Whatever Love Is (4 page)

‘Got to go, Poppy,’ Frankie said, not without some relief. ‘See you later!’

She ended the call, opened her bedroom door and ran down the stairs. As she reached the hallway she saw to her astonishment that it was her uncle who was bashing the gong, his face even more
florid than usual, his foot tapping in impatience.

‘Uncle!’ (Thomas was the one member of the family who refused to be known by his Christian name to anyone under the age of about thirty.) ‘I thought you were going to be in
London all week.’

Thomas glanced up and beamed at her. This was another surprise: her uncle, while able to smile readily enough when caught on camera watching one of his new lines being paraded at London Fashion
Week, was not given to jollity at home. He was a workaholic who, while exceedingly generous to his family and perfectly content for them to do whatever made them happy as long as it didn’t
involve him, did not view relaxation or leisure time as something that applied to him. To see him not only at home during the week but looking positively cheerful was very odd.

‘Francesca!’ he cried. ‘There you are! Glad you’re here – I’ve something to announce.’ He bashed the gong once more. ‘Heaven knows where
Tina’s . . . Ah! Here she comes – oh, and Nerys.’

For a moment his face clouded as Frankie’s two aunts (who weren’t her aunts) emerged from the kitchen – Tina teetering on four-inch heels and wearing a mini-dress that might
have looked vaguely acceptable on someone half her age and Nerys, her trousers covered in dog hairs, striding across the hall and embracing Thomas.

‘Thomas, you’re home! This is such perfect timing! I’ve just come up to seek help – I’m having the most awful trouble with my boiler. And the pipes keep making the
strangest sound. Of course, I rang the gas people but they’re frightfully expensive and I was hoping —’

‘Later, Nerys, we’ll discuss it later,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘I have something far more important to tell you all right now.’

Nerys frowned, as if struggling to imagine any issue of more concern to the world at large than the shortage of hot water at Keeper’s Cottage.

‘You’re ill, aren’t you?’ Tina gasped, snatching her husband’s hand. ‘You’ve got something dreadful – I knew it. I told you to go to the doctor
when you had that headache last week, and you wouldn’t and now you’ve got us all together to tell us.’

‘Tina, I am absolutely fine!’ Thomas assured her. ‘There is nothing wrong with me – in fact, I’ve never felt better!’

He flung open the door to the sitting room, where Jemma and Mia were perched on the arms of the sofa, bored expressions on their faces.

‘Dad, is this going to take long?’ Mia burst out. ‘Only Nick’s picking me up in fifteen minutes.’

‘Where’s James?’ her father said, glancing round the room. ‘I thought he was due back yesterday.’

‘He’s at Charlie’s,’ Mia replied. ‘They went out with Nick and everyone last night and got totally hammered and —’

‘Mia, you know I detest that sort of language!’ her father snapped. ‘I sent him a text asking him to be here, saying it was a really big day for me. But I suppose hoping that
my eldest child would care is too much to ask.’

For a moment he looked downcast, rather like a small boy who has discovered that Santa Claus is a myth. James was unlike the rest of his family in every way: his brooding, almost Gallic features
contrasted with the fair hair and smoky grey eyes of his siblings and his thirst for excitement meant that he spent more time applying himself to any activity that gave him an immediate adrenaline
rush than sticking to rules or bothering with passing exams. He was a passionate sailor, a reckless skier and above all, a brilliant musician who played drums for a band that, to quote their own
website, ‘was going places and fast’. He’d had not one but two gap years before going to uni during which he had kayaked in Africa, sailed round Britain and skied the Lauberhorn
twice. He was, in short, the kind of guy that girls adored and adults despaired of – largely because they secretly wished they could have had as misspent a youth themselves.

‘That’ll be him now,’ Frankie said as the heavy oak front door slammed shut. She ran across the room and opened the door, intent on giving James a warning about his
father’s mood.

‘Oh!’

It wasn’t James standing in the hall, windswept and suntanned. It was Ned.

‘Frankie!’

As he stepped towards her, she caught sight of her reflection in the hall mirror. Scruffy shorts, hair in a mess and a coffee stain on her vest top.

‘You weren’t meant to be home till tomorrow,’ she gasped.
By which time I would have washed my hair, done my face and worn something that made me look marginally older than
thirteen,
she added silently.

‘I had to get back,’ he explained. ‘There was no way I could stay once I realised . . . Oh, Frankie, if you knew . . .’ He stepped closer and took her hand.

‘James? Is that you?’ Thomas’s voice boomed out from behind the closed sitting-room door.

‘No, Dad, it’s me, Ned.’ The moment was broken as Ned took a deep breath, dropped her hand and walked into the room. Frankie stood stock still, savouring the moment. He was
back. And what’s more, she was pretty certain what he had been about to say.

‘There was no way I could stay once I realised how much I missed you.’ Or could it even have been, ‘If only you knew how much I love you’? Either way, even winning the
writing competition paled into insignificance as she followed him into the room.

‘Ned! You’re back! This is a bonus!’ Thomas cried. ‘I wanted you to be here but I didn’t think I could drag you away from the adventure camp.’

‘Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.’

‘Later, later,’ his father replied. ‘No sign of your brother, I suppose.’

‘No. Dad, that’s what —’

‘Oh well, never mind,’ his father cried, pulling a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and waving it in the air. ‘What do you think this is,
everyone?’

‘A piece of paper,’ sighed Mia, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

‘Dad, seriously I need —’ Ned ventured.

‘This,’ his father declared, ignoring him, ‘is an invitation to Claridges for the Fashion Awards ceremony.’

