Charlie Glass's Slippers (40 page)

I pull some money out of my purse, shove it through the screen at the driver, then get out of the taxi and start to walk, very, very fast, in the direction of the smoke, the sirens, and Dad’s store. When I realize that I could actually go even faster if I weren’t being slowed down by these
bloody
heels, I take them off and start to run.

At the next junction, my fears are horribly confirmed.

It’s Dad’s store. Dad’s store is burning down.

Smoke is pouring from the shattered windows. Firefighters from two separate fire engines are dousing the place with powerful jets of water. The section of the road it’s on has been closed off to traffic, but crowds of people are clustered along the strips of yellow tape: some who are presumably residents of the various flats above the premises along here; and others, all dressed up, who are mostly on their way down to pubs and bars at the better end of King’s Road but who have stopped to have a look.

I cross over and stand amongst them for what feels like about five hours but is probably only about five seconds, staring slack-jawed in horror at the sight in front of me.

When someone with a firm hand grabs my elbow and pulls me around, I can barely focus on who it is for a moment. Hair scraped back in a bun, baggy striped pajamas, slash of crimson lipstick . . .

“
Galina?
”

“Sharlee. Is catastrophe.” She gestures at the burning building. “I am asleep in my bed above salon. I am wakened
by smoke alarm. I am looking out of window and seeing your store down in flames.”

“Up in flames.”

Shock must be doing very peculiar things to my brain. At least, I presume this is the reason why, amidst all this, I’ve just taken the time to correct her English. And why I can’t stop wondering whether Galina stopped, on her way out of a smoke-filled building, to put on her lipstick, or whether she actually sleeps in it.

Mind you, I think Galina may be suffering from shock, too, because she’s staring at me absolutely wild-eyed. “I am seeing that light is on in store. I am thinking you are inside.”

“Oh, God, Galina . . .” I reach out and put a hand on her shoulder, though I’m not sure if it’s to comfort her or to keep myself standing upright. “No. I wasn’t there. I’m here.”

“I am not knowing that at time! And nice man from ice-cream shop is not knowing it, either!”

“Ferdy? He’s here?”

“Ice-cream shop is open late. Is doing roaring trade. But fire start and he is coming running out into street. He was seeing light on also. He was thinking you are inside. So he is running in.”

He is . . . running in?

A terrible feeling of nausea washes over me. “I just saw an ambulance.”

Galina nods again. “Am hearing paramedicals say they are taking him to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital . . .”

Which is all I need to hear.

I don’t care that my beautiful store and everything in it is slowly vanishing in clouds of smoke and high-pressure water behind me. I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about anything in my life.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is only a five-minute run from here. Three minutes, if I put on a sprint.

I mean, all that bloody exercise I’ve endured for the past four months has got to be useful for something.

• • •

It’s a cliché but it’s true: emergency rooms aren’t exactly fun places to be at ten o’clock on a Friday night. Bruised, battered, and—in some cases—profusely bleeding people are crammed into a waiting area filled with orange plastic chairs or queuing up, with varying degrees of patience, at what looks almost like a bulletproof window immediately to the right of the sliding entrance doors. Behind this window, a pair of girls who look far too young and far too bored to be doing such an important job are directing the walking wounded towards the ever-more-crowded waiting area, or—for the lucky few, with injuries deemed serious enough to escape the orange plastic chairs—behind a set of swinging doors.

By the time I reach the front of the queue, my nerves are shredded, and I’ve already bitten away four of the ten fingernails that were manicured into perfect, Jay-worthy ovals only this morning.

“Injury? Illness?” one of the bored girls asks me from behind the window, her hand hovering over a computer mouse. A sign behind her warns that “anyone acting in a threatening or aggressive manner may be removed by hospital security.”

“Neither. It’s not me who’s injured. It’s a . . . friend of mine. Ferdy Wright? He was brought in, I think, about fifteen minutes ago?”

“Name?”

“Ferdy Wright! I just said . . .” I break off, as I look again at the sign behind her. “Ferdy Wright,” I repeat, fixing a pleasant and polite smile to my face, in the hope that this will warm the girl up and she’ll be quicker about helping me. “He’s thirty-two, I think. I don’t know his exact date of birth . . . He might have smoke inhalation, or awful burns . . . I mean, he tried
to save me from a fire, for fuck’s sake . . .” Again, I break off, because I’m fairly sure that use of the F-word could be interpreted as threatening or aggressive, even if I’m not actually directing it at a staff member.

