by Faye Brann
Chris Facetimed while they were having dinner to say he was going to be late.
‘I’ve got a client presentation in an hour and they’ve asked us to dinner afterwards,’ he said. ‘Sorry, guys, Dad’s not going to make it home before bedtime.’
James and Evie moaned with disappointment, and Ollie grunted, which they assumed was teenager-speak for ‘I don’t give a toss’ but could have just as easily meant ‘damn, Dad, I was really looking forward to having some father–son time later while we played guitars in my room’.
‘Dad, are you in your office?’ Evie said.
‘Sure am.’ Chris flicked the camera round so they could see, and Evie and James both left their chairs to stand by Vicky and get a better look.
The bare-brick wall at the rear of the office could be seen through Chris’s glass office doors, and Vicky could see a young account exec flapping outside, waiting with a stack of print-outs bearing a leaf–shaped logo in various colours and sizes. A predictable request by a client to try to appear ‘green’ or ‘healthy’ and a predictable response by the design department. The account exec was right to look tentative; Chris was going to hate the leaf.
Chris’s face appeared back on the screen. ‘I’ve got to go. Sorry.’
‘No problem. I’ve got a few things I need to do anyway this evening.’
‘Oh aye, what are you up to then?’
‘Nothing major,’ she said, averting her eyes.
‘Okay. Don’t wait up. Think it will be a late one.’
‘Okay. Love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
After James and Evie had gone to bed and Ollie was safely ensconced in his room playing Fortnite online with his mates, Vicky slid out her laptop from the top of the washing machine and fired it up. Mike had suggested she try sending a message to him tonight, to reinforce what she’d learnt and make sure she remembered how to do it when it came to sending a real report. This time she would get it right. In less than ten minutes, she’d scrambled her VPN, encrypted an email, and was sat waiting patiently for a reply. Minutes later, she received the following message:
Congratulations! Not as useless as you thought!
Vicky smiled and deleted Mike’s email out of existence, logged off and shut down. She was going to be just fine.
Chapter Eight
Sacha Kozlovsky was not a happy man. Russian obscenities exploded from him, rumbling under the door and out of his office. The kitchen, where Dmitri and his mother were having breakfast, was two floors below, but, as they sat eating, Matisse winced at the echoing tirade her husband was unleashing down the telephone and wondered who was going to suffer more; them or her.
‘Is Papa taking me to school this morning?’
She looked at her son. Even at eight years old, he was still so small and innocent. His papa shouldn’t be a thug, a menace, a person to be frightened of. He should be Papa the hero, who smelt of nice cologne and had a big belly laugh; Papa who could throw him a ball in the garden or have a kick-about in the park; Papa who told him all about the adventures he had in Russia when he was a boy. Maybe one day he would be all those things, but she doubted it.
‘I don’t know, petit chou, we will have to ask him when he is finished with his call.’
She stood up from the table, leaving an empty bowl and a half-finished cup of coffee where they were. Once they had gone upstairs to get ready for the day, Magda, her housekeeper, would appear from her room tucked away behind the utility area, and tidy things.
‘Come on, Dmitri, let’s get your teeth brushed.’
Dmitri raced up the helical staircase that twisted, resplendent, through the centre of the not-inconsiderable house. Matisse followed at a more ladylike pace, taking pleasure from the smooth wooden stair rail that ran beneath her hands, and casually marvelling at the footlights that sensed her steps and lit her way on her grey marbled path upwards. She paused on the first floor, to listen; Sacha had stopped shouting and the conversation was now reduced to a low hum. She could make out a couple of words here and there – something about Dubai, and an agent. She assumed this was a second call; his ominous tone didn’t bode well for the first caller. She carried on going up, and away from the door before he caught her listening. The last thing she wanted to do was antagonise him.
