Cents and Sensibility

It was rather strange to be out with a load of complete strangers, but actually quite wonderful. I felt completely free of expectations and after all the ribbing I’d had to put up with at work – plus a lifetime of being Ham’s daughter – that was a very pleasant relief.

They were nice enough people, as far as I could tell, but comedy clubs don’t give you much of a chance to make small talk, so I didn’t really get to know any of them. And I didn’t have to tell them anything about me. Excellent.

Whoever they were, none of them looked like Hot Stuff! readers and they didn’t seem to recognize me. They were so different from the people I normally mixed with, whether through the luxury world, my family, or friends from university, it was almost like going on holiday in another country. Everyone drank beer, in pints, smoked roll-ups, and wore cheap clothes. The women and the men.

And the really funny thing was that, in my jeans, with my hair simply pulled back – I usually had it blow-dried at John Frieda, but I hadn’t bothered that week – I fitted right in. I wasn’t even carrying a major statement handbag, for once. I’d put my wallet and keys in my pocket and left my Bottega Veneta tote in my locker at the office. It was almost like being in disguise.

The other thing that made me feel protected was that whenever there was a break in the show the person I ended up talking to was Ned. He sat next to me the entire evening and was very solicitous, in his easy way, so I didn’t feel left out, or exposed.

As the evening went on, he seemed to sit closer to me, I noticed, and after a while he casually put his arm along the back of my chair.

I was a little surprised by his attentions, especially as I had expected his girlfriend to be there. Considering her connections with Hot Stuff! magazine, I was rather glad she wasn’t, but I had been interested to see what she would be like. Ned was so enigmatic, it was quite hard to picture what his type would be. In the end I just came out and asked him about it.

‘Where’s your girlfriend, Ned?’ I said. ‘I was looking forward to meeting her.’

‘Oh, she’s out with her mates,’ he said, moving his arm off my chair. ‘We don’t live together or anything, we’re not like a really couple-y couple, we lead our own lives.’

I nodded. I could relate to that. That was how I liked to conduct my relationships too.

‘So you don’t have a boyfriend yourself?’ he said. ‘Apart from the odd date with a billionaire?’

I shook my head.

‘I find that very surprising. You’re the kind I’d expect to see with one of those City types, in a Porsche and all that.’

Jay’s car popped into my head, whizzing past all the Porsches on the M23. I just smiled weakly at him.

‘Mind you,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t fit in with the Woodward and Bernstein side of your personality, would it? Guess I’m just buying into your superficial luxury persona here – perhaps you’d be more likely to be carrying on with a bit of rough instead, eh?’

He smiled, to show he was teasing and I hoped my eyes hadn’t popped open in surprise. I wondered what he’d think if he knew what I got up to with Jack. But maybe he wouldn’t be as shocked as I might think. I found Ned very unsettling sometimes.

‘Well, I’m quite surprised that you’ve got a girlfriend who works on a gossip mag,’ I countered. ‘If you want to talk stereotypes, I’d see you more with a social worker, or maybe a human rights lawyer you’d been going out with since you were at university.’

Ned laughed.

‘My last girlfriend was a lap dancer,’ he said, and before I had a chance to pursue it, the next act came on.

A little rendezvous with him was just what I needed to get me fully over Jay, I decided in the cab home from the Amused Moose. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner, really, so the next day I called him up.

‘Wotcha, Posh,’ he said, which stalled me for a moment, until I remembered that was what he had always called me – he wasn’t referring to the piece in Hot Stuff!

‘Busy?’ I asked him.

‘I’m busy now,’ he said. ‘I’m a hundred and twenty feet above the ground fixing the pointing on this here steeple, it’s in a right old mess. But I’m not busy later. Got anything in mind?’

‘You,’ I said. ‘Six thirty?’

‘It’s a done deal, darling.’

‘Don’t fall off, Jack,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m an expert with tall erections, as you know.’

I hung up, with a big smile on my face.

