The summer wedding, p.54
The Summer Wedding, page 54
‘How extraordinary. I didn’t hear you fall in.’
‘This river has some crazy currents going on, so I tied up the boat behind the willows.’ He pointed upstream. ‘I’ve been practising. I’m getting pretty good at rowing.’
‘Not catching crabs any more?’
He flashed the big smile again and held up the deli bag. ‘I’ve never had crabs, but I’m very partial to abalone. The lady at the deli assured me moules de bouchot are pretty close. Can I cook you dinner?’
‘No.’
His face fell.
She crossed her arms determinedly in front of her chest. ‘You’re bloody persistent, I’ll give you that, but you won’t get the screenplay.’
‘I know, and I’ve told Oscar that.’
‘So you admit you’re working for him!’
‘Not any more. I resigned. Now he knows my cover’s blown—’
‘Your cover was always blown, Kit.’ She sighed. ‘You were like a man wearing a fig leaf in an air tunnel.’
‘You don’t understand. He’s prepared to play dirty. He said to do whatever it takes,’ he went on urgently, ‘so I told him to take a hike. You saved me from drowning, Laney. I could never do what he plans now.’
‘What’s that? Tying me to a chair with gaffer tape and forcing me to hand it over?’
‘Kinda.’ He pulled an apologetic face.
She laughed incredulously. ‘There are laws against that. I know he’s a control freak, but I think I’m pretty safe.’
‘He’s getting desperate.’ Kit looked genuinely worried. ‘He’s had a team of script writers working on this for months and none of them can get the Dalrymple vibe. The backers are threatening to pull out.’
‘He can easily afford to pay me what it’s worth,’ Laney huffed.
She knew Oscar loved to play the big-bucks big-shot with flash cars and houses, hiding behind his dark glasses and sharp suits, yet he boxed very clever with his cash and had accumulated a significant fortune through some very shrewd investments in films. Brought up by his single mother, a night cleaner at Gatwick Airport, he’d come a long way from his days doing stand-up on piers and in clubs, but he still managed his finances with the same penny-pinching care that had enabled him to buy his first house at twenty-one and dodge taxes for most of his life.
For Dalrymple Two, Laney had asked half a million dollars, which was still modest, given its eight-figure budget. She didn’t expect to get that much, but the twenty-thousand-dollar offer on the table from her ex-husband was a huge insult. More than anything, she wanted a screen credit, her name having been omitted from the first film entirely.
In her heart, Laney knew that even twenty thousand would help stem the Demons’ ongoing financial crisis, but she glared stubbornly out at the river, wishing that her moustached nemesis would chug by. She could do with somebody to hurl insults at right now, and Kit was being far too nice.
Still blocking the doorway, she eyed him shrewdly. ‘Surely Oscar won’t pay you now?’
‘I’ll get by.’ On came the big beaming smile again. ‘His ex-wife’s seriously hot on me.’
‘I am not!’
‘The other ex-wife. She offered to take me to a shamanic retreat in Vermont that clears the body and mind.’
‘The latter being already fairly empty in your case,’ muttered Laney.
‘I’d like to fill your body tonight,’ Kit said huskily, then held up his deli bag again.
‘Thanks for the offer, but I’m working,’ she said firmly, stepping inside and starting to close the door.
‘Hey, aren’t you afraid of what Oscar plans to do?’
‘He’s hardly going to do anything this evening.’ She peered around the door. ‘Is he?’
‘I think so.’
Looking at his face, Laney saw he was serious. Letting the door swing open, she felt for her bag and phone. ‘Surely he can’t have hired anybody qualified in gaffer-taping women to chairs in that time. Evil criminals take a while to make contact with – you can hardly look them up in the Yellow Pages.’ Yet even as she said this, her already palpitating heart was forced into even more startling velocity. She now envisaged men in balaclavas bursting into Red Gables and holding Malin at gunpoint, demanding to know where the computers were kept while Hope slept upstairs. Simon was still in London, recording the finals of the Greatest British Pie Maker cook-off, on which he was a guest judge. Her pulse was as fast as hummingbird wings, her head hopelessly light and empty. She had to get home to protect her daughter. She raced towards the door.
Kit stood in her way. ‘Oscar said he has someone who owes him a favour from the old days. Someone called the Big Dipper.’
‘Oh, God, he would have a name like a fairground attraction.’ Her ex had befriended a lot of lowlife when working the clubs, priding himself on his gangland connections. ‘Don’t tell me the Big Dipper likes to drown people?’
‘I think he’s tall with a stoop.’ Kit watched her grasp for the doorframe and miss, staggering backwards, clutching her head. ‘Laney, are you OK?’
‘Fine – just a… bit… breathless. Oh, bother.’ Her vision blinkered as she felt her legs give way. But instead of the floor coming up to meet her, two hands caught her as Kit made the save faster than a quarterback on a tricky catch.
