Playing for Keeps Read online

  Love, Life, and a Whole Lotta Handbags

  Having papered over the cracks in her relationship with artist boyfriend, Anthony, Magenta Bright is fully focused on opening her first shop on the King’s Road – and on coaching her best friend – vodka-swilling, catty supermodel, Anya – through her unexpected pregnancy.

  But with Anthony away in Italy on a lucrative commission, the distance between them is more than metaphoric. And then Magenta’s ex, Hugo, shows up, the man she once lost her heart to. At one time there was nothing more important to Magenta than fashion and fun, throwing herself into every drama that passed her way. But now Magenta’s world is rocked by questions of life and death, and how she would cope if the people closest to her were gone for good.

  At work, she can’t seem to put a foot wrong, but in her personal life she’s her own worst enemy. And the stakes have never been higher…

  Also by Rosa Temple

  Playing by the Rules

  Playing Her Cards Right

  Playing for Keeps

  Rosa Temple

  ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

  Copyright © Rosa Temple 2018

  Rosa Temple asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  E-book Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008260583

  ROSA TEMPLE is the pseudonym of writer Fran Clark. A ghostwriter of romance novels, Fran was awarded a Distinction in her Creative Writing MA from Brunel University in 2014. To date, Fran has penned five publications as Rosa Temple: Sleeping With Your Best Friend, Natalie’s Getting Married, Single by Christmas, Playing by the Rules, and Playing Her Cards Right. A mother of two, Fran is married to a musician and lives in London. She spends her days creating characters and storylines while drinking herbal tea and eating chocolate biscuits.

  Dedication

  For Mum.

  I miss your stories. No one can ever tell them the way you did.

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author Bio

  Dedication

  Prologue: Then

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue: After

  Excerpt

  Endpages

  THEN

  It was the hottest day of the year. He stood on the top step at the front of my house. I didn’t dare cross the threshold, put my arms around him, apologise one last time. He had desperation in his eyes. He really loved me, I knew that, but the way he stood there, not moving an inch, I became scared he might pick me up, carry me away and I’d never see my friends and family again. I was wearing a top from Primark (don’t ask), and I didn’t want to spend years as an abduction victim in a £1.99 T-shirt for goodness’ sake. If the police ever found me the press would be there to take pictures of me in that T-shirt. Anya would be mortified and I’d never live it down.

  I looked down at the mat, breaking his intense gaze by tracing the well-worn pattern with the toe of my Converse trainer. I wondered if a plan for my abduction had entered his mind and would he have thought to buy face cream, shampoo or conditioner for my life in captivity.

  ‘Magenta! Say something. You can’t just glaze over. This is important.’ He raised his voice and I snapped back to reality with a jolt. ‘This is our life we’re talking about.’

  Making decisions. Something I thought I’d become a bit of an expert at. Any woman having a choice between two fantastic men would be happy, and I had been more than happy with the choice I’d made. But there, on the doorstep of the house, on a leafy, sweltering street in Holland Park, was the man I’d let go. And he wasn’t taking it well.

  ‘What if you regret this… this decision of yours? How can you tell me one thing one day and suddenly, out of the blue, you just change your mind? I went back, sold up practically everything to be with you, Magenta. You expect me to just go home? We were supposed to be starting something… together. This is just unbelievable.’ He didn’t drop his gaze, not once. Piercing blue eyes boring into mine. Of course, he deserved an explanation.

  ‘I’ll always hate myself for this,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t fair on you but I can’t keep apologising. I made my decision and it was a life-changing one, you know that, and it wasn’t easy. I promise you. I’m still reeling.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why I want you to think about it. Think about what you’re throwing away. I told you before I went away – I need you, Magenta. You’re my life. I don’t know what happened in the few weeks I was gone for you to stop loving me. I never stopped loving you from the day I met you, you have to believe me.’

  ‘But you still left me. Ten years you were out of my life.’ I took a breath, stopped myself getting worked up again. This was no time to apportion blame. ‘Look, I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end… how it feels not to be the one.’ I was just about keeping it together. I didn’t want to cry. Not again.

  ‘So is this your revenge? You’re leaving me because I was the one who walked away the first time? Magenta, that was ten years ago and I was an idiot back then. Since we got together again, you can see, I’m a different person.’

  I shook my head and folded my arms around my body.

  ‘I don’t know what to say any more. It’s over. You have to believe me. I can’t go on doing this with you, having the same conversation over and over again. Anthony has no idea you’re even in London.’

