by Karen Swan
‘Well, if you can get her to meet me, I’ll do my best,’ Laura shrugged.
‘Great.’ He pulled himself up to standing. ‘And listen – don’t try to sweeten the relationship into something it’s not. Every charm has got to be true.’
Laura squinted at him. ‘Are you sure?’
Rob nodded his head. ‘Don’t edit to be kind to me or anyone else. I want you to discover all Cat’s sides and flaws and strengths, and then choose the stories that, in the balance, show who she really is. That’s how you’ll capture her, by showing the warts and all.’
Laura stared despondently at the headrest in front of her. ‘If there is one thing I can be absolutely certain of already, it’s that your wife is not warty.’
Laura watched as he returned to his seat, chuckling, slowly becoming aware of a familiar telltale ache in the pit of her stomach. She had missed breakfast and absent-mindedly dismissed it as hunger pangs, but this . . . this wasn’t hunger. She clasped her hands over her tummy and felt the warmth there and faint swelling that came every month. Had it been a false alarm, after all? The sleepless nights had been for nothing? Relief flooded her and she began rifling in her handbag for her emergency supplies. Wait till she told Fee. Now she could stop with the worried, haunted looks she kept throwing when she thought Laura wasn’t looking.
Laura took a celebratory sip of her champagne before getting out of her seat and heading off to the loos. Just like that, her life was back on track.
Chapter Fifteen
The minibus Rob had hired to transfer them from Geneva to the chalet was ready and waiting as they trooped out of the arrivals hall, and everyone piled on noisily, sprawling themselves across both seats in each row in unspoken agreement. Laura made a point of sitting – or was it hiding? – at the back of the group. Sam, sitting up front, had pulled a couple of bottles of Dom Pérignon from her suitcase before they’d boarded, and the group were drinking it steadily as they made their way through the mountains, swapping stories of their summer holidays and which runs they wanted to make.
Rob and David were sitting separately in the front two rows, talking in low, serious voices and doing lots of earnest nodding at each other’s comments. Laura was much more interested in getting a handle on the rest of the group. From what she could tell, peering inconspicuously over the headrest, Cat was the queen bee of the set, Sam was the party animal, Kitty the mother hen, and Orlando the chameleon, able to camp it up singing along to Adele with Sam one moment, and commiserate over rampant mint in the strawberry beds with Kitty the next.
It was clear everyone was up for a party, drinking happily without worrying who was going to be ‘designated driver’ or whether they had to be up early with the kids the next morning. Interestingly, they were much more imposing as the sum of their parts. Laura had met both Kitty and Orlando separately and been intimidated by neither, but here, amidst the ready laughter and insider repartee, they fulfilled all her nervous expectations of what she’d envisaged the Blakes’ glamorous social set to be – even Kitty, now that she was out of her crooked cottage and pinny, looked imposingly grand without children hanging off her. She had blow-dried her hair and was wearing a spot of make-up, and she now perfectly embodied Fee’s observation: ‘She sounds like she does the gardening in pearls.’
Laura wondered for a moment what Fee would make of them all. At twenty-three, Fee wasn’t just significantly younger, she was infinitely less sophisticated too. The conversations that Laura kept picking up on – spending Easter on Lake Como (Sam); the numbers being paid at Mat Collishaw’s new exhibition (Cat); the long-term returns of investing in wine (Orlando); hosting the Boxing Day meet (Kitty) – were so far out of her orbit, they might as well have been conducted in Latin, and it saddened Laura to realize that her own dearest friend would be dangerously out of her depth here.
And what about Jack? How would he fit in? Laura’s eyes flitted back to Rob and David, appraising the sleek cut of their expensive suits and the discreet thickness of their seven-fold silk ties, the way they made bullet points in the air with fingers that didn’t boast wedding rings. He would flounder here too, she knew. The few suits he did own had the shine to them that was the downside of being washable, not dry-clean, and his voice lacked the bass timbre of theirs that came from years of public-school debating and corporate pitches. Nor did he do irony or sarcasm of any kind; he was unapologetically straightforward and sensitive, and perfectly happy to wear his heart on his sleeve. Even his face was wrong somehow – too fine-featured and clean-cut, as if he hadn’t started shaving yet. He was a boy to their men.
