by Anna Maxted
‘Emily,’ he said with convincing concern. ‘So good to see you again. How are you feeling?’
‘Like crap,’ she said. She’d meant it as a joke, but her eyes filled with tears. She roughly wiped them away. ‘I’m scared, OK? I’m scared. I’m scared about having a baby, I’m scared of the bomb, I’m scared if a leaf falls off a tree.’ She saw the glance between them. ‘So now you’re here, tell me,’ she said. ‘I order you to tell me now.’
They were silent.
She could feel her voice rising in hysteria. ‘No one will talk to me. They’ve removed the plasma and even the Tunisian cleaner can’t be bribed to bring me a paper. I ordered Hello! to be biked over and they confiscated it at reception. It is driving me round the fucking twist.’ She grabbed Claudia’s broken arm and squeezed. Her sister gasped in pain. Good. Alfie, like the gentleman he was – God, she was tired of gentlemen, her next husband would be a brickie – stepped quickly between them.
‘Please don’t upset yourself, Emily, though Christ knows, I understand. It’s only that you’re in a delicate state, and Claw doesn’t want to raise your blood pressure by talking about a traumatic event.’
Claw?
‘Listen, Alfie. This is all very cute: flowers, hushed tone, furrowed brow. But if you or she don’t tell me why not one member of my family has visited me in hospital the whole time I’ve been here, and why there are two armed guards standing outside my room twenty-four hours a day, I am going to … I am very powerful … I know people …’ She stopped. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s worse not knowing. So tell me the truth. Daddy. Mummy. Tim. Are they all dead?’
BARBUDA, A TINY ISLAND IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA, NOVEMBER 1998
Tim
Cheating abroad didn’t count. Cheating didn’t count if she’d never find out. And cheating didn’t count if you didn’t love the person you were cheating with. This was not love. He wouldn’t kid himself. He might persuade himself it was love, but truly he knew it was lust. He stretched out on the luxurious white four-poster, and his body felt like jelly in a thoroughly satisfying way, as if, after years of deprivation, it had at last been employed for its correct purpose.
He lit a cigarette, tipped back his head and watched the smoke curl to the white ceiling. The sunlight streamed into the room and he wriggled his toes in the warmth. The walls of his room were white slatted shutters that rose up until there was nothing between you and the deck and the beach and the sea. And to his left, there was the aquamarine pool, and the baby palm trees, and the azure sky. The sand on the beach was a pale shade of pink, and they’d laughed about it. The previous night, they’d eaten goat stew at the Palm Tree restaurant, and they’d laughed about that. He would have laughed about his granny dying, he was so blissfully happy with his new lover. Nothing could pollute the dream. It was a dream.
It barely felt real. At least, it felt as if he was briefly living another man’s life – another man’s charmed life. No one could harm him here. He was 100 per cent safe. He had been rescued from a nightmare, a nightmare that had begun way before an unknown suspect had blown up the Hotel Belle Époque and quite a few of its guests. He wasn’t sure how many had died. He preferred not to know. He had a vivid memory of being swept from danger by a ministering angel – Ethan Summers – and then the tape ran out. He’d had concussion. It was strange to be told that, but it had to be true. He supposed that concussion wasn’t necessarily instant. But Andy, his gorgeous private nurse, had gently filled in the blanks in his memory. He was still a little befuddled, and it was easier not to ask too many questions. Andy discouraged it as bad for his mental health, and he was happy to agree. His condition required rest, sunshine, a change of scene – Barbuda certainly provided all that.
He should really call to thank his father for picking up the bill, but the telephone network on the island was dreadfully unreliable and he wasn’t up to a tricky conversation. He didn’t really want to speak to anyone from the outside world. He needed to cocoon, and recover. Andy had been a darling – speaking to Daddy on his behalf so that his father wouldn’t feel snubbed. Tim had told Andy it was imperative that his father’s olive branch was grasped with both hands: a great deal, everything in fact, rode on their reunion.
‘I know something else that should be grasped with both hands,’ Andy had murmured, pulling off his towel to reveal an eye-watering erection.
Tim had felt himself harden in response. What perfect symmetry! He had crawled across the bed to oblige.
