Authors: Jill Mansell
But what with being so lovely, of course, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Changing the subject instead, Millie said, ‘So how are things going with you and your husband?’
And promptly prayed that Orla wouldn’t burst into tears, rush up to the bathroom, and start glugging down the contents of a bottle of bleach.
She didn’t. Phew.
‘Giles? Oh, we’re fine, absolutely fine, it was all a mad, mad misunderstanding.’ Between lighting up another cigarette and dropping her heavy silver lighter back into her bag, Orla flashed her a dazzling smile. ‘I’m just so glad you were there on that cliff top to stop me killing myself.’
‘You wouldn’t have killed yourself,’ said Millie. ‘Not really.’
Orla shrugged.
‘I’ve wondered the same thing myself, lots of times. But I was pretty desperate.’ She paused, then added with a wry smile, ‘I’m still glad you happened to be around.’
‘What was the mad misunderstanding?’
Millie was amazed she dared ask such an outrageously personal question, but she had to know. Anyway, Orla had already dragged pretty much her entire life story out of her; a spot of counter-nosiness surely wouldn’t go amiss.
‘Oh, too silly for words! There was me thinking that Giles had installed Martine down here… and he didn’t have the faintest idea she was even
in
Cornwall! It was all her fault,’ Orla explained, wafting smoke in all directions. ‘Giles finished with her but she refused to accept it. Typical scorned-mistress scenario—she kept ringing him and begging him to take her back, but Giles was brilliant, he just kept saying no. So in the end, out of sheer desperation, the silly girl moved
down to Cornwall and rented a little cottage completely off her own bat. Giles didn’t have anything to do with it. When I confronted him he was absolutely gobsmacked!’
‘Oh.’ Millie swallowed. ‘Well, um, good.’
‘So there we go, all that silly worrying for nothing,’ Orla declared. ‘Of course, we can’t physically evict her from the county, but she isn’t a problem anymore. She's still there in her sad little cottage, but I can deal with that. I’ve got my husband back and I’m happy.’
Orla was telling the truth, Millie decided. She genuinely believed what she was saying. In which case…
‘That's brilliant,’ she told Orla warmly. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’
‘Oh God,’ Orla let out a wail of dismay, ‘you really
are
. I’ve jack-booted my way into your life, crushed it to smithereens, and
you’re
still pleased for
me
!’
All this guilt, she had to be a Catholic.
‘I love that word,’ Millie sighed, tucking her bare legs under her and idly winding the belt of her dressing gown around one hand. ‘Actually, I
really
love it. Smithereens. I wonder if it's Irish?’ Clutching an imaginary microphone, she announced with a flourish, ‘And now, ladies and gen’l’men, we are proud to present on stage here tonight… the Smithereens!’
‘Can you sing?’ asked Orla abruptly.
‘Er… not really.’
‘What does that mean?’
Here she goes, off again, thought Millie, asking a load of questions that make no sense at all.
‘I’m not great and I’m not bad.’ She decided to humor Orla. ‘Just average.’
‘Dance?’
‘I’ve got legs, haven’t I?’ Millie wiggled her toes. ‘Anyone with legs can dance. After a fashion.’
‘And you’re not shy,’ Orla went on, slopping red wine over her
skirt as she delved into her bag. ‘I may have just the thing for you… hang on, I know it's down here somewhere… ah, here we are.’ She pulled out a business card and waved it triumphantly at Millie. ‘This fellow could be right up your street.’
‘Oh God, don’t tell me,’ Millie groaned, ‘it's Andrew Lloyd Webber and he's going to pester me to star in his next West End musical.’
‘No, no, I’m serious. We met briefly at a party the other night and he's looking for girls just like you.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Millie. ‘He's a pimp, desperate to recruit new hookers to replace all the ones who’ve been carted off to the cells.’
‘Will you pay attention?’ Orla scolded good-naturedly. ‘This fellow has just set up a kissogram service here in Cornwall.’
Oh for heaven's sake.
‘A
what
?’
‘No need to look so shocked, there's nothing sleazy about it. The whole thing's completely above board,’ declared Orla. ‘It's just a bit of fun… you can book Chippendale-types for hen parties, Granny-grams, roller-skating gorillagrams—oh, that would be a big plus, if you can roller-skate—even juggling clowns on uni-cycles…’
‘I don’t think it's really my kind of thing,’ said Millie, feeling a bit mean when Orla was so clearly filled with enthusiasm.
