Marrying Up (7 page)

Please God, Beatrice prayed, let her leave this flat soon. Please God let Ned propose so she, Beatrice, could become Marchioness
Dymchurch, have her own estate and fortune and get away from her bloody sister.

He had, she was sure, been within a hair’s breadth of asking her to marry him tonight, but then the waiter had interrupted
and asked whether he wanted gravy. The result was that Ned, incapable of holding two thoughts in his head at once, had never
got back to the subject, for all her efforts to lead him there.

‘The Nurofen, darling?’ Florrie drawled.

‘Get it yourself,’ Beatrice said unsympathetically. But it
was
three in the morning – probably quarter past by now – and Florrie had wrecked her new sandals and, by the look of it, lost
one of her earrings.

Her sister opened the huge, dewy, violet-blue eyes that could look so bored and blank but which now expressed hurt, surprised
innocence. ‘Darling!’ she chided. ‘You might get it for me. You really might. I feel terrible.’ She rolled over and groaned,
but she even did that beautifully, Beatrice noticed, the deep-cut back of the dress emphasising her pale and delicate shoulder
blades. ‘Perhaps I should lay off those Aladdin’s Cave cocktails,’ Florrie muttered into the pale primrose sofa cushions.

‘They’re the ones that cost two hundred pounds each, aren’t they?’

Florrie rolled back, her expression impish, and nodded her head enthusiastically before clutching a cushion to it and groaning.
‘They’re yummy.’

‘How did you afford them?’ Beatrice demanded, knowing that her sister had spent her way through her entire monthly allowance
a fortnight ago.

‘Oh darling,’ Florrie sighed. ‘Not all that Genghis Khan stuff again.’

‘Genghis Khan?’

‘Oh, silly me, I mean Nelson Mandela.’

‘Nelson Mandela?’

‘You know what I mean. Financial responsibility and all that.’ Florrie yawned.

Not for the first time, Beatrice reflected that the hundreds of thousands that had been poured into her sister’s education
might
just as well have been poured into a black hole and to all intents and purposes had.

She and Florrie were two of ten children, although only they and their brother had that particular combination of mother and
father. Lord Whyske and Lady Annabel had had six marriages between them, of which the union producing herself and Florrie
was their second in both cases. She, Ed and Florrie were, as Beatrice saw it, the centre of the family Venn diagram, although
it was painfully obvious that hardly ever were they the centre of their parents’ thoughts. Lady Annabel moved constantly between
social events; Lord Whyske, meanwhile, seemed always to be in meetings with lawyers – about business or his latest divorce.
And when he wasn’t, he made a point of disagreeing with whatever Lady Annabel had said on any topic. There was no love lost
between them; Beatrice had learnt that the only constant of her parents’ behaviour was that they always took opposite viewpoints.
Was it any wonder, she would muse, that of the three children her parents had had together, she herself was unnaturally controlling,
Florrie was semi-feral and of Ed the least said the better?

She emerged from these thoughts to find her sister looking at her pleadingly from behind her cushion.

‘I really do need a Nurofen, darling. I had several Aladdin’s Caves practically to myself. And then I danced for ages.’ She
began to hum ‘Brown Sugar’ and moved her arms languidly about. ‘Omigod, we had such fun. HRH and I were sticking our tongues
out at each other. He was on great form.’

Dread reared up in Beatrice like a terrified horse. Of course, it had always been a danger. Florrie had been a member of the
young royals’ set for some time, albeit a star in one of the more distant galaxies. But now the papers were beginning to pick
up on it. There had been something in
Socialite
just the other day.

The idea of her sister being linked romantically to the ruling house was too ghastly for words. For one thing, it would completely
overshadow her own wedding – always presuming it
happened. For what was a mere marchioness compared with a princess, especially a princess who looked like Florrie?

‘I thought you were out with Igor,’ she said accusingly.

‘We’re taking a break from each other,’ Florrie said vaguely.

This was not, so far as Beatrice was concerned, good news. Admittedly she had never liked Florrie’s Russian lover and the
way he sat about their flat demanding, in a rolling accent, the answers to questions like ‘Why have one London mansion when
you can have two?’ and ‘Why queue up with the losers in first class when you can have a plane to yourself?’ Igor’s father
owned, among other things, an airline business, and Igor had his own Learjet on permanent standby. ‘Igot’ seemed a more suitable
name, Beatrice thought, given how frequently his listeners were reminded of his possessions and his father’s wealth. According
to his son, Igor Senior earned ten thousand pounds an hour just in interest.

