Obsession (16 page)

When she was finally ready that evening she wasn’t too sure about the way she looked. It didn’t look much like her gazing back from the mirror, perhaps her skin was too pale for such a bright lipstick, but the freckles didn’t show too much and she managed to convince herself that she looked a little more sophisticated than usual, even though the suit was a bit tight.

Luke had sent a taxi to pick her up and was waiting when she arrived at the restaurant. He ordered them both an aperitif and they talked for a while about TW. Corrie was trying very hard to pay attention, but she couldn’t help noticing the way everyone was looking at them. Two women even came up and asked for Luke’s autograph, while Corrie sat by nearly bursting with pride. Then the menus arrived. Corrie decided to go for the spaghetti.

‘Not one of my more brilliant ideas,’ she laughed nervously as she wiped the front of her suit.

Laughing, Luke gave her some of his lamb to taste. In return Corrie wound some spaghetti round her fork and offered it to him. He seemed highly entertained by this, but leaned forward for her to feed him. Before it reached his mouth, the spaghetti slid off the fork onto the edge of his plate, then slithered into his lap.

‘Well, I guess you probably want to go home now,’ Corrie said. ‘I know I do.’

Luke was laughing so hard that for a while he didn’t answer. In the end he picked up his wine and saluted her. ‘Come on, we’ve got a dessert to get through yet.’

‘No. I have no intention of leaving this restaurant wearing a chocolate mousse as well as spaghetti,’ Corrie declared. ‘You have the dessert, I’ll drink some more wine. And when I’ve finished here, I’ll go home and drown my disgrace in all that I was left with last Friday – thanks to you stealing all my party guests.’

She couldn’t believe how outspoken she was being, but seemed unable to stop. Of course she knew that at any minute she was likely to say something so hideously embarrassing she’d want to stick her head in the oven later, but that he was so clearly enjoying himself was more intoxicating than the wine itself and there was no controlling her exuberance. She even warned him that she was quite capable of coming out with some outrageous
faux pas
, and gave him the example of the woman who had come into her mother’s dress shop in Amberside, who, she explained, was going to a ball at her father’s house that night, but she hadn’t known that he was her father then, and anyway it had no significance really to her story. ‘But I heard myself telling this woman that she might end up with a prick in her bum. Her face was a picture. I, of course wanted to die on the spot.’

Again Luke was laughing, but it wasn’t that particular confession that made her want to hop up and down with embarrassment the next morning, it was the next one.

‘You know what, Luke?’ she said, resting her wine glass on her chin, ‘you are just to drop dead for.’

‘I think you mean to die for,’ he corrected her, ‘and you’ve been talking to Annalise. Anyway, tell me some more about where you grew up. Amberside, did you say? Where is it?’

Her humiliation had not yet reached her, so she chattered on quite happily, not thinking for a moment that she might be boring him – that only occurred to her later. Much later.

‘Anyway,’ she finally finished, at last realizing that she’d been rattling on for hours, ‘my mother died just over five months ago and it was soon after that that I came to London. How about you, where did you grow up?’

Luke looked around and only then did Corrie notice that the waiters were putting chairs on the tables. She turned back to Luke in dismay.

‘Come on, I’ll take you home,’ he chuckled, ‘and if you ask very nicely I might come in and help you out with some of that wine I so rudely left you with last week.’

But as they were driving towards the King’s Road the car phone rang and Luke told her that he’d have to take a rain check.

Corrie swallowed her disappointment, and when he had driven away ran inside to ring Paula. It was only when she was half way through dialling that she remembered how late it was.

The next morning her hangover tormented her with memories of all she’d said and done the night before. ‘I just want to die,’ she told Paula. ‘Oh God, when I think of all the things I said. I spent hours telling him all about Amberside and there’s nothing to tell. I tried to be so cool when I told him he was to die for, or drop dead gorgeous, but I got the two confused and I think I told him to drop dead. Oh, Paula, how can I ever face him again?’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ Paula laughed.

But it was Luke who found the way, as later, in the office, after asking Eileen, one of the secretaries to book him a car to take him to the airport in the morning, he turned to Corrie and asked if she was free again that night.

