Society Girls

by Sarah Mason

  Holly is watching the unfolding drama with delight, her hand shading her face from the sun, while my attention is caught by a rather good looking man on the other side of the queue.

  “Ooh, look Clemmie! The ferry man is having to lift her out of her wheelchair now! God, I think she's taking a swipe at him with her handbag.”

  I only notice the man because he looks rather lost. He doesn't seem like a tourist and yet doesn't belong here either. But he's rather nice looking. Chestnut colored hair, short at the sides and long on top. Straight, even features, and wearing a tweed jacket and cords. He's by himself and I wonder what he's doing here.

  Once we all disembark at Rock, the young man walks ahead of us for a little while and then stops to consult a piece of paper. Holly and I get distracted by the RNLI gift shop and when I look again, he's gone. After we have purchased some shells from the shop (someone stop me, please, why can't I resist them? I have an EU mountain of shells at home), we wander up the main street along the shore, looking for Sir Christopher McKellan's house.

  His second home makes me quite want to see his first. It is a corner house and sits directly on the sea front. Its freshly whitewashed stone walls and neat little garden all shout money. Storm lanterns stand on the windowsills and cream curtains are tied back with rough, thick rope. I can tell that inside will be decorated in soft pastels and squishy sofas. I desperately need to pee and wonder if I could partake of their facilities and at the same time have a good nose about inside, but Holly tells me Sir Christopher McKellan is none too friendly with strangers and I'm better off going to the pub. So I leave Holly to it and walk over to The Mariners to use the loo there.

  Holly is waiting for me when I emerge and we are just about to wend our way back to Padstow when I see that the young man from the ferry queue is walking intently toward us as though he wants to speak with us. Even Holly is looking decidedly perkier.

  “Hello,” he says when he reaches us.

  “Hello,” we both reply. I don't know about Holly because she is practically engaged to James, but I don't open my mouth too wide in case I start to drool. Eye to eye he is even better looking.

  “I hope you don't mind but I've just noticed you coming out of Sir Christopher McKellan's house and I wonder if you can help me.” His voice is pleasant with a trace of a Northern accent. “I've come all the way from Cambridge. I'm looking for Emma.”

  “Well, that's her father's house but I asked the housekeeper if Emma was there and she said no.”

  “I know. I've just asked her too. Do you know Emma?”

  “Well, I used to work with her but she resigned last week. I was in the area and so dropped off her things. You could try her address in Bristol? That's where she lives.”

  “I already have. I was hoping someone here could help me.”

  “Are you a friend of hers?”

  “I'm Charlie,” he says simply, by way of explanation.

  We must both look a little bemused because he goes on to say, “Didn't she tell you? I'm Emma's fiancé. We're engaged to be married.”

  Chapter Five

  Fiancé? Emma? I glance quickly at Holly because surely she would have mentioned the fact that Emma has a fiancé? That's the sort of news that would make either of us immediately reach for the phone. Holly gives a small shake of her head to indicate that she is as baffled as I am.

  So where is Emma? Because if I had a fiancé, especially one who looked like this, I wouldn't be very far behind him. I have an anxious look around and even a quick peek behind me. Surely she should be superglued to his very broad, tweed back and not letting him wander around Cornwall unchaperoned?

  “Emma? Emma McKellan?” Holly repeats, just to make sure we haven't got our Emmas mixed up.

  “Yes, Emma McKellan.” He looks to each of us anxiously. “You did say you knew her?”

  “Of course we do,” replies Holly. “Wrote the social pages on the paper. Nice girl.” Now she definitely is getting her Emmas mixed up. I do not remember Emma being a nice girl. Holly glances round suddenly as though she's trying to remember where she is. Her eyes alight on the pub.

  “Charlie, did you say your name was? Why don't we all go get a drink and we'll see if we can help you.” Holly must be curious to say the least; she isn't normally so accommodating to strangers around lunchtime. “Come on.” She tugs slightly on Charlie's arm and leads him toward the door of The Mariners.

