Bella

handsome.

‘How did you get in here?’ she gasped.

‘The doorman’s a mate of mine.’ He shut the door and leaned against it. ‘Well?’ he added softly.

‘Well, what?’

‘I thought I told you not to get tangled up with Rupert Henriques.’

‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ There was a sob in her voice. ‘A lot you care. You haven’t even rung me.’

‘I thought I’d leave you on slow burn for a week or two,’ he said.

He walked towards her and put a hand on her bare shoulder. Funny how Rupert could maul her for hours and nothing happened, but just a touch from Steve sent a thousand volts through her. The warm hand crept slowly up her shoulder round to the back of her neck.

Then he laughed. ‘You were fantastic as Desdemona, honey. I’d no idea you were that good.’

Happiness flooded through her. ‘Oh! Did you really think so?’

‘Yes. Absolutely bowled me over,’ he said, bending his head and kissing her.

Bella was kissing him back. His hand was edging down the front of her dress and everything was getting quite out of control when, suddenly, to her horror, she heard the door burst open and a voice saying, ‘This must be Bella’s room.’

Colour flooding her face, she leapt away from Steve — but it was too late. Standing in the doorway was Lazlo Henriques and Bella’s old enemy from drama school, Angora Fairfax.

‘Bella. You are frightful,’ said Angora with a giggle. ‘You’ve only just got engaged to Rupert and here you are being unfaithful already with this stunning man.’ She raised her huge blue eyes to Steve. ‘I think you should call him out,’ she added to Lazlo.

‘Rupert can fight his own battles,’ said Lazlo, looking amused. ‘Hello, Bella. How are you?’

Bella was speechless. It was Steve who came to the rescue.

‘I’d better introduce myself. My name’s Steve Benedict,’ he said, grinning.

‘And I’m Angora Fairfax. And this foxy individual here is Lazlo Henriques,’ said Angora.

She was as pretty as a kitten, incredibly slim with tiny wrists and ankles, cloudy dark hair, purply-blue eyes and pouting red lips which didn’t quite meet over her slightly protruding teeth. Angora, said one of her stage school colleagues, was the sort of girl who could get away with asking a man if he could ‘possibly carry this frightfully heavy match box’.

‘Bella, darling,’ she said. ‘Do stop looking so pink in the face. It was a lovely performance. You were so good — though they shouldn’t have given you that terrible set in the last act. I mean you were hopping all over the place like the Grand National. Lazlo was awful. He went to sleep in the second and third acts, but he’s had a rough day. Gold bullion’s gone down a halfpenny or something. Have you anything for us to drink?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Bella, grinding her teeth. She’d forgotten Angora’s ability to make her feel a complete idiot. ‘There’s a bottle of whisky in the cupboard. Perhaps you’d do the honours, Steve.’

When Steve had poured out four very large drinks, Lazlo raised his glass to Bella. ‘To you and Rupert,’ he said, with a nasty glint in his eye.

‘Yes, to the lovebirds,’ said Angora. ‘You must be in a daze of happiness, Bella. Such a relief to be settled and know one won’t end up a terrible old maid keeping cats in a garret.’ She looked at Lazlo under long, sooty black lashes.

‘Don’t fish, Angora,’ he said.

She giggled. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m a bit over-excited. Harry Backhaus has signed me up for the lead in his new film.’

‘That’s great,’ said Steve, flashing her his devastating smile. ‘How did you pull that off?’

‘Strings really, darling. Lazlo took me and Harry out to a long, drunken lunch today. I gather you went after the part too, Bella darling? But as they start shooting in a fortnight, I knew you wouldn’t want to be parted from Rupert so soon.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t!’ said Bella. And she smiled at Lazlo, her heart black with hatred.

‘What about you then?’ Angora said to Steve. ‘Where did Bella dig up something as lovely as you from?’

‘Buenos Aires,’ said Steve. He turned to Lazlo. ‘Actually, we’ve met. I own the Amontillado Club. You’ve been in once or twice.’

‘One of my favourite haunts,’ said Lazlo. ‘It’s so dark I can never remember who I’ve come in with.’

‘Is it nice out there?’ asked Angora.

‘It’s nice anywhere,’ said Steve and, laughing, he refilled Lazlo’s glass.

Bella suddenly felt twitchy. If Lazlo learned from Steve the real truth about her past, heaven knows what use he’d make of it.

Angora was rabbiting on and on about acting. Steve and Lazlo had moved on to business.

‘Money, money, money!’ said Angora finally. ‘I can see you two are going to be very bad for each other.’

Bella felt a stab of jealousy. In a quarter of an hour they’d accepted Steve as they’d never accept her.

He was talking to Angora now, turning on his homme fatal act, dropping his voice several semi-tones, flashing his teeth all over the place.

Finally, Angora stretched. ‘Lazlo, darling. If I don’t eat I shall fall over.’

‘Let’s go then,’ said Lazlo, stubbing out his cigar. ‘Why don’t you come, too?’ he added to Steve.

‘Won’t I be de trop?’ said Steve.

‘Not at all,’ said Angora. ‘Lazlo will melt into a telephone box and magic up some amazing looking girl for you, then we’ll go on the town. Thanks for drinks, Bella. See you at Gay’s wedding. Lazlo had some crazy scheme for us all to go down to the country the next day, then we can go to Goodwood. If you like horses,’ she added to Steve, ‘you’d better come too.’

And they drifted out, hardly bothering to say goodbye, leaving Bella jibbering with misery and impotent rage. Lazlo’s nasty grin stayed with her, like the Cheshire Cat, long after he’d gone.

She had even more cause to be angry with him in the next few days. Two television plays and a commercial she’d considered certainties suddenly fell through. Her bank manager wrote a vitriolic letter complaining about her overdraft.

She was also due to play Nina in the Britannia’s production of The Seagull, which was going into rehearsal next week. Suddenly, Roger Field, the director, sent for her and told her he wanted her to play Masha, the frumpy, frustrated schoolmistress instead.

Bella lost her temper. ‘Lazlo Henriques is behind this!’ she stormed.

‘Who’s he?’ said Roger unconvincingly. ‘I make the decisions round here. I feel you’d be better as Masha.’

Chapter Seven

As usual, Bella left buying something to wear to Gay’s wedding to the last minute. She knew she shouldn’t buy anything at all. There were stacks of hardly worn dresses in her wardrobe and, with the present intransigence of her bank manager, he was bound to bounce the cheque anyway.

But for the last week she’d been spending money as though it was going out of fashion, almost as though she was determining her own destiny, forcing herself into such financial straits that the only way out would be to marry Rupert.

Anyway, she had to have a new dress. She knew that Steve had been asked to the wedding, and that he’d been seeing a lot of Angora, and that she must knock him for six by looking even more glamorous.

The shopping expedition was a disaster; half the shops seemed to have sales on. Everything she tried on looked perfectly frightful and she’d no idea how the weather was going to turn out. It was one of those grey, dull days that might easily get hot later.

‘Puce is going to be very big in the autumn,’ said a sales girl, forcing her into a wool dress and holding great folds of material in at the back to give it the appearance of fitting.