Best of Fiona Harper

Adam shuffled closer on the sofa, so his arm was touching mine. He leaned down to try and see into my eyes, and nudged me. ‘Coreen…?’

My bottom lip slid forward. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am too much for Nicholas Chatterton-Jones.’ I shrugged and tipped my head slightly to look at him. ‘It’s a moot point now, anyway. I found out a couple of days ago that Nicholas might be off the market soon. There are rumours about a possible new girlfriend.’

Adam gave me a lopsided smile. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’

I punched him on the arm. ‘That makes me sound awful! I’ve never actually stolen a man away from anyone. I can’t help it if they take one look at me and realise I’m the one they can’t live without.’

Adam pressed his lips together and nodded sagely. ‘That’s what I love about you—your matchless modesty.’

I punched him again. And then I smiled. How did he do that?

He put up his fists and nudged me on the shoulder with one of them. ‘So? Who’s this girlfriend? Do you think you can take her?’

I swatted his hand away, but he kept jabbing me gently on the upper arm, the way boxers did when they warmed up with one of those swinging punch bags.

‘I’m going to take you down in a minute, if you don’t cut that out!’ I said, laughing.

The devilish twinkle was back. ‘Promises, promises,’ he said.

‘It’s that awful Louisa Fanshawe,’ I said, not rising to the bait. And if we were talking fisticuffs, I probably could take her. She was another one of those willowy sorts who’d blow away in a stiff breeze. I wouldn’t risk breaking a nail on her, though, so she was safe on that count.

‘Oh, yes. I’ve heard how awful she is,’ Adam replied. ‘All that charity work…visiting sick children in hospital and campaigning for the homeless. It’s positively disgusting.’

I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. He was supposed to be on my side, so why was he practically bouncing up and down? What had he to be so happy about? I decided to direct my ire at the absent Louisa.

‘When she’s not swanning up and down a catwalk for some pretentious designer,’ I pointed out.

I thought about Louisa Fanshawe and her stick-like limbs and big doleful eyes. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but I’d allow for the fact she was striking—in that understated, slightly duck-faced way some high fashion models were. The women on Nicholas’s arm always looked frighteningly similar. Duck-faced and stick-thin was obviously his type.

I sighed again. Louisa was the less Adam had been talking about. I looked down at my chest. Less wasn’t something I had a lot of. I was doomed.

I was about to point this out to Adam, but when I looked up at him he was paying an inordinate amount of attention to the last of the prawn toasts. I think he felt me looking at him, because he offered me the foil tray. I shook my head. ‘You have it.’

He demolished it in one bite, and then turned to look me straight in the eyes. ‘Like I said…’ The seriousness there made my pulse kick. ‘The guy’s an idiot.’

I felt a smile start somewhere deep in my chest and work its way up to my mouth. ‘I love you, Best Bud,’ I said, and wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close.

For a long time he was silent and he just held me, soothing me with the rhythmic warmth of his breath on my neck. Then the inhaling and exhaling stopped. Seconds and seconds seemed to drag past before it started again, and when the next breath came there were words floating on it.

‘It’s hard not to,’ he whispered into my neck.

And then I hit him again.

CHAPTER THREE

The Very Thought of You

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 3—You’d think that someone as vain as I am would enjoy looking in the mirror, but sometimes I just can’t face it.

I CONTINUED to mope around for the next few days, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe Nan was right about something ticking inside me.

Of course I didn’t tell Nan that I might be on the verge of getting serious with someone when I visited her the following Sunday. She’d have had me up at the church to book a date so fast my head would’ve spun. Baby steps. Just thinking about being with one man for a considerable chunk of time was about as far as I wanted to go at present.

No, when I visited Nan we did what we always did—ate roast dinner, drank tea, and planed to watch an old black-and-white movie on the telly. After lunch I observed a further ritual. I went into the spare bedroom, opened the rickety wardrobe, and looked at all the dresses hanging there in their clear plastic covers.

They had been my mother’s. She’d died about ten years earlier, in a shabby little bed and breakfast in Blackpool, killed silently, invisibly and senselessly by a faulty boiler spurting carbon monoxide. And when she hadn’t turned up to go on stage that night at the club they’d just slotted another singer into the bill and carried on. It shouldn’t be that easy to replace someone, should it? People ought be remembered for their unique qualities, even if the choices they made in life weren’t ones you respected, or even understood.

