Dangerous (31 page)

‘What? Who to, for God’s sake?’

‘Marcus Redmayne.’

‘Doesn’t he own nightclubs?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I didn’t know you’d been dating anyone. I didn’t know you were engaged.’

‘Oh! Yes, the ring. We got engaged – officially – yesterday,’ said Clara, holding out her left hand. On it sparkled a vast white diamond.

Bernie stared at it. She didn’t move any closer. ‘You got engaged yesterday and you’re getting married next Friday. That has to be the shortest engagement on record.’

‘We saw no reason to delay.’

‘What, you’re madly in love are you?’ Bernie laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

‘Of course we are,’ said Clara.

‘
You?
God, you’re really having a laugh. You don’t even understand the word love.’

Clara took a breath. Whatever she felt for Marcus Redmayne, and she wasn’t sure yet, next Friday come hell or high water she was going to marry him. And he was going to marry her . . . yes. To get her clubs. And her body. Because of course he didn’t love her. The very idea was laughable.

‘I wanted you to be my bridesmaid. If you would.’ This was a gesture of kinship, an olive branch; she didn’t need a bridesmaid, not for the Registry Office, but she wanted Bernie there with her, with all the bad blood between them forgotten.

‘Right.’ Bernie nodded. ‘Let’s see what we have here. You deliberately wrecked my relationship with a perfectly nice man who loved me, purely because he had no money. You’ve made me miserable, made me lose the man I loved. And now you pitch up here and ask me to be your bridesmaid? Christ, you’ve got a nerve.’

‘I did what I thought was best for you, Bernie. I always have. You know that. And he was a pervert or at least he
pandered
to perverts.’

‘I loved David. I was happy with him. Then you had to destroy it, ruin it, because it didn’t suit you. Clara, you really are a prize bitch.’

Clara stared at her sister. Bernie was pale, she looked washed-out, jittery, exhausted. As though misery had eaten into her soul.

I did that
, thought Clara, and the knowledge hurt her. She’d done what she thought was best. She always did. But now she wondered if she had made the wrong call.

No
, she thought. Bernie, her much-loved sister, condemned to a poor life? No, she’d done the right thing. And sometime – not any time soon, she could see that, but sometime in the future – Bernie would meet a man who could offer her more than back streets and poverty and a seedy, disgusting living and then she would realize that Clara had been right.

‘Look,’ said Clara firmly. ‘It’s over, you and David. You’ll find someone else.’

Bernie let out a harsh laugh. ‘We don’t all have your facility for making loveless marriages, Clara. I suppose that’s what this one is, too? Like you and Frank? Like you and Toby?’

Now Clara was angry. ‘Can you honestly say they were bad matches? Can you? My marriage to Frank rescued us from the gutter. My marriage to Toby saw us nicely set up.’

‘And then it all came crashing down, didn’t it.’ Bernie was nodding, biting her lip, walking around the room while sending scathing looks at her older sister. ‘So now, with Toby barely cold in the ground, you move on to your next victim. I bet he’s rich.’

‘He is,’ said Clara.

She understood Bernie’s anger, and it was best to let her get it out of her system. She deserved to be shouted at, railed against; but soon she hoped that Bernie would accept that she had been right, and let it drop. She wanted them to go back to being the sisters they used to be, close, loving each other – as they always had before that bastard Bennett had pitched up on the scene.

‘Of course he’s rich!’ snapped Bernie. ‘You wouldn’t give him a second glance otherwise, would you? D’you still get them, Clara? The nightmares? The ones you used to get, about trying to find Mum in that big empty house? The one where you found her and the dead baby?’

Clara felt her jaw set with tension. Yes, she did. Hideous dreams, wandering and finally finding that horror, her dead mother, the dead baby, sitting by an empty grate, with the blood on the floor beside the chair.

Clara shook her head, brushed the thought of those night-time terrors aside. ‘I would like you to be my bridesmaid, Bernie. I really would.’

‘Yeah?’ Bernie stopped her pacing in front of where Clara sat and bent over, leaning in close. Her whole face was set with tightly contained rage. ‘Well, you know what, big sis? You can just go and
fuck
yourself.’

‘Bernie—’

‘No, I’m not listening to you any more. You did the same thing to Henry, didn’t you?You made an enemy of him, and now you’ve made an enemy of me. You’re so fucking black-and-white in everything. There are shades of grey, you know. People fall in love without worrying about wage packets. People make mistakes—’

‘What did I ever do to Henry? Except give him the best education I could afford.’

