Shopaholic to the Stars

NINETEEN

By 3 p.m. I’m feeling a lot calmer. I’ve bought my new bra and I’ve sent over three dresses, six pairs of shoes and a tuxedo suit for Sage to try on. (I don’t think she’ll go for the tuxedo suit, but she should. She’d look amazing.) I’ve also taken Minnie out of pre-school early, and dressed her up in her sweetest smocked pink-lawn frock, with a big sash and puffed sleeves. It has matching pink-lawn knickers, too, and I’m actually quite envious. Why don’t grown-up dresses have matching knickers? Everyone would buy them. I might write to a few designers and suggest it.

Jeff has driven us to the Purple Tea Room, which is halfway along Melrose Avenue and has a big hand-painted sign with swirly letters. I help Minnie down from the SUV, shake out her skirts and say, ‘See you later, Jeff. I’ll call.’ Then we head towards the sign and push open the glass-paned door.

Crikey.

OK, so I don’t think Aran and I mean quite the same thing by ‘afternoon tea’. When I say ‘afternoon tea’ I mean silver teapots and waitresses in frilly white aprons and tiny cucumber sandwiches. I mean starched tablecloths and maybe a harp playing and Miss Marple-type ladies sitting at the next table.

The Purple Tea Room is nothing like that. For a start there aren’t any chairs or tables, only cushions and bean bags and odd-shaped stools made out of wood. The room is big, but it’s dimly lit, with candles casting a wavery glow over the walls. There’s music playing, but it’s Eastern sitar music, and the air smells scented, but not of scones or cinnamon. More of …

Well. Hmm. You’d think they’d be more subtle; I mean, this isn’t Amsterdam, is it?

Everywhere I look I can see hip young people lying around, sipping at tea cups, typing on Apple Macs and having their feet or shoulders rubbed by what seem to be therapists in baggy Indian trousers. And in the middle of it all is sitting Elinor, bolt upright, wearing her usual stiff bouclé suit and chilly expression. She’s perched on a stool in the shape of a mushroom, holding a glass of water and looking around as though she’s Queen Victoria and these are the savages. I bite my lip, trying not to giggle. Poor Elinor. She was probably expecting starched tablecloths, too.

She’s looking rather pale and wan, but her dark helmet of hair is as immaculate as ever, and her back is ramrod straight.

‘Ladeee!’ shrieks Minnie as she spots Elinor. ‘Mummy!’ She turns to me in joy. ‘Is Ladeeee!’ Then she wrenches herself out of my grasp, runs to Elinor and hurls herself affectionately against Elinor’s legs. Everyone in the place turns to watch and I can hear a few ‘Aaahs’. I mean, whatever you think of Elinor, it’s a very sweet sight.

In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw Minnie quite so thrilled. Her whole body is shaking with excitement and her eyes are bright and she keeps glancing up at me as though to share the wondrous moment. Elinor looks pretty delighted to see Minnie, too. Her cheeks have turned a kind of almost-pink and her frozen face has come alive.

‘Well, Minnie,’ I can hear her saying. ‘Well, now, Minnie. You’ve grown.’

Minnie is delving in Elinor’s crocodile-skin bag, and triumphantly produces a jigsaw puzzle. Every time Elinor sees Minnie, she brings a different jigsaw puzzle, and puts it together while Minnie watches in awe.

‘We’ll do it together,’ says Elinor. ‘It’s a view of the Wellesley-Baker Building in Boston. My great-grandfather used to own it. Your ancestor, Minnie.’ Minnie nods blankly, then turns to me.

‘Mummy, Ladeeeee!’ Her joy is so infectious that I find myself beaming, and saying, ‘Yes, darling! Lady! Isn’t that lovely?’

The whole ‘Lady’ thing began because we had to keep Minnie’s meetings with Elinor a secret from Luke, and we couldn’t risk her saying, ‘I saw Granny Elinor today.’

I mean, they still are secret. This meeting today is secret. And as I watch Minnie and Elinor gazing at each other in delight, I feel a sudden fresh resolve. This rift is stupid and sad and it has to end now. Luke and Elinor have to make up. They have family together.

I know Elinor said something tactless, or worse, about Luke’s beloved stepmother which he was upset by. (I never got the exact details.) That’s how this whole argument began. But life can’t be about holding on to the bad things. It has to be about grabbing on to the good things and letting the bad things go. Looking at Elinor as she opens the jigsaw with an ecstatic Minnie, I know she’s a good thing. For Minnie, and for me, and for Luke. I mean, she’s not perfect, but then, who is?

‘Can I offer you some tea?’ A drifty girl in a linen apron and baggy white trousers has come up so silently, she makes me jump.

‘Oh, yes please,’ I say. ‘Lovely. Just normal tea for me, thanks. And milk for my daughter.’

