Charlie Glass's Slippers

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For my daughter Lara, beautiful both outside and in.

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

—HEDY LAMARR

PART ONE

chapter one

I
f Lucy could see
me now, she’d get all huffy and puffy about me behaving like a waitress.

“Gaby wants you to help with the
catering
?” Lucy screeched when she called me last night, just as I’d begun the fiddly process of piping pistachio cream onto six dozen halves of pale green macaroon. “I thought she got everything catered! She gets her children’s birthday parties catered. I bet she gets an average Tuesday morning breakfast bloody catered! Why does she want you to help with the catering for your own father’s memorial service?”

“Because her usual caterer has let her down at the last minute, and there’s nobody else available at short notice.” I paraphrased, slightly, what Gaby actually said when she called earlier in the day, which is that there was nobody else “decent” available at short notice. “But really, Luce, it’s not a big deal. It’s a tea party after the service, so it’s just a few crustless sandwiches and dainty cakes.”

“So? Why can’t she cut the crusts off a few sandwiches herself ? Why can’t she do a trolley-dash round Waitrose and get a few dozen boxes of bloody mini yum-yums? Not that I’m suggesting Waitrose makes stuff as delicious as yours, Charlie,” she added, loyally. “But that’s not my point. What
are you making, anyway? You’re not going to go berserk, are you?”

“God, no, not at all,” I said, wondering—as I still am—if baking three dozen pistachio macaroons, the same number of miniature scones, five whole lemon drizzle loaves, three Victoria sponges, and (my pièce de résistance) one perfect, glossy, gleaming Sacher torte might count as
going berserk
. “Like I said, it’s not a big deal. Just a few cakes. And if I have anything left over, I’ll bring them round to you on my way home from Gaby’s tomorrow.”

“
If
you have anything left over? All the guests work in fashion, Charlie. I don’t know why Gaby’s bothering to cater it at all. Honestly, couldn’t she just stick a couple of arugula leaves on a plate and see if anybody dares to take a nibble? Oh, and talking of mad anorexics, is Robyn gracing your dad’s memorial with her presence, or is she having too hectic a schedule of detox wraps and sea-salt scrubs at a Thai spa?”

Robyn is my other (half ) sister, and Lucy’s no more a fan of her than she is of Gaby. In fact, to say that Lucy isn’t a fan of my sisters is rather like saying the French Revolution was a bad time to be a bit posh.

“That’s not fair, Luce,” I said, putting down my piping bag for a moment so I could hurry and check the oven to make sure lemon drizzle loaf number four wasn’t browning too much at the edges. “Robyn really got herself into a bad way after Dad died. She needed to get away from it all. And yes, in answer to your question, she’s back from Thailand and she
is
coming to the memorial.”

“And the Ice Queen? She Who Must Not Be Named? The High Priestess of Mordor?”

These three are all names that Lucy (and okay, me, too) has attributed, over the years, to just one person.

“Diana? No. She’s not coming.”

“To her own late ex-husband’s memorial service? But she
looked so happy at the funeral, bless her coal-black heart. I’d have thought she’d be taking the opportunity to be right up there at the front of the church tomorrow, popping champagne corks and singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel.’”

“Nope. Bunions. Well, to be more precise, surgery to remove her bunions. Won’t be seen in public until she’s back in her heels, apparently.”

“Good. I hope the surgery hurts. And then I hope she gets another great, big bunion, right in the same place. In fact, I wish a plague of bunions upon her.”

Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the way Lucy feels about my stepmother. And the fact that I didn’t object in any way tells you, I guess, pretty much everything you need to know about the way I feel about my stepmother, too.

“Well, just promise me one thing about tomorrow, Charlie. Will you promise me that even if you’re making the food, you won’t let Gaby turn you into a waitress for the afternoon? Or any other kind of drudge.”

“Lucy, making a few cakes isn’t being a drudge! You know how much I love cooking. And don’t you think it’s nice that Gaby actually thinks I’m good at it? Good enough to serve her snooty fashionista friends? Gaby doesn’t usually think anybody’s good at anything! And anyway, I’m doing it for Dad, really, not for—”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “I promise, Lucy, that I won’t let Gaby turn me into a waitress for the afternoon.”

“Or any other kind of drudge?”

“Or any other kind of drudge.”

Well, one broken promise out of two isn’t so bad!

