We could soon spot Ravensike Lodge, even from a few miles away. The lights spread out in the mist and there were more lights of cars arriving, a procession up the long drive, so constant a stream that the magic gates barely had time to shut. As we crunched from the car park through the chilly damp air to the house, I pulled my little black silk jacket closer to me. Actually, it was Matt"s black silk jacket. When I"d told Kate where I was going, she"d suggested I borrowed something of her daughter"s.
"There are acres of clothes up there. Take what you like. She won"t mind, I a.s.sure you."
I"d had a wonderful time looking through the heaps of clothes, many of them just stuffed at the back of the wardrobe that had been built across the corners of the long, sloping bedroom with magnificent views across the moors. Such an incongruous place to find so many designer labels, many of them one-offs. The dresses were all hopeless on me-much too tight. I definitely didn"t have my cousin"s supermodel figure. The only possibility was a glorified vest of a dress-strappy and cleverly cut in a beautifully soft material. On Matt it would look stunning. On me it would look just like an overgrown T-shirt. But then Kate pulled out the jacket-beautiful black silk in tiny Fortuny-style pleats, shot through with silver.
"Try those together," she said.
"Gosh!" I said as I looked in the mirror. The dress was a little snug but OK, and with the jacket it somehow made me look a foot taller and inches thinner.
"There!" said Kate approvingly. "You could almost be Matty"s twin."
Which was definitely an exaggeration, but a very confidence-boosting one.
So I stepped into the entrance hall of Ravensike Lodge feeling on top of the world. I looked as good as I ever had and I was on the arm of one of the most eligible men in England. More importantly, one I was getting to know and like. It was all a bit ridiculous and I wanted to laugh out loud as we made our entrance. Especially as Clayton had pulled out a witch"s hat as we got out of the car and popped it on my head. "The nicest witch I"ll know tonight," he said. "Just wait until midnight."
Ravensike Lodge was perfect for Halloween. It was a huge Victorian building, all carved oak and antlers. Very gothic. The Halloween decorations were terrific. The party planners had definitely earned their fee. The entrance hall was hung with proper pumpkins carved into lanterns. Just as well we"d left our plastic versions in the car, I thought. They"d look pretty feeble compared to this lot. Bats hung from chandeliers, silver cobwebs from every picture. Witches whizzed on broomsticks up to the ceiling. There were flickering flame effects. Huge cauldrons of drink that bubbled wonderfully.
Waiting to greet us was a tall woman with piled-up black hair and the tightest scarlet dress I"d ever seen. Lynette was Simeon Maynard"s third or maybe fourth wife and at least twenty-five years younger than him. "Clayton! Alessandro! Wonderful!" she said, shimmering up to us.
"Lynette!" said Clayton, and brushed cheeks with her.
"Do have a drink," said Lynette, barely glancing at Becca and me. "Simeon will be out in a minute. He"s just dealing with a few things. You know what he"s like..." She laughed. I think she meant it to be a light tinkling laugh but it sounded more like a cackle. Appropriate. Luckily, some more people were arriving behind us, so she moved on to swoop on them instead.
A skeleton pranced up to me, bearing a tray of bright red and green drinks. "A potion?" he cackled. "Devil"s Delight or Witch"s Brew?" then whispered in a very camp way, "It"s all right, sweetie, they taste nicer than they look. But there"s plenty of champagne around too." More skeletons whirled past with trays of drink and exotic canapes.
Clayton looked around. "No Maynard," he said, "what a shame," in a tone that showed he didn"t mean that at all. "He normally likes to do the gracious host bit."
I remembered what he"d said about Maynard thinking of Shadwell as his very own Subbuteo set, and was in no great hurry to meet him.
Dry-ice clouds billowed into the hall, almost meeting the real-life mist from outside. Up on a small stage, a DJ wearing a mask like a Venetian plague doctor was pumping out some great music. A few people danced in an absent-minded fashion. The light and the dry ice made for a weird effect. Not helped when devils with tridents poked and prodded the guests into different rooms. One was like a cave, hung around with spiders and giant cut-out toads with glittering eyes. In another, set out as a casino, people were already putting money on the roulette wheel, the glamorous croupiers managing that perfect blend of professionalism and bored indifference.