Battling to stay conscious, Laney heard him grunt with effort and she mumbled, ‘Please don’t try to carry me. I weigh a ton.’
‘Lightest ton I’ve ever hauled.’ He lifted her across to the purple sofa.
‘I must get back to Hope.’ She fought to stand up.
‘You stay there until your breathing settles,’ Kit ordered, checking her pulse. ‘Jesus, you’re seriously hypertensive. Are you taking anything for that?’
‘I’m on tablets,’ she muttered, thinking guiltily about her diet pills. She tried to stand up again, battling the grey mist. ‘Please let go. I must get home to my daughter.’
‘She’ll be quite safe. The Big Dipper’s coming to the boathouse.’
‘In that case I’m definitely going to spend the rest of the evening at home.’ She closed her eyes, trying hard to breathe normally and quieten the buzzing in her head. ‘Let me get this right,’ she puffed: ‘you’re here to woo me with food and sweet nothings to apologise for the fact that some giant henchman with a stoop is about to creep in and attack me?’ She wished she felt strong enough to leap up and empty his deli bag over his head.
She could hear Kit talking, but it was a while before she could take in that he was suggesting they hatch a plan.
‘ … so we plant a fake Dalrymple Two file here, but you write a load of shit on it instead of the real deal.’
Eyes still closed, she managed a faint laugh. ‘Never a truer word, given my output right now.’
‘We have time,’ he went on eagerly. ‘I told Oscar you work here all night and generally take a nap between ten and midnight. His guy will come then.’
She peered at him groggily. ‘You set this up?’
He looked very pleased with himself. ‘I figured it’ll get him off your back.’
She rubbed her face. ‘Oscar’s far too smart for that. As soon as this Big Dipstick sends him the file, he’ll speed-read the whole thing on his phone in an hour.’
‘Not if we put it on CD-ROM. Even the best henchmen don’t carry a disk reader with them. Besides, you’ll have made your point. I’d love to see his face.’
Even with her heart fizzing and banging in her chest like bottles of pop in an overturned lorry, she had to admit it was a cheering image. ‘That’s almost clever.’
He ducked his head modestly. ‘I am almost clever. I’m almost a good seafood cook too, so I’ll be your mussel man while you’re the brains.’ He went to retrieve his abandoned groceries. ‘I never double-cross someone on an empty stomach.’
She watched him warily, wondering if this was an elaborate trick. But there was something so likeably quixotic about Kit, and he was such a bad actor, he had to be telling the truth. Wandering unsteadily to the desk, she retrieved her phone and texted Malin to tell her to double-lock all the doors and put the chain on the broken back door, adding cheerily: Nothing to worry about – just trying to stop the dogs wandering again!
Pressing Send, she gazed at her Mac. She’d already worked five solid hours without a break that afternoon, her eyes throbbing from screen glare. She guessed she could cut and paste some of Madame Bovary’s dialogue to create a realistic-looking screenplay in less than an hour, changing all the names to those of Dalrymple characters, then add a polite postscript reminding Oscar of the asking price for the genuine material.
Her phone vibrated. Malin had texted back, promising to be extra secure, adding that her new boyfriend was there.
As Laney’s replying row of smiley faces winged its way to Red Gables, Simon texted a photograph of himself, looking debonair in a red velvet suit: I’ll have a finger in every pie tonight, but I’d rather have three in my darling wife…
He’d clearly been laying into the green-room wine at the cook-off. Hands shaking, she started to compose a reply, telling him about Oscar’s bizarre plan, then deleted it: she couldn’t lay that on him just minutes before the show was recorded in live time. Instead she wished him luck and told him not to get any more pie-eyed and to be nice as pie to everyone, adding a long row of kisses that even her goddaughter would have been proud of.
‘You have vermouth – cool!’ Kit called from the kitchen, making her jump – she’d forgotten he was there, her brain like wool. ‘I’ll add it to the cooking liquor. I hope you like garlic.’
‘I chew it daily and dab it on my pulse points,’ she muttered, not wanting him to think that she was after anything more than protection tonight. She had no appetite, the thought of seafood turning her stomach, but at least cooking was keeping him busy. She’d done much the same thing the night Simon had come back from Italy, she remembered, guilt and fear mounting with every minute that passed.
She tried to imagine explaining to Simon later that she’d shared a cosy supper with Oscar’s hired stud while laying a trap for his hired henchman. That famously sardonic unflappability might crack – and if the roles were reversed she would certainly want to kill him, although when she thought about it, this was true of much of her behaviour recently. If Simon found out about her late, late lunch with Richard HH, he would be shaken, stirred and almost certainly licensed to kill.
