About the Author
Jilly Cooper is a journalist, author and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her rescue greyhound. She was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to literature, and in 2009 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire for her contribution to literature and services to the County.
About the Book
There was no doubt about it – Bella Parkinson was a success. The most promising actress in London, she was bright, sexy, hopelessly scatterbrained – and taking the town by storm. Rupert Henriques, dashingly handsome and rich enough to buy her every theatre in London if she wanted it, couldn’t wait to marry her.
But Bella had a secret in her past – and the one man who knew it was about to come into her life again. Rupert’s sinister cousin Lazlo, for some reason of his own, was trying to prevent her marriage. Before she knew where she was, Bella found herself in real danger …
Also by Jilly Cooper
FICTION
RIDERS
RIVALS
POLO
THE MAN WHO MADE HUSBANDS JEALOUS
APPASSIONATA
SCORE!
PANDORA
WICKED!
JUMP!
MOUNT!
NON-FICTION
HOW TO STAY MARRIED
HOW TO SURVIVE FROM NINE TO FIVE
JOLLY SUPER
MEN AND SUPERMEN
JOLLY SUPER TOO
WOMEN AND SUPERWOMEN
WORK AND WEDLOCK
JOLLY SUPERLATIVE
SUPER MEN AND SUPER WOMEN
SUPER JILLY
CLASS
SUPER COOPER
INTELLIGENT AND LOYAL
JOLLY MARSUPIAL
ANIMALS IN WAR
THE COMMON YEARS
HOTFOOT TO ZABRISKIE POINT (with Patrick Lichfield
HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS
TURN RIGHT AT THE SPOTTED DOG
ANGELS RUSH IN
ARAMINTA’S WEDDING
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
LITTLE MABEL
LITTLE MABEL’S GREAT ESCAPE
LITTLE MABEL SAVES THE DAY
LITTLE MABEL WINS
ROMANCE
EMILY
HARRIET
IMOGEN
LISA & CO
OCTAVIA
PRUDENCE
ANTHOLOGIES
THE BRITISH IN LOVE
VIOLETS AND VINEGAR
Author’s Note
I have always wanted to write a novel about an actress and I started writing Bella in 1969. However, at that time I wrote it as a novella, called it Collision and it was serialized in 19. Only now am I able to fulfil my original wish and present the story as a full-length novel – Bella.
Chapter One
Bella read faster and faster until she came to the final page then, giving a howl of irritation, hurled the book across the room. Narrowly missing a row of bottles, it fell with a crash into the waste-paper basket.
‘Best place for it!’ she said furiously. ‘How corny can you get?’
She escaped completely into every book she read, identifying closely with the characters. This time she was incensed because the heroine had slunk dutifully home to her boring husband instead of following her dashing lover up the Amazon.
She shivered and toyed with the idea of letting the water out and running more hot in, but she had done this four times already. Her hands were wrinkled and red from the dye of the book, and the sky that filled the bathroom window had deepened since she’d been in the bath from pale Wedgwood to deep indigo, so she knew it must be late.
She splashed cold water over her body, heaved herself out of the bath and stood, feeling dizzy, on the bath-mat. The bath was ringed with black like a football sweater, but the char would fix that in the morning.
Taking her wireless, she stepped over the debris of her clothes, picked up the second post which was lying in the hall, and wandered into the bedroom.
She turned up the music, danced and sang a few bars, then caught sight of herself in the mirror, hair hidden in a mauve bath-cap, body glowing red as a lobster.
The Great British Public would have a shock if they could see me now, she thought wryly.
She pulled off her bath-cap and examined herself more carefully. She was a big girl with a magnificent body and endless legs. Her mouth was wide and her large sleepy yellow eyes rocketed up at the corners. A mane of reddish-blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. The overall impression was of a sleek and beautiful racehorse at the peak of its condition.
