‘Victoria. Why are you here?’
Victoria clasped her hands together, touching her knuckles to her lips with a sigh. George noticed she still wore the rings he’d bought her. The outsize tourmaline glistening on her left hand. And the Cartier trinity ring she’d begged for her little finger.
‘Where to begin?’ she said huskily, shrugged, then smiled up at him from underneath that ridiculously long fringe that only someone without a grip on reality could wear. ‘In a nutshell, Nick and I are finished. And I’m broke. Haven’t got a bean. Mimi and I are homeless and penniless.’
George raised an eyebrow.
‘And your point is?’
‘You’ve got this gorgeous huge place. And we’re only tiny and we don’t eat much.’
No, thought George, but you drink like a fucking fish. He didn’t say it, though, because he didn’t want to start a slanging match. Be firm, he told himself. Firm, ruthless. No compromises. It was the only way with Victoria.
‘Sorry. I can’t help.’
‘You’ve got to.’
George was surprised to hear a tremor in her voice. Victoria was always so defiant. So definite. But she had gone very pale. The chocolate-dark freckles on her milk white skin, the ones she hated and the ones he had once loved, were darker than ever. He remembered tracing them with his fingers, playing dot to dot, in the days when her beauty had left him speechless with awe.
He didn’t want her anywhere near him now. One touch and he would be tainted. He felt himself drawing back. He could smell her perfume and it made him shudder. The aptly named Fracas.
Victoria leaned forward, her voice low, pleading.
‘I’m really scared, George. Mimi’s in a terrible state. You’re the only one who can talk any sense to her. You always were. I’m seriously worried she’s going to go off the rails.’
‘Like you, you mean?’ George knew he was being harsh.
‘Yes. Like me. It might surprise you, but I don’t want her to turn out like me. A complete loser. A flake. A pisshead. Who shit on the only man who was ever decent to her.’ There were tears welling up in her eyes. ‘So what do I do then, George? Tell me.’
There were all sorts of things he could tell her. That it was her own fault. That she shouldn’t have been so greedy. So mercenary. So fickle. That the day she had slithered out of his arms and into the grasp of Nick Taverner, media mogul, entrepreneur and total snake, was the day he absolved himself from any responsibility for her whatsoever.
‘Victoria, I have no idea what you’re going to do. And, frankly, it’s not my problem.’
‘But you’re my husband.’
‘Estranged. Abandoned. Cheated. Or had you forgotten?’ He didn’t mean to sound bitter. He meant to sound cool.
‘I made a mistake.’
‘That’s not what you told me. You told me that Nick Taverner recognized your talents, which was more than I did. That he understood your needs. That he was going to nurture you.’
‘You were stifling me. You were trying to control me.’
‘I was trying to stop you killing yourself. I was trying to give you a sense of perspective. You told me I was boring.’
‘I didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Victoria, you were a grown woman. You made your choice.’
Victoria seemed to crumple before his very eyes. Her chin was trembling as she choked back a sob. George wondered just how much of this drama was a performance and how much was genuine. Victoria was capable of using every trick in the book to get her way. She wiped away a runaway tear with her fingers, and George tried to remain stony-hearted.
‘Please. Just let us stay for a week. While we sort ourselves out. I’ve got to work out how I can get some money. I’m in a real mess, George.’
‘What about your business?’
Victoria bit her lip.
‘Nick bought me out.’ She had the grace to look a little shamefaced. ‘I’m just an employee. I can hardly go back and work for him, can I?’
‘What about the money from the sale? You must have got a decent whack.’
‘We undervalued it. So I didn’t have to pay capital gains…’
‘Jesus, Victoria.’
‘I know. But I didn’t think I was going to split up with him, did I?’
‘You must have got something. Where’s it all gone?’
She gave a minute shrug.
‘You know…’
George narrowed his eyes.
‘Shoes? Handbags? Cocaine?’
‘You really don’t think much of me, do you?’ she flashed.
‘Then what?’
‘A new car. Stuff for Mimi. We went to Mustique…’ She trailed off lamely. ‘Sixty grand doesn’t go far these days.’
George sighed heavily. Victoria’s eyes were glassy with tears.
‘Please. If not for me, then for Mimi. You wouldn’t see her without a roof over her head, would you? I mean, I’m sure you couldn’t care less if I ended up in the gutter, but you care about her, don’t you?’
George shut his eyes. He was being stitched up. He knew he was. But Victoria had him over a barrel. Of course he loved Mimi. Even if she wasn’t actually his, she was technically still his stepdaughter, and he cared very deeply what happened to her. And he knew jolly well that if he didn’t take responsibility for her, no one else would. With Victoria adrift without the life-raft of Nick Taverner’s millions…
What choice did he have?
‘I’ll have to talk to Lisa first.’
That perfect smile. That little dimple. George turned sharply and went to look out of the window.
‘This is an amazing place.’ She came to stand behind him. He could almost feel her soft breath on his neck.
‘It will be.’ His voice was matter of fact.
