London Celebrity @LondonCelebrity. 3h
A rebound fling? Will Farmer’s bitter rant as Graham and Troy heat up the Metronome...tinyurl.com/puy26gy
A nice person would have let him off the hook. There were no members of the Metronome goon squad lurking around Upper Bidford to bully them into obedience. Even the demands of her job weren’t enough to entice Lynette Stern from the civilised city to a country village with no free Wi-Fi. Lainie could have offered to bluff an excuse while Richard stayed home to enjoy whatever he usually did on a Saturday morning. She assumed it involved excellent espresso and some heavy self-Googling.
Clearly, she was not a nice person. Because she had rarely enjoyed any sight more than that of Richard Troy at a village fête, wedged between two of the more terrifying representatives of the local Women’s Institute. He looked as if he’d accidentally fallen through a portal into the third circle of hell.
A young woman with questionable maternal instincts shoved her defenceless infant into Richard’s arms, ignoring his furious response while she unearthed her phone. While she took a series of images, musing aloud on the best one for Instagram, Lainie wandered over to appreciate the spectacle at close range. It was debatable who looked more wrathful: Richard, or the infant he was dangling at arm’s length like a mud-splattered football.
“You do realise you’re holding a baby, not a leaking bucket?” she asked conversationally, and he gave her a look that could splinter wood. “Against your chest, hand under his bottom. Honestly. You must have had a cuddle before.”
“Yes, but women don’t appreciate a hand under their bottom until I’ve at least bought them dinner,” he retorted, and the WI president tittered into her jam scone.
Lainie pulled out her own phone and also took a picture. “Like I’m going to miss this opportunity,” she said in response to his glare. “If the acting thing doesn’t pan out, I can always hock this photo to the tabloids as evidence of your secret love child.” She flipped the screen around to see how the image had turned out. Wow. Portrait of an Irate Actor.
The mother laughed as she retrieved her son. The baby was well wrapped and adorably squishy in his furry onesie. “My husband would probably come after him with a meat cleaver. That’s him over there.” She nodded toward the field where a rugby match was taking place against the neighbouring village. Lainie had no idea which player she was pointing at, but they were all equally well-endowed in the thigh department.
“Now there are two reasons to keep it.” Lainie wiggled her phone at Richard, and he scowled at her.
“Delete it.”
“Not a chance. I may make it my screensaver. I especially like the smear of drool on your shoulder.”
He looked down at his coat and swore, swiping at the stain with his hand.
“Sorry,” Lainie apologised pointedly to the group of women clustered about them. “His manners are a work in progress.” She grabbed Richard’s arm and dragged him away. “It’s not the most promising beginning for your career in rubber-stamping and paper-pushing, is it? I think charming elderly women and chucking babies under the chin is part of the job description.”
“I’m campaigning for the presidency of the RSPA, not running for mayor in the sticks.” He cast a scornful look around the village green. The fête had opened an hour earlier, the ribbon cut by a bashful-looking Johnny Blake. Away from his vlogging camera, he was as awkward as the next teenage boy, but the young girls in the crowd had seemed to appreciate his stammered speech. And it was nice of him to make an obvious effort when he was out of his comfort zone.
Unlike some males twice his age.
Richard was poking at a chipped teapot on the table for the white elephant stall. “This is junk,” he said, without even bothering to lower his voice.
“It’s a white elephant stall. That’s kind of the point. And who are you, the Antiques Roadshow?” Lainie cast a quick, embarrassed look around. She would estimate the ratio of people staring at Richard to be about ninety percent. It was too much to hope they were all hard of hearing. “If you could develop some sort of filter and a volume button in the next thirty seconds, it would really help me out.”
“Exactly how long do we have to stay?” Richard stared in disbelief as a pig walked past with a blue prize ribbon around its neck.
“Until the last cup of tea is drunk and we’ve helped with the cleanup.” Lainie was rapidly losing her sense of humour about the situation. “These people are kindly giving up their time, money and goodwill to help out a charity that means a lot to me. And sulking at a fund-raiser for children with cancer is a total dick move. FYI.”
Once again, Richard reddened slightly. A week ago, she wouldn’t have thought him capable of changing colour without the aid of cosmetics. He thrust a hand through his tumbled black curls and looked away from her. All broody in an open-necked white shirt, and set against a pastoral background, he looked like a still from Wuthering Heights. She refused to be softened by the image. He could look as handsome as he wanted; it didn’t make his behaviour any more attractive.
And he needed a shave. There was a fine line between designer stubble and scruffiness.
“Of course I’ll support the cause,” he muttered, and then added impatiently, “but I don’t see why we can’t just write a cheque.” He repeated his derisive survey of the merrymaking. “You’ll be lucky to break a thousand quid with this lot.”
Lainie wasn’t sure whether “this lot” referred to the fairground goods for sale or the villagers themselves. It was offensive either way.
