He had missed her.
Her very presence in the room was making his skin tingle. He had butterflies, and it wasn’t nerves or fear – though they were there too. It was excitement. Every time he breathed in, her scent mingled with the oxygen in the air and hit his bloodstream. She was inside him already, taking possession, like some wraith from the other side. He clenched his hand, superstition making him long for some talisman to give him protection from her power. But he had nothing. All he had to defend himself with was common sense, which told him that the quicker Victoria was out of here the better for everyone.
‘I . . . better go and find Lisa,’ he said weakly.
She smiled, locking her eyes with his, and every molecule in his body crackled.
‘Where shall I wait?’
George panicked. He certainly wasn’t going to let her sit in his office. He knew Victoria only too well – she’d be through the filing cabinets and know his business before he’d even turned his back.
‘Why don’t you sit outside? It’s a lovely day. I’ll bring you coffee.’
‘Just water will be fine.’
He looked at her askance. Victoria was held together by nicotine, alcohol and caffeine.
‘Total detox,’ she said, a little too brightly. ‘My body is now a temple. Apart from the fags, of course. Got to have something to keep body and soul together.’
‘Oh.’ George couldn’t help feeling his reply was insufficient, given the import of what she was saying.
‘I’ve made quite a few changes. I’ve been looking at things. Trying to work out where I went wrong.’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘I must have been hell on wheels to live with. It’s only now, looking back, that I realize what you must have gone through.’
Help, thought George. If she was going to turn fragile and vulnerable, he wouldn’t have a hope. He curled his toes and locked his knees in the battle not to bound over and scoop her up in his arms.
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle,’ he said heartily. ‘No need to feel guilty on my account. It’s all turned out for the best.’
‘Yes.’ She swept her beautiful eyes around the room, her gaze like the arc of a lighthouse beam as she took in her surroundings. ‘The thing is, George . . .’ She dropped her voice a few decibels and he had to strain to hear her. ‘If we can’t come to some arrangement – something that suits all of us, of course – I’m going to have to start proceedings.’
‘Proceedings?’
‘For divorce.’
It was like a punch in the guts. George stood, dumbfounded, as Victoria carried blithely on.
‘I know you don’t own all of this, but I’m guessing by rights that half of what you do own should be mine?’
The witch! She was a total utter witch.
George strode angrily across the sand, his hands in his pockets. In the space of just five minutes, Victoria had aroused a host of conflicting emotions in him. Shock. Panic. Suspicion. Lust. Pity. And finally fear, mixed with a copious dollop of anger now that he was safely out of range.
He felt relief when he saw Lisa. As if his sanity was regained. Lisa was safe. Reliable. Manageable. She was sitting on a rock, her arms wrapped round her knees.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t do married men. It’s one of my golden rules. One I never break.’ She paused for a second. ‘Knowingly, anyway. I should have known you were too good to be true.’
‘It is just a technicality. The fact that we are still married. We just haven’t got round to sorting it out. Because we can never have a conversation that doesn’t end in mud-slinging.’
‘That doesn’t explain why you never told me.’
George clambered on to the rock next to her and sat down.
‘If I didn’t mention Victoria it was as if she never existed. And then she could never destroy us.’
‘Get real.’
The look Lisa gave him was bleak and disdainful. His stomach curdled.
‘Can I tell you about it? Our marriage?’
‘Feel free. Then I’ll tell you about the seventeen illegitimate children I forgot to mention.’
George flinched. Lisa was never sarcastic.
‘I don’t blame you for being angry.’
‘Bloody good thing too!’
She stood up and began bounding over the rocks, towards the sea. George scrambled to his feet and tried to follow her. His shoes were leather-soled and not suitable for leaping over slippery, seaweed-covered surfaces. Eventually she reached a rock pool that was too wide to leap across. She came to a halt. He drew up beside her, panting, and saw there were tears streaming down her face.
‘I feel such a fool. You’re a bloody fraud. And I’ve given up everything . . .’
‘Victoria means nothing. I don’t give her a thought from one day to the next.’
‘You obviously mean something to her. Else why is she here?’
‘Because I’m a soft touch. Or at least she thinks I am.’
