Odette held her head high until they got outside the door of the private dining room, when her legs almost collapsed underneath her. Luckily, the manager was chatting to the maître d’ at the front door and immediately came to their aid.
‘Come this way. My office is right here.’
‘No, it’s okay. We’ll just wait outside for my c—’ Odette began, but Calvin interrupted her.
‘Odette, darling, Harry will be at least ten minutes by the time he gets here from the car park. Let’s just go in here and you can have a seat away from the piranhas while we wait.’
Over the top of Odette’s head, Calvin gave Tress a worried glance, and her first thought was that she wished Noah was here. Her second thought? She still wished Noah was here. He’d know what to do and he’d take care of everyone and everything, he’d sort the whole damn situation out in a heartbeat because that was who he was.
Unlike that absolute arse next door.
What had she been thinking, going on a date with that guy? Or not thinking?
She’d been so determined not to let the memory of Max and his actions take this day from her that she’d given it to another narcissistic dickhead instead. Was she never going to learn?
Tress felt her throat tighten with the urge to cry and shook it off. Right now wasn’t about her. It was about this poor woman who was now sitting on a chair in the manager’s office, looking like every drop of blood had been sucked out of her. Which, she supposed, it had, by the vultures in the other room. They’d lapped up every second of that exposé, no doubt trying to work out how each of them could capitalise on it.
Calvin had his phone out of his pocket now and was calling for Odette’s car, so Tress knelt down on the floor beside her chair.
‘How are you doing there, Odette?’
The older woman shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know why you’re still speaking to me. Didn’t you see what I did?’
Tress nodded, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. ‘I saw. But I don’t like to make judgements on just one side of the story.’
‘It’s all true,’ Odette said softly, sadly, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Biggest regret of my life. Actually, that’s a lie too, because if I could go back, I don’t know that I’d change it. I’m not a good person, Tress.’
‘Well, none of us are perfect.’ It wasn’t that she was letting Odette off the hook for whatever she’d done, but she still didn’tunderstand the full picture. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to walk away from her right now.
The conversation from earlier came back to her, right at the same time as a name she’d heard uttered in the documentary preview. What had the woman said? ‘There were three of us who went to the audition. Of course, she wasn’t Odette then. She was just plain Olive Docherty. Anyway, me, Olive and our pal, Nancy…’
Tress was getting cramp in her legs, so she got up, grabbed the office chair and wheeled it over, so that she was sitting next to Odette, instead of kneeling on the floor. ‘Wait a minute, has this all got something to do with why you were looking for Nancy?’
Odette nodded. ‘I didn’t have the nerve to look for Fiona, because she was the one that I did that to. Took away her dreams. But I thought if I could find Nancy, I could ask her what happened to Fiona, find out if her life had turned out great. Fiona was from Weirbridge too. Nancy always knew the story on everyone back then, and I didn’t doubt she’d still know it now. She was the only person I could think of who might be able to tell me where Fiona was and if she was happy. If she was, then maybe I could convince myself that I wasn’t as evil as I thought. Maybe my karma would sort itself out, once I knew she was okay. Turns out she wasn’t. Like I said, it was cowardly.’
Tress wondered what Nancy would have done if Odette had turned up at the door. She valued loyalty above all else, but she wasn’t cruel – she’d probably have invited her in for tea and broken out the caramel wafers while she listened to what Odette had to say.
She searched around for her bag and realised it was still next door. Bugger.
‘Listen, Odette, I’m just going to nip back through and grab my bag. My phone is in it and then if you still want me to callNancy, I will. Even though you know the answer to what you were trying to find out, maybe it will be nice to hear the voice of an old friend again.’
‘I’m not a friend now, though. I dropped every single one of them as soon as I got the part. Too ashamed to face Fiona. Too scared I’d get found out. Like I said, I’m really not a good person.’
‘Well, I’ll make my own mind up about that,’ Tress told her, getting worried about the streams of tears that were sliding down Odette’s face.
Odette’s hand seemed to tighten on hers, and for a moment, Tress thought that she wasn’t going to let her go. Then she released her with another sad smile. ‘It’s okay, pet. You go back through to the party. I think your date is still there.’
‘I think I told him to fuck off right before I came in here.’
Odette sniffed, wiped away the tears and collected herself. There was a tiny glint in her eye as she said, ‘I thought I heard you say that, but I wasn’t sure.’
‘You were right to warn me about him, Odette. Why do I never see the clowns? He’s the first guy I’ve dated in a year, and I picked someone as vile as him.’
‘I picked four of them, pet. All that stuff about wisdom coming with age is nonsense.’
‘Thanks,’ Tress said with a warm chuckle, ‘I’ll bear that in mind. I’m thinking a convent might be the way to go.’
She was just trying to keep Odette talking, keep her focus away from the fact that Calvin was now hitting his phone on the desk, saying, ‘Buggery bugger bastard. What the hell is wrong with this bloody phone? I’ve got four bastarding bars!’
