He wished she’d stop.
‘But he was a genius.’ She looked around the boutique at the amazing things his twisted mind had created. ‘And, God help her, Nina loved him.’
They walked out of the boutique to the waiting limousine, and as Eddie waited for a suitable gap in the traffic Zakahr looked at the familiar cerulean blue building. There should be triumph building, surely? Except when he turned away he saw Lavinia staring at the building too, a faraway look in her eyes, and he remembered their first journey and how different things had been.
Her phone bleeped and she read a text message. For a second she closed her eyes, and then gave a wry smile. ‘Jasmine.’
Just for a moment he swore he saw a flash of tears in her eyes, and Zakahr knew that despite the smile and the talk and the clothes she was struggling inside. He did the kindest thing he could.
‘I won’t be needing you tomorrow.’
She was silent for a moment before she spoke. ‘Am I just to watch it on the news?’
‘Resign,’ Zakahr said. ‘I’ll ensure you get a good package.’ He saw the clench of her jaw and corrected himself. ‘A fair package. You can say you were so opposed when you found out that you resigned on principle…’
It was actually a relief.
There was sadness—an aching sadness—but there was actually relief.
‘Can I come back for my things this afternoon?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you be out?’
It killed her that he nodded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THIS had nothing to do with Zakahr.
She sat in Ms Hewitt’s cluttered office and, though her world was falling apart, she knew she couldn’t blame this part of it on him.
‘Your references are wonderful,’ Ms Hewitt said. ‘Lavinia, I am so impressed at how you have turned your life around, and I don’t doubt you would be a wonderful carer for Rachael. But we go to every length to keep a family together, and with extra support we feel Rachael…’
Lavinia had begged and pleaded her case, all to no avail, and now it came down to this. ‘Will I still get to see her?’
‘Of course.’ Ms Hewitt was the kindest she had been. ‘I’ve spoken to Rowena and suggested you have time with her this afternoon, and I’ve also recommended in my report that you have overnight access once a week—which is more than before. Your role as a big sister to Rachael is one we take seriously.’
‘And the decision is made?’
‘There’ll be a case conference on Monday,’ Ms Hewitt said. ‘I just wanted to tell you what to expect.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Lavinia…’ Ms Hewitt took off her glasses. ‘You can get a lawyer—you can challenge things, delay things a little—but nobody is on trial here. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about what’s best for Rachael.’ She was what was best for Rachael.
Despite the decision, right at her very core Lavinia knew that.
And she would be a good parent; the next hour proved that—because, even though she was bleeding inside, she fronted up to the hardest gig of her life and smiled when she collected Rachael.
‘Where are we going?’ Rachael asked as Lavinia started the car.
‘We have to go to my office, just so I can collect a few things,’ Lavinia said. There were essentials there, like her make-up bag and her MP3 player, but hopefully Zakahr wouldn’t be there—still, given the hour, she thought it better to warn Rachael.
‘My boss might be a bit funny,’ Lavinia explained as they parked the car and walked along the city street and through the golden doors. ‘He’s a bit of a grump—and you wait till you meet Abigail.’ She pulled a face, which involved making her eyes go crossed. Unfortunately at the same time the lift doors opened. Unfortunately Zakahr was in the lift.
His eyes looked to Rachael, and then away.
He did not want to see her—did not want to think of what he was doing to either of them.
Could not.
He could feel Rachael’s eyes on him, wished the lift would go faster.
‘Is that your boss?’ Rachael asked, and Lavinia’s eyes widened a fraction. Rachael rarely initiated conversation, and Lavinia rather wished she hadn’t chosen now to start.
‘It is,’ Lavinia said.
‘The grumpy one?’ Rachael checked, and without looking Lavinia just knew Zakahr’s tongue was rolling in his cheek.
They did a little dance as he went to step out. Zakahr was desperate to get out of the confines of the lift, but then he remembered his manners—though he wished he hadn’t, because now he had to walk behind them.
