Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  ‘Main Bocher was an American designer who was popular in Paris in the 1930s,’ she told Susie. ‘Wallis Simpson was a fan. When she married the Duke of Windsor, Mainbocher made her wedding dress in a shade that he called “Wallis blue”. This outfit is gorgeous. Sure you don’t want to keep it?’

  Susie snorted, holding the skirt in front of her. ‘I could hardly get one leg into this, never mind two.’

  ‘Do you mind if I try it on?’ Rachel asked, and Susie waved an arm.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She turned away discreetly as Rachel pulled off the aubergine sheath dress and matching bolero jacket she was wearing and stepped into the Mainbocher. There were covered buttons up the back of the skirt, but although she wrestled with them, frustratingly they would not close over her hips. She was a UK size 8 but this must be at least a size smaller. Nevertheless, she pulled the light-as-air tunic over her head and walked to a full-length mirror to check the effect. It was beautifully cut, skimming the hips, the skirt hem floating around her ankles. What a shame those buttons wouldn’t close.

  ‘It looks wonderful on you,’ Susie said. ‘Maybe you could have it let out.’

  As Rachel smoothed her hands over the silky fabric, trying to feel if there was any excess material in the side seams, she realised there was a hidden pocket with something inside. She pulled out a card with old-fashioned cottage-garden roses twisted round an oval frame in which the name Constance Spry, Florist was printed. It was a thick, good-quality card, and some words were scribbled in faded blue ink underneath.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, holding it up. She walked over to a lamp and managed to decipher the faded legend: ‘“Now do you trust us?”’ she read. ‘Must be some joke from long ago. The owner probably forgot it was there.’

  Susie took the card to have a look. ‘How strange to come across a note whose significance is long forgotten. Does that often happen?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ Rachel agreed. ‘I find old cinema tickets, embroidered handkerchiefs . . . I once found a romantic note addressed to a woman called Julia and signed “from a secret admirer”. I was able to return it to her great-niece.’

  She slipped off the Mainbocher and got dressed again, then they finished unpacking the trunk and a couple of large cupboards as well. There were plenty of garments Rachel knew she could sell, among them a pale gold duchesse satin ball gown, several floral tea dresses, which were her best-selling items, and a black velvet opera cape. The iron band around her chest loosened a little.

  Susie had laid out a rustic loaf, three types of cheese and a green salad for their supper, and she poured them both a glass of red wine.

  ‘Just the one,’ Rachel said. She had to drive back later. ‘I’m very excited about your Mainbocher dress.’ She helped herself to some salad. ‘I’m going to look it up when I get back. He made some fabulous outfits for Wallis Simpson and I love the way she dressed.’

  ‘She was a controversial character, though,’ Susie said. ‘I heard she behaved abominably during the war. She and Edward were sent to the Bahamas for the duration, and seemingly Wallis paid for a New York hairdresser to fly down when she needed her hair done, and she was forever popping up for Fifth Avenue shopping trips. Back in England everyone was on rations and suffering nightly bombardment, so it didn’t go down well.’

  ‘Ooh, I imagine not,’ Rachel agreed, making a face. She paused. ‘Do you think Diana ever met her?’

  Susie’s expression was wary. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I read that she went to Wallis’s funeral and I know there was some kind of rapprochement between Wallis and the royal family after Edward died, when she was a harmless old widow in poor health. I just wondered . . .’

  Susie hesitated before answering. ‘Yes, Diana knew her. Charles introduced them in 1981, during a trip to Paris while they were engaged. By then Wallis had dementia and could barely speak. She lived in a kind of twilight world, behind closed shutters, with nurses coming and going.’ She cut a chunk of Brie and placed it on a slice of bread. ‘Diana felt terribly sorry for her so she used to drop in if she was visiting Paris. That’s what she was like: if anyone was down on their luck, Duch was there for them.’

  ‘Oh my gosh!’ Rachel was astonished. ‘They kept that well hidden from the press. I’m sure I would remember if it had been reported.’

  ‘You’re right. The papers would have had a field day if they knew of a friendship between these two women who both challenged the Windsor dynasty. Can you imagine?’ Susie looked gleeful at the thought.

