by Wendy Holden
Although it had been some weeks since the invitation was issued, and he should probably be used to it by now, Orlando still found it hard to believe that his mother really had invited the world champions of freeloading on their summer holidays with them. Moreover, that the Faughs would be present when his A levels came through. The results were going to be terrible, and so was being with his parents when the dreaded fax arrived. The prospect of being with the twins as well was almost beyond bearing.
There was a rustle from the seats opposite. His mother had lowered her Vogue and was looking at him. Her mouth was moving up and down, but he heard nothing through the thunder from his earphones. She was making turn-it-down gestures. Orlando turned it down.
"Darling?" Georgie shrilled.
"I've turned it down, Mum," Orlando mumbled, shooting a self-conscious look at the people passing about them.
"Honestly, darling," Georgie said in a more normal voice. "You're supposed to be looking out for Laura and Hugh, and you're just staring at the floor from what I can see." Her thin face creased with exasperation.
"Sorry, Mum," Orlando grunted in the resonant baritone he had recently acquired. His voice had become deep and gruff in a way that seemed to catch even more female attention. Unwillingly, he raised his chin and cautiously, beneath his cliffs of brow, began to scan the airport for the Faughs.
"Look! Look! Over there!" Georgie yelped, her face ablaze with excitement.
Beside her, Richard lowered his newspaper in panic. Had the dreaded hour come?
"Look!" Georgie exclaimed again, pointing.
On the wide carpeted gangway that led through this departure hall into the next, a blonde woman was walking quickly through, gesturing angrily, surrounded by photographers. They were all yelling and letting off their flashes.
"Isn't that Belle Murphy?" Georgie gasped.
"Who?" asked Orlando. He had no interest in celebrities, apart from the distraction from himself that they afforded his mother.
There was a sharp, irritated, intake of breath from Georgie. "Honestly, darling. Don't you know who anyone is?"
"I'll go and see if I can find the Faughs," Orlando mumbled, untangling his legs to stand up to the whole of his six-foot-plus height. He had every intention of avoiding their guests if he saw them, but it got him out of the maternal firing line.
"Ow!" yelled Emma, as a colossal training shoe crushed down on her foot.
It had not been a good day. She had arrived at the airport and checked in what seemed like weeks ago, only to discover that the bargain flight she and Morning had been booked on had been delayed by up to four hours. She had walked around the heaving terminal more or less constantly since and now knew every single item in every single shop.
And now some clumsy oaf had walked slap-bang into her and crushed her foot. As well as, Emma saw, annoyed, made a dirty smudge with his sole over her white Converse.
"Sorry," Orlando blurted. He had not seen this woman until it was too late, and he had practically knocked her over. He saw in horror that she had a baby strapped to her front. "I'm really sorry," he grunted, in the new deep voice he still didn't feel entirely comfortable with.
Her assailant was very tall, Emma saw. About her age; maybe younger. He wore a pair of cut-off denim jeans and a sagging white T-shirt. His face was hidden beneath lots of blond hair, and there were iPod earphones curling around his neck. So far, so bog-standard, Emma thought.
He pushed his hair back to expose his face, and, instead of the spotty and misshapen bunch of bog-standard teenage features she had been expecting, Emma now found herself looking at a face of celestial beauty. He had the most extraordinary eyes, a brackish green ringed with yellow. She was immediately conscious of her predawn lack of make-up and the way her hair scraped back in an early-morning ponytail from which it was constantly escaping. Her exposed ears seemed to double tenfold in size, turn purple, and pulsate.
Of course, she thought he was an idiot, Orlando realised. You could tell by the way she was looking at him. She had a very direct gaze. Most girls he knew sort of squinted, giggled, and whooshed their hair about. This girl's cool and interested appraisal was something entirely different.
For a moment, the world around Emma had simply melted away. But now, against her front, Morning stirred. She hoped desperately that he wasn't about to scream.
But the only sound from directly south of her was a happy gurgle; looking down, Emma saw that the baby was smiling at the boy.
"Nice baby," said Orlando appreciatively. "What's his name?" He had not failed to notice, of course, that the baby was black. Very black, in fact, more so than one might expect if this girl was, as seemed likely, his mother.
"He's called Morning."
Orlando was intrigued. "Why did you call him that?"
"Oh, he's not my baby," Emma said hastily. "I'm his nanny."
But she was, even so, the nearest to a mother Morning had. Especially now that Belle, grudgingly agreeing to pay her after all, had made it abundantly clear that she wished to see as little of the baby as possible.
With this in mind, while she had seen Belle go through the airport just now, heading for the VIP lounge and followed by the paparazzi. Emma had kept her own head down.
Where this situation was ultimately leading to, Emma could not guess. But if current form was anything to go by, she would be spending the next twenty years following Belle, flying bucket class and on slave wages, until Morning was old enough to look after himself. Any hope of another, better job relied on keeping this one for a respectable number of months.
