There’s no sign of Leo, but it starts me wondering. Exactly which flat has this hottie come out of? There are only four flats in the converted house. The downstairs two are occupied by a gay couple – Frank and Phil – and the other by a forty-two-year-old divorcée – Jenny – who entertains a string of different men, in all shapes, sizes and colours. The rumour is that she might have a professional interest in them – unfounded – but in all the years I’ve been with Leo I’ve never seen another woman coming out of her apartment. Makes you think, doesn’t it? On the top floor there’s Dominic and Lydia, Leo’s immediate neighbours and a nauseatingly lovey-dovey couple if ever there was one. It is, of course, quite possible that the woman could have been visiting any of Leo’s neighbours, but that doesn’t stop my eyebrows from coming together in a scowl. I feel myself staring and then, can you believe it, the woman winks at me, turns on her high heels and waltzes off down the street. And it isn’t just a casual wink, it’s a knowing wink. A wink that acknowledges that there’s some sort of connection between us. That’s it. Now I’m sure. This woman has come out of Leo’s flat.
My breath is high in my chest and shallow to the point of hyperventilation. I couldn’t be more sure of Leo’s infidelity if I’d caught him with his bare bottom bobbing up and down. As a woman, sometimes you know. You just know! And I bloody well know. ‘You bastard,’ I hiss.
Then my gaze falls on the rather large builders’ skip directly in front of me. You can always find a skip on any of the streets round here due to the current British fever for renovating dilapidated properties. Well, it will serve my purpose rather nicely. Jumping back into the car, I gun the engine. Slipping Ethel into gear, I say, ‘Take this!’
Slamming the accelerator down, I drive headlong straight into the skip. I brace myself for the impact. There’s a horrible crunching noise. The bonnet crumples and there’s the satisfying tinkle of shattering headlights. Things groan underneath the bonnet and, when the noise stops, a delicate plume of smoke curls up from the engine.
I get out, slightly dazed from the collision, and look at the damage. It’s a shame I haven’t done more. Although, in the cold light of day, I think it’s a terrible thing to do to such an old girl. Poor Ethel. If I wasn’t so incensed about Leo’s betrayal, I might feel even more guilty. Let’s see what he thinks about that!
I stagger along the pavement. What to do now? If I knock on the door of Leo’s flat and find him there in nothing but his boxer shorts there’s no telling what kind of damage I might inflict on him. He might well end up with more than a crumpled bonnet and smashed headlights. This isn’t how the scenario is supposed to progress. He’s supposed to be missing me. He’s supposed to be begging me to take him back. He always does. That’s the usual routine. What’s gone wrong this time?
A red mist descends in front of my eyes. It’s that woman. That bloody, bloody woman. I’m sure. That’s why Leo hasn’t been on the phone to me apologising. I rub my hands over my face. But how long has this been going on? Why haven’t I seen the signs? What signs were there? Leo has been Leo – no better, no worse. He hasn’t taken to wearing more aftershave or going to the gym or making excuses not to see me. I’ve had no inkling that there’s a rival for Leo’s affections in my life. This puts a whole new slant on things. I’ve always been in control of the relationship, the dominant one. Leo can’t manage without me. He knows that. I know that. He’ll go to pieces. He’s completely dependent on me. It’s a shock to find out that now that might not be the case at all. My knees feel ridiculously weak. I should follow this woman – this woman who’s trying to take my Leo from me. Except I’m not sure that my feet will move in the required manner.
I look down the street in the direction the woman has taken, and it’s weird, but there’s no sign of her at all. None. But I hear that bloody laughter again. It’s soft and sugary and very irritating.
Glancing up at Leo’s flat, I see him flit by the window. I chew my nails for a bit, but before I’ve decided what to do, Leo emerges from the front door. He looks a mess – which isn’t unusual, particularly first thing in the morning. But even for Leo, he looks . . . dazed. As if he’s barely slept at all. And happy. Happy without me.
Blood rushes to my brain and, thankfully, all the rest of my limbs, galvanising me into action. Slipping behind the skip, I try to duck out of sight but I needn’t have bothered. Leo, grinning to himself, is in his own sweet world and fails to notice either me or his lightly smoking car. He wanders down the road, seemingly oblivious to everything that life has to offer.
