Before I Met You

6


1995




THIS Last Will & Testament is made by me ARLETTE FRANÇOISE LAFOLLEY of LAURIERS HOUSE, LAURIERS MOUNT, ST PETER PORT, GUERNSEY, BRITISH ISLES, GY1 3DG on the 22nd day of SEPTEMBER 1988.


I APPOINT as executors and trustees of my will, JOLYON ADAM LAFOLLEY OF LAURIERS HOUSE, LAURIERS MOUNT, ST PETER PORT, GUERNSEY, BRITISH ISLES, GY1 3DG, and ALISON CATHERINE DEAN OF LAURIERS HOUSE, LAURIERS MOUNT, ST PETER PORT, GUERNSEY, BRITISH ISLES, GY1 3DG and should one or more of them fail to or be unable to act I APPOINT to fill any vacancy ELIZABETH JANE DEAN OF LAURIERS HOUSE, LAURIERS MOUNT, ST PETER PORT, GUERNSEY, BRITISH ISLES, GY1 3DG.


I GIVE

(1) My home, Lauriers House, and all its furniture, to my son JOLYON ADAM LAFOLLEY.

(2) My MG Midget to my son JOLYON ADAM LAFOLLEY.

(3) All clothes – including in particular my mink coat which, at the time of writing, is on the top shelf of my middle wardrobe – all jewellery, personal effects, ornaments, photographs, books and ornamental furnishings to my son’s stepdaughter, ELIZABETH JANE DEAN OF LAURIERS HOUSE, LAURIERS MOUNT, ST PETER PORT, GUERNSEY, BRITISH ISLES, GY1 3DG. I also give Elizabeth Jane Dean the sum of ONE THOUSAND POUNDS, to be paid to her in CASH and thereafter the sum of ONE HUNDRED POUNDS to be paid to her every year on her birthday, to be spent on champagne, designer dresses and parties.

(4) The rest of my estate, including all accounts held in my name, savings accounts, pensions and bonds, to CLARA TATIANA PICKLE a.k.a. CLARA TATIANA JONES of (last known address) 12 ST ANNE’S COURT, SOHO, LONDON, W1A 2DF. If Ms Pickle/Jones is deceased these monies will revert to her children. If her children are deceased these monies will revert to her grandchildren. If she is deceased and found to have no immediate family these monies will revert to ELIZABETH JANE DEAN. If the executors have been unable to trace Ms Pickle/Jones within a one-year period of my demise, monies will revert to ELIZABETH JANE DEAN.


I WISH my body to be BURIED in the plot reserved for me at St Agnes’ Church, beside my late husband. My son, JOLYON ADAM LAFOLLEY, has already been made aware of my requirements for the style and tone of my internment and subsequent celebration. I have given him written instructions and a sum of money to cover expenses. What I would now like to add to these requirements is that I should very much like there to be jazz and dancing.


Signed,

Arlette Lafolley


THE LAWYER LOOKED from Jolyon to Alison and then to Betty.

‘Clara Pickle?’ said Jolyon, his large neck wobbling back and forth as he shook his head blankly. ‘Who the hell is Clara Pickle?’ He looked at Alison. Alison shrugged. He looked at Betty. Betty shrugged. He looked at the lawyer. The lawyer said; ‘So you don’t know who this woman is?’

‘Do I look like I know who this woman is? Here ...’ He put out his hand and the lawyer passed his mother’s last will and testament to him. Jolyon read the document, once, twice, three times.

‘St Anne’s Court ...?’ he muttered.

‘That’s in Soho,’ said Betty.

‘Soho? What the ...?’

He ran a hand through what remained of his hair and looked perplexed. ‘This is crazy,’ he said.

‘How much money are we talking about?’ Alison asked.

He shrugged. ‘Not much, not any more. Ten thousand, fifteen, tops. Nothing life changing, but – you know – a nice amount. It’s not the money, it’s just, who the hell is this woman? And why am I only just hearing about her? You were with her when she set out this will,’ he said to the lawyer. ‘Did she say anything about this woman?’

