Charlie Glass's Slippers (6 page)

He sits back, doubly pleased with his perfectly idiomatic English—
give them notice
—and his relentless quashing of Ferdy’s suggestion that I might be in the same league, cooking-wise, as his sister-in-law.

“Well, she sounds amazing,” I say quickly, before Ferdy (who’s looking a bit pissed off ) can say anything else, and before Lucy (who’s started to look a bit despairing) feels the need to mop up Pal’s aggression, the way she so often does. “And what a brilliant job! I don’t suppose it’s still going, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m looking for a job at the moment, and I’d really been hoping to find something food-related.” I’ve only started up this line of chat to keep the peace, but actually, now that I’ve said this, I realize I want to pursue the topic. “I mean, I
worked in a café in my gap year, and I had a part-time job in a bistro in Manchester in my first term at university, so I still have the proper hygiene certificates and stuff . . .”

“Oh, Charlie, come on.” Lucy is staring at me across the table. “You don’t want to work as a cook for a bunch of snooty rich people! It’d be like . . . like being a servant! You’re so much more talented than that—don’t
you
think she’s more talented, Ferdy? I mean, she could do
anything
, couldn’t she?”

“Er . . .”

“Actually, Luce, I couldn’t do
anything
. I’m not qualified for all that much. Two terms of an Italian degree isn’t exactly going to have headhunters beating a path to my door!”

Lucy looks simultaneously annoyed that I’m Putting Myself Down and thrilled that she’s spotted yet another opportunity to Talk Me Up.

“Of course, she only dropped out of uni,” she says, turning to Ferdy, “to come back down to London and look after her dad. Even though her dad didn’t actually look after
her
for years, because he had this nervous breakdown after her mum died, and she had to go and live with her bitch of a stepmother . . .”

“Lucy!”

“. . . and she was a godsend to her horrible sisters, because neither of them took the slightest bit of interest in caring for Elroy. But that’s the thing about Charlie, you see, Ferdy, she’s incredibly selfless like that . . .”

Much as I love Lucy, right now I’d happily upend the entire pan of Stroganoff right over her head. I’m not a bloody saint. Dad was dreadfully disabled; he needed someone to take care of him. Gaby and Robyn were obviously never going to step up to the plate, so I did. It’s not saintly; it’s making the best of a shitty situation. Not to mention the fact that Ferdy isn’t going to be any more wowed by my supposed sainthood than he is by my cheerfulness and bravery.

I shoot Lucy a look that must be pretty fierce, because she takes the hint and shuts up.

“Well, I think it sounds like an
amazing
opportunity!” Honey says. “I mean, being a cook isn’t like being a
cleaner
or anything, is it?”

I don’t embarrass the poor girl any further by saying that my (dead) mother was a cleaner, and I shoot Lucy another of my astonishingly effective looks to prevent her from saying so either.

“You should definitely go for the job, Charlie!” Honey tilts her head, prettily, in Pal’s direction. “Why not give her your sister-in-law’s number?”

Pal opens his mouth to say (I’m quite sure) that I’m woefully underqualified and totally unsuitable, but his desire to be a hero in front of Honey trumps this at the last moment.

“Well, I suppose that couldn’t hurt . . . I’d have to check with Marit first, of course.”

“That would be really kind of you, Pal,” I say—and to my surprise, I mean it. “Thank you ever so much. Now, you must let me give you some food! Can I give you some potato gratin, Pal, on the side of the stew?”

“Christ, no.” He pulls a face. “All that butter and cream? I might as well give my marathon spot to somebody else right this minute, check right into the cardiac unit, and be done with it!”

“I expect there’s probably a fair amount of butter and cream in the stew, too,” Ferdy says, looking at Pal with dislike. “Are you going to refuse to eat that as well?”

“Butter and cream in the stew?” Pal eyeballs Lucy across the table. “Didn’t you tell your friend I can’t eat that kind of crap?”

“It’s not crap,” I say, fighting my urge (for the second time this evening) to tip stew over the head of one of my guests. “It’s a bit of butter and cream, yes, but they’re both organic, and the meat is organic, too . . .”

“Oh, dear, is there
meat
in it?” Honey interrupts.

“That is generally the way,” Lucy says, looking as if she’d like to do a bit of stew-tipping herself, “with a stew.”

“What a shame! I don’t eat meat! Those poor little cows and lambs and pigs . . . You don’t happen to have any chicken in the fridge, do you?”

“Because your sympathy for slaughtered farm animals doesn’t extend to chickens?” Lucy asks.

