by Maeve Haran
‘Well, don’t. Just take it from me he’s a good guy.’ Knowing Stephen, the villa was bound to be held by one of his companies rather than himself.
‘I bow to your judgement. Besides, it’ll be fun not to know. As long as he isn’t some Middle Eastern arms dealer.’
‘He isn’t. By the way, you know what Le Sirenuse are?’ Drew grinned.
‘Surprise me.’
‘The Sirens. Those mythical women who lured men to their deaths.’
Angela’s laugh – happy and spontaneous – transformed her usually tough exterior and if they hadn’t been in the office, Drew would have risked her rebuff and reached for her.
He had to content himself with saying, ‘I wish I was coming too.’
‘Drew . . .’
‘I know, I know.’
A timely interruption meant they had to think about deliveries of a new tunic dress which had proved so popular that it had sold out instantly. It was funny, Angela mused, that the tunic – an object of derision to women when they were young, sexy and eager to display their wares – became instantly desirable when they got older and wanted to disguise the same curves which were no longer quite so shapely!
As soon as Drew left, she walked round her spare and elegant office looking at the few objects she had collected, all of which had some special meaning to her. There were the three pebbles, which had so much stark and understated beauty that a designer might have placed them there – in fact, they came from the beach where she had spent so many childhood holidays; the slender vase she had found in a Copenhagen design shop; and lastly, and perhaps most meaningful of all, a swatch of fabric, framed in wood. That had been that ‘softer even than silk’ material that the back-street shop owner had introduced her to in Hong Kong and on which she’d founded her business.
It suddenly struck Angela, as she surveyed her sanctuary, that it was entirely free of photographs and that her home was the same. What did that say about her?
The phone rang and Angela answered it, neatly avoiding answering her own uncomfortable question.
Sylvie always found packing a challenge. It wasn’t that she was Joan Collins, needing ten suitcases plus one for her wigs, but clothes had always been an important part of who she was. She hated ‘fashion’, the ridiculous dictates of a few posy men (and now, thank God, more women) who designed outrageous clothes for fifteen-year-old stick insects. What Sylvie believed in was style. The ageless elegance of Audrey Hepburn, the lush seductiveness of Elizabeth Taylor, the aristocratic untouchability of Grace Kelly. But it was colour that she loved best of all and that inspired both the way she dressed and her style of decorating.
Sylvie reached for her biggest suitcase, the metal one that had belonged to her father. It was ridiculous, really, it weighed a ton even empty, but it was incredibly precious to Sylvie. It was covered in labels – Istanbul, Cairo, Beirut, Tehran and her parents’ favourite, Damascus – it was so tragic what had happened to that amazing city, where the famous damask rose was always in bloom, according to her mother. When, finally, they came back to England, her mother would only grow her beloved Damascus roses. In their freezing manor house near Beaconsfield, her mother would put a damask rose by the bed of those she loved. Sylvie, at eleven, had once wept because there was no rose in her room.
And it was those first eleven years that had left their indelible mark on Sylvie. Sylvie even looked more at home in the Middle East. She knew there was something unusual about her colouring, as well as her strong nose, dark brown eyes and the almost-black hair she now dyed red with her beloved henna. There had been uncomfortable silences between her parents that seemed to concern her, low-voiced conversations that stopped abruptly when she entered a room. Once she had even heard her English nanny rudely whisper ‘a touch of the tar brush’ to her friend who had come for a cup of English tea. Fortunately, Sylvie had been too young to understand the implications.
England had seemed cold and dull by comparison. If she closed her eyes, Sylvie could still see the souks, the carpet sellers and the snake-charmer with his tame cobra. But, more than anything, it was the scents that were different in the Middle East, the pungent bite of the spice sellers with their piles of dried turmeric (that yellow was still one of her favourite colours for decorating); fresh ginger and the bright red of fresh-picked strawberries; the sweet, cloying aroma of the hubble-bubble pipes in the cafes, and, above all, the irresistible invitation of roasting meat on huge charcoal braziers.
