'Maybe we should go,' Miles said to Clare. 'Maybe you've said enough.'
'You don't have to tell us the rest,' said Susie.
'I think we get the picture,' I added.
Clare looked me in the eye. It was as though she'd decided I was the enemy here.
'I don't think you get the picture at all,' she said. 'You wanted to know what happened, didn't you? Well there's more.'
Miles shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It served him right, I thought. He'd asked for it, and now he was getting it in spades.
'Lots more,' said Clare.
Chapter 2
Miles was feeling sorry for himself. When I asked what the matter was, he explained with a certain degree of embarrassment that somebody had swiped his Mont Blanc in Kensington Church Street…
'Hang on,' said Luke. 'What happened to Sophie?'
'All in good time,' said Clare.
'You can't just leave it up in the air like that.'
'Shut up and let her get on with it,' said Susie.
'But she keeps jumping around,' protested Luke.
'I'm telling it the way I remember it,' said Clare.
'Yes, but…'
'Shut up and let her get on with it'
Miles explained that somebody had swiped his Mont Blanc in Kensington Church Street the night before. I'd dealt with step-by-step Mont Blanc preparation at an earlier stage of the cook book, and was about to ask him why he'd gone all the way to Kensington Church Street to buy a chestnut cream dessert when he went on, 'Bastard swiped it out of my breast pocket while I was getting out of the car. Trendy new form of mugging, apparently. Quentin lost his Sheaffer the same way.'
And I realized, just in time, that he hadn't been referring to the edible type of Mont Blanc at all but to an incredibly expensive brand of fountain pen. Talk about a close shave; another few seconds, and I would have been nailing my ignorance to the masthead. Time to pack those puddings in,' I muttered.
I'd been talking to myself, but Miles overheard. 'You sound just like Sophie — always cutting out bread and potatoes or dairy products or whatever. It's a girl thing, isn't it? Always on some stupid diet.'
'I eat what I like,' I said, annoyed that Miles thought I might be one of those ditsy types with an eating disorder.
'Well, good for you,' he said in that faintly patronizing manner that never failed to make me grit my teeth. He spotted the waiter approaching. 'And what would you like to eat now?'
I ordered the shaggy parasols in white wine and parsley dressing followed by steamed quiff of wild boar with peeled grape polka-dots. Miles ordered a teensy spinach and bacon salad, and that was that. Now he'd made me feel like a glutton, and I accused him of having tricked me into ordering too much. He pleaded not guilty and explained that he had to leave room in his stomach for a dinner date later on.
I didn't have the heart to ask who the dinner date was with.
Cinghiale at lunchtime was packed with people whose faces were vaguely familiar. And here I was, right in the middle of the glittering throng — or a throng as glittering as any throng could be when everyone in it was dressed in shades of black and white and grey.
I had arrived ten minutes late, intending to impress Miles by publicly greeting Marsha by name, perhaps even bussing her lightly on the cheeks. But Miles, louche as ever, had trumped me by sauntering in ten minutes after that, by which time Marsha and I had completed our salutatory rituals, she had gone back to greeting customers, and I was firmly seated, bored with reading and re-reading the menu, and impatiently tapping my fingernails on the table. He was as bad as Sophie. They made a fine pair.
I stopped tapping when I saw him and got to my feet, thus enabling him to peck my cheek without having to stoop all the way down to my level. It was encouraging to see, out of the corner of my eye, that some of the vaguely familiar faces had swivelled in our direction, their owners trying to ascertain whether Miles or I fell into the need-to-know category.
One of the reasons I enjoyed being seen with Miles was that he was so extraordinarily good-looking. But whenever we ate out together I was forced to address myself, not to his face full-on, but to his patrician profile. I couldn't work out whether he presented this to me because he knew it was his best angle and wanted to share it, or because it allowed him to keep an eye on the rest of the room without having to crick his neck.
I didn't care; it was a pleasure to be seen in the company of features so flawless. I just wished my own didn't blend quite so successfully into the scenery.
The table next to ours was empty, but not for long. Midway through my shaggy parasols, I saw a couple being led up by one of the waiters. The new arrivals were small yet perfectly formed, so trim and laundered and shiny it was as though they had been assembled from a plastic construction kit. His hair was short — but not skinhead-constructivist-minimalist short. Her suit was fashionable — but not sharp-end-shopaholic fashionable. They carried His and Hers soft leather briefcases. They really were perfect — a model couple. I wanted to cut them out and keep them.
But it wasn't their appearance that impressed me so much as his impeccable manners. It was the way that he, and not the waiter, stood behind his partner as she sat down, gently easing her chair into position before trotting round the table and sitting down himself. I felt a slight ache. No man had ever pulled a chair out like that for me.
After that, I kept glancing over at them during lulls in our conversation, and there were plenty of lulls, because Miles was still fretting about his fountain-pen. Or maybe it wasn't just the pen. Whatever it was, though, his attention kept wandering, and I was getting fed up with having to talk about his work, his family, his Giorgio Armani jacket and his Paul Smith tie in an effort to keep him amused. I fancied talking about me for a change, but Miles didn't seem particularly interested when I made overtures in that direction. It was probably the way he yawned and looked somewhere else that gave the game away.
Meanwhile, the perfect young man at the next table was pouncing on each word that dropped from his partner's lips and weighing it carefully as though it were a precious jewel. There had been a time, not so long ago, when Miles had treated my words and opinions as valuable gems. It wasn't as though I'd had a personality swap in the meantime. So what had gone wrong? Where was the problem? Why did I now get the impression he wished he were somewhere else?
'You're sure they're not your records?' I asked.
We had already established over the telephone they were not Miles's records, but the conversation was drying up again, and I was desperate to keep him from looking at his watch and saying, 'Well,' in that definitive way he had which was always a signal that he was about to get up and leave.
He was puffing angrily on a cigarette over a cup of espresso — angrily because he'd been trying for years to kick both habits, but never with any success. 'Of course they're not mine,' he snapped. 'I told you, I haven't played a record for years. I can't even listen to the bloody things; I can't stand all that hissing in the background. No one plays records now, no one except Sophie.'
'They're not hers.'
'How do you know?'
'She said so.'
Miles leaned across the table and spoke in a stage whisper. 'You know as well as I do that Sophie is not with the programme at the moment. She probably picked them up in the market and forgot.'
'I don't see why. She doesn't even like pop music.'
Miles, in his surprise, turned to face me full-on. 'She doesn't?'
'You've only been living with her for the past six years,' I pointed out.
For a few delicious seconds, he looked lost and confused, like a small boy whose mother is late arriving to pick him up from the school gates. I had the upper hand. But he rallied. Men like Miles always rallied. It was in their blood.