Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend Page 15

  Both his daughters were lawyers now, like their dad, earning tons of money, no doubt, and both married and having babies. I’d had invites to their weddings but hadn’t even bothered to reply. And here was Leonard offering to take me in. Frankly, it was a chance I didn’t deserve. I lowered my head.

  ‘Thank you but I’m fine, Leonard, honestly.’

  ‘You don’t look fine,’ he said. ‘Is that a skin disease?’

  No, it was chin rash. Well, I hoped it was chin rash. There was a small chance it might actually be scabies I supposed, given the night I’d had.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. He didn’t look convinced.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘Please. Tell me everything. Even if it is gossip.’

  Leonard still looked pained.

  ‘I understand. You have client/attorney privilege, right?’ I said.

  Leonard snorted. ‘I do wish people would stop watching American television. I’m not an attorney, I’m a lawyer, and no, privilege ends with death.’

  ‘Oh. OK,’ I said, resolving to stay quiet.

  ‘I have to tell you,’ said Leonard. ‘Your dad’s affairs . . . I mean, nobody expected him to die so young.’

  An overweight overstressed over-drinking cigar-smoking workaholic man in his fifties. For the millionth time I felt that acid pang in my stomach. Why hadn’t I done something? Why didn’t I look after him? Mum couldn’t be there to do it. It was my job.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said, clutching my hands together and trying not to cry.

  ‘There, there,’ said June, coming in with Earl Grey tea and some sandwiches. She patted me gently on the shoulder. ‘It must be so raw still.’

  Of course her kindness made it all worse - it had been so long since anyone had been kind - and I felt myself starting to snivel. I couldn’t cry again, I couldn’t.

  Leonard looked pained at what he had to say.

  ‘Sophie, dear, your father made some very high-risk investments . . . leveraged a lot of debt from one company to another.’

  I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, but it didn’t sound very good.

  ‘You know, that was his personal investment fund . . . he built it up from nothing. His position had changed quite rapidly with the central banking crisis, and things were very much in flux at the time of his death . . .’

  ‘What you’re saying is,’ I forced the words out. I had to be clear. ‘It’s quite possible that there isn’t any money at all.’

  ‘It’s more than possible,’ said Leonard, his cheeks pink. ‘I think it’s likely, Sophie. The debt had been moving up and up, and I do think . . . I mean, a couple more years and he’d have been back in the black again, for sure, if he could have ridden the wave . . . Sophie, I’m so, so sorry.’

  I choked back the tears. ‘But he’d have looked after me, though? He always looked after me.’

  Leonard took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. ‘Of course he did, Sophie. But . . .’ he trailed off.

  ‘But my money . . . my money . . . surely it’s ring-fenced somehow? Surely?’

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying or what it might possibly mean.

  Leonard shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, Sophie . . . banks employ very clever people to find money. Anything there at all . . . it will just all go into debt repayment. They’re very strict. Unless he’d handed it over to you years ago.’

  I shook my head, nearly speechless. ‘The house, the cars, my inheritance, all of it?’

  ‘Everything. It’ll just go to a faceless bank.’

  I started to shake. Everything gone. Everything. The holidays. The flights. The nightlife. The paintings. Everything. All of it. My entire life.

  And I couldn’t help thinking; if I had got back in time; if I’d saved my dad, we’d have come up again. He’d have recovered, made the money back. Sorted things out. But now . . .

  ‘Christ,’ I said. June was standing by my chair, patting me ineffectually on the shoulder like I was a nervous dog. ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘Sophie,’ said Leonard. ‘I mean it . . . we can help you.’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘What, give me millions and millions of pounds?’ Then I regretted my sharp tongue in response to their genuine and instinctive kindnesses. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Oh God, what a mess. What a horrible, horrible mess.’

  June patted me again. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone warn me?’

  Leonard shrugged. ‘Oh, your dad had had setbacks before. He’d never let anything worry you . . . you were his princess, you know.’

  I felt the tears prick again.

  ‘Plus, he always said, “She’s so beautiful, she’ll probably marry the King of England.”’

  Silence fell. I did feel, suddenly, like clinging to the shiny leather armchairs; the understated luxury of Leonard’s house; throwing myself on their charity, begging for them to bring me up, like little orphan Annie.

  But I was twenty-five. My life was my own. I was completely on my own, and staying here, in warmth and comfort, was only a harsh reminder of everything I no longer had.

  ‘I should go,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Stay for dinner,’ said Leonard. ‘Please. The girls are coming over. They’d love to see you.’

  The idea of Leonard’s family, all love and warmth and affection and babies sitting down to a lavish Sunday dinner and spending their time being kind to the poor little rich girl was more than I could bear.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. I was going to make up some polite excuse but I couldn’t even manage that. ‘I . . . I can’t.’

