by Liz Fielding
‘Oh, Belle…’ Claire seemed lost for words.
Simone was more direct. ‘If that’s all there is to your marriage, Belle, why do you stay with him?’
‘Honestly?’ They were high in the Himalayas, the air was stingingly cold, clear, cleaner than anything she’d ever known. Anything but the truth would pollute it. ‘For the security. The safety. The knowledge that, married to him, I’ll never be hungry or cold or frightened ever again…’
The truth, but not the whole truth. Passion, security, she would admit to. Falling in love with him had been the mistake…
‘But you’re bright, successful in your own right-’
‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘From the outside I suppose it looks like that, but every day of my life I expect someone to find me out, expose me as a fraud…’ Simone made a tiny sound, almost of distress, but shook her head quickly as Belle frowned. ‘Let’s face it, there’s no one as unemployable as a past-her-sell-by-date breakfast television host.’ Even as she said it, she knew that she was just making excuses. She was not extravagant and with Ivo’s skilful investment of her money, the only thing she truly needed from him was the one commodity he was unable to give. Himself.
There was an emotional vacuum at the heart of her life that had started long before she’d met him. He was not the only one incapable of making a wholehearted commitment to their partnership. She was equally to blame and now it was time to call it a day. Make the break. Let him go.
She’d known it for a long time, just hadn’t had the courage to admit it, face up to what that would mean.
‘If you want the unadorned truth,’ she said, ‘I hate my career, I hate my marriage-’
Not that she blamed Ivo for that. He was trapped by his hormones in exactly the same way that she was trapped by her own pitiful fears. They were, it occurred to her, very bad for each other.
‘In fact, when it comes right down to it, I hate my life.’ She thought about it. ‘No, scrub that. I guess I just hate myself-’
‘Belle, honey…’
As they reached out to offer some kind of comfort, she shook her head, not wanting it. Not deserving it from these special women. ‘I’ve got a sister somewhere, back there. Lost on the road.’ She didn’t have to explain. She knew they’d understand that she wasn’t talking about the road they were travelling together, but the one leading back to the past. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was four years old.’
‘Four?’ Claire frowned. ‘What happened to her? Did your family split up?’
‘Family?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not like you…’ She sucked in her breath, trying to hold back the words. Then, slowly she finished the sentence. ‘I’m not like you, Claire.’ She glanced at Simone, who was unusually quiet, and on an impulse she reached out, laid a hand over hers. ‘Or Simone.’ Then, lifting her chin a little. ‘We’re here to raise money for street kids, right? Well, that was me. It’s why I made such a big thing of this fund raiser. Why I’m here.’ Feeling exposed in the way an alcoholic must feel the first time he admitted he had a problem, she said, ‘My real name is Belinda Porter and I was once a street kid.’
She’d never told anyone where she’d come from. Anything about herself. On the contrary, she’d done everything she could to scrub it out of her mind. Not even Ivo knew. He’d had the tidied-up fairy story version of her life: the one with kindly foster parents-who she’d conveniently killed off in a tragic car accident-a business course at the local college-not the straight from school dead-end job in a call centre. Only the lucky break of being drafted in to work the phones on the biggest national fund raising telethon had been true, but then she’d been ‘discovered’ live on air; everyone knew that story.
How could she blame him for a lack of emotional commitment to her when she had kept most of her life hidden from him? A husband deserved more than that.
She swallowed. ‘My mother, my sister, the three of us begged just to live,’ she said. ‘Exactly like the children we’re here to help.’
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Claire said, ‘What happened to her, Belle? Your sister.’
That was it? No shrinking away in horror? Just compassion? Concern…?
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing bad. Our mother died.’ She shook her head. That was a nightmare she’d spent years trying to erase. ‘Social Services did their best, but looking back it’s obvious that I was the kind of teenage girl who gives decent women nightmares. Our mother was protective, would have fought off a tiger to keep us from harm, from the danger out there, but I’d seen too much, knew too much. I was trouble just waiting to happen. Daisy was still young enough to adapt. And she was so pretty. White-blonde curls, blue eyes. Doll-like, you know? A social worker laid it out for me. It was too late for me but, given a chance, she could have a real family life.’
