by Pippa James
Yeah, more cake – that’s all I need.
“I’ll make my own way to the hotel,” I said to Dominic as he hovered around. “I’m going to clear my head, take a stroll.”
“You won’t find him. His car is just leaving the car park,” he said, reading my lie.
“Really?” I said, looking across at the big field which served as a car park. By all accounts, it was usually like a swampy marshland, but this year it was bone dry.
“See you soon,” I said, taking off my shoes and running over to the car park.
I recognised Michel’s black Mercedes, driven by one of his team, in the queue of departing vehicles. I ran towards it, willing myself to reach it before it exited through the big wooden gate. I had to say sorry.
One car drove out, and the Mercedes crept forward. Another left. Now there were only four in front. I was getting closer, pounding the grass, dropping my shoes to give me better arm propulsion.
Please let me catch him.
I was close now. They were next to go.
“Michel!” I cried. “Wait!”
Two ladies, heading back to their car, approached me right at that moment. They introduced themselves as: “Your biggest fans. I’m Barbara and this is my neighbour, Martha.”
They had clearly been in the audience. Martha tried to talk to me about the event.
“You were wonderful!” she said.
“Thank you. That’s so kind of you,” I said, eyes fixed on the black Mercedes.
“That Frenchman is a rogue, isn’t he?” she said.
“Just a bit.”
Barbara stepped forward. “You know when you added the ginger to the sponge mixture?” she began. “Did you add that before or after the cocoa?”
“After,” I said, watching the Mercedes edge its way through the gate.
“We were wondering if you’d come and speak at our Women’s Institute meeting in Woking one week. Late autumn is best because we like to have gardening themes until then.”
“I’d love to. But I really must . . .”
I’m going to miss him. Just make your excuses and leave Barbara and Martha.
“I have my diary right here,” said Martha.
“I’m sorry, I really must dash,” I said. “So sorry. Message me on Twitter! It’ll be great to hear from you! I will definitely come. I promise!”
“We’re not on Twitter,” she said.
“Well, get on it,” I called, running at full speed again.
“Cheeky little madam,” she called after me. “That’s the last of your books I’ll buy.”
I made it to the wooden gate, but the car had just gone! He’d left Hay, probably in a heap in the back of his car with three bottles of champagne for company. I tried to run down the road after them, but they had gathered speed. It was hopeless.
I wiped my face and sat under a tree, thinking of our cinema trips, our kisses and our walk on the banks of the Seine. Those were moments in time. Think of the present.
Dominic is going to be so hurt about all this. I must get back to the hotel and find him.
Michel Amiel always made me behave crazily, and it had been that way from the beginning.
5
The Invitation
Eighteen Months before Hay-on-Wye
The fateful invitation had arrived very early in the new year, while I was binging on cheap chocolate, the last of the prosecco, fragrant clementines and crumbles of leftover cranberry Stilton. Until that embossed white card came through the unpolished brass letterbox of 12B Rosehip Lane, sheathed in distinctly luxurious vellum, my life was a joyless jumble of abject despair.
I’d just finished reading my Christmas book from Kitty, The Hen Weekend. Everyone was talking about it: the bride-to-be who booked her hen-do on an organic farm in deepest Oxfordshire. Cue moans and groans from her cool friends. But they get there in the height of a heatwave, and swim in the stream, sunbathe in the hay, have cookery lessons, line dance by night and sip strawberry wine in the barn. It was so evocative I could hardly face my reality when I finished the book.
Why am I even living in the city at all? It’s so expensive and dirty and noisy and competitive. I could move out, become a milkmaid or a line dance teacher, or what about working with wild ponies? I know! I could become Amish!
There had to be a better way to live. The festive season had been as much fun as a string of broken fairy lights. Personally, I think Christmas should be at the end of January. As it is, there’s far too much to do before it (dress-up parties, bonfires, Diwali and Hanukkah – and Strictly Come Dancing) and truly nothing to do after it. Except eat bizarre combinations of leftover treats (rich fruitcake with duck paté, anyone?) and search for coins in old handbags for the Food Fund. Six-week months seriously do suck. That particular year, I will admit to peeking at dodgy dating sites as well, reverse-seduced by tempting usernames such as Nobunnyboilers, Expornstar and Philip-Philop.
