On Monday evening, she waited until William had taken off his tie, read his post, drunk his first whisky and was tucking into his lamb chops.
‘I was wondering,’ she said to him, ‘if there was anything I could do to help at the new surgery. I mean, I’ve got so much time on my hands now, with the boys gone. I thought I could be of some assistance.’
He put his knife and fork down and looked at her. ‘In what way?’
‘I’m not sure, but there must be something I can do. You seem under pressure. Maybe I could help with paperwork, or organise a group for new mothers, or . . .’ She trailed off, realising she hadn’t really thought it through. ‘It’s so deathly quiet here now.’
‘It’s not really how it works, darling,’ William told her. ‘We have all the staff we need, and we are working to a very tight budget, which is what makes it so difficult.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be paid—’
‘The best thing you can do,’ William said with finality, ‘is keep things ticking over here. It’s important for me to come home and be able to relax. I can’t help feeling that if you were involved in the surgery too, things would become very awkward. And what would you do when the boys came home? They need you.’ He smiled. ‘I know you’re finding it hard because they’ve gone but you will get used to it, darling, I promise you.’
He picked up his knife and fork again.
Something boiled up inside Adele. It was more than indignation. She knew William wasn’t deliberately trying to patronise her, but she felt outrage. He had put her in her place. She was a wife and mother and that was all.
On Wednesday morning she woke up. She went through a checklist in her head. It was bed-changing day. Not that she changed the linen; Mrs Morris saw to that. The fish van was coming to Shallowford – William loved his Dover sole. Tim had written to ask her for some new games socks and a French dictionary.
As she lay in bed, a black blanket of gloom settled upon her. What was the point in getting up? Who would care, or indeed even notice, if she didn’t? William was always up at six, and went downstairs before she woke. He had the same thing for breakfast every morning. Tomato juice, a cup of very strong black coffee which he made on top of the stove in an enamel jug, and a poached egg on toast. He didn’t expect Adele to make it for him. He didn’t even need her for that. If she didn’t appear, he wouldn’t care. He would leave the house at seven thirty-five safe in the knowledge that she would be there when he got home.
She sat up. What harm would lunch do? She had an alibi. And the new shantung silk dress she had bought for the tennis club summer party. She examined her hair in the mirror – there would be no time to have it done properly, but she had rollers. She smoothed her eyebrows and looked at herself, trying to read the expression in her own eyes. What was she expecting? What was she capable of? What did she want?
She went downstairs in her dressing gown.
‘I’m going to have lunch with Brenda today, remember. At the Savoy,’ she told William, who was sprinkling white pepper on his egg.
He smiled at her.
‘Good girl,’ he told her. ‘You see? There’s plenty to do. Make sure you enjoy yourself. And anyway, I probably won’t be back until late.’
Again? Adele sometimes wondered why he didn’t sleep at the surgery. But she didn’t say as much. She simply smiled, and hoped William couldn’t hear the thumping of her heart.
She didn’t know why it was thumping so. It was only lunch, she told herself, because she had an idea and she wanted Jack Molloy’s advice. That was all.
R
iley loved Harrods. He had loved it since the day he’d been sent there as a young photographer’s assistant, to collect a leopard-skin hat for a photo shoot. It had dazzled him then and it dazzled him still now. There’d been nothing like it in the grimy Northern town where he had grown up. When he’d first stepped over the threshold, something deep inside him had whispered that perhaps its flagrant opulence was wrong, when there were people struggling to earn a crust, but the seventeen-year-old Riley had already known he was entering a world that worshipped excess and consumption and glamour. He couldn’t stop that. All he could do was work hard and pay his taxes. And send money back home to his mum, which he had done until the day she died.
Nowadays, he could afford to go to Harrods whenever he liked, which he did whenever he had a present to buy, like today.
