Chapter 19
NINETEEN
‘So what happened?’ Jamie plonked a coffee on my desk so vigorously the liquid almost slopped over the rim of the mug. ‘Spill the tea.’
‘More like spill the coffee,’ I said, reaching for the mug. ‘This top’s new and it’s dry-clean only. Do you have to be such a slob?’
‘“Thank you, Jamie,”’ he said. ‘“Not only do you make the best cappuccino in Mayfair, you’re putting yourself out to save my relationship. You’re a true friend.”’
I laughed. ‘Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate the coffee. But the other thing…’
‘What about it? Did he go off on one?’
‘Not really.’ I took a sip of the cappuccino, which admittedly was excellent. ‘He didn’t react much at all. I showed him the Insta post and he was like, “That looks fun.” And that was pretty much it.’
In spite of the hot coffee I’d just swallowed, I could feel a lump in my throat.
‘My God. Your man’s got a brick for a heart. We’re going to have to raise our game. Why don’t we—’
‘Jasper,’ I hissed, and Jamie shut up before he could finish making his suggestion. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not – but Jasper’s impending arrival was definitely a bad one.
Our boss was approaching us across the office – actually, approaching was the wrong word. Unless you’d describe a rampaging T-Rex in Jurassic Park as ‘approaching’ its victims.
‘What do you know about Trent Wallis’s wedding being called off?’ he demanded, his voice dangerously low.
For a second, I wasn’t sure who he was talking about: thoughts of Jamie and Sam had been filling my mind to the exclusion of almost everything else, including those of Devereaux Partners’ clients who I wasn’t actively involved with.
Then I remembered – the footballer whose stag weekend Jamie had arranged in Prague.
Jamie’s face was a studied blank. ‘What? I just arranged the groomsmen’s suit fittings at Anderson our relationship is stronger than ever.” All that bollocks.’
I could see his point. For Rosie-Mae, a former Love Island contestant now living the dream with marriage to Trent, things like this surely came with the territory. But clearly she was having none of it.
I didn’t blame her. Sam meeting up – entirely chastely, as far as I was aware – with an ex-girlfriend had been enough to send me into a tailspin.
I craned my neck to read over Jamie’s shoulder.
‘I should have seen the red flags months ago, but I didn’t,’ heartbroken Rosie-Mae told Gossip Guru.
‘I was blinded by love. When I saw the photos of Trent in the hot tub with those girls, I just felt sick. Totally devastated. I knew that I couldn’t marry a man who was a sleaze and a cheater.
I’m worth more than that. I want all other women to know that they are too. ’
You go girl, I thought. Take a stand for the sisterhood.
Unfortunately, things weren’t looking so good for the Jamie-hood.
‘Well, she isn’t standing by her man,’ Jasper said. ‘And you know what that means?’
‘No wedding,’ Jamie muttered sulkily.
‘No. Wedding. No honeymoon in the Maldives, booked by us. And the chances of Trent paying us for arranging that stag do, never mind all the hours we’ve put into this? As good as zero.’
‘But the contract—’ Jamie began.
‘Won’t be worth the paper it’s written on, once Trent’s lawyers get hold of it. We’ll be blamed for this train wreck. Or rather’ – Jasper’s voice took on a menacing tone – ‘you’ll be blamed.’
Jamie’s face had gone white above his beard. I knew that this was at least partly his fault: maybe he could have persuaded Trent and his stags that going to a strip club was a bad look and that letting things go further with the women who worked there was worse.
Maybe.
But his role had been to facilitate the stag weekend, and that meant doing what our client wanted. Everything is possible, after all. But not this, he couldn’t really have said.
He’d literally had one job – and he’d done it. As for whether he’d had anything to do with the story emerging on Gossip Guru’s TikTok feed, I didn’t want to go there.
Still, I felt sorry for him. He was my friend. He was doing his best to help me out with the Sam situation, even if he was going about it in a way that pushed some boundaries. I owed it to him to help him too.
‘We could try and salvage this,’ I said. ‘Remember when Cormac and Taisha went through a rocky patch a while back? We sorted a relationship counsellor for them and they patched things up.’
Except now, thanks to Cormac’s stay at the Ritz with the mystery blonde, things had apparently become un-patched. But I wasn’t going to remind Jasper of that.
‘I can ring her now?’ I offered. ‘See if she’s got availability. She told me she loves a challenge.’
Jasper glared at me like he’d just remembered I existed. ‘You’ll do no such thing. You need to get out of here right now and change into something smart. You’re taking Zahra Kadar to a matinee at the Royal Opera House. The Rite of Spring, I believe.’
My heart sank. There was no getting out of that – certainly, now was not the moment to tell Jasper that sitting through a ballet was my worst nightmare.
Although, I had to admit, at this point, my life felt like an ongoing greatest hits of worst nightmares, so what was one more to add to my growing collection?
I was almost late arriving at the theatre to meet Zahra.
By the time I’d briefly vented to Jamie about how I really, really didn’t want to do this and listened to him tell me – quite rightly – that my problems paled into insignificance alongside his own, dashed home to change out of my creased linen trousers and into a dress and returned to Central London, it was twenty past two.
I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find Zahra in the crowded lobby of the Royal Opera House, but in the event it was easy.
The foyer was full of groups of tourists, elderly couples sipping champagne or studying their programmes, their grey heads almost touching (giving me a pang of sadness because until so recently, I’d thought that could be me and Sam in forty years’ time), but she was the only woman there wearing a full abaya and niqab.
She must be roasting, I thought, aware of the sweat patches that were threatening to soak through the back of my cotton midi dress. Grabbing a programme, thinking it could do duty as an emergency fan, I gave her a cheerful wave and hurried over.
‘Hello! It’s so amazing to see you.’ I always made an effort to greet clients as enthusiastically as if they were my oldest friends, but I was genuinely glad to see Zahra. ‘I’ve got our tickets. We’re in a private box – fancy!’
I couldn’t see her smile, but her eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘It’s for privacy.’
‘Oh. Of course.’ As I had been the first time I met her, I was conscious of the ever-present risk of saying something tactless or offensive.
But I needn’t have worried.
‘It’s still cool, though,’ she said, and this time I could see her grin under the face covering.
‘Come on then – let’s find our seats.’
We joined the slow-moving snake of people waiting to enter the auditorium, had our tickets checked and were shown to our box – a plushy little cocoon high above the stage to the right. We sat down, and Zahra eased the black chiffon away from her face and fanned herself with her own programme.
Again, I felt a stab of sympathy for her, but there was nothing I could do to ease her discomfort any more than I could my own – although the perspiration on my top lip and the slight churning in my stomach had nothing to do with the heat.
I don’t know what you’re whinging about, I remembered Jamie saying just a couple of hours earlier, when I’d muttered that I hated ballet. A bunch of ripped women in tutus prancing about – what’s not to like?
But as the audience stood to applaud the conductor, the curtain rose and the first dancers drifted on to the stage, I started to feel sicker and sicker, and the memory I’d done my best to suppress came back as clearly as if it was yesterday, wiping away all thoughts of Zahra, Jamie and even Sam.
I’d started ballet classes when I was four. ‘It’ll help get some of the juice off those chubby legs, Gigi,’ Mum told me, packing me off to the local church hall in a baby-pink leotard that did nothing to conceal the plumpness she was determined to eradicate.