One Saturday morning towards the end of the holiday, I lay on the sofa in the flat, feeling hopeless. Nothing was right in my life. Nothing at all. Firstly, I was fuming about those pretty retro lingerie designs I’d sent off to Eve’s Secret Garden on spec back in the February. I’d never heard back, but had seen clear aspects of those same designs incorporated in their Christmas range for Debenhams. Serpents!
This was all especially annoying as my ex, Tom Percy, was busily developing a range of fashion and household items for John Lewis, and word was he’d soon have his own brand. Still a tosser, though. Trading off connections he made when dating Princess Elisha Von Hapsburg. Snake.
Secondly, I was completely broke – nothing out of the ordinary about that, but I was at the scrabbling-around-for-crumbs stage. And thirdly, my book about the history of lingerie hadn’t been taken on by one single literary agent in all of London. I had everything crossed for the solitary agency I had yet to hear back from, Branwell Thornton. One of the best. Possibly the best.
Please, God, may no news be good news.
I was cheered when Kitty and I discovered that very interesting invitation in the first post of January. We’d been holed up in the Primrose Hill basement since the epic snowfall of New Year’s Eve, with the slightly sinister skeleton of our Christmas tree still posing at our basement window.
London was royally iced with a thick layer of deep snow, so Kitty and I had gone into semi-hibernation mode, hunkered down in our underground burrow, unable to get flights out of town. We played board games and made do. Kitty’s boyfriend, Charlie Baxter, was away “on business” for the whole holiday season, giving vent to my bigamy theory, and I wasn’t for discounting polygamy either.
We were so fed up by this point we’d even broken into a sealed box of books labelled “Banned Books”, found in the back of a dusty cupboard behind the Brigadier’s cherry-wood dresser. So far, we had worked our way through Brave New World, Slaughterhouse Five, The Metamorphosis, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Satanic Verses.
There had even been a moment of dashed hope when Kitty thought she’d found a tin of syrup in there. Damn! Varnish!
I knew I should get up from the sofa that Saturday morning to shower and dress. I had any number of silk kimonos in my collection of vintage silk sensations; however, I was wearing Grandpa Delaney’s tartan dressing gown, with sheepskin boots and a fake fur hat, and if anyone had dropped by . . .
A rectangular sponge cake was rising gently, soon to be divided into French fancies for Prim & Proper, the teashop Kitty managed. It was due to reopen for new year business the very next day. Even though Kitty was the baking expert and had taught me all she knew, I did make quite a lot of cakes for the shop as a sideline, and to help Kitty out. Charlie, also the owner, was such a brute, expecting Kitty to run the place, produce lovely cakes and stay late for special duties. The hours she worked!
I was going back to my main job the following Tuesday. I tried not to think of it too much. I hadn’t expected, five years after graduating in fashion and textiles, to be working in a
tiny lingerie boutique, Voluptas, on a cobbled back lane of Primrose Hill. You’d think it might be a place to meet eligible men, wouldn’t you? But the only men who came in were: a) happily married, b) happily having an affair or c) sleazy sex pests.
Voluptas was half of a shop, in fact. The other side of the sweet, double-fronted Victorian shop was owned by a chaise-longue restorer, Francesca Blunt. The Misses Davenport (Lavinia and Araminta) had, apparently, run the whole premises as a gown and hat emporium in Edwardian times. I loved to pore over the old photographs of the shop in its heyday.
It wasn’t the most random place for me to work. I had written a dissertation on the evolution of the bra for my finals at Edinburgh College of Art, and I could tell you everything about corsetry, from whalebones to burlesque. But I wanted a life where I could wear that stuff, and live my life in the big world, in Paris, Rome, New York, Shanghai. I’d bought some gorgeous little slips of silk over the past few years, starting in the Tom Percy days, but they were folded neatly in a drawer.
