Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

Since she was supposed to be in Majorca where the temperature was up in the nineties, Pru realised she was going to look pretty odd if she reappeared without at least some kind of a tan.

By eleven o’clock, Dulcie’s back garden had turned into a suntrap. Reassured by its total seclusion, Pru dragged one of the padded sunloungers into pole position, slathered on half a tube of Factor 8, arranged herself so as to catch the maximum number of rays, and closed her eyes.

She almost fainted twenty minutes later when a man’s voice said, ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to you?’

Pru opened her eyes and shrieked. Liam was standing over her looking appalled, which was fairly understandable given that she was wearing her least exotic white bra and a pair of ancient green pants.

‘I wasn’t asleep!’ Gabbling, stalling for time, Pru sat bolt upright and tried to cover herself with her hands. Being found naked would have been better than being spotted in these pants. She peered across at the gate which led through from the front garden. ‘I didn’t hear the gate! How did you open it without clicking the latch?’

The wooden gate was only four feet high. Liam gave her a pitying look.

‘I jumped over.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought you were Dulcie.’ He paused. ‘From a distance.’ Highly likely, thought Pru.

‘Dulcie isn’t here.’

Liam was still staring at her head. Pru braced herself for the next question. In the event of emergency, she had an explanation ready. She had been in a car crash.

But Liam said, ‘I thought you were supposed to be in Majorca.’

‘Yes, I ... well, I ...’

‘So what’s with the bandages?’

Pru swallowed.

‘I ... had an ...’

Accident, prompted her brain. You had an accident.

‘You had an operation,’ Liam suggested helpfully. ‘What, to pin your ears back?’

Pru was outraged.

‘Who told you? Bloody Dulcie, I suppose—’

Liam grinned.

‘Relax. Lucky guess. Actually, my cousin had it done years ago. You look like she looked afterwards.’ The grin broadened. ‘Drove her mad not being able to wash her hair.’

Praying he’d go away wasn’t doing much good. Liam was now making himself comfortable on the grass beside her sunlounger.

‘Dulcie might not be back for ages.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s okay. I’ll keep you company instead.’

‘Oh.’

In contrast with Liam, Pru was feeling more and more uncomfortable. She sensed he had something to say that he hadn’t yet said.

‘So you’re the grandmother, I take it?’

‘Sorry? Oh ... yes.’ Unhappily, Pru nodded. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know I was here.’

A glimmer of a smile. ‘I won’t breathe a word.’

‘Thanks.’

Liam idly picked a daisy from the lawn and rolled the stem between his finger and thumb.

‘You aren’t much good at lying, are you? Not as good as Dulcie.’

Oh Lord.

‘I’m not sure what you m-mean,’ stammered Pru.

‘You know,’ Liam prompted. He sounded amused. ‘Fibbing. Bending the truth. Making up stories.’

Helplessly, Pru shrugged. She didn’t need a mirror to know her cheeks were absolutely scarlet.

‘No ... well, I suppose I’m not great at it. I just . .. just didn’t want people to know I’d had my ears done, that’s all. I’m very sensitive about my ears—’

‘You see,’ Liam’s tone, as he cut through the gabble, was conversational, ‘I know Dulcie isn’t pregnant.’

Pru stared at him.

‘What? How do you know?’

He shrugged.

‘How?’ repeated Pru, redder than ever.

‘The wonder of the double-bluff You just told me.’

This was a nightmare. This was truly awful. Pru began to shake.

‘You mean you didn’t know? It was a guess?’

Again the rueful half-smile.

‘Well, call it an educated one.’

‘Oh shit!’ wailed Pru. Dulcie was going to kill her.

‘Come on, calm down. The thing is, how I react depends on the reason she’s doing it,’ Liam soothingly explained. ‘I mean, if the whole thing was a con-trick, an attempt to trap me, I wouldn’t be too pleased. But if it was just for a joke, some kind of girly bet ... well,’ he shrugged, ‘I can take a joke.’

‘It was, it was a joke!’ The words tumbled out breathlessly. ‘Of course it wasn’t serious!’

Liam’s blue eyes were cool.

‘Like I said, you’re a lousy liar.’

Defeated, Pru fell back on the sunlounger. Somehow her horrible green pants didn’t matter any more. She watched him bat away a persistent wasp.

‘So how did you guess she wasn’t ... um ... telling the truth?’

‘Put it this way. What would you think if your pregnant girlfriend spent the night with you and the next morning you found a bit of cellophane bobbing around in the loo?’

‘What?’

‘The kind of cellophane that comes wrapped round Lil-lets,’ said Liam. ‘The kind that’s hard to flush away.’ He paused. ‘Bit of a giveaway, that.’

‘Oh!’ Pru breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You mean Dulcie already knows you know?’

He shook his head.

‘I needed time to think. I had to make sure I was right.’ Again, he almost looked amused. ‘Lucky you were here.’ Not lucky for me, thought Pru miserably. Somehow she knew she was going to end up taking the blame for this.

‘So what will you do now?’ she whispered.

Liam stretched out on the grass, knees bent, and began performing energetic sit-ups.

‘What people normally do when they’ve had a narrow escape, I imagine,’ he said. ‘Celebrate.’

Dulcie arrived home fifteen minutes later. Liam had by this time progressed to one-armed press-ups. Unable to bear the look of joy on Dulcie’s face when she saw him in her back garden, Pru rushed up to her room. Burdened with guilt and shame, sticky with perspiration and sun cream, she lay on her bed with the windows shut, terrified of overhearing what was going on outside.

Whatever it was, it didn’t take long. Pru heard the slam of a car door and the crunch of wheels on gravel. When she dared to peer out of the window – through a crack in the curtains like some neighbourhood watcher – she saw Liam tearing off up the road in his red Lamborghini. Alone.

The door to the spare bedroom was flung open. Dulcie, barely recognisable with her face streaked with mascara and tears, erupted into the room.

Pru cringed.

‘He’s gone! He’s bloody gone,’ wept Dulcie, stubbing her toe on the leg of the bed and letting out a renewed howl of pain. ‘Oh! Ow! I can’t bear it ... he’s really gone.’ Clutching her toe, collapsing on to the bed, she stared wild-eyed at Pru. ‘And it’s ALL YOUR FAULT.’

Pru couldn’t handle this. Too racked with guilt to argue – she knew it was her fault – and too stunned by the bitterness of Dulcie’s attack to even attempt to fight back, she knew she had to escape. Racing downstairs, dragging on a long red T-shirt as she went, she grabbed her bag and stumbled barefoot across the stinging gravel to her car in the garage.

So much for being cosseted.

Back at the bedsit, fusty and unaired, Pru discovered the money in the electricity meter had run out and everything in the fridge had turned to slime.

She spent two hours cleaning out the stinking fridge and frenziedly scrubbing the floor. Not having worked for the last week and a half meant she was perilously low on funds. This reduced her to fresh tears of despair.

How could I have been so stupid? she thought hopelessly. I’ve got new ears, and no food.

As she was washing the grimy windows, Dulcie’s car rounded the corner. Pru leapt away from the window like a frightened rabbit and crouched on the floor, trembling. She wasn’t up to another tirade of abuse, she just wasn’t.