Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  “The Ritz!” said Jilly. “I haven’t had tea at the Ritz since I was a girl.”

  “I’m sure it hasn’t changed,” said Carla, smiling. “I don’t suppose even the waiters have changed.”

  “Still tea in the Palm Court?”

  “Still tea in the Palm Court. We can have a champagne tea, if you like.”

  “Oh I don’t think we should do that,” said Jilly.

  “Granny! I think we should. We’ve got a lot to celebrate. Haven’t we, Marc? You’ll come, won’t you?” She was flirting with him. Jilly thought, How sweet.

  “’Fraid I can’t,” said Marc regretfully. “Got to go back and get this lot processed. But another time, Kate. Another session. I’m sure there’ll be one.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Absolutely. The other Kate will be looking to her laurels soon, you mark my words.”

  “Oh, wow!” said Kate. They did have the champagne tea. Sitting amongst the excesses of the Palm Court, with its crystal chandeliers and huge palms, painted murals and wonderfully old-fashioned pianist. Champagne, and a pile of tiny sandwiches, scones with cream, very fancy iced cakes, meringues and éclairs, and a pot of fragrant Earl Grey.

  Jilly was struggling weakly to refuse a second glass when Carla got her notebook out.

  “You may as well, Jilly, I’ve got to ask a lot of boring stuff now. Like Kate’s age, where she goes to school, what she’s interested in, and what she wants to do. Anything that you might think would give her a bit of colour, as we call it in the trade.”

  “Well, my full name is Kate Bianca Tarrant,” said Kate. “Make sure you put the Bianca in, won’t you? Kate’s such a dull name.”

  “Of course. We could reverse them if you like—Bianca Kate sounds better than the other way round.” She seemed pleased. “Why Bianca? It’s quite unusual. Did it mean something special to your mother?”

  “No, not really. I think…she just liked it,” said Kate. She sounded guarded suddenly. “Anyway, my birthday’s August the fifteenth.”

  “And you’ll be sixteen?”

  “Yeah. Then I can do what I like!” She grinned happily.

  “And what would that be?”

  “Oh no doubt about that. Be a model. Now I know how great it is.”

  “Fine. And what other interests do you have? Hobbies?”

  “Don’t have many. Clothes. Clubbing,” said Kate vaguely. “My sister’s the one. She got a music scholarship, and she plays the piano and the violin and belongs to two orchestras.”

  “Yes, she’s very talented,” said Jilly fondly. “We’re extremely proud of Juliet.”

  “Is she adopted too?” asked Carla.

  Jilly looked at her sharply. “I didn’t know you knew that.”

  “Kate told me about it yesterday, didn’t you, Kate?”

  “Yes, yes, I did. Juliet’s not adopted, no.”

  “Right. Well, you obviously get on.”

  “Quite,” said Kate. “She makes me look a bit hopeless.”

  “No she doesn’t, darling,” said Jilly, patting her knee. “You’re just very different.”

  “Hardly surprising,” said Carla, “since you’re not real sisters. Kate, do you know who your real mother is? Are you in touch with her?”

  “No,” said Kate shortly.

  “Would you like to be?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. And it’s birth mother, not real mother,” she added, rather severely. “My real mum and my real dad—that’s what they are to me—they’re the ones who brought me up, they’re the ones I care about.”

  “Of course,” said Carla soothingly, “and I’m sure they know that.”

  “Of course they do,” said Jilly. She could see that Kate was getting upset. “They’re a very happy family.”

  “I’m sure. So, any boyfriends, Kate?”

  “No. No one serious, anyway.”

  “And what sort of boys do you like?”

  “Oh…” A picture of Nat swam into Kate’s head. “Cool ones, obviously. Tall. Dark. With really cool clothes.”

  “And what do cool boys wear?”

  “Well, combats. Really good boots. Sleeveless T-shirts. Leather jackets. And they drive cool cars.”

  “And what’s a cool car? A Porsche?”

  “No!” Kate’s expression was a mixture of pity and disdain. “That’s an old bloke’s car. No, maybe an Escort, or a Citroën, that’s been, like, souped-up, something with a spoiler, that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds great,” said Carla. “And which clubs you go to.”