Just talking to Jack put me in a good mood. Even apart from his talent and enthusiasm for sex, which were considerable, the whole notion of him turned me on. I liked his rough hands and his cheeky humour – and I loved the secrecy of our arrangement. It made me feel like some kind of wicked eighteenth-century courtesan.

Looking forward to meeting him was a big part of the thrill, and I left work early to go home and pick up some of my sauciest underwear for his delectation. He loved all that corny old stuff in a really unapologetic way. Jack just loved totty, full stop.

But from the moment he walked in that evening it wasn’t right. Nothing was different on the surface. I had arrived first, showered and changed, had a vodka from the mini-bar, draped a scarf over the bedside lamp, slipped into my lingerie and arranged myself seductively on the bed.

Jack arrived in his work clothes, nice and dirty, and after admiring me for a while, from various angles, he took some of them off, while quietly telling me, in the filthiest terms, what he was planning to do very shortly.

I looked at him bare-chested, in his dusty jeans – which he was just pulling down over his hips – and I could see how sexy he was, the gay fantasy of the hunky construction worker, complete with the steel toecapped boots, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

I’d been in a state of heightened excitement all day, thinking about him, but now he was here, I felt nothing. Just a bit stupid really, in my stockings and balcony bra.

Jack got on to the bed and slowly worked his way up my body, with his usual finesse – very surprising, if you judged only by his appearance – and I went through the motions, thinking the rush would kick in at any moment, but then suddenly he stopped.

‘It’s not happening for you, is it, Posh?’ he said, sitting up.

I shook my head. ‘How can you tell?’

‘I just can,’ he said, shrugging.

I should have known. Jack had some kind of sexual sixth sense when it came to my body, of course he would have known.

He slapped me gently on the buttock and smiled at me, a bit sadly.

‘Go home, Posh Totty,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here with me anyway? A beautiful girl like you. It’s been great, Posh. I’ve been a very lucky man, but it’s time for you to go and find yourself a nice bloke. You’re too good for this, darling. So do yourself a favour, OK?

‘I’ll miss ya,’ he said warmly, as he got off the bed and zipped his jeans back up. ‘It’s been great.’

He pulled on the rest of his clothes and then he leaned down to kiss me on the cheek. He stayed there for a moment looking into my eyes with a surprisingly caring look.

‘And another thing,’ he said. ‘Don’t go shagging no more men on trains, all right? You were lucky with me, Posh, I’m a nice bloke, but there’s lots more out there who ain’t. I’d hate anything bad to happen to you. Promise?’

I nodded. And after one last slow look at me, he left.

In fact, I felt like a complete slut.

I decided I wasn’t going to have sex with anyone for a very long time, because it seemed like whether you did it as part of a loving relationship – which is what I’d foolishly thought I’d had with Jay – or simply for the physical release, you still seemed to end up feeling used afterwards.

Ham was right. All men were bastards and I was much better off without any of them. Except him, of course.

I spent the whole weekend cocooning in my little house, with my mobile switched off. I’d picked up some food at Fresh & Wild on my way home from work on Friday and I didn’t leave once, or speak to anyone, until Sunday afternoon when my phone rang.

It was Chloe.

‘We know you’re in there, Stella,’ she said, laughing. ‘Come out with your hands up.’

Then she turned a bit more serious.

‘I need your help, Stella,’ she said. ‘Henry feels really bad about your friend, Jay. He thinks he’s made the whole thing much worse for you by telling you about the family and how ghastly they are. So will you come up and have dinner with us all tonight and cheer him up? Please? It’s been like living with a depressed Fozzie Bear for nearly two weeks now and I can’t stand it. And I’d like to see you as well, of course,’ she added.

I loved Chloe, and while I still really didn’t feel like seeing anybody, I couldn’t refuse her.

When I walked into the house, though, I wished I’d paid more attention to her exact phrasing. The place was empty, but when I saw the dining table had been laid for eleven people, I remembered that Chloe had specifically said the words: ‘Have dinner with us all…’

She wasn’t kidding about the all part. There were place cards round the table and I could see that all of Ham’s kids were coming, plus his two favourite ex-stepsons, Archie and Alex. It was very unusual for so many of us to be together like that, because it was usually too complicated to arrange, not to mention utter mayhem.

