Sparkles

by Louise Bagshawe

  “I wanted you to understand my decision,” Sophie said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. She had always been nervous around the older woman. There had never been any warmth from Katherine, not when she and Pierre were first married, not even when Tom’s conception had been announced.

  “I can see your decision with my own eyes.” Her paper-thin claw of a hand gestured angrily at Sophie’s dress. It was perfectly chic: Givenchy, gathered at the waist, falling to just below the knee, with a tailored jacket, and severe Christian Louboutin court shoes.

  But the elegance didn’t matter today. The colour mattered. And the colour was black.

  “You are giving up on my son,” the elder Mme Massot said.

  Sophie flushed. It was as close to emotion as she had ever seen Katherine come, and Sophie had no desire to hurt anybody.There had already been so much pain.

  For a second she didn’t say anything.They sat together, silently, in the sumptuous parlour of the dower house, the Earl Grey rapidly cooling in front of them in its bone china cups. Sophie wished she could bolt. The excessive richness of the Louis XIV furniture, the antique silk Chinese wallpaper, it all seemed oppressive.

  “I could never give up on Pierre. But it has been seven years.”

  “Seven years and two days.”

  Sophie nodded. Of course she kept exact count; she was his mother.

  “We’ve heard nothing,” she pointed out. “Not a word, not a sign.”

  “There were reports . . . that he was seen,” Mme Massot said stubbornly.

  “We investigated all those,” Sophie reminded her. “They came to nothing. We have spent years, Katherine . . . many millions of francs . . . over two dozen investigators, the best private firms. . . .”

  Her mother-in-law pursed her lips, and Sophie glanced outside the tall, narrow windows of the eighteenth-century house. They afforded a beautiful view of the park, across the lake, all the way up to the main house, the Château des Étoiles. The castle of the stars. Pierre’s house. And now, hers.

  “If I had the slightest hope that he was alive . . .”

  “I have not the slightest doubt he is,” the old lady said, fiercely.

  “Based on what?” Sophie asked. “Have you some new information?”

  Oh, how she hoped she did. Then she would not have to go through with all this. Then she could retreat to the familiar comfort of the château and go on doing what she was good at: being Pierre’s patient, obedient wife, keeping the home fires burning and their son’s hope alive. Instead of having to face everything. Starting, but by no means ending, with Katherine Massot.

  “I have not felt it. When a man like Pierre dies, you know. You sense it. Men like him do not pass unmarked.”

  She looked at Sophie scornfully, as though to ask for the millionth time what Pierre had been doing to unite himself to such a mouse.

  “I understand. It is a mother’s love,” Sophie said.

  The old lady turned away in a rustle of silk.

  “What do you know of love?” she said.

  “I loved Pierre.”

  “I wonder,” said her mother-in-law.

  Sophie felt anger for the first time, but it was drowned out by her fear. Katherine scared her; she always had. It had taken weeks, months even, to screw up enough courage to do this. And, of course, she would take whatever Katherine threw at her. In this, as in everything else, Sophie would behave as Pierre had demanded she do. With impeccable dignity—with the bearing Sophie hadn’t acquired by birth, but which she had been aping for so long it was now part of her.

  And besides—this was Pierre’s mother. And she was in pain. Imagine if it were Tom, and I were hearing this from Tom’s wife, she thought.

  “This is a dreadful thing for you,” Sophie said, kindly. “I hope you will come and see me in a few days. And Tom,” she added, trying to sweeten the deal with the promise of her grandson. “He should be over from Oxford for the weekend.”

  “What does Thomas think of what you are doing?” Katherine demanded.

  She pronounced the name in the French way, just to let Sophie know what Pierre would have wanted.

  Sophie’s face paled a little.

  “He is very fond of his father. And, like you, he still hopes.”

  “He disapproves,” Katherine said, triumphantly.

  Sophie sighed. “It has been too long. It is time to put an end to it. As much for Tom’s sake as anything. He must learn to move on, to have his chance to grieve.”

  Katherine stared at her, then gave a brittle laugh.