She opened her letters. One was from a journalist who wanted to interview her, another an ex-boyfriend trying to come back and several forwarded by the BBC from fans:
‘Dear Miss Parkinson,’ wrote one, in loopy handwriting, ‘I hope you don’t mind my writing. I know you must lead such a busy, glamorous life. I think it’s marvellous the way there’s never any breath of scandal attached to your name. Could you possibly send me a signed full-length photograph and some biographical details?’
Oh, God! thought Bella, feeling slightly sick, if only they all knew.
The last letter was practical. It was headed the Britannia Theatre, and was from the director, Roger Field, who had written:
‘Dear Bella,
If you’re late again, I shall sack you. Can’t you see how it unnerves the rest of the cast? Stop being so bloody selfish.
Love, Roger.’
Roger, Bella knew, would be as good as his word. She looked at the alarm clock by the bed and gave another howl of rage. It was twenty past six, and the curtain went up at seven-thirty. Dressing with fantastic speed, not even bothering to dry herself properly, she tore out of the flat and was fortunate to find a taxi almost at once.
The Britannia Theatre Company was one of the great theatrical successes of the decade. It specialized in Shakespeare and more modern classics and generally had three plays running on alternate nights and three in rehearsal. Bella had joined the company a year ago and had risen from walk-on parts to a small speaking part in The Merchant of Venice. She had recently had her first real break playing Desdemona in Othello. The critics had raved about her performance and the play had been running to capacity audiences for three nights a week.
Lying back gazing out of the taxi window at the trees of Hyde Park fanning out against a rustcoloured sky, Bella tried to keep calm. From now until her first entrance she would be in a nervous sweat, stage fright gripping her by the throat like an animal. She deliberately always cut it fine because it meant that she would be in such a hurry dressing and making-up, she wouldn’t have time to panic.
And yet, ironically, the only time when she felt really secure was when she was on stage, getting inside someone else’s personality.
The taxi reached the theatre at five past seven.
‘Evening, Tom,’ said Bella nervously, scuttling past the man at the door.
He put down his evening paper and glanced at his watch. ‘Just made it, Miss Parkinson. Here’s a letter for you, and there’re some more flowers in your room.’
Not bothering to glance at her letter, Bella bounded upstairs two steps at a time and fell into the dressing-room she shared with her best friend, Rosie Hassell, who played Bianca.
‘Late again,’ said Rosie, who was putting on eye make-up. ‘Roger’s been in once already, gnashing his teeth.’
Bella turned pale. ‘Oh, God, I couldn’t get a taxi,’ she lied, throwing her fur coat on a chair and slipping into an overall.
‘I think Freddie Dixon’s after me,’ said Rosie.
‘You think that about everyone,’ said Bella, slapping greasepaint on her face.
‘I don’t – and, anyway, I’m usually right. I know I am about Freddie.’
Freddie Dixon was the handsome actor playing Cassio. Both Bella and Rosie had fancied him and been slightly piqued because he’d shown no interest in either of them.
‘You know the clinch we have in the fourth act?’ said Rosie, pinning on snakey black ringlets to the back of her hair. ‘Well, last night he absolutely crushed me to death, and all through the scene he couldn’t keep his hands off me.’
‘He’s not meant to keep them off,’ said Bella. ‘I expect Roger told him to act more sexily.’
Rosie looked smug. ‘That’s all you know. Look, you’ve got more flowers from Master Henriques,’ she added, pointing to a huge bunch of lilies of the valley arranged in a jam jar on Bella’s dressing table.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ cried Bella, noticing them for the first time. ‘I wonder what he’s on about tonight.’
‘Aren’t you going to read his letter?’ said Rosie.
Bella pencilled in her eyebrow. ‘You can – since you’re so nosey,’ she said.
Rosie took the card out of its blue envelope.
‘“Dear Bella,”’ she read. ‘That’s a bit familiar. It was “Dear Miss Parkinson” last time. “Good Luck for tonight. I shall be watching you. Yours, Rupert Henriques.” He must be crazy about you. That’s the eighth time he’s seen the play, isn’t it?’
