by Wendy Holden
Lady Mandy had let it be known – in ringing, fruity tones at every possible opportunity – that she was putting the finishing touches to the line-up. Which was why everyone at the moment was treating her with more than usual reverence. Everyone wanted one of the special yellow envelopes in which Lady Mandy would disseminate details of their part and scheduled rehearsal times. Those who had failed to land a role would get the news in black envelopes.
On the day the envelopes were expected, everyone hovered by their letter boxes and watched eagerly for the postman. Some had even been known to waylay him and bribe him to open his sack, allowing them to remove the black envelope that would otherwise publicly announce their failure. Yellow envelopes, by contrast, were opened at the most public places possible, in Fore Street usually, or in the bar of the Golden Goose.
Kiki, who had received her share of black envelopes over the years, was desperate for a yellow one. It wasn’t simply that she longed to stride the stage with tights and satin breeches showing off her best features. She also longed to mingle on equal terms with a village which, by and large, tended to treat her as a servant.
It now occurred to her that her agenda and that of the Golden Goose could be combined. She could hold a party for the successful cast of Cinderella! She would offer a free champagne reception, to get things off with a bang. Lady Mandy, whose parsimony was as well-known as her penchant for champagne – ‘one develops such a taste for it in the world of first-rate theatre’ – would be unable to resist such an offer. The suggestion that Kiki be cast as Dandini would surely be viewed favourably.
She would, Kiki decided, go to Promptings straightaway and make Lady Mandy the offer on the spot. Speed was of the essence; the dread pantomime director might be even now stuffing the all-important envelopes.
Kiki felt quite cheered up. Perhaps her chances of replacing Nessa Welsh and marrying Jonny had not gone up in smoke after all. The possibility that they had, and Jonny’s fury about the headlines, was by far the worst aspect of the entire quiz night meltdown. He had made it clear that a further breach of village security, and with it a lowering of village confidence, was out of the question. The Jackson headlines could not be repeated. But her new idea, Kiki reasoned, was foolproof.
The gate of Promptings gave on to a garden studded with memorabilia from Lady Mandy’s own thespian days and the still-booming career of her impresario husband. The entire proscenium arch from The Phantom of the Opera might have overwhelmed most lawns, but the Cheases’ was a large one and could take it.
The Chease doorbell played the tear-jerking theme tune to Ginger’s Bought It, the fighter-pilot musical on which Sir Alastair’s fortune was founded. Somewhat unexpectedly, Orlando Chease opened the door. He looked, Kiki thought, rather the worse for wear. His hair was wild and unbrushed, his feet were bare and while he wore a black T-shirt bearing an image of a huge gold cheeseburger (was it some sort of play on his name, Kiki wondered), its bravado was not borne out by his expression. This was best described as hangdog. Grief, Kiki assumed. He was obviously suffering following the loss of his fiancée. She arranged her features into an expression of commiseration.
‘How are you, Orlando?’ she asked sympathetically. His eyes were red and bloodshot, and his shoulders slumped in the doorway so she could see the hall behind him. It was filled with framed photographs of various Cheases with leading lights of the acting business. There were sepia ones with Charlie Chaplin, and fifties black and white ones with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Coloured ones included Lady Mandy with Judi Dench and Sir Alastair with Ralph Fiennes.
Kiki’s roving eyes now returned to Orlando. He was looking at her with a new expression, one she couldn’t quite read. Apprehension, possibly. Or maybe just misery. Better get it out of the way, she decided. Deal with the elephant in the room or, in her case, on the doorstep.
‘I was really sorry to hear about it,’ she said.
Orlando’s scarlet-tinged eyes widened. ‘How the hell do you know?’
‘I’m afraid,’ Kiki said gently, ‘everyone knows.’
Someone appeared behind him. ‘My son!’ Lady Mandy boomed theatrically. ‘Who is here?’
Orlando was bent over, as if in pain. ‘Everyone knows, Mother!’
‘What?!’
