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The most hurtful thing of all had been a few months ago when she had returned from California to find that nineteen-year-old Debbie was engaged, and that the party to celebrate it had been held in her absence.
She’d tried to pretend it didn’t matter, to argue with herself that they couldn’t have waited for her erratic timetable to bring her back to London again, but the pain lingered.
She often felt as if she occupied a kind of limbo. Her family had learned to live without her, had apparently closed the circle against her, and her only value to Bianca lay in her general efficiency and usefulness.
‘I’ll talk to Leon over lunch,’ Bianca announced, scrutinising her flawless complexion through narrowed eyes. ‘He should be able to think of something to get me off the hook.’
‘I hope so,’ Alix said with a sigh. ‘Perhaps he’ll be able to convince Mr Brant that you haven’t anything to hide.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ Bianca demanded sharply.
Alix met her eyes in the mirror. ‘Oh, it was just something that he implied—that you didn’t want him to write the book because there could be something you didn’t want him to find out about.’ She tried to smile rather uncertainly. ‘I tried to tell him he was wrong, but I’m not sure I was successful.’ She broke off, uneasily, staring at Bianca’s reflection, aware of a certain rigidity in her expression, and that the colour had faded in her face, emphasising the carefully applied blusher on her cheekbones.
Alix said sharply, ‘Is something wrong? Surely there’s nothing that he could find out …’
‘Of course there’s nothing,’ Bianca snapped. ‘I can’t understand what’s got into you, Alix. You’re usually so level-headed and sensible, but this man seems to have sent your wits begging. Either that or going on holiday makes you lose all sense of proportion. You’d better take the rest of the day off and get a grip on yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks,’ Alix returned with a touch of irony. A small voice inside her head was saying that if Bianca retained her own sense of proportion about Liam Brant and the biography project, this whole situation would never have arisen, but of course she would never say so. ‘I think I’ll go home.’
‘That will be nice.’ Bianca turned away from the mirror, with a final look at her appearance. ‘Give them all my best, won’t you,’ she added indifferently.
From the window, Alix watched Bianca climb into the waiting taxi and speed off to her lunch engagement with her agent. She could imagine the scene as Bianca entered the restaurant, see the admiring glances, hear the murmurs of recognition as she made her way to her table. Even a simple action like that became a performance, executed with the utmost confidence and panache.
And yet, a few minutes earlier, she had seen the mask slip. For a moment Bianca had been caught off balance, and Alix found herself wondering why, that indefinable sense of unease deepening. It was impossible, of course, that anyone who had lived her life as fully, and often as scandalously, revelling in the publicity, as Bianca could really have any kind of secret to conceal. She could have sworn that all Bianca’s cupboards were open for inspection and lacking in skeletons of any kind.
At least I hope so, she thought as she turned away from the window.
Her first thought when she pushed open the back door and entered the kitchen was that her mother looked tired. But that could just be because she had been baking all morning for the local church’s charity cake stall, she told herself.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ she teased as she hugged her mother.
‘And not before time either,’ Margaret said with a grimace. ‘Just let me get this last batch out of the oven and I’ll make us some tea.’
‘That will be lovely.’ Alix settled herself beside the kitchen table and stole a jam tart from the baking tray. ‘No need to hurry. I have all day.’
‘Oh dear!’ Margaret looked at her quickly. ‘I wish you’d telephoned, dear. You see, we’re going out this evening to have a meal with Paul’s parents—to talk over wedding details. Mrs Frensham’s only expecting the three of us. I don’t really see …’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alix said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of pushing in. I have loads of things to do, as it is—unpacking properly, for starters. And I wouldn’t mind an early night. When is the wedding, or haven’t they decided yet?’
‘I think that’s one of the things we’re going to thrash out tonight. Both sides feel that they’re rather young, but,’ Margaret smiled fondly, ‘I don’t suppose they’ll allow our opinions to carry too much weight. They’re very much in love.’
‘I’m glad for Debbie.’ Alix meant it. Debbie had always been her cherished younger sister. ‘I remember when we were children, she was always playing house. I was the one who was falling out of trees.’
‘No, she never had your love of adventure. I suppose I always hoped that she would find a nice boy and settle down, so I can’t really complain that she has done, even if it’s rather sooner than I expected.’
