Marrying Up (12 page)

Her large violet-blue eyes came to rest, rather helplessly, on Alexa. ‘Er, hi there. I’m looking for Fashion House. Have you
seen it?’

It was, of course, straight in front of her and so clearly marked that only an idiot could have missed it. But Alexa was in
no hurry to point this out. She had been given an introduction, a way in; she could make capital out of this, she could just
feel
it.

She jumped to her feet. ‘Florrie! I
thought
it was you!’

As Florrie looked at her uncertainly, she added forcefully, ‘Alexa MacDonald. We met at Classtonbury! You
must
remember.’

‘Omigod, did we really?’ Florrie gasped. ‘I can’t remember a thing. I was stoned out of my mind all weekend.’

This was exactly what Alexa had been banking on. ‘Well, we had a
great
time together,’ she insisted. ‘You and me and Igor—’

‘Igor wasn’t there, was he?,’ Florrie said vaguely. ‘No, he wasn’t,’ she added more certainly. ‘He was busy murdering someone
with his father, or whatever those Russian gangsters get up to. Omigod, can you believe I just said that?’ She giggled and
her long fingers flew to her lips.

‘I was about to say,’ Alexa rejoined smoothly, ‘that it was almost as if Igor
was
there because you talked about him so much. You’re obviously
very
much in love.’

‘No, we just fuck all the time.’ Florrie’s angelic features were split by a grin of pure naughtiness. ‘So you know Ratty and
Moley Huddersfield?’

‘Absolutely . . . Er, like a coffee?’ Alexa was anxious to avoid potentially compromising detail.

Florrie’s beam wavered. ‘Actually, that might be an idea. I’ve got the most awful headache.’

She slumped back in the aluminium chair and flipped her magnificent hair back. Up close and in the flesh, Alexa saw, Lady
Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe was more beautiful even than her pictures. Perfect cheekbones, bow lips and flawless
skin. Her make-up was smudged and looked like it had been applied the night before, but this only added to her allure.

‘Poor you,’ Alexa cooed sycophantically. ‘Drink a tiny bit too much last night?’

‘Igor bought a methuselah.’ Florrie giggled. ‘It cost fifty K.’

Alexa almost fell off her chair. Fifty K! On a bottle of champagne! ‘That must be thousands of pounds per glass,’ she couldn’t
help exclaiming.

‘Really?’ Florrie said vaguely. ‘Well, I spilt mine. The first two, actually.’ She gave a sudden, uproarious laugh, then winced
and clutched her head. ‘Omigod, it was just so mad. After the champagne, we all went off back to his penthouse – it’s the
size of a football pitch. And he – omigod, this is so crazy – he got out his gun and – actually shot the television! Where’s
my coffee, by the way?’

Twisting round in her aluminium seat, Alexa waved wildly in
the direction of the back of the café, hoping a waitress would see her and come out. There was no chance she was going in
there; the bird might have flown on her return.

Florrie, meanwhile, had spotted Fashion House. ‘Omigod, look, there it is. Right in front of me all the time. Can you believe
I didn’t see it?’

Alexa smiled politely. ‘What are you going to do there?’

‘I’m supposed to be starting work,’ Florrie groaned. ‘On
Socialist
magazine.’

‘You mean
Socialite
?’

‘Yes, that’s what I said, wasn’t it?’ Florrie blinked in surprise.

‘No, you said
Socialist
.’

‘Well, what’s the difference?’

Alexa started to laugh, then realised Florrie wasn’t joking.

‘Anyway,’ Florrie said, ‘it’s a mega-yawn, whatever it’s called. Work’s such a drag. I mean, why do people do it?’ The waitress
was finally approaching, and Florrie beamed dazzlingly at her. ‘Omigod, you wouldn’t have any champagne, would you? I could
really do with some hair of the dog.’

‘We only do champagne in bottles, madam,’ the waitress said in a flat eastern European accent.

‘Great,’ Florrie said excitedly. ‘Bring a bottle.’

Was she making progress, Alexa wondered, raising her glass to her lips. The upside was that she was sipping champagne with
the celebrated socialite Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe. On the downside, she still lacked a job and somewhere
to sleep tonight. There was no time to lose.

‘You’ve done so well to have got a job at
Socialite
,’ she began sycophantically.

‘Have I?’ Florrie rolled her violet eyes. ‘Nothing to do with me. Daddy sorted it out. The managing director was at school
with him.’

