Tag Archives: The Novel Serialised

“I love you,” Topper says over lunch in the garden. “Do you know why?” He looks up from The New Yorker. I feel some force field ripple between us.“You’re making a girl flush.”  He sits up straighter. “I need you to know,” he says, fixing me with that intense gaze. “It’s your insistence on beingContinue reading “Chapter 60: Where Do You Come From?”

Topper arrives for a week in the California sunshine, having taken time off from the Senator’s office. I run into his arms at the airport; he laughs and holds me close. “Let me have a proper look at you,” he says. We dance our way out of the terminal toward the car. “Is this new?”Continue reading “Chapter 59: I Sing the Body Electric “

I am discovering that having a job isn’t something I actually enjoy. “I adore Mr Woolf, I really do,” I tell Cary over breakfast one morning at his house. “But it’s all the… actual labouring…” I sigh. Betsy gives me a look that says spoiled. “If you want to go places, you have to putContinue reading “Chapter 58: Night-Blooming Jasmine”

We are in Newport in September. With no urgent business anywhere else, we’ve stayed on until the very end of summer. Jack wants Topper to come work for him in the Senate. “Do you want to?” I ask as we sit down to dinner on our first night back. “I told him I’d think aboutContinue reading “Chapter 57 : Indian Summer”

At the last minute, I decide to go home for my birthday. I tell Topper I miss Miss Mary, which is true enough. He says he understands. “I think you should go alone,” he says. “I think you need quality time down there, and not have to entertain me.” He’s standing by the desk, facingContinue reading “Chapter 56: Graceland Revisited”

Tilly and Buddy are married on the last Saturday of July at Grace Church in the City. The bride wears a loose-fitted dress, for obvious reasons. No one comments, not even the catty social pages, whom Tilly’s father has quietly bribed into discretion. The reception is a tasteful affair at The Pierre, the guest listContinue reading “Chapter 55: Got a Lot of Livin’ to Do!”

I’m at the Ritz in Paris with Tilly and Cornelia. We’re here for the final fittings of Tilly’s wedding dress. It’s July, and Paris is sweltering, humid and close, the kind of heat that makes me regret coming at all. Every time I step outside, I feel coated in the city’s ever-present soot, sticky andContinue reading “Chapter 54: My Baby Left Me”

The results are back for our exams and our theses.Tilly: summa cum laude. Me: magna cum laude. Tilly says it’s only because I’ve been busy with boys that I didn’t graduate summa like she did. “You’ve been juggling two of the country’s most eligible bachelors, from opposite ends of the social strata. That’s quite aContinue reading “Chapter 53: “Veritatem Dilexi” – Commencement”

Mrs Montgomery is with Topper when he picks me up from Idlewild. She embraces me, calls me “darling daughter,” and is far more polite than she has ever been. I send Topper a questioning look; he just shakes his head and moves to guide his mother into the front seat, only for her to chirpContinue reading “Chapter 52: I Need Somebody to Lean On “

Mabel and I are at The Peabody, making sure everything is in order for her upcoming nuptials. Mabel is disappointed that Topper isn’t coming. “How rude of him,” she exclaims. I shrug. “You have to bring someone,” she insists. “I’ve put you two down.” I sigh. “But I told you it would just be meContinue reading “Chapter 51: Today, Tomorrow and Forever”