Читать книгу Summer Holiday - Penny Smith - Страница 9

The theatre was rammed with people drinking bottles of beer and eating olives. ‘That’s how you can tell we’re in Kensington and Chelsea,’ said Amanda. ‘If we were in Streatham we’d be drinking full-fat Coke with a hot dog.’

‘And in Camden, we’d be having a line of coke and an energy bar,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s all healthy crack chic there now.’

‘It’s not like when we were young, is it?’ Amanda put on an old-crone voice. ‘When Camden was all fields and we had to walk three miles to school.’

‘And you’d get seventeen gobstoppers for a penny and drink dandelion and burdock floats from a passing milkmaid,’ finished Miranda.

‘Oh, yes, I remember it well. Actually, I do remember when Notting Hill was a dodgy area. Now it’s full of bankers and sleek women with fantastic teeth and shiny hair … because they’re worth it.’ Amanda did the L’Oréal advert voice.

‘That’s why I moved there. I fit right in.’

‘Well, you are a yummy mummy, so I actually think that, despite your protestations, you do fit in.’

‘And you’re a yummy mummy, too, so don’t come the raw prawn with me, matey. How are the offspring?’ asked Miranda, scoffing a pickled garlic clove and a piece of cheese.

‘I’ve got serious empty-nest syndrome. It’s okay when I’m at work, but when Peter’s not around, I rattle about in that big house looking for something to do. No feeding of the five thousand. No unloading the dishwasher every night. No sewing on name tags or helping with homework. I miss them, don’t you?’

‘Well, I miss Jack a lot because I haven’t seen him for so bloody long, but Lucy’s still around. A mouthpiece for Nigel half the time, but that’s fine.’

‘Anyway. Enough of that,’ said Amanda, draining her gin and tonic noisily. ‘I’m going to get another of these and then you’re going to fill me in about your date.’

Miranda always used to tell her children to stop wishing their life away when they said they wanted it to hurry up and be their birthday, but she had secretly wished away the days until Wednesday, and finally it had arrived. And even more secretly, as she stretched and wriggled in the cotton sheets and thought about getting up, she was wishing it was this evening. It was ridiculous – she had umpteen things to do, like finding a proper job (Amanda had suggested someone she could call about PR work), going to the bank to see exactly what amount of money she had to spend, and sorting out a man to fix the leak in the shower room.

It was strange how she had started to get calls on her mobile about advice on debt. How did they know? She cleansed her face and smothered on hydrating cream while phoning a plumber recommended by Lydia – she assumed Lucy had not phoned her the other night since there’d been no angry call.

Then she did what she had told her children never to do: she went shopping, knowing that there might not be enough money in the bank to cover it. But, she reasoned, the money would be there in about nine months when the scheme she had invested in came to fruition. And it was looking like 10 to 15 per cent interest at the moment, possibly even higher, according to Lucy. By two o’clock, she was practically dead on her feet, and some unkind mirrors with nasty overhead lighting had made her dread the evening ahead. She could only pray he had early-onset cataracts.

She wondered if Alex was running round his camper van right now, trying things on, polishing his natty dreads – if that was what you did with them – buffing up his feet.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers, she thought, as her breasts almost burst the seams on a red shirt, and went for a sit-down and a bowl of soup at a communal deli – she was definitely the fattest person there. A text pinged through. Lucy: still on the trail of the bloody books. She would have liked to tell Nigel to do his own dirty work, but that would involve a tetchy conversation with him. Not that it would start tetchy …

It was strange to reconcile the toady countenance he now had with the handsome young man he had been when she married him. On really bad days he looked like a bilberry, all swollen and purply. He would be easy to draw in a life class, just a series of massive circles. His attractiveness in every way had disappeared in direct proportion to his wealth. Peculiar how some women out there were prepared to allow such an abundance of flesh to land on them in the bedroom in return for a few baubles. At least she had had an excuse: youth, silliness and lack of ambition. Other men had been available, but she felt she had been unduly influenced by the approbation of her father. Yes, she’d blame it on him.

The leaves on the lime and plane trees lining the roads were barely moving in the sultry weather. Miranda felt hot and leaden as she walked back to the house empty-handed, debating what to eat so that she didn’t look too bloated later. At least it was the sort of day when she didn’t want to eat chocolate – it melted so quickly it reminded her of poo.

