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Authors: Jill Mansell

Kiss (4 page)

BOOK: Kiss
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‘And Mike,’ echoed Izzy in thoughtful tones. ‘Well, it was all rather sad, actually. He gave me one of his looks - the same kind of look he uses when I eat chicken legs with my fingers - and said, “I’m sorry, Izzy, but I thought I could trust you. It seems I can’t.” Then he took all of the flowers out of the vases, wrapped them back up in their bloody Cellophane packets and left.’
 
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Katerina brokenly. It was all so sad and so unnecessary. It had also - at least partly - been her fault.
 
Izzy patted her arm. ‘What will be will be,’ she said philosophically. ‘I know it’s a bummer but I suppose I can’t really blame them. Besides,’ she added with a shrug and a smile, ‘there’ll be other flowers.’
 
Her mother was being so determinedly brave that Katerina knew she had to be upset. Between them, Ralph and Mike had made Izzy’s life happy and complete. Now, through no fault of her own, she had lost them both and the unfairness of it all hit Katerina like a hammer blow.
 
‘It isn’t fair,’ she repeated aloud. Izzy didn’t even know yet about their imminent eviction from the flat and the implications, job-wise, of a broken leg had clearly not yet dawned on her. ‘And maybe it isn’t their fault. But I know who
is
to blame . . .’
 
 
It was surprisingly easy to find the house, tucked away though it was at the end of Kingsley Grove, a cul-de-sac a couple of hundred yards away from Holland Park. Although tucked wasn’t really the word to describe it: an imposing three-storey Victorian residence with pale stone walls beneath ornate russet roofs and its larger-than-average, frost-laden garden, it dominated the other houses in the road. The garden, although overcrowded, was well tended and fresh paintwork surrounded glistening, flawlessly polished windows hung with draped and swagged curtains. Katerina, pausing at the front gates, pursed her lips and wondered whether all this soulless perfection was maintained with the help of outside staff or if Death-on-legs, as Izzy had casually referred to the driver of the Golf GTi which had mown her down, did it all herself.
 
She was relieved, however, to see the offending car in the driveway. The fact that it was there - gleaming, white and polished to within an inch of its life - indicated that its owner was indeed at home, which meant that Katerina hadn’t caught two tubes and had her bum pinched at Westminster for nothing.
 
Despite the morning sunlight, it was desperately cold outside. Stamping her feet in an attempt to restore feeling in her toes and pulling her crimson coat more tightly around her, Katerina pushed open the gate and made her way up to the front door.
 
She wasn’t by nature a vindictive person and her intention in coming here wasn’t to deliberately hurt or to upset the woman. She simply couldn’t bear to think of her shrugging off the incident, dismissing it from her mind and carrying on with her life as if nothing of any importance had ever happened. She needed to make sure the woman realised - truly
understood
- the extent of her careless actions, and that while her own life might proceed unhindered she had certainly succeeded in casting a blight over another human being’s existence.
 
When the front door finally opened she was genuinely taken aback. If she
had
wanted to upset this woman she would have felt cheated, because obviously nothing could possibly make her more upset than she already was. The expression on her face was pitiful, her grey eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying. Her pale skin looked as fragile as tissue paper about to disintegrate.
 
Katerina hadn’t imagined for a moment that the accident would have affected her this drastically - the woman was positively
distraught
- and for a moment she was overcome by guilt. How embarrassing. And how on earth could she justify her sudden appearance on the doorstep without causing the poor, guilt-ridden woman even further distress?
 
‘Yes?’ said Gina wearily, barely seeming to notice Katerina. Her gaze was fixed upon a trailing tendril of creeper which had come adrift from its moorings above the porch.
 
‘I’m sorry,’ said Katerina, her voice gentle, ‘but I felt I should come and see you. My name’s Katerina. I’m Isabel Van Asch’s daughter.’
 
Gina very nearly said, ‘Who?’ but managed to stop herself just in time. The name was obviously supposed to mean something, though she couldn’t imagine why the girl should be looking so sympathetic.
 