The lawyer lowered his gaze to the table and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘she just spelled out the names for me. She made no mention of her identity and I didn’t ask.’

‘I mean, Mummy never even went to London. How could she know someone there?’

Alison and Betty just shook their heads.

‘Are we legally obliged to find this person?’ Jolyon asked. ‘Or can we just wait for the year to elapse and let Betty take the money?’

‘Yes,’ the solicitor said. ‘There is a legal obligation on behalf of the executor to trace this person. She would be able to sue you if it was ever discovered that no effort had been made to trace her.’

‘Yes, but who the hell is she? And how are we supposed to find her?’

‘Well,’ said Betty, ‘we could start by writing to that address.’

The lawyer shook his head. ‘Mrs Lafolley did mention that she had written to that address and been told that the address is no longer residential. It’s now an office for a marketing agency, or something like that. If I recall, she said that it had not been in residential use since the nineteen thirties. So that is rather a dead-end road, if you’ll excuse the pun.’

‘Well, it’s a starting point,’ said Betty. ‘There must be records, somewhere, of who lived there and when.’ She had come to this lawyer’s office with a heavy heart and now that same heart was fluttering with excitement. First a thousand pounds. Now mysterious legatees in Soho. Her imagination crackled with potential scenarios. She saw herself pacing sleuth-like through the streets of London in Arlette’s Givenchy mackintosh and a pair of patent court shoes. She envisaged herself peering at sheets of microfiche in a high-ceilinged library, making phone calls to strangers. She knew Arlette and she knew what her intent was. She wanted Betty to find her heir. It was obvious.

‘I don’t mind doing it,’ she said breathlessly.

Everyone turned to look at her.

‘I’ll be happy to go,’ she said.

‘Go where?’ said her mother.

‘To London,’ Betty said. ‘I’ll go to London. I’ll find Clara.’

‘You don’t need to go to London,’ her mother replied hastily. ‘We just have to put an ad in a paper, surely?’

‘Well, yes,’ replied the lawyer, ‘an advert in the appropriate publication would cover your legal obligations.’

‘Well, then,’ said Alison, ‘there you go. No need to go anywhere.’

Betty blinked at her, shocked that she could have missed the point so dramatically. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I want to.’

‘But, why? Why would you want to find her? If you find her, you won’t get the money.’

‘I don’t want the money.’ The words flew out of Betty’s mouth before she had even thought about it. Everyone looked at her in amazement. ‘I don’t want the money,’ she said again. ‘Really.’

‘But ten thousand pounds, Lizzy,’ said her mother. ‘Think what you could do with that. That could be a deposit on a flat. A trip around the world. A wedding.’

‘A wedding?’ Betty sneered.

‘Well,’ her mother shrugged, ‘maybe not a wedding. But something. Something worth having.’

‘Arlette already gave me everything worth having,’ she said piously. ‘She gave me self-esteem, self-belief. I don’t need her money.’ Betty exhaled, conscious of the totally ridiculous melodrama of her preceding statement. It was only half true. The money would be nice. But not as nice as the notion of leaving Guernsey with a thousand pounds in her pocket and a burning mission to find a mysterious stranger. She was twenty-two years old and any ambition she may have had (and she wasn’t sure there’d ever been one) had curled up and died in the wake of her responsibilities to Arlette over the past few years.

The last year, in particular, had been the toughest. Arlette had been nothing more than a terrified bag of bones, there had been no more ‘I love yous’, no unintentionally funny outbursts, Bella was gone, the carer left, the summer was a washout and for a while Betty had lost herself in a fug of night-time waking, wet afternoons and loneliness. She had really felt at times that Arlette might never, never die, that she might, in fact, be trapped in the house with her breathing corpse for another ten years. And then, one morning, twelve days ago, Betty had woken with a start, eyed her alarm clock and seen with a shock the improbably late hour of 09.12 blinking at her. Then she’d known immediately, without even a moment’s doubt, that Arlette was dead.

