gawping.”
“You would think we had been married for years,” snapped Fell, and Maggie felt close to tears.
When Melissa opened the door to them, Maggie, who had thought it could not be possible to feel any more miserable, found that, yes, it was indeed possible. Melissa was wearing a slinky black silk trouser suit and her face was expertly made up.
Melissa led the way into a sitting room. Maggie glanced quickly around. It looked as if it had been put together by a professional interior designer, but some time ago, when dried flowers and shades of brown and cream had been all the rage.
One again, Maggie felt sure Melissa was after Fell’s money. Melissa lifted a bottle out of an ice bucket on a sideboard and wrapped it in a white cloth. “I thought we would have some vintage champagne,” she said. She poured out three glasses and handed one each to Fell and Maggie.
Maggie took a sip and her eyebrows raised. Working at the Palace Hotel had given her a knowledge of wine, and she was suddenly sure that what she was drinking was certainly not vintage champagne.
“It is hot,” Melissa was saying. “Let’s carry our drinks out into the garden.” She smiled at Fell and led him towards the open french windows.
Maggie followed, deliberately leaving her handbag behind. As they were about to sit down in white garden chairs in front of a white wrought-iron table, Maggie said, “I’ve left my handbag. Excuse me a moment.”
She walked swiftly into the sitting room and picked up her handbag. Then she veered slightly to the left, to the sideboard, out of sight of Melissa and twitched back the cloth covering the bottle. Effervescent cider! Cheapskate.
Maggie joined Fell and Melissa just in time to hear Fell saying, “This is very good champagne.”
Fool, thought Maggie. Wait until I tell him. And then realized that was something she must not do. Fell would simply accuse her of spying again.
As she joined them, she noticed Melissa had a hand on Fell’s knee and was saying, “Have you thought any more about my little business proposition?”
“I’ve been a bit taken up with other matters,” said Fell, “but it does seem a good idea. Don’t you think so, Maggie?”
“Yes,” said Maggie with well-manufactured enthusiasm.
“Fell and I are a bit naive about business, Melissa, so we’ll probably discuss the matter with the lawyer and bank manager – you know, get them to evaluate the profits of your business and all that.”
For one moment, Maggie and Melissa locked eyes. Then Melissa said with a light laugh, “Oh, we’re friends, aren’t we? We don’t need to be fussed with all that sort of stuff.”
“No, not at all,” said Fell, who couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Over dinner, Melissa chattered on, telling stories about people who came into the shop, discussing alternative medicine, and Fell hung on every word like a man bewitched. The table was bathed in soft candlelight. The sitting room had been lit by two lamps. Maggie wanted Fell to see Melissa in a strong light so that he would realize just how old she was. She gave her handbag, which she had placed open at her feet, a hard kick. “Oh,” said Maggie, “I’ve upset my bag and I keep everything in there. No, don’t move. I’ll pick the things up.” She moved quickly to the light switch and snapped it on. Before she bent to retrieve her belongings, she had a glimpse of Melissa’s face, cruelly exposed in the overhead light. Surely Fell would notice the pouches under the eyes, the grooves down the sides of the mouth, the wrinkles on the upper lip? But as soon as she had stuffed everything back into her bag, Melissa rose with one fluid movement and switched the light off. In the candlelight, Maggie noticed that Fell’s eyes were as adoring as ever. Fell saw only what he wanted to see.
Maggie began to talk about a book she had just read, recounting some of the more amusing scenes. She talked well, but Fell did not listen. He only wished with all his heart that he were alone with Melissa. He had a longing to tell her that he was not really engaged to Maggie.
His moment came after dinner, when Melissa asked him to help her stack the dishwasher and told Maggie that one helping her was enough and Maggie could go out to the garden and relax.
As Maggie sat in the garden, Melissa’s voice came faintly to her ears, accompanied by Fell’s amused laugh.
Fell was battling with himself. He longed to tell Melissa that he was not really engaged and yet loyalty to Maggie held him back. He could not really tell Melissa anything like that until he had discussed it with Maggie first. Then Melissa gave him an intimate smile and said, “I don’t think your little friend trusts me.”
“Maggie? Why?”
“All that talk about bankers and lawyers.”
“She had no right to say that. It’s my money.”
“Perhaps we really ought to discuss it on our own.”
“That would be better,” said Fell, his senses quickening at the thought of having a date with Melissa. With such a woman on his arm, he’d be the envy of every man in Buss.
“Why don’t I take you for dinner to that French restaurant on Friday,” he said.
“Good idea. What time?”
“Eight o’clock.”
Her eyes caressed him. “I’ll see you there.”
When they joined Maggie in the garden, Maggie’s radar picked up that they must have come to some arrangement that did not include her, for Melissa now seemed anxious to be rid of them. She pointedly yawned several times and Maggie said, “You do need your beauty sleep.”
“Don’t I just,” laughed Melissa, ignoring the sarcastic edge in Maggie’s voice.
¦
They got into the car outside. There was not a breath of air. “We need a thunderstorm,” said Maggie.
Fell stared straight ahead for a moment, then he said, “You know, Maggie, I don’t think there’s really any need to bring in lawyers and accountants if I want to go into business with Melissa.”
“Why?”
“Well.” Fell gave an awkard laugh. “You can tell she’s got money and that means she must have a flourishing business.”
“How do you mean, you can see she’s got money?”
“It’s a big house and expensively furnished and then she went to the trouble to serve vintage champagne.”
All Maggie’s good resolutions to go carefully on the subject of Melissa vanished in a wave of jealousy.
“That wasn’t vintage champagne, for a start,” she said. “It was effervescent cider.”
“Nonsense.”
“I looked at the label, Fell.”
“You were spying!”
“No, I thought it didn’t taste like vintage champagne, so I had a look. And the furnishings were expensive years ago, all that brown and cream.”
“It is just as well I am meeting Melissa on her own for dinner on Friday,” snapped Fell. “How can I keep a clear mind on the subject when you’re always snooping and spying?”
“That’s unfair!”
They went into the house in stony silence. Maggie went up to her room, her face flaming. She sat down on the edge of her bed. Now she’d done it. Fell had not asked her to leave, but he might in the morning. She would need to do something to heal the breach. She washed and undressed, but sleep would not come. Even with the window wide open, the bedroom was hot and stifling. Her feet throbbed and ached. Out of her small savings she had bought a new pair of high heels to wear that evening. They were very high indeed. Suffering for vanity, she thought, punching the pillow, which suddenly seemed to have become as hard as a brick. If only she could think of something to restore herself to favour. Something about the robbery. She was just falling asleep when an idea struck her. Fell, Fellworth Dolphin. The couple in the garden in front of the big house. What if they had named him after the
¦
The next morning when she went downstairs, it was to find a curt note for her placed on top of the electric kettle, saying, “Gone for a walk, Fell.”
