I fell in love with Mrs Male long before she went into national politics. She was married to Victor Male, who was on Streatham borough council. She worked in an East Croydon solicitor's office when I first met her, but she found her degree to be more useful at Gault Thomson, a small accountancy firm in those days. When Vic burnt out on the council, she stood in the same ward and won it easily. I still saw her if she had time for me, though I was living north of the river by then. We generally met at lunchtime in the sparkling anonymity of the Kensington Park Hotel, always walking in the park for a bit after we'd made love.
Even then she was fitting me in between other errands. She visited Westminster every four days or so, was friendly with all the right people. When she became an MP she dropped me. She had too much at stake, she said. I remember her last determined, regretful kiss.
She was never the shrew the cartoonists drew; never the arrogant maîtresse of Spitting Image. I always found her a bit sentimental. I think that's why she stayed in touch, long after she had the baby.
I got married, bought a flat in Notting Hill and became a happy, loving husband, the doting father of two girls. We still had lunch together, most frequently at the House of Commons, but there was never anything undercover about it. I was working for the Spectator by then and, briefly, before the other party's victory, she was home secretary. It suited her to keep in with me, of course. My political loyalties were so flexible I was tempted to vote Lib Dem in more than one election. I felt a strong personal loyalty to her and defended her policies quite passionately. My colleagues used to joke that I was in love with her, and in some ways, of course, I still was.
I continued to feel awkward around Vic Male, whom I bumped into on occasion. He had long since gone back into the building business, though his rhetoric remained that of the economic revolutionary he had once considered himself. His attitude to me was so familiar I sometimes suspected he knew everything, but in the end I decided he was too ordinarily friendly. I met him at the Royal Over-Seas League one evening last year. We had both been invited to hear about some new bit of policy. "They want me to be the party's new secretary." He was very pleased about it. "What do you think?"
"You know me, Vic. I'm not one to commit myself."
"Come off it, Jonny. You work on the Spec, and you ghosted that column in the Express." He grinned. "So what does that make you?"
"An old-fashioned conservative liberal populist," I said. "I haven't liked anyone in your party since Jack Taylor died."
"That's not what I heard." He gave me a hard stare.
"Oh, OK," I replied. "I quite like Eric Moses. And your good lady wife, of course." I wondered if he was trying to draw me. Connie hadn't said anything, had she? It wouldn't be like her to let that sort of cat out of the bag. She relished her secrets. Had we been spotted at the KPH all those years ago?
He shook his head at me and then raised disgusted eyebrows. "David Gregory, George Smith and Jill Baldock ring any bells?"
All I knew was that they were up-and-coming backbenchers. More or less on the party's right wing. Not likely to be my bosom buddies these days. I shrugged and took a canapé from a passing tray.
Vic pressed on. "OK, what if my spies tell me they're planning to back Jimmy Pilgrim for the party leadership and that you're about to do a big profile on him in the Spec?"
"I'd say you needed a new set of spies. Honest, Vic, I have no plans to do anyone favours—neocons or neolibs. I'm the original neutral. You couldn't get me any more neutral unless you had me spayed."
He had begun to believe me. He frowned.
Vic was suddenly steered away by the obnoxious Denby Jones whom I could never look at without remembering his horrible underpants, dripping wet as he came out of the flamingo pool at Derry and Tom's roof garden on a famous occasion in 1997. He brayed horribly: "Sorry to butt in. I'm going to have to take Vic off your hands." They crossed to the big window overlooking the park and began talking intensely to Lord Northborough, who seemed a bit baffled. Once the mild-mannered greybeard glanced over at me, perhaps hoping I'd rescue him. Or maybe I was the subject of their conversation.
That was the night I learned the names of the runners in the party's leadership race. Connie Male was an outsider, but since support for the others was divided, there was a chance she might be everyone's compromise and get to take the party into the next election.
I was not particularly surprised when she called me a couple of days later. I thought she was trying to get my support. She suggested we meet at the KPH. That did surprise me. When I got there and entered the bright dining room, she was already at the table, smiling rather sweetly when she saw me.
It could have been twenty years ago, except she didn't peck me on both cheeks as she used to. I sat down and picked up the massive menu. It hadn't changed much, either. "You're looking good," I said. "The power struggle's brought the roses back."
She grinned and made a brushing gesture. "I needed a sexier image. Gets the odd boy-voter, you know." She was recognised these days. People nearby kept pretending they weren't looking at her.
