Last of the Summer Moët Read online

  But about what had happened and when, Harry would not be drawn. ‘I couldn’t afford to keep up my studies so I went into journalism,’ was all he would add over his Spitfire beer at the bar in the magnificent carved lobby, as the red buses trundled past on Kensington Gore. ‘But I still go to concerts when I can, wherever I am in the world.’

  ‘That’s so sad!’ Laura had exclaimed, the ice in her Pimm’s freezing into her hand like the cruelty of Fate itself.

  Harry had shrugged broad shoulders in the inevitable leather jacket despite the best seats in the house. Everyone else in their row had worn black tie. ‘Not really. I’d never have made it. Didn’t practise enough. I took all my grades but I can’t play a thing now.’

  Watching him over her brimming, fruit-filled tumbler, Laura wondered whether to believe him. There had, she felt, been a hunger to the way he had watched, and listened, to the soloist. It had been a contemporary piece, something plinky-plonky that she had not recognised. But it held Harry spellbound. She had felt him hold his breath when the fingers paused before playing one last plangent chord. Then, as the white arm on the stage floated up in the air, indicating the first half of the performance was over, Laura had sensed beside her a great releasing of tension. He had lived every note. Did he have a piano in his flat, wherever it was? She vowed, one day, to find out. In the meantime, it was just another piece of the jigsaw that was Harry, a jigsaw that had, then at least, seemed to be getting bigger, more intricate and more interesting.

  The second half of the concert had featured music by Ravel whom, Harry whispered, was his favourite. ‘I love a bit of French romanticism.’ She had stared at him in surprise, but his attention had been on the conductor, an iconic, silver-haired figure in a black polo neck, not waving his arms about as expected but seemingly controlling everything with his eyes, and a twitch of his fingers. French romanticism! Did that mean her? The wonderful possibility that it was added to the excitement of the concert’s finale, with the wild cheering and the foot-stamping and the conductor, evidently a Proms favourite, going off and coming back on again only to take a seat in the front row with the crowd, much to their delight.

  Harry leant over to her. ‘I love the black bra under your white shirt. Like notes on a sheet of music,’ he whispered, under cover of the cheering audience. On the crammed bus back they had snuggled together, and back at her flat he had made love to her more passionately than ever before. The memory made her tingle even now. And there had been other musical outings, always last-minute and spontaneous; he had taken her to the opera too, but... Oh, what was the point of thinking about all this?

  Laura took a deep breath and looked up. The sky above was huge and blue, full of billowing clouds that didn’t seem to move at all. They were fantastically shaped; here was a whale, there a rabbit. Maybe one was a Jeff Koons dog. She sighed. What on earth was she doing here, on her own, plotting to break into a stupidly exclusive pub quiz? How was that ever going to work, let alone save her career?

  She felt suddenly foolish, then cross, then melancholy. If only Harry was here to walk up and down this heavenly beach with her, hand in hand. To skim stones, to jump back from waves, to do all the ordinary stuff they never did because he was never around. Feeling practically suicidal now, Laura looked at the happy couples and jolly families bounding about the beach. It was all so bloody Boden catalogue. Fathers in board shorts stood at the water’s edge as children attached by the ankle to surfboards plunged happily up and down. Watching on the beach, black Labradors at hand, were smiling mums whose rolled-up grey cotton trousers exposed slim brown calves, their shiny, tumbly hair flashing with blonde highlights. There were cricket-playing grannies in arty jackets, floaty scarves and silver jewellery. ‘Owzat!’ yelled a grandson, catching one of them out. The very sand was full of everyone else’s happy, fulfilled lives.

  Children’s names were written in it; Ethan, Ella, Ariadne, Alfie. Had her own father ever written her name in the sand? Laura doubted it. He had worked in sandy places; the Middle East especially. He had died there too, in a helicopter crash, working on a story. He was buried somewhere in the desert. She had never seen his grave.

  As for her mother, the very idea of sunshine sent Odette into hysterics. She would need at least two hats, lashings of Factor 100 and sunglasses as big as welding goggles before she would consider the afternoon sun, let alone the midday one. As for playing games, she believed running ruined your ankles. Which it probably would in her case, given the six-inch heels she routinely wore. Laura dug her hands deeper into the restrictive pockets of her tight jeans, almost relishing the pain. Thank goodness Odette was happily – if that was the word – installed in Monte Carlo (of all places, given her horror of sunshine) and she need see her only once a year. She had never been much of a parent.

