That Monday morning Jay sent me a huge bunch of flowers – lots of different kinds, but all shades of blue. They were utterly gorgeous and so was the card that came with them.
‘This is the colour I am without you…’ it said, followed by so many kisses I couldn’t even count them. I wondered how he had dictated that to the girl in the florist’s.
I kissed the card back and put it carefully into my wallet. He’d stopped even putting his initial on them, to be on the safe side, but I still wasn’t taking any risks.
He couldn’t have timed those flowers better. For one thing I was extremely relieved that we had got our relationship – if that was what it was, the concept was still so new to me – back on track, if not a little closer, as it would dispel any confusing feelings I might have had about Ned after the incidents of the weekend.
As relatively secure as I now felt with Jay, I knew I could put Ned – and his killer body – firmly back into his rumpled work suit and his role as my respected colleague and office mate, with any more complicated stirrings completely forgotten.
The other reason Jay’s flowers were a welcome boost that morning, was something I’d just seen in the Post’s weekly media section, which was the most widely read one in the industry.
It was a really snide little snippet about the new section – and the first mention of it anywhere, because it hadn’t been officially announced yet. I had read it about twenty times, still hardly able to believe how horrible it was about me.
Once again under the cosh from management to cut costs, Journal editor-in-chief Duncan – Big Spender – McDonagh has stooped to conquer. His idea is don’t spend less – earn more, no matter the cost to the paper’s integrity.
So in a move that has surprised the paper’s more serious journalists, he has appointed the paper’s lissom ‘luxury correspondent’ Stella Fain to edit a weekly mini glossy magazine for the paper, with his eye on pinching some of Vogues advertising revenue.
Daughter of six-times-married peer Lord Montecourt of Cliffe, the It girl journalist has recently been linked to billionaire playboy Jay Fisher and is great mates with such luxury-brand luminaries as Rebecca Rosen – the London PR for Cartier.
So with the paper’s apparent desperation for cash, no doubt the gushing editorial will flow as freely as the Bollie at the swanky functions and freebie five-star trips Ms Fain so regularly enjoys.
Sad times, indeed, for a paper that used to be better known for its groundbreaking investigations than its PR puffs.
I was just reading it one more time, to be sure I hadn’t imagined how foul it was, when Peter and Ned appeared in the door together. I took one look at their concerned faces and burst into tears.
They both moved to comfort me and even in my distress, I was relieved that Peter got there first, flourishing the starched handkerchief he always had in his pocket. I wasn’t quite ready for a hug from Ned yet, not so soon after seeing what his bare chest looked like.
‘Oh, you poor mite,’ Peter was saying. ‘That was a very nasty little piece. Actionable, actually. I just came in to tell you that I’ve seen Duncan and he says not to worry – we’ll get the bastards.’
Ned was reading it again and shaking his head in fury.
‘What a bunch of fuckers,’ he was saying. ‘This is so wrong.’
‘But the thing is,’ I said, blinking back the deluge of tears which was trying to flood out. ‘I do go on free trips and I do drink bloody Bollie at launch parties and Becca is a luxury-brand PR and she is my friend, I can’t deny any of that. The only thing I can say in my defence is that it really doesn’t affect what I write. But that’s just my word and as I do write positive things about some of the brands – the ones I really do think are great – I am compromised.’
Peter looked thoughtful, then he took the media section from Ned’s hands and threw it into my bin.
‘There, that’s where that is going at the end of today. You’ve worked on papers long enough to know that things like this, while unpleasant at the time, blow over very quickly. Hamster cages and all that. It’s a very upsetting experience when you’re the brunt of it, but in the long term, it’s just a blip, so try not to worry about it. Just carry on doing your work as brilliantly and ethically as you always have and you will be fine. Success is the sweetest revenge, I have always found.’
He patted my head, consolingly – he wasn’t the most physical of people – and turned to leave my office, when something occurred to me.
‘Peter,’ I said. ‘Before you go, one last thing – do you think Jeanette could have had a hand in this?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Peter, looking rather pleased about it. ‘And I’m hoping she did, because it might be just the thing finally to get her fired.’
