The Devil You Know (16 page)

Why did people expect fat girls to be funny? Daisy swallowed hard. Her eyes had started to glitter. No tears right now. She wasn’t into feeling sorry for herself.

‘You’re so elegant,’ Edward said. He sounded completely sincere. ‘I feel quite underdressed.’

‘Who are you dragging me out to see?’ Daisy asked. ‘It’s a surprise.’ Daisy hit him.

‘Oh, very well. It’s Richard Weston.’

Her skin prickled with excitement. Now it felt less like a dutiful evening out. Richard Weston was Daisy’s favourite author. Bank rapt in a share scandal as a young father, he had written his first bestseller, The Kensin,ton, out of sheer desperation - wanting to try something, anything, to get his family out of debt. He had received a slender advance, but the word of mouth on the slim paperback had been incredible. Weston had it; he knew plot, and he knew how) to

sweep the reader along in a frenzy of ‘and then what happened’. Daisy wanted to jump up and down ….. ‘Edward, you beauty.’

He grinned. ‘I rather thought you’d enjoy that.’

The small, dank alleyway that led up to the wrought-iron gates of the Oxford Union was packed. Edward effortlessly managed to thread a path through the crowd of undergraduates, a few of them in white tie, most in jeans and sweaters.

‘Officers,’ he whispered in Daisy’s ear. ‘They always have to wear penguin suits. I’m only a college rep, so I get away with this.’

Daisy was ushered through the building’s doors, where a man stood checking membership cards.

‘Oh.’ She blushed. ‘I don’t have one, I’m not actually at the University. ‘

‘Sorry, miss, members only. The event’s very oversubscribed -‘ ‘She’s with me, Paul.’

‘Oh.’ The hefty man grunted and stepped aside. ‘Very good, Mr Powers. Come in, Miss.’

Daisy was impressed. Edward took her through the building and

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out into a little garden, thronging with students. A gravel path led up to another large gothic-looking building.

‘The Chamber. It’s meant to be an exact replica of the House of Commons, but it hasn’t seen a lick of paint for about twenty years.’ Edward shrugged. ‘Doesn’t stop people coming to speak, though.’

Daisy felt a pang of envy. ‘You’re so lucky, getting to see people like Richard Weston in the flesh.’

‘You have me.’ Edward smiled at her gently. ‘You can come as my guest to anything you like.’

He was so gentlemanly. Daisy suddenly felt very happy. She was lucky that Edward was such a good friend to her. Without him, she might have felt swamped here. As it was, the bullying and teasing of her miserable schooldays were already starting to fade into a bad

memory, like something that had happened to somebody else. Maybe it was just that men were kinder than women.

Edward showed her inside the dilapidated chamber with its wooden benches and ushered her to a spot near the front. The whole room was filling up fast.

Daisy sat there breathless with excitement and squeezed Edward’s hand. Her eyes were sparkling. When the President, a young woman in a burgundy ballgown, and her officers, in white tie, entered the chamber, she could hardly breathe. Richard Weston followed them in, wearing a beautifully cut dark suit, with a sober tie and expensive-looking shoes. His watch was gold, and as he passed right by her, she thought it was a Rolex.

Everything about him screamed money, far more than any designer suit could have done. He was a step up from Hugo Boss or Armani. She could tell that everything he wore was bespoke.

Imagine writing books, the best job in the world, and getting paid a fortune for them!

Daisy felt like she was a groupie at a Bon Jovi concert. Her heart was racing and there was a light mist of sweat on her palms. She loved Richard Weston’s stuff.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ The Librarian, a stockylooking young Yorkshireman, stood to introduce his guest. ‘We are privileged to have as our guest tonight the bestselling author …’

Daisy watched Weston’s face. His eyes twinkled and he was watching the room carefully. The way he was observing them reminded her of herself. He glanced over at her and caught her looking.

Daisy blushed scarlet.

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Weston winked at her.

‘… Richard Weston!’

Weston got to his feet and started to speak. He had an open, easygoing manner, but he was extremely charismatic. Daisy drank in every word.

‘I’m open to questions,’ he said, when he was done.

Sixty hands shot into the air. Daisy tentatively stuck hers up, too. ‘Yes?’

Weston was looking right at her.

