The Goddess Rules (30 page)

“You’re such a cynic. He’s been so sweet to me,” Kate said, hardly even bothered by Mirri’s dismal warning.

“I think he’s great,” Robbie said. “We had a bit of a chat about the football. He’s nicer than I remembered.”

“I told you,” Kate said victoriously. “He just needs to be given a chance.”

“A chance is exactly what he doesn’t need. A tight rein is. Don’t get too comfortable with him and it may be fine,” Mirri said with foreboding in her voice.

“Why are you so suspicious of him?” Robbie asked with the sort of ingenuousness that makes women look like jaded old tarts.

Not that Mirri seemed to mind. “I have met his type. I know,” she said, with the ring of omnipotence.

“God, it’s like sitting with the Delphic oracle.” Kate laughed. “I’m going to talk to Tanya and my mum. At least they’ll want to know what color my dress is going to be.”

Which of course they did. In fact, by the end of the evening Mirri’s was pretty much the only dissenting voice at the whole gathering. The rain stopped and the bonfire—which Leonard’s gardener had been hastily preparing, and then carefully covered up before the first spots of rain—was lit. As everyone gathered around the leaping flames, the women with shawls and men’s jackets thrown over their shoulders, the men forming a breakaway group with folded arms, everyone seemed genuinely convinced that the marriage of Kate who had never stopped standing by her at-times-naughty man, and Jake, the naughty man with rather too much charm for his own good, was a brilliant idea. They thought they’d be the perfect match. No one doubted that Jake might be a handful and that Kate would have her work cut out for her, but then when had that ever stood in the way of a marriage?

“Darling, I think he’s terribly handsome. And he has wonderful taste in wine,” Leonard pronounced as he flitted excitedly over to Kate, having been on the receiving end of some of Jake’s ministrations for the past twenty minutes. “And I never knew he was so bright. No, I must say I’m very impressed and looking forward to having him be one of the family.”

“Leonard, are you drunk?” Kate asked her slightly more-sparkling-eyed-than-usual champion.

“Of course. I’m roaringly drunk. But that doesn’t mean I’m not right in the head.”

“I’m so pleased you love him,” Kate said, and tucked herself close to Leonard’s orange tweed waistcoat for a hug. “Everyone does. Except for Mirri of course.” She caught sight of Mirri chatting animatedly to her mother. Despite the fact that the two of them were like chalk and cheese—Kate’s mother was passionate about her garden, her dogs, and, rather bizarrely, birds of prey. Her idea of shopping for clothes was a new pair of pruning gloves, and glamour meant brushing the dog hairs off her skirt. But still the two seemed to be getting on famously. As long as she and Mirri kept their talk of slugs to the kind that play havoc with your geraniums and not the kind that play havoc with your daughter’s heart, Kate didn’t mind.

“I hope the wedding’s going to be as much fun.” Kate said to Jake at the end of the evening as they put the last guest into a taxi and bolted the garden gate. Though most of the paparazzi loitered only during the daytime now, there was still the odd one who came in the dead of night in the desperate hope of finding a drainpipe to shimmy up to catch Mirri at it with Jonah. Or whoever. The Jonah story seemed to be old news to them now. Kate hoped that soon they’d vanish completely. Unless Mirri started dating someone else—that is, Nick. In which case it’d be flashes galore all over again.

“ ’Course it will.” Jake put his arm around her and they walked back down the garden to the shed. On the way he picked one of the cornflowers from the tables and tucked it behind Kate’s ear. “We’re going to be happy. We really are,” he promised. And Kate knew that he meant it and that his intentions were the best. But she still wished on the full moon, just to be on the safe side.

Chapter Twenty-three

“So how’s the work going?” Tanya asked as she and Kate sat in the ruins of the kitchen in Kate’s new flat. It had been a month since her and Jake’s engagement party, and she’d finally had the builders in to rip out all the old bathroom kitchen fittings. The girls had a bottle of wine and sat on two rotting chairs they’d found in the garden.

“It’s fine. I’ve finished Bébé and Mirri’s thrilled with him, but she’s going to stick around a bit longer until I’ve finished my portrait of her. I’ve had to put it on the back burner to get the polar bears done for Louis. I daren’t piss him off,” Kate said as she wondered whether the chalky-blue kitchen she had in mind would work in a small space. She’d have to ask Jake; he was pretty good at that stuff at least, even though he wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the dirty work like getting in the plumbers and electricians. He claimed not to have a clue about anything like that. As if Kate might be fully cognizant with it all. Still, he’d been tirelessly looking for the right country-and-western band to play at the wedding, which she wouldn’t have been able to do in a million years.

“Is he still being cold with you?” Tanya asked.

“He’s so professional, it kills me.” Kate sighed. “You know I really do love Louis. Of course it’s irrelevant whether I fancied him or not now but we were great friends. I feel like once this project’s over we’ll probably never see each other again. But I can’t stand to think too much about that. “

“It’s sad,” Tanya said as she sloshed Evian water into her wine.