  Once inside, she pulls out a chair and sits Charlie down, and he appears to crumple slightly. He slouches forward and puts his head in his hands.

  I look over to Holly and make a drink gesture with my hand. It might help to loosen poor Charlie up a bit. She disappears off.

  I try to think of something innocuous to say while we wait. He still has his hands over his face. The weather seems a bit amateurish; perhaps I could comment on the ferry queues, or maybe he might like to see my new anklet, recently purchased? Luckily Holly returns pretty smartish with three glasses and a bottle of whisky. She obviously knows the barman as he is still reading the paper.

  “I'm Holly, by the way. Holly Colshannon. And this is my sister, Clemmie. I work on features at the paper.”

  “Charlie Davidson.” He looks up and smiles a half smile at us which doesn't quite reach his eyes.

  “So,” Holly says in a very efficient fashion as she unscrews the lid and pours the amber liquid. “Wow! Emma is getting married! She hasn't told us! She is a dark horse. Is that the reason she resigned from work? Wants more time to concentrate on the wedding?”

  “I don't think so.”

  Holly plows on. “When is the happy event?”

  “A week today.”

  Holly stares at him open-mouthed and I have to wrestle the still-glugging bottle out of her hand before it spills all over the table.

  “A week today?” she repeats. “You mean that you and Emma are getting married next Saturday?”

  He runs his hand through his hair in the very clenched, tight fashion of someone truly stressed. “Only if I can find her.”

  “You can't find her?”

  Is Holly just going to repeat everything he says? I try to ignore her and say to Charlie, “Is she missing?”

  “Well, I think her father knows where she is. I certainly don't.”

  “But she hasn't said a word to anyone in Bristol about getting married.”

  “I shouldn't think she has. It was supposed to be in secret. So her father didn't find out.”

  “But why would she disappear on you less than two weeks before her own wedding?” asks Holly urgently.

  “I think that's why Charlie is here,” I say. “To find out.”

  “I would settle for just finding her at the moment,” he mutters.

  “You said you've tried her flat in Bristol?” asks Holly in a more businesslike fashion.

  Charlie slumps back down in his chair. “Yes, but her flatmate is always out. Their neighbor says she hasn't seen Emma for about five days.”

  “And then you came here?”

  “No, after that I went to her father's house in Bristol. Then I visited your paper, where they told me she no longer worked. Then I came down to Cornwall. Emma told me about their holiday home and I was hoping she would be here.”

  “But Sir Christopher didn't know you were getting married?” Holly gives me a look as she finally hands me my glass of whisky. I hate whisky.

  “He didn't approve, but Emma got cold feet at the last minute and went to see him for his blessing, although I didn't agree with her going because I knew he would never consent. That was the last I heard from her.”

  “So what did he say when you went to see him?”

  “That Emma doesn't want to see me. Ever again.”

  Oh. Right. That seems fair enough. Well, it seems to be an open and shut case to me, Detective Colshannon. I slump back into my seat and take a tentative sip of my whisky. Nope, it's no good. I still hate it.

  Emma is not kidnapped or a missing person. Not stuck in a loo s
omewhere yet to be discovered. Just had a row with her fiancé and fancied a few days off. I do think she could have called in though and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

  “Why would Sir Christopher not approve?” asks Holly sympathetically.

  “We don't quite see eye to eye. In fact, he positively despises me.”

  “Why? Have you done something dreadful?”

  Yes, good question, Holly. I lean forward and look at him curiously. What did he do that was so heinous? Did he make a pass at her mother? The chambermaid? The cat? Or are we sitting here supping whisky with a mass murderer? All jolly thoughts. I make another attempt with the whisky to calm my nerves.

  “You've never met Sir Christopher?”

  Holly and I both shake our heads. “I have met him but we haven't been formally introduced,” puts in Holly.

  “In simple terms, he thinks that I'm not good enough to marry his daughter.”

  “Why not? You don't look like too much of a reprobate to me,” says Holly.

