Love Lost and Found
Charlotte woke up disoriented, wondering where she was and whose bed she was in. Then she saw Gigi's curls on the pillow of the opposite bed and remembered everything: the cricket match, the drive to London, the conversations with Sidney, the arrest of Otis Molyneux and Gigi's broken heart. The late-night return to the Parkers' flat in Bloomsbury.
She sat up, grabbed for her phone and scanned her messages – some Monday morning greetings from her family as always, a somewhat concerned text from James, a less concerned one from Mary, telling her she should feel right at home at the flat and was welcome to use any of her clothes she found there. For that offer, Charlotte was extremely grateful. She had been sleeping in her cricket t-shirt and was starting to feel uncomfortable.
Gigi was still fast asleep, even when Charlotte returned from a quick shower. Dressed in a blouse and skirt from Mary's wardrobe, she went in search of her hosts. She found Tom Parker at the breakfast table, happily sipping a cup of coffee and humming a melody. He looked better than he had in days – even better than last night, leaving her wondering how that miracle cure had been worked between one o'clock in the night and ten o'clock in the morning.
"Charlotte, my dear! What an unexpected pleasure for breakfast. Tea? Coffee? We don't boast the delights of the Sanditon Grand's traditional breakfast buffet in our London abode, but I'm sure you won't stay hungry."
"Thank you. Tea, please," Charlotte said, slightly overwhelmed. Mr Parker was talking catalogue speech again. Not necessarily a good sign.
"Splendid. Tea. What an adventure you had last night! Sidney has told me all about it."
"Yes," Charlotte said, wondering where Sidney was. Gone? To Sanditon? To Sydney? "I'm sorry I fled from Sanditon like that. I'm missing my workday today – I think if I catch a train after breakfast, I can at least…"
"What? No no, no, no, my dear. You are excused. And you've been working so hard – if anything, you deserve an extra day off in our bustling capital."
"I'm not that fond of London, and there's so much left to do for the open-day…"
"There's nothing that can't be done tomorrow," Mr Parker said in blissful ignorance of Charlotte's checklist on his whiteboard. "You enjoy a nice day out in London, and I'll take you back to Sanditon tomorrow in the car. Are you trembling?"
"I'm…" Indeed, she was. Thinking of one and a half hour with Tom Parker on the motorway made her so. But it was not only his driving style that made her tremble. She put down the teacup. "I… I just don't know what to think anymore."
"About what, my dear? Politics? Economics? Atomic physics?"
Your brother, she thought. But she could not say that, of course. "I have always been so sure of my own judgement. But since last night… I have been so blinded by sentiment, naivety and prejudice … I had it all wrong about Otis. - No wonder your brother has such a low opinion of me," she added, speaking to the contents of her teacup.
"Sidney? Oh, no, that's not the case. Only last night he called you my competent trainee. Or was it capable? I don't remember, it was really late and the whiskey bottle was half empty. Whatever it was, rest assured: he is a conundrum to all of us."
"But a conundrum can be solved," Charlotte said, feeling the colour rise to her cheeks. Sidney Parker called her competent? Capable? But was that worth anything at all if a half-empty whiskey bottle was involved? "Your brother seems so determined to keep the whole world at arm's length," she said, still puzzled.
"That wasn't always the case." Mr Parker refilled his coffee cup, leaned back and glanced out of the window as if out there, a younger version of his brother was about to appear. "As a boy, he was very different. We always knew he wasn't destined for the hotel business. He was the clever one, the one who juggled a mathematical problem with the right hand while winning the school's cricket cup with the left. God, how I sometimes hated him in those days. And all the girls from school, mooning over him for his dark looks…" He laughed. "But he was always the gentleman. Never took advantage. Helped Diana with her homework, made sure Arthur learnt how to do fractions, and returned all those pink little love letters that were left for him at Reception. He only ever had eyes for…" Mr Parker paused, cleared his throat, then took another sip of his coffee before finally saying: "Eliza."
"Eliza," Charlotte repeated.
