Don't Tell Eve (23 page)

Inside the restaurant, Phil wondered who Jess had been speaking to on the phone and what she was up to, but mostly he’d been enjoying her discomfort. The last few weeks were the first time he’d ever seen her even vaguely rattled and he liked it. He loved emotional women, particularly when he wasn’t directly in their line of fire. But then cool, quiet ones could also be unbelievably passionate … His mind went off on a pleasant tangent.

Oliver had simply been trying to understand what Jess was about – and failing.

‘Nice view, isn’t it?’

Until Phil spoke, Oliver hadn’t realised he’d been staring at Jess quite so obviously – and that his phone had been ringing.

After that, he concentrated on talking to Phil, and not looking outside, much.

Phil also avoided looking out of the window, mostly. Although he couldn’t help making one observation. ‘That’s her ex, Jack. He owns this place. Good bloke.’

Jack didn’t seemed very ‘ex’ to Oliver, but he didn’t want to ask Phil for details and as Phil didn’t offer them he nodded
casually and pretended to himself that he didn’t feel disappointed. Not at all, not the least bit.

‘So,’ said Jess, sitting down and ignoring Oliver and Phil’s pointed lack of questions. ‘Let’s get this sorted. What exactly do you both know and how precisely did you find out?’

Oliver admitted that he really only knew there were dolls and they had something to do with Eve. Then he told them about the drunken soliciting episode. ‘Actually, I was having dinner with Kate – I’m sure you know her, she used to work in children’s books at Papyrus.’

Jess and Phil exchanged glances across the table but neither asked the obvious question.

Oliver said nothing about JJ.

Phil admitted that in addition to seeing a doll – ‘pretty cool, actually’ – he had overheard Zoë on the phone, so he also knew about the Chris photograph, which wasn’t nearly as good as Oliver’s bustier story, although he couldn’t believe that Oliver hadn’t thought quickly enough to take a picture of that. But the pics were beside the point. It was the secrecy surrounding the doll business, and then Hilary’s questions, that had convinced him something entertaining was going on. He’d actually been hoping Oliver would be able to fill him in, which was why he’d agreed to meet him. That, and the free lunch.

Neither of them, they promised, had mentioned the dolls to anyone else.

‘Okay, what this doesn’t explain is how Hilary knows.’

‘Zoë?’ Phil couldn’t help himself.

‘No, she’s straight. Besides, Zoë knows all about Hilary, so she wouldn’t go near her,’ said Jess.

‘That wasn’t quite what I meant,’ said Phil.

‘Oh, right. Well Zoë promises that she hasn’t told anyone else.’

Oliver interrupted. ‘I’m sorry if I’m sounding stupid here, but I don’t understand what the problem is with people finding out about these dolls. It’s not like you were going to keep them secret indefinitely, surely? What’s the big deal with people knowing now? And, just so we’re clear here, what are they exactly?’

Jess studied the man who’d been harassing her, who’d slept with her best friend and whose job meant he was not someone to be trusted. If he hadn’t been wearing glasses she’d have said he was wearing coloured lenses – eyes as green as that just weren’t natural. ‘It’s pretty simple really. I created them and sent them to colleagues – colleagues who’d left after being treated badly. Just a bit of therapy for them, and for me.’

Phil, who had an advantage over Oliver in having seen a doll, stated the obvious, and the obvious included the ‘v’ word.

‘I wouldn’t use that word, no.’ Jess played with a deep red glass ring on her finger.

‘Okay, so far so weird. Do you have any of them left?’ Just as Oliver was beginning to think his persistence was paying off, he realised there was a possibility that Jess no longer had any of the dolls.

‘I made copies of each one; I kept the original and sent out a replica.’

‘So, where are the originals then?’ he asked.

Oliver’s line of enquiry was interrupted by the arrival of their meals.

‘This is fucking awesome,’ said Phil, biting into a scallop. ‘Who’d be a vegetarian? Jesus, imagine it. No steak, no chicken, no fish. Or what about a vegan? Now that is weird. I mean, nut loaf? That’s not a reason to get out of bed.’

