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Veronica’s attention was caught by a cru out at the back of the book, her heart accelerating as she realised it was frolish equivalent of the French tabloid she had picked up on the train, and featured a very faraphs
‘I haven’t had ti it free and sht the paper at the airport and it’s been stuffed in her luggage, so I’ll have to iron it first’
‘That’s Max Foster’ Sophie’s stubby finger unnecessarily identified the pugnacious Scottish action-filraph last year And, see—there’s Luc squidged between him and that blonde lady—’
A very beautiful blonde lady, Veronica araphs of the trio at a restaurant table were hting, others of the two men in a wild scuffle were better lit but blurred byinto Luc’s half-obscured face Wild-eyed Max Foster hoggedlike a dissipated copy of the macho characters the forty-five-year-old actor played on the big screen, and notoriously carried over into his turbulent private life
It was no wonder she hadn’t recognised Luc at a glance, Veronica thought as she stared at the dark, grainy pictures As well as being slightly out of focus in most of the shots, he was dressed with alien black-tie forainst his inky jacket his pony-tail was invisible, leaving his hair looking as if it were cropped short
The accoed Luc variously as a ‘secretive tycoon’ and ‘-time close friend’ and ‘frequent private coht-year-old wife of a rising star in the House of Co moral leadership and emphasis on his own stable horound were rapidly building him a political power-base, and his attractive, Oxford-educated as considered one of his vital social assets
According to the copy, Max Foster had been ‘off his face’ when he entered the restaurant of the small and exclusive Mayfair hotel to join Lucien Ryder at his table But when the ‘fu millionaire’ took exception to offensive remarks about Elise Malcolm he followed the actor to the restroofest’ had spilled out into the hall, only ending when hotel security staff had pulled the two angry men apart
There was a great deal of speculative innuendo about the words that had given such offence, and what the ‘elusive financier’ and his ‘distraught co having a late-night supper in a restaurant that catered solely to hotel residents and their invited guests Much was un swirling nearly a fortnight before the photographs had surfaced in the press, Andrew Malcolm had been conspicuously silent about the state of his ten-year e
Careful to avoid libel by actually stating it, the paper was inviting the inference that Foster’s drunken antics had blown the whistle on Luc’s long-standing affair with Malcolm’s wife
‘Does Luc know you’ve got this?’ Veronica asked carefully, fighting a sudden urge to tear the thing into ato read between the lines of the report—to her it was just a story about a fight Luc had with a famous film star
But Sophie surprised her ‘Of course he does,’ she said ‘I already showed him the whole scrapbook Mum doesn’t want me to put this in, but Luc said that would be like censorship—if I’ to keep a record of his life then it should be a proper one that shows the bad as well as the good He said a biography isn’t true to life if it doesn’t show a person warts and all…’
But this was a rather large, ugly and disfiguring wart, Veronica thought unhappily The kind of painful blemish that could create scandals, wreck careers…and break hearts
No wonder Luc hadn’t wanted her to know about it She half wished now that she didn’t, but it was too late to turn back the clock
Just as she was lecturing herself not to ju conclusions on flimsy evidence from a tainted source the way she had over Karen, she looked up to see Luc in the doorway, and couldn’t help her guilty start at his realisation of what she and Sophie were holding
His sranite, and to Veronica’s despair the shi skein of invisible awareness that had vibrated between them ever since Paris suddenly winked out of existence