Seven

Mrs Le Martine was almost as excited as Ottilie at the thought that Ottilie might be actually going to have tea with Blue Lady. But first, for her mother’s sake, Ottilie must try to hint to Mrs Le Martine that she had prior knowledge about Mamma’s designer clothes going to London to be sold. After the horrors of her experience with the diamond earrings, dropping hints to Mrs Le Martine seemed as easy as helping to give a tea party for lonely, bored children on a rainy day at the hotel.

Ottilie began with flattery, though she knew that Mrs Le Martine would not believe a word. Even so she knew she would enjoy it, that they both would, just like playing a familiar card game, or going for a walk each step of which you knew but which you could pretend that you did not, stopping and exclaiming at each turn at a view, or a statue, or a perfectly planted garden as if you had never seen it before.

‘I love your lavender coat and skirt, but I think I like you best of all in pink.’

Mrs Le Martine was quite used to Ottilie threading her way through all the clothes in her cupboards, and sighing and making appreciative remarks. As a matter of fact Ottilie always thought that she must rather like it, because as Ottilie did so she would stare at her own reflection in her silver hand mirror and turn her head to and fro, watching her reflection intently as Ottilie’s words came floating back to her across the deep-carpeted room.

‘Do you know, Mrs Le Martine, my mother has a pink Chanel suit, quite new, but she has been seen in it just one time too often in the hotel, so it must go back to the secondhand shop in Knightsbridge to be sold hardly worn. Such a pretty pink. I wrapped it for her this morning . . .’

‘Which shop in Knightsbridge?’

All Mrs Le Martine’s clothes were wrapped in some form of tissue paper or box with one of many Knightsbridge names printed in silver or gold across it. Ottilie often felt that Mrs Le Martine might even own this place called ‘Knightsbridge’.

‘Oh, it’s just a little shop where all her clothes must go once she’s finished with them because of being seen too often at the hotel, and of course she can’t give them to staff or anyone in the town because they might turn up here wearing them, and then where would she be?’

‘Well, quite. Your mother could not have that, I do see.’

There was a slight pause while Mrs Le Martine continued to stare at herself in her hand mirror, and then Ottilie offered, ‘Of course, I want her to keep them for me, but she won’t because they won’t be at all fashionable by the time I grow up.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they will, Miss Ottilie.’ At last Mrs Le Martine turned from the hand mirror and, head on one side, looked across at Ottilie who was now busy trying on some of her shoes. ‘I might be interested. Would you like to show me the Shah-nelle? I missed going to the Collections in Paris this year, and, as you know, I have always been interested in collecting Shah-nelle.’

This was another pretence that they both kept up, that Mrs Le Martine always went to Paris to the Collections and never bought her clothes secondhand from the shop in London which was just about, according to Mrs Cartaret, so sadly to close. Ottilie had long ago realized the truth because of the cleaning tickets that still adhered to the so-called ‘new’ clothes that Mrs Le Martine arrived with every year.

But that was another thing that she and Mrs Le Martine shared, their pretence. That’s why they laughed so much, because they both enjoyed pretending so much, and it didn’t matter that not very much was true. All that mattered was that they laughed and enjoyed themselves during the month that she sayed at the start of the summer season every year.

Later Mrs Le Martine said, staring at the pristine Chanel suit in its beautiful white box that Ottilie had raced to find in her mother’s rooms and returned with at equal speed, ‘Of course it will be very expensive, I expect, perhaps too expensive, don’t you think?’

‘It will be less if you buy it now, here,’ Ottilie found herself saying with a certain urgency, remembering the look in her mother’s eyes what now seemed like a lifetime away, but was really only two days.

‘Would Mrs Cartaret accept forty pounds for the coat and skirt, do you think?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘In that case, ring for Edith, Miss Ottilie, and I shall try it on.’

Edith must be rung for, and then Mrs Le Martine dressed in the suit, but not before she had negotiated a full change of lingerie and Edith had done up her silk stockings with the suspenders that she so favoured – silk-lined, and tiny as if, Ottilie always thought, made for the Little People in whom Ma had believed so fervently.

