The Bachelor

by Tilly Bagshawe

  ‘You will end things with Lucy now, won’t you?’

  Henry looked at Flora. Then he looked around the room, his gaze fixing for a moment on a still-life painting of some vegetables that Flora had hung over the fireplace. One of the few splashes of colour in the otherwise whitewashed room, the picture naturally drew the eye.

  ‘I like what you’ve done with this place,’ said Henry, flashing her the smile again. ‘You’re a great designer.’

  ‘It can’t end well, you know,’ Flora told him.

  ‘Goodnight, Flora.’

  Henry left, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Flora burst into GJD’s London offices on Tite Street, a tiny, harassed figure almost completely obscured by the mountain of large shopping bags she was carrying.

  ‘Has the call started yet?’ Dumping the bags unceremoniously on the lobby floor, like a camel shedding its packs, Flora looked at Katie, the receptionist, nervously.

  ‘No. You’re lucky. He’s late.’ Katie smiled. ‘They’re all upstairs in the conference room, waiting.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Flora exhaled, eschewing the ancient lift and taking the office stairs two at a time. ‘Be an angel and shove all that stuff in a cupboard somewhere for me, would you?’ she called over her shoulder, gesturing vaguely at the bag mountain.

  It had been a frenzied morning, racing around Chelsea Wharf with Eva looking at tiles and curtain fabric and reclaimed brass bath taps and God knows what else for the castle’s new master bedroom suite. Living in their little bubble in the Swell Valley, it was easy to forget quite how famous Eva Gunnarson was in the real world. Spending a morning in London with Eva was quite an eye-opener. Flora was amazed by the numbers of people who approached them as they made their way through the Design Centre, wanting to take selfies with Eva or get her autograph or simply to say hello. All types of people too: rich Chelsea businessmen, teenage girls with their own dreams of making it as models, housewives, builders; even an adorable couple in their eighties who recognized Eva ‘off that advert on the telly’ and just wanted to give her a hug and remind her to eat properly. Eva was her usual patient, gracious self with all of them, but Flora found the constant interruptions incredibly irritating. Couldn’t people see they were busy?

  By noon it was clear she was going to be late for the conference call with Graydon. Then, at the last minute, Flora had decided to swing by the Battersea site of Penny de la Cruz’s new gallery and drop off a couple more sketches, making herself even later.

  Despite having subzero free time, coming up with sketches for Penny had become Flora’s new hobby, a much-needed stress reliever after the long days spent up at Hanborough, avoiding Henry’s eye. To say things had been tense since Flora’s discovery of Henry and Lucy in the woods would be an understatement. Twice, Richard Smart had ‘popped by’ unexpectedly, and Flora had bolted out of the house like a rabbit down a hole, poleaxed with guilt.

  ‘You don’t need to run away from him you know,’ Henry had chastised her afterwards. ‘He’ll think something weird’s going on.’

  ‘Something weird is going on,’ Flora reminded him caustically. ‘Or should I put that in the past tense?’

  ‘You should mind your own business,’ said Henry. ‘And I’ll do the same. Ask me no secrets, Flora.’

  It was even worse when Georgina Savile came to Hanborough, ostensibly to talk business with Henry, although recently George had made a big show of ingratiating herself with Eva.

  ‘Oh, I love what you’ve done with the chef’s kitchen,’ George exclaimed, when Eva showed her around. ‘I’d never have thought pink would work in here, but it’s spectacular. You are clever.’

  ‘Actually, it was Flora’s idea …’ Eva began, smiling at Flora who was sitting at the table, engrossed in her work.

  ‘Uh uh uh. No!’ George wagged a finger playfully in Eva’s direction. ‘Now you really must stop doing that. Putting yourself down. Henry’s told me how hands-on you’ve been with all of the design here.’

  ‘Well, I have made a few suggestions,’ Eva admitted.

  ‘More than a few!’ George’s fake smile threatened to take over her entire elfin face. ‘Much more. This is your design, Eva. Flora’s just here to act as a channel for your creative vision. Isn’t that right, Flora?’

  ‘If you say so.’ Flora smiled tightly at George.

  ‘You wouldn’t be a poppet and make us some tea, would you?’ George asked, as she led Eva back to the drawing room. ‘I’m absolutely dying for a cuppa, but I’m longing to see the rest of the changes Eva’s made.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, it isn’t Flora’s job to make us tea!’ Eva said, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Flora. ‘I’m making one myself.’

