Chapter 14
Ivy
‘My brother definitely has a crush on you,’ Flora tells me as she pours boiling water from a fancy tap in the middle of the island into two mugs. The cup of tea is happening—just without Xavier. ‘It’s quite sweet, actually.’
‘He definitely doesn’t,’ I argue with all the moral outrage of someone who definitely did not just blush when he kissed her goodbye just now. Two double kisses from Xavier de Vere in the space of five minutes: it’s hard to keep your cool when that happens.
‘I’m telling you, he does. He’s super awkward around you—it’s a dead giveaway. He usually has a bit more swagger with the ladies than that.’
‘I’m pretty sure girls like me aren’t on his radar.’ It comes out a tad more bitter than I mean it to, but it’s the truth, and I’d really like to shut this conversation down.
‘Oh, he’s a raging snob, obviously. And Selena—that’s his fiancée—is seriously stuck up, too. They’ll be dreadfully dull together.’ I giggle at that, and she shoots me a sly look. ‘But I suspect you’d be on everyone’s radar. How’d you meet him, anyway? He didn’t mention it.’
Your other brother paid me to fuck him, and he had his hands on my tits and his dick in my hand until he bottled it and kicked me out.
I don’t go with that, weirdly. Instead, I feed her the line Xavier and I agreed on.
‘I was serving at a function they had at your place in the country—Belvedere? We got… talking, and he suggested it might be a good thing for you and me to hang out. He spoke to my employer, too, to check me out,’ I add hurriedly, in case Flora thinks her brother offered the job to the first waitress he met.
She grins knowingly. ‘Ah, yes. The birthday extravaganza to which I was NFI, I assume?’
‘Maybe,’ I mumble, and she laughs, pulling open a fridge so well stocked with a rainbow of food that it could have its own TikTok feed.
‘Don’t worry. I’m under no illusions. They’re both uptight pains in the arse—when it comes to me, anyway. No one could accuse Ben of being uptight in any other context. Quite the opposite. Semi-skimmed or oat milk?’
‘Semi-skimmed, please,’ I say, trying to forget that I’ve seen Benedict directing actual orgies at Alchemy. The dirty bastard doesn’t have an uptight bone in his body. His insufferable brother, on the other hand…
The kitchen, as I gaze around it, is bloody gorgeous.
There’s an enormous arrangement of flowers in the centre of the island that looks professionally done.
It’s an array of autumnal colours—golds and oranges with dark greenery—and I’d love to have a crack at painting it.
The room must take up half the house, and it’s all gleaming surfaces and shiny, expensive-looking finishes.
On the far wall is a whole bank of cupboards with glass fronts and lighting inside, the kind you need to have really good-looking crockery to get away with, because otherwise they show off a multitude of sins.
Their cupboards look like display cabinets in a china and glassware shop.
‘Xavier said you don’t cook.’ I accept the mug of tea from her. ‘What about the fridge? It looks like a professional chef’s fridge, from what I saw.’
She sighs. ‘That’s because we have a professional chef, and she comes in every morning to make me breakfast and do meal prep for dinner. But I wouldn’t know where to start.’ She grimaces. ‘You must think I’m such a spoilt brat.’
I’m shocked. ‘Of course not! If you’ve always had people to do it for you, why would you bother? No judgement here.’
‘Are you a good cook?’ She takes a seat at the island and wraps her hands around her mug.
She’s in what I suppose is a typical student uniform of baggy light-wash jeans and a little white tee, with a beige sweater hanging over her shoulders and a few pieces of super-fine gold jewellery, but I can just tell that it’s all seriously expensive. She’s very… polished. That’s the word.
I consider her question. I pride myself on being able to feed my family well.
The twins need a decent square meal after a day at school, especially because their school lunches are so horrible.
Once a week, I’ll cheat and give them a Jan-style fish-finger sarnie and some Heinz tomato soup for dunking, but the rest of the time I try to cook from scratch, no matter how exhausted I am.
It’s better all round than relying on crappy fast food.
‘I’m okay. I work at a caff, and I’ve known the owners for years.
They’ve taught me well. I still take shortcuts sometimes.
But I think my best skill is looking at all the random leftovers in the fridge and being able to turn them into something tasty.
