Last of the Summer Moët Page 6

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Not being cut out for magazine journalism. I’m pretty useless really.’

  Laura beamed at her. ‘I wouldn’t say that. On the contrary, actually.’

  Wyatt was barely out of the room before Laura was typing ‘Great Hording’ into Google Images. Strangely enough, nothing came up. Had she spelt it wrong? The mobile on her desk now rang and Lulu’s name appeared on the screen. Another wedding emergency, no doubt. Last time they spoke the bride-to-be had been in meltdown over edible terrariums for the reception tables.

  Laura’s fears seemed realised when all that could be heard on the other end was heaving sobs. But she wasn’t going to let Lulu bring down her upbeat mood. It would be something and nothing, it always was.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked cheerily. Perhaps it was the dress. Or dresses – Lulu had now settled on no fewer than three changes of couture gown for her simple country nuptials. South’n Fried, not to be outdone, had commissioned special diamond-studded wedding trainers from Tiffany.

  ‘Is over!’ Lulu wept.

  ‘What’s over?’ Laura spoke slowly, aiming to understand. Perhaps the dress, or dresses were too long or too big. Over in that sense.

  Lulu had dissolved into sobs again. But she was gasping something out; something that sounded like ‘Marriage, he is off.’ But couldn’t be, obviously.

  ‘Calm down, Lulu,’ Laura counselled gently. ‘Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Oh, Laura! Am in dumpster!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘South’n Fried go with someone else!’

  ‘But... what... I mean, when... I mean who?’

  ‘Is big star. They spread love.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is charity,’ Lulu managed, after a few incomprehensible efforts. ‘Spread the Love.’

  Spread the Love! Laura was sitting down but the world spun around her anyway. She gripped the edges of Carinthia’s glass desk.

  Savannah Bouche! ‘Oh, Lulu, I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Am devastating. You come round now, hmm?’

  Laura hesitated. She longed to, but she was on the verge of a big story. She just needed to talk to Wyatt. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Chapter Seven

  Wyatt sat bent forward on the yellow sofa, picking black nail varnish off her plump white fingers. ‘You wanted me?’

  Laura nodded. All her online attempts to research Great Hording had come to nothing. ‘Where is it?’ she asked Wyatt.

  ‘By the sea in Suffolk. Next to another village called Little Hording.’

  Bingo, Laura thought. She could find that on a map. The thought of the sea was uplifting, she hadn’t seen it for ages. Now all she needed was somewhere to stay.

  ‘Goose,’ said Wyatt.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Wyatt smiled faintly. ‘The Golden Goose. It’s the pub in Great Hording.’

  ‘Is it nice?’

  ‘Not now. It’s completely changed.’

  ‘How changed?’ Laura was interested.

  ‘Well, it used to be just normal. It was called the Farmer’s Arse – sorry, Farmer’s Arms. We just used to call it the Farmer’s Arse.’ Wyatt looked down, a broad smile now playing about her black lips.

  ‘So what’s it like now?’

  ‘Horrible. All designer rooms, celebrity chefs and kitchen gardens.’

  ‘But that sounds quite nice.’

  Wyatt’s black eyes flashed in her plump white face. ‘It is if you’re stinking rich,’ she said hotly. ‘But not if you’ve been priced out of everything, like a lot of the local people.’

  Laura was fascinated. Why was Wyatt so angry? Surely, as the daughter of the Bank of England’s deputy governor, she was one of the stinking rich herself. Then there were the comments about the unfair internship. Wyatt seemed conflicted, to say the least. ‘Go on,’ she said, thinking this was all useful background material.

  Wyatt seemed surprised to be encouraged. ‘Well, it’s just not fair, that’s all,’ she blustered. ‘Why should some people have everything and others nothing? Why should some people make billions in bonuses and buy the houses other people’s families used to own?’

  It was, Laura thought, almost as if she was imitating a speech she had heard many times. But whose? And she was not finished yet.

  ‘Why should former working farms become Marie Antoinette playgrounds with helipads and recording studios? Why should the village school shut down because the only children around go to private schools? Why should the village lanes, formerly bustling with life, now be empty apart from the lost Ocado van looking for the oligarch’s mansion?’

