The summer wedding, p.53
The Summer Wedding, page 53
Mia took his hand and led him as far back from the hubbub as she could. ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘And here was me thinking this week couldn’t get any worse.’
Reaching out to take his other hand in hers, she kept her voice deliberately low and calm. ‘There’s an element of hyperbole in it, but she may genuinely be putting in the final performance of her life. Can we go somewhere quieter and talk?’
‘Of course.’ He gripped her hands, his own shaking. ‘We’ll go home.’
She shook her head, unable to face Ivan and his group hugs right now. ‘Somewhere else. Just you and me.’
‘Leomia is public property. It’s never just you and me.’
‘Don’t be such a drama queen. We’ll go for a McDonald’s Drive-thru and park up on the hill. Nobody will have a clue. Can you call for the car to come back?’
The Devonshires exited the launch hand-in-hand through the back entrance at exactly the same moment that Dougie Everett’s car arrived at the front amid flashbulbs in overdrive. It couldn’t have been timed better, and the young Brit got just the publicity his agent had been dreaming of as he stepped from the limo and Leomia’s tail lights disappeared over the horizon.
Faced with a salvo of lens shutters whirring, Dougie stopped to stare if not to pose, unaccustomed to the intensity of interest. Abe had offered him one of his pretty assistants as an adviser that night but he’d refused, keen to be seen out alone while he was trying to win Iris back.
The blinding lights dimmed once the paps realised that, despite the film-star looks, Dougie was still a nobody, and he lined up to meet the designers feeling out of his depth, wishing he had Iris at his side. An ambitious British reporter for a cable television show, who had done her research better than most, was quick to pounce on him.
‘It’s Dougie Everett, yes? You know the Devonshires really well, don’t you? Can you comment on the latest rumours about Mia’s health?’
‘She’s an amazing woman,’ he said carefully, wishing he’d taken up Abe’s offer.
‘It’s been said here that she’s not looking too well tonight.’
‘She’s probably sick of the sight of me,’ he joked, and saw immediately that his quip had misfired.
‘What’s the situation between you and Iris right now?’
‘She’s in Spain,’ he said flatly.
‘So was it hasta luego or hasta siempre after the wedding was called off?’
‘I’m afraid my Spanish is execrable,’ he flashed his big smile, ‘but I can say one joke.’
‘Can you share it with the viewers?’ She thrust the microphone closer.
‘Hay tres clases de personas: las que saben contar y las que no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘There are three types of people: those who know how to count, and those who don’t.’ He’d learned it by rote for his wedding speech, to appeal to the Spanish relatives. ‘As I’m in the latter category, right now I’m counting myself very lucky…’
Sitting on a bench high in the hills looking back down across Los Angeles, Mia and Leo made raspberry noises with their straws as they sucked up large full-fat Cokes to chase down two Big Macs and a shared bag of mini-doughnuts.
‘See how much fun it is to pig out occasionally?’ Mia gasped for air, cheeks aching. ‘That caffeine hit is better than Class A.’
Surfing on an equally powerful sugar rush, Leo laughed, pulling her up and towing her out of sight of the car so that the driver couldn’t see him gather her into his arms.
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of in hugging your wife.’ She let out a squeak, almost winded by the tightness of his grip.
‘I don’t want him to overhear.’ He pressed his forehead against her shoulder and burst into loud, racking tears, the overwhelming stress of recent weeks exploding out of him with minimal warning. Leo knew he was being totally selfish, clinging to his oldest friend and muse for comfort when he’d got them both into this situation, but he was grateful that Mia let him sob until he was played out.
‘You can’t go back to Chancellor,’ she said, when he eventually pulled away. ‘It’s destroying you.’
‘I need time out to think it through.’ He stared up at the sky with reddened eyes, watching as an aeroplane pretended to be a shooting star amid the real constellations. ‘We’ll get flights tomorrow and I’ll come back to Wootton with you for a few days. See Mamá.’
‘She’d like that more than anything in the world.’ Threading arms together, they wandered back to their bench to sit down again. Mia explained everything that Jacinta had said about her ongoing ill-health, leaving Leo in no doubt that he must tell Abe he was flying home.
‘He can hardly complain I’m not behaving like a family man.’ He pulled a napkin from the fast-food bag to blow his nose. ‘And he knows I can’t miss the Wootton Gala.’
‘You remembered about that?’
‘Of course! I haven’t forgotten it’s your birthday either. Life begins at—’
‘Don’t say it,’ she warned. ‘When we were in our twenties, we made a list of forty things we planned to do before the big four-oh, remember, and I’ve done less than a quarter of them.’
‘You still have a week.’
‘Three days.’
‘That soon? Aren’t you normally going demented with stress over it by now?’
