After posing for a few photographs with Emery and the baby, Nicky slid over to where Leonie and I were making somewhat stiff conversation about the impossibility of finding a flat anywhere within the M25. When Leonie and Nicky spotted each other, they went through a very elaborate greeting ritual, in which, rather oddly, he claimed not to have seen her for weeks, at the same time as she claimed not to have seen him for days.
But Imogen’s imminent revelations were obviously bothering him.
‘I can’t put her off any longer,’ he said, his eyes flicking nervously to where Granny and Alexander were laughing uproariously at Mummy’s story about knitting a nude WI calendar for Charles Saatchi. ‘She’s out of the jungle or wherever she’s been and she wants to see me tonight. She’s talking about the News of the World, Mel!’ His face was pale beneath his tan. ‘Grandfather warned me there’s a year’s probation on the reinstatement! I’m seriously bricking it.’
‘Ah ha!’ I said, reaching into my handbag. ‘Brick no longer! I think I have your answer.’ And I handed him the Nanny File on Imogen. ‘She’s not quite the cut-glass socialite she’s been making out. In fact, I’m sure the News of the World would like to get their hands on some of these pictures.’
Nicky and Leonie gasped as the pre-nose-job, post-shoplifting-charge Imogen emerged. I know I should have felt more guilty than I did, but she was a repellent adult, and she didn’t seem like a very nice child, to be perfectly honest. Allegra’s sense of humour might be warped but at least she had one.
‘My friend Gabi says you can date the photos she’s got of you, by the way,’ I added. ‘She says digital photos have dates on, so you can’t even pretend they’ve been doctored or something. Ring her now!’
Nicky reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his phone. I was pleased to see he was wearing one of the new English suits I’d taken him to buy, and with his hair less highlighted than usual and no sunglasses, he looked very godfatherly – in the lower-case sense of the word.
‘Hello, Imogen?’ he said. ‘Yes, I need to talk to you . . .’ Then he held the phone away from his ear and winced at the torrent of screeching.
‘Give it to me,’ said Leonie, snatching it off him. ‘Ms Leys? This is Leonie Hargreaves. I’m a libel specialist representing Prince Nicolas of Hollenberg.’
Nicky looked at Leonie, then looked at me with approval. She wasn’t dressed to impress particularly much – just a tweed suit and a furry beret – but I could see from her toned calves that she’d put in a fair amount of time on her pole.
‘She’s a pole-dancer in her spare time,’ I whispered to him.
Nicky’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Leonie didn’t notice. She was too busy giving Piglet the rounds of the kitchen, in fearsomely efficient tones. ‘I see . . . I see . . . While that is your legal right, I should also let you know that we have certain images within our possession which do throw new light on proceedings . . .’ She gave us the thumbs-up.
‘She’s very . . . stern, isn’t she?’ Nicky murmured approvingly. ‘It’s always the quiet ones that surprise you.’
‘Is it? I wouldn’t know.’
He cut me a familiar flirty look. ‘Oh, I bet you would.’
‘I wouldn’t. Anyway,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘your grandfather seemed to like her.’
‘Oh, yes. She had him at “international tax break”.’ Nicky turned to me, squinting in the sun. ‘He really likes you, though.’
‘Does he?’
‘He says you remind him of your granny. Which is about the highest compliment he pays women.’
Over by the table of drinks, Mummy, Granny and Alexander were laughing on their own. She put a hand on his arm, affectionately, and he lifted it to kiss in a deliberate gallant gesture.
‘He’s very keen to get to know you all better,’ Nicky went on, watching them. ‘He says it’s all down to you that he’s so happy now. Getting you to sort me out brought him and Dilys back together.’
‘Well, I think Granny’s the one to thank for that,’ I said. Granny was happy, Mummy looked happy, Alexander looked delighted.
‘And,’ he went on, ‘you’ll be pleased to hear that I have gainful employment at last! We’re opening a special tourism and investment embassy in Mayfair, and I’m in charge of events.’
‘Parties, you mean,’ I said.
‘Networking,’ he corrected me. ‘Very important for rebuilding international relationships. Guess who my boss is?’
