Murder Club - Mark Pearson [3]
She had returned from a business trip to Paris to discover her lover in bed with her best friend. It was hardly an original situation, but certainly never one she had had to deal with before. She was used to getting the man she chose, and, when things ended, she was the one ending it. True, she had done so with her fiancé but it wasn’t quite the same thing. To come home and find him with her chief bridesmaid in her own bed was more than just a slap to her face; it was a complete blow to her self-esteem. She was a beautiful, confident, intelligent woman and she knew it. She attracted men as naturally as a magnet attracted iron filings, but all that had changed. At least her self-confidence had, or her tolerance for men. For sure they still approached her but they were met with a frosty reception. Worst of all she realised she hadn’t really loved her fiancé in the first place. She had decided to marry him for all the wrong reasons, and realising that had made her doubt herself and her judgement even more.
But six months was long enough. Her female friends had been very supportive at first, but had now – almost as one – decided that it was time for her to get back in the dating game, as the Americans called it. She had looked at singles sites, even went on a speed-dating evening once, but that was a disaster and she had walked out on it after the second ‘date’.
That was a month ago but, undaunted, her married and partnered friends had been relentless. For her own good, they called it, putting candidate after candidate before her. A brother, a husband’s best friend, a really ‘nice guy’ from work, an ex-lover! In the end she had given in under the tsunami of pressure from them and agreed to meet the guy tonight. His name was John Smith. He was dressed in a dark two-piece suit with a white shirt and a blue tie. He might have been dressed for an interview. Maybe he had been. She smiled at the thought. John Smith looked like a salesman in the suit, but was in fact an opera singer. Only background character and chorus, he modestly pointed out. He was thirty-eight years old, had been divorced for four years (an amicable split apparently), was five foot eleven inches tall with sandy blond hair and really blue eyes. He reminded her of the younger Robert Redford maybe, or Heath Ledger. But if he was aware of his good looks, he certainly wasn’t arrogant with it, as a lot of men were.
‘You remind me of someone …’ she had said.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, can’t put my finger on it. You probably get that a lot, do you?’
He had smiled. ‘As long as it’s not Brad Pitt.’
She had laughed, genuinely. The first time in a long while a man had made her do that.
‘No. You’re all right. It’s not him.’
The conversation had flowed pretty smoothly after that. He was an entertainer, she knew, probably trained in breaking the ice. But there seemed nothing disingenuous in the way he held her gaze when talking, and his flirtatious comments were flattering and on the right side of fun. He didn’t take himself too seriously and she liked that in a man. Her ex-fiancé, come to think of it, had been a bit of a stuffed shirt. In fact the more she did think about it, the more she realised how little there was that she really liked about the man.
So when her date had offered champagne, not only did it seem churlish to refuse, but it seemed somehow appropriate that a bottle of the Widow Ponsardin’s finest drop, Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame at £175 a pop, should signal the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. A baptism in wine: out with the old, in with the new. And the thing was, John wasn’t being flash in ordering it, showing off. He had explained that he had just finished a good run with a show in the West End. Judging by his clothes, she reckoned it was not an uncommon occurrence. He explained that in truth he only did the singing part-time, couldn’t afford