‘Okay, I know it's not exactly your run-of-the-mill office job, but according to this chap the pay's not bad. I mean, why work for eight hours pushing a load of paperclips about when you could earn almost as much money in one and a half hours?’
‘Roller-skating around in a gorilla suit?’
As it happened, Millie
could
skate. Rather well, in fact.
‘Just a thought,’ said Orla. ‘You don’t have to. Pretty dishy chap, though, running the company.’
She winked, gave Millie an encouraging nod and pressed the business card into her hand.
Millie turned it over and studied the blurb on the front.
‘Single too.’ Orla sounded pleased with herself. ‘I checked.’
‘Kemp's,’ read Millie. ‘Kissograms to make your parties go with a scream. Prop: Lucas Kemp. Tel: 01637 blah blah blah.’
Oh, terrific.
Aloud she said faintly, ‘Well, thanks.’
TYPICALLY, IT TOOK HESTER no time at all to unearth the card.
‘What's that awful statue doing in the bathroom?’ she demanded the following morning.
‘Orla Hart gave it to me. She blames herself for me being out of a job. It's her way of making up for it,’ Millie explained.
‘Well, next time she feels guilty, tell her we’d prefer shoes. Bugger.’ Hester gazed down in frustration at her bare legs, which were decorated with strips of loo paper stuck on with blood. When she moved, the loo paper fluttered in the breeze.
‘Never shave your legs in a hurry.’
‘I wasn’t in a hurry, I was nervous. Today could be the day I bump into you-know-who. Oh, this is hopeless,’ Hester groaned as a trickle of blood slid down the back of her calf. ‘Why won’t it
stop
? I look like I’ve been attacked by a plague of rats.’
‘Wear jeans,’ Millie called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the bathroom.
When she emerged ten minutes later, Hester was standing in the middle of the living room with an odd look on her face.
‘What?’ demanded Millie. ‘Honestly, are you still waiting for your legs to stop gushing? You’re going to be so late for work.’
‘My jeans are in the washing basket,’ Hester announced.
Heavens, Orla Hart wasn’t the only drama queen around here. What was Hester hoping, that this would make the front page of the
Cornwall Gazette
!
‘So I thought I’d wear tights instead,’ she went on.
Phew, never mind the
Cornwall Gazette
, thought Millie, put me through
this minute
to the editor of the
News of the World
.
‘But I didn’t have any without holes in them,’ Hester continued, her tone conversational, ‘so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed a pair of yours instead.’
Oh.
Oh bum.
In fact, massive bum.
‘I’ve got some opaque black ones,’ Millie said hopefully. ‘They’d hide the cuts on your legs.’
‘And while I was going through your knicker drawer, I happened to come across… this.’ Hester held up the business card with Lucas Kemp's name on it. ‘How could you do this to me? That's what I don’t understand. I’ve spent the last three days in a complete
tizz
, wondering if I’m ever going to track him down, and all the time you knew exactly how I could do it, because you had
this
card with
his
number on it, HIDDEN IN YOUR FLAMING KNICKER DRAWER.’
It probably wasn’t the moment, Millie decided, to make a feeble joke about her inflammable knickers.
‘Okay, now listen, I haven’t had this card for days. Orla Hart gave it to me last night and I needed time to think. I was going to tell you this evening,’ she pleaded, ‘but you know what you’re like. The last thing you need is to go hurling yourself at Lucas Kemp, drooling all over him like a besotted bulldog, and letting him think you’re a complete pushover, there for the taking.’
Hester stepped back as if she’d been slapped across the face.
‘A besotted… bulldog? Is that what you’re saying I look like?’
She sounded so hurt. Guiltily Millie shook her head.
‘Of course not. I just couldn’t think of anything else that drooled.’
‘Labradors drool,’ Hester announced stiffly. ‘My auntie's
Labrador drools all the time. And St. Bernards drool. You really didn’t have to say bulldog.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway, I wouldn’t throw myself at Lucas! I have no intention of letting him think I’m a pushover.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. Sorry,’ Millie repeated, her tone humble. Even though she knew, just
knew
without a doubt, that Hester had already learned the phone number on the card by heart.
Mollified, Hester said, ‘Why did Orla Hart give you Lucas's business card anyway?’
