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So, while Amelia was still in bed, Becky spent her mornings in Kensington Gardens with Jos Sedley. He had been planning to go back to LA and his protein balls weeks before, but if he’d done that, then he wouldn’t have been able to devise a fitness programme for Becky.
‘But you’re perfect,’ he gasped when Becky had descended the stairs on that first morning in the Lululemon workout gear he’d bought for Amelia, which his sister couldn’t squeeze into. ‘You are fit. I mean, you don’t need to get fit.’
‘But I’m not firm. Everything wobbles. Look!’ Becky had done a shimmy, which had made everything wobble, including Jos. Becky had looked down at her chest and shimmied again. ‘Particularly these.’
Jos had clung on to the banister for dear life. ‘I … I see what you mean.’
‘You naughty boy,’ Becky had purred in a low voice and Jos’s torture wasn’t over, because she turned around and stuck out her Lycra-encased bottom. ‘This jiggles too.’
‘Dear Lord …’
‘I bet the women in LA are firm,’ Becky had lamented, taking a step closer to Jos, who thought that he might be having a relapse back to his childhood asthma. ‘Taut. Supple.’
She was face to face with Jos now, who swallowed convulsively – was he in heaven or hell or some heady combination of both?
‘Feel my thighs, Jos,’ Becky had commanded and she’d taken his hand and placed it just above her left knee. ‘They’re so fleshy. Can you do something about it?’
‘Water!’ Jos choked. ‘We need water!’ And he’d snatched his hand away and hobbled in the direction of the kitchen as if he was in great pain.
He’d then devised a programme for her that involved a lot of squats and lunges while he stood behind her with a sports bag clutched to his groin. Then there were a lot of exercises that thrust her chest forward, by which time Jos was standing in front of her, and though she said that she should probably work on her triceps too, Jos said that it was best to concentrate on her glutes and her pectorals for now.
Afterwards he’d help her stretch in a secluded spot.
‘I can’t help but groan when you’re manhandling me, Jos. Especially when you have my legs hooked over your shoulders. It burns but it’s the good kind of burn, do you know what I mean?’
‘No pain, no gain, eh?’ Jos would say every time. He’d grown a lot more comfortable in Becky’s presence, though after her stretches, he could often hardly talk on their walk back to the house.
In the afternoons, Becky would spend time with Amelia and whichever combination of the M’s, usually Minty and Muffin, she’d made plans with. Usually they’d have a mani/pedi or a facial, maybe even a stress-busting massage at the fancy spa on Kensington Church Street where Amelia had an account.
Then it was out in the evenings. To dinner, then to a bar or club with some more M’s and their dreary, chinless, floppy-haired boyfriends.
‘We should ask Jos to come,’ Becky would say each evening as she and Amelia were getting ready to go out. ‘It’s so lovely to see the two of you becoming closer. I wish I had an elder brother.’
‘And it’s lovely to see the two of you becoming closer as well,’ Amelia would sigh and she’d insist that Jos should come with them, and the upshot of it was that Jos hadn’t been to a Crossfit session in weeks and he could now say whole sentences to Becky without breaking into a sweat and his face changing colour.
Amelia watched the courtship with barely concealed delight. Her Jos and her dear Becky, who might actually become a real sister.
Mr and Mrs Sedley could conceal their delight only too well. ‘Why is that girl still living with us?’ Mrs Sedley asked after they’d waved off their offspring and the ubiquitous Becky to deepest, darkest Fulham to celebrate the birthday of one of the M’s’ floppy-haired beaux. ‘Do you see the way she cosies up to Jos? I’d have her out of the house tomorrow but Mrs Blenkinsop says she’ll hand in her notice if I do and I don’t trust anyone else with my new floors.’
Mr Sedley glanced at his wife with exasperated fondness. How many sleepless nights had she had over those bloody floors? Which meant Mr Sedley had had many sleepless nights too, which wasn’t very helpful when he was dealing with so many figures. One decimal point in the wrong place or one extra nought subtracted when it should have been added and they’d be ruined.