“It makes working with him hell. He hardly ever comes to check up on the work but when he does he doesn’t look me in the eye, he doesn’t talk about anything except the piece. I thought he’d have gotten over it by now. Well, not exactly over it but, well more accepting maybe.”

“Yeah, he will,” Tanya said, then couldn’t help but break into a smile. Kate looked at her across the wallpaper paste table that they’d set up for their little take-out supper party to christen the house. “Kate?”

“Yes?” Kate leaned back in the chair and looked expectantly at her friend.

“I’m going to tell you something. Which means absolutely nothing, by the way. It’s just something. But it could be something important. Or not . . .” She looked sheepishly at Kate, who was holding her breath, hoping that Tanya was about to say what she thought she might say.

“You know that Robbie and I took a break from IVF this month. You know, so I could let my hormones settle down and he could not be yelled at by me for breathing in the wrong way when he watched TV?” she asked.

“Were you that awful to him?” Kate grinned at the thought of Robbie not being able to put a foot right.

“Really awful,” Tanya admitted guiltily. “Anyway, we’re taking a break from it all but . . .” She looked unsure of what she was about to say. “I’m late.”

“How late?” Kate asked, not wanting to get overexcited just yet.

“Only about six days, but I feel a bit different,” Tanya whispered, as if there might be someone in the next room or next house who might hear.

“That’s properly late,” Kate said cautiously. “Do you think that you might be . . . really?”

“My boobs are sore. And huge,” she said as she looked down at her neat chest. “Well, huge for me, anyway.”

“Have you done a pregnancy test?” Kate poured herself another glass of wine but didn’t fill up Tanya’s glass. If there was any doubt she didn’t want to poison the baby.

“Not yet. I haven’t even told Robbie.” Tanya was blushing as she said this. “I just don’t want him to get his hopes up. But I really think I feel something. Unless I’m having a phantom pregnancy or something.” Her face deflated again.

Kate shook her head. “No, you might be right. I mean, you know your body. Why don’t we go and buy a kit from the chemist now?” Kate looked at her watch to see whether the emergency chemist down the road would still be open.

“It won’t show up yet. Besides, I ought to wait until I’m a bit more sure and then do it with Rob. ’Cause he did have to shove the injections in my bum. He ought to have a bit of the fun, too.”

“I’d have thought he might have enjoyed that part.” Kate laughed.

“The thing is. And this sounds really silly.” Tanya leaned forward onto the table and lowered her voice even farther. “I think I know when it happened.”

“What, getting pregnant?” Kate was surprised. Tanya never discussed her sex life, and she was so awkward that Kate didn’t know which of them would be more embarrassed if she began to talk about it now.

“It was the night of your engagement party,” she said as she finished her watery glass of wine in two gulps. “We came home and I was just putting the key in the front door. I was about to rush in and turn off the alarm when Robbie sort of grabbed me from behind,” she said shyly.

“Grabbed you?”

“Well, he sort of got hold of my waist from behind. I still had the keys in my hand and I could hear the alarm beeping in the house but he didn’t seem to notice. Then he started to kiss the back of my head, kissing my hair really furiously.” She was looking at her fingers, which were spread out flat on the table in front of her at this point. There was no way she would be able to tell this story if she was looking at Kate. “Then, well, then he sort of spun me around and pushed me up against the wall.” Tanya looked up at this point and caught sight of Kate’s surprised face. “Oh, he wasn’t hurting me. It was just sort of . . . passionate.”

“Sounds great.” Kate smiled.

“Yeah, it was.” Tanya was lost in the memory. “Anyway, then he started kissing me frantically on the lips and all I think at first was that I had to tap the code into the alarm or it’d go off. But then I forgot about it. And about the fact that we were outside.” As Tanya told her this, Kate was picturing Robbie and Tanya’s house, which was right on the street in Belsize Park. No front yard; barely a front doorstep. You just stepped right out of the door and into the London square. And all she could picture was Tanya, in the pale blue, chiffon print dress she’d worn to the engagement party, and Robbie getting it on on their front doorstep with taxis bringing home stuffy neighbors and passersby copping an eyeful. “So, well, then he lifted up my skirt and practically ripped off my knickers and then we were . . . well, you know . . . having sex outside our front door and I could feel the knocker against my back.”

“I’ll bet you could,” Kate couldn’t help butting in. But there was no distracting Tanya.

“And then the alarm started to go off. And we just kept on going. I had my high heels on and we were doing it on the doorstep and we didn’t stop until one of the neighbors put his head out the front door and saw us. But by that time we’d already finished and were just sort of collapsed against one another.” Tanya drew a deep breath. “And I think that’s when I got pregnant. If I am pregnant, that is. But I just feel so sure, Kate.”

“Well it sounds like you had a damned good time. Whether you’re pregnant or not,” Kate said.

