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Authors: Jenny Colgan

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‘Did you never have cruddy days before? I don’t know - fire at the gold and diamonds factory?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Actually, no. It was all right. So, change the subject. How are you?’

Eck didn’t look that happy either, come to think about it.

‘The show is going really badly. I don’t know. The last couple of months, I’ve really lost my appetite for this art thing. I don’t know why. Find myself dreaming of the old nine-to-five. Mad. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine. Let’s talk about nice things, like bunnies and kittens and stuff.’

I sighed again, thinking about the shoot. At least they’d agreed to let Julius do it.

‘You know, it won’t be that bad,’ said Eck. ‘I mean, people like that Isabella Hervey do them. Not that I would ever know or have ever seen them or anything like that, never, not ever no. Once, by mistake, at the dentist.’

‘You saw Isabella Hervey in a bikini at a dentist’s?’

‘Or it might have been very strong painkillers they were giving me.’

I kicked a stone on the pavement.

‘Have you spoken to your stepmother again?’ he asked, more gently.

‘No!’ I said. ‘I’m . . .’ I felt so safe with Eck, like I could tell the truth. ‘I’m frightened. She was my last hope.’

Eck punched me awkwardly on the shoulder in that boyish way of his. ‘She’s not. Never lose hope, Sophie.’

It was Esperanza who’d managed to track her down for me. I don’t know what I would have done without her. It turned out my stepmother was living in a rented mansion flat in Battersea. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Maybe she was lying low until the lawyers went away. I squeezed myself into my old Max Mara suit and took the bus to Battersea Rise.

I was incredibly nervous. This was a woman I’d dedicated most of my life to ignoring, sneering at, answering back to. The one I was never going to let in my life. And now, she held the only key to anything that was left.

Her voice on the intercom sounded nervous and querulous. There was a long pause when I announced myself. I thought for a moment she wasn’t going to buzz me up at all. But she did.

The hall smelled of lavender, and small dogs. Fake flowers covered the surfaces and the mailboxes were grey with dust. The lift was tiny and dark and I followed the signs to the fifth floor. The door was on the latch. I knocked, tentatively, then entered.

Gail’s flat was tiny. Two strides would take you to the kitchenette. Two other doors led off the minute corridor; obviously bedroom and bathroom. Into the space she’d tried to shoehorn some ornaments from the old house - a large stuffed kestrel my father had liked (God knows why), an ornate vase; but the effect was a bit overcrowded and spooky. There wasn’t much light in the flat, and the carpet had a horribly swirly print which made my eyes prickle.

She was sitting in the corner. Having always looked so soft and young and slim and nothing like being in her mid-forties now, it was as if her face had just collapsed into middle-age. She was painfully, pitiably thin, with long grooves running down her face, right down the middle of her cheeks. I felt sorry for her at once. Sorry for her, and sorry for myself; that there would always be a gulf between us, and that I had not only dug it but maintained it.

‘Hello, Sophie,’ she said, getting up, her face kind. I felt like we were two old opponents in a war neither of us could remember the reason for.

‘Hello,’ I said, stepping towards her, but we didn’t touch. ‘Would you like me to make some tea?’

Her eyebrows lifted. I rolled my eyes. ‘I know how to make tea,’ I said.

‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘I never doubted it for an instant.’

I half-smiled and headed towards the kettle. Before I got there, however, I turned round. There was something I really, really had to say. That I should have said a long time ago, before it corroded everything.

‘Gail,’ I said. ‘I’m really, really—’ But before I could get the word out, Gail’s face collapsed. It looked like it was melting into grief, the tears running down the grooves already marked in her cheeks.

‘Oh, Sophie!’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

I knelt down by her chair.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, as she sobbed. ‘Why are
you
sorry? I want to say sorry to you!’

‘No,’ she said. ‘How could I turn you out of your home like that? I thought it’s what your dad wanted . . . please, please believe me, I had no idea, no idea at all about the situation. ’

I glanced around the mean little apartment again.

‘I believe you,’ I said, exhaling a long breath. My last hopes - that she had sneakily done a runner, and held some back for me - had pretty much dissolved in the scent of the dusty hallway.

‘If I had known,’ she said, ‘I would have stuffed your pockets with every diamond in the house. Everything. All of it.’ She hid her face in her hands.

‘They took all of it?’

‘Everything. I’d put it all in the safe just as I was meant to . . . I wanted to protect your inheritance, Sophie. I knew you didn’t trust me or like me, so I wanted to have everything accounted for properly.’

‘And they took it all.’

‘I’m such an idiot.’

I couldn’t think of what to say to that.

‘Do you take sugar?’ I asked, finally, aware that I should probably have known.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just milk.’

She took the tea and heaved a sigh.

‘I mean, I’ve been poor before, but it’s so much harder for you . . . I can pick myself up again, I’ve done it before.’

‘I can do it too!’ I said, stung.

‘Can you? Can you, Sophie?’

