Chapter 27
27
London
May 2010
In the two weeks we’d been home from Lisbon, the girls texted often—inviting me out, asking where I was hiding. My excuse was my course essays, which were due soon, but the truth was that I couldn’t believe the mess I’d made. Couldn’t see a way out of it.
There was no other choice; I’d had to do it: I paid off the council tax and court fees for Andre’s flat with my student loan. I sent Queen Mary what I had left, the rest of the loan and all the money I’d saved up over the past four months. All the money I’d made in Saint-Tropez. Nowhere near enough, of course, and now I was penniless. I had money coming—the class at Muswell Hill Academy had finished—but the secretary had been vague on when I could expect payment.
I lived in constant, breathless fear of the phone call from Queen Mary. The voice on the line saying they’d dropped me from the course. Then I’d lose my student visa and any chance of getting the work visa to stay after. What then? Go home? It was unthinkable.
When I sent Andre the payment receipt, he had only replied, Thanks. Nothing since. I was too ashamed to reach out, to him or Liv. Though Theo didn’t know the details (we never talked about my finances, and I certainly wasn’t going to start now), he knew I was having a hard time, and had been trying on the phone to cheer me up. But he didn’t understand. When I said one thing, he heard another. It wasn’t that he couldn’t relate (though of course he couldn’t); it was this divide between us, some filmy layer of disruption when we spoke. Had it always been there, and I’d just been having too much fun to notice it? Or was the disruption Callum?
I couldn’t pretend what had happened between us was nothing. Not the kiss—though of course it was the kiss that lingered in my body, his mouth a memory that constantly flickered through me—but the way we’d understood each other, that night on the couch. His rejection hurt worse for it. He had heard me, heard all of me, understood, and then turned away from it. Declared me a mistake. Whatever he had seen in the sad girl on Parliament Hill last summer, he didn’t see it anymore.
My only hope was that Theo would feel right, once we were together again in person. That proximity, history, and chemistry would steamroll my hesitations, and Callum, into oblivion. That was the only reason I said yes when Theo called and declared that he was coming to surprise me, that very night. “But why warn me?” I said, laughing. “Why not just show up, if it’s a surprise?”
“Because we’re going to the party to end all parties,” he said, like he was offering me the thrill of my life, the cure to all my problems. “You’ll need a dress.”
I’d already heard about the party, since Tess and Ginny had been begging me to come all week. It was at their father’s house, not too far from here, on the Bishops Avenue—affectionately termed “Billionaires’ Row” for reasons I suspected would be pretty obvious the moment I stepped in the door.
I wasn’t tempted to end my self-imposed exile for a party, but Theo said it was the only chance for us to see each other, since he was off the next day to visit his parents in the Cotswolds. I was so desperate for him to settle this thing inside me, this fluttering, panicked thing. And maybe Callum would be there, cold and remote, and Theo’s warmth and charm would erase him completely, letting me sleep again. I told Theo I knew where I could get a dress.
I hadn’t borrowed Faye’s clothes since seeing her at the Savoy. But what choice did I have, a few hours before the party? The silk dress was Elie Saab, strapless, cobalt blue, and fell just below my knees. The shape of it was like an upside-down tulip, the skirt falling like petals from a very fitted waist, accentuating the curve of my hips and thighs. I’d first noticed it months ago because it was so unlike Faye’s usual style. But that was probably a good thing: less chance of anyone recognizing it as hers. I picked navy pumps and a seal-gray suede coat to wear with it.
“You’re here,” Tess said, standing back to let me into the flat she and Ginny shared. “I thought my hair was going to have to curl itself!”
“I’m here,” I said, trying to put some festivity into my voice.
“Feels like it’s been ages,” she said, waving me to follow her.
Getting ready with Tess was another reason to say yes to the party—the moment I’d been hoping for, just the two of us, my chance to tell her the truth, like I’d promised Callum I would. Not that I owed him a damn thing. It was a promise I wanted to keep for myself.
