Charlie Glass's Slippers (39 page)

“I’m Charlie,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nicer if I weren’t wearing this undignified thing!” She waggles a bandage-clad foot at me. (It is, I note with interest, roughly thirty percent of the size of Robyn’s bandage.) “I’ve been de-bunioned today, too, I’m afraid!”

“Well, I hear this is, um, the only place to do it.”

“Yes, every stiletto-loving idiot in town is knocking down the door!” Terry scowls, more annoyed than ever. “Caroline, this is the girl I was telling you about the other evening. Elroy’s daughter. The one trying to persuade bloody silly women like you to put on a pair of sensible shoes for a change.”

“Oh, that’s not quite what I’m trying to do! I’m going to be launching a new line based around my father’s vintage shoes. And selling some of the originals, too, at his old store on King’s Road,” I tell Caroline. “They’re not exactly what you’d call sensible. But they certainly are much more comfortable than the new Elroy Glass ones. I mean, I can’t guarantee you’ll stay bunion-free, of course . . .”

“Nevertheless, it sounds absolutely terrific!” She smiles at me. “I’ll come straight down for a nose around, just as soon as I’m back on my feet again. I can still remember that King’s Road shop in the old days, you know. The place in permanent chaos, and champagne popping, and your father flirting with everyone . . .”

“Yes. I remember, too.”

“Well, I give you full permission to go there and spend as much as you bloody like,” Terry tells his wife, grumpily but rather fondly at the same time. “Sensible shoes for you, and a surefire way to piss off Alan Kellaway for me. The stupid sod,” he informs Caroline, “is the only one who doesn’t think it’s the best idea anyone’s had in the bloody company for ten years.”

“Ugh, Alan Kellaway.” Caroline actually shudders. “Horrible man. You know, I still remember him from twenty, thirty years ago, when he thought he was a bit of a Jack-the-lad. Racing around town in that ridiculous purple sports car, ordering the most expensive champagne at Annabel’s. Terry still hates him,” she leans in to tell me, “because he mistakenly thinks I once went on a date with him to—”

“I’m sorry.” I abandon my manners and interrupt her. What she just said—what I
think
she just said—is far too important for me to stand on ceremony. And it seems as if Alan Kellaway is going to haunt me today, no matter how much I’d rather he didn’t. “Did you say that Mr. Kellaway used to drive a
purple
sports car?”

“Oh, absolutely. Shiny, flashy thing. Exactly the color of the foil wrapper on a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar.”

“All
right
!” Terry suddenly bellows at his phone as it rings briskly from somewhere within the depths of a trouser pocket. “
Bloody
taxi driver. We all know he’s charging me an arm and a leg for sitting outside reading the paper while he waits. There’s no need for him to harass me at the same time.”

“Well, we shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer.” Caroline extends a hand to me again. “Very nice to meet you. And I’m sure I’ll see you again, at the shop! You know,” she adds, as Terry wrestles her wheelchair into a 180-degree turn and starts to shove her towards the exit doors, “I was very fond of your father, all those years ago. I’m sure he’d be terribly proud, Charlie, of everything you’re doing.”

• • •

“Charlie, calm down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now, take a deep breath and go back to the beginning. And if you could possibly do that,” Olly says, lowering his voice and making little puffing noises, as if he’s heading out of his office and up a secluded nearby stairwell, for example, “without hurling around accusations of vehicular manslaughter against my boss, at least while it’s still office hours . . .”

“Not vehicular manslaughter!
Murder!
It was his car that killed my mother, Olly!” I’m still shaking so hard that I’m in danger of dropping my phone right into the cup of sugary tea I’ve just bought myself in The Wellington Hospital coffee shop. Two elderly ladies at the next table, one clutching
two crutches and the other parked on a mobility scooter, are watching me with curious concern (possibly because of all the shaking, or possibly because I’ve just crammed an entire Kit Kat, for medicinal purposes, into my mouth in two bites). “Mrs. Terry told me!”

“Who’s Mrs. Terry?”

“Terry Pinkerton’s wife. Caroline.”

“And she told you that Alan Kellaway knocked down your mother?”

