‘Are you going to follow me around all afternoon?’ demanded Nicky, as three girls dressed in much smaller, spanglier outfits than mine went into spasms of preening on the opposite side of the tent.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Unless I can trust you not to get up to anything stupid, and I’m not entirely sure I can just yet.’
‘Oh, Melissa,’ he began with a charming sigh.
‘Honey,’ I corrected him.
‘Oh, Honey, that just turns into a challenge.’
‘It’s not meant to,’ I said warningly. ‘I checked what happened last time you came to one of these. The extra-ball-on-the-pitch trick? Not going to happen this time.’
‘That,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘was a great laugh.’
‘Not,’ I said, pointing back at him, ‘for the woman who was knocked out by the extra ball when the referee man wailed it off the pitch. Don’t deny it. I have researched your antics thoroughly.’
Nicky made a ‘What can you do?’ face.
‘No one’s looking at you,’ I said firmly, very aware that this time I didn’t have Nelson, Gabi and Roger for back-up. This was just me and him, so I had to convince him I was beyond disobeying. ‘They’re here to gawp at Prince William, be photographed for Tatler, and drink their body weight in free champagne. You’re here to listen with concern when the charity women make their speeches, be photographed making small talk with the oldest guests here instead of molesting the waitresses, and to leave at a reasonable time, because you need to study for your post-graduate degree.’
‘My what?’
I flapped my hand. ‘It just occurred to me. It would look good if you were seen to be training in something you’ll need for taking over from your grandfather. Economics, or international politics or something.’
‘You don’t think you’re taking this a bit seriously?’
I shook my head. ‘Not in the least.’
‘Oh, God,’ sighed Nicky, but I dragged him off to say hello to the lady from the elephant charity. Alexander had helpfully sent me a list, and I intended to make him work through it.
After thirty minutes’ intensive mingling, Nicky pulled me to one side.
‘Come on,’ he said, steering me towards the exit.
‘Where are we going?’
He stopped and widened his eyes at me. ‘The loo. Obviously, you don’t trust me to go in alone, so . . . You can get two in the cubicles at these sort of dos. Sometimes more. Don’t ask me how I know that, by the way.’
‘I’m not coming to the loo with you!’
‘No?’ He tipped his head to one side, and his dark hair flopped over in a thick wave.
‘No!’ I knew I was blushing and wished I wasn’t – I knew he was trying to embarrass me.
Nicky rubbed his hands. ‘Excellent. Well, I’ll see you back here, then. Don’t bother waiting. I’ll find you.’
I realised I’d fallen straight into his trap. ‘I could do with a walk,’ I said airily. ‘And the polo’s about to start, anyway.’
We made our way through the little clusters of silk-stockinged women and cigar-smoking men, onto the wooden veranda and over to the elaborate Portaloos.
When Nicky vanished into the cabin, I rummaged in my bag for my phone.
Nicky’s phone, however, came to hand first, and abruptly beeped with a text message.
It was one of those phones where the first bit of the message came up on screen automatically. WHEN R WE MEETING 2NITE? PIGXXXXXXXXXXXX, I read. Alongside was a revealing snap of a shimmering bony cleavage.
And, just as I was wrestling with my conscience about having read Nicky’s message, that was followed by: HAV U DUMPED PORKY YET? And the cleavage again.
Furious, I typed, CAN’T MAKE TONIGHT, AM STAYING IN. Then I added, in case that sounded too out of character, HAVE HEADACHE. Then I pressed send, just as Nicky reappeared, deep in conversation with an ash-blonde woman with colt-like legs in gold sandals.
I dropped the phone into my bag as if it were red-hot.
‘Why don’t we all have a fresh glass?’ he was saying, then hissed at me, ‘Was that my phone?’ as he steered us both back towards the champagne table.
‘No! No, it was mine. Hello,’ I said, extending my hand towards the lady. Now she was right next to me, I realised that she was an astonishingly well-preserved older lady. How old, I couldn’t tell. ‘I’m Honey Blennerhesket.’
