Jill Mansell - Sheer Mischief

SHEER MISCHIEF

By

Jill Mansell

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Cha

pter 41

Chapter 42

Cha

pter 43

Cha

pter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to Mum, as ever, for all those hours at the word processor; Dad, the only one who understands it; Tina, babysitter extraordinaire; and Pearl, Sarah and Cino who all helped too.

Chapter 1

Running away from her boring old fiancé had seemed such a brilliant idea at the time. It was just a shame, Maxine decided, that running out of boring old petrol four hours later should be turning out to be so much less fun.

‘Oh please, don’t be mean,’ she begged, but the middle-aged petrol-pump attendant remained unmoved.

‘Look,’ he repeated heavily, ‘you’ve filled your car up with twenty pounds’ worth o’ petrol.

Now you tell me you’ve only got seventy-three pence on you. You ain’t got no credit cards, no cheque book, nor no identification. So I don’t have no choice but to call the police.’

Maxine’s credit cards, house keys and cheque book were back in London, lurking somewhere at the bottom of the Thames. Exasperated beyond belief by the man’s uncharitable attitude, she wondered how and when the inhabitants of Cornwall had ever managed to acquire their reputation for friendliness. As far as she was concerned, it was a filthy lie.

‘But I’ll pay you back, I promise I will,’ she said in wheedling tones. ‘This is just silly. I don’t know why you won’t trust me ...’

The attendant had a glass eye which glinted alarmingly in the sunlight. Fixing her with the bloodshot good one and evidently immune to the charms of hapless blondes with beguiling smiles, he exhaled heavily and reached for the phone.

‘Because it’s seven o’clock in the morning,’ he replied, as if she were being deliberately stupid. ‘Because you can’t pay for your petrol. And because you’re wearing a wedding dress.’

Janey Sinclair, peering out of her bedroom window overlooking Trezale’s picturesque high street, was embarrassed. She’d had twenty-six years in which to get used to being shown up by her younger sister but it still happened. What was really unfair, she thought sleepily, was the fact that none of it ever seemed to faze Maxine.

‘Sshh,’ she hissed, praying that none of her neighbours were yet awake. ‘Wait there, I’m coming down.’

‘Bring your purse!’ yelled Maxine, who didn’t care about the neighbours. ‘I need twenty pounds.’

What Maxine really needed, Janey decided, was strangling.

‘OK,’ she said, opening the front door and wearily surveying the scene. ‘Don’t tell me.

You’re eloping with our local policeman and you need the money for the marriage licence. Tom, are you sure you’re doing the right thing here? Your wife’s going to be furious when she finds out, and my sister’s a lousy cook.’

Tom Lacey, Trezale’s local policeman, had been married for ten months and his wife was due to give birth at any moment, yet he was blushing with pleasure like a schoolboy. Janey heaved an inward sigh and wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

Maxine, however, simply grinned. ‘I did offer. He turned me down.’

Janey pulled her creased, yellow and white dressing gown more tightly around her waist.

That was something else about Maxine, she always managed to upstage everyone around her.

And although it was still relatively early on a Sunday morning, it was also mid-July, practically the height of the holiday season. Tourists, unwilling to waste a moment of their precious time in Cornwall, were making their way along the high street, heading for the beach but pausing to watch the diversion outside the florist’s shop. They couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, but it looked interesting. One small boy, deeply tanned and wearing only white shorts, deck shoes and a camera slung around his neck, was even taking surreptitious photographs.

‘So why are you wearing a wedding dress?’ she demanded, then flapped her arms in a gesture of dismissal. Maxine’s explanations tended to be both dramatic and long-winded. ‘No, don’t bother. Here’s the twenty pounds. Can we go inside now or are you really under arrest?’

But Maxine, having whisked the money from her sister’s grasp and popped the rolled-up notes into her cleavage, was already sliding back into the passenger seat of the panda. ‘My car’s being held hostage,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Tom just has to take me to pay the ransom first, but we’ll be back in forty minutes. Tom, are you as hungry as I am?’

