Rob was the one who retired early that night. He didn’t say a word on the journey back – only taking his eyes off the road to throw furious looks at Cat every time she absently stroked his leg – and he didn’t give her ‘the tour’ of the house this time, either. It was down to Cat to show her to her room – one of five ‘spares’ – before cracking open a bottle of champagne for them both, even though it was gone ten when they got in. By the time Laura fell into bed – and she did quite literally fall, the room was spinning so fast – it was well past two.
‘Morning,’ Cat said cheerily as Laura staggered into the kitchen the next morning in yesterday’s clothes. Cat was sitting at a long white granite breakfast bar swirled with chocolate, wearing a black skinny jumper and even skinnier poppy-red jeans. Her skin glowed, her hair shone – and Laura felt even more deathly. How did she do it? How could she look so sparkly on four hours’ sleep and several litres of champagne?
‘Here, try this,’ she smiled, taking in Laura’s wan pallor. ‘My secret weapon. It’ll give you some zing.’ She pushed a tall orangey-pink juice towards Laura. ‘It’s full of antioxidants and vitamins. Goodness in a glass. Here, sit down.’ She pulled out a stool.
Laura sat down and sipped it suspiciously, not convinced that imbibing anything within the next ten hours was a good idea, but it was delicious. A cook in a grey uniform came over to her. ‘What would you like me to prepare for you, madam?’
‘Oh, nothing for me, thanks,’ Laura said, shaking her head.
‘Laura, this is Anchee, our cook. Fix her a Benedict royale, please,’ Cat instructed, before looking back at Laura. ‘You’re going to need some carbs or you’ll pay for it later in the chopper.’
‘What time’s it coming?’
‘About ten-ish.’
‘Is it just us going?’
‘Rob’s coming too. He’s working in the study at the moment. There was no way the roads would be clear enough to get him into the office from here.’
Laura sipped some more of the power-juice and looked out through the arched windows at the beautiful garden. It was as if the snow itself had been topiaried, with conical trees and sharp hedges rendered in white.
‘When do you buy your Christmas tree?’ Laura asked, looking around curiously. There had been nothing festive in the cavernous hall or in any of the rooms she’d snuck a glance into as she’d passed. It seemed sad to think of the beautiful tree standing fully dressed and moulting quietly in the chalet in Verbier, its lights turned off and no one at home.
‘I prefer not to get the decorations out until Christmas Eve. What with the two events being so close, I’ve always delayed the onset of Christmas until after my birthday. That was how my parents tried to make it special for me. I can’t tell you the number of times I had a birthday party and people would turn up with my Christmas present instead.’
‘Oh no, I can imagine,’ Laura said, just as Rob came into the kitchen carrying an empty cup. ‘It must have been so disappointing. One of the things we always loved about having a May birthday was that it staggered the year into almost equal halves between the present bounties. Also, we got to have our birthdays in the garden.’
‘We?’ Rob asked, the word more like a stab than a query, as he rinsed out the cup, his back to her. ‘Is that the royal “we”?’
‘Don’t be a pig, Rob,’ Cat snapped protectively. Rob shot a cold look at the two of them as he walked straight back out again.
‘Please tell me your man’s as grumpy as mine in the morning,’ Cat muttered, her mood noticeably flatter.
The plea floored Laura as she thought of the daily ritual that had kicked off her days until this week: Jack waking her with tea and toast and a host of light kisses. His face came to her in a composite of separate parts – his surf-bum hair, patchy stubble, those clear blue eyes that opened on to a gentle soul – and she felt a flash of dizziness from the strain of keeping up the pretence. It felt like a feat of endurance not to have told anyone that she was drifting, anchorless, without him now. Answerable to no one. Belonging to no one.
Anchee set down in front of her a perfectly poached egg and smoked salmon covered in hollandaise sauce.
‘Oh my goodness, that looks amazing.’
‘Great. You tuck in. I’m just going to finish packing,’ Cat said, rubbing her shoulder. ‘Honestly, I’ve got three dresses I just can’t choose between, and knowing me, I’ll end up taking the lot . . .’
Laura tried not to moan with pleasure as she ate her breakfast alone, and she could feel her body beginning to rally with every bite. Switching her phone on for the first time in four days – and finding her message box predictably full of calls from Fee, which she deleted without listening to – she called one of her suppliers to place an order for twelve extra sheets of gold and three bags of links. Now that the interviews for Cat’s necklace were complete, her mind had begun to scroll over what she needed for the launch party next week. She had a good stock of ready-to-go charms to display, but they needed fixing to chains, and she’d had a couple of ideas too: she’d woken up the night before last with the brainwave of fixing some charms to a giant nappy pin for a bridal ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’ theme. It would attach nicely to the inside of the gown for the big day and could easily be transferred to a chain for posterity. And what about kilt pins? Each clan had not only its own tartan, but a crest and motto too. There was scope for translation on to charms there too . . .
The ideas flowed quickly as she ate. When her phone rang, she answered without hesitation.
‘Hello?’
‘. . . Laura?’ Fee’s voice came down the line. Except that it wasn’t Fee’s voice, just a pale imitation, tremulous and hollow, lacking the falsetto laughter or gullible wonder.
The fork dropped out of Laura’s hand and fell on to the plate with a clatter.
