Lara nudged Stefan. ‘Check out this guy.’
A banana yellow supercar drew up at the walkway to a three-tier yacht named ‘Neptune’s Daughter’. The gullwing door flipped up and a young man stepped out wearing wraparound sunglasses and a loud patterned shirt open to the waist. He didn’t even look as a valet jumped inside his car and whisked it away. Half a mill gone in exchange for a ticket stub.
‘What do you think’s going on inside?’ said Lara.
‘The best party in the history of the world,’ said Stefan. ‘Although if that guy’s on the guestlist, I’m not sure I want to go.’
‘You’re only saying that because you’re a socialist,’ smiled Lara. ‘Oh, and you’re not invited.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Stefan. ‘If only Tzar Nicholas had allowed the peasants into his parties, there would have been no Russian revolution.’
He was about to say more, but Lara was distracted. She had spotted a familiar figure walking down the dockside towards them.
‘Alex.’
‘Oh. Hi,’ he said awkwardly, walking over. She watched Alex glance towards Stefan, assessing him, weighing him up; they were like two cats passing in an alleyway.
‘Alex Ford, this is Stefan Melberg. Stefan meet Alex. He is – was – my colleague at the Chronicle.’
Colleague. Ouch. Lara almost winced at her own coldness, but then she was still cross with him after last night.
‘Alex, of course,’ said Stefan, putting out his hand. ‘I followed your work in Syria. Powerful stuff.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alex, but all his attention was on Lara. As she met his gaze, her mood towards him softened, but now wasn’t the time to talk about their argument on the Goliath and how he’d made her feel.
‘Off partying again?’
It was meant to sound light-hearted, but it came out like an accusation.
‘I’m working, Lara,’ said Alex crisply. ‘I have to meet the advertisers.’
‘Of course. Which ones?’
‘Emirates have their America’s Cup boat down the far end of the harbour and McLaren are toasting their pole position at the yacht club.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Actually I had better be off.’
‘Sure,’ said Lara quickly. ‘Don’t let us keep you from your free cocktails.’
Alex gave a curt nod towards Stefan and a lingering look to Lara, then moved off.
‘I see you two have history,’ said Stefan, watching Alex go.
‘Alex is one of my oldest friends,’ she said. ‘It just gets awkward sometimes. We went to college together and now he’s my boss. Plus we had a bit of a ding-dong last night. I think I might have accused him of being a terrible corporate yes-man.’
‘Might?’
Lara grimaced.
‘Ah. That is awkward.’
Despite the encounter with Alex, Lara was glad she had come out. Stefan was easy to talk to and didn’t judge anything she said. It was such a simple thing, but it felt liberating to talk to someone who had no expectations and no knowledge of her baggage. They walked on, the line-up of yachts seemingly endless. Some were huge, others were relatively modest motor yachts and cabin cruisers – relatively, this was Monaco, nothing less than 50 feet. They bought two bottles of water from a Tabac and stopped at a bench, looking out over the blue-black water, the thrum of a dozen parties still audible.
‘I live on a boat,’ said Lara, glancing at Stefan with a half-smile.
‘Really? That’s glamorous.’
She laughed.
‘Not when it pours down.’
She looked at him.
‘So where is home for you?’
‘I’ve just found a place in Shoreditch for when we open the London Le Caché office. Until a few weeks ago I was based in Amsterdam. De Pijp. Do you know it?’
She did. It was a cool, creative part of the city. It was no surprise that Stefan lived there.
‘Is that were you grew up?’
‘I was born in Amsterdam, but when I was little we moved to Texel, one of the Frisian Islands.’
‘Frisian as in cows?’
He grinned. ‘I think that’s where they originated, yes. But Texel is mainly a tourist place now. White beaches, an old lighthouse. My parents had a café right on the sands.’
‘Sounds idyllic.’
‘I guess it was. As a kid there was a lot of hunting for oysters and pearls, pirate booty and washed-up bottles.’
Lara looked at him with new eyes. He seemed so urbane and sophisticated, she hadn’t imagined Stefan barefoot and poking about in rockpools.
‘Although there’s a limit to how much nature anyone can stand,’ he smiled. ‘By the time I was 18, I was itching to get out and see the world. I moved back to Amsterdam to study, then I went to Georgetown University in Washington for postgrad study. It was where I met Eduardo.’
He swigged his water bottle then looked at her.
‘So what about you Lara? Was it all pony rides and garden fetes.’
Of course, she thought sadly. He had researched her, he knew all about her – the headline version of Lara Stone, anyway. A privileged, silver spoon socialite, part of the glittering Avery dynasty. If only real life worked so well.
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘My childhood wasn’t quite so simple.’
She nodded towards the smaller yachts ahead. ‘My parents died when I was eleven. They were sailing something very like that in Croatia.’
‘What happened?’
She didn’t mention her parents often and when she did, most people made a few platitudes, then moved the conversation swiftly on. But she was glad Stefan was honest enough to ask the question everyone thought.
