Bad Heir Day (16 page)

Ten minutes later, Anna was beginning to regret having agreed to come to Geri’s for a makeover, clothes-borrow, and pep talk. It had seemed such a good idea at the time. “Success is all in the psychology,” Geri had told her. “You need to have your tactics sorted out. More importantly, you need some sexy
clothes.”

Standing in Geri’s bedroom, knee-deep in the contents of her wardrobe, Anna was beginning to have second thoughts. Her breasts had been cantilevered almost to chin level by the most aggressive push-up bra she had ever encountered. She looked doubtfully at her rear in Geri’s leopardskin-printed trousers. “Does my bum look big in…” she began.

“No,” snapped Geri. “You look fantastic. More curves than a Rococo ceiling, as Julian would say.” Anna glanced at her suspiciously. When exactly, she wondered, would Julian say that? Things were obviously going well. Geri had already mentioned that she was accompanying the family on holiday at his special insistence, even though the other family they were going with had two nannies of its own. She turned back to the mirror.

“This shirt is far too tight,” she protested, gazing disconsolately at her reflection. Geri was at least two sizes smaller than she was.

Geri sighed. “Shirts,” she stated patiently, as if talking to an idiot, “can
never
be too tight.”

“But I look fat.”

“Rubbish. You look fabulous. And next time you get depressed about your weight—which is nothing, by the way—remember that a ten-stone person weighs seven pounds on Pluto.”

“I don’t think this is really Jamie’s sort of thing,” Anna ventured as, after half an hour’s backcombing, eyelash-curling, mascara-applying, and lipgloss-slicking, Geri stood back, said, “There!” and held up a mirror to Anna’s face. The dark-eyed, pneumatic-lipped stranger with the wild red hair staring back at her looked, Anna thought, rather terrifying.

Geri recognised doubt when she saw it. “Well thanks a lot,” she huffed. “I turn you into a raunchy sexbabe and this is the thanks I get.”

“But I’m not sure Jamie likes raunchy sexbabes,” said Anna, recalling his set face during the film’s more explicit scenes.

Geri put her hands on her hips, exasperated. “Well, he’ll be the first man ever in the history of the universe who doesn’t.
Every
man likes raunchy sexbabes. Get
real
,
will you?”

Anna’s appearance being, in Geri’s eyes at least, satisfactory, they then moved on to tactics. “For Christ’s sake look
interested
if he talks about the castle…”

“You mean
when
,”
said Anna. “There’s no if about it.”

“Well, do you want to be Cassandra’s slave for the rest of your life or would you rather be lady of the manor? Doesn’t seem much of a choice to me.”

Anna was forced to admit this was true. Nonetheless, she had a sense of events moving out of her control. Did she really want to marry Jamie? More to the point, did he want to marry her? “Mere details,” scoffed Geri. “Just
make
him want to marry you, that’s all. You like him, don’t you? If the marriage goes tits up you can always leave him and get half his property into the bargain. It’s not what I’d call a great risk. He’s good-looking, isn’t he? Which ninety-nine per cent of men aren’t. And anyway, what other options do you have?”

Put like that, it sounded almost reasonable. Anna, in any case, had barely had a chance to wonder aloud about love, sex, and having to want to spend your whole life with the other person before Geri cut in with a single word. “Guff.”

Anna had no idea why a small part of her still believed that marriage should be for love. Certainly, she had never seen any evidence to the contrary. From her own parents’ squabbles—so far as she could dimly remember them—to the vicious battles between Cassandra and Jett, not to mention her own miserable co-habiting experiences with Seb, there seemed no reason to believe marriages were ever idyllic.

“Marriage,” Geri declared, “is like a tornado. It starts with a lot of blowing and sucking, then it ends up taking your house.”

“Did you make that up?” Anna looked at her admiringly.

“No, James Caan did, as it happens. Told me that at a dinner party once. So stick with Jamie and, whatever happens, you’ll get his house. Half of it, at least.”

“Hopefully the half with the roof and plumbing,” grinned Anna.

“Stop splitting hairs and go out there and get yourself one. An heir, I mean.”

Somehow implicit in her tones was the suggestion that if Anna didn’t, Geri would. It was this more than anything else—apart from the taxi hooting outside—that finally propelled Anna out of the lavender front door.