‘Ninth,’ said Bella.
‘Must be getting sick of it by now,’ said Rosie. ‘Perhaps he’s doing it for “O” levels.’
‘Do you think he’s that young?’
‘Expect so – or a dirty old man. Nobody decent ever runs after actresses. They’ve usually got plenty of girls of their own.’
Bella fished a fly out of her bottle of foundation and had another look at the card. ‘He’s got nice writing though,’ she said. ‘And Chichester Terrace is quite an OK address.’
There was a knock on the door. It was Queenie, their dresser, come to help them on with their costumes. A dyed-in-the-wool cockney with orange hair and a cigarette permanently drooping from her scarlet lips, she chattered all the time about the ‘great actresses’ she’d dressed in the past. Bella, who was sick with nerves by this stage, was quite happy to let her ramble on.
‘Five minutes, please! Five minutes, please!’ It was the plaintive echoing voice of the callboy.
Bella looked at herself in the mirror, her smooth, young face belying the torrent of nerves bubbling inside her. Then she sat down on the faded velvet sofa with the broken leg in the corner of the room and waited, clasping her hands in her lap to stop them shaking.
‘Beginners, please! Beginners, please!’ The sad echoing voice passed her door again.
Rosie, who didn’t come on until later, was doing the crossword. Bella took one more look round the dressing-room. Even with its bare floor and blacked-out windows, it seemed friendly and familiar compared with the strange brightly lit world she was about to enter.
‘Good luck,’ said Rosie, as she went out of the door. ‘Give Freddie a big kiss.’
They stood waiting by the open door under a faded orange bulb – Brabantio, Cassio and herself. Wesley Barrington, who was playing Othello, stood by himself, a huge handsome black man, six and a half feet tall, as nervous as a cat, pacing up and down, murmuring his lines like an imprecation.
The three of them left her. Help me to make it, she prayed.
Othello was speaking now in his beautiful measured voice: ‘Most potent, grave and reverend signiors.’
In a moment she would be on. Iago came to collect her.
‘Come on, beauty,’ he whispered. ‘Keep your chin up.’
It had begun. She was on. Looking round the stage, beautiful, gentle, a little shy. ‘I do perceive here a divided duty,’ she said slowly.
She was off, then on again, flirting a little with Cassio, and then Othello was on again. Here, where she found life a thousand times more real than in the real world, she had words to express her emotions.
But all too soon it was over. The appalling murder scene was ended and the play had spent its brief but all too vivid life.
And as she took her curtain calls, she had nearly reached the limits of her endurance. Three times Othello and Iago led her forward and the tears poured down her cheeks as the roars of applause increased.
‘Well done,’ said Wesley Barrington in his deep voice.
Bella smiled at him. She fancied him so much when they were acting, but now he was Wesley again, living in Ealing with a wife and three children.
Bella would now go out for a cheap dinner with Rosie and in the morning she would lie sluttishly in bed until lunchtime. She avoided the busy, glamorous world that her fans imagined she lived in. It was a question of conserving her energy for what was important.
In their dressing-room, however, she found Rosie in a fever of excitement. ‘Freddie’s asked me out.’
‘I expect he wants to discuss the way you’ve been upstaging him,’ said Bella. She collapsed on to a chair and felt depression descending on her like dust on a polished table.
Not that she wanted Freddie to ask her out. She’d long ago decided his curly hair and neon smile weren’t for her. But if he started up a serious affair with Rosie, there’d be no more cosy little dinners, no more Rosie and Bella, united and gossiping together against the rest of the cast. Still, it was nice for Rosie.
‘Where’s he taking you?’
‘Somewhere cheap. He’s amazingly mean. Do you think one earring looks sexy?’
‘No, silly. As though you’d lost the other one.’
There was a knock on the door. It was Tom, the doorman.
‘There’s a Mr Henriques downstairs, Miss Parkinson. Wonders if he could come up and see you.’
