Читать книгу Love, Lies And Louboutins - Katie Oliver - Страница 11
ОглавлениеIt was half-past eight on Friday night and raining when Jools Beauchamp answered the doorbell. “Dad! I didn’t think you were coming.” It was his turn to have her for the weekend.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he entered the hallway and shook the rain from his umbrella. “There was an accident on the A4, and of course I caught every light. How was school?”
Jools shrugged. “You know. It was…school. I’m studying for a history test on Monday. The ancient Greeks.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Herodotus and Pythagoras, Euripides and Sophocles…”
She gathered up her things; a rucksack stuffed with clothes and her iPod (she loved that new song by Christa, “Promise Me Stars”) and called out over her shoulder, “Dad’s here, Mum. We’re leaving.”
“Bye, darling,” came her mother’s disembodied voice.
“Have fun.” In a slightly less friendly voice she said, “Hello, Oliver.”
“Hello, Valery. I’ll have her back on Sunday evening.”
With that, he opened the door and held out his hand for the rucksack. “Give me that. You take this.” He handed Jools his umbrella. “Let’s make a dash for it, shall we?”
Jools unfurled the umbrella and pelted down the path, following her dad as he sprinted through the downpour to the car, a black Peugeot RCZ. As he unlocked the boot and threw her rucksack in, she hurled herself onto the passenger seat and slammed the door, breathless.
“Wow. Nice, Dad,” she said, impressed. She breathed in the new-car smell and settled back against the Napa leather bucket seat. “It’s much cooler than the old Merc.”
“Yes, well,” he said as he slid in next to her and started the engine, “I felt it was time for a change.”
“Mum says you’re going through a mid-life crisis. Are you?” she asked curiously, and glanced over at him.
He shifted gears with rather more force than necessary. “Of course not,” he said irritably. “I’m still a bit young for a mid-life crisis, at any rate.”
Jools stared out the window as the rainy streets slid by. “So where’re we going? You missed the turning to Lambeth.” That’s where his flat was.
“I thought we’d go straight on to dinner. Since I’m a bit late,” he added. “Is J Sheekey all right with you?”
She turned away from the window and stared at him. “It’s only my favourite restaurant, which you know very well.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the occasion?”
“There’s someone I want you to meet.” He kept his attention focused on the road ahead. The windscreen wipers swished rhythmically back and forth, as if saying “clear the rain, clear the rain,” over and over again.
Uh-oh, Jools thought as she crossed her arms against her chest, here we go. Let “Operation: Introduce the New Girlfriend” begin…
She already suspected her father was seeing someone; the last weekend she spent at his flat, she’d found a cosmetic bag with tampons and a lipstick stashed under his sink, and she noticed new cushions – lime-green – tossed on the sofa. Dad would never buy cushions – much less lime-green ones – on his own. And there was a carton of soya milk in his fridge. He despised soya milk.
“Really? And who is it you want me to meet?” Jools enquired, hoping she sounded indifferent (which she wasn’t) instead of curious (which, despite herself, she was).
“Her name’s Felicity,” he replied, “and she’s anxious to meet you. We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months.”
Jools turned back to the window. The glass was blurred with slanting lashings of rain. “Does Mum know?”
He glanced over at her. “Julia, your mother and I are divorced. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that,” she retorted. “And it’s ‘Jools’, by the way, not Julia any more. I’ve told you.”
“So you have. Sorry, Jools it is.” He stopped the car at a junction and waited as a couple, dressed up for a night on the town, made their way across the road. “Your mother and I are both seeing other people.”
Jools thought briefly of Marcus Russo, her mum’s new boyfriend. He might be a famous television chef, and he might even be fit, for an older guy, but he wasn’t dad. And he never would be.
“So…does mum know about your girlfriend?” Jools persisted.
“I expect she does, yes.”
“And what exactly does Felicity do?”
He paused. “Do? Well, she’s, er, she’s a teacher. She teaches.”
“What form? What does she teach? Not maths, I hope.”
“Upper sixth.” He cleared his throat. “She teaches Latin.”
As Jools pondered this, he turned into a car park and searched for an open spot. She couldn’t help wondering what she looked like, this new girlfriend of her father’s.
Was she one of those brisk, smartly dressed professional women one saw striding down the City pavements with a briefcase in one hand and a mobile phone tucked under her chin? Or was she a more boho type in swirly skirts and sandals?
Once he’d parked, they got out of the car and made their way across the street into the restaurant. Jools saw a slender woman with blonde hair and enormous blue eyes standing near the door. She wore a grey pencil skirt, a lavender cardigan, and kitten heels.
She was pretty. And oddly familiar…
Jools came to a stop. “Miss Brightly?” she blurted, confused. “What are you doing here?”
Miss Brightly was Jools’s former Latin teacher, and her presence here in J Sheekey was…well, wrong, somehow. She was meant to be standing in front of a chalkboard in the classroom, her hair held back with an Alice band, her hand upraised to write ‘Amos Amas Amat’ or ‘Study for upcoming gerund test on Wednesday’…
… not standing here in the restaurant, an uncertain smile on her lips, waiting for Jools’s father to say something.
The question was barely out of her mouth when she realized with dismay that Miss Brightly was her father’s new girlfriend. She was the one they’d come here to meet.
As Jools stood there, stupidly staring, her dad made the introductions. “Actually, I believe you’ve already met,” he said, in an awkward, jokey way that wasn’t the least bit funny.
“Hello, Oliver,” Miss Brightly murmured, and then turned to Jools and held out her hand. “Hello.”
Jools took it briefly. She saw, in the glance they exchanged, that Miss Brightly understood her confusion. “Hi,” she mumbled.
“It’s lovely to see you, Julia.”
“It’s Jools now, actually,” she said coolly, and dropped her hand back to her side.
“Oh.” Miss Brightly looked taken aback for a moment, then quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry. Jools it is.”
“Let’s go in the bar to wait for our table, shall we?” Oliver said tightly, and put his hand at the small of Miss Brightly’s back. He gave Jools a pointed look over his shoulder.
She hadn’t much choice but to follow.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jools demanded later, when she and her father returned after dinner – minus Miss Brightly – to the car. She got inside the Peugeot and slammed the door shut. “You might have warned me you’ve been doing my Latin teacher.”
“Mind what you say, Julia,” he said sharply. “I did tell you, and I also told you she taught Latin—”
“Only because I asked,” she pointed out acidly. “And you called her ‘Felicity,’ Dad. To me, she’s only ever been ‘Miss Brightly.’ I don’t know what her first name is.” Jools scowled out at the dark, rain-slick streets. “God! That was the most painful dinner ever.”
“You didn’t make much of an effort.” His words were tight. “I must say, I’m disappointed in you, Julia. Felicity did her best to draw you out, but you responded in monosyllables, like a sulky child. There was no call to be rude.”
“I wasn’t rude. I was gobsmacked!” She turned towards him in the darkness. “Has she moved in with you yet, then?”
He slowed the car as they approached a roundabout. “No. But she will do, and soon. So you’d best get used to the idea.”
Have I a choice? Jools nearly said, but didn’t.
So… not only was mum seeing that insufferable television chef, Marcus Russo, now her father was about to move in with her sixth-form Latin teacher. Shit, what a turn up. Why couldn’t her parents work out their problems, like all the other happily married couples in the world?
They rode the rest of the way back to Oliver’s flat in silence, and the only sound was the swish of the windscreen wipers and the hiss of tyres against the rainy street.
Oh, well, Jools thought grimly. At least he didn’t ask me about my new boyfriend, Adesh.