“Because there are dozens of people here who care enough to want to contribute—” and a good hundred more who’ve come along for the sole purpose of seeing your sour face, thanks to the social media grapevine “—and they can’t all afford to just ‘write a cheque.’” She had the satisfaction of seeing his flush deepen. “And all of these events help raise the profile of the charity. We’re trying to turn a spotlight on Shining Light. Not on the fact that Richard Troy has opened his fat wallet for something more philanthropic than a new sports car.”
His face was unreadable. “You’ve made your point.”
Not quite. “For the record, you’re behaving exactly the way Will would.”
Not that she would have got Will down here in a million years, PR stunt or no.
A nerve twitched above Richard’s right eyebrow. “Is that blatant insult supposed to make me re-evaluate my life choices?”
She shrugged. “It would make me think twice.”
He said nothing in response, but refrained from openly sneering when they went to greet the women running the cake stall. He even bought a bag of chocolate chip biscuits. He almost immediately handed them off to a thrilled middle-aged woman with a teenage daughter in tow, but it was the gesture that counted.
“I suppose,” she muttered, choosing a plate of small sandwiches for herself from the savoury section, “it would be too much to ask you to judge the jams and chutneys.”
“You suppose correctly.” Richard took her elbow and steered her out of the way of the crowd. “Don’t push your luck.”
But his voice was surprisingly mild.
He even stood still for over twenty photographs with fans before impatience began to flicker at the edges of his smile and temper. Seeing the signs of an impending snap, Lainie excused them with a polite murmur. They each purchased a cup of hot cider—which was very good—and strolled toward a marquee that promised excessively large vegetables.
“Is that a joke?” Richard was reading a sign inscribed Largest Pumpkin Competition. We Hope You’re Having a Gourd Day.
Lainie winced. “Well, it’s a fairly cringe-worthy attempt at one.”
“Not the god-awful pun. The competition itself. There’s actually a contest for the largest pumpkin?”
“Oh, yes. Vegetable size is a cutthroat category, I gather. You know men. Always obsessed with the girth of their courgettes.”
He ignored that and reached for her arm, foiling her attempt to take a sandwich from her plate. As ordered by Pat, he had picked her up outside her flat at an unearthly hour of the morning in order to beat the weekend traffic out of London, and she hadn’t had time for breakfast. She was starving.
“Come on, then.” He towed her toward the entrance of the marquee. Yet again, she was doing her best impression of a tugboat in the wake of the S.S. Troy.
“Arm,” she said, looking wistfully at her sandwiches. “Attached to shoulder joint. And I’m trying to eat here.”
“It’s kind of a dick move to whine at a fund-raiser for cancer patients,” he said without turning his head. “Just saying.”
Touché.
“Jesus,” he said inside the tent. “Look at the size of that thing.”
Lainie looked from an admittedly sizable pumpkin to the gleam of reluctant fascination in Richard’s blue eyes.
Escorting her to a party: no interest. One of her more expensive dresses: totally unimpressed. Acting with her in a play: distinctly underwhelmed.
And then bowled over by a gigantic vegetable.
She chose to be amused.
“Do you think they use a special kind of fertiliser?” Richard went down on his haunches, looking at the pumpkin’s bulbous backside.
Lainie unwrapped her sandwich plate and poked through the contents. “I expect they use hormone therapy. Like with chickens,” she lied, and lifted a triangle of thinly sliced bread, hoping for cheese. Cucumber. Disappointing.
“Do they?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask someone? Do you like cucumber?”
“What?” He glanced at her, distracted. “Oh. Yes. I suppose.”
She handed him the sandwich and went back to her search for cheese. She would also settle for ham and chutney. Someone had got a little carried away on the jam front.
Richard ate the dainty triangle in one bite before he cornered one of the farmers. Presumably to enquire how he too could grow such a large gourd. The elderly man looked as taken aback as she felt.
One of the organisers of the fête stuck her head through the entrance flap of the marquee. Her brow cleared at the sight of them and she came over to update Lainie on their takings so far. Her name was Mary, and she was a nice woman. They had been corresponding by email for several weeks. It was her niece, a young local girl named Lexie, who had recently died. Lainie looked at a photo of a cheerful teenager with pretty brown hair and offered Mary her sincere sympathies. There was a lump in her throat. Lexie had been only a couple of years older than Hannah. So many kids. So much stolen potential.
After Mary had gone, Lainie studied her feet for several moments. She concentrated on her breathing exercises, which had proved a useful tool in more than pacing a monologue. She had regained her composure when an elbow nudged her, making her jump.
“Are you all right?” Richard’s question was abrupt. When she looked up, he was frowning slightly and there was a trace of concern in his eyes. They had darkened to almost indigo.
He also had an air of impatience and wariness, and she felt the subtle shifting of his body as he moved his weight from one foot to the other. His body language screamed of reluctant, uncomfortable male. He obviously suspected her of imminent tears and was ready to dash up the nearest hill if they appeared. Or just order her, in his iciest tones, to stop being so female.
He would probably tell her she was habitually overplaying the sob scene. She almost laughed, and then wondered if she was becoming hysterical.
It must be the oddity of the setting. Standing in a marquee in the Cotswolds with a plate of depleted tea sandwiches, surrounded by pumpkins that would do Cinderella proud for transport, in the company of Richard Troy. Who was holding a plant pot in each hand.