‘Oh,’ said Bella, suddenly excited. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Looks orl right,’ said Tom, fingering a five pound note in his pocket.
‘Not a schoolboy?’
Tom shook his head.
‘Nor a dirty old man?’
‘No, quite a reasonable sort of bloke. Bit of a nob really. Plum-in-the-marf voice and wearing a monkey suit.’
‘Oh, go on, Bella,’ said Rosie. ‘He might be super.’
‘All right,’ said Bella. ‘I can always tell him to go if he’s ghastly.’
‘Great!’ said Rosie. ‘I’ll finish off my face in the loo.’
‘No!’ yelped Bella, suddenly nervous. ‘You can’t leave me.’
At that moment Queenie, the dresser, appeared at the door.
‘You’d better get out of that dress before you spill make-up all over it,’ she said to Bella.
Bella looked at herself in the mirror. Against the low-cut white nightgown, her tawny skin glowed like old ivory.
Let’s knock Mr Henriques for six, she thought.
‘Can I keep it on for a bit, Queenie?’ she asked.
‘And I’m supposed to hang about until you’ve finished,’ said Queenie sourly.
‘Come on, you old harridan,’ said Rosie, grabbing her arm and frog-marching her out of the room.
‘You can have a swig of Freddie’s whisky to cheer you up.’
Bella sprayed on some scent, then sprayed more round the room, arranged her breasts to advantage in the white dress and, sitting down, began to brush her hair.
There was a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ she said huskily in her best Tallulah Bankhead voice.
As she turned, smiling, her mouth dropped in amazement. For the man lounging in the doorway was absurdly romantic looking, with very pale delicate features, hollowed cheeks, dark burning eyes, and hair as black and shining as a raven’s wing. He was thin and very elegant, and over his dinner jacket was slung a magnificent honey-coloured fur coat.
They stared at each other for a moment, then, smiling gently, he said: ‘May I come in? I hope it’s not a nuisance for you.’
He had an attractive voice, soft and drawling. ‘My name’s Rupert Henriques,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Oh, please come in.’ Bella stood up, flustered, and found that her eyes were almost on a level with his.
‘You’re tall,’ he said in surprise. ‘You look so small on the stage beside Othello.’
Embarrassed, Bella tipped a pile of clothes off the red velvet sofa.
‘Sit down. Have a drink.’ She got out a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses. She was furious that her hand shook so much. She rattled the bottle against the glass and poured out far too large a drink.
‘Hey, steady,’ he said. ‘I’m not much of a drinker.’
He filled the glass up to the top with water from the washbasin.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
She shook her head and was pleased to see his hand was shaking as much as hers when he lit his cigarette. He wasn’t as cool as he looked.
As she sat down she knocked a jar of cold cream on to the floor. They both dived to retrieve it and nearly bumped their heads.
He looked at her and burst out laughing.
‘I believe you’re as nervous as I am,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you used to entertaining strange men backstage every night?’
Bella shook her head. ‘I’m always frightened they might be disappointed when they meet me in the flesh.’
‘Disappointed?’ He looked her over incredulously. ‘You must be joking.’
Bella was suddenly conscious of how low her dress was cut.
‘The flowers are heavenly,’ she said, blushing. ‘How on earth did you manage to get such beautiful ones in winter?’
‘Rifling my mother’s conservatory.’
‘Doesn’t she mind?’
‘Doesn’t know. She’s in India.’ He smiled maliciously. ‘I’m hoping an obliging tiger might gobble her up.’
Bella giggled. ‘Don’t you like her?’
‘Not a lot. Do you get on with your parents?’
‘They’re dead,’ said Bella flatly, and waited for the conventional expressions of sympathy. They didn’t come.
‘Lucky you,’ said Rupert Henriques. ‘I wish I were an orphan – all fun and no fear.’
He had a droll way of rattling off these remarks which made them quite inoffensive. All the same, she thought, he’s a spoilt little boy. He could be quite relentless if he chose.