I felt a little comforted by Peter’s comments, but after he left, and Ned had gone off to the canteen to get me a comforting bun, I sat gormlessly at my desk for a moment, wondering what to do. Get back to work, I finally told myself, like Peter said, that was the only thing for it.
I clicked on to the Internet and checked out a few new luxury shopping sites I’d heard about, but I couldn’t concentrate. I stared into space for a little while and then my glance rested on Jay’s beautiful blue flowers and I had another idea – I logged on to Google and typed in his name.
As the screen immediately filled, I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner. There were pages and pages about him. Most of them were articles – and pictures, which made my heart turn over – in trashy magazines, but there were quite a few New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories as well, and even some Amazon links to books about the Fisher family and their fortune. I clicked on one of those.
Fishers of Fortune, it was called, with the subhead: ‘How the Fisher family took control of the American banking system’.
I scrolled down and read the longer description of the book.
Leading Washington Post reporter, Jerry Mulhew, analyses the rise and rise of one of America’s richest dynasties, from its origins as a small-town savings and loan started by two brothers, to an international banking empire.
The book examines the extraordinary financial brilliance of five generations of one family and also looks into the legend of the Fisher family curse, which has arisen from the untimely deaths of at least one son in every generation since the bank began.
I knew Jay’s older brother, Bob, had died when he was twenty-three, but I’d had no idea about a family curse, that was really horrible. For a moment my hand hesitated with the cursor poised on the ‘Buy It With One Click’ box.
If I bought that book, I could find out all about Jay’s family in one fell swoop. It was really tempting, but instead I closed the page and then Google. I didn’t want to get to know him in that artificial way. I would wait and put it together through what he told me, as I would have to do with any other man.
Ned came back with the coffee and we spent the rest of the morning with the designer who had been assigned to us, going through the articles we were planning to use for the first two weeks of the new supplement.
Work was the perfect distraction, just as Peter had said it would be, and as I went through it all I began to feel really excited about the section again. Once it came out and people saw how cool – and unbiased – it was, spiteful little reports like that one would be forgotten.
I also had the chance to ask Ned about his killer body. Somehow I felt talking about it openly would put an end to any further sexually-charged moments between us.
‘So tell me, Ned,’ I said, as we started to wrap up for lunch. ‘How did you get that body of yours? I had no idea you were a man mountain beneath that terrible suit.’
He grinned at me and flexed one bicep like a cartoon muscleman.
‘I used to play water polo for Australia,’ he said.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Very impressive. Did you have to give it up when you moved here?’
‘Pretty much. I could have moved to Italy to play professionally there, but I just wanted to be a journalist, so here I am.’
‘Do you still train?’
He nodded. ‘Five times a week. Why do you think my hair’s such a mess?’
At twelve thirty I left my office for my own preferred form of training – my Iyengar yoga class. I had just pushed the button in the lift, and the doors were closing, when someone barged in. It was Jeanette.
‘Not a very positive piece in the Post today, Stella,’ she said, with her crocodile smile. ‘Rather personal, wasn’t it?’
I felt like planting a smart punch on her liver-y lips, as I was pretty much convinced that she was behind it, considering her track record of planting unpleasant stories about me in the press, but I forced myself to stay cool.
‘That’s just newspapers, isn’t it?’ I said, shrugging. ‘You’re always going to get your share of nastiness when you’re ahead, aren’t you?’
I don’t know how she took that, because I spent the rest of the ride looking resolutely at the lift door and was very glad when we got to the ground floor and I could speed off. She was really starting to give me the creeps.
The afternoon got off to a brighter start, when the post boy, Martin, turned up at my office door carrying a large package with a gold balloon attached to it. The balloon had the words Top Me!’ printed all over it.
‘Can I do it?’ asked Martin shyly.
I handed him my letter knife and he gleefully stabbed it, until it burst and a small key fell out on to the floor. Meanwhile, I had opened the package, to find an old-fashioned jewellery box, which I unlocked with the key.
