The Look of Love (13 page)

He perched on the edge of Alex’s lounger and Alex sighed and moved his bare feet out of the way.

‘Like I said, ask her,’ Alex repeated. ‘She’s gone to a meeting. Work, maybe? I don’t know. She goes out. Gran’s out too. Moll’s at school. I’m …’ he indicated the book. ‘I was just reading. Do you want some tea or something?’

‘Oh … right, sorry. Getting ahead for next term, are you? Good, good. OK, you just carry on. I’ll, er …’ He stood up and started to back towards the house, deadheading a couple of antirrhinums on the way.

‘Oh, are you going? Why don’t you stay for a bit?’ Alex called. ‘You sure you don’t want a drink or something?’

‘No, no, don’t disturb yourself. I know you’re not yet
used to me being back in your life in this face-to-face way. I’ll see myself out. I just had something to talk to Bella about, that’s all. I’ll see you in a day or two, next week maybe.’

Alex got up and followed him back in. ‘Well actually no, you won’t. I’m off to France in a couple of days, with Ben and Mick. Surfing for a while, then back to Oxford.’

‘Ah – are you? You see,’ James clicked his fingers, ‘I told Bella you’d practically left home!’

Alex looked puzzled. ‘Not quite. Uni’s only thirty weeks in the year. And this’ll only be my second year.’

‘Yes, but it’s not for long, in the scheme of things,’ James argued. ‘So who’ll be here while you’re away, keeping an eye on this lot?’ He indicated the crew, who had joined Nick and were now taking the doors off the cupboards. ‘Do you think I should move back in? They could do any amount of damage.’

Carpenter Nick frowned at him. ‘We are here, you know,’ he muttered.

James glared. ‘I can see that. I can see very untidy evidence of your presence. There’s dust everywhere. This is my …’

‘Dad! Leave it, please. Mum’s got it covered.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ James told him. ‘All this
malarkey
. It’s just all disruption and mess. Now come on Alex, be honest, wouldn’t you rather move to
somewhere a bit less
rambling
? Somewhere smart and clean and fresh?’

‘Not really.’ Alex looked vague. ‘Hadn’t thought about it. Why?’

‘Bella hasn’t said anything?’

‘About?’

‘Selling the house? Downsizing? Freeing up capital?’

‘No. Should she’ve?’

‘She could have raised the matter with you, yes. We’ve talked about it.’ He ran his hands through his hair and sighed.

Alex shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and shrugged. ‘Hasn’t said a word not to me, anyway. Sorry.’

‘OK, OK, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I did hope she might have run it up the family flagpole by now. Never mind. Look, tell her I was here. And tell her … Actually, no don’t. I’ll connect ear to ear with her later. Enjoy the surf, Alex, and be careful.’ He went to leave but having opened the front door, changed his mind and came back. ‘Alex, while I’m here, do you know where there’s a spare front-door key for here? I seem to have mislaid mine – left it in Scotland I expect.’

Alex hesitated. ‘Er, well I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to be funny, Dad, but you haven’t had a key for here for years.’

‘I know,’ James laughed. ‘But that’s only because I wasn’t in the area. It would save a lot of hassle, now I’m back.’

‘Does Mum say it’s OK?’

‘Oh don’t worry about Bella, it won’t be a problem. We’ve got a few loose legal ends to tie up and it would be very handy. Most of the relevant paperwork is here, that’s all. I know what she’s like … it’ll still be in the desk in the sitting room, where it’s always been.’

Alex opened one of the few remaining kitchen drawers. ‘OK, here you are, then. Don’t lose this one or she’ll blame me.’

James pocketed the key and made a swift exit, leaving Alex with the scenery crew. Nick looked at him and grinned. ‘
Connect ear to ear
?’ he commented.

Soho again. Twice in one week. Bella swung along the hot and dusty pavement feeling cheerful and cosmopolitan. Her hair was freshly washed and glossy and it tickled warm and soft against her neck. Better yet, her seven-shades-whiter teeth gleamed their full money’s worth and seemed to have stopped being attacked by random jangling electric sparks. She managed to get past the fabric shops of Berwick Street without going inside to drool over magically coloured silks and, sidestepping cabbage leaves blown down from the market stalls, turned up a cool shady alleyway to find the address Saul had given her.

