Amelia Sedley was wearing her nicest dress. The grey chiffon number, studded with little sparkly stones, that she once hadn’t been able to get into and now fitted like a glove, though it was still a little tight under the armpits. It was also the dress that she’d lent Becky Sharp two years before to wear on that fateful night when Jos had got terribly drunk and ended up kissing Becky and tearing the dress, but Amelia had painstakingly mended all the rips and it was almost impossible to see that the dress had ever been damaged.
And now George Wylie had the delicate chiffon in a death grip as he pumped into Amelia, bending her over the sink in the tiny en suite of the worst room in the not-great hotel that was all they’d been able to book.
George had taken one look at her when she’d stepped out of the bathroom in the dress and his eyes had darkened, causing Amelia to feel that delicious ache start deep in her belly.
‘Emmy, that dress … you look absolutely fuckable,’ he’d said in that precise voice of his. A voice that Emmy had always dreamed would one day murmur sweet nothings into her ear. ‘Knickers off, there’s a good girl.’
‘B-b-b-but we’ll be late for the benefit,’ Amelia said uncertainly even as she reached under her dress to slide off her M&S white cotton briefs.
‘Well, that will be all your fault for making me want you,’ George had said and he hadn’t even kissed her, just marched her into the bathroom and told her to bend over.
He’d been absolutely insatiable for the last two days and Amelia couldn’t think what had got into him, though she was really very pleased with what had got into her.
They were late down to the lobby to meet Jos and lovely Dobbin, who’d worked as an advisor on a documentary about post-Taliban Afghanistan and had flown in to be on a post-screening panel.
Dobbin, dashing in a black evening suit, stepped forward as Amelia tripped out of the lift.
‘You look lovely, Emmy,’ he said gravely. ‘Quite glowing.’
She was glowing and still slightly sore down there, and George, Gorgeous George, shot her a naughty, knowing look, so all she could do was giggle.
They piled into a taxi, Amelia sandwiched between Dobbin and George. ‘A rose between two thorns,’ Dobbin said and George cuffed the back of his head and told him not to be so clichéd, but Amelia wouldn’t let anything prick her happiness tonight. Not when George’s thigh was pressed against hers, his hand beneath her dress, under the cover of darkness.
It was so different to how things had been in London. Snatched dates in out-of-the way restaurants whenever George could find space in his very busy schedule. He’d kissed her a few times but they’d seemed like polite, perfunctory kisses and she wondered if he was just being polite and perfunctory in taking her out.
Then she’d remember how he’d rescued Pianoforte from being bought by a cruel-faced lottery winner, which surely was something that a man would only do if he had proper feelings for a girl.
It had all been very confusing until that night when they’d had dinner at a small Italian restaurant in Stanmore and Amelia had mentioned that Becky Sharp was in Hello! In fact, she still had the magazine in her bag.
She’d pulled it out so that George could see her dear, though quite absent, friend on the cover in a white-and-gold bikini. ‘It Girl, Becky Sharp, talks about her charity work and life as Mrs Rawdon Crawley while modelling her exclusive swimwear range for ASOS.’
‘She’s made very little go a long, long way,’ George had noted with an odd look on his face, which Amelia had put down to the flickering candle stuck in a wax-encrusted chianti bottle. Then he’d put his hand over hers where it rested on the table. ‘You know, Emmy, you’re looking very pretty tonight. Very pretty indeed.’
Amelia was sun-kissed, her hair lightened by all the hours spent outdoors. And yes, she’d lost weight, which was due to a combination of grief for her old life and her days spent doing manual labour. But she wasn’t sure that she looked pretty without the eyelash extensions and the carefully applied fake tan, the manicures and pedicures, and the huge amount of products she used to apply to her face. These days, Amelia’s look was rather too homely for her liking.
‘I’m sure I just look weather-beaten and straw-haired,’ she’d mumbled but hoped the appreciative gleam in George’s eyes was all for her and wasn’t just another trick of the flickering candlelight.
‘All that time you spend riding,’ he’d mused.
‘Oh George, I wouldn’t spend so much time riding if you hadn’t rescued Pianoforte,’ Amelia had said, as she did at least once every time she and George met.
And as ever, George had frowned and pretended that he didn’t know what she was talking about. Amelia was sure that she was the only person who ever got to see this modest, unassuming side to George Wylie.
‘No need to mention it, I’d rather talk about all the things you can do with your thighs after sitting on a horse all day. I bet you’ve got muscles that I haven’t even dreamed about.’ Then, unbelievably, he’d taken Amelia’s hand and dragged it down, under the table, to rest in his lap. ‘Feel that? I’m hard just thinking about it. Thinking about you.’