"Yes. Eliza. In fact, do you remember I told you…ah, well. Not really part of the story. - She was one of our regular summer guests. Her family came every year for two weeks. Two double rooms, fourth floor, sea view, connecting doors, full board – excellent business. Her mother was afraid of flying, I think. That's why they never holidayed abroad. Lovely woman, her mother – if only more people were like her. – Anyway. Eliza."
"Eliza," Charlotte said.
"They had known each other since they were children. It was a friendship that bloomed every year for two weeks over the summer and then was forgotten until the next year, when it bloomed again. Only one year, I think when they were fifteen, everything was different. That was the year Sidney fell in love with her."
"Oh," Charlotte said, hoping Mr Parker would not notice the blush on her cheeks.
"It was very sweet. Calfs love, we believed. Finished once the summer was over. But oh, how we were wrong. He messaged and mailed and phoned, and visited over long weekends, and that's how it developed."
"I see," Charlotte said, slightly breathless. Sidney Parker, in love with a real person that was not called Aston Martin? She must have been the most fascinating creature in the world, this Eliza.
"They finished school in the same year and then went to Cambridge together. Perfect happiness, that's what everyone expected."
"But?" There had to be a But.
"Well, the first blow was, of course, when our father died." Mr Parker looked down. "I had just been married, Jenny was on her way, and our father had a heart attack one morning in the lobby and dropped dead on the spot."
"I'm sorry," Charlotte whispered. Mary had told her the story. Her father-in-law was only fifty-six years old when he had died, an outwardly healthy man who worked twelve hours every day. It was her worst fear that Tom shared his father's fate.
"It was a blow. I had to take over the running of the hotel from one moment to another. Arthur was still in school, Diana in training, and Sidney… He would have dropped everything in Cambridge and come back to Sanditon to chop onions in the kitchen, had I asked it of him, but I wanted him to have his education. My brilliant little brother … I wanted him to make use of his talents, to leave his mark on the world and find a different path from what family history dictated." Mr Parker gazed out of the window again as if searching for that little brother out there. Charlotte thought that regardless as to what that Eliza-part of the story would come to, she was quite touched by the rest of it.
"And it all seemed to work out well. Sidney was an excellent student, expected to have a career in banking in the City or anywhere in the world, he had the loveliest girlfriend, planned to marry her and start a family, once he was settled, and then…" Mr Parker stopped, looking down, shaking his head in sorrow.
Several scenarios ran through Charlotte's head, one more tragic than the other.
The lovely Eliza, run over by a motorcycle.
The lovely Eliza, succumbing to a deathly illness.
The lovely Eliza, dying in a natural disaster, a plane crash or from a poisonous snakebite during a romantic holiday in an exotic country.
The lovely Eliza, leaving Sidney Parker alone and so heartbroken that he had to cauterise all emotions until his only love was for a car.
"… then the affair happened," Mr Parker took up his tale again.
"The affair?" Had she betrayed him? Or had he betrayed her?
"We called it the affair, though, strictly speaking, it wasn't an affair. The affair was kind of a codeword for Mary, Diana, Arthur and me. It is until today, though the topic is coming up less frequently now."
"I see," Charlotte said, though she did not. Someone had had an affair that was not an affair?
"She was a beautiful girl – still is, probably – and had always made a little money on the side with modelling jobs. Nothing grand, but enough to provide her with a contact here and there. We all believed she wanted to go into marketing or designing, but one day, she decided to apply for one of these reality shows – it was a whim, someone from the casting company saw her at a shooting and suggested she tried her luck, and she did, and she was accepted. And that," Mr Parker leaned back, "was when the trouble started."
"I'm not that much into reality TV," Charlotte admitted.
"And that's a good thing, my dear. It's a terrible business. Terrible. Destroyed Sidney's life."
"How so?"
"Well, you know, Eliza applied for a show called The Millionaire's Bride. One of these shows that are more of a meat inspection than decent family entertainment, with a hoard of beautiful ladies flocking around one rich man."