‘Whoever it is,’ I said, ‘I feel intensely sorry for them.’
‘Your granny! Or should I say, my step-granny!’
Granny and Nicky. London’s champion socialisers. ‘Any job vacancies going?’ I asked, only half-joking.
‘Sorted!’ said Leonie, snapping the phone shut and handing it back to Nicky. ‘We might need to have a chat later, so I can bring you up to date on our position. I think I’ve made things quite firm.’
He winked at her, more like the old Nicky. ‘That sounds like my sort of date.’
Leonie giggled, in a most unLeonie way, and fortunately for everyone, at that moment Emery shimmered up in a confection of silvery lace that made her look like a beached mermaid, and dragged me and Nicky off to brief us on our roles in the ceremony.
For a ceremony organised by Daddy and Emery in conjunction, the whole thing went off extremely well. So well, I found myself wiping away tears as Emery and William promised always to laugh with Bertie, not at him, to keep their promises about Christmas presents, and never to dress him in clothes that would come back to haunt him later.
I thought they might have considered that last one more carefully, since Bertie had been dressed for his naming ceremony in some sort of hippy dungaree ensemble, chosen by Emery, topped off with a tiny pair of Nike trainers, chosen by William.
Allegra leaned forward and whispered, ‘I locked the old trout in her room. Didn’t think the christening robe was that important, right?’
‘Right!’ I whispered back.
Then Nicky and I got up and stood in front of the registrar-dressed-as-a-vicar, and promised to do our best to help Bertie be himself, whatever that turned out to be, and to surround him with love, support and lifts home from school.
It was a sweet service, and it was over too quickly, even with Emery’s schoolfriend Margot singing some godawful Whitney Houston song while the photographers got all their shots. Bertie didn’t cry once, except for when Daddy insisted on promising to look out for his little mini-me, and even then I think it was a howl of solidarity.
I hung back while everyone piled out of the chapel and headed for the enormous spread set out on tables in the dining hall. I didn’t think I could face another lump of Cheddar, after helping Mrs Lloyd spear foil-covered oranges with a ton of the stuff. Instead, I hugged my coat to me, and tried to put my finger on just why I felt so . . . brooding.
I didn’t think I could even pin it down to one specific problem. It was one of those end-of-term depressions, a knowledge that everything had shifted, and I couldn’t go back. I had to go on, but I wasn’t sure where that was going to be.
‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ asked a familiar voice. A familiar arm slung itself round my shoulders as a familiar body sat down on the chair next to me.
My stomach lifted at the comfort Nelson always brought.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, seeing my downcast face.
‘I don’t know. Nothing.’
‘Come on,’ said Nelson kindly. ‘Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting weird for months now. I don’t like it when we don’t talk to each other. Come on, it can’t be dafter than anything I’ve heard before.’
I twisted round. He gave me an encouraging smile, and raised his blond eyebrows. ‘There’s nothing you can’t tell me, Melissa.’
I twisted back.
‘I’m not that keen on myself any more,’ I admitted. ‘I just seem to hop from what one person wants me to be to another. And the person who makes me fee
l most like myself . . .’ I screwed up my courage. ‘I miss you. I’ve stopped rebounding and I still think I love you. But you think of me as a sister.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Nelson.
I looked at him. ‘You do.’
‘Only because you’ve always treated me as a brother. Telling Roger you wished you’d had a brother like me when you were growing up, to explain how men think. Telling Gabi living with me was like having a girlfriend who knew about rugby. If I’d told you I had un-brotherly feelings towards you, you’d have freaked out – it would have been an epic disaster.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ I objected. ‘Well, it might have been before. But now . . .’
‘The important thing,’ said Nelson, taking my hands, ‘is that you feel happy about who you are. I like who you are, but it’s not up to me, is it?’
‘But how can I know who I am when my whole livelihood is based on pretending to be someone else?’ I wailed.
Nelson rolled his eyes. ‘When you finally accept that you’re not pretending. That you’re a bossy, sexy, confident, imperious woman in real life. You just have to learn to be as amazed by yourself as the rest of us are.’ He squeezed my hands. ‘And I am at the top of that list. I’ve always been your biggest fan.’