“If he came in less than half an hour ago, he might not be in the system yet.”

“But he might be? Could you look? Please? It’s Ferdy Wright—well, Ferdinando, if you need the full version . . .”

“Funny name.” But at least she starts to click a couple of things on her computer screen.

“Yes. His mother’s Italian, so—”

“No, I meant Wright. I mean, if you think about it, that makes him Mr. Wright, doesn’t it?”

I stare at her, blankly.

“Like
Mr. Right
?” she snaps.

“Oh! Oh, God, yes, I suppose he is . . .”

“Yeah, anyway . . . uh . . . it looks like he was brought in tonight, actually.” She looks more closely at her screen. “Oh, sorry. He’s gone.”

Everything starts to go very black and fuzzy. I can actually feel, as if in slow motion, my legs start to crumple beneath me.

“Yeah, they took him straight off to St. Mary’s Hospital, soon as he got here. Our burns unit is pretty full tonight. They’re redirecting the minor cases to St. Mary’s instead.”

I see, quite suddenly, why the hospital feels the need to post a warning about refraining from abusing its staff.

“So when you said you were sorry, that he’d gone,” I manage to croak, “you just meant he’d gone across town to St. Mary’s Paddington? Not . . . into the next world?”

“Yeah. St. Mary’s Paddington. Exactly. You’d better go and look for your Mr. Wright there. Now can you move aside, please? You’re holding up my queue.”

Just as I obey her, my phone starts to ring. I’m so glad to see that it’s Lucy calling that I almost burst into tears.

“Charlie?” she gasps, when I pick up. “I’ve just gotten to the store! Are you here? It’s fucking chaos. An Arson Investigation Unit has just arrived . . .”

“
Arson?
”

“This guy standing next to me says he used to be a fireman, and he says there’s a real odor of accelerant in the air . . . Look, where are you?”

“I’m at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.”

“
Charlie!
”

“No, I came here to find Ferdy. He ran into the store because he thought I was in there. But he’s okay, I think. I mean, he’s been transferred to a different hospital, for minor injuries. St. Mary’s Paddington. I’m going to go there now.”

“Okay—wait where you are, Charlie, and I’ll find a taxi and come and pick you up. We’ll take it on to Paddington together.”

“Oh, Luce, if you don’t mind . . . Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say, over my shoulder, to a woman I’ve just accidentally backed into.

“If you were looking where you were going,” she snaps back at me, “you wouldn’t—
Charlie?
”

It’s Gaby.

She’s waiting at the back of the queue of unfortunates, and I just have time to think how ironic it is that this is the second time in two days that I’ve bumped into someone I know in a hospital when all those years I was carting Dad around various medical establishments all by myself, I never ran into anyone who knew me.

“Are you here for . . . for Mummy?”

“Mummy?”

“Did they call you? The hospital? I thought they’d only called me. Well, I assume they tried Robyn first, because I’m sure she’s the first one on Mummy’s emergency contact list, but obviously she’s far too busy recuperating from her life-or-death bunion surgery to pick up her phone . . .”

“Gaby, hang on. Has something happened to your mother?”

“Obviously. Isn’t that why we’re both here?”

“Um, well, it’s not why I’m here. There’s been . . .” I take a deep breath. “Gaby, there’s awful news about the store, I’m afraid. Dad’s store. There’s been—”

“A fire.”

“Yes!” I stare at Gaby, who stares—rather wide-eyed—back. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t.” Her voice is hoarse all of a sudden. “I mean, I didn’t know it was at Dad’s store. I only knew there’d been a fire. There had to have been a fire. Because Mummy’s hands have been burned.”

Diana’s
hands have been burned
?

“She told me to call Alan Kellaway. Said she thought she might need a lawyer.” Gaby’s face has turned a ghostly shade of white. “Oh, my God. Dad’s store? Are you serious?”

I nod.

“But that was all we had left of him.” Her hands fly up to her face. “That place was all he ever really cared about.”

I’m still trying to digest her news about Diana’s burnt hands, but this doesn’t prevent me from replying something that I could only ever admit to one of my sisters.

“I know.”

“Oh, Charlie.” Now Gaby peers at me from between her fingers. “What in God’s name has Mummy
done
?”

