Playing for Keeps Read online

  ‘I never knew you were thinking about opening a gallery.’ I was amazed. ‘Since when?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve talked about it before. I know you’ve been preoccupied with opening; maybe it slipped by you.’ He stared out of the window at my empty shop. So did I. Yes, I had been preoccupied. I remember him mentioning his studio closing in on him and that he was thinking about moving to a bigger space. I also remember saying it was a good idea, but I didn’t remember him bringing up either the studio or the gallery again after that one time. Were we drifting so far apart I was losing focus on what was happening with Anthony?

  I heard our waiter at a nearby table. ‘Fats Waffle with maple syrup and Nat King Corn Bread with Scrambled Eggs?’

  ‘Over here,’ I beckoned.

  ‘Don’t worry, Magenta,’ Anthony said as the food was placed in front of us. ‘Nothing will stop me being here for the opening. And as far as the art gallery idea goes, it is only an idea at the moment… Magenta? You still with me?’

  ‘I… er…’

  She was there again, the woman with the super-tanned skin and long hair. This time she was dressed all in black. Weird for a warm day. Maybe she was a witch after all. After seeing her pass the shop when I was with the architect, Jack, so much had happened I’d almost forgotten about her. I’d had a big response to the adverts for a shop manager and sales assistant, I’d found a builder who was due to start work in a few days and made some headway in my designer baby-change bags. Also in that time Anthony had announced his intention to fly out to Italy again to complete another art commission for a rich lawyer who’d seen the paintings he’d been working on for an Italian film producer when Anthony and I first got together.

  But it was the strange woman who occupied my thoughts just then. If I thought back, I did remember seeing her again after that first time. It was the day I’d met with the builders. Yes, she had been there and I wondered then if she came on regular visits to the empty shop. I had put the idea out of my head, reasoning it was just coincidence. But not this time.

  ‘It’s her,’ I said to Anthony.

  ‘Her who?’

  ‘The one I told you about. The witch who’s come to put a curse on me.’

  Anthony looked up from his large brunch plate and over at the shop on the opposite corner.

  ‘She does look a bit like a witch. Is that an incantation she’s murmuring under her breath?’ Anthony said before shovelling in a mouthful of food.

  I peered closer, almost leaning an elbow into my waffle. Her lips weren’t moving at all. ‘Stop teasing me, Anthony. Do you think I should go over there and ask her what she wants?’

  ‘She’s probably just curious. Maybe she was a fan of Veronique’s and wants to know who’s taking over.’

  ‘Probably. But can’t she just wait like everyone else?’

  The tanned woman turned to walk away, facing our direction and then looking from left to right before crossing.

  ‘Do you think she sees me?’ I asked moving back from the window.

  ‘Well, if she does, and she was there looking for you, then maybe she’ll come in.’

  We both turned to the door but she crossed the road and walked straight past the café bar. I watched her leave, screwing up my brow, racking my brain to try to remember if and when I’d ever met her before but drawing a blank. Besides which, had she been looking for me or thought she knew me, wouldn’t she just have come in and introduced herself that first time? She’d had a second opportunity when she saw me with the builders. Even today she could have put a note through the letterbox at the bottom of the door. I was baffled and still not convinced she wasn’t a witch.

  Chapter 4

  The following week I went with Anya to the hospital for her scan. She’d ignored the letter inviting her for this eighteen-week scan and, at approximately twenty-five weeks pregnant, even I felt sheepish walking into the private hospital on Brompton Road with her. Anya, though, marched through the automatic doors into reception and demanded to know where they did scans these days.

  ‘What department is doing your scan?’ the receptionist asked.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Anya glared across the reception desk with green eyes blazing at the now-cowering man on the desk.

  ‘Er, n… not really,’ he blundered, losing confidence by the second.

  ‘We need maternity,’ I said, because I could feel Anya was about to demand to see the owner of the establishment in her usual Anya way when she wasn’t happy with the service.

