More Than You Know (20 page)

“Eliza! Have you got a minute? And Fiona, if she’s around?”

It was Annunciata Woburn, the features editor of
Charisma
. She was dazzlingly beautiful, with a great cloud of red hair and huge green eyes, and was breathtakingly clever. Jack Beckham adored her, and even while telling her not to give him any fucking intellectual rubbish, he hung on her words. One of her best friends was Emma Northcott, Jeremy’s sister, with whom she had been at Oxford. Beckham had hired her against everyone’s advice, and everyone had been proved wrong, very wrong. It was Annunciata who had suggested a feature about strippers’ boyfriends—“so much more original and revealing than talking to the girls themselves”—another about the relationship between cooking and sex, and a third about homosexuality, and had indeed conducted it herself and then published a savage interview with Henry Brooke, the home secretary, over what she called the archaic illogicality—and, moreover, danger—of homosexuality remaining a crime.

Eliza was so much in awe of Annunciata that she found uttering more than two words in her presence almost impossible. She was forced into it today.

“Oh, golly, Fiona’s not here. She’s out on appointments. Sorry.”

“OK, you’ll do for now. I’m just trawling the office for people for a feature that I’m calling ‘The Intropreneurs.’ ”

Eliza tried to look politely interested.

“It’s about people, young people, who are making waves from a base of absolutely nothing. And who haven’t quite arrived, but are almost certainly going to. Know what I mean?”

“Um—think so, yes.”

“Not been to public school, not been at university necessarily, just bright young people who’ve got an idea and gone for it. I’m sure there must be lots in the fashion business—but if you know anyone outside it as well, just give me their names.”

“Should I sound them out first?”

Annunciata considered this for a moment, then: “No, don’t think so, because then if I don’t use them, they could be disappointed. I’m just getting a directory together for a start. No great rush: anytime in the next week.”

She was clearly extremely rich as well as extremely clever.

Eliza went back to her office and pulled a sheet of paper towards her. There must be lots of people. Maddy. Esmond. Jerome Blake. She managed ten, then realised they were all in fashion, and she wanted to impress Annunciata by being more than a fashion birdbrain. She thought for a bit, then rang Charles, asked if he knew anyone; he said there wasn’t much working-class talent on the stock exchange. Then he said, “Tell you what, though: Matt Shaw might be an idea. He’s a real working-class hero.”

She remembered dancing with Matt at the party that night and smiled. She liked Matt; he was very sweet. Well, maybe
sweet
was the wrong word. Bit too stroppy and pleased with himself to be sweet. But … quite sexy. Well, actually, very sexy. He was certainly an amazing dancer. Anyway, he’d probably be really chuffed. Free publicity. Yes, it was a great idea. She’d call him.

“I love you so much.”

“Do you really?”

He looked hurt. “Yes, of course I do. Don’t you believe me?”

“I … Yes, I suppose so.”

“Is there … is there something the matter? Because you’ve been … not quite yourself, not quite my lovely laughing girl for some little time
now. Just tell me what it is; I’ll put it right, I swear. I can’t bear to think you’re not happy.”

As if he could. As if she could tell him. It was too complicated, too difficult. And too dangerous.

To say, “I was pregnant with your child. And I got rid of it. Just had it … flushed it away.”

That was one of the worst things: wondering what they had done with it, her baby. That minute, more than half-formed human being.

“No, honestly, David, I’m fine. Just a bit … a bit tired.”

“Well, I think we can do something about that.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I think we can go on a little vacation. Just the two of us. For a few days, a week, maybe. To Venice or Florence, somewhere really romantic. How would you like that?”

“I … well, I … Well, it would be wonderful, of course. But—”

“But what?”

How could she explain the
but
? That she was finding it so difficult to cope with everything at the moment, that she woke up most days feeling completely shattered, that she often cried herself to sleep at night—she could hide that for a day or two, while he visited London, but not for a longer time, not day after day. No, it would have to be postponed—while she pulled herself together, got her emotions under control, learnt to cope with what she had done: which had been the sensible, indeed, the responsible thing.

“But what?” he asked again.

“Oh … it’s just that my schedule is all done for the next month or so.”

“Can’t you change any of it?”

“Not really, David. And then I’m going on a course. I’m hoping to move to BOAC, I told you, and—”

“Oh, well,” he said, “it was just an idea. A little later in the year, maybe.” He looked hurt; he could see she wasn’t really very keen on the idea. Poor David. And she did truly love him; she hated to hurt him. But … it would be worse to hurt him more.

She couldn’t go on like this, crying all the time, not sleeping. Diana, who had been watching her worriedly for weeks, suggested she ask the
doctor for some sleeping pills. “Please talk to the doctor. I’m sure he could help.”

Scarlett was sure he couldn’t, but she was wrong; he prescribed her a month’s worth of sleeping pills. Within a week she felt a little better—less exhausted, at least, and less tearful. And even less angry.

But she still felt physically frail and in need of a holiday.

She checked out some destinations and settled on a tiny Greek island called Trisos, small and peaceful with its one hotel and a tiny harbour.

