by Anna Maxted
Innocence reapplied her crimson lipstick in the mirror while the goddesses etched into the glass gazed down with approval. She adored neoclassical. It was well OTT. Gianni had personally sourced every item from the world’s auction houses, to recreate the palazzo as it was in the 1700s, when it had belonged to the aristocratic Cambiaghi family of Milan. The place wasn’t complete, but so far he’d done a bang-up job. She adored the eighteenth-century Russian crystal chandelier. It had hung in the Imperial Palace in St Petersburg. And now she, Sharon Marshall of Hackney, was treading in the footsteps of lords, ladies, kings and queens – as an equal.
She’d better go and check on Claudia. She shuddered. They’d been unable to get her to speak. She was traumatized, said the doctor – a real brain surgeon. The doctor had given her an internal examination – probably adding to the trauma, but these men (idiots), what did they know?
Innocence had stood there on the beach last week, feeling shaky and sick. She couldn’t stand the kid – every time Jack looked at his adopted daughter with love in his eyes, she felt her throat close in a fist of black hatred. And Claudia was so stupid. The girl deserved a good slap.
But this.
Innocence had pushed her way into the beach hut where some of the hacks were roughing up the kiddy-fiddler. ‘Mind, please,’ she’d said, and they’d shuffled back like naughty children. It amused her that they assumed she’d never witnessed violence – if a few feeble kicks to the groin were what you called violence. The perv had looked her up and down, an insolent grin, even though he was missing an ear, and rasped, ‘Your fault …’ Miss Ashford had smiled sweetly, stamped on his face and broken his nose. Then she’d marched outside and smoked a cigarette.
It’s your fault. You led him on. She’d been ten. Her mother was deluded, eaten up with twisted rage because she was such a hag that her bloke wasn’t interested in her. Gerry had dealt with Dad, in the end. Sharon was nineteen then, far away and untouchable. Gerry had got him pissed, sliced him up, chucked him in the Thames. Dad was such an old cunt that when it came to suspects, the Bill were spoilt for choice. Gerry had always been fond of his big sis. He was a softie like that.
Innocence had lit another fag with trembling fingers.
Bad things happened and that was life. She didn’t think about that shit – it was over, nothing good would come of having it in her head: the sour blast of beer breath on her face; his rough calloused fingers pressing purple bruises into her soft skin; the sick-making smell of his body, like microwaved chicken. People suffered worse, and she couldn’t stand whiners. She’d got her revenge. He was dead and she was living, very well.
In a way, it was good that Dad had messed with her, not her kid sister, Susan. Sharon was tough. Nothing broke Sharon. But Susan would have been destroyed. Susan was a poppet, a little flower, weak.
Like Claudia.
Now, Innocence smoothed her hair, sashayed along the corridor to the guest bedroom where Claudia lay under a red and gold satin bedspread. ‘Claudia?’ she said.
The girl was asleep, her dark hair spread out on the pillow like that dead bird in Jack’s painting. Ophelia. She didn’t like that painting. It gave her the creeps. She’d have to persuade Jack to sell it to the Tate. He wouldn’t care. He didn’t like art – he couldn’t see the beauty in anything – he could only see the pound signs. He was learning.
Innocence strode to the great window and opened the green and gold drapes. The sunlight was making rainbows in the fountain at the back of the palazzo. Innocence sat on a blue satin armchair, and lit up. A minute later, Claudia awoke, coughing.
‘How are you feeling, love?’ It felt strange to hear this unfamiliar softness in her voice. The word ‘love’ tasted odd on her tongue.
Claudia smiled. ‘OK, Innocence,’ she said. Her voice was barely there; she hadn’t spoken for two days.
Oh, God. It was pathetic. This child was like a puppy, with her big imploring eyes, begging for love, so eager to please.
Innocence patted the bedclothes briskly. She couldn’t actually touch Claudia. It was like approaching a house spider: you didn’t get too close because of the fear that it might suddenly leap on you. But – Innocence breathed deeply through her nose – it seemed that the instant anger that always charged her veins at the mere sight of this interloper was … diluted. For the first time ever, she felt … a connection?