  “Oh, all over the place,” said Kate airily. “The Ministry of Sound. The Shed in Brixton.”

  “They have a wonderful time these days,” said Jilly, relieved that the conversation had turned away from Kate’s adoption. “Of course we did, too. In our own way. I used to come dancing here, you know.”

  Kate sighed and said she’d like to go to the loo. “It’s over there,” said Carla, “just down those steps to the right.”

  “Cool. See you in a bit. I might clean some of this muck off my face.”

  “Kate seems a little defensive about her adoption,” said Carla casually, after several minutes of hearing how Jilly and her husband had been two of the earliest members of Annabel’s.

  “Yes, well it’s not surprising, especially under her particular circumstances.”

  “What particular circumstances?”

  “Oh, she—” Jilly stopped, took a large sip of champagne. “Carla, this is not for publication, is it?”

  “Of course not. It’s got nothing to do with the article.”

  “No. Well, she has absolutely no idea who her mother is. None of us do.”

  “Oh, really? I thought these days it was all very open, that they can go in search of their birth mothers.”

  “Normally, of course, they can, but because she was just left like that—Oh, Kate darling, there you are. We really should go. I’m worrying about Juliet.”

  “I’ve got a car waiting,” said Carla. “It’ll take you home. Look, I’ve got all I could possibly need. I’ll send some of the pictures over tomorrow, and I could have a couple mounted for your parents, Kate, if you like. As a coming-home present.”

  “That’d be cool,” said Kate. “Thanks.”

  Jilly said that she didn’t know what Kate would do if the word “cool” hadn’t been invented, drained her glass of champagne, and followed Carla, slightly unsteadily, out to the front of the Ritz.

  What a wonderful day it had been: she felt sure it would prove a huge turning point in Kate’s life.

  What was she going to write about Kate? Carla wondered, looking at the photograph. Just an extended caption? Or a bit more? She wasn’t really particularly interesting. Just one of a million other fifteen-year-olds. Best to concentrate on that. “An extraordinary ordinary girl,” she wrote, “who could be working in a branch of Topshop, or—”

  No, it wasn’t good enough. It just wasn’t. She’d read that so many times in other fashion editors’ pages. It was a cliché. And she wanted to capture in words as well as pictures the quality of Kate, to make her special, her toughness, her prickliness. All because of the adoption, she supposed. Well, they obviously wouldn’t want that written about. And there was nothing special about that really, either. If they’d known who the mother was, it might be different.

  Her door burst open; Johnny Hadley, the diary editor, came in, looking flustered.

  “Carla. Hi. Look, do me a favour, would you? I’m frantic, got to check a couple of things for the lawyers. I’m running a nice story on Sophie Wessex. A few months ago, Jocasta interviewed some woman in the powder room at the Dorchester Hotel, or wherever it was, when there was all that trouble about the bogus sheik, remember? She said how sweet Sophie was, how she always had a kind word for everyone. It never ran, so could you have a rummage in her desk, see if you can find it. It would make a nice bit of background. God, who’s that? Lovely pair of boobs. And talking about Jocasta, she looks a bi
t like her, wouldn’t you say? Or am I imagining it?”

  “No,” said Carla, glancing down at the pictures of Kate, “I’ve said it myself. She’s my latest discovery. Yes, all right, Johnny, I’ll bring the piece in if I can find it.”

  She went to Jocasta’s desk and pulled out the top drawer; nothing in that but a stack of old tapes, some rather dubious-looking lipsticks, and a packet of Tampax. The next one looked more promising: cuttings from the paper, printouts of e-mails, a few drafts of articles. Nothing about Sophie Wessex. The third drawer was total chaos: a mass of papers, notes, typed copy, more printed e-mails. Bloody hell. She’d just have a quick rummage and then say she couldn’t find it. It was—

  “Oh my God!” said Carla. She sat down suddenly and began to read a set of pages. Feverishly, not once, but two, three times. And then picked them up, took them into her office, shut the door, and read them again.