He picked up his drink. ‘You were even better than usual tonight.’
‘Don’t you get bored seeing the same play night after night?’
He grinned. ‘I’m glad it’s not a Whitehall farce. You’re the only reason I’ve been so many times.’
There was a knock on the door.
‘Hell,’ he said. ‘Do we have to answer it?’
It was Queenie.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ Bella said to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added to Rupert, ‘I shall have to change.’
He drained his glass, got up and moved towards the door.
‘I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me one evening next week,’ he said.
It’s Monday now, thought Bella. He can’t be that keen if he can wait at least a week to see me!
‘I’m very tied up,’ she said, untruthfully.
‘Tuesday?’ he said.
‘I’m working that night.’
‘Wednesday then?’
She paused just long enough to get him worried, then smiled: ‘All right, I’d like to.’
‘I don’t suppose you like opera.’
‘I adore it,’ lied Bella, determined to keep her end up.
‘Great. There’s a first night of Siegfried next Wednesday. I’ll try and get tickets.’
As he left he said, ‘I’m sorry I had to make your acquaintance in this rather gauche fashion, but I didn’t know anyone who knew you, who could have introduced us, and the only other alternative would have been to have bought the theatre.’
It was only later that she discovered he was only half-joking. The Henriques family could have bought every theatre in London without batting an eyelid.
Chapter Two
Promptly at six-thirty on Wednesday he picked her up.
‘You look gorgeous,’ he said, walking round her.
‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ she said.
He was wearing a very dark green suit with a red silk shirt.
‘You like it?’ he said, pleased. ‘My tailor only finished it on Monday; that’s why I couldn’t ask you out last week.’
An Aston Martin was waiting outside; music blasted out of the slot stereo; the heat was turned up overpoweringly.
Bella wound down her window surreptitiously as they drove off. She didn’t want to be scarlet in the face before she started.
As they stopped at the traffic lights, Rupert turned and smiled at her. ‘You shouldn’t have made me wait so long to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in such a state of anticipation I’ve been unbearable to everyone.’
Even in the thick of a first-night audience with the diamonds glittering like hoar frost, everyone turned to stare at them. Rupert seemed to know lots of people, but he merely nodded and didn’t stop to chat.
The curtain hadn’t been up for five minutes before Bella decided that Wagner wasn’t really her. All those vast men and women screaming their guts out. She glanced at her programme and was appalled to see she was expected to sit through three acts of it.
Somehow she managed to endure the first act. It seemed so strange to be on the other side of the curtain.
‘Is it all right? Are you enjoying yourself?’ asked Rupert as he fought his way back to her side with drinks during the interval.
‘Oh, it’s great,’ she lied enthusiastically.
Rupert looked dubious. ‘Well, I don’t know; they make a frightful row. Say as soon as you’re bored and we’ll leave.’
Two earnest-looking women with plaits round their heads turned to look at him in horror.
During the second act Rupert became increasingly restless, but cheered up when Brünhilde made her appearance.
‘She looks just like my mother,’ he whispered loudly to Bella, who gave a snort of laughter.
A fat woman in front turned round and shushed angrily. Rupert’s shoulders shook. Bella gazed firmly in front of her but found she couldn’t stop giggling.
‘I say,’ said Rupert a minute later, ‘shall we go?’
‘We can’t,’ said Bella horrified. ‘Not in the middle of an act.’
‘Will you be quiet,’ hissed the fat woman.
‘My wife feels faint,’ Rupert said to her and, grabbing Bella by the hand, he dragged her along the row, tripping over everyone’s feet.
Outside the theatre they looked at each other and burst into peals of laughter.
‘Wasn’t it awful?’ he said. ‘I wanted to impress you, taking you to a first night, but this really was the end.’
As they picked their way through Covent Garden’s debris of cabbage leaves and rotten apples he took her hand. ‘We’ll have a nice dinner to make up for it.’
