Windfallen, Page 33

  "Oh, yes? And how long are you going to give him?"

  Daisy shrugged.

  "And how many good men are you going to turn down in the meantime?"

  "Oh, come on Mrs. Ber--Lottie, it's only been a few months. And they're hardly beating down the door."

  "You've got to move on," Lottie said vehemently. "No point hanging on to the past, baby or no baby. You've got to make a life for yourself."

  "He's Ellie's father."

  "He's not here." Lottie sniffed. "If he's not here, he forfeits the right to be anything at all."

  Lottie had never, Daisy realized, told her who Camille's father was.

  "You're a harder woman than I am."

  "Not hard," Lottie said, turning away toward the kitchen, her face suddenly closed off again. "Just realistic."

  Daisy looked away from the train window, leaned down and rubbed her sandaled foot on the back of her leg. She didn't want another man. She still felt damaged and raw, her nerve endings exposed. The thought of anyone's seeing her post-baby body naked filled her with horror. The prospect of being left again was too awful to contemplate. And then there was Daniel. She had to leave a door open for Daniel, for Ellie's sake.

  If he ever decided to use the bloody thing.

  "CAMILLE?"

  "Oh, hi, Mum."

  "I'm nipping out to the supermarket over lunchtime. Me and little Ellie here. Do you need anything?"

  "No. We're fine. . . . Is Hal there?"

  "Yes, he's outside. Just having a cup of tea. Do you want me to get him?"

  "No. No . . . Mum, does he seem all right to you?"

  "All right? Why, what's wrong with him?"

  "Nothing. I think nothing. He's just . . . he's just been a bit odd lately."

  "What do you mean, odd?"

  Camille was silent. Breathed out. "He's off with me. It's like he's . . . he's retreated into himself. He doesn't want to talk to me."

  "He's just closed down his business. He's bound to be feeling a bit sore."

  "I know . . . I know . . . it's just . . ."

  "What?"

  "Well, we knew it was going badly before. We knew he was going to have to close it before. And things were really good between us then. The best they've been for ages." She paused.

  "Well, he's been fine with me," Lottie said. "It's not--There's nothing you're not telling me, is there?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What happened before. With the two of you. There's been no . . . no reoccurrences."

  "No, Mum, of course not. I wouldn't do anything--We're fine. We're past all that. I was just worried because Hal . . . wasn't quite himself. Look, forget it. Forget I mentioned anything."

  "You haven't spoken to him about it?"

  "Forget it, Mum. You're right, he's probably just upset about the business. I'll give him a bit of space. Look, I'd better go. I've got to go and take off Lynda Potter's algae wrap."

  Lottie glanced down at her bag, feeling suddenly reassured that she'd done the right thing. She wouldn't tell Camille about the money yet; she would wait until she definitely needed it, until she confided in her again. It sounded as if that time might not be as far away as Lottie had hoped.

  "You know what he needs?"

  "What?"

  "Closure. That'll make him feel better."

  THERE WERE EIGHTEEN EMPTY PACKETS OF MINTS LITTERING the floor of Jones's car. It was hard to count them all without maneuvering too obviously, as many were partially obscured by other pieces of automative detritus, such as road maps, scribbled directions, and old petrol receipts. But Daisy had plenty of time to locate every one, given that for the first seventeen minutes of their journey, as they crawled through the city traffic, Jones had shouted almost constantly--and bad-temperedly--into his mobile telephone.

  "Well, you tell him. He can send in who he bloody likes. All the kitchen staff have had cross-contamination training. We've got records of delivery temperatures, we've got recorded storage temperatures, delivery quality--everything to do with that bloody party. If he wants to send in the bloody health inspector, tell him I've got twenty bloody individual frozen portions in those freezers--one for every single dish we served. So we can bloody send those away for analysis!"

  He motioned to Daisy, waving toward the glove compartment, signaling for her to open it.

  "Yes, we do. There's not a paragraph in that food-hygiene training that my staff don't know off by heart. Any of them. Look, he says he had the duck. The duck, right?"

