Ellen had always thought of the beauty business as an excuse for absurd self-indulgence, something for women with more money than sense. Although Bea’s and Kate’s battle waged against the onslaught of time had always amused her, she had no wish to join them. Shouldn’t women accept the inexorable march of time, and age the way nature intended? She was used to a quick trim with Angie at the small hairdresser’s on the corner, with the result that style and chic had eluded her for years. But she was happy with that. Overcoming her discomfort and accepting Oliver’s present gracefully would be hard, but she could see he was going to be so disappointed if she didn’t. Weakened by his forlorn expression, she waved her hands. ‘No, no. I’d love to go. It’ll be a real treat. I haven’t done anything like that for years. Thank you.’
‘Right. Well, that’s agreed, then. The other thing I wanted . . .’
Before he had finished his sentence, Ellen had picked up the empty bags and was halfway up the stairs with them, crying, ‘Back in a minute. Let me show you the skirt . . .’ She stuffed the bags into the bottom of the wardrobe, just in case she changed her mind and needed to return anything, and sat on the bed to take a few deep breaths. No more! This generosity was overwhelming. Since Simon’s death she’d had to get used to being in control of her own life, but since Oliver had visited the gallery, her world was spinning off its axis and she couldn’t right it. She had been swept into this unlooked-for relationship with a man she didn’t know yet felt as if she’d known for ever. She was besieged by unfamiliar feelings that thrilled yet threw her off kilter.
Close by the photo of Simon, there was another of him with Emma and Matt on the last family holiday they’d had together in Cornwall. The four of them together on a family picnic at an isolated cove not far from Towan beach, a favourite spot that the summer tourists to the Cornish Roseland rarely discovered. The children were due to come home in just over a couple of weeks. What were they going to think of all this? She had wondered whether she should ask Oliver to move out until she’d told them, but she didn’t want him to go. Their relationship had given her a new recklessness that had overthrown almost everything she’d held close. At the same time she was frightened by what was happening to her, not knowing how to pull things back under her control but at the same time not wanting to. She felt as if she had climbed aboard a giant switchback, increasingly petrified as it neared the top of each peak, her stomach rising into her mouth as it tipped over into the descent, screaming to get off yet wanting the excitement never to end.
She looked beside the radiator where she always left her shoes, never having got round to organising a shoe rack in the wardrobe. To her surprise, the jumble that she had left this morning had been transformed into a neat row of six matching pairs. She opened her underwear drawer in the hope of finding tights she could wear with the floral skirt. As she pulled out a pair, a cascade of red confetti flew up and fluttered to the floor. Startled, she bent down and scooped up the pieces only to see that each one was shaped like a heart.
Suddenly she felt an unfamiliar sense of relaxation. How wonderful that this adoring and adorable man had come into her life and wanted to look after her. However in control of things she had appeared, there had always been an ever-present underlying fear that everything was about to fly apart. If he would do something as special as buy her clothes, tidy her shoes without being asked, and add a sprinkle of romance to her drawers (she smiled at the pun), what else might he be capable of?
She slipped the skirt over her head, then the T-shirt, pulled on the tights and one of the four pairs of heels she owned and almost skipped back downstairs.
Chapter 8
As her alarm cut through the clouds of sleep, Bea swam up towards consciousness and reached across the bed, congratulating herself on having remembered to change the sheets the previous morning. Not that she’d known what was going to happen then, of course. Anticipating the moment her hand would come into contact with a body of the male persuasion, she stretched out further, moving her arm up and down. Nobody. Suddenly awake, she opened her eyes. Definitely nobody. He must be in the shower. Or making them tea, perhaps. She curled round in the warmth of the duvet, luxuriating until he reappeared, piecing together for herself the previous day.
This time Let’s Have Lunch had got it right. As soon as she had seen him walking towards her across the airy, mini-malist Asian-fusion restaurant, she had known. A confident stride, a well-cut suit, brown eyes with a twinkle, a full head of hair, without a recessive gene in evidence, and, most important, an easy smile. If she half shut her eyes, there was definitely enough of a resemblance to Gabriel Byrne to make him extremely attractive. The second morning from hell since the arrival of Adam Palmer at Coldharbour Press had dimmed at the prospect of lunch in the company of Tony Castle.
She was not disappointed. There wasn’t a moment of awkwardness as they introduced themselves, not a moment of hesitation as they weighed each other up. Lunch sped past in a haze of laughter and conversation with an undertow of sexual tension that had made itself felt almost immediately, only to intensify the longer they spent in each other’s company. The dishes of sea bass with garlic, ginger and soy, oven-roasted lamb with fiery spices, flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce came and went, eaten almost unnoticed. Wine glasses were topped up with a never-ending stream of Sauvignon Blanc as they got to know each other. Lunch bled imperceptibly into the afternoon so that when Bea looked at her watch to see whether it was time to return to the office she was astonished to find it was already four thirty. It had hardly seemed worth going back for an hour, particularly when she briefly considered the glum faces that would surround her as they waited for Adam’s axe to fall. Her decision was made in a nano-second. She was having a good time. Why stop? If questioned, she’d just say she’d been with an author.
The graphic-design company in which Tony was a partner seemed to have little need of him either so, instead, they agreed that nothing would be nicer than to cross the river to Tate Modern. They wandered between the rooms, both of them less than half intent on the pictures on the walls. In the darkened space of a video installation, she accidentally brushed her hand against his. Did he too feel the jolt of electricity that had travelled between them? They emerged into the glare of the gallery, Bea feeling as though something in the world had shifted.
Rather than seeing more, they decided to stroll along the South Bank, stopping to watch the river traffic, leaning over the stone wall by one of the Victorian wrought-iron street lights in the shade of the giant plane trees, dazzled by the sunlight on the water. It was unusual for Bea to feel so relaxed in a stranger’s company but, she pinched herself, she really did. Tony must have kissed the Blarney Stone several times before he’d moved to London. His flow of conversation was effortless and amusing, his attention flattering, his company diverting. Everything she could have asked for in a date. As they took themselves into a small tapas bar, it dawned on Bea where all this was leading. And lead there it did.
The sex had been better than good, earth-moving, even. A half-smile slid across her face as she remembered how spontaneously and how well they’d connected. Her fear of embarrassment at getting her kit off in front of someone new had proved groundless. Tony hadn’t recoiled in horror at the sight of her body, stranger to the gym as it was. In fact, she seemed to recall, as her smile broadened, quite the reverse. Nor was she the inhibited sex-starved singleton she’d worried she might have become during the drought since Colin’s departure. To her surprise, she had found that her self-consciousness was disappearing with age.
What was keeping him for so long? Her thoughts were taking her in one direction and one direction only, and she was aware that there were a good forty-five minutes or so that could be put to good use before they both had to leave for work.
Not wanting to wake Ben by shouting, Bea edged herself out of bed, draping her faded but attractively Bohemian silk dressing-gown round her. Her attention was caught by the dust on the bedside table-top and the base of the light, all too visible in the sunshine leaking through the gap in the curtains. Not wanting Tony to realise her slummy side just yet, she grabbed the black