Got You Back (22 page)

Stephanie forced a smile. ‘It's not for editorial, don't worry about it. Now,’ she said, wanting to get off the subject, ‘you both look beautiful. Let's get you dressed while Michael sets up.’

She looked across at Michael, and he shot her a sympathetic smile. God, what was she doing? She hadn't even told Natasha because she knew that Natasha would see through her right away and know that she just wanted an excuse to see him again. Luckily Natasha, who was across London hopefully dealing with Santana by now, would never have to know.

Meredith and Mandee were both adamant about sticking to their original outfits and Stephanie was grateful that, at least, she had filled Michael in with the fact that the clothes weren't her choice but that her clients had
mutinied and overruled her. By five to four they were ready.

Meredith, with her industrial underwear under her lurid green concoction, actually looked as if she had a figure for once. Her enormous breasts, which she usually hid in an ill-fitting saggy bra under a succession of baggy shapeless tops, had been hoicked up and pushed out and looked magnificent. Stephanie was hoping that any of the weekly magazine editors would be so blinded by the acres of white cleavage that they wouldn't notice how awful the dress was and feature Meredith on the worst-dressed list.

Mandee was a study in the use of tit-tape, which was gluing her skimpy two-piece to her body and hopefully keeping all her bits and pieces in check. If she looked like she was dressed for a photo shoot in
Nuts
rather than to go out, at least she had the figure to carry it off. They would have to do.

She could have sworn she heard Michael stifle a laugh when she led her two
protégées
into the next room. The makeup women gave them a quick touch-up and Michael tweaked the lighting to be a bit kinder, then rattled off a couple of shots of each of the women.

‘Have you got any other outfits while I'm here anyway?’ he said, in his most charming voice. ‘Seems a shame to waste the film.’

‘Yes. Good idea.’ Stephanie jumped in. He was trying to help her out, that was so sweet of him. ‘Treat it like a free photo session. That way, if you like any of the pictures you can get copies. You never know when they might come in useful.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We've
got time.’ Actually, they didn't really, the cars had been due five minutes ago, but it was worth a try.

She helped as Meredith squeezed herself into the black number with the drop-shouldered top and watched Mandee transform from a hooker into a pretty, trendy young woman in the Chloé dress. ‘Wow, you both look great,’ she said, and the pair of them looked at her unimpressed.

‘Now that is sexy,’ she heard Michael say, as Mandee went through to the next room. Meredith rolled her eyes. ‘You could be a model,’ he went on. ‘I couldn't see it, how you were dressed before, but everyone's going to want to photograph you now.’

‘Do you think?’ Mandee said. ‘Really?’

Stephanie smiled a conspiratorial smile at him as she entered the room and he allowed a hint of a smirk to get through. He turned his attention to Meredith as she came in. ‘Great dress,’ he said. ‘Very flattering.’ Meredith who was a much harder proposition than Mandee, snorted.

‘It does look much better than the other one,’ Stephanie added, but Meredith was having none of it. She allowed Michael to take a couple of shots and then announced her intention to change again.

‘I'm going to wear this one, I've decided,’ Mandee said, and Stephanie could have kissed her. She looked at Michael, who seemed to be trying to signal something to her while Meredith wasn't looking. He was jerking his head in the direction of the other room and rolling his eyes. He looked like he might be having a fit. He stopped abruptly as Meredith turned round. ‘Just a couple more, Meredith. The last ones were a bit out of focus. My fault.’

Meredith agreed reluctantly and Michael gave Stephanie an intent stare that meant… Well, she didn't know what it meant. Suddenly she was struck with inspiration. She moved through to the adjoining room, picked up Meredith's latte and threw it over the hideous green dress. ‘Oh, God!’ she called, trying not to laugh. This was ridiculous. ‘Oh, fuck! Meredith, I'm so sorry, I've spilled coffee all over your dress.’

Meredith came barging through the door. ‘Well, wipe it off — quickly for God's sake!’

‘It's no good,’ Stephanie said, picking up the dress quickly. ‘It's all soaking in. It'll stink of milk, apart from anything else.’

‘Well, what do you suggest I do now?’ Meredith said, smoke practically coming out of her nostrils.

