Flawless (25 page)

At the end of the street she saw a late-night convenience store, a place where the local kids who were too young to get into the bars used to hang out after hours. She’d never been inside—she and Brogan weren’t really convenience-store people—but had passed it hundreds of times and always thought it looked cozy and inviting, with its 1950s advertisements and its old-fashioned milkshake counter. Quickening her pace, but too cold to run, she limped toward the light it threw out over the street.

“Can I help you?” asked the pimply teenage kid behind the counter, on autopilot, without looking up from his Nintendo DS Lite.

“Phone,” whispered Diana. Her teeth were chattering so much she could barely get the word out. “I need a ph-ph…I need to make a call.”

“Holy crap!” said the kid, at last looking at her properly. “You want me to call the cops? You want some, er, some hot tea? Carl!” He yelled out back to his colleague. “Get me some blankets from the closet and some hot water. We got a situation here.”

Diana’s skin, by this point, had turned a mottled shade of blue, a combination of bruising and cold. Her left eye was swollen like a plum and fully closed. The gash on her lip had stopped bleeding, but a lump the size of a Babybel cheese was forming there, and enough blood had already spilled down her dress and jacket to make it look as though she’d been stabbed.

“Please,” she stammered. “I just need a phone.”

Luckily for her, the two boys insisted on wrapping her in thick layers of coats and blankets, sitting her under the store heater, and thrusting a mug of hot, heavily sweetened tea into her frozen hands before they would agree to let her use the portable phone.

“I can call the cops for you, if you want?” the pimply boy offered sweetly. “Or the hospital?”

“That’s OK.” Diana smiled. She was warming up now and tried not to think about the throbbing pain in her fingers and face as the blood supply slowly returned. “I can do it. I need to call a friend of mine f-f…first.”

The barman at The Red Lion on Old Broad Street had rung the bell for last orders twenty minutes ago, but nobody seemed to be paying a blind bit of attention.

“Don’t you people have homes to go to?” he shouted good-naturedly through the drunken din. “It’s Christmas Eve. Go to bed.”

“Shut up and have a drink, Charlie,” Jake shouted back.

“What about a lock-in?” proposed another drunk.

Like most of tonight’s crowd, the Meyers were regulars at their local pub, an ugly mock-Tudor turreted affair sitting incongruously between two even uglier sixties building blocks behind the subway station. But the ambience in The Red Lion was great: real old-school North London camaraderie, and Charlie Whitford was the most accommodating barkeep for miles around, regularly serving after hours and always quick with a joke or a juicy piece of local gossip.

Jake sat between Minty and Danny at a corner table, watching the multicolored lights around the bar flash on and off and wondering whether any of them would be sober enough to walk home unaided. It was touch and go. Rudy had already lapsed into a deep, drunken sleep by the fire, and Minty had reached the stage of regaling the group at the next table with dirty jokes, cackling at her own daring like a ruddy-faced fishwife. Danny was stuck in to his sixth or seventh Harvey’s Bristol Cream and showed no signs of slowing down. After four beers Jake was none too steady on his feet himself.

Still, he must have been in a better state than the rest of them, as he was the only one to notice Danny’s phone vibrating its way across the table, buzzing and jumping like a scalded insect. Unthinking, he picked up.

“’Ello?”

“Darling it’s me, it’s Diana.” The American woman’s voice on the end of the line sounded weak and quavering. “Please don’t panic. But Brogan knows. He just came home and—”

“Brogan?” Jake struggled to make sense of things through his alcohol-induced fog. “Who is this?”

“Danny?” Diana’s voice was barely audible now. “Is that you?”

Only at this point did Danny pick up on what was happening. He tried to snatch the phone from Jake, but Jake whipped it behind his back.

“Don’t play silly buggers,” said Danny crossly. “Who is it?”

“Some bird called Diana. She said something about Bro…oh my God.” The pieces fell slowly into place. “It’s Diana O’Donnell, isn’t it? Tell me you’re not seeing her.”

But Danny was in no mood to explain. Throwing himself bodily across the table, sending beer glasses and ashtrays flying, he wrestled the phone out of his brother’s hands.

“Diana?” he asked breathlessly. “What’s up? Are you OK?”

“Oh Danny!” Hearing his voice, she at last let go of all the fear and tension and burst into uncontrollable sobs. It was almost a full minute before he could get any sense out of her. “Brogan knows about us.”

“How?” Cupping the phone to his ear, Danny waved frantically for the raucous drinkers around him to pipe down. “Try to speak up, darling. I can’t hear myself think in here.”

“I don’t know,” sobbed Diana. “I’ve been as careful as I could, but he has people everywhere.”

“
Darling
?” said Jake in horror, but Danny ignored him.

“Well, what happened? What did he say?”

“He didn’t
say
much,” said Diana bitterly. “He came home, had sex with me—”

Danny visibly winced.

“…and then he…he…” She was crying again now, unable to go on.

“It’s OK,” said Danny soothingly, trying to control his own rising panic. “Did he hurt you?”

Diana was silent.

“Angel, you must tell me. Did he hurt you?”

“A little bit,” she whispered. “I’m OK. I don’t know. My face is beaten up pretty badly.”

Danny gripped his glass so hard it shattered. Minty reached for his bloodied hand, but he shooed her away.

“I managed to get out of the chalet,” said Diana. “I’m in a convenience store right now. Some boys are…taking care of me.”

“OK,” said Danny, sensing she was about to lose it again. She was clearly still very disoriented. “Put the boys on the line. Let me talk to them for a second.”

