Friend of the Family

by Tasmina Perry

  The events of the day had distracted her from thinking about David. She had tried not to dwell on Josie going round to their house whilst she was in New York, consoling herself with the fact that surely they were not so brazen as to have sex in the house with Tilly there. But you never knew.

  ‘Amy, have you got a minute to come and look at some clothes?’ Renee was a junior fashion editor being allowed to do her first shoot, thanks to the rest of the fashion team being at the shows.

  Amy smiled and stood up, following her to the fashion department at the far end of the office. She could tell that Renee was anxious and made a mental note to be as encouraging as possible. She knew she was lucky to have such a talented and down-to-earth fashion team, having heard horror stories from around the industry about the diva antics and demands of some fashion editors. That said, she still had to keep a close eye on the Verve team, reining them back from selecting £5,000 boots and the to-order gowns that were fashionista favourites but well out of the reach of the average reader.

  ‘As you know, red is a really big story for autumn/winter,’ said Renee, showing Amy the rail of clothes she had selected for the next day’s shoot. The colours looked delicious even at first glance. Sour-cherry cashmere knits and crimson floor-length coats made Amy long for the weather to turn cold so that she could start wearing them.

  Her eye caught a scarlet dress on another rack and she took a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Do you like that?’ asked Renee, noticing her boss’s reaction. ‘It didn’t make the final cut, but I can put it back in if you want . . .’

  But Amy was lost in her memories, remembering that day over seven years ago when she had gone to Threadneedle Street to see a show. As a member of the features team, she rarely went to fashion shows, but when an invite had landed on her desk, she had dressed up specially, borrowing a designer dress from Juliet to look the part.

  She had felt invincible that day. A photographer from the Evening Standard had asked to take her picture for a street-style segment, and for the first time ever she had felt glamorous and stylish and ready to conquer the world. It was also the day that she met David again. Their college friendship had dwindled to almost nothing throughout her late twenties and early thirties – reunion drinks missed through hectic work schedules. But when he had seen her coming out of the show, and they had gleefully reconnected on the street, it was as if they had never been apart.

  She touched the fine red crêpe of the dress on the rail. It was just like the dress she had fallen in love in, she thought. The dress that had got her noticed. Her heart felt heavy when she thought about going home, the tense atmosphere and the clipped conversations. Only a month ago, she’d thought she had the perfect marriage – as good as it got, anyway – but now it hurt just to think about David.

  ‘If you really like it, do you want me to call up the designer and ask if you can have it?’ said Renee, cutting through her painful thoughts. ‘They do seventy per cent press discounts and I know the PR really well, so I’m sure I can sort it out.’

  Amy looked at her, an idea forming. ‘Do you think you could do that for me?’

  Renee nodded. ‘Why don’t you just take it now? I’m sure it’s your size.’

  Amy took the dress off the rail and went into the ladies’. In the cubicle, she changed out of her skirt and blouse, slipping on the red crêpe de chine and smoothing it down over her hips. Then she opened the loo door and looked at her reflection.

  She had never been truly obsessed with clothes, not like some of the fashion girls, who would go without lunch for six months so that they could buy an Erdem dress on sale, or comb eBay looking for vintage finds. But now she understood their transformative power.

  Gone was the cuckolded wife who would let a twenty-one-year-old get the better of her. Instead, she looked like the kick-ass editor everyone thought she was; the woman who had spontaneously pitched the company CEO for one of the biggest jobs in the industry.

  She returned to her office to collect her suitcase. It was almost five, and already people were beginning to drift off.

  ‘You look great,’ said Chrissie, putting a bunch of Post-it note messages on her desk.

  ‘I have to go,’ Amy said, picking up her bag.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ grinned Chrissie.

  ‘Let’s see if I can,’ she mumbled as she pulled her jacket off its hanger.

  A taxi took her straight into the City and dropped her off outside David’s office.

