Roxie flushed with anger and embarrassment but said nothing.
Eager to avoid further confrontation, Michael De Vere raised his glass.
“Congratulations, Home Secretary!”
Leaning forward, Michael helped himself to a mountain of beef. Bad news should never be broken on an empty stomach.
“Thank you, darling.” Alexia beamed at her son. “You are sweet.”
“Were you surprised they appointed you? I mean, it did come rather out of the blue.”
“Nonsense,” Teddy said loyally. “Your mother was the obvious choice for the job. After all her sterling work with the prison reforms.”
“You’re sweet, darling, but Michael’s quite right. It was a complete shock. I mean, the PM and I do get along well on a personal level . . .”
“Yes, yes. As you’ve told us a thousand times,” sniped Roxie, earning herself twin pleading looks from Teddy and Michael.
“But I never expected a promotion on this scale,” Alexia went on regardless. “I don’t think anybody else did either. It’s ruffled quite a few feathers in the party, I can tell you. But then why be boring and play things by the book? You’ve got to take life’s opportunities where you find them. Grab the bull by the horns and all that. And of course, if I can be of service to the country, then so much the better.”
This was too much for Roxie. She knew she’d promised her father, but really. Service?
“Oh, please, Mother. At least have the decency to admit that this isn’t about service. It’s ambition that got you the job. Personal ambition. We’re not journalists, we’re your family. You don’t have to lie to us, just because you lie to everybody else.”
Teddy said reprovingly, “Roxie, love, steady on.”
Alexia’s chest tightened into a familiar ball of anger. Steady on? Was that all Teddy had to say? Why did he never stick up for her properly? Why did he kowtow to Roxie’s victim complex by treading on eggshells all the damn time? The girl used that damn wheelchair like a weapon, and Alexia for one was sick of it.
“Speaking of taking opportunities and grabbing bulls and . . . things,” Michael began uncertainly. “I, er . . . I have some news.”
“Don’t tell us you’ve finally found a nice girl and are going to get married?” Teddy teased. “I thought we’d agreed. No weddings until you’ve finished Oxford.”
“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “No weddings. At least none where I’m the groom. But I, er . . . well, that’s the news. Part of it, anyway. I have finished Oxford.”
Complete silence. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Alexia spoke first.
“What do you mean you’ve finished, Michael? You’ve only just started.”
Michael looked at his mother plaintively. “Uni’s not for me, Mum. Really.”
“Not for you? Why on earth not?”
“Honestly? I’m bored.”
“Bored?” Teddy erupted. “At Balliol? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Michael plowed on. “You remember Kingsmere Events, the company I started last year with Tommy?”
Tommy Lyon was Michael’s oldest friend. The two boys had met at prep school and always remained close.
“Not really.”
“Yes, you do. We threw a thirtieth birthday party for that Russian chap on a yacht in Saint-Tropez last summer?”
“Vaguely.” Alexia looked at Teddy, whose usually jovial features were set like thunder.
“Well, anyway, we made twenty-grand profit from that, just the two of us,” Michael said proudly. “And we’ve had loads of inquiries since then, for corporate events, Bar mitzvahs.”
“Bar mitzvahs!” Teddy De Vere could take no more. “You’re a De Vere, for God’s sake, and you’re halfway through a law degree at Oxford. You can’t seriously expect your mother and I to agree to you throwing all that away to book clowns and balloons for thirteen-year-old Jewish boys from Golders bloody Green!”
“Their parents are the clients,” said Michael reasonably. “And don’t knock Golders Green. Some of these Jewish mothers are dropping half a million on little Samuel’s big day.”
“Half a million? Pounds?” Even Teddy was brought up short by this number.
“Think of the opportunity, Dad.” Michael’s merry gray eyes lit up. “Tommy and I can net eighty, a hundred grand in a night.”
“Yes, and with a first from Balliol and my and your mother’s contacts, you could be making tens of millions a year in the City a few years from now. I’m sorry, Michael, but it’s just not on.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s not up to you. I formally left college this morning. Gave in my keys and everything.”
