‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for making you miss the party.’
‘I should be thanking you. I really need to be getting back to Oxford.’
‘No, thank you,’ she said quietly. She got out of the car and looked back at him. ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’
‘Have a good season, Georgia Hamilton. You know, sometimes things in life are a little easier, a little more enjoyable when you don’t resist them quite so much.’
‘Georgia. The taxi is here.’
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she called back from the comfort of her single bed, trying her best to disguise the sleepiness in her voice. The piping-hot bath she’d taken after returning home from the Swiss Chalet coffee shop behind Peter Jones had made Georgia very drowsy indeed. She loved her waitressing job at Chelsea’s grooviest café – she was allowed to take home free cake, could sit and write during the quiet periods and had even had the odd patisserie lesson from André, the pastry chef. But when she got home, she was dead beat, which was fine when she could just go home and sleep, but quite dreadful when she had a party to attend.
She heard her bedroom door creak open, and when a dramatic gasp followed it, she knew that her slumber was about to be short-lived.
‘You’re not even dressed,’ said Estella in panic.
Georgia pulled the blanket further up her face and groaned.
‘Five more minutes,’ she said, feeling all warm and cosy.
‘But the taxi’s here. The meter will be running . . .’ Her mother strode over and tore the blanket back.
‘I’m sorry, I was just tired . . .’
‘It’s that damn job, isn’t it? We’re going to have to p
ut a stop to it if all you want to do is come home and sleep. Serving cream horns all day long isn’t going to—’
‘Isn’t going to what?’ asked Georgia, sitting up, the suggestion of giving up the café angering her.
Secretly she admitted that it was proving difficult juggling the job with the demands of the Season, which now seemed to have moved up a gear. But she earned almost ten pounds a week and already had forty pounds stuffed in her knicker drawer. Her French friend Grace said she knew of a room in a house in the Bastille that could be had for only sixty francs a month, and at this rate she would have enough money to move to Paris by the autumn.
‘Isn’t going to what?’ she repeated. ‘Find me a husband?’
Estella took the white dress that Georgia was due to wear that evening and flung it on the bed. It landed on the blanket like a swan shot down from the sky. Georgia looked at Estella and shook her head. She knew that it was unfashionable to have a good relationship with your mother, but she and Estella were genuinely close. Lately, though, she hardly recognised her mother, and couldn’t believe she was choosing the silly demands of the Season over her own daughter’s happiness.
‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ she said sulkily, swinging her legs out of bed and holding up the dress.
‘No, I’ll wait for you,’ said Estella more softly.
Georgia went into the tiny bathroom to change, slipping on the white gown. It was not one of Clarissa’s. It had been a gift from Topaz, and although Georgia had no idea where the money to buy it had come from, it was quite lovely – long, with layers of net and tulle that shot out from the waist like a tutu. She tucked her hair behind her ears, securing it with two small jewelled clips, pulled on her white gloves, and glanced in the mirror. For one second it was like looking at a Degas picture.
‘I should probably mention that we’re being collected . . .’ said Estella through the door.
Georgia stepped into the hallway.
‘Are Uncle Peter and Aunt Sybil in the taxi?’
‘No, we’re meeting them there.’ Estella’s eyes darted away from her daughter.
Georgia went to the window and looked on to the street, where a taxi was parked outside the house. Even from this distance she could tell that there was someone in the back seat, that he was male, in his twenties and wearing white tie.
‘Mum, tell me what’s going on,’ she said, twisting back and glaring at Estella.
‘Aunt Sybil thought you should have a dinner date. Apparently it’s the done thing,’ Estella said in a low, urgent voice.
‘And that’s him? In the taxi?’
Estella grabbed her arm and led her firmly to the door.