Inside was an invitation to a fragrance launch – but not just any fragrance launch. It was from the classic French house of Huguenot for their new scent, Précieuse, and their launches were legendary, more like fabulous balls than corporate events. This one was black tie, which was always a good start.
I’d received a diary note about it a couple of weeks before, so I’d known it was coming, but there was one problem. The invitation said: ‘Stella Fain and Guest’. Who could I take?
I’d asked Ned, but he’d already accepted an invitation to a major mobile phone launch the same night. Tim would have loved it, but he was back in Iraq, and I realized that with all that had been going on, I had rather lost touch with the various other men I had used before in a human handbag capacity.
I got on the phone to a couple of them, but to no avail. One had acquired a proper girlfriend who, he said, would not appreciate him going out with another woman, even just as friends, while the other one was clearly pissed off not to have heard from me for so long and told me, in very icy tones, that he was busy that night – and the rest of his life.
I put the phone down on him and pulled a face at it.
If only Jay had been around, I thought. I could just imagine how heavenly he would look in a dinner jacket. But even if he had been in town – and even if Ham had not made me promise not to see him – our presence at such a public event would only have unleashed the hounds of paparazzi hell on us again.
Nothing was simple about that relationship, I thought sadly, except how much I liked being with him.
I was just wondering whether to ask Peter to come with me, when inspiration struck. I rang Alex at work and invited him. He sounded really surprised – and really pleased – and said he would be delighted to come with me. It was a relief that something seemed to have worked out neatly.
The day of the launch, I had my hair done in the morning and got changed in the office. I was wearing a taupe chiffon Alberta Ferretti dress I’d picked up in the Harvey Nichols sale, with the baroque pearl and diamond earrings Ham had given me for my eighteenth birthday and a pair of gold Manolo skyscraper heels. It was hard to see myself properly in the awful light in the office loos, but I thought I looked OK. I always felt good in gold shoes.
As I headed for the lift, I heard a loud wolf whistle. I looked in the direction it had come from and saw Ned, standing by the photocopier, grinning at me.
‘Nice dress, Stella,’ he said, looking me over, shamelessly, from head to toe, just as he had done that day at the pool.
Even from a distance, I could see he had that wicked look in his eyes; the one that rendered the newspaper’s librarians into blushing ninnies. I wasn’t going to let him do the same to me. There were strict limits to our professional relationship, as far as I was concerned.
‘Nice suit, Ned,’ I replied. ‘Oh no, silly me – it’s the same one you always wear. Anyway, have fun at your phone launch.’
‘Have fun with your stepbrother,’ said Ned.
Bastard, I thought. He always got the last word in.
I’d arranged to pick Alex up from his office building in the City, which was on the way back into the West End from the Journal He was waiting outside when I got there and before he noticed the taxi pulling up, I had a moment to reflect on how good he looked in his dinner jacket.
I realized I hadn’t seen him in one since my twenty-first birthday party and he still wore it well. Remarkably well, actually. Women pouring out of the office entrance were turning back for another glance at him.
His face broke into a broad smile when he saw me – that uncomplicated smile that used to make my stomach do cartwheels when I was a teenager. Now it gave me a simpler warm feeling; of familial affection, nothing more, whatever Ned said.
‘Hey, Stella,’ said Alex, getting into the cab. ‘You look absolutely gorgeous.’
He kissed me warmly on both cheeks.
‘You look pretty 007 fabulous yourself, Alex,’ I said.
‘I do enjoy getting into this rig-up, actually,’ he said. ‘Girls love it. I got changed far earlier than I needed to, so I could pose round the office a bit.’
He grinned at me again.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s this jolly all about? Something about scent, did you say?’
I explained that Huguenot was one of the classic French fragrance houses, with a long noble tradition, like Guerlain, and that they only launched a new perfume about once every five years, so it was always a big deal and the parties were extravagant production numbers.
It was apparent from the moment we arrived that this one was no exception. There was a huge marquee set up next to the Serpentine Gallery, covered in gold fabric, the entrance guarded by two muscly chaps clad Nubian-style, with loin cloths and turbans and not much else, their skin painted gold from head to toe.
