‘Isn’t this splendid!’ Eleanor entered the room with her
usual flourish, guided to the table on the arm of a charmingly attentive maître d’.
Ed and the girls all jumped up and greeted their grandmother, wishing her happy birthday. Richard took over from the maître d’ and settled his mother-in-law carefully on the squashy banquette. The birthday present and card had already been placed on the table, and Eleanor clapped her hands at the sight of them.
‘How kind you all are!’ She made no move to open the slim parcel, which contained a very expensive cashmere print scarf from Liberty, just looked around at her family with what seemed to Annie – so used to her caustic humours – like real pleasure.
‘So, children. Tell me what you’ve all been up to.’ Her glance roamed the three, then settled questioningly on Lucy.
‘I’ve been accepted to do this volunteering in an orphanage in Tanzania in September, Grandma. Did Mum tell you?’ Lucy’s excitement shone from her face.
Eleanor raised her eyebrows disapprovingly. ‘Heavens! Is that wise? Your mother mentioned the possibility, but I hoped you’d grow out of the idea.’
Lucy laughed. ‘I’m twenty-two, Grandma. I think I’m a bit past growing out of things.’
‘Well, if you’re that old, you shouldn’t be gallivanting about in foreign parts. You should be marrying some nice chap and settling down on his country estate to breed.’ Eleanor cocked her head as they all laughed at her joke.
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ she added, but there was a mischievous gleam in her eye.
‘Well done, Eleanor! I keep telling her exactly the same thing, but she pays absolutely no attention to me,’ Richard agreed, to receive an approving pat on his hand.
‘Of course you do,’ Eleanor went on. ‘I can always rely on you, dear Richard, to be the one with common sense in this family.’
‘Toady,’ Annie mouthed, looking pointedly at her husband as her mother turned away. So far, so good, she thought. She had tried to sit next to Ed, hoping she could break the ongoing silence between them, but he had carefully sandwiched himself between the two girls and was saying very little.
‘Come on, Grandma, open your present,’ Marsha urged, laughing. She and her grandmother had always had a close bond. Marsha loved the old lady’s sharp wit. ‘I chose it myself.’
‘Well, now. Let’s see …’ Eleanor reached for the package and began slowly to untie the pink velvet ribbon and pull open the thick, floral paper. She’ll love it because Marsha’s chosen it, Annie thought. If I’d picked it out it would be the wrong colour, or the wrong pattern, or she already has one just like it. Eleanor would be polite and overtly grateful, but she would know she had failed.
‘It’s perfect!’ Eleanor quickly draped the soft blue wool over the shoulders of her immaculate navy Chanel suit and Annie breathed a sigh of relief.
They ordered, the chilled Puligny-Montrachet was poured, the conversation flowed. Annie began to relax.
‘It’s a shame Emma couldn’t be here.’ She leaned across the table to address her son.
‘Yeah. She had to see her father. He’s making one of his royal visits from New Zealand.’
‘Poor Emms,’ Annie commented, knowing how stressful the girl found time with her father. But Ed just nodded and turned to say something to Marsha.
The chef arrived with his silver-domed trolley containing a huge side of roast beef. Eleanor and Richard requested theirs rare, the others wanted medium, and the chef, in his high white toque, set to work carving thick, mouthwatering slices of brown-pink meat and laying them reverently onto the heated white plates stacked beside the joint.
Annie was passing a plate down the table to Ed, loaded with meat and puffy golden Yorkshire puddings, when her mobile rang. Nooo, she thought, glancing quickly over at her mother for a predictably disapproving reaction. But Eleanor was laughing at something Richard had said and hadn’t noticed. The display said private number, but it might be the oven man. She
had
to answer it. The thermostat on the huge industrial oven at the bakery was malfunctioning, burning everything Carol put near it. It had to be fixed today or they would be in danger of defaulting on orders, something Delancey Bakes had never,
ever
done – a celebration cake was completely pointless if it was late.
She mouthed an apology to the table and got up, quickly leaving the dining room as she answered the call.
‘Hello?’
‘Er, hello. Am I speaking to Annie Delancey?’ The voice had a plummy drawl, not in the least like the service engineer’s northern brogue.
‘Yes … who is this?’
‘Well, it’s Charles Carnegie, actually. You wrote. You have something of considerable importance to tell me?’ The man sounded amused, almost playful. Her heart seemed to somersault in her chest.