Clayton nodded at a group of men in the far corner. "Poker school"s started early," he said. "Don"t suppose they"ll move from there all night now."
"Do you play?" I asked.
He grinned. "It has been known," he answered. "It has been known..."
One of the men, spotting Clayton, called across. "You up for it later? Let me get some money back?"
"No thanks," said Clayton. "Got better things to do this evening," and he turned and kissed me. "No trains to catch. Or miss," he grinned. "And maybe this time you won"t go to sleep on me."
I loved it all. I loved the way he could joke about things that I had found so embarra.s.sing. The panic of that morning when I"d woken up on his sofa all cramped and dribbly, and then the awfulness of that car journey and the police questioning and all the stick he got for it on TV and radio and in the papers.
True, he needed a bit of time to deal with things. But once the first fury or embarra.s.sment had worn off, he could laugh about it. And here he was, with his arm round my waist, gazing into my eyes. I remembered that night in Club Balaika, struggling to get Jake"s attention, and I smiled back at Clayton.
"What"s so funny, Miss Tilly?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. I"m just...well...happy."
His eyes smiled and he said, "Do you know what? I think I am too."
Back in the hall, we danced for a while. It was just an excuse to be close to him, to feel his arms around me and mine round him. For that moment, in that time and place, everything just felt right. Well, almost. I just wished it had been someone else"s party, a party we"d gone to because we wanted to, not just because Clayton was paid to be here.
When the DJ pushed his plague mask up onto his head to sort his music out more easily, we wandered head in hand into a room that had very lifelike flame effects licking at the walls. A doll-like girl-size zero, blonde hair extensions, no light behind her huge vacant eyes-screamed in horror at the fake spiders and clutched at her partner, one of Clayton"s team-mates. Her vertiginous heels scrabbled on the wooden floor as she made the tricky manoeuvre to turn round and leave the room. I wondered how she would have coped with Kate"s early-morning mole traps.
The music was fainter here, just a pulsating background so you could hear yourself speak. The men were, inevitably, talking football. "Excuse us," said Sandro apologetically to Becca, "it is good to win and we are still so..." He groped for a word. "...excited about it."
I didn"t mind. It was just good to stand there with Clayton"s arm around me, listening to him replaying the match, watching him move in his world. And watching the other women too. One looked like a real-life Barbie doll. Very tall, huge b.o.o.bs, long legs; she was made of so much silicone that I hoped she"d keep away from the fire, or she"d melt. She was already drunk and clinging desperately to a footballer I didn"t recognise. He looked pretty out of it too.
Some of the other women were stunning. Frighteningly so. Definitely high maintenance. One or two others were very attractive but almost ordinary. No, not ordinary, real. That was the word. While they were dressed to kill and out to enjoy themselves, you had a feeling that they had lives of their own elsewhere-jobs, kids, hobbies. This was only a part of it. And not the most important part either. One was looking dubiously at her bright green drink.
"Do you think it"s safe?" she grinned at me.
"It tastes better than it looks," I said. "Not that that"s hard."
She sipped it tentatively. "Mmm, still pretty disgusting...My name"s Nell, by the way."
"Tilly," I said, realising I recognised Nell, wife of Clayton"s team-mate, Jojo Francois. She was a regular on a daytime TV show I"d seen when I was looking after Mum.
"Weird do, isn"t it?" she said. "We only came because the lads were playing up here and my gran lives on Wearside, so I could kill two birds with one stone."
"Yes," I said, "I"m working up here at the moment. I guess that"s why Clayton rang me."
She studied me for a moment, trying to place me in the pattern of footballers" girlfriends. Just as I was doing with her, I suppose. Then she put her gla.s.s down. "It"s no good. I can"t drink that. The boys are going to be replaying that match for ages yet. Shall we go and see if we can find a proper drink?"
