Three days after Patrick’s party Taggie was gingerly testing her heart and finding that the ache for Ralphie was much less acute than she’d expected it to be when the doorbell rang.
In the doorway stood Rupert. His suntan was already beginning to fade.
‘Hullo,’ he said, soulfully gazing into her eyes. ‘Since your wonderful party, I haven’t been able to eat a thing.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ stammered Taggie, her heart beginning to thump.
Rupert grinned. ‘Could I possibly have my knives and forks and plates back?’
Taggie was used to unrequited love. Patrick, however, was not. Hopelessly spoilt by his mother, accustomed to attracting girls effortlessly, he couldn’t believe Cameron didn’t want to see him any more.
Despite Declan’s tirades and Taggie’s pleading, he continued to pester her with letters and telephone calls. Then, when these were not answered, he hung round the Corinium studios and outside her house.
Cameron, in fact, had hardly had time to think. As well as producing Declan’s programme and coping with her new job as Acting Controller of Programmes, she had to face a virtual palace revolution from a staff outraged by her appointment.
The afternoon before he was due to go back to Trinity, Patrick rang Cameron at the office. Expecting a call from Rupert about coming on Declan’s programme, Cameron unthinkingly picked up the telephone instead of leaving it to her secretary.
‘Can I speak to Cameron?’ said Patrick.
Cameron froze. Putting on a cockney accent, she said, ‘I’m afraid she’s not at her desk at the moment.’
‘Where is she?’ snapped Patrick. ‘Lying with the Managing Director under his desk.’
Cameron hung up.
The telephone was ringing again as she got home that evening. Running into the hall, she snatched up the receiver. It was Rupert answering her call.
‘We were talking about a date for you to come on Declan’s programme,’ she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘I was just hoping to firm you up.’
Rupert laughed. ‘Extraordinary terminology you use in television.’
His diary was ridiculously full, but to her amazement he said he could make a Wednesday in February, which turned out to be St Valentine’s Day. He’d been so adamant he wouldn’t do the programme.
‘And in case I don’t bump into Declan beforehand, can you ask him if he’s free for dinner afterwards?’
Cameron didn’t say that after Declan had taken Rupert to the cleaners she thought it most unlikely.
‘That was a good party on New Year’s Eve,’ said Rupert. ‘I saw you bopping in your suede dress. I hoped you’d jump out of your skin.’
The next moment Cameron nearly did jump out of her skin, as she felt a kiss on the back of her neck. Patrick had walked in through the unlocked door.
‘Get out,’ hissed Cameron, clapping her hand over the receiver.
Shaking his head, Patrick sauntered into the living-room. She caught a blast of whisky as he passed.
Talking gibberish, furious at having to wind up her conversation with Rupert so abruptly, she said goodbye and went into the living-room, where she found Patrick hurling darts at the dart board.
‘Nice place you’ve got here. I can see why you wouldn’t want to give it up in a hurry.’
‘Get out,’ screamed Cameron.
‘Not until you tell me why you didn’t ring back.’
He went up to the board, and pulled out the darts. His hands were shaking, his eyes were black hollows in a deathly pale face. He must have lost pounds; he looked terrible.
‘There was no reason to call back. We had a fun day.’
‘A fun day?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Was that all it meant to you, after the sunrise, and all you told me about your mother and Mike and you falling asleep in my arms?’
‘Shut up,’ hissed Cameron, looking round in terror, expecting Tony to pop up from under the piano.
Patrick picked up a huge bunch of anemones which he’d left on the dentist’s chair.
‘I bought you these. For Christ’s sake, I love you. Can’t you understand that?’
In answer Cameron snatched the flowers from him and hurled them into the fireplace. Patrick winced and turned back to the dart board. The first dart missed, crashing into the wall, the second hit the glass in the frame of one of Cameron’s awards, the third hit a plate.
‘Pack it in,’ said Cameron more calmly. ‘If Tony turns up, he’ll kill us both.’
‘He’s a fiend. I’ve been checking up on him,’ said Patrick, sitting down at the piano. ‘He’s so avaricious,’ he went on between crashing chords, ‘even the bags under his eyes have got gold in them, and he’s corrupting you too, turning you into his pet Rottweiler to savage any of his staff he wants to reduce to jelly. You’ll never get out of the Underworld if you stay with him.’
‘Tony suits me,’ said Cameron over the din. ‘We’ve been together for three years, OK? My career’s the only thing that matters.’
‘So you agreed to drop me if he made you Controller of Programmes?’
‘You flatter yourself. What can you offer me?’
Patrick’s hands came down in a jumble of discords. ‘I, being poor,’ he said bitterly, ‘can only offer you my dreams.’
‘Stop talking like a prime-time soap.’
‘You should know, you make enough of them. Can I have a drink?’
‘You’ve had enough,’ snarled Cameron. ‘Tony’ll be here in a minute.’
‘And he’ll settle you in that dentist’s chair,’ said Patrick scornfully, ‘and say “open wide”, and then it’s Wham, bam, thank you, Mammon. My Christ.’
He slammed the piano lid down and got to his feet.
‘Don’t be obnoxious,’ hissed Cameron.
On New Year’s Day, when she’d sobbed in his arms, he’d seemed so strong. Suddenly now he looked terribly young and frightened. Cameron was too insecure herself to be drawn to frailty.
‘I’m truly sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It hurts loving you, that’s all. Look, I’ll do anything. I’ll chuck Trinity, get a job. It’ll be easy with Pa’s connections.’
‘Always fall back on Daddy, don’t you?’ taunted Cameron. ‘You bitch about his philistine programme, but you’ll bleed him white when it suits you. Well I’m not having you bleeding me white. Can’t you get it into your Neanderthal skull that I don’t want you around?’
Guilt at the way she’d treated him made her even more brutal.
‘I can’t help myself,’ said Patrick, going towards the door. ‘La Belle Dame sans merci has me totally in thrall.’
He went to the nearest pub and drank until long after closing time. The landlady felt sorry for the beautiful, obviously desolate young man sitting there quietly gazing into space.
At midnight Patrick parked his car four houses down from Cameron’s and got out. It was a punishingly cold night. Cotchester slumbered beneath her eiderdown of snow. In a sky russet from the streetlamps huge stars flickered. Icicles glittered from Cameron’s gutters. In front of the house beside Cameron’s green Lotus was parked Tony’s bloody great dark-red Rolls Royce with the Corinium ram on the bonnet. There was a light on in the top of the house — Cameron’s bedroom, guessed Patrick. He imagined Tony brutally clambering over her lovely body. The Sunday before last she’d lain in his arms, pliant as a child. He wanted to plunge one of the icicles into Tony’s heart.
Wearing only a jersey and an old pair of cords, he was shivering violently now. Then he noticed that Tony’s car keys were still in the dashboard. Trying the car door he found it open. The lecherous bugger had obviously been in such a hurry to get at Cameron he’d forgotten to lock it.
Easing open the door, pulling out the keys, Patrick chucked them into a nearby flower bed. They landed deep in a lavender bush, hardly scattering the snow.