The Perfect Present

by Karen Swan

‘Okay, I guess.’ Cat looked down sheepishly. She was looking radiant in her sheepskin coat, a butterscotch knitted dress and suede boots. ‘Look, Laura, before we go any further, I want to apologize to you. I never should have dragged you into it with me. It was wrong. Rob’s completely hauled me over the coals about it.’

  ‘Really, it’s fine. I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions. You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to. You were right – I’d had a tough week. It gave me a chance to escape myself for a while,’ she managed, diplomatically.

  ‘Yes, but it all got a bit out of hand, didn’t it? I mean, a hundred thousand on paragliding? You wouldn’t have done that on champagne alone. I’d be happy to swap my styling session with you.’

  Laura smiled, knowing that although the offer might be sincere, she’d be anything but happy about it. ‘I really appreciate the offer, Cat, but I’ll have a ball; I love paragliding. And it’s an incredible cause. I . . . I honestly can’t think of a better charity to give my money to.’ That much was true at least.

  Cat blinked at her with some considerable amazement, probably as much because of the revelation about Laura’s secret wealth, which she assumed Rob had mentioned to her, as at her generosity of spirit. ‘Well, you’re incredibly sweet,’ Cat replied, pulling the car into the traffic heading up Kensington High Street.

  ‘Let’s not say any more about it,’ Laura said determinedly, relieved the formalities were over. ‘It is, after all, your birthday!’

  ‘I know!’ Cat squealed excitedly, tossing her head from side to side like a thoroughbred as the lights turned red and a mob of pedestrians crossed in front of them, eyeing Cat’s latest-model Evoque and her equally rich golden mane with unconcealed envy. She was wearing her Prada shades to protect her from ‘snow glare’, even though the pavements had been swept clear and all that remained was sludgy, grubby banks of compacted snow along the kerbs and gutters.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ Laura clapped, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek just as the lights changed and Cat moved the car back into gear. Embarrassed, Laura sat back hastily in her seat.

  ‘So what did Rob get you?’ she asked quickly. ‘Apart from the small matter of the Rachel Zoe styling session, obviously.’

  Cat shrugged. ‘He hasn’t given it to me yet. He says it’s a surprise. I’ll get it at the party tonight.’

  ‘You must be so excited.’

  ‘I am! He always puts so much thought into it, but I’m getting the impression he’s gone the extra mile this year.’

  Laura smiled to herself. The necklace was wrapped up in her suitcase, ready to hand over to him. She felt a burst of butterflies in her stomach, feeling ridiculously nervous at the prospect of Cat finally receiving her work as a birthday gift. Would she find it sufficiently beautiful? Would she think it was enough?

  Cat swung a left at the lights to go up Kensington Church Street, getting stuck behind a taxi that was picking up a fare.

  ‘How was it back home, anyway? Did you see either of them?’ Cat asked, overtaking a bus.

  ‘No. I just hid away in my studio and worked all week.’

  ‘They must have come looking for you, though? It’s the first place I’d look.’

  ‘My car’s still at Kitty’s, so they’ll see it’s not in my parking space and think I’m away. I haven’t had time to go and collect it – I’ve been so busy making stuff for the party.’

  ‘What about all your clothes? You said you’d have to go home to get them,’ Cat asked, taking a swift left and then turning left again into a tiny dead-end street flanked on either side by five white stuccoed houses, a leafy garden square no bigger than a sandpit but filled with a magnificent magnolia sitting in between them all. She reverse-parked, pulled out a resident’s parking permit from her bag and stuck it on the windscreen.

  ‘I popped in when I knew Jack would be out walking Arthur.’

  Cat cut the engine and turned to look at her. ‘That must have been weird, going back.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Any sign of the Wicked Witch?’

  Laura winced. ‘She’s . . . she’s not really li—’

  ‘Uh-uh-uh. Remember what we said? Don’t make excuses for them!’ Cat warned, patting her hand.

  They jumped out, and Laura heaved her suitcase awkwardly from the boot. It seemed to weigh a ton now – especially given that she had also packed in thousands of pounds worth of jewellery from the studio too – and she wondered how she’d managed to steal it away so deftly from the house.

