‘You seem to know Bruno rather well. Anything going on that I should be told about?’
Definitely not, thought Janey with a suppressed shudder. She liked Andre but he was the most appalling gossip. And he knew everyone .. .
‘No.’ She made it sound as if the idea was an amusing one, because anything the least hit emphatic would only bring out the Sherlock Holmes in him. ‘Not my type, thanks.’
‘Bruno?’ Jan, Andre’s girl friend, had been only half listening. With a giggle she said,
‘Everyone’s his type, though, lecherous old sod! D’you know, last Christmas he tried to seduce me in the kitchen of this very restaurant? It was right at the end of the evening but there were still three tables of customers out here. Bruno invited me through to the back to see his Sabatier knives and told the washer-up to take a ten- minute coffee break. I told Bruno to take a running bloody jump,’ she declared with pride. ‘I mean to say, ten minutes!’
Bruno’s reputation was evidently common knowledge. Janey, who had never known of it until now, realized that she simply hadn’t been mixing in the right circles. Gossip, it appeared, had its uses after all.
But anger and humiliation churned inside her. She just wished she could have had this conversation six weeks ago, before falling blindly into Bruno’s arms and kidding herself that it was love.
‘That’s nothing,’ Andre was saying, oblivious to the effect his revelations were having. As he offered Janey a cigarette, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Remember Natasha, the blonde with the tattoo on her bum who came to work for me last year? Bruno had an affair with her mother. Fifty years old and the manageress of that building society in Pink Street. She was totally besotted with him, apparently. Natasha said she only just managed to persuade her not to have a face lift.’
‘Fifty!’ squealed Jan, who was twenty-four. ‘Practically old enough to be his mother. Yuk, totally gross.’
Janey had heard more than enough for one night. The white wine wasn’t going down too well; her stomach felt like a nest of snakes. Moving away in search of food, hoping it might help, she found Nick and Tony, the antique dealers from next door, who were admiring the splendid buffet. Tony, wearing a magenta cravat and a new, extremely glossy toupee in a startling shade of chestnut, was piling his plate with scampi tails and endive salad. Nick, who had been greedily envying the whole fresh salmon, slipped his arm around Janey’s waist and gave her a welcoming peck on the cheek. He smelled of Penhaligon’s cologne and garlic, and Janey smiled because at least it was safe to assume that neither of them had ever slept with Bruno. They were devoted entirely to each other.
‘Here you are, my darling. Teeny Cornish potatoes coated in breadcrumbs, deep-fried and rolled in garlic butter.’ Nick popped one into her mouth, selected another for himself and rolled his eyes in appreciation. ‘Sheer heaven. Better than sex.’
‘Lovely,’ agreed Janey, when she had swallowed. With a grin she added, ‘So Bruno hasn’t thrown you out yet.’
‘Too busy philandering,’ Nick remarked, with a nod in Bruno’s direction. Following his gaze, Janey saw that Bruno and a blonde appeared to be playing pass-the-orange without the orange.
‘Bless him,’ said Tony with an indulgent smile. ‘He works hard; he’s just letting off steam.
If you can’t philander on your birthday, when can you?’
According to Andre, Bruno had been doing it day in, day out throughout most of his adult life. He practically made a career out of it. Reminded once more of her own gullibility, she said,
‘He’s getting too old to be a philanderer. Before long he’s not going to find it so easy to impress the girls.’
‘Ah, but he has charm,’ Tony observed through a mouthful of salmon. ‘Charisma. Mark my words, that boy will always get by.’
Nick and Tony adored Bruno. Janey couldn’t decide which was the most painful, being regaled with Andres scurrilous gossip or having to endure this paeon of praise. Belatedly, she wished Maxine could have been here with her tonight. Maxine, who didn’t yet know the sordid truth, had sensed instinctively what Bruno was really like and had tried to warn her away from him.
I was wrong and she was right, thought Janey wryly, sipping her drink. Ouch.
It would have been nice to have company, too. Doing herself up and telling herself that the party would be fun was all very well, but now she was actually here Janey was beginning to feel conspicuously single. Most of the guests were from out of town and she didn’t know as many people as she had imagined she would. Sometimes even being driven to distraction by Maxine’s over-the-top chat-up lines was preferable to standing alone and wondering who to talk to next.
Chapter 26
The next moment, just to prove she looked as solitary as she felt, a male voice behind her said, ‘Speak of the devil’s sister. Hello, Janey, all on your own tonight?’
Turning, she saw that it was Guy Cassidy, looking ridiculously handsome in a black dinner jacket and white shirt. Next to him stood a tall, titian-haired woman wearing a strapless topaz silk evening dress. Janey smiled as Guy, making no mention of Serena, introduced her as
‘Charlotte, a friend of mine’. From what Maxine had told her, he had almost as many female friends as Bruno.
‘I was just telling Charlotte about Maxine’s latest adventure,’ Guy went on, his tone dry.
‘She got on to Josh’s skate-board, shot down the lane at the end of our drive and landed up in the back of a milk float. The milkman almost had a heart attack.’
Janey winced. Was she hurt?’
‘No, but she spent the rest of the afternoon washing strawberry yoghurt out of her hair. And the milkman, in a state of shock, ran over the skate-board.’
‘Poor Josh.’
‘Poor Maxine! Very poor Maxine, in fact. As soon as her hair was dry, Josh dragged her down to the shops and made her buy him a new one.’ With a grin, he added, ‘It cost thirty-eight pounds. When I found out what he’d done I didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d bought the old one in Oxfam for a fiver.’
This time Janey laughed. Grateful that Guy hadn’t asked her where laughing-boy James was tonight and eager to keep him away from the subject, she said, ‘When she was seven, Maxine rode her bike into a fish pond and