‘. . . Laura?’
‘Huh? What?’ Laura turned to find Cat, Kitty, Sam and Orlando staring at her.
‘You were miles away!’ Kitty smiled. ‘Sam asked whether you ski.’
Laura’s heart sank. There it was. The single question that pinpointed to them all whether or not she fitted in here. Even if she could look the part in her new clothes and keep up with the broader strokes of the conversation, could she do what they could do? Backwards? Drunk? In the dark? In their sleep?
‘No,’ she replied quietly. ‘I don’t.’
An embarrassed hush fell over the party and Laura felt the humiliation rain down upon her. She felt a quiet fury gather inside her. She had been sitting quietly, tucked away at the back, determined not to bring attention to herself or intrude in any way on this intimate gathering. She hadn’t asked to be here; she wasn’t trying to muscle her way in to their oh-so-exclusive clique.
‘Oh,’ Sam said, with a certain archness.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cat said quickly. ‘We’ve got a fantastic instructor out here. He’ll have you flying down the slopes in no time.’
Laura felt Rob’s eyes on her and looked at him for help. But he said nothing. ‘Thanks so much,’ she replied. Cat couldn’t know she was here to work.
‘In the meantime, have another drink,’ Orlando said, filling her glass to the brim so that bubbles sloshed on to the carpeted floor.
Laura accepted it with a tight smile and looked out into the darkness of the Alpine night. The point had been made and everyone knew where they stood now. Kitty’s, Cat’s and Orlando’s friendliness notwithstanding, she wasn’t one of them.
‘So this is it!’ Orlando grinned, holding Laura’s hand as she alighted from the steps.
‘It’s not much, I know,’ Kitty quipped as Laura took in the low, rather small, stone chalet with shallow casement windows and top-heavy pitched slate roof that sat upon it like an oversized hat. It was tiny and there were going to be nine of them here. Rob hadn’t mentioned anyone sharing a room.
‘Finally! What took you so long?’ a male voice boomed from the beam of light that spilled out through the front door.
Laura took a deep breath. Here was the next one to contend with, then – and he didn’t sound shy.
She hung back, fiddling with the extending handle on her bag, as Cat, Sam, Kitty and Orlando – particularly Orlando – swamped him with affectionate, drunken embraces. David was behind her unloading the rest of the bags and Rob was tipping the driver. The others, forgetting all about their luggage, raced into the house, ‘dibbing’ particular rooms.
‘Bagsy I get the sheep!’ Kitty shrieked.
Laura sighed, knowing that as ‘the staff’, she had no say whatsoever on the matter and would probably be doing well not to be sleeping on a sofa. Pushing her suitcase on to its wheels, she stepped into the light towards the stranger who was standing watching her.
‘Hello, I’m L—’ she began, but her voice failed as though all the breath in her body had been snatched out of her by a sprite. His skin was darkly golden, his hair more blonde than brown, he had a dimpled chin like that Hollywood actor with the sex problem – what was his name? – and blue eyes that were double-ringed so darkly they were like stop signs.
She couldn’t move.
‘Sorry. I missed that.’ His eyes were as steady as her pulse was not.
‘Laura. Lau
ra Cunningham,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m the jeweller.’
‘Hello, Laura-the-jeweller,’ he replied, his gaze grazing over her. ‘I’m Alex-the-ex.’
Rob drew up alongside them both, a leather holdall under each arm and wheelie cases in each hand. ‘Make yourself useful, Alex,’ he muttered in an unfriendly tone.
Alex flashed an amused grin at her as Rob stalked into the house. ‘Guess I’d better get the rest of the bags,’ he said, releasing her finally with his eyes. ‘See you in there, Laura-the-jeweller.’
Laura shot into the chalet as if she’d been prodded with a red-hot poker and walked through a roomy porch, banked on both sides by deep bench seats with at least half a dozen pairs of ski boots sitting on racks and various skis and poles pinioned to the walls. She didn’t see the stray shoe that someone had kicked off in their race for the best bedroom and lurched into the main body of the house inelegantly, falling straight into Orlando, who was talking in a low voice in rapid Italian with a sensational-looking woman.