  Not like Mimi. But even she had never played cricket on a beach, not like the ones surrounding Laura here. The rules mystified her, as they did all French people, and exercise – the clothes involved especially – frankly horrified her. No man should ever see you in sweatpants, chérie.

  What would Mimi do now, Laura wondered, fighting the impulse to phone for a cab and take the train to London and thence to France. There was nothing for her here in England. She was wasting her time, what was the point? And she was already twenty-three...

  Feel your heart beat, chérie, take a deep breath, listen to yourself. Laura could hear her grandmother’s voice as clearly as if she were next to her. Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Moments like this, they help you regroup. You alone are responsible for what happens to you.

  Laura stretched, and felt stronger, strangely enough. The feeling of hopelessness was fading. She was aware of other sensations now; sea breeze, her glowing face – no SPFs, Mother! With her back to the sea, she looked at the rear of the main street, the pale blue, pink and peach-painted buildings. Glancing at the pub, she spotted something she had not seen before, at the top of the garden. That current horticultural must-have, a shepherd’s hut, and through one of its diamond-shaped window panes the keen-sighted Laura thought she could make out a familiar silhouette. A silhouette that bore a striking resemblance to Miss Piggy.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was now an hour before pub quiz lift-off, and Kiki was ready; touch of mascara, sweep of bronzer, swoosh of lip gloss, hair twisted up in its signature pencil, reading glasses halfway down her nose. At the social level she dealt with, obvious sartorial effort was frowned on. The problem was, looking as if you weren’t trying was twice as hard as actually doing so.

  Kiki’s clothes reflected the same unforgiving casual glam aesthetic. Her black Muck Sweat tracky bots flowed loosely yet revealingly round her thighs. Her lithe, Pilates-toned torso was revealed in a tight white T-shirt under a purple strappy top. On the tanned, laddered bones of her braless chest lay a single diamond on a silver chain. Pewter-painted toenails poked out of special edition designer Birkenstocks. Admiring herself earlier in the long driftwood-framed mirror propped up against the wall of her bedroom, Kiki had felt that she more than fitted in with the wives of the local masters of the universe.

  But did the bar-room? Jonny Welsh had insisted on his signature witty touches, but getting the balance right had been tricky. Kiki had never been quite certain about the behind-the-bar wallpaper. It was white with black scribbles all over it, supposedly inspired by Einstein’s doodles. And did the tables slashed with savage cuts really work?

  The carpenter who had made them had apparently been inspired by the saw-marks in his workbench. His workbench had been in Walthamstow, just as the spoon carver behind the salad tossers had worked out of Bermondsey. The drystone waller Kiki had employed in the garden had been from Shoreditch and even the blue cushions in the window seats had been dyed in Beckton by a part-time urban climber who gathered indigo from Epping Forest. It seemed that no one in the country did country crafts any more. If you wanted authentic rustic, London was the place.

  Kiki walked slowly round, humming softly to th
e bespoke pop curated by a top DJ in Brooklyn and sent by computer file every Tuesday. She would have preferred Radio Two, but Jonny had ruled it out. ‘We’re not a bloody supermarket aisle.’

  The saw-marked wooden tables had been arranged in groups of six, the maximum size of each team. Jolyon Jackson, predictably, had tried to wriggle round the diktat and bring more. ‘Got a super gang of fruity party workers. Great girls, jolly bright some of them, just down from Oxford. PPE.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t, Minister,’ Kiki had told him.

  Jackson’s exophthalmic blue eyes had bulged even further beneath his trademark messy brown fringe. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Honestly, no.’

  Kiki knew, even so, that ‘no’ wasn’t a word Jolyon Jackson had in his vocabulary, any more than ‘honestly’.

  On each team table a sign was attached by a tiny clip to a small stand. Kiki examined them. ‘Development Hell’ was the team of movie people got together by Tim Lacey and apparently included a hot young star whose identity had yet to be revealed. Kiki had everything crossed for Aidan Turner, with whom Tim claimed to be in talks for Les Misérables 2: Electric Bugaloo. ‘After my massive success in romantic comedy, a musical’s the next logical step,’ he had told Radio Times.

