Part 19 (1/2)
”Yes,” said Laura. ”Yes, I have.”
”Do you think you'll stay in touch?”
Laura gazed into the distance. ”Not sure,” she said. ”We need to talk about that tonight. About a lot of stuff.” She came back into the present with a jolt. ”I-er, I mean, Naomi needs to sort all that out. With her ex. She's got a lot of things to sort out.”
”Ah,” murmured Angela sympathetically. She picked up a bag of salad. ”What about this? Looks nice.”
”It's washed in tons of chlorine, and it's really ecologically unsound,” said Laura, throwing the offending bag of salad back. ”Oh, Mum,” she said in a rush of confidence, ”I don't know what she's doing, to be honest.”
”Why?” said Angela, her head on one side. ”Oh, dear. Why, what's the problem with her boyfriend?”
Laura was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly, ”She's only just met him. But she thought-she thought he was great. That they were really good together. But he's kind of lied to her.” Her eyes filled with tears; she turned toward the bags of salad again. ”Oh, look,” she mumbled in a m.u.f.fled voice. ”Watercress.”
Angela wasn't really paying attention, having drifted toward the vegetables. ”Oh, dear. That's a shame,” she said vaguely, covering her tracks, her eyes scanning the shelves like an SAS operative. ”Carrots, ooh, yes,” she said. ”Leeks.”
Laura leaned against one of the shelves and put her hand to her forehead. She felt hot and rather tired. A night of sleepless tossing and turning, of reaching out to grab her phone, wanting to text him and say, ”I know who you are,” of wrestling with the knowledge she had now acquired, had brought no more answers. She liked him; he liked her-wasn't that enough? It didn't matter, did it? she told herself, through the long night, as the sky filled with light and the morning came. Surely this didn't really change things?
Then, following simultaneously on, would come the doubts, the questions. Was it really true that he was this person? Someone she felt she knew, and now just didn't know at all? She couldn't reconcile the two: Nick, who loved thin chips, made her laugh, and kissed her as if it was just right; and the Marquis of Ranelagh, this symbol of ancestry and wealth, of formality and duty-this person about whom she had heard so much, as if he were a thing, rather than a living, breathing man. She had turned over and over in bed till the sheets were loose and crumpled, trying to make sense of it, desperate for some calm. That house-the treasures inside it-the history-the family, Lady Rose, Lady Lavinia...the mother who'd left him, the scandal. The publicness of a life like that. Then she knew why he hadn't told her, and she felt a cold feeling start inside her, that this was stupid, doomed, that she shouldn't take it any further.
After all, she'd only just met him. Perhaps even worrying about it was stupid. Perhaps thinking about it was the last thing to do. She wasn't angry with him, or even with herself, for once. She just wanted to see him again, to be with him, and perhaps then she would know what should happen next. Because at the moment, she wasn't sure.
”Naomi's boyfriend lied to her, did he?” Angela said vaguely, putting some leeks into the trolley. ”Oh, dear.'
Laura shook herself out of her reverie, and followed with the trolley. ”Well,” she continued, not really minding whether her mother was listening or not, ”yes. She knows he's lied. But he doesn't realize she knows.”
”What did he lie about?” said Angela, looking curiously at her.
Laura said sadly, ”About who he is.”
”What, is he a convict?”
”Kind of. The opposite. Sort of.”
Angela looked at her daughter as if she were mad, and Laura said hurriedly, ”Well, she doesn't know what she should do about it now. And that's not even the biggest issue,” she continued, warming to her theme, as Angela made sympathetic noises and moved around the corner to the condiments, where she bent over slightly, humming and putting her finger to her lip, to run her gaze over a row of mustards. ”The biggest issue is, now that she knows he's what he is, that makes everything different.”
”What would your grandmother say?” asked Angela. ”Dijon? Or whole-grain?”
”Dijon,” said Laura, plucking a jar viciously off the shelf and throwing it into the trolley, where it clattered loudly.
Angela frowned, obviously rewinding the sounds in her head so she could respond to her daughter's last sentence. ”How is everything different?” she said with astonis.h.i.+ng clarity. ”Does him having not told the truth about who he is really make that much of a difference, if she feels that strongly about him? Doesn't matter if he's a convict. Unless it's for something really awful, of course,” she said, lowering her voice. ”But it doesn't, does it?”
