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       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘You coming in for a coffee?’ asked Carrie, opening the car door.

      Alan shook his head, as Angela and Jade stepped out of the passenger seats in the back. ‘No, it’s a school night and I’ve still got a stack of marking to do.’

      So did she. Guilt pricked at the thought of 8G’s navy-blue exercise books heaped in a pile in the kitchen. They ought to be done tonight.

      She came round to the driver’s seat and Alan climbed out of the car to face her. She was lucky to have him. Good looking in a forty-watt sort of way. Every feature created a harmonious symmetry that fell a touch short of dazzling. Nice brown eyes, with thick dark lashes that begged the question was he wearing make-up, good skin, hair mid-brown but slightly limp and a nice neat nose. He was the same height as her and quite possibly the kindest man she knew.

      ‘Okay. Thanks for coming with us. Sorry about the film choice. I’m sure it wasn’t your cup of tea.’

      ‘What? And Breakfast at Tiffany’s was?’ He tilted his head to one side.

      With a gentle laugh she tugged at his jacket. ‘Yeah, but it’s iconic and you said you’d never seen it. And everyone should see it at least once.’

      He put his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace.

      ‘Well, the other one wasn’t so bad. Though who knew you were such a closet romantic? Tears, Miss Hayes? I always thought for a drama teacher you were incredibly emotionally stable.’

      ‘Thanks, I think. That was supposed to be a compli-ment?’

      He grinned at her. ‘Of course it was. Not that you need them.’

      He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. For a minute she clung to him, her heart lifting in anticipation. She wanted him to kiss her. Properly. Chase the demons of fantasy away. This was real.

      She deepened the kiss, needing that connection with him, but he pulled back.

      ‘I need to go. Those books won’t get marked by themselves. Sleep tight. See you at work in the morning. Only three more Mondays and we’re home free.’

      She bit back disappointment. Alan was being sensible. In a few weeks’ time they’d have a whole summer off, although they’d yet to decide what to do. He’d got a cycling holiday in the Swiss Alps booked and, despite the invitation, it didn’t appeal. She could’ve gone along but Angela and Jade still hadn’t sorted out a holiday and it felt wrong to abandon them.

      ‘Thank the Lord.’ She hugged him. ‘This summer term is always a killer. There’s so much going on. Exams. The leavers getting too big for their boots. I can’t wait until we break up.’

      Jade had already gone up to bed when Carrie sank down at the kitchen table opposite her sister. She let out a weary sigh and reached for the cup of tea Angela had made for her.

      ‘You okay?’

      Carrie rubbed her hand over her face, trying to summon up the right words. She didn’t want to worry Angela but no she wasn’t okay. Nothing like okay.

      ‘I’m fine. That last bit got to me. But I’m fine.’

      She should be fine. After all, she’d worked in the business. Written her own scenes designed to engineer an audience’s response. Should be impervious to a scene where the director had brought every cinematic trick in the book into play, expressly to create a total heart-stopping, heart-fluttering scene.

      ‘Are you sure?’ Angela’s soft voice penetrated her thoughts, her gentle grey eyes glistening with sympathy.

      ‘Am I fuck?’ Carrie laid her head on the table and bashed it a couple of times. It hurt.

      ‘Carrie!’

      She lifted her head and said with a weary sigh, ‘I’m not fine at all. I feel pants.’

      Seeing Richard had knocked her sideways, out through a glass window seventy-five stories up, and she was still hurtling through the air.

      Her response was ten times worse than she could have imagined. Out of sight, out of mind had worked pretty well for her to date. Whoever talked about opening cans of worms had known their onions. She wished she’d walked out of the cinema as soon as she’d heard the name Richard Maddox.

      ‘Probably the shock of seeing him again, as it were.’ Angela lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug, her brave attempt at reassurance at odds with her bewildered expression.

      She and Carrie were so different. Angela’s mild disposition and gentle approach meant that she sailed rather serenely through life on a gentle swell, never plunging into the lows or cresting the highs, despite the constant pain and difficulties she suffered with her rheumatoid arthritis.

      Her affair with a married man that resulted in Jade was the most out-of-character thing that Angela had ever done and even now Carrie had difficulty in believing that her sister had been swept away enough to commit adultery. ‘Maybe it’s because you never had proper closure. When I got pregnant with Jade, I knew that it would be over with Clive. With you and Richard, it never ended properly. Just drifted to a halt.

      ‘I’m sure that’s what it is. How long ago was it since you last saw him? Seven, eight years? You can’t possibly be in love with him, not after all this time.’

      Carrie swallowed a protest. What if she could? She’d never tested the theory before today. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s the shock of seeing him in all his twelve-foot celluloid handsome glory.’ That’s what had made her heart beat a thousand times faster and deepened the hollow feeling in her stomach all the way to Australia.

      ‘No one’s that good looking. Do you think he was wearing loads of make-up?’ Angela said knowledgeably, as if she spent hours on a film set.

      ‘Probably,’ agreed Carrie, nodding as if her life depended on it.

      ‘And I bet he had a body double.’ Angela leaned back in her chair, waving her cup about in her usual feeble grip, sloshing tea over the sides. ‘His body can’t be that good.’

      Carrie nodded again. If she wasn’t careful someone would stuff her in the back window of a car.

      Angela had a point, though. It certainly hadn’t been when he was in his twenties but then he wasn’t leading a superstar lifestyle then. You don’t exactly fill out a scrawny frame when you’re existing on baked beans and fish-finger sandwiches, living in an unheated, mould-ridden flat off Cold Harbour Lane in Brixton, shivering off any muscle tone to keep warm.

      ‘Alternatively,’ Angela was her in stride now. ‘he could have a Rottweiler of a personal trainer who dogs his every step-making sure he lives on horrible Hollywood-healthy milkshake things, like wheatgrass and alfalfa sproutings or that keen squaw stuff.’

      Carrie smiled as Angela pulled a bleurgh face.

      ‘And he must wear contacts. No one’s eyes are that blue.’

      Richard’s were. To hide the ping of protest her heart made, Carrie let out a mirthless laugh, cupping the mug of tea to take a sip.

      ‘Sweet of Alan to come with us.’ Angela’s eyes were guileless and her smile kind.

      ‘Subtle.’

      Angela shrugged. ‘He’s lovely. You’ve been seeing each other for a while.’