Tess’s room had an enormous dark wood vanity and mirror, big enough for both of us to sit at. I could hear Ginny getting ready in her own room down the hall, blasting the new Sugababes album.
“Is it hot?” I asked, pointing at the curling iron.
“Piping!” Tess sat facing the mirror. I moved behind her and began to section off the hair with clips.
“Is this Hamza thing going to blow up tonight, do you think?” I asked. There’d been a move toward détente in Lisbon, but since then I’d seen Facebook photos of the pretty Scandinavian boy who Ginny was using to make Hamza jealous. Also the pocket-sized Sussex girl who had emerged as Hamza’s weapon of choice. Both were likely to be in attendance tonight.
“Oh no, he’s not bringing that girl,” Tess said as I released the first coil of hair. “What’re you reading? I saw you brought something in your bag?”
“It’s just something I’m rereading for my dissertation, Forster’s A Room with a View. You’ve read it?”
She shook her head, which was awkward since I had her hair wrapped around the curling iron.
“It’s about a girl traveling for the first time, to Italy, where she feels sort of unlocked by the romance of the place, but also scared of it, how it shakes up manners and class divides. Being in Lisbon made me think of it.”
“I’m sure you’re tired of all the reading and research. But you know, I do envy you a bit.”
I looked up from her hair in my hands, trying to read Tess’s expression in the mirror. There was something melancholy in it that didn’t match her upbeat tone.
“You could be doing a master’s. What’s stopping you?” I asked. It certainly wasn’t the money, or the free time. “You could do it, it’s just a year. In the States, it’s two.”
“You know uni didn’t go that well for me.” I watched Tess’s shoulders rise and sag in a defeated shrug. “It’d just be more of the same.”
“You don’t know that it would be. You’re older now, things might be different. I mean, look at me—I don’t fit in with my classmates, but I’m learning so much,” I said. “I don’t need them to make it worthwhile. It just is, because I love the work I’m doing.” It wasn’t something I’d noticed, until I was saying it, but it was true: I enjoyed what I was working on for class, and for my dissertation. I was getting somewhere. So what if I didn’t say much in class? I hadn’t come here for grad school friends; I’d come here to study what I loved, and maybe, hopefully, make some kind of life from it after.
When I let the last perfect curl fall, Tess reached up over her shoulder and took my free hand. “I’m glad you’re here, Anna,” she said. Then, with a little laugh, “I guess I owe Theo for bringing you round.”
My stomach tightened. “I think I owe him more,” I said. Now was my chance—to tell her why I owed him and the Wilders, even Faye. Why I was here in her Highgate, but not of her Highgate.
“The thing is, when Theo first introduced us,” I began.
“At the Gatehouse.” She nodded, fluffing her hair in the mirror. “Your first mulled wine, right?”
I nodded. “Yes. But what I mean is, when he said I was a friend of Faye’s—”
A howl of rage came from down the hall, and we both turned to look. Ginny stormed in, phone held out in front of her to show us: a Facebook photo of Hamza with the doll-like Sussex girl, both clearly dressed for tonight’s party.
Zara arrived just in time for the ensuing drama, and they both stayed while Tess did my hair, pinning up each curl until it cooled. They stayed as she brushed the curls out carefully, in slow zigzags, so they fell together in one long, swaying curtain, until I looked like a fifties Hollywood actress. And then it was time to get dressed, and my chance to tell Tess was gone, and I’d been so scared to say it, so scared of what her reaction would be, that I was breathless with relief.
Tess and Ginny and Zara went downstairs to the kitchen to do a shot before we left, and I told them I’d be down in a minute. In the mirror, I took the hair on the left side of my face and pinned it back at the crown, so the curtain of perfect Hollywood waves hung only on one side. I looked like a different person. The girl in the mirror had never seen the bottom of her bank account. She had never been heartbroken, never scooped ice cream or cleaned toilets or washed dishes. She had never been disappointed.