  Thank God Cat had offered to pick her up from the station. They only had about three hours till the first guests arrived and there was so much to do – it would take an hour alone just to arrange all the different charms. Cat had been adamant, when she’d tried bringing it up the other day, that all the party arrangements were ‘in hand’, but Laura was determined to contribute and had packed a few bottles of Piper-Heidsieck champagne that she had found on offer in Sainsbury’s, plus several large bags of Kettle Chips and some olives from the deli.

  Cat opened the door on to a narrow communal hallway with Prussian-blue walls and a parquet walnut floor.

  ‘Leave that there, Laura. One of the guys can take it up for you,’ Cat said, indicating her suitcase as she started up the staircase.

  Guys?

  They climbed two flights to the top floor. The door was already open, and a stream of people were bustling about from one room to another.

  ‘Cat!’ a thin woman in charcoal-grey cried, kissing Cat on both cheeks as they stepped into the flat. It wasn’t huge, but the rooms still had a grandness to them, and light flooded through from the tall windows. The pear-green hall was galleried with tens of watercolours, charcoals and pencil sketches all the way up the walls. Laura thought she saw a Hockney, but couldn’t be sure.

  Smoky panelled verre églomisé mirrors lined the far wall in the drawing room, reflecting another galleried wall opposite, and a duck-egg silk sofa glistened against a delicate vanilla antique Persian rug that seemed to emit a glow like moonlight.

  But it wasn’t really the sumptuous decor that grabbed attention today – it was the staggering amount of greenery in the room. It was like walking on to a film set. Low-lying crystal rose bowls were stuffed with profuse white peonies that looked like heaps of giant snowballs, and a team of florists were arranging enormous woody sprays of mistletoe – the stems sprayed with white glitter – to sit like splayed frosted hands. Laura counted three potted bay trees, whose narrow trunks were bound with wide red velvet ribbons and finished with extravagant bows at the tops, like bow ties. But the centrepiece had to be a magnificent white-flowering miniature blossom-tree, no higher than six feet but beautifully shaped, with a venerably twisted canopy that looked like a gymnast’s ribbon caught mid-flight.

  Laura’s mouth dropped open. Frankly, it would have been rude if it hadn’t.

  ‘Oh, it came in time after all!’ Cat cried, stroking the blossom-tree admiringly.

  ‘You do not want to know the numbers I had to call to get this through customs in time,’ the grey-clad woman laughed.

  ‘It’s imported?’ Laura asked in disbelief.

  The woman looked over at her as though noticing her for the first time. ‘Thankfully the Japanese are so efficient, it meant we could absorb the two days it spent sitting at Heathrow. But next time, Cat, darling – a little more warning? I’ve not slept since last week!’

  Cat chuckled. ‘Laura, this is Tana, my party organizer. She arranges everything for me.’ She looked across at Tana. ‘Do you remember my thirtieth in Marrakesh?’ Cat dropped her bag on the sofa and ran her hands through her hair, her eyes on her vague reflection in the dappled mirror.

  ‘As if I could forget,’ Tana laughed, rolling her eyes. ‘If I never see another camel . . .’

  Give Surrey a wide berth, then, Laura thought to herself. ‘Pleased to meet you, Tana. It all looks amazing.’

  ‘It’s Laura’s designs that we’re launching tonight,’ Cat
said, twisting her hair into a chignon. ‘What do you think? Up or down?’

  ‘Up,’ Laura and Tana chimed together.

  Tana turned and smiled at her, and Laura recognized the same territorialism in her that she’d encountered in Sam and Min.

  ‘So, things seem to be running smoothly,’ Cat smiled.

  ‘Of course! The balloons have arrived. It was a bit of a rush, but . . .’ She leant down and pulled out a balloon, hastily and rather inelegantly inflating it on the helium pump. Laura looked on as a pale grey balloon fattened, revealing an intertwined LC monogram printed in white on the side. ‘You were right again. The monogram works much better than the logo.’

  What logo? Laura wondered.

  ‘Don’t they look pretty?’ Cat smiled, looking over at her.

  ‘They do,’ Laura agreed, nodding enthusiastically.

  Cat let her hair fall from her hands and it billowed like a silk parachute around her shoulders. ‘So, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how we can make the charms look interesting en masse, because, I mean, obviously they’re so teeny-tiny they could easily get lost in a room like this – there’s just so much else to look at. So I thought what we’d do is . . .’ She walked over to the balcony and opened the doors. A man was out there, chiselling away at a block of ice. ‘Andrei here is working his magic.’