  “You are very naive,” she said, “if you don’t think life gives one plenty of chances to do that.”

  Sophie looked down. Naive. Stupid. Passive. Yes, well, she knew what Katherine thought, what they all thought. She, middle-class, uneducated Sophie Roberts, picked, against all likelihood, by the great Pierre Massot, at nineteen, to be his wife. And the mother to his one child—thankfully, a son. What had she done, all these years, except learn how to dress, and behave, and host parties?

  She rose. “I had to inform you myself.”

  “Yes. Thank you for that.” Katherine’s bony claw picked up the papers, neatly folded, and extended them towards Sophie. She reached to take them, but for a moment the old woman held on to them.

  “Amazing,” she said. “You need only sign. And you will control eighty million euros.”

  Sophie hesitated, then gently took the documents from her mother-in-law’s hand.

  “Pierre would never have wanted us to quarrel.”

  “And all you have to do to get them,” Katherine said, as though she hadn’t spoken, “is declare that he is dead.”

  “Because he is dead,” Sophie said, helplessly. “It’s been so many years.”

  Katherine Massot sighed and turned her face away, as though she were just too weary to deal with Sophie anymore.

  Sophie waited a moment, then noiselessly rose and left the house. Outside, on the raked gravel of the driveway, her car and driver were waiting. As he stepped out and opened the back door for her, and Sophie slid gracefully inside—knees together, ankles lifted in one catlike movement—she breathed out. Not so much in relief. There was too much to do for her to be relieved. But at least in respite.

  The car pulled noiselessly away, following the winding road back to the main house. It was late May and a glorious spring evening, the warm, fading light bright with the promise of summer. The topiary hedges cast long shadows over the smooth lawns, and the lake sparkled brilliantly in the setting sun.

  It was an evening very like that one just more than seven years ago, when her husband kissed her on the cheek and told her he had to see to some business in the city. Nothing important, he told her.

  He walked out of the front porch, and she never saw him again.

  Chapter 2

  “And the Oscar goes to . . .”

  The superstar comic paused for a second to give the moment its required suspense. In the glittering ballroom, Hugh heard the intake of breath all around him. Everybody waiting, eyes fixed on the giant screen.

  He was not nervous. He felt perfectly calm. His heart was pulsing at a steady sixty beats per minute, an athlete’s pace.

  “Jill Calvert!”

  The comic’s plastic smile was drowned in the sounds of whoops and cheering as the screen split from five beautiful faces, four of them pretending to be pleased, to the one who really was. She lifted one arched eyebrow, placed her manicured fingers to her throat, as if to ask, me?

  The camera loved it. It lingered for a second on the creamy skin. And, of course, the deliciously avant-garde necklace that surrounded it.

  There was a fresh explosion of cheering. Hugh now permitted himself just the faintest of smiles. Hands were slapping his back, his shoulders. Ah, he thought with satisfaction, you just wait.

  Jill swept regally up to the stage in her dress, a twenties-style flapper thing, made of millions of tiny sequins. A heavy fabric that clung to her skin, black and sleek
like an otter. Sexy but very simple. The perfect backdrop for jewellery. And what jewellery! Hugh had chosen these pieces himself. Gems for a rebel. Great chunks of citrine, one of the cheapest, most plentiful semiprecious stones in the world, strung on wires of yellow eighteen-karat gold; but along those wires, glittering like tiny suns, were bezel-set canary diamonds.

  It was perfect. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. Mixing the cheap and the incredibly costly, the delicate and the spiky. Matching wire earrings dangled from her perfect lobes, silhouetted against her jet black Louise Brooks bob.

  Hugh Montfort had won the designers’ lottery. A fresh young star had just received her first Oscar, wearing a design by Mayberry, his firm. A firm Hugh Montfort, the youngest CEO in its history, had led out of the fusty, half-forgotten backwaters of St. James’s to international prominence as the number one house for the freshest, funkiest pieces money could buy. He had followed his hunches and worked—slaved, even—to get Mayberry gems round the necks and fingers of every hot young thing that ever graced the cover of a hip magazine. Indeed, such had been his success that Jill Calvert’s people had called him.

