In desperation, she’d disappeared on a working holiday to Australia with her meagre savings from a Saturday job, thinking that there would be opportunities there, that she would try a number of different jobs and someone would notice her cleverness, her potential, but she soon realized it was a treadmill of fruit-picking and waiting tables. Worse, she’d felt poor. She wasn’t meant for backpacking. So she’d returned to England and the only job she’d been able to get was as a greeter at the restaurant. A step above waiting tables. What was supposed to be temporary had slipped one year into the next, and she’d watched, incensed, as the graduates on the training schemes had been fast-tracked to managerial positions and bigger payslips. People her own age who were less smart than her but who had been able to afford university, which apparently gave them automatic kudos.
Just when she was at her lowest, Nicolas had come along and her world had opened up again. Being with him made her feel good, feel special, like she belonged. Her brain re-engaged as they debated how to fix the economy and youth unemployment. He had given her a taste of what life with money was like and she had held her head high in the fancy restaurants and been a natural at picking out a good wine. Then it all ended abruptly one Saturday evening when, instead of picking her up as planned, Nicolas had phoned to tell her his parents wanted him to concentrate on university and they felt she was a ‘distraction’. They were forcing him to choose between her and a role at the family business, and he couldn’t put her through an uncertain future, which he might well have if he wasn’t gifted a job with his father. The break-up devastated her. All the time she’d been honest about her humble upbringing, the inadequate school, the working-class family: a bitter mistake. She realized by the way he’d cast her aside that she wasn’t going to find her opportunities being who she was. So Cherry decided she would reinvent herself. Then she would immerse herself in the world to which she aspired to belong. Only this time she wasn’t going to tell anyone where she came from.
All through her school years Cherry had had one loyal ally, an ally that fought side by side with her to put her in a better place: books, or, more commonly, the Internet. It was extraordinary what you could learn. She’d read avidly, one link pulling her to another until before she knew it, she’d woven an intricate web of self-acquired knowledge. Added to this were day-to-day world affairs from the Guardian, and she’d absorbed the language of the erudite journalists and carefully eliminated any trace of Croydon from her voice. When she’d gone for the interview at Highsmith & Brown estate agency, she’d felt reassuringly well armed, and a few embellishments to her CV, along with the research from her false persona as a Chelsea-ite and that web of knowledge she’d worked so hard to create, had landed her a job.
It had been five months since she’d joined, almost to the day. She knew because she’d seen the date approaching in her diary, marked with a red circle, which was placed there as a target – or maybe a warning – and so far the only male attention she’d had had come from the window cleaner.
‘All right, love?’ he’d said, as she changed the sales details in the window, and she’d stiffened before seeing if anyone had taken any notice. He continued to cast glances at her as he swooped his squeegee in arcs over the window and she fumed with humiliation. Why couldn’t he chat up one of the other girls? Abigail or Emily. She felt he could see through all she’d built up and recognized a kindred working-class spirit. She was horrified to think his attention might expose her.
‘Talk to me again and I’ll have you fired for hitting on me,’ she’d said, then turned her back.
Other than that, they were married, gay, coming in with their girlfriends or so far up their own arses they didn’t notice her.
But all that was behind her now, as finally her luck had changed. When the orchestra got up for the interval, Daniel turned to her.
‘What do you think?’
She was suddenly filled with a heart-soaring happiness. Here she was on a glorious summer’s evening at a classical concert with a man who seemed intent on making sure she had a good time.
‘It’s fantastic.’
She looked around and sensed she could spot those with money. The girls were made up of a disproportionate number of blondes, their hair effortlessly honeyed and falling in long waves, which they tossed from side to side, knowing it would fall coquettishly back over their eyes. The boys were tanned, and their expensively casual shirts fell outside shorts that were slung low over buttocks. The same as the boys back where her mother lived (she never said ‘home’), but the difference between here and her part of Croydon was the cost of the underpants. She felt a sense of fierce pride that she could hold her head up among them. She was no different from these people – in truth, she was probably smarter – and the fact she’d made it so far proved that she was capable. It just went to show what you could achieve if you thought about it and put some effort in, and for the first time in a long time she felt she was creating some real distance from her upbringing.
‘Can you play anything?’ she asked.
‘I was forced to learn the piano until I was fifteen.’
‘Forced?’
‘Actually, it wasn’t that bad.’ He looked at her and felt he could say it. ‘My teacher’s daughter, who was three years older than me, used to sunbathe in the garden in full view of the double doors from the music room.’
She laughed and thought, It’s good that he can be relaxed enough to tell me these things, and she genuinely didn’t mind hearing them. She knew men hated high-maintenance women and she would save the jealous outbursts for when they had purpose, to bring him into touch with how much she cared. It was one of those cards worth saving.
‘You?’
Cherry had already decided not to lie too much about her background if it could be helped. Lies had a nasty habit of catching you out. Still, this friendship was at a fledgling stage and there was no need to weigh it down with the dreary truth that there hadn’t been the room for a piano even if there had been the money. There was barely room for the sickly cream leather sofa her mother had saved for months for, eyeing it in DFS until the sales started. It had inbuilt reclining seats, something Cherry found diabolically tasteless.
‘I wasn’t really the musical type. Languages were my thing. French especially.’
‘Fluent?’
‘Oui.’
‘Any others?’
‘Spanish.’
‘Impressed.’
‘And Italian.’
‘Really?’
She shrugged modestly. ‘They’re all very similar. You just have to think about it.’
‘You must have been good at school.’
‘I was. Except they only did French.’
‘So how . . . ?’
‘Taught myself. Downloaded courses.’
‘Wow.’ He looked at her with renewed admiration. ‘Wow! I could have done with you on my Grand Tour.’
‘You had a Grand Tour?’