One Summer Night At The Ritz

As she walked out the lift and down the corridor towards her room, Jane thought about how carefree and brave the words sounded, and reminded herself that this was why she was here, too. To make beautiful memories. There had been so many shit ones, over the last couple of years especially, that it was time for the good.

And when she got to her room it took her breath away.

It must have been the size of her whole boat. With its own sitting room. She was sure she hadn’t booked a room with a sitting room. She looked for the bellboy to tell him that there had been a mistake, but her bag was already there, unzipped on the suitcase stand with no sign of him. She went through the door and into the giant bedroom, huge swathes of yellow curtains hung over the window, matching yellow chairs and a tiny table with a vase of giant peach roses stood in front of it. The bed was bigger than any bed she’d ever seen, the width of the length of her sofa back home. She wanted to throw herself on it in delight but, certain she was in the wrong room, went back into the living room and phoned Reception.

As she dialled, she saw a bottle of champagne on the table and a note which she opened as the man answered the phone. The card and champagne were from Emily and Annie. Wishing her luck, telling her to enjoy herself and a final PS:

‘We thought you can’t go to The Ritz without an upgrade! Enjoy xx’

The man from Reception asked again if Jane was OK.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes I’m fine, I just thought…’ She looked around the massive room. ‘I just thought there had been a mix-up, that’s all.’

‘No mix-up, madam,’ the man said and she wondered if she could hear a slight twinge of humour in his voice.

Jane put the phone down. Paused for a second to absorb the awesomeness of the suite, and then ran through to the bedroom and threw herself down on the bed.

She never wanted to leave.

Outside the window she could look down and see the whole of Piccadilly. The tourists bustling past, the evening light starting to dim the air, the Wolseley next door, over the road the blue flags with De Beers jewels written on them and the red ones of…she got her A to Z out…the Royal Academy. Pigeons flew past at eye level and she looked down at the people on the open-top buses. She thought about blowing out the drink with pompous William Blackwell and just starting her London adventure, but she had to meet with him. However stilted and awkward it might be, she had to put an end to Enid’s mystery. Had to pass over the baton and say: This is in your court now, you do with it what you will. Meet Martha if you want, come and see the island, or just put it in a drawer and forget about it but this is your history as well as ours.

She glanced back into the room and saw her dress that she’d hung up for the evening and felt a slight shudder of nerves. She just had to get the drink part done and then the rest of the evening was hers.

She wondered if there was time to have a bath. She’d only had a bath once before in her life. There wasn’t one on the boat and her year at art college was spent living in a tiny bedsit with a bathroom so small that the shower was over the toilet. But her one-time bath had been when she was seven and her mother, a textile designer, had finished a commission – swathes of the most stunning hand-blocked fabric – late, as always, and they’d gone to the fashion designer’s house on the train to drop it off. Jane didn’t usually go with her but it was her birthday and they were going for ice cream afterwards. Her mother had told her to wait in the fancy living room, but the designer had worried about things getting broken. Her mother had rolled her eyes behind his back which had made Jane laugh and then taken her into the bathroom, filled this massive sunken pink bath and told her to stay there for an hour or so while they finished the work. The designer thought it was all very untoward but Jane thought it was brilliant. A maid came in with fresh towels and a glass of orange juice and Jane lay in the bubbles watching as her toes wrinkled up in the water. When her mum was finished she came in, towelled her dry and they went for ice cream. Jane had lemon sorbet. Her mum had mint choc chip. It was one of the amazing days.

The bathroom in The Ritz was white marble. The bath had gold taps and Jacuzzi buttons, there were fluffy white Ritz towels and candles and flash bubble bath. When she lay in the warm water, the foam up to her chin, she glanced up and saw there was a chandelier as well.

For a moment she thought about telling her mum.

It wasn’t a moment that lasted long, but long enough to remind her that, while it might be a relief that her mother was finally at rest, free of the unrelenting clutches of illness, there was still a giant hole where she had been, where comments like, ‘There’s a bloody chandelier in the bathroom!’ floated with no one to pick them up.

As she lay back in the bubbles, staring up at the glinting crystals, her phone beeped with a text from Annie.

