You’ve seen the photo, Pru. Let’s be honest, I was born with one hell of a nose.’
‘Oh ... well ...’
‘Jokes? I heard them all. Witty nicknames? Honker, Concorde, Big Bird ... I’ve been called everything in my time. When I was at school, the other kids made my life hell,’ Terry went on.
‘Then you get older, and people might stop calling you names, but you know they’re still staring at you, trying to concentrate on what you’re saying to them and all the time thinking: 'God, look at the hooter on him.' ‘
Pru couldn’t stop staring either.
‘So ... so you had plastic surgery?’
‘It wasn’t a question of vanity.’ For the first time Terry sounded defensive. ‘I just wanted to look
... normal.’
‘Oh I know,’ cried Pru. She understood exactly how he must have felt. ‘I know. Did ... well, did it hurt?’
He shrugged.
‘A bit. But it was worth it. If it had hurt a hundred times more, it would still have been worth it.
You see, I don’t have tothink about my nose any more. Why are you crying?’ He looked worried. ‘Pru, stop it. You mustn’t cry. Your nose is fine.’
Unable to speak, Pru raised her arms and scooped her hair away from her face.
At that moment the girl who shared both Terry’s office and his bed came into the kitchen wearing his towelling dressing gown.
‘Good grief.’ She eyed Pru’s ears with alarm. ‘Shouldn’t you get those seen to?’
‘Karen is to diplomacy what Margaret Thatcher is to tap dancing,’ Terry apologised. ‘But this time I have to say she’s right.’
Pru covered her ears back up again. Funny how all it had taken to overcome a lifetime’s fear of surgery was a snapshot of a man with a beaky nose.
Typical, too, that all those years when money had been no object, she hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage to have her ears fixed.
Now I’ve got the courage, Pru thought gloomily, and I can’t even afford a tube of UHU.
Chapter 25
Liza lay in the bath for an hour, watching her skin shrivel and marvelling at her spectacular stupidity. It was her birthday, she was thirty-two, and she was acting like a pathetic teenager.
Damn, worse than that. She was acting like ... Dulcie.
There had been plenty of offers over the course of the last few days, from various men eager to take her out on her birthday. Stupidly, still hoping against hope that Kit Berenger would be in touch, she had turned them all down. She had even invented ever more elaborate excuses on Kit’s behalf, every time the phone rang and it wasn’t him.
In the end Liza had run out of excuses. Reasonable ones anyway. The only excuse that would do now was if he were dead.
So here she was, a grown woman in the grip of a deeply embarrassing crush – an unrequited crush at that – all alone on her birthday and feeling more spinsterish by the minute.
Climbing out of the bath, Liza put on a baggy yellow sweater and a pair of pink shorts. Since it was sunny outside she took her work out into the tiny garden.
Seconds after she’d settled herself down with more reference books and a notepad, the post arrived. Sending her coffee flying, Liza raced to the door. Cards, cards, cards .. .
None of them from Kit Berenger.
Hating herself for being foolish enough to even think he might have sent one – how truly pathetic could you get? – Liza crammed her sunglasses on to her face and forced herself to work for two hours straight.
At midday she made herself another pot of coffee and phoned Mark.
‘Dinner tonight. Are you still up for it?’
‘I thought you were busy.’
‘Change of plan,’ Liza replied brightly. ‘I can make it now.’
‘Oh, shame, I made other arrangements.’ Bemused by her call – it didn’t occur to him for a second that she could actually have been stood up by another man – Mark added, ‘Of course, you’re welcome to join us. Suzie wouldn’t mind ...’
Dulcie was just as much of a let-down.
‘I can’t, I’m seeing Liam. He’s mad about me,’ she confided happily. ‘You should have seen him last night, trying to climb in through my bedroom window! He’s so romantic,’ she sighed, ‘so masterful.’
Not in the mood to hear this, Liza attempted a quick getaway. ‘Okay, doesn’t matter—’
‘Hang on! You still haven’t told me what’s been going on between you and Kit Berenger.’
‘Terrible line, I can hardly hear you.’ Liza bashed the phone against the wall a couple of times and hung up.
When the doorbell rang an hour later she was tempted not to answer it. Why bother when it was either flowers from Mark – a guilt gift to make up for not being able to see her tonight – or Dulcie determined to get the low-down on the Berenger affair.
