The Last Letter from Your Lover
kept a beautiful home, knew all the best people. The perfect wife for a man of his standing.
And there were compensations. She had been allowed that.
‘I do absolutely love having our own place. Didn’t you feel like that when you and Mr Stirling first married?’
‘I can’t remember so far back.’ She glanced at Laurence, talking to Sebastian, one hand raised to his mouth as he puffed on the ever-present cigar. Fans whirred lazily overhead, and the women stood in jewelled clusters beneath them, occasionally patting their necks with fine lawn handkerchiefs.
Pauline Thorne pulled out a small wallet that contained photographs of their new house. ‘We’ve gone for modern furniture. Sebastian said I could do whatever I wanted.’
Jennifer thought of her own house, its heavy mahogany, the portentous décor. She admired the clean white chairs in the snapshots, so smooth they might have been eggshells, the brightly coloured rugs, the modern art on the walls. Laurence believed his house should be a reflection of himself. He saw it as grand, filled with a sense of history. Looking at these photographs, Jennifer realised she saw it as pompous, unmoving. Stifling. She reminded herself not to be unkind. Many people would love to live in a house like hers.
‘It’s going to feature in Your House next month. Seb’s mother absolutely hates it. She says every time she sets foot in our living room she thinks she’s going to be abducted by aliens.’ The girl laughed, and Jennifer smiled. ‘When I said I might convert one of the bedrooms to a nursery, she said that, judging by the rest of the décor, I’d probably drop a baby out of a plastic egg.’
‘Are you hoping for children?’
‘Not yet. Not for ages . . .’ She laid a hand on Jennifer’s arm. ‘I hope you don’t mind me telling you, but we’re only just off our honeymoon. My mother gave me The Talk before I left. You know – how I must submit to Seb, how it might be “a bit unpleasant”.’
Jennifer blinked.
‘She really thought I’d be traumatised. But it isn’t like that at all, is it?’
Jennifer took a sip of her drink.
‘Oh, am I being terribly indiscreet?’
‘Not at all,’ she said politely. She suspected her face might have taken on a terrifying blankness. ‘Would you like another drink, Pauline?’ she said, when she could speak again. ‘I do believe my glass is empty.’
She sat in the Ladies and opened her handbag. She unscrewed the little brown bottle and she took another Valium. Just one, and perhaps one drink more. She sat on the lavatory seat, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal, and opened her compact to powder a nose that needed no powder.
Pauline had seemed almost hurt when she’d walked off, as if her confidences had been rebuffed. Pauline was girlish, excited, delighted to have been allowed into this new adult world.
Had she ever felt like that about Laurence? she wondered dully. Sometimes she passed their wedding picture in the hallway and it was like looking at strangers. Most of the time she tried to ignore it. If she was in the wrong frame of mind, as Laurence said she often was, she wanted to shout at that trusting, wide-eyed girl, tell her not to marry at all. Plenty of women didn’t now. They had careers and money of their own, and didn’t feel obliged to watch everything they said or did in case it offended the one man whose opinion apparently mattered.
She tried not to imagine Pauline Thorne in ten years’ time when Sebastian’s words of adoration would have been long forgotten, when the demands of work, children, worries about money or the sheer tedium of day-to-day routine would have caused her glow to fade. She mustn’t be sour. Let the girl have her day. Her story might turn out differently.
She took a deep breath and reapplied her lipstick.
When she returned to the party, Laurence had moved to a new group. She stood in the doorway, watching him stoop to greet a young woman she didn’t recognise. He was listening attentively to what she said, nodding. She spoke again and all the men laughed. Laurence put his mouth to her ear and murmured something, and the woman nodded, smiling. She would think him utterly charming, Jennifer thought.
It was a quarter to ten. She would have liked to leave but knew better than to press her husband. They would go when he was ready.
The waiter was on his way over to her. He proffered a silver tray, loaded with glasses of champagne. ‘Madam?’
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