Charlie Glass's Slippers (38 page)

Neither of us says anything for a moment. Then he sighs, loudly, and shoves a hand through his hair.

“Look, all I’m saying, Charlie, is that you should be focus
ing on the fun parts of this project. Do some more interviews. Get a photo shoot in one of the magazines. And leave the dreary parts to somebody else. God knows, it’s not like you haven’t done enough dreary jobs before.”

“You mean . . . taking care of my dad?”

He doesn’t reply, because a sudden clatter on the stairs has announced Eloise, on her way back down from the storeroom.

“Charlie? You don’t happen to have a bit of lip balm on you, by any . . .
Jay
?”

She’s stopped. She’s staring at him. He’s staring back at her.

“
El?
” he says.

“Oh, my God!” She laughs, hurries down the final couple of stairs, and goes to give him a big hug, and a kiss on either cheek. “It’s been, what—three years?”

“But I thought you were studying in New York . . . Oh, wait a minute.” Jay’s memory seems to jolt. “Now I come to think of it, Ben did tell me you’d moved back home a few months ago.”

“Yeah, yeah, it went in one ear and out the other.” Eloise laughs. “I’m amazed he even bothered to mention me at all, actually. I thought all you and my brother talked about was what kind of car you’re driving and what kind of girl you’re shagging! Oh, shit!” She claps a hand over her mouth and gazes at me apologetically. “Sorry, Charlie, I didn’t mean . . . you know, seeing as you two are obviously together . . .”

I haven’t really taken in anything she’s said, though, because I’m just trying to take in a couple of aspects of this situation. For starters, that Eloise is evidently sister to Jay’s best friend, Ben.

But more to the point, that Jay is still staring at her.

And not at all in the way you’d expect a bloke to stare at his best friend’s little sister. But more—much more—in the way you’d expect a bloke to stare at a twenty-three-year-old
pre-Raphaelite beauty with porcelain skin, tumbling auburn hair, and eyes like emeralds.

“Jesus, El, you look . . . you look great! Last time I saw you . . .” Jay seems lost for words for a moment. “Have you done something different with your hair?”

“Grown it long and stopped dyeing it Goth black, perhaps?”

“
That’s
it! Last time I saw you, you were a teenage Goth!” His face breaks into a grin. It’s a grin that would best be described as . . .

Devilish.

“You know,” he’s carrying on, his eyes still fixed on Eloise’s lovely face, that grin still hovering around his lips, “Charlie didn’t tell me she was running some kind of work-experience scheme. What are you, the Saturday salesgirl or something?”

“I’m not on work
experience
, idiot.” But Eloise laughs at his joke. Even her laugh is elegant, sounding rather like a flute solo in something by Mozart. “I am a proper grown-up now, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Jay says, lightly.

This is said with such a meaningful tilt of the head—and such a flirtatious raise of one eyebrow—that I actually see a faint blush rise up Eloise’s cheeks. She looks flustered, for the first time in this conversation.

“Anyway”—she waves her Moleskine notebook at him, as if this proves her point, and, I think, to distract attention from her reddening skin—“I’m a journalist. Actually. I work for
Grazia
magazine.”

“Well, get
you
! With your fancy job and your little notebook!”

She laughs, and he laughs, and I shift from foot to foot, suddenly feeling extraordinarily drab and dim-watted, as though I’m being lit by one of those dreary energy-saving lightbulbs while Jay and Eloise bask in glorious natural sunshine.

“Er,” I say, which isn’t exactly going to brighten me up, but
is my attempt to break the spell Jay seems intent on weaving on Eloise right this very minute. “I . . . er . . . didn’t know you were Ben’s sister, Eloise. I mean, not that I know Ben, either, yet, come to think of it, but—”

“Hey, then I’ve got a fantastic idea.” Jay is still looking at Eloise, though I get the general sense he’s probably reacting to something I’ve just said. “Let’s all have dinner on Friday night. Me, you, Ben. Charlie.”