‘Well…’ Stephanie said and then the doorbell rang. Thank God, it was the cars they had booked to take Meredith and Mandee to the ceremony. ‘I guess you'll have to wear what you've got on. There's no choice really. I'm sorry, Meredith.’

Meredith looked as if she was ready to explode. Michael swept in holding handbags and wraps and tickets. ‘Come along, ladies. You don't want to be late,’ he said, and ushered them towards the door. ‘You both look beautiful.’

‘Right,’ Stephanie was saying. ‘I've put lipstick and gloss in both your bags. Touch it up just before you get out of the cars. And have a great time,’ she added, ignoring the furious look on Meredith's face.

She thanked the two hair and makeup girls and promised she would use them again, then shut the door
behind them, leaning back against it and putting her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter until the women were out of earshot. Michael was laughing, too, and he threw an arm round her neck and pulled her towards him.

‘We must be telepathic,’ he said.

Stephanie looked up at him. ‘You're not trying to tell me that that's what you were saying, with all those nods and meaningful looks — “Go and pour coffee over her dress.”’

‘That's exactly what I was trying to say,’ he said, smiling and he leaned down to kiss the top of her head but next thing she knew they were in a full-blown kiss, hidden there in the tiny hallway of her offices.

Stephanie couldn't remember the last time she had kissed someone who wasn't James. In fact, she couldn't even remember the last time she had kissed James in anything other than a ‘Say thank you to your uncle for his Christmas present’ kind of way. She was aware of Michael's hand holding the back of her head and the weight of his body as he pressed her against the wall. Then he stopped as abruptly as he had started, took her by the hand and led her through to the sofa in the main office. She wondered vaguely whether she should remind him that they had been going to wait until she was officially single, but seeing as it had been him who had made that resolution in the first place, then who was she to hold him to it? Fuck it, it was only a week till she was free. In fact, she knew really that this was what she had been hoping would happen when she had invited him over. James would be waiting for her to get home so that he could be on the road up to Lincolnshire but she felt
no guilt. She was only doing what he had been doing himself for the past year.

Michael pulled his head away again and looked at her. ‘Is this OK?’ he said, and the tone of his voice, the way that he said it, made her feel weak.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Definitely.’

The next part was a bit of a blur of arms and legs and items of clothing coming off and she was just thinking, OK, this is it, when she heard a noise. The click of the front door, footsteps maybe, and then a voice, a woman's voice, saying, ‘Oh, whoops. Excuse me.’ She pushed Michael away and saw Natasha's retreating back going towards the front door.

‘Natasha,’ Stephanie said, sitting up and trying to pull odd bits of clothing round herself. ‘Hold on a second.’

Michael had sat bolt upright and was trying to behave as though this was just an ordinary day, move along, nothing to see here.

Natasha was still facing the door and obviously not about to turn around. She held out a suit-carrier of clothes behind her at arm's length. ‘I was just bringing Santana's clothes back. She never turned up, you see. Sorry, I wouldn't have, you know… if I'd known.’

‘It's fine,’ Stephanie said, clutching around for something to say. How undignified was this, caught fumbling around like a pair of teenagers in the classroom stationery cupboard? ‘We were just, erm… I asked Michael to come over and photograph Meredith and Mandee and we just…’ She ran out of steam. ‘Oh, God, this is so embarrassing.’

‘Well, anyway,’ Natasha was saying, ‘I'd better go. You
just carry on or… whatever. Nice to see you again, Michael.’ She dropped the suit-carrier over a chair. ‘’Bye then. See you tomorrow, Steph.’

Stephanie and Michael sat side by side on the sofa watching as Natasha left and closed the door behind her. The mood was most definitely broken.

‘Sorry,’ Michael said. ‘That was my fault, I just got a bit carried away.’

‘No, no,’ Stephanie said. ‘It was both of us. And how were we to know that she'd come back? It's fine. It's just a bit… awkward, that's all.’

‘Well,’ Michael said, standing up, ‘I should go. I mean, you probably have to get home.’

‘Yes, I suppose I should.’ Stephanie got to her feet, wondering how in the space of a couple of minutes they had gone from the throes of passion to acting like two people who barely knew each other. They finished getting dressed awkwardly, avoiding looking at each other.