  Kiki flicked a speck of dust off the ‘Politicos’ table. This was Jolyon Jackson’s team, situated nearest the bar as Jackson would certainly be its most enthusiastic patron. ‘Legal Eagles’, next door, was the predictable description of the village team of top barristers. ‘Bean Counters’ was Richard Threadneedle’s collection of fellow bankers. ‘Page Turners’ was the literary team got up by Dame Hermione Grantchester. ‘My Quiz Team’ was Zeb Spaw and his cohort of concept artists.

  ‘Can’t you think of anything more exciting?’ Kiki had asked the celebrated underpants-crucifier.

  Spaw had stared at her scornfully from under his trademark Soviet-era Russian fur hat and through the yellow lenses of his wraparound sunglasses. ‘It’s an artistic statement. Ever heard of Tracey Emin’s My Bed?’

  ‘Does that mean Tracey will be here?’ Kiki asked hopefully. She and Spaw were friends, as was well known.

  Spaw’s unnerving yellow gaze remained unblinking. ‘Who of us is ever here?’ he asked. ‘What does here even mean?’

  Oh well, Kiki thought. She had one bona fide star turning up. Here was the ‘Merely Players’ table, with Savannah Bouche and Lady Mandy, plus Alastair and Orlando Chease too, presumably.

  Pausing by a table which bore the team name ‘The Dumb Blondes’, Kiki bit her glossed lip. She had initially had no intention of hiring out the Golden Goose’s newly delivered shepherd hut to the unintelligible, bizarrely dressed new arrival. For one thing, the decor was still in transition. Jonny had ordered a retro-hipster look, but kitsch vintage items tended to be on the big side and space inside shepherds’ huts was limited, to say the least. At the moment it looked like an explosion in Shoreditch.

  Kiki had stood in the doorway regarding the woman in vast sunglasses and hi-vis tweed in the back of the big black Bentley. She was obviously wealthy, but that was not the point. No one in Great Hording knew her, and she was not on Kiki’s database. So that should have been that.

  ‘We have no rooms left,’ she had repeatedly told the blonde. ‘No Room Left! Pas des Chambres! Keine Zimmer!’

  ‘What about that one?’ Lulu pointed at the garden’s latest embellishment, white-painted, four-wheeled, Bluetooth-enabled and clearly unoccupied.

  Kiki had thought fast. ‘That shepherd’s hut is reserved for...’

  ‘Shepherd? Hmm?’

  ‘For residents of the village,’ Kiki finished.

  Lulu had taken this calmly. ‘OK, I buy house here.’

  Kiki was astonished. People didn’t just appear in Great Hording, demand a room at the Golden Goose and then, on being refused, announce their intention to become a resident. ‘There are no houses for sale round here,’ she said in her snootiest voice.

  This wasn’t, in point of fact, entirely true. Riffs, ex-residence of the undesirable ex-rock star Roger Slutt, was currently on the market, although an exclusive market inaccessible to the ordinary househunter. Details appeared with only one estate agent, viewable only on the dark web and through possession of certain passcodes.

  ‘No property? But is big willage, hmm?’ Lulu looked sceptical.

  ‘No property,’ repeated Kiki firmly. Especially to nobodies like you, was the unspoken coda.

  Then Kiki’s celeb-detector, honed over many years of high-level exposure to HNIs, kicked in. A familiar, infallible prickling at the back of her neck told her that, actually, this blonde wasn’t a nobody. She was famous.

  How had she not recognised her? She was the celebrated billionheiress Lulu, former fiancée of the rapper South’n Fried. He had left her for Savannah Bouche – who was now secretly dating Orlando Chease, son of Lady Mandy of this very parish.

  It occurred to Kiki that here was a way of revenging herself on that ghastly, pompous old battleaxe. If Lulu and Savannah were to be in the same room, sparks would certainly fly. This would be vastly entertaining for the regulars and acutely embarrassing for Lady Mandy.

  ‘Actually,’ Kiki added, ‘there could be a property. And if you really want to stay, the shepherd hut just might be available. Oh, and you really must enter our pub quiz this evening.’