Surreal enough for a Max Ernst painting.
“I’m fine,” she said. In her confusion, the words sounded cold, and he stiffened at the apparent snub. “Thank you,” she added, which seemed to make the situation worse. In a desperate attempt to change the subject, she nodded down at the plants. “What are those?”
He was eyeing his booty with the smug satisfaction of a small boy collecting a box of chocolates from the Tombola.
They were herb seedlings he’d bought. For his window boxes.
Herbs. For his window boxes.
The opening bars of The Twilight Zone were circling her mind on repeat.
A prickling at the back of her neck brought her head around, and she spotted a familiar sight lurking just outside the marquee.
“Photographer,” she said quietly, and her lips accidentally brushed Richard’s earlobe. She shivered involuntarily at the feel of the soft skin there, and he made a strange jerking movement. His shoulder came up as if to shrug off her touch.
He glanced over her head at their Peeping Tom. Then he casually put an arm around her, and she automatically leaned her cheek against his chest. They managed the embrace a bit more organically than their awkward clinch at the benefit. Lainie realised it didn’t seem quite so unnatural today. It was just another role after all. If she could simulate a passionate love for Will in front of a crowded theatre, she could do this. Richard lowered his nose to the top of her head, as if he was pressing a kiss there, and they heard the snapping of the camera. He wasn’t kissing, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he was sniffing, which made her paranoid about the smell of her shampoo and when she’d last used it.
It was surprisingly relaxing, just taking a moment to prop herself up against Richard. She liked the smell of his cologne, and the wool of his coat felt luxuriously soft against her face. Things had been so busy lately, an endless carousel ride of performances and late nights, interviews and appearances, that she hadn’t had the time to just stop and breathe. A manipulative cuddle with Richard seemed to be her best alternative to a spa day, with the sound of his heartbeat subbing in for the soothing oceanic soundtrack at her favourite salon. He had shifted his seedling pots to one arm. The fingers of his free hand were spread against the small of her back and he moved his palm in a slight rubbing, circular motion.
They realised, simultaneously, that the photographer had gone and they were just standing there. Dreamily groping one another.
His quick retreat was unnecessary. She was already leaping back when a familiar voice said from behind them, “Lainie?”
Sarah was standing in the entrance of the marquee, watching them with obvious interest. Lainie inwardly groaned at the gleeful speculation on her sister-in-law’s face.
Joining them at the pumpkin display, Sarah extended a brisk hand to Richard. “Hello.” She was openly staring at him and making no excuses about it. “I’m Sarah Graham. Lainie’s least irritating sister-in-law.”
Richard still looked a bit wide-eyed and fur-ruffled, like a startled cat. Lainie had never seen him take so long to pull himself together. He shook Sarah’s hand and made a cordial response. It was almost effusive, for him. She was tempted to feel his forehead for fever, but got the impression he would take off straight through the side of the tent like the Road Runner if she touched him again.
It seemed a fairly safe bet that he was not, as a rule, a hugger. He didn’t even have to play that many love scenes onstage. Backtracking through his résumé, he had been frequently typecast as the villain in recent years.
It would be shabby and far too easy to comment on that.
“Where’s Emily?” Lainie asked, interrupting Sarah’s intrigued inspection of Richard’s herb pots. “Were we abandoned for shopping on the high street?”
“No, she’s over at the tea tent. Giggling with her best friend and pretending they’re not spying on Johnny Blake. Whom I can’t help noticing is a scrawny beanpole in serious need of a shower, a comb, and a belt to hold up his trousers. I despair about the current state of teenage hormones.”
“To be fair,” Lainie said, “I believe you had a crush on George Michael when you were at school. He wasn’t exactly a well-coifed bodybuilder, was he?”
“He was adorable.” Sarah wrinkled her nose. “You eighties babies had no sense of style.”
Niall was Lainie’s second-oldest brother and Sarah was a decade her senior, but the age difference had never affected their friendship. They had clicked from the moment Niall had brought her home to meet his family as a university student.
“Says the woman who sat her A-levels in shoulder pads and a bouffant.”
Richard was stirring restlessly. Their mutual exchange of nonsense had provided enough cover for him to resurrect his usual shields. “Who is Johnny Blake?” he asked abruptly, and Lainie frowned at him.
“I introduced you to him when we arrived. He opened the fête.”
“I may only just scrape in as an eighties baby,” he said sarcastically, “but I haven’t quite dwindled into senility yet. I recall the introduction. I’m still awaiting the explanation of his apparent teen idol status.”
“He’s a vlogger,” Sarah explained. “He makes videos on YouTube.”
“Oh. YouTube.”
Henry the Eighth might have used the same tone on a visit to the London slums: “Oh. The common rabble.”
And, well—yes. She supposed that if his experience of YouTube was limited to people posting iPhone footage of his public meltdowns, he was entitled to be jaded. She would have to introduce him to the life-altering joy that was funny cat videos.
