from nowhere to get where she is now. She absolutely loathes the idea that anyone would think she was getting work on the who-you-know basis, and this is a very small industry. Everybody knows each other. Nobody trusts husband-and-wife teams – even long-divorced ones – there’s always that suspicion that one of the two isn’t as up to the job as a carefully chosen outsider would be. She’s also incredibly private about her personal life. I mean, how much have you actually learned about her during this programme? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. She keeps it all inside. I bet she gave Fliss hell when she let it slip that Daisy was her mother.’
Bella smiled. ‘She wasn’t exactly thrilled, that’s true.’ True? Daisy had looked as if she could have slapped poor Fliss at the time. ‘Though if you hadn’t already mentioned that Fliss was your stepdaughter, I still wouldn’t have been any the wiser.’
‘I know. Stupid of me. Fliss told me off about that later, said if Daisy knew she’d kill me. And I would have told you all this stuff after the show was finished. Of course I would – I really thought it could wait two more days. Honestly, I just went along with Daisy because that’s what she and I had agreed before the start. It was stupid of me, but if I make a promise I keep it. And Daisy’s not usually so communicative. By last night she was loosened up enough with everyone – and there were no crew around.’
‘She was as loosened up as a newt by the time she left. And I assumed she was warning me off you. It certainly felt like it, the way she sort of claimed you to take her home.’
Bella watched a mother trying to restrain a pair of small boys from leaning too far over the boat’s side. She and James had once spent a fraught couple of hours on a channel ferry during a rough crossing, trying to keep the overexcited Alex and Molly under control. James, ever-squeamish, had refused to go on the deck where the seasick hordes had gathered.
‘So you and Daisy … you must have been incredibly young?’ The cement block that had seemed to be lodged just above Bella’s heart was now dissolving fast. Maybe, just maybe, this could be all right. She’d see …
Saul took hold of her hand, twining his fingers through hers.
‘Daisy and I were at school together, just friends, never dated or anything. Her background isn’t anything like you’d imagine. Her mother brought her up alone after her father left. Very impoverished, devoutly Catholic and proudly keen to be seen as “respectable”. A generation or two earlier, she’d have been one of those women who scrub the front steps every day so the neighbours don’t accuse her of letting herself go.’
‘So Daisy wasn’t born to the high life of style and top-end fashion then?’ Wow, Bella thought, how very much you can’t tell about people. Daisy came across as pure Sloane Square, born and bred.
‘Daisy? God no! She’s a complete self-invention. She was always mad about clothes, always making really original ones for herself because she had no money to buy them, looking that bit different and edgy with charity-shop things she’d altered and weird furnishing fabrics off the market.’
A vision of Daisy dressed in a frock made from maroon Dralon and faded floral chintz crossed Bella’s mind. She’d bet even that would have been enviably chic, damn her. A couple wearing matching cagoules, and with maps round their necks as if they were walking the Pennines, came out on to the deck and hesitated, looking at Bella and Saul. The man nodded apologetically at Bella and turned away, heading for a seat out of earshot.
‘After school,’ Saul continued, ‘we didn’t see each other for a few years. But then when I was in Los Angeles on a rock video, Daisy was there on the next lot, working as a stylist.’
‘So you fell in love with the girl from back home and got married. Sweet,’ Bella cut in, feeling slightly queasy, and not from the boat’s movement.
‘No, no, Bella.’ Saul shifted so he could face her properly. ‘It was nothing like that. She’d already had Fliss by then, but had split with the father after only a few months. She was about to fly back to the UK because her mother was dying. Her mother hadn’t even seen the baby and she wanted to take her home, let her mum meet Fliss. But there was something else … her mother wasn’t about to die happy if Daisy came home as a single mother. It would count as a disgrace and a huge disappointment. An on-the-spot husband wasn’t really needed – the absence could be explained away somehow, but Daisy really wanted to be able to assure her she was married, give her the comfort of thinking her daughter hadn’t gone completely to the bad.’
‘Ah. Oh that’s so sad. But why you? Didn’t she have a boyfriend she could …’ What was the right word here? ‘Use’ had been what she’d wanted to say. ‘… Persuade?’
‘No – Fliss and work took all her time. It was because I was there, at the time; old friends, no emotional ties and complications – I wasn’t seeing anyone. We did the ceremony a bit drunkenly at a wedding-chapel shack thing in Vegas, couple of the crew from the video were witnesses. Wham bam, certificate in hand. Job done and off she goes, back home.’
‘That’s one hell of a favour for a friend.’ And it was. It was kind, spur-of-the-moment generous. You’d didn’t, Bella reckoned, get many men like that to the kilo.
Saul said simply, ‘I felt sorry for her. She was very young, very alone out there with her baby, trying to get her career off the ground in a horrible cat-eat-dog business. And besides,’ he smiled rather ruefully and looked at Bella, ‘Daisy has a knack of getting what she wants. It was only after the deed was done I realized how cleverly she’d let me think the solution to her dilemma was actually my idea.’
