The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

Chapter Twenty

‘Does Luke have a grandfather called Robert?’ Dora asked one morning as we had coffee in the penthouse and my heart missed a beat just at the sound of Luke’s name. Was it ever going to stop doing that?

     ‘Possibly. He has a grandfather, but everyone called him Grandpa when I was there.’

     ‘Well, he sent you an email care of me.’

     ‘Grandpa did?’

     I took the email from her and read it. It was an invitation to lunch from ‘Robert Lewis, (Luke’s Grandad)’.

     ‘Posh lunch venue,’ Dora said as I read it. ‘Old fashioned gentleman’s club, better wear a frock. Want me to accept for you?’

    ‘Sure, why not?’

    Now my heart was really thumping, like I’d drunk six espressos on the trot.  It was great to hear from the old boy, because I had liked him a lot, but it was really great to hear from anyone who had anything to do with Luke. I had tried as hard as I knew how to put him out of my mind. Gerry was so sweet to me, and such a good man, but I just couldn’t shake Luke out of my thoughts. Hearing from his Grandpa felt like hearing from my own family, like a call from home.

     The taxi driver who dropped me off at Grandpa Lewis’s club a few days later also seemed to think it was a bit too posh for me, I could tell from the look he gave me when he asked if I was sure I’d got the right place. The doors at the top of the steps leading up from Pall Mall must have been twenty foot high, deliberately designed to put the fear of God into peasants like me, sending us scurrying round to the servants’ entrances and kitchens at the back. If the doors were high, the ceilings in the entrance lobby were even higher, more like a cathedral than any club I’d ever heard of. It was like I’d stepped through a time warp, or walked onto the set of a costume drama, complete with flunkeys in black tailcoats. Every man in sight was wearing a suit and tie and there weren’t many women to be seen.

     ‘Can I help you, Madam?’ one of the flunkeys enquired.

     ‘I’m meant to be meeting Robert Lewis for lunch,’ I said, horribly aware that my voice sounded too high and was echoing off the dark marble walls.

     ‘Ah yes,’ he purred, ‘the general is waiting for you in the drawing room. If you would care to follow me.’

    The general? Fuck! No one had ever mentioned that.

    My heels were making a silly little clacking noise as I tried to keep up with him. Even the tilt of his shoulders looked disdainful, but maybe I was just being paranoid. To my relief the sound changed as we passed through glass doors and onto wooden floors and finally fell blissfully silent as we stepped onto the thick carpets of the drawing room. Bookcases full of leather tomes stretched up to the vaulted ceilings above, and giant busts of dead statesmen stood on highly polished tables amongst well tended piles of newspapers and magazines.

     Grandpa looked very different as he rose from the chair he had been waiting in. His suit was immaculately pressed and his tie tightly knotted, nothing like the sloppy jumpers and baggy cords he wore when he was at home. He looked every inch the soldier, from his highly polished shoes to his gold cufflinks and neatly brushed hair.

     ‘My dear,’ he stepped forward, his hand outstretched for mine, leaning forward to peck me on the cheek, leaving the faintest whiff of cologne in his wake. ‘It is so nice to see you again.’

    ‘Really?’ That didn’t sound like quite the right response, but I was still genuinely surprised to have received his summons.

     ‘Shall we have a sherry before we go through to the dining room?’