Under His Influence Page 4

  “Oh my God.” Anna covered her mouth with a hand for a moment. Liam couldn’t help looking down at himself, checking for horns or some horrifying disfigurement he’d never noticed until today. “Liam, I’m so sorry, but I’m…not single. I’m…taken.”

  Liam went from wanting to fall to his knees and shout “Hallelujah!” at finally being understood to crestfallen in one moment. The way she said “taken,” as if she was biting into a deliciously gooey cream cake, made it clear that he stood less chance than an ice pop in a blast furnace. He slumped, staring disconsolately at her console.

  “Oh. Right. Well, thanks anyway. I’ll…ask someone else.”

  All the same, he thought hopefully, preparing to take tail-between-legs flight, perhaps Mimi would still let him have those tickets. Perhaps she would come with him—she wasn’t a bad sort herself. Great legs. Nice rack too.

  “Okay. And Liam.” Her voice, all gentle and soppy, made him obscurely irritated. “Thank you so much for asking…you know…if it had been this time last week…I’d have said yes.” He grimaced into her sad smile and gave her a stiff nod before making a break for his phone.

  “Well?” Mimi knew it was him before he had the opportunity to announce himself.

  “No. The answer’s no.”

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Just no? Did she give you any hope?”

  “Not really. Said she was ‘taken.’” Liam mimicked her breathy tone.

  “Bugger. Did you play your hand properly? Really sell yourself? Did you tell her about the tickets?”

  “Yes. I told her all that. I thought you said she fancied me.”

  “She does! She did.”

  “Yeah, well, you set me up for a fall, Mimi. I’m pissed off. I think you owe me those tickets anyway.”

  “Oh, have them. I hate the fucking Kaiser Chiefs anyway. They were free from an advertiser.”

  “Seriously?” Liam’s voice, which had been mopey and downbeat, suddenly brightened in tone.

  “What you do tonight is the least of my worries, McGlynn.”

  “Do you really hate them? I was thinking you might want to come with me.”

  “I think not. I get the feeling I’m going to be Needed tonight. With a capital N.” She sighed heavily. “Right. Thanks for trying. Bye.”

  Mimi blew out a long breath, looking at her plum brown fingernails on the receiver, looking at her rings sparkling in the shards of sunlight, looking at the thing she didn’t want to do but felt she had to. It was an upward glance at her monitor that gave her the galvanising impulse. She picked up the phone again and punched in the four-digit number.

  “Sweetie?”

  “Oh, hi. You’ll never guess what just happened. It’s completely the worst timing of all time—”

  “Anna, could you pop up here for five minutes?” Mimi cut off the tale of Liam’s abortive invitation. “Wouldn’t ask, but it’s quite important. Sorry to be boring.”

  “Oh! Are you okay?” She sounded so young. Mimi screwed her face up, bile rising in her throat. Damn it, she couldn’t just pretend not to have seen it. The thing had to be brought out into the open.

  “I’m fine. Just come up. See you in a minute.”

  Anna rarely entered the rarefied environs of Editorial, but she always enjoyed a visit. The furniture was more expensive and there was air conditioning. People barked importantly into phones, and there were screens in the corners of the office on which news tickers ran without cease. The urgent ambience seeped into her bloodstream before she was three steps in and she began to feel that things had to be done, now. She rushed past the chaos of the Foreign Desk, onward to Mimi’s less frenetic outpost in what she called the Ministry of Trivia.

  Her face was…sombre. Even funereal. Anna felt like a relative called into hospital to attend the deathbed of a loved one. Her heart folded in on itself and her blood thinned.

  “What’s happened?” she asked, tiny-voiced.

  “Anna, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to find this…but when I did…you know, I had to show you.”

  Anna edged carefully around to a position where she could see Mimi’s computer screen. “Oh! John!” She swooped down, wanting to touch his face on the screen, to kiss it. But he was not the only person in the picture. He was standing next to a woman in a wedding dress. That could only mean…

  “Oh God, no.”