As for my role in the shop, I was good at my job and took a pride in it, of course. The provenance of every sexy slither in that shop was known to me: the pastel French knickers and matching lace-trimmed camisoles, the spaghetti-strapped teasing teddies, the rosebud-adorned bustiers, the satin corsets with a hundred devilish hooks, the flimsy silk stockings and lacy suspenders with their impossible fasteners.
But I was so bored. If it wasn’t for secretly writing my book behind the counter over a two-year period and practising my dance moves to music, I’d have been in therapy. We had an old gramophone player and I played records constantly. I liked to try out my moves for jive, salsa, ballroom and disco. Sometimes Clara danced too, and occasionally Francesca, and if we could possibly get away with it, we’d lure James Jolly over from his place on the other side of the street. He had a gift shop for gentlemen – luxury leather items, bits of cashmere, hip flasks, and playing cards. He was quite a mover, even at sixty-five. An expert on all matters cha-cha-cha.
There was no denying I had been hoping for a little book deal for quite some time. So far, I’d had no luck – not even a glimmer of hope. One of the few plus points of the Christmas holiday shutdown was that the painful but steady arrival of rejection e-mails from literary agents had ceased, and I could pretend that the eponymous Branwell Thornton was going to fall in love with A Brief History of Briefs (& Other Underwear) and would write to say as much in due course.
Sorry. That invitation!
As I deliberated on showering and dressing, quite a pile of old-fashioned mail dropped behind the front door with a resounding thud.
“I’ll get it, Kitty,” I said, nosy by nature.
“Thanks,” she replied, engrossed in breakfast and a book.
Scooping up the mail, nothing seemed of particular interest initially. Mostly junk – voucher deals for the local supermarket, plus a few delayed Christmas cards from exotic lands, bank statements and bills. There was one letter for me. I recognised the writing on the envelope straight away. Addressed to my parents’ house and forwarded to me by my mother, as usual:
From the hand of Tom Percy.
I put that in the pocket of my dressing gown.
There was still that one rich vanilla, vellum envelope which looked promising; franked, not stamped, and addressed to our flatmate, Pippa, who owned the flat. (Actually, her grandfather with the penchant for banned books did.)
Pippa Cavendish
12B Rosehip Lane
Primrose Hill, London, NW3 4TX
I held it between my fingers, considering the possible contents.
6
Shanghai Shenanigans
“A ball, perhaps,” I said, as Kitty munched on a granola concoction from Savannah’s Wholefoods whilst reading Kiss Chase, a book she’d got for Christmas from her brother. It was a manual for men about what women really want, written by a man. How does he know?
Soft pink rollers in Kitty’s coal-black hair framed her exquisite little face as she looked up.
“Sent by the office of Prince Charming?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“I told you: Harry’s mine!” said Kitty.
“For as long as he has some hair, I’m first dibs.”
“Whomsoever the slipper fits . . .”
I was longing to dance freely on a proper dance floor, not the postage-stamp space in the shop or the little bit of room around my bed. A ball would be just perfect. I was a bit worried it might be a personal wedding invitation for Pippa, so I flipped the envelope over. The stamp of the V&A.
Oh, interesting . . . not too personal, I’m guessing.
“Is it for Pippa?” said Kitty, always a stickler for convention.
“The envelope says so, but I sense it’s for sharing.”
“You steaming it?”
“Why not?”
She set the kettle to boil.
Pippa was in Verbier until who knew when, in a chalet, which evidenced by her Instagram account was more of a luxury mansion. I checked the last message from her on my phone: Lots of snow, met up with Jamie “Sex God” Patterson . . . missing you . . . nah, not really. Please forward bills for me and any other official stuff (except parking fines) to Grandpa: Brigadier Charlie Cavendish, 3 Charles Square, London W1J 7ET. Be cosy, babes. Gramps is going fucking crazy about my fines, and he mentioned raising the rent. Sos. Love ya loads. X
The envelope steamed open quite easily and I eased out the card.
Copperplate writing!
It was indeed an invitation – but not to a ball.
