The Four of Us (16 page)

As a discomfited Howard saved face by stalking off in search of champagne, Mr Satanically-Handsome lifted a finger and a young girl from the caterers, bearing a tray of glasses and Bollinger, was instantly at their side.

‘Francis tells me you're a fashion model,' he said as Artemis wondered how many more points, in just a few minutes, he could possibly score.

‘Yes,' she said, sending silent thanks Francis's way and not letting on that she was still at Lucie Clayton's and had yet to brave a catwalk professionally.

‘I saw David Bailey a minute or so ago. You're not with him, by any chance?'

She had just been about to place her empty strawberry dish on to the waitress's tray, but that he might seriously think she was with David Bailey so disconcerted her that she dropped it. Disconcerted even further and allowing her new-found poise to go to the winds, she was about to bend down and retrieve it when he caught her wrist, his eyes meeting hers.

‘Allow me.'

As he scooped up the dish she was aware that his eyes were green – not cat-green, like Kiki's, but water-deep green. Feverishly she looked round, desperate for a glimpse of Geraldine. She needed information and she needed it fast, before another look straight into her eyes made her heedless of whether or not he met the requirements she was determined any boyfriend – and potential future husband – must have.

‘I take it no response means that you're not,' he said, placing her strawberry dish on the waitress's tray and handing her a brimming flute of champagne. ‘It was out of order to think that because you're one of his favourite models you might also be officially with him this evening.'

She tried to speak, but nothing came.

He didn't seem to notice her difficulty. ‘I'm Rupert Gower,' he said, not bothering to take a glass of champagne for himself. ‘I've known Francis ever since we went to Ludgrove together.'

‘Ludgrove?'

‘Ludgrove Prep. It has a tradition of sending pupils to Eton. Without it, I doubt Francis would have made the grade.'

‘Artemis Lowther,' she managed in a cracked voice, her heart racing so fast she could hardly breathe, knowing that Francis would only have spun him the line about her being a favourite of David Bailey's if he'd wanted to attract him to her side – and that he wouldn't have done so unless Rupert met requirements. ‘I've been one of Geraldine's best friends ever since I was eleven.'

‘One of them?' The winged eyebrow quirked again. ‘How many best friends does Geraldine have?'

‘Three,' she said, hiding sudden, crippling shyness behind the barely discernible, aloof smile all would-be models at Lucie Clayton practised. ‘Primmie, Kiki and me.'

‘Kiki Lane, the lead singer with The Atoms? The singer Francis is going to manage?'

She nodded, aware, for the first time, that the firework display had come to an end and that the crush of guests, who had come down to the ha-ha to see it, was now thinning. Fairy lights still twinkled, though, and the night sky was thick with stars.

‘I believe she's about to do another set,' he said, glancing down at an expensive-looking wristwatch. ‘What would you like to do? Listen to her or have supper?'

‘Have supper,' she said, knowing that Kiki wouldn't notice that she wasn't in the crowd round the stage and wanting to be alone with Rupert Gower – or as alone with him as it was possible to be at such a huge party.

They strolled over the grass in the direction of the refreshments marquee. The flower-decked tables were candle lit and, with Kiki and The Atoms now the main focus of attention, the earlier crowd of people dining had dwindled to a handful.

The food hadn't dwindled, though. There was clear soup in cups, mousse of chicken, mayonnaise of turbot, lobster patties, quenelles of pheasant, rose cake, biscotins of pears, compôte of fruit, meringues, trifle, apricot choux.

‘And knowing Geraldine's mother, there'll be another soup served just before everyone begins leaving,' Rupert said, as, their plates full, he led the way to a small table for two. ‘She used to hostess balls for the local hunt for Francis's father, after Francis's mother died, but then Francis's father got iffy at having a hundred or so people milling about the house and garden and we had to go back to holding them at our previous venue. Hopefully, when Francis inherits, we'll return to having our hunt ball here.'

‘I didn't know Francis hunted.' Artemis felt a little queasy.

‘Of course he hunts. We're in the middle of excellent hunting country. Didn't you know that?'