He patted her hand. ‘That Becky will do as well as any other,’ he said mildly. ‘Let him marry who he likes.’
Mrs Sedley turned to him aghast. She could feel one of her heads coming on. ‘Who said anything about them getting married?’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘We hardly know a thing about her!’ A muscle was spasming painfully between her eyebrows. ‘Although I do worry that he works so much and he’s never once had a girlfriend, but does it have to be her?’
‘She’s pretty enough,’ Mr Sedley said diffidently as if he’d never once caught his breath at the sight of Becky in her workout gear.
‘There’s something about her that I don’t like. She reminds me of a ginger cat we had when I was a girl,’ Mrs Sedley remembered with a shudder. ‘It would bring in these half-dead animals – mice, baby birds, that sort of thing – then toy with them for hours instead of putting them out of their misery.’
‘Maybe you should take one of your pills,’ Mr Sedley advised because his wife had turned a mottled red colour, which never boded well; such a pity that Emmy and Jos had inherited her high colouring. This conversation about Emmy’s little friend was getting tedious. ‘Jos is big enough and ugly enough to do as he pleases, and that’s the end of the matter.’ And then he stalked off in the direction of his study to have a glass of whisky and she went off to take a pill and have a lie down, and they were still at odds with each other the next day and Mrs Sedley couldn’t help but feel that Becky Sharp was to blame.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_cb98cea1-baeb-5b51-a9c7-2c03cb824c36)
‘I have that horrible back-to-school feeling,’ Amelia said with a sigh. Mid September had rolled around all too soon, and Amelia was about to return to Durham.
No wonder Becky felt as if something were about to change. Something big and monumental.
She stared down at the third finger on her left hand and wondered how it would bear up under the weight of a huge rock.
Jos wasn’t at all subtle so he’d probably go for something that was at least ten carats. Becky had never thought about getting married and she was only twenty and who got married at only twenty, unless they were dull religious types? But Becky needed a plan B and Jos had his successful protein balls and his huge trust fund, and embracing the LA lifestyle wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. If she stuck it out for a little while then she could have at least half his balls in the divorce settlement.
‘Don’t you think, Becky?’
Becky blinked at Amelia as she was torn away from her little fantasy of a big house in the Hollywood Hills with its own swimming pool. She’d hardly ever gone to school so she’d never really known the Sunday-evening gloom of finishing homework that had been left to the last minute, then bath and an early night. Her childhood gloom had lasted for years and encompassed far more than a little angst about a half-finished essay on the Spanish Armada.
‘Actually, I have quite a good feeling about the future,’ Becky insisted to Amelia’s reflection as her friend put the last touches to her make-up. ‘New beginnings, new adventures, and all that. By the way, I’d go easy on that blusher if I were you, Emmy. You’re so lucky having naturally rosy cheeks. I wish I did. I’ll just have to settle for being pale and interesting, I guess.’
Amelia cast aside her blusher as if it had scalded her and started dabbing at her face with powder instead.
‘I think you look beautiful, Becky,’ she said a little enviously. Becky was wearing another one of her cast-offs, a gauzy grey little dress with tiny crystals sewn into it, which made Becky look like an ethereal wood nymph. When Amelia had worn it, she’d looked like a dumpy rain cloud.
‘You look lovely too,’ Becky said a little more perfunctorily than Amelia would have liked. She hadn’t been sure about her new dress; it was very pink and puffy, like a gigantic marshmallow, but Becky had persuaded her otherwise. ‘You look so sweet. Gorgeous George won’t know what to do with himself when he sees you. He’ll want to eat you up!’
‘I wish!’ Since her party, Amelia hadn’t seen George at all unless she was stalking him on all forms of social media, which wasn’t that rewarding. George was so focused on his political ambitions that he wouldn’t risk a careless meme or a whimsical picture of a sunset on Instagram.
Instead, he tended to tweet links to leader articles in the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times and it was hard for even the most besotted young woman to feign an enthusiasm about cuts to farm subsidies.
