Paradise Fields (12 page)

‘Have you ever been to a club before?'

Nel thought back to her very well-spent youth. That was the trouble with getting married young; you don't get much time to misbehave. ‘Well, the odd discothèque, you know.'

‘Exactly. And you haven't spoilt my evening. I spend a lot of time with those lads.'

‘So you live and work in London, mostly? Not in the country?'

‘At the moment I'm between both places. We've taken over a local firm—'

‘Oh yes, with those lovely offices.'

‘Which have now been painted, at least.'

‘And did Kerry Anne choose the colours?'

‘Look, I thought you asked me if I worked in London or the country. I'm trying to tell you. Stop interrupting.'

Nel stopped, mostly because she wanted to listen to his explanation.

‘The local firm was struggling. There's a historic link between us and them, so I'm going down to re-establish the business, and while I'm about it, decide if I want to move out of London.'

‘And have you decided?'

‘No. It depends on several things.'

Nel managed not to ask if Kerry Anne was one of the things. He would hardly admit it if she was. Kerry Anne was married to one of his clients, after all. Although he had given her that ‘so fun' time. She sighed, and chided herself for being old-fashioned and jealous at the same time.

‘I spent my school holidays in that part of the world, and the friend I spent them with still lives there,' went on Jake. ‘He was the one I was playing squash with, when you first saw me.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. Here we are.'

Nel pulled up the collar of her coat and tried to look suitably cool – not easy when encased in several kilos of wool. She let Jake pay the taxi-driver, but had her money ready to pay for him to go into Chill.

The bouncer looked them over, but didn't comment, although Nel felt he must have wondered why they were there. It would have been a million times worse without Jake, she knew. In fact it might not even have been possible. Knowing she wouldn't be able to talk much once they were actually in the heart of the club,
Nel put her hand on his arm. ‘I'm really grateful to you for coming. They might not even have let me in.'

‘That's OK. Let's get your coat checked, and go and find some action.'

Nel had been worried that Fleur would spot her and be furious. Now she was actually inside the club she realised it was going to be very difficult to spot Fleur, even when looking intently. And if she did manage to make her out among the other blonde girls in black trousers and strappy tops, would she know if she was taking drugs? Her whole plan suddenly seemed incredibly flaky. What had she been thinking?

‘Drink?' Jake bellowed at her over the top of the music.

Nel nodded. ‘Fizzy water, please!'

While she was alone she inspected the crowd and listened to the music. No one was taking any notice of her, she realised, and began to relax a little. She quite liked the music, too, but then she had always liked Fleur's music better than what issued forth from the boys' bedrooms. Theirs had no lyrics, no tune, and far too many electronics for her, and Fleur's was far too ‘middle of the road' for them.

Jake came up and put a glass in her hand. Nel smiled her thanks and took a sip, thinking how odd it was to be in a club with Jake, the man who until recently had been fixed in her mind as the one who had kissed her under the mistletoe. And after that he had turned into the devil incarnate who, almost single-handed, was depriving the hospice of Paradise Fields.

‘This isn't water!'

‘No, it's vodka and tonic. I thought you needed a bit of Dutch courage.'

‘But I asked for water!'

‘You can have water next time.'

‘Next time, I'm getting the drinks!'

Jake smiled. ‘Drink up, then we can dance.'

Nel couldn't help smiling back. She wanted to dance, she liked dancing. One of Mark's few faults had been that he didn't like dancing, and only did it extremely reluctantly – and very badly.

Nel soon lost her inhibitions and was getting into the music when Jake put his hand on her shoulder and pointed. It was Fleur. She was with a tall young man who looked both handsome and prosperous, but not, Nel decided, significantly older than Fleur.

Jake pulled Nel close and said in her ear, ‘What do you want to do?'

Nel turned, and Jake bent down so she could speak into his ear. ‘Just observe her, and see if anyone tries to give her anything, or if money changes hands.'

‘I doubt if it would go on out here,' said Jake.

‘I'll know if she does anything odd. At least, I hope I will!'

