The Spanish Promise

by Karen Swan

  ‘I know, but I didn’t get there at all in the end. An emergency at work.’

  ‘Sorry – you know each other?’ Milton asked, sounding incredulous.

  ‘Oh, we’re forever bumping into each other at this and that, aren’t we, Lotts?’ Lord Finch asked, just as her phone rang.

  She glanced at the screen. ‘I’m afraid I need to take this. A call I’ve been expecting,’ she smiled apologetically, reaching up on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye again. ‘Let’s have lunch in August. Will you be in Positano?’

  ‘Darling, does the pope shit in the woods?’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘You’re outrageous! I’ll call you.’ And she turned and left, catching sight of Milton’s dumbstruck expression on her way out.

  ‘I’ll keep you posted!’ Milton called after her as she headed down the corridor.

  She raised an arm in acknowledgement as she connected the call. ‘Rosie?’

  ‘Hi, Charlotte,’ her PA’s voice replied. ‘Good time to speak?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She walked down to the lifts and pressed the button, staring out of the plate-glass windows that gave over London. ‘I’m just leaving Steed now. They need me to go to Madrid tomorrow. Can you reschedule my appointments and get me on the first flight out in the morning?’

  ‘Sure. Hey, Madrid, lucky you – you can top up your tan before the wedding.’

  ‘Oh yes, lucky me,’ Charlotte replied drolly.

  ‘You don’t sound too enthused.’

  ‘You aren’t the one who’s got to tell my mother I can’t make the final dress fitting tomorrow night.’

  ‘Ah.’ Rosie was very well acquainted with her mother. ‘Well, does that matter? They’ve got your measurements.’

  Charlotte missed a beat. ‘Yeah. It’s just a couture dress, you’re right. They can wing it.’

  Rosie chuckled, also very well acquainted with Charlotte’s dry sense of humour. ‘Well at least you can take your foot off the gas for a bit while you’re out there. A bit of distance from all the wedding prep might help you to relax.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m uptight, Rosie?’

  ‘I’m saying you’re getting married next week and you’ve not had a hen party, a lunch, not even a hair appointment. You’re only taking a few days for the honeymoon—’

  ‘Because we’re both frantic at the moment. We can take one later when things have calmed down a bit. Has he called, by the way?’

  ‘Not yet. Do you want me to try him?’

  ‘No. No, it’s fine. I’ll catch him later.’ She and Stephen never spoke much in the day – one of them was invariably in a meeting – but she was looking forward to a quiet night in with him tonight. Even if she hadn’t had to go to Madrid tomorrow, they’d been on a carousel of parties lately, everyone urgently getting together for last hurrahs in the capital before they split for the coasts of Provence, Formentera and Esmeraldas, where they would reconvene to do it all again. She could think of nothing nicer than a rhubarb gin and tonic, a foot rub and an evening on the sofa wearing his pyjamas. ‘I’m on my way back now but can you ping me Lucy Santos’s file? You remember, Roberto Santos’s wife.’

  ‘The Chelsea footballer.’

  The lift arrived and she stepped in. ‘Ex-Chelsea. Real Madrid now, remember?’

  As if she could forget. Rosie was well-acquainted with her boss’s ambitions. Chelsea Football Club was already one of her top clients and it was how Charlotte had met Lucy initially, helping the Santos family to settle as they moved down to London from Manchester. Naturally, Real Madrid had their own variation on the services she offered, an in-house wealth management team, but Lucy liked the personal relationship she had built up with Charlotte and had been adamant that continued access to her was stipulated as one of the conditions of her husband’s transfer deal. Eager to secure their new star player, Madrid had happily agreed to his family’s demands and Charlotte had worked hard to help them settle quickly in the hope it might lead to the Spanish club becoming another of her clients too.

  ‘This’ll be a good chance to touch base with her seeing as I’ll be in the neighbourhood. Last time we spoke, she was still struggling: language barrier, the press, school issues . . . The FaceTime sessions aren’t enough; I think she needs more proactive support and this will be a good opportunity to try and get some time with her, before everything kicks off in earnest with this Mendoza problem.’