And then Theo was there to drive us, and the girls were calling up to me. I put the suede coat over my arm and went downstairs.
When we got to the house—in a long line of Range Rovers, Aston Martins, Jaguars—the girls went right inside. I waited with Theo for the valet to take his keys. I was glad to have a moment to process the house we’d arrived at. It was massive, all white stone and carved edifices, carefully illuminated with garden lights. “It’s beautiful,” I said. The understatement of the century.
“You’re beautiful. That color is brilliant on you,” Theo said, pulling me in for a slow kiss. I leaned into him, lingered, drew it out, searching for that magic fix I’d been sure I’d feel. But all I felt was nerves—nerves that Callum might be here tonight. Or that he might not be.
Theo offered me his arm for the stairs and nodded ahead of us. “This is one of the good houses here. The president of Kazakhstan has a mansion two doors down. A fellow doesn’t like to slag off world leaders, but it’s downright garish.”
I took the offered arm, stepping carefully in my very high heels. “Shouldn’t the president of Kazakhstan be in Kazakhstan?”
Theo laughed. “Only a few people actually live on this street. Mostly they visit. Saudi royals, shell companies, oligarchs, international schemers.”
“Which category do Tess’s parents fall under?” Probably I didn’t want to know. The idea of all of it—these empty mansions—curdled in my stomach. If we were litigating morality, there were plenty at this party more questionable than me in my borrowed dress.
“Just old money, in their case. Grandfather was an MP, I think her father’s some kind of kingmaker behind the scenes. Busy week for him.” No need to ask which party, then.
After last week’s election, the Conservatives had gained control through a baffling coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Things would change now—austerity measures, cuts to the NHS and social services, stricter visa caps to keep out people like me. Probably plenty of those Tory voters were here tonight.
We walked through open double doors into the enormous foyer. Two staircases swept out and along the curved walls, leading upstairs. I had to admit, it looked like Downton Abbey on steroids. Anywhere there was a chair, it was velvet. Anywhere there was a lamp or chandelier, it was festooned with glowing glass beads, or thin metallic netting like floss. “Over-the-top” didn’t begin to cover it.
I whispered to him, “Tess grew up here, in this house?” I supposed she had a nanny? Several? I honestly couldn’t believe she’d turned out so normal, if this was where she’d spent her childhood.
“Yes,” he laughed. “But don’t hold it against her.” Of course I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I loved Tess. But wasn’t I supposed to dislike her, on principle? My father would have.
I let Theo lead me toward the music and the light. His arm reminded me of all the other nights, all the other times he’d put the flat of his hand on my back or draped an arm around my waist. All the other times I’d been able to go where once I had not belonged, under his protection. I tried to relax into it, to remind myself I was happy to be here, with him. I was, wasn’t I?
Probably I would’ve made the tasteless faux pas of calling the room we entered a ballroom, but earlier I’d heard Tess call it “the atrium.” The ceilings were absurdly high, long chandeliers dripping over the crowd of beautiful, twinkling people. They flowed in and out through two sets of double doors to a long stone terrace for smoking. A string quartet played on a dais. There was no DJ at the moment, but all the sound equipment made it clear that there would be, later. Would Sir Paul McCartney show up and start spinning? What, really, would surprise me here?
I found a glass of champagne and caught up with Ginny and Tess by the raw bar, tipping oysters back like vodka shots. There were a few other girls there, too, and I quickly realized they were debating whether Callum would come. Tess said she didn’t think he would—hadn’t we hardly seen him lately?—and when Ginny agreed, the other girls didn’t hide their disappointment. So mysterious, they said. Like he was a nut they’d been hoping to crack open with their long fingernails.
“He’s got some new gig, a volunteer thing,” Ginny said.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Giving legal advice? Doing paperwork?” Ginny said, fluttering her hands vaguely. “A nonprofit that helps immigrants, I think.”