Jake took Nel into his arms. ‘It'll be easier for you to spy on Fleur if you're not jumping up and down. And it's less likely she'll spot you.'

‘You're not telling me I draw attention to myself when I dance, are you?' She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her. It was certainly easier to talk when they were close.

‘You dance in a very original manner,' he said.

Nel groaned, and let herself melt into Jake's arms.

Dancing with Jake was really very pleasant, she
decided. If she didn't have to keep her eyes on Fleur, she could have closed them and swayed about to the music quite happily. He smelt lovely. His aftershave was not too pungent, but it was obviously something very expensive. And his suit jacket felt very soft. Probably cashmere, she decided. He had taken off his tie, and his shirt was blue-white in the ultraviolet strobes which zigzagged across the floor.

She couldn't tell if he was equally happy to be holding her, of course, but he did seem to nuzzle into her a little, although that could have been her imagination. But when he pushed his fingers up into her hair, she knew her mind wasn't playing tricks on her. And she liked the feeling rather more than she would have admitted. Trying to distract herself from the feel of his touch on her neck, she wondered if the reason she pulled at her own hair so much was because she missed Mark's caresses. Simon never touched her hair – possibly because he liked it tidy, something it never was.

From her slowly rotating viewpoint, Fleur seemed to be behaving in a perfectly normal way. She was drinking something from a bottle, and seemed to dance with a lot of people at once, but that was fine.

Nel's feet began to hurt, in a way they hadn't since the last time she had been to a club. Jake was probably bored out of his mind. She reached up to pull his head down so she could speak to him. Just for a split second, it looked as if he was going to kiss her. But then he presented his ear to within a few inches of her mouth.

‘I think I've seen enough. Shall we go?'

‘If you want to. It is a bit noisy.'

‘And I don't think Fleur is going to do anything revealing.'

‘Then let's get out of here.'

He forged a path through the crowd, in the nick of time, as it turned out. Just as she left, Nel turned for a last look at Fleur and saw her daughter frown, as if she'd recognised her mother. I'll have to lie, she thought. I'll say I was in town, having dinner with friends – a friend – and we thought we'd go dancing. I'll say I never saw her, or of course I'd have come over and said hello.

‘Come on!' Nel muttered under her breath, as the girl took ages finding her coat. ‘I'm sure Fleur spotted me,' she said to Jake. ‘She might not have recognised me for sure, but I really don't want her to follow me. This is no place for a confrontation.'

‘Well, I'm glad you worked that out, finally,' said Jake, putting a two-pound coin into the saucer as Nel's coat was produced.

‘What do you mean?' Nel's voice seemed to be an octave higher than usual, and sounded very squeaky.

‘Come on. Let's go home.'

‘
RIGHT, I'M GOING
to Paddington,' said Nel as the taxi drew up. ‘Can I give you a lift?'

Jake grunted and opened the door; Nel got in. Then he gave the driver an address.

‘But I want to go to Paddington! To catch a train!'

‘I know the timetable by heart, and I can promise you there is no train at half past one in the morning.'

‘Well, I can wait there until there is one!'

‘No, you can't! I couldn't possibly let you spend the night on the station platform until God knows what hour in the morning! Who do you think I am?'

Nel took a breath and tried hard to stop feeling outraged. ‘Listen, Jake, I've been really grateful for your support this evening.
Really
grateful,' she repeated, thinking how unsupportive Simon had been. ‘But I can't intrude on your time a moment longer. I've already ruined your evening. Now I just want to go home. And if I have to wait for a train, so be it. I'll be fine.'

‘Have you ever spent all night on a station, in winter?'

‘That is not the point—'

‘Yes, it is. You'll be picked up by drunks, harassed by beggars and mugged for your overcoat.' The corner of his mouth twitched, and, maddeningly, so did Nel's.

‘My overcoat will be like a tent,' she retorted, trying
very hard not to respond to his half-smile, which suddenly seemed incredibly sexy.

‘It will be, but you're not sleeping in it. Not tonight.'

‘Well, I'm not staying with you!'