‘Every summer my parents took a sailing trip together. My father loved boats. I would go to my granny’s house and they would travel to Majorca, the South of France, Greece, any one of the summer sailing hubs. That year they went to Split. They wanted to sail to Hvar and the outlying islands. The next thing we knew, there was an explosion. A defective diesel pump, maybe the stove in the galley. There was an investigation, helicopters, diving crews, a British team went out to the Balkans, but nothing was found except wreckage of the boat.’
‘Your parents were never found?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s still a mystery,’ said Lara. ‘The Adriatic is bigger than it looks.’
‘I’m sorry. It must have been a very difficult time.’
‘There were lots of unpleasant rumours. That didn’t make it any easier.’
That was an understatement. There had been an affair, a secret child, the whispers had said. And of course the most poisonous story had been the one which had stuck: David Avery had killed his beautiful, but difficult wife and then set fire to the boat – the lack of evidence was merely proof of a cover-up by the powerful Avery family.
‘My grandfather tried his best to find out what really happened but he never did. A year later he was dead too. He had a heart attack. I still think he died of a broken heart.’
‘Haven’t you ever been tempted to look into it yourself?’ asked Stefan.
It was the obvious question. She was an investigative reporter, one of the best. Who better to dig out the truth?
‘No. Because whatever I do, they’re still gone and my fantasy mum and dad, the ones I carry around in my head, they can be perfect, until the day I die.’
And they were perfect in her mind. Her beautiful mother Ramona with her bright green eyes and waist-length black hair. And David Avery, her beloved father. A handsome, rugged man with dark hair and a wide smile standing at the tiller of his boat, his eyes fixed on the horizon. Lara knew that cherished image might be a figment of her imagination, or even a scene from a half-remembered movie. None of her memories were very reliable. But they were hers and she didn’t want to spoil them by digging too deeply into David and Ramona’s deaths. Perhaps Stefan might find that strange given her determination to investigate Sandrine’s apparent suicide. But it was how she felt.
‘Come on,’
she said, standing up. ‘Race you to the top.’
Stefan looked up in surprise, then alarm. ‘To the top…of the rock?’
‘What, are you scared that a girl will beat you?’
He looked up towards the Prince’s Palace towering high above them.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she grinned, then turned and sprinted off towards the steps.
The Rock of Monaco was a geographical slab that had been the original fortified settlement; the old town was up there, so was the Cathedral. Lara knew that much, but she had no idea how many steps there were to the top. She was already thinking she had bitten off more than she could chew when she heard Stefan’s footsteps behind her. OMG! He was actually doing it!
‘I’m coming!’ he shouted. Lara started laughing even as she increased her pace. ‘Never catch me!’ she called back.
She bolted across a road – mercifully clear – and then onto another set of steps. Stefan was gaining, which for some reason made her giggles worse.
‘Ah, crap,’ she panted, collapsing on the stone steps near the summit. Not as fit as she thought. Stefan caught up and dropped down next to her, his chest heaving from exertion, but also from laughter. Lara had underestimated how many steps there were.
‘You… are…crazy…’ he managed, before dissolving into guffaws.
Without thinking, Lara rolled over and grabbed him, kissing Stefan hard on the lips. After a moment’s hesitation, Stefan kissed her back, pulling her closer.
‘We’re going to get caught by the Monaco Guard,’ she laughed into his ear.
The palace was barely two hundred yards away and in the darkness she could see a glimpse of white uniform.
‘We’d better keep out of sight then,’ he whispered.
He took her hand and pulled her through the grand porte to the old town.
‘Just look at that,’ she said, taking a moment to look at the Palace, gloriously illuminated.
‘I’d rather look at you,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her neck.
They crossed to the other side of the square. There were few tourists up here despite the busyness of the weekend.
They found a bench overlooking Port Fontvieille, Monaco’s second harbour, just pin-pricks of light in the dark.
‘How are we going to get back to your apartment?’ she asked between kisses. If she was being forward, she didn’t care.
‘We’re not. Not yet,’ he said.
She loved the taste of him, champagne, toothpaste and sweet tea.
‘Come here. Come closer,’ he said positioning himself so that she could straddle him.
He held her face as they kissed again. As she tipped her head back, he pushed down the fabric of her dress from her shoulders. Lara wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts sprang free and her nipples hardened as soon as they were exposed to the fresh air.
When Stefan rolled his hand over her nipple, she couldn’t wait a moment longer.
Rising up from his lap she unbuckled his trousers and rolled her dress up over her thighs.
As he guided himself into her, she moaned.
She didn’t care who was watching, a tourist, a local, the Monaco guard, she just wanted to feel her desire build. And it did. They rocked in time, and as he held her hips, she arched her back so he could pusher deeper into her.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she groaned, squeezing herself around him, shivering as she crescendoed into a tight pulse of delirious pleasure before she crashed over the edge, every nerve ending on fire as he withdrew from her.
She closed her eyes, and tried to catch her breath, sweat trickling between her breasts. When she opened her eyes again, she smiled at Stefan, blushing, not quite able to believe she had just done that.
There was a brief moment of tension between them.