At work, just seen Martha out the back reading the diaries. Will keep you posted. Think this is a good sign. Progress. Good luck tonight x

Jane realised then that not only was there a hole in her future but a gaping one in her past. What would it be like to have, as Martha did, a stack of diaries filled with answers? As she lay in the bath she could finally admit how furious she was with Martha - how annoyed she was that she hadn’t jumped at the chance to read them. She was jealous of Martha’s chance to have a whole history laid bare. Jane would give anything to have the answers to the questions her mother had shut her eyes against, her hands covering her face, refusing to discuss. Just imagining the chance to know who her father was made her want to dunk her head fully under the water and scream, but that would ruin her new hair so instead she stayed where she was, knowing that there were no diaries written by her mother. Jane would forever live her life as she had always done, with no past except the one she had lived to see.

Chapter Three

The Diary of Enid Morris. 1st September 1944

James writes to me. He said he would but I didn’t believe him. I was trying so hard not to be naive that I’d written our affair off after one night. But he writes. Beautiful letters that make me struggle not to hope for the future at a time when I have refused to think about the possibility of life ever being normal again. It’s hard here, but I know it’s harder there. People talk about the trenches but no one can know unless they’ve lived it, can they? He doesn’t say anything really about what it’s like and equally I say nothing either. My last letter started with how glorious the sunshine was. Not that someone had died in front of me last night as we’d put them on a stretcher and I’m worried that I’m starting to become immune to suffering. Or more that I worry, if I keep working with the ambulance, that I might.

He says that he writes to me so he doesn’t have to write to his family. I’ve read about the Blackwells, I think, in the past. I asked my friend Fred if he knew anything about them but he asked why I was asking and I got annoyed with him and told him that it was none of his business. I think because Fred didn’t want me to be annoyed with him, he asked his dad who said that the Blackwells were in oil or something, owned a big house and weren’t our sort of people. (Fred’s dad’s words, not mine.) But in his letters James says they’re claustrophobic.

I wrote back to say that I knew exactly what he meant. The island is claustrophobic at the moment. It’s always claustrophobic. I stand sometimes on the bridge and look down the river and just think that there is so much out there to see. I hope they don’t destroy it all before it’s my time to see it.

Chapter Four

Jane tried to play it cool. She tried to walk nonchalantly from her room but the fluttering in her stomach, the slight shake of her hands, the nervous tremor on her lips that made her want to laugh got the better of her and she could feel her legs twitch as she started to walk to the lift. She couldn’t help it. It was all the adrenaline whizzing around inside her. What was she going to talk to him about?

She glanced at her reflection in the big mirrors as she walked. The dress Emily had leant her was a loose box cut, which was the main reason it fit. Cut straight to just above the knee, it was cream silk with hundreds of flowers printed on it. Before she put it on, Jane had spent a moment studying the printwork and, considering the cost of such a designer label, had known that she would have printed it better. A thought that surprised her, considering she hadn’t glanced at a piece of fabric with any remote interest for a decade. The shoes were Annie’s – simple silver sandals – and as she’d slipped them on she’d had to laugh at her bright-pink toenail polish. She’d never painted her toenails before.

Now as she caught glimpses of herself as she headed down the corridor she felt like an imposter. The whole evening like an odd masquerade.

The door to The Rivoli Bar was opened for her by one of the black-jacketed doormen.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He just nodded his head in reply.

In comparison to the almost garish lights of the lobby, the bar was dim. Dark like a speakeasy. The music was low, and the decor varying shades of brown. It was like the bars in old film noirs where they came over and lit your cigarettes for you and everyone drank Old Fashioneds as they plotted crimes. She had to blink to let her eyes adjust. Then looked around and realised she’d have no idea who William Blackwell was. The whole thing was a disaster. She’d seen the odd photo when she Googled him but there were maybe ten men in here dressed in suits and, in the darkness, he could be any of them. She moved to take a seat at the bar instead. She perched herself as elegantly as she could in the short dress and studied the drinks menu in front of her.

A small glass of wine was fifteen pounds. Fifteen pounds. She almost gasped. She couldn’t pay fifteen pounds for a glass of wine. In the Duck and Cherry a small Pinot Grigio was three pounds ninety-five.