  The nights were still long, but the height of the buildings surrounding her seemed to block out the light and made her shiver. She looked up at the rows of windows above her, the shadows of workers sitting at computers, and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  Her text was simple.

  Come to reception.

  She stood on the pavement, watching his world through the floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass. She was nervous and unsettled at the thought of seeing him, more nervous than her first day at the house in Oxford, when she’d turned up with her two suitcases of possessions, wondering whether she was making the biggest mistake of her life moving in with a group of people she didn’t really know and who were certainly not from her world. Back then, she had found her steel, reminding herself that Pog’s offer was a remarkable opportunity and she couldn’t let her fear and insecurity stop her from grabbing it.

  She felt that same fear and uncertainty now. What if she and David didn’t come to some sort of truce? What was the next step? Selling the house, splitting the assets and sharing custody of Tilly; meeting David only to hand over their daughter in some polite exchange every other weekend.

  She didn’t want to stop and dwell on it.

  Instead, she watched as the commuters began to leave in their droves: post boys and secretaries, the lower-paid employees, who had smaller pay cheques but no doubt bigger lives outside the office.

  For the first time in her marriage, she wondered if David’s late nights were just an excuse to stay away from home. After all, not everyone leaving the bank was a junior. She’d always assumed that he genuinely had been working till eight, nine o’clock every night, but maybe she’d been played like a fool then too.

  She was about to leave when she saw him exit the big glass lift in the middle of the foyer. She could feel her heart starting to beat harder, but she steadied herself enough to take off her jacket. She was surprised at how cold it was out of the evening sun, but perhaps her mind was playing tricks; perhaps it was because she felt so naked and exposed that she was shivering. She watched the quiet deference with which David was treated by the people around him, and felt pride first, and then longing.

  He glanced around reception, looking puzzled and – dare she hope it – disappointed. She was just about to wave at him when he saw her and moved towards the revolving doors. She wanted to put her jacket back on, but she wanted him to see her in her red dress even more.

  In a few seconds he was out on the street beside her, keeping a cautious, awkward distance. He had definitely noticed what she was wearing, but she couldn’t work out what he was thinking.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he said finally.

  She was glad he had spoken first, because everything she had planned had suddenly escaped her.

  ‘Waiting for you,’ she said as he took a step closer.

  He reached out an unsure hand and she took it, and then she was in his arms, her head against the soft wool of his suit jacket, and she could feel his hands settling into the small of her back.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said into the top of her hair.

  She drew away from him. She knew she hadn’t come all the way to the City not to discuss Josie Price.

  ‘Why was Josie at the house last night?’ she said.

  ‘She said she’d forgotten some things. She didn’t stay long.’

  Amy nodded.

&
nbsp; ‘It’s the truth,’ said David quietly. ‘She can’t have been there more than twenty minutes. I think she realised I wanted her to leave.’

  ‘Can we just forget she ever came into our lives? Forget she ever existed?’

  ‘Only if you believe that nothing happened between us. Nothing at all.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said, for the first time almost accepting it as the truth. ‘I’ll believe you if it means we can just get back to where we were.’

  ‘Believe me because you understand how much I love you,’ he said, holding her hand. ‘I’ve always loved you, even before the moment I saw you on Threadneedle Street in that other red dress.’

  She didn’t say anything, wanting to let him just talk. It was true that before Josie they’d had a good marriage and often told each other that they loved one another. But it was why people loved that was perhaps not vocalised enough. Everyone wanted to hear why they were special, why they had been picked, and Amy was desperate to hear his reasons now.

  ‘I knew I loved you the night of the Commem Ball,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe even before then. You were always the one I wanted to sit with at the kitchen table, the one I wanted to talk to when I got home from the pub. If you ever wondered why Annabel didn’t come round to the house much, it was because I didn’t want you to see me with anyone else.’

