Before the door had even shut behind them, Ellie heard Ludo say enthusiastically, ‘What a cracking girl. If she could only cook, then she’d be perfect for him.’
Camden, London, 1986
Then one night Billy went AWOL. Fine. Artistes didn’t always come home in time for dinner. But he wasn’t at the studio and he didn’t turn up for three whole days.
When he did he was tired and unshaven. There was a scratch mark down one cheek. Ari suspected that if he took off his shirt, he’d have scratches down his back too.
‘Where have you been? Who the fuck have you been with? You’ve been with her, haven’t you?’ Ari spat at him before he could even get through the door. She could never bring herself to say Olivia’s name. Billy didn’t have that problem.
‘Of course I’ve been with Olivia,’ he shouted. ‘The kid, Lara, she was sick.’
‘So? Are you a doctor? What use could you possibly have been?’ Ari shouted back at him, hormones and fear and resentment making her Medusa-mad.
‘She’s my daughter,’ he insisted furiously. ‘What the fuck did you want me to do?’
‘You left me! You left me on my own in this freezing shithole. You got me in this mess,’ she gestured down at her swollen stomach, ‘now you have to stay with me!’
Billy looked at Ari like he didn’t even know her any more, though she was still wearing five inch fuck-me heels and a huge beehive despite Carol’s fears that the Elnett fumes would hurt the baby. He looked repulsed at what she’d become.
‘Fuck this and fuck you!’ he said. The door wouldn’t slam properly because the wood was damp and warped, but it was still one hell of an exit.
A week went by and Ari knew he was never coming home again.
She winkled the address out of Jimmy Vaughn for the price of a wrap of speed but didn’t have the guts to ring on the bell. So she spent long hours standing in the cold in Powis Square, then retreated to the warm fug of the pub on the corner.
There was another person hot on Billy’s trail too. More often than not Ari would see Georgina Pratt sitting with her nose pressed to the window as she nursed a vodka and Coke. Ari actually felt sorry for the kid, sorry enough to waddle over and give Georgina the benefit of her five extra years of experience in dealing with men.
‘Listen, sweetheart,’ she said kindly. ‘Go find a real boy and stop mooning after Billy. He’s not worth it.’
‘He is.’ Georgina rounded on Ari, her pudding face contorted into an ugly scowl. ‘He is worth it and he loves Olivia, not you. They’re perfect for each other.’
Ari pointed at the bun in her oven. ‘Not that perfect for each other, are they?’
‘They are, and you’re just an ugly tart who’s ruined everything,’ Georgina said. Then she stood up and, defying all laws of man and God, threw her drink in the face of the woman who was eight months pregnant.
Chapter Twenty-three
Ellie didn’t hear what Ruth thought about this, but she looked over at David, who treated her to a chilly smile. ‘Sorry to drag you away, but if we’d stayed any longer, I think they’d have started making plans to adopt you.’
‘They were really nice,’ Ellie said, as he held the gate open for her. ‘Considering I turned up uninvited, they made me feel very welcome.’
‘Duly noted, Pollyanna.’
‘How do you even know about Pollyanna?’
‘Younger sister,’ he said obliquely. ‘I used to charge her fifty pence a time to read her a bedtime story.’
‘When I hear stories like that, I’m glad I’m an only child,’ Ellie told him as they crossed over the road and walked through the gap in the hedge that led back onto the Heath extension. Then she remembered that technically she wasn’t an only child; technically, she had two half-sisters.
Ellie risked a glance sideways at her father’s lawyer, sure he was going to spend the walk back to Highgate being cold and distant, but instead he smiled at her. He was stuck halfway between the Inns of Court and Glastonbury tonight. It was very unsettling. ‘Well, despite the financial advantages, there were lots of times that I wished I was an only child too. Particularly during the Care Bear years.’
‘Ari would never let me have Care Bears or Barbies or even a Polly Pocket,’ Ellie said, and as they came to the first dip in the path, which involved scrambling down a small but steep slope, he was already holding out his hand to help her.
