and I was twenty-three, and both of us knew that this was a moment of great importance in our respective lives – more important than taking off our clothes in front of each other for the first time. This meeting, in effect, would cause us to be naked and exposed in quite another manner.
‘You didn’t tell me you lived like this… A stately home?’ Will wound down the window and gestured at the drive, which was flanked by clumps of snowdrops and crocuses and disappeared round a bend. I remember noting that the drive was at its best, before the pushy, blowsy azaleas took over and drowned it in pinks and reds.
Already I was sensitive to how seriously Will considered his image, his positioning. ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t. The original house must have been, but it was knocked down in the fifties and a new one built. The drive is the only bit left of the grounds. My father bought it at a knock-down price when he set up the business. Nobody wanted it. The house is quite small, in fact, and not at all distinguished.’
Will relaxed. At one of our meetings – snatched between his commitments in chambers and at court, the photo-calls, sponsored walks and chicken lunches, and my clients, negotiations with suppliers, sessions choosing wines for seasonal tastings – Will had explained he was committed to working for a society where people made their way by merit and not by privilege.
‘And what do you think you are?’ I teased. ‘Barristers earn telephone numbers.’
I touched the long, sensitive-looking fingers that rested on the wheel. Everything was miraculous about Will, including his fingers. ‘You needn’t worry,’ I heard myself gabble and fumble with the words, ‘we’re not rich, not at all. We’re practically poor.’
Will smiled at me lovingly. ‘Don’t be silly.’
I blushed. ‘Silly,’ I agreed.
Was this me? The girl who helped her father so confidently to run his business, who lived a life so confidently in London? It was and it wasn’t. Falling in love with such suddenness and abandon had cut the ground from beneath my feet. It puzzled and – almost – frightened me, this violent, sweet, sharp, desperate emotion.
Will’s knuckles whitened. ‘I’m a bit nervous,’ he confessed.
Now I was in charge. ‘Just don’t pretend to know about wine, that’s all.’
He grinned. ‘Political suicide.’
Father was waiting for us in the sitting room with Caro, his mistress of ten years. After she had come into his life, which had been the cue for a thunderous-browed, red-eyed Benedetta to pack her bags and return to Fiertino, the interior of the house took a turn for the better. Caro had given it a more settled touch: a cushion, the repositioning of a chair, a pot of white hyacinths in spring, a lamp that cast a subtler light. They were only minor changes, but so effective.
‘I hope you don’t mind?’ Caro had asked, when she first arrived. I was thirteen, almost feral in my dislike – my terror at how things could change overnight. And I was in mourning for Benedetta. Caro had laughed and flipped back her hair, which had been long and naturally blonde then. She was so sure of her position as the woman likely to marry my father that she was careless of my reply.
Five years or so later, when we had become friends and Caro was no nearer her goal, she turned to me and said bitterly, ‘Alfredo never notices what I do.’
I saw myself reflected in her large, pleading eyes and I was angry with my father, sick at the thought that I had made her unhappy in the past. ‘You know my feelings on the subject,’ he had said, with his guarded look when I tackled him.
‘This is Will.’ I led him up to my father, who was standing in front of the fire.
‘Ah,’ he said, in his driest fashion, and my father could be very dry – my heart sank, ‘the politician.’
In reply, Will could have said – might well have said, ‘Ah,’ the self-made man,’ which would have described my father perfectly, but his polite rejoinder managed to include Caro, who was sitting on the sofa. It was, I had noticed, a trick he had:
At dinner, we drank a sauvignon blanc from Lawson’s Dry Hill in New Zealand. Will barely touched his, prompting a slight frown to appear on my father’s face. We had coffee in the sitting room. Caro returned to her seat on the sofa and I sat beside her. My father took up his stance by the fire. ‘The papers are not very flattering about your party. They consider you a wily lot.’
Will brightened. ‘That makes for the best battle,’ he said, at home on this territory. ‘In the end the voters will see that we have the right policies.’
‘Really,’ said my father. He looked up at me. ‘I never knew you were interested in politics, Francesca.’
‘I am now,’ I said.
The fire flickered. I heard Caro’s cup rattle back into the saucer. I was so proud of Will that I almost wept. Instead I took refuge in the practical: I reached for the coffee-pot and refilled the cups. As I bent over my task, I asked myself why I had been singled out by the gods to be blessed in this way. Why had I, Fanny Battista, been lucky enough to find my other half?
Will came over to stand by me and held out his hand. ‘Fanny?’
I took it and sprang to my feet. Will turned to my father. ‘We would like to tell you something. Fanny and I have decided to get married.’
My father rocked back on his feet, as if he had been dealt a blow. He looked at me and I knew that I had hurt him by not letting him into my confidence.
‘We decided last night,’ I explained.
‘It’s too quick,’ said my father. ‘You barely know each other.’
Will slid his arm around me. ‘Swift, but sure.’
Will sneaked into my bed in the small hours and I spent a wakeful night. It was still early when I decided to get up. I slid out of bed, leaving Will folded on to one side, one hand flung out. Foolishly, lovingly, I bent over and checked his breathing.
On the way down to the kitchen, I had to pass Caro’s bedroom, which was opposite my father’s. The door was open, the light on, and I put my head in to ask if she wanted some tea.
Clothes were littered over the bed and Caro was packing. We stared at each other. I, rumpled and sated, she beautifully dressed but desolate.
‘Why are you packing?’ I closed the door behind me.
Caro picked up a green jumper and folded it. ‘Fanny, the one good thing in this mess has been our friendship. That has been…’ She blinked back tears. ‘It helped. Otherwise…’ she shrugged helplessly ‘…it has been a waste of my time.’
I removed a pile of shirts from the bed and sat down. ‘Why now?’
She fiddled with the jumper. ‘Put it this way. You’re getting married and I’m not. I know it’s stupid to worry about a piece of paper, but I do. A lot of people do. That’s the trouble with being pretty ordinary.’
I snatched the jumper away from her and pleated it between my fingers. The material was soft and expensive. ‘Caro, you’ve been together for such a long time.’
She raised an anguished gaze to me. ‘All good things come to an end.’
‘Would you like me to talk to him?’
She shook her head. ‘No point.’
‘But you’ve been happy. I know you have.’
‘Let’s see…’ she ticked off the points. ‘Your father is kind enough to allocate me a very nice bedroom and a place at the table. I can order groceries and ask Jane to hoover the carpets. But that is it, Fanny.’ She repossessed the jumper. ‘You won’t understand yet, but it is not enough to look decorative when your father entertains. I want a real, live, working partnership. So…’ She got up and packed the green jumper. ‘I am drawing a line under the last ten years. I am relying on you to tell him.’
‘But
At that, she sparked with anger. ‘No, you can give him chapter and verse.’ She wrenched one of her suitcases shut. ‘What’s more, I am giving you your most useful wedding present.’
I had no idea what she meant.
With a foot, she nudged the suitcase towards the door. ‘I’m showing you how to leave, Fanny. It’s a good lesson.’
On honeymoon in the Loire valley only six months after our first meeting, Will laid his head on my breast and said, ‘Your heartbeat is louder than a drum.’
‘And how many heartbeats have you listened to this closely?’
