In the Name of Love (10 page)

His friends were already at the restaurant and engrossed in conversation. Felipe watched them for a moment as the waiter took his jacket. They looked so happy and so very much in love, even after five years of marriage. Felipe felt a stab of longing as he remembered how good it had felt being with Charlie. Mariana caught sight of him and waved enthusiastically. She was a beautiful woman, who bore a striking resemblance to Penelope Cruz with her rich brown eyes, curvaceous figure and luxuriant jet black hair, but Felipe had always seen her as a friend, which was just as well as the usually mild Luis would have killed him if he had ever made a move on her.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise what the time was,’ Felipe said after they had all kissed each other in greeting.

‘I expect you were thinking about Charlie.’ Mariana winked at him. ‘I want to hear all about this English beauty.’

It was typical that Luis had told her what had gone on; he was incapable of keeping anything secret from his wife. Felipe rolled his eyes, but couldn’t be annoyed.

‘She is certainly beautiful’ – he paused – ‘on the outside. You can judge how beautiful she is on the inside when you read what she has to say about me.’

Luis looked at Mariana as if warning her not to say anything, but she leant forward and put her hand affectionately on Felipe’s arm. ‘Have you considered
that
you might have got this all wrong, and that Charlie is not and never was going to write a story about you? I know you believe that you are the centre of the universe, but really it is entirely possible that she had absolutely no idea who you were!’ She held up her phone. ‘This doesn’t look like the kind of woman who would write a kiss-and-tell.’

It was Charlie’s publicity picture for her TV channel. She was smiling, and looked every inch the glossy, professional presenter: confident, in charge, in control.

‘No, she doesn’t, but what is she supposed to look like? Now, please, I know you enjoy talking about my love life because you are married and boring and have no excitement any more, but can we stop and order something to eat? I’m starving.’

Conversation turned to the financial state of his equestrian centre. As well as having a string of his own horses, Felipe and his team of riding protégés trained and competed on ten horses belonging to wealthy clients, who owned them as an investment and for the prestige. Felipe also bred horses and provided a livery for a further ten animals whose owners rode them in competitions. He had built the centre up from nothing and its reputation and renown had grown alongside his success as an event rider.

But the economic downturn was having an impact on even his very wealthy clients and he had just lost two who had been forced to sell their horses. If things didn’t improve he would have to ask his mother for another loan, and he didn’t want to do that. It was a depressing sign of the times and usually Felipe would
have
had plenty to say on the subject but tonight he couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts kept drifting back to Charlie.

He wondered what she was doing now. The UK was an hour behind. Was she out with friends in London? Or with another man? Was she at home? Alone? Or with someone else? Was she thinking about him? He remembered the look of sheer incomprehension and shock on her face as he had laid into her about lying to him. He had said some terrible things to her. Was it possible that she hadn’t set out to deceive him, as Mariana suggested? But then why else would she have lied about what she did?

Mariana clicked her fingers in front of his face to get his attention. ‘You are miles away, Felipe. Maybe skinny dipping on a deserted beach in the moonlight? Or caressing your lover with ice-cold strawberries and licking champagne off her toned stomach?’ She gave a cheeky grin. Luis really did tell Marina everything …

‘And can I say that I entirely approve? I know Charlie is younger than you, and I like to promote the older woman in a relationship.’ Mariana was five years older than Luis. ‘But she sounded more than a match for you.’

Felipe shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mariana, but nothing is going to happen between Charlie and me. Really, it would be for the best for this story to come out and then I could deal with it and forget all about her. It’s just the waiting that is distracting me.’

‘Just the waiting?’ Mariana teased. ‘Not all those delicious memories?’

‘Just the waiting,’ he repeated firmly.

A phrase which rang especially hollow at 2 a.m. when he was unable to sleep and found himself at his computer, studying all the images of Charlie Porter he could find and then looking once more at the photographs he had taken of her. He couldn’t bring himself to delete them. Deep down he felt that he and Charlie had experienced a once-in-a-lifetime connection, and although he tried to tell himself that it never could have worked because of her riding phobia, he didn’t believe that.

