More Than You Know (26 page)

“I’ve got something … something I want to talk to you about.”

Eliza looked at Jeremy across the table; she felt a clawing at her stomach, a constriction in her throat. Was this it? Finally? And if so …

“Yes?” she said. Her voice didn’t sound quite as it should. Bit squeaky. It was awful. Embarrassing.

“It’s … well, it’s pretty exciting, really. I … I hope you’ll like it, anyway. OK, here goes.” He refilled her glass. It wasn’t champagne. Which she might have expected it to be if … But he had made a bit of a thing about getting some wine he knew she’d love. So …

“Well, I’ve been asked to go to New York for six months. To head up the office there.”

“Oh. Oh, Jeremy.” She smiled. A brilliant, dazzling smile. She could feel its brilliance. It quite hurt. “Jeremy, that’s … that’s wonderful. So wonderful. I … well, I … Congratulations, Jeremy. Um … how soon?”

“Oh … beginning of September. I have to say I am a little bit nervous. But … well, it’s a great challenge. Carl Webster’s leaving the London office after five years and returning to New York, which, according to him, is going down the pan fast. Not a cosy situation.”

They’d lost several accounts, including JKL tobacco and La Roche toiletries; Jeremy was being brought in as overall account director, and his brief was to work with Carl, relaunching the entire agency.

“It will be fun,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “and I will enjoy it; I’m not asking for sympathy—except having to live without you, of course—but, God, the egos I’m going to have to dance around. The creative people are great; it’s the account people who’ve made a complete horlicks of it all, and morale is seriously bad. But there will be good aspects, no doubt.”

“Like?”

“Oh … like an apartment on the Upper East Side—that’s sort of Knightsbridge-y—excellent expenses, of course, and a contractual agreement that I can fly home at least once a month—first-class, natch. And then there’s you, of course.”

Oh, God
. He was going to say it after all. She composed her face again. Took a careful sip.

“I shall miss you terribly. Terribly.”

“I’ll miss you too, Jeremy. Of course.”

“But I do want you to come over lots. For long weekends and so on. As well as me coming home lots as well. In fact, I think I can swing the fare on expenses fairly often. I really couldn’t manage without you entirely. So … shouldn’t be too bad. Oh, darling.”

“Yes?”

Maybe even now? His idea of a joke? A tease?

“I do hate to leave just now while you’re so worried about your dad and the house and everything. But you know we can talk whenever you want to.”

No joke, no tease.

“Yes. Yes, of course I know that. And … congratulations, Jeremy, again. It really is wonderful.”

Well … so what? she thought when finally, finally she was safely home, in bed, exploring how she felt. Which was fine. Absolutely fine. It would be marvellous to go to New York, meet the editors of things like American
Vogue
and
Harper’s
, see the New York designers. So it was a huge bonus, really. And it was only for six months. And what would be the point in getting engaged when they weren’t going to be together? Probably Jeremy had thought exactly that—although he could have said it. But anyway … who on earth wanted to get married when they were flying as high as she was? It was her career that really mattered to her. Wasn’t it?

As if on cue, Jack Beckham sent for her the next morning, told her he had just fired Fiona—“And don’t try to defend her; I’ve had it on very good authority she’s been completely off her head for the last three days, migraine, my arse, and it was her fucked up that last session with the ball gowns, not the photographer”—and formally appointed her fashion editor.

They all argued later over who had had the idea first. Valerie claimed it inevitably, Valerie Hill, still one of Simmonds and Shaw’s major clients.

She had come in one morning to see Louise, who now regarded her as her personal client, about a couple of offices in Ealing. And told her over Jenny’s coffee and biscuits, which continued, Louise claimed, to be
one of the major contributions to the firm’s success, that she could see in the years to come that there would be a huge increase in offices in the outer suburbs.

“We’ll just have to look farther out—well beyond Guildford. In the greenbelt, even. It can’t go on like this.”

Louise was talking to Matt and Jimbo later that day about the nightmare of the Brown Ban, as it was called (after George Brown, a new minister in Mr. Wilson’s punitive government), on any further office building in London. “Half our development work is being stalled for lack of planning permission,” said Jimbo gloomily.

