Girl Friday

by Unknown

  ‘Annabel Plowman. John Plowman’s daughter. Your…’ She can barely say it. ‘She says she’s your daughter.’

  There is a silence then, as Ginny allows herself to remember. To remember John Plowman. To remember how he changed the course of her life.

  Ginny was on husband three, or possibly four, it was so hard to keep track, and she was living at Summerhill, in Bedford, New York.

  A grand old estate on three hundred acres, off Pea Pond Road, it had electric gates that swung open to reveal a majestic drive lined with centuries-old linden trees, leading you up to the low-slung, 1930s mansion.

  It had been falling down before Mrs Virginia Clayton – as she had become – moved in, and Ginny had immediately phoned all her New York contacts – architects, designers, landscapers, to come and turn Summerhill into a house befitting the third wife of Jonathan Clayton IV.

  Walls were ripped down, windows and roof replaced, plush fabrics re-covering the formerly threadbare sofas and chairs.

  The top landscape architects in the country produced blueprint after blueprint of gardens inspired by the classic English designers – Capability Brown, Humphry Repton, Gertrude Jekyll.

  By the time the renovation was complete – two years on – Jonathan Clayton had tired of living amid the noise and chaos, and spent Monday to Friday at their Park Avenue apartment with his mistress, Clara.

  Ginny stayed in the guest cottage – itself a rather spectacular five-bedroomed manse – to oversee the renovations.

  The staff that had looked after Summerhill for years had to go. One creaky butler/houseman, a team of Guatemalan landscapers who, Ginny decided, didn’t know their oak from their apple tree, and Jonathan’s assistant, who was horribly indiscreet and loved nothing more than sitting down with anyone who would listen to gossip about the new and awful mistress of the house.

  The team were replaced with staff from one of the New York domestic agencies. A butler fresh from butlering for an English CEO at his estate in Bucking-hamshire, three Filipina maids who were so quiet as to be almost invisible, and two full-time gardeners, plus a head gardener to oversee them, a young man who had just graduated with a degree in horticulture and who was looking for work in America. John Plowman.

  Ginny, left on her own all week, found there was nothing she loved more than walking around the gardens to see how they were coming along, chatting about the flowers and the plants with John Plowman.

  It didn’t hurt that he was so handsome. And charming. That accent! His easy smile and unaffected ways. Being around him made Ginny feel young.

  His family, back in England, teased him about not having a girlfriend. There had certainly been plenty of girls, but when he was out with those local girls from his village, they just seemed so, well, girlish.

  So unlike Mrs Clayton. Now there was a woman. Everything about her was perfect, from her perfectly painted-in eyebrows to the patent heels on her feet. And the fact that she was American added a touch of glamour and excitement to everything she did.

  Her humour, her ability to tease him, her thirst for knowledge of everything to do with gardens.

  He would bring her books on gardening and then be amazed when, a few days later, she would want to discuss them with him, pointing out that Gertrude Jekyll had done a specific colour planting in some garden or other, and she thought it would work here.

  When he brought her a book on Triboli, a book filled with pictures of his masterpiece in Florence, the Boboli Gardens, she insisted they fly out to Italy, on a research trip.

  He abandoned his hotel room on the first night, sweeping into her grand suite overlooking the Ponte Vecchio.

  It was perhaps the most perfect four days of his life. They walked hand in hand through the cobbled streets, Ginny gasping at the beauty of his beloved Firenze, stopping every few steps to take more pictures while he laughed and teased her about being a typical American tourist, then gathered her in his arms and kissed her passionately, bystanders clapping and cheering them on.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Ginny blushed.

  ‘Brava! Amore!’ He grinned. ‘I think – although Italian has never been my strongest point – but I think they’re saying how wonderful it is to be in love.’

  John Plowman knew his life was about to change for the better, and that Ginny would be the love of his life. Admittedly she wouldn’t have the life she had had before, but this was the real Ginny; she would be happy in a small house, just as long as they could be together.

  Kit came to stay in the house for two weeks one summer. John felt sorry for her, this pale little girl with the sad eyes, who barely spoke, and he took her under his wing, showing her the garden and getting her to help with small jobs, showing her how to deadhead, how to weed and prune.

