Prudence

and you sounded so down I decided to come over myself instead of answering.’

Ace gave a slightly twisted smile, and kissed her smooth brown cheek.

‘You were always one for surprises. I thought you were in Florida.’

‘I got bored out of my mind with sunbathing. Then James phoned from New York, and persuaded me to come over.’

‘Hullo Ace,’ said Jimmy, grinning. ‘I was guarding her from hijackers, honest I was.’

Then he gave me a great hug.

‘Pru, my darling, I hear you’ve been terribly poorly. You do look a bit pulled down. Never mind, Berenice is the health freak round here. She’ll soon pump you full of mega-vitamins and have you right as rain.’

‘Hi, Prudence,’ said Berenice, flashing her great white teeth at me. ‘James hasn’t stopped talking about you since we met.’

She turned back to Ace.

‘How was Venezuela, darling? I read your piece on Sunday. It was terrific. Boy, can you empathize with the under-privileged! And I’ve got finished copies of Brave Nutritional World,’ she went on, picking up a book with a large photograph of herself on the front. ‘They’re already reprinting. My British publishers really zapped out when they heard I was coming. The BBC and Border have already been on, and I’m going to Granada in Manchester tomorrow.’

Ace laughed. ‘You’ve certainly been busy.’

‘Rose-Mary has been so gracious letting me use the phone,’ said Berenice, smiling at Rose. ‘You’re quite right about your family, Ivan. I recognized Margaret and Rose-Mary, and of course Jack, immediately without being introduced. We’ve been verbalizing non-stop since we arrived.’

For a second I caught Jack’s eye and started to giggle, then hastily turned it into a cough.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ said Jack, who wanted an excuse to refill his own. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind, Berenice? She refuses to drink anything but tomato juice,’ he added to Ace.

Berenice smiled and said she didn’t need alcohol, she was ‘bombed out of her skull just meeting Ivan’s folks’. She didn’t seem quite so keen on the animals, giving Coleridge and Wordsworth vertical pats to keep them away whenever they approached her, and fussily brushing Antonia Fraser’s ginger fur off the sofa — and her shirt.

‘I don’t mean to sound pressing,’ said Jimmy Batten, as his glass was filled up, ‘but I for one ought to mop up some alcohol soon.’

‘I’ve booked a table at Dorothy’s at 9.30,’ said Jack.

Rose peered at her face in her powder compact, then calmly got a pair of pants out of her bag and cleaned the glass with them. Berenice determinedly didn’t look shocked.

‘You can count me out,’ said Rose, putting pants and mirror away and getting to her feet. ‘I’m going to wash my hair and go to bed early.’

‘I’m going to change,’ I said.

‘Are they staying the night?’ I said to Rose as we went upstairs.

‘Yes. Mrs Braddock’s made up a bed.’

‘Hadn’t they better have my room,’ I said, ‘It’s got a double bed.’

‘Oh no sweetie, it’s not worth shifting your things just for one night. Jimmy’s going early tomorrow morning. He can have Linn’s room, and Berenice’ll be sleeping with Ace.’

I clutched the banisters for support.

‘I thought she was Jimmy’s girlfriend,’ I whispered.

‘Oh no, darling. She and Ace have been living together in New York for the past six months.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said.

‘Of course I am,’ said Rose rather acidly. ‘She’s spent all afternoon, when she wasn’t on the telephone, telling us what a “warm beautiful human being” Ace is. I hope she’s tough enough to cope with him.’

Once in my room, despair overwhelmed me. To be so unprepared. To have no idea I had fallen so totally in love, only to find it was hopeless. And to think I’d been presumptuous enough to imagine that a man in Ace’s class could possibly fancy someone as young and unsophisticated as me. It was ludicrous.

I didn’t cry. It’s funny, you don’t when something really cataclysmic happens. I sat on the bed trembling and dry eyed, clutching the kitten who purred noisily, and grooved the side of its face against my chin.

Desperately I cast around for some kind of comfort, but there was none. No lifebelts, no driftwood, no passing ships.

‘Oh no,’ I whispered. ‘No, no, no.’

There was a knock on the door. My heart leapt. Perhaps it was Ace come to say it was all some horrible mistake. But it was Lucasta in tears.

‘I can’t find my foxy,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve looked for him everywhere.’

‘He’s in the hot cupboard,’ I said. ‘We put him there after he fell in the bath yesterday.’

‘Oh, so we did. Please don’t go away again. I’ve been left with Mrs Braddock all day. I wasn’t allowed in the drawing-room because Bare Knees is there. She said she just loved children; then she kept telling me to go away. Granny says she’s going to marry Ace. I hope she doesn’t. At twelve o’clock tonight, I can say tomorrow’s my birthday. You will stay for my party, won’t you?’

Would I? I was tempted to bolt straight back to London, but couldn’t bear to tear myself away quite yet.

‘Oh look,’ said Lucasta, running to the window.

Snow was beginning to fall. A glistening, crumbling drift had formed on the window ledge. Now a storm of big flakes swept giddily by.

‘Tomorrow we can make a snowman. Oh, I wish I had a sledge.’

I looked at myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back pale and hollow-eyed, with the exhausted gritted- teeth look of a candidate who’s just lost his seat. What the hell could I wear tonight? Ace had seen everything I’d brought. All my seductive clothes were in London, anyway, except for my green culotte dress, which was much too naked, and went too well with my little green face.

In the end I kept my jeans on, and put on a white slightly see-through shirt. Not that there’s much to see any more, I thought gloomily. Then I discovered I’d left my only decent eye-shadow behind in the pub at lunchtime. It seemed centuries ago, when I was happy.

Ace was waiting in the hall.

He’d changed into a suit and a pink shirt. Oh the beauty of those broad pinstriped shoulders, and long, long legs. I could smell his aftershave. I felt faint with longing.

‘Are you sure you’re up to going out?’ he said.

I could read the compassion in his eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ I snapped, absolutely terrified of betraying myself.

Dorothy’s restaurant was named after Dorothy Wordsworth. It had soft lighting, black beams, framed photostats of pages from Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary on the whitewashed walls, and forced daffodils on every table. It was pretty but a bit twee. Berenice, however, absolutely freaked out, standing in the doorway of the dining-room in her huge wolf coat, shrieking,

‘My God, I am not ready for this! I am simply not ready for this!’

‘Well if you’re not, I am,’ said Jimmy Batten briskly. ‘Come on, Pru. You go in first. I’ll sit next to you.’

Maggie sat on the other side, with Jack opposite me, and Berenice next to him, and then Ace. So at least I didn’t have to spend all dinner directly avoiding his eyes. Berenice made a great deal of palaver about removing her coat and entrusting it to the waiter, until everyone in the restaurant was staring at us.

‘Isn’t this place just darling?’ she went on, glancing round at the couples in the alcoves. ‘We must come here on our own one evening, Ivan darling.’

She was slightly less amused when she consulted the menu, which took up the whole table, and discovered there were no vegetarian dishes.

‘I forgot you were all on this carnivore trip over here,’ she said. ‘Can you have a word with the waiter, Ivan? They might have some egg plant lasagne or some lentils.’

‘They’re not into all that macrobiotic crap over here,’ said Ace. ‘This is England.’

‘Oh well,’ said Berenice, looking martyred, ‘I’ll just settle for veggies and sour cream this evening.’

‘I’d like an enormous steak, very rare, and chips,’ Jack said to the waiter. ‘And tell the wine waiter to step on it.’