‘Hey, Marie,’ she smiled as she passed the young assistant housekeeper on the stairs. ‘How’s Jack getting on?’
Marie straightened up from sweeping the treads to allow her to pass. ‘So well, Miss Tara. He is top in his class for fractions.’
‘Oh that’s amazing, I’m so pleased! Tell him congratulations from me,’ she beamed as she carried on up the stairs.
Her parents’ rooms were roughly divided into his and hers sides with a drawing room connecting them in the middle. Her father had the east side, on account of being an early riser; her mother the west, for the flattering evening light when her make-up was being applied. Tara knocked on the door at her mother’s side, already able to hear her voice over the sound of the hairdryer, and peeked her head around. ‘Hey, Mumma.’
‘Tara, darling!’ Her mother, arms outstretched, remained seated in her hairdresser’s chair as Jakob, her stylist, did some backcombing with a fine comb. ‘Come here, let me see you.’
Tara walked in, aware that her midnight needlecord flares and pretty new H&M blouse looked woefully undercooked beside her mother’s Valentino. ‘You need a haircut, darling. Doesn’t she need a haircut, Jakob?’
Jakob – who was to her mother what Gerard was to her father – nodded. ‘I could take three inches off and it would freshen you up, like that.’ He snapped his fingers together.
Idly Tara threaded her long dark hair through her fingers. She supposed it had grown too long. She’d not bothered with her ‘maintenance’ as her mother called it, for months. She had even taken to shaving her legs in the shower each morning, something that would no doubt put her mother in a full swoon.
‘Let me see you. I feel I haven’t seen you in so long. Have you lost weight?’
Tara felt her nerves flutter under her mother’s close scrutiny. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’
‘Hear that, Jakob? She doesn’t think so.’ Her mother tutted. ‘Youth’s fast metabolism is wasted on the young.’
Tara went and perched on her mother’s dressing table. It was pale pink onyx, underlit, and decorated with a few black-and-white photos in silver frames; a bespoke bottle of perfume, made by a Nose in Florence and enclosed in a commissioned crystal bottle, sat to one side.
Tara picked up the bottle and began fiddling with it. Now that she was here, she felt an overwhelming urge to reveal her happy secrets, as though they were birds inside her that she needed to set free. Her mother had always struggled to understand her, it was true; Tara’s nature was far more akin to her father’s, but that didn’t mean she didn’t value or seek her mother’s opinion, and she knew news of her engagement would surely delight her mother. It would be everything she’d been waiting for, a return to the path her mother had mapped out for her . . . Was that why she felt so nervous about it, too? Was it confirmation that Holly had been right – that she was turning her back on her dreams?
She felt another stab of nerves, her stomach pitching and swooping in anticipation of the ride tonight was going to bring. ‘How was Milan?’ she asked instead, knowing she had to allow Alex to take the lead on this. He had specifically asked for it.
‘Milan was Milan,’ her mother sighed happily. ‘I can’t believe we’d left it so long. Songs at La Scala, dinner with the Sevezzas. It was so good to see them. Did I mention their daughter’s getting married?’
‘A few times, yes.’
‘Lovely girl. Lives in New York now. She’s on the Met Ball Committee this year, does a lot for the homeless. Her fiancé’s a prince, although that doesn’t count for much of course, they’re ten a penny over there; but he’s high up at Cazenove.’
‘Always helpful.’
Her mother must have caught her wry tone because she gave her a look. ‘Of course, we’re tremendously pleased to be meeting your new beau too, dear.’
‘Mumma, no one in the world has a beau anymore. And Alex is looking forward to meeting you too. But as I’ve just said to Miles, can we please keep the . . .’ She circled her hands in the air vaguely. ‘To a minimum.’
‘What’s . . .?’ her mother asked, also circling her hands in the air and almost taking Jakob’s eye out with her cushion-cut pink diamond ring.
‘You know perfectly well. He’s a student like me. He doesn’t have any money. It’s going to be daunting enough for him coming here to meet you, without . . .’ She circled her hands again. ‘Too.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said disappointedly, and Tara suspected she was thinking that Senora Sevezza hadn’t had to tone things down for her daughter’s prince. ‘So tell me about him. What are his interests?’
Tara felt her smile grow. Just to get to talk about him made her feel happy. ‘Well, his big love is butterflies.’
There was a long silence. Even Jakob’s eyebrows shot up, his hands momentarily stilled above her mother’s head.
‘Butterflies?’
‘Yes.’ She rolled her eyes, knowing exactly what her mother was thinking. ‘Don’t worry, he’s not interested in them because they’re pretty. They are excellent indicators of the health of any given ecosystem and a predictor of the biodiversity that is likely to be found there. The future of this planet rests on flourishing biodiversity, Mumma. It’s actually cutting-edge stuff.’
‘Butterflies?’ her mother repeated.
Tara sighed. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave him to explain it to you. He makes it sound much more interesting than I can.’
‘I don’t see how.’ Her mother’s eyes narrowed interestedly. ‘Still, you must really like him to be introducing him to us.’ For all her social flightiness, she could still drill down to the nub of a matter more succinctly than any other person Tara knew. Years of tolerating sycophants had taught her how to read people and know whom to trust; if she was her father’s daughter, Miles was his mother’s son.
‘I do.’ Tara felt the secret