‘Does that mean I’m in pole position,’ said Stefan and they both started to laugh.
‘I don’t know, let’s try and get back to one of our hotel rooms, and we can do that all over again to find out.’
Chapter 17
The train from Gatwick wasn’t exactly the Orient Express, but still, Lara liked to travel by rail. She loved the way it cut straight through the landscape giving an unparalleled insight into people’s real lives.
She’d flown in from Monaco via Nice and Lara supposed it was fitting that the last leg home should bring her closer to real life. From the air you saw cloud, from the road, you saw the façade, but trains let you see people’s washing, their discarded junk and their open curtains. An unguarded reality of barbeques, trampolines and toppled football nets: details of lives lived or imagined. From the train you saw how people really were, not what they wanted you to see. Lara rested her head against the window, her cheek pressing against the cool glass, as her mind circled back to Jonathon Meyer. What was true of the back yards of Surrey was true of the yachts of Monaco. Everyone had a public face and a real, slightly less palatable one. Everyone had secrets, things they’d rather you didn’t ever see. But had Jonathon’s secrets been enough to get him killed? Had he, like Jago Bain, said ‘no’ to his Inner Circle?
Lara was rattled from of her daydream by her phone buzzing on the table in front of her.
Number unknown.
She found herself smiling, a fluttering in her stomach. Stefan? She wondered, picking it up. And if it was, how should she play it? They had ended up back at her Roquebrune pension after their tryst on the Rock of Monaco. Lara still blushed when she thought about it. Their morning in bed together, and then meeting up with Eduardo at the De Paris to discuss their meeting with Jago Bain, trying to pretend they hadn’t been up most of the night having sex.
She tapped the green button.
‘Hi there.’
‘Lara Stone?’
Not Stefan. A female voice, American.
‘Yes,’ said Lara, immediately on alert. ‘Who is this?’
There was a second’s pause.
‘I’m a friend of Melissa’s. Melissa Gelman. She suggested I speak to you about Jonathon.’
The voice was young, nervous. Lara’s eyes darted around the carriage. Maybe she had reason to be anxious. In eyeshot she could see a group of backpackers, a young couple, and a man wearing headphones looking engrossed in his phone. It was doubtful she was being watched, but still, Lara didn’t feel as if this was the place to talk.
‘Where are you?’
‘London.’
‘Can you meet today?’
There was a hesitation at the other end of the line and Lara held her breath. Say yes. She had a sense that things were finally starting to move – and she wanted to keep pushing.
‘How about seven o’clock?’ said the voice. Crap. Seven was when Alex’s birthday meal was due to start. Drinks at some fancy riverside restaurant followed by an even fancier supper. Alicia had invited her a couple of weeks earlier; it was meant to be surprise, although she knew how much Alex hated surprises. She made some mental calculations. If she took the bike, she could probably make it in time for the starter. Main course at the very least.
‘Okay, seven. Where?’
‘Do you know St. Martin-In-The-Fields? On the steps of the church.’
The church was closed, the black gates already locked. Lara walked to the bottom of the wide stone steps and checked her watch again. It was already ten past seven and no sign of the mystery caller. Not that she had much idea of what – or who – she was looking for. A young American woman: great. Across the road was Trafalgar Square; at this time of year, central London was teeming with tourists – there wasn’t a lot to go on.
Lara looked up at the mottled sky, fading into grey as the evening light waned. There had been a high white quilt of cloud over London all day – Lara wouldn’t normally have noticed, but it had been in such stark contrast to the heat and sunshine of Monaco. She shivered, not entirely because of the cool. The girl on the phone had sounded scared. Should Lara be frightened too? When money was no object, everything was disposable. Jago Bain and Jonathon Meyer both special
ised in making things disappear for the ultra-wealthy: tax bills, bad PR, who knew what else? If you had enough money, anything could be swept under the carpet. Including people.
‘Lara?’
Jumping at the voice, Lara turned. A pretty girl in her early twenties was standing there.
‘Sorry, I was watching to make sure you were alone,’ she said. ‘I’m Josie. Josie Bourne.’
At second glance, the girl was striking; fine-boned and smooth-skinned. She didn’t have a scrap of make-up on and loose black clothes disguised her willowy figure, but Lara could immediately see that this girl was more at home at the Hôtel Hermitage than a busy London street.
‘Shall we walk?’ said Lara, nodding towards the square. Clearly Josie had chosen the location for the ‘safety in crowds’ factor. Lara wasn’t entirely convinced that was foolproof, but she wanted the girl to feel comfortable.
‘So you knew Jonathon?’ she asked, as they crossed the road.
‘We were in a relationship,’ she said simply.
Meyer had been in his early fifties. Josie looked barely 21. Despite Melissa and Tom’s glowing testimonies about their boss it seemed like another black mark against him.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Lara. ‘That he had been seeing anyone I mean.’
‘Not many people did,’ said Josie. ‘But we’d been together almost a year.’
She explained that she was from a small town near Toronto – Canadian not American – and had come to Europe to model the previous year.
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