Inside, the marquee had been done up like a fantasy of the Arabian Nights, lit by hanging lanterns, with a lot of low-slung furniture, piled with embroidered velvet cushions.
The first room was a stand-up-and-mingle area, where we were greeted at the entrance by the Huguenot luminaries. There was Jean-Pierre Huguenot-Lafalle, the CEO, who I had interviewed several times over the years; another chap I had also profiled, who was the nose of the house and created the fragrances; and Tara Ryman, who did the PR for them among her many prestigious clients.
They all welcomed me effusively, and it felt more like a party given by friends than a big corporate do – especially when I saw Becca walk in.
The nasty piece in the Post did flash across my mind, as I waved to her, then turned to take my first glass of Taittinger for the evening. But while I was doing exactly what I had been accused of in that spiteful piece, my conscience was clear. If I didn’t like Précieuse I simply wouldn’t write about it. Censure by exclusion was my trademark.
‘Hi, Stella,’ said Tara, warmly. ‘Who’s your arm candy tonight?’ she whispered into my ear, while we exchanged air kisses.
‘Oh, Tara,’ I said, deliberately pulling back from her. ‘This is my stepbrother, Alex Urquhart Muir.’
From the expression on her face as she welcomed him, I could see that Tara was just as delighted to meet him as she said she was, which was not something you could always rely on with a PR as successful as her.
Right from the start, it was clear that Alex had been a great choice as my party handbag. He fitted in perfectly with everyone I introduced him to and he totally knew how to play the corporate game – asking the nose, who was at our table for the dinner, all the right questions about the fragrance. And then, of course, he looked so good.
Many of the women I knew there, from various publications and department stores, asked me who my new boyfriend was, in clearly envious tones, and it amused me greatly to tell them that he wasn’t my boyfriend – he was my stepbrother. I then casually added that he was a lawyer for a merchant bank, he was single, he owned his own house in Fulham, and I would be delighted to introduce them to him. If I could have got in his love of children and dogs I would have.
I was sure a lot of hearts were beating faster in the breasts of the single women at that party, but the one I had secretly marked out for Alex, was Becca, who was sitting at the table next to us. That was one wedding list I would have been delighted to help her plan.
After the dinner and speeches Alex and I danced a bit, but I kept finding excuses to go elsewhere whenever Becca was around so he felt he had to ask her to dance.
On about my sixteenth trip to the loo, Becca followed me in there.
‘What are you doing, Stella?’ she said. ‘Why are you trying to fix me up with Alex – and so blatantly? It’s really embarrassing.’
‘Don’t you like him?’ I asked her. There was no point in denying it.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Stella. That’s irrelevant. It’s not going to happen, so stop trying to engineer it. A, he’s completely out of my league lookswise, in case you haven’t noticed. And B, it’s quite obvious he’s mad about you. The two of you are the most gorgeous couple here. Everyone is saying that.’
‘Oh, now you don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘We’re so not a couple, you know that. He’s my stepbrother, I’ve known him since I was eight. I simply don’t have those feelings about him and I’m sure he doesn’t have them about me. We’re just really comfortable together, because we’ve known each other so long. And even if he did like me in that way, it’s irrelevant, because he just doesn’t stir my loins,’ I added, leaning into the mirror to do my lipstick and hoping she would drop the subject.
‘Well, he stirs mine,’ Becca went on. ‘And he stirs most of the women here, so you’d better watch yourself. Eventually, he will go off with someone else and then you’ll be sorry. He’s bloody gorgeous and Toria says he’s doing terribly well at Weller Wright Fisher.’
I nearly gave myself whiplash my head snapped so quickly back to attention.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Alex?’ said Becca, looking at me strangely. ‘He’s doing very well at work.’
‘Weller Wright Fisher?’
‘Yes, that’s where he works – oh, my God,’ she said suddenly, and burst into peals of laughter. ‘You were in that ghastly magazine dancing with Jay Fisher, that must have been so funny for Alex. Dancing with the boss’s son. What a hoot – you should have put a good word in for him.’
Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘We did have a good laugh about that.’