  It was exactly what she had been looking for. Only it wasn’t an article about the chatelaine of the toilets at the Dorchester. It was something quite different. A printout from the Sketch archives, and another from the Mail and yet another from the Sun, about a baby, abandoned at Heathrow airport. On August 15, almost sixteen years ago. Whom the nurses had named Bianca. And whose mother had apparently never been found.

  Chapter 23

  It was a bit like when President Kennedy was shot, the older people concerned said. And like when Princess Diana had been killed, said the younger ones. You knew exactly what you were doing when you heard about it: or rather read it. And you knew you would never forget the moment as long as you lived.

  “Oh, no,” whispered Helen, “oh, no, please no,” as she read the story, read it again, and again, and then sitting there, white-faced under her new tan, concentrating on the pictures of Kate, the extraordinary pictures of Kate, as if by ignoring the words she could will them away.

  Jim, literally speechless with rage, was pacing up and down the kitchen, pausing occasionally to bang his fist on the back door; and Jilly, the one most responsible for the horror, sat in the dining room, too shocked even to think, confronted by the very worst of all the scenarios she had imagined since Carla’s phone call, twenty-four hours earlier.

  Clio, doing a Saturday morning surgery, was shown the article by the receptionist, excited at the rebirth of the story about one of their patients. “It mentions Mrs. Bradford and her shop by name,” she said. Clio sat in her room, reading and rereading it, wondering how much Kate had contributed to the story herself, and hoping against hope it had been nothing to do with Jocasta. And wondering how Kate’s mother, her real mother, must be feeling when she saw it, as she surely would.

  Nat Tucker read it as he sat in his mother’s kitchen, ignoring his father’s exhortations to shift his bloody arse and get on down to the garage, and wondering not only if he should call Kate or just go round and see her, but how he could never have realised how totally gorgeous she was, and enjoying the very clear description of himself and his car. And, with a sensitivity that would have surprised most of his mates and the whole of his family, thinking that it couldn’t be that great, having the fact you’d been abandoned in a cleaning cupboard splashed all over some cruddy newspaper.

  Carla, who had seen the pages the night before at proof stage and felt extremely satisfied with herself, was having a little trouble confronting the reality. Of course she had only been doing her job; of course Jilly, clearly shocked and even frightened, had confirmed (Carla having put her phone onto “record” when she spoke to her, as instructed by the lawyers) that yes, it was correct, and abandoned baby Bianca was indeed Kate; and of course nothing had changed and Kate still clearly had a dazzling future as a model. But somehow, seeing her there in the paper, in all her young vulnerability, with her small sad history spelt out for the almost two million readers of the Sketch to be entertained by as they ate their breakfasts, Carla didn’t feel quite so pleased with herself.

  Martha saw the story trailed on the front page of the Sketch while she was out on her early run: “The abandoned baby: now tipped as the latest face in fashion. Meet Bianca Kate, modelling for the first time in the Sketch today.” She read the story, put the paper, folded neatly, into a rubbish bin, ran back to her apartment, showered and dressed in one of her constituency suits, and drove down to Binsmow. She arrived, as promised, at the vicarage at eleven thirty, did a brief legal clinic, and went to a school summer fair. That evening she and her parents attended a charity concert in Binsmow town hall, where she bought five books of raffle tickets and won a rather grubby-looking bottle of bubble bath. She left Binsmow early next morning, after going to communion and then breakfasting with her mother, who was engrossed in the story of Bianca Kate, the abandoned baby, which had found its way into the Sunday Times as well as the Mail on Sunday. She agreed it was the most dreadful thing to abandon a baby and that she couldn’t imagine anyone doing such a thing, then drove back to London and her apartment, where she spent the day working and dealing with personal admin. In the evening she went to the gym, where she did a spinning class and swam thirty lengths of the pool.

  Ed, who had left four messages on her landline, several more on her mobile, and a couple of text messages as well asking her to call him to discuss, among other things, a trip to Venice he had organised, was first hurt, then annoyed, and finally seriously anxious when she failed to answer any of them.

