by Karen Swan
He looked at her, still lost, his eyes hard at first but softening as they took in her face. ‘Anything.’
‘Why wouldn’t you see me earlier, in the studio?’
It took him a moment to catch up, realign his thoughts. He gave a careless shrug. ‘You were too close.’
She was confused. ‘To what?’
‘To me.’ He blinked, unknowable to her. ‘I’m not looking for this, for you. It’s not what I do.’
What I do? She swallowed, feeling as though she’d been slapped. Of course. The playboy.
He saw her expression and shifted his position, his hands on his knees, his back long. ‘I made a vow a long time ago that I’d never leave her alone again. I’m all she has.’ He looked across at her. ‘But you . . . it’s like you haunt me. Everywhere I look, you’re there – in my parents’ home, in the street, Chantilly. Even when I close my eyes at night and you’re not there, I still see you.’ He looked away, his jaw squeezed tight again. ‘. . . But at the studio? Even Natascha doesn’t know what I do – no one does apart from Laurent, the old guy you met . . . It’s the only thing that’s truly mine but even there you found me . . . I feel like you see every part of me. I can’t pretend with you. I don’t know how to keep you out.’
They fell silent, Xavier getting up, walking over to the basin, his head bowed low as he leaned on the counter. Flora watched him – handsome, fearsome, fierce, wounded. She’d learned more about him in the past half-hour than she had in the past month, none of it easy to hear.
‘So you’re saying you don’t want me close to you,’ she said quietly.
He came back over, pulling her up to standing again so that she was almost on tiptoes, his hands on her upper arms, their bodies pressed together. ‘I’m saying I don’t want to want you. But being close to you is all I want.’ His eyes roamed her face as he grazed a finger over her cheekbone. ‘You’re different to the rest, Flora.’
She swallowed, sure he could feel her heart thumping against her chest, against his – knocking to be let in. ‘How do you know? Maybe I’m not. We don’t know anything about each other. You don’t know me. Not really.’
‘I know you’re not in awe of my family – I know you stood up to Natascha and me. I know you’re independent, that you’ve got a great career.’ He grinned. ‘And you’re sexy as hell when you whistle . . .’
Her mouth opened in surprise. So it had been him at the window, that day in Paris! But she had no time to object, as he bent down to kiss her again, a lingering kiss that drew their bodies tighter, closer, stirring up all the hunger she felt for him.
‘Why are you even letting me do this to you?’ he murmured, raking his hands in her hair, pulling it back slightly so that she lifted her chin.
‘Because I want you to.’
‘But you could have anyone.’
‘I want you.’
He kissed her again. His towel dropped to the floor and he picked her up, her legs wrapping around his hips as he carried her into the bedroom and threw her down on the bed. She laughed, delighted.
He knelt over her, kissing her tummy, before looking up at her. ‘Wait – what happened to that guy? The one at Chantilly?’
‘Noah?’ She shrugged, folding her hands behind her head. ‘I dumped him in the car on the way back to Paris.’
He didn’t reply but she could tell from his smile that he was pleased – and relieved. He began kissing her tummy again but she put her hands on his head, making him look at her.
‘And your girlfriend? Or should I say girlfriends?’ How many different women had she seen him with in the past few weeks? Three?
He shook his head dismissively. ‘They were just distractions.’
‘Distractions from what?’
‘You. You’ve been driving me out of my mind.’ He kissed her stomach again, making her sigh, her arms thrown back over her head as she sank into the pillows. He inched his way up her, his lips like feathers on her skin, raising goosebumps and making her wriggle. He lay atop her on his elbows, a hand on either side of her head, gazing down at her. He stroked her hair away from her face. ‘I never did anything so good to deserve you.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘It is . . . I’m no angel, Flora.’
‘Who said I want you to be?’ she asked. ‘I’m not looking for whatever this is, either. I don’t want a white knight, thanks.’
‘Good, because I can’t be that.’
She looked up at him. ‘You always do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘It’s like you’re determined to lower people’s expectations of you.’
His dark eyes flickered and she knew she was getting too close again. ‘But you don’t fool me any more. I know you’re not what you want people to believe. That’s just a mask you wear to keep everyone away, so it’s just you and Natascha. It’s how you think you’ll keep her safe.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I get it. You’re an amazing brother to her.’ He went to demur but she reached up and kissed him, stopping the words. ‘Don’t argue. You are.’
He smiled. ‘Do you have any brothers? Sisters?’
‘One big brother, God help me.’ She rolled her eyes, as she always did when asked this question. Her stock comic response.
‘And is he protective of you? What I mean is, will he beat me to death for falling for his sister?’ He grinned.
It was a moment before Flora could reply. He’d fallen for her?
‘Freddie? Oh, well . . . h-he’s so relaxed he’s practically horizontal.’
Xavier watched her. ‘And you are close to him.’
She nodded. ‘Very. There’s only two years between us.’
‘So then I need to get Freddie onside. He’s the one who can convince the rest of your family to like me.’
Her hands cupped his cheeks. ‘They will love you.’
He stared down at her and a moment full of an unspoken, unspeakable truth passed between them. It was too soon to say it, to even think it.