She took refuge in the aloof expression she'd been taught to adopt when sweeping down a catwalk. ‘No,' she said, terrified that things were about to go wrong between them; that he was going to realize she wasn't true county set, but the daughter of a man who had started life in a Docklands terrace house.

‘I'm a town girl, not a country girl,' she said as uncaringly as she could manage, wondering if when Geraldine was at Cedar Court, she, too, hunted. If she did, she'd never made any mention of it – which wasn't too surprising considering what Primmie's reaction to such an activity would have been. She, too, felt quite ill at the thought of a fox being torn apart by a pack of hounds.

The situation was saved by the muted sound of Kiki launching into ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers'.

‘She's good, isn't she?' Rupert speared a piece of chicken. ‘What is it she's singing now? I don't recognize it.'

Vastly relieved that the subject had turned to something non-controversial that she knew something about, she laid down her fork and said, ‘It's a song she and Geraldine co-wrote. She's going to record it. Francis thinks it will launch her as a solo artist.'

‘Does he, indeed?'

There was wry scepticism in Rupert Gower's voice and she blinked, not knowing quite how to respond.

‘Francis knows sod all about the music business – or any kind of business. Managing Kiki is just something he's amusing himself with. It's merely a whimsical lark. Proper commitment to anything would bore him rigid.'

‘Would it?' she said faintly, wondering just how Francis's desire to marry Geraldine fitted into the picture Rupert was painting. It was hardly something she could ask about and she said instead, ‘And what about you, Rupert? What is it you do?'

‘I'm a merchant banker in a bank founded by my father. Would you like some dessert now? Meringues with another bottle of champagne? Or perhaps the apricot choux?'

‘Meringues, please,' she said, mindful of her diet, relief at the information he had imparted flooding through her. A banker. A
merchant
banker. And in a bank founded by his father! It was enough. He might, or might not, be heir to a title, but even if he wasn't, everything she now knew about him was enough. She had attended the party with every intention of finding herself a suitable boyfriend, a boyfriend who would, hopefully, become the husband of her dreams, and Rupert Gower – who had gone to Eton with Francis and who was tall, dark and handsome – fulfilled her criteria perfectly.

There came the sound of a storm of applause and then Kiki launched into the Martha Reeves and the Vandellas 1966 hit, ‘I'm Ready for Love'.

‘So am I, Kiki,' she whispered beneath her breath as Rupert strolled across to the vast buffet table for the meringues. ‘Oh, so am I!'

‘You do realize that your south London accent is now very fashionable, don't you, Primmie?' Kiki said.

It was Monday evening three weeks later and they were all four of them at home.

‘I'd give anything to have a legit “sarf” London accent,' Kiki continued, sprawled on the sofa in a scruffy dressing gown, a mud pack on her face and cucumber slices over her eyes. ‘It's practically obligatory in the music industry – either that or a Liverpudlian accent.'

Artemis, in a white towelling robe, an equally pristine white towel wound turban-style over wet hair, shuddered. ‘Well,
I
wouldn't adopt a south London accent,' she said emphatically, filing her nails. ‘Rupert would hate it.'

‘Just as well you feel like that, Artemis,' Kiki said dryly, ‘because you'd never get the hang of it.'

Artemis drew in her breath, about to make an indignant response. Not wanting a squabble, Geraldine intervened.

‘How are things going between you and Rupert?' she asked, tossing the
Private Eye
she'd been reading aside. ‘He's taken you night-clubbing twice this week – things must be going well.'

‘They are.' Her happiness was so obvious it glowed.

‘Which clubs did you go to?' Kiki took the cucumber slices off her eyes and dropped them into a cup of coffee that had gone cold.

‘Annabel's.' Artemis was unable to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. Annabel's was the most aristocratic of nightclubs – Prince Charles had been there on one of the nights they'd gone.

Kiki snorted and sat upright, her legs crossed Buddha-style. ‘Trust it to have been Annabel's! Why don't you go somewhere kinky and uninhibited for a change?'

‘Because I don't want to – and besides, all Rupert's friends go to Annabel's. It's fashionable.'

‘It's elitist – packed full of debs, aristos and Guards officers. You'd have much more fun at the Flamingo where the music is blues and black soul.'