  Leonard’s face was very sad as he looked at me. ‘I understand, ’ he said. ‘But Sophie, if there’s anything - anything - I can do. A place to live, a job, some money . . . please, please, please come to us.’

  I nodded. ‘Thanks,’ I said, meaning it. I didn’t have anything left in the world, after all. ‘It’s good to know that.’

  And it was, I suppose. When everything else had turned to ashes. June gave me a hug and gently stroked my face in a way that was the complete opposite to every rough caress of the night before - it was maternal I supposed. Not that I’d know - and I took my leave. As I made it to the end of the street a huge Audi estate turned in, with Leonard’s eldest daughter and her handsome husband and two sticky dark-haired children in the back. I waved cheerily, as if I was just passing, but they didn’t see me, as I made my lonely way back to the end of the street, and out into a teeming, cold, cold world.

  In the end, I walked home. All the way home. Well, there was hardly any point wasting a bus fare when I had nothing else to do, except contemplate the ruin of all my hopes, the emptiness - the complete and utter emptiness - of my life. Or what was left of it. What was left of it? More picking up sweaty G-strings, chasing invoices from newspapers and picking Wolverine’s hair out of the plughole in the shower. Or perhaps, to cover my living costs, I could get an extra job and work all night in some bar until I got too old and was just a miserable old hag with a tale to tell.

  Everything had gone. Friends - not really worth the candle, in the end. Family - nope, gone too. Money - all gone.

  The view from Waterloo Bridge, all the great sights of London politely lined up in a row for you to admire them one by one, usually raises my spirits. Today I thought seriously about what would happen if I simply jumped over the side. Would anyone notice? Maybe I could leave a note saying that Wolverine could have my room. Maybe I could leave behind my dresses and Cal could make them into curtains. I wouldn’t even ban Carena and Philly from my funeral. Would it hurt much, I wondered. Probably. And I am a coward. Maybe a bath and a razor blade. I thought of the motley collection of blunt razor blades in the Old Kent Road. Best not. The septicaemia would probably get me before the blood loss.

  Oh God, Oh God. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  When I finally, quietly, let myself in, the boys were round the kitchen table, all together. This was unusual. I looked around. They’d picked up
all the empty bottles from the night before and put them next to the back door. This didn’t exactly constitute cleaning up but was something of an advance on before, when Eck once left a Weetabix bowl right by the front door. As an experiment I left it there. Every single person entering the house fell over it immediately. Not one person picked it up. This went on for three days.

  And finally, they were eating a meal which, judging by the bizarre array of implements filthily scattered around the room, they’d cooked themselves.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, not wanting to get drawn in. My misery was best kept to myself. It would mean nothing to them; it might even be insulting, the idea that to live like they did was the worst possible fate one could imagine.

  ‘You do not,’ said James finally, tucking into what might once have been a Brussels sprout but was a very unusual colour, ‘look exactly like a woman who’s recently been taken to the edge of sexual ecstasy and back.’

  ‘Shut it, fusilier,’ said Cal shortly.

  ‘Quiet, the both of you,’ said Eck. ‘Sophie, are you OK? How are things?’

  Cal shot him a look. I wondered how much had passed between them about last night.

  ‘Uh, come and have lunch. We made it! We all did different bits! James did the sprouts!’

  ‘We like them this colour in the army,’ said James.

  ‘Cal did the potatoes.’

  ‘Those are potatoes?’ I found myself asking, weakly. There was a grey swill in a pan dunked on the table.

  ‘I never know how long to leave them on for,’ said Cal.

  ‘So what did you go for?’

  ‘About two hours?’

  I shook my head, confused. ‘And who did the meat?’

  ‘I cooked it, Wolverine carved it,’ said Eck, proudly. It looked like those plastic hams you get in doll’s houses.

  ‘With his teeth?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Cal. ‘Turn down our very kind invitation to Sunday lunch.’

  I thought of the smells of gravy and roasting garlicky chickens that had been coming from Leonard’s kitchen and suddenly felt hungry. Could potential suicide victims be hungry? Maybe I could eat lunch but just add some poison to it.

  ‘Let me push it around my plate for a bit,’ I said, trying to sound at least a little grateful.

  ‘Uh, we’re slightly out of plates,’ said Eck who, I now noticed, was eating out of a saucepan lid. Not a saucepan lid that fitted any of the saucepans we had though. ‘But Wolverine’s licked his clean.’

  Wolverines plate was a plastic bowl. I think maybe it was a dog’s bowl.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll just pick bits from the saucepans.’