Then she glanced shiftily around the room, taking a sip of her Kir royale. "She's written to me, Jonny. From Florida. She wants to meet us. Well, me, really."
"How did she find out who you were?"
"She didn't. The agency forwarded the letter. My father got it. He took over the Fulham flat after mummy died. Bit of a shocker."
"You'll have to ignore it. Or tell her it's not on."
"I know. I've made iffier decisions, after all." Her eyes narrowed in the way they did when she clashed with her opposite number in the Commons.
"Why are you telling me, Connie? Do you want me to do something?" It had been a long time since she had gone off to the States and taken what to everyone else but me was a surprise vacation in Florida. "The child must be—what—a teenager by now? Sixteen?"
"Seventeen. Haven't you wondered? Aren't you curious about her?"
"I suppose I am." In fact I hated the emotions I was beginning to experience all over again. Like drowning. I ordered a stiff Glenlochaye.
"You know. You might want to see her. Tell her why it's impossible. I've never regretted not having an abortion. But I still wonder if I shouldn't have told Vic she was his; he'd never have guessed the truth. Then again, he might have divorced me."
"I thought you weren't having sex with Vic…"
"I could have forced myself. I never made love to him again after you and I split up."
"Oh." I couldn't think of anything to say.
"He never minded much. Politics was more important to us both. I think he kept the odd floozie, but he was discreet. He dumped the last one when I became home secretary." She raised her eyebrows at me.
Being honest with myself, I had to admit I still fancied her. She'd thickened a bit and used a lot more make-up, but she was still a pretty woman in her soft, round, Slavic sort of way. Her father had been Polish, in the RAF, flying with the British during the war.
"You're not going to tell Vic, though?"
"I've no idea how he'd react. With his prostate problems and everything. I wouldn't want to make him worse. He's been a total brick, backing me every way he can. Just shows you. Serves me right."
"Well, we agreed there were no free lunches."
She looked up in surprise.
"You can't," I added relentlessly, "have your cake and eat it."
This broke her mood and she began to beam. She chuckled, shaking her head at me. "Well, if I ever get to be PM, I'll show you that there can be free lunches. And free cake, too!"
I was surprised. I wasn't used to her having mood swings. "But realistically, Connie, in ordinary life…"
"That's right," she said. It was almost as if she were shutting me up. As if she'd reached a conclusion, closed the subject.
I remembered a rare afternoon we'd had at Mitcham fair one Easter. She usually loved the bumper cars but that day wouldn't go on them. We walked back to the bus stop. When I asked her why she hadn't ridden the dodgems, she told me she was pregnant and that she was planning to stand for Streatham South. My emotional response then was identical to the way I felt now. I wanted her to be a success. I really hadn't wanted the kid. She was against abortion. She kept saying how Vic wouldn't understand. They'd agreed from the beginning not to have children. They enjoyed politics too much. I understood they'd had some sort of agreement with a "no kids" clause. We'd discussed all this, of course, but it had been some eighteen years ago.
In the end she'd gone to the US on that lecture tour. In Florida she visited a slightly iffy adoption agency run by Cuban nuns. When it was all over she'd come home and instantly set about climbing the political ladder until she got where she was now. In three years, as things stood, she could be PM.
"Let's face it, we've neither of us lost a lot of sleep over the kid, have we?" I sipped the Scotch. We'd imagined our daughter growing up in a nice middle-American suburb doing all the things little girls in Florida do—soccer, getting braces, cheerleading, the high school prom. We knew the kind of people who adopted. They were always the best qualified to have children. Connie had often joked that if she ever got the chance she'd make people take a breeding licence test, like a driving test only more rigorous.
"You needn't worry," she said. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. She can't come here. My guess is she thinks her natural mother's American. Anyway," her glance touching everything but me, "I thought you should know about it. I'd appreciate it if…"
"Don't be silly." I was rather irritated by her presumption. "I'd be an idiot to give in to sentimental impulses." I had never told my wife about Connie. "It wouldn't be fair to anyone."
"I agree, but that's the trouble." Now she looked me full in the face and I saw a shocking longing in her eyes. "I'm afraid I might. It's awful, Jonny. I mean it's making my stomach hurt. I never expected—"
"It would finish you if the papers smelled a rat. You'll never get this chance again. It's not something you can wait out, make some sort of public apology and expect the party to take you back. You'd let everyone down. Yourself included."
"It's ridiculous, isn't it?"
I must admit her emotion was infecting me. I risked a hand across the table. She gripped it briefly before she looked up at the waiter and asked for a salad.
