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She threw a casual glance over her shoulder, and then looked back at me, shaking her head.
‘Why not?’
‘Looks like a womaniser.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘What makes you say that?’
She looked over at him again, this time pausing longer. ‘He’s too good-looking. I don’t date men like that.’
‘You don’t fancy good-looking men?’
She took another sip. ‘Successful relationships aren’t based on that.’
‘What, sexual attraction?’
She shook her head. ‘I need someone who fits in with my family, my culture and who matches my intellect.’
‘Even if you don’t fancy them?’
She took another sip, though this time it was more of a gulp.
I scanned the room once again and noticed a man with a broad smile and blond hair who was sitting on a sofa. ‘Okay, what about him?’ I pointed.
She turned to look. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Why not?’
She went to put her glass down then lifted it to her mouth again. ‘This might sound a little mean.’
‘Go on.’
‘He’s not sophisticated enough.’
‘Because?’
‘Button-down collar.’
‘Okay,’ I said, scanning the room, searching for someone who might fit her ideal. I settled on a dark-haired man with intelligent eyes and a Hermes belt. ‘Him?’
She looked over, her gaze sizing him up. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, someone like him.’
Her glass was half empty when she excused herself for a trip to the Ladies’. I watched her glide across the room, and then have an awkward ‘after you, no after you’ dance with cute dimples at the bar. I noticed his head swivel, following her as she walked away. However, Mr Hermes belt ignored her as she swept past, seemingly more focused on looking up Brigitte’s skirt as she leant over the bar.
When she returned from the toilet, her make-up and composure refreshed, she continued describing her future husband.
‘I need a man who can fit in with my life,’ she began, her face expressionless. ‘He would have an international background, like myself. And a successful career. He’d have to want a large family. And, most importantly, he would need to be from an upper-class family.’
I raised my eyebrows again. ‘Why?’
‘It’s important to have shared values,’ she said, staring ahead.
I shrugged my shoulders and pretended to make notes, hoping I hadn’t sounded so clinical when I’d listed my requirements to Matthew no less than a month ago.
When she’d finished the last of her wine, she dabbed the sides of her mouth with a napkin and bid me a pleasant evening. I leant forward to kiss her goodbye, but she sidestepped my advances and then offered me her hand to shake instead, as though there had been a gross misunderstanding and she was, in actuality, hiring me to assist her in a business merger.
When I sat back down to yet another refilled glass, I checked my watch and tapped my pen on the table. My next client, Jeremy, was late. Due to my lack of faith in the network coverage in the bar, I nipped upstairs to give him a call. As I approached reception, I saw Brigitte leaning over the desk, boobs squeezed together, bottom in the air as though she were inviting penetration. With a slow deliberate lick of her lips, she pressed a piece of paper into the palm of a man standing in front of her.
‘Ahh, Ellieeee. Dis ees Jirimie,’ she purred as the man spun round, and flashed me a smile.
‘Blatch, Jeremy Blatch,’ he said, in the manner of an international spy.
Although a little slick, he was breathtakingly handsome, as though he’d just walked off the set of a Hugo Boss photo-shoot. Wearing a grey suit and a white shirt, and with floppy dark blond hair framing dazzling blue eyes, he looked every inch the fantasy Mr Right most women dreamed about.
Suspecting that Brigitte had just passed on her number, and concerned she may try to straddle him if I left it a moment longer, I suggested to Jeremy that we go downstairs to the bar.
‘That’s a first. I’m usually invited upstairs,’ he said with a wink.
I stepped back, surprised to find myself immune to his charms. It seemed my mind had adjusted from its instinctive default of perceiving men as potential boyfriends for myself, to assessing them objectively on behalf of others. Right then, I saw him as prime stock for the single girls of London.
Once settled in the bar, he unbuttoned his jacket. Through his slim-fit white shirt, I noticed the outline of a tight stomach and taut pecs. Oblivious to my X-ray assessment, or politely ignoring it, he ordered a Martini.
‘I want to meet someone special,’ he said, before I’d had the chance to begin questioning him.
‘I’m tired of meeting airheads and bimbos,’ he continued, nodding in the direction of Brigitte, who just happened to be wiggling past our table. When she saw Jeremy looking over, she bent down to pick up something from the floor, waving her bottom in the air like a mallard. He looked away, evidently unimpressed.