  As she opened the compartment, several tapes fell out, along with a wallet, a bag of mints, and several unidentified electrical cords. Daisy stuck her hand tentatively into the remaining mess, fishing around and hauling out items for Jones's inspection.

  "No. No, he didn't. I've got two members of staff who say he had the oysters. Hold on a minute."

  He broke off to wave at the glove compartment. Headache pills, he mouthed.

  "You there? Yes. Yes, he did. No, you're not listening to me. Just listen to me. He had the oysters, and if you look at his bar bill, he had at least three glasses of vodka. Yes, that's right. I've got the till records."

  He grabbed the packet from Daisy's hand, puncturing the foil bubbles and popping them directly into his mouth.

  "Food poisoning, my ass. He just didn't know not to drink spirits with them. Bloody imbecile."

  Daisy looked out the passenger window at the simmering traffic, trying to fight the feeling of irritation that had originated with Jones's casual, one-handed, mimed greeting and had grown with each of the three telephone conversations he'd continued since she got into the car.

  "Sorry. Be right with you," he'd said, initially--and then hadn't.

  "I don't give a flying f--" he shouted, and Daisy had closed her eyes. Jones was a big man, and somehow, coming from him in the enclosed space of his car, the effect of his expletives was unhappily magnified.

  "You tell him to send his f--" Here he turned and caught Daisy's pained expression. "You tell him to send his lawyers, the health and safety--whoever he wants--to me. I'll sue his ass right back for defaming my establishment. Yes. That's right. Any records they want to see, they know where to find me." He pressed a button on his dashboard and then ripped the earpiece from his face.

  "F--" He shook his head and pursed his lips. "F--bl--ruddy man. Ruddy salesman trying it on for compensation. That's all it is. He eats the bloody oysters, drinks a load of spirits, and then wonders why his guts ache the next day. So it's got to be my fault. Send round the health and safety and shut me down until they've swabbed us from here to kingdom come. God, they really get my goat."

  "Evidently," said Daisy.

  He hadn't even seemed to notice her. He'd made more noise, been more animated, than at any other time since they first met, but none of it was directed at her. There she was, possibly looking better than at any time since she'd had the baby, wearing a new T-shirt and skirt, her skin glowing from Camille's salt scrub, her legs smoothed and defuzzed by Camille's torturous waxing, looking, if not exactly Old Daisy, then at least Fairly Rejuvenated Daisy, and he'd noticed . . . what, precisely? When looking at her long brown legs? That she was stepping on the directions for how to get to the salvage yard.

  "It's his girlfriend put him up to it," said Jones, signaling right and leaning forward over the wheel. "We've had her in before, trying it on. Sprained her ankle in the toilets, I think it was, last time. No medical evidence, of course. I'd ban her if she were a member. But I wasn't in that night."

  "Oh."

  "It's the Americans have done this. Bloody litigation culture. Everyone wants something for nothing. Everything's got to be someone else's fault. God!" He banged his fist on his steering wheel, making Daisy jump.

  "If I had that little shit in again . . . I'd give him food poisoning, all right. What's the time?"

  "Sorry?"

  "Eldridge Street, Minerva Street . . . it's somewhere along here. . . . What's the time?"

  Daisy looked at her wat
ch. "Twenty-five past eleven."

  "Salvage. That's it. Just there. Bloody little . . . Now, where am I going to park?"

  Daisy's good mood of the previous hour had dissolved faster than Jones's headache pills. Finally losing patience, she stomped out of the Saab and into the architectural-salvage yard, the cool of the car's airconditioned interior swamped by the heavy heat of a city summer.

  Daisy was not used to being ignored. Daniel had always made a point of telling her she looked nice, of offering suggestions on what she wore, touching her hair, holding her hand. He took care of her when they were out, too, checking that she was warm enough, that she had enough to eat, drink, that she was happy. But then this wasn't a date, was it? And Daniel hadn't hung around to check that she was okay when it counted.

  Men. Daisy found herself using a silent expletive worthy of Jones's own. Then hating herself for becoming the kind of bitter and twisted man-hater that she'd always despised.

