The Next Best Thing

by Sarah Long

  It was a shame that Jane had missed the memorial service, but Lydia wasn’t surprised. You only wanted to be seen at these public functions if you were feeling good about yourself. And since Jane had given up her proper job in favour of a joyless life of working at home, she seemed reluctant to go anywhere.

  Working at home. A slow death. Lydia had joked to Jane once that she was like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin. Instead of having a roomful of straw to spin into gold, she had a heap of French manuscripts to turn into tuneful English prose. Locked up with her laptop by the cruel Svengali that was Will.

  She would ring Jane now, tell her about the service, and see if she could be persuaded to show up next week. No doubt she would be hunched behind her computer, in that messy basement room, while Will was lording it upstairs in his stupidly named galleria. She was probably wearing library clothes, too, come to think of it. No point in dressing up when the only conversation you’d have all day would be with the postman.

  Jane answered quickly, in the distracted tones of someone breaking off concentration. ‘Yup, hallo.’

  There was no need to be quite so graceless, thought Lydia, for all Jane knew this could be a very important phone call.

  ‘Darling. It’s me. Heading back to London, thank God. Talk about drowning in a sea of tweed, you’ve never seen a more dismal bunch.’

  Jane pulled her mind away from her translation to imagine Lydia in all her glory, surrounded by dusty academics.

  ‘They’re above it all, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘More into the life of the mind. You don’t work in that world in order to wear fine clothes. The more you study, the more you come to despise human vanity, wouldn’t you say?’

  Lydia felt a surge of irritation. Jane could be so sanctimonious sometimes, sitting at home, ploughing through her work. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I’m ringing for two things. First of all, to make sure you’re both coming to my party.’

  ‘Of course, wouldn’t miss it for the world. A beacon of light beckoning through the dark tunnel of my daily life.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I’m sure you have a very busy social life.’

  Though Lydia doubted it. Will seemed to have a reasonable time – drinks at Soho House, poker games, gallery openings — but Jane was more interested in staying in for her child, and rarely hired a babysitter. Lydia couldn’t understand it herself. If she ever had a child, it would be on her terms, which were loosely based on a photo of Tina Brown taken when she was editor of Vanity Fair. Tina had been wearing a spangly evening dress and was perched on the edge of her child’s bed alongside her black-tied husband, like a dignified visiting fairy godmother. Popping back from the office to kiss the daughter goodnight before sweeping out to a function. Pure class.

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Rupert,’ said Jane. ‘Crazy name, crazy guy. I can’t believe you’ve managed to keep him from us for so long.’

  ‘You’ll love him. I do. Not sure that he’s quite Will’s style, though.’

  ‘Will’s determined not to like him because he hasn’t got an interesting job. Yon know what he’s like.’

  ‘Dear Will.’ Lydia thought back with a flicker of affection to the time of their affair. It had been really rather exciting.

  ‘But I’m sure he’ll come round,’ said Jane. ‘What does Rupert look like? I imagine he’s tall, dark and chisel-jawed.’

  ‘Certainly tall, and possibly chisel-jawed, but not dark.’

  ‘And he’s got a very good address.’

  ‘Fantastic address.’ Lydia’s pulse quickened as she thought about the lateral conversion. ‘Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley nearly bought the one above, when they were together. It’s rather horribly decorated of course, as you’d expect from a bachelor pad. You know, those nasty oil-painting imitations of old masters.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t own the originals?’

  ‘Not in London. He’s got a few hanging in the country seat, apparently. I haven’t seen that yet, it’s been let out to some oil sheiks to pay off the new roof.’

  ‘He’s obviously a good catch, well done.’

  ‘It seems to be going well for us at the moment, touch wood.’ That’s all you could say about a relationship nowadays, wasn’t it? That it was working well at this moment in time. No promises, no unrealistic expectations, enjoy things as they are. It was the way Jane treated her relationship with Will, wearing kid gloves, as though he was a precious ornament that she was incredibly lucky to have out on loan.