She had cried, quite unexpectedly, when she touched the cold papery skin of Arlette’s bunched-together hands a moment later. She did not know whether they were tears of sadness or tears of relief. Either way, they were heartfelt. She had sat with Arlette for a full thirty minutes before she called anyone, sat and made her look the best she could. She’d combed her sparse hair, tidied her nightdress, removed her unsoiled incontinence pants and pulled her nightdress down over her legs as long as it would go. She’d wiped a tidemark of dried spittle from the corners of her mouth, dabbed some pink lipstick on with her fingertips and coloured her cheeks with a coral-tinted powder. Then she’d sat, her legs crossed together, her arms wrapped round her knees and just stared at Arlette, feeling the essence of her; the glamour, the attitude, the sharpness of her mind and her thwarted attempt at living an unconventional life, feeling it all fill the room and fill her soul, reminding her why she had loved this woman and emphasising everything that she had given to her, rather than what the final years of her life had taken away.

But suddenly it was as though it barely mattered. Suddenly Betty could look back on these last few years and smile, knowing that she had done the right thing for the right reasons and that now, exactly now, was absolutely the perfect moment for these binds to be severed and for her adult life finally to begin.

She would not have been ready for it before, she would not have been equipped, and now she was. And here it was, not an ambition, as such, but a mission, a goal, a raison d’être. Ten thousand pounds would be nice, she mused, but having a reason to get up every morning now that Arlette was gone was even nicer.

*

Betty pulled the coat free of its tissue fillings and let it fall to its full length. It was a generous coat, constructed from more animals than it rightly needed. It fell in folds and drapes, and cascaded to just above the mid-calf. Betty pulled it on and turned to her reflection in Arlette’s full-length mirror. She laughed. She looked crazy. A small child with white-blond hair, wrapped deep inside a tent of fur. She found shoes in the bottom of Arlette’s wardrobe, kicked off her canvas pumps and squeezed her feet into a pair of patent courts with small gold buckles. There. Now she stood three inches taller, inhabiting the coat slightly more convincingly. From Arlette’s dressing table she took a pair of ornate paste earrings and clipped them beside her silver hoops. She ruffled her white-blond hair with her fingertips and then tried to settle it back down again into something sleeker. Still, though, she could not take herself seriously inside this thing. Still the political incorrectness of it made her half want to rip it off with enraged disgust, half want to cry with laughter. But it was hers. It belonged to her, by law. Arlette’s mink was now Betty’s mink.

The mink wasn’t the only thing that Arlette had left for Betty on the top shelf of her middle wardrobe. There was also a book. It was Pollyanna, a vintage copy with an illustrated cover of a small blonde girl in a bonnet and a yellow plaid dress clutching a flower basket full of white peonies. Betty opened it to the title page and found an inscription:


To Little Miss Pickle

I do hope that you will be a glad girl

Yours eternally,

Arlette Lafolley


Betty blinked at the words. Pickle?

Clara Pickle.

The woman in the will.

Her breath caught.

Here was a clue. The first evidence that the woman in the will existed in a moment separate from the moment at which Arlette had placed her there. She stared at the inscription for a while, trying to read something more into it, some extra dimension, some brighter light, but failed to find any.

She put the book down and pulled the collars of the fur coat together, bringing them to her nose. The coat smelled of her room, Arlette’s room. It smelled of old face powder and faded perfume. It smelled of Elizabeth’s childhood, long afternoons sitting at Arlette’s dressing table, trying on her paste necklaces, dabbing droplets of her heady scent onto her tiny wrists and wrapping herself up in shawls and gowns and rabbit-fur stoles. It smelled of a life that Elizabeth had both adored and detested, a life of duty and of crushed dreams.

Then she appraised herself once more in Arlette’s mirror and spoke out loud. ‘Don’t you worry, Arlette,’ she said, ‘I’ll find her for you. Whoever on earth she is, I’ll find Clara Pickle and I’ll give her her book for you. I promise.’