“No, but she told me that Alan Kellaway used to drive this flashy purple sports car. Dairy Milk purple, she called it. And the old lady who witnessed the accident saw a Dairy Milk–purple sports car speeding away from Mum’s body that night! DI Wright always told me! But they never made any headway on finding the car, because Jane Brearly—she was the only witness—was adamant it had the name of a planet on the bumper, and the police always thought there weren’t any sports cars named after a planet.”

“Well, isn’t that the kind of thing your racing-driver boyfriend might know about? If there were any sports cars named after a planet, I mean.”

“Oh, my God. Jay
would
know about that!” I’m shaking more than ever. “I have to go now, Olly—I have to call Jay and ask him if there are any sports cars named after—”

“Charlie, wait!” Olly’s voice is almost commanding, for a change, though he’s still speaking very low indeed. “Look, I think I might even be able to do you one better than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well—and I don’t want you to go getting excited about this, Charlie—if memory serves correctly, I may have seen a photograph of a purple sports car in Alan’s office.”

My mind, addled by shock and racing ten miles a minute with the extreme sugar hit from my Kit Kat/sweet tea combo, struggles to process what Olly just said.

“I don’t understand. How did he get the sports car into his office to take a photo of it?”

“No! The photo is in his office, not the car! It’s a photo of Alan, actually, standing next to a very shiny purple sports car. The hood of one, I mean. It’s a pretty old photo, I think, because he’s got a lot more hair. I think that’s partly why he keeps the picture on his shelf, to be honest with you, just to prove to the world that he wasn’t bad-looking when he was younger . . . Anyway, do you think it would help, at all, if I could get you the photograph? To show to Jay, that is?”

“Olly, that would be amazing . . .”

“Okay, then I’ll stay late tonight and try to get one of the cleaners to let me into Alan’s office after everyone’s left. But Charlie, I’ll only do it if you promise you’re not going to go off the deep end about this. The man is still my boss, you know. We can’t go around hurling baseless accusations.”

“They wouldn’t be baseless.” No more baseless, anyway, than Olly’s recent suspicions about Alan Kellaway and Diana’s machinations regarding Dad’s will. “But don’t worry, Olly—I won’t do anything of the sort. I’ll just run the photo by Jay, and then take it to DI Wright . . .”

“Just one thing, Charlie. I mean, you know I’m not exactly a fan of my boss.” Olly is actually whispering into the phone now, his voice barely audible thanks to this and the fact that whatever stairwell he’s in has got a serious echo going on. “But I don’t know if he’s actually the kind of person who’d drive a car into a defenseless pedestrian, deliberately or otherwise, and then just drive off without stopping.”

“No, but he is! He’s exactly that kind of person! He has to be!”

“Well, I admit, the whole Dairy Milk–colored sports car thing is quite a coincidence. And I guess he must have known your mother back in those days. But if the stories I’ve heard about Alan back then—actually, if the stories I hear about him
now—are anything to go by, I’m not sure he’s capable of
killing
a woman. He’s far too busy doing . . . well, other things with women to do anything like that.”

Which is when two things happen, just seconds apart from each other.

Robyn, presumably having tired of phone sex with Boris and wanting to know where I’ve gotten to with her vase and Vittel water, starts calling me on my other line.

And I realize that it didn’t have to be Alan Kellaway driving the purple sports car after all. It could have been one of those women he was busy with.

It could have been Diana.

It’s slowly dawning on me that my evil stepmother, the woman who blighted my entire childhood with her arbitrary cruelties, may well have been the person who killed my mother.

“Olly,” I say into the phone again, “just get me that photo, if you can. Then call me when you’ve done it and I’ll come and meet you.”

“Okay, Charlie. I’ll speak to you later.”

I mumble a good-bye, slip my phone into my pocket, and then stumble away from my table and out of the café.

chapter twenty-five

J
ay hasn’t offered to
pick me up before dinner this evening, instead suggesting that we meet at the restaurant in Aldwych where we’re having dinner with Eloise, Ben, and Ben’s wife, Amanda. This is, obviously, a break from tradition for Jay, who usually insists on a formal pickup. But I don’t have time to worry about why he hasn’t insisted on this occasion.

