Charlie Glass's Slippers (3 page)

It was also the thing, I have to admit, that turned Ferdy from a guy-I-had-a-bit-of-a-crush-on into the unrequited love of my life.

As for his own motivation . . . well, I don’t know. Lucy (of course) is convinced that these are the sorts of kindnesses you’d show someone only if you were wildly in love with her. But I think these are the sorts of kindnesses you show someone if you just happen to be a seriously good guy. Not to mention the fact that, thanks to his dad, Martin, Ferdy knows I’ve not always had the easiest time of it, even before Dad got
ill. I’m pretty sure that his generosity has been nothing more than the result of an exceptionally sweet and gentle nature. After all, if he
were
(ha!) wildly in love with me, there are all kinds of other ways he could show it.

Like . . . like asking me out for lunch, for example?

The mere thought that this might—just
might
—be an entry into a new phase in our relationship is enough to make me wobble off my shoes slightly. I have to grab on to the windowsill for safety.

“Charlie? Christ—are you okay?”

“I’m fine—it’s just these silly heels I’m wearing!”

“Good. Because I’d really rather you didn’t plummet to your certain death from an open window today, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’d be certain death. I’d break an ankle, probably, or maybe a thigh bone . . .”

“Either way,” Ferdy interrupts me, thankfully, before I can get started on fractured hips or shattered pelvises, “I’d prefer it if there wasn’t any plummeting at all. I mean, I’d be
prepared
to come and eat sandwiches by your hospital bed, but if we’re going to do this lunch at any point, I’d rather do it properly.”

This
lunch? Now he’s so determined to do it that he’s calling it
this
lunch?

I ought to be able to handle a situation like this one. I mean, Ferdy is only suggesting a bloody
lunch
, not a torrid all-night sexathon in a five-star hotel. I should be able to string the words
lovely
,
would
,
yes
,
lunch
, and
be
into a coherent sentence, then move on to the easy, practical matter of coordinating a suitable day, time, and place. But I’m speechless. So I decide to muster up one of those flirty, swooshy hair moves I’m always seeing Robyn do when men are around in the hope that Ferdy will take this as encouragement. And if it all goes wrong, I’m so far away from him that it will probably just look like I’m avoiding a fly or something.

So I risk it. I go for the hair swoosh.

I shouldn’t have. I’ve forgotten that my center of gravity is already thrown off by the spindly four-inch heels.

I wobble for the second time in as many minutes, but this time, it’s a really serious wobble. As my head comes back to its usual, non-swooshy position, I try to grab the windowsill for support. But I misjudge the height of the windowsill. I try to grab something else for support. But there is only air. My only option is to flail wildly backwards until I come to a halt, in a sitting position and with a real thud, on top of the crate behind me.

No. It’s not a thud, sorry. It’s more of a . . . squelch. Because I’ve come to a halt on top of the Sacher torte that was on top of the crate behind me.

Ferdy may be fifty feet away, but I’m pretty sure he can still see my face above the windowsill, so it’s imperative that my face
does not
give him any indication that I’ve just sat down on a chocolate cake.

“Charlie?” Ferdy is looking a bit uncertain. “Was that just you falling off your shoes again? Or is the idea of us having lunch that appalling to you?”

“No! It is the shoes, I mean. Lunch would be . . . brilliant.” I’m desperate to make him realize that I am, actually, keen, which is probably why the next thing I hear myself say is, “Or dinner, even!”

“Dinner?” He looks startled. “Just . . . you and me?”

Shit
. I’ve pushed things too far.

“I didn’t mean . . . I’m having friends over tomorrow night, in fact!” It’s a lie, but it’s a get-out-of-jail card. After all, a preplanned dinner with friends, to which I’m casually inviting him at the very last minute, couldn’t be any farther away from the date that’s so obviously spooking him right now, could it? “So why not swing by?”

“I could . . . swing by.”

“Brilliant! Well, I’d better let you get back to your toilet.”

“What?”

“Your plumbing, I mean . . .” It’s not ideal that, right at this moment, beneath my left buttock, the Sacher torte gives a squelch so loud I’m almost certain he can hear it fifty feet away. “And I’d better get back to my memorial.”

