Quickly, as quickly as a magician vanishes a ball under a cup, Ben slips on his politician’s mask. He slaps me on the back and shakes my hand with a great show of bonhomie. His palm is soft. ‘How are you, Martin? My God! What a surprise. Thank you so much for coming. It’s great to see you. I wish it were under different circumstances, but …’
He has found his flow and now pitches headlong into the familiar stream of it. ‘Serena! Serena!’ Ben is beckoning her over, and now here she is, his wife, bearer of his multiple children, floating like a black angel across the lawn. ‘Look who it is! It’s LS. It’s bloody Martin! He’s come for Fliss. So good of you, Martin. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.’
Ben shakes his head, passing his hand through his gelled hair, sweeping the quiff backwards, then patting it smooth. I imagine his fingers sticky with product.
Serena smiles at me. She is still blonde, still fragile, still striking, a touch thicker around the waist – and yet something has shifted that has altered her appearance. She is no longer breathtaking, I realise. It’s not that she has lost her beauty, simply that it has become unremarkable. It used to be the kind of beauty that existed at a far remove, like a statue one looked up at. Now she is at eye level with the rest of us.
‘Can you believe it, Serena?’ Ben is saying now.
‘I can,’ Serena says, placing her hand on my upper arm and letting it rest there, light as a moth. ‘I invited him.’
Well, this is a surprise, given that I had always blamed Serena for putting a wedge between me and Ben.
Ben’s grin fixes itself to his face. There is a beat of silence, a perfect semiquaver of discomfort.
‘You did?’
Serena nods.
‘We all know Fliss adored LS,’ she says, which seems to be stretching the truth somewhat. ‘It seemed the right thing to do. Let bygones be bygones. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?’
She links her arm through mine and stares at her husband.
Interesting, I think, and it’s not too much of a leap to conjecture that Ben has been up to his old indiscretions again. He never was capable of fidelity. Serena, with her breeding and her brittle elegance; her blondness and her emotional unavailability, had kept his attention longer than most. But now … trouble at t’mill.
‘Come, Martin, I’ll show you to your seat.’
Serena wafts me into the marquee. Her dress is floor-length black silk and as she walks, the skirt of it swishes around her ankles. She talks to me in a low whisper, casually savaging the guests.
‘That’s Rosie Carson-Smythe. Alcoholic. Decided she was a lesbian a couple of years ago, right around the time her husband was shagging the nanny. Oh, and there’s Petra—’ Serena breaks off to give a little wave. Her bangles jingle. ‘One of Fliss’s school friends. Terrible breath.’
She chatters on, not expecting a reply. We walk right through the marquee and into the chapel. Vast bouquets of lilies on either side of the altar. There is a stand where Fliss’s coffin will be placed and a photo of her propped against one corner, with neatly blow-dried hair, in a high-collared blouse. The photo was clearly taken many years ago and bears no relation to the person I spotted outside King’s Cross station.
Swish, swish, goes Serena’s dress. Swish, swish.
‘That’s Richard Take. I’m sure you know all about him.’
Her fingers squeeze my forearm.
‘He’s doing that awful reality TV show, did you see it?’
‘No.’
‘Not surprised. Chav telly.’
‘But I am a chav, Serena.’
The corners of her mouth curl.
‘I know, darling, but you’re the right kind. You piss away from the tent.’
Is that even an expression? As much as she has lost her beauty, she has grown in a kind of caustic confidence. I’m not opposed to it. In fact, might I hazard a dangerous suggestion in the safety of these pages that I rather like it?
In the front pew, I catch sight of the back of Lady Katherine’s head. I would recognise it anywhere. Ben and Fliss’s mother. Her grey hair is perfectly set underneath a large black hat accentuated with a turkey’s worth of feathers.
‘Goodness,’ I say and Serena knows immediately what I’m referring to.
‘I knoooow,’ she says, drawing out the o. ‘So tacky. Cruella de Vil by way of Claire’s Accessories. I tried to tell her, but you know Katherine …’