‘Why didn’t you answer the phone to me?’ I said.

‘Because I thought you were going to be so furious with me for not saving your things . . . I couldn’t take your venom, Sophie, not when I was in such a state about your dad. I know you hate me. But you have to know, if I’d known . . .’

I nodded. ‘I didn’t hate you.’

She grimaced a smile. ‘Oh, Sophie,’ she said, taking a sip of her tea. ‘You’ve no idea how much I hoped and hoped and hoped that we’d be friends. I dreamed of you being the daughter I’ve never been able to have. When I fell in love with your father I used to imagine you coming to me and telling me what you were up to in school, and we could watch girly movies together and I could maybe, maybe, just in a tiny way, be there for you somehow in a way a mother should . . .’

Her voice trailed off again tearfully.

‘I know you didn’t want to share your dad. And he was great. I don’t blame you.’

Well, she should do. Shamefully I flashed back to the way Carena and I mocked the clothes she chose, and the way she ate, and how much we would talk about how much we hated her and wouldn’t let her come near us. We even had a WE HATE GAIL club and used to leave the badges lying around. I just didn’t give a shit. He was
my
dad, and she wasn’t my mother.

‘You know, in your dad’s eyes you could do no wrong, so I couldn’t talk to him about it. I couldn’t tell anyone, it would make me sound so wicked.’

‘Is that why you used to drag me to the shops all the time?’

‘I thought you’d enjoy a little mother-daughter bonding expedition, we could try things on and have tea at Fortnums and it would be fun.’

‘I thought you were punishing me.’

‘Is that why you’d never try anything on or eat anything?’

‘Prisoner rules.’

‘And drag your feet all the way up the King’s Road?’

‘I was being punished! Of course I wasn’t going to make it easy for you.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Sophie! I promise, you never did that.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad. And I’m sorry, too; that I couldn’t be what you needed. I was so jealous of you too. My good intentions never lasted as long as I hoped they would. He loved you so much, Sophie. More than anything. Much more than me.’

I felt a lump in my throat.

‘But he loved you too.’

‘Yes, he did,’ she said.

‘I can’t . . . I can’t get rid of the guilt. That I should have answered the phone that night.’

She regarded me for a long while. She looked like she was going to say something - that it didn’t matter, or that it was OK, or something, but finally she just said, ‘I know.’

And we sat there for a little while, and drank our tea, and told stories. Stories of him. How Gail had met him, and their courtship. I told her what we used to do before she came. She told me how he used to talk about me. Little bits and pieces of daily family life; things we should have been sharing for years and years and years. But maybe it wasn’t too late to start.

Before I left she said, ‘I do have one thing for you.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘They didn’t think it was worth anything. But I knew better. Hang on.’

And she went into a little cupboard and brought out the clunky black Leica that had belonged to Daddy.

And that evening I’d gone back to Eck, who had been watching
Top Gear
in the sitting room, sat down next to him, and cried and cried and cried; and he’d put his arm around me, and the feel of his warm strong body next to mine made me feel a million times better.

So, after the visit to see Gail, I knew there really was no secret stash of diamonds, which is why I was now half-naked in a freezing cold garage in New Cross.

At least Julius had started to look a bit uncomfortable asking me to do all this stuff.

‘Sorry, love,’ he was saying. ‘It’s just what the punters are after, isn’t it?’

‘No matter,’ I said. ‘I let Delilah do my bikini line. I’m never going to be in that much pain again. Psychic trauma is piffling.’

Grace and Kelly had turned up to provide moral support. They arrived in a limo for a set of shots for
Playboy
. They really
were
moving up in the world.

‘How did you get a limo to bring you to New Cross?’ I said, from my perch on a high stool.

‘It’s to make us feel like princess bunnies, innit,’ explained Grace. ‘The Playboy experience looks after you every step of the way.’

‘Just relax,’ said Kelly, tossing her hair. ‘Stop worrying about it.’ She was probably right. She’d recently had pink extensions put in, followed the next day by Grace getting identical ones. I don’t know what had happened, but the next day they’d arrived Kelly had no nails and Grace had no extensions and they both looked sad. Now Grace had baby blue ones but she kept tugging them and grimacing in the mirror.

‘Now the thing is, sweetheart,’ said Julius. I stiffened. He never called me sweetheart. I glanced at Philly at the back of the studio. She was still pacing up and down in a pair of killer boots, glancing at me occasionally and giving me a thumbs up.

‘This is a men’s mag, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Which one?’

I mentioned the name of it, and Julius sucked his teeth.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Well, did she not mention it?’ he indicated Philly.

‘Mention what?’

‘Well, they’re going to want nipple shots.’

‘Not from me,’ I said. ‘Philly’s got it all sorted out. Bikinis only. No more than Natalie Portman would do.’

Grace and Kelly both snorted.

‘Philly,’ I said, shouting across the studio. She lifted a finger to tell me, hush, she was on the phone.

BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend