Liza said admiringly, ‘You’ve got brave.’
‘My husband ran off with my cleaner. I live in a bug-infested bedsit. The hippy downstairs plays bloody Donovan records non-stop and apart from this dress I own precisely two jumpers, three nighties and a skirt.’ Pru hesitated, looking as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You’d be surprised; after a while you can learn to not care about quite a lot.’
Liza stared at Pru. Pru gazed back.
Pru tried hard to keep a straight face.
Liza said slowly, ‘Donovan records?’
Pru nodded. Liza began to smirk. Within seconds Pru was in fits of giggles. Liza was helpless with laughter.
Holding her sides, barely able to get the words out, she said, ‘This hippy of yours. Do they call him Mellow Yellow?’
Pru was giggling so much her mascara had run.
‘That’s right.’
They were drawing attention to themselves. The family at the next table nudged each other, watching them. With a huge effort, Liza controlled herself.
‘I mean it,’ she told Pru when they had both recovered. ‘You are brave.’
‘I’m not,’ said Pru, mentally reliving the moment she had fled Eddie Hammond’s office. Oh yes, that had been brave, that had been breathtakingly courageous. Give the girl a VC.
‘You definitely can’t stay in that bedsitter,’ Liza persisted. ‘Death by Donovan, imagine. Come and live with me instead.’
‘What, in your one-bedroomed flat?’ Pru was touched by the offer but untempted. For the first time in her life — at the age of thirty-one — she was on her own. The least she could do was learn to cope with it.
‘My flat’s a jolly nice flat.’ Liza leapt to its defence. ‘It’s bijou.’
‘And if I moved in, it’d be more than your style that got cramped. Thanks,’ said Pru, ‘but I’m fine. Really.’
They were supposed to be ordering their meal. Liza forced herself to concentrate on the menu.
Every time she looked up, she realised Pru was glancing across the room.
‘Right, I’ll have the Stilton souffle and the duck with kumquats. How about you?’ she said finally. Pru was doing it again. ‘Someone you know?’
Pru shook her head.
The blonde girl arrived to take their order. She was pretty and utterly charming and Liza, deciding she must be the cousin, wondered how she would react if she knew who’d she’d just been charming to.
‘Come on, who is it?’ she persisted, when the girl had left them. Pru’s eyes were still darting across the restaurant. ‘No idea. He just keeps looking over.’
‘Fancies me. Fatally attracted to my stunning wig,’ Liza smirked, ‘not to mention my cardigan.’
She glanced over her shoulder and found Kit Berenger staring straight at her.
Shit.’
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
Liza nodded, white-faced. ‘How did you know?’
Embarrassed, Pru pleated her napkin. ‘Dulcie said he was gorgeous.’
‘More to the point,’ said Liza, ‘does he know who I am?’ But how can he, she wondered, when I’m looking like this?
‘What happens now?’ Pru’s stomach rumbled; she hadn’t eaten all day. The prospect of not staying after all almost made her want to cry.
‘Right, no need to panic,’ Liza announced firmly. ‘I mean, let’s be logical about this. He can’t possibly have recognised me. And we’ve ordered now, so we can’t leave.’ Fretfully she said,
‘What I don’t understand is why I didn’t spot him before.’
‘He wasn’t there when we arrived,’ Pru whispered back. ‘He came through that door.’ She nodded at one marked Private. The look Liza gave her was long and measured.
‘So you guessed who he was straight away.’
‘I didn’t think it mattered,’ Pru protested guiltily, ‘so long as he doesn’t know who you are. I didn’t want to put you off your meal.’
The Songbird was a forty-seater restaurant. Tonight – and Saturdays are the busiest night of any restaurant’s week – it was half full.
Or half empty, depending on your viewpoint.
Either way, it wasn’t great news. Liza wondered how many of the unoccupied tables were down to her.
She couldn’t fault the Stilton souffle, which was creamy and light with an outer crust browned to perfection. The roast duck with kumquats was brilliant too.
‘This,’ declared Pm, prodding her poached salmon with a fork, ‘is divine.’
Liza wondered how on earth it could be physically possible to feel a pair of eyes boring into your back. She didn’t need to look round, she just knew it was happening.
