Page 11 of Annabel and Her Sisters

I hadn’t ‘found’ André, there was no ‘found’ about it, I told myself the following morning.

He was just my builder. Recommended by Hebe, Polly’s godmother, with whom she got on famously, and who’d had her own loft converted by him and his team some months ago.

I hadn’t actually seen Hebe for a while because she’d been on some Slow Cycling holiday that we’re all supposed to know about and had only just got back, and before that it had been the Chelsea Flower Show and any other social event you’d care to mention, which frankly, I wouldn’t mind occasionally, although she’d say darkly– be careful what you wish for.

‘Hours on your feet in crippling high heels, hats that grip like helmets lest they fly off, or some horrid hairband affair with teeth that dig in and give you a headache, and clients’ wives you neither know nor care about.

Hours of gassing on about– guess what? Children’s schools/universities/jobs.

It would be different if it was friends,’ she’d say, wistfully, ‘but this is an endurance test.’

‘God– telepathy!’ she said when I called her. ‘Come now, I need you. Need to share. I was going to ring earlier but I thought you’d be writing.’

‘Editing, which can be interrupted. I won’t lose the flow. Plus I can do it in the afternoon.’

My writing routine was very strict: nine to one every day and yes, most weekends too these days.

‘To get it over with and published quickly. To pocket the dosh,’ I’d joke, if people marvelled at me writing on a Sunday. But actually, I liked it. It kept me sane. That and Ralph at Holy Communion, of course. ‘Mum’s therapy,’ the children would joke.

I walked round to Hebe’s much smarter neck of the woods in Chelsea.

The pavements positively squeaked with wealth here and the only children one saw were shepherded by nannies, but it was beautiful: the window boxes frothed over little black railings with tasteful white blooms and the tall white houses gleamed.

I loved coming here, but Hebe told me she preferred to come to me, where it was more convivial.

She said yes, the very glamorous It Girl next door was perfectly nice, but too terrified of being papped to be friendly, and then there was the dreadful Marianne on the other side with a fence post up her backside, and no one in her street really chatted, unlike mine.

‘You’ve got that whole over the garden fence thing going on,’ she’d say enviously. ‘I miss that.’

This much was true: I loved the young Spanish couple next door with tiny children– and yes, a granny living in; we spent ages chatting if we were gardening, and even the drug dealers on the other side were sweet and helped out if necessary.

‘Definitely,’ Polly and Luke had told me when I’d expressed shock at their occupation.

‘Frank’s a regular.’ Frank was a friend of Luke’s.

They were even friends with one of them, Marcus, I think: there were six in all.

One had unblocked a gutter for me. If I opened my mouth to opine– only to my children– I was told ‘Don’t be judgy.

You don’t know their circumstances, their backgrounds.

’ Judgy. Why not? It was only a euphemism for having a different opinion, which apparently one was not allowed these days.

I mounted the tall steps to Hebe’s glossy black front door and rang the bell. She flung it open with a flourish and gave me a huge hug. She looked fabulous: brown and slim and glamorous, even in shorts and a T-shirt.

‘ Just who I need to see. You’ve no idea the hell I’ve just endured!’

‘Oh Hebe, not again!’ I laughed. It wouldn’t have been, not all of it, the cycling holiday; but one of the delightfully endearing things about my best friend was how self-deprecating she was about her glamorous life.

‘ So disappointing, as your dear ma would say,’ she insisted as I followed her down to the chic basement kitchen. ‘Cappuccino?’

‘Please.’ She put the machine on.

‘They were all desperately competitive and spurned electric bikes like mine and Sam’s in favour of real ones, so we felt we had to swap too. It felt like we pedalled for Croatia– in fact we did– we crossed the bloody border we notched up so many miles, and we were supposed to stay in Hungary.’

‘But I thought they were old mates?’

‘Not my old mates,’ she told me caustically. ‘Portia’s old friends. New to me, but she’d raved about them. But remind me not to fall out with her over it. I love her, but she’s got extraordinary taste in people. All twelve, I kid you not, were rich, entitled and boring.’

‘Twelve! All on bikes?’ I boggled. That was indeed my idea of hell.

‘Three meals a day,’ she eyed me meaningfully as the coffee brewed, ‘with complete strangers. Talking until your jaw hurt. And such nonsense. Heli-skiing, the Galapagos– you name it, they’d done it, and some didn’t shut up even on their bikes.