  ‘That’s fascinating. I was saying to Alex recently that the two of them would have had a lot to talk about.’ Rachel decided to venture the question that appeared to have upset Susie during the interview, watching carefully for a reaction. ‘We both thought it odd that Diana chose to visit Villa Windsor the day she died. Do you think it’s true that she was considering living there with Dodi?’

  ‘No, never,’ Susie replied vehemently. ‘She found it a sad place. “It’s full of old ghosts,” she told me.’

  ‘Perhaps Dodi was trying to persuade her to change her mind?’

  ‘You didn’t know her,’ Susie said, pushing her plate away without finishing. ‘Diana was full of fun, positively bursting with energy – and she had a great line in naughty humour.’ She gave a half-smile, clearly remembering some anecdote she wasn’t going to share. ‘She would never have wanted to live in a museum.’

  ‘What do you think she would have done had she lived?’ Rachel asked. ‘She was just beginning to be taken seriously for her landmines work. Perhaps she could have gone on to be a UN ambassador or something similar.’

  ‘She would have changed the world,’ Susie said firmly. ‘I have absolutely no doubt of that.’

  Chapter 37

  Brighton, 22 October 1997

  ON HER RETURN TO BRIGHTON, RACHEL CARRIED Susie’s clothes from the car into her flat and laid them over the back of the sofa. She extracted the Mainbocher from the pile and hung it in the doorway on a padded coat hanger, examining the clever cut and impeccable stitching.

  She had several fashion reference books, including one with photographs of styles that had appeared in Vogue over the years. She looked up Mainbocher in the index, and as she’d expected, there were dozens of entries. She worked her way through, and there, in 1934, was the tunic and skirt – the exact same outfit – being worn by Wallis Simpson herself. She checked the detail of the tendrils in the flower pattern and they were identical. It came from his Eastern-inspired fall collection.

  Was there any chance this could be Wallis’s dress? she wondered. It was skinny enough. She decided to email Richard and ask his opinion, because if it had belonged to Wallis, Susie would get substantially more at auction than Rachel could charge in the shop.

  She booted up the computer and went into her email folder. Hi Rich, she typed, I’ve just picked up a haul including a Mainbocher from 1934: a Chinese rose-print tunic and matching skirt. My Vogue book shows Wallis Simpson wearing it. Do you know anyone at their head office who might be able to tell me if it was hers?

  That night, Rachel tried to ring Alex in Paris to tell him about her day but she kept getting his voicemail. Even at eleven at night, when he must have been in his hotel room, the phone irritatingly went straight to his ‘can’t take your call’ message. She hated going to bed without having spoken to him; it was one of their rules that whenever they were apart they had a bedtime chat. If his phone had run out of charge, he should have called her on the hotel phone. She couldn’t ring him because he hadn’t mentioned where he was staying.

  As soon as she woke the next morning she tried his phone again, and this time he answered, telling her he was rushing to a meeting. She could hear traffic sounds in the background and his footfall on the pavement. ‘I was back late and didn’t want to wake you,’ he said in a tone that wasn’t remotely apologetic. She considered telling him she’d found it hard to get to sleep for worrying that something had happened, but it s
ounded too neurotic. Instead she said, ‘Never mind, darling. Have a good day,’ before he hung up abruptly as he reached his destination.

  Rachel was depressed by the call. Alex seemed to get further away with each day that passed, and she didn’t know how to pull him back when he was working such long hours. They needed relaxed, uninterrupted time together but it was hard to see when they were going to get it; next year some time, perhaps.

  She tried to cheer herself up by dressing in a favourite outfit: a 1940s dress that had a print of seaweed in shades of pale grey and slate, with hot-pink tropical fish swimming through the fronds. She teamed it with a hot-pink cardigan and peep-toe shoes, ignoring the dark clouds that threatened rain later. The right outfit could usually boost her mood, and this one had special memories because she had been wearing it in Cuba the night she and Alex learned to dance salsa in a rooftop nightclub. He picked up the steps faster than her, his hand in the small of her back as they moved to the infectious rhythm of a steel band under a vast starry sky. She made a mental note that they should go dancing in Brighton some time; there were loads of salsa clubs.