“You WHAAAAAAT?” Teddy’s screams could be heard all the way to the Kingsmere gatehouse. Roxie tried to intervene and soon the three of them were shouting over one another like rowdy MPs at Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Alexia De Vere closed her eyes. First bloody Roxie, getting out her violin again and scratching out the same, bitter old tune. And then Michael, dropping this bombshell. So much for my celebration dinner.
It was a relief when Bailey, the butler, tapped her on the shoulder.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal, ma’am. But there’s someone at the gates wanting to see you.”
Alexia looked at her Cartier watch, an anniversary present from Teddy last year. It was past nine o’clock. “It’s rather late for house calls. Who is it?”
“That’s the thing. They wouldn’t give a name and they were acting, you know, erratically. Jennings wasn’t sure what to do.”
Alexia put down her napkin. “All right. I’ll come.”
Alfred Jennings had been the gatekeeper at Kingsmere for almost forty years. At seventy years old, partially deaf, and with a weak heart, he was not much of a security guard. Michael had once described Jennings as being “as fierce as a newborn kitten,” a phrase that Alexia had always thought summed up old Alfred perfectly. Unfortunately, because she was now home secretary, her security was no longer a laughing matter. Her controversial work as prisons minister had earned her a number of enemies, some of them potentially dangerous, others frankly deranged. Sanjay Patel, an Indian man who had taken his own life in Wormwood Scrubs when his sentence was extended, had a particularly vociferous and unpleasant group of supporters. Alexia De Vere didn’t scare easily, but neither could she afford to be cavalier about unexpected “visitors.”
The Kingsmere gatehouse consisted of an office-cum-sitting-room downstairs and a single bedroom and bathroom above. Jennings had made it cozy, his plug-in fake coal fire constantly burning.
“I’m so sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” he warbled feebly as Alexia came in. “Especially in the middle of dinner. Fella’s gone now.”
“That’s quite all right, Alfred, better safe than sorry. Were the cameras on, by chance?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am.” The old man wheezed, pleased to have gotten something right. “They’s always on nowadays. Mr. De Vere, he’s quite insistent about it. ‘You switch them cameras on now, Mr. Jennings,’ ’e says. They was on all right.”
“Marvelous. Perhaps I could have a look at the tape?”
Dinner was over. Teddy had stormed off in a huff and Michael and Roxie were alone in the kitchen, making tea.
“Well,” Michael quipped, “that went well, I thought. Dad was his usual calm, rational self.”
“What did you expect?” Roxie said reprovingly. She loved her brother dearly. Everybody loved Michael, with his naughty-little-boy charm, his warmth, his humor. It was impossible not to. But it pained her to see their father so upset. “You know how much Balliol means to Daddy.”
“Yes, but it’s not ‘Daddy’ who has to be there, is it? It’s me.”
“It’s only two more years.”
“I know, Rox, but I’m bored out of my mind. I’m not really a lectures-and-libraries sort of bloke.” Michael slumped down on the table with his head in his hands.
“Really? You don’t say.” Roxie raised a sarcastic eyebrow
“Ha ha. I’m serious. This business with Tommy, I honestly think I can make a go of it. Dad’s an entrepreneur.”
“Hardly.”
“All right, well, he’s a businessman at least. Surely there must be part of him that understands?”
“It’s not that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want you to make a mistake, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not. Mum gets it. Even though the press are bound to give her stick about it, she knows I have to find my own way.”
“Alexia thinks the sun shines out of your arse and always has,” Roxie said coldly. “She’d support you if you said you were off to join a Muslim Brotherhood training camp in the Kashmir mountains.”
Michael frowned. He hated it when his sister called their mother by her first name. The rift between mother and daughter was obvious enough, but somehow that little verbal tic seemed to underscore it.
“She loves us both, Rox.”
Roxie rolled her eyes.
“She does.”
“Well, she has a funny way of showing it.”
Teddy found Alexia in her study. Sitting at the desk, an empty water glass in front of her, she was staring into space, twisting her wedding ring around and around on her finger.