The Next Best Thing (17 page)

But there was no point in thinking like this. He was forty years old and this was the real world, and Lydia was a fine match for him. For three years he had been proud to call her his
girlfriend, and getting engaged was the natural next step. His fantasy about Jane was just another symptom of his mid-life malaise. Perhaps he should swallow his stiff upper lip and see someone
about it. His aversion to therapy was making him feel unfashionable. Sadness and disappointment used to be accepted as part of life, but now you were supposed to label it depression and get cured
by taking drugs or talking to a qualified person. There was a shrink who lived in the apartment below him who seemed to have a lot of men Rupert’s age coming and going. He was gay and
outrageously handsome, but most of his clients looked straight enough. Stiffs in suits, most of them, just like Rupert. It couldn’t do any harm to have a trial session.

Lydia heard the taxi purring in the street below, then the door slammed and off it went, carrying her lover away. Recently she had been finding him sexier than usual, a little
aloof, less easy to please. There was no denying that although one didn’t want to marry a bastard, a little bit of bastard-like behaviour did wonders for a man’s sex-appeal. No-one
wanted an over-eager dog, wagging his tail and drooling over you with idiotic, unconditional love.

She dozed on and off for another half hour, then thought she might as well get up. She had lots to get on with, though obviously she wouldn’t be working today. Lucky for her that she was
editor-at-large, roaming free and expansive through the wide ocean of life, unlike those poor full-timers chained to their desks at the magazine like rats in a cage.

After a leisurely hath and breakfast, Lydia slipped on a pair of jeans and a low-cut sweater and lay on the ugly beige sofa watching
Trisha
on telly while she painted her nails. A
hard-faced teenage mother was going to find out whether or not her pimply ex-boyfriend was the father of her baby. When it was revealed that he was not, the girl leaped up from her chair and
punched the air in triumph while the youth sank back deflated, a useless cuckold already at the tender age of sixteen.

By the time Lydia got out onto the Kings Road, the boutiques were just starting to open. Shop girls were crouching down or reaching up at the glass doors, frowning as they negotiated large
bunches of keys. Friday morning was a fine time to cruise the shops since you got none of the trippers who came up at the weekend. Sundays were the worst, it was the only time you could park for
free, which meant the streets were all blocked solid.

Lydia was glad to count herself among the rich and leisured locals who could shop at hours to suit themselves. She was following one now, a classic Chelsea blonde wearing a full-length sheepskin
coat over a baby-blue cashmere sweater, talking on her mobile phone.

‘Yuh,’ she was saying, in a loud, confident voice, ‘there are some jeans that I’d raahly like you to look at. Yuh, eighty-four pounds but the length is
perfect.’

Mobile phones could have been invented for girls like that. Girls like that were born without embarrassment, born to loudly bore everyone to death with the details of some purchase they were
thinking of making. They never whispered into their phones like lesser-born types, never muttered an ingratiating apology, ‘Hallo, it’s only me, sorry I’m a bit late, I’m on
the 6.16, shall I get the bread or will you?’

The blonde stepped into Karen Millen and Lydia continued on her course. Past Kenneth Cole, which she liked for its New York chic, past LK Bennett, which she disliked for its prissy assumption
that modern girls wanted to look like little old ladies in two-piece suits and neat matching shoes. She crossed the road and glanced in the Jigsaw window, not bad but frankly a hit too high-street
for her these days. She then slipped down a side road, where the pretty row of different coloured cottages made you think you were in a quaint fishing port, until you remembered that a two-up
two-down worker’s hovel round here would cost you well over a million.

Lydia’s hairdresser was situated at the end of one of these falsely modest terraces. Not so much a salon as an artist’s studio, it had an easel set up in the middle of the room,
displaying a large, cheerful canvas. Klaus laid down his paintbrush as Lydia came in — he liked to add the finishing touches to his work-in-progress in between customers. Big and Austrian, he
wore long leather shorts even in winter, and had his grey hair tied up in a ponytail. He greeted Lydia warmly and sat her down in front of a mirror while he rubbed the paint off his hands with a
rag soaked in turps.