‘Did you know that in Ireland there is a shoe two inches long, made of mouse skin, and yet the heel of it is quite worn down, and the sole a little too, so it must have been worn by one of the busiest of the Little People?’

Ma had told Ottilie that often, as the start of a story designed to soothe her to sleep. Often the shoe had been lost by a little girl running away from her wicked stepmother to find the Land that Always Will. Sometimes it would be worn by a mischievous leprechaun searching to steal the Big People’s shoes when they were bathing in the sea. Now Mrs Le Martine looked across at Ottilie.

‘My dear Miss Ottilie, how fascinating,’ she murmured, not actually very interested at all, as she turned and turned in front of the dressing mirror before the fascinated eyes of Edith and Ottilie. ‘Oh yes, I think this is quite a fit, although it is a little long. But how particularly lucky that Her Majesty and I are both size eight, how most particularly lucky.’

‘You look ever so elegant in that, Mrs Le Martine,’ Edith murmured. Despite this flattery Mrs Le Martine waited until Edith had gone, which meant that she had to wait for Edith to stop hanging about removing fluff from the carpet and pretending that there was something she had forgotten so that she could listen to their talk, and then quickly found some crisply clean money and gave it to Ottilie.

‘There, dear, give this to you-know-who and tell her I am most grateful for the opportunity to buy Shah-nelle, but be sure to reassure that I shall not wear it until I return to London, never in the hotel. We could not have that, of course.’

If Ottilie thought that Melanie would be grateful when she passed on that first money for her secondhand clothes, she was very much mistaken. She simply took it from her as if she was a little late in arriving with it, and said, ‘Did I tell you, everything is fixed? Mrs Ballantyne is expecting you for tea tomorrow, at four o’clock. Do be on your very best, won’t you?’

Ottilie nodded, not wanting to catch Melanie’s eye, and then with much relief she effected her escape from the suite, and bolted off back to Mrs Le Martine with the news that tomorrow, only twenty hours away from now, she would at last be meeting Blue Lady.

This time Mrs Le Martine must come to Ottilie’s suite to help her choose her dress, and to watch Edith brush and comb her hair and tie the sides of it up in a beautiful bow at the top of her head while brushing the rest down her back in a thick and shining and satisfying fall of hair.

‘Most decorative, Edith,’ Mrs Le Martine purred as Edith turned Ottilie towards her. Tartan dress, broad white lace collar, wide sash, long white socks, black patent leather shoes, and a full petticoat beneath edged with lace just a little of which, as was currently the fashion, was allowed to show. ‘Oh yes, Edith, most satisfactory. Come here, pet.’

Mrs Le Martine leaned forward and pecked Ottilie on the cheek, giving Ottilie a wonderfully satisfactory inhalation of ‘Enchantée’.

‘Good luck, Miss Ottilie,’ she murmured in her husky voice, ‘and don’t forget the details, all the details. I want to know everything, please, right down to the last little jot or tittle.’

No need for Edith to take her upstairs, for during the last three years Ottilie had spent much time playing in the Great Suite on rainy days. She knew the way very well. She actually loved the grandness of it, the loneliness of it, the strange sense of its always waiting to be occupied by the very rich. The moment the double doors opened to admit the visitor the sea did not just come into view, it rose up from outside the French windows ahead and slapped them in the face.

Mrs Tomber always said, with great satisfaction, ‘We never have had any trouble in the Great Suite’, and if this was so it might be because the view of the sea and the rocks was so spectacular that the occupants of the rooms were constantly reminded that do what they might they were as important as sandhoppers compared to the sea outside.

In the long lonely winters when the hotel was shut Ottilie loved to people the rooms with exotic characters, polo-playing princes and grand ladies, brilliant painters, Chinese empresses and American film stars, the kind of people that never seemed to come to the Grand at St Elcombe.

But despite this particular suite’s being such an old friend, Ottilie had absolutely no idea of what to expect when she pushed open the double doors of the Great Suite. It was all very well for Mrs Le Martine and herself to imagine that they knew just what Blue Lady looked like, but they only knew her from afar, from their surreptitious daily glances up towards her balcony as they wondered over and over what she was doing there, so still, staring out to sea at the waves and the rocks on either side of the bay.

