Liz Fielding: Her Desert Dream

The second book in the Trading Places serie, 2009

LYDIA YOUNG was a fake from the tip of her shoes to the saucy froth of feathers on her hat but, as she held centre stage at a reception in a swanky London hotel, she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was the best there was.

Her suit, an interpretation of a designer original, had been run up at home by her mother, but her mother had once been a seamstress at a couturier house. And while her shoes, bag and wristwatch were knock-offs, they were the finest knock-offs that money could buy. The kind that only someone intimate with the real thing would clock without a very close look. But they were no more than the window dressing.

She’d once heard an actress describe how she built a character from the feet up and she had taken that lesson to heart.

Lydia had studied her character’s walk, her gestures, a certain tilt of the head. She’d worked on the voice until it was her own and the world famous smile-a slightly toned down version of the mile-wide one that came as naturally as breathing-was, even if she said it herself, a work of art.

Her reward was that when she walked into a room full of people who knew that she was a lookalike, hired by the hour to lend glamour to the opening of a club or a restaurant or to appear at the launch of a new product, there was absolutely nothing in her appearance or manner to jar the fantasy and, as a result, she was treated with the same deference as the real thing.

She was smiling now as she mixed and mingled, posing for photographs with guests at a product launch being held at the kind of hotel that in her real life she would only glimpse from a passing bus.

Would the photographs be framed? she wondered. Placed on mantels, so that their neighbours, friends would believe that they’d actually met ‘England’s Sweetheart’?

Someone spoke to her and she offered her hand, the smile, asked all the right questions, chatting as naturally as if to the stately home born.

A dozen more handshakes, a few more photographs as the managing director of the company handed her a blush-pink rose that was as much a part of her character’s image as the smile and then it was over. Time to go back to her real world. A hospital appointment for her mother, then an evening shift at the 24/7 supermarket where she might even be shelving the new brand of tea that was being launched today.

There was a certain irony in that, she thought as she approached the vast marble entrance lobby, heading for the cloakroom to transform herself back into plain Lydia Young for the bus ride home. Anticipating the head-turning ripple of awareness as she passed.

People had been turning to look, calling out ‘Rose’ to her in the street since she was a teen. The likeness had been striking, much more than the colour of her hair, the even features, vivid blue eyes that were eerily like those of the sixteen-year-old Lady Rose. And she had played up to it, copying her hairstyle, begging her mother to make her a copy of the little black velvet jacket Lady Rose had been wearing in the picture that had appeared on the front page of every newspaper the day after her sixteenth birthday. Copying her ‘look’, just as her mother’s generation had slavishly followed another young princess.

Who wouldn’t want to look like an icon?

A photograph taken by the local paper had brought her to the attention of the nation’s biggest ‘lookalike’ agency and overnight being ‘Lady Rose’ had not only given her wheelchair-bound mother a new focus in life as she’d studied the clothes, hunted down fabrics to reproduce them, but had provided extra money to pay the bills, pay for her driving lessons. She’d even saved up enough to start looking for a car so that she could take her mum further than the local shops.

Lost in the joy of that thought, Lydia was halfway across the marble entrance before she realised that no one was looking at her. That someone else was the centre of attention.

Her stride faltered as that ‘someone’ turned and she came face to face with herself. Or, more accurately, the self she was pretending to be.

Lady Roseanne Napier.

England’s Sweetheart.

In person.

From the tip of her mouth-wateringly elegant hat, to the toes of her matching to-die-for shoes.

And Lydia, whose heart had joined her legs in refusing to move, could do nothing but pray for the floor to open up and swallow her.

The angel in charge of rescuing fools from moments of supreme embarrassment clearly had something more pressing to attend to. The marble remained solid and it was Lady Rose, the corner of her mouth lifting in a wry little smile, who saved the day.

‘I know the face,’ she said, extending her hand, ‘but I’m afraid the name escapes me.’

‘Lydia, madam, Lydia Young’ she stuttered as she grasped it, more for support than to shake hands.

Should she curtsy? Women frequently forgot themselves sufficiently to curtsy to her but she wasn’t sure her knees, once down, would ever make it back up again and the situation was quite bad enough without turning it into a farce.

Then, realising that she was still clutching the slender hand much too tightly, she let go, stammered out an apology.

‘I’m s-so sorry. I promise this wasn’t planned. I had no idea you’d be here.’

‘Please, it’s not a problem,’ Lady Rose replied sympathetically, kindness itself as she paused long enough to exchange a few words, ask her what she was doing at the hotel, put her at her ease. Then, on the point of rejoining the man waiting for her at the door-the one the newspapers were saying Lady Rose would marry-she looked back. ‘As a matter of interest, Lydia, how much do you charge for being me? Just in case I ever decided to take a day off?’

‘No charge for you, Lady Rose. Just give me a call. Any time’

‘I don’t suppose you fancy three hours of Wagner this evening?’ she asked, but before Lydia could reply, she shook her head. ‘Just kidding. I wouldn’t wish that on you.’

The smile was in place, the voice light with laughter, but for a moment her eyes betrayed her and Lydia saw beyond the fabulous clothes, the pearl choker at her throat. Lady Rose, she realised, was a woman in trouble and, taking a card from the small clutch bag she was holding, she offered it to her.

‘I meant what I said. Call me,’ Lydia urged. ‘Any time.’

Three weeks later, when she answered her cellphone, a voice she knew as well as her own said, ‘Did you mean it?’

Kalil al-Zaki stared down into the bare winter garden of his country’s London Embassy, watching the Ambassador’s children racing around in the care of their nanny.

He was only a couple of years younger than his cousin. By the time a man was in his thirties he should have a family, sons…

‘I know how busy you are, but it’s just for a week, Kal.’

‘I don’t understand the problem,’ he said, clamping down on the bitterness, the anger that with every passing day came closer to spilling over, and turned from the children to their mother, his cousin’s lovely wife, Princess Lucy al-Khatib. ‘Nothing is going to happen to Lady Rose at Bab el Sama.’

As it was the personal holiday complex of the Ramal Hamrahn royal family, security would, he was certain, be state-of-the-art.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Lucy agreed, ‘but her grandfather came to see me yesterday. Apparently there has been a threat against her.’

He frowned. ‘A threat? What kind of threat?’