Earlier that day, a little orange Volkswagen camper van made its way towards Cirencester, Alex was feeling clammy. His father had insisted he go to see him that morning on a matter of some importance, and Alex assumed it was about his mother, who was periodically threatening to end it all.

He drove up to the gates and got out to tap in the day’s code on the pad. It was his favourite time of year for the garden in front of the house. It was vast, but sectioned off into smaller areas, including a walled garden where hollyhocks and ornamental thistles poked above lamb’s ears and lady’s mantle. By summer, it would be a riot of colour, but now everything was quietly budding.

Belinda, the housekeeper, let him in and he made his way to his father’s study where the wood-panelled walls gave the ticking of the eighteenth-century clock a pleasant bok sound. A tall, slim man with close-cropped silver hair and tanned skin was standing by the window pouring two glasses of sparkling water. One already rested on a filigree coaster on the walnut side table.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Alex, sinking into the red leather chair and accepting a glass. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve bought a small island off the coast of Spain,’ his father said, ‘to build a luxury hotel, a spa and a golf course – yes, I do know how you feel about golf courses, before you give me a lecture – and I happen to know that a number of people are going to be very unhappy about that. No, not the golf course,’ he added, as Alex opened his mouth to speak, ‘about me owning the island. Right now, it’s used as a very handy stopping-off point for drug-runners getting their stuff from Africa to Europe. I intend to stop that, obviously. I’ve been told they could make things nasty for us because we’re talking about a lot of money. I myself am hiring a couple of personal bodyguards, possibly for the next couple of years, and putting in a little more security here at the house.’

‘And you think I could be at risk too?’ Alex asked bluntly.

‘In a nutshell, yes. Let’s face it, you’re hardly difficult to track down in that orange van of yours. And not difficult to, say, kidnap. As my only son, you would be the perfect way for them to get at me and persuade me to allow them to continue. I don’t want that to happen. In fact, I won’t allow it to happen.’

‘I can see that you might not like it, Dad, but why not let them carry on with it, and get the police involved?’

David Miller took a sip of his water. ‘I have it on good authority that the police may be taking backhanders. As for letting them get on with it, you know I can’t. Can you imagine the headlines if an island I own is used for drug-running?’

Alex grinned. ‘Yes. Right. But won’t they find somewhere else if you make it uncomfortable for them?’

‘No. I think they’d try to make it uncomfortable for us by maybe shooting anybody who saw what they were doing. An innocent builder, for example.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I need you to take a lot more care than you do now.’

‘All right, I will,’ Alex said.

‘What will you do?’

‘Take more care,’ Alex said jauntily, raising his eyebrows.

‘As in?’

‘Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to do, Dad, like you always do?’

‘I’d like you to employ a bodyguard.’ The clock ticked, and the leather chair creaked as he leant forward. ‘I know you’d hate it. I know it’s not your …’ he paused ‘… style. But it’s not for ever. I’ve never asked you to change your way of life, have I?’ Alex acknowledged that. ‘Even though I do think it’s about time you started thinking about laying down foundations for the future.’

Alex nodded. ‘Yes, I know you do, Dad. And actually,’ he said, ‘I was going to wait and tell you this in a few months’ time, but I may as well tell you now. Today I signed on the dotted line for my range of organic freeze-dried soups to go into Waitrose. For a not insubstantial amount of money.’

David let out a crack of laughter. ‘Bloody well done, Alex. Congratulations. I know how much that means to you.’ He got up from his chair and came round the desk to give his son a handshake and a clap on the back. ‘Do you want a celebratory drink?’

‘No, thanks. A little early for me. But now you come to mention it, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’

David picked up the phone. ‘Belinda, a cup of tea for Alex, please, and a glass of champagne for me. Thanks.’ The sun was shining between the slats in the blinds and he walked over to alter the angle. ‘To get back to the security issue, what do you want to do? Obviously, since it’s entirely my, er, fault, if you like, that the situation has arisen, I’m willing to put it through the company.’ He raised a hand to Alex’s instant objection. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “willing”. It should go through the company, since otherwise I could be facing all sorts of problems if you were to get kidnapped. Including raising the ten quid needed to free you.’