"His nanny," repeated Orlando, interested in her northern accent. Hardly anyone ever spoke to him in anything other than an English upper-class accent, or what they imagined was one.
Emma was getting more used to the boy's extraordinary appearance now, but looking directly at him was still a bit like looking directly into the sun.
"I'm Orlando, by the way…"
She smiled. "You look like an Orlando." Damn. Why had she said that?
"And you're…?"
"Emma."
He nodded. "Yeah, you look like an Emma."
She did look like an Emma, he thought. The simple grace of the name suited her. There was something very fresh and English about her face, which was open and clear, with large, brown, shining eyes. There were touches of pink in her cheeks that reminded him of roses. He liked her brown hair, too, which was falling out of its ponytail more and more all the time. Released, it looked glossy and weighty and incredibly healthy and was shot through with rich red threads. She had nice little ears too, tinged with pink.
She wore either none or very little make-up. She looked so clean she might squeak. She was not thin, but not fat either. She looked as unlike as it was possible to look from the rickety, kohl-eyed, blonde Elizas and Jasmines he knew from school and Facebook. One could not easily imagine any of them holding a baby with the confidence Emma was doing now, nor gaining such obvious pleasure from it. She was, Orlando sensed, very kind.
A force beyond his usual diffident self now impelled him. "How about a coffee?" he blurted, surprising himself and sending a violent charge through Emma's knees.
In the terminal Costa Coffee, Orlando flicked some torn sugar papers from the table. They had established in the coffee queue that they were both going to Italy, although on different flights. And for different reasons.
"I wish I was working, not just going on holiday," Orlando remarked longingly.
"Really?" she looked at him quizzically.
"You bet." Orlando longed to earn his own living, but at what he had no idea. He had never worked in his life, not because he hadn't wanted to, but because Georgie had not let him. During his entire time at school, she had ruled out holiday jobs in supermarkets or on building sites on the grounds he could be using the time studying. In fact, he had used it to watch television. And now what career lay ahead? He had no idea what he was going to go into, apart from the local unemployment office.
&
nbsp; Emma was surprised at this outburst. It was not what she had expected such a gilded youth to say.
There was, he thought, something really rather distractingly pretty about the way her hair kept falling out of its ponytail. And the shine of her lips and eyes when she looked at him.
"The holiday's going to be a nightmare," Orlando moaned. "I'm expecting my A level results, and they're going to be the worst ever recorded."
"Why are they going to be so bad? Was your school bad?"
He shook his blond hair. "No, the school was fine."
"Didn't study?"
Orlando shook his head. Of all his weak academic aspects, studying was his weakest. Until an exam was actually upon him, he could never believe it would actually happen. And then, of course, it was too late.
"Shame to miss the opportunity," Emma said tacitly. "After going through all those years at school."
Orlando considered this. He had trained himself to be deaf to anything his mother ever said about wasting his privileges. Coming from this girl, however, failing exams sounded like something other than failing to get on the next level of social achievement, as Georgie so obviously saw it. It just sounded like a waste of effort, which, he supposed, it was.
"I suppose you got lots of As," he said wistfully to Emma. "You look the clever sort."
Emma grinned. "No one's ever said that before. Most people think nannies look thick."
"You don't look thick."
"I never took A levels. I decided to leave and start work."
"Lucky you," Orlando said, again. "The only way my mum would've let me leave is if I'd passed all my exams and a degree freakishly early and become the youngest brain surgeon ever employed at University College Hospital."
Emma laughed. "Are you saying your mum's a bit pushy?"
He pulled a face. "I mean, she's nice. She means well. But…" He stopped. Where did he start, with the buts?
In the obvious place. He started with the Faughs. Describing their horrors made him feel strangely lighter of heart. As Orlando spoke, he forgot his awkwardness about his voice. He felt a new confidence blossom; he had not realised he was possessed of such eloquence, particularly before a girl. Or that anything he might have to be eloquent about would interest a girl.
As Emma listened, the urge rose to tell Orlando about the almost equally peculiar conditions of her own Italian trip. It felt a long time since she had had a ready and sympathetic ear, someone her own age, not an employer or other adversary, but someone who would understand. She felt for the first time how lonely she had been in London.
She stopped herself, however. Emma was unsure to what extent the confidentiality agreement was watertight, but she was certain that whatever water it held Belle would squeeze to the last drop if she breached it.
"How awful," she remarked, when Orlando's torrent of resentment had spent itself. "They obviously think they can do what they like just because their father's an MP."
"And he thinks he can do what he likes as well." Orlando told Emma about Hugh Faugh's views concerning hanging or sterilising single mothers in the lower social classes.
He was satisfied to see her expression was absolute amazement.
"But…this man. He represents people. In Parliament."
"Yes."
"People voted for him."
Orlando confirmed that, incredibly, this was so.
"He has power and influence. And that's what he thinks…" Her nostrils flared. "People trust him."