  ‘You see?’ George trilled, taking the unsuspecting Eva by the hand with a forced girliness that made Flora want to throw up. When was the last time those fingers were wrapped around Henry’s cock? ‘Flora doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Henry, pulling Eva into an embrace and kissing her, pointedly, in front of George. ‘Flora’s a professional and she’s trying to work. Make your own bloody tea.’

  George had laughed it off, with an eye-roll and an ‘Oh, Henry!’ But not before she’d looked daggers at Flora – as if any of this awful charade were her fault!

  It was a relief to come to London, but as usual there was never enough time to fit everything in, especially not illicit trips to Penny de la Cruz in Battersea.

  ‘I feel like a spy, delivering secrets to the enemy,’ Flora told Penny as she handed over the sketches. Penny was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a pair of paint-splattered overalls, eating a picnic lunch of Fortnum & Mason game pie, a delicious-looking plum cake, and drinking champagne, with a disconcertingly attractive blond man.

  ‘I do hope I’m not the enemy.’ She smiled at Flora. ‘This is my good friend Gabe Baxter.’ She introduced the blond. Flora bent down to shake his hand.

  ‘Gabe, this is Flora Fitzwilliam, my secret squirrel designer. She escaped from the dungeons at Hanborough Castle to bring me these.’

  ‘They’re bloody good,’ said Gabe, flipping through Flora’s sketches admiringly. ‘Do you ever do common-or-garden houses? Or only castles? I ask because Laura and I just bought a new place on Clapham Common. Great house but everything’s dark brown. We think the last people employed a mole to decorate it. Possibly a mole from 1976 with an abiding passion for shag pile.’

  Flora laughed. ‘Unfortunately I don’t get to choose my own commissions. Not yet, anyway. I work for Graydon James. Thinking of which, I’d better get back to the office now before he sacks me.’

  ‘Really? Right now?’ Penny looked disappointed. ‘Can’t you join us? Gabe brought this delicious hamper over as a gallery-warming present. I know it’s not really lunchtime, but we were both too greedy to wait.’

  ‘Stay for a glass of champagne at least,’ said Gabe.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Flora sighed. Gabe and Penny both seemed to be having such fun. But Graydon would hit the roof if she missed the big video conference call. He’d summoned the entire company together, all over the globe, to discuss the International Designer of the Year awards next year, and their strategy for winning the nomination. As Hanborough Castle was supposed to be the jewel in the GJD crown, Flora’s presence was not so much requested as required.

  ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’

  Conrad, a pouty twenty-two-year-old Graydon groupie with perfect cheekbones and a pronounced bitchy streak, looked daggers at Flora as she took her seat at the head of the table. Graydon kept a skeleton staff of two designers and an assistant in the London office. Conrad, preposterously, had been promoted from assistant to designer last year, prompting James Peace, the senior designer, to leave GJD in disgust. Conrad now worked alongside Frances Kingham, a timid vole of a woman who sat to Flora’s left, wearing her usual expression of abject terror at the prospect of a conference call with
her boss. Making up the foursome was Karin, the new assistant, who sat on Flora’s right. Karin was a sweet, dumpy Swedish girl, who didn’t know the first thing about design, but could type at the speed of light, was wildly efficient, and let Conrad’s histrionics roll off her back like harmless drops of rain.

  ‘If there’s one thing you can rely on with Graydon, it’s his lateness.’ Flora smiled at Conrad sweetly.

  Right on cue, the screen on the wall flickered into life and Graydon’s waxy, overfilled face loomed into view, surrounded by smaller screenshots of the other GJD offices.

  ‘Is everybody here? Los Angeles? London? Dubai?’ Graydon barked.

  Various nervous echoes of assent rang around the room.

  Taking the lead with a confident smile – as the chief designer on the Hanborough project, she was the most senior person on the call – Flora asked, ‘So, Graydon, where would you like to start?’

  ‘I’d like to start with you wiping that smile off your face,’ Graydon said viciously. ‘We are six weeks behind schedule on Hanborough and I want to know what, precisely, you intend to do about it!’

  To say that the call went downhill from there would be an understatement. While Conrad preened and smirked smugly beside her, Flora took punch after punch after punch. Nothing she’d done at Hanborough so far was good enough. Her newly completed library was ‘revoltingly bourgeois. If you want to do any more naff studies in taupe, I suggest you go and work for Kelly Hoppen.’

