Rosie and Joe were seated at opposite ends of the room for the dinner but as soon as the speeches were over and everyone started to move around, he made a bee-line straight for her. He crouched next to her chair and they made chit-chat about the evening so far. Then he invited her to take another walk. Though not up a hill this time. Rosie was wearing Clare’s one pair of high-heeled shoes.
They went outside into the courtyard. The evening air was filled with the fragrance of jasmine. High above their heads, the swallows peeped their ‘goodnights’ as they prepared to cede the night sky to the bats. The sun had already set but the sky would still glow violet and peach for a little while longer. The hills in the distance were as beautiful as ever as the day slipped into dark.
Joe took Rosie’s hand to help her onto the wall overlooking the valley.
‘Hasn’t it been a wonderful couple of days?’ he said.
‘It’s been fantastic,’ said Rosie.
As they looked back towards the barn where everyone had gathered for dinner, they saw the bride and groom slip out and share a kiss by the well in the courtyard.
‘They’re a great match,’ Joe observed. ‘How lucky they are to have found each other. Love is what gives meaning to life.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Rosie, as she watched Keira take Adrian by the hand and lead him to the house and their honeymoon suite.
Joe and Rosie turned towards the valley view again. For a moment, they fell silent. Joe eventually dared to slip his arm around Rosie’s waist. He told her, ‘You look so beautiful in that dress. So elegant.’
‘It’s just a little black dress,’ Rosie protested.
‘But it provides a frame for your loveliness, rather than camouflage.’
‘Camouflage? What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you should wear what you want but you should always allow your real self to be seen while you’re wearing it. Stop hiding.’
‘I’m not hiding anything. How could I hide in the kind of things I usually wear?’
‘Sometimes, being the life and soul of the party is just as much a way of keeping yourself hidden as standing in the corner of the kitchen is. I can’t help thinking that by dressing the way you do back home, you’re trying to distract people from the parts of you that really matter. Your brain and your heart. You’re beautiful. You don’t need frills and flounces and you don’t need make-up. Rosie, you are a lily that doesn’t need gilding.’
Rosie laughed nervously.
‘Seriously, Ed told me everything. I understand that it makes you feel vulnerable, wearing your sister’s plain clothes and not being able to hide behind that larger than life character you’ve always created with your clothes. But I hope it’s also made you see that you don’t actually need any of that. You don’t have to act the whole time. Your true friends love you regardless. Like Ed and now…’ he paused. ‘Like me.’
Joe leaned forward and took Rosie’s face in his hands. She closed her eyes and let him kiss her.
Chapter Eighteen
‘What on earth…’
Over in New Jersey, at the conference hotel, Melanie was standing at the board onto which was pinned the seating arrangements for the gala dinner.
‘He’s sitting next to her?’
‘Who’s sitting next to whom?’ Clare asked, as Melanie turned with a look of pure hate on her face. Melanie quickly rearranged her features into something approximating a smile.
‘You. You’re sitting next to Jim Overbrook.’
Clare instinctively reached for the colourful beads that hung around her neck. Rosie’s beads. Never, not in a million years, had she expected to end the sales conference on the top table. Melanie must be mistaken.
She wasn’t. There it was, written in beautiful calligraphy. Clare was to Jim Overbrook’s left. On his right was the conference guest of honour, a former US senator. Holly must have fixed it just as she had threatened to. Clare had thought Holly was joking.
‘Well…’ said Clare. She didn’t know what to say. Not that she had time to think of anything before Melanie stormed off in the direction of the place she had been allocated, on a table right at the back of the room.
Surprised by the discovery that she was going to be on the top table, Clare had to make a quick dash to the ladies’ room to splash some water on her wrists. She met Holly by the mirrors there.
‘Pleased with your table?’ Holly asked.
‘You know I am,’ said Clare. ‘But…’
‘You’re not feeling over-awed are you? Just remember, they’re only people. Think of them naked! I know for a fact that Jim Overbrook always approaches these events with trepidation. He dreads sitting next to someone boring. That’s why I’ve put him next to you.’
Clare opened her mouth to say something.
‘Just don’t talk about work the whole time,’ Holly warned her. ‘Now come here. You’re shining.’
Holly took out her powder compact and pressed a little onto Clare’s forehead and cheeks. ‘Touch up your lipstick, run your fingers through your hair and you’re ready to go. You look amazing.’
‘Thank you,’ Clare told her friend. ‘You’re like a fairy godmother.’
‘But if you slip out of the party before midnight, I shall be very miffed indeed…’
Clare did not try to slip out of the party before midnight. She was having way too much fun. Just as Holly had reminded her, Jim Overbrook was only human. Though he had built the company up from scratch and made millions in the process, he still ended the first course with spinach between his teeth (Clare advised him of that fact with her trademark discretion). After that, Jim and Clare were like old friends. They laughed and joked and even, as the band started to play, got up to start the dancing together.
