The Goddess Rules (9 page)

“I can’t, I have dinner with a friend tonight,” she had said unapologetically. Jonah was sweet and they’d had a perfectly nice time in the hammock, but when you’d been wined and dined and made love to by as many Jonahs as Mirri had, it barely seemed worth putting on your lipstick for. But Jonah, to whose ears such words were music, was charmingly, amusingly persistent. Eventually she gave in because he made her laugh with his outrageous begging.

“No matter what happens to me in the rest of my life, if I don’t get to take you out to dinner tonight and kiss your cheek—just your cheek, by the way—one last time, well, then I’ll die an unfulfilled man. I’ll sit in my armchair smoking my pipe, looking out the window at the age of eighty, and remember the woman I never had,” he had complained down the phone.

“You had me last night.” Mirri had taken a drag on her cigarette and smiled as she wandered around her room, stroked Bébé, and caressed the rug with her toes.

“Ah, but last night I didn’t know that I was going to have you. It wasn’t the same. I need to know beforehand. That way I can commit it to memory and play it over and over again for the rest of my days.”

“Maybe you should just bring a video camera,” Mirri joked.

“You’re so cynical. Don’t you understand that these things are once in a lifetime?” he said, with an edge of humor in his voice. Mirri laughed and resisted telling him that on the contrary, they’d happened many times in her life and she’d forgotten most of them, even the ones that had been videotaped.

“Okay, if you must. I need to eat, I suppose.”

“Darling, you’re so romantic and you make me feel so good about myself.” Jonah laughed loudly. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Okay.” Mirri feigned indifference and was suddenly glad that she’d be seeing him again. She liked to dress up and be flirted with.

“Thank you, by the way,” Jonah said, and hung up.

So now Mirri had to find a headscarf for the evening. She’d find a hairdresser tomorrow. Thankfully she’d been famed for her pioneering fashion in her day, so whatever she wore was seen as a style statement rather the desperate remedy it really was. In fact, she’d been amused yesterday to find herself wandering down Bond Street and noticing the sundresses and capri pants and hot pants of her youth in all the store windows. And she wasn’t wrong in thinking that forty years later she was still influencing what women wore. Even though the world was an entirely different place and she’d been vilified for some of her outfits, now there seemed to be nothing you could do to shock. Which rather disappointed her if she thought about it for too long. No wonder girls like Kate who lived in the shed were so dull. They had nothing to rebel against.

“Tonight you’ll stay at home, my darling,” Mirri said to Bébé as she nuzzled into his neck. “Mummy is going to have a little fun.”

Chapter Seven

Kate’s evening had started out so promisingly. Well, certainly in the respect that she had enjoyed a lovely shower, and the sky had glowed with the pale pink of the setting sun above her. She’d even bothered to slather on a slick of body lotion in case her shins got lucky later and collided with Joss’s caressing hands. To boot she was also doing an admirable job of keeping the memory of Jake at bay. And she wore a very nice, clean denim skirt, a rather neat pink cashmere sweater, and even conceded to some beaded flip-flops instead of her usual sneakers, bearing in mind what Tanya had said about Joss liking his dates on the conservative side. She was doing all she could to promote goodwill.

“Are you going to church?” Leonard had asked when she emerged from her shed carrying a fake Kelly bag that she’d picked up at Camden Market years ago.

“No,” she said quite huffily; she’d been quite impressed with her respectability when she’d checked out her reflection in the glass panes of her shed. “I have a date.” Leonard was sitting with Mirri drinking Pimm’s on the lawn. They had polished off half a pitcher and were smiling inanely at her. Mirri was very done up and was looking Kate up and down with her usual expression of incomprehension.

“Is he a vicar, then?” Leonard grinned cheekily.

“Get lost.” Kate smoothed down her skirt primly and made for Leonard’s glass, which was on the table. She took a slug of Pimm’s and replaced it. “He’s a banker and he likes art and Tanya thinks that we’ll get on like a house on fire. He’s husband material apparently,” Kate informed him.

“Why would you want a husband?” Mirri, whose snooty French gaze Kate had been trying to avoid, asked. “They’re very passé.”

“Because I don’t really want to end up a lonely old woman.” Kate claimed victory for herself.

Mirri was undaunted. “Ah, you need a man to take care of you financially. You just want to marry for money,” she said disingenuously.

