“She’s not shut up about you,” added one of the grandsons. A Tim, Audrey was pretty sure, although even her good-with-namesness had its limits.
“Don’t you tell such tales Timothy Rice,” replied Doris with grandmatriarchal authority.
Bobby Junior—Robert, he was actually called, a quiet, dapper man in his sixties with steel-grey hair and a glint in his eyes that Audrey suspected was hereditary—put his arms around his mother. “We’re sorry you didn’t win.”
“I’m not,” Doris replied. “I mean, I am but it’s—you know when you watch the show and everyone’s all, ‘Ooh, I’m just glad I got to be here.’”
“And you’re all, ‘No you’re fucking not, you’re fucking gutted and you wish some other bastard had gone out instead,’” said Timothy Rice. “Yeah I know.”
A murmur of assent from the extended family suggested that they all knew, and they all shared the same reading.
Doris gave a little shrug. “Turns out they ain’t lying. I’d’ve liked to win. Course I would. But justbeinghere was”—she locked eyes with Audrey—“it was special.”
“Well, if that’s good enough for you, Mum,” said Robert, “it’s good enough for—”
The sound of an engine cut him off. And since they were away from the carpark and the hotel had a strict no-driving-in-the-pretty-bits policy, which theExpectationscrew enforced rigorously to minimise lost footage, the sound of an engine was extremely unexpected. Especially because it was soloud.
As everyone watched, a jet-black open-top Bugatti Veyron slid to a halt at a careless angle outside the ballroom. Colin Thrimp had already raced up to intercept it, but Audrey—knowing this could only be one person—did not at all fancy his chances.
Emily Branningham, her hair windswept from the drive, stepped down into the grounds of Patchley House. She was wearing wide-leg satin trousers and a navy-and-cream plaid jacket that was probably the most stylish thing Audrey had ever seen in real life. For a moment she paused, framed by the house she’d grown up in. And when Colin attempted to ask her why she was here and tell her why she couldn’t be, she ignored him completely, stalking towards the crowd. Towards Doris. Towards Audrey.
“Gran,” said a slightly balding man in his late thirties who Audrey was pretty sure was a William. “I think there’s a strange woman coming for you.”
The strange woman descended like the angel of death, and Doris stood waiting for her, either transfixed or defiant. Either way, Audrey couldn’t help sidling closer.
Emily Branningham lowered yet another pair of fabulous, oversized sunglasses. “Nymph.”
“Emily.” It seemed Doris was choosing defiance. “This is my family.”
“Charmed.”
“Everybody,” Doris continued, keeping way calmer than Audrey thought she’d have been able to in the circumstances. “This is Emily. She was—we was—look can we do this somewhere else?”
“It’s all right, Mum,” said Susan. “Whatever it is, it’s all right.”
Audrey held her breath just a little, half expecting—perhaps three-quarters expecting—Emily Branningham to say something callous, demeaning, or flat-out self-destructive.
She didn’t. Yet.
“Your mother and I,” she said instead, “we…”
“Hang on,” said a woman in a chiffon blouse who Audrey was pretty sure was a Tiffany and one of Maggie’s daughters. “Is this a coming-out speech?”
It could have been awkward, but Doris decided to own it. “Pretty much, yeah.”
The part of Audrey’s brain that Jennifer Hallet had both fallen for and taken up residence in really wished they were still filming this, because it reallywouldhave made a banger of a finale. The rest of Audrey, though, really didn’t. Whilein a garden surrounded by your entire family and quite a lot of other people’s familieswasn’t exactly a private setting, compared to a national TV broadcast, it was practically intimate.
Now that she’d done the hard part of explaining—or at least implying—to her family that this strange immaculately dressed woman who’d just gate-crashed a film set in a car worth north of a million pounds was something in the vicinity of her ex-girlfriend,Doris could go back to defiance. She folded her arms, looked Emily Branningham squarely in the eye and said, “Well?”
Audrey didn’t hear what Emily said next. She moved very close to Doris and murmured something in her ear. And when Audrey tried to imagine what that something might have been, all the options seemed wrong or trite or too much or not enough.
But whatever it was, it was what Doris needed. She nodded once. Then glanced towards her family. “You’ll be all right here without me for a bit, won’t you?”
“What’s a bit?” asked one of them, but Susan said more confidently, “Course we will.”
And then Emily Branningham led Doris Rice-nee-Cooper back up past Patchley House, helped her into the passenger seat of her irresponsibly dangerous vehicle, climbed in beside her, and the two of them sped away together.
Audrey watched them until they were gone.
