‘I knew this would happen sooner or later!’ Christie continued ecstatically. ‘How did it happen? Tell me everything!’
Her daughters launched into a stream of description, their words tumbling over each other, blending together: Christie, very used to hearing the twins telling a story in sync, listened intently without needing to tell them to slow down or take it in turns. Her expression grew steadily more blissful as they went on, and by the time Bella was enthusiastically miming a dramatic yet accurate depiction of the way she had gone after Jade with the bolster, Christie was clasping her hands in front of her and resembling nothing so much as a saint transfixed by a revelation delivered to her directly from the mouth of God.
‘Good girl!’ she sighed ecstatically. ‘Good girl!’
Charlotte, always competitive with her siblings, bridled at her mother’s praise of Bella.
‘So after Daddy said to throw Jade out,’ she chimed in, ‘oh, Mummy, that was amazing, I wish you could have seen it! Conway and Bart pulled her out of the chair and frogmarched her across the room, with Daddy and the new slut standing there watching – anyway, when we got onto the street I told her just what you always used to say, that you lose them how you get them! And I said you were a lady all the way through the divorce and that her brats would never get voting rights in the trust and then I told her to fuck off or I’d call the police!’
‘I couldn’t be prouder of both of you!’ Christie sighed. ‘Oh, how I wish I’d seen it! But all four of you did, and that’s wonderful! Wonderful! My babies, all watching her get her comeuppance! She climbed in through the toilet window?’
‘And over the hedge! Or through it, I’m not sure,’ Bella said eagerly. ‘She was cut up – she had a big bruise on her leg and she’d scraped her forehead . . .’
‘I couldn’t be happier! I couldn’t!’ Christie clapped her hands. ‘Brice! Du champagne, s’il te plaît! Vite, vite!’
A young man ambled across the screen behind Christie; she was reclining in her living room, on a sofa upholstered in blue-and-white-striped linen, and it looked as if he had been outside by the swimming pool, as he was wearing only a small pair of red Speedos and a gold chain around his neck. Neither Bella nor Charlotte had seen him before, but his type was very familiar to them. Christie had been working her way through the twenty-something male population of the French Riviera since she moved there.
From St Tropez to Cannes to Nice to Monaco, the word had got out that any slim, relatively hairless, dark-haired young man with a winning smile and an accommodating nature could live the good life at the Villa Rosa in St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat for a year or so, until Christie’s eyes started to stray once more to assess the new crop of bartenders, waiters, pool boys and lifeguards displayed in all their glory on beaches up and down the coast. She could afford to be very generous; each young man left with the very expensive gifts Christie had bought him during their residency – watches, clothes, a car – and, if he had played his cards well, he would have a raft of connections to other rich widows or divorcees who were also looking for a new plaything.
‘Des bonnes nouvelles?’ Brice asked, scratching his balls as he went.
‘Oui, oui, les meilleures du monde! Fantastique!’
Christie beamed back at her daughters as Brice disappeared from view to get the champagne.
‘I told him it’s the best news in the world!’ she informed them, unnecessarily, as she knew they both spoke French. ‘You should toast too! Charlotte, go get some fizz, honey! If I can’t be there with you and give you both a big hug for standing up for your mom today, we can at least raise a glass to that bitch getting her comeuppance!’
Charlotte jumped down from her stool and went over to the built-in drinks fridge. As she pulled out a bottle of Taittinger, Christie continued:
‘You two must come over for a weekend real soon! It’s so close, it’s crazy you don’t visit more . . .’
‘Yikes, Mummy!’ Charlotte called from the kitchen. ‘We’d love to, of course, but I’m going to be working like a maniac for the next six months! Oh God, we need to tell you about that too—’
As Charlotte pulled champagne coupes out of the drawer in the freezer which was specifically designed to hold chilled glasses, Bella took over, relating to Christie their father’s challenge to the four siblings, their six-month trial to present themselves as the best candidate for CEO of the entire Sachs organization. By the time Charlotte had filled the coupes and returned to the breakfast bar with the foaming, ice-dappled glasses, Christie was fully briefed and doing her best, despite her surgeries and Botox, to frown.
