by Anna Maxted
He sank to the ground, and she arched towards him.
‘God, you feel so …’ he muttered. She glanced over his shoulder. The guests were boarding the yacht at the end of the pontoon. Raquel was wearing a massive hat. Look over, look over – yes! She waved. Raquel turned away. Ha!
As the yacht departed, Innocence came.
‘Thank you for my island, sweetie,’ she purred.
Jack grinned. ‘You deserve at least one wedding present that isn’t crystal. And you did agree to get married in a shack on the beach …’
She laughed and stroked his hair. ‘Why don’t we host a little party in London?’ She hoped he would interpret ‘little’ as ‘big’. So many men did.
‘Whatever you want, darling.’
She wouldn’t book the Dorch – not yet. Maybe Claridge’s. It was the place to have a wedding party, and always on a Thursday.
‘You make me very happy,’ she said. She meant it!
He kissed her nose. ‘I was so lucky to meet you. You’re … everything. We’re going to be so happy together. You, me and Claudia.’
Claudia? What? Who? Who the hell was Claudia?
‘She’s an adorable child and I know that you two are going to dote on each other.’
The brat. She’d forgotten. Oh, Jesus. She was expecting to be the wife of a tycoon, with all the power and glory that that entailed. He was expecting her to be a … mother.
Innocence rested her head on his chest, so he couldn’t see her face. As she stared balefully out to sea, the sun disappeared behind an enormous grey cloud. Oh, all right, it didn’t – but it fucking should have done.
LONDON, AUTUMN 1980
Claudia
Claudia stepped into her wardrobe and riffled through it. She loved her wardrobe. It was big enough to hide in, but not too big. Daddy’s new house was bigger than her school! She liked to take her torch, Bass, her Daisy dolls, and a blanket, and make a nest under the dresses. Nanny M. arranged all sixty-four dresses in the right order: the white brocade, the cream silk and chiffon, the pink beaded tulle, the fuchsia lace, the red voile embroidered with feathers and pearls … then, right at the end, in a plastic cover, the black organza, the say-goodbye-to-Mummy dress. Since Mummy had died she’d got a lot of stuff.
Claudia liked things to be neat. Mrs Print, the housekeeper, had given her a set of felt-tip pens for her birthday and she liked to arrange them in order more than she liked to draw with them. Daddy had given her another special present. It was a sparkly bracelet. It was too heavy for her wrist but if you sat in the sun, the bracelet made rainbows, lots of little rainbows. When Nanny M. saw it, she did that face. ‘Is it inappropriate, Nanny?’ she’d said, and made Nanny laugh.
But now Daddy had the best present: a new mummy. The New Mummy was being delivered today. Claudia picked her pink fairy dress – it was satin chintz with netting, sequins and wings. All her dresses were made especially for her by a man called Mr Kroll. She was a bit scared of him – his name reminded her of a troll. Then she put on her white silk tights. And her pink ballet shoes with the ribbons up the legs. The ribbons got a bit tangled up so she just did a knot. She’d wear her rainbow bracelet. Her tiara was lost. She tiptoed down the back staircase, dragged a chair into the main cloakroom, and got her white mink with the ivory buttons, and her Davy Crockett silver fox-fur hat. The hat was hot, and the coat squashed the wings. But she did want to show New Mummy all of her favourite clothes. She looked in the cloakroom mirror. It had a gold frame as in Snow White. ‘I am naked without my lipstick!’ she said aloud. ‘Naked, I tell you!’
Claudia knew where Ruth kept her lipsticks – hidden all around the house, because if she needed a lipstick, it was an emergency, she didn’t want to walk for miles, she wanted it to be right there! Claudia chose Corvette Red even though she hated to put her hand down the back of the conservatory sofa – there could be a spider and she hated spiders, even Charlotte. She wanted to make her eyelashes long but Nanny M. didn’t wear make-up and Ruth kept her black paint in her handbag, so she did it with her black felt tip. It was harder to draw on your face, the mirror kept making you go in the wrong direction.