Alex smiled wryly. ‘I don’t know, Dad. It just seems a little over the top. You’ve done deals before where dodgy people have been involved.’

‘That’s the point. I’m not doing a deal with these “dodgy people”, as you describe them. I want them off the island.’

‘I still don’t understand why they won’t go and find another island. Yours can’t be the only one, surely.’

‘It’s the most useful. Not many others are virtually uninhabited. Point is, I’ve taken advice, and the advice is, we need professional protection.’

‘Is it worth the deal?’ Alex wrinkled his nose.

‘It most assuredly is. And before you ask, I’m doing as much as I can to make it ecologically aware. Solar panels on the roof, et cetera. However, it’s going to be a five- or six-star hotel, and I refuse to have the sort of ecological bathrooms where you throw earth into the lavatory and occasionally lob in a hundredweight of worms. So don’t even ask it of me.’

‘How long would we have to have these bodyguards?’ Alex asked, emphasising the final word.

‘Until the hotel is finished and at least in its first working year.’

‘Which would be about how long?’

‘Three years, to be on the safe side.’

‘Three years?’ Alex was aghast. ‘Three years of having someone—’

‘Or two,’ interjected David.

‘Of having someone,’ Alex reiterated, ‘following me around everywhere. For God’s sake, Dad. Talk about overkill.’

‘Alex, you are my heir. And they know that. Please don’t make me have to have you followed.’

Belinda knocked and came in with a pot of tea and a crystal glass of champagne. ‘It’s ethically sourced organic Assam tea,’ she said to Alex, who was now pacing the room. ‘Shall I pour?’

‘No, thanks, let it mash. How are the kids?’

‘Great,’ said Belinda, her bosom almost visibly swelling with pride. ‘One’s taking GCSEs, the other’s trying to decide whether to go in the army or do plumbing. I’d prefer him not to go into the army, what with Afghanistan and everything, but he’s got friends who love it.’

‘Yes, I can see that plumbing would be the marginally less dangerous option. Although I tell you what, there are some people whose pipes I would not like to riddle,’ he said, with a grimace.

‘Anything else I can get you?’ asked the housekeeper, addressing David.

‘A new van for my son, if you could. It’s making the front of the house look scruffy.’

Belinda looked affectionately at Alex and left the room.

‘I think she’s got the hots for you, Dad,’ Alex said, pouring the tea through the strainer into the bone china cup.

‘Hardly surprising,’ was David’s riposte. He was well used to his son’s ribbing. Belinda looked like a friendly dumpling. ‘Anyway. What’s it to be?’ he asked.

‘Let’s compromise. I’ll allow you to employ one minder. But can I have a right of veto? I don’t want one who looks like a bloody great big gorilla with balloons under his arms. And if he’s got to be around me all the time, I’d like him to have a reasonable personality.’

‘Or her,’ added David.

‘Or her,’ said Alex, perking up. ‘You know, that would actually be quite cool. Halle Berry in Die Another Day. Angelina Jolie in that shit film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Nice. Hey, I’m coming round to this idea.’

‘I think the likelihood of that is going to be about zero. But if you’d prefer a woman, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll send them round to the van, shall I?’

‘Ha-ha. The house will be finished in a week or so. Send them there or the flat in London. Is there going to be a code? Three short knocks, followed by a long one, a finger of banana slid through the letterbox and a cough?’

‘I can see this is going to be an endless source of amusement. I’ll let you have a list and you can make your own arrangements.’

Alex drove back to his house in the pretty village of Shillingford and had a quick chat with the decorators before going to London and getting ready for his dinner date. He chose a pair of Alexander McQueen trousers and a Paul Smith shirt. He slipped on a pair of tan boots he’d had made for him, and tied his dreadlocks back. He had shaved that morning and was sporting a rakish five o’clock shadow. With a cursory glance in the mirror, he left with a confident air.

There was a distinct lack of confidence going on with Miranda. She was having a crisis. Every item of clothing she tried on looked atrocious. She had decided that her body looked like an old potato. Her hair was a mess. She could only see wrinkles and could have sworn her skin was starting to ruche in places.