Never mind.
It was for the launch of a new exhibition. There MIGHT be dancing! Pippa always asked us to those anyway, so I didn’t feel too guilty. I’d never have steamed open a love note or a court summons or anything like that. (She was particularly unlucky in all matters parking and car-related.) She wouldn’t mind us going to a party as her fashion ambassadors. We had all loved the parties for the famous wedding dresses and Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty.
Kitty came over to read the details. “Oh! Miss Wong! Shanghai-Paris of the Thirties. Cool as. What’ll we wear, Daisy?”
“eBay, Kitty. Look for cocktail wear, possibly cheongsams? Tiny satin shoes, bijou evening box bags with silver clasps. Orchid hairclips. That sort of thing.”
“Can we actually afford new outfits?” said Kitty.
“Good point. I might have to sell something.”
“The petty-cash tin at the teashop owes me £45,” Kitty offered.
“Perfect!”
“Okay, I’ll claim that. And we could possibly take a tiny look in Pippa’s wardrobe, couldn’t we?” asked Kitty.
“Yes, she would want us to.”
“You mean expect us to?” said Kitty.
“Yes, that too.”
* * *
It was nice to have something to look forward to, but I was getting tired of short-term highs. I needed some radical changes in my life. As I fluffed up the buttercream for the French fancies, I admitted to myself that if this year didn’t fair better than the last, I might have to quit London for good and seek out that bucolic life from The Hen Weekend.
You should never have come here for a man anyway, Daisy Delaney. Read the letter.
But I didn’t. I put it in the box with all the others. It always took me a few days before I could look at them.
Why would you keep sending letters to someone who never replies?
7
The Party
I was longing for January payday, but at least thinking about the party (hair, nails, outfit, shoes, bag, lipstick, F-R-O-C-K) was a distraction from thoughts of pauper’s prison, complete with meals of watery broth and rough gruel, and toothless, violent inmates who particularly despise fallen princess types.
On the Friday of the V&A launch party, I took the afternoon off work. Clara, who owned Voluptas, was very fair to work for. I did some favours for her, such as telling little fibs to her investment banker husband. Nothing
serious: “Oh, Phil, she left here about an hour ago, but the traffic’s very bad.” When she was, in fact, applying LancÔme’s Black Tulip to her lips right in front of me, following a lengthy gossip and dance session with Francesca Blunt and James Jolly. And Clara did favours back. She said it was fine to take the afternoon off before the big fancy party, and that she was jealous that I was invited. Ahem.
I took ages to get ready, piling my long blonde hair up in a loose “effortless” chignon (seven attempts) and approximating a china-doll face to go with the black silk cheongsam I’d picked up for £4. At about 6pm, I bounded out of the flat in a mad rush with flushed cheeks (No! They’re supposed to be china-doll white!) and feelings of self-loathing. A curvy blonde in a size zero cheongsam? I always look much better in my imaginings. If only the diet had worked.
I crossed London by tube, jumping off at South Kensington –well, hobbling, so tight was the dress. I was ashamed to be running late, while Kitty had already sent a text to say she was almost there. She was coming from a meeting with Charlie in the Bloomsbury area, where he was eyeing up another opportunity. She said she had changed for the party in the lavish, multi-mirrored powder room of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.
Nearly there!
I shuffled along Cromwell Road in the eBay cheongsam, red-velvet swing coat and trusty tattered trainers, taking short strides due to straining side seams. The enticing darkness of the January evening was decorated by delicate frosty sparkles on sandstone façades, while beacons of electric light shone at wantonly undressed windows.
The glorious, curved arch at the top of the V&A steps was now in sight. I negotiated the stairs daintily.
“You’re in a hurry,” said a steward, holding open the door. Welcoming warm air leaked from inside the building.
A reply would require energy best directed at my footwear; a nod and smile sufficed as I pulled off my trainers, then fished in my shoulder bag for my satin kitten heels and embroidered Shanghai cocktail bag. As I changed shoes hurriedly, losing balance at least once, I looked around for Kitty in the entrance area.
