I’m not lonely!’ he objected. ‘I’m just too fascinating and busy and …’
‘Old?’
‘Yeah, old. You could always lower your standards.’
Ricki snorted. ‘I will if you will.’
‘Actually,’ he considered, ‘I’d rather be alone.’
‘Me too.’
Rose came back with her order and, handing her a fiver, Ricki stood up. ‘Well, I’d better get my skates on; I’ve got a new client today.’ She kissed Rose on the cheek. ‘Give me a ring if you need a hand with Rory this week, OK?’
‘OK. Thanks.’
‘And you,’ Ricki turned to Sam, ‘take care of yourself. Don’t get too obsessed about work. Take it easy.’
‘I’ll take it easy when I’ve retired early to my holiday home in Tuscany.’
‘Yeah, well, ciao, baby!’
Sam picked up the catalogue again.
Rose replaced the ketchup dispensers.
The breakfast rush was over.
Straightening a few chairs, Rose propped open the door. Fresh air rushed in. She closed her eyes; it felt cool and refreshing on her face.
Her luck was turning; she could feel it. Not only had the man she’d had a crush on for two weeks finally noticed her but she also had a job interview; the first real interview of her life. And wasn’t just any job; it was prestigious – for the position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager of a grand house in Belgravia.
Number 45 Chester Square.
Belgravia.
Even the name had poetry!
Last Saturday afternoon, she’d taken Rory there on the bus, just to make certain she knew where she was going. They’d stopped in front of number 45, with its tiers of neat window boxes and round bay trees bordering the front door. The brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head gleamed against the lustrous black paint. The windows sparkled in the sun. Everything was even, balanced; pleasing to the eye.
Nothing bad could ever happen in a house as beautiful as this. A longing filled Rose’s chest. She wanted to have her own front-door key. She’d step inside and find a world marked by ease and elegance, a world completely removed from the one she inhabited now.
Perched behind the till, Rose took out a copy of Hello! magazine, losing herself in the glossy pages of celebrity photos.
The café was peaceful; quiet.
Then Sam’s phone rang.
‘Yes? Yes, that’s right. A drip? What kind of drip? Oh. A gush, eh? Yeah, well,’ he checked his watch, ‘I could come by now but I may not be able to fix the whole thing today.’ He collected his things. ‘What’s the address?’
A pack of off-duty dustmen piled through the door. Sam pushed past them, waving to Rose as he went.
Rose nodded back.
In a few short days, life was bound to become very interesting indeed. But until then, there were tables to serve.
Olivia Elizabeth Annabelle Bourgalt du Coudray sat in the gold-and-blue breakfast room of number 45 Chester Square, twisting the enormous diamond eternity ring round on her finger, waiting for her husband’s wrath to begin.
She’d made the mistake of getting up in the night, waking her husband. So he’d spent the entire night tossing round as violently as he could, whipping the sheets on and then kicking them off again, pulling at the pillow and sighing in frustration. And now, sick with nerves, Olivia sat holding her cup of coffee, knowing that as soon as he came down he’d lecture her and accuse her of keeping him up.
Her husband, Arnaud, liked to get angry. Along with Cuban cigars, and being recognized in public, it was one of his favourite things. There was nothing like a good rant to start the day off; his eyes lit up and his skin glowed. It didn’t matter that he owned half of the world’s tennis-ball factories or that his family wealth was such that he was regarded as a political figure in France (his views were petitioned on everything from the future of the European Union to cheese production). Even billionaires could have their peace destroyed by an insomniac wife.
As one of six daughters of the famous Boston Van der Lydens, Olivia had spent her youth gliding between New York, the Hamptons and the French Riviera, lingering in Boston only so long as it took to scrape together a degree in Art History. She’d been privileged, emulated; photographed regularly for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. When Arnaud began his rigorous courtship of her, the American press greeted it as a union between two shining stars in the international social firmament. But here in England she was virtually invisible. And in Paris with Arnaud’s family, she felt positively gauche. It didn’t help that Arnaud’s mother, the fearsome Comtesse Honorée Bourgalt du Coudray, followed her around her own wedding reception at the Paris Opéra correcting her French and apologizing for the state of her new daughter-in-law’s hair.
Olivia glanced up, catching sight of her reflection in the oval mirror that hung across the room. She possessed the wholesome American glamour that inspires Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein; athletic good cheer coupled with classical features. Her blonde hair was thick and even, her blue eyes large, her cheekbones high, but, as she’d heard her mother-in-law declare loudly one evening to Arnaud, ‘She’s unremarkable, bland, no cachet.’ Then she’d uttered the damning verdict that had obsessed Olivia ever since. ‘Why choose fromage frais when you could easily afford camembert?’
Even now, the spectre of her mother-in-law haunted her; a constant front-row critic in her head.
Bland. Unremarkable. The Comtesse had only articulated what she had suspected all along: she was a fraud; a pale imitation of a person with no real talents or original thoughts, no tangible purpose in life. Her beauty and breeding had been sufficient for so many years. And now that she was forty, even those were fading.
Olivia was Arnaud’s second wife. By the time she married him, he already had two grown-up children, a huge social network spanning several continents, a daunting diary of engagements, houses all over the world, a variety of businesses, and armies of staff. He also had a reputation as an incurable playboy. At the time, she’d been foolish enough to think she could influence him. But after ten years of marriage, the opposite had happened.
And she’d failed in the one role nature might have provided.
No wonder Arnaud had grown so indifferent.
She sipped her coffee.
It was cold.
He had always been difficult, dictatorial. But before, she’d occupied a privileged position in his psyche; she was the prized object, perfect, unassailable.
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