Jeremy lay beneath her, arms and legs outstretched like a starfish, his chest wheezing like an old boiler.
‘You are amaaaaazing,’ he said, blowing air through his lips, tiny beads of oily sweat beginning to form on his chubby face.
She climbed off him and pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them in a bid to comfort herself.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she suggested after a moment.
Jeremy stifled a groan. It was the only downfall to being married to a young, fit woman. She had so much energy.
‘Come on,’ she said, dragging him by the arm. ‘Just a short one I promise, old man,’ she teased. Jeremy groaned, only this time there was nothing orgasmic about it.
‘Alright, alright, if you insist,’ he relented. ‘But at least let me put some shorts on first ’
‘No!’ she cried, ‘I shan’t!’ Snatching up his pile of clothes, she began to make off with them.
‘Yasmin!’ he shrieked, ‘come back here! What are you doing? Give me my clothes back.’
‘Come and get them!’ she sang, her laugher ringing out across the landscape.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jeremy muttered, as he proceeded to follow her. Frankly he was not that amused. He had done everything she had asked him to do today; he had agreed to forego the underwear catwalk show to come on this ridiculous trip, had risked his life allowing her to drive up the rock face and now he was chasing her, naked, running like a madman along the edge of a cliff. What he really wanted to do was return to the Château, take a nice long bath and indulge himself in a little five star butler service, not play silly buggers like this.
‘Yasmin, I mean it, I want you to stop!’ he called out to her, more firmly now, but she had disappeared from view and suddenly Jeremy was worried.
It was rough and craggy at the top of the cliff, great tufts of mountain grass dotted across the landscape between the dips and dells. She was probably hiding behind one of the trees, Jeremy thought, casting his eyes all around him, grateful that she had not taken his shoes with her.
‘Yasmin!’ Jeremy called out across the landscape, the echo of his own voice suddenly chilling him. Dear God, he hoped she hadn’t come to any harm.
‘Over here, Jeremy,’ a small voice cried out. ‘Please, help me, Jeremy, I’m hurt.’
‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ he wheezed, seized by panic. They were high up on a godforsaken mountain. It was rocky; full of dips and slopes and uneven surfaces. It was bloody treacherous.
‘I’m coming, darling, hold on,’ he called out to her, turning in the direction where the voice had come.
‘I’m down here,’ she called out, thinly. ‘Over by the tree.’
Icy fingers of panic gripped Jeremy’s throat as he made his way over to the large tree overhanging the rock face. Dear God, had she fallen?
‘Yasmin, darling, where are you?’ Jeremy’s voice was desperate with anguish. ‘I can’t find you.’
‘Come closer to the edge,’ her voice rang out, ‘I’m down here … I’ve fallen, please help me, Jeremy, help me!’
Jeremy gasped as his naked, overweight body lumbered towards the tree. Reaching it, he heaved an audible sigh of relief as he spied his pile of clothes on the ground.
‘Oh, thank God,’ he panted, stepping into his golfing shorts. Reluctant to look over the edge, he was terrified of what he might find; his wife, lying there, her arms and legs sticking out in all directions like a broken doll. But he knew he had no choice and so he shuffled a little closer.
‘Gotcha!’ she yelled as she sprung out from behind some bushes, causing him to stumble backwards in alarm.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, woman! What on earth are you playing at?’ he barked, properly cross with her for the first time since they had met.
‘Oh sorry, darling,’ she smirked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Did I frighten you? Were you scared for your life?’
Jeremy heard the bitterness in her voice and frowned, angry and confused and, yes, if he was honest with himself, a little scared.
‘We’re 700ft up, Yasmin, and I have vertigo if you must know,’ he snapped back.
‘The heart bleeds,’ she retorted, her face a mask of contempt.
Jeremy was baffled by the sudden switch in his wife’s behaviour. She was acting as if she hated him or something. Really hated him.
‘What’s got into you, Yasmin?’ he enquired. ‘Is this because I said I want to drive on the way back?’
There was a pause as she met his eye.
‘I lied,’ she finally said.
‘Lied?’ Jeremy shrugged, nonplussed.