As I did most weeks, I pulled out just one of Mum’s stage dresses and studied it more closely. This one was all shoulder pads and sequins, probably from around the time she’d met my dad. I could imagine Mum, her big Joan Collins-style hair stiff with half a can of hairspray, singing a soft rock ballad into a microphone, her eyes closed and her heart on her sleeve. She’d had a lovely voice. I had a few cassette tapes at home, but I didn’t play them much—too scared they’d warp or wear out.

Her voice had been rich and husky, able to catch every nuance of emotion in a song, whether she was belting it out or making the audience hang on every note. By rights she should have had more success than she did. And maybe she would have done if she’d put all the energy she’d wasted trailing round the country after my father into her career instead.

Despite my love of vintage, I never tried on these clothes. The eighties weren’t my thing, for a start. I knew the dresses would probably fit, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror and see my mother staring back at me. I didn’t want to see that same broken hopelessness in my eyes.

‘Go on—take them down to that shop of yours and get a few quid for them,’ Nan said from behind me.

I hadn’t heard her come in the room. I shook my head, carefully put the dress in its place on the rail and shut the wardrobe door. Nan gave me a sympathetic smile.

‘Cuppa? And that Dirk Bogarde film starts in a few minutes.’

I shook off the sadness that had collected like dust on my mother’s abandoned clothes and smiled back. ‘That would be perfect.’

I loved my Nan. I’d never seen her feathers ruffled, and for someone who’d produced two generations of drama queens she was as sensible and grounded as they came. I hadn’t minded living with her when I was a kid. There had always been cake and cuddles at Nan’s little terraced house. And Nan made everything seem warm and cosy. She never got that far-off look in her eyes that made you feel as if she was thinking of someone else, wanting to be somewhere else, while you tried to tell her about the gold star you’d got for your school project.

It had been easy to fall into the trap of believing I lived with Nan because Mum was always up and down the country, singing in clubs and pubs, or off on cruise ships. While there was a certain amount of truth in that, after her death I’d started to see another reason for her not giving up the club circuit and settling down. Leaving that life behind would have meant giving up hope—hope that she’d bump into Dad, hope that he’d fall in love with her all over again and come home. While she sat in a never-ending succession of grubby backstage changing rooms, putting her false eyelashes and sequins on, she could still deny the truth, pretend that day still might come, when really the dream had expired many years before.

But I didn’t like to think of Mum like that, sad and alone, pining for a man who would never love her the way she had loved him. I liked to remember the happy times. Like when she came home and stayed in the spare room at Nan’s. When I was really small I used to come over all shy at first. I’d be awed by the glamorous lady sitting on Nan’s old-fashioned brown sofa. But it hadn’t taken me long to get all loud and demanding, to be clambering all over her and tugging her to my bedroom to see my toys. I even used to make her hold my hand while I went to sleep.

My favourite memories of her were the times she’d let me dress up in her clothes. She’d even backcomb my hair and put silvery eyeshadow on me. And then I’d clump around the spare bedroom in her shoes, singing one of her songs, doing all the actions, and she’d fall back on the bed and laugh until she cried. My mum had a lovely laugh.

‘Custard Cream?’

I looked up to see Nan offering me a battered tartan tin that, back in 1973, had once contained Christmas shortbread. I’d been so lost in my memories that I’d followed her into the living room and sat down in an armchair on automatic. The titles of the film were staring to roll, so I nabbed a couple of biscuits, balanced them on the arm of the chair, and prepared myself to slip into a world where men were noble, women had impossible eyebrows, and violins expressed every emotion while the actors stayed stiff-lipped, clenching their fists. I quite liked the idea of standing motionless at a moment of crisis, all elegant and dramatic, while an orchestra swelled around me.

I looked down at my floral Capri pants and red suede ballet pumps. Not sure I’d like to live in black and white, though. I’m a Technicolor kind of gal, I suppose.