See more of them.
Lavinia, polished and glamorous. Rachael, her dark curls in knots, her socks grubby and mismatched, wearing a T-shirt too short and shorts too long. He could see why Lavinia was upset that the clothing she bought for her sister wasn’t being passed on to the little girl.
He just didn’t want to see.
‘I won’t be long. I just need to get my things,’ Lavinia said as they reached the office.
Zakahr brushed past without response.
‘Right, can you sit there for five minutes? I just need to empty out my desk,’ Lavinia said as brightly as she could as Rachael sat on the sofa.
For Zakahr it was hell.
Zakahr’s job meant not getting involved.
Figures he could deal with—sob-stories he just tuned out.
For his business to survive he had to be ruthless.
He did not want to know about Eddie and his sick grandchild, he did not want to know that Lavinia’s mortgage was a monthly concern, and more than that, he did not want a face to the name of Rachael.
Zakahr stared unseeing out of his office window, tried to tell himself that this time tomorrow he would be on a plane, that all he was leaving behind was not his problem.
Yet it wasn’t that which consumed him.
Somehow—even though he had deliberately not thought about it, had done his level best not to think about it—somehow he had pictured Rachael as a mini-Lavinia. A blonde, precocious child—a resilient, happy little thing. What had shocked him to the core—what he was having so much trouble dealing with at this very moment—was that Rachael reminded Zakahr of himself.
He could feel her mistrust, her fear, her resignation, her expectation that hurt would follow hurt.
He could not stand to be involved.
He did not want to be involved.
He gave millions to charity, he spoke at functions—but there were no pictures of Zakahr donning a baseball cap and smiling beside a child. He kept his distance.
He was being manipulated, he was sure.
Deliberately not thinking, certainly for once not analysing, he pressed on the intercom.
‘Lavinia?’ When she didn’t come immediately, he marched out of the office. ‘Can I see you now?’
‘One moment.’ She was getting Rachael a drink from the water cooler, refusing to let him rush her, and Zakahr returned to his office, sat at his desk. Ages later, but more like a moment, she came in.
‘Is this the sympathy card you’re playing?’ Zakahr challenged as soon as the door was closed. ‘Because if you’re using her…’
‘I’m not the one who uses people, Zakahr.’ Lavinia was as direct as ever. ‘And just in case that black heart of yours is having an attack of guilt, though I doubt it, there’s no need. I didn’t get access to Rachael, so my lack of a job doesn’t affect her future one bit. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get my things.’
‘She’s going back?’
‘Yep!’
Lavinia shrugged, but Zakahr could see the effort behind the apparent nonchalance. It was as if her shoulders were pushing up bricks.
‘She’ll adapt. Oh, and Zakahr…’ She gave him a black smile. ‘On the drive here I heard them announce tomorrow’s press conference on the radio. Enjoy your revenge—hope it’s everything you’ve dreamed of.’
‘What did you ex
pect, Lavinia?’ He could see that she didn’t get it. ‘Did you really think that I’d come here to make things up with my family? Have you any idea—?’
‘I’ve got a perfectly good idea of what you must have gone through,’ Lavinia shouted. ‘Because I lived it, Zakahr—because so many times I wished that my mother had turned her back on me. The same way I wish Rachael’s father would turn her back on her.’
‘What Nina did—’
‘I’ll tell you what she did,’ Lavinia said, ‘this woman you hate so much. She did something she bitterly regrets—has done many things she no doubt bitterly regrets. But she will always be my friend.’
‘Your friend?’
‘My friend,’ Lavinia admitted. ‘She gave me a decent job, gave me a chance in life. I didn’t just dream of weddings, Zakahr. I used to lie in bed at night, listening to my mum entertaining her friends, and wish that I’d find out I was adopted. To this day sometimes I wish my mother had done what Nina did. Believe me, sometimes I think it would have been kinder.’