I glanced at Clayton who smiled at me and let go of my hand and kissed it quickly. "Won"t be long, Tilly," he said, laughing. "We"re almost at my goal now."
Becca was entwined round Sandro and, as she had a blissful smile on her face, I guessed she was perfectly happy where she was. I smiled as I followed Nell into the next room, Clayton"s kiss lingering on my fingers. "Have you known Clayton long?" she asked as we made our way through the throng.
"Just a few weeks," I said.
"I thought I hadn"t seen you before," she said. "So how did you meet Clayton?"
"Oh, I"m just working up here for a magazine. He came into the pub where I go to use the computer."
"Ah," she said, "I thought you seemed to have a few more brain cells than his usual girlfriends...Oh, I"m sorry," she added hastily, "that wasn"t meant to sound...well, you know..."
She looked so crestfallen that I smiled. "No, it"s all right. He does seem to have a record of a different blonde every week."
"Goes with the territory," said Nell cheerfully. "The girls throw themselves at the footballers. They"d have to be made of stern stuff to turn down such opportunities. Many of them have the brain cells of a cabbage and the s.e.x drive of a rabbit, so that doesn"t matter. But with some of the others-Clayton, for instance-it stops them meeting people they might really connect with."
"So how did you meet Jojo?"
"I interviewed him for daytime TV-one of the first interviews I was allowed to do, and that was only because I spoke French, in case he went to pieces and couldn"t remember his English. I realised that, as well as a footballer, he was actually a really interesting person. So I didn"t let him get away! I appointed myself his interpreter-cunning move. And," she grinned, "I"ve been giving him English lessons ever since. Anyway," she added, "Clayton certainly seems smitten."
I went bright red and beamed. Clayton smitten? With me?
"Oh no," I said, firmly, "we hardly know each other."
The place was filling up now but, apart from the staff, there seemed to be no sign of our so-called host. Yet another waiter offered us a tray of brightly coloured liquid.
"There are champagne c.o.c.ktails and there is a bar, madam, in the library," said the waiter, noticing our lack of enthusiasm. Nell and I went off in search of the bar. We came to a huge oak door, barely open.
"This looks like a library," said Nell confidently, pushing at the door. But immediately it was pushed shut again, though not before we"d had a glimpse inside. There was a man I recognised as Simeon Maynard and a couple of others. They seemed to be arguing. Maynard was shouting at one of the men, while he scrabbled through a pile of papers on a desk. The desk drawers were open and another man was on his haunches, taking out piles of files and pushing them into a holdall.
It was an odd scene, but we had only a split second to make sense of it before the door was shut. Nell shrugged.
"So that"s where our host is. He doesn"t seem to be enjoying his party very much. Not very hospitable of him to hide away, is it? Not like him at all," said Nell and then, triumphantly, "Ah here we are."
The library was, in fact, a huge wide corridor leading to a ma.s.sive conservatory, where staff were bringing out trays full of food-proper food, not eyeball-type canapes. Looked promising. In front of the shelves of books-which looked suspiciously unreal-were two long bars. From one, waiters scuttled back and forth with the luminous drinks. From the other, barmen were pouring more conventional drinks.
"Vodka?" asked Nell, and I nodded. The barman poured two huge shots and pa.s.sed them over to us. Another offered a range of mixers and, when I nodded, added a glug of raspberry juice. I took a sip.
"Now that"s what I call a drink," said Nell, approvingly.
It was strong stuff. I realised I hadn"t eaten since breakfast and was glad to see a waiter with a tray of canapes.
"Eyeb.a.l.l.s or dead men"s fingers?" he asked, offering tiny stuffed quails" eggs and long narrow pastry cases filled with what turned out to be mushroom but which looked distinctly odd in the strange pale light of the library.
"This is one of the oddest parties I"ve ever been to," I said to Nell. "The food so far is straight from a children"s party, the casino"s like something out of a Round Table fundraising effort, only with proper money, and as for the rest..."
