He thought Victoria looked rather pleased. She smiled and looked at him sideways.
‘Aren’t you going to ask about her father?’
George thought about it. He supposed it would be best if he knew what he was up against.
‘I presume you’re not together any more?’
Victoria threw back her head and laughed. George found himself gazing at her white throat, longing to press his lips against it.
‘Absolutely not, darling. He was the school handyman. He was supposed to be patrolling the grounds during the sixth-form dance, making sure no one got up to anything they shouldn’t. I couldn’t resist. He was completely gorgeous. Very Sean Bean – rugged and silent. And as thick as shit.’
She ran her finger round the rim of her glass.
‘I’ve never had a fuck like it before or since.’
George met her sly glance square on.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Oh, I didn’t even bother telling him I was pregnant. He was married, for a start. And he’d have been sacked if it had all come out. I’d have ruined his life if I’d squealed. There was absolutely no point.’
‘But what about your daughter? Doesn’t she want to meet him?’
‘I’ve told her all about him. If she ever wants to meet him, I’ll arrange it somehow. But at the moment she doesn’t seem to want to.’
‘People like to know where they’ve come from. Don’t they?’
He saw her visibly stiffen, and realized that perhaps he had gone too far.
‘As far as I’m concerned, he was a sperm donor. He’d have nothing to offer her. He lived in a council house, for God’s sake.’
George recoiled at her frankness.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
Victoria stared moodily into her glass.
‘Oh, nothing. I’m just being defensive. It always makes me say things I shouldn’t.’ She slugged back the last of her champagne and grinned. ‘Anyway, I’m a total hypocrite. I ended up in a council flat myself, when I had Mimi. My parents were absolutely horrified that I’d come out of my nice posh girls school with no qualifications and a bun in the oven. My father threw me out. After the school had. Then he cut me off without a penny. It was up to my mother to sort me out somewhere to live. She made the council find me a flat. She’s quite terrifying, my mother – one word from her and I went straight to the top of the housing list. Mind you, the one person she had no influence over was my father. She had to sneak out of the house to come and visit, pretend she was off to play golf.’
‘That’s awful. What a terrible start in life.’
‘Listen, it suited me, I can tell you. I couldn’t stand my father. He was a snob and a bully. It was my only escape. And, actually, I loved it. Mimi was the most darling baby. I couldn’t understand why everyone my age didn’t have one. The only problem was money. I couldn’t live on the mingy state benefits. So I started working for a woman who ran a travel agency from her house. She didn’t mind me bringing Mimi to work. And I could take a lot of the stuff home. I ended up doing all her brochures and design work for her. Then I organized a party for her, promoting her skiing holidays. It was so easy. I had fake snow everywhere and Christmas trees. We served glühwein and a huge fondue. She ended up with a massive piece in the local paper and trebled her bookings. Then she encouraged me to set up on my own, doing PR. I could never have done it without her. She let me use a corner of her office to start with. Eventually I got my own office. And Victoria Snow Public Relations was born.’ She spread out her hands. ‘Ta-da.’
‘So single motherhood isn’t as difficult as everyone makes out?’
‘I can only speak for myself. And Mimi was a little angel. She’s always been brilliant at entertaining herself. Well, she’s had to be . . .’
She burst into laughter.
‘Do you know what’s hilarious? She’s at the same school that threw me out all those years ago. They’ve got no idea she’s an illegitimate brat who was spawned round the back of the tennis courts . . .’
She collapsed back on to the cushions, doubled up with mirth. George was a bit alarmed; she seemed almost hysterical. Then she stopped and looked at him, very serious, and he realized she’d drunk more than he’d thought.
‘Take me home.’
Her meaning was very clear. But George wasn’t going to fall into the trap of taking advantage of her when she was three sheets to the wind. If he was going to seduce her, he wanted her sober.
