(1998) Denial Read Online Free Page B

body, and couldn’timagine life without him. And she would still have been in love with him if he hadn’t let her down.
    If he had been honest with her . . . if he had kept his word . . .
    Not a million ifs, only a few, just the ones that mattered.
    She was surprised at her lack of feelings for him now. She’d been dreading this meeting, and wasn’t even sure why she had agreed to come. Perhaps because she felt sorry for him – he’d been distraught, phoning her incessantly, bombarding her with e-mails, faxes and flowers, pleading with her to change her mind. Or perhaps it was because she needed to see him one more time to be
absolutely
sure.
    And now she
was
absolutely sure. It was a huge relief. Finally, after seven years, she was free of the feelings that had enslaved her. She could pass the Caprice without any sudden pang. She could listen to ‘Lady in Red’, without being paralysed by an intense yearning for him. She could wake up in the morning without a deep pain inside her because it was Saturday morning and she wouldn’t be seeing him until Monday evening. And instead of his phone calls being the highlight of her days, they were now an intrusion.
    And, seven years on, the message that her mother, her sister, Lara, and her best friend, Roxy, had all been trying to drum into her head had got through.
    Brian Trussler, you are a complete fucking shit
.
    He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. ‘Amanda, don’t do this to me,’ he said. ‘I love you so much. I totally and utterly adore you.’
    ‘I know,’ she said flatly.
    He stared at her and drummed his free hand on the tablecloth. His eyes were bloodshot, and she wondered whether he looked so bad because he wasn’t sleeping. He’d told her he couldn’t sleep for thinking of her, and that had made her feel bad. She didn’t want to hurt him.
    He was breathing heavily. ‘I’m prepared to leave Linda.’
    Linda was pretty, with short dark hair and a sad expression, as if she had known something was wrong in theirmarriage. Amanda had never felt malice towards her, only envy and, at times, a terrible guilt.
    She shook her head. ‘No, you’re not prepared to leave her, Brian. I’ve heard you say that so many times.’
    ‘This time I am.’
    Was he capable of distinguishing the truth, any more, from the web of lies in which he lived? Amanda asked herself. She had met him when she was a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced graduate from film school, and had applied for a job as an assistant at his production company. At the interview she’d been awed to meet the man in person – she’d seen his credits, sometimes as director, sometimes as producer on countless successful television dramas,
The Bill, London’s Burning, Cracker, Frost, Casualty
. But she’d not seen his true face.
    He was a crook. On his company’s own series, he ripped off everyone with whom he came into contact. If the BBC gave him £250,000 an episode, he would make it for less and creatively account the difference. He bribed people and took backhanders.
    He wasn’t interested in making anything of quality or winning awards, or prestige, he was interested solely in milking the system of as much money as he could. He had a reputation for churning out safe, reliable police procedurals and hospital dramas. It didn’t bother him a whit that, creatively, American imports like
ER
and
NYPD Blue
kicked them into touch.
    And in those early, heady days, it didn’t bother Amanda either. She was meeting stars, she was involved in making prime-time dramas with good ratings, she was twenty-two, she was madly in love with one of the gods of television, and she had a career break to die for! Brian had told her that his marriage had been over effectively for years, he was going to leave his wife, and – huge carrot – he was on the verge of giving Amanda her very own series to produce.
    Four years later he had not left his wife, and had not given Amanda her own series, so she dumped his job, and