A Little Love (12 page)

‘She wasn’t really causing trouble. I don’t think she wanted to be seen.’

‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead,’ Milly said through gritted teeth, ‘and I was fond of Billy-boy. But if she was his fiancée and he’s left her pregnant… If he did do that to Bobby, it’s a good job he isn’t around, cos I’d bloody kill ’im!’

‘You can’t talk like that, Mills.’

‘I know, but I’m angry. What was he playing at?’

‘I don’t know. I just can’t make it out. If he was seeing both of them, then how the hell did he see that working out? That baby would have been about one when he was due to marry Bob! And if he wasn’t involved with Megan, then who the bloody hell is she? I don’t understand it, any of it.’

The two cousins walked arm in arm to the waiting car. As the limo swept them up the drive of William’s family home, Pru grimaced. ‘God, why so many people?’ She couldn’t stomach the party-like atmosphere in and around the house, the flash cars abandoned on the gravel, the sumptuous spread, the jewellery and high heels. Did they not know that her beautiful girl was dead?

There was the chink of bottle against glass as wine was poured. The hum of conversation hovered like a low cloud in the room.

‘I don’t want to be here,’ Pru mumbled from the side of her mouth.

Milly stood in front of her. ‘It’s what you have to do, darling.’

Pru stared defiantly at her cousin. ‘It is not what I have to do at all.’ And with that she went upstairs and locked herself in the en-suite bathroom of the guest room she’d stayed in. Her own private space.

Pru had always loved the privacy and sparkle of a clean and beautiful bathroom. Even as teenagers, she and Milly had had to endure the weekly embarrassment of sitting in the tin bath in the front room of their little house in Bow. The water was always unpleasantly tepid and there was a distinct lack of privacy. Family members would traipse in and out with eyes averted. She would clamber out with pruney fingers and toes, and would then stand shivering in front of the fire, trying to get dry with a scratchy, worn towel. Worst of all though had been having to use the same water as the rest of the family, lowering herself into the carbolic-scented soap scum of the previous occupant. She had hated the way the grey bubbles, bloated with someone else’s sweat, dirt and odour, clung to her skin.

When Pru and Milly first saw the bathroom at Kenway Road, they thought they had died and gone to heaven. The room was tiled in the palest pink and it sparkled so you hardly noticed the cracked sink or the stained ceiling. The tub was enormous, cast iron with a roll top, and it sat on very ornate clawed feet. The pretty cream-painted corner cupboard was crammed with Chanel No. 19 talcum powder, Sunsilk shampoo and bottles of garish red nail polish – goodies that had been in short supply in Bow. Pru had grinned at Milly. The first part of their plan was coming true: they would never be dirty or poorly dressed again.

Now Pru lay with her face against the cool terrazzo tiles of the Mountfield guest bathroom, listening to the murmur of conversation that crept up through the joists. Once or twice she heard the high-pitched trill of female laughter – how dare someone be laughing, laughing today, laughing at all.

‘Who are you, Megan? What’s going on?’ she whispered, her eyes closed. ‘Oh, Bobby, what a mess.’

She pictured the enormous bath she had run for Bobby on her first night at Curzon Street, all those years ago. Filled to the brim with bubbles.

‘I ain’t getting in your bath and I ain’t staying here,’ Bobby had shouted from the corner of her bedroom. ‘I hate you!’

Pru had noted the untouched tray of food on the bed. ‘Well, it’s okay to hate me, but you still need to have a bath and it’s far nicer to get in it when it’s hot than when it’s gone cold, so come on, chop chop!’

Reluctantly, Bobby had unfurled her legs and crawled from the corner on all fours. Scuttling like a beetle, she made her way across the bedroom, along the hall and into the bathroom, where she kicked the door shut behind her. Truth was, the child smelled of urine, dirt and fear-laden sweat. Pru listened at the door as Bobby’s small frame plopped into the suds. She crouched down outside and heard the sound of splashing and crying. A short while later, Bobby emerged, wrapped in a large cream towel that swamped her as she scurried across the hallway and back into the bedroom, where she again kicked the door shut. Pru gathered her grubby clothes from the floor and pulled the plug, gasping at the ring of black grime that clung to the edge of the bathtub. This became their ritual, with Pru leaving clean, warm pyjamas on Bobby’s bed for her to change into after her splash about. But it took another four weeks before the ice truly began to crack. One evening, clean and dry and dressed in her pyjamas, Bobby had appeared in the sitting room, popping up like a rare flower that no one had expected to bloom. Kicking her little bare feet against the edge of the sofa, she had folded her arms across her chest. ‘I still hate you and I’m not staying here, but I’d like some of that cheese on toast.’ Pru had had to stop herself from jumping for joy as she strolled nonchalantly into the kitchen to cut two thick slices of white bread.

