The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  Becky didn’t point out that Rawdon had said that he didn’t care about inheriting Matilda’s millions. After all, he’d said it when he’d married Becky, and yet, she was the one person that Rawdon hadn’t blamed for his current predicament. Which, really, was very generous of him.

  ‘Rawdy, darling, it can’t be good for you to charge around like that,’ Becky cooed, as she tapped his brother’s email address into her phone. ‘Why don’t you go and have a cigarette, clear your head.’

  ‘Fucking bastards!’ Rawdon snarled one final time, then he gathered up his Gauloises (an affectation that he still wasn’t in any hurry to drop) and headed for the door. ‘I’ll be back in ten.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Becky said sweetly and as the door slammed behind him, she let out a heartfelt sigh then turned back to her phone.

  It would probably be better to send a handwritten letter, but her handwriting hadn’t progressed far beyond the childish block letters that she’d somehow managed to learn during her occasional visits to the primary school on Great Windmill Street, and her phone had spellcheck. Also, she wasn’t trusting this message to the postal service. It would take too long and time absolutely wasn’t on her side.

  Dear Pitt

  I hope you don’t mind that Briggs gave me your email address, but I wanted to write to offer you my condolences.

  I am so sorry for your loss, both your losses. I know how fond you were both of Sir Pitt and Dame Matilda and I can’t begin to imagine how wretched you must feel. How lucky you are to have Jane as your partner. I’ll never forget how she stayed up into the night on Christmas Eve to make me that lovely red wool corsage so I’d feel like one of the family, rather than the hired help. And you too, Pitt, went out of your way to treat me kindly that Christmas at Queen’s Crawley.

  So, I’m pleased that your kindness and your good heart has been rewarded. Rawdon is too. Honestly, he couldn’t be happier for you. His career is going from strength to strength (those stories in the paper are just malicious gossip) and I have my own very successful career as a social influencer and brand ambassador, so neither of us want for much.

  I would really hate if any of this inheritance business came between you and Rawdy. Family is so important and Rawdon and the Crawleys are the only family I have, so it would break my heart if the two of you were to fall out over some imagined grievance.

  With that in mind, would it be a terrible imposition if we came to see you and Jane at Queen’s Crawley? (Briggs mentioned that you’d decided to live there for the time being and give up your London flat.) I really think you and Rawdon should spend time together, to heal after the tragic deaths of Pitt and Mattie. But more than that, I would love to see the children. The poor poppets! They are the real victims in this, practically orphans since Rosa ran off with that masseur.

  I hope that, in some small way, I might be able to offer them some comfort. It might sound unprofessional but I did grow to care for them very deeply when I was their nanny – so would love to be there for them in their hour of need.

  We’re due to leave Paris any day now to travel to Mudbury for the funerals and, if at all convenient, would love to stay at Queen’s Crawley for a while. Not long enough to get on your nerves, I promise!

  It will be so lovely to see you and Jane, get to know you properly, become a real family. That’s worth more than all that money.

  Your loving sister

  Becky xxx

  Chapter 29

  As Becky and Rawdon left Paris – and a series of unpaid bills – behind them, Amelia Sedley was peeing on a stick and praying that the two blue lines wouldn’t appear. Or was she praying that they would be there, just like they’d been there on the five other pregnancy tests she’d done?

  She’d always wanted children. In her dreams, they had always been George’s children, though ever since they’d returned from Cannes, Amelia was sure that she still hated him.

  When he’d finally got back to the hotel on the night of the charity gala, after abandoning her for Becky (even though Becky was married and didn’t even like George and actually Becky was a horrible, horrible person and always had been but Amelia had been too stupid to realise it but she couldn’t help being kind-hearted even though it meant people walked all over her and she absolutely wasn’t going to get over the whole Becky thing anytime soon and if Becky tried to contact her to say sorry then Amelia planned to be icy and dignified and say that as far as she was concerned she and Becky were no longer friends because friends didn’t treat people the way that Becky had treated her), Amelia had pretended that she was asleep.

