Scandals

The sound of her best friend’s brother’s voice from the bottom of the stairs had Katie making a grab for her case whilst Zoë put her finger to her lips and mouthed, ‘Let’s pretend we aren’t here. He’ll have a heart attack. You know what he’s like about being on time for things.’

Katie could have said that since, on this occasion, what he wanted to be on time for was the train she needed to catch for London, teasing him didn’t seem very fair. But long experience of Zoë had her shaking her head instead, whilst downstairs Tom swore audibly. Zoë burst out laughing and called out, ‘Ooooh, Tom, fancy you using such naughty words.’

Well pleased with her joke, Zoë turned back to Katie, tossing a parcel towards her. ‘Catch! Happy Christmas, and don’t you dare open it until Christmas morning.’

‘Yours is in your suitcase,’ Katie responded. ‘I sneaked it in last night.’

‘What is it? Tell me. Is it a naked poster of that gorgeous boy who serves in the uni bar? The one who looks like he could be a modern-day Earl of Rochester?’ Zoë was mad about the seventeenth-century notorious rake and poet, and Katie wasn’t surprised when she struck a pose, grasping two handfuls of her top as though it were a lecturer’s gown, and quoted,’“…with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard to every moral, and a resolute denial of everyreligious observation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness”. He must have been the most deliciously wickedly dangerous man, far more so than Lord Byron,’ she sighed. ‘I would love to meet a man like that, a reincarnation of him, wouldn’t you, Katie?’

‘Who, Dr Johnson?’ Katie teased, referring to the author Zoë had just quoted.

‘No, silly, John Wilmot, of course. Just imagine how exciting it must have been to be with him.’

‘He was a womaniser and a rake,’ Katie reminded her.

Zoë gave a small ecstatic sigh. ‘Exactly,’ and then demanded, ‘Tell me what my present is.’

Katie shook her head.

‘Please…’

‘No.’

‘Katie, do you want to catch this train or not?’ Tom bellowed.

Zoë ran to lean over the banister. ‘Katie does, but I don’t want her to. Why do you have to go home for Christmas when you could have come with us to Klosters? I thought you were my best friend.’ Zoë adopted a tragic pose. ‘You don’t love me any more, do you?’

‘Zoë, stop fooling around for once, will you? Of course Katie wants to spend Christmas with her family.’

Katie blew Zoë a kiss and dragged her case down the stairs, giving Tom a look that was both grateful and apologetic.

It was funny how things could jog along in the same way for so long and then suddenly change overnight or in her case, over a lager in an Oxford pub when she and Zoë had met up with Tom, newly returned to the UK, having completed his Master’s in America. She’d known him virtually all her life, but sitting there in the pub, listening to him talk about America, watching the way he smiled and pushed his dark hair out of his eyes, Katie had realised that the excitement she suddenly felt had nothing to do with the fact that he was Zoë’s brother. And then he’d smiled at her as though he guessed what she was thinking and she’d smiled back. Now it wasn’t just because of Zoë that she was looking forward to going skiing after Christmas.

Katie and Zoë had been best friends from the first term at the small exclusive junior school they’d attended in Kensington, and then all through their time at St Paul’s Girls’ School, before coming to Oxford. Katie, used to the bossiness of an older sister with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility about such things as properly tied shoelaces, neatly brushed hair, and not dragging one’s feet in puddles, had been fascinated and bewitched by Zoë, with her mop of red curls, and her delight in challenging authority, from the moment they had met. It had been Katie who had giggled when, that first break-time, Zoë had held a wriggling worm up to her mouth, pretending that she was eating it, whilst the other girls had fallen back in shocked horror, one of them actually bursting into tears, and that had sealed their friendship.

‘See you in Klosters,’ Zoë called now from the upstairs window of the pretty house her parents had bought for her whilst she was at Oxford, and which the two girls shared.

‘Honestly! Girls! Why do you have to cut things so fine?’ Tom mock-grumbled as he pulled away from the kerb.

Katie had never known a brother and sister who were such opposites as Tom and Zoë. Where Zoë thrived on taking risks, Tom preferred caution; where Zoë was tiny, and had a mass of dark red curls, Tom was tall, with the physique of a keen sportsman, and his hair was straight and black.

Zoë claimed that it was the wild Irish blood she had inherited from her mother’s family that was responsible for her sometimes reckless nature, while Tom took after their father’s family, conservative bankers whose small private bank, in which Tom worked, was still family owned.

‘Tom is quite happy just to exist,’ she was fond of saying, ‘but I want to live.’ ‘I hope I’m not going to miss the train,’ Katie said anxiously as Tom drove steadily towards the station. ‘My mother will kill me if I do.’

‘You won’t,’ he assured her. ‘Knowing my dear sister as I do, I made sure I came to pick you up with time in hand.’

Katie gave him a relieved smile.