Never one to starve in a crisis, I ordered the steak and kidney pudding, even though I guessed it would still be terrible. I found myself lost in her familiar perfume. Shalimar. I had bought her enough bottles of the stuff. She seemed younger even than when we'd first met at that party in Hampstead thrown by some millionaire socialist. I hadn't known she was married when I first saw her on the other side of the room, chatting to a silly man with a quiff who squatted at her feet. She looked a bit out of place in her Sloane-ish costume. Powder-blue, like today. It wasn't an affectation, just her favourite colour. It went well with her blonde, permed hair and her aquamarine eyes. Now, glancing at her across the table, I was seized with the same desire I had felt then. I was on the brink of suggesting the impossible, that we get a room upstairs and afterwards walk in the park again.
I was shocked at myself. Was it because she seemed so vulnerable, just as she had that night in Hampstead? She wasn't a bit vulnerable, even then, of course. She had been unhappy at Vic for copping out at the last moment, that was all. When she agreed to come back to my awful flat in Balham I thought she was wearing a wedding ring for appearances, as a sort of protection. She only told me she was married when she was under me on the couch and I already had my hand on her unresisting leg. She asked me if I minded. I didn't. By then I wouldn't have worried about it if Vic had been standing on the landing checking his watch.
Realistically I'd never seen myself married to Connie. The only time I proposed she laughed full in my face, but I was a little surprised, as the months became years, that she never considered leaving Vic. She was brighter than he was and braver. It would be totally against everyone's interest, she said. They had careers planned together. They were a team. The family business. It would seriously interfere with the momentum of their climb up their respective ladders. I occasionally thought of breaking it off, but I never met anyone I loved as much as Connie.
The adoption had finished it. That was the beginning of the end. I saw her a couple of days after she came home to England. She told Vic she'd caught some sort of bug and they'd kept her in hospital for a check-up. That explained the bills, if he ever noticed. I had paid my share. She would have expected nothing less. And that had been that. No solace. No free lunch. Within the year we had broken up and she had won her seat. Another year and I met my wife.
"Yes," I complied bleakly. "Ridiculous."
For a few seconds we sat staring at one another, helplessly sad.
"PM, eh?" I pulled myself together. "It seems only yesterday they made you a junior minister. Will you have to drop me? No more tête-à-têtes?"
"Oh, we'll work something out." She looked away and threw one of those sickeningly artificial smiles at someone giving her a thumbs up from the bar. Then her attention returned to what was really concerning her. "Jill and David are wavering. I'd say it's between me and Ken."
"Not what the papers are saying."
"That's because it's the reality. They think they create the news, but of course they don't."
"You're the expert," I conceded. "You'll make a spectacular PM."
"You'll support me?"
I laughed. "I didn't say that."
"You're so old-fashioned, Jonny." She allowed herself a touch of that mockery which served her so successfully in debate.
A couple of weeks later the voting began and she had disappeared. Her husband said she had gone to the country to stay with friends, to rest and avoid the publicity. I got an invitation at the office to attend a party at the Males's massive mock-Georgian mansion and I went out of curiosity, not expecting her to be back. Everyone else thought it was to rally the last of the floating voters.
She wasn't there when I arrived. Vic saw me through the glass doors and came forward, shaking my hand as someone took my coat. I managed to get a good view of their big pale green reception room. I recognised quite a few of the other guests. And it did look as if she was courting the undecideds. "Where's Connie been staying?" I asked Vic casually.
"Oh, it'll be no secret soon," he said. He began to grin. "She's just back from Florida. Family matter, that's all."
"You have family in Florida?"
"She went to pick up our god-daughter. An old friend's kid. She hasn't seen her in years."
"God-daughter? Who?" I have to admit I was hard put to speak.
Vic slapped my shoulder. "You'll find out when everyone else does, Jonny."
When Connie finally made her appearance, she had Cydney with her. Connie brought her over to where I stood at the buffet with an empty plate. She introduced us. Cydney was about Connie's height. She had my looks and Connie's eyes, but not so you'd guess; a smiling, open young woman who charmed everyone and was already the hit of the evening. Somehow she helped give Connie a subtly maternal air. We shook hands. Cydney called me "sir." I approved of her good manners. Nice kid. An asset to any parent.
"Are you staying long?" I asked.
"Three years!" Her face was a happy mask. "It's so kind of them. They're sending me to Oxford. It's like I have a whole other family here. Isn't it wonderful?"