I meant to sip the vodka slowly but the gla.s.s was empty very quickly. As was Nell"s. She"d asked me about the magazine and we talked about food, for which she clearly had a pa.s.sion, strangely enough for a footballer"s wife. She also mentioned her children.
"My mum"s with them tonight. So I should be having a wonderful time and forgetting about them, but I can"t really," she said. "I miss them. Still, I"ll be home tomorrow. Let"s have another drink and work our way back round to the boys."
We took our drinks, picked up a few more canapes and tried to make our way back to the room with the pretend flames where we"d left Clayton and Jojo. Maybe we could bring them back some proper food. I certainly needed some. I felt oddly light-headed. Light-headedly odd. As we pa.s.sed through the hallway, a group of women were arriving. There were maybe six or seven of them, falling over each other and giggling. They"d clearly had a few already. They looked round boldly. They were a striking group, wearing a lot of make-up and clothes that were just a bit too short, too tight, too low. Like any group of girls out for a good time on a Friday night.
Two of them were reaching out for drinks from the tray, the others busy gawping around them. One of Maynard"s men was already moving towards them, surprisingly smoothly considering his bulk. But one of the women preempted him.
"It"s all right, pet," she said, "Ramon invited us. Aye, all of us. We met down the Quayside and he told us about it. Look," she shoved a piece of paper beneath the muscleman"s nose, "he even wrote it down for us. Ravensike Lodge. That"s where we are, isn"t it? By, it"s a b.l.o.o.d.y long way. Cost us a fortune to get here. Are you not going to give us a drink, like?"
"Wait here," said the muscleman. "Don"t move."
"OK, pet," said the woman, undaunted, "but we can have a drink while we"re waiting, can"t we?" and she helped herself to a gla.s.s off the tray. "Come on, girls, don"t be shy."
"Oh no. I was afraid of that," muttered Nell.
"Afraid of what?" I asked, beginning to feel uncomfortable.
"The local tarts have arrived. Daft things. They just want a footballer, any footballer, and this is the way they do it. In which case," she put her drink down, "I don"t think this is my sort of party."
With that Ramon and another young footballer whom I didn"t recognise, appeared on the stairs. They looked at the girls, then at each other, and laughed. It didn"t seem a particularly nice laugh.
"So, ladies, you made it!" Ramon said.
"Why, of course. You invited us, didn"t you?"
"We did. Yes, we did."
He nodded at the muscleman who shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders and went off. One or two of the other young men who had been drinking and talking football came over to the girls, who giggled delightedly.
Now I felt very uncomfortable. I looked for Nell but she had already disappeared. I tried to follow her but couldn"t and instead stood, staring, fascinated at the women, as they knocked back the drinks with terrifying speed. Soon they were surrounded by a group of young men. The noise level ratcheted up.
I realised I had to go to the loo. The Barbie doll girl was there, head down, leaning on the washbasin. For a moment, I thought she was being sick and then, when she stood up, I could see her reflection in the mirror and the telltale trail of white powder around her nostrils.
"What are you staring at?" she asked challengingly.
"Nothing. Nothing at all," and I nipped quickly into the loo and bolted the door. What would Granny Allen say?
I waited in there until I heard her go out and the door slam. I washed my hands carefully and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked OK but I felt distinctly odd. Not quite drunk, but not quite sober either. Sort of dizzy and blurred round the edges. Partly the vodka on top of champagne and whatever that green drink was. Partly the encounter with Barbie girl. Partly the strangeness of the evening. Suddenly, what had seemed fun now seemed frightening. Unpleasant. I realised, that, like Nell, I didn"t want to stay. I would find Clayton. Maybe we could go back to my cottage.
A horrible thought struck me. Had Clayton invited me because I was nearby and available, one of the local tarts? I didn"t want any footballer. I wanted Clayton Silver. And I wanted him not because he was a footballer, but despite the fact that he was. But that didn"t explain why Clayton wanted me. Maybe he didn"t see it like that. He probably had girls in every part of the country. Why had I kidded myself I was different?