‘But of course it’ll be Conway!’ she said, looking from one twin to the other. ‘Come on now, you know that! You girls work too hard as it is. Charlotte, you need to spend more time with your family, not less. I love seeing you all on Instagram, but honey, that’s staged for the cameras, with a bunch of people round you styling you and the kids, doing make-up and hair, taking the photos. You need to kick back with Paul and Posy and Quant when there’s no one else around, make sure you get proper family time.’
‘What about telling Conway to spend more time with his family?’ Charlotte said indignantly. ‘He’s barely ever at home – Samantha’s bringing up those kids pretty much by herself!’
‘He’s working for his family, honey,’ Christie corrected her patiently. ‘That’s way different, can’t you see? And Samantha’s fine as she is – she’s really happy being a stay-at-home mom.’
Charlotte’s eyes bulged in frustration as her mother continued:
‘And Bella, sweetie, you need to start your family with Thomas! What are you waiting for, honey? The clock’s ticking – you don’t want to be left behind!’
Once more, Bella’s eyelashes fluttered in a nervous tic, the words she wanted to say bitten back. Luckily her mother was distracted by the arrival of a beaming Brice, who had donned a loose white linen shirt which hung open over his slender, slightly hollow tanned chest, a champagne glass in each hand.
‘Voici, Christie!’ he said, his French accent completely mangling her name but also turning it into a thing of beauty.
‘Merci, mon cher,’ Christie said, taking her glass as Brice slung one leg over the arm of the sofa and perched on it nonchalantly, the contents of his Speedos bulging through the shiny fabric, which was thin enough to outline every specific detail. They pouched even more as he leant forward to chink his glass with Christie’s. Charlotte reached out and nudged the laptop, moving it just far enough to cut out Brice’s package, though his lightly furred, suntan-oiled thigh was still in view.
‘You girls think you can have it all, but you can’t,’ Christie said earnestly, pushing her hair back, her bracelets jingling as she did so. ‘Listen to your mom, okay? Learn from my fuck-up! I thought I could sit on the board of Sachs and do design work and bring up four kids and keep my husband, all at the same time. And you know what happened! I got distracted and that slut took advantage!’
‘Well, she got her comeuppance today!’ Charlotte said quickly, trying to steer their mother away from one of her favourite subjects, young women today and how they should be focusing less on their careers and more on making sure their husbands had no time to look around at the even younger women making eyes at them. ‘And we’re toasting that! To losing them how you get them!’
‘To losing them how you get them!’ Bella and Christie chorused, raising their glasses.
The twins clinked their coupes together and then raised them to the screen, as Christie was doing. Mother and daughters flashed happy smiles at each other before taking sips of champagne.
‘So you’ll come visit?’ Christie said hopefully. ‘We’ll have such a great family time. No business talk allowed! Posy and Quant can spend all day in the pool, they’ll love that! They’re such water babies—’
Just then, to the twins’ relief, they heard a key in the door. It was Paul, Charlotte’s husband, returning with the adorable pair of five-year-olds from a romp in the play
ground in Regent’s Park. Twins, it had turned out, ran in the family. Christie’s attention immediately switched to her grandchildren, and as Posy and Quant lisped greetings to her, Paul kissing his wife in greeting before unbuttoning the kids’ coats and hanging them up, Charlotte and Bella took the opportunity to slip away.
‘It’s a red-letter day for Granny Christie!’ the proud grandmother was saying blissfully. ‘Paul, honey, get yourself a glass of champagne, and can the kids have a little too? Just a drop? Let ’em put their fingers in your glass. Today we’re having a big celebration!’
Charlotte poured Paul a glass, as Posy piped up, reaching to point at the bit of Brice’s leg which was visible on the screen:
‘Who’s that, Gwanny Cwistie?’