‘Was that because she was a single parent? You notice I didn’t say anything about being on benefits,’ he added drily.
‘Except you just have, and not having those things was nothing to do with lack of funds and more to do with Ari being terrified that I’d be one of those girls who was obsessed with everything pink and princessy.’
‘Did her cunning masterplan work?’ David gave her an appraising look. ‘I’ve yet to see you wear anything pink, but you have filled my bathroom with what seems like an excessive amount of hair products.’
Ellie was in the middle of telling David that Sadie would buy her whatever toys her pink, princess-loving heart desired as long as she did well in her weekly spelling tests and would keep them hidden at her house away from Ari’s disapproval, when she was interrupted by his phone ringing.
‘I should probably get this,’ he said, looking at his phone, but he said it without much enthusiasm, as if he’d much rather listen to the denouement of her story, in which Ari had discovered a contraband Barbie bangle in her weekend case and had gone on an hour’s rant that contained words like ‘body fascism’ and ‘third-wave feminism’, then made Ellie write out fifty times, ‘Barbie is a toxic plastic tool of a patriarchal culture.’
‘Hello. How are you?’ he asked tonelessly.
It wasn’t dark yet but dusk was settling in, softening the light and lengthening the shadows. The heat was becoming more humid and it was so quiet and still on the Heath that Ellie could hear the high-pitched, garbled voice of David’s caller.
She took a step away when he said, ‘You could have just called me at work, Jess, if you were worried I had squatters in my flat.’
The ice in his voice cut through the humidity. Ellie trembled.
The tinny voice on the phone sounded more hectoring now and Ellie dreaded to think what it might be saying. She also couldn’t bear to look at David’s face for clues on how the conversation was proceeding. There was a wooden bench a few metres away, so she wasn’t in earshot, though she could imagine only too well what Jessica was saying to him.
David was pacing up and down as he talked, long legs covering the same well-worn path again and again. Ellie had to stop looking at him, stealing glances that he didn’t even know she was taking. Like she was trying to commit the shape and size and measure of him to memory. It was silly when she still wasn’t sure that she even liked him that much, and he was certainly going to like her even less once he’d finished talking to Jessica.
Now was definitely the time to start planning her speedy getaway again. The Universe obviously agreed with her because when she checked her phone, there was an email from her friend Esme in Paris.
Sweetness!
So good to hear from you. Of course the offer of our sofabed still stands, except you need to know a few things.
In Paris it has rained for seven days straight.
On Monday, it will be 1 August. Paris decamps to the country and the coast for the whole of August so everywhere that’s fabulous will be shut.
Sue and I are going to St Tropez to stay with friends on Monday. You’re welcome to come along too. Said friends live in a freaking chateau. They’re bound to have a spare room.
Or you can apartment-sit. Would be totes totes totes lovely to see you before we go or can leave keys avec concierge who is staying in Paris because she’s très, très, très old et boring.
Also! So many straight men I can set you up with either in Paris or St Trop.
Holla once you’ve booked your tickets.
Love you, mean it,
Esme
David was still pacing with phone clamped to his ear. From the set of his shoulders and the speed of his strides, it didn’t appear that he was anywhere close to ending his chat with Jessica.
That made it easier to act decisively. Ellie called Madeleine Jones, who sorted out all the gallery travel requirements, and if she minded being called so late on a Friday evening she didn’t mention it. She simply agreed to Ellie’s request for a seat on the next available Eurostar heading to Paris ‘even if it’s first thing tomorrow morning. In fact, first thing tomorrow morning would be great’, and promised to email her the ticket details.
Ellie didn’t have the guts to call Vaughn. Also, Grace took a very dim view of work-related phone calls after eight p.m. so she emailed him with a fait accompli.
David was still on the phone and dusk was quickly becoming dark. Then he looked straight at her. ‘Ellie?’ He was off the phone before she even realised the call was over, and marching towards her.