‘About my sister.’
Sister? She had never even mentioned a bloody sister until today.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he barked, making to walk past her, only she stepped forward, blocking his path.
Surprised, Jeremy glanced nervously behind him at the drop below.
‘Let me pass, Yasmin,’ he commanded. He was tiring of this game now and had half a mind to give her a short, sharp slap across the face, shock her into submission.
‘You knew my sister,’ Yasmin said. ‘Her name was Chloe Jones. Jones – like me. Do you remember the name?’
Jeremy shook his head, blindsided. Chloe Jones … Chloe Jones … Thinking on it, wasn’t that the name of the girl who had gone and bloody well died in his swimming pool all those years ago? He had been accused of murdering the poor thing at one point, although this was soon put right once the police realised there was no evidence against him. But if Chloe Jones was Yasmin’s sister then who the hell was Yasmin Jones? Jeremy began to panic.
‘I remember a Chloe,’ Jeremy eventually said weakly, eyes nervously darting towards the cliff’s edge and back to her again. Two steps backwards and he knew he would fall to instant death. ‘She died in my swimming pool.’
‘You mean you murdered her in your swimming pool,’ Yasmin corrected him, her voice almost sinister in its sweetness.
‘No, no, I didn’t.’ Jeremy shook his head vehemently.
‘You and your friends violated and abused her, and then left her to drown in the pool.’ Yasmin’s heart was knocking against her ribs so hard that it physically hurt. This was it; this was the moment she had worked so hard and sacrificed for, finally confronting her sister’s killer with the truth that she hoped would destroy him. ‘And then, as her life was ebbing away, you carried on with your filthy, debauched party as if nothing had happened. Did you know that Chloe was a virgin until that night at your house? Untouched by a man,’ she added, picturing her sister’s young and innocent face from the video footage as all those men had clamoured on top of her, one by one. ‘She was pure and lovely and good – and you destroyed it,’ she said, barely able to conceal her hatred. ‘You and those animals you called friends destroyed it all …’
Jeremy’s mouth was so dry he had to think about removing his tongue from the roof of his mouth to speak.
‘Look, Yasmin, please,’ he begged. ‘Let’s move away from the edge of the cliff and talk about this properly, shall we?’ She watched as great beads of sweat trickled down his ruddy cheeks. She could see he was terrified and felt dismay in the knowledge that this did not please her as much as she had hoped it would.
‘Are you frightened, Jeremy? Afraid? Well, I hope so, because now you know what it felt like for my sister. An eighteen-year-old, young and innocent with her whole life ahead of her. A life you stole, snuffed out like a candle without a second’s thought.’ Yasmin paused. ‘Did you know, I went into care after her death? No, of course you didn’t,’ she berated herself. ‘Why would you? You couldn’t have cared less about whether or not Chloe might have a family, people who loved her, who relied on her, she was just another meaningless hooker as far as you were concerned; a piece of meat. But to me she was everything.’
‘Yasmin,’ Jeremy spluttered, mindful of antagonising her. She was dreadfully upset and suddenly he wasn’t sure of what she was capable of. ‘Darli
ng please, we can talk about this. Let’s just get in the car and drive back to the Château. We’ll talk over dinner, smooth all this mess out …’
Yasmin let out an incredulous laugh and Jeremy felt his heart sink.
‘And my name is Stacey,’ Yasmin said, lighting herself a pink Sobranie cocktail cigarette and blowing smoke in his direction. ‘Stacey Jones. Yasmin Jones doesn’t exist. She is a character that I made up. One that I knew would help me to exact my revenge, revenge for Chloe and for all those years I suffered in care as a result of you taking her away from me.’ Jeremy flinched, the gravity of the precarious position he found himself in hit him in all its clarity.
‘So you planned all this then,’ he said, ‘to marry me and then destroy me, because you think I am responsible for destroying your life, for your sister’s death? An eye for an eye, is that it?’
‘I saw the film,’ Yasmin said, blowing perfect smoke rings into the air above her.
Jeremy’s mind began to race.
‘Film?’