And no good asking the staff, Edith or anyone, because they were all so vague, having no powers of description unless there was something really out of the ordinary about someone that they could seize on – such as a broken arm, or a great white beard. But if the person in question did not have some special peculiarity they would reply to Ottilie’s curious questions in a vaguely impatient voice as if the very idea of answering her was a colossal effort, ‘Well, I wouldn’t know, really, Miss Ottilie. Well, all right. I’ll tell you. Quite pretty, she is, I suppose, for her age that is, but a bit old-fashioned now, see? But always quite polite, I would say, but as I say, definitely old-fashioned. Now I really must get on.’

They nearly always ended their poor efforts at description with ‘Now I really must get on’ as if Ottilie had embarrassed them with her questions. Perhaps because of this Ottilie had already formed the opinion that Blue Lady would be really quite old, not old as Mrs Le Martine was old but really, really old, because from afar, right above them on her private balcony, Mrs Ballantyne – which Ottilie kept having to remember was actually Blue Lady’s real name – always looked as if she was going to be old, tiny and frail, sitting in her dark glasses with a hat pulled down, and nearly always with a rug on her knees and sewing on her lap.

The shock to Ottilie therefore of seeing her on the other side of the elegant sitting room, beside the French windows of the Great Suite, was astounding. It was as much of a shock as expecting someone quite young and then finding them to be very old. It was as much of a shock as seeing how Joseph had seemed so suddenly to have changed into someone Ottilie simply did not know, tall, and handsome, but sort of grim, and with a tattoo on his arm, just like any other man that might be working on a building site for Mr Hulton, not like the Joseph she remembered even from Christmas last. It was as much of a shock as finding out how difficult it was to throw earrings away when you knew that God was watching you and Edith would be sure to notice. It was a bucket of cold water of a shock to see that Mrs Ballantyne was anything but old.

Not only that, but as Ottilie edged into the room with her tea tray, quietly shutting the door behind her with a push of her rear, she was instantly aware of the change in the atmosphere of the rooms. The Great Suite was no longer a furnished and carpeted, richly curtained blank canvas for an active imagination, the kind of imagination that Ottilie possessed, it was no longer a great toy box for her to open so that she could play with its contents, but a changed and most positive place filled with alien possessions.

It was only on giving a quick surreptitious look round that Ottilie remembered that Mrs Ballantyne’s arrival was always preceded by the delivery of innumerable personal belongings, and that she herself always arrived last, late at night and alone, hurrying up the stairs as if she was terrified that someone might see her, as if for the Great Suite to retain its magical, ghostly hold on her no human eye must behold her for longer than a few seconds, for if it did she herself might melt and disappear.

Outside the long windows it was an afternoon of dark grey clouds, and a dark grey sea rose and fell, pushing up the white tips of each new wave ever higher, so that at times it would seem they were vying to be taller and more imposing than the unmoving rocks on either side, or playing some game of touching the ceiling of the lowering sky that so exactly matched the sea. Even the palm trees that grew closer to the shielding comfort of the hotel seemed to be bending just slightly to the will of the wind, and certainly despite the late spring no-one was about outside, either below the balcony or beyond the window at which the lady now sat sewing steadily, her head bent over her needlework.

‘Put the tea tray on the round table,’ she called out in a pretty if strangely mechanical voice. ‘Leave it just there, and put two teaspoons of Lapsang Souchong from the silver caddy that you will notice in front of you into the strainer in the teapot, pour on the hot water from your jug and leave for one minute by the clock that you can see on the other side of the table, take it out, and then place a slice of lemon in each cup, pour on the tea and set one beside me and one beside the chair opposite, please.’