It was no coincidence that Lydia came to Klaus for her hair. He was expensive and off-beat, which was a plus, but the real attraction for her was the long list of famous ex-clients he could reel
off for her benefit. Like a London taxi driver boasting about who he’s had in the back of his cab, Klaus peppered his conversation with allusions to the stars who had passed through his
hands. Most of these clients used to come in the Seventies, before he had downsized to make time for his painting, but Lydia loved it nonetheless.

Klaus brushed out Lydia’s hair in his usual, blissfully unhurried way, pausing between strokes to shout at her in the mirror. She assumed he must be slightly deaf, or maybe Austrians
always spoke in very loud voices.

‘But did you know,’ he boomed, ‘that the Chelsea Pensioners are considered a very good catch as husbands?’ ‘What, those dear old veterans in red jackets, get out of
here!’ said Lydia. She loved seeing them cruising the Kings Road, often in electric wheelchairs, but didn’t buy the idea of them as marriage material.

‘I swear it’s true.’ He shook the brush at her in the mirror to make his point. ‘The mothers from the council estate encourage their daughters to marry them. Then they
die very soon and the girl gets the Chelsea pension, it’s a well-known scam.’

‘No!’

‘Honestly. How much, one inch? Did I ever tell you that I had Sacha Distel when I was still in Knightsbridge? And Catherine Deneuve. Dear Jenny Agutter still comes, and Jud I of course,
Charlotte Rampling and Meryl, she likes a good haircut . . .’

And he was back on the star trail, occasionally breaking off to bend down and take a snip off the end of Lydia’s long auburn tresses.

‘Would you like some apple-cider vinegar on your hair?’ he asked as she lay back with her head in the basin, feet resting on a high stool.

‘Not really. Why would I?’

‘Makes it nice and shiny,’ Klaus bellowed, as though she were at the far end of the street instead of right there between his hands.

‘I’m having a party tonight, I don’t want to smell of chips.’

‘As you like.’

He wrapped a towel round her head and propelled her back to her seat, then spun her chair round to face the painting on the easel.

‘What do you think?’

He always asked her, so she wasn’t unprepared.

‘A lot of verve.’

‘Thank you. Do you think you could use it in the magazine?’

‘We only use figurative I’m afraid.’

He dried her hair and stopped talking for a while, staring out of the window instead at a homely, large-boned mother wearing an anorak and pushing a buggy up the street. He turned hack to face
Lydia in the mirror and jerked his thumb in the direction of the retreating woman.

‘She came in once to ask how much it was for a haircut. It was too much for her, of course. If you have to ask, it will always he too much. She is from Switzerland, lives down the road,
her husband works for a bank that pays the rent on the house. But she is just a simple sort of person. She is not for this area.’ He shook his head in a mixture of contempt and pity, then
smiled broadly and shook his hand through Lydia’s glossy hair.

‘Not like you. You are perfect for this area.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Lydia, who thought she wouldn’t bother telling him that she actually came from Essex. She lived in the present, not the past, and
anyway Klaus wouldn’t know where Essex was.

After drying her hair, Klaus produced a hand-held circular vibrator that he applied to her back and shoulders. Lydia winced, it set her teeth right on edge. He then brought out a mirror and made
her hold it herself so she could enjoy the rear view of his handiwork.

He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Now that is a very good haircut.’

‘Though you say so yourself.’

‘Though I say so myself.’

By the time Lydia came out, the pub across the road was filling up with the usual crew of hoorays, big and braying in beige slacks or jeans and rugby shirts. As a fashion
person, Lydia was fascinated to see the rugby shirt still living on here in the heart of Chelsea. As far as she was concerned, they belonged to the Seventies, when girls used to borrow them off
their boyfriends and wear them with upturned collars and a string of pearls to look petite and vulnerable like Felicity Kendal in
The Good Life.
For the purposes of research, she went in and
ordered a large glass of wine while she ran a thorough check.

She sat down in a battered armchair and noticed one of the customers looked like a younger version of Rupert. He was giving her the eye now, leaning against the bar, pint glass in hand. He was
talking to the man next to him, but his body language was for her benefit: broad hips tilted towards her, one foot crossed in front of the other. He had a wide forehead and fair hair that sprung up
with patrician virility. She shook her newly groomed hair and made eye contact for a few seconds before looking away. It was nice to know she could still pull if she needed to, although that was
all taken care of now. By the end of this evening she would officially be recognised as the fiancee of the Hon. Rupert Beauval-Tench. She drained her glass and left the pub, brushing past her
admirer on her way out.