‘I can just see it. The walls painted chalky, matt white. Stripped floors. Curtains…? Mmmm… Not blue; it’s so predictable by the sea. Hot pink and burnt orange, maybe, contrasted with chocolate brown. Some massive canvasses – modern, minimalist. Distressed furniture, like driftwood. Beaten copper wall lights –’
Had she already been in and rifled through his ideas? She couldn’t have. Yet what she was reciting was almost what he’d designed. Could she read his mind? Maybe she could. For George knew the truth. That in many ways he and Victoria were in sync with each other. That together they made a whole. That whole had somehow splintered, rotted, fallen apart. He had long thought it beyond restoration, that no amount of love and care could render them complete again. But her words had made him realize…
He had missed her.
Her very presence in the room was making his skin tingle. He had butterflies, and it wasn’t nerves or fear – though they were there too. It was excitement. Every time he breathed in, her scent mingled with the oxygen in the air and hit his bloodstream. She was inside him already, taking possession, like some wraith from the other side. He clenched his hand, superstition making him long for some talisman to give him protection from her power. But he had nothing. All he had to defend himself with was common sense, which told him that the quicker Victoria was out of here the better for everyone.
‘I… better go and find Lisa,’ he said weakly.
She smiled, locking her eyes with his, and every molecule in his body crackled.
‘Where shall I wait?’
George panicked. He certainly wasn’t going to let her sit in his office. He knew Victoria only too well – she’d be through the filing cabinets and know his business before he’d even turned his back.
‘Why don’t you sit outside? It’s a lovely day. I’ll bring you coffee.’
‘Just water will be fine.’
He looked at her askance. Victoria was held together by nicotine, alcohol and caffeine.
‘Total detox,’ she said, a little too brightly. ‘My body is now a temple. Apart from the fags, of course. Got to have something to keep body and soul together.’
‘Oh.
’ George couldn’t help feeling his reply was insufficient, given the import of what she was saying.
‘I’ve made quite a few changes. I’ve been looking at things. Trying to work out where I went wrong.’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘I must have been hell on wheels to live with. It’s only now, looking back, that I realize what you must have gone through.’
Christ, thought George. If she was going to turn fragile and vulnerable, he wouldn’t have a hope. He curled his toes and locked his knees in the battle not to bound over and scoop her up in his arms.
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle,’ he said heartily. ‘No need to feel guilty on my account. It’s all turned out for the best.’
‘Yes.’ She swept her beautiful eyes around the room, her gaze like the arc of a lighthouse beam as she took in her surroundings. ‘The thing is, George…’ She dropped her voice a few decibels and he had to strain to hear her. ‘If we can’t come to some arrangement – something that suits all of us, of course – I’m going to have to start proceedings.’
‘Proceedings?’
‘For divorce.’
It was like a punch in the guts. George stood, dumb-founded, as Victoria carried blithely on.
‘I know you don’t own all of this, but I’m guessing by rights that half of what you do own should be mine?’
The witch! She was a total utter witch.
George strode angrily across the sand, his hands in his pockets. In the space of just five minutes, Victoria had aroused a host of conflicting emotions in him. Shock. Panic. Suspicion. Lust. Pity. And finally fear, mixed with a copious dollop of anger now that he was safely out of range.
He felt relief when he saw Lisa. As if his sanity was regained. Lisa was safe. Reliable. Manageable. She was sitting on a rock, her arms wrapped round her knees.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t do married men. It’s one of my golden rules. One I never break.’ She paused for a second. ‘Knowingly, anyway. I should have known you were too good to be true.’
‘It was just a technicality. The fact that we were still married. We just hadn’t got round to sorting it out. Because we could never have a conversation that didn’t end in mud-slinging.’
‘That doesn’t explain why you never told me.’
George clambered on to the rock next to her and sat down.
‘If I didn’t mention Victoria it was as if she never existed. And then she could never destroy us.’
‘Get real.’
The look Lisa gave him was bleak and disdainful. His stomach curdled.
‘Can I tell you about it? Our marriage?’
‘Feel free. Then I’ll tell you about the seventeen illegitimate children I forgot to mention.’
George flinched. Lisa was never sarcastic.
‘I don’t blame you for being angry.’
‘Bloody good thing too!’
She stood up and began bounding over the rocks, towards the sea. George scrambled to his feet and tried to follow her. His shoes were leather-soled and not suitable for leaping over slippery, seaweed-covered surfaces. Eventually she reached a rock pool that was too wide to leap across. She came to a halt. He drew up beside her, panting, and saw there were tears streaming down her face.
‘I feel such a fool. You’re a bloody fraud. And I’ve given up everything…’
‘Victoria means nothing. I don’t give her a thought from one day to the next.’
‘You obviously mean something to her. Else why is she here?’
‘Because I’m a soft touch. Or at least she thinks I am.’
‘Has she gone?’
George hesitated.
‘Not yet.’
‘You’ve told her she can stay.’ Lisa’s voice was flat.
‘No. I haven’t. I’ve told her I need to speak to you.’
‘You want my permission? For your ex-wife to move in with us?’
George knew the whole situation was preposterous. And it was largely his fault. If only he’d been straight with Lisa from the start. But it had been so much easier not to mention his past. As each day slipped by and the opportunity for confessions became more and more remote, it had just seemed easier to play the ostrich. How the hell could he have kidded himself? The likes of Victoria never faded obligingly into the background. He looked at the ocean stretching in front of him.