  The fact that the clients were satisfied; that the library was both luxurious and textured while remaining in keeping with Hanborough’s unique architectural heritage; that Flora had valiantly succeeded in keeping the works within budget: all meant nothing. All that Graydon cared about was the International Designer of the Year award. To win that, Flora would have to be far more innovative, far more avant-garde and far more attention-grabbing. Not to mention far faster.

  In other words, she was to abandon completely the pared-down, clean aesthetic for which Graydon had hired her in the first place, and sell out, not just on Henry and Eva, but on her own artistic integrity.

  ‘I want to see trompe l’oeil,’ Graydon ranted. ‘I want to see retractable roofs, I want to see connecting Plexiglas passages marrying old and new, I want to see eco-efficient materials. Mosaics. Gold!’

  ‘Henry won’t agree to any of that,’ Flora replied bravely. She refrained to point out that ‘gold’ was probably as far from an eco-efficient material as one could possibly get, not to mention light years outside their budget. ‘He hates modernist design, and he hates bling. And he certainly won’t pay for it.’

  ‘Then you must make him agree,’ Graydon insisted. ‘I had dinner last night with the head of the awarding committee and she told me it’s going to be a very left-wing, avant-garde panel next year. Stop asking Saxton Brae what he wants, and start telling him what he needs. If you can’t do that, I need to put somebody else into Hanborough who can. And soon.’

  Flora could sense the pricking up of ears from her ambitious colleagues at the various satellite offices. All the older male designers resented her. Even the women thought she was wildly over-promoted. She could swear she heard the sound of knives being sharpened.

  She held her own, however, fighting her corner to the end and insisting that her designs for Hanborough, while neither opulent nor crassly futuristic, were nonetheless fresh and cutting edge in their own, minimalist way. Eventually Graydon moved on to other projects, heaping praise on the Dubai team for the new five-star hotel they were building to rival the Burj Al Arab. But the call left Flora’s ego bruised and her confidence in tatters.

  Graydon wasn’t going to replace her at Hanborough. As he’d said himself, repeatedly, he simply didn’t have time. Besides which, Flora was pretty sure Henry wouldn’t stand for it. The two of them might not like each other personally, but Henry had come to respect Flora’s work. They were increasingly seeing eye to eye on the direction of the works, and Flora had been nothing short of brilliant at getting Eva involved in decision-making without putting any of Henry’s pet plans at risk.

  Even so, Flora walked out of the conference room in a daze, like someone who has just woken up to find their house has been burned down around them.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Frances Kingham asked kindly. As senior London designer, Frances would have been the obvious person to step into Flora’s shoes, should Graydon carry out his threats. But Frances could no more sharpen a knife or fight her way to a promotion than she could fly to the moon. ‘I thought that library you did looked lovely.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Flora. ‘I’m fine. I’m used to it.’

  ‘There’s someone here to see you, downstairs,’ Karin interrupted them.

  ‘Me?’ Flora frowned. She didn’t have any more meetings planned, and wanted nothing more than to drive back to Peony Cottage, crawl under her bedcovers and die. ‘Are you sure?’

  Karin shrugged. ‘That’s what he said.’

  Shit. Flora remembered. She’d told the wallpaper supplier from the Design Centre, a garrulous Cockney, that he could come by ‘any time’ if he came to his senses on pricing for the William Morris prints and wanted to make her a serious offer. Surely it wasn’t him already? Flora really didn’t know if she had it in her to enter into yet another haggling session today.

  Wearily, she trudged back down to the lobby.

  ‘In there,’ said Katie, nodding towards the ground-floor meeting room and adding with a wink, ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Flora rolled her eyes. ‘It’s definitely my lucky day.’

  What was the little man’s name again? Ian? Or was it Steve?

  She pushed open the door.

  Mason spun around and grinned at her sheepishly. ‘Surprise!’

  Flora’s mouth opened then closed, then opened, then closed again.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ asked Mason.

  Flora burst into tears.

  The next few hours were like a beautiful dream.

