“She leaves tonight, doesn’t she?” he said, heaving a sigh.
Viv exhaled the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Yes. Shame it’s not on the earlier plane.”
“I should go and say goodbye.”
Viv was appalled. “Goodbye?” she barked. “Good riddance. She’s brought you nothing but misery.”
“And a couple of rather smart shirts from Mr. Fish.”
“Don’t be foolish, darling. If she chose to break up over something so trivial, she couldn’t possibly have loved you. I always predicted it would end in tears and I was right. It didn’t take her long to invite Rupert back into her bed, did it? I don’t imagine she’s shed a single tear. Silly tart. Sad though it is, I think you have to accept that it’s well and truly over and move on. There are plenty of other girls about who would fall over themselves to look after you properly.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I should have tried harder to understand her,” he said regretfully, lowering his eyes.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Fitzroy. Snap out of it. She’s hardly the Sphinx. In fact, she’s very easy to understand. Spoiled, too pretty for her own good, and far too willing to share herself with any Tom, Dick, or Harry who bothers to compliment her. It’s all very sad. She’s looking for a father figure. One doesn’t have to have a university degree to work that out. Maybe you were just too like her father.”
“I was acting!” he stressed.
“No you weren’t,” she said with a knowing smile. “Darling, you’re not a bore and you’re not an old duffer, but you’re conventional, decent, sweet, funny, and without swagger. You don’t cause ripples but neither do you set the world alight in an outrageous fashion. You’re not a show-off. Alba wants a man made of fireworks. She’ll find him in Italy, I’m sure. Italy’s full of bottom-pinching fireworks.”
“You know, you’re wrong. We were very happy together. We laughed a lot. We were great in bed and I was just beginning to flower as a fashion icon.” He grinned boyishly and Viv stubbed out her cigarette. She looked at him for a long moment and her face softened with tenderness. She patted his hand affectionately, as a mother might.
“That’s right, darling. You make a joke of it. It might have been good, but it’s over. Let her go off to Italy. If you’re lucky she’ll sleep with all the fireworks she can find and realize in the end that not one of them has made her happy. If you’re right together she’ll come back. If not, then you’ll just have to marry me.”
“I could do a lot worse,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“And so could I.” She took off her glasses to reveal watery red eyes heavily made up with black mascara. “You know, it’s been hard ignoring her.”
“You shouldn’t take sides.”
“I’ll always take your side, Fitzroy. Even if you committed murder, I’d think the world of you.”
“Not just because I pull off the most wonderful deals for you?”
“That too, of course. But you’re one in a million. She’s a superficial girl. She’s not going to see the value of you. I don’t want to see you wasting your life away with a woman who thinks only of herself. Why settle for a woman who will only ever know the half of you, and not the better half either? The deeper one digs into your heart, Fitz, the more one appreciates your value.”
He laughed at her sadly. “How very kind, Viv. I don’t know that I deserve quite so much praise. However, I can’t help loving her.”
“I love her too, silly. That’s Alba’s gift.”
Fitz spent the afternoon in the office. He took calls, did his paperwork, ran his eyes over a couple of new manuscripts but at the end of the day he couldn’t remember whom he had spoken to, what letters he had written, and whether or not the new manuscripts were any good. He was due for bridge at Viv’s at seven. The previous few weeks they had deliberately played at Wilfrid’s or Georgia’s so that he avoided a glimpse of Alba or her boat. But he had been distracted then too. Not even the postmortem, which usually had the power to rouse him from the heaviest thoughts, could coax him out of his daydreaming. Sprout now accompanied him everywhere, delighted not to be left at home in the kitchen or in the back of the car. In fact, he was upgraded again to the well in front of the passenger seat and sometimes, if there was room, he lay across the back seat like a Roman emperor, watching the tops of buildings whizz past the window. He was good company, of course, but it wasn’t the same.