  ‘Emmy, don’t be cross with me,’ he’d had the nerve to say. ‘I’m sorry. I’d had too much to drink. In the normal way, I wouldn’t even look at that Sharp creature …’

  ‘She’s not Sharp. Not any more. She’s a Crawley,’ Amelia had said furiously, abandoning any pretence of sleep so she could sit up and glare at George. Normally the sight of him looking contrite – he did this thing with his eyes that was particularly affecting – was enough to make Amelia melt, but not this time. ‘She’s married. Not that that stopped you. You obviously don’t care a thing for me.’

  ‘I was wrong. Behaved like a complete cad and anyway, you’re twice the woman she’ll ever be,’ George had said silkily and then, unbelievably, he’d tugged at his bow tie as if he was about to get undressed. ‘Let me make it up to you.’

  Amelia would always love George. At times she felt as if loving George Wylie was imprinted into her mitochondrial DNA, but on this particular occasion, she found that she didn’t love him one little bit. Or maybe she did love him just a little bit but Becky’s words had hit home. She really did let bad things, and bad people, happen to her without ever attempting to stand up for herself. Well, now she was going to be a new, improved Amelia Sedley who didn’t let people walk all over her.

  George’s betrayal with Becky Sharp of all people had devastated her and devastation could make even the quietest of mice roar. Though in Amelia Sedley’s case, the roar was more of a very squeaky voice that said, ‘I’d stop taking your clothes off if I were you, because there is absolutely no way that I’m having with sex with you tonight.’ She’d paused. ‘Or for the foreseeable future.’

  That had been that. George had sent her one text since they got back to London. ‘You really are being very immature, Emmy. Let’s sit down and talk about this like grown-ups.’

  The old Amelia would have immediately capitulated but the new Amelia didn’t deign to reply. She had a father whose trial date was coming up and a mother who spent more days in bed with a migraine than she did out of bed. She also had a physically demanding job and colleagues who were very firm and forthright and would never let their boyfriends treat them the way George had treated her. In fact, he’d never once even referred to her as his girlfriend!

  But now it turned out that she was pregnant and maybe she wasn’t quite so angry with George any more. He’d done a terrible thing but then Amelia would go to work and she’d stroke the tangles out of Pianoforte’s unruly mane and feed him carrots and remember the one wonderful thing that George had done when he’d rescued her childhood friend from an uncertain future of either a cruel-faced lottery-winner owner or the glue factory. He had to love her to have done that.

  Even so, it was quite hard to remember that she did still love George in the face of his cold, condemning anger when she presented him with the five positive pregnancy tests.

  ‘How on earth can you be pregnant? Why the hell weren’t you on the pill? For God’s sake, Emmy, how could you have been so stupid? It is mine, I take it?’

  ‘Of course it’s yours,’ she snapped. ‘And I got pregnant the usual way and yes, I was on the pill but it’s only 98 per cent effective and I haven’t been stupid, just unfortunate to get pregnant by a man who would be horrid enough to accuse me of sleeping around,’ she said in that squeaky but furious voice that she’d found in Cannes.

  They both blinked in surprise. George had ag
reed to meet her in a McDonalds on Whitehall because he reasoned that no one he knew would ever go to a McDonalds but he’d still be able to get back to Parliament to vote within eight minutes if he got a text from the Whip’s Office. Even so, he kept looking over his shoulder as if he expected to suddenly see the Minister for Agriculture queuing up for a quarter-pounder and large fries.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ George said, eyes narrowed because Amelia was quite the unknown quantity lately. ‘It’s just a bit of a shock, Emmy.’

  ‘How do you think I feel then?’ Amelia said and the smell of fast food kept warm under heat lamps was making her feel queasy (not throwing up in the mornings was quite the challenge when she was on mucking-out duties). ‘It’s hardly ideal.’

  George’s eyes narrowed again. ‘So, you’re not happy about it?’ He could hardly keep the relief out of his voice. ‘I could … make a few discreet enquiries. There’s no reason why this has to be a problem.’