Ottilie, despite considerable previous experience of helping out with teas, felt more nervous at the sound of these instructions than she could possibly have imagined. To calm herself she thought of the kitchens from which she had just come. Down there, way below them, the staff would be laughing and joking as they set cream teas for one, or toasted muffins for two and put them in the old-fashioned muffin dishes. Down there the chefs would just be coming back on duty, stubbing out their untipped cigarettes by the back doors, waiting to swing into action as the evening star started to climb the weather-dark skies outside the windows and their wives and girlfriends settled back to watch the evening news on small black and white televisions, or listen to the shipping forecasts on their radios.

Mrs Ballantyne had never once raised her head from her sewing frame as she issued her instructions, and so, as Ottilie obediently poured hot water onto the closed straining spoon filled with Lapsang Souchong and waited an exact minute by the small, round mahogany clock in its special case by the caddy, it was still impossible for the inexperienced young waitress to see very precisely the face of the lady for whom she was making this delicately flavoured tea.

And besides, she was too intent on getting the tea right to permit herself to stare across the darkening room, unlit as yet by any of the large Chinese porcelain lamps, and illuminated only by that little amount of light that the weather and the time of year permitted.

Obedient to Mrs Ballantyne’s so-precise instructions she set a cup of tea first beside her, and then beside the empty chair.

Mrs Ballantyne must have finished the stitch upon which she was concentrating so hard, because at last she did look up just as Ottilie was looking down and for a second she stared into Ottilie’s eyes.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, but only after it seemed to Ottilie that she had given a little start and her eyes had, for a fleeting moment, lit up, as if she had found herself staring into the eyes of an old friend whom she really loved and had not seen for years. But it was only a second and then the brown eyes, rimmed with a faint green eye-shadow, seemed to once more glaze over, to become indifferent.

‘I am Ottilie, Mrs Ballantyne. Ottilie Cartaret.’

There was a slight pause as Mrs Ballantyne placed her sewing frame to the side of her chair and picked up the fine china teacup that had been put beside her, sipping at it delicately and almost without a sound.

‘People have such peculiar names nowadays,’ she remarked. ‘Such peculiar names.’

‘’parently it’s actually short for Odelia, Mamma says, but I’m never called Odelia, only Ottilie.’

‘Good heavens, imagine, did you ever hear the like of that?’

Mrs Ballantyne raised her head slightly as if she was talking to someone in the room, someone whom Ottilie certainly could not see but she now saw she had set a cup of tea for beside their chair.

Ottilie nodded at the empty chair which Mrs Ballantyne had addressed, because she felt so awkward and could think of nothing else that she could do. It would seem quite silly to say anything more, because of course had Ottilie thought the origin of her name uninteresting she would not have told Mrs Ballantyne about it.

‘Myself I like a name to have an old-fashioned ring to it, rather than a peculiar or quaint ring,’ Blue Lady went on, picking up her sewing frame once more but glancing, with a fleeting, loving smile, at the empty chair opposite her.

At this Ottilie could not help having a quite searching look round the room for this unseen person who had not yet attempted to drink the cup of tea set out so precisely for them. But there was definitely no-one else in the room, and so Ottilie stood on in an agony of embarrassment, not knowing what to say to these remarks that were not being made to her, pulling awkwardly at her broderie anglaise apron and wishing for perhaps a fiftieth time that Melanie had not been so terribly extravagant with her clothes money, and wondering how soon she could make good her escape. Above all she hoped that Mrs Ballantyne would tell her to go, because now she was here, in the Great Suite, only a few feet from her, Ottilie could see just how wrong she and Mrs Le Martine had got Blue Lady. For someone who, like Ottilie, had been looking to see an old lady with a lace collar and a cameo brooch, and if possible a great chignon of white hair, being so close to Mrs Ballantyne was certainly a great disappointment.

For a start she could hardly be more than thirty years of age, or something around that (Ottilie was not very good at ages), yet at the same time there was something very unmodern and not at all up to date about her. It was not just that she did not wear modern clothes, or that nowhere about her was there any evidence of the shirtwaisters and stiff petticoats that were currently so fashionable. It was not just that her suit had a nipped-in jacket, and a skirt that fell in an unfashionably long length to her ankles in a style that Mrs Le Martine had told Ottilie when they were talking ‘fashion’, which was practically every day, was ‘New Look 1948’, nor that her shoes were what Ottilie knew used to be called ‘peep-toed’ or that her make-up was unfashionable in that it emphasized her lips, so that they looked red and full. It was something about her whole being, as if she, despite not being old at all, was set as much in the jelly with which Chef always surrounded his oeufs en gelée as one of the softly poached eggs themselves.

