by Maeve Haran
‘As a matter of fact, Ma, I have just offered it to a woman called Angela Williams. I’m not sure you remember her, but I knew her years ago when we were at Oxford.’
‘Not that frightful woman on Done Deal? Your father loves it. Why on earth did you do that?’
‘She doesn’t know the villa’s anything to do with me.’
‘Why would that matter?’
‘It’s a long story. She’s just lost her business. You probably saw it in the paper.’
‘Good God, you’re not opening a retirement home for indigent females?’
‘Actually, I hope she’s going to give me some good business advice. I’ve had a very tempting offer on the place.’
‘Stephen, not Le Sirenuse!’ demanded his mother, scandalized. ‘You can’t sell that wonderful house as if it were an off-plan studio in Shoreditch! It’s unique! What would they do with it? Fill it with oligarchs and Qatari sheikhs?’
Stephen had heard the shady people weren’t going to stay in the shade much longer. ‘As a matter of fact, they want to open a luxury hotel.’
‘In Lanzarella! Surely there are enough luxury hotels there already? When your father and I first visited from Capri it was just a little village that grew lemons, saved from all that horrible tourism by not being on the sea. Stephen, you can’t!’
Stephen was beginning to wish that Sylvie’s husband had kept his trousers on. It would have saved them all a lot of grief.
‘I’ll think about it, Ma.’
‘Besides, Carla loved that place.’ Gwen knew it was a low blow to bring Stephen’s long-dead wife into the argument, but did it anyway. Stephen turned his face away from the camera. He knew his relationship with the villa made no sense. But somehow, remembering Carla and how happy they’d been there, he could never sell it. Maybe this time it would be different. ‘Sylvie could do the place up for you. She’d make it so beautiful you’d never want to get rid of it.’
Stephen shuddered, thinking of his mother’s Beirut bordello. ‘Sylvie and I don’t exactly share the same taste in decorating.’
‘You’ve spent far too long in the beige world of property development,’ insisted his mother. ‘In fact, you should go to Italy more yourself. Stop you wrecking London’s skyline. I read a whole article about what people like you are up to! Apparently you can’t see St Paul’s properly from Hampstead Heath because of all those horrible new skyscrapers.’
Stephen smiled to himself. The fact that he’d made a considerable amount of money from the beige world of property development had never impressed his mother. Maybe it was a good thing.
‘Right. I’m going to weed my herbaceous border while you call little Sylvie.’
‘Now don’t overdo it, Ma.’ Stephen swiftly changed the subject. ‘You are using that kneeler I bought you?’
‘Anyone would think I was an old woman,’ protested Gwen acidly.
‘You’ll never be an old woman, Ma. Even when you’re a hundred. It’s not your style.’
Gwen repressed a wide smile. ‘Off with you now. And no handcuffing nude women and leaving them hanging about.’
Stephen stared at the phone. Since he had not read Fifty Shades he was utterly mystified. In anyone less obviously on the ball he would have been worried but no doubt his mother would explain the reference to him when she felt like it. For now he was thinking about the Sylvie proposition. As usual there was some solid sense in what his mother had suggested.
And what if Angela accepted? There would be even more reason to take the offer he’d received seriously.
He thought for a moment of the Angela who starred in Done Deal. Although he would never admit it to his mother, secretly he watched every episode. The tough blonde who terrified the participants and fought ruthlessly with the other judges seemed a different person entirely from the pretty, shy young woman from the underprivileged background he’d known all those years ago. In those days Angela had been unsure of herself, conscious of her difference, perhaps just beginning to develop the angry spikiness that now seemed to characterize her.
Maybe it was this that had drawn him to her. He’d always liked strong women. Would things have been different between them if her father hadn’t died and Angela hadn’t been forced to leave university suddenly and look after her mother?
