ALEX WAS DELIGHTED THAT RACHEL HAD ASKED Susie about appearing in his documentary, but she was furious with herself, and deep down she felt cross with him for putting her in that position. It had been crass to mention it, and when days went by without any word, it looked as though it might have cost her a much-needed client.
Rachel began spending her mornings touring charity shops and antique markets in the wealthier districts of the south-east and only opening Forgotten Dreams at lunchtime. Each week she found a few saleable items, but trade remained slow and her fears mounted that she wouldn’t be able to pay the rent at the end of October. Her only hope now was getting approval for the new credit card and withdrawing cash from it.
She still dreamed about Diana some nights and woke with a mixture of anxiety and guilt that coloured her mood for the day. She often thought about the Princess’s sons and wondered how they were coping with the unthinkable loss. One was fifteen, the other twelve, she had read: old enough to comprehend the tragedy but too young to have any kind of adult perspective on it. Alex had been twelve when his mother died suddenly of a stroke. He had found her lying on the floor when he got home from school and had rung for an ambulance, but they couldn’t save her.
When Rachel asked him about that period, early in their relationship, he told her he had a week off school before the funeral but was glad to return straight afterwards because it was ghastly being stuck in the house with his grieving dad. There were reminders everywhere of the loss: the empty chair at breakfast, her cosmetics in the bathroom, her coat in the hall. His father carried on, not dealing with practicalities for months on end.
At school, the teachers were unusually kind and Alex took advantage. He didn’t get pulled up for skipping lessons, so he took to hiding in the bike shed having a fag with some older boys instead of doing double maths. When he tipped his lunch over a lad who was annoying him, they said it must have been an accident and there was no punishment.
‘The sudden lack of boundaries was scary,’ he said. ‘As if I could do anything and no one would stop me. I felt as if I was floating and rootless, that nothing mattered any more. I wasn’t suicidal but I remember thinking it wouldn’t matter if I died too. Death can come to any of us at any time, so why worry about it? Does that make sense?’
She hugged him, her heart aching for the lost little boy he had been. ‘What got you through it?’
He gazed out of the window before answering. ‘I just shut Mum out of my head. It sounds cruel, but it was my way of coping. Then Wendy came on the scene, doing all the things that mums do – laundry, giving me lunch money – and I thought, “That’s all right then.” It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I allowed myself to think about my real mum again. By then the memories were distant and felt more manageable.’
Rachel wondered if Diana’s boys were going through something similar. And she wondered if Alex’s current volatility was because the parallels reminded him of that period in his own life. If so, he probably wasn’t even aware of it.
She suddenly realised she had never seen a photo of Alex’s mum, had no idea what she looked like. A thought popped into her head. She was driving out to Arundel one evening later that week to discuss the cake with Wendy. She could ask to see a photo of his mum then. Maybe if there was a particularly nice one she could blow it up and frame it as a wedding present from her.
‘We don’t have any prints,’ Wendy told her as they sat at the kitchen table over mugs of Nescafé. A few undissolved granules floated on top of Rachel’s coffee. ‘Alex’s dad had a camera that produced slides, so we’ve got a boxful of them and a little slide viewer. You’re welcome to borrow them if you like. I think it’s a lovely idea to give him a framed photo.’
She fetched the cardboard box, along with an old-fashioned grey plastic viewer. You slotted a slide in at the side and viewed it on the screen. There was little Alex posing in navy swimming trunks with a medal he had clearly just won, his ribs sticking out and his grin displaying a missing front tooth; by a riverbank proudly holding a tiny fish while wearing some wide flared jeans and a dodgy patterned shirt; hanging on grimly as he rode a donkey at an English seaside resort. The colours had an old-fashioned magenta tint.
‘Isn’t he cute?’ Rachel laughed. ‘He looks so happy. And cheeky.’
None of the slides had captions and lots showed people and scenes that neither she nor Wendy could identify.
‘That’s his mum,’ Wendy said when they came to a shot of a blonde woman in a high-waisted 1960s bikini wearing huge Jackie Kennedy sunglasses. She was holding up her palm in a ‘Don’t photograph me’ gesture but laughing at the same time.
‘She looks very chic,’ Rachel commented.
‘Yes, I believe she was,’ Wendy agreed, obviously without any sense of insecurity about her own lack of interest in clothes. ‘Feel free to borrow all the slides and have a look through. Now, shall I show you my idea for the cake?’
She shyly produced a picture she had found in a bridal magazine of a 1930s-style wedding cake. It was in three tiers, with festoons of pearls made of white icing around the sides and a spray of real orchids on top.
‘I picked this one because I know the thirties is your favourite era, but if you don’t like it, we can look for another.’
Rachel was stunned. She leaned across, grabbed Wendy and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You genius! I am the fussiest person in the world, but this is perfect. It’s simple and classic. I love it.’
Wendy grinned, clearly delighted. ‘Oh good. I had an inkling you would.’
When he arrived home from Paris that Friday evening, Alex was whistling, his mood transformed. He produced a parcel wrapped in tissue paper from his case and kissed Rachel on the lips before handing it over. ‘I saw this and thought you might like it. If not, you can sell it in the shop.’
She opened the paper to find a forest-green velvet turban with a paste brooch of pale green and amber stones on the front.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she remarked, looking inside for a label. ‘Lanvin – wow!’ She rushed to the hall mirror to try it on, tucking her short hair underneath except for a few tufts at the forehead. ‘What a wonderful present. Thank you, darling.’ She modelled it for him, then threw her arms round him. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’
‘Glad you like it. You’ve given me a present too, as it turns out. Susie Hargreaves has agreed to talk and we’re going to film her next Tuesday. She suggested you might like to come. Said you could pick up more clothes.’
‘I was sure she would refuse.’ Rachel was delighted to hear that Susie was still prepared to do business with her, but alarmed by the prospect of the interview.
Alex flicked on the television, as he invariably did when he got home these days. ‘I used the old charm . . . and money seemed to be a factor. She drove a hard bargain.’
‘But she’s so protective of Diana!’
Alex turned to her, frowning. ‘And you think I’m going to trash her. Is that it?’
‘No, of course not . . .’
He was defensive now. ‘If I were Diana’s friend and I suspected she’d been murdered, I’d be happy to help anyone investigating her death. The French police seem to have decided on day one that it was a drink-drive accident and are not exploring any other possibilities.’
Rachel went to the fridge to get him a beer, flipping the top off the bottle, then poured herself a vodka and tonic in her edelweiss glass. When she returned, she asked: ‘Does Susie think Diana was murdered?’
‘Thanks.’ Alex took a sip of the beer. ‘I haven’t asked. She thinks we’re going to talk about Diana’s charity work – they were on some committee together. I’ll warm her up gently and ask about the crash later.’
‘So basically you’ve tricked her into agreeing?’ Rachel was alarmed. She pulled the turban from her head and laid it on the table. There was a price tag on the back: 180 francs. Not bad if it was a Lanvin original, she noted; far too much for a replica.
‘She didn’t place any areas out of bounds. She knows what the media are interested in – and she needs the money.’
He turned up the sound as the news headlines were read out: the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were planning celebrations for their fiftieth wedding anniversary the following month. It seemed awfully soon after Diana’s death for the royal family to be celebrating anything. Rachel wondered if she and Alex would ever get to their fiftieth anniversary: if they did, she’d be eighty-eight and he’d be eighty-nine. What kind of old people would they be? Crotchety ones, if the current atmosphere was anything to go by.