  Well, actually, no, not in Lydia’s book. It didn’t work that way. She had invested a great deal of time and energy in her courtship of Rupert. And now, thank God, it was payback time. He had finally done the decent thing and popped the question, without her even having to issue an ultimatum. That would have been very unstylish.

  She realised the omens were good when he’d told her he’d booked a table at the Ivy. This was promising in view of his growing fondess for TV meals. It also reminded her that he was someone who could get a same-day booking at the Ivy. Lydia had ordered champagne, as she always did, and when Rupert told the waiter to make it a bottle, she realised the deal was in the bag. He usually preferred a Scotch before dinner.

  ‘I think I’ll have the lobster,’ Lydia had said.

  ‘Me too,’ Rupert had concurred, which Lydia had taken to mean – quite correctly – that she would soon be over the final hurdle.

  Jane really needed to get off the phone now, she was reading back over her last paragraph, making her corrections. ‘What was the other thing?’ she asked briskly. ‘You said you were ringing about two things.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ said Lydia. ‘Toni Vincent was there, do you remember her? Anyway, she’s now huge at Condé Nast, and she told me about a school reunion on Sunday week, so I thought you and I should go along.’

  Jane sighed. It seemed Lydia was always trying to get her to do things she didn’t want to. ‘What for?’ she said, fiddling on her computer and changing the font size to make her work look more substantial.

  ‘For laughs. Come on, Jane, let’s stand up and be counted as Essex girls. In an ironic spirit, though there’s no shame in it these days, look at Jamie Oliver.’

  ‘I’m going to have to let you go, Lydia,’ said Jane, ‘I really need to get on.’ ‘Course you do, I’ll see you next Sunday then.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at five.’

  Lydia put her phone away and gazed out the window as the train sped past the suburban gardens backing onto the track, ugly patios with clothes hung out to dry on triangular washing lines. She was glad she’d never have to live anywhere like that. Lydia Littlewood had homes in Chelsea and Gloucestershire. And the South of France, she musn’t forget that little bonus. Lydia Littlewood Beauval-Tench divides her time between Chelsea, Gloucestershire and the South of France. Yes, that would do nicely for her bio at the front of the magazine; with three homes you didn’t need to invent any wacky hobbies to make yourself sound interesting.

  It had been her idea to keep the engagement secret and to announce it at their Christmas drinks party, ft kept the excitement going for a while longer. She would tap on the side of her glass with a silver spoon — very appropriate — and pray silence please, and Rupert would then say they had something else to celebrate this Christmas and would everyone please raise their glasses to his bride-to-be.

  At this point Lydia would look at Jane to see her expression of surprise , mingled with a reassuring dose of envy.

  Because poor old Jane had fallen into the dreadful trap of ‘living together’. Lydia had seen so many of her friends taken in by that one. They didn’t realise it was feminism’s BOG – Big Own Goal – saying you didn’t need to get married. Whereas from where Lydia was standing, marriage was always of financial benefit to a woman. Unless you were very rich like Madonna, in which case you had a pre-nup. If you didn’t marry and made the fatal error of moving in together, that was it:
you had played your trump card and completely scuppered your chances of getting him up the aisle. Either he liked what he had, so saw no reason to change things, or he believed he could one day do slightly better, so might as well keep his options open. Either way it was a no-win situation for the live-in girlfriend.

  Mindful of the need to avoid the BOG trap, Lydia’s tactics had been exemplary. Like Anne Boleyn and Catherine Zeta Jones — who had both held out for a ring on the finger — she knew you needed to maintain a bit of distance to keep him interested. She always kept her own apartment, most recently a shoebox in unlovely Balham. Rupert respected her independence and they enjoyed mutual visiting rights. And now they were going to do things properly. She had a wedding to plan, and a home to decorate as well as her day job. Busy, busy, busy.