"Why would she take part in such a show?" Charlotte's image of the lovely Eliza was receiving a substantial blow.
"Oh, one of the oldest sins of mankind. – Vanity, my dear. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. – Not sure who said that. Dickens, probably.- Maybe she believed the show would forward her career in marketing. Or designing. Or whatever. Or she panicked because with the end of Sidney's studies, the prospect of settling down, moving into a house in the suburbs and becoming Mrs Parker and the mother of more Parker babies drew closer. – However, she joined the show. Filming was done on some exotic island, they were given an allowance for shopping, they had stylists for hair and make-up, they had an opportunity to boost their social media accounts – and one of them, of course, had the chance to become the Millionaire's Bride."
"But… wasn't Eliza Sidney's bride?"
"That was exactly the point, my dear. She had to be single to join the millionaire's brides. So she dumped Sidney and flew off to… I can't even remember the name right now, somewhere in the Caribbean. – Anyway. She dumped Sidney."
"She dumped Sidney because she wanted to take part in a reality TV show?" Charlotte had to make sure that she had that right.
"Yes. She didn't win, though. But she finished second, and that was enough to join the C-list celebrities for a while. She lost no time, met an American millionaire, married him and moved with him to LA. The marriage didn't last, though – she's divorced now, but… who cares. We'll never see her again."
"I don't wish to judge, but… that sounds as if she was a very shallow person, even before… the affair," Charlotte said. Mr Parker shrugged his shoulders.
"People change. Maybe her beauty hid some of the shallow parts. Maybe my brother's love made her a better person and covered her character's deficiencies." This was about the most sensible thing Mr Parker had ever said in Charlotte's presence. "What I can say for sure is that Sidney's heart was broken and his whole world undone when she left him."
"Understandably so," Charlotte said, remembering his words for Gigi from the previous night. And this was the man she had accused of being insensible of feeling!
Mr Parker sighed. "He went down a very dark path. Missed deadlines and exams, took to false friends and strong drinks, and ultimately... There was a case of drug abuse. That's when I stepped in. Brought him to the hotel and made him peel potatoes and chop onions from early morning to late night. Not that he was very efficient, and chef really hated me for it, but Sidney was occupied and under supervision. And one day, between potato peeling, onion chopping and being yelled at by chef, he stumbled across George Lambe, who was sampling our golf course at the time with his then-wife. Now Mr Lambe is terribly short-sighted and not much use on the golf course, but he does recognise a good banker when he sees one, and he took Sidney under his wing. Made him his intern and taught him all he knew about the finance business. Mentored him. Found his first clients for him. Practically saved his life."
"I didn't know that," Charlotte said, feeling flustered. This explained so much, including the question why Mr Parker would not think twice about charging Gigi's father for her prolonged stay in the Denham Suite. She felt close to tears now. How little understanding she had indeed, how young and inexperienced she was!
"But what ultimately gave Sidney's life sense and direction was the Aston Martin, of course," Mr Parker said. "He saw it during one of the high society events Mr Lambe used to take him to. Saw it, fell in love with it and swore he would work until it was his own. – And now it is."
Charlotte closed her eyes in humiliation.
What is he trying to compensate with that silly old car?
How easily she had fallen for Otis's manipulative words. It was a miracle Sidney had ever allowed her to come close to that car, let alone drive her in it to London.
"Maybe I shouldn't have told you these things," Mr Parker said. "But… you are so fast becoming a part of our hotel family, my dear, and I would really like to see you get on better with Sidney."
"Thank you for sharing all this with me," Charlotte said. "I shall not disappoint your trust in me. I… I think I should look after Gigi now."
"Yes, of course. As a true friend in times of need." Mr Parker smiled at her and got his phone out, his mind already occupied with the next scheme, Sidney's story half-forgotten.
Gigi was awake, but despondent and still in bed: staring empty-faced at the wall, silent tears running down her cheeks. Charlotte could do nothing but sit down with her, take her hands and show her that she cared while she tried to keep her own sorrows at bay. After half an hour or so, Gigi murmured that she wanted to have a shower now, and when she closed the bathroom door behind her, Charlotte returned to the breakfast table.
