“No, no. I’m sure whatever you decide will be delicious.”
The door closed. Back in the kitchen, Laura washed up the dirty mug that had appeared in the sink, left, no doubt, by Freddy, the gardener. He had started working at Padua a couple of years ago, but their paths rarely crossed, which was disappointing for Laura, as she had the feeling that she might like to get to know him better. He was tall and dark, but not so handsome as to be a cliché. He had a faint scar which ran vertically between his nose and top lip, and puckered his mouth a little on one side, but somehow its effect was to add rather than detract, giving his smile a particular lopsided charm. He was affable enough when they did bump into one another, but no more so than politeness demanded, giving Laura little encouragement to pursue his friendship.
Laura started on the pile of paperwork. She would take the letters home with her and type them on her laptop. When she had first worked for Anthony, she used to proofread his manuscripts and type them on an old electric typewriter, but he had stopped writing several years ago now, and she missed it. When she was younger, she had thought about writing as a career; novels or maybe journalism. She had had all sorts of plans. She was a clever girl with a scholarship to the local girls’ school followed by a place at university. She could have—should have—made a proper life for herself. But instead she met Vince. At seventeen she was still vulnerable, unformed; unsure of her own worth. She was happy at school, but the scholarship meant that she was always slightly displaced. Her factory-worker father and shop-assistant mother were so proud of their clever daughter. Money was found—scraped together—for every item of her expensive school uniform to be bought; unheard of unnecessaries like indoor and outdoor shoes. Everything had to be new. Nothing secondhand for their girl, and she was grateful, truly she was. She knew only too well the sacrifices that her parents had made. But it wasn’t enough. Being bright and beautifully presented was never quite enough for her to slip seamlessly into the society of those who formed the rank and file of the school’s assembly. Girls for whom holidays abroad, trips to the theater, supper parties, and sailing weekends were commonplace. Of course she made friends, girls who were kind and generous, and she accepted their invitations to stay at grand houses with their kind and generous parents. Grand houses where tea was served in pots, toast in racks, butter in dishes, milk in jugs, and jam with a silver spoon. Houses with names instead of numbers that had terraces, tennis courts, and topiary. And tray cloths. She saw a different kind of life and was enchanted. Her hopes were raised. At home, the milk in a bottle, the marge in a tub, the sugar in a bag, and the tea in a mug were all stones in her pockets, weighing her down. At seventeen she had fallen into the space between the two worlds and there was nowhere left she truly belonged. And then she met Vince.
He was older; handsome, cocksure, and ambitious. She was flattered by his attentions and impressed by his certainty. Vince was certain about everything. He even had a nickname for himself; Vince the Invincible. He was a car dealer and drove a red Jaguar E-Type; a cliché on wheels. Laura’s parents were quietly distraught. They had hoped that her education would be the key to a better life for her; better than theirs. A life with more living and less struggling. They may not have understood about tray cloths, but they knew that the kind of life they wished for Laura was about more than just money. For Laura, it was never about the money. For Vince the Invincible, it was only ever about money and status. Laura’s father soon had his own private nickname for Vince Darby. VD.