‘And what about me?’ Alix suddenly wanted to cry. ‘What did you hope for me? Have I fulfilled your expectations, or am I a disappointment?’
She should have been able to ask, but somehow it was impossible, so she helped herself to another jam tart, and began to talk about Rhodes, producing the presents she had brought back for them all, laughing and chattering as if there was no subdued ache in her heart at all. As if everything was fine, and she was the beloved elder daughter who had never been away.
Except of course it wasn’t like that, and never would be again. Alix supposed the invisible barrier which had grown up was of her own making. She had underestimated the depth of her mother’s hurt when she decided to go and work for Bianca. Underestimated it, because she didn’t understand it.
Things might have been better when Debbie came home at teatime, but oddly they weren’t. Debbie’s greeting was perfunctory, and although she thanked Alix for her gift, her heart wasn’t in it.
‘Three weeks on Rhodes.’ Her tone was frankly envious. ‘The most Paul and I can hope for is a few days in Bournemouth, or somewhere.’
Alix glanced at the pretty, discontented face and made up her mind.
‘Would you like a glamorous honeymoon as a wedding present?’ she asked.
‘No, thanks.’ The swiftness of Debbie’s response was almost insulting.
‘Why not?’ Alix enquired.
Debbie shrugged. ‘We’ll manage,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to start my married life on your charity.’
Alix felt as if she had been pierced to the heart, but she managed to say equably, ‘I’m sorry that you see it like that. I really didn’t intend …’
‘It doesn’t matter what you intended,’ Debbie cut across her rudely. ‘We’re quite all right as we are. We don’t need you playing Lady Bountiful.’
‘That’s quite enough, Debbie.’ Margaret, who had been out of the room, had returned in time to hear the last part of the exchange. She went on, ‘You’ll have to excuse her, Alix. She’s rather on edge these days.’
‘Perhaps I’d better go.’ Alix stood up, reaching for her bag. She was desperately afraid that she might burst into tears. Until she had left home, she and Debbie had shared a room, had confided in each other, giggled and occasionally quarrelled. Now they could be strangers.
‘I’ll see you out,’ said Debbie.
‘There’s really no need.’ Alix let a note of sarcasm enter her voice. ‘This is still my home, and I’ve no intention of stealing anything on my way through the hall.’
‘Alix!’ her mother protested, smiling nervously. ‘I’m sure Debbie didn’t mean that.’
Alix gave her a quick kiss, aware of the tightness in her throat. ‘Goodbye, love, and look after yourself. I—I’ll telephone first next time.’
She walked through the hall without looking back, and shut the front door behind her. Then, feeling dazed, she made her way down the path to the gate. She was sure that Debbie was watching her from the front room window, but pride forbade that she should turn and confirm her certainty. It was raining lightly again, and she turned up the collar of her cream trench coat, and pushed her hands into her pockets as she hurried along towards the station.
What a total disaster of a day this had been! The grey skies as she flew in that morning had been an omen.
‘I should have flown right out again,’ she told herself with mordant humour.
Walking along, her head bent, she didn’t see the figure approaching until she found herself in a mini-collision.
She said, ‘I’m so sorry …’ and broke off as a female voice exclaimed delightedly, ‘Alix—Alix Coulter! How marvellous! Don’t you remember me?’
Alix looked into the smiling face of Gemma Allan, an old school friend.
‘Gemma—you’re the last person I expected to see.’
‘I can’t think why. Didn’t your mother tell you that Dave and I had bought the house on the corner? Didn’t she give you my message?’
Alix shook her head bewilderedly. ‘She must have forgotten. And of course I’ve been away—abroad.’
‘That I can see.’ Gemma whistled appreciately. ‘Is that an all-over tan, may one enquire? I’m brown too, of course, but with me it’s rust.’
‘Oh, Gemma!’ To her horror, Alix heard her voice become choky. ‘It’s so great to see you.’ To see a friendly face, she almost said.
‘Hey,’ Gemma took her arm, peering at her with concern, ‘what’s the matter? You’re upset—what is it? Your mother?’
‘Not really,’ Alix shook her head, fighting back her tears. ‘Oh, God, this is awful. I can’t stand in the middle of the road bawling like a baby.’
‘Then come and bawl in our house,’ Gemma said soothingly. ‘Dave won’t be home for at least another hour.’
