Rosa Temple - Playing Her Cards Right

I’d gone over and over the decline of my two most valued relationships and I’d decided that if anything was to blame it was the levels of stress I was under. Planning weddings, moving home, and falling pregnant are major mind blowers in themselves. So when I tell you that I’d bought and was running my own business, you’ll understand what kind of stress I was under.

Since buying the leather goods company from Anthony’s family and turning it into a successful manufacturer of leather man bags, my feet hadn’t touched the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I thrived on the buzz and activity of running my own business, and the desire to make Shearman a company that succeeded had never been stronger. I’d dropped the mantel of hedonistic socialite who relied on her parents’ wealth to keep her in flashy clothes, London apartments, and expensive booze. I’d grown up and I was working hard. At the same time Anthony was fulfilling his dream of selling the family business and returning to his passion of making and selling art. He was doing well, too. He was as busy as I had been.

I finally got up out of bed and went to stand on the balcony. I took several deep breaths, blowing each one out slowly with a sigh. Any minute I’d get a call from Mother asking when I was going to come to her suite on the top floor.

You can do this, Magenta.

The staff had begun moving tables and chairs around on the patio garden, getting ready for the wedding. One last sigh and I headed for the bathroom before Tallulah woke up. I looked in the mirror. My skin had been kissed by the sun. Like Tallulah, I’d assumed a honey glow but my hair wasn’t behaving itself. The humidity had caused my already big curls to expand and it would probably take more time to control my hair than it would getting Mother ready for the ceremony.

I stood in the shower, underneath the stream of warm water, and thought about Anthony. Again I wondered what he was doing. Was he missing me?

I had to get out of the shower. Tallulah would wake up and start crying for her mummy.

You can do this, Magenta.

You can.

Chapter 2

The Saturdays

Anthony and I lived together for well over a year before the real problems started.

It was a time of love, laughter, discovery, and a massive challenge for me. Who would have thought it? Magenta Bright, owner of a business, living in Chelsea with the love of my life and practically teetotal compared to my former life. Yes, the partying and jetting round the globe with my supermodel friend had stopped but I never missed that life, not once, because in the beginning, I thought Anthony and I were unbreakable.

After our first proper date, towards the end of a hot and dramatic summer, we wanted to live together straight away. But Anthony had just undertaken a three-month art commission in Italy and had to move out there, and I was finding my feet as the new owner of Shearman. So he’d take short breaks from his commission, flying back to London to see me and helping me look for a place for us to live.

Initially he’d suggested Clapham. I didn’t want to move there because that was where Anthony and his ex-fiancée, Inez, had shared a flat. I didn’t want to be living in her shadow.

Equally, Anthony coming back to my Holland Park flat evoked too many memories of the times I spent there with my ex, Hugo. We were having dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the King’s Road when our number one topic, the house hunt, came up again.

‘Why not find a place around here?’ I asked Anthony. ‘It’s pretty cool in this area and I think we could just about afford somewhere nice.’

And just like that we decided – south-west London it was.

As I said, Anthony popped back to London from Italy whenever he could while working on the commission: a series of landscapes in his signature bold colours for a filthy-rich, Italian film producer. I missed Anthony like mad when he was out of the country but I had a lot to keep me occupied at home.

Once or twice I managed a trip to Italy and whenever we were together we couldn’t get enough of each other. It was like a first date every time I saw Anthony. We had non-stop sex. I mean non-stop to the point of needing a vagina transplant kind of sex. I can’t tell you the number of times Anthony almost missed his flight back to Italy.

But, as luck would have it, we found the perfect place for us. Our two-bedroom house in Chelsea, whose outer walls were painted dusky pink, sat halfway up a lazy, terraced mews. We woke to the sound of traffic on the busy King’s Road, even though the mews itself was extremely quiet and two streets away from the main road. Each cottage-style house in the mews was painted in a dusky shade of blue, yellow, pink, or red. It was like moving into a posh rainbow.

Despite a bid to shake off our past, as in our exes, there was one thing I brought with me when I moved out of my Holland Park flat – my gorgeous red sofa. I couldn’t imagine life without it. I had once pledged to wear it into the ground. Anthony was happy for it to move in, too. My one regret about the new house was not having a walk-in wardrobe any more. But there were two bedrooms in the new place. All I needed to do was get some clothes rails and, voilà , a walk-in wardrobe was born.

‘What if we have a guest?’ Anthony asked.

‘Well they either sleep hanging from a clothes rail or we pay for their taxi home.’

‘So no guests, then?’ he said. I didn’t answer; at the time I was too busy staring into my new wardrobe and marvelling at how much more space there was, thinking: Maybe I could put up a hat shelf. There was certainly room for a few more than I already had.

It was almost winter once we’d settled into our new house.

One Saturday, with an icy breeze that had turned the tips of our noses pink, Anthony and I insisted on a long, early morning walk to take in the area. We set out in thick jackets and beanie hats. I had my arm wrapped around Anthony’s waist and his hugged my shoulder.

‘This looks like a nice place.’

‘Looks good to me,’ Anthony said. ‘And I’m starving.’

We were on the King’s Road – a few streets away from the house – and the café bar we’d stumbled across was called Rhythm ’n’ Brews. There were oversized vinyl records in the window, the exterior was painted dark green, and a smart-looking crowd was occupying the tables in what looked like a pretty casual and relaxing place.

The smell of coffee was more than welcome and so was the music. Jazz and breakfast. A great combination in my opinion. I’d grown up listening to my father’s soul and jazz collection so walking into Rhythm ’n’ Brews felt like walking into the massive kitchen diner of my childhood home.

Anthony and I sat at a table by the window and started salivating over the endless menu.

‘What should we have?’ I said. ‘A Bird in the Bap? A Thelonious Hunk of Oatmeal? A Chet Baked Bagel?’

We thought it was so genius to name the whole menu after jazz and R&B heroes that we decided to work our way through the entire list of breakfast and brunch goodies on a weekly basis. It became our Saturday ritual.

Whereas I used to spend Saturday mornings with my personal trainer, running laps of Holland Park, once we’d discovered this divine little café on a corner of the King’s Road, Anthony and I would sit and stuff our faces there Saturday after Saturday, reading a newspaper or book and catching up on everything we didn’t manage to say to each other during the week.

When the nice weather came back around there were tables and chairs outside. But during the cold transition from autumn to winter in those early months of moving to Chelsea we’d huddle around a little table by the window, always the same one if we could, hands around a hot cup of coffee to keep them warm.