  “He’s married, Anna. And not long ago either. This was taken last summer. Big society wedding—she’s the daughter of an earl. I’m so sorry. Look, sit down before you fall down. I’ll get you some tea, shall I? Sugary to the max?”

  Anna could not speak. She sat, staring at her dream lover in his morning suit and proudest face, vision in white on his arm, reading over and over again the few lines of fawning copy beside the picture. When Mimi arrived with the tea, she said lots of things, things that were supposed to be reassuring or peppy or kind, but Anna didn’t hear a single word.

  “Come and stay with me for the weekend,” said Mimi. This was the first line to pass the barrier. “I don’t want to think of you all alone in that pit you call a flat. Come and stay and I’ll cook for you and make you the best G&Ts in town and we’ll watch weepies and curse men until Monday. And then everything will be better—you’ll see, love. It really will.”

  “Thanks.” But Anna knew it couldn’t ever be better now, not really.

  She switched her phone off, switched her life off, and went home with Mimi, to her comfortable, beautiful flat in St. Johns Wood. Friday night was bad. She could think of nothing but John, on the steps of the Royal Opera House, in a dinner suit, perhaps carrying a bouquet for her, waiting, watching, dialling her number, getting no reply. And then Mimi would constantly remind her of his wife, waiting, watching, getting no husband home for dinner because he was “working late.”

  “You know, I really think you’d settle for being his mistress,” she said after the third gin and tonic, and the nth attempt to stop Anna from switching on her phone. “And I don’t think that makes you a terrible person, by the way. I wouldn’t have anything against being a kept woman. But you would be a terrible mistress. You would love him too much. You wouldn’t just take the gifts and the holidays and the sex and make the most of those—you would suffer. And you would feel awful about his wife. She could be pregnant, Anna. She could be anything. Just let him go. And give me the phone before I have to knock you unconscious.”

  “I just can’t help thinking about last night. It was so special. It had to mean something, Mimi. I can’t bear for it to be meaningless. I can’t.” Anna’s tears, ever present on this grim evening, fell once more.

  “Special. I’m sure it was. I’m sure he…has feelings for you. But he doesn’t have the right to have them. Perhaps if he leaves her… But then you’ll always know he’s the type of man that will leave his wife. So would that be any better?”

  “No. No. Nothing can make it better.”

  The dreams only made it worse. They came constantly, thick with emotion and desire, chasing through those snatched half hours of sleep like a pack of wolves, fixed on their prey. John was there, or just out of view, just out of reach, telling her she had to come back, telling her that it was too late to leave now. She woke sobbing every time. By Monday morning, she was exhausted, looking as lank and lifeless as she ever had. But there was nothing for it—she had to go in to work.

  “I have to switch my phone on now,” she said to Mimi over breakfast. “I can’t escape from life forever.”

  “Shame. But I suppose you’re right.” Mimi handed it over, wincing at the sound of all the missed message tones. “Don’t listen to them, Anna. Don’t read the texts. Just delete them, please. For me?”

  “He might call me at work.”

  “You know his voice. Put the phone down.”

  “What if I just tell him I know he’s married?”

  “No. That gives him an opening. I know you, Anna. You’ll swallow whatever ‘I am so misunderstood’ line he feeds you. Don’t give him the ch
ance.”

  “What if there is a decent explanation?”

  “What if you are clutching at straws? Save your self-respect, love. Your heart is hurt, but it isn’t broken. Just be grateful it only went this far. One date, Anna. That was all it was. Leave it in the past, where it belongs.”

  Anna swallowed the stupid, persistent tears. “I look like crap,” she said with a tiny laugh, observing her blotchy face and puffy eyes in her compact mirror.

  “Liam still fancies you,” Mimi reminded her with a gentle squeeze of her arm. “Come on. Let’s get going. First day of the rest of your life and all that.”