‘Georgina von Apfel.’ She took off her huge shades and gave me a very searching look. More searching than one expects at a social event. Her perfectly made-up eyes seemed to be taking in all of me, and processing me accordingly. ‘Honey Blennerhesket?’ she asked coolly, shaking my hand. ‘Are you related to Dilys Blennerhesket? You look just like her.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m her granddaughter.’
‘Georgie’s an old friend of my grandfather,’ explained Nicky. ‘From New York.’
‘More an old friend of your grandmother, Nicolas,’ she corrected him, not letting her eyes leave me. ‘Darling Celestine. How we all still miss her.’
I sensed there was a whole sea of implication there that I wasn’t getting, but a shoal of waitresses engulfed us, and suddenly I had a glass of champagne, a programme, a mini macaroon, a cucumber sandwich the size of my thumbnail, and an ironic sausage on a stick to juggle. Plus my bag hanging off my forearm like a deadweight.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, trying to balance it all.
‘Nicolas, you’re forgetting your manners,’ iced Georgina. ‘Do take Honey’s bag from her while she sorts herself out.’
‘I’m not carrying a woman’s bag!’ began Nicky petulantly. ‘And have you felt how heavy that thing is?’
‘Take it!’ she snapped, and he took it.
‘Oh, that’s better,’ I said, but, right on cue, my phone rang. Apologetically, I unloaded my food and drink onto a nearby table and rummaged in the murky depths of my handbag.
It was Jonathan. He’d already phoned three times and sent a terse EMERGENCY. RING ME SOONEST text. My heart sank, then started beating in double time. What had happened?
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, ‘but I really have to return this call. It’s an emergency.’
‘Don’t let us stop you,’ said Nicky with a glint in his eye. ‘Why not step outside? No rush.’
‘I will,’ I replied, pocketing his phone too, just to be on the safe side. ‘Mind my handbag, won’t you?’
Nicky adopted his angelic expression, which made his wicked brown eyes seem almost innocent.
Obviously, if I’d known what was going to happen next, I wouldn’t have taken that phone call. Not even if it was the Pope offering to christen Emery’s baby, with Gordon Ramsay, on hold, offering to cater Gabi’s wedding.
12
My nerves jangled as the phone rang at the other end, and a variety of awful possibilities presented themselves, escalating with every unanswered ring. When Jonathan did pick up, my heart felt as if it had bounced right into my throat.
‘Jonathan?’ I walked urgently away from the pavilion, almost falling over myself in my haste to get somewhere private. It wasn’t easy, in my heels, on the grass. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Have you got that list of members’ clubs you said you’d check out for Farrah?’ he demanded.
I stopped walking, and nearly bumped into a pair of lissom dark-haired teenagers, who glared snootily at me. But I was too shocked to care. That was what constituted an emergency? I’d assumed Jonathan had been hurt, or that there’d been some dreadful work scene. Annoyance mingled with relief flooded through me.
‘What?’ The loudspeaker commentary had begun on the match and I had to press a finger in my ear to make out what Jonathan was saying. ‘Well, sort of. I’m at a polo match with Nicolas. I can’t really talk about work here. Can it wait till I get home?’
Jonathan made a tsking noise. ‘Not really. I have a meeting scheduled with Dom in a half-hour, and I know it would make a great impression if we could wow him with those de
tails.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Have you got them or not, sweetie? I need to get moving,’ he asked, with a hint of impatience beneath his usual polite tone.
‘Yes, I have,’ I said, fishing in my pocket for the bit of paper Nicky had given me. ‘But I haven’t had time to get on the internet and—’
‘Can you please just tell me what they are!’
‘OK! OK!’ I said. ‘Um, La Paradise, Odille’s . . .’ I peered at the list, which I now saw was written on the back of a Gordon Ramsay bill. Nicky had bold, loopy writing, and he’d used a marker pen that made his scrawl look even more schoolboyish. ‘La Coquille?’
‘Great,’ said Jonathan. ‘Great. Got that. Now, are you going to be coming to Paris tomorrow as usual?’
‘Yes, I should think—’
‘Good, because I need you to come earlier. You can cancel your morning appointments, right?’