With an extremely red face Corrie told him she was. Her embarrassment wasn’t only for the night before, but because she was acutely aware that everyone had heard. It was only when Luke glanced about the room, before disappearing back into his own office, that she realized he had intended them to.

He came to pick her up that night. Corrie was so thrilled with his appreciation of her studio that she suggested they might just stay there and have a drink.

‘I’ve plenty of food too,’ she said eagerly. ‘Unless of course you want to go out.’

‘Here sounds great to me,’ he said, settling himself onto the sofa and stretching an arm along the back.

Corrie couldn’t hide her delight. It was really quite unbelievable that Luke Fitzpatrick should be her first proper guest.

‘Would you like to choose some music?’ she offered, pointing him towards the CD player. ‘I’ll just go and rustle something up in the kitchen.’

‘That your bedroom up there?’ Luke asked, nodding towards the balcony.

Corrie nodded, then blushed at the comical way he raised his eyebrows.

Five minutes later she brought in a tray laden with nuts, olives, crisps, wine and two glasses. Luke was back on the sofa, Phil Collins was playing on the CD.

They finished the first bottle of wine and started on another. All the time Corrie was listening with mounting horror and sympathy to what he was telling her about his family and childhood. He had grown up on a small farm in Southern Ireland, the youngest of three sons. There was a gap of fifteen years between him and the middle brother,
he
had been a mistake, and though he was never in any doubt that his mother had loved him, he couldn’t even begin to say the same for his father. The old man, since he was old enough to remember, had been consistently cruel to him. He didn’t go into detail, but Corrie could imagine the terror of a little boy being bullied by the father he tried so hard to please.

‘It wasn’t only me,’ he sighed, ‘he led my mother a hell of a life too. I think it’s that more than what he did to me that’s had such an effect on me.’ He held out his glass as Corrie offered him more wine. ‘Some women really do need protecting from men, even the men they love. Maybe especially the men they love. That was the odd thing, you know, she loved my father. I never did understand that. Just like you can’t understand why your mother loved your father for all those years. Strange isn’t it? Perhaps it’s protection from themselves, women need. Who knows?’

‘Did you have many friends as a child?’ Corrie asked.

‘A few. One in particular, I suppose. He was a couple of years younger than me, but we’ve lost touch now.’

‘And your mother and father and brothers, where are they now?’

‘My mother’s dead, my father and eldest brother still live in Ireland, and before you ask, no I don’t visit them. My other brother is married and lives in Australia. I’ve visited him once or twice, but we’re not what you might call close. It’s a shame really, I’d like to belong to a close family.’ He smiled. ‘Looks like I’ll have to create one of my own.’

‘Have you ever been married?’

‘No. I guess I’ve never met the right woman.’

It was on the tip of Corrie’s tongue to ask about Annalise, but she managed to bite it back. It was none of her business.

He looked at his watch. ‘Well, I guess I’d better be going. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

‘Are you flying to Scotland to join Annalise?’ Corrie asked.

‘Good God no. I’m off to LA to spend some time with an old friend of mine. Cristos Bennati. I expect you’ve heard of him.’

‘
Heard
of him!’ Corrie gasped. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of him all right. You do mean
the
Cristos Bennati, don’t you? The film director?’

Luke laughed. ‘I do.’

‘But how do you know him?’

Luke frowned thoughtfully. ‘Let me see,’ he said, ‘I’ve known him so long … Oh, I remember, it was at a party in the South of France. Neither of us were much more than about twenty at the time. I don’t recall too much about that, probably had a lot to drink, but a couple of months later Cristos turned up here in London, at the National Film School, and he gave me a call. We’ve kept in touch, on and off, ever since. And if your eyes get any rounder I’ll fall into them.’

‘I’m stunned,’ Corrie said.

‘He’s just a man,’ Luke chuckled, ‘like the rest of us.’

‘I know, but … Cristos Bennati!’

‘Time really is getting on,’ Luke said, chucking her under the chin, ‘thanks for a great evening.’

Corrie laughed. ‘Thanks for coming round, I’ve really enjoyed it.’

‘Me too. We must do it again when I get back.’

