by Victoria Fox
BUENOS AIRES.
The elusive capital … There, anything was possible.
Calida checked her cash: enough for a sandwich and a drink but that was all. She had to turn her fortunes around. She had got this far only by chance, and from here on in had to forge her own luck. Resourcefulness had always been on her side—that same nature that Teresita had dismissed so cruelly. Teresita might have had the dreams, but Calida had the brains. All she had to do was come up with a plan.
Feeling light-headed, she found a stall and bought a packet of crackers and a bottle of water. She should save the rest of her money. Calida was no stranger to sleeping under the stars, and as she emerged on to the street and began her enquiries at every shop and bar in town, every booth and garage, asking after any opportunities for work, however sporadic and however thinly paid, and received only refusals, she prepared herself for sleeping rough over the next few weeks. Come late afternoon she was exhausted and found a park to collapse in, the grass, by now cooling, a welcome cushion for her weary bones. The park was emptying, day-trippers trickling out and the stone fountain dwindling to a stop. Calida laid her bag and coat beneath a tree.
That night she slept soundly, the day’s upheaval plummeting her into welcome oblivion. But the next day was the same, and the next, and the next.
Then, on the fourth night, something happened. Calida was on the cusp of sleep, starving after her funds had run dry, and, when she heard their voices through the onset of sleep, creeping closer, she thought they could be part of her dream.
The kick to her stomach put paid to that. It was sharp, sudden, an unbelievable shock. The boys began to beat her with unfettered enjoyment. She curled up in a ball with her arms wrapped round her head as they beset her back and legs, bruising her shoulders and slamming their heels and fists into every scrap of trembling body they could find. They took everything, her bag and her case, all but the clothes she wore. The only item they left was her camera. Before she passed out, Calida heard one of them say, ‘Piece of shit,’ before tossing it to the ground. Comatose, she grabbed the neck strap, held on to it like a lifeline, and watched them rush away into the dusk, laughing and hooting like dogs, while tears of pain and humiliation soaked her face. Later, she would feel satisfaction at imagining them opening their spoils and finding so little. A few pesos she had been saving—that was all. She hoped it was worth it.
Next morning she woke, every part of her aching. A kind face hovered.
‘Are you all right? Díos mio, you poor girl …’
Calida fell back into unconsciousness. The ground shook with approaching footsteps and a seam of new voices threaded around her, like a host of angels.
Her recovery unfolded on a vineyard outside town, owned by a man named Cristian Ramos. It was a pretty, hidden estate off a country lane, next to an ivy-covered church, and Cristian was a jovial, generous-hearted winemaker, who had been out walking his dog at dawn when he had come across a bruised and battered eighteen-year-old whom at first he’d thought was dead. Cristian was a gentle, honest man, father to three young boys and husband to his wife of twenty years.
‘Stay here as long as you need,’ the couple told her, after listening to her story.
Calida protested, as much as her depleted state would allow, but they would hear none of it and said she could earn her keep by working on the vineyard. So she spent her days amid the vines, rows of pink-skinned grapes that panned as far as the eye could see towards the crust of the Andes, perspiring beneath the sun and picking until her fingers were stained. The grapes discoloured and roughened her hands, dark juice engraved her palms, while the riper fruits, ready to burst, left their skins beneath her nails. Now and then she startled at a noise that turned out to be a flap of wings or a stir in the plants, and tensed, the ghosts of her attackers always at her back.
Gradually, she made progress. Those scars that could heal healed. The others, the invisible ones, she kept to herself, and tried to avoid touching them.
Weeks turned into months and the season changed. Cristian hooked her up with a contact of his who owned a restaurant in town. Calida started waiting tables there during the evenings and slowly her pockets filled. Cristian and his family refused to take any of it, though she tried to press it on them.
One day, Cristian called her in from the vineyard to tell her she had a visitor.
It was Daniel.
He was in the living room, his back to her, looking at a picture of Cristian and his wife on their wedding day. Part of her wanted to drop to her knees with happiness and beg him to take her home; another, stronger, part kept standing.