Leaning forward helpfully, Paul turned the laptop back to its original angle before either Charlotte or Bella could screech a warning to him. The subsequent kerfuffle ensured that Christie completely forgot about lecturing her daughters on being attentive wives: she was too busy apologizing to Paul and the kids, shouting at Brice to get off the sofa, button up his shirt and hide his bijoux de famille, and promising Paul and Charlotte that it would never happen again.
Quant’s hands were clapped to his mouth in shock: Posy kept asking why the funny man was in his underpants. Meanwhile Paul was, in his most serious voice, explaining to Christie that while he was bringing the children up to be completely comfortable with their own and each other’s bodies, he and Charlotte, as parents, wanted to be able to control the level of exposure the children had on their journey of self-discovery . . .
‘Drink some and get a grip,’ Charlotte said curtly, thrusting the champagne coupe at her husband. ‘Honestly, he’s in a swimsuit. It’s not that big a deal!’
Bella turned away to hide a snigger at this inadvertent double entendre, especially because Brice, at least in a resting state, was more chipolata than Cumberland sausage. Charlotte, seeing this, realized what she had said and bit the inside of her cheeks to stop laughing too. The sisters moved away from the breakfast bar; on the screen behind them, Brice, climbing off the sofa to obey Christie’s order, accidentally turned his red-clad bottom to the camera and made both Posy and Quant hoot with laughter, point and yell about the funny man’s bum-bum.
‘Oh my God!’ Christie exclaimed, grabbing her laptop and leaning in so that the only thing visible was her face. ‘Granny’s sorry, kids! Brice, fiche-moi le camp! Dépêche-toi!’
‘Hard to believe that’s the first gigolo crotch we’ve seen on Skype, considering how many of them have been through Villa Rosa,’ Charlotte said sotto voce to Bella. ‘Christ, Paul’s going to bang on about this for ages. He’s so serious. The kids’ll just think it’s funny unless he hammers on so much he gives them some sort of complex.’
Glancing over at Paul, handsome as a Greek god with the black curls clustering densely over his scalp, his clear blue eyes and sculpted features, his striped V-neck Nigel Hall cashmere sweater clinging to his gym-toned torso, his slim-fit Tom Ford jeans performing the same service for his tight buttocks, and his jaw set as he tried to summon his patience while explaining his childcare philosophy to a fervently apologizing Christie, Bella found it as difficult as she always did when Charlotte said something negative about her husband.
She actually agreed with Charlotte this time: Paul was making it worse by emphasizing the brief glimpse of Brice in his Speedos, rather than laughing with Posy and Quant about Granny’s silly friend’s bum-bum and then distracting them with a dab of champagne on their tongues. But Paul was so good-looking, so perfect, such a great father! Charlotte was insanely lucky! Yes, Paul could be ponderous sometimes, but in Bella’s view that tendency of his had intensified over the years to balance out Charlotte’s carelessness with the children. She loved to play with them and dress them up like pretty dolls, but Paul and the nannies had the hard work of bringing them up to be civilized human beings. It was highly frustrating for Bella to watch Paul being an ideal husband and father while Charlotte criticized the one thing that she could dredge up about him.
‘We’re having courgette passgetti for dinner!’ Posy was saying eagerly to her grandmother. ‘Daddy makes it in the twirly machine!’
‘That’s the spiralizer,’ Paul explained to Christie. ‘We’re working on getting a balance between proteins, carbs and vegetables in our daily diet, and courgette spaghetti is a fun way to—’
‘Why are Gwanny’s eyes all funny?’ Quant piped up, pointing at the screen. ‘They’re all big now.’
‘Oh yes!’ Posy exclaimed, leaning forward to stare at the close-up of Christie on the screen, stabbing at it with a chubby finger. ‘Gwanny looks funny!’
Christie hastily put the laptop down on the coffee table again. The wider shot showed Brice, re-entering the room with his shirt buttoned up and a pair of capri trousers covering the lower part of his body, pulling a very comical face in a swift, involuntary reaction to Quant’s innocent question.
Luckily, Christie was entirely unaware of her current toy boy’s amusement at the elephant in the room being mentioned. She struggled to come up with an answer as Paul said reprovingly to his son:
‘Quant! You know it’s rude to talk about people’s appearances! Say sorry to Granny Christie at once.’