Anyway, Lucy was unfair to imply that I’m being turned into some kind of drudge, because Gaby has put a huge amount of effort into this afternoon, too. She’s managed to
transform this rather shabby, empty space—Dad’s original flagship store, up the less posh end of the King’s Road—into a perfectly pristine party venue, complete with freshly whitewashed walls, a newly polished floor, and big black-and-white photos of Dad hanging everywhere, with
ELROY GLASS
:
DESIGNER
,
FATHER
,
LEGEND
printed beneath. Which is a nice echo of the obituary in the
Times
the other week, where the writer called Dad “the legendary British designer bad-boy whose subversive footwear has graced the feet of the glitterati since the 1970s.”
And
Gaby stage-managed the entire memorial service, complete with eulogies and hymns and choirboys: she’s been desperate to give full vent to her superb planning skills ever since she was (in her view) cheated out of organizing a proper funeral thanks to Dad suddenly becoming uncharacteristically religious right at the end and asking to be buried in the traditional Jewish manner, meaning within twenty-four hours of his death, and therefore without giving Gaby the time to do things “properly.”

(Lucy also asked, in our phone call last night, why on earth Gaby was holding the memorial service in a Church of England church, when Dad was Jewish by birth and atheist by conviction. I don’t know the answer to this question, but I think it probably has its roots in the fact that Gaby’s not all that keen on . . . well, her roots. And in the fact that all the synagogues are in dismal bits of north London while St. Anthony’s church is picturesquely and glamorously located on one of the smartest streets in Chelsea.)

“Charlie?”

This is Gaby now, waving me over to where she’s standing, by the far wall next to one of the framed black-and-white photos of Dad. She’s stepping away from the crowd of very thin, very groomed, very surprised-looking women she’s been talking to, which is just one of the many crowds of very thin, very groomed, very surprised-looking women who have been
invited to the memorial. Today’s illustrious guests are mostly fashion editors and buyers, with a smattering of VIP customers thrown in for good measure. Not who I’d have invited, if I were the one actually hosting Dad’s memorial—I’d have asked, oh, I don’t know, Dad’s extended family, his oldest friends, and just a few of the doctors and nurses who took such good care of him these past nine and a half years—but then, Gaby
is
the PR director of Elroy Glass Ltd, so she must know what she’s doing.

“Oh, for crying out
loud
, Charlie,” Gaby hisses at me now, when I manage to totter across the floor without a fatal mishap. “Couldn’t you have worn something a bit more suitable on your feet?”

I shoot her a bit of a look. “Well, the thing is, Gaby, when I got dressed this morning, I didn’t know I was going to be doing quite so much walking about with a heavy tea tray.”

“A nice flat ballet pump would have been a much better choice.” Gaby has missed—or ignored—my pointed remark. “Where did you even dig those shoes out from, anyway?”

“They were my mother’s.” This silences her, but I carry on anyway. “And I wanted to wear something Dad had made, and the ones he made specially for Mum are the only ones that fit me. Oh, which reminds me: did I tell you that there are at least two hundred old pairs of Dad’s shoes in a load of boxes up in the storeroom?”

“
Fantastic
.” Gaby rolls her eyes. “More crap to sort out.” She’s looking stressed and irritable—or rather, even more stressed and irritable than usual. It’s a wonder, really, that she is as immaculate as she is: head to toe in sharp black Armani, her dark bob practically blinding me as it reflects the light, her skin and nails buffed to perfection, and her eyebrows—of course—meticulously tweezed into inquiring arches. It gives me an odd glow of pride in her: my sister, Gaby, the thinnest, glossiest, and most surprised-looking of them all. “Look,
I called you over because I need you to go and help with Robyn.”

“Help?” I cast my eyes about the room, looking for our other sister. There she is—chatting animatedly to a redhead in a black dress. But I can’t see what Gaby is looking so worried about: Robyn doesn’t
look
like she’s about to howl, or burst into hysterical song, or produce a pair of kitchen scissors and start hacking off her own hair, all unexpected delights she blessed us with at the funeral three weeks ago. “She seems okay.”