‘Yes, Jeremy. Footage from the party. It’s all there in colour. You and your friends sticking it to my beautiful young sister, her body floating face down in the pool. I saw it all.’
Jeremy wondered if he could make a run for it, barge right past her, but he knew that although tiny, she was young and strong and he was just so overweight and unfit. She would only need to give him a half-decent shove backwards.
‘How did you get it? The film, I mean. It was in the strong rooms at Forbes Bank.’
Yasmin gave a sardonic laugh.
‘Where there’s a will, Jeremy.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Another good philosophy in life.’
‘I didn’t kill her, I promise you,’ he protested pathetically, the realisation that his marriage was probably over beginning to hit home. ‘She had been given drugs, told that they were harmless – and she drowned. It was an accident. A tragic accident. Believe me. I suffered for years afterwards, Yasmin, years I tell you …’
Suddenly Jeremy thought about taking those two steps backwards. He wasn’t sure he wanted to live with the knowledge that his wife was not who he had thought she was, and that she had never loved him. The shame would be too much to bear.
‘I was a young man when it happened,’ he said resignedly. ‘I cared about no one and nothing back then. I may not have killed Chloe with my bare hands,’ Jeremy said, ‘but yes, I used her and discarded her and did not care what happened to her, and for that I will be sorry for all eternity. But I didn’t kill her, I didn’t kill her …’
He saw the look on Yasmin’s face as she approached him and, forgetting himself, instinctively took a couple of steps backwards, losing his footing in the process. Jeremy screamed as he grasped on to a tuft of mountain grass, the only thing that stood between him and assured death.
Instinctively, Yasmin ran to him, dropping to her knees as she grasped hold of both his thick wrists.
‘Hold on!’ she found herself saying. ‘For God’s sake, hold on!’
Jeremy let out a blood-curdling scream.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ she reassured him. ‘Try and get a footing if you can. I will pull you up.’
Yasmin looked down at Jeremy, his face a pathetic display of terror and despair, and cursed herself for the stab of pity she felt in her guts. By rights she could let him fall to his death. That’s what she had wanted all along, wasn’t it? She could tell the authorities that he had fallen in an accident and gone on to claim his considerable wealth for herself. But now it came down to it, she just couldn’t bring herself to let him come to any harm.
Yasmin hooked one of her legs around a tree for support and slowly began to help her husband heave his heavy bulk back up the cliff face.
‘You saved me?’ a sobbing Jeremy spluttered as she helped him scrabble to the safety of land. ‘Why didn’t you just let me fall?’
Yasmin sighed, her chest heaving with exertion and adrenalin.
‘You forgot another saying,’ she said sadly. ‘Two wrongs never make a right.’
CHAPTER 63
Dressed in her uniform of Chanel Boucle skirt suit, her Morello Cherry red hair cut into a neat, shiny bob, Cressida Lucas cleared her throat and looked directly into Camera 2.
‘Can I have a little more up-lighting for my close-up, Terence, there’s a poppet,’ she smiled broadly at the DOP. ‘I realise I’m back from the dead but I’d rather not look as if I am if it’s all the same to you, darling.’
Cressida knew that the interview she was about to give would be watched by millions of people the world over. It was her moment of glory, and, if she played it just right, she knew she had the potential to become an overnight star.
As a way of saying thank you to Sammie for not having exposed her true identity, Yasmin had asked Imogen to introduce her to the inimitable Cressida in a bid to see if the media maven couldn’t put a little work her way. As a result, Cressida had insisted that Sammie Grainger was to conduct her interview and Cressida watched as the sound man adjusted the excited-looking young journalist’s microphone, carefully prepping her for her first live TV link.
‘Ready to go in five, Sammie,’ the director said. ‘Cressida, are you ready?’ he asked as he began to count down. ‘Five, four, three …’
‘As I’ll ever be, darling,’ she smiled, taking a deep breath. ‘As I’ll ever be.’
*
Perched on the edge of the Balinese four poster bed inside the master suite that was his bedroom, Sebastian Forbes agitatedly switched on the flat-screen TV. Watching as Cressida Lucas’s face flashed up on screen, larger than life itself, he felt physically sick. There could be no mistake; it really was her.