‘Honestly, Emmy, he’ll take one look at you in that dress and lure you away to some dark corner and ravish your poor, defenceless, young body,’ Becky said and she snatched up the pillow from Amelia’s bed and gathered it to her in a passionate embrace. ‘I’d put money on it!’
Amelia flushed with painful hope but unless George had undergone a personality transplant since their first meeting, the poofy marshmallow dress was hardly going to cut it.
They were going to an End Of Summer party at an exclusive Mayfair nightclub. There was rumoured to be a brace of young royals attending, as well as everyone. When you and all your friends lived in one postal code, had all attended one of several boarding schools and your mothers all sat on the same committees, then your everyone was actually quite small.
There were paparazzi outside when Jos gallantly handed Amelia and Becky out of the car and for once Amelia was happy to pose for photos. The hope of … (not being ravished because, try as she might, Amelia knew that George wasn’t the ravishing sort) … George’s face lighting up when he saw her put a sparkle in Amelia’s eyes, gave her a giddiness and an allure that she didn’t normally have. And when she saw Becky’s hand tucked into Jos’s meaty paw, saw the way that Becky leaned into her brother and whispered in his ear, Amelia felt nothing but happiness for them. Maybe one day, let it be soon, she’d know that same kind of happiness. With George.
But the first person she saw, when they found the table that Jos had reserved for them, wasn’t George at all.
One sweet pang of regret pierced Amelia’s heart to be replaced by a genuine pleasure as the man who’d been sitting there got to his feet and promptly knocked over his drink.
‘Dobbin!’ she cried as Becky stared in amazement at Captain William Dobbin of Her Majesty’s Royal Regiment. She’d heard his name in passing from Amelia because when she wasn’t mooning over Gorgeous George, her conversation still revolved around him, and this Dobbin was his best friend. Dobbin had distinguished himself with honours several times in war-strewn, dusty places and so Becky had expected some dashing and glamorous war hero.
Not this tall, ungainly man with large hands and feet and even larger ears, shown in all their massive glory by his close-cropped black hair, while the rest of him was poured into a hideously tight suit. Perhaps he shared the same tailor as Jos.
In fact, Dobbin might have been a good back-up plan (a plan C), but one look at those ears – so big they had to be a hazard on the front line … A world of no. She’d asked Amelia why everyone called him Dobbin instead of William and now she knew; he was like a great big carthorse in a world full of sleek thoroughbreds.
‘Emmy!’ Dobbin said in a rusty voice full of wonder. ‘How long has it been?’
He took Amelia’s hand, realised his own was wet after spilling his drink and pulled out a voluminous white handkerchief to mop at both of them.
Becky hid her smile in Jos’s shoulder. Jos was quite the heart-throb next to the hapless Dobbin.
‘Dobs, it’s fine. I’m hardly damp at all,’ Amelia said, taking pity on him. ‘And yes, it’s been ages. A couple of years. You were just shipping off to Helmand Province.’ She put her hand on his arm without any of the agony she experienced when she dared to put her hands anywhere near George. ‘Was it very awful?’
‘Quite awful,’ Dobbin conceded. Amelia eyes filled with tears at the thought of anything being quite awful and he hurriedly corrected himself: ‘But it wasn’t so bad. The Big Brother house looked a jolly sight worse.’
Dobbin had never seen anyone blush so prettily as Amelia Sedley when she covered her hands with her face. ‘Oh, Dobbin, you didn’t watch it, did you?’
‘I did and I’m looking into having that Gav fellow court-martialled,’ he said and he wasn’t joking – he barely knew how to – but Amelia giggled and his heart melted.
‘I’m pretty sure that you can’t have somebody court-martialled if they’ve already left the forces,’ she gulped, tears forgotten.
‘If he was ever in the forces. If that’s the calibre of soldier the Marines are taking on, then God help us if there’s a war,’ Dobbin declared to more giggles from Amelia until the saccharine display was interrupted by George, deftly threading his way through the throng to break up their little tête-à-tête.
‘Sorry, Emmy,’ he said. ‘Is this oik bothering you?’