Orlando caught her by her elbow and straightened her up quickly before anyone else saw.
‘Thanks,’ she said gratefully, looking back to the porch and seeing a solitary python stiletto that she’d clocked Sam wearing earlier.
‘Laura, here you are! Let me introduce you to Isabella, Alex’s fiancée.’
‘Hello,’ Laura nodded, shaking her hand briskly and taking in her laughing brown eyes – the chocolate counterpart to Alex’s – and lithe, angular figure. Laura didn’t need to see the two of them side by side to guess at the chemistry between them.
‘Ciao,’ Isabella smiled, doing her own visual sweep.
Alex followed her in with the remaining bags, dropping them dramatically in a heap, arms outstretched.
‘Hey!’ Orlando cried, rushing to rescue his pale blue leather Connolly bag. ‘Mind my duty-free!’
‘You should have carried them in yourself, then. What else are all those extra muscles for?’Alex quipped, wandering over to a tray of glasses and handing one each to Isabella and Laura. ‘Ladies.’
Laura sipped it tentatively as she began to look around her. The chalet wasn’t anywhere near as small as she’d thought from outside. In fact – she wandered over the stone floor to the balustrading and looked down – they were on a mezzanine above a double-height sitting room.
‘Come on, let’s get you settled,’ Alex said, leading her over to a wide stone staircase in the right-hand corner that, gently and in no rush, took them down to the main living areas.
Laura rotated several times at the bottom, taking in the vast exposed stone chimney wall and the pale, limed wood walls that appeared to have been cut and laid like bricks. The floor was wooden but barely visible beneath a massive pale grey evenly patchworked ponyskin rug, and acres of plum velvet sofas were blanketed with taupe cashmere throws.
It was all Laura could do not to take her clothes off and rub her skin against the sumptuous textures like a horse in hay.
‘Got it! Got the sheep,’ Kitty called, panting as she emerged from another staircase that apparently led to yet another floor below and coming to stand by Laura. ‘Like it?’
Laura nodded. What words were there to describe this? ‘It’s very nice’ wouldn’t really cut it.
‘Sorry. I tried to get you the cow, but Sam beat me to it. And I really thought I had a chance against her in those shoes, too.’
‘I kicked them off,’ Sam crowed, appearing behind her.
‘How many bedrooms are there?’ Laura asked, just as Cat and Rob reappeared, wondering if this meant she was going to be on the sofa after all . . . Rob had changed out of his suit into jeans and a grey cashmere jumper. It was the first time she’d seen him not wearing a suit and he looked a lot more rugged, his curls untamed and flopping forward at last, and a distinct five-o’clock shadow across his jaw.
‘Ten,’ he said, walking past her towards the kitchen. Laura turned, taking in the glossy seal-grey units and row of five burgundy oversized drum lights hanging from the ceiling. Two uniformed women were busily and silently arranging canapés on long silver platters.
‘Oh.’
Cat smiled at her as she wandered over to the sound system and turned Coldplay on to blare through the chalet. She had taken off her sumptuous fur accessories but her pedicured feet looked just as expensive on the ponyskin rug. She had a jade-green polish on her toes that on anyone else would have looked tacky, but against her honey-brown skin and contoured jeans it looked high-fashion edgy.
Laura felt clumsy just standing up, compared with the easy, oiled way Cat moved, wiggling her shoulders and hips unselfconsciously to the music. ‘It’s so kind of you to let me come along this weekend.’
One of the maids came over with a tray and Cat took a drink from it. ‘Nonsense! I’m so excited to get to meet one of Orlando’s new friends. He’s one of my favourite people in the world, you know,’ she shrugged. ‘You must be pretty special. He hasn’t stopped telling me how witty and funny you are.’
Laura gulped her drink, feeling woefully unwitty.
Rob came over and Laura watched the way his eyes lingered on Cat’s face as if they were taking a rest there.
‘Have you had this chalet very long?’
‘Three years this Christmas?’ Rob replied, his intonation indicating he couldn’t be sure exactly. ‘I bought it for Cat as a surprise.’
‘You bought Cat this chalet as a Christmas present?’
