My God, was there ever anything more pointless? I was miserable, darling ... a slave to fashion.
Giving up dieting and saying to hell with size twelve was the best decision of my entire life!’
Since Mimi was currently wearing a pink mohair cardigan trimmed with sequins, a mauve organza blouse and a blue-and-white gingham skirt, it was hard to imagine her ever having been a slave to fashion.
Thoroughly mystified, Guy responded with a cautious nod. ‘I see.’
‘And it’s the same with Janey,’ she continued triumphantly. ‘She might think she’s hooked on this wretched husband of hers but all he is, really, is a habit she hasn’t broken. You have to be patient, darling. Given time, she’ll come to her senses and realize she can do without him after all. Mind you, I bet you wish now you’d made your move a bit earlier,’ she added with a smug, I- told-you-so smile. ‘She would have had to think twice then, wouldn’t she, before rushing off without so much as a backward glance? In that respect, I’m afraid you have only yourself to blame.’
‘Really.’ Guy struggled to keep a straight face. ‘Well, this is all very interesting, but I’m afraid you’re on completely the wrong track. Janey’s a friend, nothing more. She’s a very nice girl, but that’s as far as it goes. She just isn’t my type. When I said I didn’t know what was going to happen next,’ he explained, ‘I was referring to Maxine. If this new affair of hers turns out to be more than a nine-day wonder, it’s going to mean trouble for me. Before long, she’ll be wanting to move in with Bruno Parry-Brent and I’ll have to start looking for a new nanny.’
‘Of course you will,’ said Mimi blithely. ‘And who would be absolutely perfect for the job?
Janey.’
‘You’re shameless.’ This time he was unable to hide his smile. ‘Do you know that? Quite apart from the fact that she has a shop to run, I’ve already told you, Janey isn’t my type.’
Mimi, not believing him for a second, pulled the mohair cardigan more tightly around her vast bosom as a sudden gust of wind whistled down her cleavage.
‘You’re only a man,’ she said, her tone comforting. ‘What would you know? You thought Serena was your type.’
‘I have to get back,’ said Maxine regretfully, stirring the surface of the water with her big toe and transferring an artful dollop of foam on to Bruno’s shoulder. ‘We can’t spend the rest of our lives lying in the bath. Besides, I’m starting to prune.’
He reached for her hand and kissed her wrinkled fingertips, one by one. ‘I don’t want you to go. Why don’t you give in your notice and come and live here with me?’
‘What, leave my job?’
‘I left Nina,’ Bruno reminded her. ‘And my job. I’m not going to enjoy sitting around waiting for you to dash over here whenever you can manage to get a couple of hours off.’
She grinned. ‘You’ve done it to enough women yourself, haven’t you? Now you can find out how it feels to be the one on the receiving end.’
‘I want us to be together,’ he said crossly. ‘All the time.’
He was sounding more and more like a fretful mistress. Leaning forward, Maxine gave him a kiss. ‘So do I, but then we’d both be unemployed. Besides, Guy’s been good to me — in his own way — and I can’t leave him in the lurch. Why don’t we just see how things go for a while before doing anything drastic?’
‘Well thanks,’ murmured Bruno, who felt he had already acted pretty drastically. But Maxine, in a hurry to get back to Trezale House, was climbing out of the bath and reaching for the larger of the two towels.
‘Don’t glare at me like that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You know what I mean. Look, I’ll have a word with Guy and see if we can’t come to some kind of arrangement. If he’s at home, maybe he’ll let me spend my nights here. And the kids are at school during the day ...’
‘Such concern all of a sudden, for Guy Cassidy,’ Bruno complained, watching as she eased herself into her jeans and bent to pick up her crumpled white shirt. ‘He’s hardly likely to go out of his way to make things easier for us. He doesn’t even like me.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Maxine winked. ‘I have ways of getting round Guy. Don’t you trust me?’
‘No.’ He wasn’t used to feeling jealous and he didn’t much like it. ‘That’s why I want you to come and live here.’
‘I don’t trust you, either,’ countered Maxine sweetly, doing up the last couple of buttons and knotting the shirt tails around her waist. ‘So forget it. Because I’m not moving anywhere until you manage to persuade me that I can.’
Guy was leafing through a mound of contact sheets and eating a Marmite sandwich when Maxine rolled into the sitting room at seven.
‘You look as if you’ve just crawled out of bed,’ he observed, taking in her tousled hair, bright eyes and distinctly rumpled white shirt.
‘It’s what you do when you’re in love.’ She gave him an unrepentant smile.
Josh and Ella were sprawled in front of the fire, their blond heads bent over a game of Monopoly. Glancing up, Josh said hopefully, ‘If you’ve been asleep all afternoon, I expect you’d like to play Monopoly now. I’ve nearly finished beating Ella.’
Guy pushed the contact sheets to one side. ‘How was Janey?’
‘Happy.’ Maxine rolled her eyes. ‘What can I say? He fed her some terrible line and she fell for it. ‘I just went along with the whole thing and pretended to be pleased for her.’ Collapsing on to the floor next to Ella, who was biting her lip at the prospect of having to mortgage the Old Kent Road, she added, ‘But it was definitely the right thing to do. At the moment, she won’t hear a word against him.’
‘Hmm,’ said Guy. ‘So I gathered. Your mother phoned earlier, wanting to speak to you.’
Maxine pulled a face. If Thea had somehow heard about Bruno leaving Nina from outside sources, it was entirely possible that she was in for a lecture. Her mother was sensitive about such matters. ‘Oh.’ She looked wary. ‘Did she say what about?’
‘In Technicolor detail.’ Guy glanced across at the children to make sure they weren’t listening. ‘And it isn’t good news. She went round to Janey’s place this afternoon and told Alan exactly what she thought of him. It