‘Would you like something to eat?’ She could do practical. ‘The chef has made lunch.’ She glanced at the elegantly handwritten menu on the side table.
Tortina di carciofi – Artichoke tart
Risotto Milanese e osso buco – Veal shank with saffron risotto
Her stomach heaved.
‘I’m not hungry,’ whispered Claudia.
Thank God. It was stirring up all those vile memories that had done it. Innocence felt sick to her stomach, and if she caught so much as a whiff of that veal shank, Gianni would be sending her the dry-cleaning bill for his priceless seventeenth-century Ushak carpet. Jack would have to eat alone.
‘OK, love, you rest. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
She hurried back to the bathroom and threw up into the red marble toilet. She was never ill. What was this?
She brushed her teeth ferociously – ugh, the toothpaste made her gag. And then she dropped the toothbrush into the basin, and sank on to the green and gold Empire-style divan with a bump.
She’d come off the pill the second she’d married him. You had to stake your claim. But the doctor had said … Oh, fuck the doctor, when was a doctor ever right? This was it. This was it! No wonder her clothes felt a little tight. She tilted her head back and smiled. She was pregnant. She was going to provide Jack with his own child – not like that barren bitch Felicia having to ship in some orphan brat.
Innocence smoothed her hair in the mirror, and turned sideways. Her stomach was still flat. She couldn’t wait to tell Jack.
She skipped out of the bathroom, stopped still. Someone was calling her, in a hoarse, desperate scream. ‘Innocence! Help! Help! Orinoco is coming to get me – please! I’m frightened!’
Oh, for God’s sake. She stamped along the corridor and flung open the door. Claudia jumped. ‘Shut up! Don’t be such a baby! Shouting at me like that – how dare you. Stop making such a fuss about nothing! You just had a bad dream. Shut up and go to sleep.’ She had a glimpse of Claudia’s face crumpling before the door slammed. Yeah, well, get used to it. No one, certainly not some illegitimate brat that no one else wanted, was going to come between Jack Kent and his own flesh and blood. This child – their child – was her trump card, and the very fact that Claudia existed was a declaration of war.
As Innocence regally swept down the marble staircase to inform her husband that his line was to be continued, she sang a tune that must have been in her blood, a tune that the mothers of England had sung to their babies for hundreds of years:
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green,
When you are King, dilly dilly, I shall be Queen.
THE VERSACE VILLA, LAKE COMO, TEN MINUTES EARLIER
Jack
The Spyglass Island Retreat in French Polynesia was a sensation. For all the wrong reasons.
It was a disaster. But you couldn’t legislate for evil. He didn’t blame himself. No. Why should he? The hotel was his baby. Claudia was the charge of her nanny and Innocence. They were the guilty ones.
It worried him that Innocence didn’t know her place, which was to further his prospects by moving in the right circles, to organize and attend the right social events, to provide him with a family to establish the Kent name as a bastion of all that was British and proper.
And here they were: guests of an Italian dressmaker. He had nothing against Versace himself – obviously a kind, decent man, ringing to offer ‘friends’ (he was tactful enough not to call Innocence a ‘client’) a haven to relax and recuperate in after a horrific experience.
But Versace wasn’t high society.
Jack
lit a cigar and flung himself on to an orange silk chaise longue. The whole thing was a nightmare. If he’d had a gun, he’d have shot that pervert in the face. His PA – Ms Martha Green, or as he thought of her, Special Agent Green – had taken his arm and removed him from the beach hut. She wasn’t going to have him do something he’d regret, certainly not in front of the tabloid press. She had guided him to Claudia, so that he could take her from Harry’s arms.
It had been an awkward moment.
He was terrified. He could hardly look at his daughter. He couldn’t see her pain because he knew if he saw it, it would become his. So he’d bleated trite words of comfort (‘It’s all right, sweetheart, you’ll be OK’ ) when Christ knew what that monster had actually done to her – or made her do. She wouldn’t say, and although the internal examination proved negative for rape, the bastard had obviously done something. When Jack forced himself to meet her glassy gaze, he’d seen damage in her eyes. He’d looked away. He’d only ever wanted to protect his daughter and make her happy. No one likes to stare their failure in the face.