And although Ottilie could see that she was very pretty, and that like Mrs Le Martine she was just the size to fit into one of her mother’s coat-and-skirts or one of the evening dresses that Mrs Cartaret was so intent on selling, she could also see that Mrs Ballantyne would never buy anything modern and up to date from either Mrs Cartaret or anyone else, for the very good reason that Mrs Ballantyne was quite obviously a person from the past. She was a person from another era, haunting the Great Suite in clothes which could now only be found in some magazine that not even the Grand would still have lying about on some dusty shelf. She looked as strange and old-fashioned as any of the old ladies who stayed at the Grand at Christmas, with their long crêpe evening dresses, their shingled hair and their delicate little reticules hanging from silver and gold chains from which they would from time to time remove their gold or silver powder compacts and pat their noses between dinner courses, discreetly turning to one side so that no-one would have cause to notice them.

‘It is a very dark day today,’ the voice from the chair went on, addressing that same empty chair opposite her, while at the same time holding out the fragile fine china teacup, part of the special tea service that was reserved especially for the Great Suite. ‘It is a very dark day indeed. And I will have another cup of tea, please, young lady.’

Just at that moment Ottilie had been hoping to bolt out of the door and down the stairs back to the fun of the kitchens, back to friendly faces and steam and bustle, but instead she silently stepped forward to do as bidden, leaving the other cup undrunk beside its chair.

She stared at the little mahogany clock as she minutely observed the tea ritual for a second time. This must be the reason why none of the staff liked even talking to her about Mrs Ballantyne. This must be the reason why none of them really liked taking trays up to her in answer to her calls for room service, the ghostly undrunk cup of tea.

This must be the reason, because of how she was, because of the frightening atmosphere that she brought into the room and which lingered about her, making Ottilie feel shivery at the sound of her mechanical tones, her strange way of speaking. The staff did not want to talk about Mrs Ballantyne, because Mrs Ballantyne was a ghost.

Yet unlike most ghosts she spoke, and her voice was the most upsetting aspect of Mrs Ballantyne, because it was a voice from which all expectation had quite gone. A voice which reflected some deep inner misery which was frightening, and at the same time unreachable. Having watched Ottilie place the teacup on the table beside her, she once more turned back to sewing in front of the fast-darkening backdrop outside the window where the storm clouds appeared to be dominating everything. But as she turned the large solitaire diamond on her finger appeared to catch what remained of the disappearing light, so that Ottilie, whose head was always full of romantic notions, imagined for a fraction of a second that its light might be acting as a secret signal to some boat being thrown about in the wrangling seas beyond the windows.

‘I love the sea when the sky is darkening.’

At this Ottilie could not help nodding, even though by now she knew that the remark was most certainly not meant for her, and that she was in reality nodding in place of someone she could not see, because Mrs Ballantyne looked up and stared across at the empty chair opposite hers.

‘The sea is at its best when in dark and lowering mood.’

Ottilie, silent as always, nodded yet again to the back of the chair, at the back of Mrs Ballantyne’s elaborate but severe chignon, at the sea in front of both of them, at the boats on the horizon, but actually to someone whom she could not see but who was none the less, it seemed to her, as real to Mrs Ballantyne as to Ottilie herself.

Downstairs the soups would be gently simmering, the bread rolls warming up, the butter curls glistening, and people would have begun dashing in and out of the service doors. There would be lights and the dessert trolley would be about to be wheeled into position, jellies and trifles shimmering, miniature eclairs glowing in their dark chocolate sauce. Everything would be such a contrast to this dark and gloomy room and its strange occupant with her long painted fingernails, her sculpted Dior clothes, and her heavy rings that seemed to be pushing her small, slender hands down towards her needlework, at the same time making it difficult for her to hold her needle except with almost straightened fingers, in a sewing style that old ladies in the lounges downstairs always used.