And it was absolutely … Well, words failed Scarlett.
Perfect
was underrating it. After a long journey—a flight to Athens and then a long boat trip from Piraeus—she had arrived in a deep grey dusk, was led up to her hotel by the ferryman, fell onto a comfortable if rather hard bed in a small, almost cell-like room—and woke in the morning to a world of dazzling light. She had never seen or imagined anything like that light; it was positively celestial—shining, white, that shamed full-noon English sunshine into shadow. Her hotel, little more than a taverna, was one of a cluster of white-domed houses carved out of the brilliant blue sky; she leaned out of the window and felt the sun not just on her but in her, beating down to her bones, and smiled to greet it. It might only be spring in England, and a rainy one at that, but summer had certainly come to Greece.

She sat on the small terrace framed with trailing begonias and ate figs and yogurt and honey and drank orange juice and then strong, sweet coffee, while lizards sunbathed beside her and seagulls whirled and called above her head, and felt she might actually have landed in paradise. Her hosts, Demetrios and Larissa, were charming, with the Greek gift of warmth and ease; she had one of only six rooms, and her fellow guests—all clearly less exhausted than she—were already gone for the day.

Five honeyed days later, she felt mended again, restored to herself, the feeble, fretful Scarlett gone, she truly felt, for good. One day she hired a boat, a small fishing vessel with a noisy, rather smelly outboard and a tiny sail. Its owner looked about sixty and was, Larissa told her, only forty, bark brown and half-toothless. He took her on an enchanted journey to adjoining coves, to tiny islands little more than large rocks, even taught her the rudiments of sailing when a breeze sprang most obligingly up.

Another day she hired a motor scooter and took herself on a journey a little way into the hills—surprisingly green for Greece: “Trisos is green,” Demetrios told her. “We, like Mykonos, have much rain in the winter”—and to other small white villages slumbering in the heat.

On her last day, a man arrived: tall, dark, English, quite young, around thirty, she would have said, single—or at least alone. He was rather good-looking, with floppy dark hair and grey eyes fringed with almost girlishly long lashes, and he wore steel-rimmed spectacles. She had tried to be friendly, had smiled at him and asked whether he was having a good time as they passed on the terrace before dinner, and he smiled almost anxiously, shook her hand, and said he was finding the island delightful, “as I am sure you are too,” but he was clearly phobically private, buried himself rather ostentatiously in his book while eating his dinner and then disappeared upstairs. It was only when she was leaving, paying her bill, that she learnt from Larissa that he was looking for somewhere to build a house for himself. His name, she discovered, through peering surreptitiously through the hotel visitors’ book, was Mark Frost. Very appropriate. She hoped—rather meanly, for what could it matter to her?—that he would not settle on Trisos. He wasn’t worthy of it.

Eliza was sitting in the Markham pub in the King’s Road, waiting for Matt. She ordered herself a gin and tonic and was flipping through the pages of the new
Vogue
when she saw him coming in, looking slightly nervous.

She called to him. “Matt! Over here.”

“Hallo, Eliza. Sorry I’m late.”

He was dressed in a rather sharp suit and a blue-and-white shirt with a white collar and cuffs. He looked very … well, very cool. And sexy. He was very sexy, she decided.

She smiled and stood up and on an impulse leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. And felt him flinch just slightly and wondered whether that was shyness or shock—or simply that he didn’t find her sexy back. Probably the latter.

She smiled at him, suddenly nervous, and sat down abruptly. “Hallo, Matt. You look very smart. Like the suit.”

“Oh—thanks.” He smiled back at her just slightly uncertainly.

“What would you like to drink?”

“Oh … no …” This clearly threw him. “I can’t have you buying me a drink.”

“Yes, you can. It’s on expenses.”

“Oh—OK then.” He grinned at her. “I’ll have a lager.”

“Course.”

She fetched it and a gin and tonic for herself, together with two packets of crisps, then settled back in her chair.

“So—how’s things?”

“Oh … pretty good. Yes. We’ve taken on three staff. So there’s six of us altogether now. And we’re hoping to move into the development side. That’s our next plan. So, what’s this about then?”

“You see—”

“Eliza! Hallo. What on earth are you doing here? I thought you were working late.”

She looked up; it was Jeremy. Jeremy with a couple of friends. Or were they colleagues? For some reason she wasn’t particularly pleased to see him.

“I
am
working,” she said, just slightly cool. “I’m about to tell Matt here about a feature. In the magazine. I’m not sure if you’ve met. Matt Shaw, Jeremy Northcott. Matt was in the army with Charles.”

“Really? How do you do.”

“Great, thanks. Pleased to meet you,” said Matt.

“Right. Well, we’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your drink.” He bent down, kissed Eliza’s cheek, then hissed in her ear, “Clients.” And then more audibly, “Let me know when you’ve finished; maybe we could have a bite.”

“Oh … well, maybe, yes.” She smiled at him, then turned back to Matt. “Sorry.”

“That’s OK. Who’s he, then?”

“Just a friend.” He didn’t need to know more. “Anyway,” she said, “you’ll want to know why I’ve asked you here.”

“I do rather, yes.”

“Well, you know I work on a magazine now.”

“Oh, right. What’s your job there, then?”

“I’m called assistant fashion editor. But I’m just a dogsbody, really.”

“Like it?”

“Oh, Matt, I love it. I’m so happy there; I actually look forward to—”

“I know. Monday mornings. Me too. Most important thing of all, I reckon, enjoying your job. It’s what you spend most of the time at, after all. My sister, she’s one of us. Likes Mondays, I mean.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s an air hostess. Works for BEA.”

“Goodness. That’s very impressive.”

“Yeah. Well, my mum certainly thinks so.” He grinned at her.

“And is your mother impressed by what you do?”