Summer at the Lake (32 page)

Upstairs, Esme’s bedroom door was still ajar, but there was no sound of the hairdryer now. He knocked loudly. ‘Ladies,’ he said in a commanding voice, ‘your presence is requested in the dining room.’

There was a low laugh from Esme, followed by, ‘What a wonderful butler you make, Adam, but don’t whatever you do come in, we’re in a state of undress!’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Smiling, he added, ‘Will your ladyship require assistance down the stairs?’

‘I think we can manage,’ came Floriana’s voice and the sound of something being rustled.

He hurried back down the stairs and checked it was warm enough in the dining room. If the sight of Euridice lying stretched out on the hearthrug in front of the gas fire was anything to go by, then yes it was. This morning Dr Pardoe – or Dr Death as Esme referred to him – had declared his patient to be well and truly on the mend and to mark the occasion, Floriana had offered to help Esme get specially ‘dressed up’ for dinner this evening and do her hair for her.

In the kitchen, Adam served the meal into warmed serving dishes and by the time he’d ferried it through to the dining room, Floriana and Esme had appeared at the top of the stairs. He waited for them at the bottom, observing their steady progress. Esme might have made a good recovery, but watching her hold onto the banister with one hand and her other tucked into Floriana’s, she was unquestionably looking less robust – as robust as any octogenarian could look. But despite that, there was no mistaking the effort that had gone into the pair of them dressing for dinner, which put his jeans and old sweater to shame.

Yet as smart as Esme looked in a charcoal-coloured woollen dress with a sort of lilac shawl draped around her shoulders, it was Floriana who caught his attention. No longer wearing the black leggings, the baggy top and the short stripy black and purple skirt she’d had on earlier, she was now almost unrecognisable. She looked . . . He floundered. There was a word that instantly sprang to mind but he was reluctant to use it. Yet there was no getting away from it, Floriana looked
hot.

When they reached the bottom step, Adam tipped his head towards Esme. ‘Dinner is served, and may I say how splendid your ladyship is looking this evening.’

‘You may indeed, Adam, and as grateful as I am for the compliment, I think we both know that I’m utterly eclipsed by Floriana. Don’t you think she looks ravishing?’

Ravishing worked for him, he thought, trying not to stare at the plunging neckline of the silvery-grey silk dress that hugged Floriana’s every contour and stopped just below the knee. So used to seeing her submerged in multi-layered outfits with leggings or thick tights, he was stunned to see that she had the most amazing body. And great legs too. Who knew!

Before he could think how to respond, Floriana said, ‘Her ladyship here insisted that seeing as this was a special occasion, I had to change out of my usual gear and choose something nice from her wardrobe.’ She laughed in that refreshingly unconscious way she had. ‘I was convinced nothing would fit. But hey, I squeezed into this slinky little number.’

‘And as I kept telling you, I was bigger back then,’ Esme said. ‘I’ve shrunk with old age.’

Still laughing, Floriana raised an elegantly arched foot in a strappy sandal with a four-inch heel. ‘What do you think to these little babies, Adam? They’re genuine 1960s evening shoes. Gorgeous, aren’t they?’

He swallowed. Never mind the shoes,
you
look gorgeous, he wanted to say, but something stopped him. It was that question he’d overheard upstairs, and not knowing what Floriana’s answer had been. Just how did she perceive him? She had said that him being mistaken for her partner would be hideously embarrassing. Did she mean hideously embarrassing for him, or for her?

‘I think I’m one very lucky guy to be having dinner with two such beautifully dressed women,’ he said diplomatically.

‘However,’ he went on, reverting to the role he’d adopted for himself, ‘as a lowly chef and waiter combined this evening, I would urge you to come through to the dining room before your dinner gets cold.’

Both Floriana and Esme laughed happily and led the way. Following behind, Adam now saw that the dress that was skimming Floriana’s body in all the right places had a plunging back to it and with her hair tied up on the top of her head, her long neck and pale shoulders were fully exposed. He knew that it was supremely shallow of him, but the sight of her in that dress was making him view Floriana in a whole new light. He’d challenge any man not to.

