The Devil You Know (49 page)

can’t stand to see you throw yourself away like this.’

‘I’m very dear to you? How dear?’

‘Very dear,’ Edward said. ‘I’m surprised you can even ask the

question. After all our years of friendship.’ She waited, but he didn’t go on. ‘Just friendship?’ she prompted.

‘What?’ Edward said, blinking owlishly.

‘For goodness’ sake, Edward. Why did you call me here except to tell me you love me? It’s not as if I haven’t always known it. You loved me back when I was fat.’ Unexpectedly, she started to cry at this, but she went on, even with tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘You always waited for me. And marrying Wina, you did it too fast, you made a mistake, and now you want to put it right. I know it’s difficult.’ He sat stock-still, staring at her. Daisy put a manicu’ed hand gently over Edward’s bony one. ‘But now is the time, or yoll be trapped for ever.’

Her words broke the spell. Edward snatched his hand away, spluttering.

‘But - but that’s not it at all. My God, how could you have got it so wrong?’

He was a dull red now, the tips of his ears livid with blood. ‘What … what do you mean?’ Daisy stammered.

‘I love Wina. Do you think I would invite you here to - to -‘ He looked outraged. ‘You think I think so little of my wife … that I would … that I …’

Edward pushed back his chair and stood up. He took a deep breath; he was devastatingly, cuttingly formal.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Daisy didn’t move. She couldn’t. She felt sick and dizzy, and as though she were going to faint.

‘But Edward! Didn’t you love me at Oxford?’

‘Yes. Then,’ he said, his tone clipped and icy. ‘Then. When you did not return my feelings I moved on. Something I would advise you to do.’

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Daisy stood up. The tears of emotion had become wrenching sobs. She was almost hysterical. Edward looked to right and left, huntedly. Some part of her brain knew that he would not throw her, tear-drenched and gulping, into the street.

‘Calm down,’ he said, ‘for pity’s sake.’ His face softened. ‘I’ll get you some kitchen towel.’

‘Th - thank you,’ she wept.

Edward came back with some sheets of kitchen towel. ‘Here. Now look, Daisy.’ He ran a thin hand through his hair. ‘You must have been interested in me because I liked you when you were… heavier. But the point is, you were worth liking then and you’re worth liking now. You always made things so hard on yourself. You’ve always been interested in the wrong sort, or people you couldn’t have. I think perhaps,’ he said, looking very relieved, because Daisy’s sobs had subsided to miserable snuffles, ‘perhaps you don’t think you deserve to be loved. At any rate, think about it. About yourself.’

He waited by the door, and she stumbled into the corridor. ‘But can I call you? Can we talk about this?’ Daisy said plaintively.

‘No,’ said Edward gently. ‘I’m afraid we can’t. I think it would be best if I didn’t see you at all for some time.’

His words were soft, but they had the impact of an oncoming train. Daisy managed a nod and stepped out into the street, with its merciless sunlight, and people looking at her red eyes.

She heard Edward Powers shut the door firmly behind her.

Daisy never remembered how she got herself home. She knew she must have cried the whole way. It felt as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest while she was still breathing.

Somehow she found herself back in her flat It was the middle of the afternoon, sun streaming through the windows; her maid had been round, and the place smelled faintly of disinfectant mixed with fresh flowers.

Daisy went into the bathroom to blow her nose. She was a mess, red-eyed, tear-stained. She looked haggard and drawn, despite her

good night’s sleep and a month’s pampering.

A broken heart could do that to you.

She sat on her bed and stared into space until the sun went down over North London, and twilight blue calmed her down. She felt detached from her body; no appetite, no interest in anything. But she forced herself to go and take a bath.

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The warmth of the water revived Daisy just a little. She couldn’t pretend to herself any more that Edward Powers would ever be hers. Her timing had been off, totally off…

Through the bathroom door she hadn’t bothered to shut she saw the vase of pink roses, the colour of sugared almonds, she’d bought when the last flowers Magnus had sent had died. Magnus. Now she’d never see him again either.

Magnus had told her she was frigid. That she was over complicating things.