“I’ll just have some carrots,” Pal says, holding his hand out for the empty plate I’m still holding, then peering dubiously down at the dish of glazed carrots. “Though it looks like there’s butter on these, too.”

“Then I’ll have
loads
,” Ferdy says, leaning over to seize the dish of carrots and starting to heap them, pointedly, onto his plate. “Honey, even if you can’t eat the stew, you’ll have some carrots, won’t you?”

“Oooh, no, I don’t like carrots. Sorry, Charlie! Would you mind if I just called for some delivery sushi or something?”

“Yeah, I’ll get in on that,” says Pal.

“Pal!”

“Come on, Lucy, you know I can’t skip a meal after training.”

“But Charlie’s gone to so much trouble . . .”

“It’s okay,” I say. I want to save Lucy’s agony, and let’s face it, this dinner party couldn’t be more of a disaster if aliens were to land on the street outside, take us back to the mother ship, and spend the rest of the night sticking probes in all kinds of unpleasant places. In fact, as the evening has gone so far, alien kidnap and unpleasant probing might actually improve matters. “I don’t mind, honestly.”

“Well, I think it’s pretty rude,” says Ferdy, obviously blaming Pal.

“Me, too,” says Lucy, obviously blaming Honey.

“I’m telling you, it’s
fine
. I just want everyone to have some
thing to eat! And I’d bring out the dessert, but I don’t think Pal is going to get along very well with pecan pie and clotted cream!”

“Oh, is that the pudding?” Honey pulls a regretful face. “I’m allergic to nuts, Charlie! I’m so sorry!”

Upstairs, the doorbell rings, unexpectedly, for the second time this evening. It’s a mercy, because it means that I can abandon all the nut-allergic, cream-phobic stress and tension for a few blissful moments. Mum and Dad’s dinner parties weren’t like this, were they? Everyone claiming allergies and spurning the food in favor of delivery?

I open the door to find a pleasant-faced young man I vaguely recognize, wearing a gray suit and carrying a large briefcase.

“Charlotte Glass?”

“Yes . . . I know you, don’t I?”

“Well remembered!” He sticks out a hand. “I’m Oliver Winkleman. Your father’s solicitor.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Winkleman!” I met him for all of three minutes, in this very hallway, when he came around for a meeting with Dad last October. It was when Dad was getting bad enough that he was insistent about what people always call, depressingly,
getting your affairs in order
, and so Mr. Winkleman—actually, Mr. Winkleman’s boss, Dad’s longtime solicitor Alan Kellaway—was summoned to come and help. “You came with your boss, Mr. Kellaway.”

“That’s right. But your father and Mr. Kellaway had . . . a bit of a difference of opinion that afternoon. So your father appointed me his executor instead.”

“Yes, I remember him telling me something about that.” Dad’s falling-out with Alan Kellaway was hardly a surprise—Dad could start a quarrel with a paper bag if he really put his mind to it. “But why are you here now, Mr. Winkleman?”

“Well, I do hope I’m not disturbing you at all.” He glances,
uncertainly, at my updo (still resolutely not becoming a down-do; it’s the most successful part of the evening so far). “You look as if you’re going out?”

“No, no, I’m staying in. I mean, I have . . . people here. For a dinner party. If you can still call it a dinner party when fifty percent of your guests order take-out sushi, that is.”

“Ah. Your sister said you wouldn’t be busy.”

“My sister?”

“Sorry, sorry—half sister!”

“No, I know that, I mean—which sister?”

“Mrs. Porter.”

“Oh,
Gaby
.”

“Yes. She’s asked me to . . . er, this is a bit awkward, actually. I mean, didn’t she call ahead at all? To let you know?”

“To let me know what?”

“Well, obviously it’s your father’s will reading this coming week, and I think Mrs. Porter . . . well, I wouldn’t usually be doing this on a Saturday night, but she’s extremely keen for me to make a list of all your father’s personal effects in advance.”

“His personal effects?”

“Yes.” He shifts his briefcase from the right hand to the left, looking so uncomfortable that I wonder, for a moment, if some probe-wielding aliens might have gotten to him before he showed up. “Anything of value. She mentioned, for example, that he might have some bits of jewelry from his mother and his aunts, and perhaps some valuable candlesticks?”

I stare at him. “And she wants an inventory? In case . . . what? I stuff them up the chimney for now and flog them on eBay later?”

“No! Well, I mean, not
you
. I think . . . well, the reason she’s so keen to get the inventory done so quickly is because she’s a little bit worried that your other sister—Robyn, is it?—might pop round unannounced and start . . . laying claim to anything expensive-looking . . .”