  ‘D… down the corridor,’ he signalled. ‘Follow the red line to the end, t… take a left and you’ll see the sign.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, pulling Anya by the arm. Her large eyes trailed behind, shooting evils at the receptionist until he was out of her view.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘If this is how they treat their customers then maybe I’ll give this a miss.’

  I continued to link her arm as we followed the red line.

  ‘Anya, don’t flake out on me. You need antenatal care. You don’t expect me to deliver this baby, do you?’ She looked at me, hopeful. ‘Anya! All I’m going to do when you go into labour is hold your hand and fetch ice. The professionals will be taking care of you.’

  ‘But I trust you, Madge. These places give me the creeps, you know that.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve got your back, darling. You don’t have to be scared.’

  ‘Who said anything about being scared? And anyvay, it’s probably better to have a C-section. Victoria Beckham has had about nine of them now and she looks great.’

  ‘Caesarians are major operations. Natural childbirth is best.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ she said.

  ‘We’re here, Anya. And you’ll have to stop swearing – the baby can pick up on it.’

  ‘And fuck you too, Madge.’

  I pushed Anya to the counter where a skinny nurse in a dark-blue uniform beamed a massive smile at her. I could tell she recognised Anya but the staff must have been trained to act cool; a very famous and very rich clientele walked through these doors on a daily basis for all kinds of procedures. Except, as Anya pointed out, no one did face lifts in the UK any more. Everyone was going to far-flung places in the world. Even Victoria Beckham flew three thousand miles for her Botox injections, Anya had whispered to me once, telling me I had to keep it to myself.

  We didn’t have too long to wait before Anya was called in. But when her name was called she looked to have shrunk before my eyes. She bit her bottom lip. Her supermodel cool faltered and I wondered what was happening to the real Anya. Hormones had changed much of her icy demeanour and I knew she needed me more than ever. I winked at her and discreetly put my hand in hers before we stood and followed the nurse down a long corridor.

  Somehow, in private hospitals, they manage to eradicate the hospital smell. You feel as if you are walking into a spa retreat and I’d probably opt to go private if and when I have a baby.

  The stenographer and I waited a long time while Anya fussed about climbing onto the bed for her scan, stalling because nerves were getting the better of her. I wanted to tell her the scan was the easy bit but I didn’t want her running for the door saying she’d changed her mind.

  ‘Well, now, let’s see how baby is doing, shall we?’

  The stenographer, a tiny woman with shiny, black hair knitted into a French braid, swooped a probe over the small, tight lump on Anya’s lower abdomen. This child was going to grow up with a very privileged life, unlike Anya’s but very much like mine. Having been born into a very rich family I never learned how to work hard for anything until now. I knew Anya would be relying on me to help her raise this baby and, one thing was for sure, I’d do my best to make them understand how lucky they were and I’d certainly make sure he or she wasn’t going to let the first twenty-eight years of their life go by in a wave of cocktail parties, unfinished degree courses and absolutely no direction at all.

  ‘This is supposed to be an eighteen-week scan, isn’t it?’
the stenographer asked.

  Both Anya and I nodded, our eyes glued to the screen. Just then a fuzzy outline of a baby curled in a ball appeared.

  ‘Is that it?’ Anya gasped, propping herself up onto her elbows. I leaned across.

  ‘Yes, that’s your baby. But you’re a lot past eighteen weeks.’

  ‘Maybe I am a little further along. Does it matter?’ said Anya. She shot a look at the stenographer. ‘I’ve been busy, okay?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ the stenographer said, glancing quickly at the notes. ‘But looking at the dates I’ve got down here, I think your baby is due a lot sooner. Did the doctor give you the estimated due date?’

  ‘Actually they’re my own calculations on that form. I didn’t come for the first scan either.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ The stenographer smiled at Anya. ‘But judging by this scan, prepare to meet this little one a good three weeks sooner than you thought.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Anya was sitting up fully now.

