Authors: Jill Mansell
Click, went the lighter as Orla lit her third cigarette in seven minutes. Now probably wasn’t the time, Millie tactfully decided, to warn her that smoking could seriously damage your health
and
cause those unattractive little vertical wrinkles above your upper lip.
‘Look,’ Orla gestured in despair over her shoulder, ‘I was standing here, minding my own business, waiting for you and your husband to drive off. Couldn’t you just go now?’ she asked hopefully. ‘I’d be grateful, really I would.’
‘Oh brilliant,’ said Millie, ‘and where do you suppose that would leave me? In psychiatric care for the rest of my life, that's where. I mean, how would you feel if you left me here to jump off the edge of this cliff?’ She raised her eyebrows inquiringly at Orla Hart.
Anguished, Orla shook her head.
‘It's no good. You don’t understand.’
‘Okay, so you may as well tell me. Because I’m not going anywhere until you do.’ Sinking to the ground cross-legged, Millie gave the grass next to her an encouraging pat. As she did so, they both heard the sound of an engine being started up and bad-temperedly revved behind them. Next moment, the MG had reversed sharply, turned back on to the road in an explosion of gravel, and roared off.
‘God, I’m so
sorry
,’ Orla groaned.
‘Now I’m definitely not going anywhere.’ Millie shrugged and patted the grass again.
‘I feel dreadful.’
‘Don’t. He isn’t my husband anyway. Just my boyfriend. Well,’ Millie amended, ‘probably ex-boyfriend by now.’
‘And it's all my fault. Here, have a cigarette.’
Mortified, Orla knelt down next to her, opened the crumpled packet, and all but thrust a handful of Marlboros into her mouth.
‘No thanks, I don’t smoke. And I don’t mind about him being an ex.’ Realizing she couldn’t let Orla Hart shoulder the burden of responsibility for what had happened, Millie smiled. ‘Actually, you’ve done me a favor. It's quite a relief.’
‘Lucky you. Not minding.’ Orla pressed her lips together, her chin beginning to wobble.
Feeling suddenly brave—and prepared to rugby-tackle her to the ground if all of a sudden she tried to launch herself over the cliff edge—Millie said, ‘So that's what this is all about, is it? Some man?’
‘Some man,’ Orla agreed wearily. ‘Huh, that just about describes him. Oh Lord, what must I look like? I don’t suppose you’ve got such a thing as a hanky?’
By a complete fluke, Millie had a clean tissue in her jeans pocket. Feeling braver still as Orla took the tissue and noisily blew her nose, she said, ‘Husband?’
Orla had decimated the flimsy tissue in one go. Wiping her eyes on the hem of her indigo dress, she nodded.
‘Not being funny, darling, but do you know who I am?’
For a brief moment Millie considered shaking her head. She would have done if she hadn’t been the world's most hopeless fibber.
‘Well, I didn’t recognize you at first,’ she admitted, ‘but I do now.’
Orla summoned up a sad little smile.
‘So you probably remember all that awful stuff in the press a few months ago about my husband having an affair.’
Cautiously, Millie said, ‘Well… kind of.’
‘With a younger woman, surprise, surprise. By the name of Martine Drew. She's twenty-seven.’ Orla drew so hard on her cigarette she almost inhaled it whole. ‘But I love my husband so I forgave him. I did everything I could to save our marriage, including moving out of London and buying the house down here. And Giles was happy to move. He said it was just a silly blip and she didn’t mean a thing to him. He s-swore it w-was all over.’
‘And it isn’t,’ Millie guessed.
‘And it isn’t,’ Orla echoed, rubbing her pale, salt-stained cheeks. ‘I was chatting away on the phone this morning to one of my old London friends and she told me she’d heard that Martine was living in Cornwall now.’ The tears slid down Orla's face as she bit the knuckle of her right forefinger like a child. ‘Well, that speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Giles never did stop seeing her. It's obviously been going on the whole time. He's brought her down here, set her up in some
sweet
little cottage.’ She spat the word out like a bullet. ‘Oh yes, and you can bet your bottom dollar he's paying the rent with my money.’
Millie was so outraged on Orla's behalf that for once in her life she was speechless.
Noticing this, Orla sniffed and gave her another crooked, tinged-with-bitterness smile.