  The yard was huge and tired-looking, enormous timbers piled up on oversize storage shelves, slabs of stone stacked in forbidding towers, graveyard statuary casting jaded, uncaring glances around her. Beyond the corrugated iron of the entrance, the London traffic seethed, belching purple fumes and angry horns up into the fuggy air. Ordinarily a trip to a new architectural-salvage yard would have given her the same sense of anticipation and pleasure that a starlet got sitting in the front row of a catwalk show. But Daisy's mood was dark, newly tarnished by Jones's filthy temper. She had never been able to disassociate herself from men's moods; she would try to jolly Daniel out of his temper, fail, hate herself for failing, and then eventually succumb to it, too. He, perversely, had never been affected by hers.

  "Couldn't find a bloody meter. It's on a double yellow."

  Jones strode through the gates toward her, patting his pockets, waves of discontent radiating from him. I'm not going to talk to him, Daisy thought crossly. I'm not going to talk to him until he snaps out of it and speaks to me nicely. She turned away from him and began walking toward the windows and mirrors section, her arms folded across her chest, her head low on her shoulders. A few yards away she heard the ring of his mobile phone echo through the yard and then his own explosive response. The only other visible occupant of the yard, a middle-aged man in thin spectacles and a tweed jacket, turned to see the source of the noise, and Daisy glowered in response, as if she were nothing to do with Jones.

  She kept walking until she was in the covered shed area, as far away from his voice as she could get, barely noticing the Victorian fixtures, the engraved mirrors around her, furious with herself for letting herself be so affected by Jones's lack of attention. She felt herself, with what she secretly knew to be her southerner's deep-rooted sense of superiority, silently write him off as ignorant and ill mannered, in the same way that her sister might. It didn't matter how much money you were worth if you couldn't behave properly in company. Look at Aristotle Onassis, Julia would say. Didn't he used to belch and fart like a navvy? Perhaps all rich men were just rude, rationalized Daisy, unused to having to modify their behavior to suit others. It was hard to tell; Jones was the only seriously rich person she knew.

  She stopped in front of a small stained-glass window upon which was inlaid a grinning cherub. She loved stained glass; it was hard to find, but almost always worth using as a feature. Her mood briefly forgotten, she pondered where she might put it, running through an internal list of doorways, dressing-room windows, outside screens. It took her some minutes to realize she didn't want it for Arcadia. She wanted it for herself. She had bought nothing for herself, apart from summer clothes and food, for months. Once Daisy had thought shopping as necessary to her well-being as food or air.

  She reached forward and examined the glass, squinting to see it properly in the dim light of the shed. None of the segments was broken, none of the lead missing, unusual in a piece this size. She knelt and began searching for a price. When she found it, she stood for a moment and then let the window rest very gently back on its supporting frame.

  "Sorry," said a voice behind her.

  Daisy turned. Jones was standing at the entrance to the covered area, his telephone still in his hand. "Been a bit of a morning."

  "So I see," said Daisy, turning away.

  "What's that, then?"

  "What?"

  "What you were looking at."

  "Oh, just some stained glass. Nothing suitable for Arcadia."

  He looked down. "What's the time?" he said eventually.

  Daisy sighed. Looked at her watch. "Five past twelve. Why?"

  Jones turned away and, almost imperceptibly, breathed out. "No matter. Just didn't want to be late for lunch. Got a table booked."

  "But it's your club."

  "Yes . . ." He stared at the floor for a few minutes and then began looking around him, his eyes adjusting to the shadow. "Sorry anyway. For the journey. And everything. You shouldn't have had to listen to all that."

  "No," said Daisy, and she began to walk out into the light.

  There was a short delay as Jones realized she was not waiting for him.

  "Are you upset about something?" He was half a pace behind her, half reaching for her elbow.

  Daisy stopped and turned. "Why should I be?"

  "Ah, don't do that. Don't do that female thing. I haven't got the time to play twenty questions guessing what the matter might be."

  Daisy felt herself go pink with fury, made worse by the suspicion that what she was really feeling might actually sound slightly ridiculous. "Forget it, then." She carried on walking, a lump rising inexplicably to her throat.

  "Forget what?"

  She wasn't, she realized, entirely sure.