7




BETTY CHECKED THE address on the letter again, and then the number on the door. Behind her, fixed to the exterior wall of a pub was a sign saying ‘Berwick Street’. On the buzzer was a sticker with ‘Flat D’ written on it in black marker. She was definitely in the right place. She pressed the button again and waited. Still no response. Betty glanced around her. The market was packing up. The pavement was littered with old wrappers, cabbage leaves and rotten fruit. Men were shouting very loudly about fifty pee for a pound and everything must go, the sky was Quink blue and the air smelled of stale beer and old fruit.

She had been standing here now for nearly fifteen minutes. Her rucksack sat against the wall, looking as tired and wilted as Betty felt. It had been a long, long day. But more than the tiredness of travelling, Betty was feeling the sheer, wrung-out exhaustion of the years it had taken her finally to get to this place.

But for some reason, a girl called Marni Ali, with whom Betty had had a very animated and slightly confusing phone conversation just the night before, and who had promised to meet her here at exactly six o’clock with a key to let her in, was nowhere to be seen.


Gorgeous studio flat

Central Soho location

Adjacent to famous Berwick Street Market

£400 a month + bills


There’d been no picture. ‘Adjacent’ had suggested ‘alongside’, ‘close to’, ‘a few metres from’. Not ‘right in the screaming, squirming middle of’. Betty pulled her fur coat tighter around her body and shivered.

She’d taken the first flat she’d been offered by an agency she’d phoned the day after Arlette’s funeral. They’d faxed across the details to her mum’s office.

‘Four hundred pounds a month!’ her mother had exclaimed. ‘That sounds an awful lot. Just for a studio.’

‘Yes,’ she’d countered huffily, ‘but it’s in Soho.’

‘Well, yes, I can see that. But surely there must be something cheaper?’

‘No,’ Betty had said, snatching the fax from her mother’s hand. ‘This is fine. This is perfect. It’s just been redecorated and it’s available from next Wednesday. I don’t want to wait another minute. I’ve waited enough minutes. I want this flat.’

‘Well,’ her mother had sighed, ‘you’re a grown woman. You can make your own decisions. But Arlette’s money isn’t going to last very long if you’re spending that much on rent. When I lived in London I had a tiny room in a house out on the end of the Piccadilly line. And I could be in Soho in twenty-two minutes flat.’

‘But you don’t understand. When you’re on a tube, you’re leaving Soho. I don’t want to leave Soho. I want to live there.’

Her mother had sighed again. ‘So. You’ve got enough rent money for ten weeks. Then what happens?’

‘It’s fine,’ Betty had assured her. ‘I’ll get a job. I won’t need Arlette’s money for long.’

‘A job? In London? With a B.Tech in General Art and Design? And no work experience? Oh my God.’ Her mother had clasped her ears as though trying to keep Betty’s ill-thought-out plans from torturing them.

‘It will be fine.’ Betty folded her arms across her chest.

‘There’ll be thirty people lined up behind you for every job you apply for. All of them with more experience than you!’

‘Yes!’ she’d snapped. ‘I know! But they won’t be me, will they?’

She’d paused then, and stared at her mother for a second or two. She had shocked herself. She had always been a self-confident girl. Especially since moving to Guernsey and being picked out for special favour, first by Bella and then by Arlette. In all her years on that little speck of rock and soil in the middle of the English Channel, Betty had always floated somewhere above everything, in her big house, high above the sea, with her beautiful face, her quirky style, and latterly, of course, her saint-like commitment to the care of an age-ravaged lady right up until her final, unheard exhalation. Everyone knew who Betty Dean was. Everyone knew where she lived.

So it stood to reason, in Betty’s opinion, that she and Soho were made for each other, that they were soul mates, a perfect fit. She had no concerns about being accepted and about fitting in. She was, she believed, entirely to the manner born.

Except that this girl called Marni didn’t seem to have noticed. This girl called Marni was not here to greet her, to welcome Betty warmly and effusively to her new life. Instead, Betty was standing alone in the dark, invisible and slightly terrified. She breathed in deeply to stop herself crying and then scanned the street up and down for a payphone. She spied one to her left but it was at a critical distance from the flat. If this Marni girl arrived while she was on the phone, she would not know she was there and might just flit away again. She cast around helplessly, hoping for inspiration, and then she saw a man, late twenties, early thirties, hauling old LPs into boxes on the stall closest to where she stood.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, slightly impatiently.

