Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

Since her stomach was growling and she no longer ate crisps, she made her way back to the coffee shop and — ignoring the astonished eyebrows of the woman on the till — virtuously bought a couple of muesli bars instead.

The trouble with muesli bars, Dulcie discovered — apart from the fact that they were disgusting

— was the bits they left lodged in your teeth. Rushing to the changing room for a last nervous pee and to check her teeth in the mirror, she ran slap bang into Imelda.

Imelda, just out of the shower, was wearing an olive-green towel. She cast a look of amusement in the direction of Dulcie’s pristine skirt.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve booked a lesson too.’

‘I didn’t, actually. It was Liam’s idea,’ Dulcie replied as loftily as she could.

‘And you said yes,’ Imelda marvelled. ‘Well, well, wonders will never cease. Although you have to admit, he is gorgeous.’ As she spoke, she was drying herself with the towel, giving Dulcie the opportunity to see just how toned her own body was. ‘Looks like we’re both after him, then,’

Imelda went on, smiling as the towel dropped to the floor and she reached for her white satin bra and knickers. ‘May the best girl win, eh, Dulcie?’

Dulcie stared back at her. The bra was a 36D, which didn’t help. She had never liked Imelda, who was a man’s woman, a woman without female friends.

Dulcie said, ‘Maybe I already have.’

‘Oh dear, is this my fault?’ Liam laughed and shook his head at Dulcie. ‘Are you that exhausted after last night?’

Exhausted wasn’t the word. What Liam called a quick knock-up had felt to Dulcie like a marathon five-setter. She couldn’t understand, either, why the ball wouldn’t go where she wanted it to go. She’d played enough tennis at school to know she wasn’t that hopeless.

Liam leapt over the net and jogged over to her. Dulcie’s legs were trembling uncontrollably and she had a raging stitch in her side. Her racket, doing double duty as a walking stick, was the only thing propping her up.

‘Sweetheart, you look terrible.’ He was frowning now, clearly concerned. ‘What is it?’

Dulcie, thinking she would just die if Imelda was sitting in the coffee shop watching her make a spectacle of herself, croaked, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong. I f-feel awful.’

Liam put his arm around her waist and helped her off the court. Dulcie was sweating, trembling, as weak as a kitten and unable to hit a ball for toffee; it wasn’t hard to figure out.

‘Flu,’ he announced. ‘That’s what it is. You’re going down with flu.’

Dulcie almost collapsed with relief. ‘Oh I am, I am. I knew I wasn’t well! Flu, that’s it—’

‘Home,’ Liam instructed. ‘And straight to bed.’

‘Um, about tomorrow ... I was going to invite you round to my house for dinner?’ Dulcie began to panic at the thought of not seeing him.

But Liam shook his head.

‘Sweetheart, you’ll be in no state to cook dinner. I’ll see you when you’re better. Maybe next weekend,’ he gave her waist an encouraging squeeze, ‘or the week after that.’

Liza, who had caught the end of Dulcie’s lesson, was in the car park chucking her squash racket and sports bag on to the back seat of her white Renault.

‘This is my friend Liza,’ said Dulcie, gesturing weakly. ‘I’m sending Dulcie home,’ Liam explained. ‘She’s sick.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Liza. Honestly, what was Dulcie like? Did she seriously expect to get away with this? Clinging on to Liam’s arm, Dulcie gasped, ‘We th-think it’s flu.’

‘Sure it’s not mad cow disease?’ said Liza.

Chapter 21

‘How’s the invalid?’ Liza asked gravely when she phoned the next morning.

‘Not funny,’ Dulcie wailed. ‘I’m telling you, flu would be a doddle next to this. I’m totally and utterly seized up.’

Since leaving school, reaching for the next custard cream had been about as energetic as Dulcie got. Hurling herself without warning around a tennis court for sixty minutes had sent every muscle in her outraged body into spasm.

‘I’m in bed,’ she groaned. ‘I crawled to the bathroom earlier. It took me an hour to get back.’

Liza grinned. ‘You need looking after. Want me to phone Liam and ask him to pop over?’

‘Don’t you dare. Ouch.’ It even hurt holding the phone up to her ear. ‘God, this is agony. I’ll never walk again.’

‘Can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Liza was cheerful and not the least bit sympathetic. ‘Told you not to overdo it, didn’t I? Take some paracetamol, you’ll feel better in a day or two.’

‘I can’t get to them, they’re downstairs.’ Dulcie pleaded feebly, ‘You could come over, couldn’t you, just for a few hours? I really do need looking after. I’m helpless.’

‘I think you mean hopeless. And no, sorry, I can’t.’ Having pulled open her wardrobe doors, Liza stood and surveyed the neatly lined-up contents. ‘I’ve got something else on.’

The peacock-blue silk shirt, she decided rapidly. Black leather trousers and her high-heeled black ankle boots. Why not? Just because she was joining the protesters didn’t mean she had to dress like one.

‘Something more important than your best friend starving to death in her own bed?’ Dulcie sounded hurt.

‘No, but I can’t back out now. If I did,’ said Liza, ‘then I’d really be a wimp.’

Driving towards West Titherton, Liza barely noticed the dazzling scenery, the white clouds drifting high in a duck-egg-blue sky, dappled sunlight sweeping over the rolling Mendip hills and the thousand different shades of green that made up the countryside in late spring.

She still didn’t know how Alistair Kline had managed to bamboozle her into going along today.

But that, Liza supposed, was what successful barristers were all about. It was their job to persuade you to agree with them, to convince you – against your better judgement – that they were right.

‘It’s simply a matter of following through.’ Alistair had been forceful. ‘You start something, you finish it. That letter to the paper generated a fair amount of publicity, if you remember. People will expect you to be there. They’d be disappointed if you didn’t turn up, Liza,’ he went on, his expression sorrowful. ‘Disappointed in you for not caring enough to make that small effort—’

‘Stop,’ Liza groaned, ‘this is worse than The Waltons. Okay, I’ll do it.’

Alistair instantly reverted to a normal tone of voice. ‘Great. See you there then. Ten o’clock sharp.’

She wondered despairingly how she could ever have thought he was shy.

Liza slowed as she reached the brow of the next hill. Below her lay West Titherton, a golden toy village surrounded by a patchwork of fields, some dotted with. immobile black and white cows, others with clusters of sheep.

To the left of the village the protesters were already gathered at the site of the proposed new development, milling around the yellow bulldozers that stood ready, waiting to swing into action.

It was very much a last-ditch protest. The amateurish ruse of planting a rare breed of wild orchid in the path of the diggers hadn’t worked. Berenger’s had their planning permission and that was that. Basically, the new estate was going to be built but – the protesters were determined – not before the last drop of bad publicity for Berenger’s had been squeezed out.

Parking the Renault at the roadside where everyone else had left their cars, Liza joined the rest of the group. Sixty or seventy in total, they were a mixed bag, ranging from New Agers to Nimbys (those outraged members of the middle classes who don’t mind anything being built so long as it doesn’t happen anywhere near them, i.e. Not In My Back Yard).