to see a cartoon heart moving her shirt in and out. Instead she looked down and saw what he’d actually been referring to.
Crap.
Even reading upside down the Relax! Don’t Do It 80s slogan white silk t-shirt, which she’d teamed with navy cigarette trousers and tan leather brogues, the phrase screamed the very opposite of humility.
She wanted to pout and tell him that she didn’t get out much, so what did she know about what to wear up to the Big House.
His grin getting wider he added, ‘You had me a little worried yesterday but I’m pleased you’re not approaching this lying down.’
‘Shows what you know. Inside I’m completely supine and approaching this evening like a friend who’s done something stupid and is prepared to accept the consequences.’
‘Wardrobe didn’t get the memo, then?’
Gloria sighed. She had deliberately asked Persephone if she’d looked all right before she’d dropped her off at Bob’s for the night and her daughter had done her usual full Queer Eye assessment and declared her fit to go. Admittedly Gloria hadn’t asked ‘Does this outfit scream, “Don’t fire me” when she’d presented herself at her daughter’s bedroom door because Perse was too excited her mum was going out for the evening like a ‘regular person’.
Turning around she made to walk away.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ Seth asked.
‘I’m going home to change,’ she muttered.
‘No way. Go with your first instinct, brazen it out with the t-shirt, man-up and fight for not being fired as a bridesmaid.’
‘I’m not begging for a seat at the table, Seth.’ But she chewed on her bottom lip, not wanting to acknowledge her first instinct and what it might mean, because aside from the humiliation of being fired, it at least meant she’d no longer have to be bridesmaid, right?
He coughed out a word that sounded suspiciously like ‘Coward’ and that was all it took for her to reach forward and press the doorbell.
As the chimes echoed behind the oak carved doors, Seth whispered in her ear, ‘What are you doing?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m using the traditionally accepted method of letting the house-owner know of my arrival.’
‘Or,’ he said, pushing open the door, ‘you could simply come on in.’
‘Wait.’ She reached out to forestall him. ‘I’m not ready.’ Inhaling deep, she shook back her hair, shrugged her shoulders up and down a couple of times and then, swift as you like, punched him lightly on the arm. ‘That was for calling me a coward. Okay,’ she grinned when his mouth dropped open. ‘Now, I’m ready.’
They stepped across the threshold together and out of the side of his mouth he whispered, ‘Anyone ever mention you can be brutal?’
Her grin widened, and she batted her eyelashes. ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘You’re here,’ Emma came out of a room and crossed the hallway, looking nervous. ‘Jake?’ she called out. ‘Gloria and Seth are here.’
Gloria wanted to remind Emma that Seth lived here and so there was absolutely no need to imply they’d arrived together, but Emma was turning and indicating they follow her so she kept her mouth shut and looked around curiously.
It was the first time she’d been invited into Knightley Hall.
When she’d been younger she’d often fantasised about living in a place like this, or, if you want to get technical, she’d fantasized specifically about living in this place. The Tudor mansion, with its regimented yew hedges presiding protectively over it every winter and then transforming into cosy romance in summer when the heavily-scented bowers of wisteria covering the black beams burst into bloom.
Whatever the season, it had one huge temptation to her growing up.
Space.
Not the final frontier.
More the square footage.
There’d not been even half a square foot to be on her own in the two-up two-down rundown farmer’s cottage she’d lived in growing up. Small on the inside, small on the outside, it had nevertheless felt like a giant advert for her family’s struggles and she’d been convinced a beautiful sprawling house like the one she was now standing in couldn’t hold any ugliness inside its walls. It commanded status both in the village and the surrounding area and hadn’t that been what she’d craved back then, along with the kind of longevity and stability it also represented.
Gloria wondered if it had been hard for Emma, transitioning from a small shared apartment in Hollywood, to Juliet’s tiny Wren Cottage, to this place all in the space of a year. Emma was usually good at hiding her nerves but Gloria couldn’t help noticing the way she tucked her hands into the folds of her full skirt. The question was, was she nervous about entertaining in such a grand and formal space, or about the fact that at some point in the evening she was going to withdraw her bridesmaid request?
With her eyes adjusting from the low evening sunshine outside to the darkness inside from the heavy oak panelling Gloria tried to see the place more for what it was. Perhaps it was because she didn’t have status-stars in her eyes any more but Knightley Hall looked every inch like it was going to take serious money to breathe new life back into it.
She slid her own nervous hands into her trouser pockets. When you grew up poor it wasn’t that you didn’t believe money could bring you happiness. To be honest you weren’t interested in happiness, you were only interested in not being poor. She would never have believed that spending the kind of money Bob brought in could have been as stressful as not having any, but it had been.
These days she and Persephone had enough to get by comfortably. Nothing more, nothing less stopped her feeling the frustration when her parents refused to accept any money she and Bob had tried to give them and it stopped her worrying that if she had more she’d start spending it like she had before Persephone had come along. Back then, trying to feed the emptiness that had snuck up on her, she’d filled their home with things she neither liked much, nor needed.
Wondering when he’d notice.
Wondering what was wrong.
Unable to put her finger on it and quite unable to demand he tell her.
So much for being The Fierce and Fearsome Gloria Pavey.
Ironically she’d never been those things with Bob.
Just like she wasn’t going to be those things now when Emma delivered her news, she told herself as she moved past Seth into the dining room.
The room was large and even on a summer’s evening, with the leaded windows at the far end of the room thrown open to let in air and light, it was dark.
The heavy wood panelling ended at waist height and above it was plain cream wallpaper, relieved only by some dull lights the type usually seen over large pictures. And then Gloria realised that at some point there’d probably been large paintings filling the wall space, but presumably now were owned by auction-attending, country-manor decorating types.
‘You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,’ she said politely walking over to the type of long formal dining table you’d usually see in National Trust houses to study the lovely table setting of damask linen tablecloth, gold charger plates, blue and white patterned china and ornate silver cutlery.
‘Nonsense,’ Emma replied. ‘Besides, I needed the practise so that by the time Mother visits I’m not in the kitchen drinking all the brandy.’
‘You realise you just referred to your mum as “mother”?’ Seth said. ‘Bit of a Mommy Dearest character, is she?’
Gloria watched Jake enter the room and immediately shoot his brother a ‘stop talking now, hazard