‘Did you ever hear from him again? Jay, I mean,’ said Becca, in more conspiratorial tones. ‘He’s really nice, when you get to know him, isn’t he? He usually comes to the Cartier polo. What a dish. He’s even better-looking than Alex actually, which is saying something. You should have got in there. Then you could have come to us for the ring.’
She roared again and I did my best to join in.
I didn’t think I could have felt any more stupid about my idiocy in not realizing who Jay was when I first met him, but I did now. No wonder Alex had known who he was that day he had arrived at Willow Barn. I’d not only sprung an incredibly handsome dude in a flashy sports car on my unsuspecting stepbrother, but he was also the boss’s son. No wonder he’d left so swiftly.
I felt like a total banana.
The party was still in full swing when I eventually emerged from the loo. The DJ was great and there was a virtual queue of women waiting to dance with Alex – a situation I had spent the earlier part of the evening engineering, but all the fun had gone out of it for me.
I felt so stupid not realizing he worked for the Fishers and it made me feel really uncomfortable with him – adding a whole extra layer to the reasons why I didn’t want anyone to know I was still seeing Jay.
Becca’s remark that Alex was clearly ‘mad about me’ had pissed me off too. I wished everyone could leave me alone about that. He wasn’t. We were just particularly at ease with each other.
Which was apparent almost immediately, when I slumped into a chair at our table, feeling suddenly exhausted. He came off the dance floor at the end of the track and sat down next to me.
‘I’m knackered,’ he said. ‘Can I please have a break from dancing with single women for a while? It’s exhausting being the focus of so much expectation. Excluding you, of course. I could probably find a last shred of energy if you want another spin on the dance floor. Would you?’
I smiled weakly at him.
‘I’m fine thanks, Alex,’ I lied. ‘I’m happy just to watch the fun for a while.’
He turned and looked at me, with his head on one side.
‘Have you had enough, Stells?’ he said, softly. ‘Want to go? It is a school night after all.’
I sighed with relief and nodded. Suddenly I wanted to go home more than anything in the world. He really could read me.
And as he effortlessly found us a taxi in Kensington Gore and climbed into it next to me, saying he’d drop me home first and then take it on to Fulham, which was so far out of his way it was a joke, it made me understand something with renewed clarity.
There certainly wasn’t a chasm of experience between me and Alex, the way there was with Jay. Quite the opposite, really. He was almost too suffocatingly close.
The next day I was very glad I had left the party relatively early. I needed all my wits about me for the day I later came to think of as Black Friday.
It started relatively normally. I got into work on time, I was checking my emails and post, the usual stuff, and about half an hour after he should have, Ned came in with a stonking hangover from his mobile phone launch, sporting several livid love bites on his neck, and carrying four lattes from his preferred coffee emporium.
We were comparing notes on our respective parties – he was smelling my bottle of Précieuse and I was checking out the full-on movie viewing feature on his new mobile – when Peter came to my office door, looking rather grim.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Sit down, have one of Ned’s many coffees.’
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ he said, closing the door and sitting down in the chair that Ned had just vacated for him. ‘But I will have that nasty coffee, actually.’
That was when I really knew something was up. Peter loathed plastic ‘baby’ coffee, as he called it. He liked the plunger variety, which he had explained to me – at length, on several occasions – is actually stronger than the espresso machine variety, because it sits on the beans for much longer.
What now? I thought. A full close-up of me air kissing Jean-Pierre Huguenot-Lafalle on the cover of Time magazine?
‘I’ve got some rather disappointing news for you two,’ he said, taking a sip of Ned’s latte and pulling a disgusted face. ‘Oh God, but it’s not bad enough to drink that foul coffee – take it back, please, yuk. Now listen, I’ve just been up with Duncan and he is postponing the launch of the section.’
‘What?’ cried Ned and I, in unison.
‘Yes, I know, it’s a frightful bore, but that’s newspapers, isn’t it? Hurry up and wait, that’s how it goes here. Kill yourself getting something ready for a ridiculous deadline and then, no, whoops, we’ve changed our mind, we’ll do that later…’
‘He hasn’t changed his mind completely, has he?’ I asked, determined to know the full truth however awful it was. ‘That stupid thing in the Post hasn’t put him off the idea, has it?’