  ‘Mendoza?’ It was a name everyone knew. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Could be,’ Charlotte nodded. It wasn’t every day a bank’s liquidity was thrown into question. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, I’m in a lift. I’ll be back in ten.’

  ‘Oh – but what do you want to do about the dinner on Saturday? Will you be back for that?’

  The doors closed.

  ‘Oh God, yes, good point. Saturday,’ she said, pulling a grimace. How could she have forgotten about that? Charlotte bit her lip. Stephen’s parents were throwing a pre-wedding dinner at the Savoy for the core guests. ‘No it’s fine, leave everything as it is. I’m sure I’ll be back by then, but if not, I can fly back for the night if necessary.’

  ‘Or they could come to you,’ Rosie quipped, her voice beginning to break up. ‘No biggie.’

  Charlotte smiled at the prospect of one hundred of her closest friends all decamping to Madrid for the party. ‘Quite. We’ll charter a jumbo.’

  The connection was lost as she heard Rosie laughing. As if she’d been joking.

  ‘I’m home!’ she called out, throwing her keys into the trinket dish on the console table and pausing, listening for signs of life as she quickly threw a glance up the stairs and into the drawing room. Nothing. But Stephen’s briefcase was on the chair where he always left it when he came in. ‘Stephen? I’m back. And I’m wearing nothing under my coat!’ She walked down the hall and into the kitchen. ‘Oh, hello, Mother.’

  ‘Darling,’ her mother smiled, lifting her chin so that Charlotte could reach her cheek more easily.

  ‘Where’s Stephen?’

  ‘Just in the cellar, getting some more Pinot.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charlotte frowned as she took in the sight of the half-chopped vegetables and a dish of rock oysters on the worktop. ‘. . . Did we make an arrangement I’ve forgotten about?’

  ‘Not at all. I just thought I’d look in on my way back from the facialist and Stephen asked me to stay for supper.’

  ‘Ah.’ She gave a tight smile. So much for an evening in her pyjamas with her feet up. ‘That’s sweet of him.’

  ‘As I reminded him, we still need to pin down the more errant of your friends who think RSVP is a cognac.’

  Oh good. Charlotte poured herself a glass of water as they waited for the wine. ‘How was your facial? You look glowing.’ Her mother took her personal grooming very seriously and was always the first to sign up to any new cosmetic procedure that offered to whip away the years. Her once-blonde hair was now a silvery ash but she still wore it in the curled-under bob she had favoured since her forties, and her blue eyes, though undeniably droopier at the brow, had a youthful twinkle that ensured she was still sought after at dinner parties in London’s smartest postcodes.

  ‘Just wonderful. Marie’s hands are always so cold, I swear her touch alone makes my skin firm up,’ her mother said, dabbing at her cheekbones lightly.

  ‘Mmm.’

  Stephen walked in, carrying a bottle of Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru. ‘Ah, you’re back. You’re late,’ he said all in one breath as he came over. She reached up for a kiss but he pecked her on the cheek instead; he didn’t believe in PDAs, as he called them, and particularly not in front of her mother.

  ‘Yes. I had some paperwork to catch up on before I left.’ She watched as he uncorked the bottle between his knees. He had changed into his chinos and a fresh shirt, no tie. It was about as informal as he got.

  ‘How was the meeting at Steed? Farrer fire everyone?’ As a broker himself, he was well aware of the rumours about the currently testy atmospher
e within the bank.

  ‘No. It was interesting.’ She watched as he began to fill her a glass. God, she was thirsty; it had been a long day. ‘They need me to go to Madrid for a couple of days.’

  ‘What?’ Stephen asked, faltering as he handed over her drink.

  ‘When?’ her mother demanded, looking aghast.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘But the dress fitting—’ her mother exclaimed.

  ‘The dinner . . .’ Stephen added.

  Charlotte stared back at their horrified faces and counted to five. Sometimes she thought they were the couple and she the naughty child. ‘It’s fine. I’ll push back the fitting to the weekend when I’ll be back in good time for the dinner. Don’t worry. I’m hardly going to miss my own wedding party, am I?’

  But they both stared at her with expressions that suggested they weren’t quite sure. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she reiterated, having a sip of wine for strength.

