Shopaholic to the Stars (44 page)

‘Well,’ she says in a low voice. ‘Well, Minnie.’

It’s almost unbearable, watching her tight, chalky-white face struggle with emotion. She puts her lined, beringed hand on Minnie’s head and strokes it a few times, as though that’s the most she can bring herself to do.

God, I’d love to loosen her up. I should have ordered the Mind-Altering Tea for Repressed Older Women in Chanel Suits.

‘Elinor, we have to reconcile you with Luke,’ I say impulsively. ‘I want you to be part of the family. Properly. I’m going to stage an intervention at our house and I’m not letting either of you go till you’re friends.’

‘I don’t believe “friends” is the appropriate term,’ she says, looking puzzled. ‘We are mother and son, not contemporaries.’

OK, this is why she doesn’t help herself.

‘Yes it is!’ I say. ‘It’s totally appropriate. I’m friends with my mum and you can jolly well be friends with Luke. When I tell him everything you did for the party—’

‘No.’ Elinor cuts me off, a sudden steel to her voice. ‘I have told you, Rebecca. Luke must never know of my involvement.’

‘But you did such an amazing thing!’ I say in frustration. ‘And he thinks it was Suze and Tarkie! It’s crazy!’

‘He must never know.’

‘But—’

‘He must never know. I am not buying his love,’ she adds, so quietly I can barely hear her.

‘Elinor, it’s not “buying his love”,’ I say gently. ‘It wasn’t just about the money. It was about all the thought and effort you put into it.’

The girl arrives with our drinks, and we’re both silent as she arranges teapots, cups, strainers and little sugar crystals on a trolley made out of bamboo. I pour Elinor her hot water and she picks it up without drinking it.

‘So, Elinor,’ I say, in soft, coaxing tones. ‘Will you tell him?’

‘No,’ she says in final tones. ‘And you will not tell him, either. You made me a promise.’

Argh. It’s like she’s made of granite. This intervention is not going to be an easy matter.

‘OK, then. Well, we’ll find another way.’ I reach in my bag for my ‘conflict resolution’ notes. I printed them off from Google and they’ve been quite helpful, except I realized a bit too late they were about conflict resolution in an industrial-action situation. I skim through the pages, trying to find something useful.
Picketing
, no …
union representation
, no …
Health and Safety Executive
, no …
cooperation techniques
… ooh, that’s more like it.
Win-win negotiating strategy
.

Yes! That’s very good. Win-win is exactly what we need. In fact, I’m not sure why anyone would ever choose anything
except
win-win. I mean, why would you opt for lose-lose?

I read the paragraph, and the phrase that keeps popping out is ‘common ground’.

‘We need to find common ground,’ I say, looking up. ‘What common ground do you have with Luke?’

Apart from being totally stubborn, I
don’t
add.

Elinor looks at me silently. It’s as though she hasn’t understood the question.

‘Charity work,’ she says at last.

‘OK …’ I wrinkle my nose dubiously. ‘Anything else? Have you ever done anything fun together? You must have done! When he was in New York.’

When I first met Luke, he was really close to Elinor. Unhealthily close, actually, although I’d never say that. I mean, I don’t want him to go back to worshipping her, but can’t they recapture any of that relationship?

‘Did you ever go on holiday together?’ I ask with sudden inspiration. ‘Did you have any fun times then?’

I have an image of Elinor limbo-dancing at some Caribbean resort while Luke cheers her on, cocktail in hand, and force myself not to giggle.

‘We stayed in the Hamptons,’ she says after some thought. ‘My old friend Dirk Greggory had a beach cottage there. I took Luke on a number of occasions.’

‘Great. So, you could reminisce about that … maybe plan another trip …’

‘If we did, it would have to be soon,’ says Elinor with asperity. ‘Dirk passed away two years ago, and his daughter is selling the beach cottage. A mistake in my opinion, as was the ghastly work she did to the porch—’

‘Wait,’ I cut her off, my head spinning. ‘Wait. So there’s a cottage in the Hamptons that you and Luke have happy memories of … and it’s about to be sold … and this is your last chance to go back there? Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

‘Brown bear, brown bear,’ puts in Minnie, looking up from her milk. ‘What do you see?’

