Chapter 28
Cabana Number Five
IVY
The kitchen feels starkly empty after Alistair leaves.
I stand at the window for a long minute with my hand around a coffee that has gone lukewarm. The house has that strange after-meeting hush, like a theatre after the audience has left, with all the chairs slightly askew.
I am exhausted in a way I have not been letting myself feel. Now that there is a window of nothing, my body wants to lie down on the kitchen floor.
My phone buzzes.
BECKS
Where the fuck are you
It’s 10:47
Which means you are 47 minutes late for our prep meeting.
The representative is already at reception and I am sitting in the Foundation office staring at the door like an idiot
Hello???
I close my eyes. The 11:00 meeting. Fuck.
IVY
Becks I'm so sorry
Truly truly sorry
This morning has been a LOT
BECKS
Define a LOT
IVY
I feel absolutely terrible, I’m so sorry
Will explain in person
Can you forgive me
BECKS
Maybe
Depends
I CAN take this meeting on my own and tell them you have the bubonic plague but you owe me
or maybe an advanced case of syphilis
which you totally deserve
IVY
Becks you're an absolute lifesaver
I owe you ANYTHING
BECKS
Anything?
IVY
Within reason
BECKS
Brunch
Today
And by brunch I do not mean a working lunch with a sad little fucking salad
I mean brUNCH
I mean champagne and obnoxious behavior
I am owed a bacchanalia
Do you understand
A bacchanalia
I am laughing in the empty kitchen. The dogs come in and look up at me hopefully.
IVY
Where shall we go
BECKS
Somewhere shameful
Somewhere with white tablecloths and a sommelier
Somewhere I will resent you for the rest of my life if you don't take me
Somewhere they’ll judge you for your syphilis as they bloody well should
I look out the window. The sky is doing its rare London thing, properly blue, properly bright, the kind of spring day that makes everyone act unwisely.
IVY
Well, Ari’s looking after Alex today and the sun is out
BECKS
Don't tease me
IVY
What if we did somewhere with a pool
BECKS
Are you suggesting day-drinking by a pool
IVY
Yes
BECKS
In London
IVY
Yes
BECKS
In our 30s
IVY
Yes
BECKS
Get our tits out
Spend your husband’s money
Be the basic bitches we are
Live deliciously
IVY
I'll book us in somewhere
BECKS
Somewhere expensive
IVY
Obviously
BECKS
You’ve changed
IVY
Do you want brunch or not?
BECKS
Two hours
I'll wrap this meeting and meet you there
Send me the address
I love you Saint Ives
I look at the screen. I love you too, I type. Send.
I am already moving toward the stairs.
The Grosvenor since yesterday, since Henderson stepped back, he has been mine.
He is Black, late thirties, with the kind of stillness that goes with the job and a south London accent that does not quite match his tailoring.
We are still feeling our way around each other.
“Mrs Ravenscroft.”
“The Grosvenor & Vine, please. Park Lane.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
He does not raise an eyebrow at the sundress or the destination. Henderson has trained him well.
The Range Rover slides out of the gates. London comes up in slow gold light.
I sink into the back seat. My bare knees press together against the leather.
Through the tinted glass the world looks softened.
We pass a bus stop where a woman is holding a plastic bag full of supermarket flowers, and a man on a bike with a backpack and a tall paper coffee cup balanced in one hand.
The cognitive dissonance is loud today. ￡840 for a cabana. A driver. A security shadow somewhere two cars back. Old Ivy would have got the bus to a beer garden in Hackney with a ￡6 prosecco and a packet of crisps.
The lobby is the sort of marble-and-low-light space that makes you walk slower. A woman in a uniform glides me through to the lift, which is silent and surfaced in pale stone. The doors open onto the rooftop.
It hits me all at once, sun, blue, water, the sound of London turned down to a hum twelve floors below.
The pool runs the length of the building, narrow and deep blue, and along one side there are sun-beds in white linen and on the other side a row of cabanas with curtains pulled half-back.
There is a long pale wood bar at one end with a girl in a black jumpsuit polishing glasses.
The air smells faintly of chlorine and very strongly of money.
The hostess walks me to my cabana. Number Five. It has a low daybed strewn with cream cushions, a small marble table, an ice bucket already standing tall, and a view across the rooftops to Hyde Park.
“A bottle of Ruinart to start, Mrs Ravenscroft? 2010?”
“Yes, please.”
“Aperol spritzes after?”
“Perfect.”
“Lunch menus when you're ready.”
“Thank you.”
She leaves and I sit down, the cushions taking me in. The sun comes through the canopy and lands warm on my collarbone and I take an actual breath for the first time today.
The bottle arrives in a swirl of ice. Two flutes. The pop is small and well-mannered. The girl in the black jumpsuit pours, sets the bottle in the bucket, smiles, and disappears.
I lift the glass. The champagne has a freshness about it: white flowers and toast.
The view sits there waiting. Hyde Park, the rooftops, the brassy flash of the Wellington Arch in the middle distance.
I take a sip. The fine bubbles fizz against the roof of my mouth.
It’s truly delicious. I take another and keep it in my mouth, letting it bubble against my tongue.
My muscles loosen by perhaps an increment, and I can’t help looking at my bare feet with the sparkling pool in the background and thinking Who does she think she is?