Lucy Gordon - Daniel and Daughter

'Tell your father, from me, not to be vulgar,' Lee retorted.

'Dad, Mum says don't be vulgar…Mum, he says it's too late now.'

'Don't you have homework to do?' Lee enquired frostily.

When Daniel called her his first words were, 'Are you mad at me?'

'For doing me a favour?' she asked lightly. 'Why should I be?'

'For showing you off to the world without asking you first.'

'No, I like it. Being known only as a rung on Phoebe Raife's ladder was undermining my self-confidence. After last night I can double my prices.'

'That's the spirit. And in a few years I'll be boasting that I once knew Lee Meredith-that is, if you still remember me by then.'

'Stop fishing,' she told him wryly. His self-confident chuckle was the last thing she heard before she put the phone down.

She sat musing for a while, recognising again what a very subtle operator Daniel was. Under cover of doing her a favour, he'd established them publicly as a couple-which meant he'd taken her a step further along the path to marriage than she'd meant to travel.

Lee had too much good sense to complain that she was famous for the wrong reason. Daniel, who knew the value of publicity, had done her a kindness and done it very thoroughly, and she was honestly grateful.

Just the same, he'd once more arranged matters the way he wanted them, and Lee couldn't help regarding her beloved somewhat wryly.

It seemed there was no end to the little pinpricks that Phoebe's success could deliver to her father. For his birthday she blew a hole in her budget by buying him a winter coat of black leather. When he protested at the expense she said airily, 'It's all right. Daddy. I got it wholesale. Turn around again. I want to see how fabulous you look.'

Then she, Sonya and Lee applauded while he showed his pleasure by grinning self-consciously. It was a happy scene, but he would gladly have given it up if only Phoebe had been able to spend the day with him. Unluckily an important booking was taking her in one direction just as he was setting out for a family party in the other.

Lee and Sonya accompanied him to his old home in the Midlands, where his mother still lived in the comfort he provided for her. Jean and Sarah, his sisters, also turned up, leaving Lee in no doubt that she was being looked over as a future addition to the family.

She liked the Raife women, who were all tall, like Phoebe, although without her beauty. They had her sharp wits too. They greeted Lee warmly and with a kind of relief, as though she was the long-awaited answer to prayers. She wished she knew what Daniel had told them about her.

She was particularly drawn to Jean, the eldest of the three siblings. At forty-three Jean was unmarried, stylish, and had a booming, abrupt voice that spared nobody, not even the brother she adored.

After lunch she showed Lee over the garden, which was only just losing its colour. 'What about this Phoebe business?' she demanded, coming straight to the point. 'Taking it hard, isn't he?'

'Very hard. He had his heart set on her going to Oxford.'

'Plenty of time for that later. Girls of sixteen don't yearn for the life of the mind.'

'But-didn't you?'

Jean roared with laughter. 'He tell you that? Well, of course I wanted to finish my education, and I minded that my father was a blithering idiot about it. But it wasn't the whole of life. Secretly I yearned to be drop-dead gorgeous and have men prostrating themselves at my feet-especially Jack Denis.'

'Who was Jack Denis?'

'Local heart-throb. My, he was handsome! An Adonis. Pity he was as thick as a plank.'

'Didn't he notice you?' Lee asked sympathetically.

'Not him. He married the daughter of a pig farmer. Now the place is theirs. She does the paperwork and he looks after the porkers-although I think he finds even that a bit mentally challenging.' She joined in Lee's laughter.

'If I'd had Phoebe's beauty I'd have wanted to make the most of it, not have my father droning on that there were more important things in life.'

'Yes, there's a lot Daniel doesn't understand.'

'My little brother is a very brilliant man-in his way,' Jean said drily. 'But when it comes to coping with a daughter about to leave the nest he's as big a fool as the rest of the male sex. He told me about the steak and chips fiasco. Luckily for him a first-class mind came to the rescue with some low-fat cooking.'

'Hey,' Lee said indignantly, 7 bought him that book.'

'Did I say otherwise?'

'You said a first-class mind.'

'I meant yours. A mind that can see straight to the heart of the problem and pinpoint the answer. You did that while he was still floundering.'

'That's the first time anyone's praised my mind,' Lee mused.

'Sonya has a good brain too. Gets it from you. Daniel won't go far wrong while he's got you to put him straight.'

'I'm not so sure,' Lee said sadly. 'He copes on the surface, but underneath he's tense and miserable. I can't reach him. In his heart I think he still blames me.'

'A man has to blame somebody-as long as it isn't himself.'

'But things used to be so perfect between us.'

'Sure about that?' Jean asked shrewdly.

'I beg your pardon?'

'In my experience nothing is ever perfect. It just looks that way afterwards. Love is very difficult. That's why I never tried it after I got over the pigman. Why make it even harder by longing for an impossible ideal? It wastes what you could have now. And what you and Daniel could have is very special.'

While Lee was trying to decide how to respond Jean said briskly, 'I've enjoyed our talk. I'm sure you're just the woman Daniel needs to keep him in order.'

'Thank you,' Lee said, without much conviction.

Lee normally breakfasted off coffee and toast, but on the day of the big wedding dress shoot for Woman Of The World she made herself bacon and eggs and plenty of it.

'That's not like you,' Mark observed.

'I've got a very tough day ahead,' she told him. 'Five models, two make-up experts, two hairdressers, one fashion editor and twenty wedding garments. I'm going to need all my strength."

'Oh, yes,' he said, elaborately casual. 'You've mentioned this wedding shoot.'

'More than once, probably,' Lee admitted. 'I was so furious that they only wanted me because of Phoebe. Ah, well, I got her so it all worked out well in the end. Bye, folks. Sonya, don't be late for school.'

She reached the studio to find Gillian just ahead of her, and a moment later a van full of clothes arrived. Lindsay Elwes, the fashion editor, burst in, full of agitation.

'I'm already on my first nervous breakdown of the day,' she confessed. 'Stephanie's let me down. Flu or something. I've been on to the model agencies but there's nobody suitable available, so I've got to rewrite the roster to divide Steph's dresses amongst the others.'

'Don't worry,' Lee soothed her. 'It'll all work out. It always does.'

'Aren't any of them here yet?' Lindsay demanded in a suppressed shriek.

'Yes. Roxanne's just walking through the door now, and Phoebe's right behind her.'

The mention of Phoebe's name brought a smile to Lindsay's face. 'Isn't she divine?' she murmured 'Lee, you're so clever to have got her for me.'

She wafted away to embrace the models. Within the next five minutes everyone who was missing turned up, and a kind of peace descended. Lee and Lindsay discussed the order of the shots while the models got dressed and started working on their looks.

The idea was to demonstrate a wide range of wedding clothes from the simple to the flamboyant, from the traditional to the ultra-modern. Phoebe had been assigned the outfits designed for very young brides. Her first one was a trouser suit made of ivory wild silk. On her head she wore a wide-brimmed hat modelled on the borsalino headgear favoured by gangsters in old Hollywood films, except that it, too, was of ivory silk. The idea was outrageous, but Phoebe made it work. On her graceful frame the outfit became cheeky, ingenious and fun.