‘Well, I think that rules out a career in counselling!’ Lavinia said to a nonplussed Rachael, and then she kissed her nose—whether Rachael wanted it or not.
‘Love you,’ Lavinia said, and kissed her little fat cheek, which was probably the wrong thing too. But there was almost a smile on Rachael’s cross little face. ‘I love you so much.’ Which was, no doubt, according to Ms Hewitt, putting too much pressure on her. But Rachael was smiling, and Lavinia gave her a little tickle, and then she was actually laughing. ‘I want to eat you up, you’re so cute.’
And it was so nice to just be sisters—one big, one little, one funny, one serious, but sisters. And they should be together.
Ignoring potential wrath, Lavinia didn’t take Rachael for a milkshake or a boring swing in the park, and neither did she take her back to Rowena straight away.
‘Where are we going?’ Rachael stood on the elevator in a large department store as they went up past children’s wear, past toys, past books, till finally they were in the bedding department.
‘We need to sort out your room,’ Lavinia said, trying to work out how much room she had left on her credit card. ‘Let’s choose some nice bedclothes.’
‘Am I coming to live with you?’ Rachael asked, and Lavinia could hear the hope and fear and doubt in her sister’s voice. It almost broke her heart that she couldn’t give the answer they both surely wanted.
‘Not for now,’ Lavinia admitted. ‘But I’m going to keep trying to make that happen. I don’t get to decide…’ She saw Rachael’s little pinched face tighten. ‘But you are going to have your own room at my house.’ Then she qualified it a touch. ‘Wherever I live there will be a room there for you—even if I can only get you one night now and then, or even if we have to wait till you’re sixteen.’ Lavinia had an appalling thought. ‘I’ll be in my thirties!’ She was surprised that Rachael actually smiled. ‘Come on.’
It was, in spite of a broken heart, in spite of losing everything dear to her, one of the best hours of her life.
She didn’t listen to the experts, she listened to her heart—and, yes, it was Zakahr’s advice she took.
They chose pinks and greens for her bedspread and pillowcases, and a butterfly dreamcatcher, and then Lavinia got Rachael the cheapest mobile phone. They took their wares home, and made up the bed and put up curtains, and Lavinia set up the phone and taught Rachael how to text.
X
‘I’ll send you a kiss every night,’ Lavinia said. ‘And, if you can, you can send me one back.’
So Rachael had a go at texting, and Lavinia’s phone bleeped, and she got her first kiss from Rachael.
‘Come on,’ Lavinia said. ‘Let’s get you back to Rowena.’
And this time when she offered her hand Rachael took it.
‘You know, we’re going to be okay,’ Lavinia said. ‘I’m going to make sure of it.’
And she did try to hand her back with grace—did her absolute best to trust that Ms Hewitt maybe did know best—but as they walked up the garden path Lavinia could feel her heart cracking as Rachael looked up at her.
‘I want to be with you.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Lavinia said as bravely as she could. She saw Rowena’s shadow as she came to open the door, and then her heart surely stopped beating.
‘Lavinia, I don’t want to go back to him.’
And she knew you should never make a child promises you couldn’t keep but, handing her over to Rowena, Lavinia hugged her tight and made one. ‘I’ll do everything I can.’
‘Promise?’
Lavinia nodded. ‘I promise.’
She let her go, smiled to Rowena and even managed a wave as she drove off. But hearing Rachael’s plea was more than she could bear, because on Monday she was going back to her father.
There wasn’t time to break down, there wasn’t time to cry, there really wasn’t much time to think.
All Lavinia knew was that she’d do anything for that little girl.
Anything.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE could do this, Lavinia told herself.
Lavinia paced the city streets, high heels clicking, and she didn’t care.
Kevin wanted money, a significant amount of money, and she knew where she could get it. She just had to work out how.
