Perfect Strangers

By the time the guards spotted him, he was dead.

1

She closed the bathroom door and locked it behind her. Her heart was beating hard and she felt sick to her stomach. Sitting down on the edge of the bath, she squeezed the bridge of her nose. Don’t let me cry, not in front of these people.

Since the scandal twelve months ago, Sophie Ellis had discovered reserves of strength that she didn’t know she had. But today it was taking every ounce of it not to break down in front of all the gawkers. They were all out there in the living room and the kitchen, eating their canapés and judging her, their oh-so-sympathetic words of condolence loaded with hidden meaning.

‘How are you coping?’ they’d said after the service. Meaning: how can you afford this funeral after your father ruined the family?

‘It was so sudden, a heart attack with no warning,’ which meant: you should have seen it coming. And ‘Shame Charles couldn’t make it,’ which was really code for: look at how your friends have abandoned you now you’ve lost all your money.

Well, she wasn’t going to give them another reason to pity her, she thought, breathing deeply to steady herself. The people on the other side of that door knew enough about her family life. They’d read about it, gossiped about it, held the Ellis family’s misfortune up as a mirror against their own lives and given thanks, with barely disguised Schadenfreude, that it hadn’t happened to them. And now Sophie wanted to keep something hidden – her pain at losing her father, the one man she knew would always love her – and she couldn’t.

Smoothing down her black pencil skirt, she fumbled in her make-up bag for some concealer and looked in the mirror. Her skin was pale and her amber eyes had lost their sparkle. No wonder: the last few days had been a strange limbo. She hadn’t slept properly either; despite wanting to numb the pain with sleep, it just hadn’t come.

Behind her, on the wall, she could see a collection of family photographs in sleek black frames. It was like her whole life flashing before her. Peter Ellis, proud and weather-beaten on his little sailing boat, Iona. Sophie and her parents, tanned and happy in Barbados, rosy-cheeked and smiling in Klosters. They had been wealthy, yes. But what did money matter when her father was gone? She could win the lottery tomorrow but never get that life back.

Sophie had adored her father and he had loved and indulged her in return. There had been the zippy BMW as her eighteenth birthday present, the Chelsea flat at twenty-one. Peter had even supported her when she had dropped out of university to take up modelling. When that hadn’t quite worked out – someone should

have told her before she had given up college that she just wasn’t that photogenic – along with all her other career ideas, Daddy had stepped into the breach with a generous allowance in return for some event planning at his City accountancy firm. He had always been there for her, always.

‘We’ll get through this,’ he’d told her with his quiet certainty. ‘Nothing matters as long as we’ve got each other.’

She let out a sob, covering her mouth with her hand. It just wasn’t fair.

‘Sophie? Are you in there? Is everything okay?’

She could hear the brusque rap of knuckles on the bathroom door.

‘Hold on, I’ll be right out.’

She took one last look in the mirror, then unlocked the door. Her best friend Francesca was waiting for her, solemn but sleek in a charcoal trouser suit, accessorised by a black dahlia in the buttonhole and a diamond the size of a quail’s egg glinting on her ring finger. Not so long ago, people would comment that she and Francesca looked like sisters. They had their hair dyed the same honey blonde at Richard Ward’s salon in Sloane Square. The same racehorse physique, slim and long-legged, the same glowing, tanned skin. The Evening Standard magazine had even run a feature on them a couple of years earlier. ‘Chelsea Girls!’ the headline had screamed, before outlining their carbon-copy CVs: a little modelling, a spot of party planning. Five per cent work, ninety-five per cent pleasure.

Her life was quite different from her friend’s now.

‘There you are. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

‘I’ve just been freshening up.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ queried Francesca. ‘You do look a little pale.’

‘Well, it’s my father’s funeral. I thought I’d go easy on the Fake Bake this morning,’ she said, attempting a smile.

She took a fortifying glass of wine from a passing waiter as they walked into the living room. It was packed with people from the golf club, people from Daddy’s sailing club, people from Mummy’s Cobham circuit, their plates piled high with sandwiches, their glasses filled with wine. Half of them were studiously trying to avoid Sophie’s gaze, the others shooting her doe-eyed looks of pity.

‘Come on, Fran, show us the ring.’

Sophie spun around to see Megan and Sarah, her housemates from her flat in Chelsea. Francesca had just become engaged to Charles, a friend of Sophie’s ex-boyfriend Will, and her friends were anxious to hear about it.

Francesca held up her hand to display the rock. Her happiness and self-confidence were quite dazzling, thought Sophie, feeling herself shrink into the shadows. Megan and Sarah squealed.

‘It’s enormous, Fran. What is it, five carats?’

Sarah reverently stretched out one finger to touch it as if it were magic.

‘Six, I think,’ said Fran thoughtfully. ‘Flawless. Pear-cut. He got it just right, although God knows I dropped enough hints.’

‘Don’t they say that men have to spend two months’ wages on their fiancée’s engagement ring?’ Sarah looked up, her eyes wide. ‘He must be earning a fortune.’