Distraction

Chapter Forty

The camera flashes startled her, but Libby maintained her cool smile as Paolo helped her from the taxi. Several photographers yelled to him, asking for her name. He obliged, but told them nothing more. Together they headed toward the burly doormen, Libby striding out on her highest black heels.

'You look beautiful. A real star,' Paolo whispered. 'You sure you don't want to be fabulous in London with me and go to all the best parties?'

She laughed, in her element. Here, she didn't worry about not having real world curves like Zoe and Grace. Here, she walked amongst neurotic models and size zero actresses. Here, Libby blended in. Tomorrow, the cannier journalists would discover Olivia Wilde was a ballerina, a ballerina who hadn't danced for three years. Her anonymity would be over and she'd become known as the Broken Ballerina.

Inside the Kensington art gallery, Libby and Paolo drifted around, studying the bizarre paintings and even more bizarre sculptures. Just about everyone they met air-kissed and hugged him. This was Paolo, her destitute ex-boyfriend, who'd lived in more squats than he'd held down real jobs. Now he wore a cutting edge suit and Italian leather shoes. She missed his threadbare jeans and Converse boots.

'Some art, I just don't get,' Libby said, frowning at a three dimensional, upside down papier-mache representation of Van Gogh's sunflowers. 'So which is Dani, the artist?'

'He's the woman with the red beehive by the bar.'

Libby giggled. 'A transvestite. Awesome. I'm so glad your art is recognisable.'

With his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, they looked like the cosy couple they intended. Both had little to lose from any newspaper inches.

'You really do look beautiful,' Paolo said, kissing her shoulder.

'Thank you.'

She felt it. The silk top she'd once appropriated from Zoe's wardrobe and faux leather jeans had become her favourite outfit. When she and Patrick got down and dirty in the hallway, he'd admitted that in Oscar's, it'd taken all his self-control not to reach out and touch her, just to see if her breasts felt as good as they looked.

Libby crossed her ankles, trying to banish memories of the mind-blowing sex as she stared at a painting of a lilac pony galloping through a turquoise sea.

'Now, that I...' she said, glancing around, but Paolo was chatting to some guy in a kaftan.

Abandoned, she took a glass of mineral water off a passing waiter and wandered over to a trio of peach cows munching yellow grass. Cute, but the lilac horse rocked more. She glanced to the price tags. Seven grand for the cows? Five for the lilac horse? Crikey. Maybe she should take up dodgy arts and crafts. Two vast, snub-nosed pigs peered down at her, one lime green, the other sea-blue.

'Lucy, did you see here?' said a low Irish voice behind her. 'Do they not remind you of Portia and Prudence, Tabitha's old Kune Kune's?'

Libby turned. Seamus Doyle, he'd come. He stood with his head tipped to the side. Lucinda Doyle threw her head back, cooing over the painting, begging Seamus to buy it for Tabitha's birthday. If that woman had it in her to murder Maggie, Libby would eat her faux-leather jeans. Lucinda seemed more likely to drown someone in well-meaning hugs. Libby had to talk to Seamus. He was the last key person who knew Maggie.

'They're cute, but I prefer the lilac pony,' Libby said smiling at the pigs.

'Ah now, you've a cold, cold heart if it can't be melted by a couple of porcine beauties like these.' Seamus Doyle laughed, his eyes twinkling.

Libby couldn't help comparing him to Patrick - both tall, good-looking and both unwilling to offer their hearts to their broken ballerinas.

'Libby?' Paolo offered her a glass of wine.