She was almost tempted to phone Alex and tell him she’d got flu. Or the plague. Boils. Frogs. Anything. She looked at her watch. How could it be that she was running out of time? She’d been getting ready since three.

The mobile rang. Lucy again. She pressed reject call. A text pinged. Alex, saying he was on his way and was really looking forward to dinner. He’d also given her the postcode in case she didn’t know where it was. As if. His text spurred her on. She decided to follow the tenets she had lived by since she was a teenager. One: if in doubt, get them out. Two: high heels good, higher heels better.

The woman who hailed the taxi on the main road in Notting Hill looked flushed but beautiful. She had tied her hair back loosely with a clip, and was wearing slim black trousers, towering stilettos, a stunning blue shimmering shirt unbuttoned dangerously low, and diamond drop earrings – a twentieth anniversary gift from Nigel when he was feeling guilty about the affair with his secretary.

Fashionably late, she arrived at Zuma and was directed to a table where Alex was perusing the wine list. He stood up and kissed her on one cheek, setting off a chain reaction through her sensory zones and making the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. It had been an age since anything this exciting had happened to her follicles.

She smiled flirtily. ‘Sorry I’m late. Have you been waiting long?’

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The temptation to say “all of my life” is quite strong.’

‘But luckily you resisted it because it was far too corny,’ she responded.

‘Exactly. I arrived about ten minutes ago, to make sure our table was okay.’

‘What would you have done if it wasn’t?’ she asked, opening the menu without looking at it.

‘Asked to be shown another, of course.’

‘Naturally,’ she said, ‘since you’re obviously a frequent customer.’

His bright green eyes crinkled attractively. ‘I can see I’m going to have to disabuse you of the notion that I live in a swamp, make my own clothes out of spinach and grow fungus under my fingernails.’

‘A fungi to be with,’ she quipped.

‘Well, I do hope so. Before we get into the story of my life and you tell me how you came to be so gorgeous, shall we order some wine?’

‘Thank you. Yes. White okay?’ He had called her gorgeous! She felt like a teenager.

Alex addressed himself to the wine list, giving Miranda time to study him more fully. The sage green shirt with small cream stars had a couple of buttons undone and highlighted his smooth brown skin. He was wearing stone-coloured trousers, and she could see a booted foot coming out from under the table.

As if he could feel her scrutiny, he glanced up and caught her eye. ‘All satisfactory, madam?’ he asked.

She blushed to the roots of her hair.

He smiled. ‘Hey, don’t think I haven’t been doing the same. You look beautiful. That blue shirt makes your eyes look the colour of cornflowers.’

Miranda was feeling too hot to make any intelligible response. He turned to the more innocuous subject of wine. ‘How do you feel about a sauvignon? Or a pinot grigio? Or chardonnay?’

‘Chardonnay, but not too oaky. If you fancy that?’ She was all of a dither, and her voice had gone up a notch. Calm yourself, she said slowly, in her head. You’re forty-three years old, for heaven’s sake.

He waved at the waiter and ordered a bottle of chenin blanc before opening the menu.

‘How do you square all this with your eco-credentials?’ queried Miranda, gesturing to the selection.

‘I do what I can where I can. And I ask before I decide. You don’t have to wear a hair shirt to want to do the decent thing by the planet. I do think we should eat a lot less meat, but I also accept that we wouldn’t have the meadows we do if there weren’t sheep roaming the hillsides chomping up the grass and leaving handy droppings for the plants. Has that helped you make any decisions on what you want to eat?’

‘A small pile of seaweed and an organic carrot?’ she suggested.

He grinned at her. ‘Honestly. I’m an eco-fan, not an eco-bore – I hope. And please, please, order what you want. My father is an out-and-out protein scoffer. He would eat a whole cow every day, hoofs cut off, arse wiped and on the plate – except that his doctor would have a go at him. My mother thinks food is only safe to eat if it’s covered with plastic. As I said, I do my best, but I accept that the world changes slowly.’

Miranda was quiet as she ran through the menu. She wasn’t going to risk it.

‘You ready?’

‘Yes, I think I am.’

