Charlie Glass's Slippers (36 page)

“Well! I don’t know about anybody else, but I have absolutely no problem giving my permission for such a brilliant idea.” Diana turns to Alan Kellaway. “I’m sure you feel the same, Alan.”

He gives her a bit of an
are-you-high?
look himself. “But
wouldn’t we need to know more about her long-term plans for growth and expansion? How she intends to fund the production of this vintage-inspired range in the future?”

“Oh, there’s no need for anything as formal as that!” Diana flaps a hand at me as I fiddle with my laptop to find the correct section of the PowerPoint presentation. “I think we can all agree that, seeing as the setup costs of the venture are likely to be minimal, there’s no harm whatsoever in setting up shop and selling the vintage shoes. We can see how it’s all received and then think about how we fund production of a new line in a few months’ time. Now, obviously the next step is to get the store refurbished, but I imagine we can leave that part of it to you as well, Charlie? I’m sure you have plenty of ideas about how to make the old place look amazing!”

“Look, can we all just bloody agree on it and leave it there, then?” Terry Pinkerton suddenly says, rather cantankerously, before I can reply to Diana. “I haven’t come here to make chitchat about cushion covers and light fixtures. All those in favor of Miss Glass reopening the old premises and selling Elroy’s old stock,” he says, sticking up his own hand, “say aye.”

“
Aye!
” declares Diana, with gusto.

Five muttered
aye
s
follow from around the rest of the table: James the First, James the Second, and finally, after a double-checking glance towards her mother, Gaby.

Alan Kellaway says nothing. He’s still blinking at Diana like a dazed goldfish. As, I’m pretty sure, I still am, too.

“That’s that, then,” Terry Pinkerton says. He turns to me with a half-smile, half-grimace. “Good luck, my dear. I’m sure my wife will be very excited to come along to the new store as soon as it’s open. Right, can we move on to item two on the agenda, please? My item, as it happens. The threat from Selfridges and Harrods to close their Elroy Glass concessions. Now, I have quite a few questions about this, actually, Diana. Such as number one, why did my secretary practically have
to threaten your secretary with physical violence to get it on today’s agenda? And why the hell haven’t you told us anything about this until now?”

Ordinarily I’d be thrilled to watch Diana squirm. But for one thing, I don’t like to hear more bad news about the company, even if it
is
all Diana’s fault. And for another thing, I’m far too shell-shocked to take in much of what she’s saying (not to mention the fact that, in true Diana fashion, she’s managing to look supercilious rather than squirmy anyway).

Did that really just happen? Did Diana agree—more to the point, encourage everyone else to agree—to let me set up Glass Slippers? After my firm and—to be fair to me—pretty reasonable conviction that she’d walk barefoot over hot coals to prevent me from doing something, anything, that might make me happy and successful?

After the fact that she told me, only three days ago,
You’ll regret this. I promise you, Charlotte Glass, you’ll regret what you’ve done.

I mumble something about needing the loo and nip out into the stairwell. I need to catch a breath. I also need—well, actually, I
want
—to call Olly Winkleman. Hands shaking, I scrabble in my bag for my phone and wait for him to pick up.

“Charlie!” he says, when he does so. “Aren’t you meant to be in a pretty important meeting right now?”

“I’ve just nipped out for a sec. Olly—you won’t believe what’s just happened.”

“Diana was waiting for you with a lynch mob and you’ve only just escaped with your life?”

“No. Much, much weirder than that.”

“She was waiting for you with a seven-headed serpent and you’ve only just escaped with your life?”

“Honestly, Olly, weirder even than
that
.” I lean my addled head against the cool wall. “Scarier, too. She’s just told me I have her permission to go ahead with the store. Selling Dad’s
shoes, I mean. Not only that, but she practically browbeat everyone else into agreeing to it, too! I barely even got two minutes into my presentation—I didn’t even get around to showing them Leo and Suzy’s designs, in fact—and they all voted yes!”

There’s a moment of befuddled silence on the other end of the phone.

“But I thought you said she was never going to let you do it. I thought you said that hell would freeze over before Diana let you do anything you wanted to do.”

