Rich Again

by Anna Maxted

  He nodded as she reached him, but when she went to hug him, he flinched.

  She jumped back.

  ‘Please. Come into my study.’

  She felt shaken, confused. ‘This is terrible for Ethan,’ Lurch had said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ethan,’ she blurted. Why was she apologizing to him, when her baby had fallen out of his window? ‘I hope the press will leave you alone. I … I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault.’

  She expected him to tell her not to be ridiculous but he said nothing, just motioned for her to sit down on the red straight-backed chair. It was weird. She sat, and now the tears streamed down her face.

  Ethan sat behind his desk and slung his feet on top of it. He nodded to a box of tissues. ‘Emily,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. Wipe your nose.’

  She felt her throat catch. Was he being sarcastic? ‘Congratulations? My children are in care.’ She didn’t quite dare add ‘because of you’, but the thought hung in the air.

  He smiled. ‘Because of me?’

  She looked at her feet. Her breath was in her throat, in a hard lump.

  He laughed, and a chill ran through her. Goose pimples prickled on her arms.

  ‘You can say it, Emily. It is my fault that your little Molly and George are in care, in the hands of God knows who, having God knows what done to them, and you, their mother, helpless to protect or save them. What a bugger. Your family has had its fair share of bad luck. I say fair, because, sweetie, it is fair.’

  She swallowed. What was this? It was … vile. Was he rehearsing for a part? ‘Why are you saying these … disgusting things? What do you mean?’ she whispered.

  He grinned. ‘Emily, I say congratulations because you can be the first to know. Oh, this is so exciting! Bear with me one sec!’ He held up a finger. Pressed an intercom. ‘Mrs Klout? Tea for two, please, and as it’s a special occasion, why don’t we break out a couple of KitKats? Smashing!’

  She stared at him. Who was this person? He wasn’t Ethan. He was like someone horrible pretending to be Ethan. This very morning, at four a.m., he had crept into her room and she had given him head. She had been half in love with this person. But … she had to get out.

  She jumped as Ethan rapped sharply on the desk. ‘PAY ATTENTION, BITCH! Thank you.’ He smiled. He was mad. He was fucking nuts. This psychopath, he must have kidnapped the real Ethan and had radical plastic surgery or something. This was LA.

  ‘What …’ she croaked, ‘ … what have you done with Ethan?’

  He stared at her and burst out laughing. ‘Oh, that’s sweet! That’s so cute! Sweetie, I am Ethan. Ethan is me. But, get this, I am an actor! But no, no, fair question. All right, how’s this: Ethan Summers is the name on my Equity card, I have been Nathan Williams, and Nathan Alexander is my current name by deed poll – after my dear mother, God rest her soul – but my original name – perhaps it will ring a little bell? – was Nathan Kent.’

  Kent? ‘But that’s …’

  ‘Yes, Emily. It is. It is your father’s name. Clink! Penny dropped? Talk about slow. Ah, thank you, Mrs Klout. The Royal Worcester and the silver teapot. Marvellous. And my cotton gloves – excellent. I hate to see a print on silver, Emily, it tarnishes within the hour. Perfect. This really is the only way to drink tea. Your non-fat gluten-free orange blossom cookies too – you spoil me!

  ‘Now, Emily. Let me tell you a story. A long time ago, your father adopted a little girl. Darling, perfect Claudia, oh, such a precious child. But Felicia, his wife, stupid bitch, too stupid to stay alive – sugar, Emily? – wanted a little boy to make the family complete. Et voici!’

  She stared at him, this madman, unbelieving.

  ‘Me, you fucking moron! Me! And then, when that stupid Felicia went and died, Jack couldn’t hack it! Loathed me, apparently. Me – I mean, look at me! But no, not good enough for Jack. Jack took me back to the fucking shop! Wanted his money back! And do you know what happened to that poor little boy?’

  Emily shook her head. She bit her lip to stop a whimper. The truth was, until now she had forgotten his existence. He had come and gone before she was even born. He was a vague memory, a snatch of overheard gossip.

  Ethan laughed – a horrible sound. ‘Oh, everything. Sex, violence, you name it! Pretty much everything that’ll happen to your two, I should think. That George is a cute kid – he’ll be someone’s bitch before he turns seven.’