Alexa could not afford to dwell on the unfairness of this. ‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘I’ve got an appointment at
Socialite
this morning. Why don’t I come in with you? You could sign me in.’

Florrie was busy tapping the screen of her iPhone. Alexa was obliged to repeat herself and Florrie looked up. ‘Omigod, but
you know, I can’t.’

‘Can’t?’ Alexa swallowed.

‘We’re not supposed to sign people in. I actually got a letter about it. Apparently all sorts of sad sacks try and crash the
security; they want to work on magazines for some reason. Can you imagine?’ Florrie gave a disdainful giggle.

Alexa’s insides felt as if they were in freefall. That was it; her
last hope. The end of the road had been reached right outside
Socialite
’s door.

She almost couldn’t help it. She burst into passionate tears.

Thanks to her absorption in her iPhone, Florrie did not immediately notice that Alexa was racked by agonising sobs.

Alexa sobbed louder and eventually she looked up. ‘You’re crying,’ Florrie remarked, in the same tone she might have used
to observe that it was raining.

Alexa waited for Florrie to enquire into the cause of her grief, but she just continued humming and fiddling with her screen.

Alexa racked her brains. The job was a non-starter, but was there hope with Florrie on the accommodation front? She was bound
to have a large apartment. If there was even a spare cupboard she could sleep in, it would be something. Otherwise . . .

Her eye caught the tramp, shuffling out of the park across the road with his plastic bags. He was muttering to himself.

‘I’m crying because I’ve been thrown out of my flat,’ Alexa said dramatically.

Florrie’s eyes flicked up from her iPhone. ‘Omigod, that’s, like, so
weird
. How can anyone throw you out of your own flat?’

‘It’s not my flat,’ Alexa explained.

This was amazing enough for Florrie to raise her entire head. ‘Not your flat?’

Alexa shook her head.

‘But it must be,’ Florrie persisted. ‘Who else’s can it be?’

‘I rent it,’ Alexa lied.

‘What’s renting? I’ve never heard of it.’ Florrie took a slug of champagne.

Alexa, who had never imagined having to go into such details, was forced to invent wildly. ‘It, er, means it belongs to my
landlord. He’s come back unexpectedly and wants me out.’ Her eyes sought Florrie’s pleadingly. ‘I need somewhere to stay.
Just for a few days. Overnight, even.’

Florrie picked up her glass of champagne again. ‘Oh,’ she
said, smiling at something that seemed just to have appeared on the screen.

Alexa leant forward over the aluminium table. ‘I’m homeless,’ she urged, with unfeigned desperation. ‘I need a roof over my
head, otherwise I’ll be sleeping on the streets of London.’

Florrie looked up excitedly. ‘But, you know, that’s quite fashionable. Wills – Prince William – slept on them, I think.’

Subtlety – in so far as this was subtle – was a waste of time, Alexa realised. ‘It would,’ she began, slowly and emphatically,
‘be just so wonderful if I knew someone who had a spare room in their flat.’

Florrie, her attention back on her iPhone, did not seem to hear this.

‘Or even a bit of floor space,’ Alexa continued to spell it out loudly. ‘A cupboard, anything. Even the bath. Just somewhere
I could shelter for a few days until I found somewhere else.’

‘Mmm,’ Florrie said absorbedly.

‘You don’t know anyone who does, do you?’ Alexa raised her voice.

‘Does what?’ This, vaguely.

‘Has some spare room in their flat.’

Florrie’s beautiful brow creased with what was clearly the enormous effort of thinking. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘I live
with my sister . . .’

Alexa’s heart sank. She had officially hit rock bottom. Frozen with misery despite the warm sunshine, she heard Florrie complete
the sentence.

‘. . . except that she’s moving out today – she’s getting married.’

Alexa, computing the possibilities at lightning speed, felt her heartbeat race with a new, almost painful excitement. Not
only a flat with an empty room, but a looming society wedding and all its attendant opportunities to meet the eligible elite.
None of this could be allowed to slip through her fingers. No! No! No!

She poured the rest of the champagne into Florrie’s glass and
spoke slowly and emphatically, as if to a child. ‘You Don’t Have A Spare Room Coming Up In Your Flat, Do You?’

‘Hey girls, sorry to interrupt . . .’

Alexa, staring up at the long-haired young man in vast black sunglasses with a large boxy bag suspended from one shoulder,
felt she had never wanted to kill anyone more in her life.

