‘Sorry to have to point this out,’ said Meg, ‘but you can’t be very old now.’
Alexandra laughed, not offended by this. ‘I’m nineteen, so at least twelve years older than I was when I first came.’
‘Did you always have nannies?’ asked Lizzie.
‘Always.’ Alexandra took another sip and sighed in satisfaction. ‘I’m an orphan. But don’t feel sorry for me! I never really knew my parents and have managed perfectly well without them.’
‘Goodness,’ said Meg. ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like. My mother and I are very close.’
Alexandra shrugged. ‘It’s what you’re used to, I suppose. I had nannies, then I went to boarding school and in the holidays, if I didn’t stay with my stuffy relations, I had governesses or companions or whatever they liked to be called. My relations only care about my money.’
Lizzie nearly choked. She had been brought up to respect her relations although her Aunt Gina had proved to be a bit of a surprise when she met her last evening. She wasn’t sure her father would approve of Gina!
‘I am – or will be – quite rich,’ said Alexandra, as if it was a bit of a nuisance, ‘but I’m not due toinherit until I’m twenty-five. It was arranged like that to keep the fortune hunters at bay.’
‘My goodness,’ said Lizzie, weakly.
‘My relations – and I have a lot of them – take a very personal interest in my fortune. I think they’re intending to find a cousin to marry me when the time comes who’s not so closely related that we’d have strange children but who’ll keep the money in the family.’
‘My mother’s very keen on me getting married,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s why I’m on this course, so I can learn to cook and other housewifely skills and be more marriageable. Although I don’t have to have fortune hunters kept away.’
‘Has your mother got anyone in mind?’ asked Meg, who seemed to find this very odd.
‘I think so,’ said Lizzie. ‘Not that they’d make me marry him, but I think I met him when I was about six and his parents are friends of my parents although they’ve moved away since.’
‘And you don’t mind?’ asked Alexandra and Meg, more or less at the same time.
Lizzie shrugged. ‘To be honest, I mostly go along with what my parents want but I’d never marry someone I didn’t love.’
‘But you do have your hair done at the same hairdresser as your mother?’ asked Alexandra.
‘Can you tell?’ said Lizzie, patting her hair.
Alexandra nodded. ‘It’s quite an old-fashioned style,’ she said. ‘And now I can see what you’re wearing under your overalls, your clothes were probably chosen by your mother too.
Lizzie exhaled. ‘The thing is, I don’t think it’s worth fighting about things you don’t really care about.’ She looked at Alexandra’s shirt and slacks with envy. ‘My mother has been planning my wedding day since I was tiny. I reckon if I was marrying a man I really loved I wouldn’t care about the day all that much. And she does. I am their only child, after all.’
‘I’m an only child too,’ said Meg. ‘But I don’t think my mother has given my wedding day a thought.’ She paused. ‘Mind you, she works so it’s different for her.’
‘Your mother goes out to work?’ said Lizzie, curious and a little intrigued.
‘Well, she stays in to work really,’ said Meg. ‘Until recently anyway. She used to be a cook-housekeeper for an old man. He was lovely. We live in his flat. He always said he’d make sure we could stay in the flat after he died, but somehow his nieces made sure this won’t happen. Luckily, he had a really nice solicitor who’s arranged it so we can stay for three months – well, it’s been two months now. It’s why I’m on this course. I want to start earning as soon as possible.’
‘Goodness me!’ said Alexandra. ‘But in my experience relations always do that. Whenever anyone dies there’s always an ugly fight for the money, even if they have quite a lot already.’
‘And when I’ve done this course and got my certificate I’m going to cook directors’ lunches,’ Meg went on. ‘And if I can, I’ll do catering in the evenings or something similar.’
‘Why have two jobs?’ asked Lizzie.
‘I want to earn enough to get a deposit on a flat for my mother,’ Meg said. ‘She’ll quite likely get another live-in job but we both feel we want something that’s ours. If we get a flat, we can rent it out if Mum doesn’t live in it.’
‘My mother would have a fit if I even thought about having two jobs,’ said Lizzie. ‘My parents will expect me to do something until I meet Mr Right, but it won’t really be for the money.’
Meg shrugged and Lizzie worried that she might have offended her. ‘My mother was widowed young. She’s always had to work,’ she said.
‘My mother only does voluntary work,’ said Lizzie. ‘And I think she only does it for the social life.’ She thought about the coffee mornings and cake sales where women got together and talked about each other until the subject of their conversation appeared and they switched to another poor woman. She’d done enough assisting at these events to know what they were like.
‘Let’s have something to eat,’ said Alexandra. ‘I know we tasted what we made today but it was only a taste and I’m hungry. It’s flower arranging this afternoon, isn’t it? I really wanted to do a course that only focused on cooking rather than doing different things in the afternoon, but this was the one people thought I should go on.’