‘He's looking for people to do the kissograms. Orla thought I might be interested. She was just trying to help because she feels so responsible for—’
‘Ohmigod!’ In an instant Hester forgot all about being stroppy. She clapped her hands like an excited child. ‘This is
brilliant
.’
‘But I told her it wasn’t my kind of thing.’
‘You could do it!’
‘I’m a travel agent,’ Millie protested.
Well, kind of.
‘An unemployed travel agent,’ Hester pointed out.
‘Yes, but singing telegrams! They’re so… so…’ Millie floundered; they were definitely so something, she just couldn’t explain what.
‘Would you have to take all your clothes off?’
‘No!’
‘Do it then,’ Hester ordered.
‘I don’t know if I want to.’
‘Excuse me, but
is
your name Victoria Beckham?’ Hester rolled her eyes. ‘No it isn’t, so you can’t exactly afford to be fussy, can you?’
‘I was thinking more of a bar job,’ said Millie.
‘Oh don’t be so mean,’ Hester pleaded. ‘At least ring him and fix up an interview.’
Millie feigned puzzlement.
‘Why?’
‘Because then you can meet up with him and have a lovely chat about the good old days, and that’ll give him the chance to ask you all about me and you’ll be able to tell him how gorgeous and popular I am, and before you know it he’ll be desperate to see me again and that's when you’ll say, “Hey, why don’t the three of us meet up for a drink tonight?” and he’ll say, “Millie, that's a
fantastic
idea,” and it’ll all happen in a really easy, natural way. Bingo. Not a besotted bulldog, not a ribbon of drool in sight!’
‘And no sex either,’ Millie reminded her.
Hester looked shocked.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Good. Okay.’
This is what Orla means about me being nice, Millie realized. I hid the card from Hester for her own good, and she's managed to make me feel so guilty I’ve ended up agreeing to do the one thing I really didn’t want to do.
Well now I’m going to be mean and it jolly well serves her right.
Smiling like a dutiful wife, she stood at the front door and waved a deliriously happy Hester off to work. Still minus any tights and with the long-forgotten strips of loo roll like tiny red and white banners flip-flapping around her legs.
Nobody picked up the phone when Millie rang the number on Lucas Kemp's business card. Her conscience clear once more—ah well, at least she’d tried—she decided to make the most of her unexpected freedom and pay a visit to her father instead.
When Millie's parents had split up five years earlier, it had been at the instigation of her mother. Adele Brady had yearned for more; she had her heart set on a glittering metropolitan lifestyle.
And in due course, a refined metropolitan husband to match.
‘Cornwall just isn’t
me
,’ Adele had told Millie at the time. ‘It's sooo parochial. I need glamour, I need opera, I need… oh God… Harvey Nichols!’
‘See? She's got her eye on some other fellow already.’ Millie's father, Lloyd, had winked at Millie. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t have thought he’d be her type… an overweight ex-showjumper famous for his two-fingered salute. Can’t imagine he’d be much of a one for the opera.’
Millie had grinned, because she knew her dad was teasing her mother.
‘Pathetic, completely pathetic,’ Adele had hissed back, not getting it at all. ‘I could do
so
much better than you.’
‘Jolly good.’ Lloyd wasn’t bothered; he was too used to his wife's endless criticisms. At first, the fact that he and Adele were polar opposites had been a huge novelty. But after twenty years, it had well and truly worn off.
‘I’m going to be happy,’ Adele had declared with utter confidence.
‘What, with this Harvey Nichols chap?’ There was a mischievous twinkle in Lloyd's eyes. ‘Quite sure about that, are you? Because you need to watch these horsey-types, you know. They’re known to have a bit of a thing about pointy spurs and a whip.’
‘A whole new life for myself.’ Adele had gazed at him with contempt. ‘A glorious new life and a glorious new man to share it with.’
‘Ah well, each to his own,’ Lloyd had said good-naturedly. ‘Women? I give up on them. From now on, it's a bachelor's life for me.’
Famous last words.
For Adele, as well as for Lloyd.
Adele had spent the last five years racketing around London in a
state of increasing desperation. She was a fifty-five-year-old Bridget Jones in Burberry silk-knits, constantly complaining that there were no decent men
anywhere
and that the only males who enjoyed opera were all homosexuals. In cravats.
Lloyd, meanwhile, had settled quite happily into his newfound bachelor lifestyle for all of three and a half months. Then, quite by accident, he had met Judy.