Edie’s blogging again. I suggest she puts the story up on her website. By now, Liam has joined us too.
‘You should write it up, Nonie,’ he says. ‘For one of the big fashion websites. I bet they’d love to know the story. I can find out the address of an editor if you like.’
‘Why me?’
Everyone turns to look at me. Edie, Liam and Crow. They’re all staring at me.
‘Because you know the people involved,’ Edie says. ‘You were the one who gave the bags to Jenny.’
‘Because you write so well,’ says Crow. ‘That email you wrote to the overcoat men – it was perfect. Even I didn’t know what my ideas were until you described what I meant.’
‘Because you’d love it,’ says Liam. ‘You can’t stop talking about fashion. If you write like you talk – well, I’d read it.’
He’s noticed I’m a talker! And he still likes me! This is one of the best days of my life.
I don’t believe them, of course, but I do what I’m told. When three of your best friends, including your boyfriend, are telling you to do something, it’s at least worth a try.
So I write an article explaining about Crow designing the bags, and Victoria and her friends raising money for the school, and Jenny meeting Princess Alima backstage. It’s like putting an outfit together, except with words. Not like writing about Shakespeare at all (although I’m not so bad at that now, either). And when it’s done, I offer it to the online version of one of my favourite fashion magazines, and they commission me to write another, longer piece for their printed magazine. And two blogs want pieces about Crow as well, and about the production of the ‘Holding Hands’ print bags by women’s co-operatives around the world to meet the sudden, massive demand. Now, if I Google myself, the internet seems to be full of stuff I’ve written, or people quoting stuff I’ve written, and it’s amazing. My English isn’t toxic at all. If it’s about bags, fundraising and famous royals, it’s actually quite good.
‘How’s production going?’ Mum asks one summer day, as I’m grabbing a piece of toast in the kitchen. ‘Of the bags? They can’t make them fast enough. Thank goodness Andy Elat’s offered to help with distribution and stuff. I saw ten people on Oxford Street with them yesterday. It’s crazy. There were orders for half a million bags, the last I heard, and loads of co-operatives are making them. Edie says they’re going to be able to buy whole new libraries with the money. And pay for more girls to go to school. Queen Fadilah keeps going on about it in the press. She’s offered to give me an interview next month. I’m just working out my questions for her.’
‘I’m glad,’ Mum says, in a ‘That wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about’ sort of way. ‘I’ve made coffee for us both. Why don’t you sit down?’
‘Sure,’ I say. Then I stop dead. All the blood runs out of my head, into my feet. I have hot legs (not in a good way) and I feel dizzy. It’s just occurred to me: I took my last A-level paper two days ago. We’re in the kitchen. It’s time for Mum’s ‘little discussion’. No escaping it now.
Somehow, I make it to the nearest chair. It’s not so much sitting as letting my legs buckle under me. Mum pushes a mug of coffee towards me.
‘I should have told you this ages ago,’ she says.
I start nodding then shaking my head. ‘You didn’t need to,’ I whisper. It comes out as a sort of a squeak. She gives me a funny look.
‘I’ve been seeing someone for a while,’ she goes on. ‘I wanted to talk to you about it, but I know it’s hard for you. I wanted to wait till all your exams were over. Silly, I know . . .’
For a moment, I’m not really listening. I’m having an imaginary conversation with Liam. He’s going, ‘Oh my God, you were totally right. You CAN suss people out. I am SO sorry, Nonie. Will you forgive me for ever doubting you?’ And I’m going, ‘YES! See? Told you.’ The conversation we’ll be having later today, in fact, when he’s finished working at his dad’s caff and I’ve finished here, with Mum, and crawled over to him.
‘. . . nearly a year now,’ Mum’s saying. I’ve obviously missed a bit. Hope it wasn’t crucial. ‘But actually, it started in February last year, after Harry’s engagement party, so—’
‘Yes, Mum, I know. Honestly,’ I interrupt. Can we just speed this up?
She looks surprised, then smiles.
‘I suppose I can’t really keep things from you, can I?’ she says. ‘I mean, sharing a house with my only daughter. Of course you’re going to work it out for yourself. It’s just that you didn’t say anything. I tried to tell you at Crow’s birthday party, but then everything went wrong . . .’