  “I didn't go to the right school. I just went to the local grammar but he wants someone who went to Eton or Rugby for Emma. I don't shoot or ride or do anything that he would consider worthwhile. He asked me about my friends but I don't move in the right circles. And I don't have a good enough job or earn enough money to keep Emma in the manner to which she is accustomed. That's a reprobate in Sir Christopher's eyes.”

  “What do you do?” I ask curiously.

  “I'm a teacher.”

  I frown and shoot a quick look at Holly because, after all, I have met Emma a couple of times and from the extra stuff I know about her through Holly, a teacher simply wouldn't cut it for her.

  “How did you meet?” I ask, curious to know how this odd romance came about.

  “She'd come up to visit a friend in London and I met her at a party there. I'll never forget the first time I saw her. She was wearing a black velvet dress . . .” He starts to go a bit misty-eyed on us at this point and I quietly boggle into my whisky glass. Never forget the first time he saw her? Has she had a major personality transplant since I last met her? Or did he take that aloof manner of looking down her nose at you as simply endearing? “We didn't really get a chance to talk to each other until later that night—”

  “When you moved in for the kill?” I ask keenly. God, it's demon stuff, this whisky. A few sips and I'm talking like Jenny Eclair.

  He gives a nervous little laugh and looks at me slightly censoriously. “Well, it wasn't quite like that.” No, of course not Clemmie. Don't be so crass. Emma wouldn't have covered that at finishing school. “We bumped into each other in the kitchen and I made some inane remark about parties or something and then we just started talking. I asked her out for lunch the next day and things just went from there. We started seeing each other. But she would always come up to Cambridge at the weekends, I would never go to Bristol. Eventually we got to know each other well enough that I started to ask about her family, and then she told me about her father. I think she has always been a little afraid of him. . . .”

  “Afraid?” puts in Holly. “God, I've always been bloody petrified. I've come across him a few times professionally.”

  “Anyway, things got serious but I sensed that her father always sort of hung between us and until we had sorted him out we couldn't go any further. I got the impression that I was not the normal sort of man she dated. So I persuaded her, against her will I might add, that her father and I should meet.”

  “And?” I demand. This is just getting interesting. In my newfound enthusiasm I take a gulp of my drink and damn near blow my head off. I have to interrupt his story for a few minutes while I choke and have to be slapped on the back by Holly. I eye her warily. She does like to try out the Heimlich maneuver now and then. As soon as my eyes cease to water, Charlie continues.

  “Well, of course it was an absolute disaster. For some peculiar reason I thought that Emma had somehow been exaggerating madly but he hated me on first sight. Kept asking me about my job prospects and who I was friends with. We went back to Cambridge that night and Emma said that she hadn't really expected anything else.”

  “So what happened then?” Holly asks.

  “Nothing for a while but, when I realized I wanted to marry Emma—”

  “Aaah, that sounds nice,” I say. Both Holly and Charlie give me a look and I make magnanimous carry-on gestures.

  “Well, I knew that I at least needed his blessing. I actually thought Emma's happiness would be more important to him than me having the right connections.” He shakes his head.

  I wonder about my own father in all of this. What would he do? I think he would leap up from his armchair, his newspaper trampled underfoot in delight, grasp the lucky man firmly by the hand, give him a few pints of whisky and then turf him out of the house before he had a chance to change his mind. Bugger the right connections.

  After a few seconds, Charlie rakes back his hair with one hand. He really is very attractive; no wonder Emma obviously thought bugger the right connections too. Charlie continues, “So I went back to ask for his permission to marry Emma. He refused and then told me all those things I've just told you.”

  “What? He sat you down and told you that you didn't have a good enough job and didn't go to the right school?”

  “And then had the arrogance to pat me on the shoulder, said he hoped there weren't any hard feelings but I would see it was for the best in the long run. But on the way home I decided to ask Emma anyway. I explained the situation with her father but she said that she didn't care and she would marry me.” That sounds nice; I brave a smile and celebratory sip of my whisky. “That was about four months ago.”