The worst thing about it, I’ll be honest, is that it’s forced me to make my own way to Aldwych rather than hitch a lift in a swanky sports car. Because I’m no longer used to this (how quickly one’s standards change!), I leave far too late to order a minicab, and then have to spend ten minutes painfully tottering up and down outside my flat in Mum’s crystal shoes trying to hail a black taxi, and then a further ten minutes painfully tottering around the corner to get the tube at Earl’s Court instead.

By the time I get to the restaurant, another painful totter from the Covent Garden tube, I’m practically ready to haul myself back to the bunion unit at The Wellington Hospital and demand instant surgery without further delay. I don’t care what Maggie claims about Dad’s vintage shoes being more comfortable than the instruments of torture everyone is cramming their feet into these days. Clearly I’m going to have to face the
fact that I’m just not cut out for long-term high-heel wear, no matter how (relatively) comfortable. If I’m not teetering about the place in agony, I’m mowing bystanders down when my feet slip on accelerators. The world will be a better place, probably, if I restrict myself to Ugg boots and comfy Converse. Which is not an ideal state of affairs for the owner of a shoe company.

I’m assuming I’ll be the last there, but to my surprise, I’m second only to Jay, who is already at the table waiting. He’s sipping a Coke, and there’s a small wrapped package on the table beside him. He glances up as I totter towards the booth, and his smile only dims by the faintest of wattages when he sees it’s me.

Honestly, only someone like me, who’s recently become obsessed by wattage, would even have noticed at all.

“Charlie!” He leans over from his side of the booth to give me a kiss. “You’re looking lovely. I mean, a tiny bit windswept, obviously.” He pushes some strands of my hair gently behind one ear. His touch, sweet rather than sexy, makes me almost want to burst into tears again. But I’ve already alarmed Olly by bursting into tears, this time yesterday night, and I don’t want to spoil Jay’s evening with his friends by doing it to him, too. “Sorry I couldn’t come and collect you, sweetheart, but I was out on a test drive in Hertfordshire this afternoon, and it didn’t make sense to come all the way back west to pick you up.”

“That’s perfectly okay. Actually, Jay, talking of cars— Oh, yes, a martini, please,” I tell the waiter, who’s suddenly hovering at the edge of our booth. “Extra gin. Or whatever it is that makes it really strong.”

“Very, very dry,” Jay tells him, smoothly. “And with a twist. Unless you prefer it dirty, Charlie?”

I’m half-expecting him to follow this up with a cheeky raised eyebrow, one of his devilish grins, and maybe even a hand on my thigh beneath the table. But he doesn’t lift an eyebrow or grin, devilishly or otherwise, and his hand, though
it does move from where it’s resting on the tabletop, simply goes to rest on top of the small parcel beside his glass instead.

“No. I . . . don’t want it dirty. A twist is fine.”

The waiter slides away, leaving Jay and me alone in the booth again.

“Are you all right, Charlie?” Jay asks, before I can say anything. “You don’t look quite yourself.”

“I’m fine.” I’m scrabbling in my bag for the photo Olly gave me yesterday, after he’d purloined it from Alan Kellaway’s office, after hours.

“Really? You just don’t seem quite as chilled out as normal.”

“Well, no, I’m probably not.” In fact, I’m struggling to recall when I might
ever
have been chilled out with Jay. Certainly not during the marathon sex, or the fitful nights’ slumber, or the hundred-mile-an-hour motorway journeys. Or any of the times when I’ve been concentrating so furiously, desperately hard on being sufficiently goddess-like to hold his interest. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually, Jay. Something has happened. Something . . . kind of serious. And I just need your help.”

“
My
help?” He laughs, but there’s a look of unease in his inky eyes. “Charlie, if it’s as serious as all that, you almost certainly aren’t going to need
my
help! The only thing I’m ever known to be serious about is cars.”

“Yes! Exactly.” I find the photo, lurking between my wallet and my lip balm, and pull it out of my bag. “This car, Jay. The purple one, in this photo. You don’t happen to know what make it is, do you?”

