Adrienne Chinn - The Lost Letter from Morocco

‘Your blood or your clients’?’

‘Mostly the curtain-maker’s this time. The builder told me they call me Bloody Philly.’

Addy shakes her head. At forty-six, Philippa is six years older, a successful interior designer, a short-lived marriage to an Italian investment banker behind her, a tidy divorce settlement in the bank. A stonking big house in Chelsea. On all the charity ball committees. In with the ‘in crowd’. Busy, busy Philippa. Nothing like herself – the gauche one at the party in a cheap dress from the vintage stall in Brick Lane and flat shoes from Russell & Bromley hanging out by the kitchen door to grab the canapés. The grit in Philippa’s oyster.

Their father, Gus, couldn’t leave Britain behind fast enough after his divorce from Philippa’s mother, Lady Estella Fitzwilliam-Powell. The ‘Ethereal Essie’ as Warhol christened her in the Sixties when she’d become a fixture at Warhol’s Factory in New York after the divorce.

Her father had told her once that he’d met Essie on a July afternoon in the Pimm’s tent at the Henley Regatta in the summer of 1962. Addy had seen pictures of him at that age – handsome in the fair-skinned, black-haired Black Irish way. Like Gene Kelly or Tyrone Power. Essie was eighteen, famous for her boyish figure and pale beauty. You could find pictures of her online now. Impossibly slender in minidresses and white go-go boots, her thick dark hair in a geometric Vidal Sassoon cut. Their father was fresh out of Trinity College with a degree in geology, the first of his working-class family to earn a degree. Philippa came along six months after the wedding. The marriage lasted a year. After the divorce, their father headed to Canada to find oil for a big multinational. By forty, Essie was dead on the bed of her rented flat in New York. Drugs overdose. Withered and desiccated. No longer ethereal.

Now their father was dead, too. Alone in his garden on the coast of Vancouver Island, on a bed of his favourite dahlias.

‘Pip, I’ve been thinking—’

‘Thinking? What do you mean, you’ve been thinking, Addy?’ Philippa waves the magazine at the plastic bag of Red Devil hanging from its drip stand. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate right now with all this palaver. Nigel’s chosen a wonderful time to run off on you. You have to stop expecting men to be there for you. They’ll always let you down.’

‘Don’t go there.’

Philippa holds up her hands. ‘Sorry.’

Philippa’s words stick into Addy like pins in a voodoo doll. She hasn’t told Philippa that she’s been scrabbling to cover Nigel’s half of the mortgage as well as her own share for the past four months while he ‘recovers from the cancer trauma’. Didn’t they say disasters come in threes? They were wrong. A break-up, a bankrupt business, cancer and her father’s heart attack – four things. More than her fair share.

Addy rubs her hand over the short red wig, reaching a finger underneath to scratch her sweaty scalp.

‘I’ve only got one more chemo session, Pippa. Then some radiotherapy for a few weeks. They told me that’s a doddle. Then Tamoxifen for five years. If I can stay clear for that long, I’m back to being a normal human being. Even the insurance companies say so. That’s assuming I’m not dead.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’ Philippa tosses the Heat magazine onto the metal table and prises the lid off the tin of chocolates. ‘Someone’s taken all the caramels. Sod’s law.’ She drops the lid back on and reaches into the pocket of her suit jacket, pulling out her cell phone.

‘You can’t use that in here, Pippa. It interferes with the equipment.’

Philippa slides the phone back into the pocket of her tailored grey jacket. Her body is tense with what Addy takes to be the desire to leave and get on with the job of being Bloody Philly. ‘You were saying?’

‘It’ll be the spring when the radiotherapy’s done. It’s been a long year. I’m tired.’

‘Of course you’re tired. You have cancer.’

‘I had cancer.’

Philippa gestures at the women in various stages of baldness flaked out in vinyl hospital chairs the colour of dirty plasters. ‘What’s all this? Performance art?’

Addy rolls her eyes. ‘It’s insurance. To make sure there’s nothing hanging around.’

Philippa adjusts her grey wool skirt to rest just so on her kneecap. ‘Fine. You had cancer.’ She folds her arms, her lips in the tight line that sets Addy’s teeth on edge. The lipstick is leaching into the fine lines running up to her sister’s nose. ‘What’s this big idea of yours?’

Addy clears her throat. The Red Devil has created a hunger inside her. With every drop the hunger has sharpened until she’s become ravenous for life. Time is short. You hear it all the time. But now she knows time is short. She’s not going to waste one moment longer. Faffing around with a cheating boyfriend while working in a failing photography shop. No. She’ll become the photographer she’s always dreamed of being. Travel the world and capture it in her camera. Leave her footprint on the earth before it’s too late.

‘I’ve been thinking of working on a travel book. Julia at the photo agency thinks it’s a great idea. A “Woman’s Guide to Travelling Alone” kind of thing. On spec but if it’s good enough, Julia’s got contacts with some literary agents. Travel stories are big right now. Everyone’s trying to escape the recession one way or another.’

‘Seriously?’

Addy thrusts out her lower lip. ‘I’m not an idiot. I’ve thought this through. I need to get out of London for a while. I’m worn out. I just need to decide on a country. It needs to be exotic. And cheap.’

Philippa shudders. ‘Exotic? That sounds hot, and … unhygienic. Your career’s doing beautifully here. House & Garden . Do you know what that means? It’s a calling card. All my designer friends will be clamouring to have you photograph their work. And you want to leave on a silly jaunt to some hot, dirty, dusty, filthy fleapit? That can’t be good for you in your weakened condition. Do have some sense, Adela.’

Addy glares at her sister, knowing from countless past stand-offs that arguing is pointless. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right. And how on earth are you going to afford something like that? Your money’s all tied up in your flat.’

‘I can manage a few months if I’m careful with the money Dad left me. I’ll find somewhere cheap to travel to. Then, when the book sells—’

‘ If it sells.’

‘— when the book sells, I’ll have some money. It might even lead to another commission.’

‘Obviously you know best. Heaven forbid you listen to your sister.’

Philippa rises and smooths her bobbed hair, a sleek sheet of brown silk. She reaches for her raincoat and rests it over her shoulders like a cape.

‘Must go now. My Russian clients are taking me to lunch at The Wolseley. They’ve just bought a house in Berkshire from some impoverished earl.’

‘I thought you hated the Russians.’

‘Don’t be daft. Of course I do. Pushy, gaudy nouveau riche with more money than sense. Which is why they’re perfect clients. I’m hardly going to let my feelings stand in the way of decorating a stately home. I’ll do a fabulous job and get you in to do the photos. I won’t even charge you a finder’s fee.’

Addy smiles feebly, wishing that Philippa wouldn’t try so hard to impose her idea of what her life should be.

‘Oh, mustn’t forget.’ Philippa picks up her sample bag and pulls out three tattered photo albums and a bulky manila envelope, adding them to the magazines on Addy’s lap. ‘It looks like you’re not the only photographer in the family. Father’s solicitor sent these to me with a stack of documents for me to sign.’ She rolls her blue eyes. ‘Like I have time. I’ve had a quick look. Tourist photos, mainly. More your kind of thing.’