Page 38 of All Summer Long

He looked nonplussed. ‘Being sarcastic isn’t going to help anyone, is it?’ He glanced around. ‘Look. Let me take you for dinner tonight. Anywhere you fancy. You pick.’

‘You really think it’s going to be easier to talk in a crowded restaurant than an empty bar?’ He always did like an audience to play off.

‘Ali, I want to come home. I made a huge fucking mistake and I regret it more than you know,’ he said, suddenly reaching out across the table and gripping her hand as she went for her drink.

‘Felicity was a nightmare. Total and utter crazy shrew, all she cares about is how she looks in the newspaper, her reviews, and her next career move. She’s cold and so damn needy, she couldn’t care less about my career as long as hers is all right. ’

Alice couldn’t help but see the irony. He’d managed to find someone more narcissistic than himself.

‘So it’s over between you two?’

He huffed. ‘She’s gone to the States for a job that by rights should have been mine. Couldn’t have us both on the show, they said, too much personal conflict. Load of bollocks, of course. She was obviously more obliging on the casting couch than I was.’

Listening to him reminded Alice all too starkly of many mornings spent poring over the morning papers for reviews, full of bile and bitterness for anyone who’d fared well with the critics. Pulling her hand out from under his, she played with the stem of her glass.

‘So because she’s left you and gone to America, you’ve decided to come back to me?’

He looked aghast. ‘That wasn’t what I said at all. It was over between us before that. I should never have left you for her.’

He stopped short of saying sorry. In fact he’d never said sorry at all.

‘I’m not saying we can just pick up where we left off, I know it’s not going to be as easy as all that, but we’re still married, Ali. Let’s move back into the manor and get our lives back on track.’

His mention of the manor had her heart beating harder.

‘What’s the big deal about the manor, Brad? You were never really fussed when you lived in it, but now you suddenly love it?’

Brad tried the puppy-dog eyes. ‘I miss it. I miss living there with my favourite girl.’

They were words clearly designed to soften her heart, yet strangely they had the opposite effect.

‘The manor’s rented out. You couldn’t move back in there even if you wanted to.’

Brad laughed. ‘I can get us out of that agreement early. I’ve already spoken to the leasing agency to get on it.’

‘You’ve asked them to speak to Robinson about leaving sooner than planned?’ The red mists were descending.

Brad nodded, staring at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Is that a problem?’

He was testing her, playing games she didn’t want to play.

‘Yes,’ she said, quiet and clear. ‘Yes, it’s a problem.

That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?

You were fine when I was heartbroken, but now that you can see me moving on you can’t stand it.

You’ve come back here to throw your weight around, to prove to yourself that you can have me anytime you choose.

Well, here’s the thing, Brad. You waited too long.

You gave me enough time to see that there is actually such a thing as life without you, and what’s more it’s bloody good, too.

I’ve got friends, and I’ve got plans, and I’ve got … ’

Her voice grew slowly louder as she spoke, and Brad’s eyes grew slowly colder as he realised that his charms weren’t going to be enough to get his own way this time.

‘What? You’ve got what, Alice, or should I say you’ve got who?

Because let’s face it, we both know you’re shagging our tenant.

It’s a bit desperate, isn’t it? You love that fucking house so much that you’re prepared to sleep with any random yank who turns up, blows smoke up your ass and pays the rent?

’ He half laughed and then put his hands up to stop her from interrupting him.

‘But you know what, it’s okay. I deserved you to do that to me.

I deserved you to sleep with someone else.

In a funny way it sort of makes us even, doesn’t it? ’

It was difficult for Alice to know which bit of his speech pissed her off more. On reflection it was the fact that he’d called Robinson names, so she started there.

‘Some random yank? You really don’t know who he is?’ she raised her eyebrows. ‘You surprise me, what with him being a fellow celebrity and all. Only far more famous, of course.’

A slow red flush crept up from Brad’s neck, as if he were actually on fire on the inside. ‘Who is he?’ he ground out.

Alice shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter who he is.

He’s not blowing smoke up my ass, but you’re dead right about the sex, Brad.

We are having amazing, brilliant sex, the sort of sex that I didn’t even know people really actually had, and he’s not going home until he’s good and ready, no matter what you or the stupid letting agent says. ’

In the long run she probably wouldn’t be proud of the things she’d just said, but in the heat of the moment she meant every word and enjoyed the fact that Brad looked as if he was going to spontaneously combust with fury.

‘Who. Is. He?’ Brad forced the three words between his gritted teeth.

Alice shook her head. ‘That’s what’s really got under your skin here, isn’t it?

It’s not that I’m sleeping with someone else, it’s that I’m sleeping with someone more famous than you, isn’t it?

’ She rammed her chair back and stood up.

‘Well, let me tell you something, Brad McBride. He’s not just more famous than you, he’s kinder, and sexier and all round better in just about every way.

Go back to London, Brad. Go back and find yourself another Felicity to massage your ego, because I’m officially done with you. ’

‘Fine!’ he yelled at her back as she walked towards the door. ‘Fine. Go back to your love nest, Alice. Go back and make the most of it while you still can, because that house is bloody well mine and I’m having it back whether you like it or not!’

Alice turned back to him at the door, willing her voice to sound stronger than she felt inside.

‘Go ahead, Brad, do your worst. When you left I felt as if I’d lost everything in my life that mattered to me, but I was wrong. I still had my home. Borne Manor is the one thing I’m not prepared to lose in all of this.’

‘Then I’ll see you and lover boy in court,’ he said, with what she could only describe as a flounce.

She shook her head and sighed. ‘One day you might realise that real life isn’t some corny soap opera.’

‘Says the woman addicted to sleeping with the stars,’ he snapped.

‘As always, you overestimate yourself.’ She walked out of the pub and left him there to stew in his own jealous juices.

Alice was too worked up to notice The Siren’s other resident lurking outside in the hallway. Marsh turned smoothly away from her as she stormed from the pub, and then sidled into the bar when she was safely out of the way.

He looked at Brad and feigned concern. ‘You look like a man who could use a whisky,’ he said, then knocked on the bar for service.

‘Bottle of bourbon and two glasses,’ he ordered when Jase appeared, then took the seat that Alice had recently vacated and bared his teeth in what he hoped might look like a sympathetic smile.