They made their way back outside, and Lainie shivered. The sky was an ominous-looking grey now and it was amazing the rain had held off this long. There was a good reason why most village fêtes were held in summer. At least one could be optimistic about a hint of sunshine then.
She was suddenly surrounded by warm, masculine-scented wool. Her eyes, scrunched up against the wind, shot open and encountered Sarah’s equally surprised expression. Richard, now sans his thousand-pound coat and probably freezing in his shirtsleeves, didn’t look at either of them.
Too astonished to speak, Lainie touched a wondering hand to the thick, butter-soft cashmere. Richard’s cheeks were going a bit ruddy in the cold air.
Or was he embarrassed? He looked definitely relieved when a stranger approached them and apologised for interrupting.
Gratitude slid into gathering thunderclouds when the man went on to ask, very apprehensively, if Richard was the owner of the Ferrari parked by the church. Lainie didn’t think he’d moved that quickly since their first dress rehearsal, when Will had been let loose unsupervised with his sword and had found it harder to manoeuvre than anticipated.
She followed him at a less athletic pace, already wincing. She hoped he hadn’t been ticketed. That would make for a fun journey home. It had been a very long couple of hours in the car already this morning. Bob had staged impromptu drinks with VIP guests after the previous night’s show, and none of the cast had got home before 2:00 a.m. Neither she nor Richard functioned well on three hours of sleep and zero cups of coffee.
“My, my,” Sarah said provocatively at her side. “What was that I saw? Could it be? Was that possibly a belated spark of chemistry?”
Lainie shot her a look. “There was a photographer outside.” She heard the defensive thread in her words, and Sarah looked unimpressed.
“Not when I walked in, there wasn’t. Just two smitten-looking people snogging in a sea of pumpkins.”
“We weren’t snogging, and I’m not smitten.” She touched a fingertip to her borrowed coat again. Confused, yes. Smitten, no. “We’re just doing our job.”
“If you say so.” Sarah pushed back a strand of limp blond hair, side-eyed her and added wickedly, “Although I still think he’s dishy.”
“Then help yourself. I won’t tell Niall that his wife is a shameless and mentally impaired hussy.”
“Oh dear.” Sarah came to a sudden stop, and her brown eyes opened wide. “I’m guessing Richard didn’t inscribe his own car door as a fashion statement?”
“What?” Lainie asked blankly.
She followed the direction of Sarah’s troubled gaze, and her heart sank. Richard and his hapless messenger stood in the midst of a murmuring crowd, all of whom were gathered in a circle around the Ferrari, gaping as if it were a murder scene. The unfortunate victim in the case was the driver’s side door, which had been tagged. Fairly explicitly, and in deep gouges with a key.
“I’m also assuming that Dick is not meant as a chummy nickname.”
“Probably not when it’s wedged between an expletive and the word head, no.”
Lainie regretted ever getting out of her warm bed and pyjamas. She didn’t really want to look at Richard, but forced herself to do so. His lips were pressed together so tightly they had almost disappeared. The nerve ticking in his jaw was like a timer on a volatile bomb. She was surprised he hadn’t already exploded. This was a positive show of restraint, and one she doubted would last.
Catching sight of the same photographer in the crowd of onlookers, happily snapping photos and probably planning a weekend break in Biarritz on the profits, she shook off the horrified inertia and went to Richard’s side.
Up close, the damage to the prohibitively expensive car was even worse. And the message was offensive to the point of repulsion. Lainie grimaced. She might have called Richard at least one of those names in the privacy of her head—and possibly on the phone to a long-suffering relative—but this was just...foul. Insulting, abusive vandalism. Considering where they were, and why they were here, it was sick.
Mary from the Women’s Institute obviously agreed. She looked appalled as she stammered an apology to Richard, making hesitant allusions to local tearaways.
“There’s a youth centre in Brickford...”
An offer to reimburse him for the damages was made with obvious dread, an emotion silently echoed by Lainie. A sharp finger was poking at her own conscience on that score. It might not have been her idea that Richard tag along to her charity events, but it was still because of her that he was here.
God knew what it would cost to restore a carved-up Ferrari. Almost certainly more than she could afford if she wanted to continue feeding and clothing herself.
She heard a muffled giggle, hastily hushed. More than a few people, in fact, seemed to be finding amusement in the incident.
Proof in action of Richard’s unfortunate public image.
For a woman who usually wanted to skewer Richard with a blunt pencil, she was strangely annoyed by the general air of “serves him right.” When she looked at him standing to one side, alone, with the skin taut around his eyes and mouth, she felt almost...protective. He would give short shrift to any offer of sympathy, so she kept her mouth shut and settled for placing a tentative hand on his elbow. Even that she expected to be rejected with some force.
He barely seemed to notice her touch. His glaring attention was fixed on his poor sexy, wounded car. She could hear the low, harsh sound of his breathing and feel the muscles quivering in his arm. He looked and sounded so much like a bull about to charge that she experienced a fanciful pulse-jump when the wind whipped her long red ponytail in front of his face like a flag. Hastily retrieving her hair, she tucked it into the collar of her—his—coat. She felt additionally guilty about wearing it now. It might be easier to face public insult and property destruction if he wasn’t freezing his balls off at the same time.
