The Santiago Sisters

by Victoria Fox

‘Exactly. Look.’ Emily clicked her profile. ‘This is how it works. You find people you want to link with then you message them to say who you are. Otherwise you’re going to have every fucking sad case in England checking you out.’

  Tess was pleased to see Mia pop up. Check out my pics of St Tropez!!!

  Tess suppressed a shudder when she scrolled through them: her and Felix, drunk at Plage d’Aqua, Mia and Henri kissing … She had never been honest with Mia about what had happened on the beach because she couldn’t work it out herself. After she’d lost her virginity she’d felt used and filthy, and had gone back to Mia’s parents’ house and shut herself in the bathroom and cried silently into so much loo roll that Béatrice had asked next morning if anyone had disagreed with the seafood. Only when she was back at Sainte-Marthe, lying awake one night in the dorm, did it occur to her that Felix Bazinet had raped her. Clearly, she remembered saying no. Please stop … And he hadn’t. She’d sourced a pregnancy test from a girl in the top year in exchange for writing an essay on Foucault and thank God it had come back negative.

  ‘Shit a brick, is that Felix Bazinet?’ Emily’s eyes turned to saucers.

  ‘It’s no one.’ She closed the picture.

  ‘You know, Tess, you should totally ditch Mia. She’s a loser. I was talking with Fifi and Claudette and we agreed you could join us … so long as you ditch her.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  Emily didn’t ask again.

  On cue, Facebook threw up Fifi’s profile. They were met by dozens of images of the flame-haired princess posing and pouting in a variety of outfits. In some she was dining with her parents on Le Grand Mystère, her mother’s arms draped around her corpulent, indifferent father, while Fifi sat by with only an untouched paella for company. Tess decided that Fifi had an unhappy life. How weird popularity was.

  ‘You’ll live your whole world through this,’ Emily promised sagely.

  A week later, a message flashed up in Tess’s inbox. It was from Alex Dalton. His name made something flutter inside her, but she quickly clipped its wings.

  Hello, Pirate. How’s the parrot? I hope your wooden leg isn’t causing you too much trouble—I’ve heard they can get stiff this time of year. So, I’m back in Texas, at my dad’s place. His girlfriend’s staying with us—at least I think she’s his girlfriend, she was just kind of here when I turned up. She’s got this dog called Mitzy that’s so small it has to qualify as a rat (my buddy Aaron nearly sat on it). I don’t even know why my dad’s into her—she’s twenty years younger than him, she takes her dog to get its hair done, and the other day, when I said I’d been living in Europe, she asked in all seriousness, ‘Where’s that?’ I think he only dates women who are the complete opposite of Mom. Mom was smart. I wonder if he misses it, sometimes, the conversation and stuff. I do. Anyway. What else? I’m writing a book. When I say ‘writing’, what I actually mean is ‘watching movies for research and drinking beer to get ideas.’ Not that they’re coming: I don’t know what it’s about yet. I’m making it up as I go along. All I know is there’s this girl in it; she’s a bit like you actually. Maybe you can read it some day. So … OK. Write back. Hasta luego. Alex

  Tess scrolled through his photos. Alex had a ton of friends. There weren’t many pictures of him, which surprised her because most rich boys spent their lives taking pictures of themselves. A couple of Alex with a man she supposed to be his dad. One of him as a kid, which made her smile, dressed as a wizard and missing one of his front teeth; and one of him as a baby, being held by a woman, his mother.

  So sorry, dude, read the comments below. Didn’t realise it was today, thinking of you. Gone but never forgotten. Call if you need anything .

  Tess digested this. She returned to the message and was about to tap out a reply when a voice startled her from behind. ‘You thinking of moving in here?’

  Brian was in the doorway to his office, an affectionate leer on his face.

  ‘Sorry.’ Tess clicked the computer off.

  ‘The girls at Ace are arriving any minute,’ he advised. ‘Best get upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ She was accompanying Simone to tonight’s awards ceremony, a hot-pit of paparazzi and fans. Team Geddes, Simone’s harem of make-up and wardrobe gurus, would be descending. She went to the door but Brian blocked her.