Laura stopped still in the aisle. ”Don't know,” she said, chewing her lip. ”I'll have to see. See her and see.”
”It is Dijon she likes, isn't it?” said Angela, moving on. ”Ask your grandmother when we get home, just to make sure.”
”I'll ask her,” said Laura. ”Good idea.”
Before lunch, as Angela stood in the kitchen chopping, dicing, preparing marinades, getting things ready for the next day, and George crouched down by the barbecue, oiling it, speaking tenderly to it as if it were a temperamental dressage horse, Laura wandered out onto the terrace, carrying a huge bowl and a ma.s.sive bag of broad beans to sh.e.l.l under her arm. Mary was crouched over a flower bed, deadheading a pink scented rambling rose that clung to the side of the house. She was wearing sungla.s.ses and had tied an old printed scarf over her hair.
”Ah,” she said, standing up with a groan as Laura approached. ”Come and talk to me.”
”I will,” said Laura, pulling a chair up to the table and sitting down.
Mary brushed the dead leaves off her gardening gloves, and winced as she bent down again. ”Got everything you needed this morning?”
”Absolutely,” said Laura. ”You like Dijon, not whole-grain, mustard, don't you?”
”Oh, yes,” said Mary. ”Loathe whole-grain. Those little bits. In fact, I was thinking we should have some mayonnaise, too. Xan used to make garlic mayonnaise, you know. Delicious, it really was. When we were in Morocco, he-”
Wanting to steer her thoughts in a different direction, Laura said, ”Sorry, Gran.” Mary looked up, rather crossly. ”Can I ask you something?”
”Of course,” her grandmother said. She leaned against the slatted wood of the house and undid the scarf covering her hair, shaking it out. ”What's on your mind, darling?”
”You-you said you'd met the marquis's mother,” said Laura hesitantly. ”Vivienne something. Didn't you?”
”Golly,” said Mary. She patted her cheeks. ”Vivienne Lash. Yes, ages ago. Xan and I met her and Freddy both, when we were living in the south of France for the summer. Saw quite a bit of them, actually.”
”Have you met her son?”
”The new marquis?” said Mary. ”Oh, no. She was the outcast, you know, darling. She left his father when he was-ooh, barely a teenager, I think.”
”Right,” said Laura, not really knowing what to ask next, or what she was hoping to get out of this conversation. ”So-did she talk about her children?”
”Vivienne?” Mary sat down next to Laura and lifted up her sungla.s.ses. ”Not much. Think it was too painful for her. We knew all about it, of course. Everyone did.”
”How come?”
”Well, it was a huge scandal. Ma.s.sive. Kept the tabloids busy for weeks.”
”Really?” said Laura. ”Why on earth? People run off with people all the time.”
Mary smiled at her. ”Oh, darling. You are naive about things like this. Just because it doesn't interest you, just because you'd rather read about it in the pages of a novel, doesn't mean it's not endlessly fascinating to the rest of the public. Or the newspapers, at least. No, it was all rather juicy to them. For a variety of reasons.”
”What?”
”She was terribly famous in her day, you know, Vivienne. Real A-list British star. When she married the Marquis of Ranelagh, it was like a real-life fairy tale. Beautiful actress marries richest peer in the land, that sort of thing.”
”And they are...that rich, are they?” Laura said in a small voice.
Mary flexed her right hand, squeezing the secateurs tightly together. ”The Needhams? I should say so. Laura, they're the great aristocratic family, you know. Vast wealth. That house is only the tip of the iceberg. There's the place in Grosvenor Square, that castle in Scotland-and they own half of Belgravia, too.”
Something caught in Laura's throat; she breathed in the wrong way and started choking, coughing violently. ”G.o.d,” she rasped, as her breathing returned to normal.
A seagull flew overhead, croaking loudly. Mary looked up, and her gaze followed it as it flew out to sea. She said distantly, ”Yes. You know, though, it wasn't enough for her. She shouldn't have married him. I think she loved him, but it was Freddy she really loved.”
”Freddy?” Laura said, breathing deeply.