  Amy remembered those days too. Remembered going out to buy a Christmas tree with him from Oxford’s covered market and decorating it over mugfuls of home-made eggnog. Suddenly she just wanted to do all those simple things again. She pulled her jacket back on and raised her arm for a cab.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she said, her face breaking into a smile. ‘Let’s go and see our daughter and make some hot chocolate.’

  Chapter 29

  The platform was packed. Steam rose from the polished black engine and a buzz of voices filled the air. Dozens of partygoers were dressed to the nines, the women in gowns and faux-fur coats, the men in DJs or wide-shouldered suits, some even sporting capes and rakish hats. The scene was like a particularly glamorous Agatha Christie adaptation, while the atmosphere was light-hearted, excitable, like the start of a school trip to the zoo.

  ‘You’d have thought none of them had been on a train before,’ said Amy.

  David smiled. ‘I shouldn’t think they have,’ he said, raising his voice as the engine gave a screeching lurch, sending up a delighted flutter of squeals from the crowd. ‘I mean, imagine you’re Jack Nicholson. I wouldn’t think he’s been on public transport since the sixties.’

  Amy grinned. Jack Nicholson wasn’t on the guest list, but a smattering of Hollywood A-listers were, along with TV stars, singers, artists and at least half of fashionable London. A handful of invitees had pulled out after the short-lived Miranda scandal, citing prior commitments, children’s birthday parties or sudden illnesses, and Miranda herself had declined to come, which was disappointing if understandable.

  Amy knew she would have worried about it more if she hadn’t spent the last week in a state of constant panic, dealing with every last detail of the party from the light bulbs to the forks. Everything that could go wrong did on a daily basis. A shipment of gin went missing, the temp agency providing waiters went bankrupt, and a shrimp shortage in the North Sea meant they had to rethink the nibbles. Some days it felt as though they were cursed. But little by little it had all come together.

  ‘You look at home in that suit,’ she said, touching David’s arm with one finger. It was true. He had always looked good in pinstripes, but in this navy Savile Row three-piece, he looked like a 1940s heart-throb; Cary Grant in his prime. He didn’t often attend Verve events, not because she didn’t want him there, but because it was invariably ‘just work’, but today, it seemed important that he was by her side.

  David tugged at his cuffs modestly. ‘You don’t look too bad yourself.’

  Amy glanced down at her peacock-blue Dior gown. It was vintage, one of a kind, and accessorised with pearl earrings and a midnight-blue overcoat draped off her shoulders. She knew she looked better than she had in years. Perhaps it was because she felt good too. Going to David’s office last week to resolve their problems had been the best thing she could have done. They had gone home to a delighted Tilly, who was thrilled to see her parents back so early, and made hot chocolate and cuddled up on the sofa, the sub-zero atmosphere slowly rising click by click until it actually felt as if they were back to normal. Almost.

  And now here he was, standing at her side, supporting her on her big night. On the outside they were the very picture of a glamorous power couple, but inside? Only time would tell.

  ‘You’d better not have put me next to that idiot MD of yours at dinner,’ said David, looking around.

  ‘You’ve got Suzie Grazer the film director and one of the advertisers, I think.’ Amy had made sure she’d seated him between two happily married sixty-something intellectuals who wouldn’t have the slightest interest in flirting over petit fours.

  A guard in a peaked cap blew his whistle and half a dozen conductors opened the dark-green-and-gold doors of the carriages, helping the eager guests inside.

  ‘Showtime,’ said Amy, moving forward.

  Stepping through the doorway, she almost gasped. She turned to watch David’s reaction and saw that he was equally impressed: the interior designers deserved their reputation as wizards. It was wonderful, like stepping into a classic 1940s black-and-white movie, only here, everything was in gleaming Technicolor: deep-purple velvet upholstery, white linen tablecloths, polished walnut wall panels. And the guests were as glamorous as the surroundings: ball gowns in peacock shades of blue, green and gold, furs and pearls, tie pins and spats.

