Rosie (26 page)

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘She’s good at that.’ Rosie chuckled. ‘Headstrong we used to call it. It sounds old-fashioned now, what with all this feminism stuff.’

‘Are you not a feminist, then?’

‘Oh, yes. A different kind, though. Wily.’

Nick grinned. ‘You? Wily?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I look at all these women moaning on about men. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You don’t have to do that. You can get where you want to go much more quickly if you gentle them along – flatter them, flutter your eyelashes, instead of all this bra-burning business.’

‘But wasn’t that liberating?’

‘Only for breasts. Damned uncomfortable for everything else.’ She was warming to her subject now, eyes glowing. It was good to see her back on form, bright as a button, trying to shock.

‘Look at that Germaine What’s-her-name? Where’s all that bra-burning got her? She still hasn’t got a man.’

‘Er . . . maybe she doesn’t want one.’

‘Well, she’s gone the right way about not getting one, hasn’t she? All this business about men not being the superior sex. Good heavens! We know that and they know that, so why keep banging on about it?’

Nick laughed. ‘Go for ’em, Rosie!’

‘And another thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Breast enlargements.’

Nick choked. ‘What?’

‘Why do they make them so big?’

‘Keep your voice down!’

‘Is there no control over the size of them? Most women would be happy with a thirty-six B, but they end up with a thirty-six double F. What sort of man is going to want to go out with a woman with a pair of footballs fastened to her chest?’

‘Stop it!’

‘I mean, she only has to turn round sharpish and she’ll knock you over. Heaven knows what the weight of them will do to her back.’

‘Ssh!’

‘Oh, I’m telling you, in a few years’ time the papers will be full of it – “New Survey: Large Breasts Lead to Back Trouble. Fifty-six per cent of housewives with big boobs have trouble bending over. Or standing up again.”’

She paused. Nick was squeezing in the sides of his mouth to stifle the laughter. ‘Stop, stop!’ he said.

‘And then there’ll be the lawsuits. Silicone companies sued for being overgenerous with implants.’

Nick waved an arm in the hope of flagging her down.

Rosie lay back on her pillow. ‘Better now?’

He nodded. ‘Much better.’ And then, with feeling, ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it, love. And you just keep your end up. In a manner of speaking.’

‘Rosie!’

‘Oh, I know. It’s a difficult time, and lots of people’s emotions are involved, but don’t underestimate your own. It’s hard deciding how serious you are in a relationship when there are complications. Just remember that there are three people involved. You’re one of them, and your feelings are as important as anybody else’s. The danger is that you’ll put everyone else before yourself. That’s not always a good thing. It just makes you embittered.’

‘Are you speaking from experience?’

Rosie was silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps.’

‘So what do I do now? Wait and see how they are?’

‘Oh, I just wanted you to know that I understand the problem. It’ll all come good in the end. You’re a good man, and she’ll see that.’

‘Victoria asked me if I was a good man.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘Funny child. Astute.’

‘And scared? Sophie thinks she’s scared.’

‘Oh, yes. But all children of that age are. They just have different ways of dealing with it. Some lash out. Others turn bad. Those like Victoria go into their imagination. Who’s to sit in judgement?’

‘So how do you solve the problem, apart from just giving it time?’

‘If I knew that, love, I’d be sitting in the House of Lords.’ She smiled.

‘Now, there’s a thought. You’d look good in ermine.’

Rosie looked at him hard. ‘And I might have been, mightn’t I, if things had turned out differently?’

He watched her expression change. There was something of that earlier wistfulness about her now, the look he’d seen when he’d picked her up from the police station.

She leaned back on the pillow and turned her head towards him. Suddenly she was looking tired. It was as if the energy she had needed to jolly him out of his woes had sapped her strength. ‘We will find out, won’t we? About my mother?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’ He stroked her hand.

‘Only I would like to know before . . . Well, soon.’

