‘She doesn’t strike me as the sort to be in need of our sympathy,’ asserted Rachel. ‘Far from it. It’s Alastair who looks a bundle of nerves if you ask me.’
‘I know what Callum’s getting at,’ said Jenna, ‘she knows her every word and gesture is being monitored by us, one wrong move on her part and we’ll all say she’s not worthy to take Orla’s place.’
‘Could anyone be genuinely worthy of doing that?’ murmured Rachel. ‘Let’s face it, Orla was an impossible act to follow, and trust me, that’s something I know all about.’
Callum exchanged a look with his sister. He knew every minute detail of her latest break up, having had numerous long, and somewhat one-sided, conversations with her on the phone. While he wasn’t entirely surprised, he was sympathetic to her being dumped in favour of an ex; it was a bitter pill to swallow for anyone.
‘Now what are you three gossiping about?’ asked Frankie, approaching with a tray of chicken drumsticks. ‘As if I couldn’t guess. Callum, these have been pre-cooked in the microwave and just need a bit of crisping up on the barbecue if there’s room.’
‘By crisping up, I assume you mean not blackened to within an inch of their lives?’
Frankie smiled. ‘I do, and for heaven’s sake you three …’ she looked at each of them in turn, ‘… try not to stare at the poor woman, she must be anxious enough as it is without you three piling on the pressure so unsubtly.’
‘Busted,’ laughed Callum. And then: ‘I’m not sure why I’ve been trusted to be in charge of cooking,’ he said, when Frankie left them to go over and join the others grouped around Valentina.
‘I think you’ll find the mummies and daddies have more important things on their minds right now than standing over a hot barbecue,’ said Jenna. ‘There seems to be an awful lot to eat,’ she added, as Callum placed the chicken drumsticks on the grill.
‘That’s down to Mum breaking out with the psycho routine,’ said Rachel, blatantly staring at Valentina who was listening to their father with what had to be feigned interest. Nobody, in Callum’s opinion, could look that interested in what a perfect stranger had to say. Especially not a stranger who’d had too much to drink. But fair play to her, she was doing a fine job of hanging on to Dad’s every word, and for that she ought to be applauded.
‘This is so perfectly English,’ drawled Valentina, her tone to Sorrel’s ears a hair’s breadth from a sneer.
‘No,’ laughed Danny, pulling out a chair for their guest as they took their places at the table on the terrace, ‘if this was truly an English affair it would be raining and we’d be forcing you to eat your meal under an umbrella.’
‘In that case I have that to look forward to,’ she said, giving him a dazzlingly bright smile. ‘Now tell me, who is responsible for this beautiful flower arrangement on the table?’
‘That’ll be Mum,’ said Jenna, indicating Frankie who was sitting directly opposite her.
‘I congratulate you,’ said Valentina, ‘you clearly have the artistic touch.’
‘It’s nothing,’ replied Frankie, ‘just a few flowers picked from the garden here.’
‘But it is the clever way you have arranged them. In my hands those flowers would look quite ordinary, but you have created a floral masterpiece. You will have to teach me how to do that.’
‘I’d be happy to.’
Good Lord, thought Sorrel, could the woman lay it on any thicker? But it was a clever tactic, if a little obvious. Charming them with flattery in order to win them over was, of course, her best option, but could she keep it up, that was the question? How soon before the effort of being so irritatingly nice wore thin? Curious to see how Valentina would react, Sorrel decided it was time to liven things up.
‘Frankie is very much the artistic one of us,’ she said, loading on the guile, ‘unlike me; I’m hopeless in that direction. But Frankie and dear Orla were two of a kind in that respect.’
There was a deliciously predictable loss of beat to the conversation, creating a pin-drop silence, during which Sorrel kept her gaze fixed firmly on Valentina so as not to see the expression on Alastair’s face.
‘Yes,’ said Valentina, her piercing blue eyes narrowing as she returned Sorrel’s stare with equal measure, ‘I have heard much from Alastair about Orla’s artistic gifts and what a perfectionist she was, but also how heavily that weighed upon her.’
And on us!was on the tip of Sorrel’s tongue. ‘Tell us about your children,’ she said instead, as Frankie started passing food around the table. ‘I believe we’re going to have the pleasure of meeting them in the coming days.’
‘Mystepchildren,’ Valentina corrected her with steely politeness, ‘and yes, Alastair has kindly agreed for Nikolai and Irina to visit.’
‘Where do they live?’ asked Callum, passing her a large serving dish of barbecued meat.
‘In London. Nikolai works for a digital media company – please, do not ask me to explain what he does precisely, I don’t have a clue – and Irina is currently employed by a firm of Knightsbridge estate agents to deal with the many Russian customers they have. Because,’ she went on, while helping herself to one small chicken drumstick and passing the serving dish to Rachel, ‘as you know, we Russians are buying up all your property from right beneath your noses, and oh, how you hate us for it. And now this one sitting at your table has the awful nerve to steal your very own Alastair. Where will it all end, you must wonder!’
There was polite laughter around the table with Simon snorting. ‘Oh, you’re welcome to him, we’ve been trying to get rid of him for years.’ And then Alastair, perhaps thinking Valentina had been interrogated enough for the time being, picked up his wineglass.
‘I propose a toast,’ he said, ‘to the people around this table who mean the world to me, and,’ his gaze settling on Valentina, ‘to the future.’
She leaned towards him and kissed him on the cheek, then clinked her glass against his. ‘Toourfuture,’ she said.
Her words left Sorrel in no doubt that Valentina planned to have Alastair all to herself. The woman had no intention of sharing him with his old friends.