“God, yes—look, I really hope it all goes okay, Charlie . . .”

“It’s all fine! It’s great, in fact. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ferdy! Eight o’clock all right?”

“Yes, eight is all right.”

I get up, give him a wave, and close the window. I make very sure not to turn my back to him until he’s given me a little wave of his own and disappeared back through his own window. Then, and only then, do I start trying to inspect the worst of the damage.

It’s a toss-up between which is more destroyed: the chocolate cake or my new H&M “plus-sized” dress.

Nope—it’s definitely the chocolate cake.

On the bright side: at least the sponge must have been lovely and light, because if it had been chewy and tough, it might have done a better job of withstanding the backside blitzkrieg.

On the less bright side: I can hear sharp footsteps, and—barely a moment later—Gaby appears in the stockroom doorway.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Charlie,” she says—astonishingly for her, more in weariness than in anger. “You’ve sat on the Sacher torte.”

There’s really no point in trying to deny this. “Yes.”

“
How?
”

“Well, it was the shoes. I wobbled . . .”

“For Christ’s
sake.
”

“But, you know, Dad loved lemon drizzle cake, too! I don’t think it’ll ruin your little speech, if you still want to make it . . .”

“It doesn’t even matter what cake,” she says. “I just wanted something ceremonial to cut after my speech, that’s all. More to the point, you can’t possibly wander around the party with what looks like . . . well, never mind what it looks like. And Becca can’t manage all by herself, and Robyn is still acting like a liability every time she opens her silly great mouth . . . But I’m on my own. As
usual
.”

She sounds tired, rather than irritated, which makes me feel even worse.

“Look, Gab, I’m really sorry. Give me five minutes and I’ll probably be able to scrape the worst of it off.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It looks awful.” She sighs. “
Honestly
, Charlie. You are
hopeless
. And
I could really have done without this today, you know.”

Which is unfair, because it’s not as if I regularly go around sitting on cakes. But Gaby has just said this as if sitting on cakes is my life’s work. Whereas, to the very best of my recollection, I’ve never sat on a cake before. Though I do admit that today probably wasn’t the best of times to start.

“You shouldn’t have
worn
the shoes, Charlie, if you were going to be a liability in them. Still, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. At least you didn’t fling a boiling-hot teapot over Keira Knightley or anything!”

Which is even more unfair, because I never came close to flinging a teapot over anyone. And anyway, Keira Knightley isn’t here. I know, because Gaby was moaning, all morning, about Keira Knightley turning down the invitation.

“Look, I think it’d be better if you just headed home, Charlie, okay? You’re no use to me here, now, all covered in chocolate cake.”

It’s not that I want to stay—in fact, it’s not as if I really wanted to be here in the first place—but I don’t particularly want to be unceremoniously ejected from my own father’s memorial, either.

Mind you, as a not terribly grief-stricken shriek of fashionista laughter floats up to the second floor, I’m reminded that it isn’t really Dad’s memorial at all. It’s a networking event. For people who, for the past few years, wouldn’t have known Dad from a hole in the ground. And he would have felt just as out of place here as I have.

“Sure. I’ll go home.”

“I mean, it’s not exactly your kind of crowd, is it?” Gaby is obviously feeling a bit guilty, not quite looking me in the eye as she comes to pick up the tray holding the two remaining lemon drizzle cakes. “But, you know, thanks for the cooking and everything.”

“That’s okay.”

“I . . . well, I appreciate it, Charlie.”

“No problem.”

I follow her out of the stockroom and down the rickety staircase. Halfway down, I hear a sudden clatter of heels, and Robyn appears at the bottom of the staircase below us.

“
There
you are,” she tells Gaby. “I’ve been looking for you for
ages
.
Tatler
wants a photograph of the two of us together . . . isn’t that right?” she asks the
Tatler
photographer, who’s lurking behind her, pretending that he isn’t eyeing up her tiny, peachy little bottom.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’ve been told we need a pic of the Glass sisters . . .”

“Then we
have
to have Charlie in the picture, too!” Robyn declares, reaching around Gaby to practically pull me down the last few stairs. “You can stand in between us, Charlie, and stop Gaby from digging her nails into my arm or stamping her heel into my foot.”