  Amelia retched then, eyes watering with the effort not to vomit, while George watched her fearfully, edging back as far as the seat, which was bolted to the table, would allow.

  ‘I’m not going to be sick and I’m not going to get rid of it,’ she said eventually and it was George’s turn to wonder if he might throw up. Or cry. One of the two. ‘This isn’t a problem. It’s a baby. Our baby.’

  As soon as she said that, the first sentence icy cold and the final one all warm and melting, George Wylie knew that there was no getting rid of it.

  No getting rid of Amelia either: he’d have to marry her now. There was absolutely no way that a man in his position, with his potential, could afford to have an illegitimate child tucked away in Burnt Oak. He’d also have to use his influence (which wasn’t yet as great as George would have liked it to be) to keep her father out of jail, and as for her mother …

  Then there was Amelia herself. Not quite the wet little fool that she’d once been, but she wasn’t as malleable as she’d used to be either. That was no bad thing – she’d need a bit of backbone to be an MP’s wife, but this was the second occasion when Amelia had acted quite out of character. It was a side to her, one that he didn’t think even Amelia was aware of, which quite frankly terrified George.

  Still, what was done was done. She’d always be grateful to him and gratitude could be awfully useful.

  ‘Our baby,’ George repeated and he tried to sound pleased rather than resigned. His father would kill him. Or at the very least, have him horsewhipped. ‘You know, now that the shock is wearing off, I’m starting to get used to the idea. Even pleased.’ He pretended to consider the many joys of impending fatherhood. ‘Yes, pleased.’

  Amelia still looked as if she might projectile vomit if he made any sudden movements. ‘Really?’ she asked doubtfully, hope (and nausea) written all over her face. ‘Pleased?’

  ‘It’s not every day that a man discovers that he’s going to be a father and a husband, is it?’ George summoned up a smile from the very depths of his being.

  Hope won out over nausea and Amelia smiled tremulously. ‘A husband?’

  There was no way that George was getting down on one knee. Not in his Richard James suit and not in a McDonalds where any one of the ferret-faced clientele could whip out a phone and make the proposal go viral. He settled for another tight smile and gingerly reached out (there was a dried smear of red sauce on the table) to take Amelia’s hand. ‘Amelia Sedley, would you do me the utmost pleasure of agreeing to become my wife?’

  Chapter 30

  The funeral service of Sir Pitt Crawley and Dame Matilda Crawley was held at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden, and most of those present, who had fallen foul of one of the deceased at some point or other, took a silent delight that in death the two were forced to share joint billing.

  Then the coffins were transported to Hampshire for a private burial, family only, in the graveyard at St Simeon the Holy in Mudbury, where generation after generation of Crawleys had become worm food.

  It was a grey October day, rain slashing down, so the walk back to the house through the overgrown grounds was wet and muddy. Pitt had stayed behind to talk to the vicar so Becky walked with Jane, each of them holding a child’s hand. They’d had an excruciatingly earnest conversation about whether the five children should attend the burial, Becky’s opinion highly sought as she had personal experience of such matters. Although, there hadn’t been a funeral for either her mother or her father – they’d been cremated courtesy of Westminster Council and HM Prison Service respectively and as far as Becky knew, their ashes were sitting on the shelves in a municipal storeroom somewhere.

  ‘I can’t see that it would do any harm,’ she’d told Jane when she and Rawdon had arrived at Queen’s Crawley that morning. ‘It may even help the poor mites come to terms with what’s happened.’

  Truthfully, she didn’t care either way but Martha Crawley had very strong opinions that the children should be spared all talk of death. She kept banging on about how Pitt and Matilda had gone to sleep in God’s spare room, which was reason enough for Becky to take the opposing view. Briggs, absolutely paralytic on champagne, had told Becky about the letter that Martha had shown Mattie, after getting that bitch Babs Pinkerton to dish the dirt. So Becky would now make it her life’s work to ensure that Martha Crawley never knew another happy moment.