‘. . . but I’m a photographer, and I was just wondering,’ his eyes were on Florrie, ‘whether you’d ever considered modelling.’

Possibly as a result of reaching for the iPhone, Florrie’s coat had slid down her arms and her pearly shoulders rose in perfect
contrast to the black material; her hair, meanwhile, was streaming everywhere in a golden mass. She looked like the most glamorous
magazine front cover in the world.

Florrie rolled her lovely eyes. ‘People are always, like, asking me, but I’m, you know, not sure I can really be bothered.’
She yawned.

There was no answer to this and the photographer did not try to come up with one. He merely shrugged and sloped off.

‘I’d better go,’ Florrie observed regretfully, draining the wine in her glass. ‘Anyway, great to see you again, er . . .’
She looked at Alexa vaguely.

‘Alexa,’ Alexa supplied rapidly. ‘We met at Classtonbury. I’m a friend of the Huddersfields. We were . . .’ She hesitated
only fractionally, ‘just talking about me crashing for a while in your flat.’

‘Were we?’ As Florrie looked at her, puzzled, Alexa could almost hear the rusty cogs – or possibly cog – struggling to turn
in her brain. The question was, were they turning the right way?

‘Sure, why not. You can crash there for a bit if you like now Beattie’s gone,’ Florrie said casually as she rummaged in her
green leopardskin bag.

Alexa, deeply relieved, expected the keys to emerge, followed by the purse to pay for the drinks. But Florrie looked up, grinning.
‘Omigod, I’ve left my dosh at home. You OK to get the champagne?’

Back in Sedona Queen Astrid had endured yet another sleepless night. She walked, heavy-eyed, into the white and gold breakfast
room.

The big French windows, as usual at this time of year, were open to the breathtaking panorama of mountains. Brightness and
air poured in. But the Queen’s mood remained sunken and glum. She had lain awake pondering the absolute impossibility of dragging
her son away from the studies he loved, and was so good at, and of making him marry someone he didn’t want to for the sake
of king and country, as she had been forced to do herself.

Muttering a greeting, she joined her husband at the oval breakfast table. He looked up and rattled the newspaper at her. ‘The
PR chap’s done a poll,’ he announced. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the public, when asked, were in favour of the Crown Prince
marrying.’

‘I see,’ Astrid said levelly, taking a tea cup with a shaking hand. She tried to focus on the court circular, where her day
was set out for her.
At half past ten this morning, His Majesty King Engelbert of Sedona, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Astrid of Sedona, will
formally open the new kitchens of the Bougainvillea Rest Home, Sedona. They will then proceed to open the new sunroom at the
Amaryllis Rest Home, Sedona
.

The Queen was gloomily aware that, apart from anything else,
today’s poll would give people licence to ask more personal questions than usual. Old people were particularly shameless on
the prying front, taking advantage of the immunity of age. Knowing they had little time to live, and little to lose, they
asked anything and everything. Astrid expected the worst. She wriggled with reluctance in her shift dress and dug the heels
of her beige court shoes into the Savonnerie carpet.

‘You’ve called Max, I take it,’ the King said casually. Only the fierce way his hands were gripping his newspaper betrayed
the tension with which he awaited the answer.

‘I couldn’t get through,’ Astrid lied.

‘What? Again?’ The King slammed his cup down in his saucer so hard that the Queen winced. She took great pride in the palace
china collection.

‘You haven’t been able to get through for days,’ Engelbert said suspiciously.

Astrid felt panicked. ‘Max,’ she explained, ‘is doing some hands-on experience at Stonker’s.’

‘I bet he is,’ snarled the King.

‘On the farm,’ Astrid hurriedly continued. ‘But it means he’s outside a lot and out of range.’

‘Well he goes inside sometimes, doesn’t he?’ Engelbert blustered, recognising a feeble excuse when he heard one. ‘He’s not
a cow out at pasture.’

The King took up his silver spoon and dug violently into his boiled egg. It was detectably three or four seconds over the
four-minute limit he preferred. This did not improve his mood.

The breakfast room door opened and Prince Giacomo, yawning, his unbrushed golden hair cascading over his face, shuffled through
in baggy jeans and unlaced white trainers.

‘Good morning, Giacomo,’ said his father pointedly. ‘You’re late. Again.’

‘Keep your hair on, Pops,’ replied the young prince blithely.

The King stared upwards as if seeking divine guidance, or
perhaps a shaft of lightning to reduce his troublesome younger son to a smoking cinder.