And then in the next instant, it was erased altogether. ‘No. Being with me is . . .’ He looked away, shame flooding his face, but she grabbed his shoulders, holding him in place.
‘Xavier, listen to me. You are not accountable for what your grandfather did. You are not him. Your father’s taking every step open to him to make amends.’ But still he wouldn’t look at her. She put her hands either side of his face. ‘Listen to me. I am not ashamed to be with you – I couldn’t be prouder.’ She hesitated. ‘You’re not the only family to have lies written about you, you know.’
He looked back at her sceptically. ‘Oh, really? And which lies have been written about your family in the national papers then?’
He meant it ironically but she felt the tension set in her bones. He’d shared so much with her tonight, he was laid bare: his family’s humiliation, his sister’s attack . . . How could she not respond in kind? She couldn’t avoid it anyway; the trial was just a few weeks away now and it would be her family’s turn to grace the tabloids. How could she not tell him she understood him better than he could possibly know?
‘There’s . . . there’s something you should know. It’s about Freddie.’
‘My ally?’
‘Yes. Because he is nice – he’s the kindest, sweetest, gentlest guy you’ll ever meet.’
Xavier shrugged, tracing a finger down her nose, clearly not taking her seriously. ‘OK.’
‘The thing is, he’s . . .’ She didn’t want to say the words, didn’t want to give them shape, put flesh on the bones of this lie. ‘He’s . . .’
‘What is he, Flora?’ he murmured, bending down to kiss her again, his mind clearly moving on to other matters.
‘He’s been charged with a crime he didn’t commit.’
He chuckled again. ‘You sound like the voiceover person on a film.’
When she didn’t reply, he pulled back and looked at her. ‘OK, sorry. What’s he been charged with?’
‘. .
. Rape.’
A silence as loud as a thunderclap shook the room. Xavier’s body changed completely, his languid weightiness suddenly transformed with a rigidity that almost lifted him off her, as though he were levitating.
‘Xavier, it was a one-night stand, they were drunk – but it was consensual. The girl who’s doing this, she’s angry because he rejected her. He had a girlfriend he loves very much. It was all just a horrid mistake that’s been twisted into this lie.’
It was true. His crime wasn’t even that he’d cheated, but that he’d scorned. Just the way he’d recounted the events to her – ‘I freaked . . . told her it was a mistake . . . high-tailed it out of there’ – had told her exactly why lust had turned into revenge.
Flora herself had realized how often she’d catch Milly’s gaze on Freds on the few times they’d all been out together. She’d thought it sweet, if anything, but it required no stretch of the imagination at all to know that Milly had seized her chance when she’d bumped into Freddie out with the boys, Aggie away for a hen weekend.
But the truth wasn’t going to save her brother. It was telling the truth that had brought him to his knees: telling Milly, the morning after, that it had been a mistake; confessing to Aggie before she’d heard it from someone else; admitting to the police that they’d slept together when they first hauled him in. He hadn’t thought to protect himself with lies, too lacking in guile to think that anything other than honesty was the best policy.
The prosecution’s entire case rested on the text he’d drunkenly sent her in the club: Where are you??? Separated, Freddie told her he’d sent it trying to find her and the others. But Milly’s barrister claimed it proved premeditation, his client desperately trying to escape him as he ‘hunted’ her down.
It was a joke. The only person hunted in any of this had been Freddie, Milly even coming to his flat the night after when she heard Aggie had dumped him, trying to jumpstart things between them and only succeeding in forcing him to reject her again. But there was no proof of that, even though they’d been over it a thousand times – she’d been too clever to leave any digital trace of her harassment, there were no telltale texts or phone messages from her; she’d even been astute enough to keep her face covered from the street cameras as she’d climbed out of her cab. Her brother had been no match for this woman scorned.
She brought her thoughts back to the present and saw that Xavier was standing, staring down at her with an expression more devastating than a slap. It wasn’t anger or contempt – the glares she was accustomed to him throwing her way – but the worst of all: disgust.
She scrambled to her knees, watching in horror as he turned and picked up his still-wet trousers from the floor. ‘Xavier, did you hear what I said? It’s not true. I promise you. If you’d met Freddie you’d know I’m telling the truth.’
‘Yeah, it’s funny that,’ Xavier said, zipping his fly. ‘Rapists never look like you think rapists will look, do they? Monsters are masters of disguise. Most of France thinks Desanyoux’s a top guy too.’
Flora felt a chill of fear spread through her blood. ‘No, it’s . . . it’s not the same thing. Freddie didn’t . . . he couldn’t hurt anyone. He’s nothing like Desanyoux.’
‘Do you have any idea what that crime has done to my family? That monster, masquerading as a family man, a liberal? He’s completely destroyed my sister’s life! Every day, she lives with the horror and the shame of what he did to her, every day she wakes up believing she’s nothing and she goes to bed thinking the same. She spends her every waking moment being what he told her he was, because she doesn’t – she can’t – believe she’s worth more than that. Because of what he did. What he said. And now you’re telling me your brother’s the same?’