‘Yes, and perhaps there will be thunder. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it, darling?’

Mrs Ballantyne smiled at the empty chair and then gazed out at the sea ahead as if she was following someone else’s gaze rather than her own, as if she had heard someone say, ‘Oh, do look at that.’

Gradually, step by step, like a sort of reverse Grandmother’s Footsteps, Ottilie found herself backing towards the double doors, and then slowly, so slowly, she managed to turn one of the old-fashioned pointed handles. Then, quickly, she bolted out of the door, shut it and fled down the stairs again, without the tea tray, without having even mentioned her mother’s clothes, without anything, but above all without Mrs Ballantyne and her invisible guest.

‘What on earth can you mean, Ottilie?’

Melanie turned with evident reluctance from her hand mirror and placed it face down on the glass top of her much beribboned dressing table with its underskirts of shell-pink satin, and its overskirts of muslin draped in decorative swags and caught up at the sides by bunches of beautifully made artificial roses.

‘Please explain what you mean.’

Long before she opened her mouth to announce to Melanie that, unlike Mrs Le Martine, Mrs Ballantyne could have no possible interest in Mrs Cartaret’s model clothes, Ottilie had determined that she would tell Mamma that she no longer wanted to have anything to do with passing off her old clothes onto hotel guests.

‘Mrs Ballantyne only likes very old clothes, she told me so herself.’

‘That, Ottilie Cartaret, is a barefaced lie. I happen to know it is a barefaced lie, because Mrs Ballantyne is quite mad and has been for years. You could not possibly know that she is only interested in old clothes, because once she gets up into the Great Suite she never makes the slightest shred of sense.’ Mrs Cartaret paused to throw a pill down her throat and at the same time took a sip of her gin and tonic. ‘That is a lie!’

Ottilie turned scarlet at this and at the same time found herself wondering why her mother had sent her up to take tea to the woman if she knew all along that she would not be in the slightest bit interested in her cast-off clothes? Nevertheless, as always when she made something up, she could not give in, and anyway she knew what would happen if she was caught in a lie. It was the rule. Everyone at the Grand knew what happened when Ottilie was caught in one of the lies in which she believed so heartily. However well meant, they were always punished. ‘What I mean, Mamma,’ Ottilie went on, trying not to let her growing sense of desperation creep into her voice, ‘what I meant was, well, that Mrs Ballantyne only wears old clothes, so there didn’t seem much point in asking her, see? I mean did there? See?’

‘Don’t say “see” like that, Ottilie, it’s vulgar. And don’t wriggle your feet. Keep still when I’m talking to you. So, there didn’t seem much point in talking to Mrs Ballantyne, did there? Well, perhaps you will think there is some point when I tell you that unless we get rid of some of these clothes, and soon, there will be no pocket money for you for the next six months, at least!’

Mrs Cartaret’s sudden tempers, coming from nowhere, were something to which Ottilie had been forced to become used when she first came to live at the Grand. Sometimes she would even stamp her foot, or throw something at her mirror. Edith always murmured under her breath, if she was an unfortunate witness of one of her sudden squalls, ‘Take no notice, Miss Ottilie, just take no notice. Whatever happens, just take no notice.’

But Ottilie found it difficult to take no notice, particularly if, like now, she was trying to save up all her hard-earned pocket money to buy Lorcan a fishing rod for his birthday.

‘I could ask Mrs Le Martine if she has a friend who would like something. How would that be, Mamma?’

‘Mrs Le Martine! You and Mrs Le Martine, you make me sick both of you, thick as thieves and always gossiping and carrying on. Mrs Le Martine tells lies just like you do. You both tell lies. She is nothing but a liar, pretending to be something she is not. And so are you. You’re a liar.’

Mrs Cartaret sprang up from her dressing table stool and ran at Ottilie in sudden fury, her hairbrush in one hand.

‘I’m going to beat you for telling lies, and then I’m going to lock you in that cupboard, you horrid little girl,’ she shouted. ‘I’m going to lock you up until you promise never to tell me lies again!’

