Page 38 of Wild About You

I could just imagine Tally freezing in horror and retreating to her neo-Chippendale desk.

‘The thing I didn’t tell her was that it was desperately romantic,’ she said. ‘We weren’t wrapped in bedsheets or anything, though I think she thought we were. I’d just finished meeting his father, which George had painted as an epic ordeal, but he was enchanting once he’d got overthe colour of my skin.’ She caught my eye; I glimpsed the depths beneath her bright exterior. ‘I went to Cambridge from a state school in Bradford. I’ve worked in finance since the day I graduated, sometimes managing only men. George doesn’t really know what an ordeal is.

‘Anyway, so I’d met my future father-in-law, and he’d retired to his brandy, then George took my hand and led me through the house. Jamie had de-alarmed it for us, opened some of the shutters, so I saw the Caravaggio and the Canaletto by moonlight.’ She paused, and I saw again that glimmer of seriousness in her eyes. ‘That’s always how I see them in my mind. Not that he could tell me too much about them. So maybe we did need Tally after all.’

‘Maybe we can ask her later,’ I said. There was something about Roshni’s easy familiarity that relaxed me.Careful, I thought.She’s still family – still a cut above. Act professional, Anna. ‘I don’t remember there being a Canaletto.’

‘There isn’t, anymore.’ Roshni topped up my tea. ‘Jamie had to sell it at auction a few years ago. The house needed a complete rewire. His father had hedged around it for years. It meant Jamie was lumped with all the hard decisions.’

I sipped my tea, thinking that it must have been a wrench to sell something from the collection, when Roshni cut into my thoughts by slapping my knee.

‘You’re a picture,’ she said. ‘There’s still several bits of hedge in your hair, you know.’ We grinned at each other.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve failed to entirely adapt to the countryside, as you can see.’

‘Not at all,’ said Roshni. ‘You’re exactly what Stonemore needs. And, much as I love my brother-in-law – and I do – it’s good to see you keeping him in line. He needs a new perspective.’

‘I don’t think I keep him in line,’ I mumbled.

‘You’ll have to take my word for it, then.’ She offered me a biscuit.

‘I think my suitability is yet to be proven.’ I inspected the dregs in my teacup, and thought of ways to change the subject. ‘If I’m not being too nosy,’ I said, ‘how did you meet George?’

She tried to suppress a smile, and failed. ‘I was his manager in a City finance firm – where I still work. I’m used to handling the posh boys. It helps that I’m smarter than most of them, but I’ve had to be.’

I nodded. ‘This doesn’t feel like the real world to me.’

‘I get that. I come from a working-class background, Anna. When I went to Cambridge, it was as though I’d landed on another planet. Half of the people there expected me to defer to them.’

‘And the other half?’

She fixed me with an unblinking stare. ‘The other half didn’t speak to me at all. I wasn’t worth their while. But I was clever. Very, very, clever. Anyway…’ She poured me another cup of tea from the pink teapot on the coffee table, and spooned in more sugar. ‘So there I was, managing teams of these boys, and managing very well. I had zero interest in any of them, romantically. I knew how perilous it was inthat kind of environment – they were all waiting for me to fuck up, in any way.’

‘So how did he manage to convince you?’

‘There was a work jolly to Henley Regatta. I took a man I’d met – a lawyer, not from my firm. We’d been together a while. I was thinking of settling. He seemed like a sensible choice, just like I seemed like a sensible choice to him. Decent guy. Nothing to object to. Well, George got drunk and decided to have an argument with me. Out of nowhere. We were bickering away and then I thought, suddenly –God, this is So Much Fun. By the end of the day, I knew he would be important to me in some way. For the first time in a long time, I’d found a man interesting. Really interesting.’

We looked at each other, in the stillness of the flat, Hugo snoring between us. I was used to mischievous Roshni, but this Roshni was serious.

‘The following Monday,’ she said, ‘he came into the office and declared his love. I told him to stop being ridiculous, that there was no way I was getting involved with someone from work. So he resigned, that day.’ She gave a laugh, a little echo, it seemed, of the shock she had felt in the past. ‘I suppose that’s where money helps. I remember thinking how wonderful it was: that desire to declare himself, to be bold, to take a risk. Is that what you’re looking for?’ She gave me too much side-eye; I’d seen her keenly observing me as I hurled myself out of the Land Rover in the wake of a silent Jamie and still-laughing Callum.

‘I’m not looking for anything,’ I said, shifting in myseat and causing Hugo to give a gargantuan sigh. ‘I think I’m feeling fine now. Are you staying for the anniversary celebrations?’

‘No, not this time.’ She smiled. ‘Lots to do at home, and if I’m away from my desk for more than a week, the City boys start rioting, or selling when they’re meant to buy. So we’re off tomorrow. But it’s been nice meeting you, Anna. I hope we see each other again one day.’

CHAPTER 12

As soon as Roshni, George and the boys left, Stonemore moved smoothly into fete-preparation gear.

I had to give Tally credit; she really knew how to imagine a party into life. Despite the fact that it wasn’t even remotely her job (Fi had been perfectly happy to arrange everything), Tally decided she would lead on designing the anniversary festivities and threw herself into the task with immense enthusiasm. Different kinds of stalls and refreshments, a photo booth, and an ice-cream van (frankly overly optimistic, given it would only be the beginning of April).

There were only two drawbacks. The first was, Tally was very much anideasperson rather than aphysical workperson. This meant that she felt having the ideas was the most difficult part, rather than actually putting them into practice. So whilst she loved brainstorming, mood-boarding and – slightly more practically – picking up the phone andordering people around, she didn’t enjoy sourcing tablecloths, raising purchase orders, or doing anything that might ruin her manicure. If I passed one set of gloomy volunteers attempting to tie the ends of countless shrivelled balloons, I passed a hundred.

The second drawback was that she had no desire to keep to budget. So when Fi, who was in charge of our finance system, flatly refused to raise a purchase order for a chocolate fountain (‘think of the midges, Tally’), we later found her whacking it on the estate credit card that she had nicked from Fi’s desk. In the corporate world this would have been a sackable offence, instead lovely Fi rolled her eyes and hid the card elsewhere to prevent future issues. However, when someone telephoned asking for Tally vis-à-vis the reindeer she wanted to hire, Fi took matters into her own hands. ‘A bloody reindeer?’ she said. ‘It’s April!’

‘But I’ve always wanted one,’ wailed Tally.

Fi, tight-lipped, marched off to see Jamie.

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