We were ten minutes into the film when my mobile rang. Nan tutted, but didn’t swerve her gaze from Dirk, looking all square-jawed and beautiful on the screen, so I picked up my cup of tea and walked into the kitchen to answer it. ‘Oh, God, sweetie! I’m so relieved it didn’t go to voicemail!’

I’d recognise those upper-class tones anywhere. Unlike her brother, whose rich voice was even and restrained, Izzi Chatterton-Jones had a dramatic delivery that made booking a table at her favourite restaurant sound as if it was a life-and-death event. If Izzi had been a character in a novel, her dialogue would have been riddled with italics.

‘Hi, Izzi. What can—?’

‘I’ve had the most fabulous idea, darling, and you’ve simply got to help me with it.’

Knowing Izzi, whatever she was planning would be probably be last minute and extremely stressful to say yes to. On the other hand she was bags of fun, and I might even get to see Nicholas again.

‘I’m going to host a country house party!’ Izzi squealed. ‘Mummy and Daddy are going to the South of France for the whole of July, and they’ve said I can borrow the house for an entire weekend. Isn’t that the most super idea ever?’

She paused, probably waiting for me to recover from swooning with excitement. Only I wasn’t. I couldn’t think of anything worse—mud, rain, horsey laughs, everyone dressed in drab tweeds and shooting anything that twitched? Count me out. I was eternally grateful that Nicholas seemed to spend most of his time in London, in his tall white house with black railings in Belgravia. Now, I wouldn’t object to spending a weekend there, given half the chance.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Izzi asked, a hint of impatience in her tone.

‘Super,’ I said, borrowing her vocabulary. None of the words I had in mind would have gone down well. ‘But what’s this got to do with me?’

‘It’s a murder-mystery weekend!’

Okay. I know that compared to the Chatterton-Joneses I’m merely a commoner, but did I really look like the kind of girl who knew how to do someone in? It must be the accent. Although mine was a lot softer than true Cockney, Izzi and her sort probably thought I knew the East End like the back of my hand and was distantly related to the Krays or descended from Jack the Ripper.

‘I…er…don’t think I’ve ever been on one of those,’ I said. ‘What’s involved?’

‘I want to do the whole caboodle—costumes and everything—and that’s where you come in!’

Oh, goody.

‘I can’t abide those fancy dress shop monstrosities,’ she added airily.

I stifled a giggle. The thought of Izzi in a padded Superman outfit, complete with six-pack and biceps, had sprung to my mind, and it made it very hard to listen properly.

‘…so if you can sort all of that out it would be fabulous.’

Huh? Oh, dear. I’d wandered off again. Thankfully I have a full range of phrases tucked away at the back of my head for such eventualities. Sounding very serious, I said, ‘Could you be more specific?’

Izzi launched into a long spiel about wanting authentic thirties clothes for her Agatha Christie-type murder-mystery weekend, and I swear if I had been a cartoon my eyeballs would have been spinning round in my head and dinging like cash registers. Daywear, eveningwear and accessories for eight people! And Izzi only likes the very best stuff. I didn’t care that I was missing Dirk smouldering on Nan’s ancient telly for this. If things went well in the next year or two I was thinking of opening another branch of Coreen’s Closet, somewhere closer to the West End, and Izzi’s connections would really speed things along.

‘It’s going to be such a hoot!’ Izzi said. ‘We’ve all got characters to play. I’ll e-mail you details of every part so you can start hunting for suitable clothes.’

‘What’s your budget?’

Izzi made a dismissive noise, as I’d suspected she would. ‘I care more about it being right than I do about the cost,’ she said, and then she giggled. ‘I have the most fabulous part for you!’

I raised my eyebrows. I’d been hoping she’d say I was on the guest list, but hadn’t wanted to assume. This could have just been a business transaction, after all. I grinned to myself.

Izzi started telling me about the different characters the organisers she’d hired had outlined to her—lords, ladies, parlour maids and debutantes. And then she started reeling off the guest list. When she said Nicholas’s name my heart started to skip.

