Alice went back to the office to pick Agatha up and to check for messages. Helly had left yesterday for Leeds and today would be the last day the office was open.
She answered a few enquiries and emails, then, still at Helly’s desk, did an internet search on Alex Messent. A Wikipedia page revealed that, until recently, he’d been the director of a huge gallery in Paris but had come to London to set up on his own. She opened up the website for the Swan Gallery, looking at the glossy pictures of the modern art pieces and reading the incomprehensible explanations that accompanied them.
Alice appreciated that art had its own language, but there was something rather ‘emperor’s new clothes’ about it, to quote Mrs Doulton. Not that you could ever voice such a heretical view in this neck of the woods. Art and its value were subjective and if people were willing to pay, then let them pay. These billionaires and multi-millionaires had to spend their money on something, although it seemed unfair to Alice that, in her experience, very few of the artists were ever as rich as the dealers and gallerists who promoted them.
‘Let’s go and have a look, shall we?’ she said to Agatha, before redirecting the office phone to her mobile. It would be the last time she’d be here in the office – probably until the new year and, as she locked up, she rested her hand on the glass panel of the front door and gave a silent little thank you to the business for seeing her through another year.
After a brisk fifteen-minute walk, she and Agatha reached the black marble frontage of Alex Messent’s art gallery. It had that hiding-in-plain-sight kind of anonymity – a place for people in the know.
She walked slowly past, peeping in through the tinted glass windows as Agatha took a pee on its black marble step, before she pulled her away, embarrassed. The gallery was clearly filled with the kind of art that graced the walls of the Messents’ home. She was tempted to go inside. She doubted somewhere so high end would allow dogs, but what was the harm in brazening it out and just having a look?
But the sign on the door was switched round to closed, which struck Alice as odd, as it was the Friday before Christmas, and so surely the perfect time to be open, when the rich, always pressed for time, liked to flash their money around.
‘Come on, Agatha,’ she said, tugging the lead.
It was only then that she caught a glimpse of someone at the back of the gallery. A man in a suit – tall with black hair. Perhaps Alex Messent? She couldn’t tell. But now, as he turned around, laughing, she saw that it was indeed the man from the photo in the house, and he was holding out a glass of champagne towards someone. Alice could only see the bottom half of this second person — a woman in white trousers. So, Monsieur Messent was indeed busy, Alice thought, but not necessarily in the way Enya had assumed. Just as soon as she’d had this slightly salacious thought, Alice checked herself. She mustn’t go jumping to conclusions. This could even be Madame Messent inside. Or it might well be the case that he’d closed the gallery in order to sell a painting to a private client.
A text pinged in her pocket. It was Jinx telling her to pick her up from Tiffany’s. Her beautician, not the jeweller.
Alice smiled. It wasn’t the first time that Jinx had been waylaid at Tiff’s where she loved to gossip, and it almost certainly wouldn’t be the last.
I hope you don’t mind, but I brought the Tiffin from the freezer, Jinx texted. She was delighted. Tiffin for Tiffany! Alice rolled her eyes.
Tiffin was one of the first recipes Mrs Doulton had taught her as a child. Alice had written out the recipe in an exercise book and the chocolate-daubed paper still lived between the leaves of her Mrs Beeton. It was really just a case of melting chocolate and mixing in the other ingredients, but it was always a crowd pleaser.
Tiffany’s salon was on a lovely parade of shops in the heart of Belgravia, and this close to Christmas, they’d all gone to town with glorious decorations in their shopfront displays.
Alice stopped to admire an arch of blue and silver lights in a winter wonderland-themed window, gazing in delight at a crystal-covered princess dress on a mannequin below, whilst at the same time thinking how impractical a dress like that would be to move in. She caught sight of her reflection in her trusted, ancient Burberry mac in the window and wondered when was the last time she’d had reason to wear anything at all apart from her bland sensible clothes? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have somewhere swanky to go to? To actually dress up for once, but as quickly as she’d had it, she dismissed the thought. There was no good in envying other people’s lives, hard as it was not to sometimes.
Tiffany’s salon was at the end of the parade and Alice spotted Jinx in the seat nearest the window. She waved enthusiastically at Alice to come inside, and Alice didn’t need a second invitation, grateful to be out of the cold.
‘What do you think?’ Jinx asked, spinning around in the old-fashioned barber’s chair and cupping her hand under her hair, which to Alice’s mind looked exactly the same as it had yesterday.
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Not too blonde?’
‘Is there such thing?’ Alice asked, making Jinx laugh. A lot. Ah, she’d been drinking, Alice deduced, seeing two empty champagne glasses on the counter below the huge round mirror surrounded by movie-star lightbulbs.
‘Tiff!’ she called. ‘Alice is here.’
A petite, buxom, black-haired woman at the back of the salon, who was busily inspecting a woman’s headful of foils, waved across and smiled.
‘Right there, honey,’ she called.
There was a lot about Tiffany Wills that reminded Alice of Dolly Parton. The boobs, for one thing. The big hair, for another. But even more than that, it was the American accent that did it, a kind of exaggerated Southern drawl that somehow lent itself well to compliments. ‘Don’t you just look peachy,’ was one of Tiffany’s favourites.
‘Alice, I swear to God you don’t change,’ she now said, kissing her on both cheeks, although Alice wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or not. After all, Tiffany was in the business of change.
‘How are the boys?’ Alice asked after Tiff had exalted over the tiffin, which Jinx had at least had the courtesy to tell her was Alice’s creation.