‘What’s going on, Chloe?’ I said, feeling uncomfortable, when she emerged from the pantry. I didn’t like having that kind of thing sprung on me. ‘This is like some kind of spooky surprise party.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s not This Is Your Life, Henry’s just having one of his sentimental moments. You know what he’s like. He just needed to see all his babies.’

‘But Alex and Archie aren’t his babies,’ I said crossly.

‘No, but Alex is bringing the twins – they’ve been staying at his place this weekend, because Rose is in France at a gardening conference – and Henry just plain loves Archie. I think he wishes he could trade him in for Venezia, really.’

‘I’d second that,’ I said. ‘But where are they all?’

She glanced automatically at her flow chart.

‘Ham’s gone to Kristy’s to pick up those two, Nicola’s dropping off the boys any minute, Daisy is upstairs having a late nap and Alex is bringing Tobes and Tabs. But I wanted to see you alone, Stella. I’ve got something I want to tell you myself.’

‘I knew it,’ I said. ‘I knew something was going on. Spit it out.’

Chloe wiped her hands on her apron and leaned against the steel counter. I knew what she was going to say, before she even got it out, and couldn’t stop myself grinning.

‘I’m having another baby,’ she said.

I rushed round the bench to give her a hug.

‘I wanted to tell you first,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘We’re going to tell the others tonight, but I wanted to tell you myself. You’re such a good friend to me, Stella.’

I was amazed. I felt like I was the one who was always being looked after by her.

‘Really?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘It’s not always that great dealing with the ex-wives club, you know, and you just accepted me so warmly from day one. You never made me feel like an interloper.’

‘Well, that was no problem,’ I said. ‘You’re the nicest wife he’s ever had and I want you to stick around. When’s the baby due?’

She smiled broadly.

‘Christmas Day.’

I roared, it was just the sort of thing Ham would adore.

‘I’m going to have a baby! I’m going to have a baby!’ she was telling anyone who would listen, thrilled that she was no longer going to be the youngest. I pulled her on to my knee and gave her a big cuddle.

‘I’m a big girl now, Stella,’ she said very seriously, nodding her head that way she did.

‘You’re a very big girl,’ I said, mentally preparing myself to spend a lot of time with her when the new baby eventually came along, and she wouldn’t be feeling quite so thrilled about it. I’d seen a lot of that over the years with my father’s growing family.

There was a fair amount of sibling rivalry going on round the table that night, although things were more equable than they might have been because, to my great delight, Venezia hadn’t joined us after all. She’d reacted very badly to the news of the baby and had refused to come. Suited me.

‘What’s her problem now?’ I asked Archie, who was sitting next to me, in a placement which had been drawn up by Ham, as usual.

He was surprisingly keen on table plans – it was all part of his interest in the emotional manipulation of space and proximity. He’d even had dinner parties where he had deliberately done the most ill-advised plan he could come up with, to see how much it really did affect the dynamic. Monstrously, by all accounts.

But I was delighted to be next to Archie. Despite all his adolescent angst, there was something so strangely sensible about him.

‘What?’ he was asking me incredulously. ‘You’re asking me why Vomezia’ – it was his new name for her – ‘doesn’t want another half-sibling?’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m asking. I’m delighted, aren’t you?’

‘Stoked, and it won’t even be related to me.’ He laughed his painful Beavis and Butt-head snigger. ‘But Chloe’s totally great and any kid of hers will be way cool. I love Daisy, so yeah, great, but Vomezia isn’t happy because it’s just one more little chip away from her inheritance.’

‘Are you serious?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Archie, nodding so vigorously I was almost blinded by the spikes of his new vertical hairstyle. ‘I bet she’s got her calculator out, right now, working out how much her share has just decreased by.’

‘I’m speechless,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she know about Ham’s opinions on inherited wealth? He’s not leaving any of us anything – he’s always telling us that – doesn’t she get it?’