Charlie overslept the following morning and as a result it was a mad dash to get ready. She was about to race out of the door when she remembered the post and ran into the living room to shove it in her bag, figuring she would go through it on the train. She only just made it in time and leapt on the train with two minutes to spare. She intended to use the journey to catch up on the sports news, and pulled out her laptop. The three other passengers already had their laptops out as well and it was a tight squeeze to fit hers on the table.

‘It’s like a laptop stand off,’ she joked, raising a flicker of a smile from the businessman opposite her, nothing from the young woman next to him or the lad with headphones on beside her.

Before she got down to work she flicked through the post in her bag. There was a depressing number of
bills
which she ignored. But when she came to a cream envelope with a handwritten address she opened it and pulled out what seemed to be a photograph. She turned it over and saw with a shock that it was one of her publicity photos for the TV channel, and that someone had scrawled
Bitch, you don’t deserve this job
in black marker pen across her face. For a few seconds she stared at it, stunned that someone could be so nasty about her.

Then she shoved the photo back into the envelope. She was sure that people had written horrible things about her before, but those letters would have gone direct to the TV studio and been dealt with before they got to her. The studio wouldn’t give out any personal details, so how had this person known where she lived? Had they followed her? Charlie felt a flicker of fear at the thought. She was about to get up and throw the letter in the bin, and then on second thoughts decided to hold on to it in case she received any others. It might be evidence. She, like all the presenters, had her own Twitter account, and there had been the odd snide comment before about her looks getting her to where she was. But someone else always posted a positive reply, making the hater look small. This comment felt like a personal attack.

She switched on her laptop and her hands shook slightly as she checked out the sports news pages and blogs. But Charlie was a fighter and it wasn’t long before fear was replaced by anger. How dare someone write such a thing? She bloody well did deserve her TV job. She had worked her arse off for it!

She had always loved sport, and had wanted to be a sports presenter since she’d started her GCSEs, telling every careers teacher that it was her dream and ignoring them when they suggested she might be aiming too high, that those jobs were few and far between, and hadn’t she better concentrate on working behind the scenes? She’d confounded their expectations by getting a place at Manchester University to study Broadcast Journalism and finishing up with a 2:1. After uni she had worked as a runner – which basically meant earning practically nothing and being treated like a complete dogsbody, for six months, then landed a job as a researcher on a morning TV show for two years – better pay but she was still treated like a dogsbody and worked flat out. She was seriously beginning to doubt that she would ever make it as a presenter, but then Zoe had sent her friend’s showreel off to Total Sport without telling her and they were so impressed that they invited Charlie to come in for a screen test. They’d offered her a job on the spot. It was an amazing break but it hadn’t been a lucky fluke; it was what Charlie had worked towards for the last six years. The person who had sent the photo was jealous and bitter.

Charlie was still seething about it when the train drew in to Manchester Piccadilly station, but managed to file it away when she saw her dad, Ray, waiting patiently for her beyond the ticket barrier. She’d told him that she would get a taxi, but it was typical of him to want to pick her up himself. At well over six foot tall he stood out as easily the most stylishly dressed man on the platform, in a navy overcoat and trilby. He liked dressing well when he wasn’t working.

‘Dad!’ she called out, thrilled to see him, then threw her arms around him. Now she worked in London she didn’t get to see as much of her parents as she would have liked.

‘How is my star daughter?’ he asked, hugging her back. ‘Prepare yourself but I don’t have a Roller waiting outside, it’s at the garage. You’ll have to make do with the Ford Mondeo. But it’ll be good for you to see how us non-celebs live. There’s no complimentary champagne or fancy canapés either, but you could share my Dr Pepper and packet of Twiglets, if you play your cards right.’

Charlie knew she shouldn’t have mentioned the Rolls-Royce that had transported her and Zoe to and from the airport; her dad was never going to let her live it down. He was always on the alert for anything she said that seemed to flaunt her newfound TV success, and when he detected something, he would invariably tease her, so that she didn’t, as he said, ‘forget her roots’.

