I had thought him the biggest hero – although, of course, the adult me understood I had actually given Alex the excuse he needed to come back and sleep inside too – a humorous point I made much of, when I told the story to Daisy.
By the time I finished telling it to her that night, she was fast asleep and I carefully edged my way out of the bed, so as not to wake her, then bent down to kiss her precious blonde head, before I went back downstairs.
Telling that story brought back a lot of happy memories about those early days at Willow Barn. Embarrassment and shame about my debilitating pash on Alex generally made me remember the painful times more than the good ones, but when I looked back more rationally, mostly it had been very happy there, and he had been a kind and gracious step-brother.
I really ought to make more of an effort to stay in touch with him, I thought to myself, as I went back down the stairs. Those shared memories were very precious and we’d had a really good laugh the last time we’d seen each other, at Ham’s cheese fondue, as Alex had dubbed that cringe-making family dinner. Plus, I thought, I might be able to set him up with one of my legion of unhappily single gal pals.
But most of all because being proper friends with one of my ex-steps – especially one who was a bridge to two of my younger half-siblings – was one thing I could do to make Ham happy. At a time when I was doing so much that would make him very unhappy, if only he knew about it.
My beloved dad was home when I got back downstairs and I was treated to a full Hamburger, with relish and large fries, as I called his over-the-top bear hugs.
He was still full of his trip to Italy and had brought me back a beautiful Fornasetti teacup and saucer, as a present.
‘There you are cara mia,’ he said. ‘I bought Chloe a splendid mezzaluna, but I thought this was more suitable for your idea of cooking.’
Dinner was great. Apart from the sleeping Daisy, Venezia and Archie were the only kids in residence – the four younger ones were with their respective mothers – and the terrible teens were both unusually civilized, probably because Ham allowed them both to have a little wine and they felt they were being treated as adults.
I was surprised to see Archie there in the middle of the week and while Ham and I were out in the garden admiring the borders together, I took the opportunity to ask him about it.
He glanced back towards the kitchen and spoke amazingly discreetly for him.
‘He’s living with us full-time at the moment,’ he said, raising and dropping his eyebrows in a significant way.
‘Had it just got too awful with Kristy and Gerald?’
‘Yes,’ said Ham. ‘He turned up here on his bike late one night last week – in tears, poor little sod – and I’ve told him he can stay as long as he likes. Venezia seems to deal with that terrible man better, but then she’s a tough little cookie, isn’t she? Just like her mother.’
‘Doesn’t Kristy mind Archie being here?’ I asked him.
Ham snorted.
‘Are you kidding? She’s delighted. One less child to look after.’
‘Knowing her, she’ll probably expect you to start paying his school fees too.’
He grinned at me sheepishly.
‘I already am,’ he said.
Archie was clearly delighted to be living with Ham and appeared to be making a huge effort not to fight with Venezia, however much she goaded him. He also kept springing up from the table to help Chloe, without ever having to be asked. Apart from my own efforts, it was the only proper help I’d ever seen her get.
Being released from the stress of living with his latest and loathed stepfather had also allowed Archie’s true personality to shine through again and he was highly amusing over dinner. As he entertained us with impersonations of his poor beleaguered physics teacher and foul classmates, which made Ham roar with laughter, I was relieved to have the attention diverted away from me.
Ham did ask me some dutifully interested questions about how things were progressing at work, but I didn’t feel I was under the searchlight of one of his major interrogations. Plus, he wanted to go on at length about his trip to Italy and was still prone to bursting into Verdi without warning.
Mainly, though, the conversation was about the family in general, as they brought me up to date with the latest goings-on among the junior members, particularly Toby, who had been looking after a friend’s pet rat one weekend, when they had stayed up in town, and had promptly lost it in the garden.
‘Poor Tobes,’ Chloe was saying. ‘He had this terribly worried look on his face, but he wouldn’t tell me what the matter was. Then after a couple of hours with him on his hands and knees in the garden, but still not saying what had happened, Alex suddenly turned up. Toby had rung him secretly to come over to help him find it – Scabbers, its name was. They didn’t, but they sourced a very good doppelgänger at a pet shop.’
‘How is Alex?’ I asked her.
‘He just rang, actually,’ said Chloe. ‘While you were putting Daisy to bed. He’s coming down to Willow Barn this weekend, with Rose. Henry wants some advice on planting.’
Alex’s mother, Rose, was an accomplished landscape architect and plantswoman. It was how she and Ham had met and they still worked together sometimes on schemes for his domestic projects around the world. It had been an amazingly amicable divorce, that one – especially considering the circumstances with Kristy and Venezia. I had always suspected that Rose, with twins to cope with, was secretly relieved to get Ham off her hands.
‘Yes, I want to rethink the lower garden entirely,’ said Ham, getting a particular gleam in his eye, which meant grands projets were afoot. ‘I went to see the Villa Orsini garden again while I was in Italy and it’s given me some ideas…’
‘Isn’t that the one with all the huge terrifying giants?’ I asked him.
He nodded, smiling wickedly.
‘Yes, it’s the one that gave me the idea for the grotto originally. Rose is going to advise me. You should come down, senior duckling.’