“Then all I can say is, I hope Beelzebub has got his thermal long johns at the ready.”

“Well, this is incredible news, Charlie!” Olly sounds pleased as punch. I can just picture him, sitting in his office and beaming. “After all your doom and foreboding, you’re actually going to get to open this store!”

“But that’s not the point, Olly. Don’t get me wrong—being able to open the store is fantastic. I just . . . can’t believe Diana’s been so easy about it.” I raise my hand to my forehead, to dab away the line of clammy sweat I can suddenly feel there. “I can’t work out what her endgame is.”

“Does she need an endgame? Maybe she’s just doing it to be nice . . . Okay, okay,” he says, evidently realizing how silly he’s just sounded. “Then maybe she’s decided to keep you on-side because she wants something from you.”

“Diana’s never wanted a thing from me in my life. Except that I should crawl into a hole and die, that is.”

Though it does occur to me, as I digest Olly’s explanation, that there might be a very good reason indeed for Diana suddenly attempting to get me “on-side,” after so many years of neglect and cruelty. Jay. More specifically, how it might be of no small benefit to her to be nice to me, now that I’m going out with Jay. Failing in her attempts, on the weekend, to put Jay off me, she might have simply decided that she’d be better
off biting her lip and currying favor with me instead. After all, she’s obviously spent many years trying to curry favor with the Brodericks in general. Maybe she’s envisaging weekend invites to Oxley Manor. Maybe she’s just envisaging a future where she can drop the phrase “my stepdaughter’s in-laws, the Brodericks” into casual conversation.

Or maybe I’m being too generous.

You’ll regret this. I promise you, Charlotte Glass, you’ll regret what you’ve done.

“Well, I’m thrilled for you, Charlie,” Olly says now. “And you know, your dad would be, too.”

Yes. Dad
would
be thrilled, I think. And he’d probably be telling me, right now, to get to work and enjoy myself, instead of worrying away about Diana’s precise motivation or fretting about whether her motives are good, bad, plain selfish, or pure evil.

“We should go out for a nice meal, and celebrate,” Olly suggests. “With . . . with your friend Lucy, too, if you think she’d like that. I mean, she probably needs a bit of a cheer-up, I’m sure.”

“Sorry?”

“Since her breakup with . . . sorry, I’ve forgotten his name. The rather dreadful Norwegian.”

“Pal?” Now I’m thoroughly confused. “Olly, Lucy hasn’t broken up with Pal.”

“Oh! That must have been my mistake, then.” He sounds embarrassed. “It was just that I thought that’s what she said, when I bumped into her yesterday.”

Okay, now I’m starting to get a bit worried about Olly. I mean, is he hallucinating or something?

“You can’t have seen her yesterday. She’s in Austria.”

“Oh, no, I’m absolutely certain she isn’t in Austria! We bumped into each other in the ticket hall at Clapham Junction. And we had a really nice chat. She’s such a lovely girl.
Well, woman, really, of course. I’d actually been thinking of asking you, Charlie, if you thought she might be okay if I asked her out for a drink sometime.” He’s talking very fast. “But now that you say she’s not single after all, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”

“Right. Absolutely.” I just spout the words without really thinking what I’m saying.

I mean, geography was never my strong point, but even I’m 100 percent certain that Clapham Junction isn’t in Austria.

“Anyway, I’d really better be getting on, Charlie. I have a meeting of my own to get to in ten minutes . . .”

“God, yes! My meeting. I’d better get back in.”

“Well, huge congrats again, Charlie! And get back to me about that celebratory meal, okay? With Lucy and . . . and Pal, too, I suppose, if they are still together. I mean, you’d be the one to know that, wouldn’t you? You are her best friend, after all!”

“Yes. After all.”

I end the call, even more disconcerted now than I was five minutes ago, and slip back into the boardroom for the rest of the directors’ meeting.

chapter twenty-two

I
t’s damp and dismal
weather this evening. I’ve been stupid enough to come out without an umbrella, and I can’t even nip to the corner shop to see if they can sell me a crappy, instantly breakable one for ten quid. I’m waiting outside Lucy’s flat, and I don’t want to risk missing her return from work while I’m off being fleeced for a tenner. So instead I seek pretty so-so shelter beneath the narrow strip of porch above her front doorstep and try to keep warm with the dregs of the coffee I bought at Clapham Junction station almost an hour ago.