By the time they were settled in Gemma’s small sitting room, Alix had managed to regain control of herself.
‘I’m sorry to have behaved like an idiot,’ she began.
‘Think nothing of it,’ Gemma said largely. ‘Don’t forget I’m used to it, having been at school with you. What’s troubling you? You haven’t had the sack from the dream job of yours?’
Alix smiled drearily. ‘No, but I sometimes wonder whether I did the right thing in taking it in the first place.’
Gemma stared at her. ‘Well, it has to be better than a lifetime of “Now this conveyance witnesseth as follows”,’ she said drily. ‘Is it man trouble?’
‘It is a man, and he is trouble, but not in the way that you mean,’ Alix said ruefully. ‘Look, the simplest thing is if I give you a quick run-down on “My Day so Far”.’
Gemma sat and listened attentively, her sole comment being, ‘Little bitch,’ when Alix described Debbie’s reaction to her offer of a honeymoon.
‘She must be very unhappy,’ Alix said slowly.
‘She must be very jealous,’ Gemma retorted.
‘But she had no reason to be jealous of me,’ Alix protested. ‘She’s always done exactly what she wanted, and now she’s going to be married.’
Gemma looked at her pityingly. ‘Look, love, Debbie would envy a dead man his coffin. Haven’t you seen through her yet? She’s probably as mad as fire that she wasn’t offered your job.’
‘But she couldn’t have been. She hadn’t even left school …’
‘That’s the reasonable point of view. Debbie wouldn’t see it like that. She would see it as you getting a chance she’d been denied. Being married is the only other option open to her. I hope, for her fiancé’s sake, that it works. Now, about this other business, why do you suppose Bianca doesn’t want her biography written?’
Alix sighed. ‘I wish I knew. She was all for the idea originally, when she thought someone was going to ghost it for her.’
‘In other words a self-portrait by her greatest fan,’ Gemma’s voice was dry. ‘Well, Liam Brant is no one’s fan, so I suppose she can be allowed her misgivings.’
‘Do you know him?’ Alix stared at her.
‘No, but I’ve read some of his books. Dave bought me the Kristen Wallace biog for my birthday, and what an eye-opener that was. Since then I’ve been borrowing his other stuff from the library.’
‘Have you got any of them now?’
‘I’ve one—an early one about Clive Percy, the conductor. He doesn’t pull his punches, but he really gets inside the people he writes about. He makes you feel you know them.’
‘Or at least you know what he wants you to know about them,’ Alix said with some asperity. ‘You can’t really say he’s objective.’
Gemma shrugged. ‘Well, we won’t argue about it. Have you read any of them?’ And when Alix shook her head with a little grimace, ‘Well, take the Percy one. It doesn’t have to go back for a fortnight, and if you keep it longer than that, you pay the fine. Is it a deal?’
Alix laughed. ‘Yes, it’s a deal.’ She stood up. ‘Thank you for letting me talk it all out. I actually feel much better. Instead of an early night, I might just treat myself to dinner and a theatre.’
‘I was going to offer you egg and chips with us, but your plan has far more going for it,’ Gemma said cheerfully. ‘But you will come to supper soon, won’t you? Dave would love to meet you. I’ve mentioned you often. And now you’ve got my address and phone number, there’s really no excuse …’
Alix felt infinitely happier as she left Waterloo, and hailed a taxi to take her into the West End. It had been marvellous to bump into Gemma like that. They had been so close at school, but afterwards it was only too easy to lose touch. She was ashamed to think that she hadn’t even known that Gemma was married, let alone met her husband, and she couldn’t help wondering why the family hadn’t told her, because they must have known.
I could at least have sent a present, even if I couldn’t have gone to the wedding, she thought wistfully.
Gemma had referred to her life with Bianca as a ‘dream job’, but suddenly Alix wasn’t so sure. She’d begun to realise how totally and exclusively involved she was in her new life. Was it any wonder she was almost a stranger in her own home?
She would have to insist that Bianca gave her regular time off in future, so that she could set about rebuilding some of the relationships that had suffered in the past months—especially that with Debbie. She couldn’t wholly accept Gemma’s dismissal of Debbie’s attitude as resentment and jealousy. She herself must be to blame in some way, and she could only be thankful that she had the opportunity to put things right before they went too far and there was a complete estrangement.