“I don’t suppose,” Richard at last spoke, very tightly, “that anyone saw it being done?”
Nobody had seen it done. Or if they had, they weren’t prepared to admit it.
“You should file a police report,” Sarah said, the voice of calm reason, and Mary immediately offered to summon the local constable.
Lainie, keeping a wary eye on the avidly interested paparazzo, said dubiously, “I doubt if there’s much they can do, without witnesses...unless you have CCTV footage?”
They did have CCTV surveillance, but the camera was directed at the front of the church, not the rear side where Richard had parked.
“You still need to file a police report for your insurance company.” Sarah nodded to the anxiously hovering Mary, who immediately went in search of Constable Porter, last spotted browsing the book stall.
Insurance! Of course he would have insurance. Stress was doing odd things to her intellect. Lainie could have twirled with relief. She hadn’t fancied the prospect of eating baked beans and Marmite toast for dinner for the next six months.
Richard drew in a sharp breath through his nose and also glanced at the waiting photographer. The pap was looking a bit chagrined at such continued and unusual reticence from a man who had been known to blow his top over spilled tea.
“You do have insurance, don’t you?” she asked quickly, trying to divert him. Her fingers pressed a warning into his arm.
He seemed to take in her presence for the first time, and he scowled at her. “Of course I have insurance,” he snapped, pointedly picking her hand off and returning it to her. “That’s hardly the point, is it?”
From the perspective of her wallet, it was very much the point. But she appreciated that his pride was more outraged than his finances. It was actually a relief that he had returned to grumping and glaring at her. It made it considerably more difficult to feel warming, sympathetic, dangerous things toward him. Richard was a less disturbing element when she could keep him tucked firmly in her mental box of grievances. Just pulling him out now and then to touch up the doodled fangs and devil’s horns.
Mary returned with the police constable, and Richard continued to disappoint most of the crowd by not raising his voice or stamping his feet, either metaphorically or literally. He did mutter something about a clod-footed fool, but it was under his breath and not within PC Porter’s hearing, so Lainie chalked that up to a win for public relations. She rubbed her finger over the car door to see how deep the gouges went, and he reacted like a fussy hen that didn’t want people touching her eggs.
At some point in their association, her eyes were just going to roll right out of her head and bounce along the floor like a cartoon.
Fortunately for his health, as she would have made creative use of the prizewinning pumpkin if he’d been rude, he was quite polite and gracious with her niece Emily, although clearly uncomfortable with—well, humans, really. His reserve with strangers was not limited to the youth. Emily seemed unimpressed by his efforts, but then Richard was over thirty. He also bathed regularly and covered his entire backside with his trousers, so he couldn’t really be any less cool to a thirteen-year-old.
While Richard filled in his police report and Emily resumed her distant ogling of Johnny, Lainie and Sarah helped with packing up the tea tent and the baking stall. There were only a handful of items left unsold on the table. Unsurprisingly, the stuffed celery sticks had proved less popular than the chocolate brownies and toffee apples. There was a time and place to push the five-plus a day mantra and it was not at a charity carb fest.
Sarah was almost wriggling with her need to offer further commentary on the Richard situation, but was restricted by the presence of the WI. Lainie made a mental note to screen her calls for a day or two.
Once Johnny had left to catch his train back to London, Emily became impatient to return to her natural habitat. She tugged at her mother’s sleeve with one hand, texted a friend with the other and whined. Teenage multitasking at its best.
Sarah allowed herself to be dragged away, still glancing mischievously from Lainie to where Richard stood, putting out stroppy vibes and making PC Porter visibly uncomfortable. Lainie emphatically waved her relatives off and went to thank Mary and the other women for their hard work. They promised to put through a transfer to the Shining Lights account as soon as the cash tally had been finalised.
They left just after one o’clock, with enough time to get to the theatre by four, barring a flat tyre, car accident or roadworks. Richard was a simmering, brooding presence behind the wheel, tapping the indicator impatiently whenever they were stalled in the flow of traffic. Lainie wished she was driving, so she would feel comfortable turning on the radio to break the silence. It always seemed rude to do it in someone else’s car, like a tacit acknowledgment you weren’t being entertained or would rather not speak to them.
True in both instances here. She was bored, and she also didn’t want another squabble. They appeared to be incapable of having a conversation without it deteriorating into a spat. There was something about their personalities that rubbed and ground into sparks.
Perhaps best to avoid verbs like rubbing and grinding. They conjured certain images.
She watched the progress of the tic in his left eye. It was probably a good thing she couldn’t read his mind. Her fragile ego might not be able to take the strain. “I’m sorry about what happened to your car,” she ventured at last. Because she was sorry. And she had manners.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “It’s fine,” he said, as if it hurt to open his jaw more than a centimetre.
“No, it’s horrible, actually.”
“I said it’s fine.”
Message and warning tone received.