‘Really?’ My heart lifted dangerously.
‘Really. Now, can I say anything that might persuade you to move back into my flat?’
‘Like?’
Nelson’s expression changed, and the teasing went out of his voice. ‘Like, Melissa, I . . . ?’
Nelson leaned forward, his eyes beginning to close in a pre-kiss movement, and in my excitement I forgot to breathe as I felt myself lean closer too.
I swear we were about to have the most amazing moment, when my parents burst into the chapel, Daddy first, with Bertie in his front-loading sling, but with Mummy in hot pursuit. Both of them were carrying champagne flutes, and Mummy had a note in her hand that she was waving about.
‘Martin!’ she shrieked. ‘Walk away from me and I’ll make sure you’re not walking anywhere for a year!’
‘I’m just trying to get somewhere quiet, woman!’ he snarled. ‘Place is crawling with journalists and bloody family. Right. Now. Tell me what it is that’s got your knickers in a twist. Oh, hello, Melissa, Nelson,’ he said, as if noticing us for the first time. ‘Not interrupting, are we?’
‘No, no,’ said Nelson, lifting his hand politely. ‘Do go ahead.’
I could quite happily have stabbed them both with the Anne Boleyn sword.
‘This could ruin us, Martin. She wants thousands,’ Mummy began, just as the door opened again and William and Emery came rushing in.
‘Daddy, William was about to tell you something!’ she wailed. ‘You can’t just walk away from him like that!’
‘Emery, we are in the middle of a terrible family crisis,’ said Daddy. ‘Aren’t we, Belinda?’
‘We are,’ Mummy nodded.
‘Again?’ said Emery. ‘What is it now?’
‘Yes,’ I said testily. ‘What is it?’
We all turned to Mummy.
‘Well?’ demanded Daddy.
‘It’s that bloody awful nanny you insisted on hiring – she’s going to sue for unfair dismissal! All of us!’ howled Mummy. ‘And if we don’t do what she wants, she says she’s got photographs of me while I was recovering from my nose job!’
‘Which one? Anyway, she wouldn’t do anything about it,’ scoffed Daddy. ‘Let’s call her bluff. Silly old woman.’
‘My first nose job, Martin!’ Mummy glared at him. ‘Don’t you remember – we went into that clinic at the same time? And if she’s got photos of my nose job, she’s bound to have photos of you after—’
‘The wicked old harpy!’ snarled Daddy, turning puce and thrusting Bertie into the nearest pair of arms.
To his surprise, they were Nelson’s. Manfully, though, he held on tight, and Bertie didn’t seem to mind.
‘Photographs of what?’ I enquired.
‘Oh, your father had some . . . minor cosmetic surgery on his . . . Um, I’ll tell you about it later,’ murmured Mummy and she hastened out of the chapel after him. I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t tell me about it later.
‘Don’t worry – William’s a lawyer!’ Emery called after them, just as he kicked her to shut up.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ I said. ‘Leonie’s still here. She has a very persuasive phone manner with blackmailers.’
‘I. So. Don’t. Want. To. Get. Involved,’ said William, holding his hands up like a crash barrier.
The four of us stared after my parents as they hurried across the lawn, waving their arms around, sometimes at each other.
‘I sometimes wonder if it’s the constant threat of legal action that keeps them together,’ said Emery. ‘You live and learn. Still . . .’ she finished, gazing into space.
‘Emery?’ Nelson looked at her and nodded towards the baby. ‘You want this little chap back?’
‘Not specially. Why don’t you let his godmother get to know him?’ Emery put her arm through William’s. ‘So, darling,’ she said to her husband, ‘now we’ve got the christening out of the way and Bertie and I are all right to fly – when are we heading back?’ She squeezed his bicep. ‘It’ll be nice to get back to Chicago, do some proper shopping, see our friends . . .’
‘Ah,’ said William. ‘Now, that’s what I wanted to tell your parents about. Might as well tell you now. Good news!’
Emery beamed absently. I could practically see her returning to her old vague self, supplemented by more amenable nannies and American plumbing.