Esme had enjoyed herself tremendously, but now she was running out of energy. As much as she wanted to continue the evening with her delightful young friends who had gone to so much trouble for her these last few weeks, she knew that she needed to retreat to her bed.

But before she did, there was something important she wanted to do. She wanted to make an announcement, something that would surprise them both. She just hoped they would agree to it, not just for her own sake, but theirs. Because if ever there were two people who were perfectly suited, it was these two. Oh, how she wished they could see that. And how she longed to nip things in the bud before they became too firmly entrenched in the belief that they could only be friends. Hadn’t Floriana learnt that already with Seb?

While they’d been upstairs getting changed, and while Esme was trying to persuade her that Adam would make an ideal plusone – and a lot more besides if she had her way – Floriana had said that ages ago Adam had shown her a photograph of Jesse which, she claimed, categorically proved that any girlfriend of Adam’s had to have supermodel attributes. ‘That’s why we get on as well as we do,’ Floriana had then said, ‘there’s no ambiguity, he can relax around me. So stop trying to fix us up,’ she’d added with a kindly laugh. ‘We’re fine as we are, as
friends
.’

But Esme had seen the way Adam had looked at Floriana when they’d appeared on the stairs for dinner. His reaction had told her all she needed to know and had confirmed that she’d been right to meddle in the way she had by manipulating Floriana into wearing something sensationally different so that the scales would be lifted from Adam’s eyes. It amused Esme that for all his customary playing his cards close to his chest, Adam had failed in this instance to hide his feelings; he’d patently been bowled over by the sight of Floriana. Question was, had Floriana noticed his reaction? Perhaps not, she was extraordinarily unaware of her own attractiveness.

For a long time now Esme had wanted to see Floriana dressed in something that would flatter her more; inviting the girl to ferret about in her wardrobes that were packed full of old clothes she hadn’t been able to part with – they were like old friends to her – had been the perfect temptation to get Floriana to play at dressing up. The dear girl had been like a child in a sweet shop pulling dresses out and exclaiming ecstatically that she’d never seen such beautiful clothes. ‘Wow, this is vintage heaven!’ she kept exclaiming.

Pleased that Floriana liked what she saw, and tapping into the girl’s natural inclination for theatricality, Esme had guided her towards a dress she knew would effect a spectacular transformation. She had been right. Ugly duckling to beautiful swan was too simplistic an analogy, because Floriana wasn’t ugly, not even plain, she was a very pretty girl indeed, it was more a matter of changing her mindset, of making her see herself differently.

Now with Euridice purring on her lap, Esme watched her two young friends clear the table – they had insisted she did nothing but sit and eat. How good they were to her, how very generous they were with their time and friendship. They could almost be the children she had never had, she thought with a pang of sad regret. Or, perhaps more accurately, the grandchildren she’d never had.

When they returned from the kitchen Esme readied herself to make her announcement. It was while they had earlier been toasting her return to good health that the idea had come to her fully conceived – before then it had been nothing but a vague murmur of an unfeasible suggestion in her head. But suddenly there it was, a definite plan, and all it would take would be a straightforward request. She had no idea how Floriana and Adam would react; it was a lot to ask of them, and she knew she had to let it go if they said no. But she badly wanted them to say yes, for without their help she simply wouldn’t be able to do it.

Marco’s portrait was to blame for putting the idea into her head in the first place. Staring at his face for so many hours every day, and with Floriana’s curiosity prompting more and more memories from the past, it was as if the very waves lapping at the shores of Lake Como were whispering to her, beckoning her to return.
Ritorn . . . Ritorn . . . Come back . . . Come back . . .

Could she do it? Would her dear friends help her make it happen?

With his knee furiously jiggling up and down, Floriana could see that Seb was wired. The tension coming off him was wholly at odds with the quiet loveliness of their surroundings.

It was a glorious summer’s day in June and they were sitting on their old bench in the park, the same bench where two months ago she had phoned him to say she had decided to blow all her worldly savings on attending his wedding, and he’d better be grateful! In response to her jokey bolshiness, he had returned the gesture in kind. ‘Yeah, well, Florrie, just so long as I’m not putting you out.’ The exchange meant that it was business as usual; they could both relax now. In short, his wedding invitation had been his way of apologising for what had happened between them and her agreeing to go had been her way of saying sorry. Later he’d texted to say that she’d made his day. To which she’d messaged back,
Must have been an awful day in that case
.