‘I know, ironic, isn’t it? Orla Hart, queen of the romantic blockbuster. I spend my life creating glorious love affairs and fabulously happy endings, and all the time my own marriage is a complete pig's b-b-bottom. Oh God, it's no good, I can’t carry on any more. I’m so miserable I JUST WANT TO DIE.’
Yikes.
‘Right,’ said Millie, floundering a bit. ‘Well, I can see why. So, um, have you made a will?’
Orla stared at her.
‘What?’
‘A will. You know, I hereby bequeath my worldly goods to the local monkey sanctuary and fifty thousand a year to my pet gerbil.’
‘Of course I haven’t made a will.’ Orla shuddered. ‘They’re just morbid.’
‘Oh well, that's handy then,’ said Millie. ‘So if you jump off this cliff now, your husband inherits
all
your money
and
your house,
and
he gets to keep his mistress in the lap of luxury for the rest of her life. I tell you what, why don’t you just run over there,’ she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating the gleaming, burnt orange Mercedes, ‘and tie a big shiny gold ribbon round that expensive car of yours, because your husband's girlfriend's going to have her sweaty little hands on that steering wheel faster than you can say Rest in Peace. She’ll probably go with him to your funeral,’ Millie rattled on,
picturing it all in her mind, ‘and the next thing you know, they’ll be getting married!’
‘Noooo!’ howled Orla Hart, clutching her stomach and rocking to and fro in despair. ‘He can’t marry her, he
can’t
.’
‘You won’t be around to stop him.’ Millie shrugged. ‘They’ll be able to do whatever they like, because you’ll be dead. And don’t look at me like that,’ she went on, ‘because all I’m doing is being honest, stating the facts. Personally, I wouldn’t kill myself, I wouldn’t give the pair of them the satisfaction. I’d stick around and concentrate on making their lives hell!’
Miserably, Orla shook her head.
‘You don’t understand. I love Giles more than
anything
. I don’t
want
to lose him.’
‘Well you will,’ said Millie, ‘if you’re dead.’
‘God, you’re brutal.’ Heaving a sigh, Orla closed her eyes.
‘Look, you’ve got a choice here. You can stay and fight for your marriage if that's what you want.’ Privately, Millie thought she’d be mad to want to hang on to such a horrible-sounding man. ‘Or you can kick your husband out and find yourself another one—bigger, better, and nicer in every way. That would really be having the last laugh.’
‘Ho, ho,’ Orla mimicked with a spectacular lack of enthusiasm. ‘That is
so
likely to happen.’
‘But it might.’
‘You know what your trouble is? You’ve been reading too many trashy novels.’
‘Oh come on, your novels aren’t that trashy,’ Millie protested.
‘Thanks.’ Miraculously, Orla's mouth began to twitch. ‘But I wasn’t actually talking about mine.’
Embarrassed, Millie flapped her hands in apology. The
faux pas
had always been a specialty of hers.
‘Okay, sorry, but let's not change the subject. I still need you to promise that you aren’t going to kill yourself. And you really mustn’t, because all you’d be doing would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
Actually, if Orla were to throw herself off Tresanter Point on to the jagged rocks below, she’d be doing a lot more than cutting off
her nose. There’ d be body parts and internal organs splattered in all directions, followed by greedy seagulls shrieking with delight, swooping down, and snatching up ribbons of flesh in their beaks.
Millie wondered if she should point this out to Orla. Would it help or might it prove to be the final straw?
Luckily she didn’t get the chance to find out.
‘Okay, you win,’ said Orla Hart. Drying her eyes on the hem of her dark blue dress, she shook back her hair and stood up. ‘You’re right. My marriage is worth fighting for. I
won’t
let that grasping little tart spoil everything.’
Phew. Well, good. Millie, feeling her stomach muscles slowly unclench themselves, said encouragingly, ‘You can do it, I know you can.’
When they reached the Mercedes—unlocked and with the keys still in the ignition—Orla scooped her hand along the row of envelopes propped up on the dashboard and shoveled them into the glove compartment. She looked across at Millie.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Newquay.’
‘That's five miles away. How did that so-called boyfriend of yours imagine you were going to get home?’
Millie shrugged.
‘That's why I had to make sure I changed your mind about chucking yourself off the cliff. So you’d be able to give me a lift.’
OH WELL, SO MUCH for that theory, Millie concluded as she lay back in the bath and twiddled the plug chain with her toes. So much for the program she had watched three months earlier advocating the joys of the arranged marriage.