No, I thought crossly, I can’t.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ I began, and Jonathan made a grumbling noise.
I turned round to see Nicky walking towards me, his crisp white shirt now undone another button, a broad smile illuminating his handsome face. His teeth were as white and gleaming as his shirt. I pointed at the phone and made a ‘sorry’ expression. In response he pretended he was about to goose the pert behind of an unsuspecting female spectator, and laughed when I flinched forwards to stop him. Then he pulled a very Frank Spencer face and slapped his own wrist.
I couldn’t stop myself smiling at this performance, but I wagged my finger at him all the same.
He made a ‘wind up the call’ gesture, and jerked his thumb towards the champagne tent. Oh, God, I thought. He must need me to defuse one of his awful social faux pas . . . or maybe he actually wants to talk to me? After all, there were plenty of more glamorous guests for him to occupy himself with.
I pushed a hand through my hair nervously, remembered I was wearing a wig, and stopped myself just before I shoved it off my head entirely.
‘If you could get here for nine that would be ideal,’ Jonathan was saying. ‘As well as checking out those possible offices, I’ve managed to get a couple of key meetings scheduled, and it would be better if you could manage to—’
I felt a sudden pang in my chest. All Jonathan’s calls seemed to be about business these days. Business, or money. Very little flirtation at all – and we used to be as flirty as a black and white screwball comedy.
‘Jonathan,’ I said, interrupting him before Nicky got within earshot. ‘Aren’t you meant to say, “Come over earlier because I miss you”?’
There was a pause on the other end. ‘But you know I miss you.’
‘You never tell me you do,’ I said. I turned over Nicky’s list in my hand. It had been a wildly expensive meal for two. They had drunk three bottles of champagne and lingered over six coffees after the tasting-menu dinner. I felt unexpectedly envious of whoever had been on the other side of the candles.
‘I guess I hoped that every time you looked at that diamond on your finger you’d realise how much I missed you,’ he replied, with a weary sigh. ‘Come on, Melissa. We’re not eighteen. I’m rushed off my feet here, trying to deal with the office, and get things moving on our own project. If I had thirty hours in the day, you know I’d be spending them calling you. It’s only because Solange is so efficient with my schedule that I even get a chance to take lunch.’
A wicked voice in my head wondered if he’d now delegated the sending of my flowers to Solange too. I pushed the idea away, but heard my own voice whine, ‘It’s just that you’re starting to make me think that the reason you want me to move to Paris is because I’m a key employee of your new business, not someone you can’t bear to be apart from.’
‘You really believe that?’
Oh, God, this was one of those moving-walkway conversations: you get on with a reasonable comment, and before you know it, you’re being swept away to Recrimination City, with no means of getting off.
‘Sort of,’ I said bravely. ‘Can we do something fun this weekend? As well as looking at the offices? Please?’
Nicky was now standing right next to me, so close I could smell his musky aftershave.
Jonathan didn’t reply, and when I heard him say, indistinctly, ‘Oh, Solange, you’re a miracle worker,’ I realised he was multitasking, even as he was trying to convince me the romance hadn’t gone from our relationship. That ratcheted my irritation back up to annoyance.
‘Jonathan?’ I demanded.
‘Melissa, please don’t get whiny. You’re at work, I’m at work, let’s talk later, OK? OK.’
My mouth dropped open at the sheer nerve of it, but before I had a chance to snap back with something appropriately tart, he’d hung up.
‘Mr Capricorn, I assume?’ asked Nicky. ‘He does speak to you like you’re a little girl, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ I said, so cross I was really talking to myself. Jonathan couldn’t talk to me like I was a baby while at the same time insisting I help him with these ‘vital’ business arrangements. One or the other! ‘He does. Sometimes.’ I gathered myself. ‘Only when he’s busy. And he’s really busy right now. And anyway, you shouldn’t be listening to private conversations.’
Nicky looked sympathetic. ‘You look very stressed out, Melissa.’
‘Honey.’
‘You look very stressed out, Honey.’ He leaned forward and subtly straightened my wig. ‘If you weren’t in charge of my morals, I’d offer to massage it out of you. Feet first. But can I get you a drink?’