Bernie drew back. She went to the mantelpiece and leaned against it, her eyes glued to Clara. ‘We’ve been in touch, Henry and me.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yeah. Actually, we’re quite close now.’

Clara thought about Henry. The pilfering. The casual killing. The truculent, almost menacing air about him. And seeing him trashing her club alongside Sears. She stood up. ‘Well, I wish you good luck with that,’ she said.

‘What an unforgiving bitch you can be, Clara.’

Clara looked at her sister. ‘Bern. He’s no good. Never was, never will be. You know my clubs were trashed? He was there, helping that thug Sears. I
saw
him.’

Bernie looked taken aback. ‘Well, he couldn’t have known the clubs were yours.’

‘Oh, come off it! He was vandalizing my business, my livelihood, and he was enjoying it. So I’d say you ought to be careful, mixing with Henry. He’s not right in the head.’

79

It seemed ridiculous, really, to spend a lot on a wedding outfit, so Clara found a white mini dress in Selfridges and thought that would do. There would be no bridesmaid Bernie; no Henry, for certain, although Clara supposed that Bernie would have told him that she was getting married. There would be two witnesses – Marcus’s friend Gordon, and Clara, who had no real friends to speak of, had to fall back on dumpy little Jan.

‘Really? You want me to be a witness at your wedding?’ Jan had beamed all over her face when Clara asked her. And Clara felt mean then. She had asked Jan out of necessity, but Jan’s delight at the invitation made her realize that she saw this as something special.

‘What shall I wear?’ Jan wondered instantly.

‘A dress? A hat? Anything you like,’ said Clara.

‘What are you going to wear?’

‘This,’ said Clara, and there in her room at the Ritz she showed Jan her purchase.

‘Oh! Well, that’s nice.’

Clara looked at her. ‘You think so.’

‘Well, if it’s only a simple do . . . ’

Clara pursed her lips. She could tell Jan was underwhelmed with the dress. But actually she liked it. It was Empire-line, low-cut at the neck and with big bell chiffon sleeves and a deep ruby-red sash ribbon under the bust that tied at the back. The red suited her, suited her dark hair. Teamed with white sandals and a quickly purchased bouquet made up of dyed red feathers, it looked perfectly presentable.

She felt hurt by Bernie’s rejection and uneasy at the renewed closeness between Bernie and Henry, like there were things going on that were under her radar, kept secret, tucked away. And Bernie leaping to Henry’s defence as she did made her feel that somehow Bernie was condoning what Henry had done that night at Sears’s side – and that wounded her.

The wedding party – her and Jan, Marcus and his goofy mate Gordon – pitched up at Chelsea Registry Office at eleven on the following Friday, sandwiched between a ten-thirty raucous wedding party with a bride in an elaborate gown, and an eleven-thirty West Indian gathering with big hats and huge happy smiles.

This is a bit different
, she thought, as she and Marcus stood soberly before the Registrar with their two witnesses and said the words that would join them together as man and wife. They both knew the score. Well, Marcus knew part of it, at least. And the rest would become clear to him as time went on.

‘You may kiss the bride,’ said the Registrar at last, and it was over. Marcus leaned in and Clara waited. Then he kissed her on the cheek.

‘Woohoo!’ shouted Jan, throwing confetti when they were outside on the steps. She stuffed a handful of it down Clara’s dress.

‘Don’t bloody do that,’ snapped Clara, but Jan only smiled.

They hadn’t even hired a photographer. All four of them piled into Gordon’s car and went off to a restaurant for the ‘wedding breakfast’, which was a stilted affair because Gordon wasn’t much for social talk and Jan couldn’t open her mouth without effing and blinding like a trooper on a route march. The more she swore, the more Gordon seemed to sink into himself, shutting up like a clam.

Feeling tired by late afternoon, Clara went back with Marcus to the flat over his biggest club, the Calypso.

‘There’s going to be a party downstairs tonight,’ he told her when finally they were alone.

Clara looked at him in surprise. ‘What? You didn’t tell me.’

‘I’m telling you now. I told Jan before she left, Gordon’s going to pick her up and bring her back at eight.’