‘What can I get you, madam?’ The barman asked.

‘A small glass of white wine, please,’ she said immediately, nervous under his cool scrutiny, trying to seem au fait with it all, as if the price didn’t startle her one bit.

He nodded and took down a glass from the shelf.

Jane glanced around behind her, surfed the tables to see if any of the occupants might be William. It was like she was on a blind date; she should have told him she’d be wearing a rose.

‘Ms Williams?’ a voice said from behind her, making her jump. ‘William Blackwell,’ he said as she turned to face him.

There he was, hand outstretched to shake. Cool, slick, confident. Of course he’d just know exactly who she was. Jane in contrast felt completely off guard, fumbling to put the menu down at the same time as saying, ‘William, Williams,’ with a little laugh as if their matching names was a hilarious coincidence.

His mouth moved into the tiniest smile.

‘Sorry, hi,’ she said, composing herself, pushing her stupid new fringe out of her eyes and standing up off the stool. ‘Jane.’

He took hold of her hand, his grip hard against her fingers. Then sat down on the high stool next to hers and, as the waiter put the glass of white wine down, he said, ‘I’ll have an Old Fashioned,’ and Jane wanted to shut her eyes and add another little funny aside into the black hole that already held the news about the chandelier in the bathroom.

Her mum would have loved this. She would have wanted it all reported back in minute detail. On her good days they’d lie on the top of the boat and her mum would weave tales about every passer-by; every rower, every fisherman, every tourist, every walker. And Jane would egg her on, encourage her, buffeting the daydream, keeping it in the air like a balloon, all the while praying that the moment wouldn’t come when the mood would flip and her mum would roll onto her back, her eyes closed, her face long and say flatly, ‘That’s enough.’

Jane watched as William picked the exact bourbon he wanted in his Old Fashioned; looked at the clean-shaven line of his jaw, the long, straight Roman nose, the clipped black hair, the perfectly starched white shirt, the grey tie loosened a fraction enough to undo the top button, and wondered what story her mum would have spun about him. She didn’t have to wonder too much. Every man in a suit who strode past she would have down as a dashing Prince Charming hiding a stormy past, just as any loafing hippy was a passionate deep thinker with an untameable heart. Jane would watch her mum’s face as she spoke for clues as to which type her dad might have been.

‘So, these pages.’ William reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the pristinely folded diary pages that she had emailed over. ‘It’s interesting reading.’

‘Isn’t it just? I thought you’d want to know—’

He cut her off. ‘I’m wondering what you want to do about it?’

The Old Fashioned arrived. He stirred it and looked around for the waiter to ask something about ice.

Jane frowned. ‘What do you mean what I want to do about it?’

The waiter took the drink back.

He opened the diary pages. ‘Probably easiest if I name what I think is an appropriate fee.’

Jane looked at him, confused. ‘What do you mean fee?’

William did an incredulous snort. ‘Ms Williams.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘This is sensitive information about my family, we’d like it to remain within our control.’

The Old Fashioned with a fraction more ice appeared on the counter.

Jane looked down at her fifteen-pound glass of wine and felt all her nervous excitement trickle out of her. He was offering her money. To what? Keep quiet? She didn’t say anything for a moment as she considered his words. Then she turned back to William and said, ‘Didn’t you find it interesting? Didn’t you find it interesting learning about this story that had your grandfather in it? It’s beautiful, sad and…’ She paused and frowned at him. ‘Have you read all the pages?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Not your secretary or your lawyer. You. You’ve read all the pages?’

‘I’ve had a skim through.’

She made a face. ‘A skim?’

She’d read them over and over. The idea that he’d just had a casual flick and passed them over to his lawyers made her furious. ‘This is your family,’ she said. In all her run-throughs of this part of the evening, it had never gone like this. There had been stilted chat about how fascinating the past can be, there had been him telling her all about what happened after the Blackwells’ part in the diaries ended. Like an episode of the Antiques Roadshow, there had been him maybe asking about her connection to Enid but there had never been this.

‘Yes it is my family,’ he replied. ‘And, interestingly enough, not yours. So I’m left to assume—’ he was about to continue, possibly to say something about the money again, but this time she cut him off.

