Chapter 9
9
MINNIE
Five Months Ago – New Year’s Eve
‘My gewl Minnie has just finished filming a stunning new drama for the BBC – or is it Amazon – haven’t you, babe?’
JP laid a hand on Minnie’s thigh and squeezed it, as he angled his cigar to the other side of him and blew a plume of thick smoke into the air. Minnie hadn’t remembered the names of everyone sitting around the dining table of the Cotswolds country pile on New Year’s Eve – she had met so many friends and business associates of JP’s in the past month she couldn’t possibly remember everyone, and actually all that mattered was this brilliant man and how… safe he made her feel.
She really did enjoy how much he adored her.
‘Ooh do tell us about it!’ an artist friend of JP’s said keenly, her blonde bob not moving as she shook her head and widened her eyes.
Minnie was sitting around a grand candlelit dining table with a vet (Nathan) and his artist wife (Clarissa); a swimwear designer (Emilia) and her investor husband (Timothy); a property developer (Nick) and his interior designer husband (Diego); and JP’s wine buyer (Kiki) and her husband (Paul), while an assortment of their children seemed to be charging around upstairs like a herd of elephants. The names of everyone had all come so quickly, JP had flown through the introductions when they’d arrived. Minnie wasn’t even sure whose house it was as they sat down for dinner and caterers glided through with Chilean bass and black truffle butter. But everyone seemed to hang onto JP’s every word, and most of them seemed eager to hear more, even if they weren’t. They looked at Minnie, forks poised, keen to be charmed. Some smiles of intrigue, some of exasperation, as if they couldn’t be bothered to remember her name either. It made Minnie feel both thrilled and vulnerable.
‘Well, it wrapped in the summer…’ She said the word wrapped as if it didn’t fill her with enormous excitement and pride to say it. As if she were her parents and she had wrapped on a thousand projects. ‘From the bestselling book – do you know Summer of Siena ?’
Half the guests gasped, the other half looked blank.
‘Oh I loved it!’ said the swimwear designer, her accent American. ‘You remember honey, in Mykonos, it was like, the book on every third towel was Summer of Siena . Too funny.’
The husband looked sniffy, as if he wouldn’t have deigned to read anything popular.
‘I loved it too,’ confessed the interior designer. ‘You’re playing her right?’
Minnie nodded proudly.
‘She is gonna go stellar, aren’t ya, babe?’ JP gushed.
Minnie smiled, trying to downplay it, but God how she hoped. She had fought the urge by doing every distraction she could: waitressing, partying, teacher training. Her first year of teaching had been so bleak, the school she had got a job in so underfunded and the staff on their knees from working until eleven o’clock at night, then bumping into pupils and their families at the foodbank at the weekend. One teacher cornered Minnie in the stationery cupboard and almost burst into tears as she implored her, ‘Don’t do it. I wish I hadn’t left banking for this.’
The stress of teaching at a failing primary school, teamed with the dazzle of seeing Rosie on stage; Lillia’s stories of being Emily Blunt’s stunt double on set; and seeing Anthony on the cover of Radio Times at the supermarket checkout, kept pulling Minnie back to the family business. She wanted a piece of the pie that could be hers if she was prepared to graft for it, to go to drama college, prove her name, and learn all the disciplines of the trade. Minnie went to Mountview and loved every second.
‘She’s got a Marvel audition in a few weeks,’ JP said proudly, looking around the table. ‘My Wonder Woman.’
‘That’s DC,’ said Kiki, JP’s wine buyer, flatly. She wasn’t impressed by any of it. Kiki remembered the days before she’d met her husband, when JP used to show her off.
‘And you know who her parents are, right?’ JP bragged. ‘It’s foregone innit, babe? Foregone.’
Minnie blushed. She was both extraordinarily proud of her family while also being annoyed that JP had brought them up.
As Minnie asked the artist about her work, her styles and disciplines, she noticed that the vet husband kept looking at her chest. Minnie’s breasts were small and the lace collar on her shirt was Victorian, but still the guy kept looking as if she were there to be ogled. JP had presented her as such, she supposed.
‘My ingénue…’ JP later said, as they were all sitting on the sofas around a large fireplace, waiting for the countdown. As he said it, he pressed the end of Minnie’s nose with his forefinger. Minnie looked at him adoringly, falling already, as she thought about him in bed, how they would be soon, and how thrilling it was. His mass on top of her felt powerful; when she straddled his sweaty body and felt him between her legs, she would wonder if it was just another role she was playing, as she looked down on herself.
‘My ingénue I call her,’ he chuckled again to himself as he beckoned a member of the house staff to top up his glass. A French word that sounded funny in a thick Essex accent, but it was endearing, sweet even, however clumsily JP said it.
‘Ooh, countdown’s coming!’ said Emilia, as everyone stood up and staff walked around with trays of champagne, topping everyone up. Minnie took hers and smiled at the waitress, knowing she must be desperate to finish her shift and see her own friends and family; relieved that she didn’t have to work tonight. Minnie hadn’t accepted a waitressing shift since she’d met JP a few weeks ago.
‘Ten… nine… eight…’
JP pulled Minnie in, his arm strong around her waist.
She felt a pang of treachery for having ditched the Byrne family party in London – a Hampstead tradition – in favour of a guy she had only just met; or not helping Hilde out at her New Year’s service and lock-in.
‘Seven… six… five…’
Minnie suspected JP had lots of offers and options on where to spend his New Year’s Eve. He didn’t have to turn up anywhere alone if he didn’t want to, but he’d invited her. His ingénue.
‘Four… three… two… one…’
‘Happy New Year, babe,’ JP said, pulling Minnie in even closer and pressing himself to her. Minnie kissed him as if no one were watching.
‘Happy New Year,’ she said breathlessly before breaking away from this new and crazy whirlwind, a man unlike any she had never known. ‘I love you.’