The colour drained from his face as his phone went straight to voicemail. ‘Jesus, strike that, I don’t want anyone giving him ideas.’
‘Where is Al?’ Amy asked, picking up and dropping her skirt in a huff. ‘Why is he so hard to find at his own party?’
‘I’m going to see if I can see him from up there.’ I pointed to a winding staircase in the corner that led to a deserted mezzanine level above the ballroom. ‘Might be a bit easier.’
‘I’ll look in his room,’ Kekipi said, waving his phone at us. ‘Amy, you stay here, eyes open. Call if you see either of them but don’t do anything. I’m so pissed off, I could spit.’ He gave the pair of us a look. ‘What? Obviously I’m not going to.’
‘Don’t be mad at yourself,’ I said. I knew how protective he was of Al and they’d been together for so long. ‘You couldn’t have known and I don’t think Al would have believed it even if we had been able to tell him. You’ve been so busy organizing this amazing event, you can’t be everywhere at once.’
‘It’s my job to take care of Al. He’s not my boss, he’s family – and he’s my best friend,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘I took my eye off the ball because I’m an old fool. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Is it wrong to spank a forty-eight-year-old man?’
‘In what way?’ Amy asked.
‘Good point,’ he replied, straightening the sleeve of my dress with a tight smile. ‘Look at us, we’re practically Charlie’s Angels, only better.’
‘I’d be much happier fighting crime in flats,’ I mumbled to myself, tottering off towards the narrow spiral staircase that led to the mezzanine. ‘The only person I’m likely to kill in these is me.’
The party was incredible. Up on the mezzanine, I was really able to appreciate the effort that had gone into it. From the music and the lighting to the guests and my bigger-than-life-sized photographs of Jane’s dresses, the movement of the crowd below making them dance against the walls. Everything was so beautiful, so out of the realm of my experience, that I almost forgot my mission for a moment. This night was too pretty, too perfect, for someone like Artie to come along and destroy it. No matter how many times Kekipi said he was a spoiled brat acting out, I still couldn’t understand.
My littlest sister was a spoiled brat. When she cut the hair off my Barbie doll because it was my birthday and she couldn’t understand why I was getting presents and she wasn’t, that was acting out. There had to be a middle ground to parenting; clearly Jane hadn’t got it right by smothering her son until he turned into a lazy, evil genius but I really didn’t think my mum’s reaction to Liz scalping my birthday present was on the money either. Liz got sent to her room for doing it and I got sent to my room for ‘overreacting’. I was all grown up now but I was almost certain that if someone destroyed my birthday present at my birthday party on my birthday, I would still push them over and then throw cake at them.
‘Not one for the crowds?’
I was so busy snapping away at the beautiful ballroom and searching for Artie, I didn’t even notice Nick sneaking up behind me.
‘I’m looking for Al,’ I said without flinching. ‘Or Artie. And I’m not talking to you.’
‘Who said I wanted to talk?’ he asked, walking his fingers from the nape of my neck, all the way down my bare back until he found the edge of my dress. Oh good, he had slipped right back into slimy bastard mode. That was so much easier to reject.
‘Don’t even,’ I said, shaking him off. ‘I’m busy. Why don’t you knob off and work on your story while I try to help my friend?
I turned to face him, steeling myself for the vision of beauty that would bypass my brain and divert all blood flow directly to my ladyparts but instead, I saw a tired version of the Adonis I had left in bed this morning. A middle-aged man with grey skin and bags under his eyes. Even in his tux, he looked like shit. It was brilliant.
‘Well, I mean …’ He dropped the cheesy grin and stuck his hands in his pockets, eyes firmly stuck to a spot just left of the top of my head. ‘Isn’t there anything I can do to help?’
I let my camera hang around my neck and attempted a pissy flounce of my skirt. It looked a bit like I was having a fit but still, he could tell I was annoyed with him.
‘Help Al or help yourself?’ I asked. ‘I’m sorry to be so naïve but you realize I don’t understand.’