Then . . . Van Asch. Of course. This was the daughter of the woman she had driven into the other night, the motor cyclist she had thought was a man. Normally she wouldn’t have been able to think of anything else, but the past few days hadn’t been exactly normal. Gina knew she should feel ashamed of herself, but somehow she couldn’t summon the energy to worry about other people . . . Andrew had wrecked her whole life and the turmoil of simultaneously loving and hating him was tearing her apart . . .
 
‘Of course,’ she said, running agitated fingers through her lank, blonde hair. ‘You’d better come in.’
 
‘Th-thanks,’ said Katerina, through chattering teeth. She was glad now that she had skipped school and come here; at least she could put the poor woman’s mind at rest, before she made herself really ill. Guilt was a terrible thing, she thought with a fresh surge of compassion. How idiotic of her not to have realised that Gina Lawrence would be blaming herself and in all probability feeling every bit as bad as Izzy.
 
‘Would you like some coffee?’ said Gina, glancing up at the clock as she led the way into the immaculate sitting room. Walls of palest green were hung with tasteful prints and the peach velvet three-piece suite exactly matched the curtains. Katerina prayed that her best trainers weren’t treading mud into the flawless carpet.
 
‘No thanks.’ She shook her head, deciding to come straight to the point. ‘Look, you really mustn’t blame yourself for what happened, Mrs Lawrence. I know it must have been a terrible shock for you, but it
was
an accident . . . it could have happened to anyone. If I’d realised you were taking it so badly I would have come round sooner. But what’s done is done and thank God it wasn’t any worse. Mum’s quite comfortable now and the doctors say she’ll be out of hospital within the next week, which is brilliant news. So you see, you really mustn’t take it too much to heart,’ she concluded reassuringly. ‘It was just one of those things . . .’
 
Eleven-fifteen, thought Gina, gazing blankly at the girl with the sherry-brown eyes, pink-with-cold nose and dreadful black trainers. Andrew would be in his office now, working at his desk and scribbling down notes with the Schaeffer pen she had given him last Christmas. She wondered whether he was wearing one of the ties she had bought for him and whether the framed photograph of her which had stood on his desk for the last ten years was still there. Or had it been hidden away, replaced by a picture of Marcy Carpenter, the woman with whom he had replaced her?
 
The thought was so terrible that tears welled up in her aching eyes once more and she brushed them away hastily, although the girl had already seen them.
 
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry . . .’ wept Gina, sinking into a chair. ‘Forgive me, but I just can’t help—’
 
‘Of
course
we forgive you,’ Katerina broke in, leaping to her feet and rushing over to her. The woman definitely needed professional help, but psychiatry was a branch of medicine in which she’d become particularly interested recently, and it wasn’t every day you came face to face with a real life case of reactive depression. Besides, Gina Lawrence was beginning to make
her
feel guilty.
 
Putting her arms comfortingly around the woman’s heaving shoulders, she said, ‘Maybe I’ll have that cup of coffee, after all.You stay here and I’ll make us both some.’
 
When she returned several minutes later carrying a tray bearing cups and matching saucers and a plate of chocolate biscuits, the storm of tears had subsided.
 
‘I must say you have a lovely home,’ said Katerina, placing the tray on a slender-legged coffee table which scarcely looked capable of supporting it. But she sensed that Gina Lawrence wouldn’t approve of tea trays being plonked on the floor. ‘I’ve never seen such a big kitchen before. And everything’s so . . . tidy!’
 
‘I haven’t been able to stop cleaning things,’ sniffed Gina, shaking her head as the girl offered her a biscuit. ‘Ever since Monday night I just haven’t been able to stop myself
doing
things. I can’t sit still . . . I can’t sleep . . . it’s so
stupid
. . . I’ve been getting up in the middle of the night and before I even realise what I’m doing I’ve scrubbed the kitchen floor. Last night I spent five hours cleaning and polishing all the windows and they didn’t even need cleaning but I just had to be
busy
. . .’
 