‘Charles? Charles Carnegie?’ She hardly managed the words. His voice sounded older, of course, but it was recognisably the same voice that had set her alight, a lifetime ago now.
‘’Tis I.’
‘Oh … thanks for getting back to me.’ She fell back on politeness while she got her breath. ‘Yes, yes, I do – have something of importance, I mean.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘God, it must be thirty years since we … er …’ the voice paused. ‘So, are you going to tell me then?’
‘Not on the phone, no. I can’t tell you on the phone, it’s too … I’d just rather see you face to face. Somewhere private.’
There was a short laugh. ‘Oh, I say, this is beginning to make me nervous. I hope it won’t be disagreeable.’ The playfulness had gone and been replaced by mild suspicion.
‘No, it’s not in the least bit disagreeable,’ Annie retorted, amazed that he seemed to have no inkling about what she wanted to tell him.
‘That’s a relief. Well, I’m off to Paris on Friday week, but normally I’m up in town Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This Tuesday any good?’
Annie thought quickly, glad that he was suggesting an early date. She could get it over with before Daniel arrived. ‘Yes … Tuesday’s fine.’
‘Do you want to come to the flat? I’m in Onslow Gardens. Shall we say six-ish? I’ll text you the address.’
They said goodbye and she hung up. She realised she was shaking. She knew she needed to go back into the dining room before the family came to find her, but she was incapable of facing them just yet. She hurried down the corridor to the Ladies’. He sounded exactly as she’d imagined he would, she thought: smug, facetious, arrogant. There was no way the man on the other end of the phone would be interested in being a father to Daniel, and this knowledge came as some relief to her. She didn’t want him in her own life, not even peripherally.
‘Who was that, Mum? You’ve been ages.’ Ed looked at her suspiciously when she returned, and she knew he thought it had been Daniel on the phone. ‘We got them to take your food away to keep warm.’
‘Thanks … Sorry, everyone.’ She glanced at Richard, knowing she looked pale, begging him silently not to draw attention to it. ‘It was the oven man. He says it’s the thermostat,
which we all knew already, but he says it’s not going to be easy to fix because the oven’s so old.’ She lied fluently, waiting for some sharp comment from her mother.
But Eleanor shook her head sympathetically. ‘The usual story. They can’t mend anything these days. Built-in obsolescence, they call it. I call it rank incompetence.’ She wagged a finger at her. ‘Be careful, darling. Don’t let him bully you into buying a new one you don’t need.’
She smiled gratefully at her mother. There’s an upside to having a selfish mother, she thought. Like I never really know what’s going on inside
her
head, she doesn’t know what’s going on inside mine either.
‘You’re right, Mother, he mentioned that. But, give him his due, he’s still trying to fix it.’ Annie felt suddenly anxious about the oven, and realised she was beginning to believe her own lie. But even so, she reached into her pocket to turn her mobile off. She certainly didn’t want the real oven man ringing right now.
‘Who’s having pudding?’ Richard spoke into the silence.
Annie’s head was spinning with the implications of the Tuesday meeting. Blast the man for existing, she thought crossly, as the car pulled out into Sloane Street after lunch.
‘I really enjoyed that,’ said Marsha from the back seat. ‘Grandma’s so witty.’
‘Yeah, she really makes me laugh. She loves pretending to be spiteful, but she doesn’t mean it,’ Lucy replied.
Annie and Richard exchanged a knowing glance.
‘I wish I’d seen her when she was running her finishing school,’ Lucy added. ‘She must have been awesome.’
‘Monstrous, more like. They were a spoilt bunch, but Grandma showed no mercy.’
‘Training a girl to get a husband … sounds so weird now,’ Marsha commented.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Richard said. ‘A little French, tennis here, art galleries and theatre there, how to dress properly …’ he glanced at Annie. ‘Even how to get into a car without exposing too much leg, you said. Sounds too good to be true. Nothing wrong with training a woman to be the perfect wife!’
The general hilarity that greeted his words was drowned out by the blaring siren from two speeding police cars careering round Hyde Park Corner.
‘Seriously though,’ Richard added, ‘Eleanor did an amazing job setting up that school, however ridiculous it seems now. It can’t have been easy – she’d never worked a day in her life. I know she can be difficult, but I take my hat off to her for that.’