Frigid? She just wasn’t that interested in sex. Like most people, probably. Then Edward had given her that psychiatry crap.

Why did men want to run her life? She didn’t want advice. She just wanted love, Daisy thought.

But something was nagging at her. A sneaking suspicion that Edward might have, in some tiny way, a point.

No question she had messed things up and kept messing them up. Her love life was about as successful as English cricket.

Maybe it was all about Daisy, all about how she saw herself. Daisy went to the bathroom mirror and tried to look past the heartbak pallor and the bloodshot eyes. Yes, she knew she was beautiful. And if not conventionally clever, well, so what? She had done wondgs with her life - she was young, and successful, and she’d looked after her parents …

The first faint tinge of shame started to creep into her thoughts. It was no good trying to cheer herself up with what a great person she was. She’d just tried to take a married man away from his wife. Edward had told her she had a problem with self-esteem; Magnus Soren had told her to grow up.

Daisy mulled this over. She had pushed Edward away when he was suitable, pushed Magnus away when he was suitable. And made a beeline, always, for those men who were guaranteed to reject her.

For a few seconds she considered therapy, then rejected it. Fuck that, Daisy thought, I’m English. I don’t go for all that hand-holding inner child bollocks -

The phrase stopped her train of thought. Inner child. Weren’t you supposed to repeat childhood patterns over and over?

But her childhood had been mostly happy, hadn’t it? She’d had great parents who loved her. So why had she eaten herself into unpopularity, making sure, with her shyness and her weight, that the

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other kids at school would be mean to her, would - yeah - would reject her?

The answer came to her, so surprising and so instantly clear that

Daisy, nude, felt weak-kneed and flopped down on to her bed. She had been rejected before any of these had rejected her. By her parents. Her first, biological parents.

After a sleepless night, Daisy woke and dressed. The first call she

made was to her parents. Her real ones, Daisy reminded herself. Her mother picked up on the first ring. ‘Hello, Mum.’ ‘Hello, darling…’

‘Mum, I need to ask you something.’ Daisy was hesitant; was this going to be incredibly hurtful for her mother?

‘Is something wrong, darling? Are you hurt? Sick?’

‘No.’ She must have sounded worse than she thought. ‘Nothing to be worried about. But look, Mum, I’m curious about the adoption. My adoption.’

There was an exhalation at the end of the phone.

‘It’s nothing about you and Dad. You aie my real parents, my only parents.’ Daisy heard herself gabbling. ‘You know I love you ‘

‘Of course I know that, ‘darling,’ said her mother, sounding reassuringly disapproving over this unrestrained display of emotion.

‘But, you know, I’m curious. I’d like to find out more about it.’ ‘Well, we always knew you’d ask eventually,’ her mother said. ‘And I wish I could be more help, darling, I really do. But your adoption was one of those ones where they don’t give out any information. Confidentiality.’

Daisy persisted. ‘But didn’t you ask? Medical records, anything like that? Didn’t you insist?’

Mrs Markham laughed. ‘Oh, darling, we’d been trying to adopt for years. You have no idea what it’s like. When they said they had a beautiful baby girl we took you, no questions asked. If you had been sick, well.’ The shrug in the voice. ‘We’d just have looked after you. We fell in love with you the moment we saw you.’

Daisy’s eyes teared over, but she brushed them away. ‘Darling Mum,’ she said.

‘Darling you.’

‘Do you remember the name of the agency?’

‘Of course. I have all those details in a file upstairs. Hold on a second, my angel.’

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Her mother came DacK a iew lllOlllUllt ldti, iiiwj vv.t, v.

InterAdopt, and they were in London.’ She gave Daisy the phone number and an address on Tottenham Court Road. ‘But bear in mind it was twenty-five years ago, so they may have moved.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Daisy said. ‘I’ll find them.’

It proved easier said than done.

A year passed. Daisy worked on her next book, and continued her search, in between rounds of publicity, booksellers’ conferences, and the other minutiae of life as a successful author. It was very frustrating, not to be able to find much out. But phoning and writing and contacting search agencies at least kept her mind off Magnus Soren, and distracted her from her regrets.