  I had chosen Anthony over him. This was supposed to be the exciting start to a new life with him. It was fortunate that Anthony had had to fly out to Italy for work, which meant I only saw him on occasional weekends, so the fact I was being pursued by my ex could be hidden from him. I was a wreck. Here was I, trying to find a new flat in London for Anthony and me to move into when he returned from Italy, and here was Hugo, m
y ex, not taking no for an answer.

  I couldn’t count how many sleepless nights I’d had, how hard it had been to tell him I’d chosen Anthony and was leaving him, after promising him so much. I’d promised him me, my heart, my love, but one kiss from Anthony after Hugo left temporarily for Brazil to sell up his business and I knew I’d made a mistake. Anthony was the one for me.

  Hugo being back in London all the time Anthony wasn’t – it was flattering, it was heartbreaking, annoying and so totally, totally wrong.

  As my best friend, Anya, would say, ‘This is messed up, Madge.’ And she’d be right.

  Needless to say, the messed up-ness of it all went on for the whole time Anthony was out of the country – three months to be exact.

  I never came clean to Anthony about the phone calls, letters, texts and virtual stalking during those three months. And just when Anya had convinced me to take out a restraining order, Hugo disappeared. Gone. Poof. I could finally exhale.

  I assumed he’d gone back to his life in Brazil and I hoped that, after having sold his business to be with me, he could somehow put his life back together, forget me, forget the plans we’d made. I assumed that’s what must have happened, that he was in Brazil, that he’d stay there. And so a week went by and there was no Hugo, and then a whole month. Nothing. I’d not heard a word from Hugo and I thought I never would again.

  That was over three years ago and I remember thinking to myself at the time, now my life with Anthony can finally begin. It was such a relief not to have to look over my shoulder any more.

  NOW

  Chapter 1

  It was crazy really, or simply hard to imagine: my best friend was having a baby and I was opening a shop on London’s King’s Road. If you’d asked me three years ago if I’d thought such a thing was possible I would have laughed in your face. In fact, I would have been holding a Margarita and laughing in your face because I would have been swinging off a stool in a cocktail bar, half cut, sipping an endless stream of cocktails with my best friend, the now very pregnant supermodel, Anya Stankovic.

  I turned the corner into Anya’s street, driving the flashy red Ferrari she’d brought back as a souvenir for me after one of her many trips abroad. Only weeks ago, or so it seemed, pink and lilac blossoms had filled every branch of every tree along the long, quiet road. And then, in the blink of an eye, the blossoms were scattered along the entirety of the pavement and road like a carpet of confetti. Now they’d been swept away by the breeze, disappearing as if they’d never taken pride of place on the overhanging trees. In no time we’d been catapulted from spring to mid-summer. It was hot, and I had the roof down in the car. The road gleamed with the heat.

  Each time I’d visited Anya at her four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house I’d found her flicking through old copies of Vogue, luxuriating on the sumptuous sofa in the lounge, her dazzling green eyes made larger behind pale skin and chiselled features, her pencil thin body (bar the five-month baby bulge), unwilling to leave the house. She was mourning her life as an international model and spent the days ignoring calls from her agent and personal manager. Anya was convinced her life was over now she was starting to show.

  ‘You’ve had offers to pose with your baby bump in several magazines, Anya,’ I’d said to her last time I visited.

  ‘But I’m the size of an elephant,’ she’d replied. ‘Vye vould I do it to my public?’

  I’d had to bite my tongue. I desperately wanted to shake her and tell her to stop being so vain. I called her often, becoming more and more worried she might do something silly. I’d often follow up the call with a visit, no matter how brief, just to make sure she was all right.

  The truth was Anya was becoming increasingly miserable; she was missing Henry, I could tell, although she’d never let on. She and her ex-partner, the baby’s father, had parted ways since she became pregnant. A complicated story, really, but her middle-aged ex had four daughters, all just a few years younger than Anya, and he couldn’t face nappies and teething again. But instead of giving up the baby, Anya decided to get rid of Henry. She hadn’t heard from him in months and, maybe because of vanity, she needed to hear from him even if it was just so she could tell him to drop dead.

  Anya thought Henry had moved back to his Chiswick apartment and she was rattling around in their big house. She’d contemplated giving up the house in Richmond upon Thames and moving back to her empty one in Hampstead. I’d convinced her that this place, with its manageable garden and airy rooms, would be fabulous for raising a child. But then what did I know? The closest I’d come to being a mother was having a miscarriage at six weeks. A fact that nearly broke me and Anthony up for good.