‘Look, Mum,’ I say, ‘I’m thrilled for you. I really am. He’s a lovely man. But can we keep the house? Please? I mean, Harry’s not getting married any more, so he’ll be here a bit. He can keep an eye on me. And you’ll have your own place in Brazil, so . . .’
‘Brazil?’ Mum says. She looks surprised.
‘Yeah. Won’t you be going there? Or is he coming here? But how will he run his projects?’
‘Just like he always has done,’ Mum says. ‘From his office in the garden. Except it will be our garden. Wait a minute . . . Brazil?’
‘Well, he lives there,’ I point out.
‘Peter? No he doesn’t. He lives next door.’
‘Peter?’
‘Peter Anderson. Who did you think I meant? Wait – not Vicente?’
I nod. Of course, Vicente. Who else?
‘But, you’ve always loved him,’ I say shakily. This Peter Anderson thing is very confusing. ‘And he sent you all those white roses.’
‘Roses? Oh – no, that wasn’t him,’ Mum says. ‘Well, he sent that big lot last year. Very over the top, I thought. But Peter’s been sending them since then. They’re my favourite flower. Hang on a minute – Vicente? What made you think it was Vicente?’
So I explain, in a very wobbly voice, about everything I know. The time she and Vicente were ‘on a break’. Her meeting Dad and accidentally getting pregnant with me. Wanting to go back to Vicente and not being able to. The wedding that never happened. The whole lot.
I’ve no idea what Mum’s reaction is, because I’m staring at a particular pattern in the marble tabletop as I talk, but I can feel the blood heading back up from my legs and settling in my face, which is now hot enough to reheat my untouched coffee.
I get to the end and there’s silence. I look up at Mum at last and she’s just staring at me. She can’t speak for a moment. She looks anguished. Eventually, her voice comes back.
‘You thought that?’ she says. ‘All this time? Why? I mean, how did you put together all that stuff?’
‘Phonecalls,’ I explain. ‘You talking to your friends. Granny. You know . . .’
‘That woman!’ Mum looks exasperated now. Then she takes both my hands in hers and looks into my eyes. ‘I’m so, so sorry, darling,’ she says. ‘Do you know – of all people, it was Gloria who told me I should have talked to you about this, years ago. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
I shrug. Nothing to apologise for. Accidents happen.
Mum lets go of one of my hands and strokes the side of my face.
‘Nonie! I can’t bear it! Oh my God. I’m going to have to tell you the whole thing, aren’t I?’
I shrug again. She might as well, if she wants to. Whatever.
‘You were the most loved baby girl in the world,’ she says tenderly. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t realise. OK, it’s true, after I’d started dating your dad, I knew we were never going to make it as a couple. I was pregnant, but I wondered if I’d made a mistake breaking up with Vicente. Your damned granny urged me to go back to him . . . try and make it up. After all, he and I already had Harry together. But I think it was his estate that Granny loved. She wanted me to marry his acres. Anyway, I went to see him in Brazil and he said yes, he’d love to get back together, but not with a new baby. And that’s when I realised, Nonie. That’s when I knew how much I loved you. Because it never oc
curred to me, not even for a second, to think I’d missed out on Vicente when I could have you. Even though you were still about the size of a jelly bean inside me, I loved you so much.’
She’s crying by now. I’m crying. There’s a lot of crying going on. I hope tears won’t spoil the surface of the marble, because if so, we’re in trouble. And all the time, she’s stroking my face and my wonky hair.
‘So I went back to Paris,’ she goes on. ‘I told your dad about you, and he was over the moon. He painted an exquisite series of pictures for you – the moon in a starlit sky, in fact. We were going to keep them for you but he was offered such a staggering sum of money for them, and normally he was so poor, that he couldn’t say no. That money paid for his flat. All the time I was pregnant, he looked after Harry and me so beautifully. Then you were born. You were stunning. People used to stop me in the street with the pram to tell me how beautiful you were. We had a year of happy times. But I needed to work again, and I wanted to be in London. Vicente helped me buy this house because of Harry. Granny’s right about him being a very generous man. And your dad helped me find contacts in the art world so I could set up my business.’
