Meanwhile, however, somebody had to do something before Izzy and Kat came to real blows. Taking his car keys from his pocket, he said, ‘Vivienne, take Kat back to the flat.’
‘Andrew’s flat?’ Gina intercepted in cutting tones. ‘Won’t it be a little crowded?’
‘Stop it.’ Sam quelled her with a look, then turned to address Tash. ‘Maybe you should leave us to sort this out.’
Two things intrigued Tash. Firstly, Sam Sheridan clearly wasn’t too impressed by the fact that he had arrived here with Izzy, making him wonder whether there might not have been something undercover going on between the two of them until very recently. The set-up in this house, he reflected daily, was downright
complicated
.
As for the other item of interest . . .
‘I was just leaving,’ he drawled, unable to resist the opportunity to say what had apparently not yet occurred to anyone else. Stepping towards Izzy, he kissed her briefly on the mouth. ‘Give me a call tomorrow and let me know what you decide.’
Distracted and confused, she said, ‘Decide about what?’ ‘The deal.’ Carefully, he pushed a strand of dark hair away from her cheek. ‘You signed a contract with Stellar this afternoon, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to go ahead with it now.’
Izzy was still puzzled. What on earth did that have to do with Andrew Lawrence?
‘Your daughter,’ explained Tash with a brief, sardonic look in Simon’s direction. ‘And those touching lyrics of hers. I think we can safely assume, in the light of all this, that she wasn’t dreaming of old Roy of the Rovers here when she wrote “Never, Never”.’
Chapter 33
‘You can stay here with us,’ Sam told Katerina the following morning. Having slipped out of the flat at eight-thirty and returned half an hour later with a copy of
Loot
, her black coffee had grown cold beside her as she proceeded to study and circle the small ads. Pale, gripped with determination and refusing to even discuss yesterday’s calamitous showdown, she now chewed the top of her felt-tipped pen and shook her head.
‘Of course I can’t stay. You’re the good guys and I’m the social leper. Don’t worry, I’ll find something in no time.’
‘A rat-infested hovel,’ Vivienne put in, helping herself to a slice of the toast which Sam had made for Katerina, and which hadn’t even been touched. ‘Honey, you can’t do that. How will you
live
?’
Hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, Katerina shrugged. ‘I’ll get a job.’
Sam had already offered her money and been politely but firmly turned down. She was every bit as stubborn as her mother, he thought with a trace of despair; the only difference was that Izzy would have pocketed the loan without even blinking.
‘Let me phone Izzy,’ urged Vivienne, through a mouthful of toast. ‘Look, she was upset last night - she’ll be over that now. Oh please, let me call her.’
‘No.’ Bleakly, Katerina recalled the terrible things they had said to each other . . . the slap on the cheek . . . Izzy’s reaction when she realised that ‘Never, Never’ had been written not for Simon, but for Andrew . . . ‘I don’t want to see her. I
won’t
speak to her.’
Vivienne gazed at the girl before her, dressed in an olive-green T-shirt and white shorts and with her long brown legs tucked beneath her on the chair. Until yesterday, she had envied Izzy her easy, uncomplicated relationship with her daughter. Now she couldn’t even begin to imagine what her friend might be going through. ‘Sweetheart, your mom loves you. She’s
worried
about you.’
‘Bullshit.’ Katerina didn’t look up. Dangerously close to tears once more, she said, ‘Do you think I haven’t worried about
her
? I’ve supported my mother all my life. This is the very first time I’ve
ever
needed her to support me . . . and she didn’t. She’s let me down and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for that. She hates me for what I’ve done and I hate her back. From now on, she can do what she likes with her stupid men and her stupid music. I don’t care any more what kind of a mess she makes of it all.’
‘Forget Izzy for the moment,’ countered Sam, deciding to risk another outburst. Personally, he thought Andrew deserved castration at the very least. ‘What about you and Andrew?’
This time Katerina did look up. He saw the sadness in her eyes, and the determined line of her mouth. ‘That’s what makes it so ironic,’ she replied bitterly. ‘I really had finished with him . . . put it all behind me. But now that all this has happened, I may as well carry on seeing him after all.’
‘Kat, get back into the car.You aren’t even going to
look
at this one.’
It was three-thirty in the afternoon and Sam was beginning to lose patience. Katerina’s search for a bedsitter had led them from one unbelievably dreary address to another and the accommodation on offer had been so sordid he could hardly bear it. Still in a belligerent mood, she had initially been reluctant to allow him to accompany her, but he was bloody glad he had, otherwise the chances were she’d have been raped or murdered by now. Even in daylight the buildings were sinister. And now here they were in the depths of the East End outside 14 Finnegan Street, whose windows were cracked and opaque with grime and whose crumbling front wall was holding up a row of bleary-eyed, bottle-wielding tramps.
‘It’s cheap,’ Katerina replied briefly, ignoring him. ‘I can afford it.’
Sam couldn’t let her go in alone. Locking the car, he put his hand on her shoulder as they approached the front door. ‘Look, you really can’t live in a place like this, temporarily or otherwise. I don’t understand why you won’t let me lend you enough money to rent somewhere decent.’
‘Oh, please.’ Katerina threw him a look of resignation. ‘We’ve been through this before. I happen to know how you feel about lending money to a Van Asch.’
She knocked at the door and read the graffiti sprayed over it. ‘Whoever wrote that can’t spell.’
‘You aren’t Izzy,’ persisted Sam. ‘This isn’t the same thing at all.’
‘Of course it’s the same thing.’ She half-smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be able to pay you back for years.’
‘But that doesn’t matter!’ Exasperated, he reached for her hand. ‘Come on, we’re leaving.There’s no one here.’
As the door began to creak open, an overpowering smell of mould and cats’ pee billowed out to meet them.