By the time I left the loo, the noise level seemed to have soared. The music was louder, people were shouting. Lights were dimmer. Couples were entwined. As I tried to find Clayton, I found myself pushing past people. There was a man whose face I recognised from television, a footballer turned commentator. He leered at me.
"So who are you?" he asked, putting his arm between me and the wall so I couldn"t get past. I noticed the cut of his expensive suit but I could also smell the whisky on his breath, see the acne scars on his face, the spittle on his lips. As he bent down towards me, I ducked sharply underneath his arm and escaped, nearly b.u.mping into Becca.
"We"ve had enough," she said, "I think we"re going to go. Sandro"s just trying to sort out a car and a driver to come back to mine. Do you want to come too?"
"I"m going back to find Clayton," I said. "See what he says."
Now it was very important to find Clayton. How could I have wandered off from him? The memory of his kiss had long since faded. I wanted to be back with him, his arms round me. I so much did not want to be at this party any more.
I finally made it back to the room with the flames apparently flickering up the walls. In the menacing red glow, I could see Clayton standing there. I thought he might have been looking for me, but instead he was staring at Barbie girl, who was standing in front of him. Swaying slightly on her huge high heels, shouting strangely at Clayton, one of her long, scarlet-nailed fingers was jabbing at him as she tried to make a point.
"What sort of a man...what sort of a so-called man runs out on his own son, eh?" she was shouting, spitting almost. "This cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she announced to the room in general, "this cheating, lying s.h.i.t-face walked out on my sister and his kid. Never gave them a penny. Never bought the boy a present. Never even sent him a f.u.c.king birthday card! Clayton Mister Quicksilver footballer is as bad as all the rest. He"s earning thousands and thousands a week and my sister, my little sister and my nephew, his son, are living on benefits in a grotty flat. What does he care? Sod all! That"s what the great Clayton Quicksilver is really like. Just like all the rest."
I looked at Clayton. I expected his furious denial. But it didn"t come.
"For G.o.d"s sake, Chrissie, we"ve been through this," he was trying to say. If anything, he sounded bored. He certainly wasn"t denying it. It was almost as though he didn"t care.
And I felt a chill inside me. Could it be true? Could Clayton Silver turn out to be just the sort of irresponsible bloke I"d once feared he was? Please not. That bubble of excitement I"d felt when we"d arrived and danced together had gone flat and stale and was making me feel sick. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a young girl in the hallway, one of those who"d arrived in a group, giggling as two young men led her up the stairs.
Back in the flames room, people were standing in a circle, watching Clayton and Barbie girl.
"Is this true?" I asked the man standing next to me, who I realised was Jojo.
He shrugged. "I "ave "eard stories. But there are always such stories. It is part of being a footballer, no?"
Barbie girl was still shouting at Clayton, still jabbing at him. Then, as she swayed back and forth, she slipped, staggered and fell to the floor. Her skirt, already short, rode up to her hips. A few men laughed bawdily, mockingly. A couple of others reached down, helped her up, led her away out of the room. As she went, her arms draped round a man who could barely walk straight himself, she was still shouting over her shoulder. "You"re a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Clayton Silver! A cheating, deserting b.a.s.t.a.r.d who can"t even acknowledge his own flesh and blood!"
I tried to get closer to Clayton. "Is this right?" I asked. "Is this right what that...woman...says?"
"You don"t understand," he said wearily. "It was a long time ago."
And I lost it. Right there, in the middle of the flickering fake flames, the entwined couples, the gawping drinkers. Surrounded by skeletons and witches, and prancing devils, the eerie glow of the lights and the dizziness of the drink, I couldn"t tell any more what was real or not. It was all a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.
"A long time ago! When it happened doesn"t make any difference. All the things you"ve said about your own father. How you missed him. How he let you down. How you would never do that to your son! And you did! You did!" I remembered his sad eyes across the table, still hurt at the way his father had deserted him. He had sworn he would never do that and I had believed him, trusted him.