Amy wrung her facecloth out in cold water and pressed it against her eyes. Just five minutes up here in her room, just five minutes to collect herself, and then she would go downstairs again.
The new Mr and Mrs Jaspert had driven away at last, only a few minutes ago, but the party had barely faltered. Adeline’s parties were famous, and the departure of the principals was going to make no difference to this one. Or two, rather, Amy decided. In the huge, long room on the first floor the grandees were dancing stiffly under the chandeliers. There was a buffet supper in the dining room, where the pink claws and ridged shell backs of lobsters stood ferocious guard around the silver bowls filled with black beads of caviar. In the library the tables were set out for cards. But in Adeline’s white drawing room and further up the house, there were noisier, smarter people. Amy had glimpsed a woman in a man’s evening suit, with her hair cropped and brushed flat to her head, and another with her arms loaded from wrist to shoulder with ebony and ivory carved bangles. This party, where the sharp babble of conversation rose to the same crescendos as the jazz, was the one Amy wanted to join. She had been slipping into it, listening to the talk and searching for someone she knew well enough to attach herself to, when Bethan came to whisper to her that Isabel and Peter were leaving. They had gone down to the hall together.
Isabel was standing in a blaze of light while Peter shook the hand of everyone in sight. Her going-away suit was the colour of honey, the ankle-length skirt and slim jacket making her look taller. A cloud of fur framed her face, and a single jaunty feather stuck straight up from the top of her little tilted hat.
‘She looks lovelier than I’ve ever seen her,’ Bethan murmured.
The sisters kissed each other.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Isabel promised. Amy gripped her arms. Perhaps she was imagining it, but she thought that under the soft stuff of her suit Isabel was trembling.
Lord and Lady Lovell, perfectly correct, were saying goodbye now. Peter Jaspert shook their hands firmly, and kissed Adeline on both cheeks. Then the front doors were open and a gust of cold air swept around them. Peter put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and hurried her out to the car waiting at the foot of the steps. There was a flurry of waving and shouting and then the car roared away. They were gone, and not even Isabel had any idea where Peter was taking her. Glass, his normally impassive face creased by the faintest of smiles, was shutting the doors again. Amy felt a moment of pure, panicky loneliness. She turned round to see that her mother was already on her way up the great curving staircase. Her black dress left her back completely bare, with an impertinent flat bow at the bottom of the deep V. Gerald Lovell, without a backward glance, was on his way to join the card-players in the library. From now on, the party was Adeline’s business.
Amy had run up through the crowded house to her bedroom. The day had gone so quickly, she needed a moment to straighten it out in her head, and to fight back the threatening tears. Even in the silence of her room, she could only see a series of images flashing in front of her eyes. Isabel drifting down the aisle on Gerald’s arm, a column of pure white silk and lace, with points of blue light flashing from the diamonds in the Lovell tiara. Peter at the altar, turning back the lace veil to touch his lips to Isabel’s. Eight tiny bridesmaids and pages in white satin, all blinking at the press photographers clicking at them. Gerald and Adeline, standing stiffly at the head of the stairs to receive the guests, and Richard’s studiedly impassive face winking at her over his starched collar. Isabel’s small hands closed over Peter’s as they pressed the silver knife into the crenellated cake. And Bethan, sobbing quietly in the corner of Isabel’s empty room after the last leather trunk had been carried away. Bethan had cried, on the day when her own sister was being married far away without her.
Amy screwed the facecloth up into a ball and flung it away from her. She faced the mirror and addressed herself squarely.
‘Pull yourself together. Isabel’s married. Of course Isabel was going to marry. Would you have wanted to stop her? What you should do, Amy Lovell, is go downstairs and drink some champagne. Look for someone to dance with. And tomorrow, find something positive to do instead of feeling so sorry for yourself. Is that quite understood?’
The face that looked back at her was still watery-eyed and pink around the nose, but it was less obviously woebegone. Amy shook her head briskly, and her gleaming hair swung in exotic, unfashionable waves around her face. She picked a brush up from the dressing table and whisked some colour on to her cheeks. ‘Much, much better. Someone might actually ask you to dance now.’ As she stood up, Amy thought she caught the faintest drift of Isabel’s flowery perfume. She took up her own crystal bottle and squirted it determinedly around her. Then she shook out the folds of her dress, thinking approvingly that the pale lavender colour actually suited her, and marched to the door.
The white drawing room was packed to the walls.
Amy edged her way slowly into it, listening to the snippets of talk that floated out to her.
‘Ninety per cent pure shit, darling, but ten per cent genius.’
‘A tonal symphony. Poetic asymmetry.’
‘And so we went for a Friday-to-Monday, but there was not a soul there …’
‘Hello.’ Someone pushed out of the crowd and stood squarely in front of her. Amy looked up to see Tony Hardy. He still appeared to have inherited his evening clothes from a misshapen relative.
‘Don’t you remember me?’
‘Tony? Of course I do. Isabel always said I should call you Mr Hardy, not Tony.’
Tony smiled at her. ‘I remember. Should I call you Miss Lovell, now?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘So, Amy, are you looking for someone in particular?’
‘Just someone to talk to. I know quite a lot of these people by sight, and a few of them well enough to say how d’you do, but no one at all to attach myself to and ask why I feel like an ostrich in my own home at my own sister’s wedding. Except for you, that is. Oh, I could go downstairs and dance with Johnny Guild or somebody, and then go out on the balcony and do some damp embracing. But if I stay up here I thought I might be able to step across to where debutantes don’t tread. Like Richard did, last night.’
Amy was conscious that she wasn’t sounding quite rational. It must be the champagne. Another of the day’s images drifted into her head, of the Duchess of York in the church, floating blue feathers framing her face.
Tony was looking at her levelly. ‘You don’t look anything like an ostrich. You look … extremely beautiful. I always thought you would be more beautiful than Isabel, once you grew into yourself.’
Amy stared back at him. He had very light hazel eyes, and eyebrows that went up in peaks. She felt a faint flush of colour rising in her face.
‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down,’ he said. ‘Debutantes never tread anywhere near me, will that do? And I think I can promise that I won’t embrace you, damply or otherwise.’
As she followed him, Amy wondered why that seemed to amuse him.
They found a sofa in an alcove. A tall fern in a white marble urn dipped in front of them like a screen. Tony put a champagne glass into her hand.
‘Now. What’s the matter?’ he asked her.
Amy considered. It was partly losing Isabel, of course, but only partly. There was something bigger than that, less tangible and so more frightening. Amy had the growing sense that she was adrift, directionless and isolated. She had watched Isabel dancing through her successful Seasons, aware of the options open to her and coolly accepting them. Isabel had chosen, and today was the celebration of her continuing to walk on down the broad, comfortable path laid down for her from the day of her birth. Amy had never felt at ease in the way that Isabel seemed to. When she looked at her own version of the path it was flat and uninviting, yet the country on either side of it seemed hostile, or impenetrable, or obscured. She was both bored