London, June 1986
PHAEDRIA HAD WRITTEN to Michael.
A short, careful letter, explaining everything; saying that the company no longer mattered to her, had been taken out of her hands, and now that it was resolved, her share could safely go to Julia, in trust for when she was of an age to know what she wanted to do with it. She did not say any more than that, except that she loved him, and she wished him well.
There was no reply to her letter. No phone call. Nothing.
Weeks went by and she realized with an increasing dull misery that she had hurt and rejected him beyond anything he could be expected to forgive.
Life had reverted to some form of normality. Roz had come back, feisty, belligerent, spoiling for fights, but with her old hostility to Phaedria eased.
‘I’m sorry,’ Phaedria had said to her, that first day, and Roz had looked at her, her green eyes oddly soft, and said, ‘Yes, I know you are.’
David Sassoon was paying court to Phaedria, lunching her, dining her, flattering her, trying to cajole her into bed; she resisted him rather weakly, struggling to persuade herself that she actually wanted to, and failing miserably.
C. J. and Camilla had married in a quiet ceremony in New York. Phaedria and Letitia had attended, with small Miranda, who had scowled at her new stepmother throughout in a manner so reminiscent of Roz that Letitia had been overcome with giggles and had to leave the room during the over-long, earnest speech delivered by Camilla’s matron of honour.
Julia grew; she could sit up, laugh, scowl when thwarted, make noises that her doting mother knew were words. She was not exactly pretty, she had a rather ferocious little face – ‘A bit like Roz,’ said Eliza, looking at her one day. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Phaedria, she is her half sister’ – but she had dark curly hair like Phaedria’s and very dark brown eyes like her father’s.
Spring Collection had come in third in the Thousand Guineas, and been unplaced in the St Leger. Grettisaga had given birth to a filly.
Phaedria kept telling herself she was really very fortunate, and didn’t succeed in convincing herself in the least.
She was sitting in her office one June day, watching the rain pour past her window, and wondering if a trip to Eleuthera might not be a nice idea, when her internal phone rang. It was the new girl in Reception.
‘Lady Morell, there’s someone down here to see you. He won’t give a name.’
‘Lorraine, you know I don’t see anyone without an appointment, and certainly not if he won’t give a name. Tell him he’ll have to ring Sarah and fix a date.’
‘Lady Morell, he says he does have one important message for you. I don’t know if it will make a difference. He says to tell you he’s lost his raincoat.’