More Than You Know (73 page)

“That would be charming,” he said, “but I can see you’re having a girls’ evening; I won’t intrude. I’ll just have something in the study, Eliza.”

“Matt, don’t. We’d like you to be with us, wouldn’t we, Maddy?”

“Course.”

“Come on. Sit down, chat to Maddy while I cook the pasta.”

After about an hour of stultifyingly awkward conversation, with Matt sitting silent and half-sullen, Maddy left, clearly embarrassed; Eliza turned on him in a fury.

“That was so rude. Maddy was my guest and you couldn’t have been less friendly to her, didn’t even try to join in …”

“Eliza, I can’t do all that stuff. I offered to go to my study; you had to insist. I suppose she’d come to commiserate with you over the job,” said Matt, “show solidarity with—what is it—oh, yes, the sisterhood.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Eliza. “She’d just come for a gossip. About, you know, the business, what she’s doing, all that sort of thing.”

“Why is it always that lot you want to see? From your old life? You just can’t tear yourself away, can you? What about some new friends?”

“I have new friends, thank you; I just don’t particularly want to spend the evening with them.”

“Because?”

“Because they’re not interested in what interests me.”

“And she is?” he said, indicating the chair where Maddy had been sitting. “A woman with no children, just obsessed with the business, as you call it, banging on about all those poncey designers and photographers; that interests you, does it? I thought—I hoped,” he said, “after our last little upset, you were really going to throw yourself into it, forget all that rubbish—”

“It is not rubbish,” she shouted. “It’s what I care about, what I want to be doing—”

“Oh, so you don’t want to be at home, looking after Emmie; you’re just doing it out of some sense of duty. You really want to be back out there, having your arse licked. You’re not really going into this wholeheartedly at all, are you?” he said. “You’re just biding your time, softening me up, waiting for the next opportunity.”

“That is so unfair—”

“Is it? I don’t think so. It seems very fair to me. Oh, I’m going to do some work. I’m sorry I’ve spoilt your girly evening.”

“Yes,” she said, “you have. Totally.”

He finally picked up the phone, took a deep breath.

“I … well … that is, I wondered if you’d like to have dinner one night,” he said. “Nothing … nothing grand, more like supper, really.”

He had put it off several times, finding excuses: he was too tired one day, too busy the next, a bit low the third. He needed to feel his absolute best to do it right.

He had often wondered why he was so pathologically shy when it came to relationships. He could, after all, be charming and amusing when he was on show: a different person altogether. But the combined terror of looking foolish and being rejected was too much for his rather fragile ego.

He had been in love only twice in his life: first with his childhood sweetheart, who had turned her back on him and gone off with the rich, smooth heartthrob of the upper sixth; and the second time with a sweet, gentle, funny girl who had demanded nothing of him except that he loved her in the way she loved him. They had been engaged for only six months when she had found a lump in her breast; she had died exactly a year later, leaving him utterly broken both in his heart and his head. Since then, and for more than ten years now, he had not ventured into a new relationship.

He could not have told you what it was about Scarlett that appealed to him so much; she was lovely, of course, and she had a glamour about her that he liked. And she was clearly very clever and successful in a business that was notoriously tough and cutthroat and didn’t suffer fools in any way. But those were all qualities that would normally have frightened him off. And while she was very intelligent, she was far from well educated and not well-read—which would normally have troubled him, not for any intellectually snobbish reasons, but because it precluded so many sources of conversation. He had decided that what drew him to her was her vulnerability, which lay beneath the gloss and the glamour and the success; like him, he felt she was not personally secure and that personal happiness had eluded her. And if she was looking for it in people like that idiot at lunch that day, no wonder.

Whatever the reason, he was sufficiently drawn to her to risk an invitation to dinner …

There was a long, rather unnerving silence. Then she said, “Mark, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. You must know the reason; you really must. But thank you. And it’s very flattering, Good-bye, Mark. I’ll … I’ll see you on Trisos.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, longing to ask her what was this reason that he must know. And wondering how he could ever feel easy on Trisos again, were she around.

“Oh, shit,” said Scarlett, close to tears, looking at the phone, now replaced on its receiver. “Shit, shit, shit.”

It was so long since anyone she fancied and liked so much had asked her out. But she wasn’t risking that again.

“Fuck,” said Mark Frost, feeling utterly wretched, looking at the phone as he replaced it on its receiver. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

It was so long since he had fancied and liked anyone enough to ask them out. But he wouldn’t be risking that again.

Suddenly, with frightening speed, Eliza and Matt seemed to have moved into a new, strange country: a silent, unsmiling land filled with suspicion and a lack of warmth or even courtesy. They moved around, wary of each other, he staring at her with cold, blank eyes, her expression resentful and defiant. Day after day.

He went to work, came home very late, went into his study and then to bed. The spare room bed.

With Emmie he was himself: greeting her with hugs and kisses, talking to her, playing with her, reading to her, taking her out to the park. Emmie had begun to notice the coldness and the blankness, did her best to ease it. She tried to set up conversations, said, “Will Mummy come too?” when Matt said he’d put her to bed or take her to the swings. It was precociously touching; it did no good.

Eliza was in despair.

Johnny Barrett had found the terrace quite quickly; there were only two that properly fitted the description, and after spending a couple of hours in his car outside each of them, and watching a pretty, heavily pregnant young woman walking gingerly down the steps of one of them with a little girl, and then returning half an hour later carrying shopping, he felt confident he had found Eliza Shaw’s friend.

He went over to her the second morning and smiled.

“Excuse me, but can I help you with that shopping? It looks very heavy, and those steps seem pretty treacherous to me.”

She flushed, clearly embarrassed.

“Oh … no, no, it’s perfectly all right. I’m fine.”

“Well, I don’t think it is. Look—come on, just to the front door. It’s all right; I’m not some kind of mugger; I promise I won’t try to come in.”

“Well … it would be nice. Thank you.”

“These steps are a death trap,” he said, kicking at one of them; a shower of plaster fell onto the one below.

“I know. We’ve tried to get the landlord to fix them, but he never does. He never fixes anything, as a matter of fact; the place is a tip inside.”

“Going to be worse when you’re trying to get a pram up and down the steps.”

“Yes, well, we won’t be here then. We’re looking for somewhere else, but landlords don’t like babies, so we may have to—Sorry; you don’t want to hear all this.”

“Yes, I do. Don’t be silly. I’m very sympathetic, as a matter of fact. My sister’s in the same fix. She and her husband have been trying to find somewhere for months; they live up north, Manchester way.”

“Really? Well, I suppose a landlord is a landlord. Out for all they can get. And babies put other tenants off.”

“Seems so. Look—I think I’d better come clean. Johnny Barrett,
Daily News
. Your friend Eliza Shaw told me about you.”

She looked alarmed. “Oh … goodness. I thought … Eliza said you’d decided not to do the article after all.”

“I had. But to be honest with you, seeing what my sister’s going through made me keen again. I really think these people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. It’s not right. Look, you wouldn’t like to tell me a bit more now, would you?”

“Oh … I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t want to get into trouble while we’re still living here—”

“Of course not, but like I said to Eliza, no names.”

“Really?” Her large grey eyes met his. “It would be completely anonymous?”

She was very pretty, he thought. And very vulnerable.

“Completely. And you’d only be one of several stories. Look—there’s a café down the road. Why don’t I take you there and you can tell me all about it.”