“Well, we’re not going to change that,” said Louise. “And Miss Hill was saying this morning that we’d all have to move right out, start building offices in the suburbs.”

“Can’t see that,” said Jimbo. “Commercial firms won’t want their offices here, there, and everywhere. So unless you can persuade an entire company to move, it’ll never work.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Louise. “Sun Alliance are moving everyone out, apparently, except for the head office. And there’s a lot of people moving out of London to live, you know.”

“Yeah, and if they were big firms,” said Jimbo slowly, “big offices, people would move to work there, like they do to Ford, in Dagenham. I can see that makes sense.”

“Yeah, but that’s factories,” said Matt. “Can’t see people moving to be near an office.”

“This’d be a bit like a factory, though, wouldn’t it?” said Louise. “Only not manufacturing cars or washing machines, but processing insurance claims or whatever.”

“Tell you what,” said Matt. “If we could buy some land, and then develop one of these places, ready and waiting for some of these big firms … well, we’d be printing money. It’d be much cheaper than land in London. And there’s plenty of money around. You just need to have a good business plan, that’s all.”

“Well, if you say so. But how’d you know where to buy it, where the firms would want to be?”

“We could work it out,” said Matt slowly. “It’d be where the public transport was good. The underground, bus routes, mainline stations. Easy as that.” He sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette, looking at them
very coolly through the smoke. “This is our way into the big time,” he said. “Trust me.”

The news had broken fast about Eliza’s appointment. Next morning, she came into an office filled with flowers; by lunchtime every vase in the place was utilised, and she had to ask her secretary to go out and buy half a dozen more. Breathy messages accompanied them: “darling Eliza … so thrilling … so exciting … so well deserved … many congratulations”: all from people who only days before had been fawning over Fiona. Other fashion writers called in their unique code: “We’ve been worrying about Fiona … she couldn’t go on like that … she needs a rest.”

Eliza called Fiona herself, several times; there was no reply. Finally at the end of the day, feeling increasingly wretched, she wrote her a note and ordered some flowers to be delivered at her flat next morning. They were returned, with a message that said there was no reply; later that day Fiona’s mother phoned Jack Beckham to tell him that Fiona had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic suffering from a major breakdown. Jack called Eliza into his office to tell her.

“Oh, Jack, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “I only told you so you could see how right I was. She obviously couldn’t have gone on anyway.”

She thought suddenly—and not for the last time—how like Matt he was.

“Scarlett, it’s David.”

“Oh—hallo, David.”

“Look—are you quite mad? My mother says you’re coming out here to stay with her. You can’t do that; you really can’t.”

“I don’t see why not. It’ll be fun. It sounds so lovely. And maybe it’ll answer some queries for me.”

“What sort of queries?”

“Well, you know. Like how Gaby can be pregnant, when you haven’t slept together for years. Does she have a lover, I wonder? Is it someone else’s baby?”

“Of course not.”

“Well … must be immaculate conception then. How amazing.”

“Look, Scarlett of course we … That is I—she … Occasionally we … well, we sleep together. It’s … it’s just …”

“Just what?” A silence. She sighed. Loudly and theatrically. “Well, this is why I want to come, you see. To answer those sorts of questions. And I do like your mother so much, and her house sounds really lovely. And she says so is Charleston this time of the year. So … I’m coming. Sorry, David, if you’re not entirely pleased. But you should have thought that something like this might happen. Bye now.”

Something like this. That hurt so much a lot of the time she felt she couldn’t breathe properly. Someone else having the baby she should have had. With the man she loved. The baby she didn’t have, the baby that had been torn out of her, just to save the man and his filthy, lousy marriage. The baby she had kept quiet about, been so brave about, never complained about. The baby that still haunted her sleep, with its sweet, smiling, embryonic face, the baby that she had killed.

What kept her going was the rage. At the lies, the injustice, her own gullibility. How could she have listened to him, believed him, trusted him?