Daughters (25 page)

She got to her feet. ‘I have to have an early night.’

He said quietly, ‘I’m just telling you again that I’ll help you in every way I can. Financially it won’t be that much, as you know.’

‘I expect not,’ she said politely. ‘What with the stately home and everything.’

‘Maudie,’ he caught her arm, ‘let there be peace.’

She looked down at him. ‘I’m going away, Dad, because I want to get away from everything that’s happened. Don’t you see?’

‘But peace can break out?’

The appeal was not quite on target … not judged finely enough.

‘Wish me luck, Dad.’

The following day, as she was ushered into the interview room where three people waited to talk to her, she felt a strong flash of anger. Meeting her father had shaken her, and she had had a bad night.

I want this
, she thought.
More than anything.

One of the figures sitting behind the long table – groomed, middle-aged, grave – got to his feet and held out a hand. ‘We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Miss Russell.’

It didn’t take long.

Normal Saturday breakfast at home. Check. One bowl of cereal, crackling after she had poured in milk. Check. One extra-strong cup of coffee. A mind only half operational. Check, check.

Running a hand through her hair, her fingers snagged in the strands. A line of gooseflesh erupted on the strip of skin between her pyjama bottoms and the grey marl T-shirt she wore on top.

For once, her mother was quiet. She was staring into
her coffee and attempting to eat a piece of fruit when both of them knew, she really wanted to eat toast and butter.

The radio was on, purveying political and financial news, none of which was reassuring.

The letter flap rattled, followed by a cascade of paper falling to the floor.

‘You or me?’ her mother asked.

‘You,’ said Maudie.

‘No, you, Maudie.’

Maudie shuffled to the front door, scooped up a clutch of letters, handed them to her mother and returned to her wrestling match with the cereal.

Lara sorted. Bills in one pile. Junk mail in the other.

‘Maudie …’ She was holding out a letter. ‘For you.’

The house noises suddenly took on extra resonance. The fridge and the boiler clucked like hens. She was sure she could hear something scuttling in the skirting. The tap dripped stones.

‘Oh.’

‘Open it, Maudie.’

She had anticipated this moment so often, steeling herself against its impact. Imagining the champagne effect of the best news, the brutal disappointment of the worst. But, she had lectured herself, she would take what came with the cool certainty and grace of the integrated adult.

‘I can’t open it, Mum. Please.’ Her voice had lost its lower register.

Lara slit the envelope with her unused knife.

Maudie watched a parade of expressions flit across her mother’s features. ‘Oh, Maudie.’

Doubt. Sadness. Regret.

Pride.

‘Maudie, you’ve done it. You clever, clever girl. You’ve done it.’

‘Can you say that again, Mum?’

Her mother read out the acceptance … pleased to offer … satisfactory SAT results … subject to A levels … financial arrangements … replies by 1 May. She laid the letter on the table, smoothed it and handed it over.

Maudie observed it from a great height.

Her mother jumped up, extracted a bottle of wine from the cupboard and slid it on to the worktop. ‘For tonight.’ Then she brushed her hand over her hair. ‘Such good news.’ She crossed to Maudie and put her arms around her. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she did. ‘But you’ll be leaving.’

Her mother felt as soft and yielding as ever. ‘Yes.’ The word emerged less steady than Maudie had counted on. ‘Yes, I will. They’re going to send information about freshmen’s week …’

‘Oh, Maudie …’ Her mother was stroking her cheek. ‘Freshmen’s week, sophomores … we’ll have to get used to the terms. A new vocabulary.’

Her mother released her, and hunkered down to search for a casserole in the cupboard.

‘I would have been going somewhere, Mum.’ Maudie read and reread the letter – just in case the words fell on to the floor and vanished. ‘I know it’s going to change
everything. I’ll find it hard. I know I will. But you’ll have the wedding.’

‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘There’s the wedding.’

Eve’s email:

THE DRESS!!! Now we have date, church and Membury on board, we start the fun bit. MEET ME …

The dressmaker’s
atelier
was in Peckham, hidden in a network of streets, and it was taking all Jasmine’s ingenuity to find it. ‘But it’s worth it,’ Eve promised her. ‘Talk on the grapevine is all about Ivanka. One day she’ll be global and I’ll be able to say she made my wedding dress.’