‘Why do you sound so shocked?’ he asked. ‘You’ve bought your boyfriend the beach hut.’
Laura tried not to laugh at his sincere expression. As if the two properties could be remotely compared to each other!
‘Ooh, tell me about your boyfriend, Laura,’ Cat said, her green eyes keen and interested, as the beats of ‘Viva La Vida’ made the floor vibrate beneath their feet. ‘I want to know all about you.’
The maids began wandering around with the canapés and Laura accepted one enthusiastically. She was surprisingly hungry, and realized she’d only had half-glasses of champagne to drink since arriving at the airport – not that Sam or Orlando were showing any signs of slowing down. If anything, they were only just getting started, their bodies beginning to move to the music. Isabella was standing by the fire with Alex, one arm slung languidly over his shoulder as she spoke quietly in his ear. Laura watched as Alex smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips, then took her by the hand over to the others, his eyes flitting briefly over at Laura, Cat and Rob.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ Laura shrugged uneasily. ‘His name’s Jack. We live in a tiny fishing village called Charrington in Suffolk.’ She ran out of information. ‘We have a dog called Arthur.’
‘I love dogs,’ Cat sighed. ‘I’m desperate for one, but Rob won’t let me.’
‘Don’t make me out to be the bad guy,’ Rob protested. ‘You know perfectly well we could have animals if you chose to stay at home. But you’re always so busy flitting between Surrey and London and here and God only knows where else. We’re never in one place long enough to eat, much less keep pets.’
Laura saw Alex flop on to the velvet sofa next to Sam, pulling Isabella down on to his lap. She watched as Sam tucked her legs beneath her, her flaming hair clashing gloriously with the sofa as she regaled them all with a story that made Orlando slap his thigh with laughter. She could almost see the group rebonding, tightening like a knot.
Cat’s sigh pulled her attention back and she saw that Cat was shooting her a conspiratorial look. ‘See what I have to put up with? He’s so unreasonable.’ Her hair swished silkily around her shoulders with every shake of her head and Laura resolved to practise with her own in the mirror later. ‘So, do you work?’
Laura nodded, her eyes meeting Rob’s briefly as she wondered how much to leave out. ‘I’m a jeweller, actually.’
‘You mean you actually make the jewellery yourself?’
Laura nodded.
‘I can barely make a sandwich.’ Cat smiled. ‘Or the bed!’
/> ‘Laura’s been featured in the FT magazine,’ Rob added.
‘So then you’re talented as well as shockingly pretty and witty!’
‘Oh no I’m not . . .’ Laura faltered.
‘I knew that would make you blush,’ Cat grinned. ‘You are crazily modest. Do you have anything I can see?’ Her eyes flitted over Laura’s hands and face and neck, looking for rings, necklaces, earrings. But she was wearing only a watch.
‘No, I . . . I never wear jewellery myself.’
‘But why not?’ Cat puzzled.
Laura shrugged.
‘But you could be your brand’s best ambassador,’ Cat pushed, echoing Fee’s sentiments entirely. (Oh, Fee would be so proud if she knew!) ‘Do you have any sketches I could look at?’
‘Everything’s in my studio.’
Cat smiled, determined not to be brushed off. ‘Well then, I’ll just have to come to your studio, won’t I? We could go for lunch.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Laura said quietly, overawed by the interest Cat was taking in her.
‘Hey, Cat!’ Orlando called over. ‘Why are you hogging Laura? She’s my guest, you know.’
‘Tch, look at that! We’re fighting over you already – it’s far too exciting to have some new blood in the group!’ Cat winked, sashaying over to them.
Frangipani wafted behind her as Rob and Laura watched her go.
‘Well, it doesn’t look likely that I’m going to get to interview anyone tonight. They all look like they want to unwind, and I’m pretty tired,’ Laura said quietly as Cat stretched out on Orlando’s lap. ‘If you can just let me know where I’m sleeping, I’ll head to my room and get out of everyone’s way.’
Rob frowned at her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I don’t want to intrude—’
‘You’re not intruding.’
‘Okay, but this is a gathering of your closest friends and I’m here to work. It’s only natural that—’