‘Never!’ Emmy said with another giggle that made Becky grind down on her back molars.
‘Shall we order some champagne?’ she asked Jos as she sat down. Amelia appeared to have no plans to introduce her to Dobbin the talking horse and anyway, what was the point of being introduced to him?
‘Is it table service, do you know?’ Jos asked, peering about the room.
For someone so rich, Jos was absolutely lacking in panache and suaveness and all the other qualities that Becky imagined they gave out on the first day at Eton, along with those funny top hats and tailcoats.
‘I’m parched,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want any … Look! It is table service. There’s a waiter! Oh, he doesn’t seem to have noticed you.’
‘I’ll run after him,’ Jos promised and he was gone, his shoulders looking especially wide in his white dinner jacket. Unfortunately, the wait staff were also in white jackets which meant that on his way to the bar Jos was stopped by three different groups of people who tried to order drinks from him.
Becky settled back in her chair to watch the rich and entitled at play. Amelia was caught between George and Dobbin and over the chatter of the party and the DJ dropping slow beats, she could still be heard giggling in the same inane fashion.
Jos was at the bar now and when he turned round he was bearing aloft a huge bottle of champagne with a sparkler stuck in it so that on his journey through the club, he was given a wide berth. It was a very romantic gesture but when Jos reached their table and proudly placed the bottle in front of Becky, she heard George murmur to Dobbin, ‘God, how common.’
Becky was sure that she was meant to have heard because when she gave George a reproachful look – the faintest puckering of her forehead, a little pout – he raised his glass in what could only have been a mocking salute.
Well, Amelia was welcome to him, for all the good it would do to love a man who thought he was superior to everyone around him. No wonder he had political ambitions. Becky turned starry eyes to Jos.
‘This is the loveliest thing that anyone has ever done for me,’ she informed Jos with the adoring gaze that always made him put a finger in his shirt collar like it was suddenly choking him. ‘I know you don’t drink, but could you have one glass of champagne? For me?’
‘No carbs plus alcohol are a dreadful combination,’ Jos protested. ‘And anyway, this stuff is pure sugar.’
‘I think it’s mostly bubbles,’ Becky said as she hefted up the bottle, tilted one of the empty glass flutes on the table and expertly poured. ‘Anyway, aren’t we celebrating?’
‘Are we? What are we celebrating?’ Jos asked, as dense as the pads he strapped on when he and Becky were boxercising in the park.
‘Well, we’ve known each other three weeks,’ Becky said with a heavy-lidded glance that made Jos adjust himself when he thought she wasn’t looking.
‘Th … three weeks,’ he gulped. ‘Only three weeks? It seems longer.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Becky agreed, holding out a glass. ‘It feels like I’ve known you all my life. Here, have just one drink so we can toast our … friendship. Though I suppose all good things come to an end.’
‘It’s coming to an end?’ Jos echoed, his brow furrowing as he took the glass in his meaty paw and manoeuvred it with some difficulty to his lips. He didn’t really have the right build for drinking from delicate champagne flutes.
‘Yes, that’s why we’re here, silly!’ Amelia said, sitting down next to them and leaning across Becky to help herself to a glass. ‘To celebrate the end of summer. I expect you’ll be going back to LA soon, Jos.’
No one had ever treated Becky with as much kindness and sweetness and without any kind of expectation, but in that moment, Becky could quite happily have throttled Amelia Sedley. She wouldn’t even have bothered to make it look like an accident.
‘I suppose,’ Jos sighed, as if the thought of going back to a place where it was sunny all the time and he had a beautiful, architect-designed house in Malibu with three different kinds of pool in its landscaped grounds, was about as appealing as a fortnight in Scunthorpe.
‘Becky’s never been to LA, have you?’ Amelia said, nudging Becky’s arm. ‘You’d love it.’
Maybe she wouldn’t kill Amelia. Not just yet. After all, Amelia was the only person who wanted Jos to make an honest woman of her as much as Becky did.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to LA,’ she said wistfully. ‘Do you know lots of famous people, Jos? I bet you do.’