Mr Parker was no longer alone with his coffee cup. His brother was with him, just finishing a phone call. "Yes… I'll send you all the details. As I said, the main point is whether she'll be charged here or extradited to the States. – Yes. Thanks, John. Now I'm the one owing you a favour… not for that, no. And give my regards to Jane and Hetty." He rang off.
"Was that John Mathews you were talking to?" Mr Parker said, curiously large-eyed. "I had no idea you were still in touch with each other." Charlotte was curious too: Was that the same John Mathews she had been talking to about an outstanding bill for his daughter's wedding?
"Yes," Sidney said. "He's a lawyer, after all, and he has contacts in the States, so I thought he might be able to do something for Otis. – Good morning, Miss Heywood. How is Gigi?"
"Not well. She's having a shower now."
"One step after another." He sat down and helped himself to coffee and cold toast.
"I… what about your car?" Charlotte asked. "I feel bad for leaving it in that no-parking zone overnight."
Sidney raised an eyebrow. "You are concerned about my car, Miss Heywood?"
"Yes, it's…" She felt her cheeks go red. What the hell was she talking about? "It's a beautiful car. And I understand that it is very precious to you."
"Well then," he said, visibly surprised. "Rest assured, it's safe now. The neighbours in Sydney Walk were not very vigilant last night, and Mrs Siddaway has been true to her word. I've just come back from retrieving it."
"Good," Charlotte said. Fortunately, the doorbell rang, and with a curt nod to her, Sidney left to answer it, only to return a few moments later with Babington in tow.
"Good morning, Tom… - Charlotte. What a pleasant surprise." Babington was all smiles and good mood. Charlotte wondered whether Esther had finally given him her phone number. He took a seat and, provided with coffee, explained about his mission. "I've asked around a bit and pulled some strings, and what can I tell you… you'll have the opportunity to promote the Sanditon golf course and the Regency Row apartments tonight at the premiere party of Mrs Maudsley and the Masked Murderer. It's held at the Regency Excelsior Hotel, and we are promised to meet everyone who is someone in the British film industry."
"My dear Babington." Mr Parker shook his head in admiration. "You are a wonder indeed, and if Esther doesn't see it, I will order her to go out with you. Make it part of her working hours, if necessary."
Babington laughed. "She has finally given me her phone number, so I am more hopeful than ever before. But thank you for the offer. – You must come as well tonight, Charlotte. It's a murder mystery movie set in a country house in 1926. We are not invited to the film premiere, but the party is themed for the Twenties as well. Think of what you can post on Instagram!"
"Thank you, but I really don't want to leave Gigi alone."
"Oh, I'll ask dear Gussie Griffiths to come up to London and look after the poor girl," Mr Parker said. "Really Charlotte, you deserve some fun after last night. And finally, an event where I cannot make you carry trays with champagne glasses until you have blisters on your feet." He winked and laughed, but Charlotte did not join in.
"I would have to go barefoot anyway, Mr Parker. I have absolutely nothing here to wear for such an occasion. In fact, I'm borrowing your wife's clothes right now."
"And you are more them welcome to borrow them, my dear. - Sidney, do you remember the chest we prepared with all the clothes meant for the Sanditon museum? There were some beautiful evening gowns from generations of Parker ladies, but in the end, the museum did not have enough space to display them. They were more interested in sensational stuff like giant sea serpents. - I'll have a look for them in the attic." Charlotte saw Sidney nod and glance expectantly at her.
"That is very kind of you, Mr Parker, but I'm really not in a mood to be sociable. Please excuse me."
X
After another coffee, Sidney saw his friend to the door, thanking him profoundly for his efforts. "Never mind, Sidney," Babington said. "After all that champagne we have taken from your brother's stocks, that was the least I could do. See you tonight."