‘How do you feel about the critics sneering at popular culture, and do you find that your work is …’

Daisy shut her mouth. An eager and spotty youth next to her had jumped in with his question. She’d thought Weston was looking at her, but of course she wasn’t about to be that lucky.

He answered patiently. A new forest of hands surged up. Daisy didn’t feel brave enough to try again. She sat and listened as the undergraduates asked Weston to deconstruct his work, to comment on royalty structures, to speak on the decline of the English novel, and, rudely, to condemn what he did as pure trash that sapped the minds of the British people. :

‘Good God.’ He laughed at that one. ‘Sometimes you wantto drink Chateau Lafite, and sometimes you want a Diet Coke. I’m’in the Diet Coke business.’ ….

The girl who had asked the question was slender and had a severely cut dark bob. She gave Weston a sneering look. Daisy was outraged. Snobby cow. If she hated Weston’s books so much, why had she come tonight?

‘We’d like to thank Mr Weston very much for agreeing to address the Society,’ said the President smoothly. Tm afraid we’re out of time for questions this evening.’

‘I can take one last one, Madam President,’ Weston said. ‘Young lady.’

Daisy stared at her soft white hands.

‘In the blue dress,’ Weston said.

Daisy’s cheeks flamed. She looked up. The?’

‘Yes. You had a question, didn’t you?’

‘Urn, yes.’ Daisy felt extremely shy, but he was smiling at her. Her question seemed a bit stupid after all the complex ones the other students had asked, but she thought it was what everyone secretly wanted to know. ‘Are you very rich?’

‘Really,’ said the President, disapprovingly.

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Edward chuckled softly.

‘Bloody god question,’ Weston said. ‘Yes. As a matter off:act I’:n phenomenally rich. I don’t work much, I do something I enjoy and that other people enjoy, and I’ve made so much money I never need to write anything else in my life. But I still do, because it’s so much

fun.’ He gave Daisy a wink. ‘You should try it.’

‘Thank you,’ Daisy said. ‘Maybe I will.’

The President stood and ushered her guest out, and the rank and file shuffled from the Chamber. Edward escorted Daisy through the crush of young bodies into the garden. It was dark now, and the stars were clearly visible even through the ugly orange glow of the street lamps. There was a mad run for the bar, but Daisy didn’t feel like

drinking subsidised beer in a crowd of rowdy students.

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes. Gosh, thanks.’ Daisy hugged herself. ‘It was so exciting.’

‘He liked you, obviously. He wasn’t pleased when that undergraduate took your spot.’

‘I thought he was looking at me. But I suppose I was a bit crass…’

‘Bloody hell, no. Everybody was wondering the same thing, but

didn’t have the guts to say so. I think you amused him.’ ‘I’d love to be Richard Weston,’ Daisy sighed. Edward looked at her. ‘I’m very glad you’re not.’

There it was again. That awful feeling. Daisy stammered, ‘Look, Edward ‘

‘Forget it. Do you feel like eating?’

‘Uhm ‘

‘Brad’s asked me to meet him at the Bird and Baby.’

‘Sure.’ Daisy relaxed. ‘Why not?’

The Eagle and Child - known to students as everything from Bird and Baby to Fowl and Foetus - was a little walk uptown, and Edward shepherded Daisy through the crowded streets. Oxford had an incredible combination of beauty and electricity. After school, the sense of freedom was like a drug. Daisy wondered what it would be like to be here and actually be at the University. Like Edward and like Brad. There was a slight regret in the pit of her stomach. If she’d applied herself, she could have been there, too. She kind of knew it.

Maybe I’ve been settling, Daisy thought. Unhappiness was a great excuse to settle. As she walked along, she could feel the first signs of her changing

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body. Her thighs, which usually chafed uncoinfortably, weren’t quite so close together. She could feel a bit more definition in her face. Small changes, yeah. But something. Brad’s body was pure muscle, thick, but not fat. She’d gone down to the river once to watch him row. When the Merton eight came in first, Brad pulled his shirt off. Daisy had stood on the wet, cold bank of the Isis and felt something unfamiliar - the pull of real desire. Of course, she knew she wasn’t in his league; she was going to have to stop thinking about him.

Easier said than done, though.