Lady Mandy now appeared in the doorway, shoving aside her offspring with one well-aimed thrust. The grande dame of am-dram looked considerably less pleased with herself than usual. Her fearsome brows had disappeared into the roots of her wire-like grey curls, her mouth gaped and her eyes bulged. ‘It’s got out already?’ she demanded. ‘Everyone’s seen it?’
Kiki stared at her, puzzled. Lady Mandy had been there when Savannah had announced the news in person to the whole village.
‘Betrayal of the most heinous nature!’ Lady Mandy raised her hands, palm upward. ‘Deceit beyond measure!’
Kiki sympathised. That Bouche had met Honeyman while jogging in Great Hording was frustrating in the extreme. Had she been a few minutes faster, or perhaps slower, she might have ended up with him herself. ‘Savannah has a lot to answer for,’ she agreed.
There was a gasp. Perhaps two. Both Orlando and his mother were now staring at her. ‘You mean it’s her?’ Lady Mandy cried. ‘She’s responsible?’
Kiki nodded. She may as well go along with this pantomime, she decided. It might get her a better part in the other one.
Orlando was shoving his hands convulsively through his hair. ‘I can’t believe it. She never seemed the type.’
Kiki suppressed a snort. Where had he been? Mars? Savannah Bouche’s romantic track record was a car crash.
‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘she could certainly use a smartphone. But she hardly had the skill set for hacking.’
‘Hacking?’ Kiki frowned.
The two Cheases stared at her again. ‘What else do you think we’re talking about?’ asked Orlando.
‘You and Savannah. Breaking up.’
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I had a lucky escape, by the sound of it. But she couldn’t have swapped me for a more deserving man. I wish her and Caspar all the luck in the world. He’s going to need it.’ Orlando’s eyes gleamed with malice.
‘So what are you talking about?’ Kiki was now thoroughly confused.
‘The cast list! For the pantomime!’ Lady Mandy shook her phone. ‘I’ve just been Google alerted about it! Someone’s hacked into it and released it on the internet!’
Chapter Twenty-One
It had been a wretched week for Laura. After her initial breezy acceptance of it, Caspar’s betrayal had hit her hard. She felt vulnerable about everything at the moment. Friendship, work, love.
What had been occasional thoughts about Harry now became obsessive brooding. Things they had done in the past came back to her. It all seemed so wonderful. Compared to Caspar he appeared resolute, noble and dependable.
Well, up to a point. He was still absent and incommunicado, of course. But wasn’t that, Laura asked herself, the very reason he seemed so perfect? Because he was the unattainable ideal?
The memories could be set off by anything. A snatch of opera blaring from a passing bicycle taxi brought back the evening Harry bundled her in his scruffy car and hurtled – as much as one could hurtle – through south London. ‘Where are we going?’ she had kept asking, and he had refused to answer, talked about other things, until the hard, grey motorway had given way to soft, green, shaggy country lanes not unlike those round Great Hording. The land had become rounded and dippy, like the swell of green waves, and she could sense the sea wasn’t far off. Then they had turned into an imposing entrance and people in evening dress were suddenly scattered everywhere, carrying picnic baskets, drifting with flutes of champagne.
‘Welcome to Glyndebourne,’ said Harry.
She had turned to him, eyes sparkling, but he was already out of the car and heading to the men’s, whence he emerged what seemed a split second later, dazzlingly glamorous in black tie. He calmed her own fears about not
being smart enough. ‘You look wonderful!’ (Luckily, she’d been in the white shirt and black bra combo again.) Then he had led her to the middle of a glossy lawn bordered with scented white flowers and scattered with champagne picnickers in ballgowns. He had opened his own hamper, beautifully packed, brimming with delicious and exotic things.
‘You made this?’ Laura was amazed.
He shook his head of dark curls; he had picked it up in Mayfair at a deli near the US Embassy.
She seized on this. ‘You were at the US Embassy?’
But Harry, pouring champagne, would not be drawn. ‘What do you know about La Traviata?’ he asked, handing the glass over.
By the end of the evening Laura felt she knew all there was to know about it. The heart-tugging music, the passionate performances, the desperate tragedy, the glamorous surroundings, the champagne, and most of all Harry, made a mixture of amazing intensity. She felt taken apart and put together again. No one had ever had this effect on her.