And everywhere – the colour! When she got to England, Sylvie sometimes felt she was the only champion of colour in vast empires of beige, as if Kubla Khan had been handed the colour chart from Farrow & Ball.
She had been lonelier then than she could ever have imagined. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of their neighbours, the Charlesworths, and especially the lively mother Gwen, she could have turned into a very sad person.
Sylvie folded her favourite silk kaftan top, in orange with swirls of aubergine and cobalt, embellished with silken rope along the sleeves, which she wore with her jeans and matching nail varnish on her toenails – Sylvie loved to go barefoot whenever she could. Her ankle-length black-and-white zebra dress in softest silk followed, then her midnight-blue velvet number, her sequinned cocktail dress covered in tropical birds, and a variety of sandals and shawls. Sylvie eschewed the cardigan – declaring it an item for visits to Blackpool – despite Michelle Obama’s spirited effort to bring it into fashion.
She thought for a moment about Tony.
In the days when he was as excited as she was about the business, they had shared some wonderful trips to the exotic places of the world. And he’d been such fun to be with. But she wasn’t going to think about that.
She packed her carry-on with a mini capsule wardrobe, a skill she had learned since the time her case had gone to the Caymans while Sylvie herself was disembarking in Cape Town. She added her laptop and her precious zip-up bag of every known adaptor on the planet, useful for the equally vital tasks of plugging in her electronic devices and using her hairdryer.
Passport, check.
Ticket, check.
Euros, check.
Make-up bag, check.
She cheerfully zipped everything up. Sylvie and her carry-on bag were ready to go.
Monica Mathieson lay on her single bed, the bed of her childhood, and asked herself how she could have ended up back at home. Her mother could make her feel such a failure. One crushing remark could undo years of trying to build her own identity. Her mother would reel off the successes of her friends’ children, their grandchildren even, and end with the remark, ‘of course, with all your education you chose to become a librarian’.
And it was true she had excelled academically. For a brief moment her mother had been able to boast about Monica’s exam results.
But then Monica had turned down the dazzling offers and chosen a provincial university because she had wanted to be ordinary.
It wasn’t something she could ever explain to her mother, who would have liked nothing more than to show off about ‘my daughter at Cambridge’.
She’d even been offered quite a good job during her gap year but had preferred to go and be an au pair instead. ‘Why would you want to go and waste your education looking after someone else’s children?’ Mariella had demanded. But it had been Monica’s first taste of freedom. Maybe that was why she’d jumped at the chance of this villa.
She got up and opened her window. A tiny mouse had managed to nest outside in the dead ivy, cleverly camouflaging itself against the golden bronze of the leaves.
It made Monica think of herself. Mousy Monica.
Why do I never like to be noticed?
But at least, to her mother’s intense disapproval, she was going to Italy.
Feeling suddenly panicky about what she would wear there, she emptied her entire wardrobe onto the bed and surveyed it.
She and her husband Brian had led a quiet life. It had been a small life but a happy one, though he
r mother would never understand that.
The students were colourful. Monica had taken much pleasure in watching them from her desk in the corner of the university library – punks, new romantics, goths, rappers – Monica had enjoyed them all. But she had felt no temptation to emulate them. Which was just as well since she was small, pale and what her mother Mariella often called ‘plain’.
She knew she gave the impression of being dumpy but her figure was actually quite shapely – when finally she took her clothes off and she and Brian had enjoyed a surprisingly adventurous sex life, which, since his sudden death, she had sorely missed. Another thing on the long list that Mariella wouldn’t understand about her own daughter.
Indeed, one of the attractions of going to Italy was to get away from her mother for longer than the two weeks she was supposed to be dog sitting. She had only come home because her parents’ house was enormous and her financial situation dire. Brian had been a lovely man but naive about money. When he’d met an old friend who advocated the greater rewards they would get if they moved their pensions from the university scheme to a private one, Brian had believed him and had persuaded Monica to do the same.
