Joker in the Pack (Blackwood UK #1)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

BY SATURDAY, ALL I wanted to do was crawl under my duvet and turn into the McDonald’s breakfast I’d just eaten. Normally, I didn’t touch fried food, but today I felt I deserved bonus points just for leaving the house.

The rest of the week hadn’t gone well. I’d finished one project, but I hadn’t picked up any new jobs to fill the gap in my finances despite hustling online. And I’d barely slept last night because one of my nine remaining clients was an inconsiderate pig. Derek Braithwaite, CEO of DB’s Sportswear, figured that in the digital age I should work twenty-four hours a day, so he’d sent over a change request at eleven in the evening. Most likely while he was in the pub, but he’d still expected me to implement it by opening hours the next morning, weekend or not.

And I couldn’t afford to lose him, no matter how unpalatable sucking up to him was.

I’d spent Thursday cancelling all the non-essentials—my health club membership, Netflix, those little organic snacks I got delivered every week. Even my fortnightly manicure. Mother had always drummed the importance of having perfect nails into me, but the stress had made me start biting them again.

But the biggest problem was my rent. In London, where a converted broom closet once sold for six figures, even the smallest flat cost four figures a month. And I was tied into my contract for the best part of a year.

Yesterday, I’d raked through my wardrobe and piled anything I could sell onto the couch. The designer dresses Edward bought me to wear to his corporate events could go to a consignment store, but the rest? I’d opened an eBay account and used the app on my phone to list fifty-seven lots.

But selling my excess clothes was a one-off. Once they were gone, they were gone. I still needed to conjure up another two hundred pounds a month from somewhere.

Looking at my beautiful clothes and knowing they wouldn’t be there much longer made my chest tighten, and that was followed by the telltale prickle of tears I’d experienced all too often lately. And that feeling was made even worse when I poured myself a glass of wine and decided to stalk Edward on Facebook.

“You did what?” Maddie asked an hour later after I’d sobbed down the phone at her.

“I know, I know. It was stupid.”

“No, Liv. Stupid was when Jenny Henderson called you fat in year nine, and we borrowed that frog from the biology lab to put in her locker.”

“We?”

“I only did it to help you out. How was I supposed to know the thing would escape from my bag in English and Miss Foster had a phobia of amphibians?”

“But he’s changed his status. He’s in a relationship with Becki Harris. A relationship! I thought it was a new thing, but from her photos, they’ve been shagging for over a year.”

“Think positive. He cheated on her with the tennis bitch and the ladyboy too.”

Becki’s profile showed a fondness for micro skirts, her eyebrows were habitually drawn on with a felt-tip, and if she didn’t have breast implants, someone had certainly got creative with Photoshop. And I already knew she had cellulite from the way Edward’s crystal chandelier had glinted off her backside when she legged it out of his dining room.

“I just can’t understand what he saw in her. He always said he preferred the natural look.”

“He lied about everything else. Why not that?”

Becki listed her occupations as executive assistant and model/actress, but a quick internet search showed her recent projects and they certainly didn’t involve Shakespeare.

“But seriously, Maddie—she starred in a film called Wenches vs. Werewolves .”

“I don’t think Edward and his friends hire their secretaries for their brains.”

Speaking of brains, I’d clearly misplaced mine. How could I have been so stupid?

Never again.

Never again would I trust a man.

The pain they brought simply wasn’t worth it.

When I didn’t answer Maddie’s calls on Saturday afternoon, she used her key and found me slumped on the sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles and the remains of a family-sized tin of Quality Street.

“Come on—we’re going out.”

“I haven’t got any money.”

“My treat.”

“I have to work.”

She leaned forward and sniffed my breath. “When you’ve been drinking?”

The last time I’d tried that, I’d got Longacres Garden Centre mixed up with Hair by Camilla and accidentally uploaded a banner reminding Camilla’s clients it was time to get their bushes trimmed. That little mistake had taken a lot of apologising.

“Maybe not.”

Maddie pulled me to my feet and shoved me in the direction of the shower. “Chop-chop. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

She wouldn’t give up; I knew that. Her tenacity in the face of my mother’s disapproval had kept her by my side since childhood.

While my mother had been a firm advocate of “keeping up with the Joneses,” she’d made an exception for Madonna Jones and her family. Maddie had worn hand-me-down clothes and lived in a council house, and my mother had never managed to see past that to the person underneath.