She pauses and sighs deeply.
‘That’s what happened, darling. And all the time you were growing up, I was so proud of how brave you were, and how beautiful you were, and your sense of style, and your loyalty to your friends. You may have been an accident, Nonie, but you were never a mistake. Never. I just can’t believe you didn’t know that.’
‘But Granny . . .’ I stutter through my tears, ‘I heard her. About me stopping two family weddings. Harry’s and yours.’
Mum’s lips harden into a thin line.
‘Your granny is not my favourite person at the moment. You were right about Harry and Isabelle. Of course I was upset, but I realised straight away that you’d saved him from a big mistake. And she was ridiculous to bring Vicente into it. I told her so at the time. I haven’t spoken to her since, actually.’
Hmm. True. I thought I hadn’t seen Granny around much recently. I assumed she was busy redecorating or something. But I’m not really thinking about Granny. I’m mentally having my conversation with Liam again. It’s going a bit differently this time. My opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ isn’t quite as obvious as I thought.
Mum’s BlackBerry goes off to say she’s got a text. She checks the screen. This time, instead of assuming I know what it’s about, I check.
‘Peter Anderson?’ I ask. ‘Wondering if we’ve had our little discussion?’
She looks at me and laughs.
‘Absolutely! God, what shall I tell him?’
‘Well, I’m still not exactly sure what’s going on,’ I say. ‘I kind of interrupted you. Tell me about him.’
So she does. How she went round to his house to apologise after the whole ‘Turn the bloody music down or I’ll sue’ incident and they clicked. The meals at his restaurants (he owns three), the visits to her artists’ exhibitions (there are loads), and then falling headlong in love last summer. It’s funny to think you can do it when you’re as old as Mum, but I’ve checked the symptoms and it seems it’s true. They were terrified that I’d hate the idea of Mum with a new man after all this time. Because, despite having a combined age of over eighty, they can be really stupid sometimes. Why would I mind? And yes, Mum is selling her share of the house to pay Vicente back, but she’s selling it to Mr Anderson. He’s always preferred our house to his own. He’s moving in over the summer, if that’s OK with me.
‘So I get to keep my room?’ I check. I hate this all to come down to my room after everything else, but it’s important.
‘Yes, Nonie. You get to keep your room.’
‘Yay!’
‘And I’ll get that four poster you’ve always wanted. And your mirrored wardrobe. I kind of promised you.’
‘Yay!’
‘And you’re OK with Peter moving in?’
‘Of course. If you love him that much, he must be OK. I’ll get used to him. As long as he doesn’t ask me to tidy up too often . . .’
‘Oh, thank God.’
After we’ve talked, I go back up to my room and stare out across the rooftops at the blue Kensington sky. It’s the view I’ve known since I was tiny, but it looks new, somehow. Different. Something has changed. It takes me ages, standing there in front of the window, to work out what it is.
I’ve changed. A piece of me that’s been missing all my life has finally clicked into place. True, I’ve found out that I am TOTALLY RUBBISH at sussing people out, including my own mother, and can never trust my own opinion on anyone ever again. But I feel whole, and light as air. Mum called me brave, but underneath I’ve always felt pretty terrified about the future. I didn’t feel ready for it. I didn’t feel good enough for it. Now I do.
I text Liam.
‘Had the talk with mum. You were totally right. love u xxx’
I stare at it for a while. It’s the first time I’ve told Liam in writing that I love him, although it must be pretty obvious by now. But it’s sort of a big deal when you see it there on the screen. I wonder if I should really do it. Might this turn me into the sort of clingy girlfriend that every boy hates?
Then I get my light-as-air feeling again. If you love someone, you should say so. I think everything will be OK this time.
I press Send.