‘I’ve had other things to worry about.’ She patted his leg. ‘Actually, it’s been quite a relief not thinking about it. Apparently Haff’s shouting at the WAGs, one of my committee has arranged a mounted fashion show without actually organising any clothes, and Laney seems to be going with a Lorca-meets-Bananarama theme for her sketches.’
‘Sounds just like Laney. Is she still having this internet affair?’
‘Hotting up all the bloody time.’ Snuggling closer on their bench, they shared the last of the French fries and chattered on, immensely grateful for the marriage of true minds that made it so easy to talk for hours whether at home, on Skype or on a bench overlooking the City of Angels.
‘Have you ever considered an eye patch?’ the taxi driver asked cheerily as he drove Dominic north along the San Diego Freeway.
‘Why would I when I can see ten per cent out of this eye?’
‘You’re a ten-percenter? Hey, why didn’t you say you’re an agent?’ he whooped, reaching into the glove box for a computer disk and handing it over his shoulder. ‘Here, have my latest script. Where’d you say you were headed, man?’
‘Nichols Canyon.’ He pulled out one of the letters his sister had given him and read out the house number.
‘Leomia’s place?’ The driver whistled. ‘I heard his lady’s in town on the radio round-up just now. She’s looking real ill, they say. Poor guy must be in pieces. They’re such a great couple. Excuse me.’ He took a call on his headset.
Dominic looked down at the signature on the letter, the bold hand he remembered from the letters he’d received half a lifespan ago, before he’d gone away thinking she would be better off without him. He would never forgive himself for his arrogance now that he knew how much she’d suffered without him.
There was no number on the letterhead and he tapped his phone against his knee in frustration, aware that he had no way of warning her.
As the taxi driver chatted into his Bluetooth earpiece, they turned right on to Santa Monica Boulevard and he stared out at the palm trees and office blocks, as far from his life in the Mara as the winding dual carriageways and leafy Oxfordshire lanes that led to Mia’s big white house in England. Their lives had led them in opposite directions, but he couldn’t resist the magnetic force that was pulling him towards her now.
Turn around, turn around, turn around, a voice in his head shouted as they drove along La Cienega towards Sunset. His heart was so huge in his chest that the J. Arthur Rank gong and striker might have been crammed in there, hammering in the start of a movie.
When Mia and Leo arrived back at the Nichols Canyon house at close to midnight with red eyes, salty fingers and McCafé moustaches, Ivan was hyperbolic, livid that they had stayed out late and pop-eyed with fear. Ivan rarely got upset, but when he did it was nuclear, the humorous stoic igniting into full scream queen.
‘We had a weirdo here! A real frickin’ weirdo!’ He fell into Leo’s arms. ‘Why do people think they can hang around your gates just because you’re fucking famous? They go on one guided Hollywood Homes of the Stars tour and think they can terrorise us.’
Mia went to make tea, which was stupidly twee and British but she couldn’t think what else to do. Leo often had trouble from over-zealous fans, which was one of the reasons he always equipped his properties with such high security.
‘It’s all on the closed circuit,’ Ivan was saying in the next room, his deep voice shaking. ‘He leaned on the buzzer for ages. I was all over the panic button, but you know what the cops are like. They can’t do anything unless it’s an intruder.’
‘Did you phone the private response service?’
‘Yeah. The security guys moved him on. They took him way downtown, so he won’t be back tonight. Jeez, he was freaky – like something out of a horror movie. That face will haunt me.’
‘All the more reason to go to the UK for a bit,’ Leo said. ‘It’ll take the heat off things here, and I need to be at Wootton this week.’
‘You can’t leave me here with creeps like that around! What happened to “I can’t face the charity gala without you, Van”?’
Mia wavered in the kitchen entrance, mugs rattling in her fingers. She’d never witnessed Ivan like this, although she knew from Iris that he could throw major tantrums. In many ways it made sense. Leo needed that practical stoicism on a day-to-day basis, but he thrived on drama and neediness, and there was no doubt that Ivan was genuinely rattled.
‘We’re going to Wootton together,’ Leo was saying. ‘You’re coming too.’
‘What about Puff Adder?’
‘We’ll get a sitter.’
‘He’s never been left here without us!’
‘I have to see my mother, Ivan. And I want you to meet her before – before—’ Unable to finish, he looked away. From the doorway, Mia saw the utter desolation in his face.
Ivan’s low voice shook. ‘What will you introduce me as? Your PA?’
‘That’s right. She’s an old lady. She’s dying.’
Ivan’s lips turned into a furious, tight M as his cheeks inflated like a bullfrog’s. ‘I have been through a deep shock tonight. I cannot handle this right now. You cannot comprehend what I saw just now.’