  She jumped up. ‘Stop it. Shut up! I’m sorry – I’m sorry for what my father did. Look, he’s a crap father to all of us, not just you.’

  ‘No,’ he snarled. ‘You shut up. I haven’t finished. I decided that it wasn’t fair for Jack Kent to ruin my life. I have a finely attuned sense of what is fair, Emily. I decided that I would ruin his life. Of course’ – he smiled – ‘I have Mark to thank. He’s been super helpful. He was my counsellor, back in the day. He was the one who left out my case notes for me to read; he allowed me to discover who was responsible for my shit life. Mark made me see that I didn’t have to suffer, that I could make something of myself – that I deserved to be happy. And, now – ooh, you must try one of these cookies … GO ON – now I am so close to achieving my goal of destroying the Kent dynasty, making every one of you suffer as I suffered, I am happy.’

  Emily tried to swallow a piece of biscuit. It seemed to have sucked all the moisture from her mouth. ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘That old chestnut! No, Emily. Don’t get mad, get even. I’m getting even. And the hilarious part of it is, anyone could have done this. Your family made it easy. You brought it upon yourselves. I just had to tweak fate a little.’

  Was he going to kill her? She had to escape. Would Mrs Klout help? She should try to keep him talking.

  ‘W … What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m glad you ask! The hardest part of it has been not being able to tell. You know when you do something so brilliant you’re just aching to share? Ooh, I just can’t wait to tell you! So, here it is. Jack digs his own grave by marrying a gold-digger and screwing his dear friends and colleagues out of their money. Such a mensch! Meanwhile, Mark is kind enough to trace my real mother, silly bitch, and she is kind enough to provide me with a fine education and a nice inheritance.’

  ‘She … died?’

  ‘I killed her. Made it look like an accident. Mourned until probate was granted, buggered off to the Land of the Free. Hang on. I’ve got her eyeballs somewhere. Pickled. MAAAARK!’

  Oh, Jesus. ‘It’s OK. I … believe you. Please … go on.’

  ‘So, Mother paid for me to attend one of those exclusive schools with an excellent drama department – my King Lear was a sensation, the talent scouts just would not leave me be. I came over here. I waited tables for two weeks before my agent got me an audition. That was all it took. I only had to sleep with one person – the writer – ha! Only kidding. An industry joke, sweetie, don’t worry about it.

  ‘Mark came with me, Mary’s little lamb. So I had a bit of money, and now I had more. I had power. But the truth is, Emily, I’m no Lex Luther, I’m not claiming genius. An ape could have done it.

  ‘Your family – you only have yourselves to thank. Take Claudia. After Mark left the file open for me, I wrote to Claudia, claiming to be a girl who’d met her at a party. Poor, pathetic Claudia was so desperate for a chum, she believed me. Mark gathered a little information on her, and got a PI to trace her parents. Took about three days. She was looking for a job, I directed her to journalism, to the paper where her blood father worked. The rest she did herself. I knew she’d fall for him – I do my research, Emily, because, as you now know, you must never trust to luck!

  ‘Now here is the clever bit. It’s proven, Emily, that blood relatives separated by adoption often find each other sexually attractive when reunited. My own mother … fucking gross. But I knew that dear Claudia would be different. Thanks to Jack being so goddamn useless, she was gagging for a father figure. She was desperate! All I did was prompt their meeting. I didn’t force them to fall in
love.’

  She had to escape. But … she had to know. ‘What else?’

  ‘The bomb – yes, guilty as charged! Again, if your mother had been just that little bit kinder to her poor brother Gerry, he would have refused to help out. He would have said, “How dare you offer me three million quid and threaten my children, I wouldn’t hurt my sister for all the money in the world.” But you know what? He jumped at the chance, the old creep. Because she’d dropped him, just as Jack dropped me. Family! You people, you don’t see the importance of family! Family is everything, love is all, but to you, it’s nothing. You’re obsessed with money, the lot of you. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘What about …?’