‘Have you ever met my mother?’ said Archie, and I had to laugh.

But, for once, Alex seemed reluctant to let that happen.

‘So,’ he said, looking at me intently, the moment I turned to him, so I couldn’t just look away again. ‘Are you still seeing Jay Fisher?’

I pulled a face.

‘You saw Hot Stuff! magazine then?’ I said.

He looked completely blank.

‘What’s that?’ he said, as though I had changed the subject.

‘You didn’t see that thing in a magazine about me and Jay?’

‘No,’ he said, looking very surprised. ‘I didn’t realize it was that serious. Are you “dating” him, as Americans say?’

‘No, I’m not,’ I said, quickly. ‘I met him at a press thing and I think he just wanted to see the house really, so that’s why he came down that time. He’s a huge fan of Ham’s work. You know, with the museum and everything.’

Alex was looking at me steadily. I was babbling, I didn’t care.

‘But if you didn’t see that thing in Hot Stuff!,’ I continued. ‘How did you know who he was? I didn’t think I’d introduced him by his full name.’

Alex looked incredulous.

‘You didn’t need to introduce him. I knew who he was the minute I saw him.’

‘Oh,’ I said, hoping to end the conversation right there. I certainly wasn’t going to tell Alex that I hadn’t had a clue all along.

‘The bank I work for handles quite a lot of investments for the family,’ Alex was saying, with a funny look in his eye. ‘I’ve met his father quite a few times – he’s the main trustee. I had to go over to New York to see him just a couple of months ago in fact.’

‘Ham says he’s a nightmare,’ I said. No point in pretending.

Alex just smiled at me gently, in an I’m-saying-nothing -which-says-a-lot kind of way. He was amazingly discreet, I thought. No wonder he was doing so well in his job.

‘So,’ I said brightly, deciding to take a leaf out of his book. A book which could be entitled Hiding Your True Feelings The Good Old Empire Way. ‘What have you been up to? Going anywhere nice this summer?’

Alex laughed heartily; he knew exactly what I was doing, but like the true Brit he was, he played along and we had a very pleasant conversation comparing the attractions of Corsica, Tuscany and Sardinia for our prospective holidays.

Before we were forced to find another bland subject to discuss, Ham tapped his wine glass with a spoon.

‘OΚ, tribe,’ he said, standing up. ‘I want to talk to you all. Now, this is a very special occasion as you know, celebrating the wonderful news that our darling Chloe is to have another child in December, a Christmas baby for us all. So I wish to make a toast to my beautiful wife,’ he said, gazing at her and raising his glass. ‘I give you – Chloe.’

We all drank to her, followed by toasts to ‘the baby’ and ‘Henry’, and then Ham said he wanted to propose the most important toast of all, which was to: ‘Family.’

We all did what we were supposed to do and I thought that would be the end of it, but Ham was clearly loving it and had no intention of leaving it there.

‘Now,’ he was saying. ‘I want to use this marvellous moment, when I have all my ducklings gathered together – apart from Venezia, of course, the silly girl. It happens all too rarely, so I am going to grab the opportunity to embarrass you all horribly.’

My heart was beginning to sink. I loved my family, I adored Ham, but I really couldn’t stand this touchy-feely stuff. The years he had spent studying in California still had a lot to answer for, in my opinion.

But there was no getting out of it now, I could see. He had that gleam in his eye. I was beginning to sink down in my seat, praying for it to be over quickly, when I felt something gently prod my ribcage. It was Alex, nudging me. I turned to look at him and he very discreetly crossed his eyes. I felt giggles rise in my chest.

Ham was oblivious and had embarked on his mission, which was to tell each child, one by one, why he loved us.

‘Daisy, you are my most recently hatched egg,’ he was saying. ‘But not for long. You are about to grow up into a big sister, my adorable little chick, but you know how your daddy cherishes you, the product of my love for your beautiful mother, Chloe…’

Oh no, I thought, this was going to get really cheesy. The full Paxton & Whitfield. Alex nudged me again, harder.

