Perhaps she should have seen it coming. Frank and Ernest, childhood friends, boys who’d once run wild through the same Glasgow streets. Frank, true to his name, brutally honest, coldly pragmatic, never letting sentiment impede advantage. But how could Frank know? She’d always been so careful. Never revealing anything about her family, her past.
Ernest’s tone was soft, coaxing. ‘Funny things, secrets. Terribly unfortunate if they become public. Still, for now, this one’s just between me and Frank. We don’t have any reason to share it more widely. But if you give us a reason, well ...que será, será.’
Her heart gave a hard, single beat. The mask was finally off. Ernest’s skilful coercion, the way he had made her feel like she was choosing to help, had finally failed; but he had a backstop. Blackmail.
She’d always feared this day would come.
The dimly lit ballroomradiated faded grandeur. Its Georgian symmetry soothed the eye: restrained plasterwork running like icing across the sixteen-foot high ceiling. Three full-length sash windows lined one side, their thick damask curtains drawn against the cold. The far end of the room culminated in an elegant bay window which looked out onto a frost-dusted knot garden still visible – no one had drawn those curtains, as if unwilling to close off the view.
Marmalade, the ancient yellow lab, had claimed the velvetchaise longue by the fire as his throne, and now sprawled across it with the shameless entitlement of a dog who’d outlived house rules. His greying muzzle dangled over the edge, occasionally twitching at the scent of food that would never come his way. Christina moved among her assembled relatives like a well-heeled ghost, mostly invisible but entirely essential in a house of this stature, offering around the canapés and stepping carefully around Marmalade’s territorial claim. Her hands worked on autopilot, but her mind reeled. He knew. There would be no escape now, no opportunity to return to making jewellery. She was trapped behind a filigree of her own lies.
Christina held the silver tray inches away from Amy’s fluttering hands. Her sister-in-law looked regal perched in her chair, doing absolutely nothing to help, as if manual labour was beneath her station.
Next to her, Amy’s husband Hugo received a half full tumbler of whisky from Ernest with the pained expression of a thirsty man in a desert. He was every inch the caricature of English aristocracy gone to seed – late forties with a ruddy complexion and a once-sharp jawline that had softened into jowls. His watery blue eyes held that glassy quality of someone perpetually calculating the shortest socially acceptable interval before the next drink.
Christina offered the canapés to her brother-in-law, who selected an oatcake with a grin that was slightly too wide. His cheeks were flushed, and he was already slumped to one side of his chair, making Christina feel as if she were on a yacht listing badly to starboard.
Amy reached out, straightening her husband in his armchair. ‘Hugo’s had a long day,’ she said.
Christina looked around, noticing the suspiciously perfect symmetry of the gilded frames on the walls. Nothing hand-crafted ever looked that uniform. How much had Ernest sold offover the decades? And how much of the profits had he tucked away in that slush fund of his? Not that he’d ever reveal the total, not even to Frank.
She didn’t want to think about either of those men, or the threat they posed to her future.
Amy smiled thinly at Christina. ‘You’re always so hands-on. It’s impressive, really – if I had to keep track of the canapés and the conversation, I’d lose one or the other.’
‘Christina,’ Hamish said suddenly, his voice unnecessarily loud. ‘Has anyone told you how efficient you are?’
There it was. That tone of Hamish’s. Not kindness. Not praise. A public act of defence. A subtle way of correcting the room.
‘Efficient, yes,’ said Lady Flora vaguely, from her chair near the fire, she lifted her elegant green silk evening gown, and held her feet toward the hearth, revealing a pair of ancient pink slippers.
Christina stared at them. She’d never seen Lady Flora wearing anything but sensible smart shoes or wellington boots before.
Hugo sprang to his feet, ‘Ma what have you got on your feet?’
Hamish’s eyes narrowed, ‘Ma!’ he cried.
Then Hugo wobbled. Just in time, Amy caught him by the arm. Her smile remained fixed – its usual glaze of gracious indifference, as if her husband were a tall lamp that had started to topple.
‘I think we need to get Hugo upstairs,’ she murmured. Hamish was beside her in an instant, slipping an arm under Hugo’s shoulder. ‘Come on, old man. Let’s get you horizontal.’
‘I don’t want to be horizontal,’ Hugo slurred. ‘Want to be – what’s the one where you swirl the wine and speak French?’
‘Sommelier?’ Hamish offered.
‘Yes. That one.’
‘Right. Let’s get you there,’ Hamish said, guiding him toward the door, Hugo’s brogues dragging against the Aubusson rug.
They disappeared down the hallway, Marmalade padding intheir wake.
Lady Flora gave a satisfied nod, then returned her gaze to the fire, murmuring something about snow that should be in the hearth.
Christina frowned trying to work out what Flora meant. She glanced down at her mother-in-law’s slippers, then looked around the room. Up at the plasterwork – crumbling. At the silver – mostly fake. The grand facade of genteel respectability she was so desperate to join was an illusion, held together by the family’s pretence and her own exhausting efforts to keep the family solvent.
She took a slow sip and set her glass down, carefully. She wasn’t sure she had the energy to prove her worth to this family anymore. And yet Ernest’s bombshell meant she couldn’t stop. Not yet anyway. She couldn’t shake the memory of him calling her Tina. Was that the reason he had called a family meeting – to blackmail her into forging more silver? There had to be a point to tonight’s pantomime. Ernest – the master strategist – would have known nothing serious could be discussed, not after he’d practically forced that enormous tumbler of whisky into Hugo’s hand. And then there were Lady Flora’s tatty pink slippers – what on earth was that about?
As she wrapped the canapés in clingfilm and slid them into the fridge, her mind churned. Was Flora ill? Was Ernest planning to sell the house? Was he trying to prove Hugo needed help with his drinking? An hour later, driving home with Elspeth and Hamish, she was no closer to answers. All she was left with was a creeping sense that whatever Ernest was plotting, tonight had only been the opening act.
