‘I’ve always been a disappointment to you, haven’t I? No matter how hard I tried, what I did, you never quite got me, did you? What is your problem with me, Mother? I mean, seriously. I know you’ve always given all your attention to Diana, but what’s wrong with me? Why have I always disappointed you?’
A million memories came flooding back. How Diana’s mediocre school reports were rewarded with ice-cream sundaes for ‘good effort’. How Sylvia would slip Diana twenty pounds to buy something new to look pretty for a date. How she would drive her thirty miles to a pop concert, when Rachel had to get the bus and a train to swimming galas because they started too early. Diana’s surprise pregnancy had been a small setback, but Sylvia had been instrumental in deciding that her daughter and grandson should move to London to better themselves, and had even found a thousand pounds to help them make the move.
Part of Rachel was expecting her mother to deny the obvious favouritism that had always existed in the family, but Sylvia had never been a woman to keep her feelings hidden.
‘You could have been so much more,’ she said finally. ‘Look at Diana. Yes, she had looks, rather than smarts, but she was clever enough to know how potent that was. She wanted to make the best of herself, so she went out and found herself a good husband. But you? Running around town half drunk, spreading lies about decent people . . .’
‘That’s it?’ asked Rachel, almost relieved that Sylvia had voiced her thoughts. ‘That’s why you’re so angry? Because I didn’t marry some rich banker and get a big house in Kensington?’ Her eyes were filling with tears and she brushed th
em quickly away. ‘Because I’m not beautiful and vulnerable and attractive to alpha men like Diana is?’
‘No, I’m angry because you tried to take away what Diana had, because your jealousy for your sister ruined their marriage. If you hadn’t been so bloody selfish, perhaps Julian would still be alive.’
‘I did not have anything to do with Julian’s death – and any problems in their marriage were there before the Post published a word.’ She could feel herself trembling, not sure if she was trying to convince her mother or herself.
‘We’ll agree to disagree then, shall we?’ said Sylvia, turning for the door and leaving without another word.
14
Rachel hadn’t smoked in a long time. Not since the nineties. Not since she had interviewed a sixty-year-old woman with emphysema who had seen a packet of Marlboro Lights poking out of her bag and had told her with the brutality of someone who didn’t have long left in this world that she was a stupid, stupid girl for killing herself. But standing on the pavement outside one of the City’s most fashionable power-broking restaurants, the fix of nicotine from some hastily purchased cigarettes felt very good indeed.
She glanced at her watch, wondering if she could while away any more time out here. Lunch with one of Julian’s old friends was the last thing she felt like after her confrontation with her mother, but it was all arranged, space made in Greg Willets’s busy diary. She couldn’t turn back now, no matter how much she wanted to.
A taxi stopped by the pavement in front of her. The door opened and an elegant leg swung out, its high heel hitting the concrete with a brusque tap.
‘Hello,’ said Diana flatly. She looked exquisite. Wearing a pale pink knee-length dress and grey shoes, her dark hair pushed off her beautiful face with two tortoiseshell clips, she could have been a Russian tsarina on a royal visit.
She looked her sister up and down, and Rachel could tell in an instant that she disapproved. After all, Rachel was still in the same clothes as yesterday. Black jeans, a white T-shirt, ballet pumps, all of them a bit tired and smelly.
‘The restaurant has a dress code,’ Diana said awkwardly.
‘Well I didn’t know we were going to be coming to places like this when I left Somerfold yesterday.’ She threw the stub on to the ground, twisting it into the tarmac with the sole of her shoe.
‘You should have borrowed something from the house,’ Diana said, snapping her clutch bag under her arm.
‘I didn’t like to take anything without asking.’
‘That makes a change.’ She smiled, her expression softening.
Inside, they were directed to a lift that took them at speed to the seventeenth floor. Diana took off her grey leopard-print pashmina and gave it to Rachel.
‘Put that on.’
‘Is this a makeover?’
‘Hardly. But it might get you past the maître d’.’
They stepped out into the restaurant, which was packed, humming with the lunchtime crowd, and were shown directly to their table.
‘You know Mum dropped by at the house,’ whispered Rachel as they threaded through the dining space. She watched with grudging admiration the way her sister negotiated the crowd, nodding at friends, pausing every now and then to exchange a word. Diana had always been so reserved, so unsure of herself in loud public places, but here, she looked right at home.
‘I plead guilty on that one,’ said Diana, stopping momentarily. ‘I thought it was best you two spoke to each other as soon as possible. I got the impression that Mum was avoiding you. Did she give you a hard time?’
‘Not as hard as Greg Willets is probably going to give me,’ muttered Rachel, seeing Julian’s old friend sitting in a prime seat by the window.
Greg Willets stood up and came round the table to kiss Diana lightly on the cheek.
‘How are you?’ he asked her sombrely.