I could confirm her worst fears, by passing on what Lucy has just told me about the Arson Investigation Unit and the odor of accelerant. I could pile yet more shock on top of that by producing Olly’s picture from my bag, pointing at the Cadbury-colored Jowett Jupiter, and explaining to Gaby precisely why I’ve drawn the conclusion that her mother killed my mother in a hit-and-run “accident.” I could just let her wait in the queue by herself, knowing full well that the moment she encounters the eye-rolling rudeness of the girls be
hind the window, she’s cast-iron certain to act in a threatening or aggressive manner, and quite possibly find herself ejected from the hospital by security.

But I don’t do any of those things. I link my arm through hers and wait in the queue with her. She doesn’t say a word. But she doesn’t pull her arm away from mine. And when we finally get to the front of the queue she turns to me, to let me speak on her behalf.

chapter twenty-six

F
erdy’s flat, on the
top floor of a slightly scruffy Victorian house in Shepherd’s Bush, is exactly the way I’d imagined it. By which I mean that it’s mostly kitchen. As far as I can tell, there are three rooms: a bedroom (that I haven’t seen into yet, because Ferdy is sleeping), a bathroom, and the room I’m in now, which estate agents would probably call a large open-plan living/dining area, but which I would call Mostly Kitchen.

And what a lovely kitchen it is, too—light streaming in through half a dozen windows and a big skylight, gleaming granite worktops, a huge eight-ring stove and an even huger fridge-freezer, which (I’ve already peeked) is full to bursting point with all of Ferdy’s latest ice-cream experiments, and a big, square wooden table, with mismatching chairs, where Ferdy’s dad and I are sitting now.

“Ferdy’s really going to appreciate this,” Martin says.

He nods at the stew I’m making. Beef Stroganoff, in fact, because I remember how much Ferdy said he liked it at my disastro dinner party. And because even though it’s July, it feels like stew weather: gray skies have gathered, bringing heavy showers of rain. There’s a shower going on right now, as it happens, raindrops splashing down with repetitive gusto on the wide skylight. It’s an incredibly soothing sound, and I
hope Ferdy is hearing some of it, through the closed bedroom door, and through the veil of sleep.

“Well, he did try to save my life last night. I think making a few meals for his freezer is the least I can do.”

“For his freezer?” Martin sips his tea. He’s looking remarkably calm for a man who was woken in the middle of the night with the news that his son had just been admitted to the hospital with (admittedly mild) smoke inhalation after running headlong into a burning building. But I guess thirty years on the metropolitan police force prepares you pretty well for things like that. “So you’re not planning to stick around for dinner and eat it with him?”

“Well, I didn’t plan
not
to . . . I just thought . . .”

“Got to get home to that new chap of yours, I expect.”

“No, no. God, no.” I feel myself redden, and try to pretend it’s some kind of reaction to chopping this onion, as if these days onions have stopped making you cry and started making you blush instead.

“Nice bloke, is he? Ferdy told me you all spent a weekend in the country together. Spoke very highly of him. James, is it? Jason?”

“Jay. But . . . well, we’re not really together anymore.”

“Ah. Well.” Martin takes another sip of his tea. “Sorry to hear that. But if it’s any consolation to you, Charlie, love, Ferdy didn’t speak highly of him at all. Said he was a bit of a flash git, as it happens.”

“That’s . . .” I can’t help smiling, because I can practically hear Ferdy’s voice as Martin says this. “Actually, that’s unfair. Jay was a bit flash, but he was a nice guy.”

Still
is
a nice guy, as it happens. He called me this morning only five minutes after he found out about the fire at the store last night. And even though I’m fairly sure he was lying next to Eloise at the time (okay, I’m absolutely sure: I heard her in the background, talking on her own phone), it still doesn’t change
the fact that he was solicitousness itself. Wanting to know if there was anything he could do, offering to help me find new premises, offering genuine commiseration when I explained that unfortunately there isn’t any point in looking for temporary new premises because all Dad’s shoes were incinerated in the fire. He even promised to take me out “for a good old sorrows-drowning booze-up, whenever you’ve got the time.” Which—I’m fairly certain, even if he wasn’t—was his way of letting me know that our relationship is over. But that, just as Maggie said, he’d like it if we could stay friends. And I’d like that, too, even though I’m not sure I’m cut out to be quite as good at it as Jay obviously is. But if there’s anyone who’ll make it easy to do so, it will be Jay. And given a little time, maybe I’ll find myself joining the massed ranks of ex-lovers with whom, in an oddly civilized way, he maintains friendly relations. Sort of like a Bond girl, perhaps, easily replaced but—hopefully—never quite forgotten.

