Anyway, my first thought is that there’s a fresh nanny crisis today, because Vanessa opens her front door looking furious, with bits of rice cake in her hair and what looks like spit-up milk on her gray silk blouse. Despite this, she’s supremely elegant, as ever, in head-to-toe Armani, her chic dark crop freshly blow-dried and her mouth its usual cerise slash. Nature intended Vanessa to be a comfy size 14, but through sheer force of will she’s a whippet-like size 10, an impressive testimony to her daily workouts and a ban on puddings that’s worthy of the Taliban.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says, by way of greeting.
“Good morning, Vanessa!”
“No. It isn’t a good morning, as it happens.” She ushers me indoors. “For one thing, the new nanny has just left. With zero notice.”
“Oh, dear, I am sorry.”
“And for another thing …” Her face darkens still further as we’re both suddenly distracted by a noise on the stairs behind us.
When I turn around, I can see that it’s Percy. He’s wearing absurdly baggy jeans, a David Bowie T-shirt, and an extremely sheepish expression.
“I’ve been suspended,” he mutters before I can ask what he’s doing home from boarding school at ten o’clock on a Tuesday.
“Oh, Perce,” I say in a tone carefully calculated to offer him support as well as (please God) not to further enrage Vanessa. If it were just me and him, I’d go and give him a hug, but I’ve always been careful about how demonstrative I am with Percy when Vanessa is around. I don’t want her to think I’m treading on any toes. Still, he looks much in need of a hug. His body, a scrawny boy’s when I last saw him back in mid-October, seems to have transformed practically overnight into the wiry awkwardness of a teenager, and he needs a haircut. “What happened?”
“Drugs happened,” Vanessa says, more Gorgon-esque than ever as she shoots both of us—hey, why is this my fault?—looks that could quite conceivably turn us into stone.
“Mum! Please stop calling it drugs! It was just a spliff. Everyone at school smokes them. I was the only one who got caught.”
“Then you’re an idiot as well as a criminal,” she snaps.
“But it isn’t criminal! It was just for my own personal use, Mum. Which means it isn’t any worse than having a glass of wine.” Percy has clearly spent most of last night up on this rather tired teenage soapbox, but I can’t help admiring him for trying again. Something about his tenacity reminds me of Hector’s continuing and consistent refusal to abandon his beloved nappies. “I mean, you and Alasdair drink wine, don’t you? And that has mind-altering effects just as much as a spliff does. And it’s safer to smoke weed than go out and get drunk. Nobody has ever killed anybody over a spliff.”
“There might be a first time,” Vanessa says.
“You’re not going to tell Dad, are you?” Percy asks me.
“Er …”
“Most certainly she is going to tell your father. I’d have told him myself if he’d returned my call—my two calls—yesterday afternoon. Not that I imagine he’ll take too much interest,” Vanessa adds archly. “I’m sure he’s spending far too much time at the office as usual.”
I feel the need to leap to Charlie’s defense—though less of a need than I might have felt before last night, I have to admit. “He’s got a lot on his plate, Vanessa.”
“Mmmm. Well, are you just going to stand on the stairs all morning,” she suddenly demands of Percy, “or are you going to go to your room and get on with your math work?”
“I’ll get on with my math work,” Percy mutters, after shooting me a look that suggests he’s contemplated saying Oh, I thought I’d stand on the stairs all morning, actually. “Nice to see you, Grace.”
“Lovely to see you, too! Your mum and I are going to sit down and sort out all the plans for the Easter holidays!” I say, loading my voice with an insane amount of enthusiasm, because I always feel so guilty about the part I’ve played, however unwittingly, in Percy’s parents’ divorce. It’s a feeling of guilt that Vanessa is happy to exploit.
“Yes, well, not if we don’t get a move on. I have a conference call at eleven, so we’ll need to be finished by no less than three minutes to the hour. Go on through to the kitchen, Grace, and help yourself to coffee and biscuits. I just need to get the girls down for their nap. I’ll only be a minute and a half.”