‘Terrorists,’ Tiffany said in a deadpan way. ‘But then they always were. But at least they’re working. That’s something, I guess. Max is at the gym and Elijah is an actual bouncer now. Like his father. Not that I ever wanted either of them to have anything to do with that scumbag, but I guess he’s their daddy so what’s a girl to do?’
Tiffany had indulged in a fling with a nightclub bouncer when she’d been twenty-two and had produced two enormous twin boys, who Alice and Jinx had first met when they were still tiny. Alice had babysat them once when they’d got older and bigger and Tiffany had picked them up with a knowing look on her face. ‘I know. I know. I should hire them out as contraception, right?’ she’d said.
But that was then, and once her sons had left home, thanks to her tenaciousness, exceptional energy and sheer force of will, Tiffany now had what she’d always dreamed of, her own little beauty empire where ladies – and some men – in the know, came for an array of the latest treatments.
‘I was telling Tiffany about the Messents,’ Jinx said.
‘Quite the toast of the town,’ Tiffany said. ‘Apparently, their house is stuffed to the gills with priceless art.’
‘It is. I went there,’ Alice said.
‘Did you?’ Tiff looked impressed. ‘When?’
She told Jinx and Tiffany about her visit to Enya and how she seemed to have fitted right in.
‘Apparently, they’re having a big New Year’s Eve party,’ Tiffany said. ‘I’m booked out solid.’
‘I know.’
Jinx stuck out her bottom lip at Alice. ‘Why do you always know everything first?’
‘Enya was on the phone to Charles Tavistock,’ Alice admitted.
‘Oh, typical! Of course, he’d get the gig. But did you know Alex Messent also owns an art gallery?’ Jinx said, clearly having only just learned this from Tiffany herself.
Alice decided not to trump Jinx again in front of Tiffany, so didn’t admit she’d just come from snooping round there too.
‘Here. Look. I got a screenshot of their Christmas card,’ Tiffany said, opening her large phone in its gaudy leopard print case.
Alice took it and examined the picture of the Messents in their study. Alex Messent sat below a beautiful watercolour painting, with the same woman in the photos in the house, his wife Camille, his hand on her shoulder.
Sitting on the front of the desk, nearer to the camera, was Laura. She was wearing ripped fishnets above twelve-hole Doc Martin boots.
‘She looks like trouble,’ Jinx said, grabbing the phone to zoom in on Laura, whose eyes were scornful and sullen. ‘I was a nightmare at that age.’
‘As I well remember,’ Alice said to Tiffany.
Jinx laughed and handed the phone back to Alice who studied the picture for a moment more.
‘They’ve hired in caterers for the party, apparently,’ Tiffany said, sliding the phone into her tunic pocket. ‘Justin. You know, Justin Ellis?’
‘Hmm,’ Jinx said. ‘So, there’s obviously going to be no expense spared. Oh, and Alice, guess who’s on the guest list?’
‘Everyone who is anyone, I should imagine,’ Alice said. Although she knew from experience that someone, somewhere, always got left off the guest list and took offence.
‘That’s as may be, but I heard that Laars Tredeaux is on the list.’
‘Laars as in …’ Alice began.
‘My no-good dirty ex,’ Jinx confirmed.
Husband number two, then, Alice remembered. He hadn’t stuck around for long. In fact, all Alice could really remember about him was that he’d worn a white tuxedo with a black frill to some event. Oh yes, that was it. His wedding. A frou-frou affair in Holland Park, as she recalled.
‘He’s living in London? I thought he buggered off to Hong Kong?’
‘He did. But he’s back and apparently footloose and fancy free again, after whoever it was he married next,’ Jinx said, taking an angry swig of her champagne glass. ‘After they no doubt discovered what an unfaithful, dishonest—’
‘It was a long time ago, Jinx,’ Tiffany interrupted. ‘We’re over that. Remember, hon?’
Jinx put her glass down and nodded. Alice smiled, knowing that Tiffany doubled as a shrink for most of her customers.
‘I mean, when I think back …’ Jinx said, staring off into space, ‘I knew from the get-go it was doomed. He always wore socks in bed.’
Tiffany laughed. ‘Maybe he got cold feet.’
‘I’d say socks in bed is admissible after a good twenty years of marriage, but keep the flame alive, boys.’
‘You have very high standards, Jinx,’ Alice said.
‘I resent that.’
‘Darlin’, I don’t care a rat’s hoot about the socks,’ Tiffany said. ‘Just a man in bed. That’s good enough for me.’
She made eyes at Alice, whose eyebrows shot up.
‘Oh, Alice, don’t look like that, honey,’ Tiffany said, stretching a manicured hand towards Alice. ‘You got all those frown lines. You want me to give you a little pep whilst you’re here, hon?’
‘Thank you, but no. I’m fine as I am,’ Alice said, ducking backwards. She felt protective towards her wrinkles. They’d been years in the making. ‘Come on, Jinx, we can’t be late for lunch.’
‘Orders from the boss, I gotta run,’ Jinx said, hopping down off her chair and kissing Tiffany goodbye.
‘Aren’t you two just my favourites,’ Tiffany said, hugging them both before they left. ‘Oh, and I got a feeling good things are coming your way, Alice,’ she said.
Jinx squealed and for a moment Alice wondered why, before remembering that Jinx believed wholeheartedly in Tiffany’s clairvoyant abilities, even though Alice suspected these made-up suppositions were just a sales ruse.
‘You mark my words, honey,’ she said, before tapping her perfect nose and pointing at Alice. ‘This year all your dreams will come true.’