  Nicola popped by the shop mid morning, wearing a zip-up parka with fur-trimmed hood over jeans and a black and red T-shirt.

  ‘I’ve brought raisin cookies,’ she said, pulling a pack from her oversized handbag. ‘Posh ones. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ Rachel said, putting the kettle on. When Nicola removed the parka and sat down, she noticed that her T-shirt was from the Clash’s first American tour in 1979. It showed the Statue of Liberty bound in thick ropes.

  ‘Alex has one just like that,’ she remarked, then spotted that it was far too big for Nicola. One shoulder had slipped down her arm.

  ‘Yeah, this is his,’ Nicola said. ‘I borrowed it a couple of months ago and he hasn’t asked for it back yet. You won’t grass on me, will you?’

  Rachel gave a little laugh. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. I hardly see him these days, and when I do, we only seem to argue.’

  She decided to confide in Nicola about the latest rows. She had known Alex since college days and might have some useful insight. With any luck she would say that Rachel was overreacting and that everything would be fine once the filming was over.

  Instead, Nicola looked increasingly alarmed as she spoke, and when she finished, said: ‘Oh no! I’ve seen him like this before, but I really believed you two were different.’

  Rachel’s heart gave a lurch. ‘Seen him like what?’

  ‘Getting absorbed in his work, then picking fights with his girlfriend and withdrawing emotionally. He seems to panic whenever a relationship gets serious.’ She helped herself to one of the cookies.

  Rachel handed her a cup of tea and sat down, feeling sick. ‘I’m sure it’s partly my fault, because I’m not being supportive enough of his documentary. Everything was perfect until Paris. We hardly ever argued before then.’

  Nicola chewed her cookie, brow furrowed. ‘He’ll never agree to relationship counselling, will he? That’s what he needs.’

  Rachel couldn’t see it. ‘Whenever he uses therapists to provide commentaries in one of his programmes, he says they’re more screwed up than the rest of us. He thinks they only go into therapy to mask their neuroses.’

  ‘You have to try something. We can’t let Alex go through the rest of his life repeating his toxic pattern. He’s like the best, most attentive boyfriend ever and girls can’t believe their luck until suddenly he switches off the love and withdraws, leaving them high and dry.’ Nicola picked up her tea and blew on the surface to cool it.

  ‘So you’ve seen him do this before?’ Rachel knew only the sketchiest details of Alex’s love life before she came along. They’d agreed it was unhealthy to pore over the past, and she hadn’t been keen to share the lowdown on her own romantic disasters.

  ‘Loads of times,’ Nicola said. ‘He’s even been engaged before. Did you know that?’

  Rachel shook her head, stunned. That was something she would have expected him to share, despite the embargo on other details. She reached for a cookie absent-mindedly and started to nibble it.

  ‘Anna was her name,’ Nicola said. ‘She was devastated when he got cold feet and called it off just weeks before the wedding.’

  There was a look on Nicola’s face that Rachel couldn’t read. Was she enjoying imparting this news? Was she glad things were not entirely rosy between them? Perhaps she was jealous of their happiness at a time when her latest relationship had failed. No, Nicola wasn’t like that. She must be misreading her.

  ‘I knew it wasn’t going to last with Anna,’ Nicola continued, ‘because he was cheating on her. It’s never a good sign, is it?’ She stopped and peered at Rachel. ‘Are you OK? You look pale. Sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this right now. Bad timing.’

  Rachel hugged herself, stroking the arms of her cardigan. ‘I didn’t realise Alex was the unfaithful type. I’m allergic to them after my last experience.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m so tactless. Alex is not a compulsive cheater; it’s just when a relationship wasn’t working in the past, there might have been a slight overlap with the next one. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve never seen him so smitten with anyone as he is with you. Truly.’

  Nicola was backtracking frantically, trying to smooth over the damage she had caused, but Rachel was silent and withdrawn. She couldn’t wait for Nicola to leave so she could be alone.

  It was an odd feeling to hear that someone she thought she knew inside out had a callous streak she could never have imagined. There had been a similar coldness when he’d interviewed Susie. Rachel was pretty confident in Alex’s love for her, but probably Anna had been confident at the time too. Would Alex be capable of withdrawing his love for no good reason? Could he already have her successor lined up?