She will, as well. Vanessa’s to-the-split-second childcare routine makes Gina Ford look slack and sloppy. To be entirely fair to her (and I’ve no idea why I feel the need to be fair to her, because she’s certainly never been remotely fair to me), her high-powered career means it’s pretty essential to keep some measure of control. It just seems a little unfair on her twins that they’re the ones who end up on the receiving end of it. Vanessa is a top ENT surgeon at one of the best London teaching hospitals, specializing in fitting cochlear implants that restore hearing to deaf people. Though as Charlie once said, probably she just frightens deaf people into getting their hearing back.
I haven’t tried to repeat this joke to him any time recently.
The thing is, actually, that in another life Vanessa and I might not get on too badly. Yes, she’s spent the past seven years guilting me for their divorce, despite the fact that she seems far happier with Alasdair, her wealthy, almost-invisible, hedge-fund husband than she ever was with Charlie; yes, she bad-mouthed me to Chief Miranda before Robbie even started at St. Martin’s, so I never had a hope of making friends with anyone there. But honestly, I don’t think she’s all bad. I admire her career, for one thing, because I wish I could be just one-twentieth as successful as her. I admire her determination, at forty-six, to go through several grueling rounds of IVF so she could end up with the extra children she wanted (though she never would have shown it) so badly. Most of all, I’m incredibly fond of Percy, and it’s difficult to entirely dislike Vanessa when I see parts of her in someone I care about so much.
It’s just a pity, really, that I got in her firing line by marrying her first husband.
And that she doesn’t seem to be able to find anything at all to like or admire in me.
“Miranda’s here, by the way,” she tells me now, as she starts up the stairs and I head for the kitchen. “She popped in for a coffee this morning, and when I told her you were coming she said she’d stick around to say hello.”
Oh, shit. Creaking thighs, Vanessa, and Chief Miranda. It’s a terrible triumvirate I’m not sure I have the energy to cope with.
Miranda is sitting at the French country–style scrubbed oak table, sipping an Emma Bridgewater mug of coffee and avoiding a plate of Duchy Originals shortbread.
She stands up when I come in and greets me, unconvincingly, with a kiss on each cheek. “Lovely to see you,” she says, equally unconvincingly. “I haven’t managed to catch up with you at the school gates for a while.”
I don’t want to admit that this is because we’ve been getting there later than ever. “We’ve been getting in very early the past few days.”
“Right, well, I really just wanted to find out where you were with Saad Amar.”
Nowhere. I am nowhere with Saad Amar.
“I mean, I know you were saying you’d have a chat with him soon,” she carries on snittily. “And I remember your friend was rather defensive about that. But the deadline for new pupil applications is coming up fast now, Grace, and the fund-raising committee is getting really concerned that we’re going to lose out on this big fish—”
“I’ve spoken to him. Yes,” I carry on, as Miranda looks surprised. “We had lunch together last week, actually.”
“Oh.”
“It was only a quick bite. Just, you know, for him to ask me more questions about St. Martin’s.”
“And …?”
“And nothing! It was just a quick bite, I said already!”
“I meant, and how did it go?” She leans across the table. “Did he say he’d be going ahead with the application? Did he mention any other schools that are still on their radar
?”
“Ohhhh. Um, no, he didn’t. I mean, he didn’t mention any other schools. I’m pretty sure he’ll be going ahead with the application to St. Martin’s.”
Chief Miranda’s clenched fist bangs on the French oak table. “Get in!” she bellows triumphantly, and just for a moment there’s the strongest hint of Geordie in her usually plummy accent. “Oh, Vanessa,” she says as the woman herself strides into the kitchen, sits down at the table, and starts to pour herself coffee from the French press. “Grace has brought some excellent news. Something to interest you, too, if you’re going to be sending your girls to St. Martin’s one day in the future. It looks like the Amar family is going to be sending little Hassan to St. Martin’s after all!”
“Adnan,” I say.
“Sorry?”
“Well, it’s just that his name isn’t Hassan. Or Ahmed. Or Abdul, for that matter. It’s Adnan.”