“
One time
I did that,” Gaby spits at her. “And it was only because you kept trying to get in front of me in all my wedding photos.”

“Oh, I don’t think I should be in the photo, really,” I say.
I’m all too conscious of the fact that I was hardly the photographer’s pick for Look of the Year
before
I got Sacher torte all over myself. “Besides, I was just leaving . . .”

“Bollocks to that,” says Robyn, looping an arm through mine to prevent any attempt at escape. “You’re a Glass sister, aren’t you?”

“
Is
she?” the photographer mutters, not-that-inaudibly.

“Anyway,” Robyn adds, as Gaby places herself on my other side and we all wait for the photographer to get his shot right, “I’m looking really podge in loads of my photos at the moment. If I stand next to you, Cha-Cha, I look teeny-tiny!”

Just as the camera flash goes off, Gaby obviously remembers that she’s still holding the tray of lemon drizzle cakes. Quick-thinking, she shoves the tray sideways into one of my hands, so that nobody could mistake her for the waitress amongst the three of us.

Then, as soon as this Kodak moment is over, Gaby grabs the tray from me again, and Robyn sees someone she simply
has
to talk to, and they both stalk back into the hub of the party, leaving me with the
Tatler
photographer.

“Would you mind,” I ask him, “if I had a look at the picture?”

“Knock yourself out,” he says, handing me the camera so I can peer at the display window on the back.

It’s not a great photo. It’s not even a good photo. Gaby is looking slightly startled, so determined is she to divest herself of the domestic-looking tray before a solitary
Tatler
reader might spot her with it. Robyn looks her usual photogenic self—at first glance—but on a closer inspection is rather wild of eye, presumably thanks to whatever narcotic she recently inhaled. And I . . . well, the less said about my (shiny, frizzy, overweight) appearance the better. The only positive function I’m fulfilling in this picture is that I do, indeed, make Robyn look teeny-tiny. And, I guess that—if
printed in the
Tatler
—I might make most of the readers feel better about themselves, too.

Nevertheless, it’s the three of us. It’s the Glass sisters. Not united in a single picture since the time, more than twenty years ago, when—on another of those exceptionally rare occasions when I got to hang out with Gaby and Robyn—Dad took us all to Bethnal Green for the day, to visit his uncle Mort. Dad kept that picture on his bedside table right up until the day he died: a seven-year-old me, standing in between a nine-year-old Robyn and a twelve-year-old Gaby. Gaby is frowning at the camera with the disapproving expression she wore throughout that entire day at Uncle Mort’s, where she found the cousins too loud and the house too small and the food too Jewish. Robyn is pouting, as she did that entire day, because Dad had refused to drive via Knightsbridge, where she wanted to try on a new party dress they were keeping aside for her at Harrods. And I—thrilled by the exotic food, enjoying the noisy cousins, but most of all, loving every rare minute I got to spend with my sisters—am beaming wide enough to pull a muscle, and trying to put an arm around Gaby and Robyn to draw them both closer.

“Could I get a copy of this?” I ask the photographer now, thinking that—unflattering a shot though it is—it might be nice to prop it up beside the old photo on Dad’s bedside table for a while, until I’ve psyched myself up to clear his room out. I feel that Dad would like this, somehow. I feel that, amongst the ghastliness and fakeness of this memorial, the photo might stand in true memorial to Dad: that he may be gone, but that he still has three daughters who—in their own ways—loved him.

“Sorry. Making copies is a load of hassle. Look in the magazine for the next couple of months, though. You never know—you might see it on the party pages.”

But I can tell from his tone of voice that the photo won’t
be on the party pages. That coverage of Dad’s memorial will be limited to his pictures of the very thin, very groomed, very surprised-looking guests instead.

The photographer takes back his camera, and I slip out of the door onto King’s Road, making sure I don’t transfer a smear of chocolate icing from my dress onto Gaby’s pristine white walls as I go.

chapter three

I
t’s half past seven
on Saturday evening when the doorbell rings.

I know that this has to be Lucy, because I asked her to come early, rather than Ferdy, whom I’m still expecting at eight.