‘How did you find me?’
Daniel turned, and a series of emotions crossed his face like the wings of a dark bird: sorrow, heartache, confusion, relief—and finally anger. He looked different at Cristian’s house, smaller somehow. ‘You’ve been gone three months,’ he said. His voice was steady but his eyes gave him away: hopeful, yet guarded, like the guanaco. ‘Three months, Calida—do you have any idea what you’ve put me through?’
No, was the answer, because she had chosen not to think about it.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry? That’s it?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘You can start with an explanation. Tell me how you could—’ Daniel’s jaw set. ‘Without even an explanation, just vanishing like that. Coming out here all alone.’
She disliked that this proved him right; that after all she was clueless, unable to survive anywhere but on the farm, naïve to the point of risking her own life. Teresita could survive in the big bad world—she was special—but Calida? No way.
Daniel’s blue eyes searched hers. ‘At first I figured you couldn’t have gone far, but no one in town had seen you. In the end I tried my chances at the coach station. That woman remembered you, said she felt sorry for you, gave you your fare.’
Frustration sparked in her belly. Why do I have to answer to you?
Teresita didn’t have to answer to anyone. Teresita never had. Not like Calida. Good old boring, reliable Calida, who never did anything out of the ordinary.
‘When I got here,’ said Daniel, ‘I checked the hospitals. I was convinced I would find you and that would be it. Then your name came up. The doctors told me a man had brought you in. From there I found Cristian’s address.’
‘Go back,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Go back to the farm. You’ve found me now, haven’t you? And I’m fine.’
‘I don’t understand—’
‘I can’t stay there,’ she told him, coldly. ‘There’s nothing left for me.’
‘And there is for me—without you?’ Daniel took a step towards her, then a warning flash as her head rose, and stopped. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Why, then? I thought … Calida, I’m not someone who has to do this. I’m not someone who talks about things—I just … I just do them. After what I told you,’ he searched for the words, ‘it took a lot for me to tell you that. I haven’t told anyone else. There are two people in my life that I trust, and one of them’s myself.’
Calida closed her heart to his words.
Daniel will never look at you because you are desperate and embarrassing.
‘I trusted you,’ he said. ‘I trust you. And then you ran out on me.’
Calida was sick of being trustworthy. Trustworthy wasn’t exciting or sexy or daring. Trustworthy was a friend, not a lover. ‘I’m glad I left,’ she said.
‘No te creo. I don’t believe you.’
She was measured—she stepped into Teresita’s shoes for a moment and let herself be hard. ‘I don’t want the ranch any more and I don’t want our friendship.’
The edge of compassion in his voice evaporated. ‘You don’t, huh?’
A beat elapsed in which she could have spoken, but didn’t.
‘You get to run away while I stay behind to pick up the pieces?’
‘That’s what Teresita did.’
‘That was different.’
‘If it pains you to go back then don’t,’ she lashed. ‘The farm doesn’t belong to you anyway—Julia only took you in because she felt sorry for you.’
There was a terrible silence. Calida knew she was being vicious, but now the poison was spilling she found she couldn’t go back; as if this exchange was happening with her sister, all the hate and upset stacked against Daniel because he was here, because he could take it. It was easier to drill deeper than to turn back.
‘Get rid of it,’ she said, ‘even if you have to give it away. See if I care.’
‘You do care.’
‘No, I don’t. Why should I?’
‘You can’t cut me off like this.’
‘Like she did?’
‘It’s nothing like that.’
‘I never want to see that place again. OK? I never want to see you again. Who knows, Daniel, if you’d never come into our lives none of this would have happened.’
‘Calida—’
Daniel reached for her, a last attempt. She backed away. In that instant, she knew she had lost him for good. His body closed. ‘If that’s how you feel,’ he said.
‘It is. I hate that place.’
‘Just like you hate me?’
She looked him square in the eye. ‘Right now, a little less.’
Daniel absorbed the final blow. In his gaze she saw a stranger reflected and, even now, especially now, registered some satisfaction at her reinvention.