Matisse reached the second floor and padded into her room; the deep pile of the carpet wrapped itself around her bare feet as she slipped her house shoes off. She walked into her dressing room and slid back the doors, revealing the numerous racks of dresses, trousers, and shirts at her disposal. It was getting cooler every day now; a slow, steady march towards the short days and miserable weather that would smother everything until around May next year. But she wasn’t ready for winter clothes just yet, and, anyway, today she was cooking; she wouldn’t want to wear anything too warm.
Having rejected several options, Matisse decided on a bronze Marc Jacobs shirt and a pair of skinny-fit dark denim jeans. She placed some ankle-breaking black leather knee boots on the floor by the door, and a fitted wool Chanel jacket on the padded chair beside her, before adding a silk scarf to keep off the morning chill. It was unlikely Sacha would be taking Dmitri to school this morning, and she liked to be prepared.
She heard the office door swing open; when there was no noise – no slam – she exhaled the breath she’d been holding and went to her dressing table to pick out her lipstick. His mood must be a good one, after all.
Sacha appeared as she began preparations to take a shower in the palatial en suite that sat at the south end of the master bedroom.
‘I have to meet someone for coffee in South Kensington at nine, so I’ll be leaving in a minute.’
‘Will you take Dmitri to school?’ She hated asking him, but it would give her some time to make sure Magda had prepared the house for Victoria’s arrival. She should probably prepare Sacha as well in case he was coming straight home after his meeting. She didn’t want him shouting and swearing in front of her guest. They all talked about them enough at the school, without adding fuel to the fire.
‘And I wanted to remind you, I am baking cakes this morning with Victoria from the school,’ she said, pulling her hair into a ponytail. She would put the rather unattractive shower cap over the top once Sacha was gone. Why were beauty routines so ugly? Shower caps were right at the top of the list of things Matisse would rather not acknowledge the existence of, along with foot scrubbers and teeth retainers.
‘Ah yes, the famous baking lesson for the lady with the guns. Well, I will try not to scare off our sharp shooter.’ He came behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, looking at her in the reflection of the mirror while he pushed his hands downwards towards her breasts. She could feel his hard-on poking into her back. ‘But she stays in the kitchen, okay? I don’t want strangers wandering about the house.’
‘Of course,’ Matisse said. ‘Only the kitchen.’
‘I have someone coming to collect a package at midday. It would be better if she were gone by then.’
He uncapped his hands from their grip and patted her shoulders like a dog. She hated it when he did that, like she was something to be owned.
‘Dmitri, I’m taking you to school, let’s go.’ Sacha dropped his hands and rearranged himself, before turning away and heading to the door.
‘Bye, Mama!’ Dmitri bounded up to her side and gave her a big kiss on the cheek.
‘Bye, darling. Have a lovely day and don’t forget your bag.’
‘I won’t. Bye!’
Matisse listened as the front door opened and shut and the engine fired up on the Maserati sitting in the driveway. They didn’t usually use that one for school, preferring to maintain a little discretion and drive the Range Rover instead. But, occasionally, Sacha liked to be the big man; this morning’s call had obviously put him in the mood. Clearly it had put him in the mood for sex later, too. Sacha was nothing if not predictable.
She started the shower running and stepped in, her hair encased in its
plastic protector. Smooth and blemish-free thanks to hours of intensive lasering, lifting and sculpting, Matisse gently massaged her skin with a body scrub before rinsing off and stepping out. The oil content of the scrub made the water slink off her body before she’d even looked at the towel; still, she dried each leg slowly, checking for any signs of imperfection, before moving upwards to her torso and finally to her arms, hands and face.