‘“Normal tea”?’ the girl echoes, as though I’m speaking Swahili. ‘Did you look at the tea menu?’ She nods at a booklet on Elinor’s lap which seems to be about forty pages long.

‘I gave up,’ says Elinor crisply. ‘I would like hot water and lemon, please.’

‘Let’s just have a look …’ I start to skim through the booklet, but before long my eyes are blurring with type. How can there be so many teas? It’s stupid. In England you just have tea.

‘We have teas for different needs,’ says the girl helpfully. ‘We have Fennel and Peppermint for digestion, or Red Clover and Nettle for skin complaints …’

Skin complaints? I eye her suspiciously. Is she trying to say something?

‘The white teas are very popular …’

Honestly, tea isn’t supposed to be white. I don’t know what Mum would have to say to this girl. She’d probably produce a Typhoo teabag and say, ‘This is tea, love.’

‘Do you have a tea for making life totally brilliant in every way?’ I say, just to wind the girl up.

‘Yes,’ she says, without missing a beat. ‘Our Hibiscus, Orange and St John’s Wort tea promotes an improved sense of wellbeing through mood enhancement. We call it our happy tea.’

‘Oh,’ I say, taken aback. ‘Well, I’d better have that one, then. Would you like that, Elinor?’

‘I do not wish to have my mood enhanced, thank you.’ She gives the girl a stern look.

That’s a shame. I’d love to see Elinor on happy pills. She might smile properly, for once. Except then she’d probably crack, it occurs to me. White powder would fall from the corners of her lips and suddenly her whole face would disintegrate into plaster dust and whatever else they’ve patched her up with.

The girl has given our order to a passing guy in what looks like a Tibetan monk’s outfit, and now turns back.

‘May I offer you a complimentary reflexology session or other holistic therapy?’

‘No thanks,’ I say politely. ‘We just want to talk.’

‘We’re very discreet,’ says the girl. ‘We can work with your feet, or your head, or the pressure points in your face …’

I can see Elinor recoiling at the very idea. ‘I do not wish to be touched,’ she says stiffly. ‘Thank you.’

‘We can work without touching you,’ persists the girl. ‘We can do a tarot reading, or we have a humming meditation, or we can work with your aura.’

I want to burst into giggles at Elinor’s expression. Her aura? Do they mean that chilly cloud of disapproval that follows her around like her own atmosphere?

‘I do not possess an aura,’ she says, her tones like icicles. ‘I had it surgically removed.’ She glances sidelong at me and then, to my utter astonishment, she gives the faintest of winks.

Oh my God. Did Elinor just make a joke?

At her own expense?

I’m so gobsmacked I can’t speak, and the girl seems a bit nonplussed as well, because she backs away without trying to press any more therapies on us.

Minnie has been surveying Elinor intently throughout all of this, and now Elinor turns to her.

‘What is it, Minnie?’ she says, uncompromisingly. ‘You shouldn’t stare at people. Aren’t you going to sit down?’

Elinor always talks to Minnie as though she’s another adult, and Minnie loves it. Minnie doesn’t answer, but leans forward and picks a tiny thread off Elinor’s skirt.

‘All gone,’ she says dismissively, and drops the thread on the floor.

Ha! Ha-di-ha!

How many times has Elinor picked me up for some tiny bit of fluff or speck on my clothes? And now Minnie’s got her revenge. Only, Elinor doesn’t look remotely put out.

‘Thank you,’ she says to Minnie gravely. ‘The housekeeper at my hotel is somewhat lax.’

‘Lax,’ agrees Minnie, equally gravely. ‘Lax bax … Guess how much I love you,’ she adds inconsequentially.

I know that Minnie’s quoting from her bedtime book, but Elinor doesn’t – and I’m stunned by her instant reaction. Her cheekbones start to tremble and there’s a sheen to her eye.

‘Well,’ she says in a low voice. ‘Well, Minnie.’

It’s almost unbearable, watching her tight, chalky-white face struggle with emotion. She puts her lined, beringed hand on Minnie’s head and strokes it a few times, as though that’s the most she can bring herself to do.

God, I’d love to loosen her up. I should have ordered the Mind-Altering Tea for Repressed Older Women in Chanel Suits.

‘Elinor, we have to reconcile you with Luke,’ I say impulsively. ‘I want you to be part of the family. Properly. I’m going to stage an intervention at our house and I’m not letting either of you go till you’re friends.’

‘I don’t believe “friends” is the appropriate term,’ she says, looking puzzled. ‘We are mother and son, not contemporaries.’

OK, this is why she doesn’t help herself.

‘Yes it is!’ I say. ‘It’s totally appropriate. I’m friends with my mum and you can jolly well be friends with Luke. When I tell him everything you did for the party—’

‘No.’ Elinor cuts me off, a sudden steel to her voice. ‘I have told you, Rebecca. Luke must never know of my involvement.’

‘But you did such an amazing thing!’ I say in frustration. ‘And he thinks it was Suze and Tarkie! It’s crazy!’