‘I need to make a phone call, but I’m supposed to be meeting someone here.’ She pointed at the front door. ‘Will you be here for the next few minutes?’

He looked at her uncertainly as though she had just spoken to him in Mandarin.

‘What?’ he said.

Betty sighed. She had had a very long day and she could see that charm and articulacy would be wasted on this man. ‘I’m going to make a phone call,’ she said abruptly. ‘If a woman turns up here, can you tell her I’m over there? Please?’

She didn’t wait for him to reply, just hitched her rucksack over her shoulder and stomped off to the phone booth.

The interior of the booth was rank, urine-sodden, damp and covered in graffiti. As Betty tapped in Marni’s phone number, she looked at the patchwork of calling cards attached to the walls with blobs of Blu-Tack. Asian babes. Earth mothers. African queens. Busty beauties. Naughty schoolgirls. Basques, whips, boots, lips, stockings, nails, heels. A dazzling collage of commercial sexual opportunities.

‘Oh, hello,’ she began as the phone was answered by a man with an Asian accent. ‘Is Marni there, please?’

‘No, she’s not, I’m afraid. Who is this calling, please?’

‘My name is Betty Dean, I’m ...’ But she tailed off as a face appeared at the window of the booth and beamed at her. The face was dark and large-featured, kohled eyes, full lips, black hair hanging straight and glossy from underneath a cream pull-on hat, studded nostril and hoop earrings. She was clutching a folder under her arm and mouthing the word ‘sorry’.

‘Actually,’ said Betty to the man on the phone, ‘don’t worry, it’s fine.’ She hung up.

‘Oh God,’ said the girl, ‘I am so sorry. I got called away to an emergency. Another tenant. A rat,’ she hissed conspiratorially. ‘But, oh God, I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Seriously. You do not need to worry about rats. You’re on the second floor. This one was in a basement. In Paddington. I hate basement flats. Never, ever live in a basement flat. Especially not in London. No light at all.’

‘And rats,’ said Betty, drolly.

‘Well, yes, and rats. Anyway,’ Marni beamed, ‘I’m here now.’

‘Did that guy up there tell you where I was?’

‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘He did. Told me there was a moody girl in a fur coat waiting for me up here.’ She laughed.

‘Oh,’ said Betty, picking up her rucksack and letting the door of the phone booth close behind her. ‘I think he’ll find that he was the grumpy one, actually.’

She followed Marni back towards the flat, deliberately averting her gaze from the trader.

‘She found you then?’ he asked brusquely.

She looked at him and nodded, feeling a warm flush rising up her neck. ‘Yes,’ she said, matching him in tone. ‘Thank you.’

‘Come on,’ said Marni, holding the door ajar for her, ‘let’s get you settled.’

Betty nodded and followed her into the downstairs hall, past a payphone on the wall with all its wires hanging out like entrails, and up a tight staircase painted buttermilk and streaked with mildew.

‘Da-dah!’ announced Marni on the top landing. ‘This is it.’

She unlocked the door and pushed it open.

Betty didn’t really know what she’d been expecting. She hadn’t really thought beyond: FLAT IN SOHO. Or NEWLY DECORATED. She hadn’t considered the possibility that NEWLY DECORATED might mean CHEAP WHITE PAINT SLAPPED ALL OVER LUMPY WALLS. And CORK FLOORING PEELING SLIGHTLY IN PLACES. And OLD METAL VENETIAN BLINDS GIVEN A WIPE DOWN WITH A DAMP CLOTH. Not to mention NEWLY REPLACED BARE BULBS HANGING FROM DUSTY LIGHT FITTINGS and NASTY AZTEC-PRINT SOFA COVERS GIVEN A QUICK SPIN AND SHRINKING SLIGHTLY BEFORE BEING STRETCHED BACK OVER TOO BIG SOFA.