He looked at me a bit beadily, but nothing too obvious.
‘I’d love to,’ I said, in all honesty. ‘It would be lovely to see Rose. I haven’t seen her for ages.’
I was just going to make damn sure I wasn’t sleeping in the guest wing this time.
Although I was relieved not to have to lie to my father on a daily basis, as the days passed I found I was missing Jay more and more. And what I hadn’t been prepared for was that I would miss him even when I was home alone.
Suddenly my secret little nest, which had always been my sanctuary away from the world, didn’t offer the instant comfort it had always delivered before.
Every time I walked into my bedroom I could see Jay lying in my bed, his brown chest magnificent above the white sheets, his arms behind his head, the sun pouring down on to him through the skylight. I could see him in my kitchen, making coffee, with just a towel around his waist; and his marvellous rear view through the steam in my bathroom, as he stood in my bath under the shower.
Every time I put music on I would remember him going through my CDs – and my bookshelves – and shouting out with delight every time he came across one of his own favourites, which happened frequently in both cases.
It was almost like having a ghost in the place and it confirmed why I had never allowed a lover in there before. I’d allowed him to breach my fortress and it would never be the same haven again.
So, feeling like that at home and still rather on guard at my dad’s place, in case something slipped out, the office began to feel like my only refuge, which was ironic, considering how the pressure was building in there.
With Jeanette’s smear campaign still in full flow – my various spies were keeping me informed – I had until the end of that week to prepare the final presentation of the new section, to show to Doughnut and the advertising executives. The boardroom was booked for Friday morning.
In the days leading up to it Ned and I started early and worked late every night, in
between the increasing number of events we had to attend. It was a busy time in the luxury world, with a final flurry of boutique and product launches to be fitted in before the start of the summer social season, and before August, when that whole world came to a dead halt – or at least transplanted itself to Sardinia, the Amalfi Coast, Croatia, or wherever was the hot destination that year.
It was much more fun going to things with Ned in tow, but eventually I accepted that we would have to split the party load, and with some trepidation I sent him off on his own to a black-tie dinner at Asprey, wearing his normal terrible work suit, a creased old shirt – and his favourite pair of pink Converse All Stars.
As it turned out he actually made quite a splash at that dinner. The PR was Tara Ryman, and she rang me the next morning to tell me about it.
‘Jade was very taken with that new chap you have working with you. The Aussie guy,’ she said. ‘She especially asked for him to be moved next to her after the main course… Is he single, by the way?’
And so, it turned out, after all my years in the luxury world, I had something to learn from Ned – which was that even in that rarefied little enclave, with all its complicated little codes and signifiers, you could actually get ahead by breaking the rules, if you had enough confidence. And Ned had plenty of that.
‘So how did you like Jade Jagger?’ I asked him the next morning, after he had arrived in my office with the two large coffees which were his customary order from the staff canteen.
He looked mystified.
‘The woman you had pudding with last night?’ I prompted. ‘Tiny, beautiful, long hair, designs the jewellery…?’
‘Is that who she was?’ he said, a grin splitting his face.
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know…’ I replied, incredulous.
‘Didn’t have a clue,’ he laughed merrily. ‘I called her Jane all night.’
He didn’t seem to be joking and it made me feel slightly better about not having a clue who Jay was when I’d met him.
‘She’s a nice girl, anyway,’ Ned was saying, as I smiled to myself. ‘Sexy little thing. I got her number, actually…’
He grinned at me, shamelessly. I thought he was probably kidding about that bit, but I wasn’t sure – Ned was incorrigible when it came to women, but I didn’t mind. I found it amusing. I suppose he reminded me of my father in that regard.
The more I got to know Ned generally, the more I liked him and increasingly, I found I was looking on him as a friend, not just a colleague. We’d had a lot of fun putting the dummy together, and the pressure-cooker atmosphere that had been building up towards giving the presentation that Friday, had made us get quite close very quickly.
I had let him in on what was going on with Jeanette and he’d proved to be as good an office detective as Peter. While Peter always knew what was going on ‘upstairs’ in Doughnut’s inner chambers, and the executive levels above that, Ned’s efforts were concentrated with the clerical staff.
As far as I could tell, every PA and editorial assistant in the place – from the old-stagers who were hanging on for retirement benefits, to the recently recruited school-leavers – was in love with him.
He had a way of sitting on the edge of their desks, and using their names a lot, in that accent of his, while making lingering eye contact, which reduced them all to quivering jellies. Even the special needs post boy adored him.
The result was that we could get anything done ridiculously quickly, from colour photocopying and binding, to bike deliveries and mass mailouts. He also had the newspaper’s cuttings and photographic library at his beck and call for research purposes. He just had to saunter in there and lean on the counter and half a dozen pink-cheeked librarians – of both sexes – would come running.
The other benefit of Ned’s close relationships with this section of the paper’s genome was the insights he got into what Jeanette was up to. A lot of the reporters and editors on the paper seemed to forget that the clerical staff existed and would conduct the most indiscreet conversations fully within their earshot. All of which came back to Ned, with the gentlest of coaxing in his Russell Crowe tones.