‘Just so I’ve got this straight, you came here just with the intention of buying me off?’ she asked at a volume that made him flinch in his jacket and glance behind him to see if anyone was listening. Jane saw a couple of women in the corner give him an appraising once-over.

The barman had edged closer as he dried some glasses.

William did an awkward cough.

‘Are you going to answer my question?’ Jane could feel herself fuelled by annoyance. She wasn’t someone who raised her voice often, but she hated being talked down to, being made to feel small and insignificant. She’d felt it every time she went to hospital with her mum and was told that there was no more help available. That she would have to do herself harm before they could step in. And Jane would question how her mum was ever going to do herself harm while Jane was looking after her twenty-four/seven. And they would look pityingly at her.

‘I, er…’ William seemed embarrassed. Like he wished he’d sent his secretary to meet her and was still sitting at his desk in the office.

Jane, who’d been sitting perched upright, shoulders back so she looked her best in her dress, shuffled backwards into her seat, leant against the chair rest, picked up her wine, and said, ‘Read them now.’

‘I’m sorry?’ He coughed into his Old Fashioned.

‘Read them now,’ she said.

‘I really don’t think…’

‘From the moment you sat down, you’ve treated this meeting like an inconvenience and you’ve insulted me. I would never have dreamt of taking this story to any journalist. All I thought would happen is that we’d have a quick chat about how interesting it all is and go on our separate ways. Had you taken the time to get to know me and talk to me about what’s written here you would have known that. But…’ she swallowed. ‘A better story for the press than this one in the diary would be the CEO of a hotel chain trying to bribe someone for information in a public bar. Don’t you think?’ She glanced up and the barman raised his brows as he looked back down at his glass. ‘Don’t you think that would make a better story, Mr Blackwell?’ she said, just loud enough to be asking the barman and perhaps anyone sitting behind William as well.

‘OK, Ms Williams, I take your point, calm down.’ He held a hand up.

‘Don’t tell me to calm down, Mr Blackwell.’

He ran his tongue along the bottom of his top teeth. He clearly wanted to leave.

Neither of them spoke.

‘OK, let’s start again,’ he said, as if this was the boardroom and he was taking control.

‘No.’ She shook her head, her foolish highlights flicking in front of her eyes. ‘I don’t want to start again. I want you to read the pages.’

She sat back, arms folded across her chest. She’d had enough of being the one who did things for other people, who stayed calm when they didn’t. And she wasn’t leaving here with the taste in her mouth of being weak.

He watched her for a moment, deep-brown eyes studying her, weighing her up as an opponent. She glared back at him. Slowly his lips twitched up into a hint of a smile. ‘OK, Ms Williams,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’ll read the pages. Waiter? Same again,’ he added with a raise of his brow at the barman, as if he’d been chastised, and brought him in cahoots.

Jane watched as he then unfolded the papers and leant back in his chair, pulling his jacket out either side of him and making himself comfortable and while she felt in theory she had won, it also seemed somehow like at the last minute he’d managed to turn the victory round onto himself.

Chapter Five

Earlier that day…

‘So what have you got on this Jane character?’ William leant back in his chair, hands behind his head while his PA sat in the chair opposite, the sunlight bouncing off the buildings of the wrap-around London view.

‘Nothing.’ Dolores shook her head. ‘Not even a Facebook page. She’s not on LinkedIn, I don’t know what she does. All I have is that she gave the eulogy at her mother’s funeral earlier in the year. One Angela Williams. Father Unknown on birth certificate.’

‘That’s interesting. Are we looking for him?’ William leant forward, flicked through some files open on his desk and glanced across at the list of emails building on his laptop.

‘Yes.’ Dolores carried on skimming down her list. ‘Oh and there is this… First prize in a dahlia competition at some Cherry Pie Island Show.’

William glanced up. ‘I’m not sure I needed to know that.’

‘Well she won it with Emily Hunter-Brown, you know of Giles Fox fame? He left her at the altar – big Hollywood hoo-ha. There’s a connection there to the media. Possible risk.’

William tapped his fingers to his lip. ‘Bollocks.’