  This was too much for Laura, who burst out laughing. ‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing Wyatt looked hurt. ‘It’s just quite a funny image, that’s all. But I’m sure it illustrates real social division,’ she added hurriedly.

  Wyatt’s rhetorical zeal seemed to have left her. She sat on the sofa, radiating embarrassment. ‘Is that all you wanted?’ She was clearly desperate to leave.

  Laura nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  Wyatt had barely left before she was typing ‘The Golden Goose, Great Hording’ into her phone’s search engine. She waited, expecting the aforementioned gastropub to appear. But nothing appeared.

  Laura tried again; again it brought nothing up. How very strange. She had entered it correctly, she had checked the spelling with Wyatt. It was almost as if Great Hording wasn’t connected to the internet.

  Was that actually possible?

  Laura tipped back her chair and stared musingly at the striplights on the ceiling. It seemed to her unlikely. Wyatt’s father was deputy governor of the Bank of England; Edgar’s was the head of MI6. Both would need broadband of the most superfast variety. And Dame Hermione Grantchester presumably had publishers all over the world emailing her about rights, literary festivals, film deals. While Zeb Spaw would have an international network of gallerists and clients. There would certainly be internet in Great Hording. And if the Golden Goose was a business, a pub, it just had to be there. It would want to drum up business.

  Unless – the thought now struck Laura – it didn’t need to. If it was very exclusive, it might actually want to keep people away. This idea gathered pace, and Laura’s heart started to race. Was this the reason that Great Hording didn’t appear online either? Because it was so smart, so full of the wealthy and influential, it didn’t want outsiders to know about it?

  Had it somehow taken all references to itself off the internet?

  Laura hadn’t realised that could be done.

  But if you were rich enough, influential enough, powerful enough, presumably anything could be. The MI6 connection alone could remove whatever information it wanted.

  Wow!

  The hairs on the back of her slender neck stood on end. Headlines began to tumble through her excited editor’s brain. ‘Inside the Secret Village of the Super-rich!’ This really was a scoop!

  She twisted round on her chair, thrilled. She had to get to this place. As soon as possible, this very weekend. Now it didn’t matter that Harry was away on a story. On the contrary. She would be away on one too, and a much better one. One that would make his curly hair stand on end, once he knew.

  ‘The Rich List’s Rural Retreat!’ ‘Britain’s ‘Most Powerful Private Parish!’

  Laura took a deep, calming breath. She needed to plan. Finding Great Hording would be simple now she knew it was next to Little Hording. But staying at the Golden Goose was a different matter. How could she get in touch?

  She twisted round on her chair again, seeking inspiration. On the third revolution, it came. If the former name of the pub was the Farmer’s Arms, there was a good chance that the phone number would be the same. If she could find the old website online, she might have cracked it.

  ‘Farmer’s Arms, Great Hording’, Laura keyed in, breathlessly. She waited, then groaned aloud as nothing came up. But hold on. Perhaps it was the Great Hording bit. She tried again, with
out the Great.

  A link came up immediately. Laura opened it and found herself examining what could best be described as a straightforward establishment. The outside was grey pebbledash with a sagging Sky Sports banner; the large bar inside featured pine, swirly carpets and several fruit machines. The one picture of a bedroom featured a purple bedspread and brown, patterned curtains. While this would have been the height of retrochic in Cod’s Head Row, no irony seemed intended here.

  Holding her breath, Laura dialled the number. The other end picked up immediately. A disdainful voice spoke. ‘The Golden Goose. Kiki Cavendish speaking.’

  Bingo! Silently, Laura punched the air.

  ‘Do you have any rooms for this weekend?’ she asked, in the steadiest tones she could manage.

  ‘Name?’

  Laura considered. She would be there in an investigative capacity. ‘Drake,’ she said. ‘Lorna Drake.’

  ‘Sorry.’ But Kiki sounded anything but apologetic. ‘We’re fully booked.’

  Laura was instantly suspicious. Her name and the lack of a room were obviously connected. Why?

  She thought quickly. ‘I completely forgot to say. I’m a great friend of the...’