The other person who was in love with Ned, was – more surprisingly – Natalie, the fashion editor. He denied it, but it was obvious to me. I was pretty sure she was living with someone – one of those moody art photographers, by all accounts – but there was no missing it, Ms Cool Hoxton Trousers was all tongue-tied and flustered in his presence. She’d also started wearing very flimsy clothes to the office and leaning over his desk a lot.
I had plenty of opportunities to observe this mating behaviour close up, as she was making a big contribution to the new section, in ideas, contacts and sheer legwork – something I felt I largely had Ned’s charisma to thank for.
And there were other benefits for me springing directly from her crush on him, as I found out that morning after the Asprey dinner.
‘Natalie was at that dinner last night, as well,’ Ned told me, slurping down a coffee in one hit.
‘Did she crack on to you?’ I asked.
‘Oh, give it up, Stella,’ said Ned. ‘She’s got a boyfriend, she’s just lonely on the paper and I’m the only person who’s nice to her.’
‘Not as nice as she’d like you to be…’ I persisted. I couldn’t resist it. I loved teasing Ned, because it was usually me who copped it from him.
‘Anyway,’ he said, tapping me on the knee with a rolled-up copy of French Vogue. ‘I had a very interesting conversation with her last night. Something you might like to hear about.’
‘Really?’ I said, sceptically, whacking him back, much harder, with the new edition of W.
‘Yes,’ said Ned, stretching his arms above his head, so his shirt tightened across his chest. ‘It actually ties up with another line of enquiry I have been pursuing on your behalf for some time now.’
‘Good heavens, Mr Woodward,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where you find the energy for it all.’
‘Keeps me interested between the jewellery dinners, Mrs Bernstein,’ he said. ‘Anyway, shut up and listen.’
He got up and quietly closed the door. When he sat down again he rolled his chair closer to me.
‘Remember that nasty paparazzi article about you that appeared in Hot Stuff! magazine a while back?’ he said, in soft, confidential tones.
I nodded, suddenly keenly interested. I remembered it all too well. It had nearly ruined my life, although Ned had no idea about the full, ongoing extent of it.
‘Well, I know who put it there,’ he said.
He smiled at me grimly and I just stared back at him. I had pretty much given up on the idea of ever finding that out. Ned had split up with the girl who worked on that magazine not long after the night we went to the comedy club, and with that contact gone I had lost hope.
‘I thought you broke up with that girl…’ I started.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘But not before I’d found out a bit of key information.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I wanted to see if anything else came out first, to make it all hang together, before you overreacted and blew my cover – and last night it did.’
Although my heart was beating so fast I felt a bit sick, I couldn’t help smiling. He so loved the chase.
‘So?’ I said, impatiently. ‘Tell me! Who the fuck was it?’
‘Jeanette,’ he said bluntly.
‘Jeanette?’ I said, incredulous. ‘How the hell did she know?’
‘There was a woman on that Jericho trip called Laura Birchwood, right? Writes for the Post?’
I nodded. I should have known she was involved.
‘Well, she’s Natalie’s best friend – they went to college together…’
I took that in for a moment. I’d known they knew each other, but I hadn’t realized they were besties.
‘Anyway,’ Ned was saying. ‘She told Natalie that she’d seen you with Jay Fisher the morning after, as it were, when he was supposed
ly there with Jericho – and the state you were in you’d clearly shagged him…’
He got a cheeky look on his face. ‘I’d like to have seen that actually.’
‘I did not shag him, Ned…’ I said, impatiently. Not then anyway.
‘Well, that’s what Laura told Natalie and the thing is – and Natalie feels really bad about this now – she told Jeanette.’
I slammed my hand down on to my desk.
‘I’m going to kill her,’ I spat out. ‘She can forget working on this section. God!’
‘Hang on a minute, Stella,’ said Ned quietly. ‘Just cool it and listen first. Natalie feels really bad.’
‘I hope she bloody does…’ I started, but as Ned gently put his hand on my arm to restrain me, I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, before I lost it completely and told him the entire reason I was so upset about it all.
‘Just listen, first,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know then how vile Jeanette is and she just told her as a bit of office gossip – Jeanette was the only person she had on her side at the paper back then, remember, and gossip is currency here, as you know – and then thought no more of it.’
I pondered for a moment.
‘I still don’t see how that proves Jeanette gave them the story,’ I said. ‘I mean, it makes sense it would be her, she clearly hates my guts, but how do we know for sure? It could have been any of them. It could have been Laura – or Natalie for that matter.’
‘We don’t know for sure,’ admitted Ned. ‘But I’m convinced it was her. Of the three of them who knew – Laura, Natalie and Jeanette – she’s the only one nasty enough to do it, and the only one with a real motive.’
‘Laura Birchwood doesn’t like me much either,’ I said.
‘But do you really think she’d do that?’
I thought. I didn’t like Laura, she just wasn’t my kind of girl, and she may we’ll have wanted my job, but I didn’t think she was that much of a monster.
‘No,’ I said eventually.
‘And Natalie wouldn’t do something like that, now, would she?’ continued Ned.
Cents and Sensibility Page 23
