When I get back from Jenny’s, Granny is waiting for me in the kitchen with Mum. Isabelle and Harry have gone off to some party to be congratulated by yet more friends.
Granny is wearing a coral pink suit she had made in India over Christmas and two strings of pearls. She’s trying out a new hairstyle that makes her look like a 99 vanilla ice cream, without the flake. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are bright and her gin and tonic is at serious risk of spilling over as she rattles her glass to emphasise her Total Joy at the current situation.
‘Isn’t it FABULOUS? Nonie, you’re a very lucky girl. They are the most wonderful family. Isabelle’s father, Lucius, is the Earl of Arden. Absolutely charming. And her mother’s brother made a fortune in plastic packaging in the 1980s and is simply rolling in the stuff. Lots of holidays in the Hamptons and I believe he has a rather nice yacht.’
Even my mother is shocked at this. Granny is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.
‘Well, darling, these things are important. If Nonie wants to attract the right sort of person one day, she needs to show herself off. And there’s nothing like diving from a relative’s yacht to demonstrate good legs.’
I look down. My legs are currently encased in tartan tights and lace-up Doc Martens. I think they’re too short to be good anyway. But I can’t see myself diving off a relative’s yacht any time in the near future to attract some nerdy trust-fund kid, so I’m not too worried.
‘And of course there’s always the wedding itself,’ Granny goes on. ‘I know it’s a bit early for Nonie, but it will be full of prospects. You’ll be a bridesmaid, I assume?’
I shrug. But by now Mum and Granny are back onto their favourite subject. Locations, guest lists, favoured relatives, banned relatives, hats . . .
A shudder of horror suddenly flickers over Granny’s face.
‘She is religious, isn’t she? As far as weddings are concerned, I mean? I couldn’t bear a two-minute ceremony in some register office. Buffy Peaswood’s daughter did it in a concrete building in Swindon or something and held the reception on a bus. Buffy nearly died.’
Mum smiles. ‘I don’t know. We can ask her. Oh, sorry.’ Mum’s BlackBerry has started buzzing. She grabs it off the kitchen counter and pops outside to take the call. Granny immediately turns to me.
‘This is so important for your mother, darling. You will help her out with it, won’t you, when I’m not here? It’s her first proper wedding. We haven’t had one in the family since I married your grandpa. What with your Uncle Jack and . . . everything.’
My heart plummets. I nod. I’m suddenly feeling queasy. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for a while. Now seems as good a time as any.
‘Er, Granny. About Vicente. Mum was really in love with him, wasn’t she? Before she . . . had me.’
Granny gives me a sideways look. She pauses for a minute. Then she nods and looks nostalgic. ‘They were a wonderful couple. He’s so classically handsome. And my darling, the acres in Brazil. And he was so generous to your mother. Always. Even after . . . the complications. When I think that he just gave her this place for all of you to live in. But—’ she takes a sharp breath, tangy with regret, ‘—life goes on. It wasn’t to be.’
I nod again.
‘Tell Mum I’m . . . in my room. I’ve got an assignment I need to finish. She knows all about it.’
‘But darling, I’ve just got here!’
Granny looks appalled. She’s not used to being abandoned in the kitchen while we get on with our lives. But I’m not up to entertaining her right now. I’m not up to anything right now.
I race to my room and close the door behind me. Then I slide down it and try to think about King Lear. As opposed to other tragedies, closer to home.
It’s a simple story. Not very Shakespearean. Granny had two children and a practically religious desire to marry them off – ideally to people with yachts. However, Mum’s brother, Uncle Jack, found drugs when he should have been finding a fiancée. It all went horribly wrong and he ended up in a caravan in East Anglia, where he works as an occasional mechanic and tries to cope with the fact that various bits of his body stopped working in the 1990s after he’d injected and sniffed too much gunk into them. Mum sends money and Granny donates food parcels from Harrods on a regular basis, but we don’t really talk about him.
Mum, on the other hand, became a successful model in her teens and travelled the world. She met Vicente and had Harry after a whirlwind romance. They planned to get married and live on Vicente’s estate in Brazil, but something went wrong between them and while she was modelling in Paris, she met my dad and accidentally had me. She obviously couldn’t get back together again with Vicente after that. She couldn’t marry my dad either. Mum and my dad have always made it clear that they would have been hopeless if they’d got married. The only things they really have in common are a love of art, and Paris. They manage to argue spectacularly whenever they meet. But, as Granny says, life goes on.
In Mum’s case, life went on as a single mother with two children. She couldn’t keep modelling with both of us in tow, so she set up as an art dealer. She was too busy with the new business for serious dating. She has been ever since.
As I say, it’s a simple story and it shouldn’t make me sit here shaking like this. But when I think about Mum and how beautiful she was (and still is – although a saggier, wrinklier version now, of course), it seems such a waste that she never got that wedding and that happy ever after.
Granny’s right. I must be really supportive and excited about all the preparations. And I mustn’t mind at all that Harry will be leaving home and it will just be Mum and me, rattling around this big house that Vicente gave us. And maybe one day I can leap off a relative’s yacht and show off my ‘good legs’ to some appropriate fiancé-type and keep everyone happy. Then I can settle down with the appropriate fiancé-type in his overstuffed apartment somewhere suitable and read novels. Yaaay.