Images of Bobby at all different ages, in all different pyjamas, flooded Pru’s brain as she lay motionless on the cool Mountfield floor, she had loved those times, Bobby ready for bed, in the place she called home. An hour passed, then came a dull tapping at the door. Pru raised her head and glanced around the room, realising quickly that there was nowhere that she could hide.

‘Pru?’ It was Christopher. ‘Can I come in?’

Her heart gave its familiar lift at the sound of his voice, even today. Slowly she rose from the floor on unsteady legs and slid the bolt before sinking back to the floor with her knees up and her back against the wall.

Christopher crept round the door and slid down to join her, sitting against the door on the cold floor. ‘I thought you might like some company.’

Pru sidled across the tiles and placed her head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, stroking her hair and whispering ‘Sshhhhh…’ as though he could bring her some peace.

‘I can’t think straight, Chris,’ she mumbled into the fabric of his shirt, inhaling the scent of him. ‘I don’t want to be awake. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

‘You don’t have to do anything. You just have to take it minute by minute, hour by hour. You don’t have to make any plans or think ahead, just get through every bit of the day and see where it takes you.’ He sounded wise, calm and it helped.

‘I loved her so much. I couldn’t have loved her any more had I given birth to her. I keep thinking she is going to walk in or phone me, but she isn’t, is she?’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘I can’t believe it. I want to speak to her one more time. I don’t understand what happened. I just want five minutes, one minute. I can’t believe I’m not going to see her, ever. It just won’t sink in.’

‘That’s quite normal, Pru, but that shock fades, I promise you. It becomes easier to live with, even though you don’t think it ever will, not when it’s so new and raw.’

‘I keep thinking that I should have made her get a cab, told her not to use the car that night. If only I’d intervened, I could have stopped it. But I didn’t, I didn’t know I had to.’

‘We all think that. Why didn’t I speak to William that day, keep him on the phone? Or say goodbye properly, tell him I was proud of him.’

Pru closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d told Bobby how proud she was of her. Had she known that?

Christopher continued. ‘I’ve asked myself for years, why didn’t I make Ginny go to the doctor’s when she first complained of being tired, instead of telling her to have a nap, that it would make her feel better. I should have encouraged her and yet she didn’t go for another three months – three months! It might have made a difference.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Ginny.’ Pru didn’t know why she’d said it aloud, but she had.

Christopher pulled away from her. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m sorry.’

‘No, Chris, I’m sorry.’ She put her hand on his arm, which he patted. It felt brotherly, conciliatory and made her stomach twist.

Ten minutes later, Christopher made his way downstairs as Pru gathered up her overnight bag and prepared to leave. A small crowd congregated to say goodbye and offer their condolences. She watched the dark, shuffling procession approach Isabel and one by one give their love and prayers, and then they turned to her. She didn’t feel like being civil to any of them, no matter how well intentioned. She hurt too much.

She gazed at the heavy-lidded girls and slightly sloshed boys and she couldn’t help but think of Megan, who hadn’t been invited. Megan, whoever she was, this ghost of a girl that appeared and disappeared, with her words that dropped like cluster bombs, heaping confusion and sadness on top of the grief. This girl who was invisible, irrelevant and yet purportedly carrying a child that had the blood of the Fellsley family running through its tiny veins. But even if Pru could have got the facts straight in her head, it wasn’t her place to tell.

It took an age to say goodbye. Pru watched as William’s relatives crushed his friends and colleagues into their arms, taking comfort from the connection of sorts – another young person, like him, but not him. Christopher caught her eye across the room, giving her an almost imperceptible wink that made her heart leap.
‘It’ll be okay, it’ll all be okay.’
It told her that he too wished they were elsewhere; free to laugh, talk and continue where they had left off before this tragedy robbed them of momentum. She felt instantly guilty at the happiness that surged through her body on this of all days.