  ‘Not talking to boys on there, are you?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  Brian’s watery eyes appraised her. She could see tiny veins around his nose and mouth, and there were sweat patches at the armpits of his shirt. ‘The internet’s a dangerous playground. I don’t want you getting mixed up in anything nasty.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Tess tried to push past but he stopped her. Suddenly, his body was uncomfortably close. She could feel his belly pressed up against her side.

  ‘You’re a beautiful woman now, Tess.’ Brian’s voice was strained. ‘A sexy woman … Men will want you. They won’t be able to help it. Especially those whose wives have lost interest.’ Tess kept her eyes trained on the floor. Coffee breath gusted into her face. ‘Those who still have so much to give but their wives are getting it elsewhere. Older men, experienced men who could show you a trick or two …’

  ‘I have to go,’ said Tess. But Brian didn’t move. Instead his hand brushed across her bottom, at the curve where it met the backs of her legs, and squeezed.

  At last, he stood back. ‘Have fun,’ he murmured.

  Tess bolted from his office and didn’t look back.

  Despite missing out on her Best Actress award to a twenty-something newbie who made a long and embarrassing speech about her ‘timeless rock’ of a husband, Simone considered the night to be a success. Tess had easily been the most fabulous creature there (the only living person to whom Simone would concede the title) and the press had gone manic for her, fascinated by her resplendent looks and her tragic story.

  My daughter, Simone inwardly glowed, is set to be a star.

  Thankfully, her plan to get rid of the twin had worked a treat. They hadn’t heard a peep since Simone had forged that triumphant letter, using Vera’s findings in the diary as bait. That entry had been platinum; the sisters’ fight exactly the kind of fuel she needed to explode their relationship once and for all. It had presented some challenges, namely revising Vera’s Spanish vernacular into authentic Argentinian, and the accuracy of the writing, but it was worth it. Tess was absolutely hers, with no one threatening to steal her back. What’s more, she believed they were dead. Perfect.

  Afterwards, Michelle Horner persuaded her into the bar. ‘Two dirties with extra olives,’ she instructed her PA. ‘Pimento-stuffed—and keep the riff-raff out.’

  Simone was musing on a problem. ‘Tess needs a boyfriend,’ she said.

  Michelle polished her spectacles on her shirt. ‘Why?’

  ‘She never talks about boys. I’m starting to wonder …’

  ‘Plenty of girls don’t talk about that with their mothers. I didn’t.’

  Simone took a moment to savour this truth. She loved to hear the maternal relationship corroborated: it made it real. Occasionally she liked to forget Tess was even adopted, just edit that whole part out. ‘But look at her, Michelle. She’s divine.’

  The cocktails arrived. ‘She might be picky.’

  ‘As she has a right to be …’ Simone played with her olive, bobbing it up and down in the vermouth. ‘You don’t think she’s a …’ she leaned in, ‘a lesbian?’

  The idea had occurred on Sunday as Simone was firing the pool boy and now she couldn’t scratch it out. She wanted precision for Tess in Hollywood: it would all be shot to hell if it transpired that a biker dyke in a strap-on was boning her daughter. Simone didn’t know any lesbians, which explained the ignorance of this picture.

  ‘Of course not! Don’t be silly …’ Ironically, Michelle was a lesbian. This meant Simone did know a lesbian; she just didn’t know it.

  ‘I’ve decided to set her up,’ said Simone. ‘Obviously she’s still a virgin.’
/>   ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I just can.’ Simone had always been in tune with sexual energies. She could see them floating around in the same way other people saw auras. Tess had no interest in sex at the moment. Brian had even less. Lysander, on the other hand …

  Simone’s crotch sparked as she recalled the hand she had taken her stepson in that very morning. They had collided in the bathroom, Simone half-awake, her hair a mess, when Lysander had wordlessly forced her grip around his pumping cock and spunked inside sixty seconds all over her silk peignoir. It shouldn’t have been erotic, but, oh, it was. After a quick change of clothes she had returned to Brian in the bedroom. Her husband was propped against the bedhead reading the Financial Times.

  ‘Who are you thinking?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘I’m not thinking about anyone,’ Simone snapped, affronted.

  ‘For Tess’s set-up …?’

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ She composed herself. ‘Hugo Winthorpe-Myers.’

  ‘Lady Annabel’s son?’ Michelle made a face. ‘He’s a bit of a sap, isn’t he?’