He moved easily amidst the crowds of customers. No one recognised him these days. He was a slight man – puckish, almost – with dark eyes that missed nothing. A handsome man too, but he was at an age at which he was all too aware most people become invisible, no matter how famous they might once have been. Nevertheless, he carried himself well. He wore jeans with a collarless shirt and a dark-brown leather jacket, old and battered, which moulded itself to his wiry frame. His hair was a distinguished salt and pepper, left long to the collar but still cut by the Italian barber he had used for over forty years. Riley was a creature of habit, from the espresso he heated on top of his stove in the morning to the small glass of cognac he drank before falling asleep at night.
If Sylvie was with him, there would be whispers and nudges and glances. Even in her mid-sixties she stopped people in their tracks. She didn’t just have It. She had Everything. An indefinable, inimitable aura that came at birth, a melding of beauty, confidence and style that tipped the balance between simple stardom and being an icon.
Riley had sensed it the first day he’d seen her, nearly fifty years ago now. He’d been commissioned to shoot the cover of a new magazine, a supplement to accompany one of the Sunday papers. It was a prestigious commission for a young photographer, and the pressure was on for a fresh and exciting look.
He’d seen her on the Tube, a sulky-looking baggage with a ragged pageboy haircut, wearing a schoolgirl tunic with a see-through blouse underneath and long white boots. She had her feet up on the chair in front of her, smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine, languid with insouciance. He had leant over and clicked his fingers in front of her face, and as she looked up he knew he had found a new star. Her glare had drilled right into him, framed by straight dark brows that made her expression even more thunderous.
‘Can I take your picture?’ he asked her. ‘I’m a photographer.’
He indicated the Leica he always kept with him, even when he wasn’t on a job.
One of the eyebrows had shot skywards.
‘If you pay,’ she replied, with her trademark shrug and pout. ‘I’ll do whatever you like for money.’
‘French?’ he asked, recognising her accent as he dug in his pocket and held out a ten-shilling note.
‘Kissing?’ She pocketed the money with a grin that lit her up like a flash bulb.
He gave a wry smile as he loaded his camera with film. ‘
Are
you French?’
‘Oui,’ she said, with exaggerated sarcasm.
‘Stand on the seat,’ he told her, and she jumped up onto it, leaning against the window, spread-eagling herself against the grimy glass. She tipped her head back, lifted one leg so she stood like a flamingo, then turned her face to him, pouting.
He felt his stomach turn over with a terrible thrill. He had never met a girl with such a lack of self-consciousness, such an innate knowledge of what he expected. Most models needed coaxing, relaxing, a bit of direction, before they were on his wavelength.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an actress,’ she lied effortlessly, thereby proving her ability.
Despite this, Riley wasn’t taken in. He knew almost every aspiring actress in London.
‘There’s no point in trying to fool me, sweetheart.’ He carried on taking pictures, deadpan. ‘You might as well tell me the truth.’
She crossed her arms in defiance, then capitulated with a laugh.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘You win.’ She jumped back down onto the seat.
Her parents were diplomats. She was being polished at some terribly smart finishing school in Kensington, but she hated it. She spent most of the day on the Tube or in cafes, watching people, reading, drinking endless cups of coffee, smoking.
Riley shot a whole roll of film between Bayswater and the Embankment. She leapt around the carriage without a care in the world, improvising, experimenting, charming the other passengers as they got on and off. In every shot her face was different. Capricious, vivacious, sultry, impish . . . and when she lay stretched out on the seat with her arms over her head, her eyes half-closed, her bee-stung lips just slightly parted, Riley felt something inside that frightened him. This girl was going to define him in so many different ways. This girl was his future.
They got off and walked up to the Strand and he bought her oxtail soup in a grimy cafe and listened as she talked about the awful girls in her class and how all they were interested in was finding a rich husband.
‘And you? What do you want?’ asked Riley, thinking she could do whatever she wanted and wondering if she knew that.
She shrugged. ‘I just want to be me. Forever.’
He frowned as he realised he didn’t actually know her name. ‘And who are you, anyway?’
‘Sylvie. Sylvie Chagall.’
