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‘Thanks, Chris,’ James interrupted his brother. ‘I hear what you are saying but...’
‘But it isn’t anything to do with me,’ Chris finished cheerfully for him. ‘Well, I doubt you’ll get either Ma or Aunt Fee to agree with that, and you know that it’s Aunt Fee’s annual birthday lunch on Sunday. You’re not going to find it easy to keep them from guessing the truth; after all, the family is used to seeing the pair of you either quarrelling or ignoring one another, not holding hands and...’
Immediately Poppy tried to pull her hand away but James refused to let her go.
If he wasn’t going to tell Chris the truth then she would just have to, Poppy decided, turning away from James to reach out imploringly to Chris with her other hand as she began, ‘Chris, please, there’s—’
‘Chris, that call has come through for you from Bensons,’ Chris’s secretary interrupted, putting her head round the door to give him the message.
‘Thanks... I’m on my way,’ he responded, pausing only to say ruefully to Poppy and James, ‘You might as well tell them, you know; there’s no way you’re going to be able to keep it a secret now...’
Poppy could hardly contain herself long enough for Chris to close the door behind him before she turned on James and demanded furiously, ‘Why didn’t you tell him the truth? Why—?’
‘What truth?’ James interrupted her. ‘Is that really what you want me to do, Poppy?’ he asked curtly. ‘Do you really want me to tell Chris what happened—exactly what happened, everything that happened?’ he emphasised cruelly.
Humiliated, Poppy looked away from him.
‘No, you know that’s not what I meant,’ she admitted, white-faced, adding in a choked whisper, ‘But you had no need to let him think, to let him believe that...’
‘That what—that you and I are lovers? What would you have preferred me to do? Tell him it was just sex ...just a four-night stand.’
‘You could have said it was a mistake,’ Poppy burst out. ‘You could have told him that the hotel was confused by the fact that we share the same surname...’
‘I could, yes,’ James agreed. ‘And then what...?’
‘What do you mean?’ Poppy asked him in confusion.
‘If I had told him that, Chris would have been bound to ask what had happened, how we had resolved the mistake. In other words, Poppy, he would have expected me to say that the mistake was put right and that we were given separate rooms if not separate bills.’
‘And whose fault was it that we weren’t?’ Poppy demanded frantically. ‘We can’t let people think that... that we are lovers,’ she told him miserably.
‘We can’t let people, or we can’t let Chris?’ James demanded. ‘Face it, Poppy, he couldn’t care less. In fact he’s probably relieved to have you off his back. It’s time you started living in the real world, Poppy. You and I—’
“There is no you and I,’ Poppy denied fiercely. ’I hate knowing what happened between us,’ she told him passionately. ’I feel sick every time I think about it. I know you’ve always hated and despised me, James; well, now you’ve made me hate and despise myself even more than you do.’ She headed for his office door. ’No more, James. I just can’t take any more.’
‘Poppy, are you sure you’re all right?’
Poppy gave her mother a lacklustre smile and fibbed, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘She’s probably missing James,’ Chris teased her. He and Sally had arrived minutes earlier, the first guests to arrive for her mother’s annual birthday lunch, and the four of them were standing in her parents’ conservatory whilst her father poured the drinks.
Poppy shot her mother an anxious look, but she appeared to have missed Chris’s comment.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll be here,’ Chris told Poppy. ‘He rang me last night to say he’d be bringing Ma with him.’
For the first time since she had fallen in love with him Poppy found that she actively didn’t want to be with Chris. She could tell from the looks he and Sally were exchanging that he had told his wife about her supposed relationship with James.
How many of the other guests her mother had invited also knew about it? Poppy wondered, her face burning. Where was James? What was she going to do if he didn’t arrive...if she was left to face people’s questions and curiosity on her own? A dizzy panicky feeling gripped her as she looked anxiously through the drawing-room window, searching for some sign of James’s arrival.
‘Poppy, what is it? Who are you looking for?’ her mother asked her.
‘N-nothing ...no one,’ Poppy stammered, but she knew that her face was flushing guiltily and she could see that her mother was puzzled by her behaviour.
‘Poppy, my dear...and how was Italy?’ a friend and neighbour of her parents enquired heartily after he’d greeted her mother. ‘A beautiful country and, of course, you went with James who is part-Italian himself...’
‘Oh, have you and James been on holiday together?’ a slightly deaf great-aunt asked with interest, picking up on the conversation. ‘How nice; I always thought that the two of you would be well suited.’
‘James and Poppy went away together to Italy on business,’ Poppy’s mother explained hastily.
Nearly all the guests had arrived now and Poppy’s heart missed a beat as she saw Stewart Thomas and his wife on the opposite side of the room. She had had no idea that her mother had asked him and his wife to come. What was she going to do if Stewart said something to her mother about the hotel bill?
Panic seized her. Had James done this deliberately—left her on her own to face the consequences of what she had done? She started to shiver as her panic turned to a cold sweat of sick fear. How was she going to face everyone—her parents, her family?
James had to come, she reassured herself. He was bringing his mother. Chris had told her so. She could see Stewart Thomas and his wife talking together and she was sure that she was the subject of their discussion from the way they kept looking across at her.
A car drew up outside and James and Chris’s mother got out, but James wasn’t with her, Poppy realised in dismay as she recognised her aunt’s companion as a long-standing male friend.
‘Oh, dear, are we the last to arrive?’ Poppy heard her aunt saying as her parents welcomed them in. ‘I’m so sorry. There was a last-minute change of plan; James was supposed to be bringing us.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s a cold lunch,’ Poppy’s mother responded. ‘Come in and have a drink.’
Why wasn’t her mother asking where James was? Poppy worried frantically. Why hadn’t her aunt said why he wasn’t with them?
‘Poppy, you’re looking awfully pale; I hope that son of mine isn’t working you too hard. How was Italy, by the w
ay? The countryside in that area is just so magnificent. I haven’t seen you since you got back...’
Poppy glanced nervously over her shoulder before responding to her. Stewart was standing within earshot of their conversation, talking now to her own father.
‘I...’
‘Oh, I don’t think Poppy got an awful lot of time to look at the scenery,’ Chris informed his mother, giving Poppy a wicked look. ‘Although I do believe she has become a devout admirer of a certain aspect of Italian—’
‘James!’
Poppy couldn’t contain her relief as she saw the tall, familiar figure striding into the room. The agonised, reproachful look she had been about to give Chris was forgotten as she hurried across to James’s side, her brain not registering the surprise on some people’s faces and the more worrying knowledge and amusement on others’ until it was too late—until she had reached James’s side, until she had clutched anxiously at his arm, until she had by her own actions and in full view of everyone there confirmed all that she had told James so fiercely he had to deny.
‘Poppy?’ she heard her mother saying uncertainly, her face registering her disbelief that Poppy should even acknowledge James’s presence, never mind rush across the room to virtually throw herself into his arms, to clutch at him as though he were her only life raft in a life-threatening sea.
‘You’ll have to tell them now,’ Poppy heard Chris chuckling. He and Sally, as well as her own father and mother and aunt, had followed her to James’s side and all were now looking at them.
‘Tell us what?’ Poppy’s mother asked, puzzled.
Helplessly Poppy looked at James.
‘Poppy and I—’ James began quietly.
But Chris beat him to it, informing them happily, ‘Poppy and James are in love; in fact—’
‘At last. Oh, Poppy I can’t tell you how happy this makes me!’ her aunt exclaimed. ‘The two of you have always been so right for one another. I can still remember the way you used to follow James around when you were a child. Virtually as soon as you could walk you used to toddle after him, and now—’
