‘You don’t look much like your pictures.’
‘There’s a good reason for that.’ Mimi ran her fingers through her hair nervously. ‘They’re not of me. But I knew you wouldn’t see me otherwise.’
Tony scowled.
‘Are you messing me about?’ he demanded. ‘I can’t get you work. You haven’t got the figure. Or the looks.’
He saw Mimi flinch.
‘I know I haven’t,’ she said angrily. ‘I’m not stupid.’
Tony looked uncharacteristically chastened.
‘Sorry, love. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you won’t believe the birds I get in here who think they’re God’s gift to the camera. You’re cute looking, but you’re not right for glamour.’
‘Let’s get things straight. I wouldn’t take my top off for you if I was starving.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘I want to talk to you about Lisa Jones.’
‘Lisa?’ A dark cloud flitted over his face. ‘Has she sent you?’
‘No.’ Mimi put her head to one side and smiled right at him. ‘Far from it. If she thought I was here, she’d be very worried. Very worried indeed.’
She left half an hour later with exactly what she needed. It was a shame. She liked Lisa. She really did. But she had to go. Lisa didn’t need George. Not like her mum did.
Victoria was trying so hard. Mimi felt proud of her. She knew she was struggling to control her drinking. She might not actually be a card-carrying alcoholic, but she rarely used to wait for the sun to be over the yardarm before hitting the Oyster Bay big time. Mimi knew she’d cut down to just the occasional glass of wine since she’d arrived at The Rocks, mainly because when she got drunk she lost the plot and alienated people. She also knew Victoria was working her socks off to pay George back for his kindness, putting more effort into the design of their brochures and menus, their logo, their overall corporate image, than she’d ever done with any other client.
And she knew how much it hurt Victoria to see George and Lisa together. She knew because she’d heard her sobbing into her pillow late at night.
‘I’ve been a fool and I’ve got everything I deserve,’ she told Mimi, but Mimi wasn’t going to stand by and watch her go under.
Mimi was under no illusions about her mother’s short-comings. She knew Victoria was spoilt and manipulative. Not to mention vain and utterly crap with money. Yes, she had any number of faults. But Mimi loved her mother and was fiercely protective of her. She might be the first to criticize her, but she wouldn’t stand by and let anyone else run her down. And she was shocked to see how little fight Victoria had left in her. She’d lost all her confidence. She was, Mimi sensed, petrified of a future without money, without a roof over their heads. Without a man.
Victoria hadn’t had things as easy as people might think. Bringing up a child on your own was tough and Mimi recognized that it had been a struggle. Especially as Victoria’s own parents had turned their back on her, to all intents and purposes. They might not have actually seen her starve, but they didn’t give her the support she needed. They certainly hadn’t given her any affection. Mimi remembered her grandmother’s occasional visits – ‘guilt trips’, Victoria had dubbed them – and recalled a brisk, angular woman sweeping in and out of the house without so much as a kiss or a hug for her own granddaughter. Not even a packet of Dolly Mixtures. Would that have hurt?
Mimi still found it hard to believe they could have been so cruel, that they held their snobbish values over their own daughter’s well-being, that their sniffy disapproval came before what should surely have been unconditional love. Now she was older, now she could make a mature assessment of their circumstances, Mimi was determined that Victoria shouldn’t be short-changed. Yes, she’d made mistakes – didn’t everyone? – but she shouldn’t be crucified for them. She needed love and support as much as the next person.
At first, after Nick had cut them off and before she had found George again, Mimi had wondered whether her real father, her biological dad, might be the one to save them. Maybe it was time for him to cough up, face up to the responsibility he hadn’t even known existed for seventeen years. After all, reasoned Mimi, if he had a bit of money lying about going begging, they could certainly use it. He’d got away with a good seventeen years of child maintenance, hadn’t he? Perhaps it was payback time.
Victoria had always been fairly open about who her dad had been. In the past Mimi had sensed that to declare any real interest in him might have caused ructions, so she’d never bothered to find out very much about him. But once she’d decided that he could be the answer to their problems, she’d pieced together the few scraps of information she had and had tracked him down quite easily to an address on the outskirts of Bath. Which was a relief – after all, he could in theory have been anywhere in the world.