Miranda’s eyes narrow. “Oh, well, of course, I’m not the one who’s been for a cozy lunch with his older brother Saad, so I don’t have the precise details at my fingertips.”
“Cozy lunch?” Vanessa’s eyes have lit up. For someone so no-nonsense, she’s certainly a surprisingly big fan of idle gossip. “Who have you been having cozy lunches with, Grace?”
“There was nothing cozy about it at all!” I give a little laugh and help myself oh-so-casually to a biscuit. “Purely a business lunch, I’m afraid!”
Vanessa lets out a snort. “Where have I heard that before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Grace, isn’t that exactly the type of thing a man would say if he was boffing his secretary or something?” She shoots Miranda (who is loving this, incidentally) a sly little smile.
I’m feeling more picked-on-by-the-mean-girls than ever; any minute now I fully expect the pair of them to try to reveal to the world that I’m wearing strawberry-print knickers. Where’s Polly when I need her?
“Precisely the type of thing,” Vanessa continues, “that I’m pretty sure Charlie told me when he was off boffing you, in fact!”
“Vanessa.” I hate having to stand up to her, but I don’t want to be bullied. Well, not any more than I have to be. “You know Charlie wasn’t bof … wasn’t doing anything with me when he was still trying to make things work with you.”
She lets out a little laugh of her own, a high-pitched, edgy one. “Oh, well, who can remember that far back? If it wasn’t you, it was someone else!”
Christ, she really is pissed off about Percy’s suspension, isn’t she? She only ever drops snidey little hints about Charlie’s repeated infidelity—infidelity he totally denies, by the way—when she’s in a truly terrible mood.
“Vanessa …” I begin, just as I feel my phone buzz in my bag beside me. I glance down, and when I see who the text message is from, I quickly press the View option.
Don’t suppose u r free this pm? Need to talk to you about something.
It’s from Saad Amar.
“You know, I’d love to have a proper chat with Charlie one day,” Miranda is saying archly. “We’ve not really caught up in years, and I always think what an amazing man he must be to have had two such stunning wives …”
Vanessa’s reply is cut short by the yowling of one of the twins on the baby monitor, and while she stamps ominously upstairs to “put a stop to this,” and Miranda nips off to the loo, I take the opportunity to reply to Saad’s text.
Sure. Where and when is good to meet? I can come to the office?
Which I think is the right thing to say. Letting him know I’m happy to come to the office, with Charlie around the place, will communicate the fact that I’m not wrongly assuming he’s up for some funny business. That I absolutely understand, this time, that all he wants to discuss is school applications. On the other hand, last time I saw him it was at his office, and I was waiting there stalker-style with a cutesy homemade card … But before I can think up a fresh suggestion for a totally neutral place to meet, and text him again, he’s texted back.
Am not at office. Can u come 2 mine?
I’m just texting back in the affirmative when Vanessa comes back into the kitchen, the Great Twin Rebellion of SW6 successfully quelled.
“Who’s that you’re texting so furiously?” she demands as she slides back into her seat, shooting longing glances in the direction of the plate of Duchy Originals.
“Nobody.” I just want to get out of here, now, and set off for Saad’s. “Sorry, Vanessa, we should really get on with that chat about the Easter holidays …”
“Oh, yes, well, I was thinking you could take Percy for two whole weeks this time. Give him a chance to spend some time with his little half brothers.”
Vanessa isn’t, I know, interested in Percy spending some time with “his little half brothers.” She’s interested in palming him off on me because in the last year, he’s morphed—in her eyes, at least—from a nice little boy doing his Latin vocab into a terrible teenage tearaway doing banned substances. I mean, anyone with eyes can see that he’s just reacting to being shoved away to boarding school while his mother pours every ounce of her spare time and effort into the twins (whom, I notice, Vanessa never calls his “little half sisters”).
I take a deep breath. “Vanessa, you know we love having Percy, but we are having him for Christmas. And he came out to my parents’ in Normandy for pretty much the whole summer. Don’t you think he might like to spend some time with you? I mean, you don’t see him much during the term time, and …”
I falter in the face of Vanessa’s icy stare.
