Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

The ground was dry and the sun blazed down, but all the Nimbys were wearing Barbours and Hunter wellies. The New Agers wore holey jeans and layers of jumpers in various shades of black.

Everyone pursed their lips at the sight of Liza in her dazzling peacock-blue shirt. She couldn’t have looked more out of place if she’d worn a ball gown in a butcher’s shop.

Alistair bounded over to her.

‘Going on somewhere, are we?’ Eyeing the gold chains around Liza’s neck, disappearing into her cleavage, he looked as if he were itching to tell her to do a couple more buttons up.

‘Lunch with Liberace, by the look of it,’ Liza heard one of the dreadlocked New Agers murmur, nudging his friend.

‘Sure you won’t be cold?’ asked Alistair.

‘I’m fine.’ Pointedly Liza shielded her eyes from the sun. ‘Sure you won’t be warm?’

‘I’m wearing three sweaters,’ Alistair told her with pride, ‘in case they try setting the dogs on us.’

Liza kept a straight face.

‘If they set any dogs on me,’ she promised, ‘I’ll tie their paws up with my necklaces.’

‘Hmm. I don’t know how you’re going to climb bulldozers in those heels.’ He glanced disapprovingly at her boots. ‘Alistair! I’m here, okay? Supporting the protest. I am not climbing up on any bulldozers.’

Alistair looked resigned. She wasn’t taking this seriously at all. Liza had turned out to be a major disappointment, he thought sadly. All the more so since she had truly been the woman of his dreams. He adored her, he simply didn’t understand how she could not be as concerned about preserving the environment as he was. Together, Alistair thought sorrowfully, they could have made an unbeatable team.

Still, she was the nearest to a celebrity they’d got and the press were kicking their heels waiting for the action to begin. Signalling to the chaps from the Evening Post who were eating Big Macs

– any excuse to wind up the vegetarian New Agers – Alistair steered Liza towards them.

‘They want a photo of you waving a placard. And make a point of telling them how committed you are to the cause,’ he instructed briskly, ‘despite your clothes.’

For ten minutes Liza answered questions put to her by the reporter, who sounded almost as bored as she was. Then it was the photographer’s turn. He spent ages organising Liza in the foreground with a motley crew of placard-waving New Agers behind her and the bulldozers strewn with banners bringing up the rear.

He was halfway through the reel of film – and startled to find himself already half in love with Liza – when the contractors rolled up in two filthy white vans and the carefully arranged group photo promptly disintegrated.

Within seconds, the bulldozers were swarming with protestors. Minutes later the police arrived.

Scuffles broke out. Alistair punched one of the bulldozer drivers on the nose.

‘Want to wait in my car, love?’ the Evening Post reporter offered, clearly worried about blood getting spattered on Liza’s silk shirt. But the photographer was waving his arm, beckoning her over. A group of the less nimble protesters were staging a sit-in, blocking the path of the rumbling bulldozers.

‘Come on,’ bellowed the photographer, ‘it’ll make a great picture!’

‘Do as he says,’ Alistair bellowed even more loudly, from his precarious position on top of one of the diggers. ‘Get over there!’

Liza hesitated. She didn’t really mind joining the sit-in. She didn’t even mind getting her leather trousers muddy. What did bother her was being picked up and carried away like a struggling beetle by the police ... and being photographed in that position.

Talk about undignified.

All eyes were on the tremendous struggle in progress. Since no one’s attention was on the road behind them, and the noise of the heavy machinery drowned everything else out, nobody saw or heard the dark-green Bentley purr to a halt behind the police van.

Liza was still torn between not wanting to look a wimp and not wanting to look a prat. Most of all she wished she hadn’t been feeble enough to give in to Alistair’s emotional blackmail. She could be playing squash now, she thought with longing, or at home working on ideas for the new food book she had just been commissioned to write.

Damn, thought Liza, even waiting hand, foot and finger on dipstick Dulcie would be fun compared with this.

‘Liza, will you stop faffing around and JOIN THE BLOODY SIT-IN,’ roared Alistair, kicking out at one of the contractors who was trying to grab his ankles, and pointing imperiously down at Liza.

I could just turn round and leave, she thought, willing herself to do it.

The next moment she jumped out of her skin as a weirdly familiar voice inches from her ear drawled, ‘Is he your boyfriend? I’m amazed, I didn’t take you for the kind of girl who’d let men boss you about like that.’

Chapter 22

Liza’s heart began hammering wildly in her chest. Kit Berenger was standing next to her, arms crossed, feet apart, sunglasses in place as he calmly surveyed the scene of chaos spread out before them. He was wearing black jeans, a black and white striped shirt and that familiar aftershave.

Had it occurred to her that he might turn up today, the final day of the protest?

Of course it had.

So far, Kit Berenger had seen her sweating and out of breath after an hour on the squash court, and in her eating-out frump of-the-year disguise. Now for the first time he was seeing how she really looked.

Liza couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that this was why she had taken such care with her appearance today.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she said as calmly as she could manage, ‘I don’t let him boss me about, and since I’ll be thirty-two next week, I’m hardly a girl.’

‘Well, you’re hardly an ancient old trout.’

Was there actually a flicker of a smile playing around his mouth? Sideways on, and never having seen Kit Berenger smile before, it was hard to tell.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, his tone conversational, ‘what are you doing here, dressed up like a Christmas tree?’

Liza ignored the jibe. ‘Same as everyone else. Protesting.’

‘You don’t look much like a protester. You’ve washed your hair for a start.’

Before she could move, one hand came up and touched her blonde hair, idly following the line of the curve between her left temple and shoulder.

Liza shivered and looked up at him, but the narrow mouth gave nothing away. The eyes were still hidden behind black glasses.

‘My cousin heard from your editor, by the way,’ said Kit. ‘Loads of people wrote to the magazine defending the Songbird. Nearly a hundred letters altogether, saying you were out of order.’

‘Really,’ said Liza, who had written most of them. ‘They’re printing a selection in next month’s issue.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Liza steadily. ‘Looks like I was wrong and you were right.’

He took off his sunglasses. Liza waited for another smart remark. But he didn’t say anything, just gazed down at her.

Alistair, meanwhile, was being dragged down from his digger by a pair of sweating policemen, one thin, one burly, like Laurel and Hardy. Mid-tussle, he spotted Liza and a tall dark-haired boy making no effort to join in the protest.

‘Hey, you two! Get yourselves in front of that bulldozer, fast.’

Kit called back, ‘Actually, we’d rather not.’

The next moment, as Alistair disappeared beneath a heaving mound of navy-blue serge, Kit Berenger reached out and took hold of Liza’s hand. His strong fingers gripped her wrist.

‘What are you d-doing?’ Liza gasped, trying to snatch it away.

‘Taking your pulse.’ He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Hmm, fast. Very fast.’