She rubbed a large quantity of expensive moisturiser all over her body, admiring the tautness of her skin, before smoothing high-class anti-ageing serum on to her cheekbones, throat and forehead. Ageing was not on Matisse’s agenda. It was something that happened to other people, but never to her. It hadn’t been easy, though. She’d been in her late twenties when Dmitri was born, so had the advantage over many of her older peers in that her body was more willing to spring back to where she wanted it, but, eight years on, it didn’t bow to her wishes without a daily workout, a personal trainer, and an increasing number of procedures, surgical and non-surgical. While she attempted to freeze time, Sacha got older; of course, this was expected of him, and allowed. His tattoos, some nearly as old as her, stretched and faded across skin that was more fat than muscle these days; his hair was disappearing and his face was in danger of becoming one giant crease. But he was a man, and a powerful, rich one at that. It didn’t matter that he’d aged, in fact it probably did him a favour. For Matisse, the only way to stay even the slightest bit powerful was to stay young. It wasn’t fair, but it was the way life worked. And Matisse needed to stay powerful, especially when it came to Sacha.
She returned to her dressing room to put on the clothes she had laid out, before releasing her hair with a small shake. She hung her jacket back on the rail and placed the boots in their box; she wouldn’t need them now Sacha had taken Dmitri to school. A lick of mascara, a light dusting of face powder, and a dab of the lipstick she’d picked out earlier, and she was done. Matisse looked in the mirror with satisfaction. She looked exquisite, as always.
She went downstairs to ready the house for her guest. On her way, she shut Sacha’s office door. The shaft of light that lit the hallway was reduced to a thin, glowing sliver. She thought about the first caller again and wondered if he or she would have any kneecaps left by now. She shrugged it off, and continued downstairs to her own office space, next door to the kitchen, to close up that room as well. She turned the lock and pocketed the key; there were things that she didn’t want anyone poking around in either, business of her own that she would prefer to keep away from prying eyes. And despite the fact that Victoria came across as the sort of person who wouldn’t notice anything very much, Matisse wasn’t buying it. Victoria may project an image of the archetypal domesticate, but Matisse had seen her watching the room during the PTA meeting and she wasn’t sure it was the whole story. She knew from years of perfecting her own veneer that there was more to Victoria than meets the eye.
The doorbell rang a few minutes past nine and Matisse set her coffee cup down.
‘I’ll get it, Magda,’ she said, dismissing the older lady, who went shuffling back to her room muttering Hungarian curse words under her breath. Matisse wound her way back up the stairs and checked her reflection in the gargantuan hall mirror before pasting a smile on to her face and opening the door.
‘Bonjour, Victoria. Welcome.’
‘Wow! What a lovely house.’
‘Thank you very much. Please, come in.’
‘Sure. I didn’t see Sacha’s car. Is he out, then? I parked on the street anyway … I’ll just take off my shoes … oh wow! Look at that staircase, that’s beautiful. Did you do all these renovations? Bloody hell, it must have cost a fortune.’
Matisse narrowed her eyes. These sorts of outpourings were usually a symptom; a way to deal with the surprise of just how rich the Kozlovskys really were. People were so unrefined when it came to money. She had seen it before from the few people who came and went from their home. But there was something about the way Victoria spoke that wasn’t quite genuine. It could be nerves, but to Matisse it sounded almost … rehearsed?
While she took off her shoes, Victoria pestered her with questions.
‘How long have you lived in Wimbledon? Was it a whole house when you bought it? I thought they were all split up into flats on this road. I didn’t realise people still owned whole houses on the Common!’
‘We bought it when Dmitri started at the school. It’s convenient, but we had a lot of work to do before we moved in, to get it how we wanted it. I think someone died in it, before. It was like a museum but with none of the beauty; everything old or broken or ugly.’
‘Well not anymore, clearly. You have beautiful taste, Matisse.’
She let Victoria enjoy the full vista from the hallway, watching her take in the sheer scale of the place. Carefully curated paintings hung from the walls in tasteful gaps between the impossibly grand windows to accentuate the space. The view straight ahead revealed a library, with embroidered armchairs set facing the manicured garden to the rear. To either side of the hallway, the door to the living and dining rooms on the ground floor were placed strategically ajar to reveal a tantalising peek of paintings, ornaments and fine furniture – a sliver of their lives designed to intimidate and seduce each visitor who came through the doors. But not too much. She ushered Victoria towards the stairs.