  Oh God, what was Wyatt’s surname? The family name of the Bank of England’s deputy governor?

  ‘The Threadneedles,’ she finished in a rush, fingers crossed. It was not quite a lie, not quite the truth either. But she had a feeling it might just work.

  ‘Oh, the Threadneedles.’ Kiki’s tone was now quite different. ‘Um. Actually,’ she added, slowly, and for all the world as if she were actually looking at a real bookings system, ‘we’ve just had a cancellation. There is a room. With a rather lovely sea view.’

  *

  The room secured, Laura rushed out of Society House to get the Tube to Lulu’s. All other British Magazine Company editors took cabs everywhere, partly because of their shoes and partly because they could. But Laura, in her flat Chelsea boots, preferred to get to places quickly. And never more so than now, with Lulu in distress.

  As she ran out of the building, something glossy and red and a flash of green caught the corner of her eye. She screeched to a halt and looked back, but the glass of the revolving door distorted things and the figure she thought she recognised had disappeared into the lift. Red hair, pale legs in high heels, both Makepeace trademarks. But it could not be Clemency, she had been fired long ago and in circumstances making it impossible she could ever return. In any case, she, Laura, was editor now, and Clemency could not come back without her say-so.

  She put the incident out of her mind as she dived into the Underground and, some ten minutes later, dashed up Lulu’s broad, tree-lined street and, panting, rang the bell on the big security gate.

  ‘Good evening.’ As the grave voice issued from the intercom Laura smiled, recognising Lulu’s imperturbable butler. Although, given what had just occurred with South’n Fried, even Vlad must be perturbed at the moment.

  The door in the gate clicked open. Laura hurried in over the spotless flagstones concealing the vast underground stacking garage. Cone-shaped box trees in lead planters stood at regular intervals, a verdant hint of the lovely garden that spread beyond the house. You had to look closely at the planters to see the Vuitton logo, but it was there. Hardly anything Lulu possessed lacked an expensive label. The flowers in the garden maybe, but she was probably working on that.

  Lulu’s house rose before her, a wedding-cake white villa with a pillared portico and a glossy pink front door. One would never imagine, Laura thought, lifting the Chanel knocker and letting it crash back, that amid this splendour dwelt a broken heart.

  Or did it? She had been expecting to be greeted by the butler and shown to Lulu’s bedroom where the jilted bride lay sobbing in a heap. It was a surprise, therefore, to open the door and see Lulu’s face beaming as if nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘Are you... okay?’ Laura ventured.

  ‘Fine!’

  Clad in tight white jeans and a long white cashmere cardigan, her golden hair tumbling glossily about her, Lulu indeed seemed quite at ease. The usual diamonds winked at her ears and neck and if there was one vast rock fewer on her engagement finger, it hardly showed. The gold trim on her massive sunglasses glinted cheerfully in the afternoon sun. But were they hiding eyes puffy with grief?

  No, it turned out, as Lulu unexpectedly slipped them off to reveal a sparkling glance framed by false eyelashes two inches long, strongly marked eyebrows and her usual complex eye make-up involving smudges, sweeps and smokiness.

  ‘Come in. We have champagne glass!’

  There was scarcely time to be puzzled. Laura was now manhandled over the threshold into the heavily logoed hall. The familiar Stella McCarpet stared up at her and the little Hermès carriages raced happily over the walls. Above them, the separate gold letters of the Dior chandelier tinkled in the breeze as Lulu shut the door firmly.

  Perhaps it was just natural resilience, Laura thought. Lulu was irrepressible and rarely miserable for long. But this was a quick recovery even by her standards. Only a few hours ago she had been screaming hysterically down the phone.

  ‘You’re feeling better?’ she ventured, following Lulu’s tightly clad white bottom as it bounced up the glass stairs to the sitting room. One of the sitting rooms. Lulu’s colossal house had several. One of the upstairs rooms was devoted entirely to present wrapping.

  ‘Big amount!’ Lulu declared, flopping onto the Burberry sofa and inviting Laura to flop in the one opposite. She wiggled her bare brown toes in the blue Tiffany rug. ‘Who care about South’n Fried? Savannah Bouche can welcome to him.’

