Brooke laughed.
‘Sorry,’ whispered the woman. ‘It can get a little tedious at these things, so I like to have a little joke.’
Brooke smiled, grateful that she had found at least one kindred spirit.
‘I thought the whole point of a party was to enjoy yourself,’ agreed Brooke. ‘Although no one exactly looks as if they’re having a good time tonight.’
‘Well, parties like this are all about alignment. David always used to say, “We can’t socialize with who we want to all of the time.” He’s right, of course. The people in that room will be advising government in five years’ time. Some already are.’
She took a sip of champagne and held out a pale hand. ‘Alicia Wintrop,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the engagement party. I hear it was fantastic.’
It took a second for Brooke to make the connection, then her heart lurched. David had once dated a girl called Ally Wintrop.
‘You’re Ally Wintrop?’
Alicia laughed. ‘Oh I know, old names die hard, don’t they? David and I dated when we were kids. Our families had cottages in Newport just by one another. Everyone knew me as Ally back then.’
‘Oh, I thought you dated more recently than that,’ said Brooke as casually as she could.
Alicia nodded. ‘I worked in Rome after college … I was at Brown two or three years ahead of you, I think.
‘You were at Brown?’ replied Brooke curiously.
She nodded. ‘Anyway, David and I started dating again when I came back to New York, but when David got the foreign news job at CTV I just couldn’t handle all that travel. It felt like I was dating a nomad. I think we were just both too busy to be together.’
‘Oh really. Too busy?’ said Brooke with as much politeness as she could muster.
‘Um-hmm,’ said Alicia. ‘I curate a gallery downtown. The Halcyon on Spring Street. Fabulous exhibition on at the moment of Masai warrior painters. They paint with spears; it’s so conceptual. You must come down. I do some art consulting too, in Europe. I spend an awful lot of Russian money.’
Brooke started planning her escape strategy. She knew, of course, that David had a past with plenty of ex-girlfriends, but she didn’t particularly want to stand there talking to one. She realized that she was squeezing her champagne flute a little too tightly.
‘I’m sorry about that business with the Oracle,’ said Alicia. She sounded sympathetic, but Brooke wasn’t convinced.
Brooke shrugged. ‘I guess it goes with the turf.’
‘Luckily I didn’t have it so much,’ said Alicia lightly. ‘Perhaps it would have been different if we had become engaged. Or perhaps we were too obvious a couple to be interesting.’
Brooke smiled thinly. Before she could feign a headache to get away, David came over and handed her a glass of champagne. He looked buoyed up and happy.
‘So you too have finally met?’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not telling her any of our secrets,’ said Alicia, nudging David playfully, tilting her face up to smile at him.
‘I don’t want to know,’ said Brooke, forcing a smile.
‘Well, I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it,’ said Alicia. ‘I simply must go and compliment Graydon and Estella on their new Lucian Freud.’
As they spent the next half-hour drifting from group to group, Brooke floated at the fringes, keeping a close eye on both David and Alicia. David’s ex had now returned to the man she had come with, a sombre-looking man in a dark suit and heavy-framed glasses – an architect, according to David. To a disinterested observer, Brooke was simply standing by the window, enjoying the view, soaking up the rarefied atmosphere, whereas in actual fact she was looking for any telltale signs that David was still interested in Alicia – a sly glance or an ever-so-casual touch, perhaps. There was nothing; they barely even spoke. Slowly Brooke’s irritation at having been ambushed by David’s ex turned to fascination as she watched them both expertly working the room. David was magnetic, and not just because of the good looks she had fallen in love with; he had a natural composure and a good-natured confidence. He spoke with conviction and authority and he had an indefinable presence that seemed to fill the space he was in. Alicia had another tactic entirely. When Brooke was close to her, she eavesdropped on Alicia’s conversation, and it was soon clear that she had nothing particularly clever or interesting to say, but she had something more powerful than intelligence or wit. Alicia was a world-class flirt. She flirted not with sexual invitation, but in a way that the person she was talking to felt like the most important person in the room. Consequently, they responded to her as if she were spouting Descartes.
Brooke glanced at her watch. It was almost eleven.
‘I know that look,’ whispered David into her ear. ‘You want to go, don’t you?’
She smiled at him gratefully. ‘Is it that obvious?’
They had only been at the party two hours, but to Brooke it had felt like an eternity. She didn’t miss all the surreptitious glances sent her way, or the whispered comments when she was just out of range. Her mouth was aching from the permanent smile etched on it. She felt like the village idiot.
They rode down in the elevator and, when they stepped outside onto Fifth Avenue, Brooke felt her shoulders relax. A cone of moonlight shone down on them and he turned to her and kissed her, his tongue licking the inside of her mouth. It was delicious and quite unexpected – spontaneous kisses, especially those in public places, were becoming thinner on the ground as they were constantly watched. His driver was parked across on the far corner and they walked to the car with his arm around her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry we were there so long,’ he said, opening the door of the Lexus for her. ‘But it wasn’t that bad, was it?’
‘Oh honey it was,’ she laughed.
‘I didn’t hear one person mention Jeff Daniels.’
‘They would hardly discuss the ins and outs of some scurrilous tabloid story with you,’ she said. ‘But believe me, they all knew the details.’
He was silent for a moment as the car engine started. ‘You seemed to be getting on well with Ally.’
‘She’s nice …’ said Brooke obtusely.
‘You’re not jealous?’ he said, laughing softly.
‘I don’t trust her,’ she blurted out.
‘Trust her? What do you mean?’
‘Call me crazy,’ said Brooke, ‘but I’ve just got this feeling.’
‘A feeling about what?’ asked David. His words were measured, clipped. She could tell he was annoyed at the ‘trust’ jibe. Brooke supposed he had a point, considering how understanding he’d been about the Jeff Daniels accusations.
‘I just wondered if it was Alicia who leaked the Oracle gossip story,’ said Brooke.
‘What?’
‘Look, I spoke to Tess Garrett today and she said the story came from one of your ex-girlfriends.’
‘It sounds to me as if Tess Garrett is trying to justify her existence.’
‘She sounded pretty sure.’
‘On what basis?’
‘A source at the Oracle.’
He pursed his lips together.
Brooke paused before saying anything more. She never liked bringing up the subject of past girlfriends. In her experience it only made you look jealous or needy or both.
‘Aren’t