  For want of anything to do that didn’t involve GBH - to myself - I sat down on the pile of newspapers supposedly for recycling, which had now got so high we could use it as a chair. Eck passed me the roasting tin (a bunch of old Chinese takeaway foil boxes, crushed and formed into something vaguely square) and I attempted to hack my way into what might have been beef. Or pork. Or camel. Or crocodile. Or baboon. I wanted to cry.

  ‘So what’s new?’ asked James politely. ‘Apart from -’ Cal shot him a look - ‘Uh, good day?’

  Maybe . . . maybe I should just tell them. Save them thinking I was moping around for Cal. Or just a total misery guts. It would be good to tell someone. I felt . . . I just felt my whole life was a fake. Fake money, a fake job, fake friends - the fakest, and I was no princess there myself - fake sex. It was all fake and shallow and pointless and dishonest. Maybe, just for once, I should come clean. And they might despise me even more, for looking down on their lives. But at least it would be real. Who I was.

  ‘Something has happened,’ I began. I realised I’d been angrily stabbing the mystery meat all this time. I’d made absolutely no impression on it whatsoever. Just then, however, the doorbell rang.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Everyone shrugged.

  ‘Maybe it’s a furious lover,’ said James. ‘Come to take her revenge on Cal with a pair of pinking shears. And she’ll have to duke it out with you, Sophie.’

  ‘The use of the term pinking shears gives us a lot of insight into your pathetic but well-organised fantasies, Gardener,’ said Cal. ‘Someone stop Wolverine barking, I’ll get it.’

  He was back in two seconds, with a puzzled look on his face.

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said, pointing at me. ‘He’s got a camera.’

  I stiffened. ‘What do you mean, a camera?’

  Cal shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a bloke asking for you, standing there with a camera.’

  It must be Julius. What did he want with me on a Sunday though? I put down my fork with a clang and headed through the hallway towards the door.

  It wasn’t Julius. It was an unhealthy-looking man with three days’ worth of growth on his beard and a grubby leather jacket. He was carrying a big paparazzo-style camera, with a powerful zoom lens on the front.

  ‘Sophie Chesterton?’ he said.

  I tilted my head a fraction. He squinted his eyes at me. ‘Oh, yeah.’ Then he picked up the camera and started firing off shots.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I said, going to shut the door. But as I did so I saw a very slim, elegant blonde woman step out of a car. She looked oddly familiar, and marched up to me in a very over-confident fashion.

  ‘Flick Abermarle,’ she said, shooting out her hand, so I’d shaken it before I’d had time to think. What the hell was this? ‘Daily Post.’

  Uh-oh.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she said.

  I recovered just in time. ‘No,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Charming,’ she said, jotting something down in her notepad. ‘Well, Sophie, we’d like to run a story on you.’

  She said this as if she was giving me a birthday present.

  ‘On me?’ I said. I turned up in gossip columns occasionally - one drippy songwriter had written a dirge about me that went top ten, and I was often to be found in the back of the weekly mags, milling about at some charity affair, and of course there’d been the big party, but I wasn’t a proper It girl, like Tara or Tamara or that lot.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She looked like a very well made-up fox. ‘Why don’t we go inside and discuss it?’

  I didn’t want to say it was because inside smelled like a wet dog’s kennel.

  ‘Out here is fine,’ I said.

  Her face took on the fakest expression of mock concern I’d ever seen in my life, and I know Carena Sutherland.

  ‘Now, Sophie . . . you know you’ve been through a few tough times recently.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said automatically.

  ‘And we wanted to run a very sympathetic piece . . . about how you’ve been affected by your new life.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘If I wanted the publicity I’d have an agent, like everyone else.’

  ‘It’s not for publicity,’ Flick said, trying to open up her tiny tiny eyes to look like she was being sincere. ‘It’s about human interest and understanding.’

  And I’ve had a cheese sandwich made out of the moon.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. The photographer was still snapping away; I was very conscious of my unwashed hair, greasy pull-over, tear-stained grey, shagged-all-night face.

  ‘Something terrible has happened to me. And I don’t want to talk to you. Goodbye.’

  ‘But we’ve come all this way on a Sunday,’ wailed Flick, her fake sweet expression dropping like she’d thrown it on the floor.

  ‘The Old Kent Road is very central actually,’ I replied, closed the door and went back inside.

  ‘Who was it?’ said Cal.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Work. They’re a double D down for tomorrow.’

  ‘And they wanted you to stand in, what?’ said James excitedly.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Not fair,’ said James. ‘Cal’s seen them.’

  After hours of tossing and turning on my narrow single bed, sleep finally crept up on me, bu
t my nightmares were back with a vengeance that night. My dad was shouting out to me, and I was spinning around in a nightclub till I started to fall deeper and deeper down through the floor.

  I was in hell. I was in jail. There was nowhere left to fall. There was nothing of my old life left to grieve, because it was all gone.