Читать книгу Chelsea Wives - Anna-Lou Weatherley - Страница 16

Bibendum was exceptionally busy, even for a Friday lunchtime.

‘I thought perhaps we might go for a little meander around Knightsbridge after lunch,’ Calvary announced as she cast a critical eye over Yasmin’s choice of lunch outfit – a colourful Julien Macdonald dress that displayed far too much leg and cleavage – a major fashion faux pas. ‘Browse for something to wear for the ball perhaps.’ She was determined to push her protégée in a more demure sartorial direction if it killed her.

Yasmin bristled, affronted. What exactly was she trying to say? Anyway, she already had her outfit sorted, and just wait until Calvary got a load of it! If she thought her usual attire was a little on the risqué side then the woman’s eyes would fall out of her head once she saw the sheer, split-to-the-crotch McQueen she was planning to unveil!

Yasmin was wise enough to hold her tongue, however. She had learned quickly that it was best to indulge Calvary Rothschild. Interfering and bossy though the woman was, Yasmin was not naive enough to think that she couldn’t learn anything from her. She hoped Calvary’s knowledge of society might prove useful when it came to gleaning information she needed. Information about the night her sister died.

Reluctantly, Yasmin knew she should be grateful to Calvary for taking her under her wing, especially since she had been largely ostracised by the other women on the society circuit. In an odd way, they both needed each other; Yasmin wanted information and to fit in, and Calvary needed a distraction from her ever increasing marital problems. Their fledgling friendship suited them both.

‘Fine with me,’ Yasmin shrugged. If it meant blowing yet more of her husband’s cash then she was more than game.

‘And I suppose you’ll want to pick up a few last minute bits for LA, won’t you, darling?’ Calvary turned to Imogen. ‘You’re flying out the day after tomorrow, aren’t you?’

‘What? Hmm …’ Imogen replied, her mind clearly elsewhere. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, jerking her thoughts back to reality. ‘LA.’

‘You must be excited,’ Yasmin remarked, shovelling a forkful of walnut salad in between her shimmery lips. She was off the coke today and as usual her appetite had returned with an insatiable vengeance. ‘Getting back in front of the camera again. Calvary told me you were, like, as big as Kate Moss back in the day.’

Calvary shot Imogen an apologetic look.

‘Back in the day,’ Imogen repeated, her mind drifting towards him once more.

Ever since meeting with Cressida again, it was as if the door to her past had been flung wide open and, struggle as she might, she could not seem to close it again.

Her head throbbed with thoughts of him so much that it hurt. Images of the two of them together constantly flicked like still frames through her mind; she saw his sparsely furnished apartment in Camden where they had first made love … the rickety old boat they had taken out on the canals during a weekend trip to Amsterdam, laughing until their sides hurt. Try as she did to stop herself from going there, she saw the stunning white beach house in Ibiza, the sound of the waves in the distance as they made love on the sand one last time. And Aimee … she could not forget Aimee …

‘So, what made you give it all up in the first place, the modelling, I mean?’ Yasmin asked, genuinely intrigued.

‘More like who made her give it up,’ Calvary explained, throwing one leg dramatically over the other as she smoothed down the front of her Alberta Ferretti shift dress.

Imogen sighed. She hated answering this question. It always made her feel so weak and pathetic.

‘Seb wanted me to concentrate on motherhood rather than my career,’ she explained quietly, fiddling nervously with her small silver necklace, the necklace he had placed around her neck all those years ago and that had remained there ever since. ‘He didn’t think I could do both.’

Yasmin pulled her chin into her neck, outrage written all over her young, heavily made-up face.

‘Jesus, what a dinosaur,’ she shook her head ruefully. ‘Well, no man could ever make me do anything I didn’t want to do, uh-uh,’ she announced defiantly, though secretly she knew this had not always been the case. On the contrary, Yasmin had spent most of her young life doing exactly what men wanted her to do. It was partly why she felt such a fierce loathing for them all.

‘You haven’t met Sebastian Forbes,’ Calvary deadpanned. ‘Actually, I’m surprised he’s been OK about this LA trip. I must say, Ims, I thought he would’ve thrown his toys out of the pram at the very mention of it.’

‘That makes two of us,’ Imogen replied, still unable to quite believe her husband’s easy-going attitude. ‘Though I made it clear that I’m doing this for Cressida and he couldn’t stop me even if he tried. This time I stood up to him,’ she said, enjoying a small rush of pleasure as she remembered the scene in the kitchen.