Edward took her into the pub and Daisy tried not to look too eager. Where was he? Oh yeah, there, sitting by the fire and nursing a Budweiser, a weak American beer. But Daisy forgave him for that, because everyone knew Americans didn’t drink. Edward lifted a

hand, spotting him, and went across the room.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Ed. How’s it going?’

Daisy laughed; she’d never seen anyone less ‘Ed’-like than Edward Powers.

‘Hey, pretty lady,’ Brad said to her, ‘How you doing tonig?’

‘I’m OK,’ Daisy said, blushing lightly. She lowered her head’o Edward wouldn’t see.

‘What you guys been doing tonight?

‘We went down to the Union to see Richard Weston.’

Brad looked blank.

‘A famous author; and Daisy here wowed him.’

‘I didn’t wow him, I just asked him if he was rich.’

‘Getting right to the point, huh.’ Brad grinned. ‘I like a chick who speaks her mind.’

He looked at her, and Daisy thought she could lose herself for ever in those dark-lashed eyes; and then his eyes slid off her.

‘I was thinking about trying out for the rugby team,’ he told Edward.

‘You don’t know the first thing about rugby,’ Powers replied.

‘True, but I’m built like a linebacker and I can play football.’ He flexed his biceps. ‘Whaddaya think, Daisy?’

She gingerly felt his arm; it was hard as a rock. ‘Ithink you’d be a great rugby player,’ she murmured.

‘Piffle, rugby’s an art,’ Edward protested, and the two men started talking about sports, which bored Daisy rigid. She just sat and nursed her half-a-cider and tried not to be too obvious as she gazed at Brad.

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He was just so hot. Of course, his eyes weren’t on Daisy; he kept checking out other girls around the pub as he talked. But it didn’t put her off. She couldn’t help it, she just wanted him.

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Meanwhile, Rose moved into the basement. She’d had it fitted out as cheaply as possible, getting her furniture from garage sales and deep-discount stores, and even though it was gloomy, she added lots of lamps and mirrors opposite the windows and had everythi,.ng white, to make the most of the light from the small openings.

She banked her first month rent cheques and held her breath, bt they all cleared.

Rose took money from the first and paid the mortgage; the rest she had to live on. It amounted to over a thousand dollars a month.

A fortune.

Her parents couldn’t believe it. Rose made her father come out to Maple Leaf Drive the first Sunday she moved in.

‘You own it?’ her father said. ‘I don’t understand.’

Her mother just burst into tears again.

Neither one of them minded her moving out, or if they did, they didn’t let lKose see it.

‘I always knew you’d be spreading your wings, sugar,’ Paul said proudly. ‘My daughter, a homeowner.’

1Kose didn’t see them having to park the car around the corner, sobbing in each other’s arms, right after they droxie away.

She was tempted not to bother with Columbia. She had run the numbers on :z2 Maple Leaf right after she bought it, adding in projected rents, and she thought that right off the bat she’d probably made twenty thousand. What she wanted to do was refinance, take

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out fifteen, and buy something else. It was risky; she had no equity cushion. But rents were going up everywhere, and one three-family in Mount Vernon wasn’t the glittering skyscraper she had pictured on her walls.

But she didn’t dare. It would upset her morn and dad. For all the

love they’d given her, Rose thought, she owed them.

So she showered in the tiny, tiled but windowless cubicle she had

down in the basement, got up at seven, and walked down to Columbus Avenue to catch the bus for the city.

‘Welcome to Orientation Week,’ a student said brightly, a young man with too-long curly hair and I’m-smart glasses. ‘My name is Sebastian, and I’ll be showing you around the campus today …’

Rose quietly slipped out at the back. She thought she could find her way around without this guy. All she needed to know was the location of the library and the classrooms for her various courses. For the rest of it, she was going to be the loner she’d been at high school. Student housing blocks - who cared? Community room? No thanks. She regarded her fellow students not exactly with disdain, but with total disinterest. Rich kids, bright-cheeked, with scarves trailing and neat hair and new leather ankle boots under their 5oIs; no scuffs, and being driven up to the door il shiny cars - Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, Porsche 91 IS. Rose had nothing in common with them. She sighed, and tossed her long fountain of raven-black hair behind her. Four years of this. Maybe if she made enough on the side she could drop out, and her parents wouldn’t mind.