  Laura stepped on to the balcony after her, amazed by the sheer beauty of the work-in-progress before her. The reindeer was almost finished and it appeared to be pulling a beautifully carved sleigh.

  ‘We’re going to use this red velvet ribbon here as reins, and we’ll thread some charms on to it like jingle bells!’

  Laura gasped at the idea. She loved it!

  ‘But that’s not all,’ Cat said, grinning at her excitement. ‘Now that we’re here, Andrei’s going to make a solid-ice sack to sit inside the sleigh, with the charms suspended on invisible wire and frozen inside it.’

  Laura’s jaw dropped again. ‘It’ll be so beautiful,’ she whispered, completely overwhelmed by the time, money and trouble Cat was going to for her. ‘Is there time, though? There’s only—’

  ‘Plenty. Andrei’s got a blast freezer that’ll give him the ice block he needs in ninety minutes. After that he’s chiselling and sculpting. He can’t work further ahead than this anyway, as it’ll melt before anyone gets here.’

  ‘Oh. Okay,’ she nodded dumbly.

  ‘We’ll get the charms to you in five minutes, Andrei,’ Cat assured him, leading Laura back into the warmth of the flat again. The fire had been lit – being central London, it was only a gas one and the flame was still blue, but it did the job. ‘Then we’re going to thread the charms for the blossom and bay trees on to very low-wattage LED lights, and wind them in and out of the leaves. It should make them glitter in the light.’

  Charms twinkling in trees? ‘How do you even think of these things?’ Laura asked her in wonder.

  ‘I remembered this book I read as a little girl: ‘I had a little nut tree; nothing would it bear, but a silver nutmeg and a golden pear. The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me, and all—’

  ‘For the sake of my little nut tree!’ Laura laughed, joining in. ‘Oh my God! I’d totally forgotten that! It’s brilliant!’

  ‘Isn’t it? I was always so fascinated by the idea of this tree with the treasure fruit . . .’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve actually got a silver nutmeg or a golden pear?’

  Laura considered for a moment and then clapped her hands together. ‘I do! I actually do! I’ve always got a silver nut in the collection – it’s a popular motif for luck. And I’ve got a prototype golden pear that I made . . . I made one each for twins. They’re a matching pair? Get it?’

  ‘Dreadful!’ Cat laughed, nudging her arm. ‘And so we’ll have the remaining charms dangling on the mistletoe fingers and then the complete pieces – a necklace, a couple of bracelets – sitting on little scarlet pillows under these,’ she continued, pointing to several enormous Victorian bell jars sitting on some of the surfaces.

  ‘My gob has been well and truly smacked,’ Laura muttered as she saw a courier come in and hand over several mint-green Ladurée bags. In the kitchen beyond, she noticed black-clad catering staff preparing canapés and cocktails, and watched as the rainbow-coloured macaroons were immediately arranged on porcelain-lace plates. ‘How can I ever thank you? I had no idea you were going to all this trouble.’

  ‘Cat either goes to this trouble or none at all,’ Tana remarked.

  The intimation was that Laura was special to her, and she felt herself swell with pride.

  Cat checked her watch. ‘Oh God, is that the time? I’m running late. Listen, I’ve got to pop out to get my hair done, but let me show you the room where you can get ready.’

  She led Laura through to a cream bedroom dominated by a mahogany sleigh bed. A striking oil of a woman reclining nude on a bed hung on the wall behind it, but there was nothing on the surfaces – no photographs, no books, no dust, no life. Cat hadn’t told her who was so generously loaning out her flat, but she must live out of town.

  ‘There’s a private bathroom just through here,’ Cat said from a doorway at the far end. ‘No one will disturb you.’

  ‘That’s great, thanks,’ Laura nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ Cat shrugged. ‘So then, I’ll leave you to choose the charms for Andrei so he can get on with the sack. I should be back in just over two hours.’