Neither did her fantasies about FLAT IN SOHO really sufficiently prepare her for a living room that was, fundamentally, a low-ceilinged box with a kitchen counter glued to one wall and a small window on the other, with barely enough room to stretch out on the sofa without scuffing your toes against the skirting board on the other side of the room. This, she quickly concluded, was not a flat. This was a corridor with a piece of furniture in it.

Yet still the effusive Marni smiled at her with sheer delight, as though she had just shown her the presidential suite at the Savoy.

‘Here’s your kitchenette,’ she said gleefully, pointing to the three cheap units screwed to the wall, an elderly brown microwave and a two-ring Baby Belling.

‘Fridge here,’ she announced, pulling open the rust-speckled door of a miniature fridge, just large enough to house two pints of milk and a box of eggs. ‘And there’s plenty of storage space.’ She opened and closed a couple of flimsy doors, one of which almost fell off completely as she did so. ‘Having said that, we do find that our tenants in this area tend not to have much need for kitchen space. Why cook, when you can eat out every night at a different restaurant?’

It seemed to Betty that this girl, Marni, had looked neither at her nor in any detail at this flat. If she had, Betty pondered, it would be immediately obvious that she had just stepped off a ferry, that she had all her worldly possessions in a tatty rucksack and was clearly going to be paying so much rent for this tiny unprepossessing toilet cubicle of an apartment that dining out every night was not going to be an option.

‘Where do you live?’ asked Betty.

‘In Pinner,’ Marni replied brightly, in a tone that suggested this ‘Pinner’ to be a most desirable locale. ‘It’s in Middlesex,’ she continued, ‘commuter belt. Metropolitan line. I live with my mum and dad.’

Betty nodded knowingly. This girl knew as much about glamorous Soho lifestyles as she did.

She showed Betty the sleeping area, a mezzanine in the living area, accessed via a wooden stepladder, with a curtained area underneath housing a free-standing clothes rail and cheap chest of drawers.

The bathroom was, in fact, the nicest room in the flat, apparently the recipient of the majority of the redecorating budget, nicely tiled and very modern.

‘Well,’ said Marni, half an hour later, after some form-filling and tea-drinking and the handing over of a cheque for two months’ rent, ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. And remember, anything you need, just shout. My boss has a mobile phone so you should be able to get hold of him twenty-four/seven. Here’s his number, and, well, enjoy!’

Betty watched her leave a moment later, her dark head disappearing into the crowds below. She had a bounce in her step, the bounce of a carefree person, of a girl who had not yet asked herself any meaningful questions about her existence.

Betty watched her from the window until she’d disappeared from view and then her gaze fell upon the market trader, still packing up his stall, hefting the last of the boxes into a small white van. He was chatting to another man. She could hear him laughing, see him smiling. She examined him more closely now that he was at a distance: mid-brown hair, cut shaggy around in his face in that style beloved of modern pop stars. He wore combats, an oversized sweatshirt, a leather jacket. He looked about twenty-eight, she reckoned, with an athletic physique and a strong profile.

Suddenly he looked up at the window and his gaze met hers, and Betty gasped and fell to her knees.

‘Oh shit,’ she whispered angrily to herself, ‘shit.’

She let herself slide slowly to the floor, her back against the wall, shame and embarrassment coursing through her veins. She sighed loudly.

And then, for the first time since she’d rung the doorbell downstairs and realised that there was no one there to let her in, she felt a small wave of excitement building within her. This place was not what she’d imagined it would be, it was not the shadowy high-ceilinged flat in which she would pace around smoking Gauloises and being moody and interesting. But it was clean and it was warm and, more than that, it was in Soho. Right in the middle of Soho. She got to her feet and turned once more to the window. She gazed out at the now-black sky, not a star to be seen in it, and she felt reality hit her, head-on.

She was here.

She was here.

Her real life had finally begun.





8


1919




ARLETTE DE LA Mare adjusted her hat, a grey tweed cloche, ordered in from Paris, especially for her trip, worn at a jaunty angle and down low upon her forehead. She pressed the porcelain doorbell and cleared her throat. A moment later the large red door was opened by a nervous-looking housemaid in a frilled white cap.