‘I understand how you must feel,’ said Katerina firmly, ‘but you have to force yourself to come to terms with what happened before you make yourself ill. We don’t blame you for Mum’s accident, so you mustn’t blame yourself.’
 
For a long moment, Gina stared at Katerina as if she was quite mad. Not having taken in before what she was saying, only now did she realise that their entire conversation had been conducted at cross purposes. And that the girl seriously thought she was going through this living-bloody-hell purely on account of a stupid, unavoidable accident.
 
‘I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,’ said Gina, realizing that she was teetering on the edge of hysterical - and horribly inappropriate - laughter. Thankfully it didn’t erupt. ‘I’m not like this because of . . . your mother. I mean, I’m sorry, of course, but it
is
only a broken leg . . .’ She floundered, knowing that she wasn’t making herself plain and searching for the right words. Not having told anyone of Andrew’s departure, she was dimly able to appreciate the irony of having to say it aloud for the first time to a total stranger. ‘You see, on Monday . . . my husband left me. For another woman.’
 
Later, much later, Katerina would send up a prayer of thanks for the fact that she wasn’t a practising psychiatrist. The urge to hit the woman was so strong that she actually had to clasp her hands together.
 
As it was, she simply stared into the woman’s tear-streaked face and said, very slowly, ‘You selfish bitch.’
 
It was almost a relief to have someone to rail against. Gina, tears momentarily forgotten, threw her a withering look.
 
‘You can’t be more than sixteen. How could you possibly understand?’ she demanded. ‘My husband has left me and my life is ruined. I can’t think straight, I can hardly
see
straight and here you are, expecting me to feel sorry for your mother simply because she has a broken leg? The insurance company will take care of that,’ she went on derisively. ‘But my life is over and who’s going to take care of
me?
’
 
Katerina had had enough. She wasn’t a bloody psychiatrist, anyway. How this woman had the bare-faced cheek to dismiss Izzy - who was funny and brave and so optimistic that it could bring tears to your eyes - in order to wallow in self-pity, simply because she was too much of a wimp to stand on her own two feet, was beyond her.
 
‘Now you just listen to me,’ she said evenly, because screaming abuse - tempting though it was - wouldn’t achieve her objective. Death-on-legs would only scream right back and she wanted what she had to say to be listened to, to really sink in. ‘You were the one who caused that accident. Thanks to you, my mother has lost her job, her home and two long-term boyfriends. She has nothing left and by the end of the week we’ll both be homeless, so don’t you
dare
ask me who’s going to take care of you - you should be
ashamed
of yourself!’
 
Then, because she hadn’t meant to let herself get quite so carried away, she stood up abruptly, rattling the coffee cups as she did so. ‘I’m sorry, I suppose I’ve been very rude. I’d better go.’
 
‘Yes,’ said Gina icily. ‘I think you better had.’
 
Chapter 5
 
Being in hospital wasn’t so bad, Izzy decided. James Milton Ward, for orthopaedic cases, was really rather pleasant because patients with broken bones weren’t actually sick, and now that she had been moved out into the main ward she didn’t even have time to be lonely. The ward was a mixed one, morale was high, the food was surprisingly good and the fractured femur in Bed Twelve was absolutely gorgeous, even if he was a dentist in real life.
 
She had also been taught to play a mean game of poker, which was far more entertaining than battling with a weave-it-yourself laundry basket or with the increasingly grey and frazzled piece of knitting that the occupational therapist had urged her to ‘have a go at’.
 
But for the moment, peace reigned. Those in traction were either dozing or reading, and everyone else had disappeared into the television room at the far end of the ward; they were desperate to watch some vital half-hour of a soap of which Izzy had never heard, but which they evidently lived for. Izzy, taking advantage of the brief hiatus, was engrossed in painting her fingernails a particularly entrancing shade of fuchsia. She couldn’t reach her toes; they would have to wait until Katerina arrived later.
BOOK: Kiss
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