The New Mummy must have flowers. Claudia would pick some. She wasn’t allowed but if a grown-up said ‘That’s naughty’ and you said ‘They’re for you’ it stopped them being cross. She sneaked out of the staff entrance, crept past the guard, and started to pick the orange and pink snapdragons from one of the front gardens. No one noticed – she knew they wouldn’t. Her house was full of people now: Mrs Print, a lady who cooked, other ladies who cleaned, a man who drove Daddy’s car for him. And Ruth, and Nanny, but they were all busy, too busy to play – they always assumed someone else was looking after her. And today they were super-busy. There was a big grown-up party, because of Daddy coming home with the New Mummy. She couldn’t wait.
Ruth was fun but she only pretended to listen and when she read stories at night she skipped bits. Nanny was nice but strict like a teacher – she made you walk everywhere till you got blisters and eat the skin on your custard. Daddy always bought her presents but he never asked her a question or took her to the park. Last time he’d said, ‘But, darling, I’ve bought you—’ and she’d said, ‘I don’t care what you’ve bought me, I want to play with my friends!’
He’d gone quiet, and she’d said, ‘Did I hurt your feelings, Daddy?’ And he’d said, ‘A little.’ It was horrible when grown-ups were sad, the worst ever, so she’d opened the present to make him happy. Earrings, again. They were beautiful but she didn’t feel like making rainbows. She wanted to sit under the slide in the park with Imogen and Alicia and swap Walt Disney stickers.
And the only thing she wanted more than that was a mummy.
A mummy gave you almost too many hugs – exactly the right amount. She understood that you couldn’t eat your cucumber if it had touched your macaroni cheese. She noticed if your toenails were poky inside your shoe. She knew that you might like to be read a baby story, even though you were a big girl. She knew that you liked to watch Doctor Who but not if the baddies were winning. She knew that at night the bathroom light must never be switched off. She didn’t shout if you were accidentally sick on the carpet and everywhere. She put your towel on the radiator for after the bath. Even if you hadn’t said, a mummy knew when you had lost a toy and found it for you. No one else did.
Claudia sighed and tried not to cry. The last time she had cried about missing Mummy, Daddy had cried. She would hold a spider to stop Daddy crying. She’d eat avocado. She’d go to school not wearing knickers. She’d kiss Simon Larchkin who stank of wee. When Daddy cried it was more scary than a Dalek. She would do anything for Daddy not to cry ever again. But now … she sat up on the lawn. The huge black curly gates were slowly opening like magic. And there, still far away, like a toy, was the red car. It wasn’t her favourite. She liked the big car with the silver fairy that she wasn’t allowed to snap off. But the red car contained Daddy. Daddy was back!
Claudia jumped up and started to run towards the gates. The wind blew in her face and, after ages of running, her legs got tired. Then she felt shy, and hid behind a big pink flower bush. She’d wait and see what the new Mummy looked like. Her best friend, Alfie, whom she was going to marry, had met her new mummy. He said she was beautiful with long black witch’s hair. Claudia said a princess could have black hair not just witches – even though she wasn’t sure, actually – and thought that she would plait it. She looked down and let out a wail. Her tights were full of mud. For crying out loud! And now the stupid wind had blown off her Davy Crockett hat, right into the road!
As the car swept up the gravel path, Claudia dashed in front of it.
AN HOUR EARLIER, NEAR HEATHROW
Innocence
The novelty of owning a desert island wore off. Innocence compared it to buying a bag to match an outfit. For at least fifteen minutes after handing over the cheque, she’d be madly in love with the bag. By the next day, the bag was a bit less special
. It wasn’t quite so new – and, of course, even though she never threw anything away, she couldn’t wear the same outfit more than twice. This made the bag redundant. By the end of the third day, the bag was stacked alongside all the other bags, just another yesterday’s bag.
After three weeks of paradise, Innocence decided that Spyglass Island was flawed. Sod bijou, it was small. The staff were everywhere, like flies. She never bothered with the effort of acknowledgement, but she resented walking in the breeze of their air displacement.
She didn’t like the tidemark on the beach in the mornings. It looked messy. Someone should tidy it.
She didn’t like the brown palm leaves in the sea water.
It was too hot; they should find a way to air-condition outdoors.