I stopped wiping the muddy grass off my ruined heels and looked up at Nicky. There was a genuine air of concern on his face. Somehow that only made me feel more defensive.
‘Are you really bothered about my stress, or have you found some cute waitress you need to get back to?’ I asked.
He raised his hands. ‘I know you think I’m some kind of skirt-chasing lech, but I don’t like to see damsels in distress. And I definitely don’t like to see that horrible frown you do when you’re tense.’
‘When have you seen my horrible frown?’ I demanded, flushing.
‘At the dinner, when Piglet was showing off. When I nearly got thrown out of the Blue Bar the first time we met. In Huntsman, when I asked if they could do me a Playboy print lining in my lounge suit. Want me to go on?’
I must have done it again, because he added, with what I hoped was a self-deprecating wink, ‘I only notice because you look so edible the rest of the time. I can only assume it’s something I’m doing. Which . . .’ he increased the wink, ‘is either deeply upsetting or rather flattering.’
Deep breath, I told myself. Deep breath. Do not say the first thing that comes into your head.
The first thing that came into my head was: Nicky is easily the sexiest man I have ever met, he has a previously undiscovered sense of humour, and I am developing a hideous crush on him. But fortunately I was saved from making a total idiot of myself by the arrival of a policeman.
‘Excuse me, sir, madam,’ he said, gently steering us around, ‘could you step this way? We’re clearing the area temporarily.’
I looked round and realised that play had stopped on the pitch, and herds of thin women in fluttery dresses were being marched towards the safety of the car park, closely followed by their red-trousered companions, all making furious calls on their mobiles.
‘Oh, God, what’s happening?’ I asked.
The policeman looked shifty and said, ‘We’ve had a security alert, suspicious package in the pavilion. Just to be on the safe side, we’re calling in the bomb squad. Can’t be too careful, what with Prince William here today.’
‘And me,’ said Nicky, pointing at himself.
The policeman stared at him.
‘He’s a prince too,’ I explained. ‘Prince Nicolas of Hollenberg.’
‘Oh, right,’ said the policeman, unimpressed. ‘Well, if you could move along . . . Should all be sorted out in no time.’
&
nbsp; ‘Oh, my God!’ said Nicky, as we hurried towards the car. ‘This is terrible! I should phone my grandfather. What if it’s an assassination attempt by the government, to stop me inheriting?’
‘I hate to break this to you, Nicky,’ I said, ‘but I think your inheritance is somewhere beneath parking tickets in Cowdenbeath, as far as the government’s concerned.’
‘Not your government, the government of Hollenberg!’ He raked his hands through his hair. ‘Mama always said they were Mafiosi. And I’m not saying I’m a cad, but some girls haven’t taken it too well when I’ve broken it to them that—’
‘Look,’ I said, to humour him, ‘we’ll call your grandfather.’ I took my phone out of my pocket and dialled the emergency number. While it was ringing, I started to get one of those nagging things in the back of my mind, beneath the general bomb-scare panic. Something wasn’t right. What was it? I racked my brains.
‘Nicky,’ I said, mentally running through any last bequests I had, should the bomb go off – Nelson would get everything, and would distribute it with meticulous fairness between the donkey charity I supported, and the RNLI, ‘I refuse to be blown up without fresh lipstick. Where’s my bag?’
‘Your bag?’ said Nicky.
‘Yes.’ Panic was rising in me now, spreading like a bad smell from the squeaking women in the Audi parked next to us. I noticed Prince William being rushed past by a crack troop of protection officers, still in his white polo jodhpurs, his blond hair ruffled where he’d removed his helmet. He didn’t look all that bothered, to be honest. I guessed this sort of thing must happen to him a lot.
My attention was drawn back to my phone as it suddenly stopped ringing.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice answered, and I assumed it was Alexander’s secretary.
‘Hello, may I speak to Prince Alexander? It’s Melissa Romney-Jones,’ I asked politely.
‘Melissa, darling! It’s me!’
‘Granny?’
‘How are you?’