“She’s high as a fucking kite,” Gaby whispers, furiously. “And that girl she’s talking to is a journalist for
Grazia
, and the last thing I need right now is having to explain to Mummy why her darling Robyn is being described as ‘confused’ and ‘excitable’ in an article on page four of Tuesday’s magazine. Just go and get her away, will you? Becca can handle the tea on her own for a bit.” She waves a hand at the other girl who’s been carrying around a tea tray—a mousy girl in John Lennon glasses who I think is either Gaby’s au pair or her cleaner—and mouths
come on, come on, keep it moving
at her. “Please, Charlie,” she adds, turning back to me. “Robyn listens to you.”

Which is obviously desperate flattery, but if you knew how rarely Gaby utters the word
please
, you’d do what she asked you, too.

“No problem, Gab. I’ll go and sort it out.”

“Good. And when you’ve done that, Charlie, pop up and bring down the rest of the cakes, would you? I thought it might be nice for me to say a few words about Daddy, and I could do it before I cut into that Sacher torte. It was Daddy’s favorite, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!” I try not to look too amazed that she remembered this. “He loved it! I used to make it for all his birthdays, remember, and . . .”

“Good, good. I can use that.” She nods, thoughtfully, as if
she’s just been asked to deliver a eulogy about a near stranger and she’s carefully gathering together any little snippets of personal information she can find. “Okay, Charlie. Thanks for your time.”

Knowing when I’m dismissed, I set out manfully across the packed room, my mission to make it over to Robyn without a slip or stumble. Or ankle twist. Or, for that matter, an incident involving any of my vertebrae. Balance, I’m quickly working out, is the key to successful high-heel wearing.

“. . . and I’m telling you, the hot-stone massages there were absolute heaven,” Robyn is saying, in a tone that’s merely mildly manic, as I approach her and the journalist. “I really felt like the stones were kind of
drawing
all my grief to the surface. Honestly, I’d recommend Chiva-Som to anyone who’s just had a death in the family. You know, I’ve even been thinking a stay there should be made available on the NHS. Not two weeks, of course, but maybe just one week, or even just a nice long weekend . . . Oh, hey, Charlie!” She greets me with a little wave. “I’ve been telling Eloise here about what an awful state I’ve been in since Daddy died. I mean, the mess I was in at the funeral. Cutting off my beautiful hair and everything!”

Of course, I should mention that even without her beautiful hair, my sister Robyn is still a total stunner. Sharp of cheekbone, long of eyelash, and pouty of lip, she would have been a model, like her mother, Diana, if she’d grown another couple of critical inches taller. She’s skinny enough to be a model, thanks to a triple-whammy combination of great genes, a fondness for eating disorders, and an even greater fondness for cocaine. Today she’s looking even more model-like than usual, in a thigh-high black minidress and her usual six-inch heels with—disloyally—a slash of Louboutin red on the sole. It’s all a bit much for three o’clock on a Friday afternoon (let alone your own father’s memorial service), but at least it makes me feel temporarily better about my own ill-advised footwear.

“Honestly, without amazing people like Charlie to support and care for me, I don’t know how I’d have survived my daddy dying at all!” Robyn goes on. Her pupils, now I’m up close, are a little bit dilated, and she’s wearing a rigid smile. “She was the one—weren’t you, Cha-Cha, darling—who sat me down after my daddy’s funeral and said, ‘Book yourself a first-class flight right this very minute, Robyn. Take yourself off somewhere lovely and warm and sunny, where you’ll have time to grieve, and heal, and pamper yourself.’”

“Er—I suppose I
might
have said the thing about grieving and healing,” I begin, “but I’m not sure I said . . .”

“Sorry—who is this, exactly?” Eloise-from-
Grazia
asks Robyn. (She’s another stunner, is Eloise: so young and so naturally beautiful, in fact, that I’m surprised Robyn has put her looks-related paranoia on hold for long enough to talk to her.)

“Charlie, you mean? She’s my sister!”

“Your
sister
?” Eloise’s lovely mouth falls open in amazement. “But you don’t look . . .” She stares hard at me. “God, sorry—Charlie, is it?—I didn’t mean . . . Well, you’re really pretty and everything, it’s just . . . you’re . . .”

“Half sister,” I interrupt, with a smile, to save Eloise the embarrassment of having to avoid the dreaded “F” word.
Fat
, that is. Besides, it was nice of her to say the thing about me being pretty. Quite often, people comparing me and Robyn are so blown away by the difference between our respective waistlines that they can’t see anything beyond that.