and elongating them just as she had done for the past thirty years.
‘You mean that photographer chap?’ she said vaguely, having been only half listening to her elder daughter’s grumbling. ‘I thought he was supposed to be rather gorgeous.’
‘That’s beside the point.’ Janey, immune to Guy Cassidy’s physical attractions, threw her a moody glance. ‘And that stupid bottle of wine was just about the last straw. It w-as Maxine’s fault, of course, but he automatically assumed I’d opened it.’
Thea completed her make-up with a dash of crimson lipstick and treated herself to an extra squirt of Mitsouko for luck. Chucking the bottle into her bag, she said briskly, ‘Well, he isn’t your problem. And I’m sure Maxine can deal with him. She’s always been good with difficult men.’
Luckily, Janey hadn’t expected motherly support and reassurances; they simply weren’t Thea Vaughan’s style. Now, listening to her airy dismissal of the problem which as far as her mother was concerned wasn’t even a problem, she managed a rueful smile.
‘Speaking of difficult men, who are you seeing tonight?’ Is all this really in aid of Philip?’
‘Thea froze with her bag halfway to her shoulder. Her eyebrows lifted in resignation. ‘Oh, sod it.’
Philip Slattery wasn’t difficult at all. One of Thea’s long-standing and most devoted admirers, he was as gentle as a puppy. Janey liked him enormously, whereas her mother took him almost entirely for granted, seeing him when it suited her and ditching him unmercifully whenever somebody more interesting came along. As, presumably, somebody now had.
‘You mean, Oh sod it, you were supposed to be seeing Philip but you’d forgotten all about him,’ she said in admonishing tones. Then, because Thea was showing no sign of reaching for the phone, she added, ‘Mum, you’ll have to let him know. You can’t just stand him up.’
Thea pulled a face. ‘He’s going to be awfully cross with me. He’s holding a dinner party at his house. Now I suppose he’ll accuse me of lousing up the numbers.’
‘Mum!’ Janey protested, dismayed by this act of thoughtlessness. ‘How could you possibly forget a dinner party? Why don’t you just cancel your other date?’
‘Out of the question,’ declared Thea, picking up the phone and frowning as she tried to recall Philip’s number. Her own, it went without saying, was practically engraved on his heart. ‘I sold the ballerina this afternoon.’
‘So?’
‘He invited me to have dinner with him, on the strength of it. Darling, he’s seriously wealthy, not to mention attractive! This could be so important; I’d have to be a complete idiot to turn him down:
Poor, faithful Philip and cruel, mercenary Thea. Janey listened in silence to her mother’s side of the phone call as she blithely excused herself from the dinner party which he had undoubtedly spent the past fortnight planning to the nth degree.
Who is he, then?’ she said when Thea had replaced the receiver. .
Her mother, whose memory was notorious fickle, checked her reflection in the mirror and smoothed an eyebrow into place. ‘Oliver. Kennedy, I think.’ With a vague gesture, she dismissed the problem in favour of more important details. ‘He wears extremely expensive shoes, darling.
And drives a Rolls Royce.’
‘You mean he’s a chauffeur.’
Thea gave her daughter a pitying look. Janey, don’t be such a miserable spoilsport. He’s rich, he’s interested, and I like him. I mean this is the kind of man I could even be persuaded to marry.’
It was the kind of lifestyle she could easily get used to, the kind she had always felt she deserved. Hopeless with money herself, however, Thea had got off to a poor start When, at the age of nineteen, she had met and fallen even more hopelessly in love with Patrick Vaughan. Big, blond and a dyed-in-the wool Bohemian, he was the mercurial star of his year at art college, adored by more women than even he knew what to do with and a dedicated pleasure- seeker.
Within six weeks of meeting him, Thea had moved into his incredibly untidy attic apartment in Chelsea, embracing with enthusiasm the chaotic lifestyle of her lover and encouraging him in his work.
But Patrick only embraced her in return when no other more interesting women were around. Incurably promiscuous, his wanderings caused Thea such grief that, looking back over those years, she wondered how she’d ever managed to stand it. At the time, however, she had loved him so desperately that leaving had been out of the question. When Patrick, laughing, had told her that fidelity was bourgeois, she’d believed him. When he’d told her that none of the others meant anything anyway, she’d believed him. And when — quite seriously — he’d told her that he was going to be the greatest British artist of the twentieth century she’d believed that too.
She was lucky to have him, and nobody had ever said that living with a genius would be easy.
It wasn’t. The never-ending supply of eager women continued to troop through their lives and turning a tolerant blind eye became increasingly difficult. Furthermore, Patrick Vaughan only painted when he felt like it, which wasn’t often enough to appease either the buyers or the bookmakers.
Gambling, always a passion with him, fulfilled yet another craving for excitement. And although it was fun when he won, the losses far outweighed the gains. As his addiction spiralled, Thea began to realize that maybe love wasn’t enough after all. The all-consuming intensity with which Patrick gambled might divert his attention from the numerous affairs but it scared her.
Patrick, still laughing, told her that worrying about money was even more bourgeois than fidelity but this time she had her doubts. Neither the promised luxurious lifestyle nor his glittering career were showing any signs of materializing and the novelty of being poor and perpetually cheated on was beginning to wear off.
Unable to find a market for her own work she had reluctantly taken a job in a Putney craft shop, but Patrick was spending everything she earned. Bailiffs were knocking on the door. She deserved more than this. It was, she decided, time to leave.
Fate, however, had other ideas. Discovering that she was pregnant threw Thea into a flat spin. She was only twenty-two, hopelessly unmaternal and deeply aware of her own inability to cope alone. All of a sudden Patrick and-all-his-faults was better than no Patrick at all.
To everyone’s astonishment Patrick himself was delighted by the news of the impending arrival. Never having given much thought to the matter before, he was bowled over by the prospect of becoming a father and didn’t — as all his friends had secretly imagined — do one of his famous runners. He had created a son who would inherit his