  ‘Wow, is that who I think it is?’ muttered David from the side of his mouth. Amy just laughed and shrugged as they threaded their way along the corridor from one carriage to the next. He could have been referring to any of the guests crowding the train. A film star here, a model there, a racing car driver laughing with them both. Clearly everyone had forgotten the faux-pas of Miranda Pilley. Never let a little thing like fake outrage get in the way of a good party, thought Amy. And this was a great party – and they hadn’t even set off yet. She smiled. Even if she didn’t get the Mode job, she knew this would impress the top brass.

  ‘Whoa!’ A cry of delight rang up and down the train as it jerked into motion. Wavering on her high heels, Amy fell sideways only to feel David’s strong arms around her. She leaned against him gratefully, catching the grin on his face before they bounced apart again.

  The journey to Oxford would take less than an hour, and Amy was determined to enjoy every minute, knowing that it would pass almost as quickly as she could click her fingers. She passed Janice deep in conversation with her old flame, rock musician Cody Cole, surrounded by a huddle of edgy pop stars she could barely name. She grinned as she saw Juliet approaching from the other direction.

  ‘Amy, this is just fabulous,’ Juliet said, air-kissing. ‘You’re fabulous.’

  She had clearly pulled out all the stops herself, slinky in a sequin-covered silver sheath, her hair a cascade of curls.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Amy honestly. The two friends hadn’t spoken since their heart-to-heart in New York, and Amy hadn’t been sure if she would come. ‘Maybe we can talk later on.’

  Juliet gave a small shake of the head. ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘Tonight is your night. Everything else can wait.’ She glanced away, a chink in her confident, unflappable aura, and Amy wondered what had gone on in the week since she had told her about Peter.

  ‘You look like a hot mermaid,’ said David, taking a glass of champagne. Juliet slapped him on the arm, but Amy could see she was pleased.

  ‘It seems funny to be going back to Oxford.’

  ‘I’ve never really thought of it like that,’ Amy admitted.

  ‘Seriously, though, this is a master s
troke,’ said Juliet. ‘Everyone is on this train. How have you pulled it off? There can’t be anybody at the E-Squared dinner.’

  ‘Hard bloody work,’ said Amy with a rueful smile. ‘It helped that we invited the E-Squared CEO as well. Apparently he’s coming by helicopter later.’

  ‘Look at him go,’ smiled Juliet, watching David moving easily around the carriage, shaking hands, making jokes, the handsome, cheeky life and soul of the party.

  ‘He’s always good in these situations,’ smiled Amy, watching him. ‘Hard to be impressed by the world’s most successful designer or supermodel when you’ve never heard their name before.’

  ‘So you’ve patched things up?’

  Amy nodded. ‘It’s been horrible living in such a toxic atmosphere, avoiding each other.’

  ‘You’ve forgiven him?’

  Amy looked at her friend, not wanting to get emotional. ‘What’s the alternative? Divorce?’

  And that was when the train stopped abruptly with a screech of brakes, metal on metal.

  With a crunch, the entire carriage lurched forward, then back, people flying in every direction. Amy crashed against a window, her fall mercifully cushioned by the heavy drapes. She held onto the back of a booth, just missing hitting her head. There was a pause of perhaps a second, then uproar. Squeals turned to screams, a cacophony of pleading voices, cries and wails.

  ‘Attention, ladies and gentlemen, please!’ A commanding baritone voice drew everyone’s attention. Even Amy looked up in surprise as she recognised her husband’s voice. ‘Please don’t panic, we have everything under control. The train has simply had to make an emergency stop because the driver had a report of an obstruction on the line. It will just be a few minutes and then we’ll be on our way again.’

  He paused, and immediately there were calls for more information, cries about injuries, pleas for help.

  ‘I know a few of you have had a bump, so if you could look around at the people immediately next to you and see how you can help them, I will be back in two minutes and we’ll get you sorted.’