I sigh. It might be the most depressing part of Gaby’s nature that she feels the need to send around a solicitor to make an inventory of Dad’s things like this, but then I suppose it’s also the most depressing part of Robyn’s nature that she might easily appear on the doorstep one day this week and try to squirrel away Grandma’s antique candlesticks and Great-Auntie Rachel’s pearl earrings.

“You’d better come in, then.”

“No, really, if you’ve people over for dinner, I’m sure I can find a better time . . .”

“It doesn’t matter. Honestly. In fact, I’ve even got about half a ton of leftovers. If you eat meat and don’t faint at the sight of pecans, that is.”

It turns out that both the above apply, and that Olly is, by his own admission, hungry.

“But really, Charlotte—sorry,
Charlie—
I won’t make a peep,” he says, as he steps into the flat and starts removing his suit jacket. “I’ll just take a plate of food and let you get on with your dinner. The last thing I want to do is ruin your evening!”

chapter four

I
never thought I’d
say
this after the debacle that was Saturday night, but there was
one
good thing that came out of the dinner party. And that one good thing is the reason I’m sitting here, three days later, on a lush leather sofa in the poshest house I’ve ever been in, waiting for my first job interview in almost ten years.

Honestly, you’ve never seen anything like this house. It occupies almost the square footage of my entire mansion block, a huge, white-stuccoed early-Victorian edifice behind thick iron gates on an eerily quiet road to the southern side of Holland Park Avenue. There’s a huge, Bentley-filled driveway out the front, and out the back is the largest private garden I’ve ever seen in London (actually, pretty much the largest private garden I’ve ever seen
anywhere
), a gorgeous expanse of bucolic green that I can see out of the French windows. It has an indoor pool (I know this because Annabel, the leggy, efficient girl who showed me in, said she was going downstairs to see if she could find Mr. Broderick in the pool) and a gym (I know this because when she couldn’t find him in the pool, she said she’d also looked in the gym) and a library (I know this because that’s the room I’m waiting in now, surrounded by mahogany bookshelves and volumes
and volumes of books, on this lush leather sofa by the French windows).

Oh, and it even has an
elevator
, for Pete’s sake. And I know this because Annabel has been striding around on her iPhone out in the hallway, badgering some poor elevator maintenance man about an appointment for which he was due at eleven but for which he (apparently) won’t make it until noon.

Annabel isn’t the very best advertisement for taking a job here, it must be said. But Marit, Pal’s sister-in-law, who not only turned out to be surprisingly sweet and helpful but who also gave her former employers a call on my behalf suggesting they see me for the cook’s job, told me that the Broderick family themselves are delightful people. A Frank Broderick and a Susannah Broderick, apparently, with a teenage son (Rob? Ron? I’ve forgotten what Marit told me, which isn’t a great start) who still lives at home. The father—Frank—is in a wheelchair, apparently, though whether through age or infirmity I don’t know. Still, I suppose this might explain the elevator. Though it probably wouldn’t explain why Annabel was trying to find Mr. Broderick in the gym, of all places.

Anyway, she still hasn’t come up trumps on the Mr. Broderick front, so I’ll have to find a way to while away the time until she does, and keep my nerves at bay.

I get up and go to have a little look at the fan of magazines and papers that are laid out on a gorgeous Art Deco coffee table, pick up a couple of my favorite travel magazines, and head back to my chair for a bit of a flick through. Actually, one of them is the same issue of the
Incredible Expeditions
magazine that Lucy was accusing me of betraying her with the other night. I leaf my way to the page with the “New Body Boot Camp” article, rereading for the fifth (or is it the sixth?) time the writer’s extolling of the solicitous ex-marine trainers, the delicious portions of salad, and the daily Think Yourself Thinner meditation sessions. And it sounds absurd. I was being
ridiculous to think that the best way to kick-start my new, post-Dad existence is through something as frivolous and silly as getting thin. There are other ways to start rebuilding my life—serious ways, and plenty of them. This job, for example. It’s a great opportunity that’s fallen into my lap, and I intend to make the most of it.

“Charlene?” Annabel has popped her head around the doorway of the library again. She’s phenomenally healthy-looking: clear-eyed and glowy-cheeked, though that may just be an excitable flush from spending the last ten minutes barking at the elevator maintenance man on the phone. I guess she’s some kind of personal assistant or private secretary, because she’s far too glamorous ever to be considered as anything so domestic as a housekeeper. I mean, Mum was a housekeeper, and Mum was beautiful, but Annabel looks like she could have just stalked off a catwalk in Paris or Milan.