“Absolutely not. In fact, in the past
I’ve
been the one to support my boyfriend financially, if you must know.” But Kate instantly regretted saying this when she saw the pitying look on Mirri’s face. And for once she seemed genuine. Kate hurried to sound less pathetic. “What I’m saying is that I’m an independent woman but I still want a husband. I want companionship.”

“I find lovers to be very good companions. And animals and friends, too. But I always found husbands to be the poorest company.” Mirri cast her mind back over the decades and thought how dull her lovers had become as soon as she married them. They suddenly expected her to know where their socks were and what they wanted for dinner. In short, they wanted her to be their mother. “I would never marry again.”

“Well, I intend to choose mine well,” Kate said pointedly.

“I think maybe Kate wants babies,” Leonard, whose face was blushing from the excess of alcohol, blurted out. He was usually much more restrained, but Mirri’s influence seemed to be making him reckless.

“She has years before the babies have to be born,” Mirri said, and pulled a piece of apple from her glass with her fingers. “I just don’t understand why all these young women are interested in is finding husbands and having children. It’s an obsession. My niece in France is the same. It was different when I was young. I had to be married; otherwise I’d have had to live with my parents forever. But now you can live where you like, travel where you like, shave your head, wear no clothes, swim with dolphins, and live in a castle and have babies with your best girlfriends if you want to, but all you all want to do is what my generation fought tooth and nail
not
to do—think about men’s socks and babies’ nappies.” Mirri shook her head.

Kate was silenced for a moment. She couldn’t deny that what the old tart was saying was true. The one thing that kept her awake with knots in her stomach at four o’clock in the morning was the fear that she might never meet a man who would want to marry her. In fact, she’d officially given herself another two years before she dropped her standards. Then she would settle for someone who didn’t excite her as much as Jake. Someone like Joss, for instance.

“Well, I don’t see what’s so wrong with wanting stability,” Kate said and was about to leave when Mirri had the last word.

“Nothing, I suppose.” She sucked a mouthful of her drink through a straw. “Just as long as it’s not at the expense of love. Because that would be stupid. And you may be lots of things, Kate, but you’re not stupid.” Mirri smiled knowingly and Kate thought how beautiful she looked. She understood for a moment how men must feel to be on the receiving end of her attention. Because when she said something even vaguely flattering it made you want to jump up and down with delight.

“Thanks. I think,” Kate said disarmed. “Though I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll be husband material rather than just a shag-on-the-hammock. See you both later.”

“ ’Bye, darling,” Leonard slurred, raising his glass as Kate turned and left.

“She’ll learn.” Mirri smiled to herself. “But she’s got a long way to go.”

Kate had arranged to meet Joss at Brooks. It was a very smart Gentleman’s Club in St. James’s, and she was glad that she’d decided on the conservative route. She put on her best Queen’s English voice for the concierge and smiled like Julie Andrews.

“I’m here to meet Joss Armstrong,” she said.

“Follow me, miss,” the man said without looking at her, but also, rather cleverly, without condescension. That was what was so brilliant about these lovely old English institutions, Kate realized: You really could get away with almost anything because the staff were so unerringly well mannered. Quickie on the sweeping staircase? Not a flicker of interest from the gentlemen in black suits. Leonard was always boasting about the outrageous and debauched behavior that went on in his club. But then Leonard’s club didn’t admit women, so Kate had no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth.

“Kate, hello, lovely to see you.” Joss rose from the chair where he was reading
The Times,
placed his hands carefully on Kate’s shoulders, and kissed each cheek methodically.

“Joss. Hi.” Kate smiled and sat in a leather armchair, carefully tugging her skirt down.

“Well, this is very nice. Would you like a drink?” he asked as he put his newspaper to one side.

“I’d love a G and T,” she said breezily as the waiter mysteriously appeared before them, seemingly out of thin air.

“And I’d love another sparkling mineral water,” Joss added.

“Oh, in which case maybe I’ll just have an orange juice,” Kate chipped in. She always felt like a complete lush ordering a large cocktail when everyone else was on the soft stuff.

“Oh, well, if you like,” Joss agreed hastily. “An orange juice instead of the gin.” The way he said
“the gin”
made Kate glad she’d changed her mind. He made it sound as though she’d just requested three lines of cocaine and a rock star’s bottom to snort it off. Very disapproving.

“So, Kate, how is the painting?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, all over the place. I’m doing a cat. Well, a lion cub actually.”

“And you work in oils, don’t you?” he said grandly, as though she were Vermeer.