She stood up and brushed down the skirt of her dress nervously. ‘Everything all right, then?’
‘No, everything is not all right.’ He was standing in front of her now and even the faltering light and the long shadows couldn’t disguise the tight, angry lines of his face. ‘Were you going to tell me that Jess came over?’ His voice was tight and angry to match.
‘Well, of course I was! I did try when you first came home.’
‘You didn’t try very hard.’
‘There never seemed to be a right moment.’ Ellie risked looking up at David, but got as far as his chin, before she averted her gaze down to a scrubby patch of withered grass. ‘Look, she came round. She didn’t like me; I didn’t like her. And she shouldn’t have just come barging in like that. It was an invasion of my privacy. It was an invasion of your privacy.’ That sounded all wrong, like she was on the defensive, on the attack: all things that would prolong an argument. ‘She insinuated … no, she said some really offensive things to me and ordinarily I’d have just let it go, but even I have my limits.’ David hadn’t moved. Half a step nearer and technically he’d be right up in her face. Ellie needed to do better. ‘She was really hostile.’
‘Oh, she speaks very highly of you too,’ he said, his breathing slightly ragged. ‘Said you gave her some very useful relationship advice.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m sure she didn’t tell you—’
‘Just drop the act, Ellie!’ He took that half-step nearer and Ellie couldn’t take a half-step back because the bench was in the way. ‘That nice-girl routine is wearing paper thin now. That’s how you ingratiated yourself with my mother, wasn’t it? God knows what you said to her!’
She didn’t recognise herself in the bitter words that he was flinging at her. ‘I don’t ingratiate myself. Before this all started, this business in the papers, people liked me! They would open up to me. I have one of those faces. I’m a people person.’ She flung up her hands but really she wanted to grab his shirtfront and shake some sense into him.
‘You’re not a people person, you’re a people pleaser. There’s a huge difference.’ Ellie flinched, eyes blinking, air in short supply when he cupped her chin, turned her face up to catch what was left of the light, touched her. ‘I know who you really are behind that sweet smile,’ he told her simply, as if everything she showed the world was a façade that he needed to rip down. ‘You have that wide-eyed ingénue act almost note-perfect, but it is just an act, isn’t it, Ellie? I saw you last night after Billy phoned. Inside you’re as dark and fucked up as the rest of us.’
‘No I’m not!’ It was one of the worst things he could have said. ‘Just because you’ve seen me during the most awful, extraordinary days of my life doesn’t mean you know the real me!’ Ellie wrenched herself out of his grasp, nearly giving herself whiplash in the process. Her hands were clenched into fists, which she used to beat him back, because he was still far too close. ‘Get away from me!’
He stepped back, held up his hands to ward off any more blows. ‘Everyone’s got an angle. Even you. Especially you.’
‘My angle? My angle is that I’ve always been stupid enough to believe that people are fundamentally good,’ Ellie spat. ‘And as for you … You …’
‘What about me?’ David asked. He didn’t sound angry any more, but expectant.
‘If anyone hides behind a smile, it’s you,’ she flung at him. ‘Yeah, you can be really smooth and persuasive, but underneath you’re calculating and as cold as the grave.’ There was so much more to be said on the subject, and Ellie couldn’t sort out the mass of words ricocheting around in her head, so she settled for snatching up the apple strudel still warm in its tinfoil shroud and throwing it at him. ‘I’ll give you darkness, you sanctimonious fucker!’
She stumbled away, as fast as she could in her unsuitable footwear, veering off the gravel to follow an overgrown footpath that plunged her deep into the heart of the Heath, where overhanging trees made strange shapes in the gloom and the undergrowth brushed against her legs. She’d have been terrified if the anger hadn’t seized hold of her and refused to let go.
After ten minutes or so, Ellie started to calm down, pulse slowing, footsteps faltering. She came to a halt and tried to get her bearings. Her bearings proved elusive. She was lost, but it was impossible to retrace her steps when her steps hadn’t followed any recognisable pattern and had just been about getting as far away from David Gold as possible.