  “And has she seen her father since then?”

  “Well, no, they've always had quite a difficult relationship. Not exactly warm. Her mother died when she was young and I don't think there was a lot of love at home.” I think of my warm, friendly childhood. Lots of chocolate and telly. Mind you, it's pretty easy to nick some Dairy Milk from the larder and slip through to the sitting room while your mother is yelling at three six-foot boys.

  “I live in Cambridge and we've been making arrangements for her to move up to live with me.” Charlie reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out some papers. “Look, these are all the job applications she's made.” He dumps the wad on the table and slumps back in his chair. Holly pours him another finger of whisky while I have a cursory look at the papers. All letters from newspapers. Most of them refusing her application but a couple offering an interview. I note the dates on them—all of them about two weeks ago.

  “We started making arrangements for the wedding. Booked the church, that sort of thing, and, coupled with the fact that she was moving up to Cambridge to be with me, she started to talk about making peace with her father. I think it's been really worrying her lately.”

  “And?” prompts Holly.

  “And then she called me to tell me that she was going to visit her father, just to see if he would give us his blessing. I think she was even hopeful of persuading him to come to the church. It would have meant so much to Emma. I asked if I could do anything and she said no. I then told her to call me as soon as she got back. That was five days ago. I haven't heard a word from her since.”

  “Not even a message?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat, empty whisky glass in hand. You know, that whisky stuff can grow on you. You just need to get those first few nasty gulps down and then it's not so bad. I remember I developed a similar addiction to some cough syrup when I was ten. Unfortunately, my mother could tell a fake cough from a real one about a mile away.

  I hold my glass out to Holly for another drop. Charlie doesn't seem to have made much headway with his and has now started to shred one of the letters in front of him. Should I make sure it's one of the rejection ones rather than an interview offer? I decide to leave the shredding fingers be.

  “Nothing. I've been going out of my mind with worry. I've called everyone I can think of. I've even called her
father but he refused to speak to me. In the end, I took a few days' leave and came down to find her.”

  Golly, he must really care about her. Once Sally and I got cut off at high tide on Trebarwith beach and had to spend the best part of four hours on a rock. I kept expecting to hear the buzz of the search helicopter overhead but when we finally returned home my parents just thought I had been out drinking and hadn't even bothered to look under the bed for me.

  “So where do you think she is?” I ask.

  “She must be with her father. He must have somehow persuaded her not to come back to me. God knows what stuff he could be feeding her with.”

  Stuff? Goodness, is he a drug dealer as well as a tyrant father? Has he got her doped up to the eyeballs? I must look somewhat alarmed because Holly says impatiently, “Lies, Clemmie. What lies he could be feeding her with.”

  Ah.

  I see now.

  My mistake.

  Holly continues, “Well, that's all well and good if he's persuaded her to call off the wedding, but it seems a bit extreme for her not to return to her flat or her work. And not to explain to you.”

  “Maybe he knows that if we managed to speak to each other we'd sort everything out between us.”

  “But he can't keep her there against her will!”

  Charlie gives a hollow little laugh, “Oh, can't he? You don't know Sir Christopher McKellan. He's absolutely convinced that Emma would be making a big mistake in marrying me, regardless of how she feels about it, and he only needs to keep her there until next Saturday. He'll persuade her that I don't love her or something. That I just want her for her money, and hope that I'll give up looking for her. Well, I won't. I want to marry her.”

  “Do you think she's at his house?” I ask.

  “That's the problem. I don't think so. I've sat outside the house in Bristol day and night, hoping I might just catch a glimpse of her, something to reassure me that she's okay, but I've seen nothing. I don't think she can be there.”

  “Where else could she be?”

  “I don't know. I've racked my brains. That's why I've come here. I just want to talk to her. Convince her that I love her for her alone, and make sure that her father hasn't told her otherwise. If she still wants to call off the wedding then that's fine. I mean, of course I'll be upset, but I want to hear it from her own lips.”