“Yeah.” She took the orange juice that the waiter had carefully set down. “I do. And charcoal sometimes. Whatever I’m asked to do, really. I’m a bit of a whore for cash that way.” She laughed lightly. And Joss looked a bit taken aback. He did, though, also look very handsome. He had lovely straw-colored hair, greeny-gray eyes that matched the elegant eau de nil of his silk tie, and a dark gray suit that made him look very authoritative and commanding. He was nicely tall, too, Kate had noted when he stood up. And smelled of citrus. He was definitely not a man you would want to hide behind the sofa whenever your friends came around. And he looked as though he’d also do casual quite well; a well-chosen pair of loafers and a pristine white T-shirt and you’d have yourself a perfect accessory for a weekend in a soft-topped sports car. In short, he was the sort of man you saw in restaurants with beautiful women and wondered where you found such perfect specimens and what otherworldy attributes a woman had to have to attract such perfection. Kate felt happy for a moment. If she played her cards right she might at least have a chance to win him for a weekend. A sort of luxury-break-for-two offer that you might get with a new pair of Armani sunglasses.

“So tell me what you do, Joss.” Kate smiled as she imagined the beautiful woman with perfect attributes might smile. “I know it’s banking, but what exactly?” And he proceeded to tell her. Very little of which Kate understood but it sounded impressive and involved hedge funds and pharmaceutical companies and she knew that far from being a boring job as she’d thought it might be, it was actually fascinating and much, much more demanding and stimulating than splodging paint on canvas for a living whenever the bank demanded it or the mood took you. Eventually they ordered another round of almost-drinks and Kate told Joss all about her love of taxidermy. He seemed a bit squeamish and mistrustful of the idea at first, but eventually she managed to convince him that a dead, stuffed zebra in the bedroom was actually a bit of fun, and not a weird perversion. Well, he was nodding understandingly at least, whatever
that
meant.

“I thought that what we might do next is go to the launch of this magazine around the corner, it’s an arts monthly and some friends of mine run it. Does that appeal to you at all?” Joss asked when Kate had drained her glass and was wondering where their pleasant conversation might meander to after dead animals.

“That sounds great,” Kate said, sitting up a bit too hurriedly. This place was interesting for a while but then she could have sworn that the liver-spotty, yellow-faced old man in the corner had not moved so much as an eyelash for at least forty-five minutes and she suspected he could well have just died. Plus she was dying for a sip of champagne or something on a silver tray with a bit of a kick.

“I’d kill for a proper drink, too,” she said as she pulled her cardigan over her arms, which were getting just a bit goose-bumpy in the cool, dark room.

“Ah, I see,” Joss said and, rather than standing as she’d expected, sank back a bit into the sofa and made a serious steeple of his hands, with his forefingers joined beneath his chin.

“If you know what I mean.” Kate smiled sweetly.

“Well, I do actually. Or rather I did. But all that’s behind me now.” Joss was looking very intently into Kate’s eyes, and she quickly put her handbag back down onto the floor and plastered on her best listening face. Though already she suspected that she wasn’t really going to be delighted by what he was about to say. “You see, Kate, I feel that really, before we go any further, I ought to tell you about something . . .”

Before we go any further,
Kate thought,
What, like down the road to a party? Out of the door? Into a taxi?
She couldn’t imagine how far he was planning to get with her tonight, which might mean that nothing short of complete disclosure of all his deepest, darkest secrets might be necessary. She always imagined that skeletons were only dusted down and brought out of closets when an introduction to the parents or a fortnight’s holiday together were imminent. This seemed very premature to her.

“Well, if you want to . . . ,” Kate said, hoping to stall him. For the look on his face didn’t exactly smack of parties and glitter-balls before dawn. More like Confessions of a Troubled Mind.

“I’m a programmer,” Joss said earnestly. “Do you know what that means?”

“Well, it’s not your job. ’Cause I already know you’re a hedge fund wizard.” Kate laughed a bit.

“It means I’m a recovering alcoholic. It means that I had a very bad drink and drug problem and that before I came here tonight, as I do every night and twice on weekends, I attended a meeting for people like me.” He hadn’t liked Kate’s attempt at wit. Obviously.

“Right,” Kate said, chastened.

“When I was twenty-two I woke up in a gutter in Ibiza with half my hair missing,” Joss said without blinking. “I had been on a six-month binge of cocaine and alcohol, which left my liver in ruins and my life in shreds.”