Jim Overbrook was way too old to be Clare’s Prince Charming, but as she finally escaped to the terrace for some air, Clare was every bit as pleased with the outcome of that evening as Cinders must have been after her ball.
‘Thank god that’s over,’ said Holly, joining Clare at the rail overlooking the gardens. ‘Until next year.’
‘I think it went really well,’ said Clare.
‘It did,’ Holly agreed. ‘I think everyone had a good time. In so far as it is ever possible to have a good time when you’re surrounded by people from work.’
As Holly said that, Melanie stumbled through the door, dragging with her Russell Bramley. By the collar. She pushed him up against a wall and started to kiss him.
‘Ahem,’ said Holly, loudly.
Melanie and Russell straightened up immediately. They’d sobered up pretty much instantly too, from the look on both their faces. Both of them were married and both of them knew Holly knew it. ‘Beautiful night,’ said Holly.
Russell and Melanie agreed and then scarpered.
‘I very much hope I won’t be seeing them next year,’ said Holly. She offered Clare a cigarette. ‘Don’t tell, Jim.’
‘I won’t,’ said Clare. ‘But I won’t have one either.’
Holly smiled. ‘How did you get to be so sensible?’
Clare shrugged.
‘I mean, seriously.’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Of course I do.’
Clare began her story. ‘I think it was when Dad died. Up until that point, life just seemed so carefree. We didn’t worry about a thing. When Dad died, it was as though I had to grow up double-quick. I had never been especially academic, but I threw myself into my schoolwork. I knew I had to get to university and get myself a good job. I knew I had to be able to support myself. I needed to feel like I had control.’
‘That’s understandable,’ said Holly.
‘But it spilled over into every area of my life. If I could just keep everything under control. My work, my clothes, my body… Dad’s death proved to me that bad things happened when you least expect them and no matter whether you deserve them or not. I thought if I was well-prepared, I could keep bad things from derailing my life.’
‘I think Rosie went the other way. I think Dad’s death made her determined to prove that the world was still a good place and there was still lots of fun to be had. Her whole style is two fingers at gloom and death. The way she shops and racks up debt. The way she parties and never refuses a glass of wine. She lives as though tomorrow will never come. But of course it does.’
‘So, which one of you is right?’
Clare considered the question for a moment.
‘At the extremes we’ve gone to? Well, obviously both of us got it wrong. But it’s not too late for us to meet in the middle, is it? Assuming Rosie’s thinking the same.’
‘Have you spoken to her about it?’
‘Not yet. But I do want to change,’ said Clare. ‘I want to have more fun. I want to have love in my life.’
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ Holly asked.
‘I had one.’ Clare recounted the story of the holiday when she let filling in her financial spreadsheet take priority over enjoying the week in the sun that Ryan had gone to such great lengths to organize. He had loved her but she had made him think his feelings weren’t reciprocated. She understood that now.
‘Why don’t you call him?’ Holly asked.
‘Really?’
‘I don’t see what you have to lose. It sounds as though you two were pretty serious about each other. At the very least, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to talk things through and see if you can’t forgive yourself for what happened on that holiday?’
It was three o’clock in the morning by the time Clare went back to her hotel room. She and Holly had talked at length about what might be the outcome of getting in touch with Ryan. It was almost two years since Clare and Ryan last seen each other. For all Clare knew, Ryan might be happy with somebody else. Two years was long enough for him to have met someone knew, married her and be expecting a baby.
‘Maybe even twins,’ said Holly, when Clare expressed her fears. ‘But maybe that’s not where life has taken him. Maybe he thinks about you as often as you think about him.’
Clare still had Ryan’s number. She hadn’t erased it in a fit of pique, as most of her friends seemed to do at the end of a relationship. She’d kept his texts too, though she hadn’t looked at them in a long time. She looked at them now. And then she decided to write a slightly cowardly email.
‘Hello,’ she wrote. ‘I hope you won’t mind hearing from me. I’ve been thinking about you quite a bit these past few weeks and wonder how you’re getting on…’
It was a difficult email to write and it was five in the morning by the time Clare pressed ‘send’. She lay back on the pillows and fell asleep moments later. When she woke up, the red message light on her Blackberry was flashing and the first email she saw was from Ryan.
‘I can’t tell you how happy I was to get your email…’ his response to her began. ‘I have thought about you every day since I last saw you. I’m still in Spain. What are you doing this weekend? Come and visit me. Fly straight here.’
Ordinarily, Clare would have found a reason not to. She never did anything on impulse. But she was a different woman from the one who had travelled to New York with the wrong bag. She didn’t have to go back to her flat and make a careful packing list and arrange for her neighbour to come and water the plants. The plants were all indestructible cacti that could certainly survive an extra two days without dying. And, as it happened, she had everything she could possibly need for a weekend in Spain in her bag. She could go straight there.
Clare opened up her laptop, logged on and booked a flight straight from New York to Barcelona. She would have just enough time to make the connection.