  But Anthony and I were hanging in there. Just. I wouldn’t say things were wonderful between us. Months ago we’d flown back from my parents’ second wedding in the Caribbean. It had been wonderfully romantic but just before the wedding took place Anthony and I had broken up. Our getting back together was as dramatic as the breakup and we’d returned to London vowing we’d be open and talk about our feelings all the time.

  Good – I know communication is vital in a relationship, but the moment we landed in London our feet never quite touched the ground and all of our good intentions (well, most of them) fell by the wayside. Anthony was taking great strides towards building on his budding career as an artist and I was capitalising on my success as a business owner by opening a flagship shop for my leather bags for men and women.

  So you see, we still had a few creases to iron out, made harder by the fact we were so busy we were leading separate lives. Sounds bad, I know. We hadn’t talked about trying for another baby; it just hadn’t come up since we’d flown back from the Caribbean.

  So, instead of discussing having another baby with Anthony, I had thrown all my mothering instincts into helping Anya get through a very challenging time in her life. And I don’t mean giving birth and raising a baby with an absent father. Pregnancy problems for Anya meant having to wear clothes that were larger than a size ten. That in itself was a lot for her to deal with.

  ‘Hello, bitch,’ Anya said as she opened the door to me.

  I’d left the Ferrari on the front drive in the space Henry used to park his Jaguar and stepped up to the shiny red front door. There were two large pillars either side of the porch of the double-fronted house. The tall Georgian windows were now being dressed with silk moire nets – yet another precaution Anya had probably taken to block out the world. She was becoming more reclusive with every passing month.

  ‘Hello, bitch?’ I replied as I went in and shut the heavy door behind me. ‘Is that our thing now? Is that what we’re calling each other?’ I followed her into the lounge. The sofa in the middle of the room was Anya-shaped. She’d probably sat there all morning. The Vogue magazines in a pile on the floor beside the sofa were dog-eared.

  ‘It is now,’ said Anya, signalling to a chair for me to sit. ‘Since you can still carry off Gucci in a size twelve.’

  ‘We don’t do jealousy, Anya. We never have,’ I said, flopping into a leather armchair. ‘Besides, I’ve been so busy trying to open a shop for the first time in my life I’ve had to comfort eat. The stress of running Shearman Bright and getting a flagship shop off the ground means extra pounds – all on my tummy.’

  ‘And your hips by the looks of things,’ Anya said. She raised the June issue of Vogue to her face as she slid back into her Anya groove on the sofa.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ I tried to suck my stomach in. We couldn’t all have thigh gaps.

  Anya knew only too well I’d been feeling the pressure of maintaining the buzz my new range of handbags had caused in the fashion-buying world. Add to that launching a flagship shop, having a refurb of said shop and wondering how to staff it, and everything was proving to be a nightmare.

  I tried never to complain to her, though, just fill her in on the ups and downs. Otherwise I was totally devoted to Anya and trying to keep her finger off the self-destruct button.

 
‘Wait, Anya,’ I said just as I’d settled into my chair. ‘What is that sound?’

  She took the magazine away from her face. ‘Vot sound?’

  ‘That sound. That growling noise. Can’t you hear it?’ My eyes darted around every corner of the room. ‘And come to think of it, I think I hear scratching. Do you have rats?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. That’s just Storm.’

  ‘Who the hell is Storm?’ I lifted my feet off the floor, tucking my legs underneath me, expecting to see a tiger leap out from behind the curtains.

  ‘I bought a cat,’ she said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. For most people, perhaps, but not Anya. ‘I realised I’ve never looked after anything in my life before. I buy plants, they die – even that cactus. I vonce had a fish as a child but ven I came home from school I found it floating on its side in the bowl. My baby could end up the same if I’m not careful, Madge.’

  ‘Er… I’m just guessing here but I think if you don’t leave your baby in a bowl of water all day you shouldn’t have to worry.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me. I’m not sure I’m the mothering type, Madge.’ She sat up properly. ‘I mean it. I’m beginning to think that maybe I shouldn’t have kept the baby after all.’ She got up and started looking under the chair I was sitting on. I hooked my arms around my knees. ‘I thought I could practise on the cat.’ She looked under the other sofa. ‘But the cat hates me. Look.’ She raised the bottoms of her wide-legged sweat pants. There were long, pink scratches on her lily-white legs. I shuffled as far back into the chair as I could.

  ‘Not one to put a negative spin on things, Anya, but I don’t think a wild pussy is going to help you become a good mother.’

  ‘That cat only turned crazy since I brought it home. It was cute as anything at the shop. You see, the cat hates me. It threw up the Purina I bought and runs to the other end of the house if it sees me.’