‘It is perfect. Like always. And like you.’ My husband does know how to say the right thing.
‘Mmm.’
‘By the way, I invited my new boss, Emil – I think I mentioned him the other day – and his wife, Bianka. With a k. Biank-ah.’ Andreas says this woman’s name a couple of times, ending it with a dramatic ah sound and laughing.
‘Okay, whatever, that’s fine, of course.’
‘They’ve just moved here, so it would be nice to introduce her to some of the ladies.’
‘Yeah, sure, if I remember, but it’s not like I don’t have quite a lot on my mind today.’
‘I know, babe. Just, you know, the husband is the new CEO at Norbank, so it would be good to get in there with the wife.’ I nod. I get it. Andreas and his scheming. It’s always the same thing: be friends with this wife, and that wife, let’s have these goons over for a snooze fest of a dinner party. I thank my lucky stars that I’m self-employed and eternally removed from the excruciating dullness of office politics. ‘Be nice, honey,’ he continues. ‘You know it’s not that easy being new in another country.’
I glance around at my house and my huge garden and suddenly a vivid image comes to me of the first time I ever saw it, six years ago when we arrived in Wimbledon from Oslo. I felt like a fish out of water, having had to leave everything behind and uproot my children, even quitting my job as a newly qualified doctor so that Andreas could pursue his dream in the City. I thought I’d never be happy here, but then I was swept into a wonderful, tight-knit community and decided to start a keto blog which ended up changing my whole life because, well, I suppose everybody needs something to do with their time. I became the Keto Queen, and, I suppose, some would say – the queen bee of the Scandinavian community of southwest London. I do remember those early days, though; especially the feeling of being completely unmoored from everything that had tethered me in my old life.
I snap back to the present and look from my house, by now a much-loved home, and up at the sky. A dark, bulbous cloud appears as if from nowhere, blocking the sun and casting dark shadows across the garden. I glance anxiously upwards – even a single drop of rain could ruin everything. I don’t understand where this giant, terrible cloud has come from. The weather report said clear skies and twenty-three degrees all day—
‘Charlotte. Stop it. Even you can’t control the weather.’
But I want to. I want to control everything.
Andreas squeezes my arm and winks at me, then disappears off somewhere. I make my way back to the marquee and watch carefully as another apparently pre-teen waiter makes me another Arctic Kiss. I knock it back in a few big glugs, feeling the alcohol mercifully warm my insides. The guests are arriving in thirty minutes and my to-do list is substantial: make sure the kids are appropriately dressed and prepared to greet the guests on arrival, check on all the orchids positioned around the house, inspect the glasses to make sure none carry a half-moon lipstick stain from some other event – that happened once and, needless to say, was very upsetting.
I start upstairs, where the kids slouch silently on the sofa in the TV room behind their respective screens. Oscar’s shirt has a stain on it. Madeleine is wearing jeans and a crop top and says ‘Lol, no,’ when I tell her to change immediately. My son knows better than to argue with me when I place a fresh pink shirt on the sofa next to him, but my daughter just stares at me defiantly and doesn’t even back down when I give her the Look.
‘Give it a rest, Mum,’ she says. ‘Seriously, you’d be so much more fun if you weren’t so highly strung all the time.’ Madeleine gets up and pushes past me, leaving her iPad playing its endless stream of TikTok videos on the table.
*
Everything goes to plan. Of course it does. The secret to a successful party is quite simply to think of every last detail, every single moment, so that there are no surprises. I really hate surprises. People arrive, bearing flowers and gifts and fawning over the house and the kids, who, to their credit, manage to greet everyone politely, even looking fairly groomed. The waiters circle the crowd smoothly, refilling glasses and offering canapés. Andreas and I talk to a couple of his colleagues and their wives, people we’ve known for years, and I even feel myself relax a little. My two best friends in London, Anette and Linda, have arrived, and we spend a long while, just the three of us, in a quiet spot at the bottom of the garden, perusing the crowd and the surreal event this actually is. It’s so crazy to think that the blog I started as a bored expat housewife has grown into one of the biggest starch-critical blogs in the world, five cookbooks, a range of own-brand keto products, my own Norwegian prime time cookery show and now, the jewel in the crown – a major deal with Streamstar in my adopted country.
‘You got this,’ Linda says, squeezing my hand as the massive screen flickers to life and the orange Streamstar logo appears, followed by the trailer to the Keto Queen show, renamed Viking Keto for the UK market. The crowd cheers and a blur of faces turn around to locate me. Jax Myers, head of international development, raises his glass to me in a little private toast as the me on the screen launches into a punchy monologue about the evils of grains and pulses. ‘Beans!’ I scream from the screen, my amplified voice booming across the lawn. ‘Only touch them if you want to flood your system with phytochemicals. All you actually need is this. And I’m going to show you how to change your life, Viking Keto style.’ I’m holding up a huge slab of marble-veined rib eye steak, grinning widely, before dropping it down into a smoking pan.
After the trailer, there is thunderous applause, followed by loud chatter and more drinks and I lose Anette and Linda in the crowd. Andreas swoops in and plants a hard kiss on my cheek, and even the kids rush over for a hug. Andreas stays close to me as I move around the garden, speaking to old friends and industry contacts. He is noticeably in a supporting role this evening, letting me guide the conversations and laughing whenever I say something moderately funny; it’s like he’s switched on in a way he isn’t behind closed doors, when we’re alone, stripped of alcohol and fancy outfits and the upbeat company of others. He is like he was when we first met and I feel a stab of longing for the way he used to be with me, back then, because today, in this moment, it’s just for show.