Only for Eve would Jasmine do this. It was a long way and she became impatient. Apart from anything else, it gave her time to reflect, and reflecting led her into dangerous waters.

From the bus, she looked down into the window of the house they were lumbering past. Inside, a woman picked up toys from the floor. The scene was so ordinary that instead of battling with a jealous thought,
I don’t want to see Eve’s wedding dress
, she concentrated on that instead.

Ringing the bell to the studio, she was admitted by an assistant, a neat, slender girl. Pin-cushion tied to a wrist with elastic. Hair in a high, old-fashioned bun. Pencil skirt. She led Jasmine into a large loft area where the light filtered softly through muslin and gauze.

‘Please,’ she pointed to rows of slippers in varying sizes waiting by the wall, ‘we ask you to take your shoes off.’

Divided into a workshop, which had been curtained off, and a fitting room, Ivanka’s
atelier
sold dreamy, unabashed femininity. Creamy walls. Fresh muslin at the windows. A faint suggestion of flower scents. A bowl of ruffled roses.

At one end, rolls of material had been swathed in protective cloth and stacked under the headings ‘Duchess’, ‘Zibeline’, ‘Faille’, ‘Georgette’, ‘Marocain’.

Jasmine imagined the first explorers who had found the Silk Route, and borne these exotically named fabrics home.
Look
, they had cried to hungry merchants, as they unrolled bundles from their protective calico,
such beauty, such workmanship …

‘Please.’ The assistant touched Jasmine’s arm. ‘Would you mind taking off your shoes?’ She proffered a pair of slippers. ‘I’ll take you to the fitting room.’ She swept aside a curtain and ushered Jasmine in.

Here, the space was arranged to convey intimacy. At one end, there was a rack of dresses in every shade of white, and a long mirror, at the other a shoe rack, with several pairs of bridal shoes, four white chairs, and a table on which were arranged water and glasses, pins, scissors and a tape measure. ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything to drink but water,’ explained the assistant. ‘We daren’t take any risk with the expensive fabrics.’

Apart from the dresses, there was nothing overtly expensive in the
atelier
. The backdrop
had been fashioned from cheap, basic materials, but very cleverly. As usual,
Eve had got it right, she thought. Her antennae picked up the underground murmurs as automatically as Jasmine picked up her morning cappuccino, and the results were always good. Just like her real mother. ‘Your mother possessed taste and discernment.’ That
much Jasmine
had
got out of her father, who was not given to dropping details unless pushed. The snippet pleased her. She liked to think of ‘taste and discernment’ being handed from a mother to the outstretched hands of her daughters. A game of Pass the Parcel with useful DNA as the prize.

Not that she liked thinking about her mother – it made her uneasy and full of regret. Death was unfair and left gaps. She wanted to know what Mary had looked like. Yes, she had photographs, but photographs couldn’t convey the movement of a person, the alterations of expression, the nuances of hair and skin, habits and gestures. Would Mary have slipped her arms around Eve and herself and said, ‘My lovely girls,’ as Lara sometimes did?

As so often, when she
did
permit herself to think of her mother, Jasmine found herself focusing on the moment when Mary, battered and exhausted, had given up the struggle. Mary would not have known but she had bequeathed to Jasmine a great psycho drama to revisit: she imagined panicking midwives, the doctor hastily summoned, her father crying, ‘No,
no
!’ and the wail of a newborn baby impacting dimly on the nothingness creeping through Mary’s played-out, haemorrhaging body. Of only one thing she was sure. Even while her mother fought the nothingness, she would have called out for her children.

‘Jas …’ Eve wiggled her fingers at her sister. She had been deep in conversation with a smart, white-faced girl, with shoulder-skimming black hair cut sharp as a knife and violet eye shadow. ‘This is the brilliant, wonderful Ivanka.’

Hellos were exchanged, and she wondered if she detected just a hint of defensiveness in brilliant, wonderful Ivanka. ‘It’s always difficult when the relations turn up, I imagine,’ she said.

The defensiveness vanished. ‘They’re … supportive,’ Ivanka grinned wryly, ‘but I am used to it.’ Her English was thickly accented.

For ‘supportive’, Jasmine read ‘critical’. ‘Have you been working here long?’

Again the defensiveness: ‘I’m not an illegal.’

Jasmine blushed. ‘I was interested.’