‘Good evening, miss, can I help you?’

‘Yes, I am Miss De La Mare. I’m here to visit Mrs Miller.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. They’re expecting you. Do come in.’

She pulled open the door and led Arlette into a large hallway from which arose two ornately carved mahogany staircases and in the centre of which stood a vast marble jardinière holding a vase of oversized Stargazer lilies and red-hot pokers. She followed the housemaid into a small room at the back of the house, which was furnished with two bergère armchairs upholstered in sage velvet, and a large japanned standard lamp. The room looked out onto a long lawned garden, which ended in a small wooded area and a tall wall, curtained in rusty-red Virginia creeper. The housemaid offered Arlette tea and cordial, and left the room.

Arlette’s toes were sore, squeezed for too long inside velvet T-bar slippers, with a small heel. She should not have travelled in heels – her mother had said as much when she saw her off at the port that morning – but the suit she was wearing, a grey linen affair with a lean, almost angular silhouette, had demanded something feminine to soften it. She had not, after all, wanted to appear butch for her first visit to London, especially not to the home of her mother’s best friend, Mrs Leticia Miller.

After a moment she heard a small burst of laughter in the hallway and there was Leticia, all daffodil-coloured curls and ostentatiously blue eyes.

‘Lovely, lovely Arlette, in London at last. First, the blasted war then the blasted ’flu, keeping you from us for so long. So nice to finally have everything back to normal and to finally get you here.’

She clasped Arlette’s hands in hers and stared fondly into her eyes for long enough to make her feel self-conscious. ‘Last time I saw you, you were just a child. What were you, twelve, thirteen years old? Goodness, and now look at you. A woman, a lovely, remarkable woman. Now, tell me, did you have a good trip? How was the crossing? Have you asked for some tea? You must be quite worn out.’

Arlette placed her hands upon her lap and smiled politely. ‘I am, rather, yes. I was awake at four a.m. to make the ferry.’

‘Well, you have made it to your destination, still looking so pretty, and now all you have to do is make yourself at home and do as you wish until you get your energy back. Can I get you something to lift your spirits? A little Americano?’

Arlette smiled. She did not know what an Americano was but assumed it was a cocktail of some description. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’

Leticia got to her feet and opened a cabinet behind her. Arlette admired her silhouette, the way her exquisite clothes fell from her slender, boyish body, not the body of a forty-year-old woman, not the body of her own rather solid and round-shouldered mother; not, in fact, the body of most women Arlette had yet encountered. Her yellow hair fell from a loose bun at the nape of her neck in soft baby-hair curls and her feet were bare. Arlette had never before seen a person in their own home standing without their shoes. She stared at the narrow ridge of bone that ran from Leticia’s slender foot to the back of her ankle. It sent a shiver of pleasure through her, that hint of something new and brave.

She listened to the clinking of bottles, the fizz of bubbles, the chink of ice and Leticia’s plummy chatter, all talk of people she’d never heard of, and plays she really must go and see, and swanky restaurants she’d love to take her to. Arlette nodded and hmmed and mmmed, and tried her hardest to be the sophisticated young lady that Leticia had already decided she must be.

Leticia passed her the Americano and, through sheer thirst – the inside of her mouth was as dry as a desert – she drank it rather too fast and found herself drunk almost immediately. As the tight corners of her mind slackened and billowed, she felt herself strangely cocooned. It was as though this was a place where nothing bad had ever happened, and Leticia was a woman to whom nothing bad had ever happened, and while she was here, in this room, with this woman, all would be well for evermore. She heard footsteps against the tiles in the hallway and more laughter.

‘Lilian!’ Leticia called around the half-open door. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes, Mother, what is it?’ The voice sounded sulky but affectionate.

‘Come into the snug. I want you to meet someone.’

Arlette heard a small sigh, and then more footsteps.

‘Lilian, darling, this is Arlette De La Mare. Dolly’s girl.’

A tiny slip of a thing sidled through the door, big blue eyes like her mother, soft blond hair hanging long down her back in a plait. She was unthinkably pretty and wearing a dress that immediately made Arlette feel like a large ungainly man: lace and chiffon, in a shade of faded rose, low-waisted and demure with little pearls and rosettes of lace stitched all across it.