It had crossed his mind – but no, he refused to feel guilty – that if the unnamed enemy had not bombed his father-in-law’s grand party, he would not have been injured, he would not have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (tosh, but the private doctor seemed convinced of it), he would not have been ordered to recuperate in exotic seclusion, and he would not have met Andrew, the man who had changed the course of his life for ever.
And he refused to feel bad about his wife. Emily was recovering slowly – Andrew was in touch with her doctors – but it was for the best that they didn’t speak. She was in a delicate state and the least emotional upset could have an adverse effect on the baby. It was curious to think that she had once attracted him, but lust was like running water, it had to go somewhere. He couldn’t feel sorry for her: she had trapped him into marriage, whatever she claimed. And of course she had planned the baby; it was her bad luck that she had planned so wrong.
He didn’t like being married to Emily. It was drab. She’d tried to cook for him, on Cook’s day off! She was a terrible cook, truly terrible. And she tried to change things. He liked his loo rolls kept in a wicker basket adjacent to the loo, not on a holder. He liked the black and white photo of his mother as a young girl wearing an Alice band right next to his bed, not a cluster of empty Coke cans. And every Christmas Eve, he liked to go back to Fortelyne, where he and his mother would decorate the tree with trinkets handed down from generations. He hoped his parents would have forgiven him by Christmas – after all, it was the season of peace and goodwill. They’d wrap presents, eat mince pies and drink mulled wine, and Mummy would put an orange in his Christmas stocking, and the dogs would lie at his feet.
When he’d told this to Emily she’d looked aghast. ‘Ohmigod,’ she’d said. ‘Like, can’t we get a sitter and go to a club?’
Even if she suspected that there had been a … hiccup in his fidelity, he was certain that Emily would remain his wife – not because she loved him, although he thought she did, but because she would never entirely relinquish hope of becoming queen of Fortelyne Castle. Alas, she wasn’t to know that the true queen of Fortelyne Castle was himself …
‘Turn over, my little pony,’ whispered Andrew, and Tim shivered with delicious anticipation. Without question, this was the best afternoon of his life. Screwing this god of a man, sipping cocktails in a hammock strung between two palm trees, feeding each other fresh lobster, going for a dip in the warm Caribbean Sea, wandering along the private beach, finding a romantic spot that wasn’t overlooked … although that teenage bird-spotter with his long lens camera had given them a fright, or perhaps, they’d given him an education …
As his head grew light with the beginnings of his fourth orgasm of the day, Tim decided that his recovery would take another two months at least.
LONDON, OCTOBER 1998
Innocence
It was vile and disgusting and she would have suffered a panic attack – had she been the weak, spineless, pathetic sort of person who suffered panic attacks. As it was, she hadn’t removed her white gloves since stepping inside the building – the vast, ugly, soulless building, full of the sort of mentally unstable pond life she’d run from long ago. She held a silk leopard-print Hermès scarf over her mouth and nose. There was a high risk of catching a fatal bug in this place – Ebola wouldn’t surprise her.
At least, if Jack did emerge from his coma, there was a fighting chance that a germ would see him off. Innocence sighed and carefully rested her Gucci shades on her pink hair. T
oday it was in a low, demure ponytail: ‘We’re thinking humble, we’re thinking chaste, we’re thinking stricken,’ Patrice had declared, nodding approvingly as Samson gently patted talcum powder to whiten the healthy flush of her cheeks. ‘Oh, bravo, Samson, bravo – the instant pallor of grief!’
She had paused dutifully on the steps of the Whittington hospital – NHS! – so the assembled press could take her picture. The paparazzi had shouted dirty jokes to try and make her laugh; fortunately Patrice had taken the precaution of insisting that she wear a pair of cheap nylon knickers from Woolworths to ensure that she maintained an expression of deep and genuine sorrow. She was carrying a gift bowl of exotic fruit (which she intended to eat herself), a teddy bear from Harrods (adults who owned soft toys should be shot) and a duck-egg-blue cashmere dressing gown from Paul Smith. The ‘gifts’ had been assembled in a rush: the man was in a coma, what did he care? Her outfit, however, had required detailed planning. Long ago, in the shit-filled bog of an inner-city sink school, Innocence had promised herself a pair of shoes for every day of the year, and she had more than kept her word.