The apprehension was mounting, as if this was an interview for a job she desperately needed. This was not
the case at all – at the worst she could simply say, oh well that could have been fun, but didn’t look like it was going to be, and walk away. But then there was Saul; she didn’t want to let him down. Wasn’t that always the way? When you thought you had all the choices on your side and that opting out was a real possibility, you ended up feeling responsible for someone else’s project going right. She tried telling herself it was nothing to do with her, that if she didn’t do it or lend them her house (though it was a bit late on that score – by tonight half her kitchen infrastructure would be on its way to a storage lock-up somewhere, not to mention that in her head the location fee had become an essential income component), then they’d find someone else. Never mind that Saul had such a friendly manner and such appealing grey-blue eyes. So, if you thought like that, did Jules’s spaniel.

She found the pink door Saul had told her to look for, almost hidden under a thick tangle of honeysuckle that seemed far too rampant to be growing in a pot, and rang the bell.

‘Come on up, Bella!’ Saul called to her from an open window above. She was conscious for a second only of the scent of honeysuckle, lush and heady between his smile and hers; she quickly pushed the door open and climbed a broad wooden staircase that had been painted to look like a floral carpet runner, with the kind
of design that you saw in unmodernized pubs. The practical side of her wondered why anyone would go to so much trouble when it would have been so much easier simply to put down real carpet, but she decided it must be an ironic design statement, the sort to be expected among visual media folk. Even with magazines she’d worked for, the art department had been very separate from where the copy was produced – a remote enclave with specialized computers and an exclusive and mysterious vocabulary. Those who worked in there dressed more wackily too: engagingly art-school.

‘Bella! It’s so good to see you.’ Saul greeted her at his office door and kissed her lightly. The scent of the honeysuckle was still all around him. The room was the full depth of the building, very light with big windows and painted deep pink. The walls were hung with framed black and white photos of half-built structures. Some were famous – Brunel’s Tamar bridge was there; so were Canary Wharf and the Empire State Building, but many were identifiably film sets – all works in progress. He must have a thing for scaffolding.

‘Let me introduce you to Daisy and Dominic,’ Saul said, indicating a couple across the room sitting at a blue glass circular table. ‘This is Bella – one of your victims and in a way, our hostess – in terms of the set, anyway.’

Dominic stood up to greet her. He nodded at her in a friendly enough way but didn’t actually speak. He was forty-something, tall and skinny to the point of possibly questionable health, wearing black from head to foot (apart from a silver leather belt), which set off hair that must have been modelled on Nicky Clarke’s, being long, lion-blond and perfectly blow-dried to give an impression of far more volume than was actual. Bella could see little shines of pink scalp here and there, and found it endearing. His smile, which was so crooked you could almost call it diagonal, dazzled – more tooth-whitening, for sure – but his face was crazed with smoker’s lines, which unfairly managed to make him look rugged rather than ragged.

‘And this is Daisy.’ Daisy remained seated but put out a thin, fragile-looking hand with perfectly oval nails painted deep dark red, just as Charlotte’s had been a few days before.

Daisy was a dramatic and slightly alarming sight. She was wearing purple-framed sunglasses, the biggest Bella had ever seen, and her mid-length blue-black hair was scraped back into a ponytail and secured with a circlet of pink feathers and purple ribbons. But it was what she was wearing that confused Bella. It seemed to be an oversized orange towelling bathrobe, in which Daisy looked tiny and terribly frail for a woman who might not (and it was hard to tell when you couldn’t see
someone’s eyes) be any more than late thirties. Bella smiled and said hello in the kind of softly sympathetic voice suitable for invalids, then looked at Saul, half expecting him to explain that Daisy wasn’t feeling terribly well, perhaps had been staying overnight … where? Possibly an apartment upstairs? And that she hadn’t got dressed because she was feeling a bit feverish and certain she was coming down with flu, so would be going straight back to bed after putting in a few aspirin-fuelled minutes at this meeting. But then if you had flu, you probably wouldn’t wear that much near-black lipstick. It certainly wouldn’t make you feel better if you accidentally looked in the mirror.

‘Hello Bella, nice to meet you,’ Daisy said in a rather flat voice. Only half a smile. Bella felt immediately that she’d disappointed, somewhat. Was it to do with her last-minute Jigsaw-sale dress? Was mauvey-grey silk (sprinkled with blue and cream flowers) all wrong? And the taupe gladiator-type sandals – they must be unforgivably last-summer to a woman who dressed the nation’s style icons and probably possessed enough inside knowledge to predict exactly what the world would be wearing four years from now.