‘Did you find it sad?’ he asked her, about the opera.
Laura thought. ‘The saddest bits are the happy bits, because you know what is coming and they don’t.’
She had been surprised to see his eyes shine a little bit brighter at this. Had he known then what was coming for the two of them? That soon, he would be gone, possibly for ever.
She reminded herself how he had warned her many times that radio silence was something she would occasionally have to deal with. Their first date, at the secret NDY Club – Not Dead Yet, the haunt of foreign correspondents just back from the field and their diplomatic and media associates – had made it clear that he moved in a secret world. His work meant that he was away without contact for long periods of time and while he would never say why, she could guess. His phone was being tapped. People were hacking his emails.
He had never asked her to wait for him. Still less had he insisted she keep chaste like a wartime bride. He probably wouldn’t mind about Caspar, but it was this very thought that made Laura regret that now all the more bitterly.
She longed to feel Harry’s strong, leather-sleeved arms around her and hear his low, amused voice making light of her worries. Every night, in the flat in Cod’s Head Row, she found herself half-listening for his foot on the stair. But the only feet on the stairs were those of Edgar and his nightclub companions, most recently some Lithuanian sailors moored up against HMS Belfast. ‘How On the Town can you get?’ Edgar had enthused when, inevitably, Laura arrived at his door to remonstrate. He and the sailors had been doing a Gene Kelly routine and one mariner was still tap-dancing in the sink.
Harry would also have helped her bear the humiliations daily heaped on her by Clemency. If it had been bad under Carinthia it was now ten times worse. The ghastliest moment of the past week had been when Laura received a call from Honor, Christopher Stone’s secretary, asking her why she had failed to present herself for lunch with him at Two Shepherd Street, his exclusive club.
Laura was horrified. ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to!’
‘It was in your diary,’ Honor said, sounding unusually steely.
‘It wasn’t! I swear to you, Honor. I wouldn’t miss lunch with Christopher!’ Or Two Shepherd Street, which served delicious shepherd’s pie and cauliflower cheese and supersized Smarties as nibbles with the coffee.
‘I asked Karlie to put it in your diary,’ Honor insisted, unintentionally providing the breakthrough.
‘She never said anything to me about it!’ Laura was on the point of exclaiming before realising this sounded like an excuse at best, incompetent at worst. She fudged it with Honor, and stormed over to Karlie.
‘I gave you a note about it,’ Karlie claimed, coolly. ‘It must have got lost on that horrendously messy desk of yours.’
There had been – quite literally – stony silence from Christopher since the incident. Laura expected any day to be given the sack. She had had to think fast to bolster up her position and it was during a features meeting over which Clemency was presiding with flashing eyes and thumping fist that the ideal position-bolsterer suggested itself. Clemency was haranguing the assembled about the need for a suitable female interviewee for a forthcoming issue. Someone widely admired and glamorous yet mysterious and inaccessible. Someone who no one else had interviewed.
‘Well obviously Her Majesty would be perfect!’ she stormed at the hapless Anais. ‘Except she doesn’t normally do press. Any other bright ideas?’
Laura, thinkingly longingly about Harry, now had a very bright one. ‘How about Ellen O’Hara?’
From the other side of the glass desk, bolt-upright against the David Linley throne, Clemency narrowed her green cat-eyes. ‘Ellen O’Hara of the Sunday Times? The foreign correspondent?’
She looked surprised, as Laura was herself. The suggestion had come from left field and had seemed almost to make itself, born, she supposed, from her recent reflections about the NDY Club. It was here, with Harry, that she had first met Ellen. The veteran correspondent had presented an impressive and glamorous figure, her swept-back glossy blonde hair, white shirt and fawn trousers giving her a Grace Kelly air.
‘That might work,’ Clemency admitted reluctantly. ‘Her father’s a marquess. She’s very Society.’
Laura blinked. No one had mentioned the marquess at the NDY Club. It had not been relevant. What very much had been – so far as Laura was concerned – was that Ellen had known her own father, Peter Lake. They had been fellow reporters at the time his helicopter crashed in the desert.