Sebastian had hoped that somehow it had all been a horrible mistake and that the woman who had burst into the police station just happened – unfortunately for her – to simply look like Cressida Lucas.
Sebastian felt his blood chill. That insufferable woman had always been his nemesis, lingering in the background of his life like a nasty smell. Now she was back from the dead, like something from a horror film, even if he was reluctantly a little grateful to her for saving his wife’s liberty.
‘Hello and welcome to Live at Five,’ Sammie’s dulcet tones rang out across the room. ‘Tonight we have an exclusive interview with the woman whose sensational story has sent shock waves around the world. The international press have dubbed her, quite simply, “The Survivor”, and Hollywood bigwigs are already clamouring for the film rights to this most shocking tale of courage and survival,’ Sammie said, expertly addressing the nation with just the right amount of gravitas and spin.
Sebastian grimaced as the camera panned in on Cressida, looking suitably persecuted, her eyes a little watery and doleful.
‘Back in June of this year, when the ill-fated Virgin Atlantic flight VA02367 from London to LAX suffered engine failure and tragically crashed, killing over 300 passengers, it was believed that there had been no survivors until now,’ Sammie spoke earnestly into the camera. ‘But yesterday, forty-six-year-old former media agent and model scout, Cressida Lucas …’
‘Forty-six!’ Sebastian snorted. ‘Yeah, right! And I’m twenty-one!’
… Ms. Lucas, of Mayfair, London, presumed dead, suffered temporary memory loss following the minor brain injuries she sustained from the air crash and claims to have no recollection of events from that fateful night. It is believed, however, that she was eventually picked up by Caribbean pirates in the Atlantic Ocean and taken to Bermuda, where she has since been recovering in a private medical spa.’
*
Sammie turned to her, ‘Cressida, thank you for agreeing to be on tonight’s show. As you can imagine, the world is in shock to learn about your incredible tale of survival. Please, in your own words, can you tell us what you remember, however little, from that ill-fated night?’
‘Well, Sammie,’ Cressida began, her earnest expression a little too rehearsed for Sebastian’s liking, ‘the crash itself is somewhat of a blank. The fi
rst thing I remember is waking up in a strange bed, not knowing where I was, or indeed who I was …’
‘Ha!’ Sebastian smirked, ‘and not for the first time in your life, I’m sure, eh, Cressida?’
Sammie turned to the camera and stared into it, her face a picture of sincerity, building just the right amount of tension in the studio.
‘Though she cannot recall the events immediately afterwards, it is believed that Ms Lucas drifted inside a piece of debris from the wreckage for days before she was picked up by pirates and taken some 5,000 kilometres to the remote island of Bermuda where gradually, her memory has slowly returned.’ She turned back to Cressida. ‘Cressida, it must’ve been overwhelming when you discovered that you in fact were the sole survivor from that horrendous plane crash.’
‘I don’t know if overwhelming is a big enough word, Sammie,’ she said, ‘living with the guilt has been, well …’ Cressida turned away from the camera, visibly distraught. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, holding her hand up in front of her face. ‘Can I please have a moment?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Sammie nodded sympathetically. ‘I can only imagine just how difficult this must be for you.’
‘Oh, please!’ Seb sneered, wondering if people were actually buying this stuff. It was the biggest crock of shit he’d heard in his whole life.
The truth was, having checked in late and thanks to a long queue in the duty-free Chanel shop, Cressida Lucas had never even boarded the ill-fated LA flight. It was only when she heard about the crash, and the lack of survivors, that the plan to rid herself of her insurmountable debts had popped into her head. As far as the authorities knew, she too had died alongside her poor fellow passengers that night, and so, her body unrecovered, Cressida had been able to slip away, unnoticed, to begin a new life in Bermuda, where she planned to start her life again, one that was free of financial burden. And things were all going rather nicely until Cressida – whose conscience still burned whenever she thought of the terrible lie she had told Imogen – had read about her old friend’s predicament in the newspapers. She’d chartered a flight back to London that very same day.
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