The house was tiny, terraced, rather run down but quite pretty, with a white front door and big pots filled with geraniums that gave it a continental feel. There was a sign outside advertising furniture restoration and French polishing. By peering along the alley that led down the side of the house, Mimi could see evidence of some sort of ramshackle workshop in the back garden. She felt a small prick of disappointment. Somehow she didn’t think she had stumbled across a potential gold mine. The hunky school handyman who had fathered her hadn’t gone on to make his fortune, as she had sometimes fantasised. He wasn’t going to reappear in their lives, conveniently unattached and miraculously wealthy, only for him and Victoria to fall into each other’s arms. He wasn’t going to hug the daughter he’d never known he had, and whisk the pair of them off to his small but tasteful manor house to live happily ever after.
Mimi was still curious, nevertheless. While she was there, she might as well catch a glimpse of the man whose genes she shared. She waited nearly two hours before he finally emerged, in a baggy T-shirt and khaki shorts, a well-built man with shaggy hair and a beard. Definitely attractive, in an alternative, artisan way. She could see an earring and he was smoking a roll-up. She peered at him for signs of any resemblance to herself and thought that perhaps that was where she had got her slightly crooked nose and her full lips. Moments later a woman with long hennaed hair followed him, in a turquoise batik skirt. They got into a transit van and drove off, the exhaust spluttering and the engine protesting. No, thought Mimi, thinking of her mother’s penchant for sports cars. This was definitely not her route out.
She hadn’t felt particularly strongly about the man she’d seen. He’d looked quite handsome, but she couldn’t imagine what he could bring to their lives. He’d have to restore a lot of furniture to keep Victoria in the style to which she was accustomed. Besides, he looked to have a life of his own. She wasn’t going to go knocking on his door. It wasn’t as if he’d rejected her, after all. He’d never known she existed. Mimi had told herself, before she went to look for him, that she would go with her instinct. If she felt compelled to meet him, then she would. But when she looked at him, she felt nothing. As she’d taken the bus back through Bath that afternoon to the horrible hotel they were still staying in, she’d finally decided that there was only one person who could get them out of this mess. Only one person who had ever provided them with love and security and laughter and a home. And no way was Mimi going to let George slip through her fingers again.
Now, she’d managed to get them as far as The Rocks. All she had to do was her cuckoo act. She had to budge Lisa out of the nest. Mimi was a thoroughly resourceful creature. She’d worked out that Lisa must have secrets, because everybody did, and she watched and listened carefully for clues. Before long, she heard Lisa regaling people with the story of how she and George ended up buying The Rocks. Lisa told a good story: she exaggerated stripping off at the motor show until everyone had tears in their eyes from laughing.
‘My agent wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you,’ she finished off. ‘In fact, I think I was the first person ever to tell Tony Lavazza to stick it. But I’ve never regretted it. Not for a second.’
It hadn’t taken Mimi long to track down Lisa’s agent. She’d used Yasmin to bait him. And just as she surmised, Tony was eager for revenge, as the photographs in the bottom of her rucksack proved.
H
annah was very worried about Molly. She’d missed two shifts in the last week, claiming illness. And she did indeed look pale, but Hannah suspected there was more to it than just a summer cold. Molly seemed jumpy and agitated. She shot off home after work like a scalded cat. And while she was at work she was withdrawn. She seemed to keep herself to herself. Whereas once she would have joined in the gossip over a coffee, now she carried on working without a break. Molly had always had a ready smile; she had warmth. Everyone liked her. But now, a light inside her had gone out.
Hannah decided that it was up to her to do something about it. So she cornered Molly one morning, in the bedroom she was cleaning.
‘Moll, if there was something the matter, you would tell me?’
Hannah put her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. Molly looked back at her, wide-eyed.
‘Course.’
‘You seem . . . well, you don’t seem happy.’
Molly shrugged. Hannah noticed that she was incredibly thin, her collarbones jutting out of her uniform. And her face was milky white, with purplish-blue shadows under her eyes.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Bruno told me you didn’t want the housekeeper’s job.’