“I didn’t want him to go away to school, you know. I preferred the idea of a day school in London. Your husband was the one who insisted on boarding school.”
“Well, I think Charlie just thought … with you working such long hours …”
“Oh, yes, shove him away to boarding school, with all the other kids from broken homes, whose fathers would rather stump up the school fees than face up to the fact they’ve done wrong by them …”
“Fine.” I know when I’m beaten. Vanessa has brought out the big guns. “We’ll have him for two weeks at Easter. We’ll be glad to.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” she says, all sweetness (ish) and light now that she’s got what she wants.
“I’m positive,” I say as Miranda walks back into the room. She starts exclaiming rapturously on the new hand towels Vanessa has in the downstairs bathroom, and the two of them fall into a frankly horrifying game of one-upmanship over their interior fixtures and fittings for the remainder of the coffee morning. By the time I’m eventually released, at precisely fifteen minutes before eleven, I’ve heard enough about why Cath Kidston is so much superior to Oka to last a lifetime.
I suppose I’m expecting Saad’s front door to be opened by Thomas, the formidable housekeeper, but as my taxi drives away, it’s Saad himself who appears on the front step.
He’s looking unusually uncertain, as well as predictably gorgeous, dressed in casual clothes—jeans, battered brown shoes, a light-blue shirt—rather than a business suit, for the first time since I’ve got to know him. Maybe it’s the casual clothes that have taken away his usual air of smooth invincibility.
“Grace.” The lightest peck on each cheek. He smells of pine forests and mountain air. “I hope I haven’t dragged you away from anything enjoyable.”
“Just coffee with Charlie’s ex-wife.”
“Ah. Then, as my little brother would say, Yay for me.”
He ushers me through the front door, then, after a moment’s hesitation, into the drawing room, the one with the Picasso.
“I’ve already told Thomas to bring us in some tea … do you like tea?” he asks, graciously handing me into the pale gray leather sofa, then sitting down beside me. “I can have him bring coffee if you’d prefer? Or …” He glances at his watch. “… is it too early for something stronger?”
“Oh, I think a little too early, yes.” I’m not falling into the trap, again, of thinking tha
t this is anything other than a get-together to talk about St. Martin’s. “Tea is perfect.”
“Good, good. This is probably a conversation we should be sober for, after all.”
Oh, shit. This sounds serious.
He’s decided to enroll his brother at another school, hasn’t he? And right after I’ve gone and told Chief Miranda he was a dead cert for St. Martin’s. Bloody brilliant.
But I don’t want Saad to realize the immense pile of crap he’s just landed me in, so I plaster a smile over my face. “Saad, look, I understand completely. You’ve had to make the right decision for Adnan. Anyway, between you and me, I don’t have all that high an opinion of St. Martin’s. The teachers are ever so pushy, and the parents are even worse, and …”
“Grace, this isn’t about St. Martin’s.” A glimmer of a smile crosses his face. “But thanks for the late show of honesty on that front. Maybe I’ll have another look at St. Thomas’s after all.”
I really should have just kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?
“Look.” He moves a fraction closer on the sofa, then seems to think better of it. “It’s not been an easy few days for me, I’m afraid, Grace …”
“Of course. I mean, it didn’t seem as if that client dinner went very well last night.”
“What?”
“The client dinner. Charlie … well, he wasn’t in the most relaxed of moods when he got home from it, that’s all. I assumed it hadn’t gone very well.”
His eyes darken. “No,” he says, after a moment. “No, it didn’t go well. At all.”
“I’m really sorry. I know it must be really stressful, running an entire company—well, actually, I don’t know how stressful it must be to run an entire company, but I can imagine, obviously …”
“Grace.” Now he does move closer on the sofa, but it’s only to place a finger on my lips. “Please. Stop talking about work.”
Well, the touch of his finger on my lips has pretty much done for me talking about work. There’s a good chance, in order to keep it there forever, that I may never feel the need to speak again.
There Goes the Bride Page 17