‘I was tired this morning,’ he said, doing his own grumpy flounce. ‘And I was a dickhead – is that what you want me to say?’
‘I already know that.’ I grabbed my hair and twisted it into a loose ponytail for something to do with my hands that wasn’t touching or punching. ‘What I want you to say is that you were wrong.’
‘I was wrong.’ He turned and rested his forearms against the banister. ‘I thought about it all after you left, and you were right.’
‘Oh …’ I wasn’t expecting him to belly up so quickly. I didn’t know quite what to say.
‘I’m not going to pretend that I can’t be selfish sometimes,’ Nick said, stretching out his back, eyes still trained on the crowd below. ‘I haven’t had to worry about anyone but myself for a really long time and I know this isn’t going to make me more popular with you, but the Al and Artie thing? It had the potential to be a really big story. I took this job to see you again, not because I wanted to tell Artie’s story. But then this came up and I realized how big it could be. Did I think about you? No, and I didn’t think about Al either. I thought about selling it to Vanity Fair or Vogue and that was about it.’
‘Heart-warming,’ I replied. ‘Such a nice story.’
‘I’m a selfish shit.’ He shrugged and looked over at me. ‘That’s not going to change overnight. But it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you and it doesn’t mean I don’t realize that I should have thought about how you would feel getting into all of this.’
I stopped twisting my hair for fear of an impending frizzbomb. Curly girls had so much to deal with – we couldn’t even calm our nerves without fucking up our hair.
‘If you had, would you have done anything differently?’ I asked, holding on to the banister behind me, Nick’s hand inches away from mine.
‘Honestly?’ He looked at me with open, honest eyes. ‘Probably not.’
‘Well, don’t I feel special,’ I whispered.
‘I know I never said this was going to be simple,’ Nick covered my hand with his and I let him, ‘but if it happened again, I would do things differently. What happens next is up to you.’
‘What happens next is we find Al,’ I said, wishing I were a shallow piece of shit who could forget her friends’ problems and pretend what he’d offered was enough. Stupid morals. ‘It’s up to you if you want to help.’
‘I know where he is.’ He pulled my hand away from the banister and wound his fingers around mine. ‘I just talked to him and I told him everything. Like I said, you were right, I do owe Al. He’s a decent man and there aren’t many of them around.’
‘What?’ I blinked slowly. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’
He scrunched his shoulders right up to his ears and let them drop. ‘I had to make things right with you first, didn’t I?’
I looked over my shoulder at the party below and let Nick lead me back down the staircase and out of the ballroom. Everyone looked like they were having such a wonderful time. I really hoped things stayed that way.
My secret garden really wasn’t much of a secret at all. Nick pushed the door open to reveal Al sitting at the tiny wrought-iron table with a glass of whisky and one of the old photo albums from Jane’s studio. He was wearing his tux but the bow tie hung loose around his neck and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. He stared at a page of the album, smiling and running a finger over the photograph. In that moment, I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to pull on Nick’s hand and take him away before Al saw us. This was too sad. I knew what was in that album, knew that he was looking at pictures of him and Jane. He had already had his heart broken when he lost the l
ove of his life; how was he supposed to handle his own son acting like such a wanker as well? It was too much. Unfortunately, it was also too late.
‘Ah, Mr Miller, you’re back.’ He looked up from his memories and scratched his beard. I bloody loved that beard. ‘And you brought Tess. What time is it? Am I dreadfully late?’
‘It’s just getting started,’ I said, breaking off from Nick’s hand and stepping forward to take the empty seat next to Al. ‘You’ve got plenty of time.’
Nick hovered in the doorway for a moment and I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he was going to cut and run entirely but eventually, he stepped into the garden and closed the door behind him.
‘I was just looking at these pictures from our last party here …’ He pushed the album towards me and tapped the photo in the top right corner. ‘The Eighties were kind to no one except for my Jane. Everyone else looks ridiculous.’
