To us, in that damp spring of 1925, it was just another Season, and we embarked on it with the casual arrogance of those blessed with money (though I was always notably less blessed in that department than my friends), privilege and time, and no sense that any of those things could be taken from us. We didn’t know it, but the wild days of our youth were fast running out. By the time the next Season came round the following year, everything had changed in ways we could never have imagined.
Ah – but I’m getting ahead of myself, and if I’m to tell you the story of that summer I need to begin at the beginning. You might be wondering why on earth I’m telling you this story at all, of people you don’t know in a time before you were born, and thinking you’d rather have one about a singing fish or a box of wishes – or no story at all and another clue instead! But be patient, my darling. This journey is long, so the treasure hunt mustn’t be rushed and the next clue will arrive in its own good time. One of the things I miss most on this endless voyage is sitting on your bed in the soft, sleepy evenings at home and making up stories for you. I can’t promise that there will be beautiful princesses and grumpy talking camels (remember him?) in this one, but it’s the story of how you came to be, and so it has the happiest ending of all.
But that bit is a long way off yet and there will be a lot of clues to discover before we get there! Let’s go back to the beginning of that last Season, in the cool, blossom-strewn May of 1925. It all started with the treasure hunt …
3
The Hunters Assemble
May 1925
Flick Fanshawe sighed and slumped back in her chair, dispiritedly picking a transparent sliver of cucumber from a finger sandwich. The benevolent light of Claridge’s silk-shaded lamps couldn’t quite erase the shadows under her eyes (partly tiredness, partly the remains of last night’s mascara) or warm some colour into her pallid cheeks. The Season itself hadn’t got properly underway, but a string of parties had already left their mark on Flick’s famous china doll beauty.
‘The thing is, I’m really not sure I can be bothered. I’m simply exhausted, for one thing, and I’m not sure that any party of Aggie Montague’s is going to be worth the effort of dressing. She invites everyone – no discernment at all. One spends the entire evening trying to avoid all the dull people.’
Selina looked at Flick fondly over the rim of her teacup. In all other areas of her life, all her other relationships, Selina was cast as the feckless one; frivolous and flighty. Only with Flick did she feel remotely responsible. All things were relative.
‘One simply has to look on it as a challenge,’ she said soothingly. ‘A sort of game. One can award oneself marks out of ten according to the dullness and persistence of the people one succeeds in avoiding. Last time I spent the entire evening successfully evading Margot Atherton, who kept trying to waylay me, like the Ancient Mariner from that frightful poem we had to learn in the schoolroom. I’d say she’s definitely a nine.’
‘Gosh yes, at least.’ A note of indignation entered Flick’s tone. ‘What on earth could she possibly want to talk to you about?’
‘Miranda’s tedious wedding, I suppose – she’s the other bridesmaid. As I hear about nothing else at home I absolutely refuse to talk about it when I’m supposed to be having fun.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’ Flick’s memory was as short as her attention span. She frowned. ‘Your sister is marrying her brother – so does that mean you and Margot will be sisters, of a sort?’
‘There’s a thought too gruesome to contemplate,’ Selina said, putting her cup down and allowing herself a moment to admire the bright red mark her lips had left on its gold rim. (Her mother would be disgusted – she abhorred lipstick, which was undoubtedly part of its appeal as far as Selina was concerned.)
‘Rupert Carew is back from Burma,’ Flick said, shooting her a sideways glance. ‘Isn’t he going to be best man? Harry Lonsdale saw him at his father’s club, looking terribly tanned and exotic, which is quite surprising considering he’s spent the last year down a ruby mine. Apparently he’s brought back the most enormous stone—’
‘I don’t think Rupert actually goes down the mine himself, just like Harry Lonsdale’s father doesn’t actually write everything in his newspapers,’ Selina interrupted, with an edge of impatience. Rupert Carew’s ruby had formed one of the chief topics of conversation at dinner last night, and Selina had sensed the change in atmosphere, the purposeful narrowing of her mother’s eyes as Miranda had announced that he’d taken the stone to Asprey’s to have it set into a ring. ‘Talking of newspapers, where is Theo?’ She twisted round in her chair, scanning the Grand Foyer, where the daily ritual of afternoon tea was coming to an end. A white-jacketed waiter immediately made his way over.
‘More tea, Miss Lennox?’
‘Thank you.’
‘I imagine Aggie Montague will have invited him to her deathly party tonight,’ Flick said morosely.
‘Theo? Of course—’
‘No, silly, Rupert Carew.’ Flick peeled apart a meringue and scooped the cream out with her finger. ‘What on earth is the point of having a party and inviting disapproving grown-up people who don’t know how to have fun and are sneery about those of us who do? It’s too frustrating – like being offered a giant box of chocolates and being told not to take any of the fondant centres.’
Selina wanted to say something positive and rallying; to remind Flick that Rupert was only a few years older than they were, but it would have been disingenuous. She knew exactly what she meant. Those few years had placed Rupert and his contemporaries on the other side of a great chasm. The war lay between them; an obscenity that the younger people were keen to forget and the older ones doomed to remember. Sucking her finger, Flick sandwiched the meringue together again and replaced it on the cake stand, then subsided onto the velvet banquette in picturesque despondency.
‘And then, of course, there’s the matter of what to wear. The things I had made by that little dressmaker on Brompton Road are all wrong – I mean, too, too hideous.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I must go and look at ready-to-wear in Harrods or Selfridges, but I’m not sure I can bear it, and I have simply nothing for tonight. I mean, really – not a stitch …’
Affection fought a niggle of impatience in Selina’s chest. She would have adored to be able to afford Selfridges ready-to-wear, but had to make do with Miranda’s cast-offs, cleverly remodelled by Polly. Really, Flick could be terribly tactless sometimes. They had come out in the same season, and the other girls had been wary of Flick, with her Parisian couture dresses, perfectly petite figure and porcelain beauty. ‘Frightfully stand-offish,’ was how they described her. ‘She thinks she’s heaps better than the rest of us,’ one had said to Selina, ‘though her Papa is only the most minor Earl and her mother was one of the Irish Kilgannons and quite mad. She’s jolly pretty, but that’s no reason to be so superior.’
It hadn’t taken Selina long to understand that it wasn’t superiority that made Lady Felicity Fanshawe appear so aloof, but painful insecurity and desperate shyness. Her mother had died when she was small and she had been brought up in a rambling medieval manor in darkest Sussex by her elderly, bookish father and an Irish aunt – Aunt Constance – who had an instinctive mistrust of children, laughter, dirt, jazz, dancing, and anything that might loosely be described as fun. (Aunt Constant Killjoy, Theo called her.) Flick was simply unused to the company of other girls, and had practically never seen a male below the age of fifty in her life before that first season. Her lack of experience was coupled with an instinct for enjoyment that Selina found adorable but worrying. From the start she had taken on the role of Flick’s protector.