“You’re not wearing polo kit,” I say.
“You gotta be joking! I’m a Formula One driver, I can’t risk falling off a horse and breaking a wrist,” he says while lowering his sunglasses and adjusting the khaki coloured jacket he’s wearing over a white linen shirt.
“This is one of Harring’s many contradictions. He risks his life at every lap on a race circuit, yet he worries about falling off a horse.”
“The risk is mine to take, isn’t it, Parker?”
“It’s all yours.”
“Well, so this is your Jemma! She doesn’t look like a Londoner, to be really honest.”
With Harring, I feel free to speak frankly. “His mother can’t stand the way I look, so she’s made this desperate attempt to turn me into her younger self.” So saying, I take out the hairpins from my bun, letting my hair fall on my shoulders. “And she can’t stand these, either,” I say, indicating the fuchsia ends.
“Delphina must have had a heart attack!” Says Harring, observing my coloured strands.
“Unfortunately not,” Ashford replies.
Then, the sound of trumpets calls the players onto the field. “The match is about to begin,” Ashford announces.
“Since you’re not playing, how about joining the mummies collective and helping me lower the average age?” I ask Harring. He’s nice, and I’m sure he could tell me some embarrassing anecdotes about Ashford.
“Actually, I was considering doing something else,” he says, stretching to look at someone behind us. “Alicia Trahern is as hot as hell, today!”
Ashford looks at him sceptically. “Alicia Trahern? You’ve always said that she’s gotDumboears!”
“I can barely see them with her hair down,” Harring says, and then he slips through the crowd of spectators.
Ashford shrugs. “This is Harring.”
While Ashford and his team take to the field and I make my way back to the lovely geriatric area, I run into a group of girls who are about my age and… oh God, I wish I could disappear!
Bloody Delphina, she made me believe that I was expected to wear this faded wallpaper, but these girls’ outfits are so fashionable: they’re all wearing short colourful dresses or frilly skirts, and it feels like looking at the front page ofVogue.
When they notice I’m among them, they form a circle and I find myself in the middle of it.
“Lady Burlingham, I suppose. The new incumbent at Denby Hall,” says the tallest girl looking at me. “I’m Sophia Skyper-Kensitt. I’ve known Ashford for ages,” she looks me up and down again. “What an incredible choice!”
“Quite odd,” another girl echoes. “We were all impatient to meet the new duchess.”
“And what a delightful look,” adds a third young lady.
“You look amazing, too. I saw dresses like yours discounted at Selfridges’.”
They suddenly shut up and Sophia (I think) says: “I don’t go to Selfridges. This is my dressmaker’s work.”
I look at her and I hesitate: I don’t want to go back to those mummies! I want to join these girls and talk about fashion and parties.
“We could watch the match together and have a chat. I don’t know, maybe you could recommend a good dressmaker so that at the next event, I can hang around with people who didn’t fight in the first World War!”
Sophia’s face contorts in sheer misery. “Our gazebo is fully booked; there’s always someone missing, but today is the first match of the championship league andeveryonecame,” she stresses ‘everyone’ quite strongly. “We don’t even have room for a dog, even a small one,” she says, and all the others laugh as if they had heard the joke of the century.
Was she trying to offend me?
“Let’s hope that there will be other occasions,” I say, while I adjust the hideous hat on my forehead again.
“We cannot wait,” they say, heading towards their gazebo.
Time to go back to the elders.