There was the Kolovsky boutique—the place every woman wanted to be—and she stared in at the window and saw the silk and the opals. And then she saw her reflection, and it would have been so easy to rest her head on the window and just weep, but if she started she would never stop. Instead she swept into the store and selected a Kolovsky wrap—one of the last designs of the founder, Ivan Kolovsky, spun in golds and reds and ambers, in the same thread as the dress she had worn that night she had first kissed Zakahr. The staff knew her, of course, but they blinked a little when she told them to charge it to Zakahr Belenki.
‘And this, too,’ Lavinia informed them, grabbing a koa slip dress. And then she saw another wrap, a turquoise one, filled with silvers and greens like a peacock on display, and she knew who would love this one. Ignoring Alannah’s incessant questions and requests for a signature, Lavinia left—and ground the gears in her car all the way to the hospital.
‘Here.’ She wrapped it round Nina’s shoulders. ‘Ivan designed this one.’ She smoothed the silk around her friend’s shoulders and tried to comfort her. But she wouldn’t stop crying, wouldn’t stop wailing.
‘He’s called a press conference for tomorrow. It’s over,’ Nina sobbed. ‘Tomorrow it is all over.’
‘Stop it,’ Lavinia said, because it was too much like her own mother.
‘He hasn’t been in to see me. He’ll never forgive me. Riminic won’t come to see me.’ Round and round on the same pointless loop. ‘He’s never going to forgive me.’
‘Perhaps not!’ Lavinia was cross, but she was kind. ‘Maybe he’ll never forgive you, Nina. But you know what? You can forgive yourself. You did a terrible, awful thing—but that’s not all you are. You’ve done many good things, too—look how you helped me. You gave me a good job, you helped me with Rachael, with so many things.’
‘I want my son.’
‘You have your son!’ Lavinia said. ‘Whether he forgives you, or loves you, still you have your son…’ But there was no reaching her, and the doctor moved in with medication. Lavinia shooed him off. ‘You want more Valium, Nina? Or why not have a drink, like my mum did? Or you can get up, get washed…’
‘It hurts,’ Nina insisted, thumping at her chest, and Lavinia couldn’t do it any more.
‘Life hurts,’ Lavinia said. ‘But you can’t just give in. Sometimes you do what you have to at the time, and then work out how to forgive yourself afterwards.’
And so, now, must she.
For the first time in almost a week Zakahr shaved. He stood with a towel around his hips and tried somehow to shave and not fully look at himself in the mirror.
His suit was chosen for the morning, his s
peech written, his case packed. Soon it would be over.
And then came a frantic knocking at his door.
‘Yes?’
Zakahr stood back as a mini-torpedo swept into his suite.
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ She was breathless, could not look at him, but she was determined. ‘That offer.’
‘What offer?’
‘For money.’
‘Lavinia…’ he sounded bored ‘…you told me very clearly that money was the last thing you wanted.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ There was a frantic air to her, an urgency as she rained his face with kisses.
‘Lavinia…’
Zakahr peeled her off him. He did not want to deal with this. He did not want to deal with her, Lavinia, the person who made him sway, this woman who clouded his judgment. So he pushed her away with words.
‘I might have known you’d revert to type.’
‘I’m my mother’s daughter.’
‘Just go.’
She could not. She would not.
So she did it—she pulled off her dress to reveal the koa slip beneath. She was shaking, and ashamed, but worse—far worse—he remained unmoved.
‘Here.’ He strode across the room to his desk, pulled out a cheque. ‘For the other night. Now, get out.’
And she had what she wanted, there in her hand, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough—and it had nothing to do with money. She was kissing him again, pressing her lips on his unwilling mouth. He turned his face away.
‘Is it money you want, Lavinia, or sex?’ He wanted her, not what she was doing. He remembered her abhorrence at the idea and tried to save her from herself. Pulling at her wrists, he pushed her away from his body. For even as he rejected her she would surely be able to feel he was lying.
Both, she almost sobbed. But that wasn’t the entire answer. There was a third—an addition that she could not bring herself to admit.
She didn’t want him to go, yet somehow had to accept there was nothing here for him to stay for.
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