“Actually, it’s Charlotte.”

“What?”

“My name. Charlotte. Or you can just call me Charlie, because that’s what my friends . . .”

But Annabel isn’t interested, either in my friends or in getting my name right. “I’ve just managed to get hold of Mr. Broderick on his mobile. He should be here in five minutes. Can I get you anything in the meantime? Tea? Coffee? Biscuits?”

“No, thank you.” Tempted though I always am by the offer of a biscuit, I’ve made a huge effort with my appearance this morning, and I don’t want to go into this interview with crumbs all down my front. “I’m perfectly okay just to wait.”

“Fine. Oh, and by the way, I should have said before—please keep your phone in your bag while you’re inside the house.” She nods at my mobile, which I’ve been fiddling with to relieve the boredom, and which is still sitting in my lap. “The family consider it a security risk.”

“A
security
risk?”

“Yes. People taking photos, those photos finding their way into newspapers . . . I’m sure you understand, with a family like the Brodericks, that privacy is at an absolute premium.”

“Er—yes. I understand.” I’m kicking myself, now, for not asking Marit more about exactly who these Broderick people
are
. What if they’re people I’m meant to have heard of ? The name doesn’t ring any bells, but then I’m rubbish at general knowledge.

“Good.” Annabel gives a brisk nod. “Well, I’ll leave you to prepare, then.”

Which begs the question, doesn’t it: prepare
what
?

I mean, after Marit called back yesterday to tell me she’d arranged an interview, I did spend several hours getting as prepared as I possibly could. But now Annabel has made me feel that there’s more I could be doing. More I should have done.
Great
. Just what I needed, at the last minute, for my rickety confidence. And I can’t even ask her what she meant, exactly, because she’s disappeared into the hallway again.

When my mobile rings, I practically jump out of my skin trying to get to it before anyone hears it.

“Lucy?” I hiss into my phone when I finally locate it and see that it’s her calling. “Look, I can’t talk . . .”

“I was just calling to wish you luck.”

“Thanks, but I really can’t talk. I’m not meant to use a phone while I’m here. It’s a security risk, apparently.”

“Security risk?”

“Yes. Do you know who these people are? I mean, did Pal’s sister-in-law ever mention them to you?”

“No, all I know is that they’re stinkingly rich. Though that’s probably enough of a need for security in itself. Oh, and the son is a racing driver, of course.”

“A racing driver?” I’m filled with respect for the teenage Rob/Ron. “Wow. That’s pretty impressive, for a teenage boy.”

“What? Jay Broderick’s not a teenager.”

“Jay? I thought he was called Rob. Or is it Ron?”

“He’s not called either. He’s called Jay. Charlie, surely you’ve seen him in the papers and stuff, when he won the Formula One championship a few years back? Tall, dark-haired, half Japanese or something. Definitely not a teenager. At least,” she adds, with a rather filthy giggle, “if he is a teenager, he’s the most ridiculously hot teenager I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, well, there must be more than one son, then . . . shit, Luce, I have to go!”

“You’re not being stormed by the marines, are you?”

“No, but I can hear voices in the hallway . . .”

I end the call and shove the phone back into my bag. Lucy may have been joking about the marines, but I wouldn’t like to cross Annabel in a hurry. I can hear her now, outside the library door, sounding rather more soft-edged and easygoing than she has with me or with the elevator maintenance man.

“. . . great to see you, too! Sorry to have been hounding you, but this girl has come for an interview to replace Marit, and I knew you were already coming over to see your father this morning. And I know you don’t like him to be bothered with staffing issues.”

“It’s fine, Annabel.” This is a man’s voice, laid-back and confident. “You know you can hound me whenever you like. And you’re looking incredible after your holiday, by the way. The Maldives, was it?”

“That’s right!” Annabel sounds as if she’s simpering. “We got back on Friday.”

“And did that boyfriend of yours finally get his arse into gear and pop the question?” There’s a flirty smile in the man’s voice now. “Remind me of his name again? Boy, was it, or Man, or something?”

Annabel actually
giggles
. “Guy! And no, he didn’t pop the question, Jay. We’ve only been going out six months.”

“Six months? Six days should have been enough for him to know you were the one!”

Annabel giggles again. “Oh, Jay . . .”

“Right, so, where’s this cooking girl you’ve got lined up for me to meet?”

“In the library.” Annabel sounds slightly put out, perhaps because she was hoping the flirtation would go on a bit longer. “I assumed you’d conduct the interview in there? Unless you want to take her down and show her the kitchens?”