It went on in the same vein, with Ham getting more and more like a talking Hallmark card. It really was amazing how someone so brilliant and sophisticated could be quite so syrupy.

Archie clearly felt the same way as me and Alex, and it was my turn to nudge Alex, as I noticed my favourite toxic teen was sliding very slowly down his chair, like a piece of spaghetti, until he was actually on the floor under the table.

Alex and I started to shake with barely controllable laughter, as Archie then very slowly started to inch his way across the floor, away from the table, moving on his elbows like a commando.

Ham – by then in full flow about Freddie, so he was clearly working up through his children by age – was completely oblivious.

Trying to hide the tears of laughter that were threatening to pour down my cheeks, I made the mistake of turning my head to the side and caught Alex’s eye. That was it. With a great combined guffaw, we simultaneously leapt up from the table and literally fell through the open glass door into the garden.

‘Oh, for GOD’s sake,’ I heard Ham saying, as we made our exit. But it was too late, we couldn’t go back.

The relief of being able to let the tension out was so great that we were both rolling around on the lawn, kicking our legs in the air.

‘Oh, my God,’ Alex was saying. ‘The full cheese counter, with extra relish. Gag.’

‘Ham and cheese on rye, or what?’ I agreed.

We finally recovered ourselves a little and sat up on the lawn, but as soon as we looked at each other, we were off again.

‘Oh, my little duckling,’ Alex was saying. ‘Your tiny egg so recently cracked into the great omelette pan of life…’

I was laughing so much, my stomach was starting to hurt. Then I looked back through the wall of glass – a feature of all Ham’s houses – and saw that Archie was now halfway down the hall, away from the kitchen, still moving like a centipede, on his stomach.

That set us off all over again, until I was just lying there panting. That was when I noticed how wet the grass was. I turned my head to look at Alex, who was rubbing his face with his hands and groaning. He turned suddenly and looked at me.

‘My arse is getting soaked out here,’ he said.

‘So’s mine,’ I said, jumping up and looking behind me to see a big wet patch on my skirt.

‘Oh no,’ I said, looking back into the house. ‘He’s still only on Marcus. It’s going to take ages.’

I made a split-second decision.

‘We can’t go back in there,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come and have a drink at my place until it’s all over?’

‘That would be great,’ said Alex, looking pleased and rather surprised.

I almost regretted my invitation as soon as I had made it, but Alex was family really, and I did occasionally have Chloe in for coffee and Daisy was a regular visitor, so it wasn’t like a real intrusion. But apart from Ham, he was the only man who had ever been in my place.

Alex looked very big in my tiny little sitting room and he smiled sweetly as he took it all in.

‘Well, Stella,’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were such a girly girl at heart.’

I looked at it afresh through his eyes. The sofa he was sitting on was covered in sugar-pink velvet, with a pompom trim. I was mixing drinks at my mirrored console table, by the dim glow of the twenty strings of fairy lights I had festooned around the various gold mirrors and floral paintings on the walls.

I giggled a little as I handed him his vodka and tonic, and sat down in one of my French bergère chairs, which were upholstered in leopard-print fabric.

‘It’s my secret den,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to make concessions to anyone else’s tastes or needs in here.’

I stood up again suddenly.

‘My bum really is wet,’ I said. ‘I think I need to change. Do you want to borrow something?’

He felt the back of his jeans and nodded.

‘Yes, but not a frilly negligee, please.’

I smiled to myself as I opened my wardrobe. Frilly negligees were something I had plenty of and when I was home alone, I flitted around my little house got up like Eva Gabor in Green Acres.

I was momentarily tempted to put one of them on – perhaps the sheer pink organza with the marabou trim and matching mules? – just to make him laugh, but stopped myself.

Just at that moment I was feeling on a really good even keel with Alex for the first time since that weird weekend at Willow Barn. Being united in hilarity about Ham’s hideous sentimentality – something we had both hated when we were young – had got us back on to a comfortable footing again and I was suddenly aware how easy it would be to unbalance it.

