‘We haven’t got all the equipment in yet. We don’t start the voodoo sacrifice for ages.’
I glare up at her and her face, concerned and wise, makes the anger dissolve into tears in an instant.
‘Elisa wants to take Lexi out for coffee,’ I say miserably, snatching up some kitchen roll and wiping my eyes.
‘When?’
‘This evening.’
‘Lexi’s a kid. Kids don’t do evening dates, do they?’ says Lorraine.
‘No. Dan is going too, it’s only going to be for half an hour but I swear the bloody woman picked a day when I wasn’t around.’
‘She doesn’t sound bright enough to be that manipulative,’ says Lorraine and I glare again.
‘She might be!’
‘Think this through, Freya,’ says Lorraine, removing the knife from my hand, dragging up one of our stools and shoving me onto it. ‘Make-up launches hardly last forever. It’s not as if L’Oreal have signed her. It’ll be over in a few weeks and she’ll go back home to Spain. End of. Just hold your nerve.’
I get home, screeching brake pads and all, by a quarter to nine, to find a candle burning on the coffee table. Two glasses are waiting for me and Dan, some cheese and crackers are ready with napkins and myhome-made chutney, and a bottle of red wine has been opened and being allowed to breathe.
Dan, who likes wine but has no time for any of the associatedcarry-on that so many men immerse themselves in, is clearly doing it all for me.
Not that I’m a wine connoisseur myself but as a chef, I understand a fair bit about it. I still get swayed in theoff-?licence by bottles with pretty labels, though.
I ignore theset-up and race upstairs, taking two steps at a time and collide with Dan on the landing.
His strong arms grab me.
‘All asleep,’ he whispers, and I let out a huge breath of rage.
Lexi cannot be asleep. She’s so often awake at this time, inhalf-sleep but still awake.
‘I’ll keep my eyes open till you get home, Mum,’ she always says when I’m out on a job.
‘Damn,’ I say, and he hugs me into him but my body is too stiff and angry. I pull away and step quietly into her room where I swear, the scent is different from normal. Lexi normally wears a light flowery perfume she got from her aunt Scarlett for her fourteenth birthday, something entirely suitable for a girl of her age. But her room now smells of something sexy and grown up.
Elisa’s bloody perfume, I think, furiously.
In her bed, Lexi is lying the way she always does, dark hair fanned out, her teddies and old cuddlies still there on the bed but on her bedside table is something new: a publicity shot of Elisa propped up against the lamp: all glossed lips and hair tweaked to within an inch of its life. I can’t read the writing at the bottom, so I take the photo onto the landing and look.
‘To darling Lexi, to lots of fun, love and hugs, Elisabetta.’
If AJ was there, he might think I was psychotic at that moment because I want to rip the photo into shreds, then set fire to them. I want to ring bloody Elisa and tell her to stay away from us but I can’t.
Dan is suddenly holding me and at first, my body is rigid with rage, and then I lean into him and let myself cry. We stand there for several minutes, and while I always get such solace from my husband, tonight I cannot. He can’t understand this. He doesn’t hate Elisa the way I do.
Finally, he moves, takes the damn picture and replaces it, then leads me by the hand downstairs and into the den where he pours me some wine and sits on the couch with me, holding me.
‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he says. ‘I know it’s so hard. I know you can’t bear her near our daughter but we have to.’
‘Why?’ I say, sobbing, pushing the wine away. ‘She can’t want to be involved now. She can’t. I don’t want her here. We’re a family, not bloody Elisa or Elisabetta which is stupid, because who changes their name at her age? She’s so fake, and who says “to lots of fun ...” to a child? Who does that?’
Dan takes a slurp of wine and winces. He really is a beer man. Despite my pain, I feel huge love for him because he’s carefully organised all the things I like for my return.
‘You bought this because you liked the picture on the front, didn’t you?’ he says.
I nod.
