She knew the real reasons for their enmity. She was young and attractive, and liked to dress glamorously. She was wearing a red dress edged with silver bugle-beads, a look none of the other wives would have dared to try and pull off, and she simply wasn’t apologetic enough about not being English.
‘Of course, we’ve largely stopped going to Capri because these days it’s full of the most ghastly people.’ Emma Hereward was talking across her. ‘The budget airlines all fly into the region now.’ As usual, Emma was seated with Anastasia Lang and Cathy Almon. The three of them were hardly ever apart and were as poisonous as scorpions. Cathy was the plainest and therefore the most picked on. All were married to men in Oskar’s department.
‘We go to a marvellous little island off Sicily—’
‘Isn’t that where Giorgio Armani has his villa?’ asked Ana Lang, also talking across Sabira. ‘The Greek islands are ruined, of course. Do you still have the place in Tuscany?’
‘We gave it to the children. Better for the tax man.’ Emma noticed Sabira listening. ‘Does your husband have a bolt-hole?’
‘I’m sorry?’ She didn’t understand the question. What was bolt-hole?
‘A second home – you know …’ She walked her fingers. ‘Somewhere you can whizz off to in the school holidays.’
‘He has a house in Provence,’ Sabira replied, ‘but I have never been there.’
‘Why ever not? I mean, the French are frightful, obviously, but you must get so bored being stuck in London.’
‘I go home to see my family in Albania, but Oskar is usually too busy to accompany me.’
‘Of course it’s different for you, not having any children,’ said Ana. ‘But what would Oskar do in Albania?’
‘We go to the beach there.’
‘You have beaches?’ Ana exclaimed. ‘How extraordinary.’
‘Yes, we have very nice ones.’
‘That’s a surprise. I always assumed the country was mainly industrial. We have a Polish chap – you must have met him, Emma. He built our patio. A terrible one for the vodka, but then all Eastern Europeans drink like fish.’
Sabira dropped out of the conversation and refilled her glass.
The speeches dragged on. Someone from the Animal Procedures Committee was talking about a new initiative, but he had a habit of moving his face away from the microphone, and whole sentences dropped out of earshot. The Deputy Prime Minister, a fair, faded little man who might easily have been mistaken for the manager of a discount software firm, was whispering in her husband’s ear. She was so far away from the speaker’s table that she could barely see who was talking.
‘These initiatives are a waste of time,’ Cathy Almon was saying. ‘Democratic governmental procedures are hopeless. People respond better to a benign dictatorship; it saves them having to take responsibility.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Sabira, jumping in. ‘Surely the key to any democratic process is representation.’
Cathy stared at her as if she expected frogs to start falling from her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Remind me who you are again?’
‘I’m Sabira Kasavian. We have met a dozen times.’
‘Goodness, of course, you must forgive me. I have absolutely no memory for faces. You must be very proud of your father.’
‘I am, but Oskar Kasavian is my husband.’
‘Then you must be more mature than you look.’ She meant it as a compliment, Sabira decided, a very English kind of compliment, the sort that offended as it flattered.
‘No, I am not,’ she said in a louder voice than she intended. ‘He is forty-five and I am twenty-seven. There is an eighteen-year age difference between us.’
Ana Lang laid a beringed claw on her arm. ‘There’s no need to take offence, dear. You mustn’t be so sensitive.’
‘But I do take offence,’ said Sabira hotly. ‘You know where Giorgio Armani has his holiday villa but seem unaware that Albania has a coastline. That one, Mrs Almon, likes to pretend we’ve never met, and makes me introduce myself again. And you just accused my countrymen of being alcoholics. You’ve been patronizing and condescending to me ever since we sat down.’
‘I think you’re overreacting,’ said Ana, who could only cope with indirect criticism. ‘There’s no need to get so overwrought. This is simply dinner conversation. How long have you been married to Oskar?’
‘Nearly four years,’ Sabira replied.
‘Then I’m sure you must be familiar with at least some of our social customs by now, just as we are with yours. For example, your drinking habit could hardly go unnoticed, and while you might consider it part of a noble heritage there are others who could misconstrue it as intemperance.’ Ana bared her teeth in a mirthless smile, daring her to answer back.