She closed her eyes. He held her hand until her breathing was soft and steady, then slipped away, determined to sort himself out. Clever Rosie. She always knew what he was thinking. How did she manage to play every moment so that it brought out the best in people? At least, that was how it seemed. Except, of course, when she misbehaved. Then she was a liability. But right now it seemed churlish to harbour such a thought, and he had to face facts: those days were probably over.

 
 
29

Probably better under glass in cold, wet districts.

T
hey had not spoken for thirty-six hours. He did not know how she was feeling or what she was doing. He wanted to ask if she and Victoria would like to come over and stay for the weekend, though he was fearful of putting the question; afraid of being turned down.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. She sounded preoccupied, hesitant. It was as if the passion and conviction they had shared only a few days previously had evaporated.

‘Do you want to meet first? To talk?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yes, that might be best.’

‘Shall I come to you?’ He knew at once what the answer would be. She seemed anxious to keep him out of her world. He hoped it was because she wanted to leave it behind, and thought of him as her new life.

‘No. I’ll come to you. I’ll get the seven o’clock ferry.’

‘Fine. I’ll pick you up.’

And she was gone, with no talk of love, just a brief goodbye. But it was enough to make him want to fight for her. As for his chance of success, that was anybody’s guess.

Filling the day would be the main thing. He needed something to take his mind off her. Well, not her so much as the likely outcome of their meeting. Something he could concentrate on. Like diamonds. He drove into Newport and looked in the windows of the jewellers’ shops, but there seemed little point in going inside to ask questions: the rings in the windows were priced in hundreds, and the stones were barely visible in their settings.

Eventually, while he was taking a short-cut between the two main streets down a narrow alleyway, he passed a small shop with an ornamental metal grille on the inside. Several bright spotlights shone on assorted rings and necklaces that pirouetted on deep blue velvet turntables, the gemstones shimmering in the light.

The sign on the shop front read, ‘Elliott Williams, Jeweller’, in ornate, gilded script. He pushed at the navy blue door, but it refused to open. Then he saw the printed notice: ‘Please Ring For Attention’. He pressed the button on the wall and the door buzzed. He pushed it open, and went into the lavishly appointed shop.

As the door closed behind him, the outside world receded. The gems dazzled him.

‘Can I help?’ The voice was soft, well spoken and civil. At first he could not see where it was coming from. Then a figure appeared from behind one of the display cabinets. It was a man, tall and slim, in his sixties, with grey hair, slightly too long, brushed back from his face. He wore a pinstriped dark blue suit with a striped shirt, white collar and too much cuff showing. The broad-striped tie was held in place by a diamond pin.

‘Well, I hope so. It’s just an enquiry, really.’ Nick did his best not to look nervous.

‘Fine,’ the man said. ‘Fire away.’

‘I just wondered if you could tell me anything about diamonds.’ The moment he had said it, he realized the idiocy of the question.

The man laughed. ‘I’ll do my best. It’s my name on the sign outside so I should be able to hazard a guess at most things.’

‘Of course. Sorry.’

‘Look, it’s rather quiet at the moment. Would you like some coffee? Miranda’s making some.’

‘Thank you.’

Elliott Williams put his head round the door that led to a room behind the shop. ‘Can you make that three, Miranda? We have a guest.’

Nick heard a compliant murmur, and tried to take in the contents of the display counter immediately in front of him. There were gems of all colours and sizes – rubies, emeralds, diamonds and sapphires, in brooches, on rings and even tiaras. He wondered how much call there was for diamond tiaras on the Isle of Wight. ‘How do you get them to shine so much?’ he asked. ‘I suppose it’s the lighting.’

‘Partly, but mostly it’s down to the cut . . . So, what do you want to know?’

Nick pulled himself out of his reverie. ‘Well, I’ve been given some diamonds. Well, a diamond. And I just want to know a bit about them, really.’

‘Do you have it with you?’

‘No, but I could bring it in.’

