The Trials of Tiffany Trott. Isabel Wolff

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ bugger right off, get lost, never darken my door again, let alone buy me dinner at the Ritz or flirt with me or pay me compliments or laugh at my jokes or make me giggle and …

      Just then the doorbell rang. Funny. I wasn’t expecting anyone. A man was standing there. With an enormous bouquet. Who the hell … ?

      ‘Miss Trott?’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ I said. Over his shoulder I could see a van marked Moyses Stevens.

      ‘Flowers,’ he said. ‘For you.’

      I brought them into the kitchen, put them in the sink – they wouldn’t fit even my largest jug – and just sat and stared. It was like a floral fireworks display, a golden explosion of yellow gerbera, lemon-coloured carnations, saffron-shaded roses, banana-yellow berberis, white love-in-a-mist and buttery-coloured stocks, all bound together with a curly, primrose ribbon and topped by delicately spiralling twigs. Heaven. And tucked inside the cellophane wrap was a letter.

      My dear Tiffany

      I specifically asked the florist – Mr Stevens does make exceedingly good bouquets – for something in yellow. Yellow for cowardice. My cowardice, at not being straightforward with you from the start. Can you forgive me? I must say I was rather taken aback by your anger – you were rather fierce you know – but I’ve tried to see things from your point of view. I can only apologise for having upset you with my facetious and offensive offer. I was, in fact, trying to be honest with you, but I appear to have insulted you instead and I can only say that I hope you’ll forgive me enough to remain, at least, my friend. SS PS Graded Grains Make Finer Flowers.

      Oh. Well. Gosh. Gosh. I mean, that’s a nice letter. That’s a really nice letter. And what an incredibly thoughtful thing to do. Perhaps I’ve been a bit over the top. Perhaps I’ve been too hard on him. How did he know my address? Oh yes, he had my card. But what a lovely thing to do. He is nice – Oh God oh God oh God, why does he have to be married? Just my luck. Maybe I should think about it. Maybe we could be friends. Why not? Everyone needs friends, and he’s so funny, and so interesting, and he’s got such good taste in ties, and we get on incredibly well. I’m sure we could at least be pals. I’m sure we could. I’m sure.

      ‘You must be out of your tiny mind!’ said Lizzie, as we strolled round Harrods Food Hall the following Saturday – or rather, as I traipsed after her while she filled her basket with an assortment of prodigiously expensive groceries in preparation for lunch in her garden the following day. ‘Don’t have anything to do with him,’ she reiterated slowly.

      ‘But I like him,’ I said, as we queued at the charcuterie counter.

      ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ she said, as a jolly-looking man in a white coat planed slices off a Hungarian boar. ‘Seriously Successful is not available. He’s married. And, what’s more, he’s told you that he’s never going to get divorced – a pound of Parma ham, please – and you just haven’t got time to waste. Oh, and I’ll have six honey-glazed poussins as well. Basically Tiffany, you’re nearly –’

      ‘I know,’ I said wearily, ‘I’m nearly fifty.’

      ‘Exactly. So if you really want to get married stick to single men – God knows there must be enough of them out there. I mean, I really don’t mind if you marry a divorcé, Tiffany,’ she added, as we surveyed the rows of French cheeses.

      ‘That’s a relief,’ I said absently.

      ‘I mean, if you married a divorcé you could still get married in church, or at the very least have a blessing and wear a nice dress and everything. And have bridesmaids,’ she added. ‘But getting involved with a married man is not something that should be undertaken “unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly”, as they say. Half a pound of nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg, please. In fact it should not be undertaken at all.’

      ‘But I’m not going to get involved with him – he only wants to be friends,’ I pointed out.

      This was greeted with a derisive snort. ‘Friends? Don’t you realise that that’s a Trojan horse? If you become “friends” with him, I guarantee it will be only a matter of weeks before you’re sitting desperately by the phone dressed down to the nines in your La Perla, while his wife’s private detective is parked outside your house with his video camera trained on your bedroom window. Is that really what you want? Because that, Tiffany, is exactly what happens to mistresses.’

      Mistresses? Mistress. What an awful word. God, no. No way. Lizzie may be brutal, but she’s right.

      ‘I’m only thinking of you, Tiffany,’ she said, as we wandered through the perfumery department on the ground floor. ‘You’ve been up enough dead ends with men to fill a cemetery. You can’t afford another mistake. Just write to Seriously Successful, thank him for his flowers and tell him, firmly, but very politely, that you can’t possibly remain in touch. Are you OK for moisturiser?’ she added as she dotted ‘Fracas’ behind her ears.

      ‘Yes,’ I replied as I dismally sprayed ‘Happy’ onto my left wrist.

      ‘Have you tried the new Elizabeth Lauderstein ceramide complex containing alpha hydroxy serum derived from fruit acids?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Fantastic isn’t it?’

      ‘Incredible. Lizzie, do you think these expensive unguents really work?’ I asked.

      ‘I believe they do,’ she said simply. ‘OK, Tiff, let’s head home.’

      ‘Thank You For Not Smoking’, said the sign in the taxi in which we headed up towards Lizzie’s house in Hampstead. Lizzie pushed her Ray Bans further up her exquisitely sculpted nose and lit another Marlboro Light.

      ‘You know, Tiffany, I’ve been thinking about it all and the fact is that you’re going about this whole thing the wrong way.’

      ‘What do you mean, wrong way?’ I asked, opening a window to let out the smoke.

      ‘Well, you’ve been answering ads, and I think it would be far, far better to put one in yourself,’ she explained. ‘That way you’d be more in control. You could filter out the husbands and the head-bangers. I’ll help you write it,’ she added. ‘I’m good at that kind of things – we can do it right now in fact.’

      The taxi turned left off Rosslyn Hill and came to a stop half-way down Downshire Hill, outside Lizzie’s house. A vast, white-washed early Victorian pile with a fifty-foot garden – and that’s just at the front. Lizzie and Martin have lived here for eight years, and it’s worth well over a million now. I struggled out of the taxi with her array of Harrods carriers, just like I used to help her carry her trunks up the stairs when we were at school. She went and tapped on the window and Mrs Burton came and opened the door.

      ‘Thanks, Mrs B,’ she said. ‘We’re loaded down with stuff for tomorrow. I’ve been a bit naughty in Harrods, but never mind,’ she added with a grin, ‘Martin can afford it, and he likes to feed all my girlfriends properly. Where is Martin, Mrs B?’ she enquired.

      ‘Mowing the lawn,’ Mrs Burton replied.

      ‘Oh good. I told him it needed doing. OK, Tiffany, will you help me put this stuff away?’

      Now, СКАЧАТЬ