She fought mounting panic again, remembering Simon bringing the vermouth to the boathouse in the first place. Dressed in a white tuxedo, he’d arrived late one afternoon not long after she’d started to use it as an office, bearing bottles, cherries and his favourite Art Deco cocktail shaker, insisting he must make her Manhattans. They’d made tipsy, clumsy love on the purple sofa and against her desk, when he’d inadvertently wiped her unsaved work by leaning on her keyboard during the throes of passion. After the flaming row that followed, he’d tweeted to his followers that Mrs Demon was contemplating divorcing him for his Manhattan data transfer, causing a rush of female followers to declare their willingness to replace her.
She mustn’t think about Simon, she reminded herself. She had a trap to set for the Big Dipper. They’d laugh about it afterwards. Alternatively, she’d briefly make the headlines as the drowned wife of celebrity foodie and design guru Simon de Montmorency, found mysteriously floating in the Thames surrounded by CD-ROMs.
Blinking hard to focus on the screen, she started to create a fake script, typing film directions around her latest radio play so badly that the words came out as gobbledegook. Oscar would never be fooled.
‘How’s it going?’ Kit was looking over her shoulder at the screen, sucking his fingers. ‘Food in five, yeah?’
She got back to work, turning Madame Bovary into the dummy Dalrymple Two, pasting in sections from early drafts of the original Dalrymple, which she’d emailed to herself while writing and still had because she never got around to tidying up her inbox. Flying high in there were all Richard HH’s most recent messages, which she knew she must delete or hide. But just seeing them gave her reassurance, a rock to cling to in an increasingly stormy life. The prospect of meeting him tomorrow evening made tonight’s events seem all the more surreal.
Without thinking, she sent him a message: Simon away, and Seduction Kit here offering his services and seafood as we await the Big Dipper. Will tell all tomorrow. Thinking about that keeping me going…
Kit served the mussels swimming in a thick cream sauce that billowed aniseed vermouth fumes. He opened a bottle of Californian Chardonnay as rich and oaky as Marmite. Perching on a rickety stool, Laney fought waves of nausea.
‘Here’s the plan.’ He started to brief her as he pulled fat yellow flesh from the shells. ‘We leave the doors open. You pretend to be asleep when the guy arrives. I’ll hide out of sight. If it goes wrong, I’m here to protect you.’
Laney jumped as Simon’s ringtone burst from her phone. He’d be calling for a pre-pie-judging ‘Good luck’, which she was far too wound up to manage. Diverting the call to voicemail, she asked, ‘Why would it go wrong?’
‘Trust me, it won’t. Eat up.’
She battled her way through half the bowl, then developed such chronic, bilious indigestion she had to go out on to the balcony for gulps of fresh air.
Her phone was lighting up with Simon’s ringtone again. She diverted it once more.
Tonight’s full moon had already risen in the dusky sky and was a snowman’s head sitting on top of the willows on the opposite bank. She hoped he’d help fight off Oscar’s henchman.
Then she heard a boat engine in the distance, making its way downstream, the low growl of a bow-rider.
Kit stepped out on the balcony behind her and listened too.
‘Surely that’s not him.’ She gripped the rails tighter. ‘It’s not yet nine.’
‘Better get ready just in case.’ He took her hand and pulled her back inside.
While Laney flapped about, hands shaking crazily as she copied her fake script on to a CD and labelled it very obviously ‘Dalrymple Two’, Kit threw their half-eaten meal into the sink, killed the lights and hid behind the kitchen peninsula.
Laney draped herself on the sofa, gasping for air like a landed fish.
The boat puttered straight past.
Laughing, Kit emerged. ‘Man, we have to do something about your breathing. Nobody hyperventilates like that when they’re asleep.’ He cocked his head, ‘Oh, hell.’
The boat engine was back, a deep throaty wash as it reversed into the boathouse lagoon. He crept across the room to peer through the windows. ‘It’s him. Jesus, he’s tall.’
‘Isn’t he being a bit obvious?’ Laney gasped. ‘Surely he could switch off the engine and float in like any self-respecting thief.’
‘Maybe Oscar wants him to be up-front and negotiate,’ Kit whispered encouragingly, then let out a disappointed sigh. ‘Maybe not. He’s putting on a mask.’
‘Balaclava?’
‘Mickey Mouse.’
‘Fitting. Oh Jesus.’ Laney shakily adopted her position on the sofa, shallow breaths now remarkably similar to those she’d been taught to do when panting between her final labour contractions. Then she let out a screech as Kit picked her up in a fireman’s lift and carried her behind the peninsula.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered frantically as he laid her on the floor and crouched over her so they were both hidden from the big windows. They could hear footsteps on the jetty below now.
‘He’ll never believe you’re asleep over there,’ he breathed. ‘You sound like you’ve just run a marathon.’ The big smile beamed down at her. ‘But he will believe you’re making love. Oh, yes, baby. Oh, yesss!’ he cried out. ‘Oh, Laney, you are good.’