“Who on earth calls a child Madonna?” she’d asked one day. “It’s bordering on child abuse.”

I kept my mouth shut because my opinion wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. But no matter what my mother thought, Maddie and I had been inseparable.

When my father went through his midlife crisis, announced he was marrying a woman ten years his junior, and moved to Spain, it was Maddie who’d brought around the darts for us both to throw at the wedding photo he’d thoughtfully sent me.

After that, my mother had suffered her own breakdown, and we moved from our nice four-bedroom detached in Notting Hill to a pokey terraced shoebox. The doctors said Mother made a full recovery, but I knew better. Appearances meant everything to her, and giving up her life of luxury meant taking a huge hit to her social standing. I’d often wondered whether that was why she’d piled so much pressure onto me.

I’d been shunned by the popular set too, and I spent most of my GCSE year cowering behind the bike sheds to avoid their name-calling. Of course, then I’d failed my exams and hidden at Maddie’s for two days straight before I plucked up the courage to go home.

“You’re grounded, madam. Do you hear me?” Mother screeched when she found the results slip in my bag. “How could you do this to me?”

To her. Always to her. My feelings didn’t matter, and I couldn’t do anything right.

When I turned eighteen, Maddie was the one by my side when Mother lost her battle against lung cancer, blaming my father’s smoking habit to the end. And even as she slipped away, her remaining hair had been neatly curled, her lipstick perfect.

Now Maddie was here for me again. The least I could do was go out with her for the evening, and now she wandered into the bedroom while I finished getting dressed, a glass of wine in her right hand and a digestive biscuit in her left.

“You can’t go out wearing that. You look as if you’re in mourning.”

I glanced down at my black pencil skirt and matching blouse. “I am. My relationship died.”

“Stop thinking like that. I can tell I still have work to do.”

She rummaged through my closet, coming up with something sparkly that had somehow missed the eBay pile.

“Here, put this on.”

I unfolded the garment. Did I even buy that? “I’ll need some trousers to go with it.”

“Don’t you bloody dare!”

I put the offending item on, and it didn’t even come to mid-thigh.

“I can’t go out like this. It’s positively indecent.”

“Nonsense. You can and you are.”

The look of determination in her eyes said I wasn’t going to win this one.

“Fine. Just don’t make me pause on any street corners, because I’ll probably get arrested.”

She rolled her eyes. “Stop being so melodramatic.”

“You’re not the one who’s going to be flashing her underwear if there’s even the slightest breeze. Where are we going, anyway?”

“Oh, just a club.”

“A club? I thought we said dinner. I’m not sure I’m up to visiting somewhere rowdy.”

“Well, it’s more of a cabaret. And there’s a buffet.”

“Why don’t we get a takeaway instead?”

“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”

Adventure? Adventure? DeBrett’s girls didn’t need a sense of adventure. I had a sense of class, and I had a sense of decorum. That was all I needed.

Right?

Two hours later, I blinked under overly bright lights as I slid around on a black plastic chair. It had got a little slippery when I missed the stripper’s body with the baby oil and squirted it all over myself instead. No way would this dress be going on eBay. Once I’d peeled it off, it’d be heading straight for the bin.

With a dozen disturbingly named cocktails in me, I chanted along with the rest of the hen-night crowd in the audience.

“Strip! Strip! Strip!”

The muscle-bound hunk gyrating in front of me duly obliged and whipped off his leopard-print thong. He flashed the crowd then turned back to me, his sausage and meatballs swinging hypnotically just inches from my face. I couldn’t tear my gaze away.

This was great! Why hadn’t I thought of coming to a cabaret before?

The music was funky. The flashy lights were so pretty. And the men were really, really shiny. This was my new favourite thing!

As the music wound down, my new friend, Taurus, offered me his arm to help me back to my best friend in the whole wide world. I could see her waving at me from the front row. Both of her.

I waved back.

“Hiiiiiii, uh…”

What was her name again?

M-something? Mary? I was just puzzling over that when my feet shot out from under me. The crowd gasped as I grabbed at Taurus, but he was covered in so much oil he slid right out of my grasp.

What’s-her-name disappeared from view in slow motion, replaced by hot-pink spotlights and a wide-eyed hunk staring down at me. The last things I saw before it all went black were his muscled thighs overhead, meat and two veg looking so deliciously edible between them.

Oops.