‘No, I’m being unfair,’ he continued. ‘Some of the girls I’ve dated have been remarkably clever and successful.’ He paused, and then looked a bit strained. ‘It’s just, I don’t know …’
‘You haven’t found what you’re looking for?’ I said.
‘Yes, you’re right. I haven’t.’ He looked down to stir his Martini.
‘I thought it was shaken and not stirred?’
He laughed, looking quite chuffed with the analogy.
Unlike William and Harriet, Jeremy seemed to have no inhibitions when talking about his personal life and relayed his childhood with a mix of passion and nostalgia.
‘Life used to be so simple,’ he said, having described the farm in Somerset where he grew up. ‘When did it get so complicated?’
He downed his Martini, and then went on to explain how he’d play outside all day with his dog, Rusty.
‘He never left my side. He didn’t care how much I earned or what car I drove.’ He threw a glance to the ground. ‘And back then neither did I. Now life is all about work.’ He picked up his phone. ‘And the reason I’m working so hard—’ he frowned at the screen ‘—is so that one day I can have that life back.’
During his second Martini, he went on to explain how his dad went bankrupt when Jeremy was eight years old, and that the family had had to move to London for work. And that they couldn’t afford to take Rusty with them.
‘I begged my dad to keep him, promised I would find a job to pay for his food.’ He gripped the Martini stirrer. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘It was a cold day that day, so cold.’
‘What day?’
‘The day my dad shot Rusty with a .38 special.’
My hand few to my mouth. I heard a snap and then saw the Martini-stirrer fall to the table in two pieces.
‘That was the moment I vowed never to be poor again,’ he said.
After he’d blinked his tears away, we ordered more drinks. Then he explained how, when they’d first moved to London, he’d bunk off school and wash cars and windows to help his mum out with the bills and that by the age of eighteen, he had grown it into a national cleaning company.
‘And now, six businesses later, I find myself running a hedge fund,’ he said, sinking back into his chair.
‘What a story.’
‘Yeah, great, isn’t it? Now I get to wear this bloody suit every day and pretend to be someone I’m not.’ He laughed, though I could tell it was forced. ‘And now, I’m embroiled in this ridiculous life. I own a watch that allows me to dive to a depth of three hundred metres. I can turn my Bang and Olufsen sound system on from my desk. I employ someone to book my flights, wash my underpants, clean my toilets and buy my clothes. I have twelve thousand square foot of property that I hardly use, a forty-foot yacht and a car that can accelerate from zero to sixty in two seconds.’ He sighed. ‘The women I meet, they don’t want me. They want a lifestyle.’
I cocked my head and thought about what he’d said.
He leant forward and picked up the broken stirrer. ‘I guess I’m looking for an old-fashioned girl.’ He paused. ‘I want a big family, and a wife who has the time and patience to nurture our children. Not work all hours or shop all day while some stranger plonks them in front of the TV.’ He looked at me, his eyes clouded to the dull blue of his silk tie. ‘Are there any women like that left in the world?’
I nodded while the image of Harriet flashed through my mind. I tried to suppress it, after all, nothing on paper would put them together, but there was a strange feeling niggling in my stomach. And I knew it was more than a litre of house white.
Later that night, vivid dreams disturbed my sleep: a party, Harriet shaking hands with faceless men from behind a Venetian mask, William laughing, waving a joint and wearing a tennis skirt, Jeremy dressed as a dog and holding a shotgun and Brigitte, naked, sprawled across the desk at reception. I woke abruptly when I felt myself falling down a never-ending staircase, blood-red carpet spiralling into darkness. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding as I gasped for air. That was when I realised that there was no going back, that I couldn’t let them down.
They had put their faith in me, and now all I had to do was the same.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_eb4fff43-d99f-5dfe-9399-1c8ad6ab4a03)
‘GOOD AFTERNOON, MRS RIGBY.’ The coiffed estate agent held out his hand.
I fixed my gaze on his tie. I couldn’t stand to look at the house in its entirety.
‘It’s Miss,’ I said, staring at yellow stripes on baby-blue silk and trying to ignore the bay windows that seemed to be taunting me in my peripheral vision.
‘Yes, of course. Shall we take a look around then?’