Not that you’ll ever need to do that, of course,’ I add in a panic.
‘No, I definitely should learn how to do that. Food waste is not okay.’
I nod my agreement. Amen to that. ‘So, what does your day look like today? Do you want to do some cooking together? Or do you have lectures? We can go and check out your uni if you like, and hatch some plans for you to get more involved socially? Where are you at uni?’
She checks the dainty, expensive-looking gold watch on her wrist. ‘I have a lecture in a couple of hours. I’m at the Royal College of Arts, and I’m usually at their Battersea campus, but I’m in South Ken today.
’ She makes a face. ‘You’re going to think I’m a total freak, but I’ve never been on the Tube before.
I know it’s awful, but my brothers suggested using our driver would be safer.
I thought you could hold my hand? Figuratively speaking, of course. ’
Now I can’t hide how gobsmacked I am. Lily and Rose have been taking public transport to school since they were eleven. No wonder Flora feels completely isolated—she’s not properly living in London.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘though it sounds like your biggest problem right now is getting your brothers off your back so you can actually live your life.’
She sighs. ‘You’re not wrong.’
We end up taking the Bakerloo Line to Paddington and then the District and Circle around to South Kensington.
Flora’s uni may be due south of her home (I checked on the map), but it’s a bit faffy to get to.
That said, it’s a good thing that she gets to use the quieter lines for her journey.
The Piccadilly or Northern Lines would be a baptism of fire for someone who’s led as sheltered a life as she has.
The Tube journey is uneventful. None of our fellow travellers has a psychotic episode, it’s not too crowded, and we don’t get tormented by any buskers trying to play the accordion.
I thought Flora might be horrified, but she seems tickled by the whole experience.
At each point in our journey, I make her call the shots—which direction we need to take, which platform to go for—just like Dawn and Dad and I did with the twins when they were younger.
I’m not doing her any favours if I let her follow me around mindlessly.
‘I’m pretty sure I could do this on my own,’ she says as we exit at South Ken. ‘It seems quite straightforward, as long as I pay attention when I’m getting on the District Line.’
‘Of course you could. It’s dead easy, and you’re smart. You’ve got the whole of London at your feet now, so don’t you dare sit at home in that big mansion of yours when you could be out exploring.’
The Kensington campus is in a seriously nice part of town, right next to the Royal Albert Hall and opposite Kensington Gardens.
I don’t know this area at all, but just being here makes me feel uplifted.
It’s so spacious and green and unsqualid.
The Harrow Road is depressing and functional, but the green spaces and grand, gorgeous architecture here are inspiring.
Flora and I plonk ourselves down on the steps of the Albert Memorial with the cups of coffee she’s very kindly bought from a kiosk in the park.
She still has forty-five minutes until her lecture, so we’re in no rush.
‘You know,’ I tell her conversationally, ‘Belvedere is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my whole life. ’
I don’t know why I’m telling her this. I thought I’d feel intimidated by her, but she’s so clearly young and wet behind the ears that I feel as though she’s a little sister (not that I don’t have enough of those already).
Besides, she’s so friendly that it would be impossible to find her scary, no matter how posh and loaded she is.
Her face absolutely lights up. ‘You’re so kind to say that. I miss it so much. It’s so good for the soul, you know?’
‘Yeah.’ I rest my elbows on my knees and watch a couple of little kids blowing bubbles.
Even the parks are different around here.
Life feels better. Easier. ‘When we turned up to, er, serve at the party, I saw the front of the house, and the lake, and the grassy bit, and I thought sitting there and painting all that on a sunny afternoon would surely be what total happiness looks like.’
Her smile grows wider. ‘Do you paint? How wonderful!’
‘Well, a bit. I don’t have much time for it these days.’ Or money. Oils are expensive. ‘And where I live, there isn’t much to paint. The Harrow Road doesn’t exactly get the creative juices flowing, you know?’
‘That’s not good.’ She frowns. ‘But you could come here and paint.’
‘I could, yeah.’ I don’t tell her that, these days, my creativity stretches to doing quick digital oil paintings on Photoshop for commissions I get through my Etsy store.
I paint people’s houses and gardens. I don’t earn a huge amount from them, but it helps, and Jan is kind enough to let me work on them when the caff is quiet.