‘But he’s not!’ she cried, growing angry now.
‘You’re his sister! Of course you would say that!’
Flora stared at him, open-mouthed, scarcely able to believe this was happening. ‘You’re Natascha’s brother! Why can’t you believe me the way I believed you? I’m telling you, he’s innocent! If you met him, you’d know it too.’
He grabbed his shirt off the floor, throwing it on, violently shrugging his arms through the sleeves, wincing as he remembered too late his injured shoulder. ‘You’re deluding yourself,’ he sneered, fastening the middle buttons incorrectly, striding into the sitting room and picking up his shoes.
Flora jumped off the bed and ran after him. He was heading for the door. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she cried. Tears were beginning to slide down her cheeks but she rubbed them away furiously. ‘You’re the only person I’ve told. The only one I trusted! I was trying to show you that I understand the devastation it’s caused you. I thought you’d understand – Freddie’s the victim too.’
‘No!’ Xavier whirled on the spot in the open doorway, one finger pointed at her and stopping her dead in her tracks. ‘He is not the victim.’
She stared after him as he strode outside, back into the blackness of the garden. ‘Xavier!’ she called. ‘Where are you going? You can’t go like this!’
He turned, ten metres up the lawn but already a hundred miles from her. ‘I can’t make my parents fire you, Flora, so I’ll leave. I’ll leave here tomorrow.’ He blinked at her, that black look back. ‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
The moon was still in the sky as she let herself into the flower room, long shadows stretched out over the floor, the riot of colours bearing down from the walls muted and subdued in the pale light. She switched the desk lamp on and opened up her laptop, firing off the email:
Angus, I’m sorry but I can’t work on this project any more. Things are too difficult with the family. I’ll be flying back to London tonight. I understand if you decide to fire me. Regards, Flora.
She watched it send, aware of a weight lifting off her at the prospect of freeing herself from this gilded cage and this once-illustrious family.
She got up and made herself a coffee, the roiling of the kettle sounding amplified in the stillness of the house. Her hands clasped the steaming mug – she had no intention whatsoever of drinking it but she couldn’t stop shivering – as she sat on the back step by the French doors and looked out again into the garden. Dawn was just a breath away, the first chink of light beginning to bleed up from the horizon like a curtain that was about to be lifted above a stage.
Only, the players had well and truly left this theatre now. Xavier would be in Paris in a few hours, she would be home in London and this night – its exquisite pleasures and drubbing pain – would be nothing more than an aberration, something she’d forget soon enough, just as she always did. What was it Freddie always said about her? Teflon-coated. Nothing and no one stuck to her!
She pressed her hands to her eyes again, stemming the tears that had been falling as silently and endlessly as snow since he’d left. It had been three hours and forty-two minutes now but it would get better soon, she knew that. Her anger was beginning to settle and harden already. This wasn’t heartbreak, there was no point in being hysterical about it. Just look at the facts – she barely knew the man, not really. Sharing a few dark secrets didn’t make them soulmates; just because they were heavy in subject matter didn’t make them more significant than the myriad tiny humdrum details that define people’s lives, the ones you really have to know to know a man truly – like how he took his coffee or where he bought his socks, the name of his best friend and his first pet.
No. This wasn’t heartbreak. Someone couldn’t break your heart unless you placed it in their hands first, and she hadn’t done that. What she’d thought was a primal connection between them had been nothing more than a thrilling game of chicken. Who would look away first? Who would run?
She put down the mug and lay on the floor, curling herself up as tight as a shell. No. This wasn’t heartbreak. She was Flora Sykes, twenty-seven years old. And she’d never been in love.
The splash in the pool awoke her and she move
d with a groan, at first confused as to why she was asleep in the doorway which opened onto the garden. A cool breeze must have been blowing over her as she slept for her neck felt stiff when she lifted her head, trying to see who was in the water, instinctively trying to get out of their sight. Was it Xavier? She blinked several times, trying to focus, but she knew he wouldn’t be so stupid as to swim metres from her door when his last words to her had been that he never wanted to see her again.
Natascha then? The prospect didn’t repel her as once it had. Not now. She felt nothing but compassion and tenderness for the girl, all her ugliness explained away – but how could she ever express that? Flora sensed Natascha would see her brother’s revelation as an indiscretion, a betrayal.
To her surprise, as she haltingly pulled herself up to sitting, she saw it was Jacques ploughing up and down the pool, almost as driven as his son as he furrowed deeper and deeper tracks in the water.
Her hand touched the cold cup of coffee on the floor beside her; it was remarkable that she hadn’t knocked it in her sleep and she realized that she mustn’t have moved. Her body stiff and sore, she slowly stood up and took the coffee cup to the sink, rinsing it and leaving it to dry on a tea towel on the counter, before splashing her face with cold water. Her eyes – she was thankful to note she’d stopped crying at least – were puffy and swollen, the feel of her lids, one upon the other as she blinked, thick and leaded.
She stared around at the room – there was still so much work to do, this collection’s histories as hidden now as they had been a month ago, but she would never know them now. She was done, here. The Vermeils’ past was none of her business any more, much like their future.