There were pieces on eBay for triple the asking price within minutes of the doors opening on High Street Ken.
She’d never been particularly good with clothes. Her mother was always going on about Esme needing to look ‘put together’.
‘A good bag and good heels will lift any outfit,’ her mother likes to say. ‘Those are the key pieces worth investing in.’
Lilian Reade considered herself something of a sartorial expert, having once enjoyed a short-lived stint as a fashion model in the 1970s after her colleagues in the Ministry of Defence had encouraged her to enter Miss Whitehall. She’d won the competition and signed up with an agency where her most high-profile job had been modelling for a knitting pattern company based in Slough. But the way she talked about it, Lilian’s glory days had been a jet-set whirlwind of catwalks, male admirers and parties in St-Tropez.
‘Girls had more meat on them in those days,’ she is fond of saying. ‘No skinny minnies. And I was naturally slender so my agency kept telling me, “Lilian,” they said, “You’ve got to try and put some weight on, dear.” I mean, can you imagine, darling, can you?’
Lilian would give a light spray of laughter while Esme would shake her head dutifully. ‘No, Mum, no I can’t.’
There is a black-and-white newspaper clipping of Lilian as Miss Whitehall in a shockingly short houndstooth dress standing outside Big Ben, posing as if her life depended on it. Lilian is prone to fishing it out from a conveniently placed scrapbook any time she wants to make her daughter feel inadequate.
Esme thinks of it now as she hops on a bus to Hyde Park Corner, wincing as the skin on the back of her ankle catches against the back of her high-heeled shoe. Her mother, needless to say, swears by high heels but the soles of Esme’s feet are already prickling with heat. She hopes she won’t have to walk too far at the other end.
But by the time she makes it to the Dorchester – which is further up Park Lane than she had remembered – she is already five minutes late. Her ankles are red-raw, her toes uncomfortably squashed. A silver-haired Frenchman greets her at the door of the restaurant, eyeing her up and down as if she is a piece of second-hand furniture, before suavely sashaying across the plush carpet, leading her past a shimmering pillar of glass that falls from the ceiling like a divine shower curtain and then on to a corner table at which Sir Howard and his PR man, Rupert, are already seated.
‘Shit,’ Esme says under her breath. Turning up late is not a good way to start the Howard Pink charm offensive.
‘Sir Howard,’ she says, with as much confidence as she can muster. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’ She extends her arm. Sir Howard tries to stand but only gets three-quarters of the way out of his chair before his considerable stomach makes it impossible for him to continue without toppling over. He shakes her hand. His palm is cool and surprisingly smooth. A floral scent wafts from his open-necked shirt and she recognises it instantly as Roger & Gallet soap, of the kind once used by her grandmother.
‘You’re here now, I suppose,’ Sir Howard says, unsmiling. She can sense displeasure radiating from him.
Rupert leans towards her and introduces himself. ‘Good of you to come, Esme,’ he says, as though she is doing them a tremendous favour. He is well-spoken and conventionally handsome, like one of those men in the Gillette adverts. He looks much younger than Dave even though she knows they are contemporaries. She wouldn’t imagine the two of them as friends. ‘Dave said you’re one of his star reporters,’ Rupert continues, motioning to her seat. ‘I must say, I thought you’d be older. It’s a sign of age, isn’t it, when policemen and doctors start seeming like children …’
Esme notices Sir Howard staring fixedly at a point in the mid-distance throughout Rupert’s oleaginous patter. In person, the Fash Attack millionaire looks both smaller and more imposing than his photographs would lead you to believe. His face is dominated by a bulbous nose, framed by a receding hairline that is emphasised by a copious amount of gel, employed to slick the few remaining follicular wisps severely backwards. He is not wearing a tie and the collar of his white shirt lies open to reveal a sprouting of dark chest hair. For a titan of industry, he seems remarkably unintimidating but then she spots his eyes: brown and pinprick sharp, the pupils darting this way and that, trailing the waiters, taking in the other customers, analysing everything that comes into his field of vision. He is leaning his head against one perfectly manicured hand, the tips of his fingers so close to his nose he might be smelling them. He appears almost entirely uninterested in her.
‘I’ve been at the paper for eighteen months,’ Esme is saying as a waiter unfolds her napkin and casts it out over her knees. ‘Sir Howard, it’s very kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule,’ she adds, trying to get his attention. She is not used to middle-aged men disregarding her so flagrantly.
Sir Howard turns his head, lizard-like. His voice, when he speaks, is pointedly quiet.
‘I was led to believe you were going to apologise,’ he says.
Esme flushes. ‘Oh, yes, well, of course, Sir Howard. We – I mean, the paper – are really incredibly sorry for the oversight …’
Rupert waves her apology away with a flap of the hand. ‘It’s quite all right. I’ve explained to Sir Howard that it was the picture desk who messed up. Dave tells me it won’t happen again.’
‘It won’t,’ says Esme, although she has absolutely no way of ensuring this.
‘I hate that fucking picture,’ Sir Howard says, launching the swear word across the table just as the waiter arrives bearing three identical egg-shaped bowls.
‘To start the meal, we present to you an amuse-bouche of shrimp and lobster ravioli with a ginger consommé.’
There is a slight pause.
‘Well get on with it then,’ says Howard. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
The waiter looks suitably apologetic but then takes a small age pouring the consommé into each of their dishes from individual white jugs. Once this is done, he stands back for a moment as if awaiting plaudits for the culinary genius on show. When none is forthcoming, he gives a simpering smile, bows and clasps his hands together.
‘Bon appétit,’ the waiter says, retreating backwards like a royal footman.
‘Christ,’ says Howard. ‘I thought we’d never get rid of him.’
Esme laughs. He looks at her, his eyes suddenly twinkling.
‘I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Esme.’
‘Are you Scottish?’
‘No, my Dad was.’
‘Was?’ Howard fires back.
‘Yes, he died when I was eight.’
He puts his spoon down and seems genuinely taken aback. Esme is used to all sorts of reactions when she tells strangers: shocked intakes of breath, sympathetic squeezes of the arm, patronising assurances that ‘time’s a great healer’ but, perhaps because he’s had to deal with his own loss, Howard’s appears oddly sincere.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally.
Rupert grimaces and wrinkles his brow, to show that he is terribly sorry too.
‘It’s all right. It was a long time ago.’
‘You never get over something like that,’ Howard says. ‘How did he die?’ he asks bluntly.
‘Drink driving.’
‘Christ. Did they catch the bastard?’
‘They didn’t need to. My father was the drunk driver.’
Howard sits motionless, a spoonful of soup hovering dangerously over the tablecloth at a midway point between bowl and mouth.
She tries not to think of her father too much but now, having mentioned