  As it was, Martha and Bute were walking behind Becky and Jane and positively seething that there hadn’t been room for them in the front pew. Bringing up the rear was Rawdon, who’d been in a massive sulk ever since Becky had told him that Pitt had invited them both to stay. He was with Thisbe, who was as vile and snot-encrusted as Becky remembered him. Whatever riches she managed to claw out of the estate by the time she and Rawdon left Queen’s Crawley would be well deserved for having to put up with his godforsaken family.

  Becky had forgotten how cold and forbidding the house was – Pitt and Jane were welcome to it, she thought as she unwillingly shrugged out of her coat and went to join the company in the drawing room.

  At least the fire was lit. ‘I know that Sir Pitt had some funny ideas: no fires until the clocks went back! But it’s so cold,’ Jane said to Becky. ‘Pitt and I are agreed that the house needs a completely new central heating system as soon as probate is granted.’

  ‘And a new roof and windows that aren’t rotting in the frames,’ Becky suggested helpfully. She put a hand on Jane’s arm, her expression concerned, sincere. ‘I feel so sorry for you and Pitt. It’s quite the poisoned chalice you’ve inherited.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Jane agreed. For someone who’d just inherited millions and millions, not to mention at least five houses spread over three continents, she didn’t look very happy. Her mousy hair looked lank, though that probably had everything to do with Queen’s Crawley’s antiquated plumbing system (another thing that Pitt would have to throw thousands of pounds at) and its brackish water. She had dark shadows under her eyes and an angry red spot on her chin – Becky suspected that since she’d become lady of the manor, she’d been comfort eating.

  Not that she was officially lady of the manor. It wasn’t as if Jane and Pitt Junior were married but even if they had been hitched, marriages ended in divorce all the time. It would be quite the scandal though, ditching Rawdon for his older, much, much, much richer brother … Becky’s reverie was interrupted by Pitt himself entering the room, nervously fussing with the few strands of hair that were all he had left. Just the thought of what it might be like to be touched by those lily-white, fleshy, soft hands sent a shudder through Becky from tip to toe. Besides, the money was one thing, but Pitt the Younger wielded absolutely no influence and now had sole custody of his five half-siblings.

  No, Jane was welcome to him.

  ‘Honestly, we don’t know where to start.’ Jane was still lamenting, without pause, the sorry state of Queen’s Crawley. ‘Also, you have to believe me, Becky, Pitt had no idea that everything would come to him.’ She gestured to the threadbare sofa by the draughty window wh
ere they couldn’t be overheard and Becky, ears pricked, gladly followed. ‘Martha and Bute, but mostly Martha, have been thoroughly unpleasant.’

  ‘Oh?’ It almost killed Becky not to seize Jane by the lapels of the frumpy brocade blazer she was wearing and demand all the gossip. ‘I thought Martha was looking a little out of sorts but I put it down to grief.’

  ‘Huh!’ Jane snorted and though she was a thoroughly decent sort, who still abided by the Brownie Guide Law and her old school motto of Beati mundo corde (Blessed are the pure in heart), Martha Crawley could alienate anyone. If Oprah Winfrey ever came into contact with Martha Crawley, then even Oprah would have wanted to slap her. ‘She’s said some very unkind, hurtful things. Implied that I ingratiated myself with Aunt Matilda and put pressure on her to change the will. Which I didn’t. I really didn’t.’ Jane went quite white at the very suggestion, which made her spot look even redder and angrier.

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Becky said soothingly, though she’d thought exactly the same thing. But now that she’d been forced to spend quality time with Jane, it was obvious that the woman didn’t have a bad bone in her body. That probably explained why she was so dull. ‘Mattie was very much her own woman, wasn’t she? Once she got an idea in her head, then she wasn’t for turning.’ Though Becky was still furious that Dame Matilda had been as good as her word and had left her and Rawdon high and dry, she felt a momentary pang. How she wished that Matilda were here to liven up this dreary gathering by being rude to everyone.