‘Other than that, as I say, I have nothing.’ Dolores stood up, flipped her pad over and pushed her chair in. ‘You have meetings at four, five and six o’clock. You’re due at The Ritz at seven and then you have dinner with…’ She looked at her pad again as if she’d forgotten the name but Will knew Dolores never forgot anything. ‘Heidi,’ she said as if the name tasted sour. ‘At seven-thirty.’

‘The Ritz,’ Will sighed as he scrolled through, adding the dates and times on his iPhone. ‘It’s so old fashioned,’ he said, then paused, ‘I haven’t had an Old Fashioned for ages. Maybe I’ll have one there. So what, I’ve got quarter of an hour with her?’

Dolores nodded. ‘You could possibly squeeze it to twenty minutes – if you get a taxi.’

‘No, no. Fifteen minutes is quite enough. Just enough time to drink an Old Fashioned.’

Dolores shook her head, then paused as she opened the door. ‘You might find it interesting, you never know. She might not be after money, Will.’

Will raised a brow. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dolly, everyone’s after money.’

She tutted at his cynicism.

‘Come on.’ He held his hands out wide. ‘What did you email me this morning?’

She looked away from him towards the view of the Shard.

He laughed then started to scroll through his emails. ‘Here it is…’ he said, ‘Bro, hope you’ve had a good morning. I’m gonna need another five grand. Zeph. And – hang on – let me find the next one. Here we go, William, I know we agreed the terms of the deal but my lawyer feels the company assets are worth more than your offer suggests. Hope you’re well, Aunty Violet.’ Then he tilted his head as if his point was proved.

Dolores sucked her lip.

Will’s phone rang. He paused before picking it up. ‘When you have evidence of widespread altruism, Dolly, I’ll give this Jane character more than twenty minutes. Mum, hi,’ he said as he picked up the phone. ‘I’ve got ten minutes, max.’

‘Hello, darling. You work far too hard.’ Francis Blackwell’s voice always had the calming melody of someone who had nothing to do except read her book in the sunshine with a glass of rosé. ‘Right, so ten minutes. OK. Well, I was clearing out the attic yesterday and I remembered something about those diary pages. You’ve read them, haven’t you?’

‘Course I’ve read them.’

‘Yes, well you’re so busy—’

‘I’ve read them.’

‘Well, it was something your father said years ago. He knew her. This Enid character. Well he didn’t know her as such, but he knew of her. He went to that little island. Strawberry something?’

‘Cherry Pie.’

‘Cherry Pie Island, of course. He went. His mother took him. He said they stood on the bridge and they watched this woman at the cafe and her child playing outside. I remember him saying that they didn’t go over the bridge, just stood on it and his mum just stared and then they left. But he never knew why and they never went again. I suppose this is why, isn’t it? She knew, Granny knew. She was always a cold fish, they all bloody were; the Blackwells. I hear Violet’s asking you for more money? What happens if you say no?’

Will peered down towards street level, down to the tiny people and tiny cars. He sighed. ‘She has to find an investor, or I do, to buy her out, or we have to split the assets which would be a nightmare. I can’t pay her any more. I’m only just getting us back on even, there’s no more to give her.’

His mum sighed. ‘Yes, Dad did rather er… Well you were handed a bit of a millstone, darling. We all know it. Sell it all off, if you ask me.’

‘Can we not go into this?’

‘OK, sorry, Will. I’d better go, my ten minutes is up, isn’t it? I just thought that was quite interesting. That he’d seen them. Enid and her little girl. That he’d remembered that. Ties it all up quite nicely. Anyway, ciao, darling.’

Will slipped his phone in his pocket and narrowed his eyes at the view. He thought for a moment about his dad. All ambition and crazy ideas and happy-go-lucky and ‘let’s just give it a go’. Thought about when they’d go and stay with his grandmother - Prudence Blackwell. The big, dark house, like there were never any lights on, yet he could see the big gold chandeliers blazing even now when he thought back. Could feel her cold hands and hear her clinking rings. Her lip raised in a sneer watching to see if Will would make a noise, kick his ball in the house, draw on the wall, anything that she could suck her breath in at and leave his dad tense and panicked and trying to please her but also wishing his son could just run about the garden without the possibility of damaging the roses.