‘Where do you think he is, then?’
But Winifred, as if to drown out the rudeness of her question, was asking where Amy had been staying last week. Amy ignored her and started saying something about the Rosenbergs, about their children. Laura turned away from her, glad that drinks were arriving and a cold vermouth was put in front of her. It was as though Amy was angry with her, she thought, and she tried to push Amy’s attention away from her.
‘Where’s Gianni?’ She had only just become aware that he was missing. Was he still in the car?
‘He’ll be back.’
He didn’t come back for a long time, and when he did, Amy didn’t let him have a drink but insisted they went back to the house. The photographers were still waiting, but Laura was braced now, and Archie drove fast, zooming dangerously along the coastal road. As soon as they went in, Amy and Gianni ran upstairs. Laura looked almost laughingly at Winifred, assuming it was sex. But they were only gone briefly, and when they returned Amy seemed languorous, coming out with a slow step onto the terrace, smiling more easily at everyone.
It was the kind of meal that any onlooker would think was straightforwardly bright with chatter and laughter. The citronella candles did not really keep the mosquitoes away, and the first bottle of wine was corked, but the sound of the ocean could be heard on the warm night air. The neighbours Archie had mentioned came over at the end of dinner, two young couples who were eager to meet new people, and Laura could see that they found Archie and his group glamorous in a rather seedy way. Here were the notorious Amy Sandall and the infamous Laura Last, drinking with younger men in this Italian garden; she felt embarrassed by how they must seem to these young English couples. But Amy’s low laugh filtered out over the group, making Laura feel, as she had in the past, that they were all satellites to her self-sufficient charm. She remembered how Amy had studded her life with these distant appearances and, suddenly, caught up with the wine and the evening, she wanted Amy to know what she had meant to her.
‘I’ve always admired you so much,’ she said. ‘You won’t remember, but I saw you on the boat on my way over to England when I was just nineteen. And the first party I went to at Sybil’s house, you were wearing a white satin coat. And then I remember seeing you at the Dorchester during the war.’ As she spoke, Laura realised how limp her words sounded: she could not express what Amy’s image had meant to her; how she had seemed to Laura to be a unique woman who did not need the world’s approval, who was able to follow her own star. But as she spoke it dawned on her how empty her admiration of Amy had been, like the callow admiration of a teenage schoolgirl for a film star. ‘I think I aspired to the way you looked.’
Amy leant forward for another drink. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ she said, but her words were cold, and she turned back to Winifred, to the conversation they were having about why monogamy is unnatural. Amy had obviously taken to Winifred, and the two of them seemed to be taking delight in talking frankly about sex in front of the younger couples.
Laura was soon glad to go upstairs. In her room she opened the shutters and leaned out, eager for the sea breeze to penetrate the room. Amy and Winifred and Gianni were still sitting on the terrace; the others had gone down to the end of the garden for a look at the moon on the sea. Amy’s words were borne upwards on the night air. ‘That tedious woman. Still thinks she’s an ingénue. If there’s anything I hate, it’s an ageing ingénue. Did you read what Alistair wrote about her? You should hear what he said that couldn’t be printed – she looks such a prig, but underneath she’s a tart who was always running after other women’s boyfriends. Nina told me the same – apparently she was almost sucking Blanchard off in front of her. So Edward drank and drank, desperate to get away from her, and really had fun with his boys from university. I doubt he was ever really a spy – probably wanted to escape that ghastly marriage, at least Nick would spice things up for him.’