occurred to Hattie to buy such a dress (and she was nervous of looking at herself in the shop mirror) it was, in fact, perfect on her.
Hattie’s lack of sexual confidence extended to her choice of clothes, and she felt now, as she finally examined her reflection in the softly lit mirror, like a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes, a ridiculous impostor pretending to be a woman.
Claire, who spent a great deal of time, money and artifice on her own appearance, was often amazed at Hattie’s disinterest in clothes and make-up and astonished by her lack of vanity. Claire had long since given up trying to persuade Hattie that she was beautiful. She understood that her friend had some deep-seated physical inferiority complex prompted by the fact that she was so very different from her infamously lovely mother and her celebrated sister.
While Hattie’s mother had brilliant blue eyes and straight, shiny white-blonde hair (even now at fifty-seven) her younger daughter was born with brown eyes and thick, dark curls that she struggled to control. And while both her mother and her elder sister, Arabella, were tall but shapely (they had breasts where Hattie had the merest hint of pectorals) she was short and skinny.
In company her mother had referred to the teenage Hattie as ‘the changeling’ or would say, when anyone remarked on her daughter’s looks, ‘She is a genetic throwback.’ And as a result Hattie had never been able to see her own particular beauty.
‘It would look good with a high heel, I think,’ the fawning shop assistant now said to Toby as they studied the embarrassed Hattie. ‘Suede stilettos …’
Inwardly Hattie groaned at the thought of having to wear this dress and high heels. Had she been able to get away with a pair of black opaque tights and some loafers she might have felt happier but the idea of being forced to wear a pair of sheer glossy stockings and stilettos made her feel even more the child at a fancy-dress party. But she went along with Toby’s wishes – and the awful sales assistant’s advice – because she just wanted to get the whole thing over with.
As well as Hattie’s dress, shoes and a selection of underwear, they bought various props for her empty home: a vast bunch of long-stemmed red chillis to put into plain glass vases, new cutlery and crockery for the table and a number of large church candles. That evening, before their guests arrived, Hattie felt as if both she and their minimalist flat had been sullied and cheapened by the way in which Toby had chosen to adorn them.
‘Put on a little lipstick and smile, darling,’ said Toby when he saw her. And with a heavy heart she went into the bathroom, put aside her trusty Lipsyl, and painted her mouth the same scarlet colour as the chillis that decorated the table. When she emerged Toby was temporarily stunned by her beauty.
‘You’ll do …’ he said, with so little enthusiasm or expression that instead of suffusing her with confidence his off-hand compliment compounded her conviction that she looked terrible.
She had decided, minutes after the arrival of Toby’s client, Tom Charter, and his lovely second wife, that the only thing to do was to drink. That way, she thought, she might achieve a little of the sparkle Toby desired.
For once she was quite relieved to see Jon, who arrived a little later than everyone else. The other guests – a senior partner in Toby’s law firm and the QC advising them on the UCO case, together with their partners – all seemed to know each other and made Hattie rather nervous. It was her own fault, of course, because she was rarely free to enjoy – or for that matter interested in – the social events that punctuated the working lives of these successful men. And Toby’s own reservations about Hattie’s ability to indulge in the right kind of small talk had made it easy for her to escape the dinners and cocktail parties that came with his now burgeoning legal career.
Toby had long since discovered that the name of his girlfriend – that is, her family name – was of more use to him in his career than the woman herself. Her inability to play the social game was a bitter disappointment to him because he knew that in the circles in which he now mixed – and in which he longed to become further enmeshed – Hattie’s family connections would be an enormous asset.
Still, tonight she seemed to be more the woman he secretly wanted. He could tell that Tom Charter – who had played an important part in Toby’s recent elevation within his firm – was taken with her, and he crossed his fingers under the table and quietly prayed that she kept to the list of subjects he had suggested the evening before last.
Claire was carefully installed on the other side of their most important guest so that she could deflect anything that might offend the great man. Tonight she was in full professional mode, partly because Charter’s company – UCO – was one of her most important corporate accounts and partly because, following the events of the previous weekend, she had vowed (not, of course, for the first time) never to allow herself to be used by a man again.
‘So tell me what you do with your days, Hattie?’ Tom asked innocently and affably.
‘Oh, I work at this and that,’ said Hattie, aware that clinical psychology and the decline of the NHS was definitely not on Toby’s conversation list.
Unfortunately, Jon, who was incapable of resisting a quick jab at Hattie, was not going to allow her to escape closer personal scrutiny.
‘Yes, Tom, instead of being the kind of socialite her parents had expected, Hattie has turned into their family’s social conscience. Instead of living up to their upper-class expectations, she prefers to devote herself to administering to the underclass.’
‘Doing what, exactly?’ asked Tom. ‘I’m a clinical psychologist, specialising in children, although most of them nowadays tend to be teenagers. My patients are usually referred to me by the juvenile courts and I have to make an assessment of them. Jon says I have a social conscience but if I have a conscience about anything it is that I don’t do enough, I can only go so far in my work …’ she said, breaking off as she caught a warning glance from Toby.
‘What did your parents want for you?’ asked Tom.
‘Well, I think ideally they wanted Prince Edward,’ said Hattie, her face flushed by her unusually high intake of alcohol. ‘They didn’t really envisage my wanting to do anything much more than my mother or my elder sister had done. Which was, and still is really, to look good and party.’
‘Which,’ said Claire with enforced gaiety, ‘is great work if you can get it.’
‘And makes your choice of career all the more noble,’ said Tom.
‘Not to the nobility,’ said Hattie with a bitter laugh. ‘I am something of an embarrassment to them. They regard me as a sad eccentric’
‘But your family is famous for its eccentricity,’ prompted Tom.
‘My great-aunt’s divorce case – the citing of the entire English cricket team – and my grandfather’s insistence on sleeping in a silk-lined coffin for the last twenty years of his life – were what you might call conventional acts of aristocratic eccentricity. What I do – working with the mentally displaced and socially deprived – makes me a much more peculiar animal.’
There was an awkward silence.
‘But surely your parents are at least proud of your academic achievements? Blue stockings match well with blue blood, don’t they?’
‘I think they are much prouder of my sister, whose only qualifications in life are her looks and her ability to attract the attention of the gossip columns.’
Tom Charter and his wife, rather like Hattie’s family really, were far more interested in her sister, Arabella’s, outrageous lifestyle than they were in her own rather dull existence. In fact Mamie Charter clearly found the subject of Arabella’s love life – which only that month had involved an infamous ageing rock star – fascinating. Much to Toby’s relief.
‘You must meet Bella,’ he said enthusiastically.
‘You’d love her,’ said Claire. ‘She’s an absolute hoot.’
Hattie