‘I’m going to have to tread very carefully with Victoria,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to need your support. I know I don’t deserve that, in the circumstances. But if you’ll let me explain what we were all about, what happened, you might understand.’
Lisa gave a tiny, reluctant nod. Her curiosity was greater than her pride.
George picked up a nearby shell and lobbed it into the rock pool, before taking a deep breath and plunging straight into his story.
‘I met her five years ago, just after I first moved to Bath. She had her own PR company. She organized a launch party for a development of luxury apartments we’d done. A conversion of an old lunatic asylum.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘Ironically…’
George was entranced the moment he set eyes on Victoria working the room. She was wearing an emerald-green wrap dress spattered with tiny butterflies and incredibly high heels, in which she walked with the utmost grace. At one point their eyes met. His heart began to beat faster as she glided over to him and, plucking two glasses of champagne from a passing waitress, handed him one.
‘You’re George Chandler. You were the project manager on this. You moved here six months ago, from Bristol,’ she told him, as if he might have forgotten.
George nodded his agreement of her précis. ‘You’ve done your homework.’
‘It’s my job to know exactly who everyone is.’ Then she smiled. A proper smile; not the polite, hostessy rictus she had been wearing all evening, but one which reached her eyes and melted George’s heart. ‘I’m Victoria Snow, in case you haven’t done yours. Come and sit down with me for a moment. The room’s working beautifully – I can take five minutes.’
She led him over to a cluster of armchairs by the window and they sat down.
‘You’ve done a wonderful job,’ George told her.
He wasn’t just being polite – she really had. The room was heaving with local heavyweights. Two well-known faces said to have already signed up for their unit were present – one who played a dashing doctor in a popular television drama, and a jockey who was tipped for the next Grand National. They were surrounded by crowds of sycophants delighted to be in the company of celebrity, however minor.
Victoria smiled her acceptance of his compliment. With her slanting green eyes and her extraordinary cheekbones, she was like Lauren Bacall, decided George. Or Faye Dunaway. She oozed glamour and class and style. Totally unobtainable, he decided. He wasn’t even going to belittle himself by trying. There was bound to be an equally glamorous Mr Snow somewhere.
‘Actually, it’s not hard.’ She was leaning into him confidentially. ‘It’s just a question of spending other people’s money. I’m fantastically good at it.’
‘It’s not though, is it?’ protested George. ‘You’ve put a lot of thought into this. The guest list, the canapés, the freebies – it’s very slick. But seemingly effortless. That takes skill.’
‘Ah,’ she said, tipping her head to one side and smiling at him. ‘You’ve caught me out. I rather prefer people to think I’m a bit of a bimbo. You’re very…’ She put a finger to her lips as she sought the right word. ‘Perspicacious.’
She crossed her legs and the emerald-green silk of her dress slithered aside, revealing a perfectly toned, slender thigh encased in a gossamer stocking. George tried desperately hard to look elsewhere, then realized she was laughing at him.
‘What?’ he asked indignantly.
‘What are you doing afterwards?’
He frowned and bit his lip, pretending to give it some serious thought while he played for time.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
She dipped a finger int
o her champagne and pressed it to his lips, tracing the bubbles over his cupid’s bow with an intense concentration. Then her head darted towards his, swift as an adder, and she kissed the last traces of liquid away. A moment later she was smiling at him.
‘I must go and circulate,’ she pronounced.
And before he could respond, she’d slipped away and lost herself amongst the crowds.
George followed her progress for the rest of the evening, intrigued with her professionalism as she made small talk, introduced people, broke up little cliques and redistributed guests amongst the room, passed drinks and canapés, directed waitresses. He could see her eyes didn’t miss anything. Dirty glasses weren’t left for more than a moment. Drinks were replenished. Each guest was made to feel as important as the next.
As the guests started dwindling away, he sidled up to his boss, Richard.
‘Tell me about Victoria Snow.’
Richard looked at him sharply. His lips thinned.
‘Crazy, fucked-up, alcoholic nympho spendthrift.’
‘Oh,’ said George, somewhat nonplussed.
‘Think Paula Yates meets Imelda Marcos with a bit of Sue Ellen Ewing thrown in. Don’t go there.’
George watched Victoria across the room, unable to equate the person being described with what he saw.
‘She’s done a very good job here,’ he protested. ‘People are actually looking at the plans. They never usually do at these launches. They usually guzzle as much free wine as they can and bugger off.’
‘Yeah, well – you haven’t seen her bill.’
‘I’d say it was worth every penny.’
Richard gave an infuriating, knowing smile.
‘She does great PR. But her personal life is a disaster area. Trust me. I’ve seen the fallout.’
‘Maybe she hasn’t met the right person.’
Richard raised a sardonic eyebrow.
‘And you think you might be?’
George gave a non-committal shrug. Richard shook his head.
‘Trust me, George. She’s virtually certifiable, if her reputation is anything to go by.’
‘I’ve never been one to listen to tittle-tattle.’
Love on the Rocks Page 16