Some of the cloud formations were an annoying shape.
Innocence gazed sadly at the tiny ice crystals that had formed on the window of the private jet. It was chartered – another word for hired. At this rate they’d never afford their own. She was wearing white calfskin gloves, partly for the look, but mainly to avoid all the germs from all the grubby down-at-heel millionaires who’d sat in this seat before her, sweating over its velvet cushions, farting into the soft fabric, exhaling halitosis into the recycled air. She shuddered. The vintage Dom served in antique crystal, the humidor because she liked a Cuban cigar, the charming steward (cute but not too cute): all the tailor-made luxury was invisible in her blur of fear. She saw a life of second-hand shoes all over again.
She barely knew Jack, not as a person – not that she cared. Knowing anyone as a person was overrated. Although with a husband she supposed it was inevitable, sooner or later. It was a shame, in the sense that sex was always hotter with a virtual stranger. If you stuck around, any lover got lazy. Superman would be revealed as Clark Kent.
Jack had seemed more impressive than most: smart without that pathetic urgency to talk about himself. Some people couldn’t rest until they’d turned themselves inside out. It was just vulgar. She giggled to herself when she thought that, but then she’d always been a snob, long before the days of serving royalty. Even as a kid she’d curled her lip at the tart next door, hanging her knickers and bras on the washing line. Those were your privates – what a slag!
The only disadvantage to Jack’s reserve was that she didn’t yet know how to manipulate him. She could see that Spyglass Island was a diamond fast becoming a lump of coal. This hotel was their future, but it was stuck in the past. Every time she saw a waiter in a red waistcoat, she felt sick. To anyone younger than fifty, a red waistcoat was a flashing neon sign that spelled NOT COOL.
Jack needed to take action. And if he didn’t know what to do, she would have to push him in the right direction. She’d fantasized about him sacking the entire management while she lay on the beach, smoking, sipping dirty martinis, perfecting her tan. Straight after they’d fuck like rabbits. She got off on ruthlessness, not red roses.
But he’d acted like a tourist, charmed by old crap because it was foreign. No, she didn’t care to admire the suriset – it had no new tricks. Actually, she wanted to club the hotel pianist to death with a coconut. She wanted real food, not fucking new potatoes. M. Bertrand was an old-school twit stuck in the 1960s who’d be better suited managing a seaside hotel in Cornwall where they made banana milkshakes with Nesquik not fruit, and still sold golliwog postcards in the gift shop.
Jack didn’t seem to have noticed cause and effect.
It was typical of the rich. They didn’t see other people. Or maybe it was just typical of men.
But it was a problem. Even if they did manage to attract the ideal guests – cool, sexy young film stars, heiresses, rock stars, baby tycoons, awash with cash – these people would notice. And they wouldn’t return. Jack didn’t understand that to this superior breed, the turquoise lagoon would be contaminated by his nondescript staff. Ugly people were like an oil spill. The men only had eyes for the gorgeous girls, they filtered out ugly, but the gorgeous girls were hyper-allergic to the slightest imperfection. Ugly was old; it was death; it spat in the face of living for ever.
Her husband’s first investment was a wreck, and yet he’d done nothing, said nothing, put her security at stake. She was so insulted.
There had been one charm-free tycoon she’d had her eye on but it hadn’t worked out: he was twice married with five kids and a mistress; the will didn’t bear thinking about. But she’d sat beside him at one of Harry’s dinners and discussed his art collection. She’d swotted up on art history and was able to make the appropriate noises over the fact that he owned three Matisses, four Gauguins, two Pissarros and ten Courbets. He’d jammed a mound of salmon mousse into his mouth on a cracker, and said – spitting crumbs over her silk Dior – ‘It’s all numbers to me.’
All numbers! Oh! She’d melted!
But, alarmingly, Jack didn’t seem to be a – there was a word for it, wasn’t there? – a money-maniac. He was good company, but if she’d wanted a companion she’d have bought a dog. She still might. Had she made a mistake?
‘Babe?’
‘Yes …’ She paused. ‘Darling.’