  Now though, Kiki was rather regretting revealing that Riffs was for sale, let alone inviting Lulu to the quiz. How could she have thought that trouble with Savannah, let alone Lady Mandy, was a good idea? She tried to calm herself down. Lulu was sure to hate the house – it was hideous. And with any luck she wouldn’t come to the quiz either. Quizzes were obviously not her forte, as the team name she had chosen suggested.

  Kiki finished checking the tables and turned towards the bar. Behind the fashionable scoured slate facade, engraved with early Clash lyrics, Pavel was polishing glasses. With his jutting cheekbones, full mouth and fair hair curling almost to his broad shoulders he looked, as he always did, wildly handsome. His tall, broad-shouldered figure was shown to best advantage in the pub’s regulation black shirt and black trousers, the regulation chic little hessian pinny tied round his narrow waist. He was laughing at something with Rosie, the blonde barmaid with the rolling local accent and skin like strawberries and cream. Watching them, Kiki felt a stab of jealousy. Pavel was obviously keen on his voluptuous co-worker, who looked even better than he did in a clinging shirt and tight trousers.

  Kiki now braced herself to go into the kitchen and taste Hervé’s mushy peas. He had been working on them for days and no one had been allowed near. She went towards the kitchen with her fingers crossed.

  Hervé’s menu leaned towards the experimental; quail’s entrail ice cream with ground oyster-shell mash was one of his signature dishes, along with mackerel bone salad with onion dust. The kitchen had so many Bunsen burners, Petri dishes and test tubes that it looked more like a chemistry lab than somewhere food was prepared.

  At the back, where there were a few actual stoves and preparation counters, Hervé’s red Paisley bandanna could be seen moving about. He spotted her and raised a tattooed arm. ‘Over ’ere, Kinkee!’

  This mispronunciation never failed to irritate her. She was 99 per cent certain it was deliberate. As she passed a cooking station, Kiki caught the eye of one of Hervé’s sous chefs, a young boy she was not sure she had ever heard speak. He was working on something with a blowtorch, but it was not, for once, Hervé’s celebrated emulsion of scorched holm oak – ‘who knew that wood could taste so good!’ one of the reviewers had raved – but something unusually normal-looking, a pie in a big square dish, its crust beautifully brown and decorated with the crest of Great Hording in pastry.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Kiki exclaimed, in relief. Only now did she realise just how much she had feared that Hervé might take the pie and mash brief and turn it into pie and mash-flavoured midget gems, or something similarly high concept and weird.

  She
beamed in welcome as she reached the stove he stood by, wearing the ancient lace-up shoes he always wore instead of chef’s clogs. His footwear had once belonged to the great Escoffier, or so Hervé claimed.

  From the side of a huge aluminium pan, the chef fixed Kiki with a baleful eye. ‘Kinkee. Nevair in my life ’ave I been asked to produce sumzing like zees!’

  ‘But it looks great, Hervé!’ Kiki peered into the pan. It actually was mushy peas! What was more, Hervé had got the green just right. Among the many things she had feared was a violent chip-shop verdancy, but this was tastefully restrained. ‘You judged the food colour perfectly.’

  From beneath the piercings on his shaved eyebrows, Hervé’s brown eyes flashed. ‘Colour! There ees no colour!’

  He must, Kiki thought, have sourced some very special peas, in that case. Perhaps those from the kitchen garden. The thrice-gold-medalled horticulturalist had planted at Hervé’s request, a rare semi-wild native strain called Duchess Blue. It was very tricky to raise and required a huge amount of expensive attention. Pound for pound, Kiki had once complained to Hervé, they cost as much as pearls. His response to this had been to serve them necklace-style, connected with edible, gold-covered saffron and served in a crab-biscuit jewel box.

  ‘May I taste?’

  ‘Bien sur!’ Hervé plunged his tattooed forefinger into the mush and brought up a clump which he stuck in his mouth. ‘Genius!’ he declared, smacking his chops and reinserting the digit. Kiki watched, uncertain about the hygiene but eventually crooking a delicate finger and skimming off a spot.

  She tasted, frowning. It was cold, which she had not expected. And very garlicky, which she had not expected either. And there was another taste, bland but slightly nutty, which most definitely was not that of peas, not even Duchess Blue, which had a slightly chickeny flavour. She slipped her finger back in and tasted again, eyes closed, concentrating hard.