He walked outside, his left hand still dripping with blood. Sobered by shock and the crisp night air, he managed to talk calmly to the boy from the store, instructing him to get Diana straight to the hospital and to have his friend call the cops on the way. By the time he’d spoken to Diana again, reassured her, and promised to have air tickets to London waiting for her at Denver airport on Christmas morning, everyone else had left the pub and staggered home. Only Jake, leaning ominously against the locked front door, was waiting for him, his face half hidden in shadow.

“So,” said Danny wearily, slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket. “Now you know.”

“Yeah,” snarled Jake. “Now I know.”

The next thing Danny knew, he was flat on his back on the icy pavement, fending off a volley of punches.

“Diana O’Donnell?” Jake roared, between blows. “You stupid fucker! You’ve ruined us! How could you bang Diana O’Donnell? Brogan’ll have our balls in a fucking pickle jar!”

“I’m not ‘banging’ her,” said Danny, shielding his face with his forearms. “I love her, all right? I’m in love with her and I’m gonna marry her, and I’m sorry about everything else and lying to you and all that, but I—”

“Marry her?” The punches stopped.

Danny, not sure whether the respite was permanent or not, lowered his arms an inch.

“Yeah,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yeah, I think so. If she’ll have me.”

“And what about Brogan?” said Jake, getting to his feet. This affair, and Brogan’s discovery of it, was just about the worst news he could imagine. But he’d never heard Danny talk about marriage before. Things were obviously serious. “Has she left him?”

Danny’s face darkened. “He roughed her up tonight. I’ve just sent her to the hospital. I think he might have raped her,” he added bleakly. Then, to Jake’s amazement, he started to cry.

“Hey, come on, bruv.” Jake put his arm around him. “It’s all right. It’ll all work out all right in the end, you’ll see.”

But at that particular moment, neither of them was sure they believed him.

N
ANCY
L
ORRIMAN DREW
wolf whistles from the construction guys as she crossed the parking lot at LAX and headed for the terminal.

An unseasonably cold January had forced the normally scantily clad LA girls into jeans and sweaters, but thankfully it was a look that suited Nancy. With her blonde bob and cute, curvy, Marilynesque figure, she looked sexier in a pair of fitted Sevens and a tight, lemon-yellow sweater than most women did in hot pants and heels. Her trademark fire-engine-red lipstick and flirtatious smile didn’t hurt either. She was clearly a woman who reveled in male attention and was used to getting it.

Today she had more reasons than usual to be happy. She’d just had her first script optioned, a difficult political thriller that she’d been writing on and off for over two years. And she was on her way to pick up Scarlett, her best friend in the world, who’d miraculously decided to open a new jewelry store in LA in an effort to spread the gospel of exploitation-free diamonds to the American public.

No one had been more shocked than Nancy when Scarlett announced that not only was she moving to LA, but she was also going into business with Jake Meyer. Like most girls-about-town in LA, Nancy knew Jake as a reprobate playboy, a womanizer
with a ready smile and an even readier condom. At the moment Scarlett seemed obsessed with some Seattle lawyer she’d had a fling with last fall. But Jake’s sly charm was legendary, and Nancy was far from convinced that her friend would remain immune to it indefinitely, especially with the two of them working side by side.

Still, those were all worries for the future. Right now she had all the fun of showing Scarlett around town to look forward to, not to mention the treat of having her as a roommate while she looked for a place of her own to rent.

She walked into the arrivals lounge to find Scarlett already there, perched patiently on her luggage reading a thick book called
Sierra Leone, The Truth Behind the Conflict
.

“Plane landed early.” She smiled, jumping up to hug her friend. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Why didn’t you call my cell?” said Nancy, taking charge of Scarlett’s single suitcase. “I could’ve gotten here earlier if I’d known. Is this all you brought? Where’s Boxford?”

“They’re keeping him at the airport overnight. There’s a veterinarian here; can you believe that?”

Nancy looked concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s still a little groggy from the tranquilizers, that’s all. I’m coming to get him first thing in the morning.”

“So this suitcase?” Nancy looked at it doubtingly. “This is it?”

“I only packed summer clothes,” said Scarlett, shivering in her cut-off jeans shorts and tank top as they stepped outside into the cold wind. “I thought it was supposed to be permanent sunshine here.”

“Ah, yes. Another of LA’s many myths, I’m afraid.” Nancy smiled. “You’ll get used to it. I’ll take you to The Grove tomorrow for some winter gear. We might invest in some fake tan too,” she added, wrinkling her nose at Scarlett’s pasty white legs, “for when the sun does come out.”

Nancy’s car, a beat-up vintage Thunderbird in the same lemon yellow as her sweater, was her pride and joy, and Scarlett dutifully admired its gorgeousness as they pulled out of the airport onto the palm-lined boulevards. Taking in the tall, swaying trees, eight-lane roads, and scruffy, low-built storefronts, she felt small and very far from home.

“Don’t worry,” said Nancy, swinging on to Lincoln once she saw the line of static red taillights on the 405. “This side of town is pretty crappy. But there’s a lot of beauty here. Wait until you see my house.”

Her place was indeed enchanting. Nestled high in the Hollywood Hills above Laurel Canyon, it was a rustic, white wooden cottage-cum-cabin, surrounded by fruit trees and magnolias. Wind chimes hung from bushes in the garden, ringing a welcome to Scarlett as she walked up the path. They were only a few minutes above Sunset Boulevard, but it felt like being deep in the countryside. Boxie was going to love it.