My stomach tightened and I wondered if this wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had. Matthew had diagnosed me as ‘borderline psychotic’ once I’d told him that I’d made an appointment to view the house Robert and I were once going to buy. He said that it was tantamount to kissing the cold corpse of a loved one as a means to say goodbye.
‘The front door is all original. Beautiful detail in the stained glass,’ the estate agent said, stroking the frame.
I followed him into the hallway and took a sharp breath.
‘Magnificent entrance, don’t you think, Mrs Rigby? Ten-foot ceilings. Original panelling. Simply stunning.’
I nodded, swallowing hard.
‘Expansive lateral space. Great for entertaining.’ The estate agent wandered off towards the kitchen.
I looked around at the oak floors and marble fireplaces and I felt a weight pressing on my chest. I thought back to the last time I was in this house: skipping over the threshold with Robert at my side and a three-carat diamond on my finger. Back when my head was buzzing, a confetti-coloured future dancing around my mind. But now, as I stood in the hallway, staring up the grand staircase, I realised that the life I had planned to live in this house—the dinner parties, the children, the love, the laughter, the miniature schnauzer—would never be mine.
‘Mrs Rigby,’ the estate agent called. ‘Come through to the kitchen.’
I walked down the passage, towards the back of the house and into the open-plan kitchen. It was flooded with light and exactly as I remembered: a white gloss handleless heaven. I stared at the granite surfaces, where I’d imagined being creative with the contents of an organic produce box, then at the walls, where I’d envisaged hanging thoughtfully collected paintings from upcoming artists, then finally at the breakfast table where I’d foreseen bustling family mealtimes with cheeky yet cherubic children.
The bi-folding doors were open onto the garden, where mature trees erupted from a lush green lawn. A rope swing was swaying in the breeze, as though the spirits of my imagined offspring had refused to leave. No one could blame them.
‘You won’t get a better family home in London,’ he said, opening the kitchen drawers so he could then demonstrate the self-closing mechanism. ‘Do you and your partner have children, Mrs Rigby?’
Suddenly, I felt flushed, my heart rate quickened. ‘Er, not yet,’ I stammered, waving the question away.
The agent winked as though somehow he’d mistakenly gleaned that I were about to bear a litter of ankle-biters.
‘Wait until you see the nursery,’ he said, beaming.
I looked around the room. The sunlight bounced off the white gloss units and into my eyes. Bounce. I rubbed my temples. Bounce. My skin felt hot. Bounce. The light seemed to grow brighter and whiter. Bounce. Bounce. My vision blurred and suddenly sharp pain shot through my head.
‘Mrs Rigby? Mrs Rigby? Are you okay?’
I regained consciousness to find the estate agent fanning me with the property pamphlet.
‘Mrs Rigby?’
The image on the front moved closer then further away, then closer. I could feel the dizziness returning. Closer, then further away, then closer.
‘Can I get you a glass of water, Mrs Rigby?’
I snatched the pamphlet from him and threw it to the ground.
He looked startled. Then he smoothed down his tie and pretended to check his watch. ‘Perhaps we should resume the viewing when you’re feeling better, Mrs Rigby?’
I glared at him. ‘It’s Miss,’ I said, clambering to my feet. ‘Not Mrs.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s chat next week, Miss Rigby.’
I had one last look around, kissing the cold corpse on the head, then the agent closed the door behind us. He was right. It would make someone else the perfect family home.
‘What do you mean there aren’t enough champagne glasses?’ raged Cordelia, throwing up her arms, as though she were initiating an angry version of the Mexican wave. ‘This is outrageous!’
Steve took a step back and blinked. ‘I was told that one hundred and fifty people were coming,’ he answered in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘So there are one hundred and fifty glasses.’
He pointed to the table where they stood, looking all polished and proud.
I raised my hand tentatively. ‘There are more people coming than I—’
Cordelia interrupted, still glaring at Steve. ‘We have three hundred guests arriving in—’ she checked her watch ‘—oh, fifteen minutes. They’re each expecting champagne on arrival so you’d better have this resolved.’
With a hair flick that signalled the conversation was over, she flounced off, the length of her stride impaired by the tightness of her pencil skirt. In repose, she looked like a forties screen siren in her skin-tight black-and-white monochrome outfit, but when she walked, particularly at any speed, she assumed the gait of an elongated penguin.