Ned had been disgusted the weekend Igor had crashed a shooting party at the Whyske family seat and blasted everything in sight
with a Kalashnikov with ‘Rock and Roll’ stamped on the side. When, apparently for fun, he shot the bowler off the head of
the butler delivering the guns’ lunch to the moor, Beatrice had found her calls to Ned unanswered for weeks.

But while Igor was a liability, he was less of a risk to her own happiness than a prince of the blood royal. Oligarchs’ sons
attracted little general attention; they were two a penny after all.

‘Why the break with Igor?’ Beatrice asked nervously.

Florrie stretched her arms in the air and gave a voluptuous sigh. ‘He’s a bit demanding,’ she said with a smile.

She wasn’t joking, Beatrice knew. Some of Igor’s requirements were most unusual, even though Florrie had accepted them in
her usual breezy way. Her sister was, Beatrice had discovered since they had started sharing the flat, quite startlingly open
about sex, usually in the kitchen on Sunday mornings as Beatrice made tea and the Russian snored in Florrie’s bedroom. Beatrice,
narrowly avoiding slopping boiling water over her wrists, felt
the insight into Igor’s preferences didn’t make liking him any easier.

‘Oh, I’m going to make a cup of tea,’ Beatrice said jumpily, twisting so hard on her bare heel that her skin burnt against
the carpet.

‘Make me one, will you, darling?’ Florrie called as Beatrice stomped in the direction of the flat’s smart black and stainless-steel
galley kitchen.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, Beatrice strove to calm herself down. Florrie had been out with the prince. But so what?
The prince had taken lots of girls out. It was not a serious gesture, nor was Florrie, Beatrice was fairly sure, seriously
interested in him, whether as a person or a prince. And particularly the latter. Social class was not a subject that interested
Florrie. Duke, dustman, it was all the same. All that mattered was whether they amused her. Or whether she wanted to sleep
with them.

Besides, making an effort, pursuing something, was not Florrie’s style. She never made a play for anyone. Not even her worst
enemy – which was what Beatrice frequently felt like – could accuse her of man-eating. The far more depressing truth was that
Florrie just attracted men like jam drew wasps, simply by virtue of existing. She never tried in the least, which of course
made her all the more irresistible.

Beatrice poured the water into two mugs and carried one through to Florrie, who had now left the sitting room and was settled
happily in Beatrice’s bed. ‘Mine’s all unmade.’ She smiled beseechingly.

‘Your trouble is that you’re lazy, Florrie,’ Beatrice grumbled as she passed the tea into her sister’s frail hands. ‘You really
must be the idlest girl in Britain.’

‘I know!’ Florrie beamed, her smile lighting up her face and showing a row of small, even pearly-white teeth. ‘Aren’t I awful?’

It was a few days afterwards, and in the sitting room of the flat, the telephone was ringing. Beatrice dived between the antique
furniture to answer it.

‘Darling!’ exploded the other end.

‘Mummy!’ Beatrice beamed, relieved that her mother had finally responded to her frantic texts and answerphone messages transmitting
the triumphant news. Ned Dymchurch had proposed at last, which meant that Lady Annabel, whose organisational skills were as
formidable as the rest of her, could finally sink her teeth into the wedding.

‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it?’ she burst out, unable to stop herself.

‘Amazing!’ cried Lady Annabel.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Beatrice exclaimed. It had indeed been a close-run thing. The sommelier, tiptoeing purposefully towards
their ice bucket, had almost done for it this time. Only Beatrice seizing the bottle herself and sloshing it violently into
both their glasses had saved the moment.

‘Me neither, darling. All my dreams have come true!’ There was a little yelp of ecstasy at the end of Lady Annabel’s sentence.
‘So, is our princess there?’ she added.

‘Princess?’ Beatrice frowned. Her heart began to hammer. ‘Princess who?’

She realised in a flash that they were talking at cross-purposes. Of course they were, she chided herself bitterly. What had
she
been thinking of, to imagine her mother was remotely interested in her?

‘Oh
really
. Princess who do you think?.’ Lady Annabel’s tone was scornful. ‘Just a mo, I’ve got it here . . . yes . . . ahem . . .’
Lady Annabel cleared her throat as if preparing to address the nation. ‘Lady Florrie Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe . . . seen
dancing cheek to cheek with HRH – and we’re not talking faces . . .’