It’s past seven when Lucy eventually appears around the corner. She’s almost comically shrouded with a huge golfing umbrella (printed with a skull and crossbones; it must be a prospective piece of YoHoHo merchandise she’s trying out), and so she doesn’t see me until she’s opening the gate that leads to her flat’s short pathway.

“Oh, my God, Charlie!” She clasps one hand to her throat. “You made me jump!”

“Sorry. I’d have called to warn you I was here, but your phone is switched off. But maybe it’s just struggling to find a signal. You know, in the Austrian Alps.”

Her cheeks flame instantly. “How did you know I was here?”

“Olly Winkleman.”

“Oh. Bugger. Yes. But really, I mean, how did you know I was
here
?” She casts a hand up at her flat. “Not at . . . not at Pal’s, that is.”

“Olly Winkleman,” I repeat. “He told me he’d bumped into you at Clapham Junction station. And that you’d said you’d broken up with Pal. It doesn’t exactly take the detective skills of Hercule Poirot to work out that you’d come back to your old flat.” Then, because I realize I’m sounding a bit edgier than I’d like, I try a smile and add, “By the way, Olly seems pretty keen on you, Luce! He even asked if I thought you might go out for a drink with him some—”

“I don’t want to talk about men right now,” she says abruptly, and starts to fish in her handbag for her keys.

“Okay, then do you want to talk about what’s happened with Pal? We could open a bottle of wine, and—”

“No, thanks.” She runs a hand through her hair, smoothing her scruffy ponytail. It’s a style she hasn’t worn in months, since before she started going out with Pal. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t come in at all, if it’s all the same to you.”

I stare at her, dumbly.

What the hell is going on?

I mean, obviously over the course of twenty-four years, we’ve had the occasional tiff, the odd minor squabble. But neither of us has ever barred the door to the other before.

“You . . . don’t want me to come in?”

“It’s just that I’ve got quite a lot of YoHoHo stuff to be getting on with.” Lucy’s face is pinched and rather gray, though the latter could just be because of the shadow cast by the black skull-and-crossbones umbrella. “Rearranging all the boxes I brought from Pal’s flat. That kind of thing. Besides, shouldn’t you be getting home yourself ? I’m sure you have a . . . a run to go on, or something. Or a hot date with Jay to get yourself all dolled up for.”

Her tone is so sharp, suddenly—aggressive, even—that I actually take a startled step backwards, into a small-to-medium puddle.

“Well, is there anything inaccurate about the assumption?” Lucy slots her key into the lock. “I mean, doesn’t that pretty much sum up what you do these days, Charlie? Go for runs. Get dolled up for Jay. In fact, Charlie, while we’re having this conversation—”

“
Is
it a conversation?”

“I think it’s ridiculous how much time you spend on your appearance these days.” Her voice is shaking. “You know, if you put half as much time into being a good friend as you did into highlighting and manicuring and
exercising
 . . .”

“You’re saying I’m a bad friend? Because . . . because I
exercise
?” For the first time in this conversation, I feel a flash of anger myself. “So you’d rather I was still fat, is that right? I’m a better friend to you when I’m overweight?”

“That’s not what I’m saying! But if you must know, then yes. Yes, maybe I
would
rather you were still fat.” Her eyes widen for a moment, as if she’s just noticed—as I have—that she’s used the F-word for the first time in our two-and-a-half-decade friendship. “Look, all I mean is—”

“That’s okay. You’ve said what you mean. You preferred our relationship when I was fat and frumpy.”

“Charlie . . .”

“And now that I’ve finally gained a bit of confidence, you don’t want—”

“You haven’t gained confidence! You’ve gained a boyfriend. You’ve gained skinny eyebrows and an overpriced hairdresser. That’s not the same thing.”

I want—I really, really want—to tell her that actually, I don’t even think I’ve gained a boyfriend; that I have the strongest suspicion that Jay’s interest in me is already fatally waning; that I’d give anything to go inside with her, open that bottle
of wine, and talk about it. But I don’t tell her this. What I say instead is, “Well, I still don’t think there’s any good reason for you to be jealous of me.”