He was right, the photo was almost entirely taken over by shoulder pads and lamé and enormous hair, but there in the corner was Jane, her beautiful blonde hair shining against her classic black sheath and Al standing beside her, sporting some very impressive lapels. On the other side of Jane was a very grumpy-looking teenager in a smaller version of the same suit Al wore.
‘Nice suit,’ I said, closing my eyes and taking a calming breath. ‘So, I went to talk to Edward Warren earlier.’
‘Oh, I know you did,’ Al said with a laugh. ‘I wish I’d been there to see it. Sounds like it was a riot.’
‘You know?’ I opened my eyes and sat back in my chair, looking up at Nick. He shrugged his shoulders, protesting his innocence.
‘Edward told me.’ Al rested his hand on the family portrait. ‘Actually. he told me someone called Bess had been to see him but it didn’t take long for me to work out that it was you. Called me on his way to the airport and once we’d had a chat, he decided to postpone his trip. Should be here any moment, actually. He’s never been one to miss out on a party.’
‘Did he tell you what he told me?’ I asked, twisting in my seat to look at Nick. He looked as nonplussed as I did. ‘About Artie?’
‘Oh yes, dear,’ he nodded. ‘And Nick filled in the rest of the gaps for me. I think Edward was quite surprised how much your intervention affected him; he seemed terribly shocked to be throwing himself on his sword for me.’
‘You already knew?’ I felt Nick’s hand on my shoulder as I struggled to know what to say next. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I wouldn’t say I’m OK.’ Al picked up his whisky and sipped it, his face thoughtful. ‘But I’m not as surprised as I would like to be.’
Nick raked a hand through his hair, squatting down at the side of my chair. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘If either of you have a time machine handy, I wouldn’t mind popping back to the sixties and having another go at raising a decent human being.’ Al drained the rest of his glass in one slug. ‘But if that’s not on the cards, I would suggest you both go back inside and have a very lovely evening. Does the ballroom look wonderful? Kekipi always does such a fantastic job with these things.’
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I said as Al began doing up his shirt buttons. ‘Kekipi feels terrible, though. We feel terrible about all of this.’
‘Why would anyone feel terrible?’ he asked, moving on to fasten his bow tie. ‘For better or worse, Artie is my son. I’ll deal with it. Did Kekipi tell you about the time he tried to overthrow Anna Wintour and take over Vogue in the nineties?’
‘No,’ I said, slightly concerned that Al had gone mad. ‘He started telling me a story about Princess Diana and a bomb threat, though.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Al laughed out loud. It felt out of place with the quiet of the garden. ‘Such an ambitious boy, could have done anything; but he never wanted to put in the work to earn the things he wanted. Entirely mine and his mother’s fault; little to be done about it now.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I stood up and let Nick take my hand again. Al beamed at the affectionate gesture between the two of us and clapped Nick on the back.
‘I’m very glad that this is working out.’ He nodded at the two of us and then adjusted his tie until it was perfect. ‘I knew right away. Sometimes, you do just know.’
‘Then you’re better at this than I am,’ I replied, glancing at Nick and then back at Al. ‘We’re a bit rubbish.’
‘Oh, all the best people are,’ Al said, waving us out of the garden with both hands. ‘That’s part of the fun. If you don’t fight, you can’t make up and where’s the fun in that? Nothing like a good argument to clear the air, it keeps you both on your toes. But you two are good for each other, I think.’
Nick didn’t say anything, just smiled and squeezed my hand. Shaking my head at myself, I squeezed back.
‘Nothing worth having was ever won easily,’ Al summarized as he closed the door to the garden behind us. ‘A lesson my son is about to find out for himself.’
‘This is going to be brilliant,’ Nick whispered as we sped up to chase Al back into the palazzo. Seventysomething or not, he had quite a sprint on. ‘Make sure that camera is ready.’
‘I don’t think these are the photos I’m meant to be taking,’ I said, wishing I already knew what as going to happen next. ‘Are they going to fight to the death?’
‘If they were guinea pigs, Al would kill and eat his young,’ he said, hurrying me along as fast as my shoes would carry me.
