The Temptation of Gracie

by Santa Montefiore

‘Who was that, darling?’ her husband called from the dressing room next door.

  ‘Flappy Scott-Booth, aka pain in the neck,’ she replied, marching in to share her annoyance. ‘She’s one of my mother’s ghastly friends and a meddler. She called to tell me that Mum has decided to go to Italy.’ Carina laughed joylessly and rolled her eyes. ‘Mum must be mad! Perhaps she’s lost her mind. God! Now is not a good time. I’m frantically busy at work. I don’t have time to deal with her losing her marbles.’

  Rufus, who was undressing, stood in his stripy boxer shorts and shirt and stared at his wife. ‘Did you just say that Gracie is going to Italy?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not going,’ Carina replied firmly. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it. One, she doesn’t have the money to go hopping all over the world, and two, she’s totally incapable of going anywhere on her own. She never went anywhere when Dad was alive, why she has to go now is beyond me. It’s just silly. I’ll call her tomorrow and talk her out of it. But that Flappy woman is a right pain. I thought she’d called me to tell me something terrible had happened!’

  Rufus ran a hand through rust-coloured hair and grinned. ‘It does sound very out of character. Do you think she’s joined a cult?’ His grey eyes twinkled, but Carina did not find him funny. It was late and she was tired and her guilt at not having spoken to her mother in so long made her tetchy.

  ‘Not in Italy,’ she retorted. ‘God! As if I haven’t got enough on my plate at the moment.’ She lifted her long brown hair off her neck and turned round so that Rufus could unzip her black dress which had received many admiring comments at the cocktail party that evening.

  ‘Before you go in there like a bulldozer, you might want to find out why she’s going away. There’s probably a perfectly logical explanation.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. You know Mother. She’s shy and timid and likes her routine.’

  ‘A late-life crisis?’ said Rufus, then he added mischievously, ‘Perhaps she’s got a lover!’

  Carina was unamused. ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘Just a joke,’ he chuckled.

  ‘Still not funny.’ The truth was that while Gracie was tucked away quietly in Badley Compton, going about her usual routine and not causing Carina any worry, Carina could focus on the really important things, like increasing the success of her business and expanding her net of contacts and suitable friends.

  She stepped out of her dress and wandered back into the bedroom in her underwear. As she put her jewellery away in the chest of drawers, she caught sight of herself in the long mirror that was leaning up against the wall. She knew she shouldn’t have eaten the canapés. It was rare that a carbohydrate passed her lips, but she had weakened at the tray of duck pancakes. She stood straight and pulled in her stomach, regretting the pancake (only one) very much. At forty-one she was in pretty good shape. Who would know just by looking at her body that she was a mother? She worked out with a personal trainer three times a week and avoided a long list of unhealthy foods most of the time. Wine was a nightly necessity in order to unwind from a stressful day at the office. If dieting didn’t keep her thin, being frantically busy did. Running her own public relations company was enormously demanding, especially as she found it very hard to delegate. She hadn’t worked like a dog for the last fifteen years to loosen the reins now. Each of her clients had to believe they were the only ones who mattered. That kind of attentiveness required her to be in a dozen different places all at the same time – looking sharp, glamorous and in control. She turned away from her reflection, slipped out of her underwear and into silk pyjamas.

  The en suite bathroom was designed especially so that she and Rufus had their own space. They each had a sink and capacious cupboards. Carina filled hers with beauty products from the companies she represented, but she didn’t have much time to enjoy them. If she wasn’t racing to a drinks party she was hurrying to a dinner party, and the odd night they stayed in she was so tired she lay in bed watching television like a zombie. Once, before they had made money, she and Rufus had shared the tiniest bathroom in a flat in Wandsworth – that was when their daughter Anastasia was a baby. Carina couldn’t imagine living like that now. She’d got used to finer things. She certainly couldn’t imagine living in her parents’ cottage in Badley Compton where she’d grown up. She’d left that dull and uneventful life long ago and closed the door resolutely behind her.