‘Think you can get her?’ Clemency challenge-sneered.
Laura nodded confidently. Ellen would agree, for her father’s sake. Plus, she was devoted to Harry. She might even know something about where he was; they pooled resources on stories from time to time.
Clemency’s narrowed green eyes glittered. ‘Do you know her? How?’
Laura had no intention of revealing anything about this. Harry had sworn her to silence about the NDY Club, which switched locations regularly and whose existence was secret to all but its members. And sometimes even to those who had been there. Once or twice since he had left Laura had returned to the backstreet where Harry had taken her. She had knocked on the worn door of the battered building where celebrities and battle-scarred hacks alike had pressed the admission button. But the building now was empty; the club had moved on.
She met Clemency’s eyes, and those of Karlie. Both women were staring at her hard, suspiciously. Laura shrugged and smiled. ‘Oh, you know. Met along life’s way. As you do.’
But perhaps their meeting had meant nothing to Ellen after all. Laura had emailed her at her paper, but so far there had been no answer.
Now it was Saturday morning and she was driving up to Great Hording with Lulu and Vlad to spend the weekend at the former’s new country estate. Despite not having ever laid eyes on the actual place Lulu was full of plans for Riffs. Excitement had made her more than usually incoherent. The back of the car was heaped with fabric swatches, colour charts, wood samples and magazines about interior design and gardening. They slid all over the footwells whenever Vlad turned a corner which, as they had now reached the twisting country lanes, was often.
Laura, burdened as she was with her own troubles, was nonetheless pleased that all Lulu’s distress about South’n Fried seemed to have evaporated. She was now thinking of nothing but redecorating. Would she continue the theme of designer logos that characterised the Kensington mansion? Laura wondered. Would Riffs, too, have a BalenciAga in the kitchen? As they rolled along Lulu handed her a copy of a weekend newspaper, pointing excitedly to a stern-looking man with a black quiff and a blue goatee.
‘Is famous designer Bingo Borgen. Minuscule ideas, hmm?’
‘Minimalist,’ corrected Laura, reading the accompanying article in which Bingo declared himself sceptical about the need for conventional flat floors. ‘We need to challenge our preconceptions.’ He appeared to have the same questioning approach to windows. ‘Are they truly necessary?
Darkness is underestimated as a decorative force.’
‘He sounds awful,’ Laura said firmly.
The billionheiress had moved on, however. ‘And here is famous gardener.’
Laura took the magazine now being offered to her and examined its cover. A bearded youth wielding a hoe and wearing a T-shirt declaring ‘A Weed is Just a Plant in the Wrong Place’ smiled out from above the headline ‘ZAK ATTACK. Horticulture’s Hot New Face’.
He was certainly very red in the face. Perhaps it was sunshine. Flicking to the corresponding interview, Laura learnt that Zak viewed grass as a destructive monoculture which he preferred to concrete over wherever possible. ‘People underestimate the simple beauty of cement.’
‘You’re not seriously thinking of doing that,’ Laura said to Lulu. ‘Concreting over your garden.’
Lulu shrugged. ‘Am keeping brain open, hmm?’
Laura left her to it and turned her own attention to the newspapers. The general election campaign was about to begin and some of the government’s leading lights featured heavily in the first few pages. Here was yet another photograph of Jolyon Jackson terrifying some poor child in hospital. Laura read the accompanying copy carefully. There was no mention of his caddish conduct at the pub quiz. People were forgetting already. Great Hording’s reputation as a haven for the rich and privileged appeared to have survived.
Or had it? The headline on the next page read, ‘CLEAN-EATING GODDESS EMPLOYED SLAVES IN RESTAURANT.’
The goddess being referred to was a certain Willow St George, whose Spiraliza chain of eateries were well established in the capital. The article accused her of employing illegal immigrants on wages of a pound an hour. Looking at the photograph of the red-lipsticked woman with the dark, glossy hair, Laura was certain she recognised her from the Golden Goose pub quiz. Hadn’t she been the person telling Caspar that Bond needed to update his food refs?