Sidney did not return immediately to Tom. He looked in on Gigi first, and, finding her asleep, went on to search for Charlotte. He found her in the kitchen, perched on a stool, with one leg pulled up and her chin resting on her knee, her eyes gazing at the rack of cooking tools but most probably not seeing any of them. She half-turned her back on him, unaware of him watching her.
He stayed in the doorway, allowing himself a small smile. Her concern about that silly, old car had amused and surprised him. Had she really come to understand what the Aston Martin meant to him? Was that her way of saying I'm sorry?
She did not have to apologise, though. After last night, he was prepared to forgive her everything and anything. She was right. If only he had been more honest with her about Gigi and Otis.
At the breakfast table, she had looked so young and innocent in Mary's oversized clothes. She was young. Only twenty-one, far away from her family or any friends, thrown into the Parker madness of events. Trying to keep her integrity. Trying to be a friend to the troubled, neglected child of a millionaire. Trying to hold his brother's failing hotel business together.
When he was twenty-one, heartbroken, desperate and on a promising path of self-destruction, he had been saved first by his elder brother and then by George Lambe.
In George Lambe, he had found a father figure, a mentor and role model, someone to guide him through the world of finance, to support his first steps, to lead him back onto track when he took a wrong turn. Never had George reproached him or openly criticised him, never had he raised his voice or accused him of his young age and lack of experience. They had discussed his defeats and celebrated his victories. Two years ago, after collecting the Aston Martin from the vintage car dealer, he had driven straight to his mentor's office and taken him for a victory lap around the countryside.
For Charlotte Heywood, there was no such friend in Sanditon.
There was a besotted architect who admired her every move. There was a grumpy old lady prone to prejudice and bigotry. There was a hotelier too busy saving his business to note his trainee's needs, and there was the hotelier's wife, stuck with a frantic husband and four children under ten, grateful for anyone voluntarily picking these children up from school or taking them to the beach.
But there was no one to help Charlotte navigate her way through Sanditon's muddy waters. Admiral Heywood had had to do that all by herself: the rocky parts, the mist and the sunshine. And yet she had never complained, but simply sailed on. Even when he, Sidney Parker, confronted her in one battle after another.
He had done nothing to help her. On the contrary, he had only made life more difficult for her.
Where have you been? Nowhere, apparently, except for school.
What have you learnt there? Nothing, it would seem
He had failed her even more miserably than the rest of his family, for he was the one who should have known better.
For a second, he considered walking over to her and simply taking her into his arms.
No. Not the right time and not the right place, with Tom next door and Gigi heartbroken in her bed. He cleared his throat. She turned around immediately.
"Mr Parker."
He tried a smile. It came out a bit crooked. "Tom… ahem, Tom suggested I try to make you reconsider. – The party tonight," he added.
"Why did you arrange a lawyer for Otis?" she asked slightly out of context. So that was what had been on her mind. He cleared his throat again.
"I came to the realisation that Otis ran a high risk when she went to London with Gigi. So, however strong my misgivings are, and however misguided I believe Gigi is, I better accept that they are in love with each other. And what can I do as a foster father if not support the person my foster child is in love with?"
She had to digest this. He saw her biting her lip and closing her eyes as she was thinking, opening them again and unconsciously rubbing that sweet little dimple in her chin with her index finger. "I owe you an apology," she finally said.
"No," he said, taking a step closer to her and searching her eyes. "You don't owe me anything, Miss Heywood. It is I who should apologise."
"But…"
"I've done you a great discourtesy. All Parkers, in fact. I'll speak for my whole family. We have taken advantage of you."
"No, you haven't. I love Sanditon, and the hotel – I love every minute there."
"We both know that there were several occasions during which your stay was not that enjoyable," Sidney said, and as he saw her blush: "I apologise for those as well."
She looked down on her feet, blushing even more, but when she looked up again, a small sparkle of mischief had returned to her eyes. "Will you stop apologising if I say that I come to the party tonight?"
"I will."
"Well then."
"Well then," he replied, unable to hide his delight.
Notes:
"It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. – Dickens, probably." – Jane Austen, of course. But I did not expect Tom to know that.