They dined in Soho; very expensively, Bella decided. Crimson velvet menus with gold tassels, and rose petals floating in the finger bowls. They sat side by side on a red velvet banquette, rather like being in the back row of the cinema.
‘What do you want to eat?’ Rupert asked her.
‘Anything except herrings.’
He laughed. ‘Why not herrings?’
Bella shivered. ‘My mother forced me to eat them when I was young. I was locked in the dining-room for twelve hours once.’
Rupert looked appalled. ‘But I’ve never had to eat anything I didn’t like.’
‘This is a nice place,’ said Bella.
‘It’s a haunt of my father’s,’ said Rupert. ‘He says it’s the one place in London one never sees anyone one knows.’
‘Rupert, darling!’ A beautiful woman with wide-set violet eyes was standing by their table.
‘Lavinia.’ He stood up and kissed her. ‘How was Jamaica?’
‘Lovely. I can’t think why I came home.’
‘Have you met Bella Parkinson?’
‘No, I haven’t. How do you do?’ She looked Bella over carefully. ‘I’ve read all about your play, of course. Macbeth isn’t it? I must come and see you.’
She turned back to Rupert and said, a little too casually, ‘How’s Lazlo?’
‘In Buenos Aires.’
She looked relieved. ‘That’s why he hasn’t rung. When’s he coming back?’
‘Next week sometime.’
‘Well, give him my love and tell him to ring me before my suntan fades.’ She drifted off to join her escort at the other end of the room.
‘She’s beautiful,’ sighed Bella, admiring her beautifully shod feet. ‘Who is she?’
‘Some bird of Lazlo’s.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘My cousin.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Evidently Lazlo complained her bed was too small, so she went out to Harrods and bought one three times the size.’
‘She’s mad about him. Is he attractive?’
‘Women think so. I know him too well. We work together.’
‘What at?’
‘Banking. We’ve got a bank in the City. But most of our business is tied up in South America. My father’s chairman but Lazlo really runs it.’
‘You look a bit Latin yourself.’
‘My father’s South American. My mother, alas, is pure English. She’s coming home next Friday, worse luck. I’m hoping someone will hijack her plane. She keeps sending me postcards telling me not to forget to water the guides.’
Bella giggled. ‘Who?’
‘One of her interests along with the Blind, the Deaf, the Undernourished, and any other charity she can poke her nose into. Alas, there’s no charity in her heart. Her life is spent sitting on committees and my father.’ He looked at Bella. ‘What were your parents like?’
Bella’s palms went damp. ‘My father was a librarian,’ she said quickly. ‘But he died when I was a baby, so my mother had to take a job as a schoolmistress to support me. We were always terribly poor.’
Poor but respectable. She’d told the same lies so often that she’d almost come to believe them.
Their first course arrived – Mediterranean prawns and a great bowl of yellow mayonnaise. Bella gave a little moan of greed.
Later, when she was halfway through her duck, she suddenly looked up and saw that Rupert was staring at her, his food untouched.
‘Bella.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you have dinner with me tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ she said. She didn’t even stop to consider it. The one thing that could have spoilt her evening was the sense of being a failure, that he’d get to know her a little and then decide she was a bore.
Later, they went back to her flat for a drink and Bella drew back the curtains in the drawing-room to show Rupert the view. Half London glittered in front of them.
‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ said Bella ecstatically.
‘Not a patch on you, and you’ve got the most beautiful hair in the world.’ He picked up a strand. ‘Just like Rapunzel.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘The princess in the tower who let down her hair and the handsome prince climbed up and rescued her. You must have read it as a child?’
Bella looked bleak. ‘My mother didn’t approve of fairy stories.’
Rupert frowned and pulled her into his arms. ‘The more I hear of your childhood the less I like it,’ he said.
Then he kissed her very hard. After a minute he pulled her down on to the sofa and began fiddling with her zip.
‘No,’ she said, stiffening.
