bath; she only managed to scrape a flannel over her face and under her armpits, pour on a great deal of scent and rub in cologne in an attempt to resuscitate her dirty hair.
At five minutes to eight the doorbell went. Sammy was early. Harriet rushed downstairs with only one eye made up, aware that she looked terrible. Cory met her on the landing.
‘Going out?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s my night off.’
She opened the front door to two earnest-looking women with wind-swept grey hair. One was clutching a notebook, the other a rather ancient camera.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said the woman with a notebook. ‘It’s a very difficult place to find at night.’
Chattie wandered down the stairs in her nightgown. Visitors always meant a possibility of staying up late.
‘And who are you, young lady?’ said the woman with the camera.
‘I’m Chattie. I had a pretty dress on today.’
‘And I’m Carol Chamberlain,’ said the woman with the notebook. ‘We’ve come all the way from London to interview your Daddy.’
‘Come into the drawing room and I’ll get you a whisky and tonic,’ said Chattie.
Harriet went green, fled upstairs and knocked on Cory’s door.
He didn’t answer. She knocked again.
‘Yes,’ he said, looking up, drumming his fingers with irritation.
‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, with infinite weariness. ‘What the hell have you done now? Have all Sevenoaks’ relations arrived?’
Harriet turned pale.
‘I-um-I’m afraid I forgot to put off
‘Was he absolutely insane with rage?’ said Sammy, who always enjoyed stories of other people’s disasters. It was a source of slight irritation to her that Harriet got on so well with Cory.
‘Absolutely insane,’ said Harriet miserably. ‘I may well have joined the great unemployed by tomorrow.’
They were tarting up in the Ladies of the Loose Box. Crowds of girls around them were back-combing like maniacs. One girl was rouging her navel.
Harriet was fiddling with her sweater.
‘Do you think it looks better outside my jeans?’ she said to Sammy.
‘No,’ said Sammy. ‘Doesn’t give you any shape. Let’s see what it looks like tucked in. No, that looks even worse. Leave it hanging out. You look absolutely fantastic,’ she added with all the complacency of someone looking infinitely better.
She was poured into black velvet trousers and a low-cut black sweater, her splendid white bosom spilled over the top like an ice-cream over a cone. She was also wearing black polish on her toes and fingernails, and a black rose in her newly dyed mahogany curls.
No-one’s going to want to talk to me, thought Harriet as they went into the arena. All around her people were circling and picking each other up. Some of the girls were ravishingly pretty. It could only have been a spirit of adventure, not a shortage of men, that led them to this place.
Sammy was already leering at a handsome blond German in a blue suit.
‘I’d just love a sweet Cinzano,’ she said fluttering long green eyelashes at him.
The German fought his way to the bar to get her one. The next moment a pallid youth had sidled up to her.
‘I work in films,’ he said, which he patently didn’t.
‘Really,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m a model actually.’
Harriet had completely forgotten the hassle of hunting for men. She kept trying to meet men’s eyes, but hers kept slithering away. Don’t leave me, she pleaded silently to Sammy. But Sammy was on the hunt like Sevenoaks after a bitch, and nothing could deter her from her quarry.
‘It’s always been my ambition to go to Bayreuth,’ she was saying to the handsome German.
The worst part of the evening for Harriet was that she wasn’t a free agent. She couldn’t split because Sammy was driving and she hadn’t brought enough money for a taxi.
Sammy having downed eight sweet Cinzanos was well away with the German, and seemed to be having an equally devastating effect on his friend, who had spectacles, a nudging grin and a pot belly.
‘Come over here, Harriet,’ said Sammy. ‘You must meet Claus.’
She pushed the fat, nudging grinning German forward.
‘Harriet’s frightfully clever and amusing,’ she added.
Harriet became completely paralysed and could think of nothing to say except that the weather had been very cold lately.
‘Ah but the freezing North brings forth the most lovely ladies,’ said the fat little German with heavy gallantry. He was in Yorkshire, he told Harriet, for a textile conference and had lost 10 kilos since Christmas. Harriet didn’t know if that were good or bad.
‘Isn’t he a scream?’ said Sammy.
She pulled Harriet aside.
‘They want to take us to The Black Tulip,’ she said. ‘It’s a fantastic place; you have dinner and dance, and there’s a terrific group playing.’
‘It’s going to make us frightfully late, isn’t it?’ said Harriet dubiously.
‘Oh come on,’ said Sammy, drink beginning to make her punchy. ‘No-one’s ever taken me to a place like that before. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’
Oh God, thought Harriet, I mustn’t be a spoilsport.
The Black Tulip was even worse than the Loose Box. Harriet found her smile getting stiffer and stiffer as she toyed with an avocado pear.
‘First I cut out all carbohydrates,’ said the little fat German.
Opposite them Sammy and the handsome German couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They were both getting tighter and tighter. Harriet wondered who the hell was going to drive her home.
‘Then I gave up bread and potatoes,’ said the fat German.
He must have been huge before he lost all that weight, thought Harriet, as she rode round the dance floor on his stomach. She suddenly longed to be home with Cory and William and the children. What would happen if William woke up? Mrs Bottomley slept like the dead. Cory’d go spare if he had to get up and feed him. She wondered how long he’d taken to get rid of
‘A new penny for your thoughts, Samantha,’ said the handsome German.
‘They’re worth a bloody sight more than that,’ said Sammy.
They all laughed immoderately.
‘I also cut out all puddings and cakes,’ said the fat German.
‘I get no kick from champagne,’ sang the lead singer. ‘Pure alcohol gives me no thrill at all.’
You can say that again, thought Harriet.
Sammy was leaning forward, the fat little German gazing hungrily at her bosom.
‘Shall we go for a drive on the moor?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Harriet, violently. ‘You all can,’ she added. ‘But could you drop me off first?’
‘We’re all going back to Heinrich’s hotel for a little drink,’ said Sammy, getting rather unsteadily to her feet.
‘I must get back in case William wakes,’ said Harriet desperately.
After some argument, Sammy relented. ‘We’ll get you a cab,’ she said. ‘Claus can pay. The only one going at this hour is driven by the local undertaker.’
Harriet felt as cheerful as a corpse, as she bowled home under a starless sky. She couldn’t stop crying; she had no sex appeal any more, the world was coming to an end, she’d never find a father for William.
As she put the key at the door, Sevenoaks, who usually slept through everything, let out a series of deep baritone barks, then, realizing it was her, started to sing with delight at the top of his voice, searching round for