  ‘Has Vlad been talking to you?’ That would figure. Lulu’s factotum was also her confidante and her wisdom was legendary.

  ‘Vlad say all man useless,’ Lulu went on vehemently. The butler, Laura knew, spoke with authority. Vlad had been a man once; possibly one in the Estonian army. Glimpses into her past were as rare as they were astounding. ‘Say I better off without.’

  Laura nodded her approval, even though she didn’t think she would be better off without Harry. But some men she had known had definitely been useless. She was, for example, definitely better out of any romantic entanglement with Caspar.

  Her mind lingered on the two of them. What was Harry doing now, away on his mysterious investigation? And what was Caspar doing in Malibu? Borrowing a cup of sugar from Cher?

  ‘We need drink!’ Lulu was stabbing agitatedly at the big red button on her remote control, the one marked ‘Champagne’. ‘We are celebrating!’ the heiress added.

  ‘Celebrating!’

  ‘Lulu’s new life!’

  Vlad, Laura reflected, had clearly done an amazing job talking Lulu out of her despondency and making her focus on the future.

  ‘New life?’

  ‘New life in country! In old willage.’

  The smile froze on Laura’s face. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. Lulu had been her friend in London since she had arrived, penniless and desperate. Without Lulu’s help she would not be where she was now. And while she had flourished since then and could now stand on her own two feet, the thought of a London without Lulu was, well, unthinkable. Still more unimaginable was the idea of Lulu in a country setting. While she was keen on crafting, she tended to do it in a special crafting studio upstairs, next door to the present-wrapping suite.

  ‘What willage... I mean village?’ Laura asked.

  Lulu beamed. ‘Ambridge!’

  ‘Ambridge?’ Laura frowned. ‘The place in The Archers?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘But, Lulu, Ambridge isn’t real.’

  Lulu threw back her head and laughed. ‘Of course is real.’

  ‘No, Lulu, it isn’t.’

  The beringed hands mirthfully slapped the plump white-clad legs. ‘But is on BBC two times in day! And on Sunday, whole hour!’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a radio soap. Not an actual real village.’

  Lulu stopp
ed laughing. ‘Is not real willage?’ Her tone was troubled. ‘But is in Borsetshire.’

  ‘Lulu, it’s fiction. Borsetshire doesn’t exist either.’

  Lulu looked aghast. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lulu.’ Laura hated being the bearer of bad tidings.

  The blonde mane was shaking sorrowfully about. ‘Vlad will be devastating. What can I tell her?’

  The butler now appeared, a brisk, morning-suited figure with a pale, impassive face and smooth, side-parted dark hair. She carried a tray bearing a gold-foil-topped bottle with a familiar label and two glasses.

  ‘Hi, Vlad,’ Laura said warmly. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Vlad!’ Lulu wailed. ‘Ambridge not exist, Laura say.’

  Laura watched the butler put one arm behind her back and pour two precisely level three-quarter flutes of Moët. While her every move was professional, the bottle was definitely wobbling. ‘Very good, madam.’

  Laura felt horribly guilty. ‘But there are plenty of other places in the country to move to,’ she added brightly.

  Lulu bounced up and down on the checked sofa. ‘You hear that, Vlad? Plenty more places.’

  ‘Very good, madam.’ But the butler’s previously brisk mien seemed now all gloom.

  ‘Like where, Laura?’ Lulu’s sunglasses swung expectantly in her direction.

  Laura took a nerve-stiffening swig from the flute she had just been handed. The wine danced deliciously on her tongue, but her mind was running on the fact that Lulu’s emotional recovery and Vlad’s happiness now seemed to be in her hands. It was useless to ask why or how. What could she suggest to Lulu?

  She was going to Great Hording this weekend, of course. But only as a recce for her story on Britain’s best-connected village. And the last person anyone wanted on a secret operation was Lulu. She was the very opposite of incognito. She was ultracognito.

  On the other hand, this was becoming an emergency. Vlad had now exited the room in terrible silence and Lulu’s gaze, still trained on Laura, had changed from expectant to agonised.

  Laura gave in. ‘I’m going to the country on Saturday,’ she said. ‘You can come with me if you like. See what you think.’