I nod at whatever my husband is saying, and take another glug of my Arctic Kiss, feeling pleasantly buzzy by now, and turn my eyes back to the laughing, smiling people that have descended on our garden to celebrate me, the sun bouncing off their Rolexes and huge diamond studs. The women are mostly dressed similarly to me, in white summer dresses, accessorized with discreet gold jewellery, diamonds, and coloured enamel Hermès bracelets. I scan the crowd gathered on the lawn and every single woman is wearing a variation of this Scandi-Sloane uniform. Except for one.
She’s tall and very striking, with a wild halo of blond curls framing a tan, fine-featured face. She’s wearing a bright-red trouser suit, casually unbuttoned to reveal a very low-cut silk camisole. She looks stylish and sexy and very out of place in the conservative white cotton dress crowd. She also looks like she couldn’t care less about blending in, walking confidently toward us on towering gold Valentino shoes, watched by literally everyone.
‘Oh, here they are. Bianka. Emil. Welcome, both of you. So glad you could make it.’
Bianka leans in and kisses my cheek, and it’s a real kiss, not an air kiss. The way she smiles at me is genuine and open, and for the first time in ages I feel completely out of my depth in someone’s company. I’m reminded of being back at school and suddenly being spoken to by one of the cool kids several grades above. I’m not often in the company of someone who doesn’t seem to care about conforming, especially not here, with my mummy friends and Andreas’s finance buddies – a sea of conformist conservatives.
‘Charlotte. I’m so pleased to meet you. I’m a really big fan. I’ve followed you for a long time, and your approach has just made me feel so amazing.’ One of the things I’ve often found strange as I have become increasingly high-profile, especially in Norway, is that it’s like another version of me exists and always walks a few steps ahead of me, and it’s this Charlotte people think they know. Bianka may have seen me on TV and smiling from the cover of my books. She knew how I talked and laughed and moved before we’d ever met, and yet I know nothing about her. Looking at her, I suddenly want to know everything. Bianka seems like the kind of person who brings a special energy to a room. I can tell that others notice it too; people glance over constantly as though needing to know where she is and whom she’s talking to.
‘What are you drinking?’ asks Bianka, peering into my half-empty cocktail glass.
‘An Arctic Kiss. Vodka and champagne, with a splash of lemon.’
‘Sounds odd.’ She laughs, and so do I. ‘Can I try?’ She takes the glass from me before waiting for a response and takes a little sip, her lips pressed to my lip gloss stain on the glass. Not afraid of germs, it would seem. She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head, reaching out to grab a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. Her husband and mine have faded into the crowd somewhere and I want to keep Bianka close to me; there’s something about her and her energy I want to be near. She stands very close to me, though there’s plenty of space on the lawn. I want to ask her a million questions, like why did you choose that outfit, how many times have you been in love, do you really feel as calm and confident inside as you look, what are you afraid of, does your husband make you laugh, like, really laugh?
I glance back up at her to find Bianka looking at me intently, her expression hard to read, perhaps wistful or slightly melancholic.
She leans in close before whispering straight into my ear. ‘You know, you remind me of someone.’ Her thick, wild hair comes to rest across my shoulder like a soft cashmere shawl and I have the sudden and strange sensation of wanting to touch it with my fingertips. I wait for her to continue, but just then a waiter steps directly in front of us and thrusts a tray toward us laden with canapés of salmon roe atop sliced cucumber. I shake my head, but Bianka takes two, sliding them both into her mouth and winking at me.
‘This is all so perfect. A lot of prep must have gone into this,’ she says when she’s finished chewing. I want to ask her who I remind her of, but it’s as though the strange feeling of intimacy that passed between us when she drank from my glass and whispered in my ear is gone and we’re strangers again.
‘Oh. Thank you. You know what it’s like.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Oh. You know. Hosting events like this.’
‘Nope. No idea.’ She laughs, making several heads turn.
‘No?’
‘I’m not really much of a hostess. The idea of a bunch of people in my house is super stressful. I make Emil do everything. By the way, I love your house, it’s just so beautiful.’ Bianka glances appreciatively at our house, softly lit now although it is still light outside, long streaks of pink and violet dragging across an indigo summer sky. I try to get my head around what she’s just said, about making her husband, the new CEO of Norbank, do everything when they have people over.
‘I guess I just like it, looking after everyone. It’s what I always wanted to do. You know, make sure everyone has what they need.’
Bianka smiles and grabs another couple of canapés from a passing waiter and pops them in her mouth, one after the other. ‘And who looks after you?’
It’s a strange question and one I don’t know how to answer. I get the feeling that Bianka does this, consciously cutting to the bone to ask what she really wants to know, to hell with convention and small talk. Who looks after me? Nobody looks after me, though I haven’t really thought of it like that before. But it’s true – I’m a wife, a mother, and a business owner. I look after everything and everyone all the time. No wonder I’m a control freak. Maybe my face shows that the question’s hit home, because Bianka gives my arm a firm squeeze and smiles gently at me, a smile that suddenly makes me want to cry. I want to steer the conversation onto safer ground.
‘How are you finding Wimbledon so far? Isn’t it just the most fantastic place?’
‘Oh yes, it’s lovely,’ says Bianka. ‘And everyone seems so nice.’
