Tally shook her head. 'Not unless I can come up with some brilliant plan for it to make money. But as I can't even get grants to repair the place, I very much doubt I'll get them to start building restaurants and things. And quite frankly, Mrs Ormondroyd's cooking is hardly a draw.'
'You could always marry someone rich,' Jane suggested. 'Then they could buy the place off Julia.'
'Fat chance,' said Tally miserably. 'Who's going to want to marry
me?
She raised her thin face hopelessly to Jane. 'It's not as if I'm pretty. Or rich. I'm going to die a spinster in a council house at this rate.'
'Hang on, hang on,' said Jane, seeing Tally wobbling at the top of the Cresta Run of self-pity. 'What about all that stuff about Lord Right? What about finding the perfect man?'
'Forget it,' said Tally, flashing her a hurt, how-could-you-mention-that-now glance. 'At the moment, I'm trying to hang on to the perfect home. Not that anyone thinks it's perfect except m-m-m-me.' She started to snivel again.
'Now look,' said Jane briskly. She was, she knew, at her best when she was trying to help other people out of trouble. Unable to solve any of her own work or Nick problems, she nonetheless felt completely confident she could sort Tally out somehow. The most appalling messes always had ingeniously simple solutions. Didn't they?
40
'There's got to be a way out of this,' she said decisively, sitting up straight and giving her slumped friend a challenging look. 'We need to get you a knight in shining armour. Sir Lancelot. Or Sir Earnalot, more like.' She grinned. Tally remained hunched and hopeless.
'He doesn't even have to have shining armour,' Jane added. 'You've got plenty of that standing around the Great Hall.'
'Well, it's not very shiny,' sniffed Tally, 'but Mrs Ormondroyd does her best. You know what she's like.'
'Half cleaner, half demolition squad,' grinned Jane. 'Well, a knight on a white charger then. Or, even better, a gold chargecard. A multi-Mullionaire.'
'But where am I going to meet someone like that?' asked Tally dismally.
Jane had to admit it was a good question. 'Let's have another glass and think about it,' she said.
After an hour more of lamenting the situation at Mullions, Tally suddenly decided she couldn't bear to be away from it another second. 'After all,' she said mournfully as Jane poured her into the train at Paddington, 'I might not be living there much longer.'
'We'll think of something,' said Jane, clunking the train door shut like a capable nanny. Tally was the only person who could make her feel in control. The only person more hopeless than she was.
Jane returned to the flat. As she opened the front door, she saw Tom and a fair-haired girl going slowly upstairs. His hand was spread tenderly across her back and he was talking to her. They seemed to be much too absorbed in each other to notice Jane crossing the hall beneath them. Anaesthetised by alcohol, Jane blinked, pursed her lips and nodded slowly and exaggeratedly to herself. Of
course
41
she was not disappointed. She had only had one conversation with Tom, and that had been in far from ideal circumstances. And of
course
Tom had girlfriends. When someone looked like that, it was only to be expected. Good luck to him, in fact, she thought, stabbing furiously at the Chubb with the key and a trembling hand.
Inside, Jane collapsed on the sofa with a cup of camomile tea which Nick always said looked like pee but which she hoped might do some overnight super-cleansing of her system and save her from the hangover she undoubtedly deserved. With an effort, she forced herself to think about Nick and what he was doing in Brussels. He had left this morning so early she had not even said goodbye to him.
She gazed vaguely at the bookshelves opposite the sofa and smiled fondly at the fat spines of Nick's vast collection of political biographies. The sudden need to find a man for Tally had helped put Nick into perspective, albeit the perspective given by several large glasses of dubious house white. There was no doubt that, at his worst, Nick was rude, unsupportive, mean and selfish. But she wouldn't be without him, Jane assured herself. She loved him. She lived with him. Occasionally they even had sex.
Poor old Tally, was Jane's last waking thought before passing out on the sofa. The only man who made the earth move as far as she was concerned was Mr Peters with his shovel.