  He taught her with gentleness and sweetness, sorry only that Ginny seemed so uninterested in her daughter. She was her biological daughter, but couldn’t have been less like her confident, outgoing mother.

  Perhaps he could change Ginny, he thought. Perhaps when they were married Kit could come and live with them and they could be a big happy family.

  ‘Oh darling,’ Ginny said sadly, when he revealed his plans to her. ‘I will always love you, but I’m not leaving my life.’

  She didn’t tell John she was pregnant for a few weeks. Didn’t tell anyone. When he finally noticed her growing bump – she had taken to spending most nights during the week with John, in his small gardener’s cottage – she cried.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell my husband,’ she sobbed. Still, she refused to leave Jonathan and be with John.

  There was no point telling Jonathan the baby was his – they hadn’t slept together in almost a year – and an abortion was out of the question. It just wasn’t something Ginny could do.

  But neither did she want this child. There wasn’t an ounce of maternal instinct in Ginny. Never had been, never would be. Her first marriage, which resulted in Kit, had been a mistake. It was Ginny trying to be the dutiful daughter, trying to lead the life her parents expected of her, rather than following her dreams. Life with a husband and baby proved impossible, hence her taking flight shortly after Kit was born. She had never wanted any more children and she had nothing but negative feelings for this baby from the moment she discovered she had conceived.

  The pregnancy was more than an inconvenience, it was a disaster. She didn’t delight in her changing body, she hated it; she wished she wasn’t such a good Catholic girl, wished she could just go to see a doctor and have it taken care of, but there weren’t enough Hail Marys in the world to take care of the guilt she knew she would have.

  John was fired, and it was decided the baby would be put up for adoption. It was Ginny who contacted John, who asked him to find a family. Jonathan took the news of Ginny’s affair in his stride, but it was one thing to find your wife was having an affair and quite another to raise someone else’s child as your own.

  Ginny went to London to have the child. In the Lindo wing of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. No one knew her. No one thought to make a secret phone call to the gossip columnists on the papers in America.

  While she was gone, her husband started thinking that it was time to replace Ginny with a younger, newer model. Not Clara – she wasn’t wife material in the slightest – but he had been somewhat taken with a young socialite he had met at the ballet a handful of times, and there was definite chemistry between them.

  And Ginny had already cost him more than his first and second wife combined. It was definitely time for a change.

  The divorce was quick, and relatively painless, made more so by yet another substantial financial settlement. She didn’t see Jonathan again. And she didn’t speak to John Plowman again for many, many years.

  Ginny’s voice is tense on the phone. ‘How do you know about her?’

  ‘She’s here. In Highfield. She wants to meet me. She wrote me a letter and she’s staying in a hotel here.’ Kit takes a deep breath. ‘It’s true, then.’

&nb
sp; ‘What’s true?’

  ‘She is my sister.’ The words feel alien even as they leave her lips.

  ‘Technically, yes. But honestly, darling, I don’t know what she wants. She keeps trying to get hold of me too, and I just don’t want to have anything to do with her.’

  ‘Mother! How can you say that about your own flesh and blood? And how could you not have told me?’ The fury comes out in her words, the little-girl hurt that she can’t hide, even as an adult.

  ‘You didn’t need to know,’ Ginny attempts.

  ‘What?’ Kit spits. ‘This is my sister. How could you? How could you deny me a sister?’ She is close to tears as she speaks, aware she is regressing, sounding like a nine-year-old, but the anger is such that she doesn’t care.

  ‘Kit, stop,’ Ginny demands sternly. ‘There’s too much you don’t know. I’ll have to explain when I see you, and I’m sorry for your hurt, but… there’s more to this than meets the eye.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  How can Ginny explain, how can she tell Kit that she has never wanted anything to do with Annabel because she has had nothing but negative feelings for her since before she was even born?