‘That must have hurt so much.’
She looked up, grateful for Claire’s intuitive understanding of just how painful it had been to be unwanted.
‘It’s odd,’ she said, ‘because I was the one named after a doll. Belinda. Maybe it was some need in her to reach back to a time of innocence, hope.’ She shook her head. ‘It never suited me. I was never that kind of little girl.’
‘You have the blonde hair.’
‘Bless you, Claire,’ she said with a grin, ‘but this particular shade of blonde is courtesy of a Knightsbridge crimper who charges telephone numbers. She pulled on a strand, made a face. He’s going to have a fit when he sees the state of it.’
She reached for the sewing kit. There was no hairdresser here and no wardrobe department to produce a clean, fresh pair of trousers for the morning. If she didn’t stitch up the tear, her thigh would be flapping in the wind.
‘Daisy was different,’ she said, concentrating on threading a needle. ‘I hated her so much for being able to smile at the drop of a hat. Smile so that people would want to mother her, love her.’ Her hands were shaking too much and she gave up on the needle. ‘I hated her so much that I let someone walk away with her, adopt her, turned my back on her. Lost her.’
‘I lost someone, too.’
Claire, suddenly the focus of their attention, gave an awkward little shrug. ‘It must be this place, or maybe it’s just that here life is pared down to the basics. The next marker, the next drink of water, the next meal. Meeting with the people who exist here on the bare essentials.’ She took Belle’s needle, threaded it, began to work on the torn trousers. ‘There are no distractions, none of the day-to-day white noise of life to block out stuff you’d rather not think about and with nothing else to keep it occupied, the mind throws up stuff you’ve put in your memory’s deep storage facility. Not wanted in this life.’
‘Who did you lose, Claire?’ Simone, pale beneath the tan that no amount of sun screen could entirely block in the thin air, almost whispered the words.
‘My husband. Ethan. A decent, hard-working man…’
‘I had no idea you’d been married,’ Belle said.
Claire looked at her ringless hand, flexed her fingers, then with a little shiver said, ‘As far as the world is concerned, it never happened. One messy little marriage discreetly dissolved with a stroke of a lawyer’s pen.’
‘It can’t have been that simple.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised just how simple money can make things.’ Then, ‘In my defence, I was twenty-one years old and desperate to get away from my father. He isn’t that easy to escape. He paid my husband to disappear and I was weak, I let him.’
‘Twenty-one? You were practically a kid.’
Claire lifted her head, straightened her back. ‘Old enough to have known better. To have been stronger.’ Then, ‘He’s been on my mind a lot lately. Ethan. I guess it’s all part of this.’ Her gesture took in the tent, their surroundings. ‘I work for my father, but as far as the rest of his staff are concerned I’m a joke, a pampered princess with a make-work job whose only concern is the next manicure, the latest pair of designer sho
es. I came on this charity ride to shake up that image, to prove, to myself at least, that I’m better than that.’
‘And finding Ethan would help?’ Belle asked. ‘He did take the money and run,’ she pointed out.
‘Why wouldn’t he? I didn’t do anything, say anything to stop him.’ She shook her head. ‘It would undermine a man’s confidence, something like that, don’t you think? I need to find him, make sure that he’s all right.’ She swallowed. ‘More than that. I need him to forgive me. If he can find it in his heart to do that, then maybe I’ll be able to forgive myself.’
Simone, who’d been increasingly quiet, covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a moan. ‘Forgive yourself? Who will forgive me?’ As Claire, all concern, reached out to her, took her hand, a sob escaped her and then it all came pouring out of her, like a breached dam. A story so terrible that it made Belle’s own loss seem almost bearable.