‘I fail to understand.’ Elinor’s brow creases as much as it can, i.e. hardly at all.

‘What do you see, Mummy?’ demands Minnie imperiously. ‘What do you seeeeee?’

It’s a good thing I know all her little books off by heart.

‘A red bird.’ I turn back to Elinor. ‘This is perfect. You can say that’s why you’ve come to see Luke. He’s bound to listen.’

‘Red bird, red bird, what do you see?’

‘A blue horse.’

‘No!’ cries Minnie, crashing down her beaker. ‘Not blue horse! Yellow duck!’

‘OK, yellow duck,’ I say, hassled. ‘Whatever. Elinor, this is definitely the way to go! Try to remember all the great times you had together and mention them to Luke. Try to find that bond again.’

Elinor looks dubious, and I sigh. If only she’d present herself better. (By which I
don’t
mean having immaculate nails and matching shoes.)

‘Could you wear something a little less formal tonight?’ I suggest. ‘And maybe loosen your hair? And talk differently?’

Basically, have a personality transplant, is what I’m really saying.

‘Talk differently?’ Elinor seems affronted.

‘Try repeating this after me.’ I lean forward. ‘“Luke, my love, if we can just spend some time together—”’ I break off at Elinor’s rigid expression. I can see she isn’t going to go for ‘Luke, my love’. ‘All right, let’s try it a different way. You could say, “Luke, my angel …” Her face grows yet more rigid. ‘“Luke, my sweetheart … my darling—”’ I break off. ‘OK, what
would
you say?’

‘Luke, my son,’ says Elinor.

‘You sound like Darth Vader,’ I say bluntly. Elinor doesn’t even flinch.

‘So be it,’ she says, and sips her water.

That is
totally
a Darth Vader thing to say. Next she’ll be ordering the destruction of a thousand innocent Jedi younglings.

‘Well, do your best.’ I reach for my tea, feeling exhausted. ‘And I’ll do my best. That’s all we can do.’

From: Yeager, Mack

To: Brandon, Rebecca

Subject: Re:
Darth Vader

Dear Rebecca

Thanks for your email.

There are many theories regarding the inspiration for Darth Vader, as outlined in my book
Whence Anakin?
, available from all good bookshops.

Whether he was based on a ‘real-life person’ as you suggest, and whether that person left ‘real-life genes swirling around in the gene pool for anyone to come across’, I think doubtful.

In short, I think it unlikely that your mother-in-law is related to Darth Vader.

All my best wishes and may the Force be with you,

Mack Yeager

President, SWGS

STAR WARS GENEALOGY SOCIETY

We’ve arranged that Elinor will come to the house at 7 p.m., and by ten to seven I’m swigging wine, trying to stay calm. I never knew being a peacemaker would be so nerve-racking. Does the Dalai Lama get this stressed out before he spreads peace throughout the world? Does he apply his lip gloss three times because he’s so flustered? (Not very likely, actually.)

At least Minnie went to bed without a fuss, and the older children are happily watching
Wall-E
. The intervention should be over by the time they have to go to bed. Or I suppose it should. How long does an intervention take?

Oh God, why did I ever decide to do this?

On the plus side, the Intervention Room (i.e. kitchen) looks brilliant. I’ve lit about twenty candles for a mellow, calming atmosphere, and I’ve got soft music playing and I’m wearing a green dress which is very soothing. At least, it would be soothing if it weren’t for the fact that it cost me $280 last week in Intermix and today I saw it marked down to $79.99! They could have warned me. They could have given me some secret sign. That assistant must have been laughing her head off as she wrapped it up.

Anyway. Never mind. Luke doesn’t need to know all of that. The point is, the room is ready and I’m ready and now all we need is for Elinor to arrive. I can’t pretend I’m not tense. And I can’t pretend the atmosphere isn’t tense. I keep glancing at Luke, wondering how he’ll react.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a beer, and his face is resolutely turned away from me. As I look at him, I feel a kind of plunging inside. We aren’t right. We aren’t
us
. It’s not that we’ve rowed again, it’s almost worse. We’re not making proper eye contact, and neither of us has mentioned our talk this morning. The only time I’ve seen Luke smile today was earlier on, when he was on the phone with Gary, his colleague.