I frown. How could he do this? How could he do this to me? It isn’t in Leo’s nature to be duplicitous. He probably doesn’t even know what it means. All that rubbish about men being born to spread their seed over as wide a range of the female population as possible – it simply doesn’t apply to Leo. He’s just too damn lazy. If there’s one thing he isn’t, it’s a skilled seducer. So how on earth has this turn of events come to pass?
Well, there’s no way this woman is going to have him. Leo might be a crap boyfriend, but he’s my crap boyfriend. Not someone else’s! A strategy needs to be planned. I kick Ethel’s hub-cab, twice for good luck – and something niggling in my brain tells me that I might need it. Something has happened to Leo and I’m not sure what. But I will find out. I will definitely find out. But not yet. Not just yet. I watch my dear lover amble away from me, smiling wistfully. First I need to calm down. I need to do that bloody relaxation CD. Perhaps it’s still lying in the street outside my flat. Or maybe I’ll have to invest in another one. Whatever, I need my wits about me for this. So, I storm off down the road in the opposite direction before I’m tempted to kill Leo first and ask questions later.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Leo finally arrived at the office, everyone was jumping up and down. This was an unusual sight, as normally everyone was slumped over their desks. There was a particularly dense line of people jumping up and down near Old Baldy’s office, Grant and Lard among them. Lard jumped for very little, so Leo was more than a tad surprised.
Once he’d availed himself of a wonderful cup of the brown goo that posed as coffee in this place, he wandered over to see what was going on. Leo gulped the coffee down gratefully and waited for it to kick in. If he was going to keep up with Isobel in the bedroom department, then he would have to seriously increase his caffeine intake. He might have to start injecting it rather than just drinking it.
‘Am I missing something?’ Leo hated to think he was missing anything as he was naturally very nosy.
Grant turned round. ‘Baldy Baldwin has got the most amazing assistant,’ he told his friend slightly breathlessly. His pupils were dilated with joy. ‘She started work this morning.’
‘Really?’
Grant gave another few sprightly springs. ‘You can’t see much.’
Leo put down his coffee and jumped up and down too, trying to get a glimpse.
‘You have to jump high,’ his friend advised. He puffed again. ‘To see over the filing cabinets.’
‘Can’t you just walk past the office?’
‘We tried that,’ Grant said. ‘The door was closed. We didn’t want her to think we were spying on her.’
‘Even though you are?’ Leo braced himself for a big jump. The coffee sloshed unpleasantly in his stomach. ‘Ouff.’ His knees definitely weren’t what they used to be. ‘I can’t see anything.’ Putting his hands on Lard’s shoulder, he tried to get a bit more leverage.
‘Stop that,’ Lard snapped. ‘It’s my turn to get a look. Give me a leg up, Leo.’
Grant looked vaguely bewildered, all agog, and Leo was sure he’d seen that expression somewhere before. ‘She’s unbelievable,’ Grant panted excitedly. ‘Enough to make grown men weep.’
Leo stopped mid-bounce. He didn’t need to know any more. ‘Oh no. Oh bloody hell, no!’
‘What?’ Grant and Lard shouted behind him.
Leo rushed into Baldy Baldwin’s office. And sure enough, Isobel
was sitting behind Mr Baldwin’s desk; she had her feet up and in one hand was a cup of coffee. And Leo would have liked to bet that it didn’t taste like the manky machine stuff he’d just quaffed. In her other hand she was holding her wand. She was waving it at the piles of papers waiting for filing, which in turn danced along the desk and the windowsill and efficiently popped themselves into the filing cabinets or shuffled themselves cheerily into tidier piles. And they were doing it to the tune of ‘Mambo No 5’.
Leo realised that he knew very little about women. After all, he was used to good old Emma who was reliable to a fault. She didn’t do anything out of character. There were no surprises with Emma. No shocks. Even the regular dumping had just become a ripple in the tranquil lake of their lives. Leo thought that was why it was very difficult trying to cope with Isobel, who kept disappearing and popping up in strange places doing strange things. He was actually beginning to appreciate what Emma had to endure while with him. But even Leo, at his least reliable, wasn’t a patch on Isobel.