‘Naughty Quant!’ Posy said with great satisfaction.
Quant relieved his embarrassment by turning to punch his sister, and Paul grabbed the kids to separate them. Bella gathered up her bag.
‘I should be going,’ she said half-heartedly.
It was always difficult for Bella to drag herself away from the St John’s Wood house. Though the gleaming white surfaces weren’t exactly cosy, still, at this time of day, with Charlotte and Bella playing with the kids, a log burning in the glass-fronted fireplace, Paul in the kitchen starting to plan out one of his gourmet yet healthy meals, the warmth and happy chaos created a family atmosphere that was entirely missing from her own home.
‘You can stay and have courgette spaghetti with Paul and the kids if you want,’ Charlotte offered nonchalantly. ‘I have business drinks later at Claridge’s, but I’m sure they’d be happy for the company. Paul made this amazing chocolate avocado mousse last night, and there’s some of that left over. Thomas is still away, right?’
‘Yes, he’s back tomorrow morning,’ Bella said. ‘He’s getting the red-eye from Dubai.’
She was repressing a strong wish to stay, to play house with Paul and Posy and Quant. But she knew it would feel worse if she stayed and left later; it would be even harder to wrench herself away. After dinner came bathtime, and Paul would be more than happy to let Bella supervise the kids as they played with the bubbles in the whirlpool bath and built wobbly, towering wigs on each other’s heads, screaming in excitement as the coloured lights under the water changed in sequence . . .
And then ‘flying’ them out of the bath, drying off their squirming little bodies, getting them into their pyjamas for Paul to take over and put them to bed while she quietly let herself out of the house, to go back to her own empty one on a Friday night, with her husband away . . . no, she had done that before and it was the most depressing moment she could imagine, when your hosts were ready for you to go, but you were not.
It wasn’t just the kids. It was Paul, the house, the whole package. Despite what Christie had said, Charlotte really did have it all. And when it was not merely your best friend, or even your sister, but your twin who had it all, that was a particularly bitter pill to have to swallow, not once, but on a near-daily basis.
Chapter Six
It was an easy drive home. A left turn out of Charlotte’s private courtyard took Bella up to the Finchley Road, which led almost all the way to Hampstead Garden Suburb. It was, Bella’s husband Thomas always said with amusement and pride, the only suburb in the world which boasted of its status to the point of incorporating it proudly in its name.
The Suburb, as it was known to its inhabitants, had been intended as a retreat from the noise and
bustle of London. Built in the early twentieth century, specifically planned with widely spaced houses on gracious tree-lined avenues interspersed with public gardens, the Suburb had been entirely successful in achieving its goal: though it contained two churches, they were banned from ringing their bells, and the trust which governed the management scheme had recently cracked down on overly noisy lawnmowers and leaf blowers. Thomas was one of the four elected trustees and had been at the forefront of implementing this policy. The Suburb, which was the major freeholder, also required that homeowners get the trust’s approval for felling trees, building garden sheds and even major changes to their gardens, and Thomas was equally enthusiastic about ensuring that it remained as pristine and unspoilt as possible.
When they first moved there, five years ago, Bella had loved the quiet, tranquil atmosphere. Thomas had grown up there and always planned to return when he got married, considering it the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. He had been the first man she had dated who had been ready to nest, and the relief when she realized that he felt the same way as she did had been overwhelming and unexpected.
Because Bella, at twenty-eight, had found that her peers still wanted to play the field. On business trips to America, women her own age had told her that in the US, you could talk on your first date about what you wanted in a partner, weed out the men who weren’t able to say that they too were ready for a serious commitment leading to marriage. For an Englishwoman, however, this kind of frankness was anathema, and even if Bella could have summoned up the requisite bravery to try it, any Englishman would have run a mile. So she bounced unhappily from one boyfriend to another, men in her own social circle who had plenty of funds of their own and didn’t need to marry a Sachs daughter for money and status. When she finally met forty-year-old Thomas at a dinner party, it had felt like the happiest of endings.
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