  ‘I don’t know why you put yourself through this,’ her mother sighed, sitting back in her chair with a disappointed expression.

  ‘Through what?’

  ‘All this stress.’

  ‘I’m not stressed.’

  ‘Of course you are – all these meetings, all the travel, all this rushing about.’ Her mother’s hand twirled through the air in despairing flourishes. ‘No wonder you always look so strained.’

  ‘I don’t look strained,’ she protested, but her hand had risen protectively to her cheek as though looking for physical proof. She looked over to Stephen for support.

  ‘To be honest, you haven’t been taking care of yourself recently,’ he shrugged. ‘You’ve lost weight—’

  ‘Every bride loses weight.’

  ‘Plus you’re distracted and always late for everything.’

  ‘Yes. Because I’m busy.’

  ‘Busy doing things you don’t need to be doing,’ her mother interjected with a tone of finality, as though that settled it. ‘I realize you like the idea of having a job but surely the novelty’s worn off now? Frankly, darling, you’re spreading yourself too thin. Stephen was just telling me before you walked in, about how he could do with you supporting him by being more at home.’

  Charlotte shot him a furious look. Had he? He had the good sense to look away and get busy with prepping dinner again. ‘I simply said life would be easier if you weren’t working too,’ he said quickly.

  ‘What would you prefer I do? Shop? Lunch? Play tennis?’

  ‘And what is wrong with that?’ her mother asked sniffily. ‘Must you always display such disdain for the way you’ve been raised? Honestly, Charlotte, sometimes I think you’re a closet socialist.’

  Charlotte stared at her mother before looking back at her fiancé again; it was hard to keep up with which one of them she was actually arguing with. Seemingly both. ‘That’s offensive.’

  ‘Absolutely it is!’ her mother agreed, completely missing the point.

  Charlotte sighed, topping up her glass and too weary to argue. ‘Look, I’m not even sure what we’re debating here – or why. My career is important to me, that is all; I’ve worked hard to get the consultancy to this point. It’s not simply some sort of daily distraction.’

  ‘I just think you should be thinking about what’s best for Stephen’s career, before your own. How can you support him when you’re running yourself ragged?’

  ‘Hardly ragged.’

  ‘You’re off to Madrid tomorrow.’

  She sighed; her mother’s couture week schedule would put her own to shame. ‘Stephen’s fine. If he wanted a little wife sitting waiting around at home for him, he’d have proposed to someone else and not me. Isn’t that right, darling?’

  She looked hopefully towards her fiancé, who appeared to be concentrating hard on slicing a lemon. He looked up blankly. ‘Hmm? . . . Oh, yes, quite.’

  It was one of his characteristic non-answers, his chosen method for agreeing and disagreeing with them both unspecifically at once. As a former brigadier in the army, he had survived sniper fire from the Taliban and mortar shelling in Damascus but he still went to great lengths to avoid openly disagreeing with her mother.

  ‘I’m going to have a shower and change into something more comfortable,’ she said, setting down her glass irritably. ‘My feet are killing me.’

  ‘Well don’t be long, please. We need to finalize the button-holes. Did you see Pip’s email? There’s been a disaster with the twister roses. Plague of whiteflies apparently, such bad luck. We need to go back to the drawing board . . . She suggested ranunculus,’ her mother called to her retreating back.

  Charlotte raised a feeble hand in acknowledgement and climbed up the stairs, her mother’s crystal tones still wafting enquiringly behind her. Happy Ever After came at a high price.

  Madrid

  ‘I feel like I’m going mad.’ Lucy Santos’s pretty plumped mouth settled into a bitter line. ‘No one in this house speaks English. Not her.’ She nodded towards the housekeeper polishing a juicer. ‘Nor her.’ She nodded towards the nanny, playing with her four-year-old in the garden. ‘Rob said it didn’t matter, that it was a good thing because it forces Leo to speak Spanish, but if there’s anything important I need to communicate, I have to get Rob to say it when he gets in.’

  Charlotte frowned, she had distinctly overheard the house-keeper speaking in English on the phone when she had popped to the loo earlier. ‘First off, fire the housekeeper and get one who does speak English. Secondly, have you started the Spanish lessons we discussed?’

