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“I’ll ask Stevenson to dispose of the rest of these in the morning,” he murmured, indicating his cigarette box.
It wasn’t right, and I didn’t have the energy in that moment to protest, but I was going to request he didn’t. It wasn’t healthy, but he could at least finish them. They had to be expensive, and it would be a waste.
Mostly, though, it was about memories of me and Ian in the Conservatory, and I didn’t want to lose any part of our time there.
However, I supposed I’d get used to it.
He pulled the throw off me and helped me to my feet.
He went to the tablet and extinguished the lights.
Then, holding each other, Ian’s arm around my shoulders, mine around his waist, we walked through the shadowed paths lit faintly with the coming day, into the deserted foyer, turning lights off along the way.
And we returned to the Hawthorn Suite.
To tie it all up…
Daniel and Portia didn’t make it.
They gave it a go, but in retrospect, I believed everyone knew they were doomed to fail.
Daniel’s expanded app launch was a resounding success, however. He and his mates dreamed up another one, and it, too, performed swimmingly (Ian invested in that one as well).
Nonetheless, all of this meant he was very busy and didn’t have time to give my sister the attention she thought she deserved.
A mutual decision, they broke it off.
Though mutual, Portia was Portia, so it was also dramatic.
Daniel then turned his attention to launching a new social media platform, which was highly successful (Ian invested in that too).
Not long after the breakup with Portia, Daniel found a no-nonsense woman named Jenny, who took absolute zero shit. They married in a tiny chapel on the coast with only very close relatives and friends in attendance (Jenny’s idea).
Daniel went on to make his own millions, and as such, Jenny could turn her attention from being a nurse to managing him, their home and their brood of four children (the number of children also Jenny’s idea).
They bought a farm that had a big, rambling, stately house close to the coast and not near, but not far from Duncroft.
They were happy.
Portia found a position at Liberty.
She then invested her time, and her money, in opening her own boutique.
It was very stylish, and with her taste, offered beautiful things, but she wasn’t a natural businesswoman. Even if she often asked Ian his opinion on how to run things, it stayed afloat on a wing and a prayer.
She eventually met a professor at Cambridge named Colin. He was tall, handsome, quiet, studious, whip smart, had piles of patience and worshipped the ground Portia walked on.
They married in a registry office with Portia wearing an antique forties, ivory satin, to-the-knee dress and a pretty fascinator. Lou wept. I signed their marriage certificate as a witness.
I often marveled at Colin’s profound fortitude in the face of Portia’s persistent antics (no, she never really grew up). And I credited him and him alone with keeping their two children’s feet on the ground when she put great effort into spoiling them rotten.
But it worked with them.
Beautifully.
Lou’s surgery was a success. Her migraines went away, and she found cute hairstyles to wear while she was growing back what they had to shave. She eventually fell in love with an old-money MP who was fifteen years her senior, married him, and along with their townhouse in London, she had her own manor to oversee in Kent.
But I had her beat; hers only had eighty rooms.
