‘Ignore that,’ she told him. ‘The fact is, you knew Sylvia wasn’t going to be here, and you’re completely relaxed about it.’
‘Am I?’
‘All you can think about now is enjoying yourself with me,’ she persisted, meeting his eyes urgently and trying to convey her message. ‘Hold me close and look deep into my eyes, as though I was all you cared about in the world.’
If only…
He nodded, understanding and following her lead with a good deal of skill. The house was tiny and ‘dancing’ consisted mainly of taking small steps from side to side, but that, too, was useful, because their ‘audience’ had a close-up view of the performance.
‘Smile,’ she whispered, favouring him with a dazzling smile of her own. ‘Pretend I’m Sylvia.’
He managed to stretch his lips, although his eyes were still blank. Dee raised her head so that her mouth was closer to his, not kissing, but conveying the impression that she would kiss him if they were alone.
Suddenly she clutched her head and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got such a headache.’
‘It’s getting late,’ Helen said. ‘It’s been a nice evening, but-’
Obediently, everyone began to drift off. It wasn’t really late at all, but everyone knew ‘something was up’.
‘Shame Sylvia couldn’t make it,’ someone murmured. ‘I wonder what kept her.’
There were several curious looks at Mark, then everyone was gone.
‘Right, what is it?’ Helen demanded, looking from one to the other. ‘What are you two keeping a secret?’
‘Sylvia’s gone away, Mum,’ Dee said. ‘She left a letter.’
Mark handed it over and Helen read it, her face becoming like stone.
‘She’s with a man,’ she said harshly. ‘My daughter’s a bad girl?’ She glared at Mark. ‘What do you know about this? Why didn’t you stop her?’
‘Because I didn’t know.’
‘You’re supposed to have been courting her all this time. Why didn’t you protect her?’
Dee forced herself to be silent. She longed to cry out that someone should have protected Mark from Sylvia’s treachery, but he would have hated that. She contented herself with saying, ‘Why don’t you save your anger for Phil?’
‘Just who is he?’ Helen demanded.
‘I think I saw him once, when I went to collect her from the shop,’ Mark said. ‘They were giggling together. We had a row about it.’
Suddenly Helen burst into sobs. Dee moved towards her, but her father appeared from the doorway where he’d been hovering and signalled for them to go. She left them in each other’s arms, while she and Mark went out into the garden.
Once outside, Mark leaned against the wall, dazed like a man in a nightmare.
‘We can’t just leave it there,’ he said. ‘I have to find her, but I don’t know how.’
‘She said she was already far away,’ Dee recalled. ‘They’ll probably know more at the shop. It’s my half-day tomorrow. I’ll go over and see what I can find out.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ he asked quietly.
She knew what it cost him to make the suggestion, for she felt everything with him: the pain of revealing himself as the rejected one, the shame of admitting how he’d been deceived, the awareness of smothered grins. Her heart ached for him.
‘It’s best if I go alone,’ she assured him. ‘They’ll talk more freely to me.’
‘Thank you.’ That was all he said, but she knew he’d divined her understanding and was grateful.
She went to the shop the next day and returned home that evening with a heavy heart.
‘They all know Phil,’ she said. ‘He’s the rep for a clothing firm so he was in and out quite a lot, and they got to know each other.’
‘But why did they run away?’ Helen asked wretchedly. ‘Why not just get married?’
‘They can’t,’ Dee said reluctantly. ‘It seems that Phil is already married.’
Helen gave a little scream and covered her face. Joe grew pale and said, ‘I don’t believe it. A married man, and she’s living with him. She wouldn’t do anything so wicked.’
‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ Dee said. ‘His wife was in the shop when I arrived. She’d come looking for him. They have two children and he seems to have just left them all.’
She was giving them only half the story, but there was no way she could tell them about the other things she’d learned-about Sylvia’s reputation as a minx who routinely flirted with any man, and perhaps more. His abandoned wife had gone further, calling Sylvia a prostitute, but this, too, she would always keep to herself.
At last Helen dropped her hands and lifted her head. Her face was hard. ‘She’s no daughter of mine,’ she said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, she’s dead.’
‘Mum!’ Dee protested.
‘She never sets foot in this house again. She’s not my daughter.’
Dee turned to her father.
‘I don’t know,’ he said helplessly. ‘Perhaps your mother knows best. Sylvia has put us out of her life.’
‘But maybe she’ll need our help.’
‘She’s dead to me,’ Helen said stonily. She rose and kissed Dee’s cheek. ‘You are my only daughter now. Remember that.’
She stalked out of the room, followed by Joe.
‘I’m going out,’ Mark said. ‘I need to get drunk.’
‘Let me come with you. We’ll get drunk together.’
She had no intention of drinking, but she wasn’t going to turn him loose upon the world in his present state. Taking him firmly by the hand, she led him out of the house. She, too, was in shock, but she’d had time to think about things on the way home. Mark was still stunned. When he spoke, it was in short, jerky sentences.
‘How long has it been going on?’ he asked.
‘I…can’t say,’ she said, not entirely truthfully.
‘Tell me,’ he said violently. ‘Don’t spare my feelings. I want to know the truth, however bad.’
The truth was that Sylvia had been playing them off against each other for at least two months, perhaps longer. Dee had encountered Philip Mason once, a burly man in his thirties, pleasant enough but uninspiring. How Sylvia could have preferred him to the dashing Mark baffled her.
‘It was a few weeks,’ she said vaguely.
‘And I thought she loved me. I respected her, do you know that? I thought she was a decent girl and I didn’t…well, anyway, I respected her. And all the time she was…well…’
They walked on in silence for a while. Dee had tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and kept it there determinedly, lest he escape and do something that might harm him.
‘Don’t brood about it,’ she begged. ‘It can’t do any good now.’
‘It might teach me to be more wary of girls another time. How everyone will laugh at me.’
To comfort him, she denied it, but her words were hollow. Their performance at the party would help only for a short time. The truth would soon seep out.
‘They don’t matter,’ she said urgently. ‘You must thumb your nose at them. All they need to know is that you and Sylvia have split up-’
‘Because she preferred someone else.’
‘No, she pretended to prefer someone else because she knew you’d lost interest.’
‘Who’ll believe that?’
This was what Dee had been preparing for, when she must risk everything on one throw of the dice. To the last moment she wasn’t sure if she had the nerve, but then she took a deep breath and threw her fate to the winds.
‘Everyone will believe it,’ she said, ‘if you’re seen with another girl.’
‘But how can I do that to any girl-deceive her into thinking I’m interested when I’m just playing a part?’
‘But if she already knew the truth, you wouldn’t have to deceive her,’ Dee pointed out.
‘But who would-?’ He stopped as her meaning started to get through to him. ‘Are you saying that you’d be willing to-?’
‘It can’t be anyone but me,’ she said. ‘You said once I was your best friend. Well, friends help each other out. One day I’ll ask you to do something for me.’