Two of the girls rolled their eyes openly at this, like it was a joke, and I felt my hand tighten on the glass.
“That’s really important work,” I said emphatically, not hiding my irritation.
Half of the crowd was young, twenties and thirties, and I recognized many of them: acquaintances I’d met at dinners and bars and nightclubs, posh boys Tess knew from Westminster, girls Zara knew from St. Swithun’s. Cambridge alums Theo had introduced me to at the Gatehouse or Hawksmoor. The other half of the crowd was older and gathered more along the walls, as if they were keeping out of our way. Considering Tess’s father’s work, I suspected that many of the older men were the kind of people who had money in offshore tax havens but went on the BBC and insisted that what British families really needed was a little belt-tightening.
After some canapés and more champagne, Tess grabbed my phone and took photos of Theo and me, mugging to make us laugh. The photos were like a flip book when I swiped through them. I had the sensation that I was watching a stop-motion animation, a film clip someone had made of this unreal life. And instead of loving that feeling, as I usually did, I felt a tremor of misgiving in my stomach. A premonition? I turned to Theo, uncertain, but he bent down to kiss me and then put his arm around me, and I felt like myself again, like nothing strange had happened.
After an hour or two, Tess’s father got on the dais in front of the string quartet and took up a microphone, and everyone hushed to listen to him speak. Once he started, the people out on the terrace crowded in to hear, and our end of the room began to feel claustrophobically tight.
A few minutes in, a sort of hiss caught my attention. Someone calling, but trying not to be heard, trying not to break the quiet. I looked around, twisting slightly in the circle of Theo’s arm.
Callum, dark and dashing in a charcoal suit. My heart did a guilty hiccup of excitement. I hadn’t seen him since we’d all landed at Heathrow.
He was far from me, but he raised a hand and waved me toward him. In the crush, I couldn’t get to him without causing a disturbance, pushing through, stepping on mirror-shined shoes. I shook my head at him, confused, the few glasses of champagne muddying things. Callum tipped his head back in frustration. This irritated me; what right had he to be frustrated with me? But he cupped his hands around his mouth, quietly calling something, over all these heads. One word, repeated, but I couldn’t hear it, and he couldn’t say it louder without the whole room hearing it.
A shout of laughter went up around me, followed by a cheer, and the speech was over. Theo excused himself to the bathroom, and I stood crowded in with Tess and Zara, while Ginny made fun of her father’s speech. Hamza and Seb were trying to keep their laughter discreet, since the room was still fairly quiet. “Oh, hey,” Zara said, looking over her shoulder. “Look who’s here!”
I didn’t turn, knowing it would be Callum. Coming to tell me whatever he’d been trying to whisper-shout, coming to complicate a night I was trying to keep simple.
But the voice I heard was not Callum’s; it was a voice from my memory. Long vowels from deep in the throat, the R ’s rolling in that particularly French way. For a moment all I could hear in my head was the first time I’d heard him speak: I can’t stand London anymore. I could see it, too, the scene: in the palace-hotel garden, his posture in the white chair as haughty as his voice, his arm slung casually around the chair next to him. The chair she sat in, the chair next to me. Because she had brought me there.
I watched that tall, broad Frenchman coming toward us. I knew there was only one reason Simon would be here, only one person who would bring him. But I couldn’t move, my feet in her borrowed heels fixed to the floor, that nightmare when you’re staring down the freight train but can’t move from the tracks. I wanted to close my eyes, brace for impact. I wanted to wake up. But I couldn’t even blink. When he finally arrived, when he leaned to the side to shake Hamza’s hand, I saw her there, behind him. Faye, her dark, long-lashed eyes sweeping the room, appraising the guests, the catlike smile already on her lips. And then someone said her name, and she looked at us, all of us, and me in the cobalt dress, and the smile faltered.