‘Good evening,’ she said, smiling and striding confidently across the room to shake Arlette by the hand, although she was, according to Arlette’s mother, only seventeen years old. ‘How lovely to meet you. Mother has told me all about your mother and her, and their strange childhood in the middle of the English Channel. I believe you are staying with us for a while?’

‘Yes,’ said Arlette, cursing herself for the almost perceptible slur of her words and for allowing herself to feel intimidated by a seventeen-year-old girl. ‘I’m here until I can find appropriate lodgings. I’m hoping to get a job of some description.’

‘Well, don’t feel you need to get a job and lodgings on my account. I’m delighted to have another girl in the house; too many boys as it is.’

Leticia had three boys, apparently. They were aged between sixteen and five. Two of them were at boarding school. The smallest one, Arlette assumed, was in bed.

‘I do hope you’ll be coming to my birthday party. It’s on Saturday night. It’s to be a masked ball.’

‘Oh,’ said Arlette. ‘When is your birthday?’

‘It’s tomorrow, in fact. I shall be eighteen.’

‘Well, what a coincidence. It’s my birthday on Saturday. And I shall be twenty-one.’

‘Oh, well, then, you have completely stolen my thunder.’ She held a delicate hand to her face, dramatically, in a gesture that Arlette could see had been entirely stolen from her mother’s repertoire. ‘Twenty-one,’ she sighed, ‘a grown-up. How utterly glorious. We shall have to make it a joint celebration.’

‘Oh, no need,’ said Arlette. ‘My mother has already thrown me a party. Last weekend.’

‘Well, we shall raise a glass in your direction then, at least. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somebody else’s birthday party to rush off to. Mother, can I take the paste drop earrings from your stand, the new ones? Please ...?’

Leticia wrinkled her pretty nose at her pretty daughter and then smiled. ‘You may,’ she said, ‘but do not under any circumstances lose them. Your father will be very cross.’

Lilian smiled and winked at Arlette. ‘I have my mother wrapped round my little finger,’ she said in a faux whisper. And then she exited.

‘She’s right,’ sighed Leticia. ‘Seventeen going on twenty-seven. She’s almost out of control. When I was her age it would have been unthinkable – a party, unescorted. But that’s the way things are these days. Apparently, as a parent I’m to take a step back and let her go.’ She sighed again. ‘Ah well, I suppose I must trust that I’ve raised her well and that she won’t do anything to shame me and her father. Now,’ she clapped her hands together, ‘some supper. You must be ravenous. I think Susan has made her famous lamb and mint cutlets. I’ll show you to your room, and then when you’ve had a chance to freshen up, I’ll meet you in the dining hall. Say, in half an hour?’


Arlette’s room was small but very pretty, overlooking the garden square and the street. She rested her bag at her feet and stared for a while through the heavy curtains. She was in Kensington. Near Holland Park. The house was a stucco villa and Leticia was Arlette’s mother’s best friend from home, who’d married an incomer and left the island tout de suite when her husband’s firm had offered him a promotion to their London office. ‘She’s a true one-off,’ her mother had said, with a light in her eye that Arlette only ever saw when her mother talked about people whom she perceived to be somehow ‘better’ than herself. ‘She will show you the world through beautiful eyes.’

Arlette had never been away from home before. But life was different on the island now. The war had ripped the heart out of the place. A thousand men, dead and gone. Including her own father. Before the war the island had been prosperous and growing more prosperous. Now it was a place of tragedy and open wounds. Arlette had felt restless and out of place for months. Then, one afternoon, watching her daughter staring restlessly out to sea, her mother had taken her hands in hers and said, ‘Now. Go now. I don’t need you any more.’

And so she had. On a soft September day, with no idea what on earth she was going to do once she got here. So, she would take it one step at a time. First a wash. Then some lamb and mint. And then, she supposed, somehow or other, the rest of her life would begin to unfurl, as mysterious and unknown as a well-kept secret.