Daphne
Daphne
Daphne sat at a table for two by the window, looking over at majestic Tower Bridge, which was glowing in the sunset. Across the river, she could see the aptly named Gherkin building, which had only just been built the last time she’d been in this neck of the woods, but now looked well settled in. She’d forgotten, holed up in Hammersmith for so many years, what a magnificent city she lived in. She was going to miss it.
She watched an impeccably dressed waiter lead Art over to her table. He was holding firmly on to Art’s elbow, as if Art might collapse at any minute.
“We hope you have a wonderful dinner, sir,” he said, pulling out the chair for Art, then shaking out the folded linen napkin and placing it on his knee. “We’re honored that you chose our establishment for your bucket list.”
“ Daphne ,” hissed Art, as soon as the waiter had left. “What have you done now?”
“Well, they were fully booked,” said Daphne. “For weeks, apparently. So I told them you were dying. Which is true, after all, just not as imminently as I led them to believe. I said the final item on your bucket list was dinner at this restaurant, and it couldn’t wait a minute longer. So please try not to look too healthy.”
Art sighed and rolled his eyes but, if she weren’t entirely mistaken, he also looked just a tiny bit impressed.
“I sent the text,” said Art. “She’s called Kitty, by the way. Silly name for a grown woman.”
“Well, it worked,” said Daphne. “I saw her as I arrived. She was about to head in, then she looked at her phone and did a U-turn, looking like the Kitty that had got the cream. It was just in the nick of time, as Jeremy turned up ten minutes later, looking as cross as someone who’d recently found their scooter transformed into a giant woolly penis. He’s over there—look.”
Jeremy was sitting at a table for two, which was draped in a linen tablecloth and groaning with silverware and crystal. A champagne bottle nestled in a large bucket of ice beside him. As they watched, he acknowledged several of the diners at neighboring tables with a half wave and a slight tilt of the head. These self-styled Masters of the Universe communicated in a secret code, it seemed.
Jeremy raised his hand and gestured at a waiter, then pointed at his menu and issued some instructions which they couldn’t hear.
“I came here when Terence Conran first opened it in the early nineties, with Jack,” said Daphne.
“Who was Jack? Your husband?” said Art. And, much to her surprise, Daphne found she wanted to talk about him. That was what friends did, wasn’t it? They told each other things about themselves that were true. Things that were important. And besides, it could hardly make any difference now, could it? The countdown had already started, and there was no stopping it.
So Daphne told Art about growing up as the Hopesburys’ foster child, and her desperate desire to belong, pausing only to relay their food order to another obsequious waiter. She told Art how she’d been surrounded by luxury and riches, none of which were hers.
“And then,” she said, “I met Jack. And in his smile, I saw everything I’d ever wanted. With Jack by my side, I had the respect, the belonging, and more money than even I had imagined possible. I was only eighteen when I met him.”
“What did he do?” asked Art.
“Well, I thought he was just a businessman. A club owner, and import/export,” said Daphne. “Needless to say, it was all a bit more complicated than that. I must have been terribly naive, or maybe just deliberately looking the wrong way. By the time I found out the extent of Jack’s operations, we were married, and I was so firmly entangled that I couldn’t see how I could get out.”
Art looked as if he couldn’t work out which of his many questions to ask first, which made Daphne realize how much she’d given away. Stupid woman. She needed to deflect the conversation back to Art. There was a question that had been niggling away at her ever since he’d taken her into Kerry’s room.
“Art, I don’t mean to pry,” she said. Although she did. “But, Kerry’s room. It looked like it was a room for two children?”
The expression on Art’s face was one that Daphne was familiar with. It was how her own face had looked in the mirror, for years after she’d lost Jack. Unbearable grief and sadness, but also an undercurrent of guilt. Or perhaps she was just projecting.
She reached across the table and rested her hand on Art’s arm. Then took it away again and shoved it into her lap.
“Kerry was a twin,” said Art, so quietly that Daphne had to strain to hear. “Katie, her sister, died, incredibly suddenly, of meningitis. She was just fifteen. Then, just days later, Kerry and her mum left me. They say time heals, but I’ve never got over it. I think about her, about all of them, every single day.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” said Daphne who, now she’d got into the habit of apologizing, seemed unable to stop. But there was nothing else she could say. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have a child, let alone to lose one so very young. Poor, poor Art.
“Is that concern, Daphne? Empathy?” said Art, with a shaky smile.
“No. Indigestion,” said Daphne. “I shouldn’t have ordered the beef carpaccio. Although it was delicious.”
“Why am I not at all surprised that you like eating raw meat?” said Art, shoving the painful memories aside in the practiced manner of someone who’d been doing exactly that for more than thirty years.
“Look,” she said, nodding over toward Jeremy. “Idiot man ordered for Kitty, too. Of course he did. I bet she doesn’t even like steak. She looks more like a tofu kind of girl.”
“What does a tofu kind of girl look like?” asked Art.
“Skinny. Pale. And weak,” said Daphne.
“For someone who rails against the stereotypes of aging, you really do make some heinous generalizations,” said Art.
They watched as a waiter placed a large rib eye steak in front of Jeremy, and another in the empty place opposite him at the table. Jeremy, who was looking increasingly angry, kept checking his watch and reaching for a phone which wasn’t there. According to the plan, Art should have passed it to William, who would have taken it back to Lydia in Hammersmith.
Half an hour later, Daphne had eaten most of her Dover sole, along with half of Art’s oysters.
“You can’t eat too much,” she’d told him as she’d stolen the food from his plate. “You’re dying, remember. Your digestion simply isn’t up to it.”
Jeremy, meanwhile, had finished his steak, and Kitty’s was still sitting on the table. Forty pounds’ worth of untouched prime organic grass-fed beef. The blood that had seeped from the rare meat was congealing around the edges of the plate. The acquaintances Jeremy had greeted so proudly as he’d arrived were looking over at him, whispering behind their hands.
Jeremy stood up, throwing his napkin onto his chair, and stalked over to the ma?tre d’, asking, presumably, for the bill. The fact that the first two cards Jeremy tried to pay with were rejected only accentuated his public humiliation and made it clear that Lydia had executed the financial phase of Daphne’s plan. Good girl.
Lydia was out of range, so Daphne pulled out her phone and sent her a text.
All going to plan. He’s on his way home now. She resisted the urge to add her name, since Ziggy had informed her that signing your texts was ageing.
“So, now we’ve played our part, what do we do next?” said Art.
“We order some more wine and ask for the pudding menu,” said Daphne. “And for God’s sake, try to look at least a little bit sick.”
“Spending time with you makes that rather easy, actually,” said Art. But he winked at her, turning his words into a joke between friends, rather than an insult.
Daphne smiled and leaned back in her chair. She’d missed having a sparring partner. She hadn’t enjoyed herself this much in years.