‘But I still can’t work out how Hilary found out.’

‘Do you think someone who was sent one showed her? Or told her about it?’ asked Phil, his attention still on his plate.

‘Nah, everyone is too scared of her.’

The waiter topped up Jess’s glass of sauvignon blanc.

‘Which
might
be a reason for telling her,’ said Phil, as though making a crucial connection in a detective novel. ‘Anyway, why are you really doing this, Jess? You know you’ll get sacked if they find out.’ As he said it, it occurred to Phil that there could be another reason Jess hadn’t told anyone about Alex not writing his book; that she might have intended to leave it until it was too late to replace it. That she might have been trying to sabotage the company. Anything was possible.

‘I’m not sure it’s a sackable offence actually,’ Jess grinned, ‘but yeah, I’ve had good reason to want to control the, er, flow of information.’

‘The fact is, she knows,’ said Oliver, ‘so what are you going to do about it?’

Jess didn’t answer, so Oliver continued. ‘I’ve got an idea, but first back to my question – where
are
the original dolls?’

‘At home.’

‘Okay,’ said Oliver, taking a bite of his scallop and agreeing with Phil, it was dazzling. He couldn’t believe she’d leave someone who was responsible for such food. You’d have to be mad, but then she wasn’t currently giving a strong show of sanity. He refocused. ‘So, I have an idea. I’ll need to see the damn things first, but I think there might be a way you could get them out into the open but stay in control.’

‘I’m not sure writing about them is the answer.’ Jess was still weighing up Oliver. The Eve solicitation incident hadn’t hit the papers, but his editor might have decided it was the kind of story that would get them sued.

‘I didn’t mean writing about them.’

Jess gave him a look of disbelief.

‘Okay, not yet.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ she asked, wondering if Oliver might have a better idea than the one already planned.

‘Let’s go to your place. I have to see them first, then we can discuss it.’ It would be quite a gamble if Jess wasn’t JJ, and so far he didn’t have proof that she was, just supposition. The dolls would be the proof, at least Oliver hoped they would.

‘What I need to know,’ said Oliver, as he surveyed the display on Jess’s side table, ‘is how far you’re prepared to trust me?’

‘I think you mean how much further,’ said Jess. ‘What’s the idea?’

‘Before I tell you, I want someone else to assess them, just to make sure. It’s someone I trust.’

Since their lunch, Phil had been trying to work out why Jess was allowing Oliver to be involved in all this. It wasn’t just that the guy was cute; Jess had some other agenda. She hated journalists, so she had to be using him. Jess was one of the most strategic people he’d ever met, which meant that she had to have her own grand plan, one that Hilary had apparently interfered with. What that might be, he still had no idea.

‘Right, so you’re not asking me to trust just you, but some shady mate as well?’

‘He’s a long way from shady.’

‘I’ve just got your word for that.’

‘Okay, this is getting us nowhere. Would you consider parting with them, temporarily at first – but maybe permanently?’

Jess didn’t have to think about her response, but she took her time giving it. ‘Perhaps, if the circumstances were right.’

‘Good. For a start, what about just one – for a few hours?’

What could he do with them? Indeed, what
would
he do with them? Jess asked herself. It was taking a considerable risk, but it was possible the dolls – the plan – could benefit from his interest. She flicked her eyes in his direction, as he studied her work. He was involved with Kate, it seemed, and was a friend – or a ‘friend’, like so many others – of Zoë’s. So people knew him. It was hard to imagine one person being attracted to both Kate and Zoë, but perhaps he was simply a self-serving opportunist, like Phil. She struggled to identify his obvious faults, his appearance providing no significant hurdle. Reserved? No. Arrogant? No, but definitely confident. She tried to remember what she’d felt the first time she’d seen him, at the book launch, and in doing so she began to wonder what he thought of her. This came as a surprise – she didn’t normally care what people thought of her. Glancing around at her chaotic study and then at the collection of dolls, it occurred to her that whatever it was, it was unlikely to be positive. Not that it mattered, given the Kate thing, however unlikely that pairing seemed. She sighed.