W wrote editorials on her closet. Or rather, they should have. Now that she was a fashion icon (Rainbow magazine adored her style and Hurley could go fuck herself) her wardrobe required its own staff. Jasper Jones and his company Closet Fairy had taken charge. Now Jasper colour-coordinated every item, and each outfit was separated into A and B wardrobes from current and past seasons. Innocence kept a wardrobe for trousers, a wardrobe for dresses, a wardrobe for shirts, and another for coats. Each item was kept in a garment bag with a photograph attached. A computer tracked which outfit was worn when, and a 360-degree ‘catscan’ camera generated an all-angles image of every look as Innocence stepped out of the door. At the end of each season, Jasper archived key pieces, possibly for Emily, but that depended on her mood – right now it was a fair bet the V&A would inherit.
According to Patrice, UK Vogue’s tips for winter included diamonds, epaulettes, feathers, gold, lacy legs, purple, see-through, velvet and zips. Frustratingly, he had forbidden Innocence from wearing all of these things at once. So, for today’s mercy mission, she was meekly attired in a black cashmere polo-neck body by Ralph, a stiff flared skirt with netting by Calvin, black leather ankle boots by Prada, and lacy – she had insisted – black stockings. Her bag was Louis, but a small, pious Louis. It was, cried Patrice, a sexy, witty take on Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
As she ascended in the disgusting shabby lift, she held her breath – it reeked of disinfectant and death – and wondered how long she would need to hang around. Surely visiting hours should be cut short if a patient was on the brink? But less than two hours, and the media would accuse her of a ‘brief, token’ visit.
The gossip and speculation had been horrible. Understandable, however: it was no secret that she and Jack were united only in mutual loathing, and, of course, some sluglike hack, wanting to make a quick dollar, had dug up last year’s interview with Oprah. Quote: ‘Yes I do hate him, and I do wish he were dead. Of course he knows it, why else has he surrounded himself with former Mossad agents? He’s wetting himself with fear of what I might do – and rightly so!’
Entirely tongue in cheek, Oprah roaring with faux-outraged laughter – oh what adorable British dark humour, with the vulgar audience whooping away in support – and now, suddenly, her words had been turned against her, taken out of context and, while Scotland Yard had no intention of taking such garbage seriously, it was upsetting, personally hurtful and bad for business.
She might feel murderous, but in fact, she had no wish to kill Rumpelstiltskin. Let him spin straw into gold for years and years. There would be all the more for her, as his wife, to inherit when he did go. This attitude seemed perfectly sane and obvious, so it was annoying that other people couldn’t see it.
They were so busy focusing on the Wife He Never Loved Like the First, they were blind to a truth that was plain to Innocence and had been for a while. Jack had an enemy – a deadly, vengeance-seeking enemy – and he or she was creeping closer all the time. Talking of which, watching the Belle Époque being blasted to bits had been a Kodak moment. God, it served him right! In her wildest dreams, she could not have imagined a more fitting end to his arrogant ‘Easter Party’. Easter! Comparing himself to Jesus Christ! Innocence was not a Christian, but in this instance she was certainly a defender of the faith. How ironic that when he’d ordered his heavies to turf her out, he had probably saved her life. One didn’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but she wasn’t sorry that his bit on the side, Maria, was pushing up daisies. That would teach her to steal another woman’s husband.
Today, she would (as she did every day) whisper in her husband’s ear, ‘Poor Maria is dead, I’m so sorry for your loss,’ in the hope that receipt of this fact would prompt a turn for the worse.
But he remained stubbornly immune, in his dream world. She also read to him the LA Times’s eulogy to Mollie Tomkinson: ‘Comparable to the untimely death of River Phoenix, a tragic and shocking tale of a precious, God-given talent cruelly struck down before its prime.’
But Innocence couldn’t feel bad for pretty young dead girls.
She had cheerfully read aloud the editorial, which bluntly suggested that Jack’s immoral business practices had ruined many lives, thus he was responsible for the creation of a raft of enemies. Perhaps in these desperate times it was sadly inevitable that one of these had resorted to terrorism? And while in no way did they condone cold-blooded murder, it could be argued that the blame for Mollie’s death on the ill-fated night of the Easter Party ultimately lay with her host.