  ‘All the better for Tess’s initiation.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’

  ‘I’m never wrong, Michelle. You wait and see.’

  Tess arrived for her date with Hugo Winthorpe-Myers and knew instantly that should the planet explode in a nuclear apocalypse and all humanity be wiped off the face of the earth save for herself and this man, she would never, ever consider him a match.

  ‘Hi,’ Hugo drawled, meeting her at the door to his ancestral home. He was dressed like someone three times his age, in a brown tweed waistcoat and toffee-coloured chinos. He had a slight facial tic that jerked his ear to his collarbone.

  Give him a chance. Objectivity was everything. Hugo was wealthy, check. He had property, check. He had a title, bonus check. Tess was incapable of finding that thing called love—she couldn’t even enjoy sex: how was she ever going to love anyone?—but she was OK with that. After all, love was a trap only fools fell into.

  Brightly, she smiled. ‘Come in,’ Hugo wheedled, stepping back. He winked at her, though that could have been the tic. A gust of musty air assailed her from the grand hall. Through it, the dining room was enormous. Hugo pulled out a chair at one end of the table (which could have accommodated thirty people) and helped her in.

  Rather than sitting next to her, he loped to the opposite end and flicked out his napkin. ‘Wine!’ he screeched, and the goblets were brought. ‘To us,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She couldn’t hear a thing this far away.

  ‘I SAID TO US,’ he shouted.

  The starter was mushroom soup. Tess’s heart sank when she saw she had sets of cutlery for four courses, and a grandfather clock in the corner taunted her by spitting out the seconds agonisingly slowly. The soup was grey and thick.

  ‘Do you study?’ Tess asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘DO YOU STUDY?’

  Hugo dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘I don’t need to,’ he replied smugly. ‘Hartleigh Manor is my future. This house will be my business.’

  ‘Have you always lived here?’

  ‘Of course!’ he spluttered. ‘Don’t you know anything about the gentry? This estate has been ours for centuries. My great-great-grandfather was the Duke of Bassett. My father is the Earl of that same name and one day I will inherit the title.’

  Above Hugo’s bowed head, which was busy attending to the soup, was a framed portrait of a man in breeches. Nearby, in a glass cabinet, a stuffed eagle spread its dead wings.

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Mummy and Daddy only wanted me. Good job I was a boy, the old man says, or they’d have had to keep going.’ Tess waited for Hugo to return the question, and was relieved when he didn’t. She should know better than to ask stuff like that.

  ‘How did your mother meet Simone?’

  ‘Some party or other.’ Hugo slurped. ‘Mummy’s always out making friends. Trouble is, everyone takes advantage because everyone wants to know an aristo.’

  The main course arrived—stuffed quail with dauphinoise potatoes and buttered carrots—and Hugo elaborated on the lifestyle the house awarded him, the fleet of classic cars he was looking to collect (despite the fact he hadn’t yet acquired his licence, ‘but Daddy will sort that for me’), and the shooting expeditions he would undertake as part of Hartleigh Manor’s Grand Business Plan. ‘Stag dos, you know,’ he pitched through a mouthful of macerated bird. ‘They come out here to see how the other half lives before returning to their hovels. Only of a type, you understand.’

  ‘What type?’

  Hugo picked something out from between his teeth. ‘Put it this way, sweetheart: I don’t want a bunch of reprobates tearing up the taxidermy.’

  After a pudding of apple crumble, chased up by a final course of melting Camembert and celery sticks, finally, and not a moment too soon, it was over.

  At the door, Tess realised he hadn’t asked her a single thing about her life.

  ‘It was great learning all about you,’ Hugo said cordially, leaning in to kiss her cheek. He stuck his tongue in her ear. It was so alarming that she shoved him away.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Come on,’ his tic went into overdrive, ‘you know you want it. Nine ladies out of ten positively wet their knickers at the mere suggestion of my title.’

  ‘They pee themselves?’

  He was thrown. ‘What?’

  ‘Seriously, I’m interested. That is what you mean, right?’

  ‘You know precisely what I mean,’ Hugo said acidly.

  ‘Well, then, I guess I’m one out of ten.’