‘That might be an idea. They come in all sorts of sizes and the quality varies. You know about the four Cs, I presume?’

‘The four Cs?’

‘Yes. A diamond is graded according to four characteristics – cut, carat, which is its weight, clarity and colour.’

‘Right.’

‘Is your diamond particularly large?’

‘Well, I suppose it’s about as big as my little fingernail.’

Elliott Williams paused. Then he said, ‘Hmm. I think you
had
better bring it in. You do have it somewhere safe, I hope?’

‘The bank.’

‘Good. A lot will depend on the other three Cs, as I’ve said. Is it cut or uncut?’

‘Oh, it’s cut.’

‘Shape?’

‘Roundish, I suppose.’

‘In which case it will probably have fifty-eight facets. The better proportioned the facets, the better the light reflection and the more the diamond will sparkle.’

Miranda, a rather superior-looking girl with long blonde hair and a tight black mini dress, brought in two cups of coffee on a silver tray. She looked, and walked, like a model.

‘Thank you,’ said Nick, as he took the proffered cup. She smiled absently but did not meet his eye. Nick found himself musing on her relationship with Mr Williams. Daughter? Girlfriend? Then he came back to the matter in hand. ‘Are they all cut the same?’

‘There are recognized cuts. The most usual is the AGS Ideal Cut, sometimes known as the American Ideal Cut.’

‘Always American!’ said Nick, making polite conversation.

‘Except that it was first published in England by a man called Towkowsky who worked for a Belgian firm of cutters.’

‘Ah.’

Elliott Williams was warming to his subject. ‘There are slight variations on the theme, but we usually call them Ideal Cuts. Then we come to weight, measured in carats. There are a hundred points to a carat, so a fifty-point diamond weighs?’

‘Half a carat?’ suggested Nick.

‘Correct.’ Elliott sipped his coffee, then took a key from his jacket pocket and opened the back of the display case. He slid out a flat, square cushion on which rested a single stone with no setting. He laid it on the counter. ‘Here you are. Take a look.’ He handed Nick a small lens with which to examine the stone under the light.

‘Wow!’

‘Beautiful, isn’t it? But it’s not flawless. If you look very closely you’ll see one or two very slight imperfections. It’s what we call a VS1, which means it has very small inclusions. A VVS1 has very, very small inclusions – imperfections. Flawless is the best, down to I3, which has inclusions visible to the naked eye.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes, even you would,’ retorted Elliott, amused by his own witticism.

Nick smiled politely. ‘So the clarity of my diamond is very important?’

‘Oh, yes. It will affect the value tremendously. A one-carat diamond could vary in price between a hundred pounds and twenty-five thousand, depending on its quality.’

Nick recapped, to make sure he had all the facts. ‘So that’s cut, carat and clarity. What about colour?’

‘Anything from D to X.’

‘Sorry?’

‘From white to yellow, though you can also get blue, pink, red, green and even brown diamonds. But they will usually have been irradiated.’

‘Aren’t white ones the best?’

‘Well, there’s a lot of call for yellow at the moment. Fashionable, you know.’

Nick sipped at his coffee. ‘And where do they come from? South Africa?’

‘Oh, not always. They may come from Australia, Namibia, Botswana . . .’

‘What about Russia?’

‘Oh, yes. Increasingly. Around twenty-five per cent of the world’s diamonds come from Russia.’

‘And are they good quality?’

‘Undoubtedly. They didn’t discover them until the nineteen fifties and until recently there was a strict export quota. But that changed in 2002.’

‘So there are more of them about now?’

‘Certainly.’

Elliott drained his coffee cup and looked at his watch. ‘Well, if that’s all you need to know, I have an appointment to get to.’

Nick realized that he had probably trespassed on Elliott Williams’s time rather more than he should have. ‘Of course. Sorry.’

‘Not at all. If you want an appraisal I should charge you, but why don’t you pop back with the diamond and I’ll give you a rough idea of its likely value for nothing?’