  Back at the flat that evening, Rachel booted up the home computer. She hated herself for what she was about to do, but Nicola had planted a seed of doubt that she couldn’t dispel. She opened Alex’s email account, pleased to note it wasn’t password-protected; didn’t that show he had nothing to hide? She would check anyway, just this once, then forget all about her suspicions. They were unworthy of her.

  Amidst the usual junk mails, there were messages from his team about equipment and timings, many of them in a kind of shorthand that meant nothing to her: PAL 700, VHS transfer, burnt-in time code. There were several messages from someone called Pascal, but she quickly worked out that he was one of the researchers in France. Lots of male friends had emailed complaining they hadn’t seen him for ages and asking when he could manage ‘a swift half’, to which he replied that he would call them as soon as he’d proved who’d killed Diana.

  And then she noticed that Nicola’s name cropped up regularly, every few days. She hesitated before opening one of her mails: Thanks for picking up the bill last night. You spoil me, it read. She checked the date and saw it was for the previous Friday, when he had come home late. She opened another mail: You are the best, it said, followed by a whole line of kisses, as if Nicola had leant on the X key and held it down with determination. She began to feel uneasy. She read three more emails from Nicola, all of which demonstrated that their Friday evening meetings were a regular occurrence and she and Alex were much closer to each other at the moment than he was to her.

  Suddenly she remembered an incident at their New Year’s Eve party ten months ago. It was almost 4 a.m. and she was about to head for bed, although a crowd were still partying in the sitting room. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water but stopped in the doorway when she saw Alex and Nicola standing still with their arms around each other. There was nothing sexual about the hug; it was two friends, both the worse for drink, more or less propping each other up. Rachel had seen them hug before and it hadn’t remotely worried her, but this hug lasted a long time. Eventually she cleared her throat dramatically and they jumped apart.

  Had she been wrong not to worry about the hug? Could Alex possi
bly be having an affair with Nicola?

  Chapter 38

  London, October 1934

  THE MORNING AFTER MARY’S ARRIVAL, WALLIS BURST into her bedroom wearing a blue tea gown and flung herself on the bed, just as she used to do in her teens when she stayed over at the Kirk household.

  ‘Did you sleep well, darling?’

  ‘Like the dead.’ Mary yawned and stretched. ‘I swear, it’s marvellous to be here. I’ve missed you and Ernest.’

  ‘We’re simply ecstatic to have you back. Tell me, what do you think of the new addition to our household? The other one, apart from you.’ Wallis arranged the tea gown artfully over her legs.

  ‘The Prince of Wales? You seem very informal with him. Why do you call him David?’

  ‘That’s what his family call him. He prefers it to Edward.’

  ‘The poor man is clearly smitten. You’ve made another conquest, Wallie, but doesn’t it worry you?’

  Wallis gave a secret smile. ‘He told me he loves me, and I said not to be so ridiculous.’

  ‘Yet you encourage him by inviting him here? It must be rather awkward for Ernest that he can’t relax in his own home without tripping over your lovesick Prince.’

  ‘Ernest and I discussed it and I think he’s flattered that the Prince is in love with his wife. What man wouldn’t be?’ She examined her carefully filed fingernails. ‘Anyway, it won’t be long before he discards me, just as he discarded Thelma and Freda Dudley Ward before her. I may as well enjoy my day in the sun.’

  ‘You wrote that it was exhausting keeping up with two men, and I could see what you meant last night. Both of them expect you to entertain them. When do you ever get to relax?’ Mary thought Wallis looked tired, and a little thinner than normal. She always lost weight when she was under pressure.

  Wallis sat up, folded her legs beneath her. ‘Mama taught me that it is a woman’s duty to be entertaining, and I enjoy it! But there are times when there’s just not enough of me to go around. This Saturday, for instance, I must help the Prince to host a lunch party at the Fort, while Ernest has gotten it into his head to drive to Bath. I know you enjoy architecture and such like, so I wondered if perhaps you might go with him? Only if you want to . . .’