‘I can’t wait,’ I said softly. I wasn’t just being excited for Izzi’s benefit now. I really meant it. This was my opportunity! I’d be able to relax and mingle with Nicholas outside of a hot, crowded cocktail party. I’d be able to dial things down a bit—just as Adam had suggested—and Nicholas would be able to see my relaxed, fun side. I could see it all so clearly: languid cocktails in the drawing room before dinner, fresh, misty country mornings…

Izzi developed a stern edge to her voice. ‘And I need you to bring a man!’

I’d been deep in a fantasy where Nicholas and I had been strolling though a secluded bluebell wood. I had stepped in a rabbit hole and twisted my ankle, and he’d swept me into his arms and carried me back to the house as if I weighed nothing. (This was a fantasy, after all.) I could almost smell his woody aftershave as I laid my head against his chest…

‘What?’ I said, a little too sharply.

‘It’s a dealbreaker if you can’t,’ Izzi said. ‘I’m desperate! Jonti broke his leg bungee jumping, and is stuck in New Zealand, and Jonathan refuses to miss some horrible cricket match. You’ve got to bring someone!’

The bluebells, the rabbit hole, the lovely feeling of being safe in Nicholas’s arms? They all disappeared into that mist I’d been daydreaming about. I was glad Izzi couldn’t see me, because I felt my eyebrows clench together and my jaw tense.

The last thing I wanted to do was bring a date on Izzi’s weekend! It would spoil everything. While Adam had pointed out that I hadn’t been above being seen with another man to spark a potential conquest’s interest in the past, I’d learned my lesson on that front, and I’d never get any time alone with Nicholas if I had a lovelorn swain lolloping around after me all weekend. Also, I didn’t want to encourage any of them needlessly. The only man I was interested in at the moment was Nicholas, and it wasn’t fair to give any other impression.

What was it that Adam had said about toying with people the other night? Hmm. I decided I must be maturing.

‘It’s a bit short notice,’ I muttered to Izzi, but she just laughed.

‘I can’t believe you haven’t got a hundred men ready to fall over themselves for a weekend with you. You’ll manage it somehow.’

I pouted. Sometimes having a reputation like mine was not a good thing. Not that I’m a floozy. I might get a lot of male attention—I might even enjoy it—but I do try not to encourage it unless I’m interested. And I’m actually quite picky about who I go out with. There have been far fewer men in my life than most people think.

Flip. What was I going to do? I really needed this weekend to be a success for me—in more ways than one. I supposed I could fob Izzi off, hoping she was just blowing hot air about it being a deal breaker, but what if she stood her ground if I called her bluff? And she just might. One of the reasons I liked Izzi was that she was unpredictable and prone to sudden whims, just like me. If I caught her in the wrong mood when I let it slip I would be coming alone, she might just pull the plug on me. It’s the sort of thing I might have done in her place.

And then an idea struck me. Beautiful in its simplicity—except for the fact the man in question would never go for it. But Izzi was right: I’d manage it somehow.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said cheerily. ‘I have the perfect guy in mind.’

‘Why do I have the horrible feeling there’s a catch involved?’ Adam asked me from the other end of the rowing boat. I couldn’t see him properly. We were under tall sycamores on one corner of the boating pond and I couldn’t make out his features because the aggressive June sun was behind him, causing me to squint. However, even though he was just one big, soft blur, I knew there was a twinkle in his eyes.

Adam’s twinkle is a really good sign. It usually means he wants to say yes to whatever I’m trying to get him to agree to, but is just having fun with me in the meantime.

I adjusted my parasol. ‘Why would there have to be a catch?’ I said sweetly.

‘Oh, I dunno…’ The oars swept out of the water and propelled us forward in an exhilarating little jerk. ‘Maybe because you invited me out for an afternoon stroll in Greenwich Park—rest and relaxation, you said—and I end up doing all the work while you sit there licking an ice cream cone.’

‘I said I’d get you one when our time is up,’ I replied. I couldn’t see what he was fussing about. A little bit of delayed gratification is good for the soul.

The oars hit the water again, and I couldn’t help noticing the fine hairs on Adam’s forearms as we emerged into the sunshine again. Hairs that shifted and shimmered as the muscles underneath them bunched and relaxed. There’s something very captivating about watching a man row. I’d have to make sure that I ended up in a boat with Nicholas at some point during the country weekend. There must be a lake somewhere on the Chatterton-Joneses’ estate. It’s that kind of place.