“
Jealous?
” The word drips, as distasteful as sour milk, off Lucy’s tongue. “You think I’m
jealous,
because you’re skinny and blond?”

It’s my turn to try to back away from the stupid thing I’ve just said. “No, I don’t think that. Look, I just—”

“And you haven’t stopped to think for just one minute that if I
am
jealous, it might be more to do with the fact that you hooked up with my boyfriend?”

“That I . . .
Sorry?
”

“I mean, it’s pretty funny, really,” she continues, with a short, mirthless laugh. “I mean, ever since I met Pal, you’ve barely been able to disguise your dislike of him. And then pretty much the moment you get all thin and gorgeous, you suddenly—lo and behold—change your opinion of him! And next thing, you’re getting off with him in the bathroom of an Elizabethan country house.”

Oh, my God
.

“Honey told me,” Lucy goes on, before I can say anything. She isn’t quite meeting my eyes now, though whether because she’s too disgusted by me or because she knows, in her heart of heart, that there’s something absurd about this accusation, I couldn’t say. “She walked in on you by accident, after dinner. She told me the next day, when she came back from the car track. I think she was getting her revenge for you trying to . . .” For a fleeting moment, a near-real smile flickers in the direction of her face, as though she knows what she’s about to say is just plain silly. “. . . trying to kill her.”

I’m way too distracted to bother pointing out that hitting Honey with my car was an accident.

Because now everything is making sense: Lucy’s sudden disappearance. Her refusal to answer my calls. This horrible
quarrel, on her front doorstep, that’s hit me so out of the blue.

And not just these things. Something else is making sense, too: Ferdy’s unexpected coldness towards me, that morning at the racetrack. The fact that he was so unimpressed by me. Because the previous night after dinner, Honey had come scurrying from the bathroom to tell him she’d just seen me kissing my best friend’s boyfriend.

Or rather—if she’d stuck around one second longer—that she’d seen my best friend’s boyfriend kissing
me
, and getting a swift whack around the chops with a damp flannel for his trouble.

“That’s not what happened,” I manage to say.

“Really? Because Honey may not like you very much, but that doesn’t mean she can just go around making things up. And Ferdy believed her, too . . .”

“Ferdy’s wrong. Honey’s wrong. You’re wrong.”

“And that’s all you’ve got to say?”

Okay, I really don’t know what’s going to help Lucy here. If I tell her the whole truth—Pal’s creepy groping, followed by the indecent proposal in the bathroom—then maybe I’ll get myself off the hook. But it will come at the expense of her pride and dignity, not to mention whatever (misplaced) faith she might still have in men.

“I mean, maybe now you can see why I’d rather have old Charlie back again,” she’s saying now. “Because slim, blond, totally bloody gorgeous Charlie seems to be the kind of girl who’d make a move on the man I . . .” She stops, unable, it seems, to make a straight-faced claim that she was actually in love with Pal. “. . . I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.”

“You were never meant to spend the rest of your life with him,” I hear myself say.

“I was!” There’s a catch in her voice. “We’d have gotten
married, eventually . . . and I’d have had his children. Which is all I’ve ever wanted, Charlie! You
knew
that.”

“But not with him, Lucy! With someone who actually deserves you!”

“He did deserve me . . .”

“No, he didn’t. He’s a pig, Luce. A pig who puts you down, and treats you badly, and only has sex with you every second Thursday and once on Saturday mornings!”

“I told you, he just doesn’t have a very high sex drive!”

“Well, he had a high enough sex drive to grope me under the dinner table on Friday night, then lunge at me in the bathroom and suggest we get together for a weekly romp before his spinning class on Tuesdays!” I see Lucy’s eyes widen in shock, but I’m so determined to get her to see that she’s only gained her freedom by dumping Pal, and not lost the chance of a happy family, that I have to carry on ripping off the Band-Aid. “
That’s
what Honey saw. Pal making a move on me, not the other way around. I didn’t kiss him back, Lucy. I don’t even know how you think I could do that to you!”

