Charlie Glass's Slippers (37 page)

“Would you just go, Charlie, please?” There’s a catch in her voice again. “Just go and hang out with your perfect Prince Charming. And leave me alone.”

“But you can’t just stay out here, sitting in a puddle . . .”

“Please. Go.”

I can tell from the look in her eyes that she means it. So I turn and head back out into the street, leaving her sitting on the doorstep behind me.

Except that I don’t. I move two houses along and lurk behind a large privet hedge, so that I can see her but she can’t see me. Then, fifteen minutes later, when she’s taken her head out of her hands, dragged herself to her feet, opened her front door, and gone into the warmth and dryness of her flat, I stop hiding behind the privet and make my way back to Clapham Junction.

chapter twenty-three

I
t’s only six days
after the board of directors gave me permission to go ahead with Glass Slippers, but already the store is more than half completed.

I’ve been working like a demon, day and night, to get the place looking fit for purpose. And I’ve actually had a pretty good time. No: I’ve had a pretty
great
time. It’s been a real opportunity to bring my vision for Glass Slippers to life. I’ve pored over old photographs of the store in Dad’s day and tried to come up with an interior that will hint at the way it used to look while still keeping it fresh and modern. I’ve papered the walls with silk-damask wallpaper in a winey shade of red that (thank God) I got for a wildly discounted price because it was an off-cut of something that an interior-designer friend of Maggie’s had already used to decorate a Russian oligarch’s new place in Eaton Square; the floor has been covered, just this very afternoon, with a hard-wearing but soft-looking terra-cotta–colored carpet; and where just last week the only furniture in the place was a scrawny Ikea desk, there’s now an antique chaise longue, upholstered in embroidered fabric in elegant eau-de-nil, teak shelving units that I found in an exceptionally posh salvage yard in Queen’s Park, and several cracked-leather armchairs in rich chocolate brown.

And talking of chocolate . . . I know, I
know
, I really shouldn’t be shoveling these sneaky little chunks of Galaxy into my mouth right now. But I skipped breakfast this morning because there wasn’t time, after my morning run, to weigh out the required blob of no-fat yogurt before having to hurry to the store to meet the carpet-fitters. Actually, there wasn’t even quite as much time to do my morning run as usual. I slept through the alarm by almost half an hour, which was annoying, as I managed to do the same yesterday morning as well. I wish I could tell you I was struggling to wake up because of more all-night sexathons with Jay, but in fact it was simply because I was working late both nights, sweating over adjectives in my press release and laboring over a short biography of Dad, to accompany said press release, that glosses over his Mad Morocco era and tries to put what Maggie keeps calling “a positive spin” on his decade battling serious illness.

Ah—
battling serious illness
. Now, that’s a way to put a positive spin on it. I’d better write that down before I forget it. It’s a big improvement on
struck down with a dismal and ultimately fatal neurological disease
, which is what I came up with at two o’clock this morning. (As I think I’ve already pointed out, the whole PR aspect of this job is really not my forte.) But yes, I think
battling serious illness
could work. And Dad certainly was a battler.

Well, up until Morocco, anyway.

The thing is that, writing Dad’s biog for the press release and being here in the old store so much this past week, I’ve been thinking about . . . okay,
dwelling on
 . . . what Lucy was saying, back in the ill-fated bathroom at Oxley Manor. And, I guess, what Ferdy’s dad said to me in the café, that day of Mum’s anniversary.

Look, it’s not like I’m suddenly
blaming
Dad for my fucked-up childhood or anything. Mum was the love of his life, and
her death really did send him into a terrible tailspin. He could barely take care of himself during the Mad Morocco era, so it’s obviously unthinkable that he could have looked after me.

But then, the loves of people’s lives die tragically every day, don’t they? And not everyone who’s left behind, broken and grieving, can simply throw their hands up in despair and abandon their child while they wallow in misery on the outskirts of Casablanca.

And maybe . . . well, maybe even if that happened, most people would make an extra effort, after they finally came home, to build a stable life for their child again. Set up a proper home, perhaps, rather than tackle their grief by throwing themselves into work, and embarking on yet more worldwide travel, and letting their child carry on living with their stepsisters on the grounds that “it’s better for you to have the company when I’m so busy all the time.”

Maybe he could have been a bit
less
busy all the time.

“Charlie? You’re miles away.”