Pru didn’t have the luxury of taking to her bed and wallowing in her grief; she had a business to run. The distraction was actually good for her, focusing her mind on something other than her loss. Although, in truth, concentrating on the minutiae of cake-making was difficult.

It was a busy afternoon at Plum Patisserie. She placed her teacup on the desk in front of her. The subtle lighting and tawny hues made the room seem homely and cosy; clients felt more like they were joining a friend for coffee than transacting business. The chairs in front of Pru’s desk were wide and comfortable, the kind you could sink into and snooze in without too much persuasion. The vast ornate mirror behind her desk made the room appear larger than it was and in the winter the log burner gave the whole room a feeling of intimacy.

‘Was dreadfully sorry to hear your sad news, Pru,’ Lady Miriam said as she gulped her coffee.

‘Thank you.’ Pru gave a brief nod. She found it difficult to accept condolences, knowing that if she gave in to sentiment, the floodgates would open and she would be sobbing again. ‘So,’ she drew proceedings back to business, ‘it’s a cake for your daughter’s birthday and she will be…?’

‘Yes, my daughter Bunny and she will be fourteen.’

‘Smashing, and do you have an idea of the kind of cake you are looking for, Miriam?’

Lady Miriam lapped at the cup of strong coffee and spoke through her mouthful of scone. It fascinated Pru that for all her fancy labels, privileged upbringing and pricey education, the woman still hadn’t learned what a rap on the knuckles had taught Pru aged three, that a mouth full of food equalled no talking. Pru tried to listen to her words, but it took all her strength not to stare at the wet blobs that flew from her mouth and landed on the blue blotting paper in front of her, creating something that resembled an aerial shot of the Galapagos.

Pru had noticed that many of her wealthy clients seemed to calibrate differently what was polite or acceptable. She recalled one Chelsea hostess who shot her assistant a withering look when she called the downstairs cloakroom ‘the toilet’, but seemed to find it perfectly natural to use her bare hands to retrieve a turd from the rug, left by her rather highly strung Pomeranian. Pru had fought the urge to be sick and, unable to refuse the offered handshake at the end of their meeting, had rushed home to scrub her palm before spraying it with a liberal application of bleach.

Lady Miriam considered her response. ‘I
think
I know what I want. Well… I do and I don’t!’

Pru was aware that today her train of thought was fractured, her voice a monotone, but she nodded and picked up her pencil. She could go through the motions even if she couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.

‘What would really help would be if you could give me an idea of a theme, a colour or anything that Bunny is particularly fond of – for example tennis or horses?’ Pru was usually on safe ground with these two pastimes. ‘Anything at all as a starting point and then we’ll get Guy to come up with some concepts and samples that we can go through before making a final decision. How does that sound?’

Lady Miriam smiled. ‘It sounds fabulous!’

Pru had learned over the years that her customers fell into two categories. There were those who picked up the phone and asked for a birthday cake, with minimal instruction. ‘Something pretty, please. It’s for my mother’s eightieth and there’ll be thirty guests.’ Pru would then deliver the cake and send an invoice. In return, along with the payment, she would usually receive a brief but sincere thank you note, written on crested cream vellum. And then there were the others, who figured that as they were paying very large sums of money for extraordinary cakes, they should be involved in the intricate and time-consuming business of design, production and finish. For them, the more stages to the whole process, the better; they loved to meet over coffee, often with urgent requests for minute changes.

By the very fact of her presence, it was clear Lady Miriam fell into the latter category. She waved her arms over her head. ‘I see the cake as the centrepiece, the wow moment! I want everyone to arrive and walk around it, almost in homage to Bunny reaching this incredible milestone!’ Lady Miriam’s hands finally came to rest under her chin.

Pru wanted to point out that becoming fourteen was not usually considered an incredible milestone and that if this is what they were preparing for her fourteenth, what would her twenty-first look like? She gulped at this thought. Bobby would never have a twenty-first, not now. She bit back the thousand comments that wanted to surge from her throat and instead described her vision of a huge flowery cake scattered with tiny rosebuds and real gypsophila wound in, with variegated petals and teensy iced bows whose ribbons would flow over two tiers.