  ‘Timmy! Screaming iron! Girl, you need your gaydar tuned! But’ – Ethan shook his head – ‘money, money, money! You had to have that castle, didn’t you? If you hadn’t married Tim, I couldn’t have led him astray. Well, not me personally, I prefer snatch. But Mark has connections within the community. And someone’s going to do it if the money’s right. I paid for his luxury stay in Barbuda – oh, it’s a gorgeous place, so romantic. Do you really think that tight arse the Earl would shell out after his son had married you? Again, Emily, you people don’t pay enough attention to matters of the heart. People have feelings, emotions; they rarely act out of character. Where’s your empathy, Emily? The Grand Old Duke of York: isn’t that what the papers call him? Can’t get enough dick!’

  Very slowly, Emily looked around the study for a weapon. ‘And my mother going to prison?’ she said, as a prompt. The more he talked, the less he’d notice what she was up to.

  ‘Ha! Pure luck! But let’s face it, she’s so crook – she was well overdue for a stay inside. But, again, serendipity! If she and Jack didn’t hate each other’s guts, I couldn’t have pinned it on her. Still, she got out. She can thank her brother for that. His mouth was just too big. He had to go.’

  Emily made all the right noises. ‘Mm … Oh, yes … Ha ha … Definitely …’ Maybe there would be a paperweight. No. No one except Timmy and small children used paper. The gold Buddha? The Oscar. That would be serendipity. To brain him with his Oscar. The Oscar was heavy, but the gold Buddha looked heavier. She wondered if she had a chance of overpowering him. He practised Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, or, as he called it, BJJ. Oh, she’d said. That sounds similar to what I practise! She shuddered. The thought of having gone down on this … madman … it turned her stomach.

  ‘Emily, I hope you’re listening. This concerns you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She forced herself to stare into his eyes. They were beautiful.

  ‘You’re not going to get your children back.’

  With a shriek of primal rage, she leaped at him across the desk, clawing at his face. He punched her once, on the nose. The pain was excruciating; she could barely see; the warm blood ran into her mouth, tasting of metal. She tried to pull at his hair, baring her teeth to bite. This time, he hurled her to the floor. Her head struck the stone with a great crack and an agonizing white-hot pain shot through her. She tried to speak, reach out, but she couldn’t. Her vision was fading. She saw his handsome face, now blurred, in the distance, she saw him pull off his white cotton gloves with his teeth, and spit them – ‘pah, pah’ – on to the floor. She heard him whisper, ‘Goodnight, sweet Emily, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,’ and then, though she tried so hard to resist, the darkness came.

  LOS ANGELES, SUNDAY

  Claudia

  ‘Claudia? Claudia? Is this Claudia?’ The voice sounded panicked, almost hysterical, and vaguely familiar.

  ‘Yes. This is Claudia. Who is this?’

  ‘Claudia, you don’t know me. I’m a friend of your sister. My name’s Ethan. I’m so sorry. I have bad news.’

  Ethan Summers. He of the box-office smashes and the non-childproof beach villa.

  ‘I know about the children,’ she said, hoping her voice sounded crisp. ‘I’m at LAX. I’m in a queue. Tell Emily I’m taking a cab to the Hills. I’ll call her from a landline as soon as I get there. Goodbye, Ethan.’

  She cut off. She was a journalist; she was not going to ooh and ah over him because he was prominent in the entertainment business. She interviewed famous people month after month, and some were nice and some were not. Some had talent, some were lucky. Mostly they were like normal people, except with more money and bigger heads. She had no doubt that Ethan’s head was the size of a pumpkin.

  The news about George and Molly being taken into care had come out of nowhere. At first she’d thought it was some terrible mistake, but Sky News couldn’t report on anything else. Of course, this story had it all: love, tragedy, violence, celebrity, a beautiful young mother – it was ratings gold. She’d booked her flight – Sunday morning was the earliest available. It hadn’t occurred to her to call her father. Innocence had called her – she was on a business trip and tropical storms had delayed her flight. Tell Emily she’d be there the instant the weather permitted. Claudia had called Emily but she had never picked up. Claudia shuddered. The thought of those two gorgeous children being snatched from their mother … it was inhumane. She wanted to cry.