'It's fantastic,' trilled Josh as Jane entered the
Gorgeous
offices one morning a week later. 'Blanket coverage,' he yelped, gesturing at the newspapers which lay scattered about the desktops. The new issue of
Gorgeous
had obviously hit the publicity jackpot.
42
'They've all picked up on her column.'
Jane grabbed a pile of papers. It was true. Only the
Morning Star,
it appeared, had resisted the temptation to carry a picture of Champagne D'Vyne on its front page.
'Eat your heart out, Tara,' crowed Josh. 'The party's over.'
Jane gazed in fascination at a vast picture of the multiple-Gulfstream owning Hon. Rollo Harbottle in the
Sun.
To say he was far from handsome was an understatement. Rollo looked as if his features had been thrown on from a distance by a group of near-sighted darts players. Teeth like tombstones and a receding hairline hardly improved matters; it was a face, in short, that only a bank manager could love. Most gruesome of all, it was gazing with lascivious appreciation at Champagne's barely-there knickers, clearly almost not visible beneath the near-transparent material of her dress. Talk about heir and a G-string, thought Jane. According to the caption, the Hon. Rollo Harbottle was poised to inherit a vitreous enamel fortune.
'He looks horribly pleased with himself,' observed Valentine. 'Flushed with success, in fact. But he
has
done quite well, I suppose. Considering he looks like something you'd find on a fishmonger's slab.' He gazed at the photograph in awe. 'I've never seen an overbite like it,' he said, shaking his head. 'They should preserve it for dental science after he's dead.'
'Well, she's obviously not with him because of his looks,' said Jane.
'Yes, the vitreous enamel fortune probably has something to do with it,' Valentine agreed. 'What you might call a chain reaction. He probably bowled her over.' 'And we
mustn't forget his
title,'
grinned Jane.
43
'Champagne's obviously a sucker for the class cistern. I wonder whether he's taken her to the family seat yet.'
Josh, ignoring them, was flicking busily through the centre sections of the newspapers. 'Look at all these inside spreads,' he crowed.
It was true. The
Daily Mail
had run a line-up of every man Champagne had ever been out with and had calculated their net worth in a facetious paragraph beneath. The Hon. Rollo Harbotde, Jane noted, was the richest. Second was Giles Trumpington-Kwyck-Save, an equally ill-favoured supermarket heir Champagne had apparently dumped a couple of weeks before.
'That's market forces for you,' observed Valentine. 'Wonder how long it'll be before Harbottle's been passed on to the next gold-digging party girl. I'd give him a week.'
'Oh, I don't know. After all, do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rollo?' snorted Jane.
Even some of the quality broadsheets had made features of the story. The
Daily Telegraph
had lined up a collection of the most eligible bachelors in Britain for Champagne's consideration and headlined the piece 'Sparkling Possibilities'. The
Guardian,
meanwhile, had run a pious piece by some former millionaire's wife headlined 'Why I Prefer Poor Men'. Josh fell about laughing when he saw it.
All morning the phones rang with requests about
Gorgeouss
new star columnist. 'Richard and Judy want her,' reported Valentine, putting the phone down after one conversation.
'So does Chris Evans,' smirked Josh. 'But I've told him TFI's got a long way to go to beat the Big Breakfast offer.'
'I can't quite believe what I've just heard, but I think that was the
Today
programme,' said Jane, putting down
44
her receiver in horror. Surely people weren't taking Champagne seriously? 'It's a nightmare,' she moaned to Valentine. 'That column's going to run and run now. What have I got myself into? All these papers calling her the It Girl. Which makes me the Shit Girl, I suppose. The nearest I get to a trust fund is Sainsbury's loyalty points.'
'Keep your chins up,' said Josh, overhearing as usual and giving Jane the broadest of grins. 'You'll grow to love her in the end. You'll be twin souls soon. Sisters under the skin.'
But why, thought Jane miserably, do I have so much more skin than she does?
Tracking Champagne down for the second Champagne Moments column proved even more exasperating than the first. Her mobile was switched off and her home answer-phone was full. Simon at Tuff PR was just full of himself
'Look, Champagne's very busy,' he barked. 'She worked very hard promoting a new club last night. She's at home. I don't think she's even up yet.'