Molly looked at her sharply.
‘So?’
‘I think you’d be good at it.’
‘I don’t want the responsibility.’
‘It’s not that big a deal, counting sheets.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Molly was sharp. ‘Anyway, I might be leaving.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You like it here.’ Hannah frowned, puzzled by what Molly was saying. ‘Don’t you?’
Molly was silent for a moment, then shut her eyes. Hannah suspected she was trying not to cry.
‘Yes, I like it here,’ she said wearily. ‘But . . . I might have to move. That’s all. Family stuff.’
Hannah hugged her, instinctively sensing that the girl was struggling inwardly.
‘You know you can talk to me. If you want to.’
Molly managed a smile.
‘Thanks.’ She wriggled out of Hannah’s arms and made for her trolley, fishing around amongst the cleaning agents for the window cleaner. ‘I’d better get the mirrors done. I don’t know why people have to touch them with their mucky fingers, but they always do.’
She smiled brightly at Hannah, making it clear the conversation was over, then squirted the bedroom mirror liberally with Windolene.
As soon as Hannah left the room, Molly blinked back the tears she had been trying to hide, wishing fervently that Hannah hadn’t been so nice. She could always cope when people were horrible, but when they were understanding, when they acted as if they might care for her . . . There was a moment back then when she’d thought she was going to lose it.
The strain of the past couple of weeks had almost been more than she could bear, trying to arrange for someone to look after Alfie now Skyla had gone. Her mother seemed to enjoy tormenting her, turning up to look after him late so that she had to kill herself running for the bus, or not letting her know if she would be able to cover until the very last minute. Molly knew she would never do anything to hurt the little boy – Teresa might be a selfish cow, but she wasn’t a total monster. But her nerves were shredded by the uncertainty of her existence. When her mother couldn’t cover, Siobhan, her sister, was usually happy to step in, but Molly didn’t trust Siobhan’s boyfriend Zen one bit. If she knew the two of them were looking after him, she made sure she took all her cash with her to work. Zen was a drug user, a heavy drug user to boot, and Molly knew his type had no qualms about who they pinched money from. And again, although she was certain Siobhan wouldn’t let Alfie come to any harm, she felt uncomfortable with the arrangement.
Without reliable back-up, there was no way she could take on the housekeeper’s job. Bloody Joe. Why did he have to go and abandon her and Alfie like that? Even if they hadn’t turned out to be the love story of all time, then at least they could have shared the responsibility a little bit. And there would have been more money.
Molly sighed as she pulled back the eiderdown from the recently vacated bed, then stripped the sheets and stuffed them in the dirty linen bag. The memory didn’t haunt her very often, for she’d trained herself very well indeed to shut it out, but when it came back it hit her hard.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
Hannah was heading back down the corridor when she walked smack bang into Caragh.
‘The last time I looked, the reception desk wasn’t on the third floor,’ she said accusingly.
Hannah pulled herself up to her full height, which meant she was head and shoulders above Caragh.
‘I was just delivering a message to a guest,’ she retaliated.
Caragh raised a corner of her mouth into a smirk.
‘You’re quite sure you weren’t . . . consorting with a guest?’
Hannah looked shocked.
‘Of course not.’
‘No. Of course not,’ mused Caragh, her voice at its lowest and most dangerous. ‘After all, they’d need to be pretty desperate.’
Hannah stood stock-still, rigid with shock. How on earth could anyone be so cruel? What kind of kick did Caragh get from taunting her about her looks? It wasn’t as if Hannah was any sort of threat. No one in a million years would choose her over Caragh, with her creamy skin and her glossy auburn bob. But she didn’t have to crow about it.
‘You take that back!’
The pair of them wheeled round to see Molly in the middle of the corridor, her eyes blazing.
‘Hannah’s worth a million of you, you stuck-up ginger cow.’
Hannah’s hand flew to her mouth. Caragh breathed in deeply, her nostrils quivering with suppressed rage, and looked down at Molly witheringly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Don’t bother doing the snooty manageress bit with me. You’re nothing but a jumped-up slut.’