The day they took their first lot of exams came back to him; how they’d had to wear the traditional Oxford uniform of sub fusc – black and white – and how annoyed it made Angela. So annoyed, in fact, that she tore up the white carnation he had in his buttonhole and threw the petals over him.
Stephen found himself smiling. He’d often read about her in the papers, how well she’d done; he’d even spotted her across a crowded room at one or two events and almost gone over to introduce himself.
Yet something had stopped him. Guilt, he supposed. They had all been young and silly, yet he felt he hadn’t behaved well towards Angela. Which was why he’d told Drew not to admit that the villa was his.
He stared out of the window, wondering if she would accept.
He just wasn’t sure he was up to inviting the whirlwind that was Sylvie into his life again.
‘Are you OK, Mum? Why don’t you sit down and I’ll bring you a cup of tea?’
Claire smiled at her son Evan. His expression was one of kindness and there was a look of genuine concern in his grey eyes. Funny how much he looked like his father; the same build and mop of dark hair, though Martin’s was greying now, and, Claire remembered, there had been a time when Martin would have offered her that cup of tea and told her not to overdo things.
‘I’d love the tea but I have to keep chopping for this funeral I’m catering tomorrow. Why are you laughing?’
Evan squeezed past her in the small kitchen. ‘I didn’t know people had their funerals catered, that’s all.’
‘You’d be surprised. This lady left a complete list of readings, music and poetry plus a detailed menu. Smoked salmon blinis followed by coronation chicken and green salad with no peppers or tomatoes because she thought that ruined the look. Cheese and biscuits. Coffee.’
‘I don’t suppose she’ll be noticing from where she is now.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it. She was one of those clients.’
Evan handed her a mug of tea. ‘Do they vary a lot?’
‘God, yes, some of them just delegate to you and forget all about it and the others drive you mad with fussing. She was one of those.’ Claire sipped her tea. Sometimes she’d really like to give up the catering and take it easy but they couldn’t afford it. Besides, just at the moment, she liked getting out of the house. She found Belinda a difficult daughter-in-law. She seemed almost to expect room service and never offered to cook or even shop. Then there was the state she left Claire’s liquidizer in. This reminded her that she’d been meaning to have a word.
‘Evan, darling, do you think you could remind Belinda to wash up after her kale shakes? Only I depend on the liquidizer for my work.’
‘Maybe it’d be better if you did,’ Evan suggested nervously.
Claire sighed. How come nice men like Evan ended up with bossy partners like Belinda? And she, whom she also considered a nice woman, had let Martin get away with letting her do all the earning while he rarely did a thing.
As if to illustrate her point Martin came into the kitchen. ‘What are we having for supper tomorrow? Leftovers from the funeral? Or will the grieving mourners have recovered enough to stuff themselves with all the coronation chicken?’
‘Why don’t you cook something for a change? Or would that be asking too much?’
Martin pretended he hadn’t heard.
Claire went back to chopping her onions. She had learned how to do this professionally on her catering course – first cutting the onion in half then turning it on its side and slicing with consummate skill so that every bit was a similar size and it didn’t even have time to make her cry. Today, for some reason though, she did feel like crying. It wasn’t at all like her.
‘Just the onions,’ she lied. ‘Any news about the flat?’
‘Not so far. Trying to get rid of me?’ he asked.
‘Of course not.’ Just Belinda. And maybe Martin.
‘What the fuck did you think you were doing, sending that out to all our clients, not to mention my ninety-year-old mother in her care home?’ Tony Sutton’s face was the kind of tomato colour that suggested an imminent heart attack. If so, she’d wear a red dress at his funeral.
‘I hope she’s proud of her stupid son.’ Sylvie was slightly regretting her rash behaviour but she wasn’t telling him that. ‘And what the hell were you doing anyway?’ she demanded. ‘Forget the betrayal, the indignity of seeing my husband pumping away at that brainless little bitch, the total lack of originality in screwing the intern – haven’t you even heard of Monica Lewinsky? What about the Riskovs’ five-hundred-thread-count sheets? What if they had arrived early and got a preview of your arse? Have you no business sense?’