“Remember,” Geri called after her, “it’s all about tactics. Think Premier League. The manager gives the team a pep talk before the game, and again at halftime.” There was a sound of running footsteps and then something small and hard was slipped into Anna’s hand. “Take the mobile and call me from the loos before the pudding. Which, of course, you’ll have refused.”

***

Jamie was late. Anna shifted uncomfortably in Geri’s tight trousers, trying to relieve the pressure on her bladder. In twenty-five minutes, she’d got through almost the entire bottle of rosé provided by the kaftaned waiter. Her nerves now felt much better, but she was dying for the loo. Two things prevented her from going: the thought of missing Jamie when—
if—
he finally appeared through the carved front door; and, almost worse, the thought of everyone else in the restaurant scrutinising her too-tight clothes as she walked past their tables and descended the look-at-me staircase leading down past the petal-strewn fountain to the loos.

The girls at the next table, she knew, would be merciless in their criticism. There were about eight of them, strappy dresses flopping off their tanned shoulders, spindly, high-heeled ankles poking out in all directions from under the table, taking quick, nervous puffs on their cigarettes as their narrowed eyes flicked speculatively at each other and around the room. They had already cast her a few pitying, been-stood-up-have-you glances made worse by Anna’s surmising that, judging from what the ringleader, a naughty-looking blonde chignon with a dirty laugh, was saying, they were a bachelorette party. “Yah, and the worst thing is that so many people are buying off-list,” complained the chignon. “I mean, this morning I got sent some
Italian millennium toasting flutes
, for fuck’s sake.”

“Is that the same as toasting forks?” asked the very thin dark crop next to her.

“No it isn’t. And while we’re on the subject of Italy,” added the blonde, “I’m sick of people ringing me up and asking where it is.
Unbelievable
.
I’d no idea my friends were so thick.”

Anna smiled to herself and reached for another piece of pickled carrot. Jamie was now half an hour late. The many scenarios she and Geri had rehearsed—what to say, how to sit, how to look (“Catch his eye, drop yours, and then, with a sweeping glance back upwards, look at him directly again and give him a slight, full-lipped smile,” Geri counselled. “It’s called The Flirt. Never fails.”)—had not included a complete no-show on his part. She’d give him another ten minutes, thought Anna, pouring the last of the rosé into her glass. Until then, she’d practise The Flirt in the mirror opposite the table and hope the girls didn’t think she was trying to pick them up.

The restaurant buzzed with laughter and conversation. Tiny alcoves were let into the walls, each containing a softly radiant oil lamp; from the ceiling above the stairs hung a collection of about twenty magnificent brass Moorish lanterns, all of different sizes and heights. Rugs were scattered over the wooden floors, providing a challenge for the waiters as they slid back and forth with huge brass trays of food. It was every bit as romantic as the glossy magazines she had consulted said it was, as well as being deliciously camp—Disney Moroccan—into the bargain. The only fly in the ointment was the food—for someone like Jamie, who had been barely able to cope with a choice of pizzas, Pasha’s suggestions of yoghurt chicken, seafood tagine, and prawn chermoula would probably be completely unnavigable. But that was a bridge she would cross when she came to it; at this rate, she wouldn’t have to bother.

A flurry of interest among the bachelorette party suddenly impressed itself on the daydreaming Anna (the rosé had been more potent than she had thought, the restaurant was deliciously warm, and she had finally found a way to sit that didn’t make her want to wet herself). Something tall and imposing was walking through the restaurant—and straight to her table.

“Anna, I’m so sorry.” Jamie. At last. “Got delayed, I’m afraid, and couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant. Just came back to me in the taxi—thank God.”

Aware that the bachelorette party—and a good many of the waiters—were staring at Jamie in open admiration, Anna levered herself halfway out of her chair to receive his kiss on both her cheeks. She was surprised to see that he, too, seemed to have made a considerable sartorial effort. His crisp white shirt set off his wide, dark eyes and Mediterranean tumble of thick black hair to perfection, despite the emphatic crease across the nipples and lower stomach revealing that he’d just got it out of the packet. A pair of Argyll check trousers fell in a long, graceful line the ten feet or so between the floor and Jamie’s waistline. There were other transformations too. Instead of sitting down, as expected, and glancing suspiciously at the menu, Jamie picked it up enthusiastically. He did not quite say, “Oh, chermoula, my favourite,” but he did make interested noises about the chicken. Anna, encouraged, and clenching her buttocks to strengthen her resolve, tried out The Flirt on him.