At the door, he lifted his head a fraction, as if he were about to say something more, something that would unpick this and make it right. Anything.
‘Goodbye, Calida.’ The door slammed.
Calida saw her sister again just before Christmas 2002.
She had finished eating with Cristian and his family and made her excuses for bed. The children were next door with the TV on. The Ramoses’ television wasn’t the sort they had owned on the ranch. This one was huge and in colour, with dozens of channels. Calida was passing through when suddenly, there it was—a flash of red, a delectable smile; an impossible glimmer, like a butterfly almost caught then gone.
‘Wait.’ The children, confused, stopped the remote.
Simone Geddes assailed her first, a brittle smile locked in place for the cameras. It was as if Calida had seen the actress yesterday, no detail lost, that same ruthless, serene expression, polished beyond humanity. Simone was attending a film premiere in London, swathed in diamonds and a velvet dress the colour of midnight.
And then the butterfly: Teresita.
Calida gripped the back of a chair. The breath dried in her throat and a cool ribbon spooled down her neck. The siren onscreen bewitched her—her sister and a stranger. She wanted to reach in and pluck her from this fantasy, to dig and dig until she found the girl she had lost—but, thousands of miles across the ocean and an infinite distance beyond, she understood, finally, why Teresita didn’t want to return.
Her twin shone. That was the only word for it. She had entered paradise. Her black hair had grown into liquid sable, piled high on top of her head. Calida knew that head: she had kissed it good night and smoothed its brow; she had pulled that hair when she was mad and held a fistful in her sleep when she was afraid. Emeralds the size of plums dripped from Teresita’s ears. Her gown was red and pooled to the floor.
Simone did the talking, her arm held proprietorially round Teresita’s waist. Teresita just stood there, and smiled and smiled. Why shouldn’t she? She had it all.
Calida bolted upstairs. She lay on her bed, listening to the air as it filled her lungs: Teresita, Daniel, the world that had exploded in a thousand showering lights.
Cristian’s wife knocked on the door. She couldn’t bring herself to answer it.
Catching her image in the glass, she surveyed her tatty clothes, her bitten nails and her earth-smeared skin. Never had she felt so plain. All the while she had been pining, Teresita had been out there, living a stolen life and basking in her fortune.
When had the sword fallen? When had they come apart? When had it all gone wrong? She had thought it was Daniel, but saw now he’d been merely the catalyst. When Teresita was an infant, squirming like a kitten, fighting free; when she was five and broke out of Calida’s arms to run alone across the prairie; when they went riding together and her sister, strong and wild as the horses, galloped ahead without a backward glance? Calida had taken for granted that they would always be part of each other, sewn into each other’s lives, inseparable. She had been wrong.
Tess Geddes was a pitiless creature.
Ambitious. Cruel. Nakedly unkind.
Bitch, Calida thought, and with the word came a rush of unexpected heat, like fire rushing through a window. She said it again, this time out loud.
It tasted good.
Her anger came apart. In dismantling it, she took the useful bits and hid them, like treasure. Determination. Grit. The indomitable heart of the wronged.
Selfish bitch. You think you’ve ruined me.
Guess what? I’m only just beginning.
In the morning, Calida said goodbye to Cristian and his family. At the station she knew without hesitation where she was heading, and bought her fare without difficulty. She slept soundly on the coach, dreaming of what was to come.
Teresita had made it the easy way, cheating her pass into wealth and success. Calida intended to match her dollar for dollar—the difference was that she would work for it. And when she had, when she was equally as rich and renowned as her twin, she would look Tess Geddes hard in the eye and demand to be recognised.
I’m your worst nightmare.
In the gloom of the carriage, Calida smiled.
I’m your dark horse. And I’m coming for you.
19
St Tropez
‘I’ve missed you so much!’
Tess arrived at the Port Grimaud villa just as Mia Ferraris stepped out to greet her. The friends embraced and an assistant took Tess’s bags. The waterside retreat was bright and cool, an open kitchen skewered by an ornate spiral that rose to three upper floors, and, at the far end, where a spill of Côte d’Azur sunlight washed in, a forty-foot sailing yacht was tethered in the marina as casually as a car parked on a drive.