Then a tour around the Dolomites with them all showing off about how much they knew– or had revised and read up on– torture! ’

‘Oh dear !’

‘First world problems, I know, and I can only complain to you, but give me Cornwall any day. However, I did come back to something momentous.’ She glanced round at her machine. ‘Actually, let’s have coffee in a mo.’ She flicked it off. ‘Come and look at this.’

Suddenly her eyes were alight and she raced past me, bounding up the stairs like a gazelle– all that pedalling.

Four flights, in fact. I followed, puffing and wheezing tragically.

Despite her disparaging comments about her holiday friends, I knew damn well Hebe would have been in the lead.

She was frightfully fit and secretly competitive, was in the Hurlingham Club most days swimming lengths and doing classes.

For a woman well over fifty, she had the most annoying arms I’d ever seen.

Mine not only had bingo wings on the upper arms but from wrist to elbow too.

I have photographic proof if you don’t believe me.

I knew exactly where we were heading and had already worked out what I was going to ask her– very subtly, of course.

We went up an unfamiliar fifth flight, past the floor where her two children, Ben and Chloe, had once slept, into a newly converted attic space.

It was full of glorious light with skylight windows and French doors on to a tiny wrought-iron balcony.

One wall was entirely glass, a mirror. The French windows had a fabulous view over the rooftops of London.

I spun around, speechless for a moment. ‘Wow.’ I was genuinely overawed. Just one huge room, but boy it looked good.

‘Isn’t it amazing?’ she squealed.

‘It surely is. And this is all going to be the gym?’

‘So much nicer than the basement, don’t you think?’

‘Well, yes. You can get on that ridiculous static bike and at least have a view; you won’t have to watch that ghastly man egging you on. But Hebes, you could get ten bikes in here.’

‘Oh well, rowing machines, treadmills, whatnots– you know,’ she said airily.

I did. We were so unlike in our interests and yet so similar in other ways, and although I usually teased her– as she did me, laughing about my slovenly lifestyle: if not writing by the fire in exercise books I’d be eating chocolate and watching daytime TV– now was perhaps not the time. I had bigger fish to fry.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ I assured her. ‘And the machines will fit in perfectly.’

‘And all created by the heavenly André, who frankly,’ she advanced on me suddenly, gripping my wrist and eyeing me earnestly, ‘I believe I might just have fallen in love with.’

She must have seen the shock in my eyes, because her expression suddenly changed from what I now realized was jest to huge delight.

‘Oh! Oh no, not really, just a massive schoolgirl crush, but oh…! I can see you have!’ She clapped her hands in delight. ‘Oh, that is simply beyond my wildest dreams! And Polly’s too, incidentally– we planned the whole thing. Isn’t he heaven?’ she shrieked.

‘ No. God, no.’ I knew I was blushing furiously. ‘No, of course I haven’t, what on earth makes you think that?’

‘Your face,’ she said triumphantly. ‘And the fact that he’s the most delightful single man in London– and trust me, I have many single girlfriends who have paraded absolute horrors. This one is on his own. In a different league.’

‘For which there must obviously be a reason,’ I told her. ‘I mean, why is he alone? What’s a– yes, OK, attractive– man doing, roaming around Chelsea and Fulham doing up attics and basements without being snapped up?’

‘He doesn’t do basements,’ she informed me.

‘Doesn’t go “down below”, as he told me without irony– I tried hard to keep a straight face.

I had to think of that terrible time we nearly poisoned the Guinness client so as not to laugh.

And the reason he’s roaming is he’s only recently divorced. Hasn’t been on the market long.’

‘Ah.’ I pretended to walk across and admire the view. I could feel her smirking behind me, though, even though I couldn’t see her.

‘You know damn well you want to say “Why?”’

I sighed. Turned. ‘OK, why?’

‘Because of army life. Did you know he used to be in the army?’

‘No, had no idea.’

‘Well, he was. And he was one of the youngest brigadiers ever. He’s incredibly brave.

Was in Iraq, Afghanistan– I’ve obviously googled him, he’s even got his own entry!

And you’d never know, he never talks about it– and obviously I prodded like fury, you know what I’m like.

But I was told by Portia– who’s also had her attic done by him, by the way, that’s how I got him– that he saved at least three people’s lives in Afghanistan.

Anyway, he was obviously away for ages, months at a time, a year at one point, and his wife got pissed off and ran off with someone else. ’

‘Right,’ I said casually, pretending to peer in a cupboard at the far end of the room.