‘Oh, big deal,’ Jemma burst out. ‘You go every year.’

‘Yes, but this time . . .’ He paused, beaming at them all. ‘I have won the top accolade – Outstanding Achievement in Fashion! What do you think of that?’

‘Darling, that’s wonderful!’ Tina burst out. ‘Lovely!’

‘Uncle, that’s fantastic!’ Frankie cried.

‘Cool,’ Mia murmured.

‘Well done, Dad.’ Ned’s words lacked expression and Frankie noticed that he kept tugging at the collar of his polo shirt, something he always did when he was anxious or
distracted.

‘And of course,’ Thomas went on, ‘the timing just couldn’t be better with my Cheeky Cheetah adverts hitting TV screens next week.’

‘Your new label, of course!’ said Nerys. ‘I was reading about it in my Sunday paper – such a coup! “Flair and finesse for the front runners of fashion”
– that’s what Hilary Alexander said.’

‘Won’t suit you then,’ Jemma murmured, winking at Frankie who, drunk on the joys of winning a prize and knowing she was loved by Ned, struggled to suppress her laughter. While
Tina made looking glamorous second only to spending hours on her laptop analysing her symptoms and reading up on every new alternative therapy, Nerys had a penchant for corduroy skirts and cable
knit sweaters and judged clothing solely as something to keep one warm while walking the dogs or bossing the members of the WI.

‘It’s going to be a hectic week.
The One Show
have already been onto me, and I’m sure there will be lots of interviews with fashion editors. Suzy Menkes adores my
work.’

‘So, Dad, well done and all that,’ Mia said, jumping to her feet at the sound of a car crunching to a halt on the gravel outside. ‘But that’ll be Nick, and I have to go,
OK?’

She ran to the window and peered out.

‘Yeah, it’s him – and James is with him. He looks a right mess. Must have been some night he had. Anyway, I’m out of here.’ And before anyone could stop her, Mia
was out of the door and onto the drive outside.

Ned turned to Frankie and gripped her arm. ‘Get to James and stop him making an appearance till I’ve spoken to Dad,’ he hissed in her ear.

‘Why? What —?’

‘Frankie, just do it, OK? Please.’

The urgency in his voice, and the way he practically shoved her towards the door convinced her that whatever was going on, it was serious.

‘Dad, can you come into the conservatory for a moment? There’s something you need to —’ Ned began as the front door slammed and footsteps thudded across the hall.
‘Now, Dad, please!’

The door to the sitting room flew open, almost knocking Frankie off her feet and James, unshaven and with bloodshot eyes, stumbled into the room.

‘James, wait! I haven’t —’ Ned began, but his father pushed him to one side and strode across the room and gripped his elder son by the shoulders.

‘OK, I should be angry with you. In fact, I should be incandescent.’

‘But you’re not?’ James asked.

‘Well, at least you’re here now,’ he said, slapping him on the back. ‘I was about to suggest we opened a bottle of bubbly.’

‘Champagne?’ James seemed dumbfounded.

‘Oh, of course, you don’t know. We’ve a lot to celebrate.’

‘Celebrate?’ James glanced at Ned, bewilderment written all over his face.

‘Dad’s won an award for outstanding achievement in fashion,’ Ned said hastily. ‘That’s what we’re all here for.’

‘And he doesn’t know about . . .?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Well thanks for nothing, Ned!’

James slumped down into the nearest armchair and buried his head in his hands.

‘James, what is it? What’s happened? Are you ill? Thomas, he’s ill!’ Tina wailed.

Ned took a deep breath. ‘He’s not ill,’ he said. ‘He’s in trouble. Real trouble.’

CHAPTER 3

‘Thomas though a truly anxious father,
was not outwardly affectionate.’

(Jane Austen,
Mansfield Park
)

‘
I’
VE GOT INTO A BIT OF A MESS
.
’

Frankie’s fingers darted over the keyboard. For as long as she kept typing, creating a new story and a wayward hero by the name of Jasper, she could detach herself from the enormity of
James’s latest escapade. For a character in a story to behave like a complete jerk was one thing; she could manoeuvre the outcome into whatever ending she wanted. Creating a happy-ever-after
scenario for James Bertram was going to be a whole lot harder.

‘
It wasn’t exactly my fault.
’

She highlighted the last sentence and hit
delete
. No way was she going to insult even a fictitious guy by forcing him to spout the garbage with which James had tried –
unsuccessfully – to mollify his father. This was one occasion when writing wasn’t going to make things any easier to understand.

Who was she kidding? It wasn’t what James had done that she was trying to blot out, it was the disappointment of knowing that Ned hadn’t come home early to be with her. He’d
come because his brother had asked him to.

She pushed back her chair and walked to the window, staring out at the garden. When her uncle had frogmarched James into his study, slamming the sitting-room door behind him with such force that
a crack appeared above the lintel, no one had moved, and no one had spoken for a full half-minute. Even Nerys, not known for pregnant pauses, had sat, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, staring into
space.

And then from behind the study door the shouting had begun, and as Thomas laid into his son, and James countered each verbal onslaught with more expletives than was probably wise under the
circumstances, the rest of the family had started talking, babbling over one another as if trying to blot out the sounds with their own voices.

‘I just don’t get it. So, like, James stole money?’ Jemma had blurted out. (There were a lot of things in life that Jemma didn’t get, but on this occasion, Frankie had to
admit that she too was at loss to grasp the full horror of it.)

‘Surely he didn’t actually
steal
it,’ Tina had said, her bottom lip trembling as it always did when she hoped to divert attention to her own suffering. ‘Maybe he
was just stressed and got forgetful?’