Less than a month later, Mimi and Victoria moved in and George found his masculine enclave invaded. The butter compartment in the door of the fridge was filled with bottles of Chanel nail varnish. There were knickers strewn around the bathroom, cotton-wool balls, plastic dry-cleaning bags ripped off garments and thrown on the floor. Toe separators. Gelfilled eye masks. Fake tan wipes. Hair straighteners. Hair curlers. Nail files. Victoria might look a million dollars when she walked out of the door, but she left a bomb site behind her.
George had never considered himself to be fanatically tidy, but had never realized what chaos one woman could create. A bit of mess, however, was a small price to pay for having this fascinating, luminescent, sparkling woman in his life. And rather than Mimi being a handicap to his relationship with Victoria, he found he adored having her in the house. He toasted her bagels for breakfast, and introduced her to Nutella and blueberry conserve. He dropped her off at school, as it was on the way to his office rather than Victoria’s, and she gave him all the gossip about what her friends were up to – stories that made his hair stand on end, but he reasoned that it was better that she told him than kept it all secret. At night he helped her with her homework, because Victoria didn’t have the patience or, she insisted, the intellect to cope with logarithms or French irregular verbs. And at weekends, if Victoria had work or a hair appointment, he was happy to provide a taxi service and be the official cashpoint machine. He supposed he could be accused of spoiling Mimi, but he suspected that she’d had a tough time of it over the years, and had probably endured a rather lonely, self-sufficient existence. It wouldn’t hurt her to be indulged.
By the end of six months, he felt a desperate need to cement the relationship between the three of them officially. George was the type who needed things written down in black and white and rubber-stamped. And that was how he found himself on a beach in the Caribbean, the legs of his best linen suit rolled up as the waves lapped round his ankles, with Victoria next to him in a white silk slip, the two of them repeating their vows. Mimi, wearing bright pink parachute trousers and a fishnet hoodie, stood at the water’s edge and watched.
‘Hello, Dad,’ she beamed, as George and Victoria waded out of the water hand in hand as Mr and Mrs Chandler.
They had a huge party to celebrate their marriage when they got back to Bath. Only George’s boss Richard was lukewarm in his congratulations. George decided that perhaps he had once made a pass at Victoria and had been rebuffed. He’d noticed at work that Richard had a tendency to bear a grudge. His disapproval was obviously sour grapes.
From then on, George and Victoria were the king and queen of the in-crowd. They dictated what bar to hang out in, what restaurant to eat in, whose invitations were accepted and whose shunned. To enter their inner sanctum was to win a ticket to the high life, fuelled by champagne and exotic cocktails. At first George revelled in it. He loved designer clothes, he loved style, he loved being at the cutting edge of setting trends. He knew he was burning the candle at both ends, but he was still young enough to get away with it. Just. And he didn’t want to waste one precious moment with Victoria. He feasted his eyes on her, hung on her every word, couldn’t keep his hands off her. And the sex . . . oh God, the sex. Bliss, ecstasy – there wasn’t a word that came close to describing it.
As the months slipped by, however, the novelty began to wear off. At first, it was the social whirl that began to pall. Gradually, the veneer became tarnished and George recognized it as tawdry and shallow. The conversations he had once regarded as stimulating, the repartee he had considered witty, were repeated again and again. The majority of the crowd had only one topic of conversation: themselves. And too many of them were dependent on getting high or drunk for their entertainment. George liked a drink but, in general, he kept his head.
Suddenly, he looked at his so-called friends and saw superficial peacocks filled with insecurity. And by mixing with them, he realized that Victoria was guilty of all the attributes he found so unattractive. She could be spiteful and two-faced. She would cold-shoulder people for the most trivial of reasons. And she craved centre stage. She flirted incessantly, seemingly for the sake of it, seemingly to reassure herself that she was a more attractive proposition than anyone else. She had to be irresistible. George began to see her with new eyes.
More worryingly still, George had noticed that Victoria seemed to be drinking more and more. And maybe worse: George knew a lot of the people she mixed with dabbled in harder substances. She certainly kept it hidden from him, as she knew he disapproved. Either way, whatever she was doing, it was starting to encroach on her everyday life. Sometimes Victoria wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, even on a weekday. George would give Mimi her breakfast and drive her to school, then phone home at about eleven, when Victoria had just about surfaced, groggy and incoherent. Somehow by midday she got herself together. She would be back in the office, immaculate, radiant, ready to hit the phones. Did that miraculous recovery come about with a little bit of chemical help, he wondered?