The hotel was fucked.
He fumbled in his pocket for a pill. He’d come round to Prozac in a big way. It amused him that he’d ever been so prim about prescription drugs. Vitamins for the brain, that’s all they were. Helped it to function. Especially when washed down with a couple of Valium.
Sanity, he realized, was merely your commitment to holding on to it. He needed pharmaceutical aid to keep his grasp.
He couldn’t stand the uncontrollable waves of panic caused by the smallest event, the way his mind zigzagged over every option. Marmalade with toast, or jam? Jam! No! Marmalade! It was that bad. Prozac gave him a superior detachment, it wiped his mind of that terrible, weak self-doubt, it crushed those ridiculous, girlish panic attacks, it made him the cool, calm master of the universe that he ought to be. And, let’s face it, being on Prozac was a mark of your status. If you didn’t need Prozac, well, you were nobody!
He’d have to open the season at a massive discount: it would barely cover costs. He had a lifestyle to maintain and with sister hotels opening in LA, New York and the Amalfi Coast his assets were stretched so thinly. He’d borrowed with the abandon of a man in a hurry for success and he was hostage to the goodwill of the banks – ‘the banks’!, as if they were grey, faceless entities, when they were in fact run by a most particular breed of people, as ruthless as they were charming, rich, important posh people who loathed upstarts.
They wouldn’t foreclose on one of their own, which was why he so desperately needed to be accepted as one of them. It was all right for Innocence, she was born to it. She could afford to be eccentric – he hadn’t initially realized how eccentric. Had he known he might have … well. He was all right. He was no fool.
Harry could only do so much. Innocence had given the strong impression that she was fabulously connected, but she seemed unwilling to exercise those connections. Once, at a benefit in Chelsea for old soldiers, the Duchess of Kent had waved at Innocence with a puzzled look, as if she couldn’t quite place her. Jack had strode towards the duchess for an introduction; Innocence had purred, ‘Manners, Jack!’ and led him in the other direction.
He shook his head, watching the blue smoke rings waft towards the ceiling.
A knock.
‘Enter!’
The butler: small, ancient, Italian, suspiciously black hair. ‘The phone is calling for you, sir.’ He paused. ‘It is not the newspaper. I have word.’
‘Thank you.’ Jack nodded and lifted the receiver. It was very … gold.
Ten minutes later, he put down the phone and punched the air. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Yes, yes, and fucking yes!’
He summoned the butler and ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon 1966. He knew bugger all about booze (except how to drink it) but he’d paid a sommelier to put together a cellar. The guy had worked for Sol Kerzner so Jack supposed he knew what he was talking about. He travelled the world, bidding for bottles at auction. He cost, but you had to look as if you knew about these things. They probably taught History of Alcohol at Eton. Two great crystal bowls of bubbly were fizzing away when Innocence appeared at the door.
She looked especially beautiful – ah, mine, all mine! She also looked stunned at his grinning face. Fair enough. For the last week his mood had been as black as tar. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Is everything … OK?’
He kissed her, whirling her round the gigantic room. ‘It’s fantastic.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve been proposed for a membership of Lloyd’s. I’m about to become elected as a Name. A Lloyd’s Name!’
Innocence seemed to tense.
‘Darling, that’s nice. But … why?’
His head jerked in surprise. She knew why. It meant that he was finally recognized by the English landed gentry as one of them. Did she doubt that he was worthy? It enraged him that she believed they must have an ulterior motive – her suspicion reflected badly on him.
He thought about his own, long-abandoned community. Ruth didn’t give a toss about religion, but the other women were deadly. One man’s wife had converted from C of E; she was probably more knowledgeable about Judaism than the whole synagogue put together, but she would always be ‘the convert’. Even though this stranger was allowed into the fold, she would never be quite as equal as those who were born to it.
Was that how the Establishment regarded him? No. He was a self-made man, he was married to nobility. He deserved to be a Name.