Oh, I forgot to say: Eloise is here at the store right now. Eloise-from-
Grazia
, that is, the stunning redheaded journalist I first met at Dad’s memorial party, in this very store, almost four months ago. This is just one of the many advantages of having a fully fledged fashion hotshot like Maggie on board with Glass Slippers: she’s put the word out amongst her fashionista friends and already the press interest is starting to snowball. Eloise-from-
Grazia
has come to write the first of what Maggie hopes will be many articles about the old/new store, and she’s spent the past half-hour trying on various pairs of vintage shoes and waxing lyrical about how incredibly comfortable they are. I can only hope this will be the central point of her article, because I can tell I’ve let her down by not giving snappy sound bites about the exciting new store opening. It’s my lack of PR instinct again, and it reminds me that I really could use a bit of Gaby’s help on this kind of thing.

“Sorry, Eloise. I was just distracted.” I don’t know Eloise well enough to tell her what I was really thinking about. “Were you asking me a question?”

“I was just asking about the heel on this sandal.” Eloise, who’s looking even more intimidatingly beautiful than the first time I met her (looking, in fact, exactly like she’s just stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting), lifts up a foot at the end of a long, elegant, perfectly porcelain leg. The shoe she’s just tried on is a fairly plain tan sandal, made remarkable on second glance by the fact that Dad designed it with a carved wooden heel made to look like a Roman column. “Do you remember what inspired your father to create this?”

“Er . . . Rome?”

“A holiday, you mean?”

“Yes. Yes, a holiday.”

“With you and your sisters?”

I’m about to let out a snort of derision and say that the only place Dad ever took me, Gaby, and Robyn as a merry trio was Uncle Morty’s house in Bethnal Green that one day twenty-two years ago. But I’d never be so disloyal to Dad in front of a stranger. Heaven knows, it’s hard enough that I’m starting to get my own head around the fact that he may not have been the shining example of fatherhood that I always pretended he was. Anyway, Maggie has told me to talk up the family business angle, so I rack my brains for something press-friendly that isn’t quite a fib.

“No, no . . . Dad did most of his traveling alone . . . but that’s not to say he didn’t spend lots of time with us girls, of course.” Okay, this is way too close to a fib. “When he wasn’t traveling. Or at work on a new collection.”

“Tell me about that.” Eloise leans forward, her little Moleskine notebook in hand, her beautiful face concentrated in readiness for a decent human-interest story. “Tell me more about those early years with your father.”

“Right . . . er, well, they were great, of course. The early years. Just, you know . . . great.”

“But having a genius like Elroy Glass for a father . . . I mean, that must have been the source for many happy memories?”

“Oh, many. Many, many.”

Except that now, of course, I can’t, for the life of me, think of one.

Damn
Lucy, and the pesky notions she put into my head about Dad, and all that . . . abandonment stuff. If she were taking my calls (she’s still not), I’d call her up this very minute and have a go at her. I mean, here I was, all these years, perfectly happy to be half in love with Dad the way everybody else seemed to be. Never realizing that those feelings were based on a fantasy. Or rather, if not a fantasy, then certainly something pretty long gone past its sell-by date. Those Saturdays right here at the store were all very well and good, but there were a lot of Saturdays after that, too: Saturdays spent alone in my bedroom while Diana took Gaby and Robyn to ballet classes, horseback riding, and friends’ houses, while Dad—as I’m coming to realize—pretty much just did his own sweet thing.

But I can’t tell Eloise about that.

On the other hand, I don’t think I can lie, either.

“Would you like,” I ask, perkily, getting to my feet, “a sandwich?”

“Sandwich?” Eloise’s alabaster forehead displays a solitary wrinkle. “But I was just asking you about—”

“Because I was just thinking of popping to the café over the road and grabbing a sandwich . . . I mean, a
salad
,” I correct myself, because I’ve succumbed to (big, mayonnaise-laden) sandwiches every lunchtime for the past few days, and I think my brain might need retraining. “What would you like me to get you?”

“Er, thanks, Charlie, but I actually have a work lunch . . .”
Disappointed, as well she might be, by my failure to provide her with cozy family portraits for her article, Eloise is slipping off the sandal and getting to her feet. “But I think I’ve got enough for my piece anyway. Can I just use your loo, Charlie, before I get going?”

“Sure. It’s on the second floor, sharp left at the very top of the stairs.”