‘Laura, please, wait! I am sorry! I know what I did was wrong. Please . . .’ Fee gabbled desperately, knowing only too well that her friend was this very moment struggling to disconnect her. ‘I was trying to help.’
Laura gasped in outrage at Fee’s sanctimony. ‘Since when has betraying your best friend’s confidence ever been considered helpful?’ she hissed.
‘I was wrong to tell him – I know that now. It wasn’t my place,’ Fee said pleadingly.
‘Tch, you think?’ Laura asked sarcastically. ‘And how about sleeping with him? I suppose you’ve since figured out that that wasn’t your place either.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘Oh, I understand perfectly! Everything is very clear to me now. I made a huge mistake thinking you could be my family. I’m better off alone. I don’t need you. I don’t need any—’
Her finger found ‘disconnect’ and pressed it. The phone fell from her hand to the floor and she dropped her head in her arms, holding her breath, knowing that even just to exhale would be enough to open the floodgates. She held on . . .
‘Laura?’
She looked up with a start. Cat was holding out her phone, concern written all over her beautiful face.
‘Who was that?’
Laura met her eyes and Cat’s face fell as she saw the overwhelming expression of heartbreak reflected back at her. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she whispered, opening her arms out wide.
Laura walked into them and let the sobs come at last.
‘So we’ll meet you in there, then?’ Cat asked Rob, rifling in her bag on the pavement as Laura ducked into the taxi ahead of her and slid along the back seat.
Rob nodded. ‘I’ll change at the office. If you’ve got Laura to walk in with, there’s no point in me travelling all the way over to Kensington only to have to go back to Knightsbridge again.’
‘I promise we won’t be too naughty,’ she pouted.
Rob gave a knowing sigh. ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll believe it when I see the Top Shop label.’ He threw a quick glance over at Laura as he stepped into his car, but luckily her expression was impossible to read behind the sunglasses Cat had given her to hide her puffy eyes.
‘To South Molton Street, please, driver,’ Cat said as she got in and sat beside Laura. ‘First we shop,’ she smiled, patting her knee. ‘Then we talk.’
Laura took a deep breath, trying to keep it together. She’d been bang on about the floodgates. To paraphrase Paxman, she’d started, so she’d finish, and she felt as barely held together as the Hoover Dam with Sellotape.
‘Have you decided what you’re wearing yet?’ she asked Cat, giving it her best shot at being ‘okay’.
Cat swivelled round to face her excitedly. ‘Well, I’ve got it down to two. The front-runner’s a Marchesa gown I bought in Rome last month. Silk chiffon in that baby, baby pink that’s just so good for us blondes,’ she purred, running her hands down her arms. ‘With waterfall ruffles and a black velvet bow at the waist.’
‘It sounds amazing.’ Laura nodded, utterly hypnotized by just the sound of it. It could have been pudding.
‘Mmm,’ Cat said, wrinkling her nose. ‘But is it just a bit . . . blah?’
‘Well, what’s the other one like?’ Laura asked, sniffing inelegantly.
‘Now that’s the interesting one. It’s a bit out there for a do like this. Everyone will be in full-length, but this is short – I mean micro-short – but it swings out, like a baby-doll style, so it’s not tacky or anything.’
Laura nodded. She knew that if there was one thing Cat didn’t do, it was tacky. ‘What colour?’
‘Grey, but kind of fringed on a jacquard.’
Laura blinked, lost, and Cat laughed at her beleaguered expression. ‘It’s a satin that looks like it’s got distressed feathers on, as though the threads have pulled. It makes you want to tickle your hands against it.’
‘I think I’d have to see it to . . . understand it.’
Cat nodded. ‘I’ll take it in to Browns with us. See how it looks compared with your dress. It might look odd for me to wear short if you’re in long.’
‘I think I’ll probably go short,’ Laura said quickly, surmising that a short dress must surely cost less than long, given the discrepancy in the amount of fabric used.
‘What about your hair?’
‘What about it?’ Laura asked back. Her hair needed a decision? She’d planned just to wash it.
‘Up or down?’
Laura swallowed. ‘What do you think?’
Cat tipped her head in consideration. ‘I’d say down.’
‘So then I’ll go with down.’ Laura sighed with relief, sinking back into the seat. It definitely sounded the easier option.
‘Oh God, and shoes!’
Laura shot forward again. ‘Shoes?’ She’d been planning on wearing some. What was the calamity?
‘I so badly want to wear my new Valentino shoots, but they’d really only go with the Marchesa.’
Laura hesitated. ‘What’s a shoot?’
‘A shoe-boot,’ Cat explained, looking bemused that this wasn’t the common parlance she’d assumed. ‘They’re divine. Black with a sheer gauze over the top of the foot and tying in just the diddiest drawstring below the ankle.’ She sighed. ‘He’s got such an eye for the details. If that drawstring was just an inch higher and above the ankle?’ She pouted and shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. Entirely different proposition altogether. We can’t all be Bolivian supermodels with legs up to here, can we?’ she giggled.
Laura shook her head, even though Cat was the closest flesh and blood approximation of a supermodel that she’d ever seen.
The taxi pulled up outside a run of boutiques painted in a distinctive clotted-cream colour. Cat paid, not bothering to get either a receipt or change, as Laura hauled herself out of the other door.
‘Ready?’ Cat asked, looping her arm through Laura’s and walking with authority and purpose towards the nearest door.
‘You lead the way,’ Laura smiled, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ll follow.’