  He briefly imagined the faces of his rivals in New York, Paris, London. Cursing. Montfort had pulled it off yet again. Yes, he thought—perfect. A brief surge of pleasure at a job well done washed over him. He lived for these moments, when his successes enabled him to forget.

  “Perfect!” Pete Stockton, the chairman of the Mayberry board, exploded next to him.

  Hugh nodded towards the screen. “Watch.”

  He had another surprise up his sleeve—one he had suggested to a startled, and instantly grateful, Miss Calvert, who could see at once what it would do for her. How it would take her from just another worthy actress into instant superstardom. Fame was the currency, Hugh thought. For her—for him, as well. An Oscar was nice, but it didn’t necessarily make you huge by itself. Who remembered Marisa Tomei? Or Roberto Benigni?

  Jill Calvert smiled, bowed, shook her beautiful head. The citrine and diamond earrings sparkled like raindrops in sunlight. Around Hugh there were sighs of envy and pleasure.

  On the screens in front of them, Miss Calvert lifted her golden Oscar aloft and kissed it. More cheering. She smiled radiantly and said, “Thanks.”

  And then she turned and left the stage.

  The superstar comic stared.

  There was a horrible pause, and then the bandleader, caught utterly by surprise, started to play, his Muzak barely drowning out the murmurs of the crowd. And then, as Hugh watched, there were smiles—smiles of amusement, and smiles of jealousy. Every man and woman sitting there was an old media hand, and each one of them realized at once what Jill Calvert had just done. The only thing that would be talked about the next morning. On a show where weeping, ten-minute speeches thanking everybody from God to the star’s dog-walker were the norm, she had made the shortest Oscar speech ever.

  And it couldn’t be beaten, either, because it was precisely one word long.

  Jill Calvert would be everywhere tomorrow. And in the months to come. Endless pieces would be written about that moment: analyzing everything, talking about her image. And the sleek black dress and the wild, flashing jewellery would be a part of that.

  Montfort smiled. When the exchanges opened tomorrow, Mayberry stock would be up. He thought possibly as much as 5 or 6 percent.

  The crowd broke around him, applauding him as though he were a movie star himself. These were Mayberry executives and salespeople, the frontline troops in the L.A. office, most of whom owned a little stock in the company, and all of whom were thinking about their wallets.

  Montfort glanced at his watch, a discreet gold Patek Philippe. Mayberry made watches, but he never wore them, nor his firm’s cuff links, for that matter. Funky was not his style. He was an old-fashioned Englishman with a horror of ostentation, and would rather have been shot dead than be caught wearing any of Mayberry’s jewellery for men. He had inherited several pairs of cuff links and a signet ring from his father, Sir Richard, and that was all the ornamentation he required. Early on, Pete Stockton had suggested Hugh switch to Mayberry products, but a single look had been enough to warn him that that was a deal-breaker.

  And they had wanted Montfort, while he had not particularly cared about going to work for them. Mayberry’s was an interesting challenge, nothing more. He had been born rich, the son of a baronet, and didn’t need the money.

  Working at the firm was only about one thing to Hugh Montfort. Winning. That was it. And that was enough.

  It was ten thirty. By the time his limousine had arrived at the Governor’s Ball, dinner would have started. Even in Hollywood, where it was fashionable, Montfort hated to be late. It seemed undisciplined.

  “I should go,” he said, quietly.

  “Go, go,” Pete said, slapping him on the back again. “Damn good job, Hugh. What is it you Brits say? Good show.”

  Montfort smiled thinly. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

  Stockton shrugged. “I’m okay. I’ll probably just head back to the hotel.” His eyes, hooded in the fleshy face, flickered over the crowd, settling on a couple of salesgirls. Both blondes, one of them pneumatic. They smiled warmly at their corpulent boss.

  Montfort tried not to let his distaste register. No, Pete Stockton would not care to party tonight. Too many people about who knew his wife, Claudia, a regular on the L.A. charity circuit. And Stockton did not really care about stars or mingling. Just the bottom line. He knew perfectly well that was served best when their dashing CEO did the meet and greet.

