The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  Nothing. Nada. Zip. Which was interesting. Quite annoying too. The Pitts, Younger and Elder, Rawdon, and all those other men had been very predictable when it came to Becky getting what she wanted.

  ‘Thought that you might be grateful I sent your beloved husband away for a week,’ Steyne said, turning a page and casting his eye down the list. ‘I had a word with Declan. Perks of owning a film studio. Cristal for the lady and I’ll have a beer, and it better not be chilled, or I’ll have your knackers for afters.’

  The restaurant didn’t actually serve beer but for Lord Steyne, the sommelier (the bus boys weren’t to be trusted) would go to the pub across the road for a room-temperature pint of London Pride.

  ‘Well, of course, I’m grateful for that but I’m not sure how grateful I am,’ Becky said, because Rawdon was definitely gambling again, definitely imbibing things he shouldn’t again. Hanging out with his old friends, even though they were a motley collection of almost-made-its and never-weres. They were yesterday’s news, whereas Becky had all sorts of interesting and useful new friends, and Steyne was the most interesting and useful of them all.

  She didn’t kiss him to thank him for the dinner, though she’d ordered the most expensive things on the menu and ate them with gusto because it was obvious that Steyne hadn’t had dinner with a woman who ate anything with gusto since he’d left Hackney as a teenager and come Up West to make his fortune.

  She patted him on the cheek before she gracefully climbed out of the back of his Bentley. ‘Thank you for dinner. We really must do it again some time.’

  Eventually Steyne stopped coming to the salon, but instead would take Becky out for dinner at least once a week when he was in town. Sometimes to a new restaurant and sometimes to a very old restaurant (he was particularly fond of Simpsons on the Strand). Sometimes it was even dinner with other people – say, the Foreign Secretary and the leader writer of The Times. As if having dinner with a married woman, when neither of their spouses were anywhere to be found, wasn’t anything to be secretive about.

  ‘Hiding in plain sight, sweetheart,’ Steyne said and he laughed when Becky asked him exactly what he thought they were hiding when they were simply good friends.

  By now, the flowers had been replaced with gifts of a higher monetary value. A diamond tennis bracelet, though Becky didn’t play tennis, a matte-alligator Hermès Birkin almost the same shade of green as her eyes, and, best of all, a weekly lifestyle column in The Globe, the UK broadsheet he owned. In return, Becky now pressed a kiss to Steyne’s wrinkled cheek when she got out of his Bentley, but she hadn’t given him any more than that, and why should she? She hadn’t asked him to buy her fancy presents, not even hinted that he should. Hadn’t even pretended that she found him attractive, which made a welcome change.

  She knew, however, not to drop her guard with Steyne because a man like him didn’t do anything merely out of the goodness of his withered old heart or simply for the pleasure of the company of a beautiful woman.

  It took Steyne a good three months before he made his counter-move.

  ‘You seem to think I’m a patient man, sweetheart, but I’m not,’ he said on the night that he took her to a charity dinner at the National History Museum where they’d dined on sturgeon eggs under the blue whale. He held onto her wrist after she kissed his cheek. ‘I don’t intend to wait for ever.’

  Becky held his gaze, though he wasn’t wearing his glasses so she worried that her brazen stare wasn’t as effective as she’d like it to be. ‘Wait for what?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Mrs Crawley,’ he said, tugging her closer and whispering right in her ear. ‘I invented the game, you see, so you’re always going to lose.’

  ‘Who says I’m playing by your rules, though?’ Becky flexed her fingers and that was all it took for Steyne to release her. She did wonder if she’d overstepped but the next day, there weren’t flowers or a delivery from Net-a-Porter or even a box from Garrard’s, but a stiff-backed envelope from Buckingham fucking Palace, thank you very much, inviting her and Rawdon to a gala evening in aid of a mental health charity, which enjoyed the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

  ‘As special guests of Lord Steyne,’ some palace flunky had written in a perfect copperplate script in navy-blue ink on the invitation.