  If they weren’t returned to Emily within the next twenty-four hours – no, the next twelve hours – Claudia would embark on an international publicity campaign to have them returned. Vanity Fair, Sunday Times Style, UK Vogue would allow her this: she would write the first expose of life as the daughter of Jack Kent and Miss Innocence Ashford. She would be brutally honest about what Emily had been, but also about who she was, and how she had changed on becoming a mother. Truly, those children were the blessings of her existence. They had been her focus, and her joy.

  Admittedly, Emily had floundered at first, but she had grown to love them, and her confidence in herself as a parent had also grown. When Claudia saw her with her son and daughter, she often had to run upstairs to a bathroom to have a good bawl. It was a beautiful thing, strangely painful, to see the tenderness between them. Emily had no idea that she was such a natural, and now, because of this one terrible slip – it was so frightening that one slip was all it took to nearly kill a child – she would be forever punished; an unfit parent.

  Emily was one of the few notorious people in the world whose reputation was actually a lot worse than the reality. Claudia would change the public perception and the social services would be forced to reconsider the case. Not because they cared, but because no one likes to be hated.

  And, of course, the main point of her piece – or pieces, for she would write for anyone and everyone – would be that it was curious that Ethan had escaped blame. Not one paper or TV station had suggested that he might be culpable. She noticed that while reporters mentioned that the accident had occurred at a property ‘owned’ by the superstar, they also took pains to note that ‘Ethan Summers was not present’, when, according to Claudia’s sources, he was a few hundred yards from the house. Also, the journalists became vague when it came down to who had actually left the baby alone. ‘The child’s mother, Emily Kent, daughter of the disgraced billionaire, was lying on the beach when the accident happened,’ according to one female newsreader with a severe bob and judgemental eyebrows. ‘Ms Kent had asked an employee at the beach house, who was unqualified in child care, to change the baby’s diaper inside the house. She was aware that the man had no official training.’

  Claudia felt her face grow hot with rage. It was disgusting. Emily would never have risked Molly’s safety – it was bizarre that she’d allowed this person to take the baby. Claudia wanted this employee interviewed – by the police, or herself. No doubt Ethan had the scarier lawyers.

  Her lip curled. If her father had thought to give his younger daughter the full backing of his legal team, perhaps Emily’s name would have been handled with the same degree of care and reverence that the media had accorded Mr Summers.

  Surely he was liable in some way. She’d even spoken to her mother’s solicitors on Madison. There had been a case in California where a landlord was
deemed liable for a toddler’s injuries, sustained after falling from a window because: ‘traditional tort principles imposed upon a landlord a duty to exercise due care for the residents’ safety in those areas under the landlord’s control.’

  But then, oh God, he was Emily’s new best friend. Emily’s famous new best friend. Emily wouldn’t want to sue him. Suing Ethan Summers (and you might as well sue God) would not get Emily her children back.

  If Claudia wanted to help, she’d have to focus on Emily. As it was, the media didn’t fear Emily. She was young, naive; she was an easy target. She was indeed that poor little rich girl. The whole world could see that her parents were too wrapped up in their own lives to support her.

  Well, her sister wasn’t. Emily disliked her, she knew that. But she had never forgotten that one time when Emily had realized that her fiancé Martin was actually her father. Emily had been a saint. She had held Claudia up when Claudia could barely stand. Claudia knew that Emily loved her, even if Emily didn’t. And Claudia loved Emily. She felt like a small flickering wax candle next to the bright, crackling, sparkling, fizzing firework that was her sister. She loved her passion and her spirit and her sharp wit, and it would be amazing if she, Claudia, could actually do something for Emily. If she could save those beloved children, return them to their mother, then she would die happy, knowing that she had accomplished one thing that actually mattered.

  Her mobile rang again. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Claudia, it’s Ethan again. I’m so sorry to trouble you but – it’s not the children. It’s Emily.’

  Claudia felt a cold hand squeeze her heart. ‘What about Emily?’

  There was a stifled sob, then Ethan blurted, ‘She’s dead. She … killed herself. She … must have thrown herself over the banisters. My housekeeper found her. She was just … Oh God. I’m so sorry. I guess … the grief … those poor kids … those poor kids …’

  People in the queue were turning to stare at Claudia. ‘Are you OK?’ She wasn’t aware of having made a sound, but now she clung to a stranger. ‘My sister,’ she gasped. ‘My sister … she’s twenty-three.’