‘Listen, Nel, I do understand about you not wanting to inconvenience me in any way, and I appreciate your concern. But quite frankly I'm tired, I don't want to spend the whole night arguing with you, and if you refuse to come home with me, I'll feel obliged to drive you back to the country myself. And I think I'm over the limit.'

‘Oh.'

‘Or I could arrange a minicab, but that will cost a fortune. I'm not mean, but I do resent paying over fifty pounds to someone who may not even get you home safely.'

‘I could go to a hotel,' Nel persisted stubbornly.

‘Oh, stop being bloody ridiculous. Sit back and enjoy the ride. I've got a perfectly good sofabed you can sleep on.'

‘I haven't got a toothbrush or anything.'

Jake sighed deeply, and leant forward to speak to the driver. ‘Could you stop if you see an all-night shop, please? Madam needs a toothbrush.'

‘Honestly! Now he'll think we're sleeping together!'

‘Rubbish. I didn't say you needed condoms.'

Nel huddled in her coat, shaking with indignation. When a One Stop appeared at the corner of a street, she got out and went into it, wondering if she should refuse to re-enter the taxi. As she stalked the aisles, looking for what she needed, she concluded there was something incredibly slutty about buying a toothbrush in the middle of the night, however pure one's intentions. She
added a pot of moisturiser to her basket, and then her hand hovered over the condoms. She didn't want them, she doubted if she remembered how to use them; it was so long ago – before they were married – that she and Mark had struggled with the hard-to-open sachets. But some defiant streak in her wanted just to plop them in on top of her more legitimate purchases. It was something to do with living up to the reputation she was sure she had by now.

She didn't do it. If Jake saw them, and she couldn't trust him not to go through her bag, he'd think she was coming on to him, and she would die, literally die, rather than let him think that.

‘You took your time,' he said as she sat back down beside him.

‘Well, I was just deciding which magazine to buy.'

He looked in her bag, as she knew he would. ‘But you didn't buy one!'

‘No, and I didn't spend time looking for one, either! It just took a while to find the toothpaste. They don't have a special section devoted to loose women's requirements, you know!'

‘Are you a loose woman?'

‘No, but I felt like one in that shop. I'm sure the man thought I was planning to sleep with my gentleman friend, and was wondering who would possibly want to sleep with me.'

Jake stared at her. ‘Oh, I'm sure he wasn't wondering that.'

Nel turned away to look out of the window, aware that she'd said far too much. Being with Jake shifted her identity somehow, from mother to woman, and it didn't feel safe.

When they reached their destination, Nel insisted on paying for the taxi, pushing Jake away from the window with such vehemence that he almost fell over.

His flat was tiny and reassuringly cluttered. He switched on a table lamp which he dimmed to glow-worm brightness and turned off the main light, but the mess was still clearly visible. Piles of papers were on every chair, and the table was hidden under a heap of files.

Jake swept several Sundays' worth of newspapers off the sofa and onto the floor. ‘Sorry about the mess. I'm not here often enough to do anything about it.' He didn't seem unduly apologetic, and she wondered if she'd ever be able to be like him about mess and other people.

‘Only one bedroom, I'm afraid,' he went on. ‘I'd offer you the bed and sleep on the sofa myself, but I know you'd kick up.'

‘I do not kick up! I'm a very reasonable person.'

‘You're mad as a box of frogs. Now, let me take your coat.'

Without it, Nel felt underdressed. She tugged at her top to hide the large amount of cleavage that was now on show.

‘Don't keep doing that,' said Jake, having laid her coat tenderly on the back of a chair. ‘It draws attention to it, and it's very distracting. You've been doing it all night.'

‘Have I? I'm sorry.'

‘No need to apologise. It's the sort of distraction I like.'

‘Is it?'

A moment later he had his arms round her and was kissing her.

Nel was tired and had had a fair bit to drink. Also, all her tension about Fleur seemed to have been dissipated. Her fears that she may have been taking drugs were probably all just neurosis, encouraged by Simon. Now, her defences were down and it was only too easy to nestle into him, close her eyes and kiss him back.