It had all been so sudden, so unexpected. Of course, Amelia had dreamed that one day George would think of her with even a fraction of the affection she had for him, and now here he was, telling her that he was dying to be inside her.
They couldn’t go back to Burnt Oak – not with her parents living there and besides, George could no sooner go to Burnt Oak than he could fly to the moon. His pied-à-terre in Victoria was miles away too, so their first time, Amelia’s first time, was in a motel called The Spider’s Web on the A41 Watford Bypass, though it had been no less romantic for that.
Since then, they’d done it half a dozen times and since they’d been in Cannes, they’d done it loads and loads. Amelia was pretty sure that the cranberry juice she guzzled with every meal wasn’t going to be enough to stave off a UTI, but she didn’t care.
What she cared about was that when she walked into the ballroom of Le Mirage, and felt the nerves kick her in the stomach like Trixie, the most skittish of the riding school’s ponies, she was on George’s arm. When you were with a man as commanding and as capable as George Wylie, there was no need to be nervous.
Jos, predictably, had wedged himself into a white dinner jacket, which meant within five minutes of arriving, three people had mistaken him for a waiter and had asked him for more champagne. He never learned his lesson about the perils of wearing a white tuxedo. ‘Everyone wears a white DJ in LA,’ he kept muttering under his breath and even Dobbin, who had faced down the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS, was sweating and discomfited.
‘Champagne for my lovely lady,’ George said suavely, lifting two glasses from a passing waiter’s tray and presenting Amelia with one.
Once Amelia felt the champagne bubbles fizzing on her tongue, the nerves mellowed out and she could take in her surroundings. The elegant ballroom had been designed in the art nouveau style, and its decorative flourishes could be seen in the fretwork of the sweeping staircase, the delicate pillars and the painted friezes on the balconies that overlooked the scene.
And the scene consisted of four hundred mostly beautiful people. Amelia stared at women poured into dresses she’d seen in the windows of the exclusive boutiques that lined the Croisette. Their faces were as expensive as their clothes; skin stretched tight over preternaturally smooth foreheads, lips and cheeks plumped with the very latest in-fillers, framed by hair as glossy as liquid silk.
In her dress, that really was so very three years ago, and silver sandals that had already given her blisters, Amelia felt quite the poor relation, but George was still at her side and every now and again he’d smile at her, and Amelia wouldn’t have swapped places with any other woman in the room.
Not even Becky Sharp, who was moving towards them with a fluid grace, the crowd separating to allow her free passage, just like God had parted the Red Sea for the Israelites. In a room full of beautiful, beautifully-dressed women, Becky was easily the most beautiful and the most beautifully dressed.
Amelia suddenly thought back to the first time she’d met Becky on that first night in the Big Brother house when Becky had stuck salt-and-vinegar crisps between two slices of heavily buttered white bread and said mournfully, ‘All the other girls in here are so sophisticated. I’m glad you’re not like that.’
Now Becky looked like she lived on a diet of vintage champagne, gulls’ eggs and nectar. She’d acquired an iridescent, untouchable patina that only the truly famous seem to have, so Amelia wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d glided right past them. But Becky didn’t. She stopped in front of the foursome and held out her slender white arms in greeting.
‘I’m so glad you could all come. And Captain Dobbin too. What a lovely surprise,’ she said in the slightly breathy voice that now sounded as if she’d been born and bred somewhere in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. ‘Emmy, you look absolutely adorable. So brave to wear a cocktail dress when everyone else is in a gown. Good for you.’
Was it possible that Becky didn’t even remember the dress? Amelia was gathered up in a fragile embrace as if she might break Becky if she hugged her too hard.
Mind you, Becky had probably worn so many designer gowns in the last year or so that who could blame her if she forgot a frock or two? ‘You look lovely, Becky. Um, is that er … Gucci?’
Becky looked down at the blush-coloured tulle sheath dress that clung lovingly and glimmeringly to her. ‘Not Gucci, silly Emmy. It doesn’t look anything like a Gucci. It was custom-made for me. Unless you’re familiar with haute couture, you wouldn’t have heard of the designer,’ she revealed almost apologetically. Then she looked beyond Amelia to smile brilliantly at the three men she’d come with. ‘Now, let’s find some fascinating people for you to talk to. Come! Follow me!’
So Amelia, the Member of Parliament for Squashmore, a celebrated war hero, and the founder of the most successful protein-ball company on the West Coast, obediently and meekly followed Becky Sharp, as the glittering masses parted for her once more.
