Jill Mansell: Sheer Mischief

By the time Guy reached her, she was dragging herself into a sitting position and muttering

‘Bloody Eenglish’ under her breath.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, helping her carefully to her feet. There was a lot of mud, but no sign of blood.

Her expression wary, she shook her wet blond head, then cast a sorrowful glance in the direction of the spilled carrier bag lying in a puddle. ‘Not me. But my croissants, I theenk, are drowned. Bloody Eenglish!’

‘Come on.’ Smiling at her choice of words, he led her towards his car. When she was installed in the passenger seat inspecting the holes in the knees of her sheer, dark tights, he said,

‘Why bloody English?’

‘Eenglish weather. Stupid Eenglish umbrella,’ she explained, gesticulating at the torrential rain. ‘And how many kind Eenglish people stopped to ‘elp when I fell over? Tssch!’

‘I stopped to help you, he remarked mildly, slipping the engine into gear as a cacophony of irritated hooting started up behind them.

The girl, her face splashed with mud and rain, sighed. ‘Of course you did. And now I’m sitting in your car and I don’t even know you. It would be just my luck, I theenk, to get murdered by a crazy person. Maybe you should stop and let me out.’

‘I can’t stand the sight of blood,’ Guy assured her. ‘And I’m not crazy either. Why don’t you tell me where you live and let me drive you home? No strings, I promise.’ She frowned, apparently considering the offer. Finally, turning to face him and looking puzzled, she said, ‘I don’t understand. What ees thees no strings? You mean like in string vests?’

Her name was Véronique, she was eighteen years old and she lived in an attic which had been shabbily converted into a bedsitter but which had the advantage — in daylight at least — of overlooking Wandsworth Common.

As a reward for not murdering her on the way home, Guy was invited up the five flights of stairs for coffee. By the time his cup was empty he had fallen in love with its maker and forgotten that Amanda even existed.

‘Let me take you out to dinner,’ he said, wondering what he would do if Véronique turned him down. To his eternal relief, however, she smiled.

‘All wet and muddy, like thees? Or may I take a bath first?’

Grinning back at her, Guy said, ‘I really don’t mind.’

‘It is best if I take a bath, I theenk,’ Véronique replied gravely. Rising to her feet, she gestured towards a pile of magazines stacked against the battered, dark blue sofa. ‘I won’t be long. Please, can you amuse yourself for a while? They are French magazines, but maybe you could look at the pictures.’

The tiny bathroom adjoined the living room. Guy smiled to himself as he heard her carefully locking the door which separated them. The magazines, he discovered, were well-thumbed copies of French Vogue, one of which contained a series of photographs he himself had taken during last spring’s Paris collections. The thought of Véronique poring over pages which bore his own minuscule by-line cheered him immensely. It was, he felt, a good omen for their relationship.

But the magazines were also evidently a luxury for her. The bedsitter, though charmingly adorned with touches of her own personality, was itself unprepossessing and sparsely furnished.

The sofa, strewn with hand-embroidered cushions, doubled as a bed. Strategically situated lamps drew the attention away from peeling wallpaper and the posters on the wall, he guessed, were similarly positioned in order to conceal patches of damp. Neither the cinnamon-scented candles or the bowls of pot pourri could eradicate the slight underlying mustiness which pervaded the air.

And there was no television; a box of good quality writing paper and a small transistor radio seemed to comprise her only forms of entertainment. Guy, exploring the meticulously tidy room in detail, greedy to discover everything there was to know about Véronique Charpentier, felt an almost overwhelming urge to bundle her up and whisk her away from the chilly, depressing house, to tell her that she no longer needed to live like this, that he would take care of her .. .

And when she emerged from the bathroom twenty-five minutes later, he actually had to bite his tongue in order not to say the words aloud. Mud-free, simply dressed in a thin black polo-necked sweater, pale grey wool skirt and black tights, she looked stunning. The white-blond hair, freshly brushed, hung past her shoulders. Silver-grey eyes regarded him with amusement. She was wearing pastel pink lipstick and Je Reviens.

‘OK?’ she said cheerfully.

‘OK!’ Guy nodded in agreement.

‘Good.’ Véronique smiled at him. ‘I theenk we shall have a nice evening.’

‘I know we will.’

She blew out the cinnamon-scented candles and picked up her bag. ‘Can I make a confession to you?’

‘What?’ Guy’s heart sank. He couldn’t imagine what she was about to say. He didn’t want to hear it.

But Véronique went ahead anyway. ‘I theenk I begin to be glad,’ she confided, lowering her voice to a whisper, ‘that I fell off the bus in the rain. Maybe Eenglish weather isn’t so bloody after all.’

Oliver Cassidy wasn’t amused when his son informed him, three weeks later, that he was going to marry Véronique Charpentier.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said sharply, lighting a King Edward cigar and not bothering to lower his voice. ‘This is ridiculous. She’s eighteen years old. She’s French. You don’t even know her.’

‘Of course I do!’ Guy retaliated. ‘I love her and she loves me. And I’m not here to ask your permission to marry her, because that’s going to happen anyway. I’ve already booked the Register Office.’

‘Then you’re a bloody fool!’ Oliver glared at him. ‘She’s in love with your money, your career; why on earth can’t you just live with her for a few months? That’ll get her out of your system fast enough.’

‘There’s no need to shout,’ said Guy. Véronique was in the next room.

‘Why not? Why can’t I shout?’ His father’s eyebrows knitted ferociously together. ‘I want her to hear me! She should know that not everyone is as gullible as you obviously are. If you ask me, she’s nothing but a clever, scheming foreigner making the most of the opportunity of a lifetime.’

‘But I’m not asking you,’ Guy replied, his tone icy. ‘And Véronique isn’t someone I want to get out of my system. She’s going to be my wife, whether you like it or not.’

Oliver Cassidy turned purple. ‘You’re making a damn fool of yourself.’

‘I’m not.’ His son, sickened by his inability even to try to understand, turned away. ‘You are.’

They were married at Caxton Hall and Véronique accompanied Guy on a working trip to Switzerland in lieu of a honeymoon. Upon their return, she moved her few possessions into his apartment, gave up her job in a busy north London delicatessen and said, ‘So! What do we do next?’

Joshua was born ten months later, a perfect composite of his parents with Guy’s dark blue eyes and Véronique’s white-blond hair. With no family of her own, Véronique said sadly, ‘It’s such a shame. Your father hates me, I know, but he should at least have the chance to love his grandson.’

Guy, though not naturally vindictive, wasn’t interested in a reconciliation. ‘He knows where we live,’ he replied in dismissive tones. ‘If he wanted to see Josh, he could. But he clearly doesn’t want to, so forget him.’

The arrival of Ella two years later brought further happiness. Contrary to Véronique’s plans that this time the child should have silver-grey eyes and dark curly hair, she was a carbon copy of Josh. Guy, his career skyrocketing, took so many photographs of his family that they had to be stored in suitcases rather than albums. It wasn’t until he received a large Manila envelope through the post, addressed to him in familiar handwriting and containing a selection of the choicest photographs, that he realized Véronique had sent them to his father. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ he said furiously, hurling the envelope to the ground. ‘He doesn’t deserve anything. I’ve told you before ... just forget him!’