‘Shall we go down?’
‘Downstairs?’
‘Oui, to the kitchen.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
Matisse noted the disappointment in Victoria’s voice and was glad she hadn’t offered to do a full tour. For once, Sacha had been right to limit her visitor to the kitchen. They didn’t need anyone poking around.
‘How do you find having a kitchen in the basement? I imagine getting the shopping downstairs is a bit of a bore.’
‘We have a service lift at the back for deliveries to the lower ground,’ Matisse said, waving in the general direction of the lift and the CCTV screens tucked discreetly in the basement hallway.
‘A lift? Bloody hell!’
They rounded the last step into the kitchen. It was an impressive sight. To the right, the state-of-the-art room stretched the entire depth of the house, an array of shining appliances mingled with tasteful cream and gold kitchen units. To the left, a smaller area displayed a glossy black dining table, laid ready as if for a photoshoot. An enormous circular kitchen island was in the centre of the room, the countertop resplendent in black and gold marble.
Even Matisse would admit, she had outdone herself when it came to the kitchen remodelling. She had spent much of her adult life in Paris, where the streets brimmed over with stick-thin women living on a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes, but as a girl she grew up in a village house in southern Provence where food was king. It was in that kitchen that her mother had taught her how to cook, not stopping until Matisse had a full repertoire of recipes tucked securely under her belt, ranging from the simplest jus to a perfect meringue. These days, of course, they had a chef come in to cook for them most of the time. But that hadn’t always been the case, and Matisse was secretly looking forward to her baking session with Victoria this morning.
‘The first, and most important, ingredient for any good cooking is that you take pleasure in the place where you create the dish,’ she said. She poured two fresh coffees, slipped an apron over her head and handed an identical one to Victoria. ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’
The two women spent the morning in clouds of flour, whipping eggs and butter and sugar together to produce a plethora of sponges and cupcakes that Mary Berry would have been proud of. They talked about art, which surprised Matisse; she thought, given a captive audience, Victoria would be the type to prattle on endlessly about her children with little else to say. But, despite her initial assumptions, Victoria had turned out to be an entertaining baking partner. And she really didn’t have a clue how to make a cake; Matisse had enjoyed showing her how to beat the butter and sugar and then gently fo
ld in the flour so that the mixture stayed light and airy in the tin.
They made good progress. By eleven-thirty, the aroma from the kitchen had wound its way through the entire house, tendrils of sweetness wrapping around the staircase and sneaking under the doors.
‘You’re an excellent teacher, you know,’ Victoria said, as they sat on stools drinking a celebratory coffee. ‘Some people have that knack, don’t they, for helping other people be better at something?’
‘I am not sure anyone has said this about me before.’ Matisse gave a half-smile, wary of taking the compliment and glanced at the cakes that were cooling on a rack on the counter. ‘Sacha wouldn’t agree with you. He does not like it when I try to help him.’
‘Well, I’m useless. I can’t teach anyone anything without taking over. I always said, the kids are going to have to learn to drive from Chris. He says they don’t have to learn; I can just sit in the back seat and drive the car from there like I usually do.’ Victoria laughed. ‘Men though – they’re all the same, aren’t they? Don’t want to be told how to do anything.’
‘That is certainly true of my husband. He does not want me involved in his life. He says it is interfering. I say, maybe I would do better than him and this is what he is afraid of.’
There was a small pause and Victoria put her mug down. ‘Would you mind if I used the loo quickly?’
‘Not at all. It’s upstairs by the front door.’
She watched Victoria leave. She had given a little too much away, maybe; Victoria had seemed glad of the excuse to interrupt the conversation. While she sipped her coffee and waited for Victoria to return, the front door slammed. Sacha. Matisse heard him go straight to his office but knew it wouldn’t be long before his stomach got the better of him. Sure enough, within a few minutes, she heard him heading downstairs.
‘Smells like you’ve both been hard at work,’ he said, striding into the kitchen.