‘Oh, I haven’t read a book in ages. Simply don’t have the time!’ Belinda looks through me. Then, searching for a crumb of praise to cast my way: ‘Very nice glasses.’ She holds up one of Aunt Amelia’s crystal tumblers, half full of her G and T.
‘Yes … from one of Guy’s aunts …’ And I find myself babbling about Amelia Carew and life in Delhi during the last days of the Raj.
I realize how little I’ve engaged Belinda when she suddenly squeals, ‘There you are!’ and rushes up to the two men, who’ve surfaced from the study.
The doorbell goes: Hallelujah! Charlotte and Jack bounce in, looking lively and in a good mood. My friend’s haircut, manicure, and Marni jacket reassure Belinda that here at least is someone who understands.
Guy pulled a face when I suggested Jack and Charlotte be included. He is fond of Charlotte, but Jack makes him wince. ‘Sorry, HarrietnGuy, I know it’s rude,’ Jack will mutter as he dives for his ever-throbbing BlackBerry, ‘but this is a big one …’ And then, after a few minutes, he’ll explode: ‘Ben, boy! You’ve got yourself a deal!’ But we have to invite the Collinses because, as I reminded Guy, we owe them. They invited us to La Traviata at Glyndebourne last summer, which would have been a truly wonderful treat, had it not been that we had to buy them programmes at £20 each and champagne at £10 per glass. Guy and I had to pretend we were on a mid-summer detox and made do with tap water.
Jack is one of our few friends wealthy enough to impress Oliver: his bonus last year was five times our combined incomes. Despite the personal trainer Charlotte has signed him up with, who takes Jack out on the common twice a week like a well-trained dog, Jack remains stubbornly portly. Although Charlotte tries valiantly to derail his train of boasts tonight, within minutes he manages to work into the conversation the new Porsche and the Tuscan villa they rented for a fortnight last month.
‘Back in your box, Jack!’ Charlotte wags her finger as her husband is about to launch into the price of villa rentals in the Tuscan-Umbrian region.
‘Yes, love.’ Jack nods and bites his tongue.
Guy, I can see, breathes easier. Oliver, who had been asking a lot of questions about real estate near Florence, looks disappointed.
‘Now, tell me about your company – sounds so high-powered …’ Charlotte turns her large, awe-struck eyes on Belinda. A successful career woman is calculated to fill my best friend simultaneously with fear and fascination. We both left university with only the vaguest idea of what we’d like to do professionally: something in the arts – which translated into both of us waiting on tables at the Chelsea Arts Club for that first summer. The minute Charlotte married Jack and it became clear she wouldn’t have to work, she luxuriated in her status of stay-at-home wife as if it were a bath full of Aveda essential oils. But every now and then, when confronted with a tough-talking, high-gloss success story in heels, Charlotte feels a pang of dissatisfaction. These women talk knowledgeably about profit margins and annual returns on investments, but they also have two storybook children, can wear a sleeveless dress without fear, their YSL Rouge Velours is without chips, and they have read the latest bestselling biography of Stalin’s chef. Scaaaaareeeee, as Charlotte would say. Happily for her, Jack constantly reminds his wife that, in his book, career women are ball-breakers, and mums who work child-wreckers. He likes her, he assures her, just the way she is. And he shows his appreciation with countless expensive gifts, weekends away, and ‘second honeymoons’. Charlotte basks in these attentions, while I resent them as reminders that the last time Guy organized a weekend away, we ended up camping with the children in a muddy Devon field; and the last gift he gave me was a clumsily mounted and rather smelly wolf ’s head from Moldova.
The conversation proceeds like a school run: everyone sets off confidently if carefully, certain of where they want to get to and by what route. But little by little we are held up by other people’s dithering, or inconvenienced by their selfishness, and all propriety is ditched as we grow irritable, fearful, and aggressive.
The first to grow irritable is me.
‘HarrietnGuy, this will come as a bit of a surprise to you two,’ Jack practically does a little jig of delight as he tells us, ‘but we’re moving to Chelsea.’
‘Chelsea?!’ I gasp.
‘Chelsea,’ Charlotte confirms. She doesn’t meet my eye – she knows this is darkest treachery. We’ve always lived in Clapham, we’ve always joked about being a short bicycle ride from one another’s kitchen … and now … The clock’s brassy gong calls me to the pork belly.
‘Nothing like a man who wears his wealth lightly,’ Guy mutters as he brings a tray of dirty glasses to the kitchen. ‘A four-bedroom house in Chelsea!’
‘Chelsea is so yesterday,’ I whisper, trying to cheer him up. But in fact I am just as put out: Charlotte and Jack moving north of the river means they’re really out of our league. And to spring it on us – on me – as a surprise!
Guy is doing mental arithmetic: ‘That’ll be … oh, at least £1.5 million. Like putting five children through ten years of boarding school.’
Back at the table, Jack is beaming. ‘Never thought we could afford Chelsea … Pimlico, yes, just about …’
He drones on, and I find myself almost nostalgic for the Carew conversational code: no talk of money, religion, or women.
‘This pork is delicious, Harry.’ Charlotte is trying to steer Jack’s enthusiastic talk away from the move. ‘Organic?’
I know Charlotte too well to fall into her trap. ‘Of course.’ It’s an outright lie, but I have no remorse. Charlotte’s newfound zeal for the ‘natural way’ goes to such ridiculous ends that I have to ignore her diktats.
‘We’ve become Freegans –’ Guy gives ‘Manic Organic’, as he calls Charlotte, a wicked look ‘– we only eat food that’s free. Berries, mushrooms, a quick scour of the dustbins at the back of Safeway and Tesco’s, and’ – he prods the pork with his fork ‘– road-kill.’
Charlotte shudders in distaste: she never knows how to react to Guy’s teasing.
But I’m on Guy’s side. Charlotte drives half an hour in her Chelsea tractor to get to the Nature and Nurture Centre that sells wheatgrass at £35 a bundle, and buys faded, dimpled, wrinkly little fruit and veg at three times the price of their non-organic equivalents. This, despite her regular botox injections, eyelash tinting, and enthusiasm for very unnatural slimming powders.
‘Isn’t your son at Millfield?’ I turn to Oliver Mallard – and realize too late that this was out of bounds.
‘Don’t get me started,’ Oliver sighs, and shrinks into himself like a concertina.
‘Francis is having a rather mixed time,’ chips in Belinda warningly.
But Oliver cannot be stopped. Francis, he explains, is a ‘late developer’. Late developer is the ambitious parent’s favourite euphemism. Poor marks, insufferable behaviour, detentions, suspensions and expulsions: everything can be blamed on their offspring’s late development rather than sheer ineptitude. In Francis’s case, development is so late in coming that the school has told the Mallards that there is no point in his applying to Cambridge, even for Land Economy.
‘Never gave us a clue until now. Always led us to believe he was on track for Oxbridge …’ Oliver shakes his head, inconsolable. I can see he is still grappling with the shock that none of his brilliance has rubbed off on his only son, and none of his money can shoehorn the boy into Papa’s footsteps.
‘Shocking, the way the school handled it!’ Belinda barks indignantly. ‘And now, what are we supposed to do? Look at an ex-poly somewhere?’
You would have thought Francis faced a career as a plumber’s mate.
Guy doesn’t make matters any better by referring cheerfully to his cousin