She’s standing on the doorstep with her phone pressed to her ear, looking a bit stressed. This means that the person on the other end of the phone either has to be a customer or her boyfriend, Pal. He’s meant to be coming to dinner tonight, too, but Lucy said he’d be coming straight from his circuits class at the gym, so he probably won’t get here until around eight himself. Pal is Norwegian (I only mention this because otherwise it appears as though he’s been named after a brand of dog food; actually you pronounce his name like
Paul
), and he’s an accountant somewhere in the City. He and Lucy have been an item for almost six months.

Customer
, Lucy mouths at me, nevertheless reaching over to give me a quick hug as she comes through the door.

She’s a big one for hugs, Lucy. She’s also really good at them, thanks to the fact that she’s in the perfect zone between skinny and plump, and has—I hope this won’t sound weird—quite the most marvelous chest you’ve ever seen:
a proper, heaving, wandering-on-the-moors-in-rags-worthy
bosom
. This evening, her remarkable bosom is covered up in an unusually prim cashmere cardi, which she’s teamed with a much less prim denim mini and knee boots. I’ve gotten the impression, recently, that Pal has expressed a preference for Lucy to wear more conservative clothing, because she’s been swapping her customary Joan-from-
Mad-Men
sweaters and tight tops for Mrs. Thatcher–style blouses and buttoned-up cardigans. It’s a revolution that hasn’t quite reached her bottom half yet, however; if anything, her hemlines are getting shorter and her heels higher, as if to cling to her essential Lucy-ness in any way she knows how.

“
Arrrrrr
,” she’s saying now, into her phone, “that do be correct. It do be five of Her Majesty’s finest pounds and ninety-nine of Her Majesty’s finest pence for standard delivery. And that way, me pretty, you’ll be getting your swag by Wednesday at the latest.”

I should point out that there’s a perfectly good and work-related reason why she’s talking into her phone in a gruff West Country accent. Though her proper, full-time job is working for a luxury adventure-travel company called The Bespoke Planet, Lucy has quite recently started up her very own small business: YoHoHo.co.uk, a pirate-theme party supply website. She’s always wanted to run her own business, and her plan is to make YoHoHo successful enough that she can stop pandering to demanding travel snobs at The Bespoke Planet and pander to demanding party organizers instead. The sooner this happens, the better, because she’s already started to do well enough with YoHoHo that she has to take inquiry calls from customers in the middle of the day. Seeing as part of her (rather unusual) branding strategy is to conduct all customer-related business in an accented pirate voice (hence the
Arrrrrr
, and also some
Shiver-me-timbers-
ing, not to mention the occasional chorus of
Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest
), she spends
quite a lot of time, when she’s meant to be doing her proper job, dashing off to answer her phone in the loo.

“
Arrrrrr
, yes, me pretty, there do be parrots available on the website. Just be clicking on the
STUFFED BIRDS AND OTHER ACCESSORIES
section and ye’ll be finding three sizes to choose from . . . Thanking ye kindly, me pretty. Shiver me timbers!

“You don’t happen to know,” she asks me, in her normal voice, as she ends the call and throws her phone back into her handbag, “what might be a suitably pirate-ish way of saying
good-bye
? I tend to end calls with
shiver me timbers
or
walk the plank!
, but neither of those feel quite right, somehow.”

“Have you thought of trying
fare thee well, me hearties
?”

“Fare thee well, me hearties.” She tries it out again in her pirate voice and looks pleased. “Oooh, actually, that could work, Charlie. I’ll give it a shot next time. Wow, Charlie, you look
great
,” she goes on, standing back to look at me more fully. “Your skin looks amazing. And I love what you’ve done with your hair.”

“Really?” I pat my head, uncertainly. I don’t usually put my hair up like this, but I remembered that the divine Davina, in a photo I saw of her on Ferdy’s phone, had her hair all piled up on top of her head, so I’m hoping it’s a look that Ferdy likes. “And is what I’m wearing okay?”

“For a pair of black trousers and a white shirt, it’s okay. I still don’t know why you don’t wear more dresses, Charlie. You look fabulous in a dress. Or that nice skirt you found at Westfield, the black-and-white vertical stripe one that makes you look all curvy.”