Ottilie froze. It was such a very long time since Mrs Cartaret had last beaten her, she had quite hoped that she never would again. The last time was when the sauce chef had left without warning and Ottilie had tried to help out in the kitchens and dropped a whole tray of plates. She had been marched from the kitchens, in front of the whole staff, and beaten and locked in a cupboard. She so hated that word ‘beat’. I am going to beat you. She would never say that word when she grew up, not ever. She would never say ‘beat’. She would never beat anyone either, as Mamma was trying to beat her now.

‘Please, Mum – Mamma – please, don’t beat me. I’m sorry for telling you a he, really I am.’ Mr Cartaret appeared at his wife’s bedroom door as Ottilie started to plead with Mrs Cartaret. ‘Please, please, please don’t beat me, please, Mamma. I didn’t mean to tell you a lie, really I didn’t!’

‘In for a beating, are you?’ Ottilie heard him ask. But he went away before Ottilie started to cry out. And later he said to her as he passed her in the corridor when Edith had let her out of the cupboard, ‘We all have to go through it, you know. I was beaten. Did me no harm, really it didn’t. Besides, being in a dark cupboard’s nothing to complain about. Quite good for you, I understand.’

What he did not say to Ottilie was why it was good for you. Nor did he tell her the real reason why Mrs Cartaret had flown into such a particularly bad temper that afternoon.

Ottilie had managed to dry her tears long before a welcome ray of light illuminated her lonely and terrifying sojourn locked among Mrs Cartaret’s heavily scented clothes and Edith, creeping silently in once Madame had gone to make her entrance down the golden staircase, was able to let Ottilie out and take her back to her own suite where she bathed her in silence, both of them avoiding looking at the red marks or into each other’s eyes.

If Edith and Ottilie had met each other’s eyes they would have been unable to avoid telling each other the truth, which was: ‘Mrs Cartaret is mad.’

So they did not look into each other’s eyes, and while Ottilie listened to Edith reading to her from yet another chapter of her favourite book her mind went back to the old days when she was the centre of Ma’s life, her little star, and she lay beside her basking in the warmth of their early mornings together, while Ma sipped her morning tea and music played from her pride and joy, the great grand mahogany radiogram.

One day soon perhaps Ottilie would be able, somehow, to go back to what she still found herself longing for so heartily, would feel herself once more trotting beside Ma heading for Number Four and all its warmth, but as it was now there was just Edith. Yet at least that was something, at least she was lucky in Edith.

‘Edith?’

‘Yes, pet?’

Edith stopped, placing her finger under the word she was about to read, which she always did most precisely.

‘Now I won’t be having pocket money for six months I shan’t be able to give Lorcan a birthday present, will I?’

‘No, pet, I don’t suppose you will.’

Edith looked grave. It was grave. Very grave. The whole thing was extraordinarily grave. After all, as they both knew, in six months Lorcan would be twenty-one years of age, and as Edith always said, there was no birthday more important than that, surely?

‘Perhaps I could do a paper round, like Chef’s daughter does?’

‘Oh no, pet, that wouldn’t be allowed. Never. Not for you, Miss Ottilie.’

‘What could I do, then?’

‘Just try and be good, and hope for the best.’

‘I do try and be good, but it doesn’t seem to work, does it, Edith? So there doesn’t seem much point in hoping for the best.’

‘It does do good sometimes,’ Edith said, her eyes quickly returning to the book. ‘I often hope for the best, Miss Ottilie.’

Ottilie closed her own eyes with one of her particularly deep and shuddering sighs. If only she understood more about everything maybe it would make it easier to be good. In the morning, long before Mrs Cartaret was up and about, she would go and see Mrs Le Martine and they would laugh and talk and maybe some of those things in her life that she so loved would be all right again.

But in the morning when Ottilie crept down to see Mrs Le Martine she had checked out of her suite, leaving only an envelope addressed to Ottilie by her dressing table mirror. Inside the envelope there was a card. The words were printed very carefully on the card.

For you, Miss Ottilie, to spend as you wish.