  As she removed her make-up and washed her face she didn’t dwell on her childhood by the sea or the early days of her marriage, she was busy thinking about the breakfast meeting she was due to have at eight-thirty the following morning with a prospective client, a cosmetics company, which was going to have to be persuaded to change not only its packaging but its advertising as well if it wanted to compete with the bigger and more successful brands. However, her mother kept drifting into her mind like an annoying grey cloud.

  When she climbed into bed Rufus was reading The Economist with his glasses on. He looked old slumped against the pillows with his chin on his chest. Rufus didn’t work out very often. He had a slight paunch which irritated Carina because, unlike her, he had the time to look after himself. He was a successful property developer, although the market was pretty slow at the moment, but even when business wasn’t thin on the ground he seemed to have all the time in the world to do exactly as he pleased. He knew how to delegate and did, very efficiently. Like many public-school boys Rufus was laid-back and optimistic, the sort of man who made time to have a drink with a friend and didn’t complain if he was having a bad week. He saw the funny side of every drama, mostly hers, and tried to encourage her to be as philosophical as he was, but Carina was much too busy being busy to have time to let her guard down. She wasn’t from his world and had to work hard to convince everyone that she was. Having left Devon and married well, she had taken great trouble to reinvent herself. The thought of her mother pulled her straight back to a place she didn’t want to be.

  Carina would have liked to read in bed but her eyes were stinging. Her bedside table was piled high with award-winning books, which she intended to read just so that she could keep up with her erudite friends, but she hadn’t read a single page of any of them. Her head sank into the pillow. She’d start on one tomorrow.

  ‘Night, darling,’ she said, pulling a silk mask over her eyes.

  ‘Night,’ said Rufus, without looking up from his magazine. They both knew the routine. It hadn’t changed in years.

  Carina dreamed that her mother was lost in Florence; a lonely, bewildered figure, shuffling down shady alleyways.

  The following morning, after the breakfast meeting, during which the client had agreed to all her suggestions, Carina telephoned Gracie. She had closed her office door so that no one could listen in, having asked her assistant to go out and get her an almond milk decaffeinated latte from the coffee shop around the corner. She felt a moment’s guilt when she heard her mother’s voice, because it had been a long while since she’d heard it, but that was swiftly gone, along with the pleasantries, as she went straight to the point.

  ‘Your friend Flappy called me last night, very late, I might add, to tell me that you’ve decided to go to Italy.’ Carina was sitting perched on the end of her desk, throwing her gaze over the framed photographs on the wall of herself with a glittering array of celebrities. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gracie replied. Her daughter’s educated vowels still sounded strange to Gracie. She hadn’t been brought up that way. ‘I’ve only just decided, but it seems the whole of Badley Compton is talking about it.’

  ‘Why do you need to go?’ Carina asked, trying to mask her irritation with curiosity.

  ‘I’m going to learn to cook Italian food.’ There was a brightness in her voice that Carina didn’t recognise. Wasn’t she a bit old for a mid-life crisis?

  ‘But, Mum, isn’t this a bit rash? I mean, how are you going to afford it?’

  ‘I have some savings.’

  ‘But they’re for your old age
.’

  Gracie chuckled. ‘I’m already in my old age, dear.’

  ‘Only just. You may have another thirty years ahead of you.’

  ‘I’m not the Queen Mother.’

  ‘And you’re planning on going alone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gracie. ‘But you mustn’t worry about me. I’m very capable of—’

  Carina cut her off briskly. ‘Mum, you can’t go alone. What are you thinking?’

  ‘Of going alone,’ Gracie replied simply and firmly.

  It was clear to Carina that she wasn’t going to talk her mother out of it, at least not today, not on the telephone. She sighed heavily. She didn’t have time for this nonsense and yet she couldn’t allow her mother to travel abroad on her own. It didn’t feel right. She knew her father wouldn’t have allowed it. He’d expect her to step into his shoes and go with her.

  There came a knock on the door. ‘Hold on, Mum,’ she said. ‘Come in, Jenny.’ Her assistant put the coffee carton on the desk, beside a photograph of Carina shaking hands with the Countess of Wessex. Carina put her hand over the receiver. ‘Jenny, call Theo Fennell and book in a lunch at the earliest. I have an idea that might interest him. And tell Jonathan I need that report on my desk before I lunch with Bruce.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Which means now,’ she added. Then, speaking back into the telephone, she continued. ‘Look, Mum, what’s the rush? Why don’t you wait a year?’

