Page 19 of Guilty Pleasures

‘Did he?’ said Cassandra, slightly mollified. ‘I’m not at all surprised.’

‘So how was the funeral?’ asked Ruby, her young mind already on other things. ‘I still don’t understand why I couldn’t have gone. I saw Uncle Saul more than you did and I really wanted to go and say my goodbyes.’

‘Roger thought it best if there were no children and for once I agreed with him.’

‘Mother, I’m not a child,’ said Ruby, affronted. ‘I’m thirteen years of age.’

‘By the way,’ said Cassandra crisply, ‘Saul left you £10,000 in his will.’

‘Wow! Brilliant!’ squealed Ruby slurping her drink. ‘Can I have it now?’

‘Of course not,’ said Cassandra fiercely.

‘And did you get the company?’ she replied playfully.

Cassandra almost smiled at her daughter. Straight to the point, just like her mother.

‘No. Saul, in his infinite wisdom, gave it to my cousin Emma.’

‘Ah, so that’s why you’re in a really shitty mood,’ she smiled cheekily.

‘Ruby!’ said Cassandra. ‘I don’t pay £25,000 a year for your education to hear you swear.’

Ruby leant forward and held her mother’s hand.

‘What did you want that boring company for anyway?’

‘I wanted it for us, darling,’ said Cassandra, squeezing her daughter’s fingers with a warmth that surprised her.

‘But why?’ asked Ruby. ‘You have a cool job. We have money. If you’d got the company, we’d have had to move back to the village. Uncle Saul used to tell me that it was a perk of owning the company living in that house. Some perk! It’s so creepy! I bet it’s got gh

osts.’

Cassandra moved her hand from her daughter’s grip, smarting at her daughter’s casual dismissal of her ambitions. What did that ungrateful wretch think she did this all for? How did she think she got such an expensive education? A few ghosts was the least of it. Cassandra took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. Only Ruby could make her shake like this, she thought.

‘So … what did you think of the March issue?’ she asked, trying to change the subject.

‘It was great. Although I think you do too much modern art.’

‘Darling, lots of our readers are collectors or fancy themselves as collectors.’

‘But it’s all a bit rubbish, isn’t it?’ laughed Ruby. ‘I mean the way you called that painter who does the orange circles a genius. How is he a genius compared to say Leonardo da Vinci? Did you know Da Vinci was probably one of the most all-round talented people ever? He designed helicopters, solar heating, rockets, everything.’

Cassandra smiled.

‘Am I to assume you’re studying the Renaissance period at the moment?’

‘You got it,’ grinned Ruby, happy her mother had taken the bait. ‘… And seeing as I got an A in my paper, are you going to take me to Paris? You did promise at Christmas … ?’

The fact that Cassandra was the mother of a 13-year-old girl was an open secret in the industry, but it was not something she flaunted. There was no shame; over the years, Anna Wintour’s child Bee Shaffer and French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld’s daughter Julie had been seen on the front row. But Ruby looked nearer eighteen than thirteen; Cassandra was only 35, and did not want people doing the maths and getting it wrong.

‘Now, darling, I know I promised you could come to a couple of shows this year but Rive is throwing a big party in Paris and I don’t think it would be appropriate for you to be there. Maybe for couture in July, mmm?’

‘I really wanted to go to the Louvre,’ said Ruby in a low, disappointed voice.

Cassandra so wanted to please her daughter, to give in to her demands. She’d love to show Ruby off, but she had to be strong. She couldn’t let Ruby’s disappointment interfere with her plans, not now. She was doing it for both of them – didn’t she understand that? Sometimes she felt so close to her daughter that she was almost part of her, other times it seemed as if they lived on different planets.

‘When am I going to see you again?’ said Ruby grumpily.