‘OK, well now you’re here, Bella, and it’s so close to lunchtime,’ Saul was saying, looking at his watch, ‘I thought we might go out and have something to eat. There’s a little bistro just round the corner, very relaxed.
We could get to know each other over some wine and a bit of lunch. Is that all right with you?’

Bella gulped. Ah … she hadn’t thought of that. This could be tricky. But his smile looked almost boyishly hopeful and she wasn’t going to be impolite by refusing. She would just have to do her best with whatever the menu offered and besides, she was quite hungry.

To her surprise, the wan-looking Daisy was coming too. Bella almost asked her if she wouldn’t rather be going back to bed instead, feeling concerned for her as you would for a listless, over-pale child, but Daisy got up, briskly tightened her orange tie-belt and gathered up her huge floppy handbag, which, combined with the robe, only added to the impression that she was a little girl playing dressing-up in her mother’s clothes.

‘Oh great, let’s go. I’m starving!’ Daisy announced, trip-trapping swiftly towards the doorway on the highest heels Bella had ever seen. Bella wasn’t a shoe expert, but even she recognized the signature scarlet sole of Louboutin. Daisy was quite a small woman – how she had feet long enough to cope with a six-inch heel was one of those questions that could keep a woman awake at night. Bella, following her down the clanky wooden stairs, could feel one of her ‘I Really Don’t Get …’ columns coming on. More than that, she was also curious about the big orange coat-thing. From her
vantage point close behind Daisy, she could now see it wasn’t actually made of towelling but of something cleverly woven to look like it. It was presumably one of fashion’s deep mysteries, to which she hoped soon to become privy.

The restaurant wasn’t busy. The waiter led them through to a courtyard at the back where there were several sun-speckled tables under a vine-swathed pergola. Fat bunches of blue-black grapes hung over them, giving an impression of somewhere far more exotic than dusty central London. In a sunny corner, wide-open blue trumpets of morning glory twined up a trellis, and maroon nasturtiums tumbled from boxes halfway up the walls.

‘Oh this is pretty! We could be in Italy,’ Bella said. Saul looked pleased at her approval. ‘Exactly – that’s why I love it here,’ he told her. ‘It’s like a tiny escape from London without the hassle of travel. No airports, no queues, no screamy children.’

‘I know – by the time you get on the plane you wonder why you bothered,’ Bella agreed. ‘And … not really related to children, where’s Fliss? Has she got a day off?’

‘Having a duvet day,’ Daisy snarled. ‘Lazy infant. Says she’s got a migraine but my money’s on a hangover.’

‘Come on now Daisy, she’s put in the hours. Don’t begrudge her a sickie for once,’ Saul told her.

The waiter brought menus and offered drinks. Bella asked for a spritzer, feeling the need for something long and cool for the hot day.

‘White wine for me,’ Daisy requested. ‘With a separate glass of ice, please.’ She still hadn’t taken off her sunglasses, and Bella was very curious about what lay behind them. It was hard to feel she could even begin to get to know someone who was resolutely hidden. And wasn’t it rather rude, too, to be so determinedly keeping the eye contact this one-sided?

‘Interesting coat,’ Bella ventured. Well, it was a start.

‘Oh, you like it? Dries. Next season’s. This was a runway model, from the show.’

‘She’d like you to think they practically paid her to wear it.’ These were the first words Bella had heard from Dominic. She’d begun to wonder if he had a voice at all. ‘Truth was,’ he leaned closer, his sardonic smile reminding her of a pleased cat, ‘a model threw up on it – God knows how, it’s not as if the poor darlings eat anything, but only Daisy here wasn’t too squeamish to take it off their hands and give it a wash.’

‘Enough, Dom; it’s worth thousands. What’s a bit of puke at that price?’ Daisy’s smile was even more alarming than Dominic’s. Pretty, Bella thought, admiring more gleaming teeth, but frightening in the same way as a vampire in a movie in the first revelation of fangs.

‘Personally I think it looks like a bathrobe,’ he sniffed. ‘Don’t you, Bella?’

Bella wasn’t sure what to say. The honest answer would be yes, but she didn’t yet know these people well enough to say so.

‘But a
Dries Van Noten
bathrobe, darlings!’ Daisy put him right. ‘You’ll see Cheryl in one before Christmas, trust me. But after that, it’ll filter down.’ She went back to studying the menu, leaving Bella with the certain knowledge that ‘filtering down’ spelled the end of all interest for any item of clothing.