  Even Rawdon dropped the studied cool that was as stale as his breath after one of his nights out with his phone turned off. ‘Buckingham Palace? Us? Me?’ he gabbled when Becky flashed him the invitation. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘What’s Steyne got to do with anything?’

  ‘He’s been to a few salons while you were away filming,’ Becky said, reaching forward to wipe away an imaginary spot of dirt from Rawdon’s pretty face. Then she turned away from him to take something, anything, out of the huge fridge that had been installed in their deconstructed kitchen, as if talking about Steyne didn’t even warrant her full attention. ‘We support some of the same charities, so I suppose it has something to do with that.’

  There was no point in making Rawdon suspicious, not that he had anything to be suspicious about. Yet. Also making Rawdon suspicious usually meant that he’d want to have sex with her – it was the only way to get a rise out of him these days – and Becky really didn’t want to have sex with Rawdon. It would serve absolutely no purpose and rarely gave Becky any kind of pleasure.

  She couldn’t help but feel that this thing with Rawdon had run its course. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to wait it out. Since his run in Coriolanus and since she’d introduced him to all sorts of influential people at the salon, Rawdon was up for all sorts of tantalising projects. If one of them catapulted Rawdon right up to the upper rungs of the A-list and with a pay packet commensurate with that, then Becky could only benefit too. Especially as a good divorce lawyer would get her at least half of it.

  Becky turned back from the fridge and smiled. ‘We haven’t had a date night for ages, have we? And it doesn’t get much better than a date night at Buck House with Kate and Wills.’

  As an avowed republican who was quite adamant that the monarchy should be abolished and forced to live in a static caravan park in Hull, Rawdon all but swooned. ‘Do you think the Queen will be there?’ He tugged at his hair, which needed a good wash. ‘Jesus, Becks, I haven’t got a fucking thing to wear. Can you blag me a decent evening suit? Dior Homme, ideally.’

  ‘For you, anything.’ Being on good terms with Rawdon was so much better than being irritated by every single thing he said and did.

  Besides, an evening spent rubbing shoulders with royalty was one in the eye for all those people who never thought she’d amount to anything. How she’d rub it in their faces. Becky had been thinking about how she was going to take down Barbara Pinkerton – grassing her up to HMRC just hadn’t been satisfying enough, not even when she was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in back taxes. Maybe she’d send her a photo of little Becky Sharp deep in earnest conversation with the Queen and flirting with Prince Philip.

  Becky also planned to casually mention it to Pitt and Jane next time she saw them, but Jane beat her to it by calling Becky to gush about how she and Pitt had been invited to Buckingham Palace too.

  ‘It must be because I persuaded Pitt to give 10 per cent of the inheritance to the Prince’s Trust to distribute as they saw fit – it was the Christian thing to do, Becky.’

  That was how the four of them ended up together in the back of an S-Class Mercedes crawling up the Mall.

  ‘We’re very lucky, eh, Rawdon, to be in the company of such beautiful women,’ Pitt said gallantly, though his eyes kept straying to Becky and not to Jane, who was starting to despair that Pitt would ever pop the question.

  ‘You look lovely, Jane,’ Rawdon said in the sultry, drawly voice he used when he was trying to soft-soap Becky, though Jane was wearing a strapless mustard satin gown that did nothing for her complexion or her flabby upper arms.

  ‘And I don’t?’ Becky asked waspishly as Jane tittered and m
umbled inarticulate words about how she didn’t and Rawdon was mean to tease her.

  ‘You always look lovely,’ Rawdon said wearily as if to suggest that Becky’s loveliness bored him. He cast a cursory glance at his wife and his eyes narrowed. ‘Where did you get the earrings and necklace from?’

  It was just as well that Becky wasn’t the blushing sort. ‘These?’ she queried, touching the earrings in question, which had belonged to Rawdon’s late mother and had been gifted to her by Pitt after she invited him to be her plus one at a little lunch thrown by Hatchards, where he’d been seated next to Hilary Mantel. The necklace had belonged to Rawdon’s grandmother and Pitt had handed that over after Becky had introduced him to the MD of Penguin at one of her salons.