Oh, so the
you
he was referring to was Eloise. I was the one who was the afterthought.

I feel my wattage decrease by another few dozen volts.

“Friday?” Eloise screws up her lovely forehead. “Oh, I don’t know, Jay, I have this party to go to . . .”

“All right, all right, Little Miss Popular. How about Saturday instead? And hey, if there’s a man lurking around on the scene, then bring him along as well. Ben and I can team up to interrogate him. Good Cop, Bad Cop. Find out if he’s good enough for you.”

There’s a nasty, rather nauseous feeling in my stomach, one that only intensifies when Eloise replies.

“God, no. I’ve been footloose and fancy-free ever since I came back to London.”

“A trail of broken hearts left behind you in Manhattan, I assume? Desperate men throwing themselves off buildings the entire length of Fifth Avenue?”

“Yeah, right.” Eloise pulls a face, but there’s an even deeper hint of a blush on her porcelain cheekbones. “Shit, is that the time?” she suddenly says, glancing down at her watch. “I’m due in Maida Vale for lunch in twenty minutes!”

“Hey, I can drop you, if you like.” Jay finally turns his attention back to me. “I mean, if you’re sure you can’t join me for lunch today, Charlie.”

Which is obviously a perfectly reasonable question, seeing as I’ve been the one refusing to leave the store and claiming I
have far too much to do. It would just be less unsettling if he weren’t asking the question with a slight glaze over his eyes, as if he’s barely noticed I’m there even though he’s looking right at me.

“Um, no. I mean, yes. I mean, I can’t come for lunch . . .”

“Oh, my God, then a lift would be absolutely amazing, if you could,” Eloise tells him. “Would you mind, Charlie?”

“Mind? Why on earth would I mind?” I laugh. Or rather, I make a kind of grim, awkward, ha-ha-ha sound that bears little relation to a laugh. “Like I say, I’ve got loads to be getting on with here . . .”

“And will you let Maggie know I’ll be giving her a call?” Eloise is already picking up her bag and pulling on the wedge heels she abandoned, so as to avoid marking the new carpet, when she first came in this morning. Once in her shoes, she’s close to six feet. Her elegantly pale legs, in her linen miniskirt, look longer than ever. It’s not an effect Jay has failed to notice, either, I can tell.

“Oh, sure. I think she’ll be a great deal of help, if you need to know anything about . . .”

But neither of them is paying a huge amount of attention. Jay is making some joke about Eloise’s notebook, and she’s laughing again, and blushing, and there’s so much electricity crackling and fizzing between them that any minute now I fully expect a power surge to blow every appliance in a five-mile radius.

I mean, Jay does suddenly remember, just before opening the door for her, that he hasn’t said good-bye to me properly. So he does, to be fair to him, dart back over to me and give me a quick kiss, plus an assurance that he’ll call me later.

But his mind, I can see, is already elsewhere.

And from the way he’s looking at Eloise, as he opens his car door for her and shuts her safely inside before driving away, at his usual high speed, I know exactly where his mind is.

chapter twenty-four

I’m heading into
The Wellington Hospital in St. John’s Wood (which, I’ve been reliably informed by Maggie, is “the
only
place to get your bunions lopped off”) to visit Robyn. I’m still not quite clear how she’s managed to wrangle a second overnight stay, but I suspect she’s just having too good a time being the center of attention to give it up. Anyway, despite the fact that the last time we talked she was screaming bloody murder at me for having the temerity to date Jay, I still feel like I ought to be there for her in her hour of need. And it clearly is an hour of need, because when I texted her to let her know I was coming, she texted back a list as long as my arm of all the things she required “to take my mind off the pain”: a 2.5-kilo luxury Jo Malone Grapefruit candle, silk pajamas from Shanghai Tang, a jar of Crème de la Mer body moisturizer and/or hand treatment (my choice), a box of Itsu takeaway sushi, a (freezer-cold) bottle of Grey Goose, a DVD box set of either
The Hills
or
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
, and a silver stiletto charm from Links on Marylebone High Street, “to keep my spirits up and remind me that one day soon, with everyone’s love, help, and prayers, I may be able to walk again.”