I don’t tell Lucy that, seeing as I’ve put on a few pounds since our last shopping trip to Westfield, the black-and-white vertical stripe skirt won’t go up over my hips anymore. (Nor do I mention how much I love her for trying to claim, just like the good folks over at H&M, that my figure isn’t “fat” but “plus-sized.”)

“Because dresses involve high heels,” I say, “and I don’t intend to finish this evening with my oh-so-amusing party trick of squashing a Sacher torte. Anyway, I wanted to look, you know, casual.”

“So that Ferdy doesn’t think you think it’s a date?” She raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think there’s too much chance of him thinking you think it’s a date anyway, Charlie, seeing as you’ve invited another couple.”

“But that’s even worse!” I stare at her in horror. “Oh, God, he might think I think it’s a
double
date!”

“Charlie, for the love of God.” Lucy starts to bustle me down the stairs, towards the kitchen in the basement. “Stop stressing about what Ferdy thinks you might think. In fact, stop
thinking
, full stop. This is going to be a perfectly nice evening. You always said how difficult it was for you to have people over while your dad was so ill.”

She’s right; I did. In fact, there were times—I feel guilty now—when I used to get properly whiny about it all. I’d see other people—young, old, middle-aged—pottering around the supermarket on a Friday afternoon, picking up packets of smoked salmon and sticks of crusty baguette that were obviously intended for a sophisticated dinner party with friends; or I’d see the same kind of people heading out for the Earl’s Court tube on a Saturday night, with a bottle of wine under one arm and a box of posh chocs in the other, presumably off to the very same dinner parties the supermarket people were shopping for. And honestly, it used to make my heart hurt, how much I wanted to be able to do the same. I’d try to make myself feel better (and I do know how pathetic this sounds) by dreaming up the precise menu I’d cook, if I were the one hosting. I’d even come up with seating plans. Because for me, the Holy Grail of adulthood was always the sophisticated dinner party. Mum and Dad used to host fabulous ones, right here in this very flat. Mum would get all dressed up in the beautiful
printed silk kimono-style dress that Dad bought for her in Paris, and those sparkly, spindly heels. Earlier in the day she’d have made a rich beef Stroganoff and allowed me to help her set the table with the best linen and Dad’s mother’s antique silver candlesticks. I can still remember the sound of the grown-ups’ ringing laughter and the mingled scents of boozy beef and Mum’s beloved Anaïs Anaïs, which I’d smell, through a haze of sleep, when she’d slip into my room and place a kiss on my forehead before rustling back out again in her silk dress and closing the door gently behind her.

“So please,” Lucy is saying, as we reach the kitchen, “just relax and try to enjoy it. Anyway, I’m dying to meet this Ferdy you’ve been banging on about . . .”

“I’ve not been
banging on
about him.” I dart for the cooker, suddenly paranoid that the pecan pie I’ve got browning in there might be
over
-browning. It’s not. It’s fine. Paranoia still lingering, I open the lower oven door and have a sniff of my beef Stroganoff. It smells fine, too. In fact, it smells delicious. As well it might, seeing as it’s precisely the same recipe that Mum used to use, all those years ago. “I’ve mentioned him a few times, that’s all. Glass of wine?” I add, hoping—actually, knowing—that Lucy will be easily distracted from this line of discussion by the suggestion of alcohol. “I’ve got some white nice and cold in the fridge.”

“Mmm, yes, brilliant.”

Lucy plonks herself down on the banquette beneath the skylight, which is our favorite place to sit with a glass of wine and chat. It’s been our favorite place to sit with a glass of wine and chat for almost a decade, ever since I first came back here to live with Dad. And long before that, when we were children, it was our favorite place to sit with juice and biscuits and chat. But all that stopped when Dad had his nervous breakdown and disappeared to Morocco and—for reasons I try to avoid going into unless I can possibly help
it—I was sent to live with Gaby and Robyn and my stepmother, Diana, until I escaped to university when I was eighteen. Then, when Dad got ill, I left university to come home and take care of him. Still, this place—this slightly shabby, split-level, ground-and-lower-ground-floor flat in a mansion block in Earl’s Court—has always been home.

“What’s this?” Lucy’s magpie eye has spotted something on the coffee table beside the banquette. “Hey! What are you doing, eyeing up the competition?”