I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say. "It certainly is." I waved vaguely at the centrepiece of the table, an enormous gateau decorated in red, white and blue. "Can I get you anything?"
Connie eyed me a little nervously.
"Cake?" I asked.
Even then she was fitting me in between other errands. She visited Westminster every four days or so, was friendly with all the right people. When she became an MP she dropped me. She had too much at stake, she said. I remember her last determined, regretful kiss.
She was never the shrew the cartoonists drew; never the arrogant maîtresse of Spitting Image. I always found her a bit sentimental. I think that's why she stayed in touch, long after she had the baby.
I got married, bought a flat in Notting Hill and became a happy, loving husband, the doting father of two girls. We still had lunch together, most frequently at the House of Commons, but there was never anything undercover about it. I was working for the Spectator by then and, briefly, before the other party's victory, she was home secretary. It suited her to keep in with me, of course. My political loyalties were so flexible I was tempted to vote Lib Dem in more than one election. I felt a strong personal loyalty to her and defended her policies quite passionately. My colleagues used to joke that I was in love with her, and in some ways, of course, I still was.
I continued to feel awkward around Vic Male, whom I bumped into on occasion. He had long since gone back into the building business, though his rhetoric remained that of the economic revolutionary he had once considered himself. His attitude to me was so familiar I sometimes suspected he knew everything, but in the end I decided he was too ordinarily friendly. I met him at the Royal Over-Seas League one evening last year. We had both been invited to hear about some new bit of policy. "They want me to be the party's new secretary." He was very pleased about it. "What do you think?"
"You know me, Vic. I'm not one to commit myself."
"Come off it, Jonny. You work on the Spec, and you ghosted that column in the Express." He grinned. "So what does that make you?"
"An old-fashioned conservative liberal populist," I said. "I haven't liked anyone in your party since Jack Taylor died."
"That's not what I heard." He gave me a hard stare.
"Oh, OK," I replied. "I quite like Eric Moses. And your good lady wife, of course." I wondered if he was trying to draw me. Connie hadn't said anything, had she? It wouldn't be like her to let that sort of cat out of the bag. She relished her secrets. Had we been spotted at the KPH all those years ago?
He shook his head at me and then raised disgusted eyebrows. "David Gregory, George Smith and Jill Baldock ring any bells?"
All I knew was that they were up-and-coming backbenchers. More or less on the party's right wing. Not likely to be my bosom buddies these days. I shrugged and took a canapé from a passing tray.
Vic pressed on. "OK, what if my spies tell me they're planning to back Jimmy Pilgrim for the party leadership and that you're about to do a big profile on him in the Spec?"
"I'd say you needed a new set of spies. Honest, Vic, I have no plans to do anyone favours—neocons or neolibs. I'm the original neutral. You couldn't get me any more neutral unless you had me spayed."
He had begun to believe me. He frowned.
Vic was suddenly steered away by the obnoxious Denby Jones whom I could never look at without remembering his horrible underpants, dripping wet as he came out of the flamingo pool at Derry and Tom's roof garden on a famous occasion in 1997. He brayed horribly: "Sorry to butt in. I'm going to have to take Vic off your hands." They crossed to the big window overlooking the park and began talking intensely to Lord Northborough, who seemed a bit baffled. Once the mild-mannered greybeard glanced over at me, perhaps hoping I'd rescue him. Or maybe I was the subject of their conversation.
That was the night I learned the names of the runners in the party's leadership race. Connie Male was an outsider, but since support for the others was divided, there was a chance she might be everyone's compromise and get to take the party into the next election.
I was not particularly surprised when she called me a couple of days later. I thought she was trying to get my support. She suggested we meet at the KPH. That did surprise me. When I got there and entered the bright dining room, she was already at the table, smiling rather sweetly when she saw me.
It could have been twenty years ago, except she didn't peck me on both cheeks as she used to. I sat down and picked up the massive menu. It hadn't changed much, either. "You're looking good," I said. "The power struggle's brought the roses back."
She grinned and made a brushing gesture. "I needed a sexier image. Gets the odd boy-voter, you know." She was recognised these days. People nearby kept pretending they weren't looking at her.
Then she glanced shiftily around the room, taking a sip of her Kir royale. "She's written to me, Jonny. From Florida. She wants to meet us. Well, me, really."
"How did she find out who you were?"
"She didn't. The agency forwarded the letter. My father got it. He took over the Fulham flat after mummy died. Bit of a shocker."