‘Whoever he is, he’s gone,’ Leo reassured him, with another hug, and this time Ivan broke down on his shoulder, sobbing quietly. ‘Come to England, Van. It’s beautiful. You’ll like it. I can’t bear to be there without you.’
With a throaty sob, Ivan kissed him so lovingly that Mia was winded.
When they pulled apart, Leo pressed his forehead apologetically to Ivan’s eagle-wingspan chest. ‘I’m sorry we left you to deal with a gate stalker alone, Van. I know they freak you out.’
‘Actually, he wasn’t after you. He said he was looking for Mia while she’s in town.’
Mia jumped in surprise. The mugs rattled again. ‘Me?’
‘You.’ Ivan’s bushy eyebrows closed together over his big brown eyes like a Greek letter pi. ‘He left a note. The cops didn’t even want to see it. Here.’ He fished a piece of paper from his pocket to hand to her.
As soon as Mia saw the writing, she knew it was the same as the birthday card she’d received almost twenty years earlier. Her legs gave way under her and she landed ingloriously in Puff Adder’s sofabed, which the bull terrier took in very bad part, launching an attack on her arm before snatching the note.
‘No!’ Mia tried to grab it back and the dog snarled at her furiously, turning to shred it.
While Leo rushed forward to help Mia, Ivan dashed sideways to comfort Puff Adder, who had already reduced the note to scraps.
‘What did it say?’ Leo demanded. But Mia, who hadn’t even finished reading it, was too upset to speak.
Watching jealously as Leo enfolded his sobbing wife in his arms, Ivan cradled Puff Adder. ‘It said something like “It’s taken me twenty years to admit I was wrong, and I am sorry. I do exist and I will love you until the day I die, no matter how many lives we live,”’ he told them. ‘It was signed “D”.’
Chapter 47
Laney found arranging childcare for an adulterous liaison all too horribly practical and real, like pre-booking a black cab as a getaway car from a bank robbery.
Richard HH had told her he was in London on Friday and, having said yes to lunch, she’d now spent all week embellishing an over-complex lie to enable her to go, spinning the tale that she had to rehearse the gala cabaret with a few of the performers in the West End just before the event. Her guilt was assuaged by the fact that Simon was behaving just as suspiciously, always on his phone writing furtive texts, and getting uncharacteristically irate when she’d forgotten to write a meeting with his publishers into his diary that week, which she suspected clashed with an illicit liaison of his own.
The thought of meeting Richard HH immunised her from the all-too familiar pain, keeping her fantasy world alight. But on Thursday evening, as she battled to finish Madame Bovary’s second episode, she received a message that read: Darling Laney, bloody meeting’s now run across lunchtime… Her cry of disappointment was cut short as she read on: so have booked us for afternoon tea instead. Please note, I always take afternoon tea very late (a family tradition). Table reserved from 8 p.m., under ‘HH’ x PS I am an old-fashioned rogue, but promise to behave if you do.
She was furious with him for moving the goalposts faster than a wonky Subbuteo table, yet at the same time she was white hot with excitement at the thought of all the wicked, wanton potential that came with dinner. But now she’d have to ensure Malin was available to babysit – she was already minding Hope this evening, to enable Laney to work.
Pacing across the floorboards between her desk and the little kitchen area, she started a dozen replies calling the whole thing off, then changed her mind and erased them. It was early evening and she had at least another hour’s work to do on the Flaubert, but her mind was totally scattered, stress levels peaking. She read her horoscope online, which gloomily predicted that Geminis were in for a stormy patch, but softened the blow by pointing out that all gardens needed rain for the biggest blooms to grow. Navigating her way back on to the website that Richard HH had first linked her to, she found to her horror that the roses were desiccated to almost nothing, just a few dry petals clinging to the heads. Surely there had to be a Reset button?
She started clicking her mouse frantically on it, at first so engrossed that she thought the rapping she could hear was her finger tapping on the device. Then she realised somebody was knocking on the boathouse door.
Kit Lucas was holding a bulging delicatessen bag and a huge bunch of sunflowers, a seductive vision on the wooden deck, all big white smile and long auburn lashes, loose shirt rippling in the breeze. With the late-evening sun streaming through the weeping willows behind him, framing him in a golden halo, he could have been brought to life from the teen annuals she’d drooled over as a girl. But right now she failed to appreciate the vision of splendour in front of her, her mind full of RHH, dead roses and Flaubert. Besides, sunflowers still had unfortunate connotations of Simon larking around in an Umbrian field pursued by busty blondes.
‘Hey, Laney.’ The lazy smile widened as he thrust the bouquet into her arms. ‘I figured I should apologise.’
