The family dynamics are interesting. The mother in all her fragility utterly controls her family. Both husband and daughter treat her as if she is fashioned out of eggshell and defer to her in all things.
In the car, Lily doesn’t ask me what I think of her parents and I don’t offer any opinion. The evening is a success on the surface, but I think I both terrified and fascinated them, in the way a colorful but poisonous reptile might. As for me they are not really my kind of people, they are too straight and proper—not an unpaid parking ticket between them no doubt. Their marriage reminds me of the surface of a pond, stale and passionless. Still, I like them well enough.
In all their careful goodness they made my Lily.
TEN
Lily
After I paint my lips carmine, I step into a long, backless black dress that ties at the nape of my neck. One little tug and I’ll be standing in a scrap of lace held together by a bit of string. Carefully I pin a small black brooch on the tie, then step into a pair of black shoes with gold high heels. My toenails, painted gold, poke through. I stand in front of the mirror and look at myself curiously. I have never worn black. Nan’s superstitions have colored my thoughts.
‘Bad luck color. For funerals only,’ she always said.
But Jake bought this dress for me, and now that I see myself in it I realize that I really like black. I think it makes me look long and sophisticated. I touch my meticulously constructed hairdo and wonder what the night will bring. Tonight is the big re-launch party for Eden. Everyone will be there. It is an event.
As I finish fixing a pair of gold hoops in my ears, Jake appears in the doorway. I turn around to look at him and my breath catches. I have never seen him look so dashing. He is wearing a snow white dress shirt, a black silk tie, a beautifully cut black suit and black shoes. There is a red carnation pinned to his lapel. Nothing adds panache to a man’s appearance like the confidence embodied in wearing a boutonnière, that symbol of fragile life and beauty caught in a single bloom. I already know that he will be the only man in the entire club wearing a flower on his left breast. The only man swimming against the current. And I love him for it.
He comes forward and stands next to me.
‘We match,’ I say to our reflections.
‘That we do, but you are more beautiful by far,’ he compliments suavely.
I smile, wordless, swept up by his beauty, by my good fortune, by the intensity of my feelings.
As he watches I tilt my head back, elongate my neck amorously, and with a single finger, dab perfume behind my ears and at the base of my throat.
In the mirror I see him turn toward me. His hands go toward my earrings. ‘Not these for tonight,’ Jake whispers, as he gently removes them. From his pocket he brings out two strands of blue gems. Carefully, he hangs them from my ears. My mouth drops open in amazement. They are indescribably gorgeous. I turn my head slightly and the ropes of blue swing into my neck.
‘Oh, Jake. They are beautiful,’ I gasp.
But he is not finished. From his other pocket he takes another handful of blue gems, and moving to the back of me, places them around my throat. The stones glitter against my skin, like blue stars. Their color is so close to the shade of my eyes that I gaze at them in astonishment. How did he find these stones? My eyes meet his, startled, wondering, and awestruck. He smiles and turns me around to face him.
‘I was right. They are perfect,’ he murmurs, and bending his head kisses the hollow between my breasts where the plunging neckline ends. He watches riveted as through the material my nipples harden. He runs his palms over them and I make a small sound of submission.
His eyes register approval. ‘I can’t wait to get you home tonight.’ There is a softness and depth to his voice.
In the darkened confines of the car I feel Jake’s hand take mine.
‘Your hands are cold,’ he says. ‘You’re not nervous, are you?’
‘A bit.’
He squeezes my hand. ‘Don’t be. I’ll be at your side the whole time.’
I smile gratefully at him.
‘You do know you will be the most beautiful woman in there.’
‘You haven’t even seen all the women yet.’
‘I don’t need to. You are the most beautiful woman to me.’
As we approach the queue of people waiting to get in I feel a little apprehensive, but also a heady sense of excitement. The new Eden’s marbled and gilt splendor seems almost garish to my heightened senses. I feel so buoyed up I am almost lightheaded. My feet seem to scarcely touch the ground and my stomach feels empty. I suppose it could be because I haven’t eaten for hours. I daren’t eat, not with this dress. Perhaps I am also anxious that I may not fit in. The shadow of his mother’s disapproval looms. I know she will be here. Will she undermine me?
Red ropes are lifted and we are ushered in.
We go past the plum velvet loveseat in the foyer toward the enormous central vase filled with magnolia blossoms. Struck by two spotlights the blooms seem almost brighter than the lamps.
The music grows louder and my heartbeat quickens.
We enter the club and the whole of fashionable London seems to be there. All the dancers are in their best, and beautiful people are everywhere. It must be true that beautiful models, male and female, have been flown in from all over the world to pretty up the place. Under the chandeliers the supremely rich are casually amused and the air is charged with their intriguingly corrupt whiff. Laughter ebbs and flows like the tide.
The Mayor of London is present; movie star hair, sharp as knives, and as usual pretending to be a good-natured buffoon.
Jake takes me to the table where his mother is sitting. Her eyes meet mine and her back straightens. She drops her eyes to a large bowl of floating orchids set in the middle of the table.
‘Ma,’ he greets, and bends to kiss her. In the candlelight the pearls around her neck glimmer milkily. She appears softened and yet hostile.
‘Hello, Mrs. Eden,’ I greet politely.
She nods distantly. I can’t blame her. I might be even more ferocious if I thought someone was threatening my son. I remember being in school and aggressively fighting Luke’s battles for him.
‘Lily, meet my sister, Layla,’ Jake says.
I turn to meet a stunning creature in a deep red silk dress standing next to us. She is tall, very tall—she might even be five ten or eleven—and is everything I have always thought of as beautiful. Her hair is the color of bitter chocolate and cascades down her back in rich and lustrous waves. Her eyes are as green as Jake’s, but there appears to be either gray or blue in them, too. Her nose is straight and narrow, and her mouth is large and expressive. She grins, vibrantly alive and fiery. She is only nineteen and Jake tells me she has been studying fashion in Paris.
‘Layla, Lily.’
Layla claps her hands with delight. ‘Oh, Jake. She’s a doll.’
I visualize the expression on my mother-in-law’s face, extract the disapproval and count the hatred.
Jake looks down at me, indulgent, almost like a proud parent. ‘Yes, she is a bit of a doll, isn’t she?’
Heat warms up my throat and cheeks.
But in seconds the dynamics of the situation change.
‘Who the fuck invited him?’ Layla says angrily. The change in her is dramatic to say the least. There are twin spots of color in her cheeks.
‘I did,’ Jake says smoothly.
I turn my eyes in the direction Layla is looking in and see Billy Joe Pilkington approaching us. He is impossible to miss. He is large and menacing. Everything about him screams beware of me, I’m lethal. He is the kind of man I would cross the road to avoid. When he was bloodied and lying beside Jake, the menace had not been so apparent. Now it powers out of him in waves. He is dressed in a navy suit, but he is not wearing a tie, and his shirt is open low enough to see the beginnings of his tattoos. His eyes are dark—either dead fire or black ice. A place to trip up and fall badly.
He stop
s by Jake’s mother first. ‘Good health to you, Mrs. Eden,’ he says.
Mara smiles. ‘God and Mary to you. How is your mother?’
‘She’s made dying her life’s work,’ he says with a straight face.
Jake’s mother hides a smile. ‘May God grant her many years.’
‘And me earplugs,’ he says with a wink, and turns his attention toward our group of three.
‘Hello, Layla,’ he greets civilly.
‘You have a nerve coming here!’ she says rudely. Her whole body has become strangely stiff and hostile. She looks at him with great disdain.
‘Layla,’ her mother gasps, shocked.
‘Apologize, Layla,’ Jake says with a scowl.