‘Ha! I’ve noticed that. She made me try on a skirt with something called a paper-bag waist. And very nearly convinced me that not only did it look great but that I’d picked it out myself.’
‘There is one thing she’s making no headway with, though …’
‘Dominic?’ Bella guessed.
‘That’s the one. They’ve been circling each other for months. Somehow they just can’t quite cross that gap.’
‘Maybe …’ Bella began tentatively, ‘maybe it’s to do with Dominic knowing she keeps work separate from the personal?’
‘Partly. But I also think that besotted as he is, he’s also pretty damn scared of her.’
‘Wise man,’ Bella agreed, as the boat pulled up at the O2 arena and all passengers except the two of them queued to get off. ‘We Victims know exactly how he feels.’
‘So where’ve you been?’ Back at the salon Jules was waiting to grab Bella the moment Saul left her side to talk to the director. ‘Daisy’s not here either, just Dominic. He and Henri the hair man are going mad!’
‘Were we that long?’ Bella asked, running her fingers through the still-wet ends of her hair. She must look a complete fright. If Charlotte had seen her right now there was no way she’d have given her any kind of job where she’d have to go out in public. ‘Surely not everyone’s been done yet, have they?’
‘No they haven’t, just Molly and me so far. You didn’t even notice my new look, did you? World of your own …’ Jules shook her newly cut hair, which had been given an even wilder array of scarlet and pink streaks. ‘Don’t you think I look like Zandra Rhodes?’
‘It looks fantastic, Jules – love the pink bits. I hope I get something that’s as good. If Henri’s cross, he might take it out on me.’
‘Ha!’ Jules snorted. ‘By the look of you, you won’t care if he shaves off every last bit. I take it,’ her voice went down to loud-whisper level, ‘all is well?’
‘All is very well, thanks.’ Bella’s smile was uncontrollable. She was going to look manic on camera, all teeth and wildly glittery eyes.
‘Ugh!’ Jules wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘There’s nothing worse than being shut in a room with the newly loved-up. Come on, you can tell me all later – let’s see what they’re doing with Dina. I hear raised voices.’
Dina was putting up resistance. The words ‘crowning glory’ were uttered (by her), countered by ‘frizzy horror-show bird’s nest’ from Henri the stylist. Dominic glared silently at the pair of them and the camera rolled.
‘Really long hair is a symbol of clinging to your youthful glory days,’ Henri was saying. ‘The youth and the glory are long gone and frankly, past the age of thirty-five, hair this long simply smacks of desperation and immaturity.’
‘I like Dina’s hair long,’ Bella challenged him, feeling Dina was being unfairly picked on here. ‘It’s part of who she is. She’s not representing “a woman of her age”, she’s just her. That’s her style.’
A salon junior approached Bella with a gown, wrapped her in it and led her away to the basins. Bella hung back, wanting to hear the argument, but was pushed firmly down into a squashy leather chair and her head was painfully rammed against the sink’s edge.
‘Something feathered, short, almost gamine …’ was being said as Henri ignored Dina’s opinion and, out of the corner of her eye, Bella could see him running a finger and thumb over Dina’s tresses, checking the texture.
‘Gamine?’ Dina’s voice covered at least two octaves. ‘I’m pushing fifty, for heaven’s sake! I thought you said I wasn’t to cling to my youth? Just chop a few inches off the stuff and stop thinking Audrey Hepburn!’
Henri gave in, but on one condition. ‘In that case we’ll be giving you an up-do,’ he told her in a tone that made it clear he would stand for no argument on this. ‘I want you to see how you look with the bulk of your hair above your shoulders rather than below. Deal?’
‘Deal.’ Dina grinned at him through the mirror. ‘I win!’ she called across to Bella, then her eyes in the mirror widened with horror. ‘Sheesh, will you look at Daisy!’
Daisy crept into the salon, sliding through the barely open door like a cat that had been missing for days. She looked … well, the word scarecrow came to mind. How many chunky beaded bangles, Bella wondered, as the girl vigorously scrubbed shampoo into her scalp, could a pair of skinny arms take? How many multicoloured, beaded, gilded and feathered layers could even a thin little waif like Daisy pile on before looking as if they were forced to wear their entire wardrobe because they were about to go and live on the streets? She had the big sunglasses on again and the high, cream open-toed boots over turquoise tights. Bella, craning her head as far as she could, saw Dominic take one look at her and actually step back till he crashed into the wall mirror and knocked over a banana plant. Saul halted the filming and told Fliss to get Daisy some strong coffee.
‘He looks terrified.’ Molly tiptoed up and sat beside her mother.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Bella whispered. ‘She looks awful. All wild. Ill, even.’ The girl slip-slapped conditioner over her head and started the slow scalp massage she’d been taught. ‘So, have you got any plans for Christmas?’ she asked.