The sigh was loud enough to catch Phil’s attention, after that attention had meandered from the dolls, which were dolls after all. Phil couldn’t work out why Oliver was quite so fascinated by them, beyond it being a ploy to get Jess into bed. He’d have played it slightly differently himself, and focused a little less on the creepy dolls, a little more on the cute girl. Because she was cute, even with her hair like that. He was actually beginning to like it and he wondered if this was related to the fact that she was becoming more interesting by the hour, and, he couldn’t help noticing, interested. Did Oliver know she was checking him out? He coughed. ‘So, people, what’s the plan?’

Turning to Jess, Oliver said, ‘There is another option, I guess. Instead of taking one, I could come back later with my camera.’

‘Borrow mine,’ said Jess, instantly regretting it. Could she pretend not to be able to find it? Or that it had flat batteries? Then he’d have to come back after Phil had gone home. If Phil ever left. ‘Actually —’ she began.

‘Oh, there it is, on top of your desk,’ said Phil helpfully, picking it up and handing it to Oliver.

‘Thanks, Phil,’ said Jess, without gratitude.

While he clicked, Oliver listened to what Jess and Phil would have considered their inconsequential chatter. The more he knew about Jess, the more he wanted to know. For a start, there was Jack, who, it seemed, still lived in the flat. So much for being an ex. Zooming in on one of the dolls, he tried asking a leading question. ‘These really aren’t what I imagined. To be honest, from Zoë’s description I pictured them as, I don’t know, more craft than art.’ He took one last photo, this one of them en masse. ‘More amateur. They remind me a bit of the work of JJ,’ he said carefully, alert for Jess’s response. ‘Do you know her work?’

Physically Jess gave nothing away. ‘What makes you think JJ is female?’

‘Just, I don’t know, a sensibility.’ Her question was almost as good as an admission.

Phil was impressed, it was smooth work.

‘So what gave you the idea?’

‘You know …’ said Jess, shrugging.

Only someone very familiar with JJ’s work would recognise the link. After all, JJ’s CV had developed considerably over the years and encompassed a range of areas. First there’d been what she called the re-interpretation of large outdoor advertisements through direct intervention, and the newspapers had called vandalism – or graffiti. They’d quickly
identified her tag – she couldn’t resist a signature of some kind – and it was then that the critics had begun to follow the progress of her ‘work’, as they’d initially referred to it. Not wanting to be exposed, Jess had moved to other areas of re-interpretation, the whimsical rearrangement and redesign of shop mannequins, which were then positioned in public places and photographed, for instance. Finally, for the last few years, as the risk of getting caught grew, she’d changed her approach and begun to construct large-scale images, part collage, part found objects and part painting. These were the works people had begun to collect seriously. Through it all her art displayed professional polish, social comment, ironic humour and some aspect of discomforting darkness. Those things were her signature as much as those two letters that appeared at the bottom right-hand corner of each work; at least they were according to her dealer.

But Oliver couldn’t know, thought Jess. That he’d made the connection was pure fluke.

‘Actually, no, I don’t. But if you don’t want to tell me that’s cool,’ said Oliver. He had enough information for the time being and could be patient. ‘What about just one?’

Letting him take one would be a way of ensuring that she saw him again, not that she should want to, given he wasn’t available – but what did it matter, she thought. ‘Okay, just one.’

‘Thanks,’ said Oliver, choosing the one dressed in a bustier and boots. It had to be a coincidence.

‘Look after it.’

‘Of course.’ He waited for a minute and when nothing happened added, ‘Jess, do you have a box? This is a doll, after all.’

‘I thought it was a work of art?’ said Phil, watching as Jess packed it up. As he did so, he wondered why more women didn’t wear thigh-high boots, and why bustiers weren’t more popular.