Whatever Love Is (8 page)

‘Can’t you just ring her?’

‘Well I could, but I wanted to see her face when she heard the news. Besides, I thought now was as good a time as any for her to have her first driving lesson. Well, not her first ever,
but her first with me.’

‘Oh.’ Jealousy had gnawed at Frankie’s stomach with an intensity that took her by surprise. ‘I thought . . . I mean you did say you’d take
me
out driving
before lunch.’

‘Did I? Oh, so I did. Sorry. Still, we can do it any time, can’t we? This afternoon – we’ll go then. It’ll be a good excuse to escape because Verity Rushworth is
coming over to talk engagement announcements and photos in
Country Life
with Mum!’

‘And . . .’ she’d hesitated.

‘What?’ Frankie detected a faint note of impatience in his voice.

‘Nothing.’

‘No, go on. Do you need me for something else?’

Yes, but I’m not likely to get it
, she thought.

‘It’s just that when I told Nerys and Tina about my prize, Nerys was really shirty.’

‘Ignore her,’ he replied airily. ‘You know what she’s like with you – anything that makes you look cleverer than Mia or Jemma, and she’s on you like a ton of
bricks. Like I’ve told you a dozen times before, she never had kids of her own and when the girls were little and Mum was still modelling, she looked after them a lot. Well, us boys too, of
course, but she was always keener on the girly stuff! Mia’s always been her favourite, though. She can’t bear to think anyone might outshine her.’

Frankie had pulled a face.

‘If you get the grades you need for Newcastle – anything better than Mia’s A and two Bs – she’ll probably accuse the exam board of making a mistake!’ Ned
laughed. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’

‘But she also said that if I went to the festival, I’d be insulting your dad. Something about me deliberately going against his principles.’

‘Now that’s downright crazy,’ Ned had said. ‘We’re all going to the festival, yet she makes it sound as if you’re the one rebel in the family! It’s true
that Dad was pretty anti it when it started a few years back – wrote to the papers and all that stuff. And there’s no way he’d let them use our fields, or have access over any
part of our property because of the conservation issues. But he’s not stupid: he knows he can’t stop any of us going. I’m going to be there practically
twenty-four/seven.’

‘You are?’

‘Sure – Kids Out There are running a play area and I’m on the team. Anyway, Dad’ll be in Mexico and won’t know what’s going on, will he? Stop worrying! Now I
must get over to Alice’s.’ He’d grinned at Frankie. ‘I might not be back for a while.’

‘And you reckon he’s really keen on this Alice girl?’ Lulu asked, offering a stick of chewing gum to Frankie as the bus crawled past the multiplex cinema.

‘Do birds fly?’ Frankie murmured. ‘He’s besotted. It’s all, “She’s so witty, Frankie; oh, Frankie, she’s such fun to be with; oh, Frankie, you
will be nice to her won’t you? She doesn’t know anyone down here.” What hope do I have?’

Lulu touched her arm. ‘Look at it this way,’ she said encouragingly, ‘you live in the same house, you know him better than anyone and you can wangle it so you do stuff
together. Anyway, she won’t be here forever. And if you get into Newcastle Uni, you’ll virtually be on Ned’s doorstep in Durham. How did the driving lesson go, by the way? Yours,
not Alice’s.’

‘Huh,’ said Frankie. ‘What driving lesson?’

‘The car’s nearly out of petrol – really sorry. Tomorrow, I promise.’

That was Sunday afternoon.

‘Did I say today? Oh sorry, I promised to drive Alice down to Sussex so she can load the horse into the trailer herself. Tomorrow, OK? Absolutely definite.’

That was Monday.

But when Tuesday came, he was cleaning the stable and having a riding lesson with Alice, who stayed for lunch and tea then dragged him off to the cinema. Although ‘dragged’ was
hardly the word to describe the eagerness with which he went.

After the third excuse, Frankie gave up mentioning the subject. Her driving instructor kept reminding her that she needed more practice; she was tempted to ask Mia but she was so preoccupied
with scouring rightmove.co.uk for flats in Brighton, uploading pictures of her engagement ring onto Facebook, and telling the world about her forthcoming holiday in Barbados at the Rushworth family
villa, that she had no time for anything else. Frankie knew Tina would take her but the last time they had tried it, Tina had screamed ‘Stop!’ every time their speed reached twenty
miles an hour.

First thing on Wednesday morning, Frankie rang the test centre and cancelled her test. It would probably have been too soon anyway.

‘Now that,’ Lulu declared as the bus pulled into Greyfriars bus station, ‘is totally defeatist. Just because Ned’s a waste of space . . .’

‘No, he’s not, he’s lovely.’

‘
Now
who’s besotted?’ Lulu teased.

Frankie pulled a face. ‘Drop it, OK?’ She sighed. ‘So – shall we meet for coffee at Leopold’s when I’m done at the paper? Eleven-thirty?’

Lulu glanced at her watch. ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘Then we can hit the shops. I have nothing to wear for the festival.’

An hour later, Frankie was walking down Wellington Street with a broad smile on her face. She’d been interviewed for the following day’s edition, and given the
prize money, tickets to all three days of M-Brace and a clutch of money-off vouchers for various cafés and clubs in town.

The only thing niggling at the back of her mind was William. When she’d mentioned to the photographer, a ginger-haired guy called Spike, that her brother was a photographer on the
Sea
Siren
, he had whistled through his teeth. ‘Wow! That is a ticket to serious money if he plays his cards right. He needs to get a few commissions from the blue rinse brigade – make
’em look years younger than they really are – and then brandish his card and hey presto! Before you know it, he’ll be getting invites to do the society set all over the
world.’