Orlando regarded her with blazing eyes, his heart surging with the joy of, at last, finding someone who really understood. "I know. It's unbelievable. If only his constituents knew…" He tore a packet open and began layering the top of his cooling cappuccino.
"Do you realise," Emma interrupted him, "that you're putting salt on your coffee?"
The next thing he knew, she was scrambling to her feet as quickly as Morning and his bottle made possible. "My flight's actually up there! Boarding now!" She paused, her eyes awkwardly flicking his. "Um, thanks for the coffee…"
She had gone, disappeared into the crowds, before he could even ask her where she was staying. Before he could get her mobile. If she was near him, they could have met. Had another coffee. Become friends.
Chapter Thirty-two
Two men were walking despondently through Gatwick's main departure zone. One was tall and thin with a lugubrious grey face, a long nose, and greyish, thinning, long hair. His companion was short and pink, with reddish, thinning short hair. Otherwise, they were more or less identical in jeans, trainers, and black leather jackets, the front of which bristled with black camera equipment. Huge lenses, flashes, and various other black cylindrical objects, all hung suspended from their necks by broad black straps. In their hands, the men held takeaway cappuccinos and croissants.
"Bleedin' 'ell," said Keith. "Hardly got a single shot there. Agency's gonna bang me nuts between two bricks."
The photographers sat down and stared moodily at their cappuccino cups. "Always the bloody same, ain't it?" Keith added. "These stars, they're desperate for us when they're struggling, but the minute they're back up there, it's—" he mimed someone throwing out a hand. "Oooh! No photographs! They get all bloody grand again. And there we were, taking pictures of Belle Murphy when she couldn't get bloody arrested in London, let alone a part in a big film."
Even though he had heard it all before, Ken gave a slight, despairing, disbelieving shake of his head in support.
Cappuccino foam shot out of Keith's nose, and he wiped it with one black leather sleeve. "No bloody gratitude, that's the problem."
"No. Yes." Not that Ken cared. He had long since stopped expecting gratitude. Why should the celebs be grateful? The paps made money off of them; they, in a less direct but probably more profitable way, made money off of the paps. It was a straightforward business arrangement. Gratitude—and the moral values associated with it—didn't come into it.
"Never thought Belle Murphy would be back up the greasy pole though. If anyone looked down and out, it was her."
"Yeah." Ken stuffed the rest of the croissant into his mouth and, chewing vigorously, screwed up the paper bag it had come in and lobbed it at a distant bin, which it missed.
"But then she gets a part in this new film, and she's off like a greyhound at Walthamstow."
"Yeah."
The two men sighed in unison and surveyed the scene around them.
Ken heard Keith grunt as a tall, lissome blonde in very tight white jeans undulated slowly past, her high red heels clacking sharply on the shiny floor, her rather close-together eyes, which had a yellow tinge, fixed on the two photographers all the while. She had obviously realised they were paparazzi. "Poor man's Paris Hilton," Keith, leaning over, rasped in a stage whisper to Ken.
The blonde, who had two young children in tow—and tow was the word; they dragged at the ends of her arms unwillingly— narrowed her yellow eyes. "Poor man's Mario Testino!" she spat viciously at Keith, before pulling the children after her so hard Ken feared their arms coming out of their sockets.
He looked after her in concern; the little party had stopped a few yards away, and the blonde was shouting. Ken gathered, with his quick ear, that the little boy, who was straining desperately to break free, had dropped something that had rolled away, a little red toy train. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Cosmo," the poor man's Paris was yelling in a harsh patrician voice. "Just stop messing about. If you've lost it, you've lost it. That'll teach you. If you must take those bloody trains everywhere, you've got to keep hold of them. No. No!" she shouted, dragging the child back as he made a break for freedom. "We've got a plane to catch, okay?"
"Please, Totty," the boy begged. "Please. It's over there. I can see it…"
His white-haired sister pleaded in his support, pulling hard on the arms determined to drag them away. "Totty," she cried. "I can see the train. It's just there…" She stabbed the air urgently with her other hand, which was holding a small, pink-striped toy cat.
It was true. Ken could see the little red train. It was just there. It had sped across the hard, shiny walkway and come to an abrupt stop against a white-painted plant pot housing a weeping fig. He could see it. The children, all too agonisingly obviously, could see it. The blonde could see it too, Ken knew. It was sheer sadism that was preventing her from allowing him to go the few steps to it and pick it up.
"Mummy would let me…Daddy would…" the boy pleaded, obviously intent on using every weapon in his arsenal.
"Well, Daddy's not here; he's had to go abroad again," the blonde retorted with what seemed to Ken an inappropriate sneer. "And Mummy's working. It's not her holidays yet; she's coming out next week. We're going ahead," she added savagely. "We're going to have a lovely time in Italy by ourselves…lots of your friends are out there already, like Hengist. He's in his villa…"