  “See you later,” Stockton said. He stared at the girl with the tits. She simpered and tossed her fountain of blonde hair.

  Montfort nodded. “I believe we have a board meeting in June,” he said. An implicit rebuke. He had no intention of seeing Pete Stockton again until he absolutely had to. Stockton waddled off in the direction of the salesgirl, and Montfort, diligently avoiding all congratulations with murmurs of thanks, made directly for the door, and his limo.

  The signature red and white stripes of the Mayberry awning hung over the illuminated showroom, newly leased at great expense, but well worth it. In L.A., if you weren’t directly on Rodeo, forget it, Hugh thought. He would drive by here tomorrow on his way to the airport, just to see the crowds that would be thronging around the door, clamouring for a glimpse at the new collection. He made a note to himself to raise the starting price on every piece a thousand dollars. Tonight. An imperceptible nod, and his driver pulled into position.

  “The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,” he said, once he was seated inside.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said the driver, respectfully.

  Montfort lifted his head—grinned. The first genuine smile to have crossed his lips for some time. That was funny. The man had evidently looked up the passenger name—the Hon. Hugh Montfort—and thought he was some kind of a judge. But he wouldn’t dream of correcting him. He tried never to make people uncomfortable, if business wasn’t involved.

  “Big party tonight, sir,” said the driver.

  “I’d rather be in bed with a book,” Montfort said, with complete honesty.

  The man laughed. Hugh swallowed a sigh and looked out of his tinted windows at the L.A. traffic streaming through the night. This was the part of the job he most loathed, but he would do it to the best of his ability all the same. Glad-handing celebrities, networking with agents, fending off the attentions of the minor starlets, delicately, so that none of them took offense. That was hard: some of them were very persistent.

  Hugh Montfort had everything a millionaire actress could want: chiseled good looks of the nonplastic kind. A military background he never discussed. Money of his own. Success that would never compete with hers. A sort-of title. And a castle in Ireland. It was a distinguished list, and not one that was overlooked. But he had no interest in actresses, even very beautiful ones, except as walking billboards for Mayberry jewels. He supposed there would be lots of offers tonight, both busines
s and personal. Especially once the rumours started that he had advised Jill Calvert not only on what to wear, but on what to say.

  But he would disengage himself gently. Appear at as many parties as possible, and head for home, what, about 3 a.m.

  A great weariness swept over him. He was already jet-lagged and exhausted. And he took an engineer’s care with the machine that was his body: no stimulants other than coffee, and not too much of that. He would not be fuelled by coke or uppers, or whatever designer drug the rich were into these days to ease the pain of having nothing important to do.

  Montfort balled his fist, summoning forth reserves of adrenaline. When much younger, in the Marines, he had learned how to do with very little sleep and how to concentrate in much worse conditions than this. A raw second lieutenant, barely twenty-one, crawling through sodden, freezing fields on his belly. Trying to take an Argentine position. Praying he didn’t get anyone shot. Yes, that was suffering. Not going to a dull party, even ten dull parties.

  He thought of the war whenever he felt depressed or the urge to quit reared its persistent head. It was better to think of that than his real sorrow, the one he fought day and night not to dwell on. And it put the present trouble back in perspective, as something trivial, not worth his consideration. That attitude, he knew, had helped him become the powerhouse of his business that he was tonight. No covers of Fortune or Forbes, not yet. But Hugh Montfort had something better. His rivals, to a man, knew him. And feared him. He had taken Mayberry from nothing, from just another fussy, small marque eternally obsessing over Cartier, to the leaders of young style, and the brink of worldwide dominance.

  But the brink was not good enough. Montfort wanted to go all the way. To establish a brand so big, so impressive, that people would pay tens, even hundreds of times what a piece was worth just because it came packaged in red and white stripes. He knew it could be done. Tiffany had done it.

  Mayberry was going to be next.

  The limousine pulled up and Hugh prepared himself for the next round of congratulations. He smiled in the backseat, preparing his charm like the weapon it was.