he was tucking into profiteroles, Valent got a message that a Trixie Macbeth had rung. She was in London. Could he spare twenty minutes to see her some time? Ringing straight back, Valent told her to come round to his house in St John’s Wood in the early evening, after Ryan and the family had left for Yorkshire and before he left for China.
Trixie was shivering outside when he got home, terribly pale, her hair hidden by a black wool hat.
‘Granny’s hyacinths, that’s nice,’ she said listlessly as he showed her into the drawing room. Having sat down on one of Bonny’s pure white sofas, legs in red tights sprawling like a colt’s, before he could even offer her a drink she burst into tears.
‘Please don’t tell Mum, she won’t understand,’ she begged. ‘I can’t talk to her and Dad’s so obsessed with Tilda Flood, and Romy and Martin will be so smug and judgemental. I’m pregnant. I loved him so much. I don’t want Granny to be hurt, but it’s Seth. He was so kind and loving at the beginning, then he backed off. It was all stop-go, stop-go. Then on the night of Ant and Cleo, before I realized it, I was in a bedroom. Bonny and Rogue were in there. Seth made me go to bed with them. I’m sorry, Valent, I don’t mean to hurt you, it probably didn’t mean anything to them. But it was gross.’
She was crying so much Valent often couldn’t catch what she was saying. He just sat patting her shoulder as the story of Stratford unrolled, so angry he couldn’t speak. Then he got up and poured her a brandy.
‘Afterwards,’ Trixie took a gulp and choked, ‘I refused to see him any more, but I couldn’t stop missing him. And when I bumped into him on the weekend of the floods, stupidly I forgave him and we started up again, and now I’m pregnant.’
‘How long?’
‘Only two months. Please don’t tell Granny, she’s away this weekend. She adores Seth so much. Perhaps I got pregnant to get attention. Mum and Dad just aren’t interested in me.’
‘You poor little luv.’ Valent took her hand. ‘What d’you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. Half of me wants an abortion, I don’t want anything of Seth’s. But part of me wants the baby, though teenage mums are such a cliché, more of us than in any other country, a fuck to get a flat.’ The words were ugly, falling from her woebegone mouth. ‘I don’t want to be just another statistic. And I don’t know if I could support a baby.’
‘I’ll help you. You’re a very bright and very beautiful young woman,’ said Valent. ‘What you need is a job.’
Valent had been planning to fly straight back to China, where he was having problems in the toy factory over his latest brainchild. Instead he flew to Staverton airport, where a car brought him back to Willowwood. There were no stars or moon, snow was idling down, whitening the fields. There were new blondes on the block, however, hazels with their cascades of yellow catkins competing with the dark gold willows.
Valent hadn’t bothered to warn Bonny he was coming. Going upstairs, he found her at her dressing table in a grey silk dressing gown, beautiful and scented. She was brushing her ash-blonde hair, like an actress in an old film, like Sir Francis Framlingham’s Gwendolyn.
The bed was rumpled.
‘I’ve been studying for so long I had to have a nap’ were her first words. ‘How did it go?’
‘Good.’ Valent sat down on a mauve chaise longue so delicate he always felt it might buckle under him, and got out his chequebook.
‘How were Ryan and Diane?’
‘Fine.’ Valent was writing a cheque with lots of 0s. Bonny wriggled her toes in excitement in the thick blond carpet. She had seen a divine cream coat at Lindka Cierach’s last week.
‘I hope you’ve invited Ryan and Diane down here, I am so looking forward to meeting them.’
As Valent handed Bonny the cheque for £300,000 she didn’t notice his hand was shaking.
‘Ooooo, lovely,’ she cried. ‘Is this a birthday present?’
‘No, it’s a leaving present,’ said Valent harshly. ‘Get out.’
Bonny was remonstrating noisily when Valent opened the wardrobe and Seth fell out, wearing nothing but a pale pink negligee as a loincloth. He was flabbergasted when Valent shook him by the hand.
‘Thanks, mate, you’ve done me a very good turn. Now hop it, both of you.’