‘Who are you to talk about business sense? You’ve probably killed ours stone dead. This thing’s bound to have gone viral by now. We’ll be the laughing stock of London.’
‘It’ll blow over soon enough.’ Sylvie shrugged. She knew she was on shaky ground. She even had a sneaky suspicion it might be illegal. All this stuff about revenge porn. Would Tony minus his boxers qualify?
The sudden look exchanged between her assistant and Frank the curtain hanger came back to her. They had both known about Tony and Kimberley and had wanted to protect her, so this thing had to have been going on for some time.
‘May I remind you this is my business?’ Sylvie insisted. ‘You are my occasionally useful husband.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Tony replied huffily. ‘Didn’t you even consider what our daughter would think?’
Sylvie tossed her mane of red hair. She had indeed been assuaged by a tsunami of guilt on this front, but so far there had been total silence from Salome. The truth was, she hadn’t thought of her daughter at all at the time. She’d been too angry. But of course she should have.
Rather to her surprise, most of the response she had had so far from their clients had been amusement and even a little admiration – especially from the women. She had instantly told everyone that the whole thing was the work of some malicious hacker. The Russians and her grand Middle Eastern clients had chosen to accept this rather than disrupt their decorating plans and, fortunately, Kimberley’s father was no longer on their emailing list or he would certainly have been in for a surprise over his cornflakes.
‘Anyway,’ Sylvie put on her grandest dame manner, ‘you’d better bugger right off now and move in with Kimberley.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. She lives at home.’
‘Do the words “You should have thought of that before” register in that sex-obsessed brain of yours?’
Tony slammed out of her office, tripping on the rolls of fabric as he left. That would have been entertaining, if he’d broken his leg. She had a feeling Miss Kimberley of Basildon might enjoy dressing up in an Ann Summers nurse’s uniform but not tending to a temporarily disabled Tony.
She had tried to dismiss Kimberley as the bitch of Basildon, but the memory of the girl’s glossy hair, long legs and youthful, dewy skin crept unwanted into Sylvie’s thoughts. She glanced down at her own arm, which had once been as smooth and appealing as silk, now dry despite oceans of moisturizer, and at the way it crinkled into a hundred tiny folds when she moved it, just as her mother’s had.
And tough, extrovert Sylvie suddenly wanted to cry.
She wondered for a moment what Kimberley had been doing sleeping with Tony. A father complex? The hope of a job? Then she remembered with irritation that her husband could actually be very charming and attractive when he put himself out. It was just that it had been a very long time since he’d put himself out for her.
Angela sat staring at her laptop, not even noticing the surroundings that usually meant so much to her. She’d searched for five years to find the perfect mews house in Marylebone, one of the few parts of Central London she felt still had real character. She’d decorated the house entirely selfishly – the privilege that came from living alone when you had no one to please but yourself. Angela hated compromising on taste, or, in fact, compromising at all. Perhaps that was why she had never got married, or even lived with anyone, and now found herself, as Drew had put it so brutally, without a husband, family or even a dog. As a matter of fact, she had thought about getting a dog, but had decided it would be too unfair, given the hours she worked and the amount of time she spent away on buying trips and visiting foreign factories to make sure the suppliers were keeping to her rigorous standards.
Drew had also pointed out the fact that Angela didn’t seem to have many women friends.
‘Women friends are a waste of time!’ Angela had snapped. ‘They say they are offering sisterly solidarity but actually they just dump their problems on each other. That makes them feel so much better that they go straight back to the same bad situation they were moaning about. I’d rather not moan to other people but do something about my problems.’
Unfortunately, today her problems seemed insuperable. She’d just been reading how incredibly common it was for founders to get fired from their own companies if they’d opted for outside investment. Outside investors, it seemed, rarely believed that the founder – no matter how successful – was the right person to really make the most money out of expanding the business. Yet according to all the lawyers, she had no option but to take the money and leave.