Unfortunately, the friend had turned out to be on commission from the private scheme which had subsequently gone bust, leaving both of them broke. Monica was sure it was guilt about this that had given Brian his heart attack. She wasn’t young enough to get another job (despite the Government’s exhortations that they should all work into their late sixties) and the landlord of the flat they’d rented was selling the house to a developer. So Monica had come home. Her father had been delighted but Mariella had seen her as an unpaid skivvy.
Anyway, there was no point in feeling sorry for herself. She loathed self-pity.
Actually, Monica decided, she might as well just take her entire wardrobe, since it would fit into one suitcase. The only item of clothing she possessed which could be called remotely fashionable was the swimsuit she had bought in the sale at Toast. One of the perks of working at the university was free entry to the university pool. With her short easy-care hair, the swimsuit gave her a kind of boyish chic that had once or twice surprised her when she’d caught sight of herself in the dressing-room mirrors.
What would weigh far more was the selection of books she insisted on taking with her when she travelled. Friends had tried to persuade Monica of the far greater sense in possessing a Kindle, but Monica loved physical books too much, especially old books, the smooth feel of their spines, the aroma of decades of use, the amazing thrill to find that some of their pages were still uncut.
And then there were Brian’s ashes. She had never yet found the right place to scatter them. Brian had been drawn to the sun, maybe surprisingly for someone born in Lancashire. Perhaps she would find his natural resting place in the sunshine of Lanzarella.
Claire scanned the EasyJet flights to Naples, not quite convinced she was actually doing this.
Martin had been grumping around ever since she’d told him, while Evan gave her little grins of encouragement and Belinda darted her glances of betrayal, as if she had denounced her to the secret police, rather than leaving her to help with a bit of cooking and washing-up.
Claire wondered when Angela was planning to go. She supposed she might be flying British Airways, possibly even Business Class, but that was a whole other world from her own. Still, it might be nice to coordinate their arrival and perhaps even travel from the airport together. Since Angela had given her a mobile number, she decided to call it while she was sitting with all the flights in front of her.
Angela answered with remarkable speed.
‘Hello. Angela Williams.’
She sounded wildly impressive to Claire, who always thought she herself came over on the phone as halfway between a charity chugger and her own mother.
‘Angela. Claire Lambert here. The caterer,’ she added into the tiny silence that followed. ‘I wondered when you’re flying to Italy? I’m just looking at flights now. Getting from the airport to Lanzarella seems a bit complicated. Two buses.’
This time the silence grew into frank amazement that anyone could contemplate any journey that involved two buses.
‘I’m flying in on Tuesday afternoon,’ was Angela’s instant reply. ‘I’ve booked a car to meet me.’
She didn’t suggest, Claire noted, that Claire might like to join her.
‘Look, I’ll email you all the details and we’ll meet there. Apparently, there’s a housekeeper in permanent residence so any time you want to turn up would be fine. Sorry, I have to rush now.’
Angela grimaced as she switched off her phone. She hadn’t anticipated this woman Claire and she becoming best friends, just that Claire could look into the catering. She hoped agreeing that she could come wasn’t going to be a mistake.
Claire looked at the phone. Uppity bitch. She’d seemed so nice the other day compared to those idiotic venture capitalists. But maybe they were all part of the same world. And it definitely wasn’t Claire’s.
Still, she was definitely not backing down. It would give Martin too much pleasure to patronize her.
She looked at the flights again. The cheapest one meant flying out at 6.30 a.m. She wondered if the trains started that early. Maybe she’d have to spend the night in the airport. She wouldn’t check a bag so as to save costs. At least the buses the other end seemed reasonable.
In spite of everything Claire felt a little flare of excitement.
She was going to Italy.
‘Our PR people say there’s going to be a profile of you in tomorrow’s Times.’ Drew knew how Angela would react, but he had to warn her anyway.
‘Do we know what it says?’
Drew had actually managed to see a proof via a mate of his on the paper but he wasn’t going to tell Angela that. ‘Usual stuff. Charts your rise. Switch from banker to entrepreneur. Success of Fabric. Rumours of imminent sale, what you’re like on TV.’