  The train was pulling into Paddington and Lydia checked her make-up in her compact mirror. Green eyes, an unusual colour cleverly emphasised by her use of eyeshadow, luxuriant auburn hair, her best feature, which she often wore brushed forward over one shoulder. She traced a finger lightly over her slim white neck that was gratifyingly free of lines. Come to think of it, Anne Boleyn was not an ideal role model. She got her man all right, but then look what happened to her.

  Lydia thought she’d work at Rupert’s flat this afternoon, since everything about Prince Charles’s farming methods was loaded onto her laptop. There was no need to be too technical; her readers were more interested in her insight into HRH at home than his views on dreary old agriculture. Who cared what the calves ate, what really mattered was whether the valet who served them tea looked as though he might be enjoying an unhealthy relationship with another member of the royal household. Though she wouldn’t couch it in those terms. She worked for a society glossy, not the gutter press.

  ‘Cadogan Gardens please,’ she said to the taxi driver, who nodded his approval. What a relief it was, after two years of remonstrating with cabbies to take her to the black hole of Balham, to know you wouldn’t have to put up a fight in order to get home. ‘Sorry love, I don’t go south of the river,’ they usually said, ‘can’t get a ride back.’ She quite sympathised; she wouldn’t go there herself given the choice.

  It had been such a come-down, after her return from New York. Two years of Sex and the City glamour, the feted British expat, then home to roost in Balham. It gave her a frisson of panic to think what might have been if Rupert hadn’t come good on the proposal. A lifetime of Balham, although it was surprising how many posh people seemed to emerge from the tube, mostly temporary inhabitants on a staging post to somewhere more respectable. Young blonde mothers would drift westwards to Wandsworth to join horrid playgroups and children’s music clubs twixt the commons in Nappy Valley. Nappy of the Valley of Living Death. Lydia would stick to Chelsea, thank you very much.

  She paid the taxi and let herself into Rupert’s building, picking up his post from the hall table. She would take care of all the admin once they were married, she was good at it and liked to feel in control. She walked up to the second floor and let herself into the apartment, throwing down her coat and breathing in the atmosphere of what would soon become her home. The maid hadn’t been in and Lydia made a mental note to change that: you needed someone every day or what was the point? A bowl of half-eaten cereal sat discarded on the kitchen table, and a cup of cold tea stood on the drainer, next to the supper dishes piled up in the sink. Well, they’d just have to stay there; Lydia had no intention of starting as she didn’t mean to go on.

  She wandered down to the bathroom, where Rupert’s spartan collection of toiletries stood on the shelf above the basin. Razor, shaving foam, deodorant, toothbrush, it didn’t take much to gel him ready for the outside world. Her own overnight bag was kept in the cabinet, containing a small sample of the range of beauty products that would soon be crowding Rupert out. She frowned as she looked round the room. Those black and white tiles would have to go, they were so desperately Eighties. She was planning to completely redo this bathroom anyway, to turn it into a wet room. This meant you lost the boundaries between shower tray and floor (so suburban, the idea of a shower tray!) and just stood in a mist of beautiful mosaic tiles while the water came at you from all sides in a sort of Moroccan nirvana of spiritual cleansing. If Rupert made a fuss, she could always have a jock-style power shower fitted in the guest bathroom.

  Her mind buzzing with design ideas, Lydia went back to the sitting room and sank down on a large and ugly leather sola. It was like Rupert himself, she thought disloyally, big, beige and comfortable, and directly facing an extremely large television screen. The room was given over to the needs of a man coming in from work with no thought in his head beyond kicking off his shoes to watch Sky Sports over a takeaway chicken tikka masala. Needless to say, it would have to change. You couldn’t have smart dinners where the guests were expected to have their drinks sitting in a circle around the council-house-style monster telly.