For a heartbeat, after she’d finished her story, there was total silence as Simone waited, her eyes anticipating horrified rejection. As one, Belle and Claire put their arms around her, held her.
‘I can’t believe I told you that,’ she said finally, when she could speak. ‘I can’t believe you still want to know me.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve kept it bottled up for so long,’ Claire said tenderly.
‘Some secrets are so bad that it takes something special for us to be able to find the words,’ Belle said quietly. ‘It seems that each of us needs to walk back a way, make our peace with the past.’
‘This journey we’re on isn’t going to be over when we fall into a hot bath, crawl between clean sheets, is it?’ Claire whispered. ‘This has just been the beginning.’
‘The easy bit.’ Belle swallowed, feeling a little as if she’d just stepped off the edge of a precipice.
‘But at least we won’t be alone. We’ll have each other.’
‘Will we? You’ll be home in America, Simone will be back in Australia and I’ll be in England, looking for Daisy. She could be anywhere.’ Then, ‘I could be anywhere.’
Belle closed her eyes and for a moment the fear was so great that all she wanted to do was turn the clock back to the second before she stopped on the road and looked back. If she just kept facing forward, moving forward, she wouldn’t see the demons snapping at her heels. Then, as if sensing her fear, Claire took one of her hands, Simone the other.
‘It’s not just Daisy I have to find,’ she said, turning her hands to grasp them. ‘I’ve been living behind this image for so long that I’m not sure who I am any more. I need to be on my own. To get away from all the pretence.’
‘Belle…’ Simone regarded her with concern. ‘Don’t do anything rash. Ivo could help you.’
She shook her head.
‘I’ve used him as a prop for long enough. Some journeys you have to take alone.’
‘Not alone,’ Claire quickly assured her. ‘You’ll have us.’
‘If you have to do this, Belle, we’ll be there for you.’ Simone straightened. ‘For each other. Support, encouragement, a cyber-shoulder to cry on and with three time-zones we’ll have 24/7 coverage!’
They both looked to Belle and the three of them clasped hands, too choked to speak.
Belle hadn’t told anyone when to expect her. If she’d phoned ahead, the television company would have sent a car or Ivo’s sister would have despatched the chauffeur to pick her up. But having made the decision to cut her ties with both marriage and job, it seemed hypocritical to use either of them.
Or maybe just stupid, she thought as she abandoned the endless queue for taxis and headed down into the underground to catch a train into London.
She’d have to turn up for work until her contract expired at the end of the month.
She pulled a face at this reminder that her agent-right now pulling out all the stops as he negotiated a new contract for her-was someone else she was going to have to face…who was never going to understand.
She wasn’t sure she understood herself. It had all seemed so clear up in the mountains, so simple when she’d made that life-changing pact with Claire and Simone and they’d sealed it with their last bar of chocolate.
Back in London, faced with reality, she felt very alone and she shivered as, with a rush of air, the train pulled in to the station.
She climbed aboard, settled into a corner and automatically took out a book to avoid direct eye contact with the passengers opposite. Scarcely necessary. Who would recognise her, bundled up against the raw November chill, no make-up, her hair covered in a scarf twisted around like a turban to disguise the damage wrought by six weeks without the attention of her stylist?
How easily one slid from instantly recognisable celebrity to some woman no one would glance at twice on the underground.
Without the constant attention of those people whose job it was to polish her appearance, the lifestyle magazines, the safety net of her marriage, her career, who would she be?
What would it take for her to fall right off the face of civilisation, the way her mother had? One bad decision, one wrong turning and she, too, could be spiralling downward…
Fear crawled over her, prickling her skin, bringing her out in a cold sweat, and an urge to abandon all her grand ideals, crawl back into the comfort zone of the life she had and be grateful for it, overwhelmed her.
Daisy didn’t need her.
