Page 4 of Guilty Pleasures

As he held her she caught their reflection in the glass.

It had taken Emma time to grow into her looks but at 29 even her own natural modesty could not deny that she looked good. At work, she always downplayed her attractiveness by wearing little or no make-up, but then she had a naturalness that suited it. Wavy, dark-blonde hair fell to her shoulders, her cheekbones were high, her mouth naturally full, and when she smiled it warmed up her intelligent grey eyes.

Moving closer, Mark slipped his fingers between two buttons of her shirt and under the lacy fold of her bra until his fingertips brushed her nipple.

Mark said, ‘You’re so beautiful.’

Emma would usually deflect compliments, deny them, or make them into a joke, but his touch seemed to sear her skin.

‘I love you,’ he whispered suddenly, looking into her eyes. Emma felt her stomach gallop.

‘You mean it?’ she said not knowing of any other way to respond.

He nodded pushing back a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

She let her body sink into his, and for the first time in weeks she felt such a sense of calm and belonging that she welled up with emotion.

‘I love you too,’ she whispered.

Mark moved his lips towards her neck running them down her skin.

‘I’m sure I saw a bed somewhere around here,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse with desire. ‘I think it’s about time we went and checked it out.’

She kissed him on the mouth, then started unbuttoning his shirt all the way down to his navel.

‘Who needs a bed?’ she asked, looking up and smiling wickedly.

2

Nothing as dramatic – or enjoyable – as getting snowed into a luxurious Vermont log cabin made Emma late for her uncle’s funeral.

Her Sunday evening flight had been sitting on the runway for three hours and it was this that had thrown her entire schedule off kilter. That was the way Emma functioned; with order and precision and just a little margin left over as a safety net. But this time even her careful approach had let her down; by the time the taxi had made the fifty-mile journey from Heathrow to the tiny Oxfordshire village of Chilcot where the funeral was being held, she could already hear the rousing sound of hymns coming from inside the church.

‘Shit, shit, shit, it’s started,’ she mumbled, making a dash for the church. Wincing as the double doors groaned loudly she squeezed inside and slipped into the end of the nearest pew.

‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live.’

As she listened to the hollow sound of the vicar’s voice echoing around the small church, Emma felt a pang of regret wash over her.

It had been three years since she had seen her Uncle Saul. Working at Price Donahue had meant that her holiday time was cut to a miserly two weeks a year. There was barely enough time to get to Martha’s Vineyard let alone make the long journey to her family home. She should have made the time but she hadn’t and now it was too late. Saul was dead, his coffin festooned with roses at the front of the altar. The life-force of the family, the bon viveur, the glue that had seemed to hold everyone together, was gone.

Emma’s own father was buried in Chilcot church’s grounds and it made the day seem even more poignant. She shut her eyes and for a split second she pictured herself running around Saul’s villa as a little girl the summer before her father died. She could still almost smell Les Fleurs; the riot of scent from pine to jasmine, lavender to thyme. She remembered the wonder of seeing hilltop medieval villages for the first time and the illicit swigs of rosé smuggled from the kitchens by Cassandra. It had been the last perfect summer.

The service ended with ‘Jerusalem’, after which the coffin was carried down the aisle and the congregation streamed out into the grounds. Emma estimated there were over 200 people crammed into the narrow aisles; it was no wonder. Saul had been the patriarch of the village and Milford was still the main employer of most of its residents. It explained why so many of them were here, spilling out of the church, some of them in tears. Searching the crowd she vaguely recognized senior managers from the company. There was also a peppering of the London crowd that Saul had hung around with for four decades: elegant women with smart hats and impressive-looking husbands, well-known businessmen, politicians. She recognized Soraya, the Sixties supermodel, Terry O’Neill, even a handful of ageing rock stars.

‘Finally,’ said a disapproving voice behind her accompanied by a tap on the shoulder. ‘Please tell me you were at the back of the church.’

‘Yes, Mother, I was at the back of the church,’ said Emma with a sigh, leaning in to kiss her mother Virginia. She was exquisitely dressed in a charcoal suit, her silver blonde hair swung in an elegant bob around her pinched disapproving face. At almost sixty, she was still beautiful in a way Emma was not, finely boned, elegant, regal.

‘My plane was three hours late. You did get my message?’

‘Your mother was worried sick,’ snapped the man standing next to Emma’s mother. Jonathon Bond was her mother’s second husband. A stockbroker with pewter hair combed back in a slightly sinister style and a perpetually anxious expression, he had married Virginia within three years of Emma’s father’s death when she was still only ten. It was approximately at that point that Emma had begun to feel as if she were surplus to requirements within her own family. Emma liked to tell herself that she hadn’t intentionally drifted apart from them, but the truth was she had wanted to leave England to escape from a mother who seemed to have no interest in anything outside her new marriage. But if she had subconsciously tried to punish her mother by moving to another continent, Virginia hadn’t seemed to have been particularly bothered.

Today was the first time she had seen her mother in six months. She had invited her mot

her and Jonathon over to Boston for New Year, but Virginia had declined, saying Jonathon had to be at the office over the holiday. She’d since learnt from her cousin Tom that they’d actually spent New Year staying at the Four Seasons in Manhattan instead. Emma had thought she had stopped feeling disappointed with her mother but it seemed as if this was something she would never get over.

‘Cassandra was here early,’ said Virginia shortly, ‘She had to come all the way from some fashion show in New York.’