  If it was the first day of the rest of her life, Anna could only hope that subsequent days would be easier. She switched her mobile back off after deleting all the text messages unread—a task she had to perform with her eyes almost shut and lip chewed hard, every fibre of her being screaming at her to read them even as she hit the delete key over and over. She had to avoid Rob and Liam now, especially with Liam giving her the whipped-puppy eyes every time she caught a glimpse of him. The computer screen seemed blurred, everything was fuzzy, everything was vile, hard, cold, dirty, smelly, dull, drab. And all through the day, the strongest thought in her head was “Don’t think about John,” closely tied with its associate, “I hope John calls/doesn’t call/calls/doesn’t call.” Every time the phone rang she jumped, dreading his voice, and every time it wasn’t his voice, she slumped, hating the caller, irrespective of purpose, for not being John.

  “Why hasn’t he called me?” she asked herself, fretful over her bitter coffee dregs at three o’clock. “He should call me. Beg my forgiveness. Crawl. Something.” Perhaps, though, it was kinder of him to let her go. Perhaps he knew she had found out his secret. Or perhaps he was with his wife right now, in the delivery suite of some private hospital, watching her give birth to their first child. She could imagine his face, his smile so wide it might split his cheeks, his eyes elated, his gestures big and sweeping, then tenderness as the tiny bundle was placed on her stomach. Ugh. It was sickening. Enough to make her bring that cappuccino straight back up again. Anna resolved that from now on, she was going to be cynical. Hard-hearted. Sophisticated and jaded. All that jazz.

  At six o’clock, packing up her bag, Anna had decided how her Monday evening was going to play out. She had been paid recently, so she would buy a whole heap of magazines at the station, take them home, order a pizza and read until her eyes fell out of her head. Read about nothing stuff; about lipstick and film stars and seaweed wraps and which minor celebrity was calling another one fat. This would at least get her through one evening.

  “So dramatic,” she scolded herself on the way to the lift. “Needing things to get me through the night. Mimi’s right. It was one date. One miserable date and he didn’t even take me anywhere—just the Heath. Cheapskate. Bet his wife gets taken to the Ivy.”

  The internal pep talk ended abruptly when the lift doors slid open. Back against the far wall, sitting cross-legged on an easy chair, half reading the paper, was John.

  Chapter Four

  In that split-second of realisation, Anna could see his face was like thunder. He caught sight of her and rose, walking swiftly over to the barrier that separated authorised and unauthorised users of the building.

  “Anna,” he said, and he looked as if he was never going to stop, that he would walk straight through that cordon and into the lift, so she backed away, almost tripping over herself in her haste to escape, and jabbed at every button, wanting the doors to close, to shut out his face, his handsome face, his haunting, angry, disappointed face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered when the doors had saved her and she was on her way to the basement, where she could take a back exit.

  She needed a moment once she was safely out of the elevator, a moment to hunker down and bury her face in her hands and try to get her breathing back from this supercharged version he had induced.

  “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” she mouthed, rocking gently back and forth against the supportive wall.

  “Are you okay?” asked a concerned voice.

  “Fine. Bit faint.”

  “Right.” The concerned voice melted away with its footsteps, leaving Anna to inhale hard, hold it in for as long as she could, then let it all out, one long, restorative breath, feeling her heart slow, feeling her muscles relax, feeling herself coming back.

  “I’m back,” she said to the empty air around her. “Time to go home.”

  She stood. Her feet wanted to take her back to the lobby, run her back to John, but her brain somehow steered her to the back exit, past the security guard and into the car park. What if he found her here? What if he knew about this door?

  Anna’s pulse sped up again and she felt shaky, as if her knees might give way at any moment. He could be in one of these cars, but of course he didn’t have a permit. Of course he wasn’t in his car. Anna dodged through the car park, trying to hide herself behind the taller vehicles in case she might be watched. At the gate, she looked left and right into the quiet back street. Empty. She could take an alternative route to the Tube station, or maybe use a different station, in case he was waiting for her there. This is ridiculous. Why was she afraid of him? He was just a man. If he caught up with her, she could just tell him to go away. There was no need for all this sneaking around—and yet a part of her brain, a very strong part of it, was telling her that she should avoid him at all costs.

  She chose to compromise, taking a more circuitous route to the Tube station, making sure that she didn’t go past the front of the office block where he could still be waiting for her, or maybe lurking by the steps, or in the bar across the road.