There are
kitchens
?
Plural?
But before I can think any more about that, Annabel is peering around the door. “Charlene? Mr. Broderick is here for you now.”

“Great! I mean, it’s Charlotte, actually . . . but thanks so much.” I get to my feet, hauling my briefcase/bag with me, and head her way. I can’t help noticing that her top button has come undone: the crisp white shirt she was wearing buttoned all the way up when I arrived is now revealing a good deal of golden skin and even the smallest hint of lacy bra. “Your top button’s come undone, by the way,” I whisper, helpfully.

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s really undone . . . in fact, it might even be the top two buttons . . .”

“It’s
fine
!” she snaps, giving me a bit of a look.

So I say no more about it, and simply follow her meekly out into the marble hallway, where a man is waiting, his hands thrust into his jeans pockets.

Sweet
Jesus
, he’s good-looking!

He has to be the Jay that Lucy was going on about, because his almost absurdly handsome features are obviously partly Asiatic. His eyes are sooty and almost black, his hair likewise and shiny as a brand-new chestnut, and he’s blessed with that soft lips/strong jaw combo that gives the faintest of feminine touches to an otherwise relentlessly masculine face. But it’s not just his face. If anything, his body is even better. He’s over
six feet and broad-shouldered, with the kind of lean upper torso that probably comes from many, many hours in the gym but somehow manages to look as if it comes from many, many hours doing much more attractive, manly things, like chopping wood, or tilling fields, or throwing some insanely lucky girl around a bedroom . . . Because that’s the final thing about his looks. He’s not merely handsome, with a fabulous body. He’s also
sexy
. His appeal isn’t like Ferdy’s, stemming from pleasant looks and a gentle demeanor. This is not the kind of man who makes your brain concoct silly romantic fantasies of misty moors and whinnying horses. This is the kind of man who makes you think of hotel rooms, and mussed-up sheets, and drinking champagne in a shared bath with scented oils making your damp skin all slippery against each other, and . . .

“Hi, there.” He smiles and approaches with an outstretched hand. “I’m Jay Broderick. And you are . . .?”

“Charlene,” Annabel answers for me, which is handy because I seem to have lost the power of speech. “Like I said, Jay, she’s here about the cooking job.”

“Hey, I tell you what, you wouldn’t be able to whip me up a bit of breakfast, Charlene, would you?” He pats his stomach, flat and taut-looking beneath his blue checked shirt. “I haven’t had breakfast, and I only had three hours’ sleep, and if I don’t eat something I’m going to get all cranky . . . and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

His smile turns rather devilish, as he directs this final remark in Annabel’s direction. Who—it only now occurs to me—hasn’t had an accident with her top two shirt buttons at all. She’s deliberately undone them for Jay’s benefit. Which I can hardly blame her for. If
I
were the kind of girl who had a chance with Jay Broderick, I’d be stripping to my undies, throwing myself at him, and begging him to take me now, this very minute, on the marble floor . . .

“Charlene? How about it?” He’s smiling at me again. It’s
a perfectly pleasant smile, but I’d kill for one of the devilish grins he just treated Annabel to. “Just some bacon and eggs, nothing fancy.”

“Um, yes, I could do that . . . but actually, my name’s—”

“Great! I can interview you while you cook. Come to think of it, the cooking can be
part of
your interview.”

“Oh, Jay, I don’t know about that,” Annabel says. “She won’t have public liability insurance, and she isn’t under any kind of contract . . .”

“Annabel, relax. How much damage can one person possibly do, cooking a bit of bacon and eggs? You’re not planning to slice off a couple of fingers when you cut bread for toast, are you, Char?”

“Not planning to, no.”

“Not planning to blind anyone with hot fat from the frying pan?”

“Oh, God, no!”

“Then I think we’ll be all right. Excellent—here comes the elevator,” he says, when there’s a sudden creaking from the shiny brass double doors to the right of the hallway. He puts a friendly hand on the back of my shirt—which, like a teenage girl, I vow I’ll never wash again—and steers me towards the doors. “We can go down to the kitchens in this. If you get the job here, you’ll have to get used to this thing. My father had it installed when he finally succumbed to his wheelchair a couple of years ago, but now he likes everyone to use it. Especially his cook—
I
swear you’d be faster climbing four flights of stairs up to his office, but he was always moaning at Marit that his food was cold if she did that . . . Oh, Hamish, mate!” he says, as the elevator doors open to reveal someone standing in there. “Were you here to see the old man?”