‘Excuse me, then. I am getting used to the British who say one thing but think another. I think you call it politeness.’

‘Right,’ said Jasmine.

Ivanka spread three sketches on the table. ‘Last time we talked, you preferred this one and the toile has been made up.’ She gestured to Eve. ‘Undress, please.’ Turning to Jasmine: ‘This is only the beginning of the process.’

The grave assistant spread a drugget over the polished wood floor in front of the long mirror.

Eve took off her sweater and jeans. Her back was white and tautly gleaming, her legs toned and smooth. How thin she was, these days, thought Jasmine. Too thin – seemingly consumed by her own energy.

Ivanka pointed to the shoes. ‘Please find a pair,’ she said to Eve. ‘We can’t try on anything without shoes. I imagine you will choose a pair with heels.’ She disappeared behind the curtain.

Eve picked up satin pumps and slipped them on.

Ivanka reappeared with the toile cradled like a sleeping form in her arms.

At her command, Eve stepped into the skirt and the bodice was eased over her arms, then pinned into place. Ivanka arranged the folds of the skirt and train. ‘A toile is not the real thing,’ she explained to Jasmine. ‘Depending on the material, the finished dress will fall differently.’ She smiled.

The not-dress was sleeveless, boat-necked and fell in folds from a belted waistline to which an artificial flower had been pinned. It was fashionable – very – and unyielding in its retro-chic.

‘Plain,’ said Ivanka, narrowing the violet-embossed eyes. ‘Veeery plain.’ The ‘very’ crackled with Ukrainian emphasis. ‘Plain is class.’

Eve stared at her reflection. It was as if, Jasmine thought, she was encountering herself for the first time. Picking up the skirt, she swayed from left to right and pointed a toe. ‘For a woman this is the dress between baptism and burial,’ she remarked dreamily. ‘But the toile is a ghost dress. The negative behind the photograph.’

‘
Don’t
, Evie.’

Ivanka laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder. ‘Please be still.’ She ran her hand down Eve’s back and made a sweep across the shoulders.

‘Do you like it, Jasmine?’

‘We discussed making it in zibeline in order to get the structure.’ Ivanka produced a marker pen. ‘Or faille might do.’

‘What do
you
think, Jas?’

Eve sounded uncertain, which was unlike her.

‘If it was me …’

Ivanka drew a black line across the waist. ‘It’s important to get the balance right.’

Jasmine said, ‘Would something softer, more flowing …? If it
was
me …’

Ivanka’s pen halted.

‘But it isn’t you,’ said Eve. ‘That’s why I need to know.’

The bell to the studio rang and a slippered Lara appeared. ‘Sorry, so sorry. Couldn’t quite fathom the instructions.’ She took in the figure clad in the toile. ‘Oh.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she put her arms around Eve.

So like her.

After a moment, Lara stood back. ‘Have I missed the decisions?’

‘No,’ said Eve. ‘I waited.’

Ivanka flipped open the laptop on her desk. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘We will do it virtually.’

The three of them gathered around. Touching buttons here and there, Ivanka manipulated a photograph of Eve on the screen and superimposed the dress made in different materials, and with modifications, over her image.

In the toile, the real Eve shivered as she watched the parade.

The conversation lasted a long time – oyster, chalk, satin, taffeta, chiffon. Jasmine’s attention drifted. It was extraordinary, fascinating, the lengths to which men and women went to make their lives palatable, the milestones they inserted into them and what they considered important. She was as guilty as any, devoting time and organization to negotiating around the flatline of the everyday.

Again, Lara hugged Eve, an anxious, protective gesture.

Veils, petticoats, shoes …

She caught Lara’s eyes. Lurking in them Jasmine saw an emotion she couldn’t place and, in response, a tiny anxious flame lit in her. Lara was worried.

Why?

Among the rack of ruffled dresses, there was a plain sheath with long sleeves. She pointed to it. ‘Did you try that one, Eve?’

She pictured herself in it. Tall, slender, with piled-up hair.

She hated feeling jealous, hated its condition of helplessness and obsession, the prison of self, all phrases Lara would use. Sibling rivalry was the subject of psychological study (and sit-com jokes) and Lara knew all about that too. She would probably explain to Jasmine that the feelings of displacement she had undoubtedly experienced when Eve was born had been intensified when Jasmine made the connection between Eve’s appearance and her mother’s disappearance.