Now she could hear her own erratic breaths, the thud of her frantic heart. There were other sounds. Nature sounds. Things skittering through the bushes. Though it was too hot for a breeze, there was rustling, and she was a city kid, born and bred, who didn’t do nature. Nature was far more scary than being on your own on Dalston High Street at three in the morning.
With fumbling fingers, Ellie managed to find her iPhone, go to Google Maps and pray she had enough of a 3G signal to navigate her way out of this mess. She was peering at the screen, willing the page to load, when a hand gripped her shoulder. Her heart spasmed painfully and she honest-to-goodness screamed until a voice said, ‘Thank God, you’re wearing white. I’d never have found you otherwise. Somehow I didn’t think you’d answer your phone.’
Ellie shook off David’s hand. The anger was back and she had to fight against it; curling her toes, tensing every muscle, forcing herself to take deep breaths before she trusted herself to turn round.
He was standing there, adjusting the strap of the cool bag, and was that a smile? Did he think that he could say horrible, hurtful things to her and then it wouldn’t matter because he’d rescued her from a terrifying, lonely night on the Heath?
She wanted to kill him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say, though she wasn’t remotely sorry, but she couldn’t bear to feel this unhinged for even a second longer. ‘If it’s any consolation, I’ve never called anyone a fucker before.’
‘Not really, no.’ He shook his head. ‘You got angry, Ellie. Why can’t you just stay with it? Own it. Just stop pretending to be so bloody perfect because you’re not. No one is.’
Ellie could feel her face begin to droop, to fold, her eyes start smarting, and before she could even tell herself not to cry, she’d burst into tears that were long overdue. It had been one hell of a week and she needed to cry it out. But to be crying because David had the wrong idea about her was pathetic.
She didn’t want the tears to turn into a big, ugly cry, but all she could do was hang her head as her shoulders shook and, God no, she was flapping her hands in front of her face.
Why did girls do that? Why was she doing that?
‘Ellie? There’s no need to cry,’ David said more sharply than was necessary, when he was responsible for a lot of the tears that she was currently shedding.
She turned her back on him and wished that he had enough tact and consideration to hide behind a tree until she’d got the tears reined in. Instead, he just stood there, looking at her. ‘Please go away!’ she said in between sobs. ‘Give me some privacy.’
But he didn??
?t give her privacy. She felt his hand on her shoulder again, trying to turn her round to face him. She batted him away with a flailing arm.
‘For God’s sake, Ellie. Tears aren’t going to make me feel sorry for you,’ he said, because he was fucking relentless.
‘I thought you wanted me to show an honest emotion,’ she spluttered. ‘Well, I’m crying. I’m owning my crying. Why isn’t that good enough for you?’
‘Don’t do this to me,’ David said softly, so softly that she wouldn’t have heard him if he hadn’t been close enough that he could suddenly wrap his arms around her.
Ellie’s first instinct was to panic and struggle free. Her second instinct was to stiffen and go completely still so the message penetrated his incredibly dense brain that his touch was unwelcome and unwanted, but then he smoothed back her hair from her hot, damp face and he pressed his lips to her equally hot and damp forehead so fleetingly that Ellie thought that she’d imagined it.
Then David did it again. But it wasn’t fleeting. It was his lips firm against her forehead and her third instinct was to melt against him, limbs as pliable as warm dough, because he was touching her, properly, deliberately, for the first time since Glastonbury, right at that moment when she needed the comfort of someone else’s touch, even if that someone despised her.
The tears slowed to a crawl and Ellie was sniffing, ready to retreat, but David hugged her a little tighter and shushed her and kept his hand smoothing through her hair like a mantra as he pressed more kisses to her forehead and the bridge of her nose and her eyelids when she obligingly closed her eyes. When he reached her mouth she was already tilting her face up, raising herself on tiptoes so nothing could go wrong before it had even started.