I ignore the list. I pick up a box of Quality Street and a copy
of the latest
Grazia
from the newsstand near the tube, then head for the hospital.

Then I feel just a little bit guilty, and turn around to go back to the nearby flower stall, where I also pick up a bunch of slightly droopy tulips in Robyn’s favorite shade of hot pink.

I’m amazed, given my paltry offerings—and given our most recent encounter—that she’s even as pleased to see me as she apparently is.

“Ooooh, Quality Street,
yummy
!” she squeals, from the comfort of an extremely cozy-looking hospital bed.

The room is more like a hotel suite than any of the hospital rooms I used to sit in with Dad, and she’s actually brought her own bed linen: crisp white Frette sheets that I recognize from her bedroom at home. Someone has already brought her a giant Jo Malone candle (Lime, Basil, and Mandarin; knowing Robyn, she quite fancied the Grapefruit one just to make up the full Citrus collection) and someone else—or, presumably, several other people—has showered her with bouquet after glorious bouquet of fresh-cut flowers. They’re filling every available vase I’m sure the hospital had at hand—calla lilies, and red roses, and at least three glorious arrangements of peonies. In the midst of it all, Robyn is sitting up, queen of all she surveys, dressed in an extremely fetching pale-pink silk peignoir and, in brave defiance of her current hardship, a six-inch-high Christian Louboutin sandal on her left foot. Her right foot is wrapped in a bandage that—and I do know I’m not a bunion-removal surgeon—looks at least four times larger than it really needs to be.

“I had the most enormous lunch, so I won’t actually dig into the chocs until later,” Robyn carries on, summoning me towards her with a wave, then kissing me warmly on both cheeks, “but you were sweet to remember that I like them, Cha-Cha.”

“Well, I know they used to be your favorite.”

“Oh, no, darling, they were never my
favorite—
Charbonnel and Walker white chocolate and vanilla truffles were always my favorite, the same as Mummy.” She waves a hand towards a box of these very truffles that are sitting next to one of the peony bouquets on her bedside table. “Lulu brought those for me. Help yourself, Charlie, if you’re hungry.”

I
am
hungry (when am I not, these days?), but—thanks to memories of a semi-naked Alan Kellaway carrying a tray of them up to Diana—my aversion to Charbonnel et Walker truffles is deep-rooted.

“Sweet of Lulu, wasn’t it? Especially when
Gaby
, by the way, my own
sister,
hasn’t even bothered to
text
me to say she’s thinking of me. I mean, what a bitch! I’m lying here, in complete and utter agony . . .”

“You seem reasonably comfortable.”

“. . . not knowing if I’ll ever walk again . . .”

“Now, Robyn, there’s no need to exaggerate.”

“. . . and my so-called sister can’t even get off her gigantic arse to come and visit. I’m not talking about you, Charlie, by the way. You
have
gotten off your gigantic arse to come and visit. And I love you for doing it. You know,” she goes on, putting one hand over her heart, to show how very much she means it, “I promise, here and now, Charlie, that when you get your bunions done, I’ll stay with you night and day until you’re given the all-clear.”

Seeing as Robyn once forced me to spend six hours trailing around Selfridges carrying her shopping bags and “giving my opinion” on her sixteenth birthday-party outfit when I had a fever of 103 and was starting to hallucinate that the store assistants were turning into leprechauns, I take this promise with a hefty pinch of salt.

“That’s really nice of you, Robyn, but I don’t actually have any bunions.”

“Well, not
yet
, you don’t. But carry on wearing heels, Cha-
Cha, and you’ll be booking a slot here faster than you can say . . . well, something pretty fast. I
love
those shoes, actually,” she says, gazing down at the Roman-column sandals on my feet with an expression of such genuine mourning that I do actually feel truly sorry for her for a moment. “In fact, you look very nice altogether today, Charlie. Are you going out with Jay tonight or something?”