  ‘Lie back, Miss Stankovic, and we’ll listen for his heartbeat, shall we?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Anya, looking at me with bulging eyes. I smiled, hoping to assure her that the dates didn’t matter. Very quickly we heard a tiny rumble of sound and the very definite beat of the baby’s heart.

  Anya’s smile was uncontrollably wide and her eyes almost glassy with delight. I squeezed her hand.

  ‘I told you it would all be worth it,’ I whispered.

  ‘I’ll try to establish an actual due date if I can just get some measurements,’ the stenographer said. ‘Baby is on the move today. He’s on the small side but doing extremely well. Nothing at all to worry about.’

  ‘Just now you said, "his" heartbeat,’ said Anya. ‘And "he’s" on the move.’ She grabbed the stenographer’s hand. ‘It’s a boy?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked again at Anya’s notes. ‘I thought you wanted to know the sex.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Anya, waving her away. She looked at me. ‘I’m having a boy.’

  ‘I know, isn’t it amazing? We could stop at Harrods on our way home and order some furnishings for the nursery. What do you think?’

  ‘Great,’ Anya said, turning away from me before a tear could escape.

  Anya and I almost skipped out of the hospital, slowing down at reception so she could scowl at the receptionist in the main foyer. He withered again as Anya screwed up her eyes, aimed her fingers at them and stabbing her fingers towards the receptionist.

  Out in the late summer morning Anya gripped my arm.

  ‘If anything happens to me, Madge, it’ll be up to you raise Bruno for me.’

  I had a puzzled look on my face.

  ‘What? What are you saying? Nothing is going to happen to you.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Madge. This is the reason I didn’t come for a scan before. I’ve had this feeling. I’ve been fretting about the baby’s health. Now I know he’s fine, I’m thinking maybe the problem is me.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Anya? You’re scaring me.’ We were face to face now. I was searching her eyes to see if this was just another in the line of problems Anya was creating when there weren’t any there to begin with. But I could see she was being deadly serious.

  ‘Call it model intuition,’ she said. ‘I just have a deep-down feeling that something is going to go wrong. Dreadfully wrong.’ She put a hand up before I could protest. ‘I mean it, Madge. Just promise me you’ll be there if anything… if anything happens on the day. Okay?’

  ‘I promise I will.’ I shrugged and pulled her along the Brompton Road. I needed to lighten the tense atmosphere. ‘But if you don’t make it I won’t call him Bruno. Sounds like the name of a pitbull. How about Agamemnon?’ I waved down a taxi, still chilled by Anya’s feelings of foreboding.

  We climbed into the back of the taxi but Anya wouldn’t let it rest.

  ‘I can’t shift this feeling, Madge.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I’ve spoken to my lawyer and I’m changing my—’

  ‘Please, Anya. Don’t be so morbid. I can’t have you talking like that. Wills and things like that. We just saw your baby, heard his heartbeat. We should be celebrating. Look, I promised I’d be there for you, no matter what. And no matter what, I will. Whatever that means, okay? But let’s just go and buy a crib. Do you realise your baby is due one week after the shop opens? It’ll be a week of celebrations, let’s just leave it at that.’

  She gave me a tight smile and we both knew to drop the subject. I never did do tragedy well, my melodramatic side going into overdrive at the merest sniff of disaster.

  ‘It won’t be long before we’re interviewing for my shop staff,’ I said. ‘You still up for that?’ I needed to change the subject.

  ‘You try stopping me. It’s a big decision. Staff. Let’s not bother to shop for baby things,’ said Anya, looking out onto Knightsbridge as the taxi approached Harrods. ‘Let’s just spoil ourselves. Are you in?’

  We gave each other that "Let’s shop till we drop" look and jumped out of the taxi so we could do just that.

  Chapter 5

  I’d been hard at work for weeks, scarcely time to catch my breath, when all of a sudden Anthony left for Italy. It rained on the way to the airport the day he left. Long-awaited rain that had been falling so heavily since the night before. I could feel the city breathing at last; the days had been humid and the nights unbearable. I’d come back from the photoshoot with Anya as she modelled my newly designed baby-changing bags full of enthusiasm, bursting to tell Anthony all about my day as he finished off his packing. He nodded every now and again and made sounds that told me he was listening.