Artemis was caught, and knew it. If she said she didn't like blues and black soul Kiki would go off on a rant that could last all evening.

‘Talking of bluesy stuff,' Geraldine said, coming to her rescue, ‘let's play some Billie Holiday and open a bottle of Chablis to celebrate our all being home together.' Wearing wine-red velvet trousers and a loose silk shirt she crossed the room barefoot, heading for the kitchen and the fridge.

Kiki looked across at Primmie, who was trying to read Boris Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago
. ‘You're nearest the gramophone, Primmie. Put Billie on, will you?'

Primmie, ever accommodating, put her book down and obliged.

Artemis stopped filing her nails and watched her. There was something odd about Primmie lately. Usually she chattered away ten to the dozen, but almost from the moment she'd moved into the flat she'd become oddly reticent. Finding out what her colleagues at BBDO were like – colleagues she now spent a lot of her free time with – was like getting blood out of a stone.

‘Where do your BBDO friends hang out, Primmie?' she asked as Billie's ‘Long Gone Blues'filled the room.

Primmie flushed slightly. ‘A local wine bar.'

‘What? Every night?' Geraldine asked, walking back into the room with the bottle of Chablis and glasses.

‘I'm not out
every
night. I stayed in and did my laundry last night – and Kiki's laundry, because she lets it pile up till I can hardly see the bedroom floor – and Saturday night I visited my mum and dad.'

‘Oh, well, if you were in glorious downtown Rotherhithe on a Saturday night, I, for one, am not envious.' Kiki rose to her feet. ‘Do you think this mud pack should come off now? My face is beginning to sting.'

‘You have a mud pack on?' Geraldine said in mock surprise, beginning to pour out the wine.

Kiki threw a cushion at her head. Billie's inimitable voice continued to magically dip and glide and Artemis continued to regard Primmie thoughtfully.

Primmie was still slightly flushed and it wasn't because she was annoyed at Kiki's meant-to-be-funny dig about Rotherhithe, it was more as if she were embarrassed and uncomfortable because she was concealing something. Though she may have been speaking the truth about visiting Rotherhithe on Saturday night, the bit about her evenings being spent with her work colleagues in a wine bar local to Hanover Square was definitely not the entire truth. With a flash of intuition, it occurred to her that Primmie might have a boyfriend – a boyfriend she didn't want them to know about.

She took a glass of wine from Geraldine, wondering if Primmie was being reticent because her boyfriend was a workman, not a colleague. Perhaps he was a carpenter who was refurbishing the offices, or an electrician. Or – her eyes flew wide at the thought – perhaps he
was
a colleague, but was married!

‘Primmie, you're not involved with a mar—' she began, perturbed.

Kiki, who cut across people's conversations all the time, said, ‘Hasn't anyone been checking the time for me? Half an hour this face pack had to be on for. I was
relying
on someone to tell me when the time was up.'

‘It's up now.' Primmie rose briskly to her feet. ‘As we're all in tonight I'll make something to eat. Do Eggs Benedict sound OK?'

With an odd, set expression to her face she marched out of the room, into the kitchen.

Artemis bit her lip, her concern escalating, certain that Primmie had known
exactly
what it was she, Artemis, had been going to say – and that she'd waltzed out of the room before she should be given a second chance of saying it.

As there came the sound of a pan being put on the stove and a cupboard being opened, she said tentatively to Geraldine, ‘I'm a bit worried about Primmie. I think she may have a boyfriend.'

‘Well … it wouldn't be before time, would it?' Geraldine took a sip of her wine. ‘I may only have had one boyfriend in my life, but he's been my boyfriend since childhood. Kiki was fifteen when she began going around with Ty. You and Primmie have been very slow off the mark where boyfriends are concerned and if Primmie is finally dating someone, it's something to be pleased about, not worried over.'

‘Y-e-s,' Artemis said doubtfully, not sure she liked being bracketed in a ‘slow off the mark'category with Primmie. ‘But what if he isn't suitable?'

‘In what way, for goodness sake? Primmie isn't you, Artemis. If she's attracted to someone, she's not going to worry about his family's social status, his bank balance or his prospects. All that is going to matter to her is what he's like as a person – and whether she fancies him or not.'