Furthermore, it was said that her bereaved family were considering suing his arse for a hundred million dollars in lost earnings.
Innocence allowed herself to be patted down by Jack’s security. The agent was dour and non-smiling in a black bomber jacket and he didn’t meet her eye. ‘The thrill’s all mine,’ she muttered as he finally nodded towards the door.
To her surprise, he followed her in.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘But I do,’ he replied. ‘And I’ve got the gun.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she muttered. But in a way, she was glad for the company. She hated being with Jack. It felt as if death was in the room and she didn’t want to be contaminated. She would have preferred for her entourage to soothe her – Patrice, Jamie, Samson – but, PR-wise, it was better to be alone. The security guard was better than nothing. In fact, he was nothing. People like him did not get noticed by people like her.
She inched around the bed. It was hard to look at her husband in this helpless state. Weakness of any kind repulsed her. He looked so grey and shrunken, and she could barely suppress a shudder at the spaghetti of tubes attached to him. And the smell. It was sickly sweet, as if something, or someone, was slowly rotting. She sprayed her Chanel No. 5 around the room as if it were mace.
‘This is the ugliest place I have been in for fifteen years,’ she said aloud, and sighed. The neurosurgeon who’d operated on Jack’s head injuries had said that it was ‘hard to see into the future’. No doubt he’d be along shortly, in his self-important white coat, to bore her with further platitudes. The truth: Jack might recover fully, or die in the night. And if he didn’t come out of the coma within the next two weeks, she was going to suggest – or perhaps it would be wiser to prompt the doctors to suggest – that his life-support machine was turned off.
Innocence jammed two teddy bears on Jack’s pillow, one alongside each ear. Then she pulled her chair close and rested her hard leather boots on the soft mattress of his metal bed, slowly but firmly pushing his motionless legs to one side until she was fully comfortable.
Then she ripped off the fruit bowl’s cellophane wrapping and ate a cherry. There were a few doubles, and she hooked a pair over her ear. As a child, she’d never seen a cherry; as an adult she’d watched Alfie’s podgy little sister dance around the Cannadines’ vast and ornate sitti
ng room wearing ‘cherry earrings’ and wanted to slap her face. She flipped open her gold Chanel vanity mirror and admired the cherries. The million-pound Graff diamonds set them off nicely.
I am, she thought to herself, lighting a cigarette under the impassive gaze of the guard, finally living my life as I wanted to live it from the start.
‘Not in here,’ said the guard, nodding towards the ceiling.
Shit. If the sprinkler system came on, legionnaires’ disease was a given. She stubbed out the fag on the side of her chair.
‘I may seem untroubled’, she said, coolly, ‘over Mr Jelly Head here, but I am crazed with grief. Only I prefer to keep my pain and desperation to myself. It is the height of vulgarity, selfishness and bad manners to inflict one’s extreme emotions upon a third party. Also, in case you were unaware, I am a very private person.’
The guard blinked, and appeared to check his watch.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, irritated. ‘Am I boring you?’ You great ape.
He didn’t respond and she turned away in disgust. She had more pressing matters to attend to. Her husband’s solicitor should have got back to her by now. She needed to speak to him urgently about the will.
She deserved to inherit everything. If it weren’t for her, Jack would have lost everything, instead of most things. Not only that, she was the mother of his daughter – his blood daughter. During the past year, their relationship had been curt. He had the mistress. Husband and wife had probably slept in the same bed – well, not exactly slept – only three times in the last twelve months.
But that was a hazard of extreme wealth and untrammelled success. You shared stunning palatial homes around the world, but you were rarely in the same mansion at the same time. You had to attend to your interests in New York, LA, Bermuda, Positano, while he maintained his in Paris, Rome, Madrid. He had a charity benefit in London, while she must attend a fashion show in Milan. Being a Power Couple was impossible: you either had power, or you were a couple. She and Jack vastly preferred power to each other. It had got to the point where they were strangers who occasionally met in the night. After one such meeting, during which they’d screwed in the shower, she sliding slowly to her knees (something she hadn’t done with Jack for years), she had curled up next to him like a viper in the great ornate bed with its antique mirrored headboard, and smiled.