Chloe. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ thrusting a mug of mulled wine into Chloë’s chilled hands.

      Jasper and Peregrine had found her, huddled and sleepy, on their return from a promenade along the Serpentine. Their keys fitted the locks on Jocelyn’s door perfectly for it was they who had had them changed. Jocelyn had left the house to them on that very condition: ‘To prevent my nearest and not so dearest trespassing and traipsing through.’ So Chloë had been rescued and was once again ensconced in a familiar armchair, looked down upon by the benevolent, if surreptitiously Latin, smiles of Mr and Mrs Andrews.

      ‘Your phone,’ said Jasper, ‘is perpetually engaged. We’ve been trying you for yonks.’

      ‘If the Sins weren’t using it,’ Chloë explained, ‘I left it off the hook. Knowing that it would never again be Jocelyn, I can’t bear to hear it ring.’

      Chloë cradled a chipped cup that she knew well and nibbled biscuits from the lucky dip of Jocelyn’s old Foxes’ tin. Wardrobes full of velvet were just up the stairs and off the landing, and there would undoubtedly be a bottle of Mitsuko in the bathroom, one in the bedroom. And yet it seemed strange to be there, half asleep, freezing cold, sitting amongst all the familiar accoutrements and smells but with no Jocelyn.

      ‘They say that people inhabit their places, their things, long after they’re gone – but I can’t find Jocelyn anywhere here,’ Chloë mumbled, her nose running on to Peregrine’s Hermès scarf. Jasper topped up the mulled wine and laid a slender, perfectly manicured hand on the top of her head.

      ‘We couldn’t find her either, poppet, not at first. But in drifts and droves she returned and now we chat away to her frequently, don’t we, P? I hated it here at first, didn’t I, dear? I found it so empty – and yet everything was in its place; all should have been comfortingly familiar, but it was alien and cold. And then, a few days on, I opened a kitchen drawer and found a shopping list scrawled by Jocelyn on the back of an envelope. It matched entirely the items currently in the larder. Suddenly I was quite warm and Jocelyn was here once more.’

      ‘And for me,’ said Peregrine, coaxing the Hermès scarf from Chloë’s clutches to replace it with a damask handkerchief from Dunhill, ‘for me it was when I spied one slipper under the Lloyd Loom chair in her bedroom – you remember those pointy, turn-up-toe Indian things she had? It caught me quite unawares – it was only when, a day or so later, I found the other one lurking behind the laundry basket that I could smile. In fact, I had a right old chuckle – it was as if she had just that moment kicked them off prior to springing into bed with a magazine, a brandy and the telephone!’

      ‘But,’ sighed Chloë who had begun to thaw, ‘I miss her. And it hurts, it pulls – here,’ she explained, pressing both hands above her breasts. Peregrine and Jasper cocked their heads and donned gentle half-smiles.

      ‘She’ll never really be gone, you know,’ said Peregrine, cuddling up to her comfortingly in the armchair.

      ‘You’ll see her again, Clodders old thing. I bet you anything she’ll be in Wales!’

      ‘Ooh! And Ireland!’ cooed Peregrine, rolling his ‘r’s and jigging his head.

      ‘Scotland,’ philosophized Jasper, looking vaguely northwards.

      ‘And good old Blighty!’ declared Peregrine, gesticulating expansively and inadvertently clonking Chloë’s nose in the process.

      ‘In fact,’ said Jasper standing up and lolling with a certain swagger against the fireplace; one knee cocked, one hand in a pocket, the other draped aesthetically over the mantel, ‘you’ll see her quite often – in you!’

      Chloë looked at Jasper gratefully. And then she looked at him in quite a different light. She stifled giggles.

      ‘You’re Mr Andrews!’ she exclaimed, looking from him to the painting above his head.

      ‘Gracious duck!’ whooped Peregrine. ‘You are! To a ‘t’! What is it, Clodders? Is it the pose or the poise?’

      ‘It’s both,’ she declared, delighted.

      Jasper moved not one inch, if anything he lifted his chin a little higher and dropped his eyelids fractionally.

      ‘Then I suggest, my dearest Peregrine, that you don a divine sky-blue frock and sit demurely at my side! For if I am indeed Mr A, you can be no other than my devoted Mrs A!’

      ‘Velvet!’ proclaimed a suddenly lucid Chloë having picked herself up from a fit of giggles on the Persian rug.

      ‘Blue satin!’ sang Peregrine, tears of mirth streaming down his face. He looked at Chloë slyly. ‘Race you!’ he hollered before diving for the door and the stairs beyond.

      Because she was at least forty-five years younger than him, Chloë reached Jocelyn’s bedroom first and flung open the cupboard doors with the grandest of gestures that would have done her late godmother proud. Peregrine and Chloë, and a wheezing Jasper just behind, looked in awe at the sparkle and drape of the cupboard’s contents. There were yards of silk, watered, raw and crushed; swathes of satin, duchesse, brocaded and ruched; there was velvet and devore velvet; plain taffeta and moire; there was suede that was butter soft and cashmere that was softer than air. A superior collection of handmade shoes was hidden from view in their soft fabric sacks.

      The three of them stood in silent reverence and gazed on. Jocelyn was amongst them once more. Chloë slithered into a dark green velvet dress that was far too long but it didn’t matter. Jasper zipped her up and placed a lattice of jet around her neck while she scooped up her hair and he fixed it with a bejewelled pin.

      ‘Divine,’ he whispered, ‘so Rossetti! So Burne-Jones!’

      ‘Do you think I could have it altered to fit? Do you think I should?’

      ‘I think you should! Jocelyn decreed it in her will, girl. No use just having “anything of velvet” – what good is velvet if it is not to be worn? I’ll do it for you, being the accomplished seamstress that I am. Gracious, Peregrine!’

      Peregrine stood before them, resplendent in washed blue silk, one hand on his hips, the other raised affectedly above his head.

      ‘It fits like a glove!’ he declared, his voice saturated with pride heavily laced with outrage. Though it was decidedly odd seeing a man of grandfathering age wearing her godmother’s dress, Chloë had to concede that it fitted perfectly, suiting him and complementing his demeanour utterly.

      ‘I like it!’ she enthused after a momentary assessment.

      ‘I love it!’ boomed Jasper, twirling Peregrine around. ‘Shall we take more mulled wine and then play rummy?’

      Jasper insisted on hanging Chloë’s Mr and Mrs Andrews at the opposite end of the room to their Chilean doppelgängers.

      ‘We could play Spot the Difference,’ he declared, balanced on a Chippendale chair with a hammer between his knees and a picture hook pursed between his lips.

      ‘Her shoes for starters,’ said Peregrine, still befrocked, his nose inches from the frame, squinting through Jocelyn’s reading glasses. Then he whipped them off and stared at Chloë in alarm.

      ‘Gracious, Clodders! You haven’t even opened it! Look, Jaspot – it’s pristine. Not even the teeniest СКАЧАТЬ