  And Kate, her golden, dazzling day turned dark and ugly, sat in her bedroom, the door firmly locked, crying endlessly and silently, and feeling more wretched and ashamed than she could have believed possible.

  When Gideon found Jocasta, she was sitting on the grass by the lake, still and stunned, holding the paper close to her, wondering how such a thing could possibly have happened, and cursing Carla with a venom which surprised even her.

  “Can I persuade you to talk about this?” said Gideon.

  “I suppose so,” she said, turning a face, swollen with crying, to him. “It’s something horrible, Gideon, something I—well, something I was implicated in.”

  “But you weren’t there,” he said when she had finished. “It’s not your story. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Gideon, it is, it is. Oh God, I have to go to London. Go and see Kate. I really have to.”

  “All right, my darling one. If you have to. Maybe I should come with you. I’m worried about you, you look dreadful.”

  “No,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him, resting her head briefly on his shoulder. “I’ve got to do this by myself.”

  “All right. If that’s how it is.”

  “It is. Oh, Gideon, it’s such a horrible thing to happen. To a little girl.”

  “What, being abandoned at an airport? It is indeed. But she has a lovely family now, from the sound of it—and maybe she told Carla herself. Maybe it wasn’t your fault at all, nothing to do with you.”

  “I asked Carla that when I rang her,” said Jocasta, starting to cry again, “and she said Kate didn’t tell her anything, only that she was adopted. She got it all—she said—from the archives.”

  “She could well have done.”

  “Yes, but I had a lot about Kate in my desk; I think she found that. And she certainly didn’t warn the poor little thing what she was going to do. She admitted that. Bitch! It’s so cruel, so dreadfully cruel.”

  She blew her nose, managed a wobbly smile. Gideon looked at her, then back at the newspaper.

  “I suppose,” he said quite quietly, “no one has mentioned any resemblance between you and this girl?”

  Jocasta started to laugh: a loud, almost hysterical laugh.

  “Yes,” she said, “actually they have.”

  Clio decided she should ring Jilly Bradford. She had liked her so much and she could imagine how dreadful she must be feeling. There were no quotes from her, or indeed from any of the family. Including Kate.

  She got a recorded message in Jilly’s slightly dated, upper-class accent. She left a message, saying how sorry she was
, and then pressed her buzzer for the next patient. What an awful mess. Poor little Kate. God, these newspapers had a lot to answer for. Surely Jocasta couldn’t have done this. But it was her paper.

  Back in her flat, feeling half ashamed, she decided to call her. Her mobile was on message. Clio left her number, asked her to call, and was still wondering if she could be bothered to make herself anything more than a sandwich, when Jocasta rang.

  “Hi, Clio. It’s Jocasta. How are you?”

  “Fine. I just saw the article about Kate and—”

  “It was nothing to do with me, Clio. Honestly. Well, only in the most indirect way and—well, actually I’ve left the Sketch.”

  “You’ve left? Why?”

  “Oh…bit of a long story. Look, I’m in Ireland at the moment, about to fly to London. I’m going to try and see Kate, because I do feel responsible. In a way.”

  “Jocasta, you’re talking in riddles.”

  “I know. Sorry. Look, if I haven’t been beaten up by the Tarrants, could we meet this evening? I could come to you, if you like. It’d be good to talk it through with someone who knows Kate. Would you mind?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be silly. Just call me.”

  “Is that Mrs. Tarrant?”

  “Yes?”

  It was a soft voice with a slightly north-country accent.

  “Mrs. Tarrant, you don’t know me, but I think I could be Bianca’s mother. You see, I left a baby at the airport seventeen years ago—”

  “Sixteen years,” Helen said sharply. She thought she might be sick.

  “What? Oh I’m sorry, I thought it said seventeen.”

  Helen slammed the phone down and burst into tears; and greatly against her will, feeling every word threatening to choke her, she called Carla Giannini.

  Carla had called first thing: bright and confident. Weren’t the pictures lovely, didn’t Kate look great, they must all be so proud of her. Helen had been so shocked she had mumbled something totally inane.