“Well, Ferdy was never exactly going to be the guy’s biggest fan, was he?” Martin is staring rather fixedly at the tabletop, but there’s a determined tone to his voice that implies he’s damn well going to say whatever it is he wants to say, no matter how awkward it makes either of us feel. “You know. Feeling about you the way he does. And all that.”

Again, I’m hoping my blush can be explained by the onions. Because if anything, it’s even deeper than it was before.

“Dad?”

This voice takes both of us by surprise, and we turn around to see Ferdy in the kitchen doorway.

He’s still looking a little bit the worse for wear, mostly because of the huge purple bruise right in the middle of his forehead, sustained (he admitted to Martin, who swore me to secrecy) when he got confused by all the billowing smoke and ran headlong into one of the teak shelving units. Other than that, he’s managed to get away with nothing worse than
that mild smoke inhalation, for which the hospital let him go, after a few hours of observation, first thing this morning. It’s miraculous, considering that Galina had me convinced he’d been burnt to a crisp along with all Dad’s shoes.

Not a single pair was saved, by the way. From the scarlet platforms to the cobalt-blue Mary Janes, the entire vintage collection went up in (what I hope was pretty colorful) smoke. I’ve already had a tearful conversation with Maggie about it—though, oddly enough, she was the one who was tearful rather than me. (I haven’t yet dared to call Leo or Suzy, by the way. I’ll have to do that in person, after arming myself with a medicinal bottle of brandy for each of them.)

It’s not that I don’t care about losing Dad’s precious collection, or that I don’t care about the mess at the store, especially after all my hard slog getting the place ready. It’s just that when it all comes down to it, the most important thing is that nobody got hurt. And the second most important thing is that I’m not going to let Diana’s nihilism triumph. Burning down the store was her bitter revenge against Dad, through me; her desperate attempt to prevent the rekindling of any of his former glory. Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but it has even less fury than a woman scorned twenty years ago, and whose intended revenge—getting Dad, years ago, to sign a will that would essentially leave everything he’d worked for in her hands—didn’t quite go according to plan.

Besides, I don’t think this has to be the end for Glass Slippers. Far from it. Not when Leo and Suzy have already come up with such a brilliant vintage Elroy Glass–inspired collection. And not when, more importantly, I’ve finally had a proper chance to talk to Gaby about the future. It was a long night, last night, what with me waiting for Gaby while she talked to Diana and then to the police, and then Gaby coming with me while I tracked down Ferdy at St. Mary’s. It was no wonder, after the night we’d had, that we ended up sharing two whole
bottles of red wine (and a takeaway pizza) back at my flat at three o’clock this morning. I think it was the wine that eventually emboldened me to ask Gaby if, when the dust settles, she’d like to come in on the vintage shoe project with me as the PR director. At which point (possibly emboldened by the wine herself ) she brought up the fact that, seeing as it looks as if Diana is going to be otherwise engaged for a while, it might be a good opportunity to have a serious think about the current direction of the main Elroy Glass line. “And obviously, you know,” she said, in a still brusque but rather boozy fashion, pouring me another glass of wine, “it’d be good if you’d give your input on that. Seeing as the vintage direction might be the right way for the company to go. And anyway, we’ve got to get a bit of creativity back on the agenda.”

Luckily, I can also blame the wine for the fact that at this point, I hugged Gaby for the first time in . . . well, possibly ever. And I suspect that Gaby can blame the wine for the fact that she got a bit moist around the eyes, and had to use a wodge of pizza-delivery napkins to dry them up.

“You two look thick as thieves,” Ferdy says now, padding into the kitchen in his bare feet. He’s pulled on a pair of jeans and a faded navy T-shirt, and his dusty-colored hair—genuinely dusty after his brush with the flames—is sticking up at angles that would confound even the most skilled mathematician. He looks so handsome and so sweet, with that ridiculous bruise on his head, that it makes my heart hurt just to look at him.

“Oh, I was just telling Charlie the latest about her stepmother,” Martin says, rather more smoothly than I’d have given him credit for. It’s not a lie—he
has
been telling me the latest about Diana—but it’s not, of course, precisely what we were discussing when Ferdy came in.

“About Diana?” Ferdy’s face hardens. “Are they charging her with arson for the fire? Manslaughter for the hit-and-
run? She’s not going to get away with it by hiring some fancy lawyer, is she? Or claiming insanity?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s a fancy lawyer in Christendom who can get Diana out of the hole she’s dug for herself. But as for insanity . . . well, if Diana wants to spend the rest of her life in a hospital for the criminally insane, instead of in prison, I don’t think anyone would bother trying to stop her.”