  Lucy snorted. ‘For all the good it’s doing me. Hola. Que tal. That’s about it.’

  ‘Keep at it. You’ll be surprised what a difference it makes, being able to understand and be understood.’

  Lucy’s gaze flickered to her resentfully. ‘I bet you’re fluent.’

  There was judgement in the pronouncement; defensiveness; insecurity. ‘I came here a lot as a child, which helped, and I did do a Spanish module at university,’ Charlotte conceded.

  ‘Let me guess – Oxford.’

  ‘Cambridge,’ Charlotte shrugged. ‘But don’t assume that means anything. I got a third.’

  Lucy’s eyes twinkled with delight. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Having too much of a good time, I’m afraid.’ Charlotte gave a secretive smile.

  The admission made Lucy relax somewhat. ‘Well it obviously didn’t hold you back. Look at you now: wealth counsellor for a fancy private bank. Who even knew that was a thing?’

  ‘Trust me, for as long as there’s money in this world, there’ll be people who need me. Money is like beauty: a blessing and a curse; people think it’s the answer to everything but it destroys as many lives as it saves. Any rich person will tell you that money is a prison.’

  ‘Ain’t it just,’ Lucy muttered under her breath. She was curled up and almost lost from view on one of the vast cream leather sofas. Absolutely tiny, her five-foot-one frame was gym-whittled and elevated by cork wedges, her long balayaged caramel hair giving another inch of height. An enormous aquamarine ring kept glinting on her finger, and the rips on her sprayed-on jeans were so numerous as to suggest she’d been attacked by wolves.

  But in spite of the fact it was almost thirty-five degrees outside, her hands were wrapped around a cup of hot, almost-orange tea and she kept dipping her head every few moments to take a sip, losing her train of thought each time. She was distant and distracted, a pale imitation of the bubbly, excited young woman Charlotte had known in London a few months before. Back then, she’d been bursting with impatience to get over here and ‘be in the sun at last’.

  This was the dream and certainly on paper the move had been seamless. The club had sold £67 million of Santos-branded merchandise, already recouping almost half their outlay on him, and he had settled in well, scoring seven goals in the last nine matches. And behind the scenes, the living was easy: the house was fresh from the pages of Architectural Digest – all modernist polished concrete floors, wrap-around windows an
d cedar cladding, a pale pristine pool with swallows swooping over the surface. In the middle of the kitchen, a copper island the size of an emperor bed was being buffed by another maid in a pale-grey dress. But the mistress of it all was floundering. Unhappy, isolated and resentful.

  From her spot on the opposite sofa, Charlotte watched Lucy gazing out at her four-year-old son Leo, playing in the bespoke tree house, the nanny looking up at him from the ground and imploring him to come down.

  ‘D’you think she’s pretty?’ Lucy asked her, jerking her head towards the young woman outside. Charlotte glanced over. The nanny was wearing jean cutoffs and a white t-shirt with Déjà vu written on the front, her long dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. She was in trainers and wasn’t wearing any make-up that Charlotte could discern.

  ‘Sure,’ Charlotte shrugged. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I guess so . . . I mean, she’s not ugly.’

  Charlotte watched Lucy watching her. ‘Do you think Roberto thinks she’s pretty?’

  Lucy’s head whipped round, her attention back in the room. ‘Why would you ask that?’

  ‘Because it felt like there was subtext to your question.’ Charlotte tilted her head slightly and waited. ‘Was there?’

  Lucy was quiet. ‘I dunno,’ she muttered finally. ‘. . . Maybe.’

  Another silence settled, filling the room like an invisible expanding foam, filling in all the crevices. They both knew the injuncted stories that swirled around the players – they were always either cheating or secretly gay; no one could ever just be happily married. ‘How’s he settled here, do you think?’

  ‘Rob?’

  Charlotte nodded.

  ‘Rob’s Rob. At home wherever he puts his boots.’

  ‘Still, it must be easier for him being here than you – the language barrier doesn’t exist, for one thing.’

  ‘Colombian Spanish is different from Spanish Spanish.’ ‘Yes, but there are more overlaps and parallels than not, surely?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Whereas for you, even just buying a pint of milk is tricky.’