Becky’s hips undulated sensuously, which made Amelia feel as if her own hips were made of Lego, as they slowly climbed the sweeping staircase to the galleries above. In an alcove was a table littered with mostly empty bottles of champagne, and sitting around the table were a variety of people in various stages of inebriation.
Becky beckoned to a wizened old man who looked as if he’d wandered in off the street and pulled Dobbin forwards. ‘Do you know Sam?’ she asked expectantly, as if most people did.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Dobbin said, wondering why on earth he should.
‘He’s a very famous film director,’ Becky scolded. ‘Aren’t you, Sam?’
The gnome-like figure shrugged impassively.
‘Modest too. Anyway, he’s making a film about the war in Syria and you must have been to Syria doing soldier stuff, so I’ve decided that Sam absolutely has to talk to you.’ Becky nudged Dobbin further forwards. ‘Go on, he doesn’t bite, but I don’t think he’s turned on his hearing aid.’ She tapped Sam, the famous director, on the shoulder and gestured at his ear, while the old man smiled and put a proprietorial and liver-spotted hand on her bottom.
Becky didn’t even flinch, just calmly removed the hand and turned her attention to Jos. ‘I have someone all lined up for you too,’ she said, tucking her arm into Jos’s as she used to do during those few heady weeks when Jos had been the happiest man in London. ‘He helped to finance Rawdy’s last film and apparently his family own a chain of gyms in the Midwest and he’s very curious about your balls.’
‘Protein balls,’ Jos corrected as Becky dragged him over to the next table where Rawdon was holding court, in sunglasses and a leather jacket, while surrounded by a bunch of perma-tanned men, whose white teeth glowed in the dim light, and their female companions who all looked as if they’d come straight off a conveyor belt in a factory that made Victoria’s Secret models.
‘Becky seems to know everyone,’ Amelia said to George but he just grunted as if knowing everyone wasn’t such an impressive feat. Then when she took his arm to console herself that even though she was two stone heavier and six inches shorter than all the other women in their immediate vicinity, she was still worthy of George Wylie, he tensed and shook her free.
‘Don’t cling, Emmy,’ he admonished as Becky came towards them with a beautiful elegant woman in tow. He puffed out his chest, stood a little taller, a little straighter and Amelia steeled herself for Becky to introduce George to her stunning friend, but it was Amelia she reached for.
‘Emmy,’ Becky said, taking Amelia’s hand and pulling her out of George’s orbit. ‘This is Claire. It turns out that she was at university with the brother of one of the M’s.’
Amelia had recognised Claire immediately but could hardly bring herself to look at her, in case Claire’s otherworldly beauty sapped the life right out of her. ‘I’ve seen all your films,’ she breathed, while next to her George made the tiny, hissing sound which always meant that he was embarrassed by her latest display of gaucheness. Still, Amelia couldn’t help herself. ‘And I thought you were terribly good in that TV adaptation of Where Angels Fear To Tread.’
Claire inclined her head, which rested on a swan-like neck. ‘Thank you,’ she said gravely. ‘And of course I loved you in Big Brother. I wish I could cry on cue like that and not have to rely on glycerine drops.’
‘No, she really does cry that much,’ Becky said and Amelia wanted to point out that that wasn’t entirely true, certainly not lately, but Becky’s grip on her hand tightened. ‘Claire has to ride a horse in her next film and she’s absolutely terrified. I knew that you would be the perfect person to put her at ease. Why don’t you two go and have a chat?’ She pointed out a distant corner. ‘There’s an empty table over there.’
‘Will you?’ Claire asked earnestly, because her drama coach had told her that she lacked sincerity and now she over-compensated so no one would think that she was shallow. ‘I have so many questions. I’m particularly worried about what it will do to my thighs. Will it make them bigger? Those girls who do dressage at the Olympics all have thunder thighs.’
Amelia could feel her own thighs expanding under her dress as Claire led her away, nattering in her ear, so she didn’t even have a chance to look back at George to see if he minded.
And it was probably just as well, because Amelia Sedley and her thighs were the very last thing on George’s mind. Becky Sharp looked to her left and then her right, and once she’d established that she and George were the last two standing, she stepped closer to him. Close enough that he could smell the heavy, exotic tang of her perfume, like lilies a day away from decay. Close enough that George could see the gentle rise and fall of her breasts as she took a couple of deep breaths as if she were nervous. Close enough that not even a whisper could come between them.
‘Gorgeous George,’ she purred. ‘Alone at last.’
And when he walked her backwards into the dimmest, darkest corner, she didn’t even make a token protest.