She looked baffled by my politeness, like a bulldog confronted with a kid blowing bubbles. Not so Jade, who was hovering at her mother’s shoulder, stick-thin and pale, junkie chic from head to toe. The sort who always looks grubby, even straight from the shower. ‘Don’t come the toff with us, you posh bitch,’ she snarled. ‘Where’s our lad? What have you done with our Jimmy?’
Luckily for me, George was at my shoulder, the perfect mixture of urbanity and steel. ‘In no sense is Jimmy yours,’ he said. ‘Scarlett made her intentions perfectly clear. If you are unhappy about that, I suggest you employ a lawyer.’
‘A fucking lawyer? You think I need a fucking lawyer to tell me who my own family are? That boy’s my grandson.’ Chrissie pointed at me dramatically. I could hear cameras clicking all around me. ‘She’s got no claim on him. She’s only after our Scarlett’s money.’
‘Greedy bitch,’ Jade echoed.
I knew I was lost if I engaged with them. I’d be dragged down to their level and frankly they had more experience at the scummy end of the argument. But it was tempting. As if sensing this, George put a hand on my arm. ‘I doubt you could even tell me the boy’s birthday,’ he said dismissively.
‘Shut your yap, arsehole.’ This from Jade. ‘It’s not you we’re talking to. It’s the scheming conniving bitch here that needs to answer to Jimmy’s family.’
George shook his head. ‘You’re wasting your time. If you’re trying to screw some hard-done-by deal out of a tabloid, let me say loud and clear, Scarlett put a roof over your heads and paid your bills for the last six years. In exchange, all she wanted was for you to stay away from her. The boy is nothing to do with you. Now either you behave like civilised people or I will have you thrown out of here.’
Chrissie threw herself at him, fists flailing. Before she could make contact, Simon grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her side with the ease of practice. ‘Time to walk away, Chrissie,’ he said, backing her away from George. ‘Come on, let’s have a drink and a little talk about Scarlett.’
She gave in ungracefully. But as Simon started to turn her away from us, she hawked up a gob of smoker’s phlegm and spat it full force towards George. Startled, he stepped back just in time and it splatted on the wooden boards centimetres from his shiny black lace-ups. He looked at the disgusting gobbet then stared at Chrissie and Jade in retreat. ‘Excellent,’ he said softly to me. ‘Spitting is not a good look for the tabloids. Dear Chrissie’s blown her chance of getting one of them in her corner. They know that moment’s going to be all over YouTube by bedtime.’
‘Do you think they will try to get custody of Jimmy?’
‘They don’t have a leg to stand on, which any lawyer worth their salt will tell them.’ He sighed. ‘Christ, I need a drink. This is like one of Dante’s circles of hell.’
Nothing I could argue with there. Nor could I see much point in us being there. I was with Marina. I didn’t need this in order to mourn Scarlett. It was an ordeal that had to be endured. And always at the back of my mind as I scanned the room and made Scarlett small talk with people I barely knew was the fear that Pete would use this event the same way he’d used Joshu’s memorial – to get his claws back into me.
So I was only half-listening when one of the hacks button-holed me and started in on how wonderful it was of me to take Jimmy on. ‘He’s my godson,’ I said. ‘I was there when he was born and I’ve been part of his life ever since. I’m the lucky one here.’
‘All the same,’ she persisted. ‘To take on someone else’s kid when there’s no financial provision is a big ask. You get top marks in my book.’
I must have looked puzzled, for she gave me a look of transparently fake concern. ‘You didn’t know? She’s left everything to her charity. Every last penny. The kid doesn’t get a shilling.’
45
I found George over by the buffet, delicately nibbling a sausage roll and surveying the room like a hawk waiting for prey to stoop. ‘I’ve just had a very bizarre conversation with a
George raised his eyebrows. I think it still surprises him when I use sweary words. ‘How very awkward for you. What was she saying?’
‘George, do you know anything about the terms of Scarlett’s will?’ Sometimes, taking a leaf out of Chrissie Higgins’ book seems like the best line of approach. Especially when you’re dealing with a master of diplomacy like Georgie.
His smile was pained. He wrapped the remains of the sausage roll in a cocktail napkin and put it down. ‘Ah,’ he said, reaching for his gin and tonic.
‘So it’s true then?’
He waved his free hand in a way that I think was meant to be nonchalant. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, Stephanie.’
‘My friendly reptile reckons Scarlett left the lot to her charity. Everything goes to the TOmorrow charitable trust. The house, the cash, the merchandising rights. The whole lot. Is that right?’
‘I was planning on sitting you down and telling you later in the week,’ he said, his eyes hangdog.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said. ‘Jimmy doesn’t get a thing?’
‘Personal effects, that’s all. Which essentially means jewellery.’ His smile was like the grimace of a man going down for the third time. ‘There are some rather good pieces.’
‘You don’t think I’m going to sell his mother’s jewellery, do you? Christ, George, what do you take me for? And why am I only hearing about this now?’
‘Please, keep your voice down, Stephanie. There are ears all around us. It’s not good to air this in public. Let’s walk.’ He steered me out of the ballroom and down the hall through the hotel reception to the car park. We ended up in a hideous grotto, built, I suspect, for the benefit of wedding photographers. ‘I’m sorry you were kept in the dark, but Scarlett was most insistent.’
‘Why? Did she think I was like her scummy relatives? That I’d only take Jimmy on if he came stuffed with tenners? How do you think that makes me feel, George?’ I was probably shouting by then but I was past caring.
‘I entirely agree with you. And that’s precisely what I said to Scarlett when she told me what she’d done. I knew you wouldn’t walk away from the boy, whatever the financial arrangement.’ Again the pained smile. ‘Poor Scarlett didn’t have the benefit of our experience. She still found it hard to trust people where money was concerned. That’s why she paid Chrissie’s utility bills directly rather than give her the money for them.’
I threw my hands in the air. ‘I can’t believe she’s left nothing for Jimmy. What about a trust to pay for his education?’ George shook his head. ‘How am I supposed to explain that to him when he’s old enough to understand?’
‘All you can do is show him her will. I made her put a clause in explaining why she was doing what she did.’
‘Really? There’s an explanation? It’s not just that her bloody cancer spread to her brain?’
George steered me over to a curved stone bench and sat down. He crossed one elegant leg over the other and took a cigar case from his inside pocket. He took out a small cigar and lit it with a match from a cardboard book advertising a bar in New Orleans. It was only the second or third time in our acquaintance I’d seen him smoke. A measure, then, of how stressful he was finding this conversation.
He exhaled a mouthful of aromatic blue smoke and fixed his sorrowful gaze somewhere in the middle distance. ‘Her position goes thus. She started with nothing. Less than nothing, one might say, given her disadvantages. And purely by her own hard work and determination, she made it. Along the way, she saw a lot of spoiled brats. People who had wasted the opportunities their lives had laid on a plate for them. She talked about Joshu in that regard. A boy who had both brains and choices and who opted for what she called “arsing about with a set of decks”. She was determined that her son would not go the same way. Scarlett worked for everything she had, and she valued it. She wanted him to have the same drive and the same satisfactions. Not to hand him the