I peeled off my wet skirt and put on a nice neutral pair of jeans, and then found a sarong for him to wear.

I took it down to him and then went through to the kitchen to get some ice, returning a heartbeat too soon, just as he was about to wind the sarong around his hips.

He had his back to me and I was treated to a view of just about the finest pair of bare male buttocks I had ever seen. Alex still rowed, I remembered. It showed.

I nearly dropped the small silver bowl I was carrying, but just managed to hold on to it and dodge back into the kitchen, before he realized I had seen him.

I had to take a few deep breaths to recover before I could go back in, but not only because of the physical jolt of coming face to face with such a magnificent display of man flesh. The thing that had made me nearly drop the bowl, was that it could have been Jay’s rear quarters I’d been looking at.

The two of them didn’t look anything alike from the front. Their faces were completely different – with Jay more movie-star handsome, it had to be said – although Alex was still a good-looking guy, in a particular pink-cheeked English way.

Jay’s hair was darker, but physically, I realized, they were startlingly similar. The same height, the same build, the same broad shoulders – and the same fabulous bottom. The only difference was that Jay had really sexy tan lines on his – his buttocks were stark white against his tan, where his trunks had been.

I almost wished I could ask Alex to take his sarong off and turn round, so I could see if he also had those wonderful lines running down from his abs to his groin, like Jay had. I thought he probably did.

I made a bit of noise, clunking around in the freezer as though I was doing something useful, until I felt fully composed again. I was sure it was the similarity to Jay which had unsettled me so much, but I couldn’t escape facing the truth that anything vaguely sexual in connection with Alex made me feel deeply uneasy.

He was only my stepbrother – and my ex-stepbrother, at that – but he was definitely part of my family, not my love life. I wasn’t going to make the same embarrassing mistake my adolescent self had made and mix them up again.

I needn’t have worried. Blissfully unaware of the ringside view I’d just had of his butt – and of the extensive collection of saucy seduction wear I had upstairs – when I finally went back into the sitting room, Alex was still happily operating in what I thought of as our ‘fond cousin’ mode, which enabled me to slip back into it too.

‘Hey, Stella,’ he said. ‘Do you remember the time Henry made us play that loathsome game where we all had to write the things we loved about our siblings on pieces of paper and then he read them all out and we had to guess who had written what about whom?’

I groaned.

‘Oh yeah,’ I said, remembering all too well. ‘And if someone guessed yours right you had to hug the person you had written about? It was terrible.’

What I remembered was that I’d written something horrifically embarrassing about Alex and I was now immeasurably grateful to Ham for not reading it out – although at the time I had been furious with him, because I had been gagging for an excuse to hug my stepbrother.

Happily oblivious to that, Alex was now laughing about something else and shaking his head.

‘I wrote that I admired Rowan because he was a very skilled butcher,’ he said, chuckling away. ‘Ham read it out and was really pleased – he thought it was something to do with Boy Scout barbecues, or something, and had no idea butchery was our slang for wanking. You know – beating the meat?’

I shook my head at him.

‘You boys,’ I said.

As Ham was always telling me, the sexed-up savage was never far below the surface with men, however civilized they appeared to be on the surface. Alex was clearly no exception.

By the time we re-emerged back in Ham’s kitchen about an hour later – after carefully checking from the garden that his one-man love-in was definitely over – it seemed he had already forgiven me and Alex for our sudden exit.

‘Sorry we missed it, Ham,’ I said, pecking him on the cheek. ‘We just weren’t in a Californian sort of mood.’

‘That’s all right, you cheeky little buggers, I loved you up anyway – both of you – in absentia.’

And as he beamed at us and invited us into the library for a cognac, while the younger children watched a DVD in the living area, I reckoned his irritation at our rudeness was probably cancelled out by his delight in seeing us bonding.

Whatever Ham was up to with us – and nothing to do with human relationships was accidental if he had anything to do with it – was clearly going to plan. I was happy to let him have his little fantasy.

9