His mouth twitched as she ordered a selection of vegetable dishes. He ordered some dishes that she hadn’t seen, explaining afterwards that he was a friend of the chef and had phoned ahead.

The restaurant was packed, with a hubbub coming from the bar area to the right of the entrance. Their table was one of the more discreet ones, but it still felt buzzy.

‘Where do your parents live, then?’ Miranda asked, after the waiter had left. He raised his eyebrows. ‘You said your dad eats cows and your mum eats plastic. Earlier,’ she explained.

‘Oh, yes, I did. Dad lives in Gloucestershire. Mum currently lives in Hampshire. The Isle of Wight. Just getting divorced for the second time and presumably working on a third husband.’

‘Not very good at being on her own, then?’

‘No. Although she does prefer the company of adults. She wasn’t around that much when I was growing up.’

‘Where was she?’

‘Charity stuff, I suppose,’ Alex said smoothly, not revealing that he had had a nanny for most of his childhood. ‘And then she divorced my father when I was ten and married a man who was an idiot. Luckily, I get on well with Dad most of the time, and he got custody of me.’

‘Only child?’ empathised Miranda.

He nodded. ‘You too?’

‘I spent my childhood wishing I was creative enough to have an imaginary friend.’

He laughed. ‘I spent my childhood roaming round the est–countryside,’ he stumbled slightly, ‘un-damming streams, saving chicks that had fallen out of the nest, foraging for mushrooms.’

‘How idyllic. And did you always have hair like that?’ she asked.

‘It was an act of rebellion when I was about twenty-five. It’s quite fun creating dreadlocks. You have to put special wax in your hair and eventually it does it itself. I’m considering chopping them off.’

‘That would be a shame if you have to put so much effort into it. It must be like a big, comfy pillow when you sleep on it. And if you cut it off, you might end up on litter-picking duties instead of being given the big, butch equipment.’

He looked confused for a second, then his brow cleared. ‘Oh, right. Samson and the hair. I get it. I do think it gives me an air of latent strength that would be sadly lacking if I had a short back and sides.’

‘You could have a long back and sides,’ she suggested.

‘Which would be what it is now.’

‘No,’ she corrected. ‘You’d have long back and sides and a short top. Which is an unusual look, but one you could possibly pull off.’

‘Hmm. Like a mad monk.’

‘And with the dreadlocks, do you have to avoid getting water on them?’

‘Only if you want to have scurf up to your ears and get a great itch going on. You wash your hair as often as most people. But unlike your lustrous locks, I merely let them dry naturally. And occasionally shape them into dogs, squirrels or swans.’

‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Like balloon animals. You could wake up of a morning and decide to go on safari.’

‘Is that how you’d like to wake up, an animal on your head?’

‘I could say I’m just “lion” here! I do look like a lion’s sat on my head sometimes. I have to get the water buffalo in to lick me into shape. It’s a jungle out there in Notting Hill.’

He laughed. ‘So, you’re divorced with two children and you live in Notting Hill?’

‘Correct.’

‘You do good deeds at weekends?’

‘Erm … correct?’ she essayed, with a slightly guilty expression.

‘You did a good deed last weekend?’

‘Correct.’

‘And your favourite colour is green?’

‘No, I don’t really have a favourite colour. Do people really have favourite colours?’

‘I have absolutely no idea. Particularly not when you’ve got to our age. I was sort of being ironic. I was saying you loved green as in ecologically.’

‘Oh,’ she said briefly. She had been startled by ‘our age’. Strictly speaking, they were the same generation, she supposed. And they were technically on a date, she supposed. So she should stop worrying about the age difference … she supposed.

‘What do you get up to, then, when you’re not tidying canals?’

‘I have endless lunches and go shopping. I have manicures, pedicures, massages and hair-dos. I do charity work with children and animals and, in my spare time, I dabble with world peace and global warming and make small soft moccasins for millipedes,’ she said gaily.

‘Phew,’ he said, taking a sip of the wine that had been poured. ‘I’m surprised you managed to find a hole in your busy schedule to have dinner with me.’

‘There’s a half-finished pile of slippers at home,’ she pronounced.

‘Is it a rush order?’

‘It’s imperative they’re finished by the weekend. There’s a hoe-down.’

