Marrying Up by Wendy Holden Page A

was longer, lacking absolutely her
     sister’s delicious retroussé. Her mouth was also thinner and flatter than Florrie’s pert, peachy pout. More elongated here,
     more squashed there; in some ways the same, but ultimately absolutely not. Her face was like Florrie’s – but reflected in
     a hall of mirrors.
    Florrie’s great big eyes – violet-blue to her own dark brown – were closed. Her long pale-blond hair was pulled back, revealing
     neat little ears adorned with, Beatrice noticed with a stab of fury, a pearl earring that looked suspiciously like one of
     her own. And which, more to the point, she had already refused to lend Florrie some days ago. Draped carelessly over the sofa,
     Florrie’s long, slender body with its elegant small breasts looked longer, slenderer and paler than ever in a minidress of
     some thick, pale, pearly material. Beatrice recognised the Valentino that Igor, the oligarch’s son, had recently presented
     Florrie with. There was a big orange stain on the front of it that looked like ketchup.
    Pale high-heeled sandals, one of which had smeared mud on the cushions and one of which had its strap broken, hung off long,
     delicate white feet. The sandals were hers too, Beatrice saw, outraged. Her new ones. She hadn’t even worn them yet.
    Please God, Beatrice prayed, let her leave this flat soon. Please God let Ned propose so she, Beatrice, could become Marchioness
     Dymchurch, have her own estate and fortune and get away from her bloody sister.
    He had, she was sure, been within a hair’s breadth of asking her to marry him tonight, but then the waiter had interrupted
     and asked whether he wanted gravy. The result was that Ned, incapable of holding two thoughts in his head at once, had never
     got back to the subject, for all her efforts to lead him there.
    ‘The Nurofen, darling?’ Florrie drawled.
    ‘Get it yourself,’ Beatrice said unsympathetically. But it
was
three in the morning – probably quarter past by now – and Florrie had wrecked her new sandals and, by the look of it, lost
     one of her earrings.
    Her sister opened the huge, dewy, violet-blue eyes that could look so bored and blank but which now expressed hurt, surprised
     innocence. ‘Darling!’ she chided. ‘You might get it for me. You really might. I feel terrible.’ She rolled over and groaned,
     but she even did that beautifully, Beatrice noticed, the deep-cut back of the dress emphasising her pale and delicate shoulder
     blades. ‘Perhaps I should lay off those Aladdin’s Cave cocktails,’ Florrie muttered into the pale primrose sofa cushions.
    ‘They’re the ones that cost two hundred pounds each, aren’t they?’
    Florrie rolled back, her expression impish, and nodded her head enthusiastically before clutching a cushion to it and groaning.
     ‘They’re yummy.’
    ‘How did you afford them?’ Beatrice demanded, knowing that her sister had spent her way through her entire monthly allowance
     a fortnight ago.
    ‘Oh darling,’ Florrie sighed. ‘Not all that Genghis Khan stuff again.’
    ‘Genghis Khan?’
    ‘Oh, silly me, I mean Nelson Mandela.’
    ‘Nelson Mandela?’
    ‘You know what I mean. Financial responsibility and all that.’ Florrie yawned.
    Not for the first time, Beatrice reflected that the hundreds of thousands that had been poured into her sister’s education
     mightjust as well have been poured into a black hole and to all intents and purposes had.
    She and Florrie were two of ten children, although only they and their brother had that particular combination of mother and
     father. Lord Whyske and Lady Annabel had had six marriages between them, of which the union producing herself and Florrie
     was their second in both cases. She, Ed and Florrie were, as Beatrice saw it, the centre of the family Venn diagram, although
     it was painfully obvious that hardly ever were they the centre of their parents’ thoughts. Lady Annabel moved constantly between
     social events; Lord Whyske,