Aphrodite's Hat by Salley Vickers Page B

were not a romance, they were something else – unique, as he was always saying – but nevertheless, she felt almost timid when she suggested the celebrated hotel as a possible venue for their own celebration.
    â€˜It’s rather luxurious,’ said Sylvie – which was not like her. On the whole she took for granted the fact that luxury was her due.
    â€˜Don’t be absurd,’ said Jamie. ‘For people like us no corner should be cut.’
    Sylvie spent an unusual amount of time shopping to buy her outfit for the celebration evening. She found the experience enervating. Unconsciously, she had come to rely on Jamie’s decisive judgement over what suited or didn’t suit and deprived of this firm touchstone she found herself unusually dithery and at sea.
    In the end, she bought a dove-grey frock, a smart pink suit and a little black dress, to add to the many similar ones already accumulated in her wardrobe. She arrived home fatigued, with quantities of bulky carrier bags, to a brief message from Phillip on the answer phone.
    â€˜Hugh’s back from Egypt. He’ll be arriving this evening.’
    Hugh was Phillip’s son by his previous marriage. Sylvie had tried her best with Hugh, but the relationship had remained strained. Hugh was an only child; his mother was a confirmed hypochondriac who, despite the fact that the marriage had ended long before the advent of Sylvie, made it plain that the source of any continuing infirmity was the usurping second wife.
    Sylvie rang Phillip. ‘I’m out tonight – what do you want me to do about Hugh?’
    â€˜I’ll be tied up till late,’ was the unpromising answer. ‘Can’t you cancel?’
    â€˜No,’ Sylvie said, ‘I can’t.’
    Phillip’s obliviousness to her arrangements was matched by a blank insistence over his own which angered and occasionally depressed Sylvie when she came up against it. ‘You’ll have to organise something – I can’t get back and he’s no key.’
    â€˜I can leave a key with Marje.’ Marje was their cleaner. But, no, she couldn’t, she remembered: Marje was off with her sister for a week in Lanzarote. ‘Can’t he get here before I leave?’
    â€˜I don’t know when he’ll turn up,’ said Phillip. ‘I told him you’d be in. I’m sorry, I’ve a meeting to get to now.’
    Sylvie tried on the dove-grey dress, disarranged her hair as she pulled it off again, smudged mascara on the pink silk suit, snagged her tights as she changed them for a second time and finally settled for the little black number, not the new one, but another she’d had in the wardrobe unworn for an age. She settled down with a large gin and tonic to wait for Hugh and tried to calm herself. A part of her suspected that Hugh knew about the dinner and sensed that it was important to her: he had the uncanny intuitive flair of the ill-disposed.
    At ten to eight, Sylvie, defying burglars, left a note on the door. ‘Will be at Claridge’s. Come there for key.’ She did not quite dare to defy Phillip enough to leave Hugh wholly abandoned.
    The taxi she called at the last minute was late, and by the time they reached their destination the evening had turned humid and she was sweating in the little black number which appeared to have acquired moth holes in the skirt. She almost lost the third pair of tights as a woman in killer heels nearly trod on her foot as she hurried from the taxi.
    But there to greet her in the cool, dimly lit dining-room was a welcoming Jamie, kissing her cheeks and commenting appreciatively on her scent – ‘Chanel 22, no?’ – as he helped her with attentive hands to her seat at their carefully placed table.
    She had chosen her starter, and was laughing in relief at his wicked observations over a very cross couple dining in silence at the other side of the room, when she heard a