  Mason took Flora back to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental. (‘Our suite,’ he told Flora firmly. ‘I’ve already called Henry Saxton Brae and let him know you’re taking three days’ vacation.’) Instantaneously she’d been transformed from harried underling, traipsing around after Eva Gunnarson and being publicly berated by Graydon James, to fairy-tale princess. Or, at the very least, to being a rich man’s wife. Which was, of course, what she was soon to become. If this afternoon’s showing was anything to go by, it was an alternative lifestyle Flora could quickly get used to.

  After spending an hour stroking Mason’s face, bursting into tears, and smelling him a lot, mostly to make sure he was real, Flora sank into a deep, lavender-scented bath and dozed off while Mason did some emails on the bed. Their bed. Our bed.

  Drifting back into the bedroom in a profoundly contented haze, Flora saw three Jimmy Choo bags placed neatly at the foot of the bed and a gorgeous grey Donna Karan jersey dress laid out on the bedspread.

  ‘The dress is from Manhattan,’ said Mason, slipping a hand under Flora’s towel and cupping each of her gloriously heavy, full breasts in turn. ‘It’s this season’s and there was a hell of a wait list, but Henrietta had a friend at Barneys who helped me out. I just knew it would look perfect on you.’

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Flora, making a determined effort not to focus on the Henrietta Branston part – God, that girl was like a bad smell – as well as not to start bawling again. Really, she was so emotional; if it weren’t a physical impossibility, she might have suspected she was pregnant.

  ‘The shoes I picked up here. I just liked the colours.’

  Feeling like a kid on Christmas morning, Flora opened the Jimmy Choo boxes, pulling out three pairs of strappy heels in hot pink, metallic blue and neon yellow. They were all divine, although none of them were at all Mason’s usual style. Has he changed his tastes that much? thought Flora. How long have I been away?

  ‘Go put them on,’ said Mason, stroking Flora’s hair,
then sliding a hand around the back of her neck and caressing it slowly. He’d been tempted to take her to bed the minute they got back to the hotel, but she’d been so keyed up he decided to wait until after dinner. ‘We have a table at Lucio at eight.’

  A small, intimate restaurant on a quiet part of the Fulham Road in South Kensington, Lucio was famous for serving the best tiramisu in London, if not the world. After a delicious meal of Burrata Caprese and lobster ‘fra diavolo’, washed down with a wonderful bottle of Brunello, Mason and Flora shared the rich, creamy pudding in a state of sated bliss.

  Flora had spent the first two courses yabbering away endlessly to Mason about Swell Valley gossip: Henry’s infidelities, her guilt about not telling Eva, Georgina Savile’s bitchiness, the weirdness of seeing Richard Smart dropping by the castle and yukking it up with Henry, while knowing what she knew about Henry sleeping with Richard’s wife.

  ‘The irony is, she seems terribly nice,’ Flora told Mason. ‘Lucy, I mean. She must be out of her mind to risk it all for Henry. I mean, the man has no scruples. None whatsoever …’

  Mason listened patiently, nodding and reassuring, making comments when the conversation seemed to demand it. He waited while Flora told him all about Barney Griffith, the would-be writer she’d befriended, and the artist wife of the handsome cricketer who was opening some gallery or other. He did a heroic job of hiding his utter lack of interest in any of these people – people he would almost certainly never meet and whose lives were a million miles removed from his own. But the effort was worth it. By the time the ambrosial tiramisu arrived, Flora was all talked out, nicely buzzed from the food and wine, and as relaxed as she would ever be.

  Mason decided to strike while the iron was hot.

  ‘I spoke to your mother last week,’ he said, as casually as he could. ‘About the wedding.’

  Flora dropped her spoon with a clatter. ‘You spoke to my mother?’

  Flora’s mom, Camila, lived as a semi-recluse in a small apartment in Brooklyn, subsisting on a diet of Walmart ready meals and disappointment. Her life consisted of daily visits to church, online bridge (she was a very talented card player), and a lot of daytime television. Flora’s repeated efforts to persuade her to get out more, contact old friends or take any sort of interest in Flora’s own life had been met with total rejection. ‘I’m happy as I am’ was her mom’s mantra, a statement so self-evidently untrue it broke Flora’s heart. As for Flora’s engagement, having gloomily pronounced that matrimony always ‘ended in tears’, especially marriage into a ‘snobby, rich family’ like the Parkers, Camila had specifically asked not to meet her daughter’s intended, and expressed her wish not to be involved in any of Flora and Mason’s wedding plans. At this point, Flora was by no means sure her mother would even attend the wedding.