Infuriatingly, somehow she managed to keep it together work-wise. She simply never made morning appointments – her working day began at lunch. She was still picking up new clients by the handful. Because say what you like about her, Victoria knew how to make a splash. Every time she launched a new product or a new venue it had a twist, a clever gimmick that made sure it was lodged in the psyche of its target clientele. She was tireless, innovative, professional and raking in a small fortune, which slipped through her fingers almost before it had hit her bank account.
Although she never let her clients down, her private life was disintegrating. With increasing regularity, George had to extricate her from dinner parties when she began to get obstreperous and obnoxious. She could be very outspoken and she was brilliant at sensing people’s weak spots. She would home in on them with a ruthless cruelty. And woe betide any other woman who tried to outshine her. Victoria would knock them down, cut their feet out from under them. The next day, she didn’t show a flicker of remorse. Meanwhile, George ran up huge bills with his favourite florist, sending not only their hosts extravagant bouquets, but anyone Victoria had offended. People often said ‘It’s just Victoria’, but George didn’t think that was a good enough excuse. You couldn’t excuse appalling behaviour on the grounds that you’d always been insufferably rude.
There were times when George convinced himself he could save her. Sometimes, on a Saturday afternoon, if he could grab her attention before she was due to go out for lunch, he would pin her down and talk to her about the house, which he was gradually redecorating. They would sit down with a pot of coffee and a table full of magazines, and she would give him ideas – ideas that made him tingle with excitement, because they were usually so simple, but with that flash of inspiration that made her so good at her job. And if he was very lucky, they would spend the afternoon in Walcot Street, wandering amongst the reclamation centres and antique shops, the lighting emporiums and the interior designers, picking out pieces that would make the house a home. And it would always be Victoria who spotted the key feature – the statue to go beneath the window on the landing, the enormous abstract oil painting whose vibrant colours set off the drawing room walls to perfection, the French chandelier that needed completely rewiring but was, when you thought about it, ideal for the kitchen, albeit totally impractical. This was the Victoria he wanted all the time, but he always felt as if he was borrowing her, as if she was humouring him, as if she was counting the moments until she could be herself. And no matter how hard he tried to hold on to that Victoria, she always slipped away. By six o’clock, she was getting ready, putting on her costume, fortifying herself with a cocktail or a glass of champagne, and by eight o’clock she had disappeared completely.
Eventually, he steeled himself to tackle her about the fact that her drinking had got out of control. It was a Sunday, and he brought her pancakes in bed when she still hadn’t got up by midday. The telling thing was she didn’t even have hangovers any more; she just needed to sleep. He asked what it was she was trying to forget, or cover up, but she just said she wanted to have a good time. She insisted she wasn’t unhappy. But George suspected there was more to it.
‘Is it me?’ he asked, because it was since the wedding that she’d deteriorated.
‘Of course not. I love you.’
‘Then what is it? People who are happy don’t behave like this, Victoria. You’re losing your grip. I’m worried.’
He pushed and pushed, until suddenly she broke down and wept all over her breakfast tray.
‘I hate myself,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m not the person I want to be.’
‘Come on. You’re beautiful. Successful. Popular. Well, when you’re not drunk and being rude to people.’
‘But I’m a fake. It’s a complete act. I’m totally manufactured. All those clothes – they’re just a suit of armour. My dressing-up box, so I can pretend to be someone I’m not. A silly little show-off.’
‘So what is it you want to be?’ George was utterly mystified.
‘Someone warm and loving and caring, who doesn’t think all this crap is important.’
‘But it’s not.’
‘I can’t operate without it.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Exactly.’
‘No – that’s not what I meant. I meant you can be the person you want to be. You’re not hard and shallow and superficial, otherwise you wouldn’t have told me all those things.’
George looked at her, curled up on the bed, her face pale with misery. He reached out and stroked her hair.