‘I’ve been transferred to the London offices again,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘So you and Bertie can stay here, while the company sorts out a London place for us. Isn’t that great? I’ll be over just as soon as they’ve found a house. You know how bad I felt about dragging you away from your family in the first place, and now . . .’
The colour drained from Emery’s face. ‘Darling, is this a joke?’ she demanded.
‘Not in the least,’ beamed William. ‘Did I tell you my membership of the Hurlingham has finally come through?’
‘We need to have a little chat. In private,’ she hissed, and grabbed him by the sleeve to haul him out into the gardens.
That left me and Nelson once again, this time plus Bertie.
To say my family had ruined the moment would be a predictable understatement.
‘So,’ said Nelson.
‘So,’ I said, tongue-tied.
I wanted to tell Nelson how utterly adorable he looked with tiny Bertie in his arms. As Nelson smiled and growled, Bertie gazed up at him with round, trusting eyes, as if Nelson was a horse whisperer. A baby whisperer.
I really, really wanted to tell him how much I loved him.
Nelson tickled Bertie’s tummy and smiled as Bertie giggled and kicked his feet up in the air.
‘You know, Mel, when we have kids they’re not going to have these ludicrous baby trainers,’ he said, without thinking. ‘Proper baby clothes only, and nothing with writing on.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I agreed, then stopped, like in a cartoon when someone is clouted with a frying-pan.
Nelson seemed to realise what he’d said, because he looked up at me, shocked.
I was shocked too, but somehow managed to recover first. ‘Do you mean . . . when I have kids . . . and when you have kids?’ I stammered. ‘Or when . . . we have kids?’
Nelson hesitated for the most agonising few seconds of my life. They felt like hours. I could hear music from the reception, and the distant sound of champagne corks. Even Bertie seemed to know it was a moment of great tension and kept his trap shut. Then a shy, crooked smile started on Nelson’s lovely kind mouth, and he said tentatively, ‘When . . . we have kids?’
‘You want to have children with me?’ I asked, just to clarify.
‘Eventually,’ he said. ‘Not right now. But I can’t think of any other woman I’d want to spend the rest of my l
ife with, apart from you.’
‘Are you sure?’
Nelson put out his spare arm and tried to embrace me, but Bertie was in the way.
Gently, but firmly, I plucked him out of Nelson’s arms, put a cushion and a shawl in the font and laid him on top, with a warning finger not to live up to his genes and ruin my moment.
Nelson put his arms round me, and pulled me close to him. I marvelled at how neatly our bodies fitted together, my curves against his strong chest, my cold nose level with the crook of his neck, as if we’d been made as a pair. But I could also smell his familiar clean smell, now excitingly unfamiliar, and masculine, and it made me so hot and bothered I was sure he’d be able to feel my heart racing through his sweater.
‘Melissa,’ he said, holding me away so I could see the sincerity in his blue eyes, ‘I’ve sat through your many attempts to change who you are, and I feel I know you better than anyone else. So when I say you are the kindest, funniest, most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, wig or no wig, you have to believe me. I don’t lie. I love you, Melissa.’
He paused, smiled a little, then said it again, in case I hadn’t believed it the first time. ‘I love you, Melissa.’
‘I love you, Nelson,’ I said, and the words were barely out of my mouth before he was kissing me, and suddenly he was a man I’d never met before. His lips were firm but warm, and the sureness of his kiss turned my legs to jelly, while his hand stroked the small of my back and I melted into his broad chest. And then the kiss hardened and deepened into something so sexy the sensible Nelson vanished for ever from my mind.
Too soon, he broke it off and said, as if he didn’t want me to be thinking the wrong thing, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want children straight away. It’s not like I’m lining you up for imminent breeding.’
‘I should hope not,’ I said, tracing my finger along the freckles on his jaw.
‘We’d need to get the nursery planned out and everything, and that’s not a ten-minute job.’
‘Quite,’ I said, letting my finger trace up to his mouth, and around his lips.
‘Good,’ he whispered back, pulling my face closer to his. ‘You know, I am the luckiest man in the world.’ And he kissed me again, this time letting his hands wander in a way I’d never even imagined he knew about, given his boys’ school background.
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