Jamie looked back at her. She felt her stomach tense and her lower bowels turn to liquid—which at the moment, was pretty much what they were anyway. Finally, after a long, sexy silence pregnant with possibility, Jamie, still gazing at her, spoke.

“Got something in your eye?” he asked.

Anna buried her face in the menu. Fortunately, the waiter chose that moment to mince up.

But that was the only wrong note of the evening, apart from when Anna, helping herself to the mixed mezes with more enthusiasm than skill, accidentally knocked her hand against his. As the usual electric shock shot deliciously up her arm, the spoon wobbled and a great dollop of aubergine and tomato splattered onto the glaringly white tablecloth. Anna blushed furiously and, in her confusion, promptly set a spoonful of tabbouleh scattering across the table as well. She felt like a four-year-old. Seb, she knew, would have left the splodge where it was and stared at it meaningfully all evening. Jamie, however, simply moved one of the many terracotta meze dishes over the mark, pressed it firmly down on top, and grinned at her.

As they talked—or, rather, as Anna listened to Jamie talking—it struck her that he seemed to be making an effort to charm similar to the pains he had taken to dress well. As Jamie, again neatly side-stepping the subject of himself directly, related a string of anecdotes about his ancestors, it seemed to Anna that never had someone talking about their relations seemed so sexy.
Or amusing.

“Yes, Granny Angus was quite a character. She used to stick her teeth in with exactly the same mortar she used to mend the walls—you see, as a family we’ve always been patching up the old place.” Jamie paused and flashed her a gusset-immolating grin. “After she had her fifth heart attack, my father was at her bedside thinking she was about to peg it when she opened her eyes, looked straight at him, and demanded, ‘Fetch me my compact mirror.’”

Anna giggled. She had rarely felt so happy. More rosé was ordered, food arrived, and plates were taken away. Suffused with wine, glowing brass, and the soft light of oil lamps, she felt herself relaxing under Jamie’s barrage of charm. Enough even to go to the loo, at last.

There was something different about the table when she returned to it. Anna’s stomach did a double loop of nervous delight when she spotted, nestling against the knife blade next to her plate, a small, rather tatty blue box. Sitting down quickly before her knees gave way beneath her, she gazed from it to Jamie, her eyes wide with hope and fear.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?”

Anna put out a trembling hand, hoping Jamie wouldn’t notice how bitten her nails were. Inside the box, nestling on a bed of rather moth-eaten cream satin, was a diamond of impressive dimensions. Anna gasped. Inside her, the mezes and the prawn chermoula attempted a pas de deux.

“It was my mother’s.”

“It’s lovely.” Never having been one to count her chickens, Anna could not yet be sure he hadn’t just brought it along as a Dampie curio to show her, rather as some people got out their holiday snaps.

“Aren’t you going to try it on?”

“Do you think I should?” Her heart beat a tattoo as she gazed unsteadily at him. His face was fading in and out of focus. Its strong, well-defined edges disappeared in places into a watery mass. As she bent her head, something wet and warm trickled down her cheek.

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Well, of course it’s up to you, but it might be an idea as I’m asking you to marry me.”

Anna stared at him. She was conscious of feeling nothing beyond being perfectly stunned and immobile. Opposite her, Jamie, as if in slow motion, smiled, gestured, and, finally, picked the ring out of its box and slid it on to her hand. In the watery world of utter shock she now inhabited, Anna was dimly aware of the cold metal sliding up her finger, of the bachelorette party at the next table turning to stare in unadulterated envy.

“…know it seems sudden…thought you would be perfect,” Jamie was saying in a slow, gloopy, surreal voice that didn’t sound like him at all. She tuned out again in panic. “…share all the same interests, love of old buildings, the countryside…” he was mouthing at her as she picked up his voice again. She felt her head, heavy as a rock, moving slowly up and down in assent. “…saw no point in waiting for years to ask you…one just knows, doesn’t one…important to have a wife who shares one’s interests…very happy,” Jamie was adding, a hint of concern now creeping into his wide eyes at her lack of response. “Thought you could come back to Dampie with me…going up in a couple of days…sooner you move in the better…can plan the wedding from there…chapel in the castle grounds…are you all right?”