PENNY JORDAN - Scandals

‘We can’t start but we can get organised for when Robert and Olivia get here,’ Harry pointed out. ‘We’ll need a couple of pairs of tall stepladders. Where did you put them after you’d put those curtains back up for Granny?’ he asked his younger brother.

‘Outside in the garage.’

‘Right, we’d better go and fetch them.’

‘Let’s go and sit down in the drawing room and you can both bring me up to date with all your news,’ Amber suggested to her granddaughters.

The kitchen at Denham was a big comfortable room with a table in the middle large enough to seat a dozen people, but with the six female members of the second generation of Jay and Amber’s family gathered round, all talking at once, it wasn’t just the soup simmering on the Aga that was giving off heat and filling the space.

‘Janey, you’ve done enough. Do let me help. I know you, you’ll have been working flat out for weeks getting ready for this,’ Rose pressed.

Although there was no blood relationship between them, Rose had grown up with Ella and Janey, gone to St Martins with them, lived and worked in London with them, and the two of them were the closest she had to siblings.

‘No, honestly, Rose, I’m fine. It’s only soup, after all. I would appreciate a hand, though, when we take the tea into the drawing room, and if you wouldn’t mind buttering the scones…?’ The two of them fell easily into the kind of efficient domestic routine that came from years of living together.‘…It makes it easier for Amber and Dad. They’re in those boxes, and the butter’s our own. John and Dad have been experimenting. John wants to open a farm shop at Fitton. I’ve brought a trolley from Fitton Hall so that we’ll have two. We won’t take it in, though, until Robert and Olivia get here.’ Rose made her way to the worktop and opened the first of the Tupperware boxes, whilst Janey looked at her a little enviously. Rose always looked so…so contained and calm. Even the way she dressed reflected that. In fact, everyone looked better than she did, Janey thought glumly: Emerald in her Chanel; Polly in what Janey suspected must be Armani; Ella, her own sister, in something that was chic and obviously Fifth Avenue, and even Cathy, who wasn’t in the least bit interested in fashion, was wearing a pretty dress. No one looking at them now would ever guess that she had been the one who had been passionate about clothes and design when she’d been young. Unlike the others, Janey recognised, she’d put on weight, but there was no point feeling sorry for herself or hard done by because her life meant that she simply never had either the time or the money to spend on herself. Maintaining Fitton Hall was like having an ever-open extra mouth to feed, which gobbled up money and always needed more. Fitton, it could be said, was the cuckoo in the nest of her marriage.

Janey knew that it hurt her husband, John’s, pride that her father paid him to manage their estate along with Fitton’s land, but without that money they could never have managed, despite all they tried to do to bring in extra income.

Her father and stepmother were both generous and tactful, discreetly paying both boys’ school fees, helping them through college and Sandhurst, and providing them each with a small allowance. They should be grateful to them, and she was, which was why she tried her hardest to repay their generosity by making sure that she was always on hand to help and keep an eye on them. John, though, sometimes chaffed resentfully against their need for what he called ‘charity’.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if John’s father hadn’t provided quite so generously in his will for his second wife. It irked John that, despite the fact that she was drawing such a generous annual income from Fitton, his stepmother still expected John to pay for the upkeep of the Dower House.

Janey tried not to feel too sharply aware of the difference between them as she looked from her own work-reddened hands and short unpolished nails to Rose’s discreet manicure. Rose was so fastidiously controlled in everything she did that she probably wouldn’t get so much as a smear of butter on the black dress she was wearing, whilst if she had been wearing it, no doubt it would already be covered in greasy smears…

Janey made a big effort to gather herself, to raise her game. She was just feeling down because Cassandra was being so very difficult at the moment, she told herself. It was hard to remember sometimes that Cassandra had been such close friends, not just with her own mother, but also with John’s mother, when Cassandra was constantly complaining and making life so unpleasant for poor John.

Goodness, but Janey was letting herself go, Emerald thought critically, glancing at her stepsister, before looking round the kitchen for her younger twin sisters and then heading determinedly in their direction.

‘Whilst you’re both here,’ she began without preamble, ‘there’s something I wanted to discuss with you about Walton Street.’

‘Emerald, it’s Christmas,’ Polly protested, ‘and I haven’t seen Cathy for over six months.’ ‘This is important. London’s booming, thanks to the banking industry. There’s been a big influx of Americans buying up property. Robert’s inundated with commissions from them, but Walton Street hasn’t seen a corresponding increase in sales—’

‘That’s because everyone wants polished cotton for their curtains, preferably from Tricia Guild,’ Cathy interrupted her.

‘I know that, Cathy. What I’ve been thinking is that we should try and get into the American interior design market, with Ella’s help, make a move away from the private homes market over here and think instead about targeting the corporate market. We should expand into commercial soft furnishing, specifically hotels. There’s a huge demand for top-quality hotel accommodation at the moment, and that’s going to increase. If we can get in on the ground floor of that kind of development it would give us a huge advantage. I was at a cocktail party the other week and one of the other guests was complaining that he simply can’t find anyone of the right calibre to oversee the soft furnishings side of a new hotel he’s building.’

‘Well, it’s certainly worth thinking about,’ Cathy agreed. ‘But we’d need larger premises, and more staff. And you’ll have to sweet-talk Rose into agreeing. She’s the one who co-ordinates the interior designs, after all.’

They all looked across the kitchen to where Rose was buttering scones.

‘What are you three up to?’ Ella’s amused voice broke into their conversation.

Of all of them, Ella was the one who had changed the most, Emerald reflected, turning from a plump, anxious and defensive young woman, who never bothered much with her appearance, into the elegant soignée New Yorker she was now. In fact, it was almost as though, with regard to their appearance, Ella and Janey had changed places so that now it was Ella who dressed fashionably and Janey who didn’t. But then, Emerald acknowledged, it would be next to impossible to live in New York and be married to a man like Oliver, who had once made his living photographing beautiful women and clothes, and not be affected.

She eyed Ella’s effortlessly elegant draped cream jersey top and skirt with a definite twinge of lust.

‘It’s Donna Karan,’ Ella answered her unspoken question, looking amused, her English accented with a faint American drawl that was as sensual as her clothes. ‘Perfect for travelling as it doesn’t crease. Olivia bought the darlingest pieces from her leisurewear collection when we went out shopping together.’

Although she was speaking to Emerald, Ella’s real attention was on her sister. Janey worked so hard, Fitton Hall was a demanding mistress, and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted to share her husband with it. They’d flown over first class and she’d taken advantage of the extra luggage allowance to fill a large case with clothes for her sister. In New York, heading up a charity meant attending a constant succession of society events and maintaining a high profile, and that meant a constantly renewed wardrobe. She’d have to wait until she could catch Janey on her own, so that she could do things discreetly. Janey had her pride, after all, and no one was more prickly about this than John. ‘We were just talking about the business,’ Emerald told her. ‘We really need to get a foothold in the American interior design market.’