Page 22 of Happily Ever After
‘It might be true that you can grow up in a bus and go and – I dunno, set up your own company or be seduced by a billionaire or travel the world and all that. But only if you’ve got more. Only if you’re more than me. People expect someone who grows up like I did to be a kooky, ditzy pretty girl with a brain like razor wire. If you’re just ordinary, then nobody cares. You’ve got no education, no particular talent and you’re not even decorative. Life lied to me.Bookslied to me. And my sister got a great life because she didn’t fall for the lie.’
‘Oh, Andi.’
Hugo came over and hugged me. It was a warm hug but totally fraternal.
‘Not to mention that I got a stupid name!’ I said, muffled against his shoulder. ‘I mean, Andromeda! I ask you. I don’t even look like an Andromeda – I ought to be all willowy and a bit wafty and “at one with the universe”. I should have been beautiful and wear a size six and have lovely hair.’
‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ Hugo gave me a little shake. ‘Don’t talk yourself down. You might not have masses of qualifications, but here you are, you’ve got a job. You’re doing good things.’
I stepped away. ‘Am I, though? Am I not really just doing some pointless data entry?’ I nearly slipped and mentioned my search for the diaries but managed to keep my lip buttoned on that.
‘You are giving my mother someone else to focus on, apart from me and Jasper, and that is an action worthy of beatification,’ Hugo said firmly. ‘When she’s complaining about you, or supervising you, then she’s leaving us alone, and my mother has taken an unhealthy interest in my brother and me since we were born. Oh, not like that.’ He must have seen my expression. ‘Nothing worthy of the tabloid press. It’s more that she has very firm ideas of how she wants our lives to go. I’m jealous of my brother, too,’ he added.
‘Because he got away with renouncing his birthright? How did he manage it, by the way?’
Hugo looked conflicted for a moment. ‘It’s not my story to tell, sorry,’ he said. ‘But it means that Mother has concentrated her efforts on me, and making me take on estate responsibilities. Ican’ttell her I don’t want it either, the shock might kill her.’
There was a momentary silence; presumably we were both weighing up the pros of this happening. There didn’t appear to be any cons.
‘So, you see,’ he went on. ‘I could never tell her about this.’ A waved hand indicated the racks of frocks. ‘She so wants me to conform utterly. Saying that I can only marry a woman who can deal with a man who likes to wear dresses in his downtime – it wouldn’t go down well, let’s put it that way. Telling her that I’m going to sell the entire estate as soon as I inherit, pack up my collection and go somewhere where I can live the way I want to…’ He shook his head. ‘Not going to happen.’
I looked at him standing there, slender and attractive and yet with a dark loneliness about him. ‘Can’t you get away? You must have friends, people you could go and stay with to find a life away from the estate?’
Hugo shook his head again. ‘I’m not really the sociable sort,’ he said. ‘All the boys from school meet up now and again and I’ve been along once or twice to the reunions, but it’s all so – loud. It’s a bit like none of them have grown up at all, they’re all in their father’s firms or in banking or some such, but they all seem to be playing at life.’ He sighed. ‘Too much money and too much privilege. All I have is a crumbling old house and an estate full of people who pretend to be faithful retainers whilst plotting to move to the city and earn proper money doing proper jobs.’
‘Oh, Hugo.’ He looked sadly forlorn, standing in front of the wardrobe but staring out of the window into the darkness. My heart pleated with pity.
‘I’m not really cut out for this Lord of the Manor lark,’ he said. ‘But Mother is determined that I’ll run the place with a rod of iron, so she keeps trying to instil a ferocity into me that’s just not there.’ Now his handsome face was pulled tight around the eyes with hopelessness. ‘I haven’t got it in me to bark orders and demand obedience. Even the cat doesn’t listen to me; what hope have I got of getting a workforce to? It ought to have been Jasper. He’s good at all the officious stuff, but the bugger managed to worm his way out of it and left Mother to me.’
‘Life can be a bit of a shit really, can’t it?’ I patted his arm.
‘Indeed it can.’ Hugo gave me a wan smile. ‘All we can do is make the best of what we’ve got. Play the hand we were dealt, and all that.’
I went to the door. ‘Anyway, I had better go back to cataloguing that bloody library, because right now it’s all that’s providing me with a sense of self-worth.’
Hugo smiled. ‘Can I recommend a pair of Manolos for that?’
I had to laugh. ‘Not really going to work for me. But you have at it.’
He unlocked the door and we both went out onto the landing, meeting The Master coming from the direction of my room with a determined expression. The cat and I descended back to the grim dark of the dust-haunted room, while Hugo went off to do his own thing, hopefully feeling a lot lighter and a lot happier now that his secret was out in the open.
I felt, mostly, cheated.
After a morning’s work, I went for a walk in the grounds again. I needed to avoid Hugo for a while, I decided. Not because of anything he’d done – I didn’t feel the disgust or horror that he had clearly feared I would, but I needed time to think. If marrying Hugo wasn’t totally out of the question, and it did seem to be something Lady Tanith was working towards and even Hugo didn’t seem revolted at the prospect, plus now I had his misplaced sense of guilt on my side – was it something I felt I could do?
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jeans and strolled along one of the winding paths through the shrubbery. I could marry Hugo. I already knew his secret, so he would feel he could be open with me, and that was healthy. I could live here until Lady Tanith died – all right, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but the house could be lovely if someone who wasn’t obsessed with the previous owner took over and actuallychanged things.And then – then we could travel. Tour the world. Probably with heavy emphasis on couture clothing shops and places that sold designer shoes in size ten, but still. We could.
But then I thought of the trade-off. My husband would wear women’s clothes whenever he could. We’d go designer shopping, not for me, but for him, and Hugo had the tall, slender build that looked great in sample size clothing. We’d be at all the fashion shows, London Fashion Week, Paris, and all the while he would be handling fabrics, thinking of how they would drape, the fit, the cut. Everyone would look at me and think how lucky I was that my husband bought me couture, or vintage dresses with history, possibly with a side order of what a waste it was, buying such lovely things for such an ordinary looking girl. Then there was the enormous factor of my not fancying a man who wore dresses. Hugo in male garb, yes, absolutely. But I couldn’t look at him in azure silk and tassels and feel the same way.
Not even to save me from the bus. Not even to stop me having to go cap in hand to my sister. The parents would probably go down a storm in their new series, touring North America in the Winnebago and come home full of plans and contracts and the possibility of an extended stay in the States or Australia. They wouldn’t even notice that I was still there, still hiding out in libraries and trying to pretend that hashtag Vanlife was working for me.
I shook my head and stopped by a small tree with branches weighed down by the formation of berries. I banged my head slowly against the trunk. Stay here, with Hugo, or go home? Either option seemed equally dreadful right now.
‘What has that tree done to you?’ It was Jay, emerging from cover like a scruffier version of the god Pan. ‘And have you got my jumper? I’m going to need that, it’s bloody cold first thing in the morning.’
‘Sorry, no,’ I said vaguely. ‘I didn’t know I was going to see you.’
Jay looked at me, his head tilted to one side. ‘Did you sort out your person?’ he asked.