  ‘Oh Kit. I’ve tried. Do you think I don’t recognize that, despite all, she is still my daughter? I was a terrible mother to you, but I hope I’m making up for it somewhat now. I wish I could do the same for Annabel, but it isn’t the same. Not just that I don’t trust her, but that I don’t have a bond with her. This is a baby I never even held, and a child who grew up to be a troubled and destructive woman.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You must feel something for her.’

  ‘I have tried to feel something for her, but I don’t, and I can’t. She isn’t someone who feels like my child. It isn’t like you, Kit. I promise you it’s not the same. And you must not trust her either. She wants money, and heaven knows her father was paid enough at the time.’

  ‘So what if she wants money? She’s your daughter.’ And God knows you can afford it, she wants to say. But doesn’t.

  Kit hears Ginny sigh. ‘Kit, I don’t expect you to understand, but I have more than provided for her. Every time she has got into trouble over the years, I have been the one to bail her out, but don’t you go telling her that. When she got into drugs as a teenager, who do you think paid for rehab? I paid her university fees, which was a waste of time because she dropped out halfway into her second year, and I have supplemented her life behind the scenes for many years.’

  ‘You have?’ Kit is shocked.

  ‘Indeed I have. None of which she knows. This is a private arrangement between myself and John.’

  Ginny doesn’t want to explain to Kit that it was duty that made her provide for Annabel. Hers was a pregnancy that was not supposed to have happened, and Ginny paying for Annabel’s mistakes comes from a sense of duty rather than any familial obligation you might expect a mother to feel.

  ‘This child is not someone I owe anything to. She has spent years fighting drugs and alcohol, has never held a steady job as far as I know, and is obsessed with money. Her last serious boyfriend was a drug dealer, and she stayed with him because he kept her in cocaine and Rolexes. I know she’s up to no good.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  ‘No. But John sends me pictures, and we talk regularly; he tells me about her. She never knew I was her mother until recently. Now she wants to meet me, and I know this is about money.’

  ‘Mom, you’re saying terrible things. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This is your daughter, a child you abandoned, and all she’s asking for is to meet you. Her own mother.’ Kit shakes her head in disgust.

  ‘Don’t call me Mom, Kit,’ snaps Ginny. ‘You know how I hate it. This is a girl with ulterior motives. Don’t give her money – it will just go up her nose. Honestly, I’d say don’t have anything to do with her.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Kit says, feeling dirty after this conversation. Sullied.

  ‘Bye, darling,’ Ginny says, and the connection is cut.

  Kit tips the wine glass back and glugs the entire contents before refilling it and shaking her head, just as her phone buzzes from the kitchen, signalling that she has a text. It’s from Charlie.

  How’s yr evening? T is crazy. Doesn’t seem to know finance world collapsing! Yr boss here too, being v. sexy and clever – I feel v. glam being out with r. mcclore! Hope u r misbehaving… C xxx

  ‘Unbefuckinglievable,’ Kit says, out loud, reading the text. ‘Suddenly I have a sister who’s not just greedy but a drug addict and alcoholic, and now one of my best friends is dating my boss and refusing to discuss it with me. Could it get any worse? Don’t answer that!’ She looks up at the ceiling, her way of communicating directly with God, curse words and all.

  The Highfield Inn is not far. It is one of three hotels in town. There are the Berkshire Arms, an exclusive small boutique hotel with trendy restaurant attached, a Marriott that survives only because it provides conference facilities and is thus regularly packed by visiting business people, and the Highfield Inn.

  Originally a Howard Johnson, it was not-so-sensitively restored a few years ago. It changes hands every few years, with every new owner vowing to turn it into something truly special, but it still looks like a motel, just a motel with some clapboard siding and a fresh coat of paint.

  There is nothing luxurious about the Highfield Inn, and it is not a place anyone ‘obsessed with money’ would ever stay. It sounds like Ginny is making up stories.

  Kit has had one glass of wine. Surely she’ll be safe to drive. She could pick up the phone and call this Annabel Plowman, determine by the sound of her voice whether she sounds trustworthy, whether they should meet, but it would be easier still to jump in the car and zip over there, perhaps get a glimpse of her close up, just to get a sense of who exactly she is dealing with.