  Now Pitt cringed where he sat.

  ‘They’re not real, Rawdy,’ Becky snapped like he was a fool for thinking otherwise. ‘It’s not like you can afford to buy me proper diamonds, is it? These are on loan from a high-end costume jewellery boutique in Bond Street as long as I do a sponsored Instagram post.’

  ‘They look real,’ Rawdon muttered because he had a distant and yet distinct memory of watching his mother getting ready to go out when he was little, of her clipping the earrings into place, then turning from the looking glass to smile at him.

  ‘Since when are you an expert?’ Becky said and she sniffed. Eager to break the tension, Jane leaned forward.

  ‘Your dress is beautiful too, Becky,’ she said eagerly, almost daring to touch the deep-red georgette satin that spilled across the expanse of seat between them. The bodice was beautifully draped and the skirt fell in a series of tiny, knife-edge pleats. Jane frowned. ‘It’s odd. I had a dress just like it, which seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Where did you get it from?’

  Opposite, Rawdon audibly sucked in a breath. Early on in their relationship, he’d thought it funny when Becky relieved him of his mobile phone and wallet, without him even feeling her fingers investigating his pockets. Now he didn’t think it was at all funny, even as Becky assumed a vague expression.

  ‘I can’t even remember. Fashion companies give me clothes all the time.’ She fixed Jane with a glacial look, which made the other woman wilt. ‘And not to be funny or anything, but it’s hardly like we take the same size, is it?’

  ‘Oh, of course not, I wasn’t implying anything,’ Jane quickly said though she’d bought the dress in question in a moment of madness after she’d got a huge bonus at work. And that was after six months on Atkins and a bout of norovirus had whittled her figure down to proportions that she’d never managed to replicate again. Still, Becky had had the dress altered and taken in by a little Russian tailor that all the Vogue girls used for their alterations. ‘The dress really does look beautiful. You look beautiful.’

  Becky simply sniffed and stared fixedly out of the window while her three companions stared down at their laps, and somehow all the giddy joy of attending a party at Buckingham Palace had been sucked out of them.

  THE TIMES

  Birth announcements

  WYLIE On May 2nd at the Lindo Wing, St Mary’s Hospital, London to Amelia (née Sedley) and George, a son, George John Archibald.

  Chapter 33

  Little George was the most perfect, most beautiful baby that anyone had ever seen.

  No woman on the planet had ever given birth to a child blessed with such soft, downy cheeks or such adorable tiny toes that made Amelia want to weep when she looked at them. Though the private maternity nurse said that although little George’s cheeks and toes were very nice, it was likely that Amelia had ‘a slight case of the baby blues’.

  But Amelia wasn’t blue at all, she was happier than she’d ever been. She realised now that she’d never experienced love until a squalling little George, covered in blood and vernix, was placed on her chest and immediately latched on to her swollen nipple.

  Of course, she was still a little cross that big George hadn’t been at the birth but he’d had to vote on a very important bill to privatise huge swathes of the NHS, so he’d missed the moment when his son was born.

  ‘But you are a very, very clever girl giving me a son and heir at the first attempt,’ he said warmly, when he eventually turned up at the Lindo Wing. ‘Should smooth things over nicely with my Pa too.’ He’d even bought her a beautiful platinum charm bracelet as a push present and said that he’d add to it with every new Wylie that Amelia produced.

  Terrified that little George’s physical, mental and emotional development would be blunted if she’d had an epidural or even gas and air, Amelia had had a completely natural birth. She was still high from the endorphins that the bossy woman at her NCT class swore her body would release, and high from the fierce and frightening force of love she had for little George. But she didn’t mind sharing that love with big George. He might not have done any of the heavy lifting, but he’d done his bit to bring this wonderful new life into the world. ‘Would you like to hold your son?’ Amelia asked, holding the tiny miracle towards her husband.

  George stared down at the red-faced and wrinkly baby that was still smeared with gunk and couldn’t prevent the shudder that rippled through him. It was splendid that the family name and genes had been secured for another generation but until the infant was old enough to be put on a pony, then George had absolutely no use for him.