‘Are we still on for tomorrow night?’ Stephanie asked, as they left the office without even having kissed one another goodbye.

Michael stuck out his arm to flag down a taxi. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I'll ring you in the afternoon and we'll make a plan.’

She thought he might get into the cab with her but instead he slammed the door shut, raising his hand in a wave as it pulled away. She turned on her phone. There was a frantic message from Natasha: ‘Oh, God, Steph, I'm so, so sorry for barging in on you like that. Why didn't you tell me he was coming over? Then I could have taken the clothes back to mine. You looked like you
were getting on rather well, by the way. Hopefully you picked up where you left off once I'd gone. Good for you. You deserve a bit of fun. But I'm still really sorry I walked in and ruined it.’

Stephanie looked out of the window. Now that the feelings of embarrassment were fading she just felt a bit sad that the whole thing had put up some kind of a barrier between her and Michael. There was an awkwardness there now that hadn't been there before. Maybe they'd tried to move things on too fast. It was fine for her: she knew Natasha and she knew that Natasha would never disapprove of what she had been doing, but Michael would be worried about how unprofessional it had looked, she thought, managing a smile. Hopefully they could regain their old ease with one another tomorrow, maybe even laugh about it because, to be honest, once you got past the initial embarrassment it was funny. She just wished she could be certain that he would call her tomorrow as he had promised. She had a feeling he might not.

31

James was doing some serious thinking on the drive back to Lincoln. Stephanie had got home just after six, looking stressed and dishevelled. He had been tempted to stay, to say, ‘Sod work on Monday morning, let Malcolm or Simon worry about the surgery for once,’ but he didn't know how to broach it without Stephanie thinking he was behaving oddly. And the truth was he was
feeling
odd. It was as if he had been asleep for a year and had only now woken up and realized exactly what it was he had been doing all that time. What had he been thinking? More to the point, how had he ever thought he could get away with it? He had dug himself into so deep a mess that he couldn't imagine there was a way to dig himself out again without losing everything. He had thought he could keep the situation going indefinitely, that both women would remain contentedly in possession of half of him, and that his feelings towards both of them would always be such that he would never feel the need to jump one way or the other. Now he had started to wonder if he had been wrong.

When he got home around nine forty-five Katie was out. She had left him a note saying she had a client and that she had left him some dinner in the oven. He petted Stanley and then ate, sitting at the tiny table in the kitchen. He looked around at the Thai statues on the shelves and
the framed photos of Katie's holidays in the East before she had met him, on the walls. There was nothing of him in the room, he thought, nothing really to say that he had been living here for the past year. Even the colour, a bright, sea turquoise, wasn't one he would have chosen himself.

The doorbell rang.

James looked at his watch. Five past ten. It was late for someone to be calling unannounced. He opened the door cautiously to find Simone standing there. ‘Is Katie in?’ she asked, before he could even say hello.

‘Erm… no, she's working,’ he said. Something about Simone seemed a little manic.

‘Good. It's you I wanted to see. Can I come in?’ Simone was already halfway through the door as she said this. ‘Do you have any wine? I'm desperate for a drink.’ She had clearly had a couple already.

James poured her a small glass. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘I'm fine — why wouldn't I be? I just heard you were having trouble with the planning department and I thought I might be able to help, that's all.’

James was having trouble believing that Simone had come round at five past ten in the evening to discuss his extension.

‘I could put in a word with the Conservation Area Group. They have a big influence on the council, you know. If I could get a consensus that there's no objection to the building…’

James interrupted her — this really was very strange: ‘Simone, that's really very kind of you, but I can't see the Conservation Area Group agreeing that my breeze-block
and uPVC extension is an asset to the area. And, besides, I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble.’

Simone, who had been sitting in one of the little armchairs, stood up and moved on to the sofa next to James. He shuffled along awkwardly.

‘It's no trouble,’ she said, and gave him a look which made him realize exactly why she was there. She was trying to seduce him. For a split second he toyed with the idea of calling her bluff, but he knew that whatever the solution to his problems might be, shagging one of his neighbours wasn't it.