Martin gets to his feet, pocketing the photo of Alan Kellaway and his Jowett Jupiter as he does so. I gave the photo to him at the hospital last night, and—as he’s just been telling me—he took it to the police station to show one of his former colleagues first thing this morning. Only a couple of hours later, two uniformed policemen dropped around to Alan Kellaway’s office to ask him a couple of questions about his apparent ownership of a car that’s linked to a twenty-year-old hit-and-run. Barely had the questions begun when Alan Kellaway (apparently) turned into a blubbering, quivering wreck and admitted that Diana had been driving his car that day, that he’d happily give evidence to that effect, and that he’d very much like it if he wasn’t charged with being an accessory to manslaughter and/or perverting the course of justice. He even told the officers where the car is still kept—in a locked shed on the grounds of his cottage in Cornwall, apparently. Although it hasn’t been driven, or even let out onto the road, in twenty years, Martin is dubious about the idea that there will still be any evidence of the “accident” on it. Still, Alan Kellaway’s evidence, plus the accompanying charge of arson, is going to get Diana into some extremely hot water. She’s actually under arrest at the moment, even though she’s still being treated for her burnt hands in the hospital. Gaby is taking charge of the (increasing) press interest, and Robyn—as far as I can gather from the various phone conversations we’ve had so far today—has checked herself out of the Wellington bunion clinic and is planning to jump straight onto Anatoly’s
private plane to Sardinia “until all this yucky stuff with
bloody
Mummy blows over.” It seemed (though I really didn’t want to know) as if Boris the bodyguard was going, too, deputized by Anatoly to be Robyn’s shoulder to cry on.

“Anyway, I really need to be getting home now. Leave you two to it.” Martin gets to his feet before elaborating on what, exactly, is the “it” he’s leaving me and Ferdy to. “Now, your mother told me to tell you she’ll be over later this afternoon with one of her lasagnas. And don’t forget, she’s got a key. So . . . well, I’m just saying that I’d put the chain on, if I were you. If you were wanting, you know, any privacy, or anything . . .”

“Great, Dad,” Ferdy says, his voice heavy with sarcasm and embarrassment this time. “Thanks a lot.”

While Ferdy sees (okay, hurries) his dad out of the flat, I get up and busy myself with the onions. If anything’s going to stop me from getting flustered right now, it’ll be cooking.

Not that I’m completely sure, yet, that there’s anything to get flustered
about
. Even though Lucy has told me, at least half a dozen times since last night, “but he
ran into a burning building to save you,
Charlie!”. . . Well, I still can’t quite believe that Ferdy likes me. After all, people save strangers’ lives all the time, and it doesn’t mean they’re madly in love with them, so I can’t seriously believe, the way Lucy seems to, that this is proof positive that he’s wildly in love with me.

But then, there was that thing Martin said just now. About the fact that Ferdy was bound to dislike Jay “feeling about you the way he does.”

The fact is, really, that I don’t want to think about whether Ferdy likes me or not. Because I want him to like me so very, very badly—the same way I like him—that I can’t even bring myself to entertain the possibility that he might. If I’m wrong (if Lucy is wrong, and Martin is wrong), I’m honestly not sure I could handle it.

“Sorry about that,” Ferdy says, coming out of the tiny hallway and back into the kitchen.

“Sorry about what?”

“Dad. You know. He talks.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“I mean, I think you’ve got bigger things on your mind right now than . . . well, than . . .
you
know.”

Do
I know?

“Your stepmother’s just been arrested for burning your store down, for Christ’s sake! And for murdering your mother!”

“Well, we don’t know that it was actual murder.” I leave the onions to soften and head back to the table to start cutting the beef into chunks. It strikes me that this is the most extraordinary conversation to be having while doing these mundane tasks. But I still think I’d rather have this conversation than the other conversation. Because it didn’t sound as though Ferdy was about to say that his dad was right, and that, smoke inhalation and bruises permitting, what he’d really like to do right now is throw me onto the kitchen table and make blissful love to me. “Um, where was I? . . . Oh, yes . . . we don’t know whether or not Diana actually planned to do it, or whether she just happened to be driving along that evening and saw Mum crossing the road, and couldn’t help herself.”

Ferdy stares at me, running a hand through his hair. It sends a small cloud of dust skyward. “That’s incredibly forgiving.”