  Saffron Hill, like a canyon with office blocks sheering up either side of the narrow street, was not a thoroughfare with many hiding places, if it came to it, but there were people around, heading home from work, on whom she could call if necessary.

  She was able to dart across Farringdon Road and slip swiftly into the street of dilapidated shops on which the station was situated. Past Starbucks and Costa, past the dry cleaners, past the estate agents, almost there, almost home and dry. She sailed around the corner to the station, her eardrums banging in time with her heart, and found herself face-to-face with her beloved nemesis, so close that there was no chance of outrunning him, or turning away; so close that she could only stare and gasp and feel that mad, big love wash over her once more.

  “Going my way?” he asked, with a mock lightness that terrified her for a moment. He put a hand on her arm, gently urging her towards the ticket barrier.

  “Please…” she protested weakly, buffeted by too many conflicting urges. The urges to run, or to explain why she wasn’t going with him, ever, were overruled by her abhorrence of public scenes, her naturally people-pleasing bent, and her overwhelming surge of need for him. She wasn’t sure how the need had grown so huge so quickly, but when she was with him, she had a sense of belonging she hadn’t experienced since her parents’ death. When her inclinations allied with the touch of his hand on her arm, she was lost. She followed him to the ticket barrier, mutely fed her Oyster card to its hungry maw, and descended the steps to the platform.

  They had no time to stand and wait. The northbound train was already approaching, and John nudged Anna through the doors, holding her against his chest while he found a free strap to hang on to as the packed carriage rattled and shunted on its way. She closed her eyes and trusted her soul to fate. Now that she had her face against the hot, dampish cotton of his shirt again, and could breathe him in, and smell and feel him so intoxicatingly close, it was unfair of her wits to intervene and make her forgo this blissful journey. John was here, holding her, and she was wanted, and she would go with him, wherever and whenever he asked her.

  The questions still had to be asked, though, and once they were up above ground in the cleaner, more fragrant air of Belsize Park, Anna opened her mouth, only to find that he edged in with the first inquiry.

  “So. W
ere you ill?”

  He seemed not to want to hear her answer, pulling her across Haverstock Hill, towards the quieter streets behind it.

  “No. But I was…enlightened.”

  He looked at her, flinty-eyed, and she quailed. She had not realised he could be this intimidating.

  “Enlightened? Well, then, perhaps you’d care to enlighten me.”

  “You have a wife.”

  He stopped, holding on to her by the wrists, staring down at her. He looked rumpled, Anna noticed, not the impeccable man she had been with previously. He needed a shave, he was sweaty and his shirt clung to his chest; moreover there was a bloodshot tinge to his eyes that suggested that he, like her, had not slept well. Curiously, it made her want him more, not less.

  “I had a wife,” he said, slowly and clearly. “Had.”

  “I saw the photos. Last summer…”

  “God.” John sank down onto a wall, clutching his forehead. Anna shifted from foot to foot, feeling once more entirely outmanoeuvred.

  “Is she…?”

  “Dead? Yes.” He met her eyes, unsmiling now, his fingers looking as if they might dig into the brick.

  “Oh my God.”

  Quite without warning, making her want to scream with self-loathing and fury, Anna’s tears rushed out. What a self-pitying idiot he must think her. She tried her best to quell them, slamming palms into her eye sockets with vicious force.

  “Stop, Anna. Stop. Come on. I’ll take you home.”

  “No!”

  “Not your home. My home. Here.” He took her elbow and half ran with her, all the way along the tree-lined streets until they reached a red brick mansion of Victorian Gothic proportions at the Hampstead end of the hill.

  “Is this your house?” Anna looked up at the turret, pointing its accusing spike at the low, dark clouds that gathered over London.

  “All mine. Now. Come on. Let’s get inside and dry your eyes before they get rained on.”

  Once inside, Anna wanted to wow and gasp at the sheer scale of the place, with its high ceilings and echoing spaces, but she felt somehow that the mood between them was too sombre now, so she followed John mutely into a luxurious sitting room at the back of the house, confining her expressions of awe to her eyes, which stretched and narrowed in rapid series with each new wonder of interior decor.