Annie nodded. ‘I know. I sometimes forget how hard it must have been.’ She so often found herself firefighting with her mother, keeping just ahead of the niggling and the jibes, that she lost sight of the fact that Eleanor, left with overwhelming debts – mostly from gambling – racked up by her husband, had pulled them back from the brink of destitution. And had even made a tidy profit from the
ridiculous fees she got away with charging the twenty-five pupils she took on every year. That, and the sale of the huge house in Ovington Square, had provided her mother with a very comfortable old age.
‘Can you drop me at Green Park, Dad? I’ll take the Victoria line.’ Ed interrupted her thoughts.
‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to go from Camden?’ Richard asked.
‘The Victoria line’s off every weekend till the autumn,’ Marsha put in.
Ed groaned. ‘Bugger, I forgot. Are you sure it’s
every
weekend?’
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Marsha asked.
‘Yeah, sure I believe you. OK, I suppose it’ll have to be Camden.’
He’s in such a hurry to be shot of us, Annie thought sadly.
‘If you’re meeting Emms,’ she heard Marsha say, ‘she probably won’t be back till later, but you could come home with me and hang out, if you like.’
‘Can’t. I’ve got things to sort out at home.’
She heard the cagey tone in her son’s voice. Ed’s not just avoiding me, he’s avoiding his sister as well.
‘I wonder how Grandma will react to Daniel. Will she like him, do you think?’ she asked, directing her question to the back of the car. There was silence for a moment. Annie turned to look at her children.
‘He’s charming and clever. Grandma likes clever.’ Lucy smiled at her.
Annie waited for Ed or Marsha to volunteer something.
‘Mum …’ Marsha began. ‘What happens now? With Daniel?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s coming to stay till he goes to Edinburgh, but will he come back afterwards? I mean permanently?’
‘Of course not,’ Richard snapped.
Annie frowned at her husband. ‘No, he won’t be coming back, Mash.’
‘He might if he hasn’t got anywhere else to live, mightn’t he?’ Lucy asked.
She saw Richard’s what-did-I-tell-you look and wanted to smack him.
‘He’s just staying for a few weeks. He has no intention of living with us. Why would he want to?’ Annie tried to control her irritation.
More silence greeted her question.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind one way or another,’ said Marsha lightly. ‘I was just asking.’
Asking on her brother’s behalf, Annie thought.
‘He counts as family now, I suppose,’ said Lucy.
Ed finally spoke, his tone suddenly vehement. ‘He’s
not
family. Not in the way we all are.’ I mean, was that the last time we’ll have a Daniel-free family get-together, Mum? Is he always going to be around from now on?’
Annie didn’t reply for a second. Don’t antagonise him.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, Ed, if you want the truth. I’ve never been in this situation before, obviously. I’m just feeling my way … like the rest of you.’
She turned again and saw the concerned faces looking back at her. It reminded her of when they were young, lined up on the back seat on the way to school, to and fro to parties, swimming, the supermarket, on holiday in Scotland or Normandy.
‘Can we just let things take their course? I’m not going to foist someone on the family that nobody wants around.’
‘You’re not upset, are you, Mum?’ Lucy asked after a moment.
Annie said no, but she had to turn away, not wanting her children to see her incipient tears. They were tears as much of frustration as anything else.
‘I really don’t want this thing with Daniel to come between us,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I couldn’t bear that.’
‘Nor me.’ Lucy’s tone was stalwart. ‘Can I come to yours for a bit?’ Annie heard her ask her sister in a low voice.
‘So what was going on at lunch?’ Richard asked, as soon as they’d dropped the others off.
‘Charles Carnegie called. We’re meeting on Tuesday.’
‘That explains it. You looked positively ill.’
‘I didn’t want to mention his name in front of Mother.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll be glad to tell him though … get it over with finally.’
‘Where are you meeting?’
‘Where?’ She was puzzled by the question. ‘He suggested I come to his flat.’
Richard’s head shot round. ‘His
flat
? Why can’t you meet in a pub or a bar?’
‘What does it matter where we meet?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Richard?’ She could hardly bear another round of bickering.
‘Just seems a trifle odd, meeting in his flat when he hardly knows you.’
‘I don’t see what’s odd about it.’ She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice as she added, ‘Anyway, we’ve made the plan now.’