‘Has she gone?’
George hesitated.
‘Not yet.’
‘You’ve told her she can stay.’ Lisa’s voice was flat.
‘No. I haven’t. I’ve told her I need to speak to you.’
‘You want my permission? For your ex-wife to move in with us?’
George knew the whole situation was preposterous. And it was largely his fault. If only he’d been straight with Lisa from the start. But it had been so much easier not to mention his past. As each day slipped by and the opportunity for confessions became more and more remote, it had just seemed easier to play the ostrich. How the hell could he have kidded himself? The likes of Victoria never faded obligingly into the background. He looked at the ocean stretching in front of him.
‘I’m going to have to tread very carefully with Victoria,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to need your support. I know I don’t deserve that, in the circumstances. But if you’ll let me explain what we were all about, what happened, you might understand.’
Lisa gave a tiny, reluctant nod. Her curiosity was greater than her pride.
George picked up a nearby shell and lobbed it into the rock pool, before taking a deep breath and plunging straight into his story.
‘I met her five years ago, just after I first moved to Bath. She had her own PR company. She organized a launch party for a development of luxury apartments we’d done. A conversion of an old lunatic asylum.’ He gave a wintry smile.
George was entranced the moment he set eyes on Victoria working the room. She was wearing an emerald-green wrap dress spattered with tiny butterflies and incredibly high heels, in which she walked with the utmost grace. At one point their eyes met. His heart began to beat faster as she glided over to him and, plucking two glasses of champagne from a passing waitress, handed him one.
‘You’re George Chandler. You were the project manager on this. You moved here six months ago, from Bristol,’ she told him, as if he might have forgotten.
George nodded his agreement of her precis. ‘You’ve done your homework.’
‘It’s my job to know exactly who everyone is.’ Then she smiled. A proper smile; not the polite, hostessy rictus she had been wearing all evening, but one which reached her eyes and melted George’s heart. ‘I’m Victoria Snow, in case you haven’t done yours. Come and sit down with me for a moment. The room’s working beautifully – I can take five minutes.’
She led him over to a cluster of armchairs by the window and they sat down.
‘You’ve done a wonderful job,’ George told her.
He wasn’t just being polite – she really had. The room was heaving with local heavyweights. Two well-known faces said to have already signed up for their unit were present – one who played a dashing doctor in a popular television drama, and a jockey who was tipped for the next Grand National. They were surrounded by crowds of sycophants delighted to be in the company of celebrity, however minor.
Victoria smiled her acceptance of his compliment. With her slanting green eyes and her extraordinary cheekbones, she was like Lauren Bacall, decided George. Or Faye Dunaway. She oozed glamour and class and style. Totally unobtainable, he decided. He wasn’t even going to belittle himself by trying. There was bound to be an equally glamorous Mr Snow somewhere.
‘Actually, it’s not hard.’ She was leaning into him confidentially. ‘It’s just a question of spending other people’s money. I’m fantastically good at it.’
‘It’s not though, is it?’ protested George. ‘You’ve put a lot of thought into this. The guest list, the canapés, the freebies – it’s very slick. But seemingly effortless. That takes skill.’
‘Ah,’ she said, tipping her head to one side and smiling at him. ‘You’ve caught me out. I rather prefer people to think I’m a bit of a bimbo. You’re very . . .’ She put a finger to her lips as she sought the right word. ‘Perspicacious.’
She crossed her legs and the emerald-green silk of her dress slithered aside, revealing a perfectly toned, slender thigh encased in a gossamer stocking. George tried desperately hard to look elsewhere, then realized she was laughing at him.
‘What?’ he asked indignantly.
‘What are you doing afterwards?’
He frowned and bit his lip, pretending to give it some serious thought while he played for time.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
She dipped a finger into her champagne and pressed it to his lips, tracing the bubbles over his cupid’s bow with an intense concentration. Then her head darted towards his, swift as an adder, and she kissed the last traces of liquid away. A moment later she was smiling at him.
‘I must go and circulate,’ she pronounced.
And before he could respond, she’d slipped away and lost herself amongst the crowds.