Working for Bianca had been allowed to take her over. She lived, dressed, snatched her meals, even took her holidays at Bianca’s imperious behest. She smiled wryly as she recalled how Bianca had tossed the plane tickets and hotel reservation in Rhodes to her quite casually one day.
‘Here you are, darling. You’re looking pale and wan, and it depresses me.’
Alix could have protested—should have done, she told herself reflectively. She could afford holidays for herself. Heaven knew, she had enough money. Her living expenses were so few that she now had a healthy deposit account in the bank.
But she didn’t argue, partly because Bianca liked to have her generous impulses received with due appreciation, and partly because she wanted to get away for a while anyway.
If she looked pale and strained, Bianca might well be experiencing guilt rather than depression, she decided cynically. And it would undoubtedly be convenient for her employer to have her out of the way for a few weeks, while the affair she was having with Peter Barnet burned itself out.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened, of course. Peter was a journalist working for a show business column on one of the national dailies, and he had been invited to one of Bianca’s cocktail parties. He was young, blond and undeniably attractive, and Alix had been attracted. She had enjoyed talking to him, and not been altogether surprised when he telephoned her and asked her to have dinner with him. She had seen him several times when Bianca had suggested, almost idly, that she might like to invite him to make up the numbers at a small dinner party she was giving.
Alix’s impulse had been to refuse. She knew what would happen; she had seen it all before. It was as if Bianca could not bear to see any personable man paying attention to anyone other than herself. Other men who had dated Alix had either found themselves frozen out, or overwhelmed with a display of charm calculated to undermine any masculine defences.
Alix had not been in love with Peter, or with any of the others, but all the same it had not been pleasant to sit on one side of Bianca’s gleaming dining table and watch Peter succumb without a struggle. He and Alix had talked and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company, but he had never stared at her with that look of hot and glittering desire that he was turning on Bianca. Dinner ended, the other guests departed and Alix invented a headache to take her up to her room.
What happened after that was anyone’s guess. And Alix didn’t want to know. Nor, she found, did it help to tell herself that the ache in her heart was dented pride and no more. She was tired of having to face the fact of how easily Bianca could eclipse any charms she might have. It was hurtful to see someone she had liked apparently forget that she existed.
She knew the pattern, of course. Bianca’s little flings were unvarying. There would be flowers delivered, and long intimate phone calls, often while Alix was in the room, with Bianca lying on her chaise-longue, the receiver cradled against her cheek.
Alix couldn’t really be sorry that she was going to miss this particular episode in the long-running saga of Bianca’s love life.
And she thought, ‘I’d be frightened to let myself love someone in case she did the same thing to him. I might have loved Peter, for all she knew, but it made no difference. She still has to prove that she’s irresistible.’
As she queued at the box office of the theatre of her choice, Alix found herself wondering without too much curiosity what had happened to Peter. She could imagine, of course. One day, out of the blue, he would have found that Miss Layton was no longer accepting his calls. She wondered if he had accepted the situation with dignity, or made a scene. Not that it would have mattered. When it was over for Bianca, it was over, and there were no reprieves.
The disappointments of the day were still with her when she reached the box office window, to be told regretfully that all the seats had been sold, including the few returned tickets. And there was no prospect of any more cancellations.
Alix turned away ruefully. There were other theatres and other plays, of course, but this was the one she had set her heart on. She should have realised the necessity to book. She stood in the street outside the theatre, trying to decide what to do next. She would have dinner, of course, and then back to the house, she supposed, for an early night. Or she could always read the Clive Percy book, she thought with a glance at the parcel in her hand.
There was a small Italian restaurant just round the corner and she would eat there, she decided, deliberately removing from her mind the remembrance that Peter had taken her there.
Even though it was comparatively early in the evening, the restaurant was quite busy, its tables mostly occupied by couples. Alix was shown to a corner table, given a menu and offered an aperitif. She ordered a Cinzano and leaned back in her chair, a feeling of relaxation and contentment beginning to steal over her. Perhaps she wouldn’t have an early night after all. There was a musical she wouldn’t mind seeing—and there were cinemas. She would ask the cheerful proprietor if he had an evening paper and see what was on.
Aware that someone had stopped beside her table, she looked up with a smile, expecting that her drink had arrived.