“And you know it’s all because of what Mirri said,” Tanya told her.

“Mirri?” Kate wondered how she might fit into this particular story.

“That night. At your party. She told Robbie that if we wanted to get pregnant then we needed to have fabulous, exciting sex. Apparently you’re much more likely to conceive if you have a mind-blowing orgasm. One-night stands are supposed to be the best time to get pregnant—for that reason.”

“Well, I never.” Kate’s eyes widened. “And Mirri told Robbie this?”

“Apparently she told him to”—Tanya leaned across the table in a conspiratorial way—“fuck me senseless.”

“Sounds like Mirri’s kind of advice.” Kate nodded. “So when are you going to take a test?”

“I’m going to give it another week. Just so I don’t get too carried away. Then I’ll tell Robbie.”

“Well, fingers crossed.” Kate held her hands in the air. “Though I don’t know who I’ll eat sushi with if you get pregnant. It’ll be a real drag.” Kate winked and Tanya smiled, hardly daring to hope that she might soon have to forgo yellowfin sashimi.

“Mirri, it’s me.” Kate made her way up the stairs of Leonard’s house later that evening. She’d put Tanya in a taxi, locked up her brand-new, desperately scruffy house, and come back to Leonard’s. She was dying to stay at the flat but it wasn’t anywhere near ready yet. And though Kate didn’t want to admit it she was slightly disappointed with Jake, who even though he’d played three gigs last week said he hadn’t enough money to pay the plasterer who needed to come and fix up the holes in the walls before they could so much as spend the night there.

“Come in,” Mirri called out as Kate gave the bedroom door a perfunctory tap.

“I just came to see if there was any post,” she asked. Mirri was working at her desk, doubtless looking at endless columns of figures for the trust. She put her pen down and stretched her hands above her head when Kate walked in and sat on the bed.

“Oh, I’ve been here too long.” She stood up and took a few paces around the room, then went to draw the curtains. “No post,” she said. “Just bills and an invitation to a Moroccan theme party in Somerset. Which I shall live without.”

“Maybe he’s away,” Kate said with very little conviction.

Two weeks ago Kate had sat down with Mirri and they’d written a note to Nick Sheridan. It was very simple and didn’t hint at anything other than friendship. It had read:

Dear Nick,

You may remember that some years ago we met at the wedding of my friend Tony. In fact I saw some footage of the wedding recently and was reminded of you. I’m currently in England for the summer and in between business am finding some time for pleasure. It would be lovely to catch up with you, perhaps for tea one day.

With warmest wishes,

Mirabelle Moncur

It may have been a brief note but my God it had taken an age to write. Kate and Mirri had sat through packets of biscuits, cups of tea, countless drafts, and what felt like the rise and fall of whole empires before they got it right. There had been poetic and quite morbid French-notes; there had been very dry, unfriendly English-notes; there had been love-declaring versions; even one that was an almost fully realized autobiography of France’s greatest sex goddess. But in the end they’d prosaically opted for short and sweet. Despite the hours they’d put in, however, they still hadn’t heard back from Nick Sheridan.

“They have offices in Tokyo. I saw it on the website,” Kate told Mirri for the sixth time in as many days.

“It obviously wasn’t fate after all,” Mirri said as she dropped down into her armchair and drew her legs into her chest. “Though it’s a little irritating that I got rid of Jonah. I’m missing his cock. Still, at least Isabella has the benefit of it now.” She shrugged.

“I still can’t believe you did that,” Kate said. Two weeks ago, the day before she posted the note to Nick, Mirri had experienced a huge pang of conscience and thrown a dinner party for her prettiest goddaughter to meet Jonah. That way if anything happened with Nick, her faithful young Jonah would be wonderfully taken care of. And as Mirri knew only too well, there was no way he wouldn’t fall for her. Isabella was twenty-eight years old, her mother was a dead poetess, and her father was a South American arms dealer who was a great friend of Mirri’s in the 1970s. He still contributed a very generous donation to the trust every year.

“He’s a pussycat,” Mirri was fond of saying, though if his firecracker daughter was anything to go by, Kate doubted it. Isabella was studying for her Ph.D. in philosophy at Cambridge and was about as spiritual as General Pinochet. She blew into dinner in a black mood because of the London traffic, even though she had a driver, and practically declared war on Jonah when he helped himself to the last piece of lobster. Needless to say he hardly noticed because Isabella had black eyes, caramel-colored hair, and the tiniest, prettiest hands Kate had ever seen. In fact, she would have asked Isabella if she could paint them but she was terrified of her, and by the end of dinner one of them was also firmly attached to Jonah’s inner thigh. She spoke with a barely perceptible lisp, and the day after the dinner party she and Jonah had flown to her grandmother’s avocado plantation in Venezuela to get to know one another better, and possibly to throw things at one another. The avocados must have provided ample and ready ammunition, Kate imagined.