“Let me see.” He takes the photo out of my hand and looks at it closely, beneath the hanging lamp above the table. “Oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is. It’s a Jowett Jupiter! The fifty-four, from the look of the hood. I’d have to get a look at more of the car to be absolutely sure of the year.”

“But you
are
absolutely sure”—I’m struggling to keep the tremor from my voice—“that it’s a . . . what did you say? Jowett . . .”

“Jupiter.”

“Named after a planet.”

“Yeah. You don’t see too many of them around these days. Actually, you wouldn’t even have seen many of them around in nineteen fifty-four, to be honest with you. They’re not exactly well known.”

“That’s why the police thought Jane Brearly had it wrong.”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you thinking of buying one or something, Charlie? Because if you’re getting interested in collecting classic cars, there are quite a few I’d point you towards before I suggested a Jowett Jupiter. They’re decent enough, but if you want something with a real zing in the engine . . .”

I’m just glad that the waiter is making a return with my martini, because I need the steadying hand of 40-proof alcohol right now.

“Whoa, Charlie! You might want to slow down on that martini!” He smiles at me, in a kind way that reminds me, ever so slightly, of the way he smiled at me that first day we met, in the elevator. “I mean, no judgment, Charlie, but knocking back nearly neat gin like it’s water isn’t exactly elegant!”

Elegant
.

He’s comparing me—unfavorably, as if there’s any other way I could be compared—to Eloise.

I don’t know if it’s the whoosh of the alcohol or, more likely, the fact that I have bigger things on my mind right now, but I don’t care as much as I thought I would. I’d never have thought this possible until now, but I’m not even taking it all that personally. It’s just like Maggie said: Jay needs things to be shiny and new. Shiny new cars. Shiny new women. Maybe,
like Maggie warned me, reality can never live up to Jay’s hype.

And Jay isn’t very big on reality.

Handsome, charming, and physically faultless though he is, he’s not without his own fatal flaw. Probably it was set in stone many years ago, when his mother died. But really, I was pretty much doomed, wasn’t I, long before Eloise floated onto the scene? Not because of all those surface things I was stressing about: cellulite, a millimeter of stubble, a below-par performance in bed. A photograph of me looking fat and frumpy, even. But because of that tiny seed that Diana planted oh-so-cleverly in Jay’s head. The mental image of me tending to my dying father. I don’t think there’s a woman in the land, no matter how perfect in appearance, who would survive Jay’s cull after that.

And now, of course, he’s reencountered Eloise. Who is just so beautiful, and refined, and elegant. Who probably doesn’t have an inconveniently dead mother, or a dying father.

Who is—for now at least—Jay’s brand-new vision of perfection.

“You know,” I start to slip my jacket back on and take back the photo of the Jowett Jupiter, “I think I . . . I might have left something on somewhere.”

“Left what on?”

“Or unlocked. Yes. That’s it. I think I’ve left the store unlocked.”

“Oh! That’s not good, Charlie.”

“No, it’s not. I think I’d better . . . Well, I’ll just slip away, before the others get here, if you don’t mind. Head back to King’s Road and make sure everything’s okay.”

“Well, sure, if that’s what you feel you need to do.” Jay’s brow is creased with polite concern, and he’s reaching for his phone. “Let me order you a taxi.”

“No, I’m fine, honestly . . .”

“Charlie, come on. It’ll be much quicker and easier for
you if you get a taxi.” He gives my arm a little squeeze. “Then maybe you’ll still have time to come back and join us for a drink later.”

We both know I’m not going to come back and join them for a drink later. Or actually, maybe I’m the only one who knows that. Jay, from the look of him, is already so far off in the stars fantasizing about Eloise that I don’t think he’s really thinking about anything else at all. His natural friendly good manners are kicking in, but if it weren’t for that, I’m not even sure he’d know I was still here.

“Honestly, Jay, I’ll be quicker on the tube. But thank you. Thanks for . . . well, everything.” I lean in and give him a swift kiss on the cheek. As I do so, my handbag knocks his little parcel off the top of the table and into my lap. “Sorry.” I hand it back to him. “This is yours.”

“Oh, yes, it’s just a little something I got for Eloise. A notebook.”