  ‘A year? Who knows where I’ll be in a year?’ It was clear from Gracie’s tone that she really didn’t care one way or the other, what mattered was now. ‘You really don’t need to concern yourself over this, Carina. It’s my decision and my treat. I’m very excited about it.’ There was that buoyant, cheerful voice again that Carina didn’t recognise.

  ‘If I hadn’t so much on I’d come with you,’ Carina said weakly, but she knew that was a lie. She bit her lip and dropped her gaze to her feet. If she hardly ever visited her mother in Badley Compton, she was hardly going to go all the way to Italy.

  ‘You’re busy with your life, dear. But thank you for the kind thought.’

  ‘Why don’t you go with a friend?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to,’ said Gracie. ‘I’m going alone and my friend Esther has offered to look after the dogs.’

  ‘I thought I’d talk you out of it, Mum, but it seems you have everything worked out.’

  ‘Oh, I do.’

  ‘So, you’re going in April?’

  ‘For seven days.’

  ‘Can I get Jenny to book your flights, at least . . .?’

  ‘I can manage myself, thank you.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you’re okay, I’d better run. Full-on day. You know.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Off you go. You’re such a busy girl.’

  Gracie listened to her daughter hang up and then, regretfully, did the same. She remained in the kitchen, looking out over the harbour, and the sense of loss which ran like a hidden stream beneath the veneer of contentment rose suddenly to flood her heart. She put a hand on the side of the sink and took a deep breath. Carina was a successful businesswoman, she told herself. Of course, it was hard for her to come all the way down to Devon to visit. The last thing Gracie wanted was to be a burden. And yet, in spite of the well-worn arguments, she felt an emptiness inside where Carina had once been.

  All around the cottage were photographs of Carina, as a little girl in school uniform, grinning at the camera, as a rebellious teenager with spiky hair and black eyeliner, as a young woman already morphing into the sophisticated woman she would later become. Her wedding day, she and Rufus one Christmas, with Anastasia as a small baby, and then the gaps grew wider. Those windows into her daughter’s life became less frequent until there were no more windows. Carina had made it clear by her absence that she didn’t want her mother to be a part of her life. Gracie had lost her daughter and she had never really got to know her granddaughter. The truth was too painful to acknowledge, that for some reason she was unwanted, so she put Carina’s distance down to a very hectic and successful life and told herself to be proud of her daughter’s achievements, to be unselfish and undemanding; to let her go.

  Gracie returned to her chair by the fire and to the magazine which lay open on the table beside it. Her battered heart recovered a little at the sight of that magnificent castle as if the amber glow surrounding it were honey being poured straight into her chest. What did it matter to anyone if she went to Italy? Who would miss her? Why should anyone care? She felt a surge of defiance, a stirring of an old and forgotten courage, an almost imperceptible reawakening of a part of her that had been in deep hibernation for many, many years. She smiled then as she remembered the girl she had once been and, in that moment, she felt young again.

  Carina hurried off to her lunch meeting and then on to the various evening events that her position as a top London PR director required her to attend. Yet, as the week advanced, the irritating grey cloud that was her mother refused to drift away. In fact, it only grew heavier. It brought guilt and annoyance. By Thursday night she was in an extremely bad mood. What made matters worse was the text she received from Anastasia. Her seventeen-year-old daughter was in the school sanatorium, with the flu, demanding to be taken home.

  Carina gave a loud sigh. ‘Why does she always get sick at the worst possible time?’ she asked Rufus, who was in his usual place on the bed, reading the Spectator. ‘I mean, I haven’t got time to drive all the way to her boarding school to pick her up. She’ll just have to sweat it out in the san. Isn’t that what we pay the school for anyway?’

  Rufus smiled in that lackadaisical manner of his which Carina now found exasperating, because everything always seemed so easy for him. ‘I’ll bring her home,’ he volunteered.

