Kitty and Orlando were sledging in the garden when they returned later that morning. Miles of swirling, parallel tracks, punctuated by heavy splodges where they had fallen off, marked the once-pristine snow, and the two of them were weak with laughter and over-oxygenation from the immaculate air.
Rob and Laura stopped on their way from the car – skis over their shoulders – to shake their heads and chuckle as they watched the two of them hurtling down the garden, shrieking like toddlers on roller skates.
‘Having fun?’ Rob called out as they trudged back up to the top of the lawn, nattering away to each other, sledges bumping behind them.
They looked up the drive. ‘You’re back!’ Kitty beamed. ‘Have fun?’
‘We scarred those slopes!’ Rob quipped, prompting Laura to groan.
‘I officially object to you talking like a dude,’ she riposted as Orlando and Kitty arrived, panting, in front of them. ‘And, Orlando, you are mine! Sam’s not here to save you now. You can’t get away from me this time.’
‘I would never try to,’ Orlando flirted, winking a dreamily long-lashed eye.
‘My room? Half an hour?’
‘Aaaahhh, my favourite words,’ he joked, placing one hand across his heart. Then he pulled a sad face. ‘But I must have a massage. I cannot have all this lactic acid staying in my muscles.’
‘All this what?’
Orlando’s eyes widened as an idea came to him. ‘Let us have massages together. We can talk on our tummies!’
‘O . . . kay,’ Laura said slowly. ‘So long as the towels stay on.’
‘Baby! We shall be Adam and Eve before the apple. Innocence and beauty and joy.’
‘Towels on, Orlando,’ Laura said firmly, following him into the chalet.
Orlando turned and squeezed her hard around the shoulders so that her feet almost left the ground. ‘You English roses!’ he cried. ‘Such puritans! What you need is a little Latin passion in your life.’
‘Thanks, but I’m perfectly happy with my life.’
‘Hmm, she said the same thing to me too,’ she heard Rob say with devilment in Orlando’s ear as he passed through the porch. ‘But I’m not buying it either.’
Twenty minutes later, they were as naked as babies and Laura had never felt safer with her clothes off. Gemma and Sasha had moved the two tables into one room and were synchronizing their movements, poor Sasha having to work double-time to cover Orlando’s considerable muscle-mass.
‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ Orlando mumbled. ‘Is making me sleepy.’
‘Wake up, Orlando!’ Laura barked at him. ‘I’ve waited all weekend for this.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he moaned, forcing open his eyes and staring at her with hugely dilated pupils.
‘You promised you would think of hateful things that would make me like Cat. And also some more stories.’
‘You like her anyway. She won you over without my treachery. But I do have a story for you.’ He grinned lazily. ‘You will love it.’
‘I’m listening,’ she said, flattening her hands together under her cheek.
‘We had gone to Milan together for a few days.’
‘To see Alex?’
Orlando shook his head. ‘No, no. We were in the design stage of the Cube and Cat wanted to go to this trade show. She had read about the coloured glass and someone was exhibiting there . . . You’ve seen it yourself.’
Laura blinked yes.
‘Anyway, I had heard about a club, very famous for its beautiful dancers. Some friends had been, and . . . I mean, I was excited about the glass, of course, ’ he added guiltily.
‘Did you go to the club?’
His eyes twinkled. ‘I just assumed Cat would go to bed early when I told her.’
‘Assumed?’
‘She insisted on going with me.’ He nodded sombrely.
‘What’s wrong with that? Women go to gay clubs all the time.’
‘Not this one, they don’t. Strictly no women, not even the lesbians.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you know what she said?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘She told me to man her up.’
There was a brief pause.
‘You mean . . . ?’
Orlando nodded. ‘Well, you don’t argue with Cat, especially when she has that look in her eye, so we strapped her chest with some bandages and bought her a suit.’
Laura gasped. ‘But what about her hair? Her face? There’s no way she’d get away with it. How could she possibly be mistaken for a man?’
‘Her hair was shorter back then, so we slicked it back. And she is good with make-up, so she did . . . you know, something on her brows to make them heavy.’ He shrugged.
‘You’re not going to tell me she actually got away with it?’
‘She did!’
‘But she can’t have looked like a man!’
‘No. You’re right, she didn’t. She didn’t look like a man, no. But she was the most perfect, beguiling, effete boy. They went wild for her, I tell you. No one could take their eyes off her. And we danced, danced all night.’ He lowered his chin, looking up at her conspiratorially. ‘I think maybe, at the end, some people knew. She took off her jacket, and her arms and shoulders – you know, they are women’s, so slight. You cannot fake that. But no one cared by then.’
‘What did Rob say?’
‘I don’t think she told him. It was our secret,’ he whispered.
‘Cat Blake dressed as a man in a gay club in Milan,’ Laura murmured. ‘Well, that certainly wasn’t what I was expecting.’
Orlando’s eyes gleamed. ‘She is wild. Do not underestimate her. There is so much more to Cat Blake than most people know.’ He winked.
Laura thought for a moment as Gemma worked on a knot by her left shoulder blade. ‘It’s funny you mention this wild side to Cat. Sam talked about it too, whereas Kitty and Rob seem to hold a more romantic view of her. She seems almost to be a woman of two halves.’
‘We all have our dark sides, our secrets.’ He looked at her intently. ‘You too.’
Laura kept quiet. It was the light side she didn’t have.
‘It is strange this job of yours, no? You are more like an undercover reporter than a jeweller.’
Laura felt hurt. ‘I’m not interested in digging up dirt, Orlando, and I’m not making a judgement on anything people are telling me. Cat’s life is what it is. Pretty damn amazing from where I’m lying, admittedly, but it’s not like I think she’s perfect either. Who is? And Rob feels the same. He loves Cat in her entirety: the good, the bad, the not-remotely-ugly.’
Orlando grinned.
‘He doesn’t need you to be kind or protective about his wife and he doesn’t need her to be perfect.’ She continued, ‘All he wants is for this necklace to be honest and reflect her life. Nothing more, nothing less.’
Orlando stared at her for a long moment, one eye closed as he lay his head on its side.
‘How did you start doing this, Laura? No one else makes jewellery like this. I have a friend – very beautiful, very rich. She wears a diamond cross because she thinks it is pretty, but she’s Jewish. Half the women in my club are cheating on their husbands, but they all still wear their wedding rings. Whereas you are making jewellery that really means something to the person wearing it.’
‘I suppose because I believe that it’s memories that are the gift.’ She propped herself up on her elbows, her cheek resting in her hand. ‘It feels worthwhile, somehow, to cast devotion and adoration and friendship and everlasting love into silver and gold and platinum, because it means those memories and stories can be remembered for always and passed down like the treasures they are. Memories have to be remembered, Orlando. Above all else, they are what ultimately define us.’
A beat passed between them and Laura felt suddenly embarrassed to have climbed on to her soapbox. Had she said too much? Revealed her scars? But she needn’t have worried. Orlando looked back at her, visibly moved by her passion. ‘Well, that and size-twenty-seven jeans,’ he said with the utmost, endearing, seriousness.