The Vanishing Point

45

I found George over by the buffet, delicately nibbling a sausage roll and surveying the room like a hawk waiting for prey to stoop. ‘I’ve just had a very bizarre conversation with a Herald hackette,’ I said. ‘One of those where you have to pretend you know what they’re talking about or else you look like a complete twat.’

George raised his eyebrows. I think it still surprises him when I use sweary words. ‘How very awkward for you. What was she saying?’

‘George, do you know anything about the terms of Scarlett’s will?’ Sometimes, taking a leaf out of Chrissie Higgins’ book seems like the best line of approach. Especially when you’re dealing with a master of diplomacy like Georgie.

His smile was pained. He wrapped the remains of the sausage roll in a cocktail napkin and put it down. ‘Ah,’ he said, reaching for his gin and tonic.

‘So it’s true then?’

He waved his free hand in a way that I think was meant to be nonchalant. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, Stephanie.’

‘My friendly reptile reckons Scarlett left the lot to her charity. Everything goes to the TOmorrow charitable trust. The house, the cash, the merchandising rights. The whole lot. Is that right?’

‘I was planning on sitting you down and telling you later in the week,’ he said, his eyes hangdog.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said. ‘Jimmy doesn’t get a thing?’

‘Personal effects, that’s all. Which essentially means jewellery.’ His smile was like the grimace of a man going down for the third time. ‘There are some rather good pieces.’

‘You don’t think I’m going to sell his mother’s jewellery, do you? Christ, George, what do you take me for? And why am I only hearing about this now?’

‘Please, keep your voice down, Stephanie. There are ears all around us. It’s not good to air this in public. Let’s walk.’ He steered me out of the ballroom and down the hall through the hotel reception to the car park. We ended up in a hideous grotto, built, I suspect, for the benefit of wedding photographers. ‘I’m sorry you were kept in the dark, but Scarlett was most insistent.’

‘Why? Did she think I was like her scummy relatives? That I’d only take Jimmy on if he came stuffed with tenners? How do you think that makes me feel, George?’ I was probably shouting by then but I was past caring.

‘I entirely agree with you. And that’s precisely what I said to Scarlett when she told me what she’d done. I knew you wouldn’t walk away from the boy, whatever the financial arrangement.’ Again the pained smile. ‘Poor Scarlett didn’t have the benefit of our experience. She still found it hard to trust people where money was concerned. That’s why she paid Chrissie’s utility bills directly rather than give her the money for them.’

I threw my hands in the air. ‘I can’t believe she’s left nothing for Jimmy. What about a trust to pay for his education?’ George shook his head. ‘How am I supposed to explain that to him when he’s old enough to understand?’

‘All you can do is show him her will. I made her put a clause in explaining why she was doing what she did.’

‘Really? There’s an explanation? It’s not just that her bloody cancer spread to her brain?’

George steered me over to a curved stone bench and sat down. He crossed one elegant leg over the other and took a cigar case from his inside pocket. He took out a small cigar and lit it with a match from a cardboard book advertising a bar in New Orleans. It was only the second or third time in our acquaintance I’d seen him smoke. A measure, then, of how stressful he was finding this conversation.

He exhaled a mouthful of aromatic blue smoke and fixed his sorrowful gaze somewhere in the middle distance. ‘Her position goes thus. She started with nothing. Less than nothing, one might say, given her disadvantages. And purely by her own hard work and determination, she made it. Along the way, she saw a lot of spoiled brats. People who had wasted the opportunities their lives had laid on a plate for them. She talked about Joshu in that regard. A boy who had both brains and choices and who opted for what she called “arsing about with a set of decks”. She was determined that her son would not go the same way. Scarlett worked for everything she had, and she valued it. She wanted him to have the same drive and the same satisfactions. Not to hand him the easy life on a platter. And that’s why she decided not to make him a child of privilege.’

It made a twisted kind of sense. Scarlett knew the level I lived at – comfortable, but not lavish. She knew I could afford the upkeep of a child, but not the indulgences of the rich. I only wished she’d trusted me enough to share her decision. ‘I can see her point,’ I said. ‘It would have been nice to hear it from her and not some tabloid hack, though.’

George blew a perfect smoke ring. Of course he did. I suspect George was born with the ability to blow perfect smoke rings. ‘Scarlett didn’t always observe the niceties of civilised intercourse,’ he said wearily. ‘She did well for someone who had such a deprived upbringing. And I don’t mean deprived in the material sense. I mean deprived of all those elements that make you and me at home in the world. Stuff we take for granted. Like waiting for everyone at the table to be served before we begin eating. Like understanding that it’s possible to cook a curry from scratch. Like always saying thank you when someone sends you a bunch of flowers. They live like savages, Stephanie. The way she described her childhood made me want to weep. So she didn’t always understand the obligations of friendship. She should have told you. But I understand why she didn’t.’

‘I do too. And it makes me sad.’ I stood up and patted George’s shoulder. ‘There is one good thing about Scarlett’s will.’

‘What’s that?’

I smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ll be hearing from Chrissie and Jade’s lawyers.’