‘Well ...’ Tom, who was always hungry, managed a sheepish grin.

‘There, you see. We’re both absolutely starving,’ declared Maxine, gazing with longing at the array of switches studding the dashboard and wondering which of them controlled the siren.

Then, fastening her seatbelt and flashing her sister a dazzling grin, she added, ‘But you mustn’t go to too much trouble, darling. Just bacon and eggs will be fine.’

Tom, to his chagrin, was called away instead to investigate the case of the stolen parasol outside the Trezale Bay Hotel.

‘Toast and Marmite?’ Maxine looked disappointed but bit into a slice anyway. Rearranging her voluminous white skirts and plonking herself down on one of the wrought-iron chairs on the tiny, sunlit patio, she kicked off her satin shoes and wriggled her toes pleasurably against the warm flagstones.

‘Why don’t you change into something less ... formal?’ Janey, who was wearing white shorts and a primrose-yellow camisole top, poured the coffee. ‘Where’s your suitcase, in the car?’

Maxine, having demolished the first slice of thickly buttered toast, leaned across and helped herself to a second.

‘No money, no suitcase,’ she said with a shrug. ‘No nothing! You’ll just have to lend me something of yours.’ Janey had looked forward all week to this Sunday, when nothing was precisely what she had planned on doing. A really good lie-in, she thought dryly, followed by hours of blissful, uninterrupted nothing. And instead, she had this.

‘Go on then,’ she said as Maxine stirred three heaped spoonsful of sugar into her coffee cup and shooed away an interested wasp. ‘Tell me what’s happened. And remember, you woke me up for this so it had better be good.’

She had to concede, ten minutes later, that it was pretty good. Three years at drama school might not have resulted in the dreamed-of glittering acting career, but Maxine certainly knew how to make the most of telling a story. In the course of describing the events of the previous night her hands, eyebrows – even her bare feet – became involved.

‘... So there we were, expected to arrive at this fancy-dress party in less than an hour, and bloody Maurice hadn’t even remembered to tell me it was on. Well, being Maurice, he phoned his mother and she was round in a flash with her old wedding dress tucked under her skinny arm.

It’s a Schiaparelli, can you believe? So we ended up at this chronic company party as a bride-and-sodding groom and everyone was sniggering like mad because the thought of us ever actually tying the knot was evidently too funny for words. And I realized then that they were right – I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending to be a dutiful banker’s wife and having to socialize with a bunch of boring stuffed shirts. So I told Maurice it was over, and then I told the stuffed shirts and their smirking wives exactly what I thought of them too. Poor Maurice; as far as he was concerned, that really was the last straw. It didn’t matter that I’d humiliated him, but insulting all the directors was too much. Janey, I’ve never seen him so mad! He dragged me backwards out of the hotel and told me I wasn’t worth his mother’s old slippers, let alone her precious wedding dress. ‘I screamed back that as he was such an old woman he should be wearing the bloody dress! Then I kicked him because he wouldn’t let go of me, so he called me a spoilt, spiteful, money-grabbing delinquent and chucked my evening bag into the Thames.’ She paused, then concluded mournfully, ‘It had everything in it. My favourite Estée Lauder eyeshadow palette ... everything.’

All the toast had gone. Janey, reminding herself that it didn’t matter, she was supposed to be on a diet anyway, cradled her lukewarm coffee in both hands and remarked, ‘Bit daring, for Maurice. So then what did you do?’

‘Well, luckily we’d taken my car. All my keys were in the river, of course, but I’ve always kept a spare in the glove compartment and the driver’s door is a doddle — you can open it with a hair slide. I just jumped in, drove off and left Maurice standing in the middle of the road with his mouth going like a guppy. But I knew I couldn’t break into the flat — he’s got that place alarmed to the eyeballs — so I headed for the M4 instead. And because the one thing I did have was a full tank of petrol, I thought I’d come and visit my big sister.’