‘Sounds to me like you were fifteen years too late,’ Yasmin retorted, unable to help herself from wondering how someone as beautiful and seemingly smart as Imogen had ended up with a man like Sebastian Forbes who, by all accounts, sounded like a misogynistic bully.

‘Better late than never, I suppose,’ Imogen smiled unconvincingly, dipping her spoon into her celeriac soup.

‘Relationships, darling,’ Calvary interjected, sighing and trying hard not to think too much about the mess her own was in. ‘I’ve always thought that love makes people do the silliest things.’ She shot Yasmin a humorous look. ‘Like marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather.’

Imogen bit her lip and cast her friend a look that told her she was a wicked woman.

‘Oh yes, bravo, very funny,’ Yasmin retorted, slowly clapping her hands. ‘You may mock, Calvary Rothschild, but I’ll have you know that Jeremy is the love of my life.’ This statement sounded almost as ridiculous as it was unconvincing. ‘I knew as soon as I saw him,’ she added, the natural drama queen within her unable to stop herself from overegging the pudding.

‘Love at first sight, was it?’ Calvary raised a sceptical eyebrow, adding dryly, ‘if such a thing even exists.’

Suddenly it was the summer of 1995 and Imogen was in the British Library. He had been taking a sly look at her from behind the dusty bookshelves as she casually thumbed the pages of an old copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, pretending not to have noticed him.

She had been instinctively aware of someone watching her, longing eyes leaving imprints on her skin. When she had eventually looked up and met his gaze, it had felt as if a bomb had gone off inside her. He had immediately looked down at the book he was reading as if furious with himself at having been caught staring, and the memory of it still made her smile, even now.

He had asked to buy her coffee and then screwed his eyes tightly shut as if embarrassed by the suggestion, and they had both laughed with an ease that she had never experienced with a man.

He had been a day or so off clean shaven and his soft sandy-coloured hair had hung in his eyes with a nonchalance that was almost contrived. He was tall, and well built, and his eyes were the most unusual teal green colour, protected by thick, dark lashes that were so glossy they looked almost wet, as if he had just stepped from the deepest lagoon. Uncharacteristically, she had found herself wondering what it would be like to make love with him. Later, that afternoon, she got to find out. Subconsciously, she had already made the decision to do so before her cappuccino had arrived. Afterwards, when he had confessed that he had a girlfriend called Aimee, who he no longer loved ‘in that way’, she had believed him.

Somehow she had known this man would be her destiny.

*

‘So it wasn’t instant with you and Douglas then? More of a grower, was he?’ Yasmin enquired. She had noticed that Calvary rarely spoke of her husband and that whenever she did, her expression seemed to cloud over. Jeremy had told her all about Douglas Rothschild’s infamous incapability of keeping his cock in his trousers.

‘Rothschild would shag a hole in the wall,’ Jeremy had crudely guffawed, as if it were something to be proud of.

‘Ha! Me and Douglas?’ Calvary snorted derisively. ‘Oh yes, darling, it was love at first sight alright! Only trouble is, it’s also love at first sight with every other bloody woman he meets!’ She threw her head back and laughed, though it sounded so desperate and hollow that Yasmin had to stop herself from placing her hand on her arm in empathy. It wouldn’t do to start getting emotionally attached. She had a job to do and emotions would only complicate things. They always did.

‘Well, I believe in love at first sight,’ Imogen confessed, the champagne making her feel unusually candid.

Calvary raised her eyebrows.

‘Oh darling, next you’ll be telling us that you’ve met the tooth fairy!’ she retorted with a heavy dose of good-humoured sarcasm.

‘No, really,’ Imogen insisted, suddenly gripped by an urge to talk about him. The truth was, she had never spoken about that time in her life before. Not even to Calvary, her oldest and dearest friend.

Imogen had always believed it was better that way. By staying silent, it was almost as if she could convince herself that part of her life had never existed. Only it had existed, and now it was as if those memories, confined to the deepest part of her mind all those years ago, had suddenly glimpsed daylight again and now wanted out.

‘There was this man, once …’

Yasmin’s eyes lit up in anticipation.

‘A man!’ Calvary spluttered, clearly thrilled and surprised. ‘Oh Ims, you dark horse! Do tell.’

Imogen’s eyes began to glaze over as the image of his face flashed before her with such clarity that she felt the imprint of it on her heart.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘His name was Michael. But to me he was always Mickey …’