‘Isobel,’ he gasped, barely able to speak.
She gave him one of her loveliest smiles. ‘Hello, Leo.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Working,’ she said.
‘Working?’
‘In my own way.’
Own unique way. ‘Why here?’
His frustrating fairy friend simply shrugged. ‘I thought it would make it possible for us to spend all day together.’
‘Oh.’ Leo had to get his head round this one and it was very hard to think in the middle of dancing filing. ‘Stop. Stop that,’ he shouted at the papers before he realised what he was doing.
‘Mambo No 5’ ground to an abrupt halt, as did all the papers. Rather reminiscent of his jigging crockery, they all bumped into each other and then slithered into untidy heaps.
‘This is insane.’ Leo could hear himself shrieking. ‘What would you do if Old Baldy came in?’
And, of course, at that very moment, Mr Baldwin – Old Baldy himself – appeared in the doorway. Leo could feel his mouth and his eyes widen in a silent scream.
‘Leo?’ Old Baldy said, a dark and thunderous look crossing his countenance.
An involuntary gasp of terror escaped from Leo. In the nick of time Isobel waved her wand and Old Baldy froze.
‘I’d probably do that,’ Isobel informed Leo, casting a glance at her immobilised victim.
Leo’s shoulders sagged with relief. Old Baldy looked like a waxwork from Madame Tussaud’s – one of the better ones. Circling him cautiously, Leo was mesmerised. Even though it grossed him out completely, he touched the end of Old Baldy’s nose tentatively, cagey in case the currently catatonic boss should suddenly move. But no. He pulled at his boss’s bottom lip and let it twang back to his mouth. Nothing. Mr Baldwin, thankfully, remained totally inert. Leo could have drawn all over him with a felt-tipped pen and Old Baldy would be none the wiser. The idea was very tempting. Leo’s breathing was slowly returning to normal. All this excitement was going to knock years off his life.
He looked over at Isobel and sighed. ‘Do you know that you’re a truly amazing woman?’
‘Yes.’
Leo went to sit on the edge of her desk. Clearly she was going to be in control here from now on. Leo’s life, even in the office, was no longer his own.
‘The guys can’t wait to meet you,’ he said. They glanced at the window. Grant and Lard were still pogo-ing up and down beyond it like demented punk rockers.
‘You can’t tell them, Leo.’
If Leo hadn’t felt confused enough before, he was now thrown into a complete tailspin. ‘Tell them what?’
‘You can’t tell them that I’m a fairy.’
‘Oh, but they’ll love it!’
Isobel shook her head. ‘No. You mustn’t.’
‘Why? They’re my best mates. They’ll think it’s really cool.’
‘They won’t. They won’t believe you, Leo. And if people don’t believe in me, it weakens my powers. I won’t be able to stay here.’
‘At Thornton Jones?’
‘No, Leo. I won’t be able to stay here on earth, with you.’
‘Bugger.’ Leo jumped off the desk and paced a bit. He was sure that neither Grant nor Lard had ever been out with a fairy. This was a great one to have up on them. They had to know. ‘Can’t I tell them just a tiny bit? It would help considerably if I could explain my glitter problem.’ Leo gave his hair a shake to elicit some sympathy.
‘No. It has to be our secret.’
‘Oh.’
Isobel got up from behind Old Baldy’s desk and took up a notebook. She sat in the chair more commonly assigned to an assistant. Keeping up appearances, clearly. ‘We have work to do, Leo.’
‘Oh, yes.’ And Leo had to stop the guys jumping up and down before they all had a heart-attack and had to be rushed off to Casualty – then he’d be left to manage on his own in the department and everyone would realise that he knew nothing about his job and millions of people would go broke all over the world and it would all be Leo’s fault.
The top of Grant’s head appeared in the window. Lard would have to eat chocolate all day to replace his expended calories. ‘Yes. Better get on,’ Leo said with some urgency.