Clara didn’t want a party. They hadn’t even booked a honeymoon. Remembering the disastrous Venice trip with Toby, she wasn’t too sorry about that either. Clara sat down on the couch in the comfortable living room, feeling somehow deflated. She looked down at the diamond ring on her left hand, which now had a matching platinum band beside it.

Married again.

Suddenly she felt more than tired. She felt exhausted, drained of life.

‘Drink?’ Marcus offered, going over to the drinks cabinet.

‘Thanks. Gin and tonic.’

He fixed a whisky and soda for himself and brought the drinks back over, placing them on the side table.

‘Well, here we are then,’ he said, fixing her with that dark unnerving gaze of his. ‘So when were you going to tell me that it was you who shopped Sears to the Bill?’

Clara took up her glass and gulped down her drink. She’d expected him to find out quickly, but not
this
quickly.

‘Later,’ she said.

‘Yeah, when I was committed. Gordon told me just before the ceremony started.’

‘So why didn’t you pull out?’

‘As I told you – I want your clubs.’ He took up his glass and drained it. ‘You’re a devious cow. I ought to kick you straight up the cunt for pulling a stunt like that.’

Clara shrugged. ‘You married me to stop anyone else getting my clubs. I think that’s pretty devious, too.’

‘Sears is going to want your backside on a toasting fork for this,’ he pointed out.

‘But I have your muscle now. Your protection. Don’t I?’

Marcus was shaking his head in wonder. ‘Jesus! You’ve got some front.’

‘You’re using me for your own ends. What’s the difference?’

Marcus looked at his empty glass. ‘Want another?’

‘Yes, please.’

He went over to the drinks cabinet and poured her a second gin and tonic.

‘Not joining me?’ she asked, when he didn’t refresh his own.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Things to do. I’ll see you later.’

And he left her there, his new bride, on her own in the silence of the flat.

80

‘Twistin’ the Night Away’ was pounding out of the speakers. Everyone who was anyone seemed to be in tonight. The place was heaving with celebs. Diana Dors was in a corner with her husband, and Ronnie Knight was on the floor, twisting with a blonde.

‘I just spoke to Albert Finney!’ said Jan excitedly when she came upstairs to the flat to see if Clara was ready. ‘I was standing
this close
to him, can you believe it? Christ, I wish poor old Sal had lived to see this. She’d have loved it.’

It was an unpleasant reminder in the midst of what should have been a happy day. But Clara seemed to have lost her facility for happiness, so what did it matter? Another business deal had been done. She had slipped down the ladder a little, come perilously close to falling further, but here she was, back on top again.

Married to a rich man.

Richer than Toby, with more clout than Toby.

But Marcus was cold toward her. At least she and Toby had become friends. Somehow, she couldn’t see that happening with Marcus. She felt too much for him; he felt too little for her. That much was obvious. It hurt her, but she’d make the best of it, like she always did.

‘The police still haven’t got to the bottom of it, you know,’ said Jan. ‘Poor bloody Sal. Someone carved her up proper.’

‘Jan,’ said Clara sharply. ‘Could we not talk about that, today of all days?’

‘Sorry. So what are you going to wear tonight then?’

‘I’m not changing.’

‘Oh! OK. You’re not going away then? You know, on a honeymoon like normal people do?’

‘Shut up, Jan.’

After Marcus had left her alone, she had fallen asleep on the couch. When she woke, it was already dark; she’d been more tired than she realized. And he hadn’t come back. She turned on a couple of low lights, went to the bathroom, freshened up. And still he hadn’t come back. She could hear the party – well, her wedding reception – was in full swing, and she thought that traditionally the bride and groom ought to enter together, to cheers and catcalls . . . but he hadn’t come back.

I stitched him up.

Yes. That much was true. What she had done was the equivalent of throwing a stone at someone and then ducking behind the nearest large object. Marcus was that object. And he was mad as hell about it. This was her punishment, being left alone.

‘Come on. Let’s go down,’ she said, taking Jan’s arm.

People were bopping around on the dance floor to ‘Duke of Earl’ by Gene Chandler now. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Even while people were congratulating her, saying what a dog Marcus was and how the hell did she catch him? Clara found herself anxiously looking around for him, wondering where he’d got to.

Finally she spotted him over by the bar, talking to a big bruiser of a man. As she looked at him, his eyes roamed around the room and settled on her. He said something to the man, who turned his head and gave her a long look. Then Marcus moved through the crowds to where she was standing.