Bad, bad days.
But she’d come through all that. She had slowly, surely, rebuilt her life. Layla was nineteen now – a young woman. Things between them were still… well, frigid would be a good word for it. Layla was polite but distant. No more, no less. She had a job in an accountancy firm, she was hyper-bright, could add a column of figures in record time.
As for Annie… well, she’d learned to drive. Bought herself a top-of-the-range car. Treated herself to some designer gear: a few Yves St Laurent pieces, a lot of Chanel, some cunningly constructed items from Betty Jackson and Balenciaga. She indulged in high-end holidays, regularly jetted back and forth to the States, checked out the Times Square club, visited with Alberto her stepson, made something of a life for herself.
And… she’d started dating.
She glanced at her date as he paid the bill, left a hefty tip for their waiter. No, her date wasn’t mean. But he’d been rude and snappy to the poor little bastard more than once this evening, trying no doubt to impress her or maybe the other diners with his standing as a gourmand, his expectation of only ever receiving the very best. David Fairbright. Good-looking, wealthy but not mean with his money, and tall – taller than Max.
Shit, now why had she thought of him?
As they went out to the taxi, she pushed her ex-husband out of her mind.
‘Nice dinner,’ David said as they sat in the back of the cab on its way to Holland Park.
‘Lovely,’ she replied, although she couldn’t even remember what she’d eaten. And his treatment of the waiter had annoyed her.
‘You haven’t been there before?’ he asked.
‘No. Never.’
Silence fell. Silence had been falling between them all evening, and it wasn’t an easy companionable one either. The fact was, he didn’t know what to say to her and she wasn’t interested enough to come up with something to say to him. Annie suspected that he found her slightly intimidating. A lot of men did. She was wealthy in her own right, and some men – David included, she thought, for all his pumped-up self-importance and yes he was a bit of a bolshy git – couldn’t handle that.
That, and her background. Which was colourful, to say the least.
They’d talked on their first date, about their divorces. She had mentioned Max’s name. And she suspected that since then David had been doing a little homework, because he seemed a fraction cooler this time. Now that he knew about Max, and about her, she suspected their second date would also be their last.
The taxi pulled up outside the Holland Park house. Annie got out, and David did too, paying off the taxi driver, who drove away.