In all likelihood she’d forgotten she even existed. What would be the point of selfishly blundering in, disturbing her doubtless perfect life with memories they’d all rather bury, just to ease her own conscience?
Wouldn’t the selfless thing be to trace her, find out what she needed and help her anonymously, from a distance, the way she had always supported charities that helped street kids?
Daisy was nineteen, at university in all likelihood. She’d probably die of embarrassment to be confronted by a sister whose success was due solely to the size of her bosom, the huskiness in her voice.
Worse, once the press found out about her sister-and it was inevitable that they would-they’d keep digging until they had it all.
No teenager needed that and there were other ways to redeem herself. Daisy would need somewhere to live. She could fix that for her somehow. Ivo would know…
She caught herself.
Not Ivo. Her. She’d find out.
She exited from the underground station to the relative peace of Saturday morning in the capital before the shops had opened and was immediately confronted by a man selling The Big Issue-the badge of the homeless. She fought, as she always had to, the desperate urge to run away and instead forced herself to stand, take out the money to buy a copy of the magazine, shake her head when he offered her change. Wish him good luck before hailing a passing black cab and making her escape. Pushing away the thought that she could have done more.
The driver nodded as she leaned in to give her address. ‘Welcome back, Miss Davenport.’
The immediate recognition was a balm, warming her, making her feel safe. ‘The disguise isn’t working, then?’ she said, relaxing into a smile.
‘You’d have to wear a paper bag over your head, miss.’ Then, when she’d given him her address, climbed in the back, ‘The missus’ll be chuffed when I tell her I had you in the back. She’s been following your bike ride. Sponsored you herself.’
‘How kind. What’s her name?’
She made a mental note so that she could mention her donation when she went back on air on Monday, chatted for a few minutes, then fished the cellphone out of her pocket and turned it on.
It hunted for a local network, then beeped, warning her that she had seventeen new messages.
‘Please call…’ from her agent.
‘Please call…’ from the director of her show. ‘Please call…Please call…’ The reassuring template messages of her life. And, just like that, the fear, never far below the surface, dissipated.
Smiling, she flicked the button to next and found herself reading, ‘I wish y
ou were my sister, Belle. Good luck. Hugs.’ Not a template message, not business, but a ‘care’ message from Claire, sent before she’d boarded her own plane back to the States.
The next, from Simone, said, ‘Are you as scared as me?’ Scared? Simone? Brilliant, successful, practically perfect Simone who, like her, like Claire, had a dark secret that haunted her.
She’d left them in the departure lounge at the airport in Hong Kong and it had felt as if she was tearing off an arm to leave them. And now they’d reached out and touched her just at the point at which her resolve was on the point of crumbling. For a moment she was too shaken to move.
‘We’re here, Miss Davenport,’ the driver said and she looked up, realised that the cab had stopped.
‘One moment.’ She quickly thumbed in her reply to Claire. ‘I wish you were, too!’. True. If Claire were her sister she wouldn’t be faced with this.
To Simone she began, ‘We don’t have to do this…’ Except that wasn’t what Simone wanted from her. What they’d all signed up to. She wanted, deserved, encouragement, the mutual support they’d promised each other. Not permission to bottle out at the first faint-heart moment from someone who was looking for an excuse to do the same.
A week ago in the clear, clean air of the Himalayas, in the company of two women who, for the first time in her adult life she’d been able to open up to, confide in, be totally honest with, she’d felt as if she’d seen a glimpse of something rare, something special that could be hers if only she had the courage to reach for it.
The minute she’d set foot in London, all the horrors of her childhood seemed to reach out from the pavement to grab at her, haul her back where she belonged and, terrified, she couldn’t wait to scuttle back into the safety of her gilded cage, pulling the door shut behind her.
She looked at the phone and realised that whatever message she sent now, fight or flee, would set the course of the rest of her life.
She closed her eyes, put herself back in the place she’d been a few days ago, then wrote a new message.
‘Scared witless, but we can do this.’ And hit send.