For Better for Worse

‘Yuck, it’s gross,’ Vanessa informed her. ‘There isn’t anything in here,’ she added contemptuously. ‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’

Was there anywhere else left to go? Eleanor wondered as she obediently put the suit back and followed her stepdaughter towards the shop door. They must surely by now have been in every shop there was, without Vanessa being able to find a single item she liked—but no, apparently there were one or two places still left to try.

In one of them, full of racks of dull dusty-looking second-hand clothes, Eleanor tried not to wrinkle her nose in distaste as the fusty, ancient smell filled the air.

Fortunately it seemed that nothing here appealed to Vanessa either, although Eleanor wondered if she had congratulated herself too soon when the next shop Vanessa announced she wanted to try turned out to be the junior version of an upmarket and very expensive high-profile designer range.

‘It’s only Diffusion stuff,’ Vanessa informed her with a bored shrug when she expressed her doubts. ‘Much cheaper than his main designer line. Sondra said that everyone in New York wears his stuff.’

Ten minutes later, blinking a little at both the clothes and their prices, Eleanor decided wryly that if ‘everyone in New York’ did wear it they must possess extremely indulgent and wealthy parents.

While Vanessa disappeared in the direction of the showroom with a handful of outrageously priced Lycra, Eleanor stood silently staring out of the window. Not at the models, but thinking instead about Marcus’s comments to her earlier.

Why had he left it until now to tell her that he didn’t want to move to Broughton House? Was he right when he said that it was not for everyone else that she wanted the house but for herself, not because she hoped it would bind them all together as a family, but to fulfil her own childhood fantasies?

And in those few words he had given her an image of herself she didn’t want to see: an image of a woman too determined to have her own way, too caught up in her own desires, too obsessed by her own needs to recognise the needs of others.

Was that really what she was like? Was that really how Marcus saw her…?

‘I want to see what this looks like outside…’ Vanessa had emerged from the changing-room wearing a dress that was surely far too tight and short for a girl of her age, but Eleanor could see from the mutinous expression on her face that it would not be wise to point this out to her.

Having been given permission by the salesgirl to go outside, they walked through the doorway, setting off the security tags with a noise that made Eleanor wince.

‘No, I don’t like it,’ Vanessa announced, both to Eleanor’s surprise and relief. ‘Hold this for me, will you?’ she commanded Eleanor, handing her the large, heavy shoulder-bag which seemed to go everywhere with her, adding as she turned round, ‘There’s no need for you to come back inside with me.’ Silently Eleanor waited while Vanessa went back inside the changing-room and then reappeared in her own clothes, handing the dress to the salesgirl before coming to join her outside.

Despite the fact that she had not found anything she liked, there was an air of suppressed excitement and energy about her as they headed back to the car; Eleanor even caught her grinning at one point, and her spirits started to lift. Perhaps they could after all establish some sort of common ground… some sort of workable relationship…

‘We could have lunch out if you like,’ she suggested, but Vanessa immediately shook her head.

‘I want to ring Sasha,’ she told her, ‘and then I’ll have to pack. Did Ma say what time she would be picking me up?’

‘No. She wasn’t sure what time her flight would land,’ Eleanor told her, trying to ignore the way she was beginning to scowl.

They had been back half an hour when she went upstairs to ask Vanessa what she wanted for lunch. Her bedroom door was open and Vanessa was lying on the bed, facing away from the door, speaking into the telephone.

‘Yeah, it was a doddle… just like you said. She never knew a thing. I’ve got it with me now…’

As she spoke she rolled over and saw Eleanor standing inside the door. Immediately her expression changed.

‘Look, Sasha, I’ve got to go,’ she announced into the receiver, quickly replacing it before turning back to confront Eleanor. ‘You don’t have to spy on me… I’m not a prisoner,’ she began belligerently, but Eleanor ignored her, demanding quietly instead,

‘Where did that dress come from, Vanessa?’

Both of them knew the answer. It was identical to the one Vanessa had tried on in the designer shop, the label was still on it, and no doubt the security tag was still inside it, Eleanor recognised sickly.

‘Vanessa?’ she repeated.

Vanessa shrugged sulkily. ‘All right, so I took it,’ she admitted irritably. ‘So what? Everyone does it. They even add the cost of it on to the clothes because they know it’s going to happen. It doesn’t mean anything.’

Eleanor stared at her in disbelief. ‘You stole a dress and you don’t think it means anything?’

‘I didn’t steal it. I just put it in my bag,’ Vanessa told her smirking at her. ‘You were the one who walked off with it…’

Eleanor stared at her, suddenly recalling with vivid intensity the moment Vanessa had asked her to carry her bag for her, and to wait outside the shop with it.

Too angry to dare to allow herself to express what she was feeling, she bent down and picked up the dress.

‘What are you doing?’ Vanessa demanded. ‘That’s mine.’