Inside the envelope there was a great deal of money, a frightening amount. So much that Ottilie ran back to her own suite and Edith, unable to face counting it herself, quite terrified at just the sight of it.

‘Why did she want to give me all this, Edith? Quick. Hide it. Or Mamma will think I have stolen it, won’t she?’

Ottilie practically threw the envelope at Edith, and Edith, sort of knowing at once why neither of them must say anything to anyone about it, that it was a terrible secret between them, immediately stashed the envelope and the money in the side pocket of her uniform as if she was afraid the door would suddenly be flung open and they would both be accused of having stolen it, and it would be taken from them.

‘You mustn’t say, Miss Ottilie, and I wasn’t going to tell you, but it appears that Mrs Le Martine heard all about what happened to you – you know, being punished – and she wouldn’t stay here after that. Not a minute longer. She wanted to say goodbye to you, but you were fast asleep, and she was that upset she wouldn’t stay until morning, took a hire car and left. There was a terrible row between her and Madame, at dinner. Everyone was very shocked in the dining room, I hear, and several regulars left early. But you were asleep by then, thank goodness, because it was not nice, as I understand it, not nice at all.’

Colour flooded Ottilie’s face and she could feel not just the pain but the terrible humiliation of the beating the previous day. ‘Oh, but I didn’t want her to hear about that, really I didn’t.’ Ottilie started to cry. ‘I didn’t want Mrs Le Martine to hear about that at all.’

Edith bent down to Ottilie and put her arms awkwardly around her, because although they were always together they did not usually hug each other.

‘You must feel proud, really, Miss Ottilie, because Mrs Le Martine really went for Madame when she heard from someone on the staff that she’d been beating you. She said you were the nicest little girl she’d ever met and she wasn’t staying a minute longer. She blamed her something terrible, blamed Madame in front of everyone. Mrs Tomber said she heard from Chef who heard from Thierry the head waiter that it was terrible to hear how Mrs Le Martine went for Madame, but of course they were in Mrs Le Martine’s corner, although they can’t say so, because of their jobs.’

Ottilie tried to stop crying but she could not, because she knew now that she would never again be able to pretend to Mrs Le Martine that she was a cheerful, mischievous little girl. Now Mrs Le Martine would know all about her mother, and about Ottilie’s not really being cheerful at all. The two of them would not be able to pretend any more, would not be able to tease each other and make believe. It was all over, for ever and ever, just as Joseph and Sean were all over, not wanting to see Ottilie any more, and perhaps even Lorcan too because of not being able to save up for the fishing rod, because of no pocket money, because of everything.

As Ottilie dried her eyes, Edith went on, ‘I know all about what she’s been on at you for. Mrs Le Martine told me everything, Miss Ottilie. Trouble with Madame is she has clothes mania, begging your pardon, Miss Ottilie, but truly that’s what she has. They’ll be the death of her, one day, they will really, those clothes of hers. Never content, never happy, enough is not enough for her. Sending you round to people like Mrs Le Martine, making you ask them if they want to buy her old clothes indeed. She’s just punishing you because she’s bored and cross. She doesn’t really need the money at all, not like my mother needs money. It’s as if she wanted to humiliate you because of her own poor little girl drowning in the sea when she was lunching and not paying attention. Now look, see. I’ll keep this money for you. No-one knows about it except you and me, and we aren’t telling, are we? We’ll keep it under our hats. And I’ll buy that fishing rod you want to give Mr Lorcan for his birthday, when the times comes, so I will, and I’ll wrap it for you, and all that. You just leave it to me and I’ll do everything. And not a word to anyone, mind? Mrs Le Martine will be back next year, course she will, as right as rain and twice as wonderful, as they say. She’ll be back. You see if she isn’t, mark my words. And then you can thank her for everything, quite quiet, when no-one’s around, and that’s that. No more to be said.’

But there was something more to be said. Ottilie looked up at Edith, her eyes dry of tears now, but even so she had to speak slowly so as not to be upset again.

‘Edith?’

‘Yes, pet?’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Course, pet.’

Edith adopted her most mature expression and waited for the inevitable question.

‘Will I ever grow up?’