  "Ah, c'mon, Daisy. . . ."

  She turned to face him, livid. "Look, Jones, I didn't have to come here today, you know? I could have stayed at the house in the sun and worked and played with my daughter and had a nice time. You're the one telling me I haven't got time to spare, after all. But I thought we were going to have a good buying session and a nice lunch. I thought it might be . . . useful for both of us. I didn't think I'd spend my day stuck in an overheated scrap yard listening to the rantings of an ignorant pig with Tourette's."

  It was fair to say it hadn't sounded quite that harsh in her head.

  There was a brief silence.

  Daisy examined her feet while contemplating the temporarily obscured fact that he was actually her boss.

  "So. Daisy . . ." He stood squarely in front of her. "Still trying to spare my feelings, then?"

  She looked up at him.

  "Truce? If I turn my phone off?"

  She was not a girl to hold a grudge. Not usually anyway. "You don't have another hidden in your jacket?"

  "What kind of man do you take me for?" He paused, then reached into his inside pocket and pulled out another mobile telephone. Which he turned off.

  "Bloody Welsh," she said, looking steadily at him.

  "Bloody women," he said, and held out his arm.

  SHE WAS NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHAT IT WAS, BUT FROM then on Jones's mood lightened considerably, elevating her own with it. He became increasingly relaxed and gave his full attention to her suggestions, offering little resistance to even her more fanciful choices and proffering his credit card with gratifying frequency.

  "Are you sure you don't mind spending all this?" she said as he agreed to buy an obviously overpriced pharmacy cabinet for her to put in one of the bathrooms. "It's not the cheapest yard."

  "Let's just say I'm enjoying today more than I expected to," he said. He didn't ask the time again.

  Shortly before they left, perhaps infected by Jones's own apparent carelessness with his credit card, Daisy made a decision about the stained-glass window. It was too expensive. She didn't even have a house to put it in. But she wanted it, knew that if she didn't buy it, it would haunt her for months afterward. (In the same regretful manner that friends reminisced about lost boyfriends, she still thought back to a Venetian chandelier she ha
d lost at auction.)

  She walked over to Jones, who was settling up at the payment cubicle and organizing delivery. "I'll just be five minutes," she said, pointing toward the shed. "I just want to get something for myself."

  She nearly cried when they said it had sold. She should have known to buy it as soon as she saw it, she berated herself; anything that was good should be pinned down immediately. If your eye couldn't see its worth clearly enough to make a decision, then you didn't deserve it. She stared at the cherub, wanting it more keenly now that there was no chance of its becoming hers.

  She had rescued a sofa once, had managed to locate the dealer who'd bought it from under her nose while she perused a junk shop and offered to buy it from him. He charged her almost double the original price, and although she hadn't cared at the time, had just been desperate to have it, as the months went on she realized that its price had somehow spoiled it for her. That when she looked at it, she saw no longer a hard-won antique but an inflated sum she'd been shoehorned into paying.

  "You okay?" said Jones, standing by a stack of unstripped doors. "Get what you want?"

  "No," said Daisy, leaning casually against one with frosted-glass panels. She was determined not to whinge. She could keep things in perspective now. "Missed my moment," she said.

  And then yelped and collapsed sideways as, with a huge crack, the glass went straight through.

  They spent two hours and forty minutes at emergency room, where she received twelve stitches, a gauze sling, and several cups of sweetened machine tea. "I don't think we'll make lunch," said Jones as he helped her to the car afterward. "But I think a couple of stiff drinks are probably in order."

  He placed a packet of painkillers in her good hand. "And, yes, you can drink with these. First thing I checked."

  Daisy sat silently in the passenger seat of Jones's car, her new outfit splattered with blood, feeling hopeless and chaotic and rather more shaken up than she cared to admit. Jones had been surprisingly good about the whole thing, had sat patiently with her in a succession of waiting rooms as triage nurses and then on-duty doctors had mopped her up and restored her arm to something not dissimilar to that of a patchwork doll. He had left twice, to make telephone calls outside. One of which, he said in the car, had been to Lottie, to tell her that Daisy would be home later than expected.