"You'll have to ignore it. Or tell her it's not on."
"I know. I've made iffier decisions, after all." Her eyes narrowed in the way they did when she clashed with her opposite number in the Commons.
"Why are you telling me, Connie? Do you want me to do something?" It had been a long time since she had gone off to the States and taken what to everyone else but me was a surprise vacation in Florida. "The child must be—what—a teenager by now? Sixteen?"
"Seventeen. Haven't you wondered? Aren't you curious about her?"
"I suppose I am." In fact I hated the emotions I was beginning to experience all over again. Like drowning. I ordered a stiff Glenlochaye.
"You know. You might want to see her. Tell her why it's impossible. I've never regretted not having an abortion. But I still wonder if I shouldn't have told Vic she was his; he'd never have guessed the truth. Then again, he might have divorced me."
"I thought you weren't having sex with Vic…"
"I could have forced myself. I never made love to him again after you and I split up."
"Oh." I couldn't think of anything to say.
"He never minded much. Politics was more important to us both. I think he kept the odd floozie, but he was discreet. He dumped the last one when I became home secretary." She raised her eyebrows at me.
Being honest with myself, I had to admit I still fancied her. She'd thickened a bit and used a lot more make-up, but she was still a pretty woman in her soft, round, Slavic sort of way. Her father had been Polish, in the RAF, flying with the British during the war.
"You're not going to tell Vic, though?"
"I've no idea how he'd react. With his prostate problems and everything. I wouldn't want to make him worse. He's been a total brick, backing me every way he can. Just shows you. Serves me right."
"Well, we agreed there were no free lunches."
She looked up in surprise.
"You can't," I added relentlessly, "have your cake and eat it."
This broke her mood and she began to beam. She chuckled, shaking her head at me. "Well, if I ever get to be PM, I'll show you that there can be free lunches. And free cake, too!"
I was surprised. I wasn't used to her having mood swings. "But realistically, Connie, in ordinary life…"
"That's right," she said. It was almost as if she were shutting me up. As if she'd reached a conclusion, closed the subject.
I remembered a rare afternoon we'd had at Mitcham fair one Easter. She usually loved the bumper cars but that day wouldn't go on them. We walked back to the bus stop. When I asked her why she hadn't ridden the dodgems, she told me she was pregnant and that she was planning to stand for Streatham South. My emotional response then was identical to the way I felt now. I wanted her to be a success. I really hadn't wanted the kid. She was against abortion. She kept saying how Vic wouldn't understand. They'd agreed from the beginning not to have children. They enjoyed politics too much. I understood they'd had some sort of agreement with a "no kids" clause. We'd discussed all this, of course, but it had been some eighteen years ago.
In the end she'd gone to the US on that lecture tour. In Florida she visited a slightly iffy adoption agency run by Cuban nuns. When it was all over she'd come home and instantly set about climbing the political ladder until she got where she was now. In three years, as things stood, she could be PM.
"Let's face it, we've neither of us lost a lot of sleep over the kid, have we?" I sipped the Scotch. We'd imagined our daughter growing up in a nice middle-American suburb doing all the things little girls in Florida do—soccer, getting braces, cheerleading, the high school prom. We knew the kind of people who adopted. They were always the best qualified to have children. Connie had often joked that if she ever got the chance she'd make people take a breeding licence test, like a driving test only more rigorous.
"You needn't worry," she said. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. She can't come here. My guess is she thinks her natural mother's American. Anyway," her glance touching everything but me, "I thought you should know about it. I'd appreciate it if…"
"Don't be silly." I was rather irritated by her presumption. "I'd be an idiot to give in to sentimental impulses." I had never told my wife about Connie. "It wouldn't be fair to anyone."
"I agree, but that's the trouble." Now she looked me full in the face and I saw a shocking longing in her eyes. "I'm afraid I might. It's awful, Jonny. I mean it's making my stomach hurt. I never expected—"
"It would finish you if the papers smelled a rat. You'll never get this chance again. It's not something you can wait out, make some sort of public apology and expect the party to take you back. You'd let everyone down. Yourself included."
"It's ridiculous, isn't it?"
I must admit her emotion was infecting me. I risked a hand across the table. She gripped it briefly before she looked up at the waiter and asked for a salad.