I gave him the most disgusted look I could muster. ‘Have you been hanging out with Amy or something?’ I asked. ‘Eww.’
I couldn’t share Nick’s thirst for blood. No matter how determined Al seemed to be, this had to be painful for him. It was definitely making me reconsider ever having children of my own. I would be damned if I was going to sacrifice my vagina for a tiny demon that would only grow up to try to destroy my life’s work. I’d googled an episiotomy after reading it in one of my mum’s book years ago and that shit was no laughing matter.
When we all arrived back at the ballroom, it was even busier than when we left.
‘Ciao, Chiara!’ Al was immediately caught up in a human tumble of air kisses and elaborate noncontact hugs. ‘And Stefano, so glad you could make it.’
‘Tess, over there …’ Nick nudged my attention over to the corner of the room where Artie and his handlebar moustache were busying themselves at the bar with a woman in a dark blue dress. And not just any woman.
‘Oh bloody hell, he’s talking to Amy.’ I pressed my right hand to my temples, trying to shove a burgeoning headache right back to wherever it came from.
‘Had we better go and save her?’ Nick asked, casually throwing around the term ‘we’ and expecting me not to notice. I did a tiny, silent squee and nodded although I was certain it was far more likely that Artie would be the one that needed saving from her before the night was out.
‘Amy!’ I descended on my friend with multiple cheek kisses, ignoring her confused expression and acting as though we always greeted each other this way as opposed to punching each other and shouting ‘All right, slag!’ across a crowded room. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. And Artie, so good to see you again.’
‘Ah, Vanessa,’ he took my hand in his and kissed it, his eyes twinkling up at me. ‘Or did we decide on Tess in the end? I forget.’
‘Shouldn’t worry about it,’ I said, digging my fingernails into my palms. Now I thought about it, killing him with a shoe would actually tie everything up nicely. ‘It’s so lovely to see you.’
‘Couldn’t miss the big party, could I?’ He looked so sickeningly pleased with himself. ‘And here’s my favourite journalist. Good to see you, too.’
‘My favourite monkey,’ Nick smiled through gritted teeth. ‘I was chatting with the organ grinder. Have you seen your father this evening?’
There were few things I loved more than being in the middle of an alpha male-off and since I was sleeping with the man who was winning this one, it was even more fun than usual. Amy gave m
e a quizzical look but I just smiled happily.
‘It’s fine,’ I mouthed. ‘It’s all OK.’
‘Your lovely friend, Amy, was just telling me how she’s never been to New York,’ Artie explained as Nick took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed one to me. This time I took it happily. I had a feeling I was going to need more than one before the evening was over. ‘I told her she must visit.’
‘And you promised to be my tour guide,’ Amy reminded him with a light giggle that I knew must have been like razor blades in her throat. ‘Have either of you seen Kekipi on your travels?’ she asked.
‘No.’ I gave the room a once-over but he was nowhere to be seen. ‘Al’s here, though. He’s really looking forward to everything.’
‘He is?’ Amy’s big blue eyes seemed to understand my overactive eyebrows and unnecessary emphasis. Nick and Artie looked a little bit lost but that wasn’t their fault, they hadn’t been reading between my lines for the better part of the last three decades. Hopefully Nick would catch up eventually. Hopefully I’d never see Artie again as long as I lived.
‘I see someone I must speak to …’ Artie excused himself with a shallow bow. ‘It was lovely to make your acquaintance, Amy. And a delight to catch up with yourselves.’
‘We are charmed,’ Nick said, his voice ruffled as Artie walked away. ‘I never fucking liked him.’
‘But you were perfectly happy to let him shaft his dad for your story,’ Amy said in a quiet voice, adding a short sharp punch to his gut to make her point. ‘I knew I was right to give you that slap when I met you.’
Nick winced, not expecting the blow. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But it was totally uncalled for. Next time I deserve it, remember you’re one-up, OK?’
‘Not here, not now,’ I warned the pair of them, all of my attention on Al. ‘Where is Kekipi?’