When I stop talking, we stand in silence, staring at each other. After a moment, I reach out a hand to try to touch Lucy’s shoulder, but she pulls herself away.

“I’m all right. I’m fine.” She looks neither all right nor fine. “I believe you.”

“Luce, the only reason I didn’t tell you about it is because I didn’t want you to feel . . .”

“Humiliated? Stupid?” A tear, one I can practically feel the heat of, is making its way out of the corner of her eye and down her cheek. “Second best?”

“No! You shouldn’t feel any of those things! Especially not because a jerk like Pal tried to cheat on you.”

“I don’t feel humiliated and second best because he tried to cheat on me. I feel humiliated and second best because he tried to cheat on me with my stunner of a best friend. When
I’m obviously so worthless and undesirable that he barely blinks an eye when I walk out on him.”

“You’re not worthless and undesirable. Far from it.”

“Well, I’ve obviously done
something
wrong,” she says, bitterly. “Not put in enough hours at the gym. Not gone blond or bootylicious enough for his liking.”

“Lucy . . .”

“Oh, what does it matter, anyway?” Her entire body seems to sag, as if she’s too weary to hold herself up anymore, and she sits down, suddenly, on the doorstep, not seeming to care that it’s turned into a slushy-looking puddle. “You’re right, Charlie. I’ve been completely miserable these past few months. Pal doesn’t like my job, or my family, or my friends . . . except when he’s liking my friends
too
much, that is . . . and living with him has been a total nightmare. Every little thing I did was wrong. I put the coffee mugs back in the cupboard facing the wrong way, and I used the wrong setting on the washing machine to wash his socks, and I got in absolutely massive trouble for asking if I could watch
Peter Andre: The Next Chapter
instead of another bloody episode of
The Killing
 . . .”

“That night you came around with the wine, you mean? When I was going out to Jay’s party.”

“Exactly.” Her tone is pointed. “When you were going out to Jay’s party.”

“But Luce, I said I’d stay home with you! And if you’d told me any of this stuff, I’d have—”

“You’d have what? Listened? Because I don’t remember the last time you listened to me, Charlie. You’re so busy perfecting yourself that you don’t seem to have time for anyone else’s problems anymore.”

I’m speechless at the unfairness of this. Is Lucy really—
seriously
—trying to blame me for the fact that she wouldn’t admit the smallest fault in her relationship with Pal? The unsatisfactory sex life; his constant, disapproving bossiness?

But then, she doesn’t look in any kind of mood to be fair right now. And maybe I wouldn’t be feeling too fair, either, in her position.

Besides, I can’t get away from the fact that I haven’t exactly been that engaged with Lucy’s tribulations lately. Some of the passing comments she’s made about Pal, and the way he treats her . . . well, in the old days, I wouldn’t have just let those slide, time after time. Not even in the interests of being Entirely Positive about her boyfriend. In the old days, I would have said something after her housewarming, when she was all dressed up like a librarian and panicking about her canapés. I would have said more when she told me he ran their relationship like a corporate HR department, with warnings and sanctions for misdemeanors like forgetting to wipe the shower down or neglecting to switch the coffee machine off. And that night of Jay’s party, when she just showed up with that bottle of wine and then burst into tears all over Mum’s silk kimono dress . . . well, although I really did mean my offer to stay home with her that night, I should have made sure I got hold of her the next day to see if she wanted to talk. I needed to rescue Lucy, the way she’s so often rescued me in the past. But I’ve been—yes—far too busy perfecting myself to find the time.

“Lucy, I’m sorry. For everything I’ve done—well, everything I
haven’t
done. Can’t we just go inside, and have a proper talk?”

“Talk about what? About the fact that I’m single again? About the fact that if I’m ever going to have a chance of getting married and having kids, I’m going to have to get out there all over again and find myself a brand-new man? Who’ll forget all about me the moment he lays eyes on you?”

I could point out that, again, she’s not being fair. Or I could point out that there’s more—far more—to her life than yearning for marriage and kids, if she could only recognize it. But she’s looking so wretched, so determined to pick at this scab
until it bleeds, that I don’t think it’s the right time to point out either of those things. I point out nothing.