At the time it had seemed such a great idea. Millie had listened, transfixed, to the reasoning of the pretty young Muslim girl happily explaining why an arranged marriage was the only way to go. After all, look at the divorce rate among Westerners, who married for love. Disaster, absolute disaster. It stood to reason that what everyone
should
be doing was getting themselves matched up, forgetting all about this sexual-chemistry malarkey, and
gradually
allowing love to grow.
Since her last dozen or so boyfriends had all been unmitigated disasters, Millie had found herself nodding vigorously at the TV screen and agreeing with every word. And when, a week later, Hester had offered to set her up on a blind date with a friend of a friend because, ‘I just know you two will get on,’ she had said yes at once.
Upon meeting Neil, Millie had realized—also at once—that she didn’t find him remotely fanciable. But that was all right, that was fine, because she wasn’t supposed to. Fanciability was forbidden, remember? This time her love was going to blossom sloooowly, like a flower. All the things Neil did that irritated her beyond belief would—in due course—stop being irritating and instead become lovable quirks.
Apart from slurping his coffee like an industrial vacuum cleaner, which—Millie had to be honest here—was never likely to become a lovable quirk.
But the experiment hadn’t worked. Three months down the line, Millie's flower was in no danger of blossoming. In fact, she suspected she’d been dealt a dud seed.
A very dud seed indeed.
‘Tea and toast,’ sang Hester as the bathroom door crashed open. Triumphantly she added, ‘And I want to hear the whole story!’
‘What story?’ Millie surfaced and slicked her wet blonde hair away from her face, astounded by the sensitivity of her friend's antennae. How could Hester possibly know that she had spent the afternoon talking famous writer Orla Hart out of hurling herself off Tresanter Point?
‘Don’t drop it in the bath this time.’ Dropping the lid of the loo seat down and settling herself cross-legged on it, Hester handed her the plate of Marmite on toast. ‘Didn’t you hear the doorbell just now?’
‘No.’ Millie guessed she’d been submerged at the time. Either that or singing in a loud and shamelessly off-key fashion. Gosh, she hoped it hadn’t been Orla Hart at the front door.
Except that wasn’t actually terribly likely, was it, seeing as Orla Hart didn’t know where she lived.
‘It was Neil. With your handbag.’
‘Oh.’ Millie nodded with relief. Her bag had still been in Neil's car when he had screeched off, abandoning her on the cliff top with End-It-All Orla.
‘He practically threw it at me when I opened the door,’ Hester complained. ‘And he wasn’t looking thrilled, I can tell you.’
‘No. Well, I suppose he wouldn’t.’
‘Do you know what he said next?’ Hester leaned forward indignantly.
‘No.’ To be helpful, Millie said, ‘I was in the bath, remember?’
‘He said he was bringing back your bag, not that you deserved it, and that you’re a stuck-up spoiled bitch, a selfish cow who thinks you’re sooo great, but you’re not, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Millie dutifully. ‘Gosh.’
‘Well, as you can imagine, I was shocked.’ Hester gave her a severe look. ‘I said, “Is this Millie Brady you’re talking about? Are you
sure
it's Millie?”’
‘And he was sure,’ Millie guessed.
‘He certainly was. What's more, it's over, okay? All over. He never
ever
wants to see you again, you’re an ungrateful bitch, he wishes he’d never met you, you’ve got a
bloody
nerve thinking you’re better than anyone else… oh, and by the way, that thing on your leg
isn’t
attractive, in fact it's a downright turnoff and didn’t you know only complete and utter floozies get themselves tattooed?’
‘Oh. Well, I certainly do now.’ Millie mustered a brave smile. She supposed she deserved it, jumping out of Neil's car at the crucial moment like that, without so much as a thanks-but-no-thanks. His feelings were bound to be hurt.
But the final jibe, the bit about the tattoo, hit home. Millie instinctively sank lower in the water in an attempt to conceal the decoration on her right thigh beneath a mound of bubbles. Getting herself tattooed in a moment of recklessness had definitely been something she’d lived to regret.
It was bad enough knowing you had an embarrassing tattoo without having to hear that it made you look like an out-and-out floozy.
‘So just a wild guess,’ said Hester, ‘but would I be right in guessing you aren’t exactly flavor of the month with Neil?’
‘Not unless you count pickled-maggot flavor.’ Millie pulled a face.
‘Why?’
‘He asked me to move in with him.’
‘And you said no?’
‘I didn’t say anything. Just got out of the car and legged it.’