‘Why not?’ he muttered into her hair. ‘Christ, Bella, I want you so much.’
Bella took a deep breath and burst into tears. One of her greatest acting accomplishments was that she could cry at will. She had only to think of the poor unclaimed dogs at Battersea Dogs’ Home, waiting and waiting for a master that never came, and tears would course down her cheeks.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ she sobbed.
Rupert was on his knees beside her. ‘Darling. Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. I shouldn’t have rushed things. I’ve behaved like a pig.’
She looked at him through her tears. ‘You won’t stop seeing me because I won’t?’
He shook his head wryly. ‘I couldn’t if I tried now. I’m in too deep.’
After he’d gone she looked at herself in the mirror. ‘You’re a rotten bitch, Bella. God, you’re in a muddle,’ she said slowly.
She wanted men to want her, but once they tried to get involved she ran away, frightened they’d find out the truth.
Chapter Three
Rupert arrived next evening, his arms loaded with presents.
‘I’ve decided you missed out on a proper childhood, so we’re going to start now,’ he said.
In the parcels were a huge teddy bear, a Dutch doll, a kaleidoscope, a solitaire board filled with coloured marbles, a complete set of Beatrix Potter and The Wind in the Willows.
Bella felt a great lump in her throat. ‘Oh, darling, you shouldn’t spend all your money on me.’
Rupert took her face in his hands. ‘Sweetheart, listen. There’s one thing you must get into your head; there are a hell of a lot of disadvantages about being a Henriques, but being short of bread isn’t one of them.’ He held out his hands. ‘We’ve got buckets of it. My father’s worth a fortune and, since Lazlo put a bomb under the bank, we’re all worth a lot more. I’ve got a private income of well over £25,000.’
Bella’s jaw dropped.
‘That’s what’s so lovely about you, Bella. Anyone else would know about the Henriques millions. I’ve never worried about money in my life, and when I was twenty-one last month I inherited . . .’
‘Twenty-one?’ said Bella quickly. ‘You said you were twenty-seven.’
He looked shamefaced. ‘I did, didn’t I? I knew you wouldn’t be interested in me if you knew how young I was.’
‘But I’m twenty-three,’ wailed Bella. ‘I’m cradle-snatching.’
‘No you’re not,’ he snuggled against her. ‘Anyway, I’m crazy about older women.’
From then on they were inseparable, seeing each other every night, touring the smart restaurants and getting themselves talked about.
As spring came, turning the parks gold and purple with crocuses, Bella found herself growing more and more fond of him. He was very easy to like, with his languid grace, sullen pent-up beauty, and his appalling flashes of malice that were never directed at her.
But he could be moody, this little boy who had always had everything he wanted in life. His thin face would darken and she could feel his longing for her like a volcano below the surface.
The eternal late nights were taking their toll on his health too. He had lost pounds and there were huge violet shadows beneath his eyes.
One May evening they were sitting on the sofa in her flat, when he said, ‘Don’t you mind that I never take you to parties and things?’
She shook her head. ‘The only parties I like are for two people.’
Rupert turned her hand over and stared at the palm for a minute, then said, ‘Why don’t we get married?’
Panic swept over Bella. ‘No!’ she said nervously. ‘At least, not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘We come from different backgrounds. I’ve always been a have-not, you’ve always been a have. Your family would loathe me. I haven’t any background.’ She gave a slightly shaky laugh. ‘When I talk about the past, I mean yesterday.’
‘Rubbish,’ Rupert said angrily. ‘Don’t be such a snob. I love you and that’s all that matters.’
‘I love you too.’ Bella pleated the folds of her skirt.
‘You’re making things impossible for me,’ said Rupert sulkily. ‘You won’t marry me; you won’t sleep with me. I’m going out of my mind.’
He got up and strode up and down the room. He looked so ruffled and pink in the face, Bella suddenly had an hysterical desire to laugh.
‘There’s someone else,’ he said, suddenly stopping in front of her.