  Laura followed her out to the sitting room, watching as Cat grabbed her coat, kissed Tana on both cheeks and dashed back out again. She saw that one of the ‘guys’ had carried her suitcase up the two flights of stairs for her and it was sitting on its end in the hall. She went to retrieve it, almost colliding with one of the party planners who was officiously and blindly carrying a festoon of grey balloons from the study into the sitting room, having to squeeze them through the doorway in batches. The bag caught on the skirting board as she moved, leaving a vivid black drag mark along the pristine paintwork, and she heard a quiet tut behind her.

  ‘See to that, will you, please?’ She watched Tana direct an underling and then turn away to move back into the drawing room to carry on overseeing preparations. Laura felt her smile slip. She had a sudden sense that Tana wasn’t going to be quite so chummy with Cat gone, and she banged her way down the hall, feeling awkward and alone in this flat full of strangers.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Laura sat on the edge of the bed drying her hair, her towel pinned tightly under her arms just in case anyone, in all their enthusiasm, should burst the locks and come in. It was certainly a risk. Outside her door, she could hear the commotion of florists, party planners, the ice sculptor and caterers all doing their separate things.

  She needed to get ready quickly and join them. She had over two hundred pieces to sort through and help thread on to ribbons and lights, and she was beginning to shake so much from nerves, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to pick them up.

  She rifled through the suitcase left open on the bed, looking for her hairdryer. It took several frustrated attempts before she realized she’d never packed it – Jack had come home before she’d had a chance.

  Feeling the first seeds of panic take root – society party with air-dried hair? Really? – she hurriedly threw open the wardrobe doors and looked inside. There was bound to be one here, especially if this was just a bolt-hole. A solitary black suit swung from a hanger, a narrow silk tie draped casually round the neck. Curious, Laura checked the label on the back – Ermenegildo Zegna. Pricey.

  She shut the doors and tried the bedside cabinet. Nothing on that side of the bed. She crossed to the other and checked that too. Found it!

  Quickly she finished off drying and styling her hair, pleased with the way it fell, rather than hung, around her face for once. Her trouser suit – a blood-red velvet tux with skinny cropped trousers – flattered her, making her look particularly long-legged; Cat had picked it out for her last week, possibly as compe
nsation for whisking the grey feather minidress from under her nose.

  She peered at herself in the mirror. She looked lean and uncharacteristically cosmopolitan and reprimanded herself for never having had the vision (or occasion) to wear trousers as a ‘cocktail’ option before. She felt urban and young. This was her second dressy event in a week so she’d better get used to the vagaries of party dressing – this was simply how life was with the Blakes. Cat had told her to wear the suit without anything underneath, but Laura wasn’t that brave and had bought a mannish ivory silk shirt. Her red ankle boots could have been considered overkill, but the poppy versus the crimson tones clashed rather nicely, she thought.

  She applied her make-up with new speed – Cat had passed on a few tips last Friday – and quickly zipped her clothes and accoutrements into the suitcase, smoothing the bed covers and replumping the pillows. There! As if she’d never been here.

  She walked across the room, and as she wrapped the lead round the base of the hairdryer and replaced it in the drawer, her eye fell on a tiny white corner that was clearly the edge of a Polaroid photo. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have looked. Ordinarily. But she clocked who it was instantly.

  Laura bent down and peered into the drawer, finding a stack of photos pushed to the back. It must have been dislodged and fallen forwards as she’d opened it. She flicked through them, knowing she should feel guiltier than she did for prying like this. But she had nothing to feel guilty about. Not compared with this. She looked at tens of images of Cat sleeping, Cat laughing – and they’d all been taken in this bed. The photographer wasn’t revealed in any of them.

  Or was he? Laura peered closer at one that showed Cat leaning back on her elbows, her eyes straight to camera. To her right, on the table, was a bottle of champagne and a three-quarters-drunk glass, and beside that a gold signet ring.

  Laura knew full well that Rob didn’t wear one. But she plainly remembered who did.

  ‘So where’s your boat kept?’ Laura asked, writing everything down furiously as Michael Bublé crooned in the background and the fire flickered. Mistletoe garlands had been draped over the fireplace and great bunches of balloons that could lift the house, Up-style, bobbed in the frantic air currents – frantic from the amount of hand-waving, hair-tossing and air-kissing going on. The flat had been mobbed for the past hour and a quarter, and she was getting cramp in her hand and a sore throat. She kept looking around, but there was no sign of Cat.