‘He must never know.’

‘But—’

‘He must never know. I am not buying his love,’ she adds, so quietly I can barely hear her.

‘Elinor, it’s not “buying his love”,’ I say gently. ‘It wasn’t just about the money. It was about all the thought and effort you put into it.’

The girl arrives with our drinks, and we’re both silent as she arranges teapots, cups, strainers and little sugar crystals on a trolley made out of bamboo. I pour Elinor her hot water and she picks it up without drinking it.

‘So, Elinor,’ I say, in soft, coaxing tones. ‘Will you tell him?’

‘No,’ she says in final tones. ‘And you will not tell him, either. You made me a promise.’

Argh. It’s like she’s made of granite. This intervention is not going to be an easy matter.

‘OK, then. Well, we’ll find another way.’ I reach in my bag for my ‘conflict resolution’ notes. I printed them off from Google and they’ve been quite helpful, except I realized a bit too late they were about conflict resolution in an industrial-action situation. I skim through the pages, trying to find something useful. Picketing, no … union representation, no … Health and Safety Executive, no … cooperation techniques … ooh, that’s more like it. Win-win negotiating strategy.

Yes! That’s very good. Win-win is exactly what we need. In fact, I’m not sure why anyone would ever choose anything except win-win. I mean, why would you opt for lose-lose?

I read the paragraph, and the phrase that keeps popping out is ‘common ground’.

‘We need to find common ground,’ I say, looking up. ‘What common ground do you have with Luke?’

Apart from being totally stubborn, I don’t add.

Elinor looks at me silently. It’s as though she hasn’t understood the question.

‘Charity work,’ she says at last.

‘OK …’ I wrinkle my nose dubiously. ‘Anything else? Have you ever done anything fun together? You must have done! When he was in New York.’

When I first met Luke, he was really close to Elinor. Unhealthily close, actually, although I’d never say that. I mean, I don’t want him to go back to worshipping her, but can’t they recapture any of that relationship?

‘Did you ever go on holiday together?’ I ask with sudden inspiration. ‘Did you have any fun times then?’

I have an image of Elinor limbo-dancing at some Caribbean resort while Luke cheers her on, cocktail in hand, and force myself not to giggle.

‘We stayed in the Hamptons,’ she says after some thought. ‘My old friend Dirk Greggory had a beach cottage there. I took Luke on a number of occasions.’

‘Great. So, you could reminisce about that … maybe plan another trip …’

‘If we did, it would have to be soon,’ says Elinor with asperity. ‘Dirk passed away two years ago, and his daughter is selling the beach cottage. A mistake in my opinion, as was the ghastly work she did to the porch—’

‘Wait,’ I cut her off, my head spinning. ‘Wait. So there’s a cottage in the Hamptons that you and Luke have happy memories of … and it’s about to be sold … and this is your last chance to go back there? Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

‘Brown bear, brown bear,’ puts in Minnie, looking up from her milk. ‘What do you see?’

‘I fail to understand.’ Elinor’s brow creases as much as it can, i.e. hardly at all.

‘What do you see, Mummy?’ demands Minnie imperiously. ‘What do you seeeeee?’

It’s a good thing I know all her little books off by heart.

‘A red bird.’ I turn back to Elinor. ‘This is perfect. You can say that’s why you’ve come to see Luke. He’s bound to listen.’

‘Red bird, red bird, what do you see?’

‘A blue horse.’

‘No!’ cries Minnie, crashing down her beaker. ‘Not blue horse! Yellow duck!’

‘OK, yellow duck,’ I say, hassled. ‘Whatever. Elinor, this is definitely the way to go! Try to remember all the great times you had together and mention them to Luke. Try to find that bond again.’

Elinor looks dubious, and I sigh. If only she’d present herself better. (By which I don’t mean having immaculate nails and matching shoes.)

‘Could you wear something a little less formal tonight?’ I suggest. ‘And maybe loosen your hair? And talk differently?’

Basically, have a personality transplant, is what I’m really saying.

‘Talk differently?’ Elinor seems affronted.

‘Try repeating this after me.’ I lean forward. ‘“Luke, my love, if we can just spend some time together—”’ I break off at Elinor’s rigid expression. I can see she isn’t going to go for ‘Luke, my love’. ‘All right, let’s try it a different way. You could say, “Luke, my angel …” Her face grows yet more rigid. ‘“Luke, my sweetheart … my darling—”’ I break off. ‘OK, what would you say?’

‘Luke, my son,’ says Elinor.

‘You sound like Darth Vader,’ I say bluntly. Elinor doesn’t even flinch.

‘So be it,’ she says, and sips her water.

That is totally a Darth Vader thing to say. Next she’ll be ordering the destruction of a thousand innocent Jedi younglings.

‘Well, do your best.’ I reach for my tea, feeling exhausted. ‘And I’ll do my best. That’s all we can do.’