Mia’s shoulders were burned and there was a livid strip of pink at her waist. ‘Ugh, I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying all week for an even tan, you know how I have to rotisserie myself or else I miss a bit? Then I fell asleep on one side.’
‘It’s her own fault,’ came a woman’s voice, floating downstairs. ‘I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time in the sun, chérie, it isn’t good for you.’
‘Bonjour, Madame Ferraris,’ said Tess. She had met Béatrice and her husband Anton at the Sainte-Marthe open day. All the parents had been invited—strange that she should include Simone and Brian in that bracket, but what else were they?—as the students prepared to move into one of Paris’s Grandes Écoles. This seemed a grande waste of time given Tess’s impending assignation with LA, and, as far as she was concerned, to hell with the rest of her education. By now she was frantic to reach the big league: Hollywood. Movies. Rich, powerful billionaires … Simone called every day to inform her of meetings being set up, power lunches being booked in, and a meticulously selected troupe of agents already waiting in the wings. Whenever Tess returned to London she was flaunted at some glittering event, while Emily Chilcott looked on with an acid glare. Emily’s envy was a delectable bonus. Brian had sent his daughter to Sainte-Marthe to become a doctor or a lawyer—but that wasn’t what Emily wanted. Emily wanted what Tess had … only Emily couldn’t have it.
‘You think you’ve got what it takes, huh?’ Emily hissed. ‘Dream on.’
Tess stayed quiet. She knew she was ready—everyone else could bite. She didn’t plan to become just any actress, oh no: she planned to become the most talked-about, magnificent actress of her generation. That’ll show them. She only w
ished Julia and Calida were alive to see it, tortured by guilt, wishing they’d never done what they had. How much had she been worth, she wondered—a thousand, a million, a billion, more? Whatever, she would earn ten times that amount. A hundred times.
‘Call me Béatrice, please!’ Béatrice smiled. ‘None of this Madame, it makes me feel ancient. How are your mother and father?’
‘Ils sont bien.’
‘We should have invited them out here … La prochaine fois.’
Tess didn’t like the sound of this reunion one bit. At the school open day, once Simone had finished griping about Concorde’s imminent closure (‘I suppose I shall be taking the Boeing bus along with the hoi-polloi!’), she had slyly murmured that Béatrice was a ‘hippy’, and that she shouldn’t be wearing Lanvin because it clung to her ‘motherly shape’. Just because Béatrice had a different allure—a natural one that didn’t appear as if she had been hung out on the washing line for three days by her ears—it didn’t make her any less attractive. ‘Peut-être,’ Tess said. ‘Maybe.’
Mia handed her a beer. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s hit the beach!’
The vacation was as enchanting as Mia had promised. The girls spent their days reading and sunbathing, taking the dinghy out to nearby coves, and wandering idly through the old town to pick up bric-a-brac. Tess ate like a queen: fuzzy pink peaches for breakfast, baguette with chocolate spread for lunch, then pizza at midnight.
‘I’ll permit this holiday so long as you promise not to put on weight,’ Simone had dictated before she’d left. ‘I’ve got Maximilian Grey-Garner III interested in representation and I guarantee you now he will not take on a walrus.’
The idea of Maximilian Grey-Garner III was at once terrifying and fabulous (although including him in the same phrase as ‘walrus’ would have a lasting and troubling effect). With a name like that, he had to be big league. Tess couldn’t wait to impress him; to use him, his people, use whomever she had to, to climb to the top.
On her final weekend, Béatrice and Anton sailed the yacht down the coast to moor at St Tropez. Tess and Mia sat on the bow, their legs dangling over the edge. They each sipped a glass of chilled rosé as the yacht slapped up and down on the waves, feeling giggly as they compared tans. Tess had gone right off alcohol following puke-gate at the danse d’éntrée but was now in full recovery.