But I didn’t love her; we were colleagues and friends, that’s all, and besides I wouldn’t want to lead her on. It just wouldn’t be right.
And she wasn’t Kylie.
Kylie – what was it about Kylie’s visit that disturbed me so much? It wasn’t the shouting and the screaming, although that had been bad enough. The pain, the anguish at seeing her at my door had been hideous, but there was something else, something that seemed off center when she’d finally run, sobbing, down the drive.
I looked at Alexandra. It was something to do with her.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said as the cloudy recollection, that sense of something odd that just wouldn’t coalesce into a solid memory, faded away just out of reach. “But thank God for that. It would have been a huge mistake.”
The woman grinned at me. “Maybe later,” she suggested, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching.
“I need a drink,” I said, ignoring Alexandra’s remark. “Of water,” I added. “And some breakfast.”
In the kitchen I poured fresh orange juice and set the coffee maker. Then I set about making the best hangover cure I knew – what we Brits call a fry-up. Bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes – I even had some Heinz Baked Beans and the iconic HP Sauce with its distinctive label depicting the Houses of Parliament alongside the Thames in London. I added mushrooms and a side of toast and I tucked in with gusto.
Alexandra’s lip curled with disgust when she saw the heart attack on a plate in front of me. “That looks gross,” she sneered, lighting up her staple breakfast of a morning cigarette.
“Reminds me of home,” I mumbled through a mouth full of carbs. I pointed my fork at her. “And I’d rather die of this than smoking myself to death. Much tastier.”
“Reformed smokers,” Alexandra said with a roll of her eyes. Ain’t they the worst?”
With my stomach fully loaded I sipped coffee and tried to make sense of the day before. I felt better already; physically that is, emotionally I was still shot to shit.
I wanted answers.
“What the hell happened yesterday?” I asked as we sat at the kitchen table.
Alexandra lit up her second cigarette of the day. “You found out what Kylie’s really like,” she replied. “A good thing, too.” Alexandra looked at me with a fond expression. “Before you got in too deep with her. Better to find out now than later on.”
“How did you know we’d been seeing each other?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. Alexandra seemed a little too well informed, the newspaper article hadn’t surprised her at all; neither had my reaction to it.
Alexandra dragged on her cigarette. “Oh, come on, Damien,” she said. “Everybody on the crew knows about you two fucking. You know what it’s like. Someone always notices and tells someone else.”
It was true enough; I did know how it was impossible to keep something like that a secret. Alexandra was right and I felt like a wanker for my suspicions.
Then it came to me, the image that I couldn’t quite get into focus. When Kylie had been here, just after she’d left, when I’d turned around and seen Alexandra in the hallway behind me she’d been standing there in her underwear, her blouse flapping and the upper slopes of her breasts swelling over the cups of her bra.
Why? We hadn’t been in the middle of anything. I’d been upstairs changing into a pair of sweatpants when Kylie had started banging on my door, Alexandra hadn’t been anywhere near me.
As I thought about it I only half listened to Alexandra speaking.
“… She’s not the right girl for you, Damien. She’s at least nine years younger than you. What you need is someone more like you. Besides, Jenny says—”
I rounded on the mention of that name. “Jenny says?” I interrupted. “What the fuck would you be doing talking to Jenny Clark?”
Alexandra flushed and crushed her cigarette butt into the remnants of my breakfast. She shrugged but I noticed she avoided my eyes. “I can be friendly with Jenny,” she said with a petulant pout.
“Sure you can,” I replied. Alexandra flinched when she heard the tone of my voice and saw my expression. “But I’m wondering why, Alex.” I started on her then, hitting her with questions, one after the other. I knew that if I kept up a constant barrage that she’d slip up at some stage. I hoped I was wrong; I hoped to hell Alexandra wasn’t guilty of what I suspected her to be, and if it turned out I was wrong then I’d feel like shit for putting her through it.