‘We’ve got to cool it for Beth’s sake.’
‘But I need you,’ pleaded Abby who was still groggy from sleeping-pills. ‘At least answer my letters.’
‘They’ve got to stop, too,’ said Christopher hastily.
He couldn’t man his personal fax at all times, and five letters a week reeking of Amarige, Abby’s sweet musky very distinctive scent, and marked personal, were not easily explained away.
‘Sandra’s beginning to get suspicious.’
Sandra was Christopher’s secretary, a plump, knowing blonde, at whom Abby had shouted too often when she was desperate to get through to Christopher.
‘Why doesn’t she send on my fan mail and my clippings? I need some feedback.’
‘Because it’s all answered in the office. Sandra’s perfected your signature so she can even acknowledge favourable reviews.’
‘She’ll be forging my cheques soon.’
Christopher lost his temper.
‘I cannot understand your attitude. A complete powerhouse at Shepherd Denston is devoted to keeping your particular show on the road, so you can concentrate on music, which was what you said you always wanted, and all you do is winge.’
Howie, Howard Denston’s son, who ran the London office, Christopher continued, would meet her at Heathrow, and drive her up to Birmingham where she was playing the Brahms again with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
‘And, for God’s sake, think of the agency’s reputation and wear something long and decorous. The Symphony Hall are generously allowing you to sign CDs in the interval. And remember only sign your name, OK? All those personal inscriptions and “Love from Abigails” just hold up the queue.’
‘You want to excise love from my life. You could fly out to Tokyo. Oh hell,’ she screamed, ‘there’s someone at the door, don’t hang up, please don’t hang up.’
Outside were four smiling waiters, all avid to have a look at Abby, as they wheeled in a massive breakfast for two: champagne, grapefruit topped with strawberries, silver domes over sausages, bacon and eggs, a T-bone for Christopher, croissants and blackcherry jam, which Abby had ordered yesterday, anticipating she and Christopher would be ravenous after a long night of love.
‘I’m sorry,’ sobbed Abby, ‘you’ll have to take it away.’
Rootling around in her bag, she gave them two hundred dollars.
But when she picked up the telephone again, Christopher had gone.
Nor did her spirits rise when she found Buenos Aires Airport so upended by Rannaldini’s fury and his attempts to charter a new aeroplane that her own flight to Heathrow had been grounded by a temporary strike. Abby, who was wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt, had scraped her hair back and hidden her reddened eyes behind huge dark glasses, but she never managed to remain anonymous. A ripple of excitement went round the airport, as the Tannoy started belting out her latest hit. Next minute crowds were mobbing her, yelling ‘L’Appassionata, L’Appassionata’ and nearly starting a riot. Abby then ended up on the same flight as Hermione, who despite her big black hat and her white Chanel suit, was deeply miffed not to be mobbed as well.
Looking disapprovingly at Abby’s ripped shirt and wild hair, from which the purple ribbon had been torn, Hermione said, as they climbed the steps to the plane: ‘You come from a different generation, of course, Abigail, who are more concerned with lights and glitter and showbiz. I couldn’t bring myself to pose nearly naked on a record sleeve. Our generation were only interested in the music.’
Abby was about to snap back that nothing mattered more than the music, when she gave a gasp of joy. One of the inside first-class seats in the left-hand row had been packed with hundreds and hundreds of scented yellow roses. Christopher hadn’t forgotten. He had done this in the early days of their affaire, when he occasionally had been unable to travel with her.
Then the Furies moved in as Hermione, too, gave a gasp of joy.
‘Who put those lovely rosebuds beside my seat?’
‘They’re for me.’
‘Mais non,’ an Air France steward shimmied up. ‘Elles sont pour Madame Harefield.’
An ecstatic Hermione then asked the steward, Jean-Claude — ‘what a macho name’ — to put the roses in water so Abby could have the seat next to her. She then proceeded to read out the accompanying card from Christopher in which he said he was so jealous of anyone sitting beside Hermione that he felt compelled to fill the seat with flowers.
‘I know he’d have made an exception if he’d known you were going to be on this plane, Abigail,’ Hermione went on graciously. ‘Then he says, let’s see, oh yes, “Meeting you, Dame Hermione,” actually I’m not a dame yet, “was like a dream come true, I can’t wait for our next encounter.”’
A ruse is a ruse is a ruse, thought Abby bleakly.
Hermione must pay excess baggage on her hand luggage, she reflected a second later, as every steward was summoned to stow away squashy fur coats, make-up bags, endless duty-free gifts ‘for my partner Bobby and our son Cosmo — I never come home empty-handed’, into every available crevice.
‘And I expect a nice glass of bubbly and some caviar, Jean-Claude, the moment we take off.’
Abby cuddled her Strad case. It was like travelling with a Renoir. She even took it into the John on flights.
Those are exactly the words he once wrote to me, she thought numbly, as Hermione lovingly replaced Christopher’s note in its little envelope.
‘By the way I’ve got a present for you, Abigail.’
Perhaps I’ve misjudged her, thought Abby, until Hermione handed over a large signed photograph of herself and a tape of her singing Strauss’s Last Four Songs.
‘I was so touched,’ went on Hermione smugly, ‘that Rupert Campbell-Black flew all the way from Bogotá to hear me in the Mahler.’
‘He came to sign me up,’ protested Abby. Oh, what was the use? ‘I must say for an older guy he’s drop-dead gorgeous.’
‘Did you notice his beautiful hands?’ said Hermione as though it was the discovery of the century.
‘Oh, get real,’ muttered Abby. ‘He’s beautiful all over.’
‘He has the most beautiful hands.’
Thank God, the plane was taxiing along the runway.
‘What’s his wife like?’ asked Abby.
‘Not a woman of substance,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘That’s why he’s drawn to, well, more sophisticated and mature women.’
‘Like yourself,’ said Abby, looking round for her sickbag.
‘Indeed,’ Hermione bowed her head. ‘Oh splendid, here comes Jean-Claude with the bubbly.’
Just managing not to throttle her, particularly when she continued to sing The Force of Destiny, Abby pretended to sleep, brooding on the tyranny of her life, bound like Ixion on the wheel of fortune-making. She had been excruciatingly homesick when she’d been sent away to Paris and Russia. She had never had time for real friendships with other girls, or going out dancing or on dates, dickering over lipsticks, cooking disgusting dinners to impress boyfriends. The grind of touring had just been bearable when Christopher had been with her. Now she only had endless hours in bridal suites to contemplate her isolation.
The final straw, when they finally reached Heathrow, was that Howie wasn’t there to meet her. Rosalie Brandon, his deputy, was full of apologies. Benny Basanovich, the agency’s star pianist, had thumped a conductor in Frankfurt, and Howie had had to fly off and sort it out.