She’s picked up, from the top of the pile of magazines I’m always meaning to tidy away, a brand-new travel magazine from Incredible Expeditions, who are indeed The Bespoke Planet’s major competition.

“Oh, Luce, I’m not eyeing up the competition. They send the free magazine here, that’s all, because Dad always used to travel with them.”

“You’ve
turned down corners on the pages
,” she says, in an accusatory tone, flicking the magazine open. “Camel safari in Egypt? Rainforest camping in Costa Rica? Dog mushing on the Iditarod Trail?
I
could organize all these trips for you, Charlie, if it’s adventure travel you’re after! And I’d get you a bloody great discount, too!”

“I’m not after adventure travel.” I pour us both glasses of wine—larger ones than I’d usually pour for myself, but I don’t see any way I’m getting through this evening if I remain even slightly sober—and head over to sit down beside her. “I was only looking, out of interest.”

“Then why have you bothered to turn the pages down? God, Charlie, you weren’t thinking of
this
, were you?” She holds the magazine out again, stabbing a finger at the other article on the dog-mashing page. “New Body Boot Camp in the Scottish Highlands?”

“No! Well, not exactly.” I take a long drink from my wineglass. “I mean, dawn yoga and three-times-daily hill runs?
Nothing but lettuce leaves for breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . . Can you really see me doing that?”

“For someone who’s not really thought about it, you seem to know an awful lot about it.”

This is probably because, secretly, I
have
thought about it. Thought about how amazing it would be to just . . . vanish for a while, then return to London in a triumphant glow of good health and thinness. Because there are times—such as last night, for example, when I got back from the memorial—when I can’t help but wonder what that would be like. Getting thin, I mean. What it would be like if people’s eyes didn’t boggle, incredulously, if they notice me at all, on finding out I’m related to Gaby and Robyn.

Of course, I know in my heart of hearts, I’m never going to actually
do
it. I’m not lying when I say that dawn yoga and a diet of lettuce leaves isn’t my cup of tea. And anyway, now that Dad’s gone, what I need more than anything else is a job, and I simply don’t have the money to swan off, à la Robyn, for a nifty little detox somewhere warm and sunny.

Lucy sets the magazine down somewhat disgustedly, as though it’s creating a nasty odor that’s pervading the kitchen.

“Seriously, Charlie, the Scottish Highlands? You’d come back blue with cold and brown with rust! Ooooh—you know, if you really want to get a bit healthier”—she tactfully avoids the words
lose weight
—“there are far more enjoyable places I could arrange for you to do a boot camp. Vietnam, or New Zealand . . . or there are some amazing-sounding places in California, for example, that Duncan’s been at me to go out and try.”

“Lucy, you should go!”

“Oh, well, Pal’s really not keen on me going away as much as I used to, because he works such long hours, and it can sometimes be hard enough for him to find the time to see me . . . I mean, for us to find the time to see each other . . .” She
takes a Lucy-sized slug from her own wineglass. “But anyway, why don’t I ask Duncan if you could check out a couple of these boot camps for him instead? I don’t know if he’d be able to pay you, but you’d get a free holiday, and—”

“Thanks, Luce, but I’m really not seriously thinking about travel at the moment. There are more important things I need to be getting on with. Like finding a job, for starters.”

“You don’t need to panic about that just yet, Charlie. Your dad arranged for the flat to be left to you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but that’s all there is for me to be left! Dad was totally out of cash by the end, Luce.”

And I do mean totally: Dad was always rubbish with money, but being so ill for so long would have outfoxed even the most careful financial planner. On paper, he was a wealthy man when he died, but all his assets were tied up in this flat (which, Lucy is correct, Dad did arrange to leave me in his will) and—far more so—in Elroy Glass Ltd, where he clung doggedly onto his majority share, no matter how often anyone tried to buy him out. He did sell some of his shares a few years ago, when the boiler gave up and the car gave in, and we were
really
desperate for cash, but that took him dangerously close to losing his majority stake. Losing his majority would have meant ceding more control of the business to Diana—as if she didn’t already have enough of the day-to-day control, seeing as she’s been the CEO right from the very start—which is why Dad refused to countenance letting his share dip below 51 percent.