The Gatecrasher by Sophie Kinsella

whispered, in tones prepared to be astounded.
    “I’m saying . . . maybe this girl is worth it.”
    “Worth it?”
    “Maybe she’s worth two hundred thousand pounds. To him, at any rate.”
    Tricia stared at Fleur as though suspecting trickery.
    “These wealthy widowers have to be very careful,” she said eventually. “They’re terribly vulnerable.”
    “So are wealthy widows,” said Fleur casually. “I find I have to be on my guard constantly.” Tricia stiffened. But before she could speak, Eleanor Forrester’s voice interrupted the group.
    “More Buck’s Fizz? And then I’ll start the presentation. Did I tell you all about poor James Morrell?” she added, handing round glasses. “Banned for a year! And he was only a tiny bit over the limit! I mean, which of us hasn’t been a tiny bit over?”
    “Me,” said Fleur, putting her glass down on the grass without drinking from it. “I don’t drive.”
    A babble broke out around her. How could Fleur not drive? How did she manage? What about the school run? The shopping?
    Tricia Tilling’s voice rose truculently above the rest.
    “I suppose you have a chauffeur, do you, Fleur?”
    “Sometimes,” said Fleur.
    Suddenly, without meaning to, she remembered sitting behind her father’s driver in Dubai, leaning out of the window into the hot dusty street and being told in Arabic to sit still. They’d been driving past the gold souk. Where had they been going? Fleur couldn’t remember.
    “Now, are we ready?” Eleanor’s voice pierced Fleur’s consciousness. “I’ll start with brooches. Aren’t these fun?”
    She held up a gold tortoise and a diamanté spider and began to talk. Fleur stared ahead politely. But the words washed over her. Memories, unbidden, were flooding into her mind. She was sitting with Nura el Hassan and they were giggling. Nura was dressed in pale silk; her small brown hands were holding a string of beads. They were a present; a ninth birthday present. She’d put them round Fleur’s neck and they’d both giggled. Fleur hadn’t admired the beads aloud. If she had done so, Nura would have been obliged, under custom, to give the beads to Fleur. So Fleur had simply smiled at Nura, and smiled at the beads, to let Nura know that she thought they were very pretty. Fleur knew Nura’s customs better than her own. She had never known anything else.
    Fleur had been born in Dubai, to a mother who ran off to South Africa with her lover six months later and a rather older father who equated bringing up a child with throwing money at it. In the shifting, rootless world of Dubai expatriates, Fleur learned to lose friends as easily as she made them, to greet a new intake at the British School at the beginning of every year and say good-bye to them at the end; to use people for the brief period that she hadthem—and then discard them before she herself was discarded. Throughout, only Nura had remained constant. Many Islamic families would not allow the Christian—in truth, heathen—Fleur to play with their children. But Nura’s mother admired the pretty, insolent little redhead; pitied the businessman who was having to raise a daughter as well as hold down a demanding job.
    And then, when Fleur was only sixteen, her father had suddenly suffered massive liver failure. He had died leaving Fleur a surprisingly small amount of money: not enough for her to continue living in the luxury apartment; not enough for her to stay on at the British School. The el Hassan family had kindly taken Fleur in to live with them while her future was decided. For a few months, she and Nura had slept in next-door bedrooms. They had become closer than ever; had discussed and compared themselves endlessly. At the age of sixteen, Nura was considered ready to marry; her parents were in the process of arranging a match. Fleur was alternately aghast and fascinated at the thought.
    “How can you stand it?” she would exclaim. “Marrying some man who’ll just boss you