‘No, no,’ said Peter. ‘He was very clear about that – he’s just postponing it for several reasons. There are production issues, plus the ad people say they’re not quite ready to go live, and on top of that he’s got some heavy board meetings coming up that he wants out of the way before your section starts up – or any of the other new projects he’s working on, for that matter.’
‘Any idea how long this postponement might be?’ said Ned.
‘No,’ said Peter, with his customary bluntness. ‘But I know the board meetings are in three weeks’ time, so you’ve got at least a month, probably a bit longer. I’d say two, in all honesty.’
‘What are we supposed to do in that time?’ asked Ned.
‘Yes,’ I added. ‘Do we carry on commissioning?’
Peter looked a little uneasy.
‘No, he wants you to lay off on that for the time being. Just go back to writing features, the way you were before.’
Something else occurred to me. Petty, I knew, but important in the newspaper scheme of things.
‘Am I allowed to keep my office?’ I asked.
Peter’s face creased into a broad smile.
‘That’s my girl,’ he said. ‘You know what really matters on this paper – yes, as far as I know, you are staying in this prime piece of Journal real estate.’
‘Actually, Peter,’ I said, running the whole scenario through my head at high speed, to make sure I was quite clear about all the implications. ‘I’ve got two more questions. Do I carry on going to the section editors’ meetings – and do I have to answer to Jeanette again? I suppose I do.’
Yes, I’m afraid you’re right about that. The Lovely Jeanette is still features editor, so you will have to work to her brief again, temporarily. But that’s why it’s also really important that you carry on going to the section editors’ meetings. You still are one – it’s just on hold. OK?’
Peter left my office, followed shortly after by Ned, and I sat there for a moment, feeling a bit shell-shocked. Then I decided I might as well just get on with it.
I was going through the huge pile of press releases on my desk, when a bleep announced that I had an intraoffice email. It was from Jeanette’s assistant saying that she wanted a list of features ideas from me – by three o’clock that afternoon.
She didn’t lose any time, I thought, and opened the list of feature ideas I had for my section, to see if there was anything I should pass on to her before they went out of date. I could be fair-minded and professional, even if she couldn’t.
I was just about lost in my work again when the alarm on my Palm Pilot went off. I was delighted to see that it was reminding me I had a work lunch and a tea to go to that day – the perfect distractions.
I had to walk past Jeanette’s office on my way to the lift and although I didn’t deliberately look in – I always made a point not to – I couldn’t help noticing that Martin Ryan was in there with her. Jeanette had her back to me, but I saw Martin’s shark eyes watch me go by.
The lunch, in the private room upstairs at The Ivy, was the newspaper launch – they’d hit the magazines months before –for a range of vintage sunglasses.
They’d been unearthed in an old optometrist’s shop in Italy, by an LA-based stylist, who presented herself as the classic la-la-land fluff bunny, but who clearly really had a steely business mind.
‘Peggy Guggenheim used to buy all her eyewear from this store in Venice, Italy,’ Leandra, the pretend fluff bunny, was telling us, while sporting a pair of huge black and white stripy sunglasses it was difficult to ignore. ‘So I went over and found they had a whole warehouse of old stock. I bought it. So here we are, with a collection of vintage shades with an amazing provenance, but refitted to twenty-first-century eyewear standards.’
Here we are, I thought, with sunglasses at £600 a pop. But that was fine by me. I knew they’d sell out in Browns before the end of the month and I’d get a great feature out of it, which we could illustrate with a fabulous archive pic of Peggy Guggenheim wearing crazy sunglasses and a kaftan, sitting in a gondola.
It was just the kind of brainless distraction I needed, and I was feeling quite cheered up, until we got to the coffee and in a lull in the conversation, Laura Birchwood suddenly piped up.
‘I hear your new luxury section has been cancelled, Stella,’ she said, from the other end of the table of twelve, so everyone could hear.