“Tomorrow.” I still feel awkward discussing Jay with Robyn.

“Oh, God, you’re not feeling funny about discussing Jay with me, are you?” Robyn asks, as if—for the first time ever—she’s read my mind and understood what I’m thinking. “Darling, don’t worry about it! I wouldn’t touch Jay with a ten-foot barge pole, I promise you. And I’ve got the most amazing new boyfriend, you wouldn’t believe!”

“Oh, Robyn, I’m so glad!”

“You won’t be, when you meet him. You’ll be like literally dead with jealousy. Anatoly is
so
sweet . . . well, his bodyguard is really sweet, anyway; he’s the one who has to do most of the translating between us . . . and he’s
so
sexy, and
so
good in bed . . .”

“And his name is Anatoly, you say?”

“Who, the bodyguard? No, he’s called Boris.”

“But you were just talking about Anatoly.”

“No,
Boris
is the one who’s sexy and good in bed. Though you mustn’t say a word to Anatoly about that, of course! But really, he can’t seriously think I’m supposed to actually
enjoy
having sex with him. I mean, he’s so old, and bristly, and gross.”

I feel a faint stirring of despair, and am glad, for a moment, that Dad is dead and long buried, so that he never has to know about any of this.

“Robyn, why on earth are you going out with a man you find . . . bristly and gross? When you’d rather have sex with his bodyguard instead?”

“Because Anatoly has the most amazing house in Eaton Square, of course.
Eaton Square
, Charlie!
And
he owns his own island in the Seychelles, and two private jets, and like literally every diamond plant in Siberia.”

“Mine.”

“Fucking hell, Charlie, don’t be so unreasonable! You’ve already got Jay! You can’t have Anatoly, too!”

“No, I mean diamond
mine
. Not diamond
plant
.”

“Oh, well, does that really matter, Cha-Cha? I’m not going to go out there and dig for the bloody things. I’m only going to be wearing them.” Irritated now, she reaches for the box of chocolate truffles on the bedside table, takes a Robyn-sized nibble out of the side of one (by her standards, this is an out-of-control binge), and then shoves the box in my direction. “Okay, you have to eat one now. You can’t let me get fat and disgusting all on my own.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“But you’re a total chocolate fiend!
Don’t
tell me you’ve decided to go all anorexic on me.”

“Not at all.”

“Because if you
are
thinking of going anorexic, you have to let me know. I could do with dropping a couple of pounds myself, and it’d be nice to have someone to—”

“Actually, Robyn . . .” The chocolate truffles have prompted not only memories of Alan Kellaway in his underwear, but thanks to that, a memory of that conversation—okay, confrontation—with Diana at Oxley Manor. “. . . I had something I wanted to ask you about your mother, if you don’t mind.”

“About Mummy?”

“Yes. It’s a bit . . . well, it’s a bit personal.”

“If you’re going to ask me if she had a face-lift that time she claimed she was visiting her cousins in New Zealand, the answer is yes.”

“Er—that wasn’t what I was going to ask, actually.”

“Oh. Good. Because that’s like a deathly secret.”

“I was just going to ask,” I continue, starting to feel a bit warm and pricklish at the awkwardness of this, “about your mum’s . . . romantic life. Years ago, I mean. Because I know—I think we all know—that she was having an affair with Alan Kellaway for many years . . .”

“Mmm.” Robyn takes another microscopic nibble of her truffle. “Still is, I wouldn’t be surprised. Makes me feel awful for poor old Michael. Mind you, Mummy’s always suspected he’s at it with the women’s golf pro at the country club.”

For crying out loud, can’t
any
of that generation keep it in their pants?

“Right. Um, the thing is—seeing as your mum had three husbands after she divorced Dad, and seeing as there’s been, well, this thing with Alan and everything—I just wondered if you might know if she ever . . .” I just have to blurt this out, don’t I? “If she ever wanted Dad back.”