Harry’s on his decks. The room is throbbing with disco and this would normally be the point where Peter Anderson comes in and starts start swearing about the volume, except today he can’t. He’s too busy dancing with Mum. He has to be one of the ungrooviest dancers I’ve ever seen, but Mum doesn’t seem to care. She’s beaming at him. If Jenny were here now, she’d be ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing about what a lovely couple they make, but that’s the problem with having a friend who’s a Broadway star. She isn’t here. She’s still performing to sell-out houses in New York, where she’s ‘the new Audrey Hepburn’ to the fashion press and ‘the new Julie Andrews’ to the entertainment press. What’s even weirder is that any teenage girl who can sing on America’s Got Talent is instantly known as ‘the new Jenny Merritt’. Jenny is already the old version of herself! And she’s not even nineteen. She’s doing a shoot for Vanity Fair tomorrow. They don’t know what they’ve let themselves in for. I miss her so much.
Crow’s just back from another trip to Uganda, to deliver Henry to his new teaching job and see Victoria again. She comes over, accompanied by my gorgeous, studenty boyfriend. Well, not quite a student yet. We start college together next week, and if they let me change courses I’ll be doing journalism with him. I have, after all, just interviewed the world’s most stylish woman. Surely they’ve got to let me in?
Liam’s in jeans, his perfect sneakers and an asymmetrical jacket from a vintage market I bought for him with the earnings from selling my first article. It makes him look even cooler and more gorgeous than usual. I can’t believe he’s mine. I kiss him, just to make sure. He absent-mindedly rubs his fingers over my cocktail rings as he holds my hand. It’s a thing he does. He is SO my boyfriend.
‘You up for a dance?’ he asks. ‘I’d have asked you before, but I’m worried about your dress. Will it cope?’
I’m in a dress made of antique lace, with a sculpted bodice and a skirt in the shape of pointed flower petals, which makes me look like a fairy. Crow was going to use the lace for the latest version of Isabelle’s dress, but suddenly it wasn’t needed any more. We haven’t told Harry where it came from, and we won’t, but it seemed a shame to waste it. Crow’s own maxi-dress is made out of the famous ‘Holding Hands’ print. She could license it to a big company and make millions. Instead, she’s licensed it to a charity. She’s not interested in making millions. For now, she’s interested in being with her friends, learning about Picasso and doing what makes her happy. It took me a while to understand, but finally I do.
We decide to risk the lace on the dance floor. Harry’s playing some 1970s funk that simply demands to be d
anced to. But before we join the others, I catch a look in Crow’s eye.
‘What? What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Just a feeling. Wait and see.’
I’m desperate for more information, but Liam drags me away and Crow waves me off. Mum is still boogying on down in the middle of the dance floor. She didn’t go for the column dress with the billowing train in the end. Her wedding outfit is a simple white suit that Yves Saint Laurent made for her the year before I was born. It’s white wool, with a short jacket and a flared skirt. It still fits her perfectly. She accessorised it with a soft cloche hat and a bouquet of white roses on the steps of the Chelsea Register Office this afternoon and she looked stunning, I thought. Even Granny approved.
‘It’s style, Nonie,’ she said to me, as we threw rose petals over the happy couple. ‘So chic. It reminds me of Bianca Jagger. Before your time, darling . . .’
Granny forgets that I’m an expert on style icons of the twentieth century. I know exactly what she means. I’ve seen the photos. Bianca’s hat was bigger.
I’m glad Granny’s enjoying the day, even though it doesn’t include country houses, estate chapels, tiaras, ecru bridesmaids or any of her ‘wedding essentials’. Luckily, just seeing Mum so in love seems to be enough for her. And the fact that Granny was allowed to be there at all. I had to really work at getting Mum to forgive her for what she said about me. But I hate it when we don’t talk to each other in our family. I mean, it’s so ridiculous. Honestly, who bottles up all that stuff?
Harry plays a slower number. Liam moves in closer. I can feel his breath in my hair. I can hardly concentrate. Mum has her arms around Peter Anderson’s neck. Next to her, Vicente is dancing with his girlfriend – the one he was coming to London to visit last Christmas, but was too polite to tell me about. Beyond them, sitting at a table near the dance floor, Edie is deep in conversation with my dad. They’re probably talking about the paintings he did for me before I was born. She’s been fascinated by this story ever since I told her. Either that or she’s trying to get him to buy some school bags.
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