Jos gulped down the rest of his champagne and puffed out his chest. ‘Well, I’m very good friends with Ryan Gosling’s personal trainer.’ He didn’t even notice when Becky refilled his glass. ‘We sent him some protein balls and apparently he loved them.’
‘Wow! Ryan Gosling,’ Amelia gasped. ‘Who else?’
More stars than there were in the heavens. An Oscar-winning actress next door who was always having loud parties with no consideration for the fact that Jos got up at five to do his first workout of the day. A legendary film director lived up the hill who was obsessed with shooting coyotes and had accidentally killed two of his own bichon frises. And all manner of rap artists, hotly tipped young actors and even a couple of Real Housewives’ husbands, who all worked out at Jos’s gym.
Jos polished off most of the bottle of champagne as he got into his stride; namedropping all the celebrities he’d seen as he queued for his collagen berry lattes or hiked in the Hollywood hills.
‘You’re so well connected. I suppose you have lots of friends. Lots of very glamorous, very beautiful friends who are girls. Girlfriends,’ Becky said, with just a hint of a quiver of her bottom lip. ‘No wonder you can’t wait to go back to LA. We must seem so dull by comparison.’
‘Never. You’re the most beautiful of them all,’ Jos declared rashly and loudly so that George Wylie, who was still hanging around like a bad smell, smiled thinly. ‘They’re all stuffed full of silicon and Botox and actually they’re not friends at all because they’re very unfriendly.’
‘They sound awful,’ Amelia said but then her attention was caught by one of the M’s and with a coy flutter of her lashes at Becky, she slipped out from between them. ‘Must go and say hello to Muffin.’
‘It sounds to me as if you don’t like LA as much as everyone thinks you do,’ Becky commented. Although this was said gently, she was the daughter of Frank Sharp, con artist, hustler and trickster, so there was something hardwired into her DNA that gave her the ability to sniff out a person’s weaknesses. Once she’d identified what made them tick – the dark, secret heart of them – then of course she was going to use that knowledge for her own advantage. Anyone with any sense would do the same.
‘It’s good for the protein-ball business. I don’t think there’s a single person in the 90210 zipcode who’s eaten gluten since Obama became president but, Becky …’ Deep set within his roughly hewn face, Jos’s eyes were troubled.
Becky placed her hand on his knee. ‘You can tell me anything,’ she whispered, leaning forward so that Jos could tell all his fears and worries to her breasts. ‘I would never judge you.’
‘Oh, Becky, I’m so lonely,’ he confessed. He’d never told this sad truth to anyone. ‘Also, and I … I know you might find this hard to believe, but … but … well, I’m shy. Very shy. Always have been.’
Becky shook her head then turned her face away, then sighed, and the hand that was on Jos’s knee slid up a few centimetres, not enough to cause alarm or raise eyebrows, but Jos’s heart was thundering away as if he’d just done thirty minutes of high-impact cardio. ‘There is a way that you wouldn’t ever have to be lonely again,’ she said, leaning up to whisper in his ear so that her breasts almost brushed his chin and Jos had to close his eyes and practise mindful deep breathing. ‘And, a secret for a secret: I’m shy too. The whole reason I went on Big Brother was to build up my confidence.’ Her hand, almost of its own accord, moved up another inch or so. ‘It’s like we’re kindred spirits, isn’t it?’
‘Soulmates,’ Jos agreed and Becky’s face was still tilted up towards his own and he licked his lips nervously and … and … and …
‘For fuck’s sake!’
‘What the hell?’
Their romantic moment was cut short by a sudden dousing of cold champagne from the bottle Dobbin had attempted to pour into Jos’s empty flute.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Didn’t want to interrupt you, thought I’d be all stealthy like, but the bottle slipped.’
‘I’m soaked!’ Becky snapped, furious both at the interruption and that she’d been taken unawares and sworn, when nice, shy, orphaned young ladies didn’t go round dropping the f-bomb. ‘You should be more careful.’