  Hugo backed off, furious. ‘One out of ten might be generous,’ he said snidely, before floundering a moment and delivering a parting shot. ‘And for the record, you’re too fat for me. I like girls like Mummy, who watch what they eat. You devoured that cheeseboard so fast it was like sitting opposite a Hoover nozzle.’

  Tess wanted to punch him in his pimple-pockmarked jaw. Instead, she turned on her heel and stormed down the steps. The BMW was waiting.

  ‘Enjoyable evening, Ms Geddes?’ the driver asked as he whisked her away.

  ‘Fine,’ she answered, biting her lip until she tasted blood. Money or not, they were all the same. No matter their means, men were all bastards inside.

  Look at her father: he had taught her everything she needed to know about the opposite sex and a lot more besides. She’d killed him for the privilege.

  It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t meant to happen that way.

  Had she killed her mama and her sister, too? A cursed child, a poisoned cup …

  Perhaps this was her punishment. A life of frigid misery, sold and paid for and carted across the ocean like a sack of sand because inside she was rotten and they’d longed to get rid of her. Tess choked on a wave of hopelessness before pulling herself back to shore. Stop it. You’re stronger than this. You’re not a crier—don’t start now.

  By the time they reached the Kensington mansion, she had pulled herself together and translated her tears into pounding, unstoppable energy. She might not be able to prove to Julia and Calida the woman she’d become, but she could damn sure prove it to herself. Tomorrow, she would pack her bags for Hollywood.

  22

  Argentina

  Calida woke in her apartment in Belgrano, Rodrigo Torres’ magnificent body warm alongside hers. He was sleeping, his lips parted and his dark, severe brow a reminder of the thrilling commands he had issued the previous night. Rodrigo was her teacher. She was his student. It was an electrifying journey to enlightenment.

  Calida’s defences had been stripped after her first week of tango lessons, months ago now. He had been patient, generous, leading her deep inside the music to explore its strange new rhythms, winding a path through its burning territory. ‘You are a natural,’ he breathed into the coil of her ear, as he pressed his hips aga
inst hers.

  It was only a matter of time before they had pressed their hips in a different way. Calida had known it would happen. Through dance she cast out her insecurities and stepped into the shoes of another woman—a ruthless, fervent woman who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. And she wanted Rodrigo. At nineteen, she had been adamant about losing her virginity. While she had always thought she would give it to someone she loved, someone like Daniel, it was liberating to choose another route. That was what old Calida would have done. New Calida followed her body.

  Their sex was intoxicating.

  Too long she had pleasured herself by her own hand, not believing that any man would do those things with her. Why would they, when there were women like Tess Geddes in the world? But Rodrigo told her she was gorgeous—he adored her shape and her strength; he didn’t want a girl who would snap as soon as he touched her. Calida wondered what it had been like for Tess. Her twin would have shed that badge years ago, with a dashing film star or a London pretty-boy, and by now would consider herself a connoisseur. Sex would be Tess’s forte: she would trail her lovers on a string, just as she had Daniel, and would relish the power it gave her.

  Calida had assumed the sisters would share this landmark, embark on it as one, confiding their secrets and conquests. Not any more. She locked these feelings away and buried the key, and decided she didn’t care. Calida might have been born first, but Tess had stolen an advantage in everything else—beauty, boys, travel—and now it was time to catch up. The look on her twin’s face when she finally did, tapping her on the shoulder and whispering, ‘Hello, remember me?’ was what kept her going.

  ‘You’re the only girl I know who tastes good in the morning.’ Rodrigo grabbed her and pulled her down. His erection grew against her belly and Calida opened her legs, ready to take him, no foreplay necessary. He held his tip against her.

  ‘Do it,’ she begged, craving the release, the oblivion. ‘Do it hard …’

  Rodrigo fired her his irresistible grin and turned on his back. Calida knew what he wanted—and she wanted it too. It gave her a feeling of such control, to bring a potent man down, leave him quivering and crying her name. Lowering her head, she began kissing his balls, flicking her tongue out and then enclosing one between her lips. She licked the root of his penis in the way he’d instructed, working her attentions up the shaft, little by little. When she reached the thick flower of his crown she pouted her lips around it, driving against the cushion of her tongue. When he was almost there, she clasped her fingers around his dick and worked in tandem with her mouth, increasing her speed and bringing him as far into her throat as she could manage.