With a sound that was meant to be a quiet sigh, but which came out as a nose-blast of exasperation, Lainie stretched out her calf muscles and flexed her ankles. She still thought it was obscene that his car cost more than most people’s mortgage, but she wasn’t denying it scored well on leg room. The seat was comfortable too. She wiggled her bottom from side to side, enjoying the pliable cushion. A little bounce or two, to test the suspension. Not bad.
The silence suddenly became more pointed, and she looked up into Richard’s aggravated, long-suffering stare.
“I see why you aren’t supposed to transport the infantry without a car seat,” he said, annoyed, and lightly grabbed hold of her knee when she bounced again. “Why can’t you just sit still like a normal person? It’s like being trapped in a small box with Tigger.”
“Speaking of behaving like a sane person,” Lainie retorted, her eyes fixed on his restraining hand, “congratulations on not going off like a Catherine wheel at the fête. Why so civil, mon ami? The little grey cells want to know.”
The skin of her knee was prickling under his fingers. She delicately lifted them away digit by digit, and couldn’t resist an admiring stroke of his fingernails. Hers were never that neat and smooth. Too many applications of polish over the years. His facial skin looked in better shape than hers too, which was a bit depressing when he had greasepaint slathered on it as often as she did and could give her at least six years.
“I don’t know, Tig.” He returned his hand to the wheel and his gaze out the windscreen. “It must be your soothing influence.”
She didn’t bother to respond to that.
They made it to work by ten to four, and already a few people were waiting outside the side doors of the theatre. Lainie stopped to pose for photos and sign a few tickets. It was still surreal every time someone stopped her in the street to ask for a signature, and she doubted if she would ever feel blasé about the compliment. Richard, on the other hand, cut a striding path through the hopeful group without looking at anyone and went straight inside. Apparently the limits of his civility had been reached. A small child started crying when the door banged shut behind him, most likely from fright at the sudden noise, but it seemed to underline Lainie’s embarrassment. She felt she had to linger for an extra five minutes as some sort of poor compensation.
An elderly woman said to her loudly, “Personally, dear, I think you can do better than both of them.”
She was quite chuffed about that as she made her way inside.
Backstage was crowded with cast and crew. Footsteps and voices echoed loudly from the catwalk above the stage, as lighting adjustments were made in the midst of strong disagreement. The acoustics in the Metronome were so good that the resulting profanities would be crystal clear in the cheapest seats.
A grip walked past, laden with equipment, just as Chloe decided to have a costume refitting outside the privacy of her dressing room. The crewman’s concentration naturally faltered when his eyes almost bugged out of his head, and Lainie had to duck to avoid a head collision with the boom.
Ignoring the chaos she had caused with her corsets, Chloe looked up and waved at Lainie. “Hello!” she called, through a mouthful of sandwich. “I hear you’ve been larking about in the Cotswolds with Richard. That must have been fun.”
From anyone but Chloe, that would unquestionably be sarcasm.
“That’s one word for it.” Lainie walked over and held a loose flap of silk for Chloe’s dresser, Theresa, who looked as if she needed about three extra hands. Women had swaddled themselves in a lot of fabric in the olden days. Lainie quite enjoyed the palaver of walking and sitting in her own costume. She had literally got her bustle stuck in the greenroom door during opening week, and Will had had to get in there with his shoulder and wedge her out like a stuck cork. The corseting, she thought they could have dispensed with. Nobody needed a wasp waist.
Theresa hummed gratefully through a mouthful of pins, and Chloe put her hands on her hips, swishing her gown from one side to the other. It was not the most helpful behaviour when they were attempting to resize her clothing without turning her into a voodoo doll.
“I should take Benji for a day in the country,” Chloe said. “The fresh air would do us both good.”
Lainie had no idea if she was referring to her teenage son or her miniature dachshund, both of whom had been named after Chloe’s grandfather. There was no polite way to ask. She settled for a vague, affirmative “Mmm.”
“And it’s nice about you and Richard,” Chloe added, pausing in her fidgeting to smile at Lainie. “I hadn’t really thought about you as a couple, but it seems to fit, doesn’t it?”
Did it?
Theresa made another sound through her pins, apparently in agreement, and Lainie tried to look less appalled than she felt. Did people really see her as being temperamentally compatible with Richard?
Maybe they both needed to re-evaluate their life choices.
She left Chloe to her dreamy gyrations and cut through the wings, doing her best to ignore the sounds of the understudies’ rehearsal taking place on the stage. It made her uncomfortable, listening to someone else reading her part. She started to nitpick her own performance, which was a bad idea a few hours before curtain.
On her way down the stairs to the principal dressing rooms, she almost walked into Will, who was coming up without looking, his eyes fixed on his phone. Probably sexting with the fangirl, she thought, examining her feelings on the subject. She was relieved to find she wasn’t remotely jealous. She wasn’t even angry anymore. There was merely a certain relief at having dodged a bullet, and an underlying shame that she’d ever entered into such a shallow relationship in the first place.
“Whoops,” she said when she trod on his foot. “Sorry, Will. Excuse me.” She went to move past him, and he glanced up sharply from his phone. His large hand shot out and wrapped around her upper arm, bringing her to a halt so swiftly that her feet skidded off the step. She swayed in his hold like a pendulum dangling from a clock and made a noise best transcribed as “Eek.”