‘No, it hasn’t,’ I said. Which was the truth. And I wasn’t even going to dignify her comment by explaining the situation – or asking how she’d heard that. I knew the answer to that anyway: her pal Natalie had clearly got right on the phone to her.
‘So, when is it launching then?’ persisted Laura.
‘I really can’t reveal that,’ I said, as patronizingly as I could. ‘It’s strictly embargoed.’
I was happy with the way I’d handled it, because I hadn’t expected the news to have travelled quite so fast, but I was still glad to get out of the lunch.
I had over an hour before tea at The Berkeley, so I decided that a walk through the humming centre of town to the retail bliss of the West End was what I needed. A scramble around the big Zara in Regent Street, followed by the flagship Top Shop and, if I had time, New Look and Warehouse too. Bond Street shopping was work for me, the Oxford Street chain stores were my private therapy.
I decided to make a small detour first to Coco de Mer in Covent Garden, to see if they had anything new and particularly saucy in. I’d already featured the store in my pages as a new wrinkle on the luxury market – prestige erotica – and I loved the place.
With its sensual atmosphere and all the naughty books and toys on display, just being in that shop was a turn-on, and I wished I could call Jay to meet me there and then. I bought a vintage lace blindfold as a hostage to fortune that I would see him again very soon. At £68 it was something of an investment.
It was as I stepped back to Monmouth Street that I saw them. Standing outside the Covent Garden Hotel just up the street, were Ham and a blonde woman, who from the back could have been Chloe. But when she turned to get into the taxi, I could see it clearly wasn’t her, because there was no pregnant belly. Just the very slender figure of the type of woman Ham particularly liked.
I felt physically sick and told myself not to be stupid, he was probably just saying goodbye to a work associate, but then I saw him put a hand on her waist and pull her to him. There was no mistaking it. He kissed her full on the mouth and even from a distance I could tell tongues were involved. The final confirmation was when I saw his big meaty hand reach down and squeeze her buttock.
The taxi door slammed and the cab pulled away, leaving my father standing on the kerb wearing the satisfied smile of a man who has just got seriously laid.
I felt some kind of small explosion take place in my head and without a conscious thought my feet were running across the road and up to the hotel. He’d made me lie to women in the past to cover his tracks, and I’d done it for him, but there was no way I was going to let him get away with this one.
By the time I had reached him and grabbed his arm roughly, my fury had turned to ice.
‘I saw you,’ I said, practically spitting the words into his confused and shocked face. ‘I know what you’re doing. Don’t do it, Ham. Not this time.’
‘Darling one,’ he tried to say, turning on his autopilot charm offensive. ‘Whatever are you talking about, my little one?’
‘Don’t little one me. I know what you’re up to. You just fucked that skinny blonde, don’t try and deny it.’
He gaped at me. He tried to smile again, but I think he realized he was trapped.
‘I’ve been around you and your womanizing my whole life,’ I hissed at him. ‘Jesus, you’ve even used me to cover up for you in the past, which is how I know this is one of your preferred schtupping venues, so don’t bother saying anything. Just listen to me…’
I tapped my finger against his chest hard, as I made my points. I wanted to hurt him.
‘Chloe is pregnant,’ I said. ‘I know you are phobic about fat chicks, but do not do this to her. I’ll take her side if you do. She’s the best woman you’ve ever had – and I include my mother in that, even though I didn’t know her. So for once in your life, Dad, keep it zipped. And I don’t mean your mouth.’
He just stared at me, frozen. He had tears in his eyes and I was glad.
‘I’ll be watching you,’ I said viciously, and I turned my back on him and walked away, fast.
He called after me, but I ignored him and when I saw a cab at Seven Dials, I jumped into it.
‘Hello, darling,’ said the cabbie. ‘Where can I take you?’
I had no idea. Suddenly Zara and Top Shop had lost all their allure and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere near that tea at The Berkeley. I wasn’t up to making interested remarks about a bespoke mascara service. I wasn’t ready to go back to the office either and my house was way too close to Ham’s territory.
I gave him the address of Margot’s nursing home.