BECKS
Somewhere expensive
IVY
Obviously
BECKS
You’ve changed
IVY
Do you want brunch or not?
BECKS
Two hours
I'll wrap this meeting and meet you there
Send me the address
I love you Saint Ives
I look at the screen.I love you too, I type. Send.
I am already moving toward the stairs.
The Grosvenor & Vine has a rooftop pool that gets photographed every June and then ignored for nine months of the year. It opens for spring on the first warm weekend, and judging by thebooking confirmation that arrives in my inbox three minutes after I called them, today is that weekend. They have one cabana left. £840 for the afternoon, two-bottle minimum, lunch service available.
I book it on my own card. There is something in me this morning that wants to spend my own money. I’m proud of the salary I earn. Hussy money is not the same as your-own money. I am learning this in real time.
I run upstairs. Ariana's door is open. She and Isobel are in the wing chair by the window, Alex on Isobel's lap, his small hand in her necklace. Ariana looks up.
“I am going for brunch with Becks.”
“Excellent. Where?”
“The Grosvenor.”
She raises her brows. “Day-drinking?”
“Apparently.”
Ariana looks at her mother. “Mama. We've been replaced as the fun ones.”
“We were never the fun ones,” Isobel says.
I put on a sundress over the swimsuit Becks once told me made my tits look like a Renaissance painting. In the mirror, the cut on my forehead is small but uglier than I have wanted to admit. The skin around it is still that yellow-purple of a bruise on the turn. I conceal what I can with foundation.
Pryce is waiting in the hall. He has been Alistair's man for years; since yesterday, since Henderson stepped back, he has beenmine. He is Black, late thirties, with the kind of stillness that goes with the job and a south London accent that does not quite match his tailoring. We are still feeling our way around each other.
“Mrs Ravenscroft.”
“The Grosvenor & Vine, please. Park Lane.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