  ‘Thanks awfully, Emmy, but I won’t. New suit,’ he explained and when Amelia’s face darkened, he backtracked. ‘Anyway, don’t want to get in the way of your first few precious hours with young George. Don’t all your baby books say that you should spend the first forty-eight hours skin-to-skin?’

  Amelia had bought and read so many books on pregnancy, birth and childrearing that it wasn’t at all surprising that George had managed to acquire some of that conflicting knowledge, even if it was by osmosis. Or maybe it was because Amelia had been banging on about it for months and months.

  She sniffed. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said and George leaned down to kiss her cheek, holding his breath at the raw animal scent, the milkiness of her. Now probably wasn’t the time to suggest that she take a shower or do something with her hair. And it definitely wasn’t the time to ask when and how she planned to lose the baby weight, he knew that much. ‘Look, I’ll leave you to get some sleep. You can ring for a nurse to take him away so he doesn’t keep you up by screaming his head off.’ He couldn’t help but shudder again. ‘My younger sister did nothing but howl for the first year of her life. She and Nanny had to go and sleep in the East Wing so she didn’t disturb us.’

  It wasn’t the most auspicious start to George’s relationship with his son but they had all the time in the world to get to know each other. Though perhaps it would be helpful if George would stay for longer than fifteen minutes when he came to visit.

  Apart from George senior’s intermittent appearances, there was a steady stream of visitors. Amelia’s mother and father, of course, though they’d had to go almost as soon as they arrived as the soft mood lighting in Amelia’s private room made her mother’s head throb. The last specialist Mrs Sedley had been to, paid for by Amelia from the allowance that George gave her, had opined that Mrs Sedley’s migraines were psychosomatic and suggested that she saw a psychotherapist. That suggestion had gone down like the Titanic. Meanwhile Mr Sedley had developed a nervous twitch and an obsession with clearing his name, which mostly involved studying the stock-market reports going back twenty years or so and writing detailed reports on his findings which he’d send to everyone from the Governor of the Bank of England to his local branch manager at Barclays. The pair of them were shadows, an echo of the people they used to be before they’d been ruined.

  However, marriage to the most handsome MP on the Conservative backbenches and the subsequent securing of the Wylie baronetcy had finally restored Amelia’s reputation. To that end, she’d been visited by the wives of some of George’s parliamentary colleagues – he was particularly pleased that the life partner of the Minister for Social Just
ice had popped in for five minutes – as well as her old friends from school and university, including every single one of the five M’s. She’d even entertained a couple of her Big Brother housemates because there was nothing like forcing a human being out of your vagina to let bygones be bygones.

  Only one person from Amelia’s past and her quite recent present was absent – Becky Sharp. She had sent a beautiful gift basket full of exquisite things for the baby, though every single item was pink despite the announcement in The Times stating very clearly that Amelia had had a boy. Amelia didn’t like to think it was a deliberate slight, but then she didn’t like to think much about Becky at all. Of course, little Georgy didn’t know they were pink and, according to many independent studies, had no concept of gender constructs, but George senior did, so Amelia asked one of the nurses to distribute the pink contents to the mothers in the NHS bit of the hospital.

  In fact, there had been so many people in and out of the room and interfering with the bonding process that Amelia was quite pleased that on a quiet evening six days after Georgy had arrived, it was just the two of them.

  She was just settling down for a much-needed nap, Georgy fed and changed and tucked into his darling little sleepsuit, when there was a quiet knock on the door. She pushed herself up, brushing her hair back and pinching her cheeks with the hand not clutching Georgy – how like George senior to drop in so late!

  The door opened, revealing Captain Dobbin of Her Majesty’s Royal Regiment. He came timidly into the room, then promptly skidded on the water dripping from the absolutely massive bouquet of mixed blooms he was clutching in one hand, and careered into the bassinet, which thankfully was empty. Amelia had no intention of placing little George in it; why, it would be like putting him in a cage!