When Luke got out onto the street he pocketed the keys to his car and walked in the direction of the King’s Road to flag down a taxi. He didn’t want to risk losing his licence, he’d get someone from the office to pick up his car in the morning. That should set the tongues wagging, he laughed to himself, as he flagged down a cab.

What would set them wagging even more was if he were to dump Annalise for Corrie. Now what kind of hornet’s nest would that stir up? He grinned. At this precise moment
in
time he was probably the only one who could come even close to guessing the answer to that. And it sure as hell could be an answer to a whole lot of problems for him.

It wasn’t until the middle of the next day that Cindy Thompson finally came right out and confronted Corrie with what was on everyone’s mind. Corrie had been aware of the gossip all morning, of course. Sam, the odd job man, had made no secret of the fact that he’d had to go over to her place to pick up Luke’s car. Predictably everyone had jumped to the conclusion that she and Luke had spent the night together. Corrie was in no position to put them right, since no one had had the guts yet to accuse her. That was until Cindy sauntered over to pick up her coat at lunchtime.

‘Corrie,’ she said.

Corrie looked up from her desk.

‘You might have forgotten that it was Annalise who got you your job here,’ Cindy began, ‘but I can assure you that none of us have. And if this is the way you repay her then all I can say is you’re a crafty, conniving, two-faced little cow.’

For a second or two Corrie merely looked at her, but gone were the days of letting them get away with their vicious, small-minded victimization. She got slowly and deliberately to her feet, looked Cindy straight in the eye, and said, ‘Not that it’s any of your damned business, but just for the record Luke Fitzpatrick did not spend the night with me last night, he merely came round for a drink. It was a gesture of friendship on his part, which is a damned sight more than any of you sycophantic hypocrites have ever made.’

‘Oh, so the cat really has got claws,’ one of the researchers meeowed.

‘She’ll need more than claws once Annalise finds out about this,’ Alan Fox chipped in. ‘I hope old Luke remembered to use a condom, there’s no knowing what a chap might catch …’

‘Stop right there!’ Corrie hissed.

‘Watch out Alan, I think she’s going to wallop you again,’ Perkin snickered.

‘Oh drop dead the lot of you!’ Corrie snapped, and stormed out of the office.

She returned after a lunch hour spent wandering Battersea Park to a note on her desk asking her to go to the edit suite to log some tapes for one of the editors. The office was buzzing with the latest news in from Eastern Europe, something that was going to affect that night’s programme, so no one paid much attention to Corrie as she picked up her notepad and pen and left the office again.

As she was walking down the corridor she heard footsteps coming after her, then someone calling her name. She turned round.

‘Corrie,’ Prue said in a hushed voice, ‘I just thought I ought to let you know that while you were out Annalise called.’

‘Yes?’ Corrie said.

‘Well, Eileen told her that you’d spent the night with Luke.’

‘What!’ Corrie gasped. ‘But I told them … Oh God! What did Annalise say?’

‘I don’t know. But we both know how she feels about Luke. Anyway, I just thought I ought to warn you. Don’t tell the others I did, will you?’

Corrie shook her head. ‘No. OK. And thanks, Prue.’

That Thursday evening Corrie was sitting at home watching the TV when there was a knock on the door. To her dismay it was Annalise, who, judging by the holdall at the top of the stairs, had come straight from the airport.

Leaving her bag where it was Annalise swept past Corrie into the studio without so much as a hello. ‘I do hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Corrie sighed. ‘No, you’re not interrupting anything,’ she said, with exaggerated patience.

‘No, of course not, he’s in LA, isn’t he? Didn’t you ask to go with him?’

It was on the tip of Corrie’s tongue to tell Annalise to grow up, but despite the fact that Annalise was younger than her, she was still a producer. Instead she said, ‘Of course not. Why on earth would I?’

‘Well you can’t tell me you don’t fancy him.’

‘I’m not telling you anything. There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Are you quite sure about that?’

‘Of course I am. For God’s sake …’

‘Did you sleep with him?’

‘No!’

‘Liar!’

‘Annalise, I did
not
sleep with Luke. I didn’t even kiss him. But if you choose not to believe me then remember, it’ll only be yourself you’re hurting – and for no reason.’