The following day, Ryan met her at the airport in Spain. As the flight had begun its descent, Clare had wondered, just for a moment, if she was doing the right thing. When she had booked the flight, high on the adrenalin of having had such a good conference, she felt sure that she could persuade Ryan that they should try again. Now her confidence wavered. And then there was another voice inside her – the one she had preferred to listen to since she and Ryan last said goodbye – that voice was reminding her of all the reasons why they just weren’t in the least bit compatible.
The moment she saw him, however, that little voice was suddenly gobsmacked. So what if he was laid-back and she was a classic Type A? She had never before or since met anyone who made her heart want to sing the way Ryan did. She had never seen a face that she wanted to kiss as much as she wanted to kiss Ryan’s face. And now he was tanned and his hair streaked blond by the sun, Ryan looked more delicious than ever.
Rosie’s long summer dresses were perfect for a few nights in the seaside city. Clare was even getting used to the high heels. She hoped that Rosie would be able to forgive her for being the first to wear those gold sandals. Perhaps they were even, since Rosie had been the first to wear Clare’s precious Donna Karan frock.
Clare was astonished at how easy it was to be with Ryan again. Possibly easier than it had been when they first met and they were so desperate to impress each other. Because things were definitely a little different this time.
When Ryan asked Clare to go dancing at a late night bar with him, she was delighted. When he asked her to spend the whole of the next day in bed, even more so.
‘You sure you don’t need to check your spreadsheets?’ he asked.
‘I think the money markets can grind along without me,’ Clare confirmed. ‘Just this once.’
‘Don’t tell me this is only a one-off,’ said Ryan.
‘Not if you don’t want it to be,’ said Clare.
‘I don’t.’
Chapter Nineteen
Just over a week since they said goodbye in the taxi outside Terminal One, the twins met at Rosie’s shared flat in London to hand the suitcases over.
Clare couldn’t wait to get her shoes back. Rosie’s shoes were beautiful, but a week of wearing high heels had given Clare’s calves a harder workout that any number of Pilates classes. She was keen to get right back down to earth. Meanwhile, Rosie was equally keen to get back into one of her dresses. Summer had finally arrived in London and Rosie wanted to make the most of it.
Rosie smiled with delight when she saw how Clare had packed her clothes – all freshly washed – just as carefully as she would have packed her own, with sheets of tissue paper protecting the fabric from creases.
‘I should take a picture of this,’ she said. ‘Because the contents of my case are never going to look this good again.’
Next Rosie wheeled the other case across the floor to Clare, in the manner of a gangster sliding over a case full of notes.
‘Do I dare look inside?’ Clare asked.
Rosie smiled. They both knew what Clare was expecting. In short: the very worst. Her beautiful designer classics all crumpled and crushed, bearing a complete story of the week’s activities in permanent stains.
But just as Rosie had been thinking very hard about her own weaknesses, she had also been thinking hard about Clare’s strengths. If Rosie was going to get to grips with her financial problems then she was going to have to stop shopping. If she was going to have to take a break from shopping, then she needed to look after the things she already had. Just as Clare took care of her clothes. On returning from Tuscany, Rosie had taken the whole lot to her nearest dry-cleaner. Then she had let Ed show her how to fold things as beautifully as a sales assistant at Harvey Nix. Clare’s suitcase was worthy of any ‘how to’ packing spread.
Clare beamed when she saw her favourite clothes returned to her in such a pristine state.
‘Thank you,’ she hugged Rosie.
‘I know they were expensive,’ Rosie said.
‘It’s not that,’ said Clare. ‘I just really appreciate you trying to see things from my point of view.’
‘And I appreciate you trying to see things from mine.’
Rosie put the kettle on while Clare carried on talking.
‘I’v
e been thinking about the year Dad died,’ she said.
Rosie visibly flinched.
‘It was difficult for everyone but you and I both tried to cope in our different ways. And I think that’s what had made us the people we are. I retreated into myself and resolved that I would never need anybody ever. You tried to get the world to love you in Dad’s place.’
Rosie nodded in painful recognition.
‘The way we’ve been has worked for both of us to a certain degree. I’ve always felt comforted by my routines and my regimented sort of life because I’ve been certain that no-one could suddenly turn up and take anything away from me. I owned my house. I gave 120% to my job. I did my best not to rely on anyone and that meant not falling in love.’
Rosie sat down at the kitchen table.
‘Meanwhile I tried to make everyone love me,’ Rosie took up the theme. ‘I clung onto that feeling I got when we were kids and all the grown-ups applauded when I performed some silly little song and dance. I thought that if I could be entertaining enough, no-one would ever want to leave me. I wanted my social circle to be so big that there was never any danger I would have to be alone.’
‘But I ended up being so lonely,’ said Clare.
‘And ultimately,’ said Rosie. ‘So did I. I realized too late that most of the people in my life viewed me as the court jester. None of them wanted me in their lives as anything more. I looked and acted like such a liability.’
‘If only we could have talked about this before.’
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