‘Because I have a huge cock. They must have heard the rumours.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘Why ask you now, the week after your business has been hit by this ghastly publicity and its future is so … uncertain?’
She knew how to wind him up. ‘Look, love, it’s sweet of you to be cautious on my behalf and, to put your mind at rest, I still have to undergo a ball-breaking interview. But, entre nous’ – hm, breaking into French: classy or common? Best get Agent Green on that one – ‘it’s a done deal.’
‘Who proposed you?’
‘Altringham. The banker. A friend of a friend of Harry’s. You’ve met him.’ It briefly occurred to him that Innocence might have wielded influence, but he dismissed the possibility. ‘His agent will be my agent, although I’ll be in a different syndicate.’
‘Is Harry a Name?’
‘Is that relevant?’ He could almost feel the Prozac clash swords with the roar of adrenalin.
‘Darling, Harry has excellent financial advisers. Whereas your advisers are scared to go ag—’
‘Nonsense. As I recall, you are not involved in any official aspect of my business and—’ He stopped. She looked as if she were about to speak, but had reconsidered. ‘What?’ he snapped.
‘How much are they asking from you?’
‘It’s not your concern.’
‘Please, Jack. Just tell me. I’m your wife.’ Innocence did not usually sound humble.
He sighed. ‘They’ll ask me to deposit a bank letter of credit for two hundred thousand pounds. And I have to give evidence of an additional three hundred thousand of net worth. The more money I put up, the higher the premium income I’m permitted to receive,’ he added quickly. ‘They’re practically giving you something for nothing.’ He grinned. ‘I can scrape that lot together in no time. Maybe sell a painting. I’ve seen the way you look at the Millais.’
Innocence sat down hard on a sumptuous chair. She didn’t look happy. ‘What’s the risk?’
He snorted. ‘There is no risk! We’re looking at an institution with three hundred years of straight profit!’
‘But say the impossible happened?’
She was really winding him up. His fingers itched to pop another pill, take the edge off. He gritted his teeth. ‘I deposit enough stocks and bonds to cover any losses that Lloyd’s might have to pay out. But that’s not going to happen. Now, darling, can we stop with the inquisition, and celebrate?’ He snatched up a champagne bowl and drained it. ‘Here.’
She took a small sip from the othe
r champagne bowl.
‘What? Nineteen sixty-six Dom not good enough for you?’ His nerves were jangling like church bells. Trust a bird to hack through 25 mg of anti-hassle medication.
She stroked his face. He wanted to jerk away, but … ah, the touch of her. ‘Sweetheart,’ she murmured. ‘It tastes disgusting but … for a good reason. I also have some news. We’re going to be parents.’
He stared at her, starting to laugh. His own – No, he mustn’t think like that! A new baby! His heart pumped through the fog. ‘That’s fantastic!’
She looked coy. ‘I suppose I’m thinking like a mother. I want to safeguard our future … our baby’s future. I don’t mean to upset you, darling.’
‘Sweetheart, don’t be silly! You’re right to be cautious, absolutely right!’
She gave him a shy smile. ‘I … I worry that if the impossible did happen, and Lloyd’s, as an insurance company, sustained huge losses – I know it’s terribly unlikely – but it’s still a gamble, and I worry that you could lose every single possession you’ve worked so hard for, including your hotels, including our homes, and Baby might be homeless – and I couldn’t bear it, to think of our poor little baba, suffering! And I just wonder if it might be prudent to place some of the possible – oh, what’s that word?’ She blinked prettily. ‘Yes, assets, in someone else’s name.’ She paused. ‘Claudia? Or your mother?’
He frowned. The woman had a point. ‘Claudia is too young. It’s not possible. And my mother – I couldn’t trust her not to do something nuts. She’d sign everything over to the RSPCA.’
Innocence nodded. ‘I love you, Jack. I suppose I shouldn’t, but I want to … protect you … us.’ She patted her stomach.
He felt a rush of love. She was a mass of hard edges, but she had a heart as sweet and as soft as pink marshmallow. ‘Innocence, I think you’re going to make a wonderful mummy. Clever you.’
She giggled. ‘You had a big part in it.’