Sylvie Chagall. Riley told her, as they shared a pot of tea, that the whole world would soon know her name. She had nodded, completely unfazed.
He had taken just one photo to the magazine editor. It was Sylvie, sitting on the Tube, laughing, her legs sprawled in front of her, next to an upright gentleman in a bowler hat, his face impassive. The photo seemed to represent London past and London future: the dawning of a new era.
Three weeks later Sylvie was on the magazine’s debut cover. Six months later the world was wooing her. A year later they were in Venice, shooting a film with an infamous Italian director who had cast Sylvie in
Fascination
, the story of a man’s obsession with his daughter’s best friend. Riley was the official photographer. He never felt himself to be her chaperone. If anyone could look after herself, it was Sylvie.
Late one night, in the vast and sumptuous palazzo rented to accommodate the upper echelons of the cast and crew, she had come to his room. It was her eighteenth birthday, and they had all celebrated in a tiny restaurant in the Dorsoduro, dish after dish and glass after glass brought to them by the staff until they were glazed with rich food and heavy red wine. Sylvie, so self-assured, so unruffled by her imminent stardom, had held court with an extraordinary poise despite being the youngest on set by several years. Riley had taken her photograph, blowing out the candles on the sweet honeyed cake the proprietor had made especially for her, and thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful.
Now here she was in his bed.
‘I want it to be you the first time, Riley,’ she whispered as she slid on top of him. She was naked. ‘I know you will be kind.’
All that time, nearly five decades, they had been lovers. The two of them had parity in their respective success, so neither was threatened by the other. They were both independent. Their work took each of them all over the world, but at different times. It was impossible to coordinate their diaries so they could live a life together, so they had never bothered. He had a flat in London; she had settled in her native Paris. Throughout the year they met when it was convenient, often at house parties of mutual friends – a riad in Marrakech, a yacht in the South of France, a penthouse in New York.
They both had other lovers over the years. It was the time they had been brought up in. Neither of them saw it as a betrayal. They would never dream of hurting each other. They were always there for each other, whenever, wherever. When Sylvie caught double pneumonia, after filming in the snow in Prague one winter, Riley was at her bedside in a shot. When his mother died, Sylvie was there at the funeral, holding his hand all the way through, glamorous in a black coat and dark glasses, and he got through it because she was there. His Sylvie.
And now, they might be in their autumn years, but they both still worked. They were both heavily in demand. Their experience and their reputations overrode any prejudice about age. They could pick and choose whom they worked for, and when, but they were both monumentally busy at a time when most people were looking to kick back and relax. Neither of them could imagine a life without work. It defined them.
The one thing that was sacrosanct was their annual trip to Venice on Sylvie’s birthday, returning to the location of the film that had cemented their relationship. Even now,
Fascination
was a cult classic amongst film buffs, and the story of their romance on set was a legend. And nowadays, because they loved the twenty-four-hour bubble that cocooned them and allowed them to be themselves, just themselves, they travelled there on the Orient Express. Riley got on in London and Sylvie joined the train in Paris, and they celebrated her birthday on board.
And this morning, Riley was in Harrods to buy Sylvie her birthday present. He bought her the same thing every year. A silk scarf. Sylvie was never without one – slung round her neck, knotted to her bag, tied around her head, always with that effortless French chic. Riley smiled as he remembered her sliding one around his eyes once, tying it in a knot at the back of his head. It had smelled of her. She had done nothing but kiss him while he wore it, her lips light as a feather on his ear-lobe, his collarbone, his ribcage . . .
He walked through the heady scents of the perfume department, then through the candy colours of the handbags until he reached the scarf counter. He could tell that the charming assistant had no idea who he was. The young never did these days, but he didn’t care at all. He’d had his moment.
‘Is it for someone special?’ she asked. Riley found it a peculiar question. Did she have a drawer of scarves for people who weren’t special?
‘It absolutely is,’ he told her. ‘Someone very special.’ She seemed pleased by this reply, and started to pull out a selection, spreading them out on the glass counter for his inspection.