Читать книгу Babyface - Elizabeth Woodcraft - Страница 14

TENSaturday Evening – The Dinner Party

We planned the evening as we drove towards Hyde Park Corner. While I engaged Sandra and her other guests in deep, interesting conversation, Yolande would go and rifle through Sandra’s cupboards for something which, she assured me, was an important part of Danny’s case. Just normal dinner party activity.

‘I haven’t told them you’re coming,’ Yolande had said, buckling herself into the passenger seat, ‘or Sandra might have smelt a rat.’

‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘If you and Sandra are such friends, why don’t you just ask her for this thing?’

‘Well, we get on, but sometimes Sandra has divided loyalties.’

‘How come we’re even going to Sandra’s?’ It wasn’t too late for us to find a restaurant to have dinner. Although on a Saturday night, that’s not always easy. Maybe she’d like to slum it and we could go for a kebab somewhere.

‘I told you, she has something I need.…Danny needs.’

‘What am I doing here?’

‘When I’ve got it,’ she smiled, ‘you’ll tell me what to do with it.’

‘Why don’t I just wait outside and I’ll tell you when you’ve finished dinner. Or, even better, let me tell you now. Give it to Kay Davidson.’

‘I don’t want to go on my own. There’s nothing to worry about. Sandra doesn’t concern herself with Effo’s business really. It’ll be a laugh. She’s a good cook. Sometimes. Their relationship works quite well. He pays her bills and she hosts his dinner parties.’

I stopped the car abruptly in front of the Shaftesbury Theatre. A taxi behind hooted and swerved angrily by us. ‘So, he’ll be there tonight?’

Yolande ran her hand up the back of her neck, over the combs in her French pleat. The scent of vanilla perfume wafted across my face. ‘No, no. Sandra’s on her own in London. I think so anyway.’

‘So this could be one of his dinner parties?’

‘She didn’t say. But whoever’s there, it’s probably best not to mention Danny this evening. For some reason Danny is not popular with Effo and his friends. Shall we go across Trafalgar Square and down Pall Mall?’ I was so entranced to be with a woman who could give good directions that I didn’t ask exactly why Danny was not a friend to Effo, whether it was his contract killing or the fact that he was so bad at staying out of prison, let alone how a relationship with Danny fitted in with having a husband, and where this friendship with me came into it.