“You don’t get the good food,” she said. “Mom said the other day that you’re like another daughter to her, so you’ve been demoted to family status, I’m afraid. Have to wait for company for anything good. Anyway, don’t you get enough fancy food at the hotel? Nice gourmet meals with Javier?”

Charlie was serving her apprenticeship at the Fitzcharles, her father’s hotel in Covent Garden. The business manager was a young Spaniard, when mentioning whom she had lately taken to showing her Irish blood by blushing very slightly.

“I don’t need the food to eat it,” she said, ignoring the jibe. “I just want to have it on the table to look at and admire as a symbol of status. And—I thought that you might like to have steak for dinner occasionally. The budget does run to it, you know.”

“Not the way I run it,” said Lulu firmly. “I’m not wasting your money on overpriced filet mignon when there’s perfectly good Bolognese sauce to be made. You never know when you might need a few pounds in the bank.”

“Um …” Gently, Charlie looked around her at the spacious kitchen with its gleaming appliances. “I think I’m okay for the time being.”

“And that’s the danger of being rich.” Lulu turned from the stove to face her friend, her spatula raised in admonition. “Rich people always think they’re okay. And then sometimes it turns out that you’re not, and then where are you?” The last of the meat was browned, and she turned back to tip glistening chopped onions into the rich, gelatinous fat. “Mr. Goncharoff is talking about selling up,” she said.

“Again? He’s been saying that for months now.”

“Well, I think this time he might just mean it.”

“Hmm.” Absentmindedly, Charlie popped a piece of mushroom into her mouth. “What will you do if he does?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Sophie says there are openings at her place.”

“Fulla Beanz?” Sophie worked at a coffee shop in Soho, where the clientele was young and the management understanding when the staff requested time off for auditions. “Lulu, you’d hate it!”

“Would I?” Lulu turned from her pan to frown at her friend. “Why?”

“Well, wouldn’t you? All those trendy actress types?”

“As opposed to me? Thank you.”

“No, not as opposed to you! As opposed to …” She stopped.

As opposed to old Mr. Goncharoff, thought Lulu, with his gray beard and his world-weary jokes, or Irena, his smiling bottom-heavy wife whose skirts drooped unevenly over her stout calves. As opposed to Tom the quiet lodger, or frightening Aunt Amy in Boston, who lived alone with a housekeeper and snapped at sales assistants if she considered them insufficiently efficient, or old Mrs. Scott-Ramsay, who lived in the lower part of the house and pounded on the ceiling with her cane when they laughed too hard or played music too loud. And as opposed to me, she added to herself then, since that’s the company I belong in; Sophie and Sasha and all the trendy, charming, and attractive people opposed to me.