Angela looked at him searchingly. She’d known Drew long enough to tell that he was hiding something. ‘And . . . ?’
‘It says you’re a workaholic with no personal life.’
‘A sad woman who takes refuge in her work,’ Angela stated bitterly. ‘I think I’d better change my flight to today.’ Angela stared out of the window at the happy crowds in St Christopher’s Place. They had ordinary lives, ordinary homes, ordinary wives and husbands. Why had she not been able to settle for the ordinary?
‘You can handle this,’ Drew interrupted, taking a step towards her. ‘It’s only copy, some journalist trying to get an angle.’
Angela put out a hand to stop him. ‘I know, tomorrow it’ll be covering fish and chips. I don’t believe a word of it, that’s what my dad said about the News of the World with all its stories about vicars and choirboys and disgraceful duchesses. But he always bought it just the same.’
‘You’ve never talked about your dad,’ Drew said gently.
‘No? He was lovely, my dad.’ Suddenly Angela’s voice became full-blown Yorkshire. ‘Told terrible jokes and always backed the wrong horses, fortunately only for a shilling, but he couldn’t have been more loving. Then he went and died. Forty-nine. Silly bugger.’
Drew thought for a moment she was going to cry. ‘And my mother went into a total collapse. Nervous breakdown, the whole shebang. So I had to leave Oxford and look after her.’
‘Bloody hell, I mean – Oxford!’
Angela managed a faint smile. ‘Yes, it was tough, especially as I thought I was in love. In some ways it was good for me. Made me practical. No more philosophy for me. I got a job in a bank. It was the dullest job you can conceive. When the Sixties were exploding, I was reconciling figures in the NatWest Bank in Filey!’
Drew laughed. ‘I know. I can hear the Northern Lass whenever you get angry.’
‘I bloody well hope you can’t! I had elocution lessons to lose it. Another thing my dad was good at was sweeping things under the carpet. He would never have liked all this modern ba
ring-your-soul stuff, and that’s what I’m going to do with this profile. I’ll get a plane this afternoon, drink a glass of champagne and make sure I don’t go near any newsstands.’
‘You’re amazing, you know, no matter what this stupid cow says.’
‘Thank you, Drew, I appreciate that. But on the whole I’d rather be amazing in Italy.’
In the end Martin drove Claire to the airport. It was classic Martin – what should have been a kind gesture miraculously turned into a criticism. Claire said she’d be perfectly happy to go the night before and sit and read a book but Martin had insisted that that was impractical and he couldn’t see why Claire couldn’t have booked a later flight.
‘To save money,’ Claire had insisted, her irritation growing.
‘The best way to save money would be not to go on this wild goose chase at all,’ he’d pointed out acidly when they were all discussing it the day before. ‘I can’t see how you can possibly be qualified to advise on Italian catering anyway.’
‘Mum’s a brilliant cook,’ Evan had attempted.
‘But she’s never cooked for a hotel in her life,’ Martin grumbled, ‘and it’ll probably mean we won’t be able to afford that trip to Prague we were planning.’
The truth was, it was Martin who wanted to go to Prague, to some international exhibition of movie posters. Collecting movie posters was Martin’s hobby.
Since they lived in Twickenham it wasn’t actually that far to Gatwick but Martin left, as he always did, about three hours early. So early that Claire could have checked in on the flight before, except that it was full.
Equally irritatingly he announced he would stay and see her off. It might have been grudging of her, Claire knew, when he had got up so early, but she actually wished he’d go and give her a little freedom. She might buy herself some nice perfume, which Martin would see as another extravagance. She decided she would suggest she go through security now so there was no point in him staying and delved in her large handbag for her passport. Her hand alighted on a packet of jelly babies (good for your ears on the flight); wet wipes (you didn’t get offered a hot towel in Economy); a dictionary; a map of Naples to find the bus station (not being sufficiently technologically evolved to do this on her phone); English money; Euros; her most beloved cook book, Elizabeth David’s Italian Food (only for the seriously initiated since it had no pictures or illustrations); her ticket and her – oh my God, she couldn’t find her passport!