With good reason, another part of her mind argued. She had virtually caught him in the act with Belinda, for goodness’ sake. And then the woman had confirmed all her fears when she had spoken about their affair. Why would Belinda have done that if she hadn’t been sleeping with Jay?
Jealousy? the first voice suggested. A woman scorned and all that. The green-eyed monster was a powerful one.
She lay back in the soapy water, her head whirling as something like panic gripped her. She couldn’t rethink all this, she couldn’t. Not just because she had been with Jay yesterday and fallen under his spell. Clara had said he could convince her black was white and Clara was right.
‘I know what I know.’ She said the words out loud because she needed to hear them. If she started doubting herself now it would mean the last miserable ten months had been for nothing, that she was the one at fault. And she wasn’t. Jay had made her out to be some sort of headcase yesterday, when she thought about it, with all that talk concerning her father. What was that if not controlling? Well, she wasn’t going to be manipulated.
She sat up sharply in the water, causing a wave to swish over onto the tiled floor. She had to be resolute and true to herself. She couldn’t let herself become nothing more than a puppet, dancing to Jay’s tune.
Clara knocked on her door at nine o’clock, still in her nightie and bathrobe—black, obviously—and looking curiously childlike without the outrageous eye make-up and with her hair as yet unspiked for the day. Bounding into the bedsit like an eager puppy, she plumped herself down on the floor after dragging a cushion off the sofa. ‘Right, all the gory details, please,’ she demanded serenely.
Miriam smiled. ‘Sorry to disappoint but he was the perfect gentleman.’
‘Again?’ Clara wrinkled her small nose. ‘You mean he didn’t try and have his wicked way with you?’
Miriam shook her head.
‘So what did you do? Where did you go? When are you seeing him again?’
‘We had lunch, a walk by the river, went to the theatre and then dinner and I’m seeing him again in exactly—’ Miriam made a show of glancing at her wristwatch ‘—two hours.’
‘You are? Oh, Miriam.’ Clara shook her head in despair. ‘I knew it. He’s reeled you in again.’
‘He most certainly has not.’
Bright blue eyes met soft brown. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And there are no interesting details of the kiss-and-tell variety?’
‘None.’ She had decided to draw a veil over that blistering kiss before they’d left the bedsit yesterday.
‘Well, put the coffee on and I’ll tell you something really funny.’
Miriam looked more closely at her friend. There had been a note in Clara’s voice she couldn’t place; something between excited and sheepish was th
e best way to describe it. ‘What’s happened?’
Clara shifted on the cushion, looking down at her hands, which were playing with the corded edging as she said, ‘You know that guy I told you about? The one I’ve been talking to at work?’
‘The one who’s—’ Miriam had been going to say celibate but changed it to, ‘in tune with himself?’
Clara nodded. ‘We’re seeing each other.’
Miriam busied herself with the coffee, keeping her voice casual as she said, ‘So why is that funny?’
‘You’ll know when you see him. Not that there’s anything the matter with him,’ Clara added quickly, ‘there’s not, he’s—he’s great, but very…establishment. You know?’
Miriam wasn’t quite sure she did. ‘Establishment?’
Clara waved a black-taloned hand. ‘You know, suit and tie, polished shoes, drives to the speed limit and is good to his mother, that sort of thing.’
Miriam handed Clara her coffee. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Exactly.’ Clara’s voice was verging on a wail. ‘I mean, me with someone like that. It’s ridiculous.’
‘But you like him,’ Miriam said carefully, sitting down on the remaining cushion on the sofa and taking a sip of coffee.