‘Is that generally what you say when people ask you what you do?’

Miranda thought back through the evenings with the Nigel-clones. ‘If I do, they usually say’ – she put on a Queen Mother accent – ‘“No, but, really, what do you do?’’’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but, really, what do you do?’ he asked her, in an even higher voice.

‘Oh, you have disappointed me. I was hoping you were going to come up with something more interesting than that,’ she said, with a properly disappointed expression.

‘I’m genuinely interested in what Ms Miranda Blake gets up to,’ he said. ‘Like, what did you do today?’

‘Weeell,’ she said slowly, trying to decide whether to lie or not. ‘Actually I did go shopping, but couldn’t find what I was looking for. I organised a plumber because I’ve got a leak – that’s L-E-A-K, not L-E-E-K. Cleaned a bit at home. A rather boring day, all in all. You?’

‘Essentially spent the day talking to my dad and dealing with a few bits and pieces here and there.’ He was always a little cagey, having been targeted by gold-diggers for most of his life.

‘What a dull pair we are.’ She sighed, picking up some fried seaweed with her chopsticks. She wished it was the meat sizzling at the next table, which smelt heavenly.

‘Yes. It’s amazing we find anything to talk about, isn’t it?’ His smile belied the statement.

‘In reality, I do what many women in my position do when they suddenly find that, after years of being everyone’s skivvy, they’re beholden to no one. They run around trying to find something to do. Hence the canal. And I’m trying to sort out a job, or it’ll be out to the scullery after dinner for a spot of washing-up.’

‘Hopefully it won’t come to that,’ said Alex. ‘I’m sure I could sell some of your caterpillar carpet slippers. This area’s ripe for them.’

‘Moccasins for millipedes. They wouldn’t fit caterpillars,’ she corrected.

As successive dishes came, the conversation flitted from one topic to another until eventually Alex asked for the bill.

Miranda reached for her purse and took out her credit card.

‘Thanks, but I’ll do this,’ said Alex, handing his card to the waiter, without even checking the amount.

‘Tsk tsk. You should never do that,’ said Miranda. ‘They might have put somebody else’s food or drink on our bill. Or whatever.’

The waiter handed the console back to Alex for his PIN. ‘Well, that seems very reasonable,’ he said, looking at the amount.

Miranda had not managed to extract the information required to know whether it was all bravado on his side, and whether he would now have to live on scrumped vegetables for a month, but she accepted the comment at face value.

‘Would you like to have a drink at the bar?’ he asked.

She looked doubtfully at the packed area full of skinny women, with over-inflated beaks instead of mouths, and predatory men in sharp suits. ‘No, I don’t think so. But there must be somewhere else we can have a quiet drink,’ she said.

‘Hmm. A friend of mine has lent me his flat just around the corner. We could go there – if that doesn’t sound too whatever-the-word-is – forward for a first date?’

She flicked him a saucy look. ‘Oh, go on, then. And it’s certainly a better idea than the shark-infested pool over there.’

Her high shoes tapped as she walked alongside him. Morse code for ‘Ooo-er’.

Ten minutes later, he was letting her into an imposing building with a porter on the door, who nodded as they went past.

‘My God,’ she said, as they went into the first-floor flat. ‘Who is this friend? Can I have him as a friend too? This is incredible. What beautiful artwork.’

The flat was on one level with blond-wood floorboards, white walls and big sofas in thick beige cotton. A giant painting of two swimmers hung over one, while a turquoise and green statue loomed over the other.

‘He likes to support up-and-coming young artists,’ said Alex, standing behind her as she admired the painting. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

‘Vodka tonic, please, if you have it.’

‘Coming right up,’ he said, and went through to the kitchen. ‘Ice and lemon or olives?’

‘He keeps a very well-appointed kitchen. Olives, please.’

She could hear cupboards being opened, and continued to admire the art on show.

‘There you go,’ Alex said, handing her a heavy tumbler.

She sat down on one of the enormous sofas and kicked off her shoes, then tucked her feet underneath her. ‘Lovely,’ she exclaimed, taking a bigger gulp than she’d meant to, and coughing. ‘Sorry,’ she spluttered, eyes watering.