  I was exhausted after the shoot so goodness knows how Anya must have felt. But like a true professional she held up well under the lights and the photographer’s constant commands to tilt this or bend that. I just couldn’t believe how quickly the time had flown since Anya’s scan.

  During that time I’d finished the nifty little baby-changing bag designs and sat with production for hours to decide on a colour scheme and appropriate fabrics. I had them rush through the prototypes and was able, along with Anya’s business manager, Heather, to arrange the photoshoot with Anya as the glamorous mummy model for the bags.

  I did a mini-launch and enlisted the support of a handful of journalist and a string of fashion bloggers to talk about Anya and the bags and the fact that they were exclusive to the shop and not available online. This bought me time to have the actual baby-changing bags made up because they didn’t have to be on sale until October. The media also gave us coverage of the shop opening and the fact that the name of the shop would be unveiled nearer the day.

  I’d always enjoyed going along to fashion shoots with Anya. I had been her sidekick, wing man and fan club of one ever since her career took off when we were both nineteen. She had taken to the lifestyle with ease, acting like royalty, asking for over-the-top riders like pink champagne, dark-chocolate-coated cherries and a tin bath filled with milk for bathing in her changing room. I’d never known her to take a milk bath nor eat the chocolate cherries but she consumed a great deal of champagne and so did I.

  The shoot for the baby-changing bags was somewhat different. Pink champagne was replaced with bottled water, the chocolates became fruit, and instead of a bath of milk Anya much preferred a cosy chair and a footstool.

  The photos were taken between a studio in Covent Garden and a fabulous garden setting courtesy of her manager’s boyfriend at his house in Epsom. We did the whole shoot in a day. Anya said she would have to sleep all day the following day but I knew the photos were going to be amazing thanks to her.

  I’d prattled on for ages about my work while Anthony packed, lying on the bed with my arms behind my head as he looked for his passport.

  ‘What about you? How was your day?’ I remembered to say.

  ‘Oh, you know, same old, same old.’

  We spent a quiet evening together, making a stir-fry late at night and
finishing off an open bottle of red wine that must have sat on the kitchen counter for over a week. As I said, Anthony and I were both on autopilot when it came to our work and there wasn’t much time for sitting, talking, eating or drinking together, let alone anything else.

  The next morning, I’d put off a meeting so I could take Anthony to the airport.

  ‘You didn’t have to do this, you know,’ he said after checking in. ‘Didn’t you have something on?’

  The ‘something’ I’d put off was a meeting with my sales team, but I’d had Riley reschedule after seeing the time of Anthony’s flight. I also had to pop into the shop to check on the builders.

  ‘As if I’d let you leave without saying a proper goodbye,’ I said hugging Anthony as tightly as I could around the waist. A couple with a wonky trolley dodged around us and we had to swerve out of their way. We exchanged clumsy apologies and Anthony pulled me aside so we weren’t in the way of the bustle of passengers darting here, there and everywhere at Heathrow.

  ‘Got everything?’ I asked Anthony after a few moments of silence.

  He didn’t answer, just nodded his affirmation.

  ‘And will you…?’

  ‘Have you got the…?’

  We spoke at the same time, laughing and saying the obligatory ‘You first, no you… It wasn’t important’. Again at the same time.

  ‘What was it?’ Anthony asked, looking up at the departure board and checking his flight details – again.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Just don’t go running off with some Italian girl behind my back.’ If it was meant to be a joke it was far from funny. All Anthony did was give an awkward laugh and say something about trying his best not to.

  ‘By the way,’ Anthony said, ‘I may have a lead on a new studio.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, turning away and checking the departure board myself. ‘That’s good news. You never mentioned it last night. Did I tell you about the plans I had for the Grand Opening?’

  ‘Only a million times, Magenta.’