Never one to starve in a crisis, I ordered the steak and kidney pudding, even though I guessed it would still be terrible. I found myself lost in her familiar perfume. Shalimar. I had bought her enough bottles of the stuff. She seemed younger even than when we'd first met at that party in Hampstead thrown by some millionaire socialist. I hadn't known she was married when I first saw her on the other side of the room, chatting to a silly man with a quiff who squatted at her feet. She looked a bit out of place in her Sloane-ish costume. Powder-blue, like today. It wasn't an affectation, just her favourite colour. It went well with her blonde, permed hair and her aquamarine eyes. Now, glancing at her across the table, I was seized with the same desire I had felt then. I was on the brink of suggesting the impossible, that we get a room upstairs and afterwards walk in the park again.
I was shocked at myself. Was it because she seemed so vulnerable, just as she had that night in Hampstead? She wasn't a bit vulnerable, even then, of course. She had been unhappy at Vic for copping out at the last moment, that was all. When she agreed to come back to my awful flat in Balham I thought she was wearing a wedding ring for appearances, as a sort of protection. She only told me she was married when she was under me on the couch and I already had my hand on her unresisting leg. She asked me if I minded. I didn't. By then I wouldn't have worried about it if Vic had been standing on the landing checking his watch.
Realistically I'd never seen myself married to Connie. The only time I proposed she laughed full in my face, but I was a little surprised, as the months became years, that she never considered leaving Vic. She was brighter than he was and braver. It would be totally against everyone's interest, she said. They had careers planned together. They were a team. The family business. It would seriously interfere with the momentum of their climb up their respective ladders. I occasionally thought of breaking it off, but I never met anyone I loved as much as Connie.
The adoption had finished it. That was the beginning of the end. I saw her a couple of days after she came home to England. She told Vic she'd caught some sort of bug and they'd kept her in hospital for a check-up. That explained the bills, if he ever noticed. I had paid my share. She would have expected nothing less. And that had been that. No solace. No free lunch. Within the year we had broken up and she had won her seat. Another year and I met my wife.
"Yes," I complied bleakly. "Ridiculous."
For a few seconds we sat staring at one another, helplessly sad.
"PM, eh?" I pulled myself together. "It seems only yesterday they made you a junior minister. Will you have to drop me? No more tête-à-têtes?"
"Oh, we'll work something out." She looked away and threw one of those sickeningly artificial smiles at someone giving her a thumbs up from the bar. Then her attention returned to what was really concerning her. "Jill and David are wavering. I'd say it's between me and Ken."
"Not what the papers are saying."
"That's because it's the reality. They think they create the news, but of course they don't."
"You're the expert," I conceded. "You'll make a spectacular PM."
"You'll support me?"
I laughed. "I didn't say that."
"You're so old-fashioned, Jonny." She allowed herself a touch of that mockery which served her so successfully in debate.
A couple of weeks later the voting began and she had disappeared. Her husband said she had gone to the country to stay with friends, to rest and avoid the publicity. I got an invitation at the office to attend a party at the Males's massive mock-Georgian mansion and I went out of curiosity, not expecting her to be back. Everyone else thought it was to rally the last of the floating voters.
She wasn't there when I arrived. Vic saw me through the glass doors and came forward, shaking my hand as someone took my coat. I managed to get a good view of their big pale green reception room. I recognised quite a few of the other guests. And it did look as if she was courting the undecideds. "Where's Connie been staying?" I asked Vic casually.
"Oh, it'll be no secret soon," he said. He began to grin. "She's just back from Florida. Family matter, that's all."
"You have family in Florida?"
"She went to pick up our god-daughter. An old friend's kid. She hasn't seen her in years."
"God-daughter? Who?" I have to admit I was hard put to speak.
Vic slapped my shoulder. "You'll find out when everyone else does, Jonny."
When Connie finally made her appearance, she had Cydney with her. Connie brought her over to where I stood at the buffet with an empty plate. She introduced us. Cydney was about Connie's height. She had my looks and Connie's eyes, but not so you'd guess; a smiling, open young woman who charmed everyone and was already the hit of the evening. Somehow she helped give Connie a subtly maternal air. We shook hands. Cydney called me "sir." I approved of her good manners. Nice kid. An asset to any parent.
"Are you staying long?" I asked.
"Three years!" Her face was a happy mask. "It's so kind of them. They're sending me to Oxford. It's like I have a whole other family here. Isn't it wonderful?"
I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say. "It certainly is." I waved vaguely at the centrepiece of the table, an enormous gateau decorated in red, white and blue. "Can I get you anything?"
Connie eyed me a little nervously.
"Cake?" I asked.
