‘Shame!’ shouted Patty, as the guests stood up and dispersed around the gardens.
Diana smoothed down the lightweight white wool of her shift dress and gave a small sigh of relief that the dinner had been a success. Pastis, her favourite caterers, had come up trumps again. She had personally selected the menu herself with Dan Donnell, the company’s head chef. There was king crab, liquorice pannacotta in the palest of blue, and she had been particularly proud of the canapés – miso-glazed prawns and scallops – soft, delicate little bites. Certainly she hadn’t seen anything left on anyone’s plate; always a good sign among gourmands like these.
The garden also looked ravishing. Julian liked to refer to the detached four-storey Notting Hill villa as their ‘London crash pad’ – their main home was now Somerfold, a beautiful three-hundred-acre estate in Oxfordshire – but the garden was still impressive for this part of town, where multi-million-dollar homes usually had to make do with a communal garden square. Tall poplars framed either side, with a sloping lawn to the centre and a kidney-shaped pond full of koi reflecting the fairy lights strung from every bough and bush. In the balmy early summer evening, it was like a Victorian schoolgirl’s vision of a fairy grotto – which was exactly the effect Diana had been hoping for. She had been nervous about entertaining after all this time, but the night, so far, was going down a storm.
‘Oh, darling,’ said Patty, approaching her on the terrace. ‘It’s gorgeous out here. I don’t know why you don’t spend more time up in town.’
Diana looked down at her glass. ‘Oh, I much prefer the country nowadays. I feel so hemmed in in the city,’ she said, not entirely honestly.
Patty gave a gentle smile and touched her arm. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I do understand. But we miss you, you know.’
Patty was being kind – and of course, she did understand; Patty and Michael knew all about Diana and Julian’s ‘problems’, as they were ever-so-politely referred to. But the truth was, Diana had been relieved to move out to the country three years ago. She had never felt entirely at ease in the sort of circles Julian so loved: the bankers, the industrialists, the gilded elite, exactly the sort of people he had invited this evening. Which was why she had insisted that this, their first appearance on the social scene in six months, should stay small and intimate, if you could call sixty friends and colleagues and a five-course dinner small.
Diana and Patty walked down to a raised seating area overlooking the pond and turned to watch Julian, Mike and a group of the men talking enthusiastically about chartering a chopper and yomping across Nepal.
‘Don’t they ever get bored of that macho grandstanding?’ sighed Patty. ‘Climbing Everest indeed. None of them can find a space in their diaries for a round of golf, let alone an expedition to Shangri-La.’
Diana giggled.
‘More to the point, none of their wives would stand for it,’ added Patty with a sigh. ‘I want flip-flops on my feet on holiday, not crampons.’
She gave Diana a reassuring tweak. ‘Are you having a good time, darling? I’m so glad you’re, well, out and about again since . . . all the trouble.’
How we love our euphemisms, thought Diana. In the long months since ‘all the trouble’, she had come to realise how hard people in her world found it to discuss real issues. Stillbirth, miscarriage: it was all too serious, too real for these people. My child died inside me, she thought. Why can’t you say it? But she knew Patty was only trying to be kind. And besides, tonight wasn’t the time to be dwelling on the past. Tonight was a time for laughter and happiness, looking to the future, not the past.
‘I won’t pretend the last year was one of my all-time favourites,’ she said, ‘but I promise I won’t hide away in the country the whole time.’
‘I’m glad. Because we miss you,’ said Patty gently.
Diana was grateful for her words. Even though Patty was at least fifteen years older than she was, she was one of the few wives on the circuit she felt she could talk to. She was a ferociously bright and successful woman – on the board of a Swiss bank – but she didn’t wear it on her sleeve. She and Michael, who headed up an influential hedge fund, were a financial power couple. So much so that they divided their time between a mews in Belgravia, a manor house in the New Forest and an eighteenth-century villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. No one mentioned that Patty was from an ordinary background in the north, because it didn’t matter; she was one of them now. Diana wished she could pull the same trick. Not a day had gone by since she married Julian when she hadn’t felt judged for where she had come from.
‘You should go back into this professionally,’ said Patty.
‘Back into what?’ Diana had let her thoughts wander again. It was getting to be a bad habit recently.
‘Event planning, darling,’ said Patty. ‘Isn’t that where you started?’
‘Hardly. I was temping at the Denver Group and I got roped into organising the company’s summer party.’
The temp that got lucky, she thought to herself. That was what the bitchy wives and girlfriends said about her with ill-disguised jealousy. The temp that bagged the boss.
‘You should start your own business,’ said Patty. ‘Seriously. I’d hire you in a heartbeat. We don’t entertain quite like we used to, but we could certainly use some of the fairy dust you sprinkle on your parties.’
Diana gave her friend a playful half-smile. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you are very bossy?’
Patty’s eyes sparkled. ‘Yes, and I don’t take no for an answer either. Ask Mike.’
Diana had always envied Patty and Michael their relationship. Uniquely in their circle, it seemed, they appeared to actually like each other’s company. They bickered endlessly, of course, always making jokes at each other’s expense, but there was an unmistakable feeling of warmth and respect between them. They just seemed happy together.
‘Patty, I can’t think about starting a business right now,’ said Diana. ‘I have a child—’
‘Charlie is a teenager,’ interrupted Patty. ‘A teenager who is at boarding school.’
‘Okay, but I want to get pregnant again. You know how difficult it has been for us. I don’t need any stress.’
‘That’s what everyone said about my sister when she was going through IVF. Give up work, relax, it’s the only way to get pregnant. Instead she gave up IVF, went back to work and, hey presto, she had a daughter at forty-two.’
‘So you’re saying I should get a life?’ said Diana with a wry smile.