“A notebook?”

“Yeah, I was kidding around with her, when I drove her up to Maida Vale, about how serious she looked with her little notebook. So I called up this writer friend of mine who lives in Italy and got him to courier me a notebook from this incredible stationer’s in Rome. Best in the world, apparently. Leather-bound, acid-free paper, gold-monogrammed with Eloise’s initials . . . Oh, here they are!”

He’s already sliding out of the booth and heading towards the door, where Eloise has indeed just appeared, with a tall, good-looking man who must be her brother, Ben, and an attractive blond woman, with incredible eyebrows, who must be Ben’s wife, Amanda.

Jay’s face, as he greets them, is wearing a familiar expression. It’s the expression he wore the night of his birthday party, when he took me up to his rooftop hideaway, and gazed at me as if I were the second coming of Christ and the eighth
wonder of the world rolled into one. As if nothing, before or since, could ever look so beautiful.

I slip past them towards the door, careful to put my head down, because I don’t want Jay to see me and stop me and make me look as if I’m being rude.

But he doesn’t stop me. He’s caught up in helping Eloise off with her jacket, and none of them even notices that I’m leaving.

• • •

Outside, it’s drizzling, and the totter to the tube feels impossible. So I flag down a taxi and, when the driver asks me where I want to go, hear myself asking him to head towards Clapham.

Towards Lucy.

Then I realize that it’s probably a good idea if I call her and tell her I’m on my way.
Ask
her, more to the point, if she
minds
that I’m on my way. I’m only hoping she picks up the phone at all, when she sees it’s me calling.

It goes for several rings, and then just when I think she’s ignoring me after all, and direct the driver towards home instead, she picks up.

“Charlie?”

“Luce! Look, I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, still. But something’s happened, and I really need you. Not something silly, like Jay dumping me—although he
has
dumped me, pretty much—but something serious. Something about Mum . . .”

“Charlie, where are you?”

“Currently, Soho. But I’m on my way to your flat in a taxi.”

“But I’m on my way to
your
flat in a taxi!”

“You’re kidding.”

“No! I was just about to call you to see if you were in. I’ve just been out for a drink with Olly . . .”

“With
Olly
? Oh, Luce, that’s fantastic!”

“. . . and I had such a good time that, well, I just really wanted to tell you about it.”

This is such good news that it wipes away everything else, for a moment. Not just the fact that Lucy’s been out on a date with Olly. Not even just the fact that she had a fantastic time. But most of all, the fact that she really wanted to tell me about it.

“Look,” she goes on, “why don’t I head south, you head west, and we’ll meet in the middle?”

“Around King’s Road, you mean?”

“Yes. King’s Road. Oh, I know! I’ll stop for a bottle of wine and we can go and talk in the store. I’ve been dying to see it. I came along the other day, actually, but you were inside with this scarily gorgeous girl, and I lost my nerve.”

“Eloise. Yes. I have to tell you about her. I have to tell you about an awful lot of things. If you don’t mind, that is?”

“Oh, Charlie. What are best friends for?”

I redirect the driver towards King’s Road and sit back in the leatherette seat, trying to stop myself from smiling.

I mean, on paper, obviously, this isn’t the best of nights. I’ve effectively been dumped, by Jay, for a younger and more beautiful model, and I’ve just found out, beyond pretty much any reasonable doubt, that my mother was killed either by my father’s lawyer or by my bitch of a stepmother.

But for some reason, I’m actually happy.

I’m so excited to be on speaking terms with Lucy again that I don’t even notice that we’ve reached King’s Road or that the traffic has suddenly ground to a halt, just two blocks away from the store.

“Something nasty going on up here,” my taxi driver is saying, as we suddenly see blue flashing lights and hear wailing sirens up ahead. “Where was it you wanted on King’s Road, love? You might be better off just getting out and walking.”

Seeing as the meter has just crept past the twenty-quid mark, I can’t disagree with him.

“Dear, oh dear,” he adds, as an ambulance suddenly speeds past us, going the opposite way on the other side of the road. “Something’s burning somewhere around here. Must be one of the shops on that next block.”

That next block
being . . .
Oh, my God
.