She’s just started up the stairs towards the second floor when I hear a familiar sound on the street outside. It’s the sound of an Aston Martin engine. Jay has just pulled up into a space outside on King’s Road. He gets out and heads towards the store.

I consider, just for a moment, hurtling up the stairs past Eloise and locking myself in the second-floor bathroom until he goes away again.

This isn’t because I don’t want to see him. Having been too busy with work to meet since last week, I’m actually very keen to see him. It’s more that I don’t want him to see
me
.

I mean, I don’t want to get all uptight about my appearance or anything, especially not after Lucy’s accusations the other day. But honestly, even if Jay weren’t the kind of man to change his mind about his women the way a child changes his mind about his favorite flavor of ice cream, I wouldn’t want him to see me right now! It’s not just the fact that I’ve somehow (still not sure how) managed to put away an entire family-sized bar of Galaxy. It’s also the fact that I’ve been so caught up in work that I haven’t managed to keep up the exercise this past week, and that I’m wearing jeans that (thanks to this, and to the chocolate) are visibly a full size too tight around my bum. And the fact that I’ve neglected my salon appointments with Galina, so my eyebrows are bushy, my legs are bristly, and the less said about my mustache and sideburns, the better.

But I still head for the door to greet him.

“Hi!” I pull the widest smile I possess, hoping that might
detract attention from my physical flaws. “I thought you said you were in meetings all morning.”

“We finished early.” He leans in to give me a kiss: on the cheek, and accompanied by a little pat on the shoulder. I must have looked at him a bit quizzically, because he lets out a little laugh and says, “Sorry, Charlie, I’m trying to be professional here. I thought you were in work mode. You certainly
look
as if you’re in work mode.”

This has to be a veiled criticism of my haphazard appearance. Embarrassed, I try to smooth my hair. “I was in such a hurry this morning, I barely had time to shower.”

Good one, Charlie. Make Jay think you smell, too, along with everything else.

“I mean . . .”

“Don’t be silly. You look fine.”

Which is a pretty long way removed, I can’t help noticing, from his usual claims that I’m some spectacular blend of Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe, and Scarlett Johansson.

“Anyway, grab your things,” he’s continuing, swinging his car keys purposefully around in his fingers, “and I’ll run you home for a quick wash-and-brush-up. I’ve got lunch reservations at Claridge’s for twelve thirty.”

“Oh, Jay, that sounds wonderful!” (Though I can’t deny I’m almost as enthused about the prospect of lunch at Claridge’s as I am about the prospect of spending time with Jay . . . Okay, who am I kidding? Lunch at Claridge’s is the
really
appealing part of his proposal.) “But I really don’t have time for that today. I’m just finishing up this interview, and there are deliverymen coming soon with some mirrors, and then I have a meeting with my designers at one thirty . . .”

“So call them and get them to come later. We’ll only need an hour or so for lunch . . . a bit more if you want to grab a room for the afternoon . . .”

“Um, but I have lots of other things to do, too.” And any
way, there’s literally no way I can agree to “grab a room” at Claridge’s, not in the disgraceful physical state I’ve allowed myself to sink to. “I mean, now that the carpet’s down, I really have to go and buy a decent Hoover, and I’ve got to give all the paintwork a good cleaning from where the carpet-fitters kept getting their grubby hands on it . . .”

“Charlie, for God’s sake!” His eyes flash real irritation for a moment before he covers it with a smile. “Honestly, what am I going to do with you?” he teases, grabbing me around the waist and pretending he’s about to smack my bottom. Which would all be a colossal turn-on if I didn’t think he might actually, seriously mean it. “You need to hire people to do all this kind of thing for you! You need a cleaner, for crying out loud! Look, when we get to the restaurant, I’ll give my own cleaner a call, tell her to meet you back here later on with all her equipment. She’s fantastic, and she’ll do everything you ask. Grubby paintwork and all.”

“That’s really nice of you, Jay, but honestly, there’s no need.”

“’Course there’s a need. You have to
eat
, don’t you?”

“Sure, but I was just going to grab a sand . . . I mean a salad from over the road.”

“That’s just ridiculous!” His mouth is a flat line now. “I’ve barely seen you for the past week, and now you’d rather faff around with a feather duster than come out and have fun with me!”

“I never said feather duster. I said Hoover . . .”

“Does it really fucking matter? You’re not bloody Mrs. Mop!”

He’s raised his voice, which seems to have taken him by surprise as much as it’s taken me.