“Well,” stated Wendy nervously, “the rich have a different life. Not something we really know about.” Wendy patted Cherry’s hand, meaning to be consoling, to dismiss him and welcome her back to their mutually supportive club, but Cherry recoiled inwardly. She was consumed with anger and pride. Even her own mother thought he was out of her league. It was sowrong,so utterly ridiculous, to believe that you couldn’t be with someone else, that they were better than you because they had money.
“You’re not upset, are you?”
“No.”
“Only . . .”
“What?”
“You might not have seen this.” Wendy pushed across the local paper and opened it up to the local wedding section. Nicolas’s face smiled out at her; next to it was the blonde from the bar in a tiara and white gown. They radiated togetherness. Cherry went rigid and she forced herself not to show any emotion other than indifference. She looked at the photo for signs that he was thinking of her instead, that the marriage to—she read the name, Gabriella Clara Butler Oswald—was something he’d been pressured into, something he had to endure if he was to stand a chance of taking over his father’s business. She thought she might have caught a glimpse of strain in his smile but then that could’ve just been a reaction to the relentless greed of the wedding camera, shot after shot. She pushed the paper back. “Goodluck to them.” It was said in a tone that meant the subject was closed.
“Do you want to check your room, see if there’s anything else you need to take back with you? I’ve sorted through all your old toys from when you was little.”
Cherry did not. She already had everything she wanted from this flat and the thought of taking any part of her childhood into her new life felt like the worst kind of contamination. “I can’t, Mum, I’m going to meet some friends. Maybe next time, eh?” And with that, she stood. “I need to get going actually, got to get back into London.”
Wendy covered her disappointment and stood too. “Ah, well, thanks for coming out all this way, love. I do appreciate it.”
There was a brief silence during which neither of them said anything and then Cherry smiled brightly. “Right,” she said, and made her way to the door.
She let her mum kiss her on the cheek and then found a small box pressed into her hand.
“Happy birthday,” said Wendy, beaming, expectant, and Cherry could tell it was something she’d been dying to give to her. It was wrapped in doodled flowery paper, the kind that looked as if it was designed by a four-year-old and came under the category of “cute.” The right thing to do would have been to open it there and then, but Cherry couldn’t face pretending not to be disappointed. She put it in her bag.
“All the best, love,” said Wendy, with a catch in her voice.
It was agony. Cherry knew her mother was aware she couldn’t wait to get away, but she quickly pushed the realization away, pretending not to notice Wendy’s look of hurt. Her chest was tight with guilt; she hated being there, hated what she became when she was there. “Thanks, Mum.”
She escaped and hurried back to East Croydon station. With every step, the guilt grew. She got out her phone and sent a soul-clearing text, something jolly and lighthearted about how nice it had been to see her. Once she’d gotten a cheerful reply, she feltthe pain in her chest ease, and gradually the train and then the tube transported her back home.
It only took half an hour to get to Tooting and the evening was still warm. She poured herself a glass of wine left over from the weekend with Daniel and went out into the tiny courtyard garden. It was only three steps wide and six steps long and she could see St. George’s hospital chimneys from beyond the fence and the row of Victorian flats that ran parallel to hers, but it was a little piece of outside. A fox slipped quickly and silently into a hole it had dug under her fence and disappeared into the neighbor’s garden. She sipped her wine and watched it go, impressed with the creature’s ability to make a home anywhere in London. She’d heard a radio show a few weeks back where people from places like Barnes and Chelsea were phoning in to complain about the foxes coming into their houses. Tooting had been as close as she could get to the capital’s center, rising rental prices acting as a thicket of thorns to keep her from going any farther.
This made her think about what she was going to wear the next day, and galvanized, she took her wine inside to the bedroom. Opening up her wardrobe doors, she scanned her clothes critically. It was going to be another hot day, so something that wouldn’t look creased and shabby after working in the office. She decided on a tailored sleeveless silk shirt and navy pencil skirt. She made a space for the chosen items in the middle of the wardrobe by pushing everything else to the sides and then hung them together. She looked at them, satisfied for a moment, before closing the door. She went back into the garden and thought excitedly about the next day and how much she was looking forward to meeting Daniel’s parents. Felt a warmth toward Laura for inviting her over, and so soon in her and Daniel’s relationship. It was something that had never happened the entire time she was seeing Nicolas. She imagined them hitting it off right away and a wave of pleasure washed over her as she saw herself fitting in. Daniel was so easygoing and she had a feeling that his parents would be her type of people.
It was only much later, when she went to bed that night, sheremembered the present. It was the latest iPhone and Cherry knew it was her mother’s attempt to understand her, buy her something that she thought the younger generation might like. She also knew the cost would have been a sacrifice for her mum. It seemed so sad somehow and, anyway, she already had one. The guilt flared up again and she discarded the gift in a drawer and lay back on the pillows and sighed. How her mother fit into her future, she didn’t know.
7
Friday, June 13
THE CAVENDISH HOUSE WAS ONLY A TEN-MINUTE WALK FROM THE AIR-CONDITIONINGof the office, but Cherry was hot and bothered. Even in early evening, it was 80 degrees and she quickly and subtly checked her armpits for damp patches. Other than a tiny fivepence-shaped dot under the right arm, thankfully, she’d escaped.
Cherry was nervous. She wanted to be liked. She looked at the bunch of tiger lilies in her hand, artfully arranged in brown paper with twine, tied like a corset’s stays, and wondered again if they were too much. There seemed to be a lot of them and they were, well, big. They should be, she thought wryly, they’d cost her sixty quid. And then again, lilies were big. She counted the stems: seven. Surely, that wasn’t over the top? She swapped hands so they didn’t get too sweaty and decided it was too late to do anything about them now. The important thing was she wouldn’t show up empty-handed. She turned into the Cavendishes’ street and, checking her watch, realized with a flicker of apprehension that she was going to be early. Oh, God, she didn’t want to look too desperate or anything. Quickly she turned down another side street, which, if she followed it around, would bring her to the other end of the road she was in now. She walked along, pretending to be a little bit lost in case there was anyone around whomight know the people she was going to see and a story of her wandering around came out in some later casual conversation. The idea of it made her cringe with embarrassment.
She turned back into the top end of the Cavendishes’ road, checking her watch and matching her pace so that she reached the iron gate of number 38 at exactly six-thirty. She walked across the checkerboard of immaculate black-and-white tiles to the large, imposing black front door and rang the bell. It wasn’t long before it was thrown open, a warm, wide welcome from Daniel. He took her hand and kissed her fully, but quickly, on the mouth.
“Hi. They’re dying to meet you,” he whispered in her ear as a sort of preemptive warning, and then she heard two sets of footsteps approaching.
Mr. Cavendish was first, a large, broad-shouldered man who was used to striding into rooms without any fear of who might be in them. He wore a short-sleeved shirt tucked into shorts, an odd mix of semiformal and casual, and she felt pinned down by the full beam of his—not unkind—eyes. He grasped her free hand with more force than was necessary in a confident, brisk male way, and if she was honest, it hurt.
“Dad, this is Cherry.”
“Howard,” he said, introducing himself. “Nice to meet you.”
“Great to meet you, Howard.”
He let go of her hand and it tingled as the bones realigned and the blood rushed back. Then it was Laura’s turn. To Cherry’s surprise and secret delight, the other woman took her hand and, after looking at her in some sort of charmed way, drew her closer and kissed her on each cheek.
“Lovely to meet you, Cherry.”