George followed her progress for the rest of the evening, intrigued with her professionalism as she made small talk, introduced people, broke up little cliques and redistributed guests amongst the room, passed drinks and canapés, directed waitresses. He could see her eyes didn’t miss anything. Dirty glasses weren’t left for more than a moment. Drinks were replenished. Each guest was made to feel as important as the next.
As the guests started dwindling away, he sidled up to his boss.
‘Tell me about Victoria Snow.’
Richard looked at him sharply. His lips thinned.
‘Crazy, fucked-up, alcoholic nympho spendthrift.’
‘Oh,’ said George, somewhat nonplussed.
‘Think Paula Yates meets Imelda Marcos with a bit of Sue Ellen Ewing thrown in. Don’t go there.’
George watched Victoria across the room, unable to equate the person being described with what he saw.
‘She’s done a very good job here,’ he protested. ‘People are actually looking at the plans. They never usually do at these launches. They usually guzzle as much free wine as they can and bugger off.’
‘Yeah, well – you haven’t seen her bill.’
‘I’d say it was worth every penny.’
Richard gave an infuriating, knowing smile.
‘She does great PR. But her personal life is a disaster area. Trust me. I’ve seen the fallout.’
‘Maybe she hasn’t met the right person.’
Richard raised a sardonic eyebrow.
‘And you think you might be?’
George gave a non-committal shrug. Richard shook his head.
‘Trust me, George. She’s virtually certifiable, if her reputation is anything to go by.’
‘I’ve never been one to listen to tittle-tattle.’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
George took Richard’s doom-laden warning as a challenge. As the crowds thinned out, he wandered over to her.
‘Dinner?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you,’ she answered politely, and his heart sank. Then she gave him a mischievous smile. ‘I don’t like eating. I think it’s thoroughly overrated. What I would really love is a nice bottle of vintage champagne somewhere with comfy sofas where I can kick these ridiculous shoes off and not have to be polite for a minute longer.’
George assessed the alternatives as quickly as he could. He knew he had a couple of bottles of Veuve in the fridge – not vintage, but he didn’t think she was really going to quibble. He certainly had comfy sofas and she could take off as many items of clothing as she liked . . . He stopped himself. Inviting her home was going far, far too fast.
‘I can arrange that, no problem.’ He hoped he didn’t sound too smooth. He didn’t want to come across as smarmy. ‘You finish up here and I’ll bring my car round to the front.’
Less than an hour later they were ensconced by the fire in the drawing room of the Queensberry Hotel, a champagneladen ice bucket on the table between them, and Victoria’s L.K. Bennett mules carelessly thrown to one side. George, who’d never fallen head over heels in love in his life, found his hand shaking slightly as he poured out the bubbles, wondering wildly if he had any chance whatsoever with this creature. She was an extraordinary mixture of wanton and controlled – her drawl was so measured, her body language was languid, yet every now and then her eyes would flash with wickedness.
‘Before we go any further,’ she confided, ‘you should know I’ve got baggage.’
Visions of a set of Louis Vuitton suitcases flashed into George’s head.
‘Baggage?’ he echoed, rather stupidly.
‘She’s called Mimi, short for Miranda, and she’s the result of too many Cinzanos at a school dance. And me thinking that single motherhood was preferable to doing my A levels. In my typical misguided, pigheaded, I-know-best-even-though-I’m-only-seventeen fashion.’
George still looked slightly blank.
‘I’ve got a daughter,’ Victoria explained patiently. ‘A twelve-year-old daughter.’
‘Is that a problem?’
Victoria sighed.
‘It is for most men.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not a free agent. I have to think twice before I go out or go away anywhere. Because I have to look after her, ferry her round, feed her, deal with her problems, do her homework – basically put her first. And most blokes can’t handle that. They like to come first.’
‘They must be very selfish. I don’t think I’d have a problem with it.’
‘Ah. That’s what they all say to begin with.’
George felt wounded. He wasn’t that shallow. He wasn’t going to be lumped in with all the superficial, self-centred men that Victoria had dated up until now. Clearly, this was some sort of test. He decided to rise to the challenge.
‘OK. For our first date, we’ll go ice skating. You, me and Mimi.’