Her parents lived in Chorlton, a few miles out of the city centre, in a Victorian terrace. They had worked hard to give Charlie and her brother the things they themselves never had as kids, both coming from relatively poor backgrounds, especially her mum. Ray worked as a plumber – the world’s nicest plumber, Charlie was always teasing him. He would regularly undercharge pensioners or single mums, which was probably why they still lived in the terrace and not in a large house like some of his contemporaries. Her mum worked at the Clinique counter at John Lewis’s in the Trafford Centre in Manchester. Lori could sell
anything
to anyone. Really she was wasted in cosmetics, she should have been working for Sir Alan Sugar. She had the gift of the gab.

They chatted all the way back to the house, catching up on each other’s news. But when Charlie asked how her brother was, conversation ground to a halt. Her dad frowned. He had been devastated when Kris was sent to prison, and would only go and visit him if Lori pushed him into it. He found it impossible to comprehend how his son, the boy on whom he had lavished so much love and attention, and who’d had all the advantages that Ray himself hadn’t, had ended up in such a mess. He blamed Kris and he blamed himself.

‘Out in another two months, and then God knows.’

‘Oh, Dad, I’m sure he’ll be okay. It sounds like such a cliché but he’s learnt his lesson.’

‘Has he? Here’s another cliché for you: only time will tell.’

‘I’m going to see him tomorrow with Mum. Will you come too?’

Her dad shook his head. ‘I’m working.’ He sounded hard, totally unlike his usual easygoing self.

Ray pulled up outside the house, then turned to Charlie. ‘Come on, don’t let’s upset your mum by talking about your brother.’

‘Sure,’ she replied. She wanted to tell her dad to let it go, to forgive Kris, but she knew it had to come from him.

Her mum had seen them pull up and had already opened the front door. At forty-six, Lori could easily have passed for someone ten years younger. She had
a
knock-out figure, an exceptionally pretty face with the same striking green eyes as Charlie, and long blonde highlighted hair, which she refused to have cut just because she was over forty. ‘Do Madonna, Courtney Cox or Elle Macpherson have short hair?’ she was fond of saying, adding, ‘I’m not getting old without a fight! The hair stays, and if it falls out, I’ll get a wig. I’d rather be mutton than mumsy.’

‘So good to see you!’ Lori exclaimed, hugging Charlie tightly. She breathed in the familiar scent of her mum’s perfume, Clinique’s Happy mixed in with fabric conditioner. Now she knew she was home.

Home. The place where she had always felt so secure and loved, where she could drop her guard. Charlie loved her TV job, but boy, it was tough sometimes. She could never have an off day, always had to be on top form, aware of how many other women wanted to step into her shoes … At home she could let go, relax.

Lori had made one of her legendary roasted Mediterranean vegetable
lasagne
and they sat round the kitchen table eating, chatting and drinking wine. They were halfway through the meal when she exclaimed, ‘By the way, who was that gorgeous man in your holiday photos? He looked like a male model.’

Shit!
Charlie hadn’t realised she had posted a picture of Felipe.

‘Er, not sure who you mean,’ she blustered, not fooling anyone.

Lori reached for her laptop and clicked on to Charlie’s photos. Sure enough, there was a picture of Felipe and Charlie standing on the beach, talking to
each
other. It was one of Zoe’s more artistic shots, taken when Charlie hadn’t realised they were being photographed. Felipe had his arms round her waist, holding her close to him. They certainly looked more than good friends; they looked like lovers, with eyes only for each other.

‘Oh, him,’ she muttered.

Her mum looked at her expectantly and Charlie knew she would never get away with not saying anything – her mum had ways of making her talk … ‘He’s called Felipe, and he lives in Spain so I’m not likely to see him again.’

‘Loads of cheap flights to Spain,’ Lori persisted. ‘You could go for the weekend.’

‘I often work at weekends, remember?’

‘Not
every
weekend.’

Charlie sighed; she would have to ’fess up. ‘Actually, Mum, I’m never going to see him again.’ And she went on to tell them about Felipe believing that she was a journalist about to sell a story on him.