Gary is in New York right now but flying back to London tomorrow morning. They were talking about the Treasury meeting and Luke seemed all fired up. He kept dropping in ‘Number 10’ and ‘policy’ and I could tell his brain was whizzing with ideas. He kept laughing at things that Gary said, and he seemed in a better mood than he has been for days.

I really,
really
hate to say it … but I think the truth is that high finance suits him better than movie stars.

Dad is still out, which I’m a bit relieved about, because he’d only want to join in the intervention and start telling Elinor she’d be a nice-looking girl if she’d get a bit of meat on her bones. And I haven’t heard from Suze since I saw her this morning, except for one text asking me to pick up the children from their activity clubs. I know she came back again to the house earlier, because Mitchell told me. Apparently she was still with Alicia and still looking for Tarquin. She went around the house yelling, ‘Tarkie! Tarquin, where are you?’ and then she drove off again. That’s all he had to say about Suze. He then proceeded to give me a full report on all the security breaches he had identified that day (two, both consisting of the little boy next door throwing his Frisbee into our garden).

I think Mitchell will be glad to leave. He was so bored today, he mended our barbecue, which he showed me proudly. I didn’t even know it was broken, to be honest. In fact, I must tell Luke.

‘By the way, Mitchell mended the barbecue,’ I say, awkwardly breaking the silence.

‘I was going to do that,’ says Luke at once, his jaw tight. ‘You didn’t have to ask Mitchell.’

‘I didn’t ask Mitchell! I didn’t even know it was broken …’ I trail off, in slight despair. I’ve got to get him in a better mood before Elinor arrives.

‘Look, Luke …’ I bite my lip. ‘Are we OK?’

There’s a pause, then Luke raises his shoulders in a shrug. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean this!’ I say in frustration. ‘Not looking at each other! Being all prickly!’

‘Are you surprised?’ says Luke heatedly. ‘I’ve spent the day managing fall-out from Sage and Lois’s stunt. A job which might have been easier if I’d known all along that it was a fake.’

‘Shhh!’ I say, glancing at the open door. ‘Jeff might hear!’

‘Right at this moment, I couldn’t care less who hears,’ says Luke curtly.

He looks totally fed up, and I know a lot of it is my fault.

‘Luke, I feel really bad for you,’ I say, reaching a hand out to his. ‘And I’m so sorry. I should have told you about Sage and Lois when you asked. But please look at me.’

Luke takes another slug of beer and finally meets my eyes.

‘Becky, life is tricky enough without us having secrets from each other,’ he says. ‘We should be on the same side.’

‘I am on your side!’ I say fervently. ‘Of course I am. I just wasn’t thinking. I’ve been trying to be independent … trying to get my career going …’

‘I get that.’ He sighs. ‘And I don’t mean we can’t be our own people. If you have to spend time out here for your career, then that’s what you have to do and we’ll make it work.’ He gives me a strained smile. ‘I can’t pretend I look forward to life without you – but if it’s really your dream, I’m not going to stand in your way.’ He hesitates, spinning the beer bottle round in his fingers, then plants it firmly on the table. ‘But we have to be honest with each other. We
have
to, Becky. Honesty is the foundation of everything.’

‘I know,’ I gulp. ‘I know it is.’

Oh God, should I quickly tell him about Elinor coming here tonight? Explain everything? Give him my reasons, tell the whole story, try to make him understand …

But it’s too late. As I’m drawing breath, the doorbell rings shrilly and I feel a clutch of nerves at my stomach. She’s here. Help. She’s here.

‘I’ll go,’ I say breathlessly, and make for the door before Luke can move. ‘Jeff, I’ll go!’ I call as I hear his heavy tread coming from the TV room. ‘I know who it is!’

I gave Elinor the code for the gate earlier and told Mitchell to put Echo away for the night.

My heart is hammering as I swing open the heavy front door. And there she is. My mother-in-law. The first thing I see is the nervous look in her eye. The second thing I see is the dress. She’s in a dress. A wrap dress. Elinor Sherman is wearing a
wrap dress
?