She couldn’t look at him. Men who didn’t know how to stay rich were unattractive. They could look like Steve McQueen – irrelevant. If they couldn’t make their money breed, they were weak, and the very idea of shagging a weak man made her skin crawl. He’d tricked her. He’d made a small fortune on the stock market. It must have been dumb luck. And a small fortune wasn’t enough. God help her if Harry Cannadine had been the brain of the partnership – the brain cell of the partnership. That man was a shining example of why the aristocracy was on course to become extinct.
‘Are you OK, babe?’
Even though she was actually trembling with anger, her instinct told her to conceal all hostility. He wasn’t the type of man who welcomed criticism. What type did? Her mind buzzed with panic. What now? Divorce? After one month? She would be eating out of bins! She’d met his lawyer; you wanted to check his back for a dorsal fin. She’d put in close to a decade of work on this project. She’d gone public with Miss Innocence Ashford. She wasn’t going to waste her. If her new husband was running with open arms towards failure, she would divert him towards success.
It was possible he was an idiot, but it wasn’t a disaster. Her goals would merely take a little longer to achieve.
More than anything, she craved wealth and its blessed power. She understood the need of the supervillain to control billions of people – stupid little ants. She wanted that for herself, and the respect and fear that went with it. She craved a lifelong pot of fuck-you money. She would never have been happy as the Little Wife, just spending, bearing the snide looks of those who served her because they thought whore. No. She wanted to be the author of her infinite fortune; she wanted to be as omnipotent as Jack, and be recognized and admired for it.
A small problem: if Jack knew of her ambition, he would neither recognize nor admire it. To Jack, a woman with ambition was unfeminine, like a woman with facial hair.
But Innocence knew her own heart. She had stolen and she had earned, and the truth was she’d got the ultimate high from blowing what she’d earned. Incredible but true: a horrible irony. She compared it to having a cold and losing your sense of taste. You’d eat, oh, a scoop of albino ossetra caviar and you couldn’t believe the hit wasn’t there, so you’d wolf the whole pot, and still no satisfaction, just a vague, empty feeling. Well, that was frittering other people’s money. For her, the spark was missing, and because she couldn’t believe it, she’d spend faster, more and more – chasing that high – and in no time, nothing would be left.
Jack was fast looking like a little lamb lost in a financial wood, and if she didn’t take charge, the money would be gone. He’d chosen a business that she had an instinct for. Her personal style was different but she knew what the right sort of people liked. This was her opportunity to create an empire which would truly be hers. You could only get so far on your knees.
&
nbsp; It was a pity that Jack would be unwilling to share. She stifled a snort. No matter. The man would learn that sharing was good. She would teach him the value of the division of power. And there was only one way to make that happen: first, he would have to fail.
AN HOUR LATER
Jack
Jack allowed himself a smile. After two years of making money miserably, he was finally happy. It was strange to feel alive again. Innocence had done it. She’d saved him from a spiral of depression where every day had a serrated edge. He was bad at taking Valium. He preferred feeling suicidal to feeling mentally ill. He hated the idea of the pill taking control of his brain. It smeared Vaseline over reality; the whole world felt softer. All in all, he preferred the edge. But happy – that was new.
Spyglass Island had been a steal. The place was stunning: the light was different, so bright it made the world look hyper-real. But the hotel was a dump. It was advertised as ‘authentic’, another word for ‘tatty’. Most of the staff were so old that the place felt haunted. He’d given them the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy – offering sums they’d be crazy to refuse – mainly to offset the guilt. He wanted them out of his head and finished with. Money was great like that: it solved problems.
He’d shielded Innocence from the worst of it. Their villa, on the water, was only acceptable because he’d ordered its renovation before their arrival. He wasn’t sure that the gold tasselled furniture suited a desert island, but sod it. Anyhow, they’d spent so much of their time screwing that he suspected she hadn’t noticed the décor – or the ghosts in waistcoats. He’d been lucky in this investment, not in the English sense, where they liked to insult you by declaring your success pure chance, but in the Chinese sense, of preparation meeting opportunity. After the Italian disaster, he’d been smarter. The events of that day in Italy had changed him. He had been pushed towards decisions that made him ruthless.