Jane saw red. 'I'm going round there,' she announced. Phoning was obviously useless. It might be good to talk, but only if the other person picked up the receiver. 'What's the address?'
Trust Champagne to live in one of the most exclusive squares in London, Jane grumbled to herself as, half an hour later, she piloted her battered red 2CV into a row of porticoed palaces, their white stucco gleaming in the afternoon sun. The vehicles parked outside resembled an al fresco luxury car showroom. A futuristic, white open-top sports model lounged decadently alongside a vermilion Corniche more brilliantly scarlet than Vivien Leigh with a double first. My love is like a red, red Rolls, thought Jane
45
enviously, conscious of the dent in the side of her own door and the flotsam and jetsam of rubbish on the floor.
Appropriately enough for one of her probable bra size, Champagne lived at number 38. Standing like a shrunken Alice in Wonderland before the colossally oversized black-painted door, Jane dithered between bell pushes marked 'Visitors' and 'Tradesmen'. Which, she wondered, was she? Trade, certainly. Or perhaps both. She pushed first one and then the other, but there was no reply from either. Eventually, she pushed the huge door itself with her fingertips. Unexpectedly, it swung open.
Jane entered a vast, white-painted hall where a curving wrought-iron staircase mamboed its way up to a huge Edwardian skylight. A white door stood slightly ajar to the right. All was silent. Even the traffic outside was stilled, lost in the high-ceilinged space, the all-absorbing quiet of wealth. It was, Jane thought jealously, a far cry from Clapham, where Nick's windows practically cracked if Tom dropped a peanut upstairs. She did not, however, want to think about Tom just now. Especially, she did not want to dwell on the niggling feeling of betrayal after seeing him with the blonde girl.
Without warning, the quiet erupted into ear-splitting noise. It reverberated off the floors, resounded off the pillars, flashed back sharply from the huge chandelier that hung in the centre of the ceiling. It turned out to be a small, grey poodle with spiteful little black eyes, which had shot out of the door on the right and was now engaged in skidding round Jane in circles on the marble. It was a ghastly creature. Its high-pitched, hysterical bark was, Jane thought, the most irritating sound she had ever heard.
'Gucci, what the fuck's the matter?' Jane instantly
46
revised her opinion. The second most irritating sound she had ever heard.
'Champagne?' called Jane.
'Who's that?' bawled Champagne.
'It's Jane. From
Gorgeous.
I'm here about the column.' Silence followed. Jane pushed the glossy white door further open.
'Hang on,' yelled Champagne. 'I'm coming.' From the giggles that followed, Jane deduced Champagne was not alone. Nor was her last remark necessarily addressed to Jane. Did she have a man in there?
Jane picked her way between the piles of clothes, shoes and shopping bags that formed islands in the sea of cream carpet on the sitting room floor. The room was so enormous that even the huge, black Steinway grand filled little more than a corner. From the piles of dresses slung over the piano stool, Jane deduced its ivories had seen little tinkling of late and that its main function was to support the collection of silver-framed photographs which, in the best Belgravia tradition, crowded its gleaming surface.
Champagne had still not appeared. Jane crossed the room towards the photographs, waves of pale carpet ebbing about her feet as she moved. Although most of the pictures featured Champagne holding gum-baring contests with a string of celebrities, there were a few more personal ones as well. Jane peered closely at a large picture of two children: a blonde girl and a boy in front of a well-kept country house. There was no doubt that the girl was Champagne - the knowing smirk and the self-conscious pose were all there even then. As was the rest of it, Jane saw jealously. At the time she herself had been a pudgy-kneed child with a pot belly, Champagne already had a neady-cropped mane of white-blonde hair (it must be
47
natural after all) and the long, slender limbs of a thoroughbred. But, Jane comforted herself, if Champagne had the legs of a racehorse, she had the brain of one too. And her boyfriend, Rollo Harbottle, had the teeth of one.