‘Oh God!’ groaned Beatrice, clasping her forehead with an icy hand.

It was too cruel. After what seemed like years of working on him, Ned Dymchurch was finally going to take her up the aisle.
But now Florrie looked set to steal her wedding thunder, as she had always stolen everything else. Shoes, earrings, attention
most particularly.

‘Awfully funny, don’t you think?’ Lady Annabel gurgled. ‘Cheek to cheek and we don’t mean faces!’

‘What else does the article say?’ Beatrice asked miserably.

‘Now where was I, oh yes . . . Lady Florrie, blah blah . . . deep in intense conversation . . .’

Beatrice relieved some of her feelings in a hot, savage snort. ‘Intense conversation! Florrie!’

‘Don’t underestimate her,’ Lady Annabel ordered. ‘Florrie is full of surprises.’

Beatrice didn’t disagree. The latest, provoked by the arrival of a clutch of bills, had been the discovery – unbelievable
with anyone but her sister – that Florrie had no idea one paid for utilities and thought electricity came out free from the
wall.

She took a deep breath and made a determined effort to return the subject to herself. ‘Er, Mummy, now the wedding’s definitely
on, we need to think about the venue.’

‘Yes! St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey?’ Lady Annabel sighed happily. ‘I prefer the Abbey myself,
so
romantic, although of course we need to remember it’s a royal wedding and you can get more people in the Cathedral . . .’

Beatrice did not reply. Her smouldering sense of resentment had become an angry blaze. It was so unfair.

‘And of course Florrie would look fabulous in a tiara,’ Lady Annabel wittered on. ‘But no doubt Her Majesty will want to lend
a crown from her collection, she usually does on these occasions . . .’

She was, Beatrice realised, going to be entirely eclipsed. A sickening sense of hopelessness swept through her. Back rammed
against the Chinese floral wallpaper, she sank slowly down to the thick-pile beige hall carpet.

‘It will be so lovely to see the dear Prince of Wales again,’ Lady Annabel carried on. ‘Perhaps at Highgrove . . .’

One of the few addresses, Beatrice knew, that the socially rocket-fuelled Lady Annabel had not wedged her foot in the door
of over the years.

Her mother finally rang off, but immediately the telephone shrilled again. Beatrice hesitated before answering it. A journalist,
wanting the inside track on her possibly soon-to-be-royal sister?

But no, it was her father. He had not yet spoken to her about her engagement. Beatrice’s heart leapt with the hope that he,
at least, was calling to congratulate her.

‘Beatrice?’ Lord Whyske barked in his testy baritone, as usual dispensing with time-wasting expressions of affection.

‘Hello, Papa! You’ve heard about . . .?’

‘Florrie, yes. Is she there?’

‘No, Papa. Isn’t it great news about Ned, though?’

He was speaking over her, however. ‘Busy being measured for her crown, eh?’ Self-satisfaction softened the hard edges of Lord
Whyske’s voice.

‘But you have heard?’ Beatrice persisted. ‘About me getting married to Ned . . .’

‘Must go. Spot of trouble on the Cornish estate to sort out.’ The phone went abruptly dead at her father’s end.

Beatrice stared miserably at the receiver. If Florrie became
royal, what about the consequences for her? Had her parents even stopped to consider them?

The whole point of going up the aisle with Ned Dymchurch was to show the world – and especially her parents – that she, Beatrice
Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe was not as hopeless as everyone had always thought. She might have grown up in the shadow of
her beautiful and beguiling sister, but she was the first to marry, and marry spectacularly well. Marry a mansion, an ancient
title and, most of all, money. But who was going to care now?

Nor was this all. Apart from the disaster it would be for her own nuptials, the idea that her sister could join the royal
family was absurd. For all her gentle birth and patrician upbringing, anyone less suited than Florrie to the rule-bound rigour
of court life was impossible to imagine. The royals had, after all, only just recovered from the last havoc-wreaking blonde.

She needed a drink, Beatrice decided. She opened one of the many bottles of vodka that stood on the kitchen shelf, presents
from the Pole who did the ironing. She reached into the freezer and flung some ice cubes into a tumbler. As an idea started
to bloom in her mind, Beatrice stopped gulping the spirit and sipped thoughtfully.