Isobel swished that damn wand again.
‘Hurry up, boys,’ she urged the filing. And there was a mad scramble of papers as they all dived for the filing cabinets.
Leo couldn’t help but smile. ‘Wicked.’
‘This has to be between me and you, Leo,’ she stressed. ‘You do understand that?’
‘Of course.’ Leo was going to add that he wasn’t an idiot, but sometimes even he wondered.
Isobel zapped Old Baldy who sort of melted immediately and continued to stride into the office as if nothing had happened.
‘Leo,’ he barked. ‘You’re late again!’
‘I know. I . . . er, I . . . er . . .’
He gave Isobel a pleading look. She glanced up from her notebook and her poised-to-take-notes pose. With a tut she swished her wand again.
‘I see I’m going to have to give you a pay rise,’ Mr Baldwin said.
‘A p . . . p . . . pay rise?’
‘Yes.’ Baldy took up his rightful place behind his desk. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘No. N . . . no,’ Leo stammered. ‘Absolutely not. No. I’ll just go. Go back to work. Shall I? Lots to do. Lots and lots.’ He started to back out of the door before the spell broke and something truly dreadful happened.
Mr Baldwin smiled benignly at him. Not something he did often.
Turning to Isobel, Leo said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ He hoped his voice held a note of warning.
And Isobel smiled and looked at him as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Leo backed into the wall in the corridor. Grant and Lard looked at him expectantly, but he was too stunned to speak. His brain was busy with troubling thoughts. What was happening? And what the hell was he going to do with this woman?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Leo followed Grant and Lard back into their own part of the office. Everyone had now given up on trying to catch a glimpse of the new assistant and they’d returned instead to their desks and the dire state of the foreign markets.
Sitting down and slumping in front of his computer screen, Leo was exhausted and overwhelmed by several different emotions. His friends were behaving like two excitable schoolboys. They clearly weren’t in control of their emotions either. Grant was beside himself with glee. ‘Is she not worth considering the “I do” words for?’
‘Yes,’ Leo mumbled. His head got nearer to his desk and he raked his fingers through his very dishevelled hair, trying to massage his very dishevelled brain.
Grant and Lard stopped and stared at him questioningly.
‘That’s Isobel,’ Leo offered.
‘Isobel?’ Lard said.
Both of his friends looked at him blankly and then Lard had a moment of revelation, not dissimilar to Moses and the
burning bush. He gasped out loud. Any minute now he’d be rushing to the nearest Twix for succour. ‘Not six-times-a-night woman?’
Leo nodded.
‘Oh my good grief,’ Grant breathed. ‘That’s her?’ His face took on an unhealthy flush of redness. ‘Let me have her. When you’ve finished with her, please let me have her.’
‘No. I want her,’ Lard said petulantly.
‘We’ll share,’ Grant suggested to him while Leo looked on bemused. ‘You can have her on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Given her reputation, I’m not sure that I could cope with her all week anyway.’
Lard glanced Leo’s way. ‘I’m not sure that Leo can either.’
He might have a point. Leo sank further into his chair. Going to work used to be such a simple affair.
‘You’re looking decidedly peaky, mate.’ Lard sat on Leo’s desk and frowned at him with concern.
‘I do feel rather peaky,’ Leo squeaked. Living with Isobel was like being on an emotional rollercoaster. In the dark. With a blindfold on. And your hands tied behind your back. Leo was feeling so disorientated that he’d no idea what might happen next.
Lard pulled open his desk drawer. ‘Walnut Whip or Twix?’
Leo had managed to predict that with only a modicum of thought. If only Isobel was as easy to analyse.
‘No.’ He shook his head, releasing another shower of glitter dandruff. ‘No thanks.’
Grant rubbed his chin and looked rather shifty. ‘You might feel a bit more peaky when you find out what we’ve done.’
Leo’s senses were suddenly alert. ‘What?’ Grabbing the Twix from Lard’s meaty hands, he bit into it. Believe it, he needed endorphins.
‘Emma phoned,’ Grant told him. ‘We agreed that you’d meet her for lunch at Bertorini’s.’