Frankie had laughed knowing that things weren’t quite that simple, but it had started her thinking. The last few messages on Facebook from Wills had lacked his usual hilarious,
punctuation-free outpourings. They had read more like travelogues, with lots of news about what Malta was like or how he hadn’t managed to go ashore at Cagliari because he had to photograph
some damage to the swimming pool. In the past he’d been bubbling over with news about his plans, and his Facebook page had been full of new photos for sale; recently he had sounded flat and
he hadn’t uploaded anything for weeks. Even his last message, congratulating her on her prize, didn’t contain one single joke, which for William was a sure sign that things
weren’t right.

She needed to hear his voice: she would phone him as soon as she got home.

It didn’t take Frankie long, while queuing for her latte, to spot Lulu. She was sitting at the rear of Leopold’s, the newest café in Northampton, in a red
leather chair, legs crossed, skirt hitched up and arms gesticulating wildly at a guy sitting opposite her.

Typical
, thought Frankie with amusement, balancing her coffee in one hand and a chocolate-chip muffin in the other and edging her way towards the spare seat next to her friend. Lulu was
the kind of girl who struck up conversations with total strangers on trains and buses, particularly if they were male and under twenty-five.

‘Hiya!’ Lulu waved at her and pulled the chair back at the same moment that the guy stood up and turned round.

A bystander would have been hard-pressed to decide which of them looked the more amazed.

‘It’s you!’ he said to Frankie.

‘What are you doing here?’ Frankie replied.

‘Do you two know each other?’ Lulu asked.

‘This,’ said Frankie, ‘is Henry Crawford. I was telling you about him.’

‘All good I hope.’ Henry smiled.

‘All
true
,’ murmured Frankie and went to find a paper napkin and compose herself.

‘Well, thanks for nothing! You frightened him off,’ Lulu moaned when Frankie returned to the table. ‘I was just getting somewhere.’

‘Lulu! I told you about the way he came on to Mia the very night she got engaged.’ She had decided to keep quiet about the way he’d flirted with her too – somehow it was
humiliating to admit to being cast aside so easily. ‘And now he’s chatting
you
up – you didn’t even know his name!’

‘Oh
puh-leese
! You are so uptight! Honestly, you’re like something out of a bygone age.’ She leant across and pinched a piece of Frankie’s muffin. ‘Hey,
look!’ She pointed to the floor. ‘He’s left his books behind.’

Frankie bent down and picked up the two paperbacks and a Rexel sleeve stuffed full of pages of illegible scrawl.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘
Little Dorrit
and
Mansfield Park.’

‘Little who?’ Lulu’s taste in reading was limited to chick-lit and
Grazia
magazine.

‘And they’re annotated,’ Frankie mused, flicking through the pages. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he . . . I’ll just go and see if I can catch up with
him.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Lulu.

But Frankie was already halfway to the door. She had hardly left the café when she spotted Henry hotfooting it up the hill towards her.

‘You found them! Thanks so much,’ he panted, taking the books from her. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost these. I haven’t got round to
transferring my latest notes to my laptop yet, lazy sod that I am.’

‘So, you’re actually reading these?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised!’ He laughed. ‘It’s part of my course. I’m doing film and theatre design at Ruskin and my summer assignment is to design two sets
– a film set for
Dorrit
and a stage set for the Jane Austen. Trouble is, I can’t seem to break away from stereotypes – you know, all rats and clanking chains or lace
bonnets and fans!’

‘Mmmm,’ Frankie said. ‘Trouble with Austen is that she’s been done to death. Great movies and all that, but most of them are clichéd and half of them nothing like
the original.’ She screwed up her face. ‘You know what? I’d forget all that and focus on the starkness of Dorrit’s life experience and the shallowness of the society of
Austen’s time. In fact, you could do a modern . . .’ She stopped short, furious that she could be so influenced by his choice of reading material.

‘A modern . . .?’

‘Nothing, I must go. Lulu will be getting in a strop,’ she said hastily.

‘And I’m due at the Royal Theatre,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘My father wangled a meeting with the stage manager and I daren’t be late. There’s a
chance I might be able to shadow her for a week later in the summer.’

‘That would be so cool,’ Frankie enthused, despite herself. ‘They’re doing Ibsen next month. Good luck!’

‘See you around,’ Henry said. ‘I want to hear your ideas!’

‘Sure,’ Frankie replied and then mentally kicked herself for sounding so enthusiastic.
He may be more interesting than you thought
, she told herself firmly
, but remember he
can’t be trusted.

‘I’ll come over sometime and we can talk theatre,’ he called after her.

She knew that was probably just an excuse to see Mia again, but to her great annoyance the idea of talking to him suddenly seemed rather more attractive than she would have imagined.

CHAPTER 6

‘Selfishness must always be forgiven,
you know, because there is no hope for a cure.’

(Jane Austen,
Mansfield Park
)

A
WEEK LATER
, F
RANKIE WAS SITTING ON THE SWING SEAT
in the garden, eyes half closed, attempting to resolve an impossible
situation in her story about the character called Jasper. She was trying to write to distract herself from worrying about her mother. She’d just come back from a fleeting visit to Hove, where
the doctor had suggested her mother would soon be ready to leave for another try at a halfway house placement – which of course was good in one way, but worrying too, because it might not
work out. Suddenly she heard her name being called.

‘Frankie! Oh, thank goodness I’ve found someone!’ It was Alice, trim in a pair of cream jodhpurs and an open-neck shirt, struggling with a saddle over one arm and a bridle,
rope halter and hay net over the other. Since her horse had arrived, she’d been visiting the house twice a day and somehow managing to hang about for far longer than Frankie thought was
necessary. ‘Where’s Ned?’