“Oh, God, yes. All the time.”

I stare at her. I don’t know what’s more stunning to me: the fact that Diana
did
want Dad back, or the fact that Robyn is so quick and certain to say so.

“But I thought . . . she loathed him, didn’t she? I mean, she never used to stop saying what a worthless piece of shit he was. And she didn’t visit him or call him—not once—when she knew he was dying.”

“Mmm, yes, she absolutely loathed him.”

“But you just said—”

“Don’t be
thick
, Charlie! She loathed him
because
she wanted him back but because he’d never have her. I mean, things really never worked out the way she wanted with Daddy. He was supposed to come crawling back to her when he came home from Morocco, but he never did. Even though she’d taken you in and everything. So she just ended up kind of stuck with you, Cha-Cha. No offense, darling, you understand?”

I don’t take offense. My mind is too busy whirring to have room for that.

No
wonder
Diana hated me quite as much as she did. Not only was I a constant reminder of Mum, whom she hated, but I was a constant reminder of Dad, too. The man she wanted—how did Robyn just put it?—to come crawling back to her. The man who never did.

So that New Year’s Eve when she threw her first major fit at me—that must have been around the point that she began to worry that Dad might not be singing to her hymn sheet after all. That even my motherless presence might not be enough to make him return to her.

Jesus! I’d almost be feeling sorry for her if it weren’t for the fact that she made my life such an utter . . .

Damn it
. I
do
feel sorry for her.

Not to mention the fact that I’m also, if it’s possible, just that little bit more scared of her than ever, now that I know this. Somehow her parting remark at Oxley—
you’ll regret what you’ve done—
suddenly seems to encompass far more than merely getting on her bad side by dating Jay, or having the nerve to set up Glass Slippers. It’s making me wonder if even I might have underestimated her white-hot fury about Dad’s will. After all, the very least she must have ended up expecting from him, seeing as he wouldn’t rekindle their marriage, is that he would have left his shares to
her
daughters, where she could control them, rather than to the cuckoo in her nest.

“Ugh, I feel really sick now. I’ve eaten
so much
chocolate.” Robyn flings her half-eaten truffle back into the open box just as her phone rings. It must be Anatoly—hang on, what am I thinking?—it must be
Boris
, because Robyn goes all giggly and whispery, and sends me out of the room to go and find a vase and some water for my tulips (“Vittel rather than Highland Spring, please, darling—I find flowers are so much happier drinking French mineral water than chilly Scottish
stuff”) while she and Boris put both their lives at terrible risk by shamelessly flirting over the telephone.

The nurse at the nearby nurse’s station has obviously had her fill of Robyn already, because she’s none too pleased about having to rustle up yet another vase for Madame, and positively choleric when I risk asking if there’s anywhere on the hospital premises where I might find a bottle of Vittel. Still, she directs me towards the coffee shop on the second floor, and I’m just heading up there (I’m keen not to become any kind of witness to anything that might put a Russian billionaire’s nose out of joint, and anyway I’d quite appreciate a couple of moments alone to digest what Robyn has just told me) when the door to a nearby room opens and a man steps into my path.

He’s wrestling, hot and bad-tempered, with a wheelchair that contains a patient and serene-looking woman. He’s Terry Pinkerton, from the Elroy Glass board of directors.

“Miss Glass!” He recognizes me at exactly the same moment as I recognize him, and—rather endearingly—doesn’t bother to try to hide his bad temper with the wheelchair situation. “Wretched bloody thing! Its nearest relative must be a supermarket trolley, it’s got such a bloody mind of its own. What are you doing here? You’re not bunion-afflicted, too, I hope?”

“No. Visiting my sister. Who
is
bunion-afflicted.”

“Oh, dear, the poor thing,” says the patient-looking woman in the wheelchair, extending a hand. She’s in her late fifties, and rather smart and chic, in a navy twinset and cropped trousers. “I’m Caroline. Terry’s wife.”