  It gave Lydia a rush of excitement to think about briefing a designer. No wonder brides always lost weight, there was so much to do that you forgot about food. She had a shortlist of three interior architects and was waiting to see who would give her the best price in exchange for a four-page spread in the magazine. It was lucky the photos were always taken of interiors without any people sitting in them to ruin the view. Rupert, bless him, was a lovely guy, but hardly likely to enhance a mood shot of the kind of Soho Loft meets the Andes vibe that she was aiming for. He was more Johnnie Boclen meets happy-clappy schoolmaster.

  She remembered the first time she had met him, in New York, in the piano bar of the Pierre Hotel, a stately establishment where the corridors were lined with unctuous staff. Very old money, and just what Lydia thought she was looking for. During her brief affair with Will, he had brought her to New York to stay at the Paramount, a Johnny-come-lately kind of place, done out like a nightclub so you couldn’t see anyone’s face in reception. John Malkovich had held the door open for her, which was nice, but it was all a bit too cool for its own good.

  In contrast to the darkness of the Paramount, the Pierre was all gold and magnolia, fatly upholstered chairs, ten sheets on your bed. Rupert had been looking very at ease; he was big enough for this place, whereas Will, had she brought him here all those years ago, would have looked small and displaced, like a street busker who had somehow made it through the wall of bouncers.

  Rupert and Lydia had been set up on a double date, which they undertook in the ironic spirit of the British abroad, the idea of ‘dating’ being beyond hilarious in their home country. With their trademark haplessness, the British expected to just fall into the right relationship, whereas the Americans worked earnestly to establish the best possible base from which to proceed. Luckily, the date had paid off, and she had hit the jackpot.

  Sod the work, thought Lydia, I’ve got a wedding to plan. She put her coat back on and decided to check out Kelly Hoppen on the Fulham Road where she was thinking of having her list. They had nothing in the window except three white vases at astronomical prices, which all looked very promising.

  The rain was sheeting down as Lydia walked up the road to Sloane Square where the Peter Jones courtesy bus arrived just in time to rescue her from those damned nuisance charity workers patrolling the Kings Road with their clipboards. As if she didn’t have enough to spend her money on right now. She sank gratefully into the luxuriously upholstered seat. At the age of thirty-seven, she was a short engagement away from being a rich Chelsea wife, with an interesting and successful career to boot. When she could so easily have slipped into the life of a sad freelance hack with a bedsit in Balham. It had been a gamble, moving to New York, but one that had paid off. You won’t make the scene if you don’t hit the green, to quote one of those mottos of self-improvement so beloved of Americans, the masters of reinvention. Don’t ask, don’t get. Go for broke. Marry a millionaire.

  The bus drew up outside PJ2 in Draycott Avenue and the passengers got off, politely thanking the driver as though he were the family c
hauffeur. Lydia cut back to Sloane Avenue, past Bibendum and left into the Fulham Road, when she heard the sound of low-flying aircraft so loud she feared an attack by the axis of evil. But it was just a red Virgin helicopter coming down to land in the private gardens of Onslow Square. Richard Branson coming home for his tea, perhaps. How fabulous.

  And wasn’t that Nigella and Charles going into Theo Fennell’s posh jewellery shop, the tall facade prettily illuminated by a mesh of white fairy lights? It was here that the Duchess of York’s poor ex-dresser had been working before she clubbed her boyfriend to death with his own cricket bat for failing to marry her and referring to her as a pair of old slippers. Lydia would not have gone that far, but Rupert’s proposal had certainly brought things to a very satisfactory conclusion. She pushed open the door to Kelly Hoppen and greeted the lofty assistant with a smile. ‘I’d like to open a wedding list, please,’ she said. Was it her imagination or did she see a flicker of envy cross the girl’s face?

  Jane wished she had gone to the memorial service now. She always did that — said she was too busy to do things, then wasted time dithering around. Lydia’s call had knocked her off her stride, and she might as well have gone for all the work she’d achieved this morning.