The agency had moved out of its premises years ago. It took her six months to find that they had gone out of business, another six months to get even small snippets of information from the public records. In the meantime, Daisy licked her wounds and worked it all out on paper; she was kinder to her characters than luck had been to her.

even dated, but that was desultory. Her dates never laed

She

more than four outings, at most. She found she couldn’t bear to have men touch her.

Daisy was getting obsessed with finding out about her birth parents. She believed in her heart that she had had a revelation, that she would never be able to move on unless she discovered why they had given her up. Hadn’t wanted her.

The Orange Blossom was published to sizzling reviews and even bigger sales than her first book. Daisy’s business manager invested her money and did well, making her returns at almost 4 per cent.

She was rich, and getting richer. She even got stopped on the street a couple of times. Magazines wanted to interview her, talk shows wanted her as a guest. She was young,, successful, outrageously goodlooking. Daisy was coy about her love life - ‘What love life?’ and that just made the press more interested. She did not enjoy the attention. It took away from one of her greatest pleasur,es in being a writer - anonymity; being lost in her made-up world, at least until the books came out and she could see people reading them on the Tube. Now tl, at gave her a buzz.

But this time she thought that maybe she could use it. Her search

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was getting nowhere. Every little piece of information led to a dead end.

Daisy made a decision. She was going to go public, and maybe that would lead to the truth.

‘I was adopted,’ Daisy said to Susie Quant.

Susie was the perky host of Sitting witk Susie, a daytime chat show which had a pretty high rating. It was on Channel 4 and followed

Oprak, and her publicist thought appearing on it was a coup. ‘Give them something juicy,’ she had said.

Daisy had decided to do just that. Susie’s heavily mascaraed eyes widened. Daisy could see her thinking, ‘Great TV.’ ‘Were you really?’ she purred.

Daisy looked right at the camera. ‘I was. The agency was called InterAdopt, and it seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. If any of my readers have any news, I’d be grateful if they could contact me …’

She heard the sharp hiss in the audience, the intake of breath. Well, that should be good for a paragraph in OK!. Daisy hated bringing such private matters out in the open, but she was frustrated, and she needed help.

Who knew? Maybe this would work.

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The Lincoln Town Car purred to a halt and the chauffeur got out, walked around to the back, and opened the door. He stood to attention, but noticed, out of the corner of his eye, those long, lean legs as they slid out of the luxurious buttery leather interior of the car. He always did; gams. like that were hard to miss.

Rose Fiorello was wearing a chocolate-brown woollen Donna Karan dress with cream buttons and trim, long sleeves, and matching cream leather gloves. Her wonderful legs were encased in brown lambswool hose, tapering down to a pair of knee-high Jimmy Choo zip-up boots. A second later, her warm, protective cashmere coat,fell about her.

His boss was as glamorous as a movie star, the driver thought. 1 the other guys in the service envied him this assignment and pumped him for info. A sweet little thing like that … she had to have some rich sugar daddy, no? They talked in hushed tones about Vincent Salerni, the mob boss and Ms Fiorello’s patron. He had to be in the back of the car sometimes, right? Taking a little ‘tribute’? But he had, sadly, nothing to report. Fiorello was hot stuff OK, but she lived like a nun. A very rich, very busy nun. And she took no crap. He’d heard her chewing out men on the in-car phone and he was glad not to be on the other end of the line.

Rose Fiorello was, he had concluded, very beautiful, very rich, and very pissed off. Like, all the time. She had fired the last four drivers for occasionally being late - she was like that, she demanded respect. Even the slightest deviation from rispetatto and you got fired. The woman was like Genghis Khan in a cute little short skirt.

Maybe she was gay, but she never had any girlfriends in the back of that limo. As far as he could work out, the boss didn’t have time for them. She visited her morn once a week, and that was the extent of her social life.

Not for the first time, he reflected that it was a shame.

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‘When will you be wanting to be picked up, Ms Fiorello?’ he

asked, touching his cap deferentially.

Rose didn’t look at him. ‘I’m not sure, Bernie. I’ll beep you.’