As Tom had predicted, they arrived at the station in good time, and Katie was secretly thrilled when he insisted on accompanying her onto the platform, carrying her case for her, and waiting with her until the train pulled in.

‘Thank you for the lift.’

As he placed her case on the train for her and Katie stepped into the carriage, she automatically aimed a brief ‘thank you’ kiss at his cheek, her eyes widening when Tom cupped her face and kissed her back, not on her cheek, and not as the irritating friend of his equally irritating sister, but properly. Really, truly properly. Not with tongues – they were in public, after all – but almost. And it was a long kiss, a meaningful kiss, a lovely, wonderful, wonderful kiss, Katie decided, pink-cheeked as Tom released her and stepped back, saying softly, ‘See you in Klosters.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes!’ Katie agreed fervently. The train was pulling out but she couldn’t bear to go off to find her seat until the platform and Tom had finally disappeared from sight.

She had already had the best Christmas present ever, she decided blissfully, as her train rumbled south towards London, cold air, not warm, predictably coming out of the heating vents, making her glad of the thick tights she was wearing under her miniskirt, as she huddled into the warmth of her black peacoat.

Beyond the carriage window rolled the disappointing green of the Oxfordshire countryside. Christmas should be white, not green and wet. But there would be snow in Klosters, of course. Katie’s tummy fluttered with excitement and anticipation.

She was looking forward to being with the family of course she was – especially Granny and Gramps, who were such darlings. She hoped everyone would like the presents she’d got them – books this year; she liked to have a theme. The book she’d bought for Zoë was a beautifully bound copy of the Earl of Rochester’s poems that she had found in an antiquarian bookshop in Falmouth during the summer.

Normally after Christmas Katie’s parents took Katie, her elder sister, Emma, and her younger brother, Jamie, skiing, but this year her parents and Jamie were flying out to Australia instead, where her father had business interests, whilst Emma went to Italy to spend a term studying fabric design at Angelli’s.

Silk was the lifeblood of their family, although that might not be immediately obvious to outsiders. Her own ambition, once she had finished university, was to set up an archive library-cum-museum documenting all the patterns Denby Mill had produced, along with their provenance. Her grandmother, Amber, would be an invaluable help. And how much Katie was now looking forward to seeing her. Christmas at Denham Place, even without snow, would be utter bliss.

Through the plate-glass window wall of his penthouse apartment, sitting in the Eames lounge chair with his feet on its footstool, Robert stared out across the London rooftops. The chair was positioned exactly so that its occupant could see both out of the room and into it. Robert knew that he had a perfect panoramic view of the city, but the images inside his head weren’t of St Paul’s, the Thames and the distant horizon, but of the classically elegant buildings of cream stone and the cobbled square they dominated and surrounded: the royal palace and the offices of state of the Principality of Lauranto. What a project it would be to bring those Palladian buildings back to their original glory, to restore the dingy, shabby harbour below the ancient walled capital city back to the charmingly picturesque place it had once been. It would take money, of course – investment, investors. Olivia’s parents were the principal trustees of a very large charitable trust, and responsible for finding suitable causes for it to invest in and support. Oh, yes, Olivia would definitely be the ideal wife for him.

She had grown into an elegant, intelligent, socially adroit and confident young woman, with that aura of polished gloss that New York women possessed; a woman that it wouldn’t be hard for him to marry. In fact, it would be extremely easy for him to marry Olivia, Robert recognised. Extremely easy and very suitable.

Chapter Four (#ulink_a36a4a03-a2bf-509e-a342-88b8cc9a7126)

‘Darlings, how lovely!’

‘I’m sorry we’re later than I said we’d be, Mummy,’ Emerald told Amber, ‘but the traffic was simply awful. Is Robert here, only he’s got all the presents? We simply didn’t have room, what with everything that Emma is insisting on taking to Italy with her.’ ‘Yes, he’s here.’

‘And the others? Have they arrived yet?’

‘Yes, everyone’s here apart from Olivia, and Robert has gone to the airport to collect her.’

Detaching herself from her mother’s embrace, Emerald asked, ‘I take it that we’re all in our usual rooms?’

‘Yes, of course, darling.’

‘Drogo, can you take everything up? There’s something I want to have a word with Cathy about before I forget. Where is she, Mummy?’

‘In the kitchen with Janey, I think.’

As their mother headed in the direction of the kitchen, Jamie told Katie, ‘Granny and Gramps have got the tree ready for decorating.’

‘Yes, and it’s my turn to put the fairy on top this year,’ Katie answered

It was a family tradition, started when they had all been small, that the children took it in turns to place the fairy on top of the tree.

The front door opened, as she spoke, to admit a surge of cold air, and Harry and David, Janey and John’s sons.

‘Made it after all, have you?’ Harry joked. ‘We were going to give you another half an hour and then start the tree without you.’