‘The Pont de Normandie resembles an elegant, powerful bird, soaring up in a gracious curve over the Seine estuary. Comparable to Concorde, it bears witness to
man’s capacity to scale the heights of technical brilliance, and stands, proud and erect, a lasting testament to the presidency of Jacques Chirac’

Jane read back over the last sentence and pressed the back-space key. She couldn’t say proud and erect in the same breath as President Chirac, it made the book sound like a soft-porn mag
instead of a hymn of praise to French engineers. On the other hand, what did it matter? She doubted anyone would go so far as to read the book. Americans might line it up on the coffee table to
prove they were well-travelled Francophiles, but they would be unlikely to do more than Hick through the photos as they sipped that weak cinnamon-flavoured coffee they all raved about.

She replaced the words with
‘magisterial’
, one of her favourite adjectives for this kind of job. The art of Cellini, the oeuvre of Stendhal, the slopes of the Auvergne, all
could be described as magisterial, which also served to flatter the reader with its assumption of a knowledge of Latin roots. Or ‘routs’, as Americans pronounced it. That always made
her laugh, like the way they said ‘cribs’ for herbs. Not to mention those quirky differences in vocabulary she had to be aware of in her work: horse-back riding, eggplant, heavy cream,
sidewalk: strange words that reminded us that a shared language in no way meant we spoke the same way. Except in the field of personal development where the Brits stood shoulder to shoulder with
their American cousins, as they moved forward, resolved issues, drew a line under things and reassessed goals.

Surely it must be time for a coffee. Jane saved her work and stood up, bulky, in her favourite working cardigan, which used to be a smart knitted jacket until she’d washed it and doubled
its size. On her feet she wore a pair of Will’s woollen expedition socks, and her hair was messily piled up on her head, held in place with a clip like a claw. She looked a fright, but who
cared. She’d get brushed up tonight for Lydia’s party, she’d have plenty of time since Liberty was staying at her friend Portia’s house. The Barbie overnight bag — on
mini-wheels with an extendable handle, the sort that air hostesses pulled behind them as they clip-clopped onto the plane in their ladylike shoes — had been packed and handed over this
morning to Portia’s mother, who hadn’t failed to notice Jane’s dishevelled appearance.

‘What time do you want to collect her?’ she had asked, a pucker of anxiety forming on her smooth brow as she noticed a dirty mark running down the leg of Jane’s jeans.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll use the tradesmen’s entrance,’ said Jane. ‘Joke,’ she’d added, i t was the car, problem getting it started this morning, and I
ended up spilling oil all over myself.’

Portia’s mum had been wearing jeans too, but hers were put together with stiletto shoes and a Jean-Paul Gaultier jacket. It had been a long time since denim was a byword for tough rebel or
beat poet. Now it just said rich bitch, same as everything else.

The breakfast bowls were still hardening on the table, so Jane took advantage of her coffee break to soak them in the, sink. After their argument, Will had made a point of being helpful round
the house. He had done all the washing up for three days until he cut his hand on a glass. Nice while it lasted, but they had now slipped back into their usual roles. It was business as usual,
though Jane didn’t mind. She had other concerns.

She stared at the goldfish swimming around in the tank that she had placed on the counter beside the microwave. They would have to be hidden away in the cellar before Liberty came back, and then
hibernate until Christmas, pretend they were in a snow-covered pond. It was perfectly safe, she’d heard of one woman who kept hers in the fridge when she went away for the summer, with no ill
effects.

She made her coffee and padded back to the table, slopping some onto the floor as she went. It didn’t really matter any more, since Will had noticed a discolouration on the rubber
flooring. He’d had the architect over yesterday so he could give him a bollocking about it. Just beneath the window the colour had faded and was now much paler than the rest of the room. The
architect had said it was due to UV rays of sunlight. Will had said it was a miracle any UV rays could get in, the room was so dark, but it was an even bigger miracle that an architect who was
supposed to know his materials should have recommended rubber in the first place. Jane had left the room at this point, and taken refuge in the galleria, which luckily appeared to be UV resistant.
Will would go completely bonkers if anything bad happened up there.