Not even close!
he’d replied.

As tempting as it had been to invite him to unburden himself, a little warning voice inside her head had told her to back off. If he’d had a bad day, it was Imogen’s job to listen and sympathise.

Today Floriana had had an art group from Chipping Norton booked on a Pre-Raphaelite tour – it was one of her favourite tours to conduct and included the collection of paintings at the Ashmolean, the stained glass in Harris Manchester College, the murals in the Oxford Union and the tapestries in Rhodes House and Exeter College and, of course, Keble College Chapel to see Holman Hunt’s
The Light of the World
. It was at Keble, while she was waiting for a few stragglers in the group to finish photographing the front quad and catch up to go into the chapel, that she’d felt her mobile vibrating in her pocket.

To her surprise, it was Seb. She had just been thinking of him. But then she couldn’t set foot in Keble without doing so. ‘You’ll never guess where I am,’ she’d said, keeping her voice low and stepping away from her group who were mostly talking amongst themselves.

‘Hmm . . . let me have a stab at that. I’m going to guess that you’re about five yards from entering my old college chapel.’

‘How the hell—’ She broke off, looked about her. There, over by the main entrance, just stepping out from behind a group of giant-sized rowers, was a familiar figure raising a hand in her direction.

‘Surprise!’ his voice said in her ear. ‘Behold,’ he went on, adopting a theatrically deep tone, ‘I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come to him and will sup with him and he with me. How am I doing?’

‘Word perfect. I’m surprised though, you hated that painting, dismissed it, and the whole of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, as nothing more than sloppy tosh.’

‘Whereas you always had a fondness for that sort of thing.’

‘You mean I had an open mind. What on the earth are you doing here?’

‘If you’re free later, I’ll tell you.’

Seeing that the stragglers of the group had now caught up, she said, ‘I’ll be finished at about five-thirty.’

‘Let’s meet in the park. Usual place. I’ll bring some bread for the ducks.’

Now, as Floriana tossed a handful of breadcrumbs at the greedy well-fed ducks around them, she thought of Seb’s explanation for coming here – Imogen was in Paris on her hen weekend, leaving Seb at a loose end. He claimed he’d driven to Oxford on impulse, in the hope of seeing Floriana. On another impulse, he’d decided to call in at his old college and lay a few ghosts to rest, and that was when he’d spotted her. Serendipity, he called it.

The pragmatist in her maintained that a simple phone call was all that it would have taken to confirm that she was around and free to see him. Typical Seb, he could never do things the easy way. It was always last minute and leaving things to chance with him.

After a trio of panting joggers had gone by, he said, ‘Come on then, tell me about this guy you’re bringing with you to my wedding, who is he? I suppose he’s a boffin type, isn’t he, all brains and a dubious dress sense which he thinks gives him a personality.’

Floriana tossed another handful of crumbs at the ducks, one of which was pecking at her shoe. ‘You know what, I’m just going to sit here and let you fine-tune that offensive tone of yours.’

He laughed. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? I’ve hit the nail slap-bang on the head. Well, I guess it stands to reason you’d end up with someone of that ilk, after all –’ he spread his arms wide – ‘this is your world.’

Dodging the arm that nearly caught her on the jaw, she said, ‘He isn’t a boyfriend, he’s a friend.’

‘Aha! Distancing yourself from him already. Shame on you, Florrie. Stand up for your man. Or as the song goes, stand by your man.’

‘Seb.’

‘Yes?’

‘Shut up or I’ll set these killer ducks on you.’

‘Pecked to death, sounds eminently more fun than being nagged to death.’

‘I haven’t nagged you!’ she said indignantly.

‘I didn’t mean you.’

‘Who did you—’ Floriana bit the question back, sensing she’d inadvertently entered a danger zone.

His knee, which had come to a rest momentarily, began jiggling again, its movement vibrating through the bench. ‘Go on,’ he prompted, ‘finish what you were going to say.’

No, she wasn’t going to play that game. Throwing the last of her bread to the ducks, she stood up. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.