  Kit won’t have to meet her, not tonight. She can go in disguise, a baseball hat and glasses, her hair in a ponytail, a big scarf covering the lower part of her face. God knows it’s cold enough, and what else does she have to do?

  She goes upstairs to her closet to grab a hat, and less than five minutes later she’s heading to the Highfield Inn, Annabel’s letter lying next to her, on the passenger seat.

  14

  A few blocks away from the Highfield Inn, Lotus, a trendy Asian fusion restaurant, is hosting Charlie and Keith, Alice and Harry, and Tracy, who, unexpectedly, brought with her Robert McClore.

  The manager of the restaurant is fluttering around, quivering with excitement, for this is a first: not only does he have the owners of the hottest restaurant in Highfield in for dinner, but with them is the famous author, Robert McClore!

  The waiters, who are mostly Korean, have no idea who Robert McClore is, but they are terrified of their manager, and are following instructions to bring out free tasters, and to provide the best service of their lives.

  Alice chose Lotus. She chose it because while they eat at the Greenhouse every day, while they try to eat organic, local produce, no refined sugar, no white flour, nothing with any additives and preservatives, she can’t resist the occasional cravings for spare ribs and sesame chicken, or a velvety chicken korma with sag paneer.

  And they eat at their own restaurant so much, she didn’t want to have the same food, didn’t want to be interrupted every few minutes with questions from the staff, who, she knows, can handle everything perfectly well themselves when they don’t have the option of asking her.

  So when Tracy phoned and talked about meeting for dinner, she jumped in before Tracy mentioned the Greenhouse, and suggested the Lotus instead.

  It takes a while for everyone to relax. These are, after all, people who don’t know one another well, and Robert McClore is an unexpected guest, and it is hard to be normal, to not focus on the fact that there is a huge celebrity sitting at their table.

  Do they ask him about his books, confess they are huge fans, or pretend that he is just like them?

  It reminds A
lice of the time she went to a party in London and Mick Jagger was there. He was the only celebrity in the room, and for most of the evening nobody spoke to him. It was Mick Jagger! Standing feet away from her, and every time she caught his eye, he smiled, looking desperately lonely, desperate to talk.

  But no one wanted to be uncool, no one wanted to give away that they knew who he was, or that they were impressed, and so he stood, on his own, until one die-hard fan finally bit the bullet and went over to say he had been to every Stones concert in London in the seventies, and what was up with that playlist in 1982.

  So very different, she thinks, to how Americans react to fame.

  One night Oprah Winfrey had come to the Greenhouse for dinner. She had, it seems, been in the area to appear at a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, when he was campaigning for the presidency, and was staying with friends for a couple of days after the event.

  They had walked into the Greenhouse for dinner on a Saturday night when the restaurant was packed, and Alice had never seen anything like it. As Oprah walked in, it was as if an invisible spotlight shone upon her. A hush fell upon the diners, before a swell of excited whispering.

  ‘Oh my God! It’s Oprah! And Gayle!’ Chatter, chatter, chatter. People made no bones about swivelling their heads to gaze, unabashed, as the group made their way through the restaurant, smiling and stopping to shake hands, to receive praise warmly and graciously.

  ‘That,’ Alice said, turning to Harry, ‘is a true celebrity. Look at how good she makes people feel.’

  ‘It’s the gift of Oprah,’ Harry said. ‘That’s why she is who she is.’

  Tonight, at Lotus, Alice notes a similar effect, but on a far reduced scale. Everyone turns to watch them walk through the restaurant to their table, and Robert McClore is clearly recognized, but it dies down quickly, and no one comes up to say anything, to lavish praise upon him, perhaps because they know, from his reputation, how uncomfortable he would be.

  It is not until their main courses are brought to the table – sesame-crusted tuna with pak choi and daikon salad, cilantro soy lime fish cakes, maple-glazed spare ribs, seared beef tataki with soy mustard sauce, wok-seared sesame chicken with papaya salad, udon noodles with lemongrass and kaffir lime – that they start to relax, start to enjoy themselves, aided somewhat by the constant refilling of the hot sake, and chilled white wine they are having with their meal.