Angela slammed her laptop shut and strode over to the fridge. Breaking all her usual rules she opened a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé and poured herself a large glass to take to the bath. Even more out of character for one who valued her figure, she decanted a large handful of cashew nuts into a bowl and took them too.
The en suite bathroom was her favourite place in the whole house. It had a large freestanding bath, thick luxurious carpets you could almost drown in and a lovely antique basin. The crowning luxury was surround-sound music she could operate remotely.
She took off her clothes and left them on the large bed, catching sight of her naked body in the dressing-room mirror. Even at sixty she was tall and elegant, with small high breasts and hardly any puckering of the skin above the cleavage – not that she had much of that. For a fleeting moment it all seemed a waste – her still-attractive figure, the stylish home, the money – what was it all for?
Angela turned angrily away from the mirror. Bloody hell, she was becoming morose!
She quickly filled the bath, adding her favourite wildly expensive bath foam, another of the fruits of her success, and turned the music up loud. Tamla Motown soon filled the steamy room, banishing the blues – at least for the moment.
She lay back, letting the scented water envelop her, and thought about this curious offer from Drew’s mysterious friend.
Finding those reporters lying in wait for her had thrown her more than she wanted to admit. Fame was a double-edged sword, which was why she was surprised so many people seemed to court it for its own sake. Well, she wasn’t one of them. It also made people somehow want to see you fall, as though you had set yourself up above the average mortal and deserved anything you got.
Of course, in her position, she could go anywhere – a yoga retreat in the Maldives, a spa holiday in Crete. But Angela wasn’t good at holidays. This was partly due to her relentless energy but there was something else she didn’t like admitting: she feared being pitied. You could stay in the best hotels, eat in the most expensive restaurants, but waiters still came up and loudly enquired if you were dining alone.
A few weeks of Southern Italy, in a private villa, away from the glare of the press and the humiliation of reading about herself, was undeniably seductive. She could even speak a little Italian since she’d been to a summer school in Rome when she was a teenager. It might be fun t
o brush it up. But the biggest attraction was certainly the business proposition of whether the villa should become a hotel. That was something she would relish. She wouldn’t be a lonely holidaymaker but a woman with a purpose.
When she got out of the bath she decided she’d google Lanzarella. Besides, it didn’t have to be for long. The press had a short memory. They’d soon be distracted by a politician’s affair or a corruption scandal in football. On the whole she thought she’d say yes.
Sylvie had a last check of the Belgravia apartment to make sure everything was in place. The main reception room looked suitably magnificent – Moscow Opera House with just a dash of modern sophistication. The flowers were perfect. She hadn’t had time to do them herself, but the florist had managed to get the dark red peonies from New Covent Garden market that Sylvie had requested even though they weren’t really in season yet. She had toyed briefly with silk ones, which could look sensational, but her instinct told her the Riskovs would see that as somehow cheapskate, especially if their friends surreptitiously started to feel them and smirk, which was all too possible. The peonies had been arranged in huge Chinese vases.
Sylvie bent down and breathed in the subtle aroma. Perfect. The red curtains looked brilliant. Frank had been putting them up when she had discovered Tony, but she wasn’t going to think about that.
She got Amelia to do the bedroom checking, just in case she broke down. She had suggested the Riskovs arrive at midday because the light from the enormous windows looked at its best then, but today the weather was dismal – any sign of spring was shrouded in sheets of sleety rain. She’d just have to hope that, coming from Moscow, they would at least consider it better than home.
The doorbell rang and she stood like a hostess in a reception line, holding a bouquet of glorious white roses, the kind that had their petals fully open but hadn’t started to droop yet. Until now it had only been Mr Riskov she had dealt with. The roses for his wife had been Amelia’s idea and the look on Mrs Riskov’s face when Sylvie presented them told her it had been an inspiration.