The Debutante

‘I beg your pardon?!’ (I was trying to be serious and aloof but really there’s no point with Pinky–he just carries on regardless.)

‘Now don’t be coy. Everyone knows your mother married Lord Warburton of Warburton’s Wholesome Wholegrain. And a fine loaf it is.’ He looks at me sideways. ‘I expect I best woo you, now that you’re a famous heiress.’

‘I’m not famous.’

‘You will be.’

‘And I’m not an heiress!’

‘Yes, well, insanely well off then. Shall I do it now?’

I sigh. ‘If you must.’

‘Best get it over with.’ He takes his hands out of his pockets and puts on a wobbly sort of voice. ‘Your eyes are like two perfect blue–’

‘Please stop.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘What about Anne?’

‘What about her?’

‘Well, oughtn’t you woo her too?’

‘It’s not really how it’s done. Not strictly speaking. You’re meant to wait for one girl to go before you have a bash at another.’

‘We’re friends.’

‘I see.’ He turns to Anne. ‘Your eyes are like two perfect blue–’

‘Brown.’

‘Ah.’ He stops. ‘This is too complicated! Shall we all have a cocktail? A cigarette?’ He turns to me. ‘A kiss?’

And I did, darling–that is, let him kiss me. And before you become too livid let me explain that the thing about Pinky is he’s good fun and quite harmless. He’s more like a brother than a man and we were aching to find out what it was like. Besides, he kissed Anne too. There’s really no point in him kissing just one of us as we won’t have anyone to discuss it with later. We both agreed it was a bit wetter than we thought it would be and probably would’ve been nicer if it hadn’t been Pinky. He asked if he could write to me and I said yes. Already I’ve had a postcard of a goat and a rather suspect-looking peasant girl. And instead of the bread girl he’s taken to calling me Toast. Do you think we’re engaged?

Please don’t tell the Holy or I shall be forced to elope with a man I’ve only met once.

Piles of kisses from,

The Wayward (Libertine)

Jack took the plates into the kitchen, piling them into the sink. Mrs Williams would probably do them in the morning. He should leave them. Still, he turned on the water and squirted some sharply scented lemon washing-up liquid into the bowl, dunking his hands into the hot soapy water. Here at least he could make progress; change something. Doing the dishes was proof of a civilised world and a surefire remedy for existentialist angst.

Besides, he wanted to buy some time, put some space between them.

He’d intended to be witty, charming. Intelligent yet funny and unpretentious. But none of his carefully composed observations were required. The conversation had a life of its own that he hadn’t been able to control. He rinsed a glass clean under the tap.

He didn’t agree with her. Found her thinking flawed; a curious combination of honesty and elusiveness.

And yet she was undeniably compelling. When she moved, his gaze followed. When she spoke, he found himself leaning forward not just to hear what she had to say, but to catch what she didn’t; the spaces between her thoughts, which seemed to reveal even more. There was an unwilling transparency about her; a glassy fragility in spite of all her defences. His instinct was to protect it.

No wonder Derek Constantine was captivated. And he wondered again as to the exact nature of their friendship.

Some people were like viruses, infecting everyone they come into contact with. Derek Constantine was one of them. A fatal combination of glamorous tastes and plausibility, Constantine possessed a sleek moral dexterity masquerading as open-mindedness and sophistication that was almost impossible to resist. Why did he, of all people, have to be her connection in New York? Exactly what kind of clients did he introduce her to? Could he be the man she was referring to earlier? Jack tried to push the idea out of his mind, but it adhered itself to his imagination with unreasonable tenacity. He felt his jealousy twist into life, creating visions, scenes – Derek’s permanently tanned, manicured hand reaching to unzip Cate’s dress, his fingers travelling across her skin, his tongue darting, serpent-like, moistening his lips…

Jack reached into the soapy dishwater. ‘Damn!’

The tip of a carving knife jabbed his palm.

He rubbed it angrily under the tap. It wasn’t cut, just smarting.

He should be more careful – there was nearly always a blade beneath the water.

Jack stacked the last plate, folded the tea towel and hung it across the Aga.

Suddenly the weight of the day hit him; his resources not just depleted but gone.

He knew nothing, he reminded himself, yawning. Constantine could’ve been like a father figure to her for all he knew.

Then he spotted the wine bottle. Should he drain it down the sink?

He was thinking too much, as usual. Do nothing, leave it. Pushing the cork in, he turned out the lights.

Moving slowly through the hallways, he checked the doors, locking up. He imagined Cate upstairs, maybe sleeping already, and him below, going through the end-of-evening rituals. And for the second time that day he felt a pleasing swell of masculinity.

It was a beautiful house. Elegant, substantial; refined. A house that knew what it was and what it was doing. Once there’d been a whole Empire like that.

Jack tried to recall if he’d ever felt that way in his own life; that bright, hard sureness about who he was and where he was going. It existed. There was a time when he was first married that he felt in charge of his destiny; young, smart, capable of great things. He had only to conceive of a desire and he could achieve it. It was a wonderful, glorious feeling.

And then Fate intervened. This vast, self-determining power turned on him, without warning, and suddenly the godlike ability to steer his own course in life, free of any lasting obstacles or opposition, evaporated. Worst of all, he no longer possessed an inner compass. He was off, like a man suffering from vertigo. Instead he hesitated, floundered, fell. The tide that had pushed him so firmly towards achievement ebbed and he was compelled, by increments, to accept a life dictated instead by his limitations.

The accident had taken away so much; things that couldn’t be retrieved; pieces of himself that he hadn’t even realised existed until they were gone.

Most of all he missed that grandiose, cocky version of himself, striding boldly into the future. The truth was, he had liked himself for a while, and enjoyed his effect upon life. Now he preferred not to think of himself at all.

He and this old house had something in common: both were frozen in a time they thought would last forever; clinging to the memory of a past that was already faded, already gone.

Turning out the hall light, he climbed the stairs, groping through the darkness to his room.

The Bristol HotelParis

12 August 1926

My dear Irene,

I am sorry, my darling, to have given you such a fright. You must believe me when I say I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. Anne and I simply wanted a little holiday and to meet with Pinky for a day or two and Madame Galliot took it all the wrong way, as usual. Of course there is no way she would’ve allowed us to go had she’d known, so we simply HAD to come up with a lie–only a little one. We told her we were visiting relatives of Anne’s for the weekend and then, really quite cleverly, composed the nicest little note in shaky old-lady handwriting asking for us to come which Pinky had posted from Monte Carlo the week before. It could only have been Eleanor who told her it wasn’t true. And then of course it all went horribly wrong. I am sorry, as I understand now that the papers picked it up–‘Peers’ Daughters Go Missing in Monte Carlo’. And before we knew it there was a full-scale search on! All the while we were completely oblivious, wandering around Villefranche with Pinky, eating ice cream.