Will shoved his phone into his pocket and returned her to an upright position. She would have thanked him if he hadn’t left his hands on her waist, and if he wasn’t looking at her as if she’d just crawled out of a compost heap.
“What do you think you’re playing at?”
She blinked. “I said sorry.” She fumbled around and located her spine, adding pointedly, “I wasn’t the one gawping down at my dirty text messages instead of looking where I was going.”
A faint flush ruddied his cheeks. Bingo. “That’s what this is about, is it? How things ended between us?”
“Technically, things didn’t ‘end’ between us. Not in the traditional sense of the word, where one person decides they want out of the relationship so they strap on a pair and man up about it. But minor detail.” She raised an eyebrow, wondering if his nostrils had always flared so aggressively when he spoke. “To which ‘this’ do you refer?”
“Cut the crap, Lainie. You know what I’m talking about. You get your knickers in a twist about Crystalle and—what? Decide to revenge-bang Troy?”
“Her real name cannot possibly be Crystalle. Have you seen her driver’s license? I bet you a fiver it’s something like Joan.”
“Richard-sodding-Troy.”
“Or Mabel.”
“Would you shut up about Crystalle!” Will blew out through his mouth and pushed a rough hand through his tumbled black hair.
It was funny, really. On paper, Will and Richard would sound almost interchangeable. Hair—black, eyes—blue, build...distracting. Surprisingly fit, both of them, for men who would rather be seen dead than sweating in public. In person, however, they didn’t look remotely alike. Richard’s hair was curly and his face was far more sculpted. He looked like a carved mask she’d seen in the British Museum. Will was pure Calvin Klein pretty boy. He was aesthetically the more handsome, but Richard was sexier. Women would probably want to tack Will’s two-dimensional face to the wall of their office, but they’d rather have a three-dimensional Richard, mussed and sleepy, against their pillow.
Had she just admitted to finding Richard sexy?
She wondered when to expect the remaining signs of the apocalypse.
By comparison, her mind hastily backtracked. Comparatively speaking, when the alternative was Wee Willy and his revolving bedroom door, Richard was...not unattractive.
She had to go. She clearly needed a power nap and a strong coffee before the show.
“We are no longer personally involved, Will,” she said, narrowly avoiding a slip of the tongue and calling him ‘Willy’ to his face. She dodged around his restraining arm. “It’s none of your business who I get involved with.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” he retorted, following her to the bottom of the stairwell. They stood looking at each other in the dim hallway. A door opened and then closed again somewhere down the passage. Will’s breathing was quick and agitated, a loud rasp in an otherwise quiet stillness.
After a moment, he relaxed the tension of his shoulders, apparently with an effort. “Sorry.” He sounded stiff, the apology dragged out of him. “You’re right. You can do whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” she said dryly. “Now, if you don’t mind...”
“I still think you can do better.” Will’s mouth twisted into a grimace, and she was forced to remember why she’d liked him in the first place. “Than both of us, I suppose.”
“Will...”
“I mean, come on, Lainie. Troy. A city full of single blokes, and you pick the biggest wanker in the West End.”
“It’s a sorely contested title. And we’ve agreed this is none of your business. Now move, please. I need to be caffeinated, and you need to resume typing dodgy little comments in Mabel’s ear.”
Will raised his hands in surrender and stepped away, and she moved around him, reaching into her pocket for the key to her dressing room.
He started back up the stairs, pausing at the top to call down, “And it’s Ethel. I saw her passport when we went to Paris for the day.”
Ethel? The discarded trophy wife and wannabe glamour model, Ethel.
Quelle horreur.
* * *
Pat was almost out the door when she suddenly came to a halt and retreated back into the dressing room.
Richard looked up from the script he’d been reading before her unwelcome interruption. He didn’t bother to mark his place this time. From a promising first act, it had descended into melodramatic, historically improbable crap.
He smothered a yawn. God, he was tired. He’d had about three hours of sleep last night. The extra shot of espresso in his afternoon coffee was ineffective. He checked his watch. If Pat would kindly sod off, he could fit in a thirty-minute power nap. After her latest mandate, making herself scarce was the least she could do. He wondered if Lainie had received the news yet.
“Was there something else?” The question was pointed rather than polite.
Pat was smiling to herself. With one manicured finger, she smoothed back the immaculate blond hair above her temple. “That should put an extra cat among the pigeons.” The observation was both clichéd and obscure. When he merely blinked slowly, uninterested, she added, with a nod toward the door, “Lainie and Will. A rather intense little tête-à-tête in the hallway.” She looked thoughtful. “It might be about time for a statement from that corner. Perhaps I’ll drop a few words in ears.”
Richard had stopped listening to her. He was already on his feet. He wasn’t going along with this farce so Lainie could pull a U-turn and dive back between Farmer’s sheets. As Pat watched with great interest, he yanked open the door and strode out into the hallway. He was just in time to see Farmer’s flat feet clumping up the stairs, probably on his way to the greenroom to sexually harass the catering assistants. It wasn’t going to be necessary to speed him on his way.