I decided to get in some practice and attempted to drape myself fetchingly at my end of the boat, doing my best to look elegant and ethereal.

‘Now you’re just rubbing it in,’ Adam muttered.

I closed my eyes and smiled, my face turned up to the sun. The twinkle was still there. I could hear it.

‘All I’m asking for is one lick,’ he said softly, and I belatedly realised we were drifting rather than see-sawing through the water. I opened my eyes to find Adam much closer than I’d thought he’d be. The twinkle was there, all right, but there was something behind it, something hot and bright. That aggressive sun reflected in them, perhaps. I shifted my parasol. I must have let it slip back when I’d had my eyes closed, because I could feel my cheeks heating now.

For some reason I couldn’t find the words to refuse. He leaned closer and closer, a lazy smile spreading across his face. The chocolate in those eyes began to melt. I couldn’t help but watch it swirl and warm, filling my vision until it was almost the only thing I saw. It was odd, because we were hardly moving it all, yet it was at that moment I felt a quiver of seasickness in my tummy.

Just as he was close enough to lick my ice cream, as we were cocooned under my parasol and it seemed we were the only two beings in the whole of Greenwich Park, I felt a tug on my fingers and the cone was eased from my hand. There was a sudden lurch and a splash, and I found myself sitting alone in the rowing boat while Adam waded through the knee-deep water to the edge of the stone-lined pond, eating my ice cream in big gulps and laughing as he went.

I was so surprised I nearly dropped my parasol. And then Adam really would have been in big trouble. It was made of exquisite cream lace, and I hadn’t seen another one to rival it in years. I caught it just in time, and snapped it closed. Then, still listening to the sound of Adam chuckling from the safety of dry land, I swapped seats and picked up the oars.

I’ll bet you thought I couldn’t row. Well, I can. I’m rather good at it, actually. Boating ponds were cheap entertainment when I was a kid, and Nan and I used to come here all the time when it was sunny.

It was just as well I was facing away from Adam, because I was seething under my breath. The sight of me rowing expertly towards him just made him laugh harder, for some reason. I wanted to kill him.

Only I couldn’t. I needed him to do me a favour, didn’t I? A pretty big one. And if that meant sucking up my pride so I could further my business and snaffle the man of my dreams, so be it. I could be the bigger person while Adam continued to act like a kid. I could.

I reached the stone lip of the boating pond and marshalled my features to show none of my irritation. By the time I’d neatly nipped out of the boat—blowing a kiss at the scruffy teenager in charge of the pond so he’d come and fetch it instead of making me row it to the proper place—I was the pinnacle of elegant calm. I had a picture of Grace Kelly in my head, and I was determined not to lose it.

I caught up with Adam at the ice cream van, where he handed me a replacement cone, complete with chocolate flake and strawberry sauce. I snatched it from him and walked away.

‘Now you owe me,’ I said. To his credit, he didn’t disagree. Well, not straight away. We both walked, giving our attention to our ice creams until we were halfway up the hill.

‘I don’t think half an ice cream really equates to a whole weekend in the country dressed up like a wally.’

He might have a point there, but I was hardly going to acknowledge that, was I? ‘These are very good ice creams,’ I said, as I pushed the last of mine into my cone with my tongue. Adam went quiet. I looked up to find him swallowing. Hard. He had a strange look on his face, and I had a horrible feeling he was about to say something I wouldn’t like, so I started off up the hill again.

He caught up to me fairly quickly. ‘Come and see my latest project and we’ll call it quits,’ he said.

I sighed. ‘I’ve visited everything you’ve constructed for years.’

He shook his head. ‘Not for quite some time, actually. You’d be surprised at what I’m doing now.’

I wasn’t convinced. A summerhouse was a summerhouse, and a shed was a shed, after all. Not that I’m not proud of him for turning his hobby into a business that keeps him afloat, but it’s hardly glamorous. Wherever you find wood like that, there are inevitably spiders. And I’m not big on spiders.

‘And this thing you’ve being doing down in Kent is wildly different, is it?’

‘I finished that months ago. I was talking about the hotel project in Malaysia.’