  ‘But I don’t want her at home. We’ve got people for Sunday lunch and I don’t want her moaning and groaning around the house, giving everyone the flu.’

  ‘Darling, she’ll stay in bed watching TV. She won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to drive her back—’

  ‘I’ll drive her back,’ Rufus interjected, taking off his glasses and looking at his wife in bewilderment. ‘What kind of mother refuses to have her daughter home when she’s sick?’

  Carina sat up. ‘Are you accusing me of being a bad mother?’

  ‘Since you ask, right now that’s what you look like.’

  ‘How dare you, Rufus!’

  ‘Look, Carina, I’m accepting of you not making time for me, I’m used to that and I’m fine with it, but I won’t allow your job to monopolise you to the extent that you find no time for your own child.’

  Carina folded her arms defensively. ‘So, you’re now saying I’m a bad wife and mother? That’s just great.’

  ‘I’m saying that you’re married to your job, which is fine, but Anastasia is your child, not your business.’

  ‘That’s just perfect! I’m a success and you chastise me for it. If I was a lowly secretary I’d have all the time in the world to bring your slippers and cook your dinners and pick up Anastasia from school when she’s sick, but this isn’t the 1950s! I have a career, like you, and yet, as a woman, I’m expected to do all the domestic stuff as well. Those feminists have a lot to answer for as there’s a fault in their argument. I’m a bad wife because I go out and earn a living. Perhaps you should have married one of your Sloaney friends whose only goal is to raise kids and spend their husband’s money. I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about my career. I’m a success, a huge success, and I’ve done it all on my own. I’ve come from nowhere. I didn’t have the contacts and privileges that you had. My parents were provincial, unambitious people and if I hadn’t left Badley Compton I’d still be there working in the gift shop!’

  Rufus frowned. It was the amusement in it that infuriated Carina. He never took anything she said seriously. ‘How did we get from Anastasia’s flu to the Badley Compton gift shop?’

  She glowered at him. ‘You’re the most annoying man!’ she snapped
.

  ‘But you married me.’ He grinned, but Carina looked away. ‘I’ll fetch Anastasia tomorrow. You don’t have to cancel any of your meetings. God forbid your daughter infringes upon your business life.’

  ‘That’s unfair. It’s a rat race out there.’

  ‘And you’re queen rat, I know.’

  She sighed dramatically, turned her back on him and pulled her mask over her eyes. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to sleep. Some of us have to get up at dawn to go to work.’

  ‘While you’re lying there lamenting your lot, chew on this: I think you should accompany your mother to Italy.’

  ‘You’re so predictable, Rufus. I knew you were going to say this. It was only a matter of time . . .’

  ‘You need a break. It will do you good to go away for a week. Gracie won’t be around for ever and she’s your mother. She’s a widow. She lives on her own and you barely see her.’

  ‘Devon is a five-hour drive from London,’ Carina mumbled.

  ‘The telephone is in your hand, all the time.’ Carina had nothing to say to that. ‘One could even go as far as saying you’ve disowned her in favour of my mother,’ Rufus continued.

  ‘Diana lives around the corner,’ she retorted wearily.

  ‘But you still feel the need to telephone her most days.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

  Rufus picked up his magazine and began to read again. ‘The trouble is,’ he said. ‘I understand too well.’ Glamorous society queen Diana Cavendish was just the sort of mother Carina wished hers could be. ‘By the way, did you really work in the gift shop?’

  Chapter 3

  Anastasia lay in bed, shivering, and waited for the school nurse to inform her that her father had arrived to take her home. The rain was tapping cheerlessly on the window pane and it was already getting dark, even though it wasn’t yet four. The room in the health centre was just as desolate: thin, nondescript curtains which served no purpose, stark white walls, practical linoleum floor and iron beds with lumpy mattresses. Suffering from a temperature and a sore throat Anastasia was feeling sufficiently sorry for herself to have persuaded the school nurse that she was sick enough to be sent home. In any case, they needed the beds as there was a bug going round and the ill overseas girls had no option but to remain at school. The nurse was really quite pleased to be getting rid of Anastasia.