It had been a trying day all round.
Lainie was walking toward him, headed for her dressing room farther down the corridor. She looked pleased with herself. A tiny smile tugged at her lips. Her red lipstick was almost the exact shade of her hair. She lifted her head and faltered when she encountered his narrowed gaze.
Richard debated speech, and then simply lifted her by the elbows and transferred her to his own dressing room. She didn’t come quietly.
The stream of protest came to an abrupt halt when she caught sight of Pat. A vivid blush spread up from her neck. She was definitely a natural redhead. Completely unable to maintain a distance between her emotions and her complexion. Given their line of work, she ought to be thankful for the camouflaging qualities of greasepaint.
“Hello, Pat,” she said stiffly, and then shot Richard a nasty look, as if he was responsible for the other woman’s presence.
“Lainie.” Pat smiled at her. “I hear things went well this morning.”
“Oh.” Lainie darted another glance at him. “Did you?” Her tone was sceptical.
“The Digital Mail is running a caption contest on the photograph of Richard fondling root vegetables. Last time I checked, they already had three hundred entries. Ninety-nine percent sexual innuendo, obviously.”
Richard rolled his eyes but couldn’t stop a faint smile when he saw Lainie’s amusement.
“I’ll have to remember to enter tonight.” She lifted a delicately arched brow at him. “Was there a reason for that polite summons into your lair, by the way? Or did you just feel like showing off your biceps?”
“I thought you might have questions about Monday,” he said blandly, and watched her expression change.
“Monday?” she asked suspiciously. She glanced from him to Pat. “Oh, God. Now what?”
“Your enthusiasm is noted,” Pat said, heavy on the irony. “I’ve booked you both to appear on Wake Me Up London on Monday morning. You’re on at half seven, so you’ll have to be there at six. Get an early night tomorrow. Concealer can only do so much. We’d like to avoid the impression that we work our cast into walking corpses.”
Lainie was obviously appalled, which perversely made Richard feel better. Bad temper put red flags under her cheekbones and caused her short, straight nose to wrinkle. It was all very ineffectual. She didn’t have the face for intimidation. Her features were deceptively sweet. If she’d thrown tantrums as a child, her parents had probably smiled tolerantly and chucked her under the chin.
“You want us to do a TV interview? About...this?” Lainie asked, horrified.
“Could you not gesture directly at me when you say that?” Richard asked. He leaned back against the wall and crossed one ankle over the other. “It’s bad for my self-esteem.”
She ignored him and continued to address Pat. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Neither of us comes across that well in screen interviews anyway, and if we’re supposed to be addressing our...relationship...” She managed to get the word out, but it rolled sourly around her tongue. She looked as if she’d taken a swallow of milk and realised it had gone off about six weeks ago.
“Speak for yourself, Tig,” he said, and her sea-green eyes turned almost teal with irritation. Personally, he was starting to feel quite relaxed. There was something very soothing about letting Lainie fight their battles. She was so delightfully...flammable. “I always keep my head during interviews.”
“That’s why you’ve almost driven Lynette Stern into a nervous breakdown, is it? Allow me to send you a link to a clip reel on YouTube. It’s a three-minute Not-Safe-For-Work montage of your polite responses to interview questions. The censored version is one continuous bleep.”
Richard’s smile grew. “Have you been looking me up on the web?”
There was an audible click of teeth as Lainie pressed her lips together. She could probably make judicious use of Lynette’s fuck-you emoticons.
“Ostensibly, the interview is to promote The Cavalier’s Tribute and give an insight into what it’s like to be a young—” Pat eyed them. “Youngish actor in the modern West End.”
Lainie looked even more annoyed. “Well, I’m younger than Richard.”
“You’ve always seemed practically infantile to me,” he told her comfortingly, and her fingers closed around the ballpoint pen he’d left on his desk. He suspected he was about two minutes away from having it neatly inserted into his jugular.
“Obviously, Tara Whitlow is going to broach the relationship angle. I think it’s best if you play for discretion. The less you say, the more the public will infer for themselves. Sadie Foster is likely to be voluble on the subject of her affair with Jack Trenton, so I’d prefer you to present a contrast. You’ve both had media training. I’m sure you’ll behave sensibly.”
It was admirable, the level of threat Pat could impart without altering the tone of her voice or intensity of her expression.
“Sadie?” Lainie flung his spare jacket off the desk stool, and he watched as fifteen hundred quid of full-grain leather sailed carelessly into one corner of the room. She sat down and fixed Pat with a furious stare. “Is Sadie Foster in the same interview slot?”
“And Jack.” Pat casually removed a speck of fluff from her lapel. “It was originally their booking, to promote Les Mis. But the band scheduled to appear at eight had to pull out due to ‘illness’—i.e. one of them has been carted off to rehab. So the producers have extended Sadie and Jack’s slot, and decided to include you and Richard, as well. The Palladium has had enough free publicity recently. We need to keep our end up.”
Lainie’s response to that was short, explicit and unprintable.
Really, she was growing on him all the time.