nightmare with an audience. With tears streaming down her face, Janey turned and searched frantically for the way out. All she could see was a blur of faces.
Mascara stung her eyes and she didn’t know where the hell she’d left her handbag. Her face burned with shame as she pushed her way through the crowd of riveted partygoers in what she prayed was the direction of the door.
The next moment a pair of strong arms were guiding her. Behind her a voice murmured reassuringly, ‘It’s OK, I’ve got your bag. Just keep walking.’
Janey stumbled on the steps outside the restaurant and the arms tightened their grip on her shoulders, keeping her upright. When they reached the pavement she turned to face her rescuer.
‘I’m all right. Thanks ... I’ll be f-fine now ...’
Her voice wavered and began to break as a fresh wave of humiliation swept over her.
Fumbling blindly for her bag, she tried to hide her blotched face, cruelly exposed by the bright spotlighting outside the restaurant. She must look a complete wreck; this was almost more awful than having to endure Bruno’s sneering jibes.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ said Guy, handing overher bag but keeping a firm hold on her arm. ‘You aren’t all right at all and you’re certainly in no state to drive home. Come on, give me your car keys.’
He might have come to her rescue but he wasn’t being wildly sympathetic. Still sobbing, Janey said, ‘I’m not drunk.’
He sighed. ‘I know you aren’t drunk, but you can’t see where you’re going, either. Why don’t you just give me the keys and let me drive?’
‘Because the van isn’t here.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I walked.’
For some reason he seemed to find her reply amusing. Turning her around and leading her briskly across the road towards his own car, he said with a brief smile, ‘Fair enough.’
‘You can’t take me home.’
‘Why not?’
Janey wiped her wet face with the back of her sleeve. Sequins, like miniature knives, grazed her cheeks. ‘What about ... thingy? Charlotte?’
‘Oh, thingy will understand.’ This time he grinned. ‘Besides, you only live half a mile away. All I’m doing is giving you a lift home; we aren’t eloping to Gretna Green.’
It was dark inside the car, which was a relief, but Janey still flinched each time another vehicle passed them, beaming sadistic headlights over her face. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, either; the harder she tried not to think about Bruno and the degrading scene back in the restaurant, the more insistently the tears slid down her face. She hoped Guy Cassidy couldn’t see them plopping into her lap.
The journey took all of two minutes. Janey was free of her seat belt and reaching for the door handle before the car had even drawn to a halt outside the shop.
‘It’s customary to invite the man in for a coffee, you know,’ he observed, when she had mumbled her thanks and scrambled out on to the pavement.
Janey, who had been about to slam the passenger door shut, forgot to avert her swollen eyes. ‘Look, you’ve been very kind but I’d really rather be on my own. Don’t you think I’m embarrassed enough as it is?’
But Guy had switched off the ignition and was already stepping out of the car. ‘I think it wouldn’t be fair to leave you on your own bawling your eyes out.’ His tone of voice was more gentle now, and reassuringly matter of fact. ‘Come on, we can’t stand here arguing in the street.
People will think you’re Maxine.’
‘She said you were a bully,’ Janey grumbled, realizing that he wasn’t going to go away.
‘And what about Charlotte, anyway? You took her along to the party. She won’t be very pleased with you if you don’t go back.’
‘She’ll survive.’ Guy dismissed the protest with a careless gesture. Taking the keys from her trembling hand, he opened the front door and guided Janey into the hallway ahead of him.
‘Besides, rescuing damsels in distress is as good a reason as any for escaping. ‘I grew out of those kind of parties years ago, and I’ve already told you I don’t much care for Bruno Parry-Brent.’ With a brief sidelong glance at Janey, he added, ‘That’s something we appear to have in common, at least.’
So much for looking great, thought Janey, gloomily surveying her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Having scrubbed her face, soaping away every last vestige of makeup, it no longer looked like a ploughed field but it was certainly in a sorry state.The whites of her eyes were pink and her cheeks, normally pink, were white. Her eyelids remained hopelessly swollen too, despite her best efforts with a cold flannel. And somewhere along the line she had managed to lose one of the combs holding her hair back at the sides. All in all, she looked like a lop-eared rabbit.
But since she wasn’t about to run off to Gretna Green, as Guy had so caustically reminded her earlier, what did it matter? Pulling a face at herself in the mirror, chucking the other bronze comb on to the windowsill and running her fingers through her no longer perfect hair, Janey unlocked the bathroom door. Guy was in the kitchen making coffee. If he was so hellbent on hearing her side of the unflattering story behind Bruno’s contemptuous outbursts tonight, she would give it to him. She had no reason to want to impress him; he was only another rotten man anyway.
‘You’re looking better.’ Guy, having made the coffee and brought it through to the sitting room, handed her the pink mug with elephants round the side. Stretching out in the chair by the window, he added, Not wonderful, but better.’
‘Thanks.’ He certainly had a way with words, thought Janey. Flattery like that could turn a more susceptible girl’s head.
‘So what was it all about?’
She shrugged. There was no reason on earth why Guy Cassidy should be interested in hearing this, yet he was