‘What’s wrong with you? You look like shit.’ Possibly only someone who’d once been your husband, however brief and unconsummated the marriage, could have got away with talking to a woman like that.
Saul and Bella – her wet hair wrapped in a towel – took Daisy and her coffee outside to a little palm-planted courtyard at the back of the salon, so that filming could continue with her well out of sight.
‘Hangover,’ Daisy muttered. Her eyes were still hidden behind the glasses. Bella guessed that the words ‘piss-holes’ and ‘snow’ wouldn’t have been inappropriate if they were on view.
‘But you didn’t have that much, did you? You weren’t that bad,’ Saul said.
‘Not then. Later – at home. My life’s crap.’ From under the sunglasses, fat crystal tears ran down Daisy’s pale face and dropped on to her furry orange shrug.
‘Er … shall I, um, more coffee …’ Saul was getting up, making an escape.
‘Coward!’ Bella whispered to him; Daisy, after all, was his friend, not really hers.
‘It’s just … she might talk to you. Woman stuff?’ he murmured back, his mouth tinglingly close to her ear. She watched him walk away, back to work, looking back at her from the doorway, smiling.
Bella unwrapped the towel from her head and handed it to Daisy. ‘Sorry, I haven’t got any tissues. This will have to do,’ she said, smoothing down her damp, mussed-up hair and feeling thankful the warm sun was shining on her. A cold winter day, and Daisy would have been out here alone, no question.
‘Thanks,’ Daisy said, dabbing at her face and poking the towel ends under her glasses to mop new tears. ‘You should go inside; your hair’s all wet – you’ll catch your death.’
‘My mum used to say that.’ Shirley probably still did, now she thought about it.
‘Mine too,’ Daisy sobbed into the towel. ‘Oh I’m sorry Bella, I’m not really like this.’
‘I know. What started it off?’
The door opened and Molly brought two more cups of coffee and some ginger biscuits, then swiftly went back inside. She had the distinctly nervy look of someone who’d picked the short straw for this little mission.
Daisy gave a big sniff and took off her sunglasses, fixing Bella with a watery stare through eyes that had been too thoroughly made up with shades of green and purple shadow, most of which was now halfway down her face. She looked like an advert designed to shock, offering refuge from domestic violence.
‘You started it off, actually,’ Daisy said. ‘You and bloody Saul. So obviously so bloody … happy.’
Bella thought back to the day before, most of which had been taken up with the two of them not being happy.
‘But … we … weren’t. Then.’ She couldn’t deny it about now, though.
‘Oh I knew, the moment I got to your place in the morning.’
‘Right. And you mind that … because?’
‘Because I’m not!’ Daisy’s voice was a childlike, petulant squeak.
‘You’re in love with Saul?’ Bella was confused now.
‘No! Don’t be ridiculous. With … someone else. Who doesn’t give a flying one about me.’
‘Dominic,’ Bella said.
‘Did I say Dominic?’ Daisy was defensive. ‘I did not say that name.’ Her huge eyes started overflowing again. ‘He wouldn’t take me to the launch last night. I think he thought I’d look all out of place or something. I mean, me! I am style!’
‘Hmm, sometimes you are. But maybe sometimes you’re just a bit too …’ Bella struggled for words.
‘Too what? Too distracting? Too stunning? Too …’
‘Theatrical?’ Bella supplied for her.
‘And what’s wrong with that? How else does someone of five foot three and a small frame get themselves noticed?’
‘Nothing’s wrong … except, well do you need to be centre stage the whole time? But hey, what do I know. You’re the stylist, you tell me.’ Bella looked at her, taking in the strange collection of flung-on clothing that Daisy was wearing.
‘Yes … I think I do need to be central.’ Daisy sounded subdued now. ‘I know he likes me. Usually we do everything together. It’s just … we never get any further. And now I think we never will. It’s like he just can’t let himself get nearer. It’s like, however obvious I am, he doesn’t seem to see me.’
‘Hey, I’ve just thought of something.’ Bella could feel a small plan forming. ‘You won’t like it but you have to promise to go along with it when we get back to the house after this. OK?’
Daisy sighed and dunked a biscuit into her coffee, not seeming to notice that drips of it fell on to her silver skirt.
‘All right. I promise,’ she said sulkily. ‘Whatever it takes, so long as you don’t go running to Dom and telling him all this.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ Bella assured her. ‘Just go home for a couple of hours, get some sleep.’
‘I will, or I’ll look crap later for the wrap party. But it won’t make a difference, you know, whatever you’ve got in mind.’ Daisy mopped the last of her tears, blew her nose noisily and handed the towel back to Bella.
‘Oh thanks,’ Bella said, feeling an unusual moment of empathy with James as she held the towel by one far corner. ‘And Daisy, just – don’t be so defeatist.’
Ye gods, she thought, I’ve turned into my mother.