‘Just a quick look,’ said Katerina, who had no intention of borrowing so much as a bus fare from Sam Sheridan. ‘Come on.Who knows, it might have hidden depths.’
It didn’t have hidden depths. The depths were all there on display, from the damp-blackened walls to the hideously matted rug only half-covering bare floorboards. The furniture, such as it was, was unbelievably decrepit, the curtains were too small for the filthy window and the only light was provided by a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling.
When the scrawny landlady offered Katerina the room and she in turn accepted, Sam couldn’t even speak. She was doing it deliberately, he now realised, and there was nothing on earth he could do to stop her.
‘Well?’ he drawled, when they were out of the house. ‘Happy now?’
Beneath the calm veneer, Katerina was feeling slightly sick. Nothing seemed real any more. It was as if her body was making the decisions without consulting her brain. Finding work and somewhere to live were just things she had to do.
‘Does it matter?’ she countered with an offhand gesture. ‘At least everyone else will be happy.’
‘Oh yes, delirious.’ Revving the car’s engine and startling the tramps out of their collective stupor, Sam screeched away from the kerb. ‘They’ll all be thrilled, I’m sure, when they find out where you’re going to be living.’
Katerina was gazing abstractedly out of the window. ‘It’s none of their business, anyway,’ she murmured. ‘And it’s been very kind of you, driving me around like this, but my problems aren’t actually anything to do with you, either.’
She was determined to punish herself. More than ever now, Sam longed to confront Andrew and make him realise the extent of the damage he had caused. A mid-life crisis was one thing, he thought irritably, but this was wrecking people’s lives.
In response to his phone call, Izzy had arrived at Sam’s flat at seven o’clock. Judging by her outfit - a new, black-sequinned dress and ludicrously high heels - she wasn’t exactly prostrate with concern for her only daughter.
‘She’s moved into a bedsitter in Stepney and got herself a job in BurgerBest,’ he said shortly. ‘She also tells me she isn’t going to medical school.’
‘So?’ countered Izzy, still boiling with resentment towards him and hating the way he was now trying to make
her
feel like a wayward schoolgirl. ‘What am I supposed to do about it? Kidnap her and lock her up in a cupboard?’
‘How nice to see you taking your parental responsibilities so seriously.’ Sarcasm fuelled his own annoyance. Izzy’s
laissez-faire
attitude might have worked in the past, but it was the last thing Katerina needed right now.
As if she realised this, Izzy’s expression changed. Sinking down on to the arm of the settee, she stopped glaring at him and heaved an enormous sigh. ‘OK, OK, of course I’m not happy about it, but there really isn’t a great deal I can do to stop her. She’s almost eighteen years old and she’s been carrying on an affair with a man old enough to be her father, for heaven’s sake. Maybe a few weeks in a bedsitter will give her time to think it through.’
‘Izzy, this particular bedsitter had to be seen to be believed. It’s a health hazard.’ Handing her a piece of paper, he said, ‘Look, here’s the address.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, refusing to take it. ‘I won’t do that. I’m not going to approve of what Kat’s done.’
‘You’re making a mistake,’ Sam said warningly. ‘She needs you.’
Izzy’s eyes glittered, her temper flaring once more. ‘And you’re her long-lost father figure, I suppose,’ she retaliated, stung by the criticism. ‘Maybe when you’ve brought up a child of your own,
on
your own, I might listen to your brilliant advice. But until then, I’ll do what I - as a parent - think is best. OK?’
He had injured her pride. Too late, Sam realised that if he had urged her to disown Katerina, there was every possibility Izzy would have done the opposite.
‘At least keep the address,’ he said with resignation. ‘And if you should happen to bump into her, try and make her see that she can’t give up her place at medical school.’
Izzy cast him a derisive look. Comments like that only went to prove how little he really knew Katerina. ‘She might have said it, but she didn’t mean it,’ she replied in almost pitying tones. ‘Medicine means more to her than anything. It’s all she’s ever wanted to do.’
‘Cut!’ yelled the director, and with a gurgle of relief Izzy collapsed into Tash’s arms.
‘Ever felt overdressed?’ he drawled, helping her out of the full-length, dark green velvet coat which clung to her damp body.
‘Ever thought of hiring a hit man,’ Izzy countered, ‘to take care of whichever sadist dreamt up this idea?’
The set, upon which part of the video for ‘Never, Never’ was being shot, depicted winter in Moscow. In reality, the first week of August was proving to be the hottest of the summer so far and the temperature had rocketed to 90°F in the shade. Izzy simply couldn’t understand how forty seconds’ worth of video could possibly take seven and a half hours to produce.
‘You’re looking at your watch again,’ Tash observed drily. ‘What’s the problem? Supposed to be meeting your lover?’
It was a month since Izzy had even seen Sam, yet for some peculiar reason Tash continued to suggest that the two of them were indulging in some clandestine affair. At times he only appeared to be half-joking. Frustrated by the fact that - for once - she was innocent of such a crime yet at the same time touched by this evidence of Tash’s own unexpected insecurity, she reached up and kissed the corner of his mouth.
‘I told you this morning,’ she said patiently, aware of the fact that the make-up girl and lighting cameraman were eavesdropping behind them. ‘There’s a house in Wimbledon I’m going to look at. The estate agent’s meeting me there at six.’
‘What d’you want a house for?’ Tash frowned. Over the past weeks, they had spent most of their time together. Nothing had been said . . . no formal arrangements had been made . . . but it had just so happened that a number of Izzy’s clothes had gradually taken over one of his wardrobes. The almond-scented shampoo she always used was propped up on his bathroom shelf next to her toothbrush, and several spare pairs of shoes littered his bedroom floor. ‘What’s wrong with my house?’