The Santiago Sisters

by Victoria Fox

  And so she agreed to a date.

  Steven picked her up from the villa on Friday night. He seemed anxious, which she found endearing, and, rather than the usual prescribed supper of chickpea panisse at Château Marmont, he took her down the informal route and to a cosy table at Casa Vega. Despite it transpiring halfway through the meal that Steven had chosen the place because he thought she was Mexican, it was the most agreeable first date she’d had. Steven was intelligent and articulate, interested in her, fascinated by all she had to say and attentive to her thoughts. He welcomed her ambition: he himself had come from humble beginnings and not a day passed when he didn’t count his blessings and thank God for how far he had come. Tess offered him an edited version of her life, Simone’s version, where she was the grateful orphan and Simone the beneficent donor. She decided she would wait to tell him the truth … if she ever did.

  As the wine went to her head, Tess reflected on how refreshing it was to meet a man who didn’t put beauty first. So many men did. Alex Dalton, for one. Shallow. Vain. Predictable. Last week she’d read that Alex had begun dating a Victoria’s Secret model. Before that it had been a catwalk queen, before that, a darling from London Fashion week who had stolen the headlines for walking the runway in a see-through Marc Jacobs. Each time Tess clapped eyes on him, yachting in Italy with his girlfriends, partying with A-listers or attending some function in Boston, she wished so hard that she could take it back. Her confession. Her weakness. It was as if Alex carried with him a tiny, vulnerable piece of her, whose existence threatened all she had built. Only he knew the chink in her armour. Only he had seen her at her worst.

  I’m not making that mistake again.

  She didn’t have to. In Steven’s eyes, she was a strong, capable woman: a woman who would grab this town by the throat and make it her own.

  ‘Well, would you …?’ Steven was saying.

  Tess blinked. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Argentina,’ he prompted. ‘Would you go back? My friend has a ranch down there—I know it well. Outside Bariloche.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We should head out there some time.’

  ‘Sure. That’d be nice.’ She necked the rest of her wine.

  Over the next few weeks, Steven embarked on a dedicated campaign of wooing. Simone caught wind of it and screeched her disapproval down the phone, but was unable to do a thing about it. Her censure made Tess enjoy it more. See? You’re not my boss. Enormous sprays of flowers arrived at the Malibu house, together with jewellery, purses, exquisite tiered boxes of cocoa-dusted truffles.

  She was flattered. Hundreds, thousands of women hankered after Steven, yet he saw something different in her: she wasn’t just a Vogue cover. Moreover, there was nothing about Steven that made her afraid. Thus far her experiences with men had all been variations on a theme: the perpetrator and the victim, their bodies, solid and overpowering, backing her into a corner and bringing her out in a panic. On the contrary, Steven was patient. After their second date he kissed her chastely on the lips. After their third, he kissed her again, for a bit longer this time. After their fourth, he put his tongue in her mouth, gently and softly, not unpleasantly. Like wading little by little into a cool sea, the water creeping gingerly up her knees, he persuaded her.

  The first time they slept together held no surprises. Steven took Tess back to his mansion and she had known what was going to happen. He fixed her a drink, lay down with her on the couch and began to kiss her, his hands roaming her body and his fingers peeling the dress straps off her shoulders. He treated her tenderly, reverently, and not at all like Felix Bazinet. He consulted every inch of her body, a piece at a time, tracing his tongue across her breasts, sucking her nipples, pressing his lips in a chain down her stomach until he reached the mound of hair between her legs. He groaned at this, commenting on how nice it was that she was ‘natural’, and dipped his head. Tess had never had a man go down on her before. Mia had raved about how hot it was, and Tess had read that it was a man’s ultimate expression of devotion, but right then it just felt a bit gross and wet. Steven’s tongue seemed huge as it lapped her in wide, upward strokes, his breath hot and the liquid click of his saliva punctuating each movement. Several times he circled her opening and then dipped the tip of his tongue inside, as if this were a die-hard successful trick he had learned, but really it achieved nothing. Tess faked her engagement because there was nothing else to be done. Every so often she caught Steven looking up at her to gauge her reaction.

  When he entered her, she pinched with pain, but quicker and lighter than with Felix. His erection wasn’t as big as Felix’s and, even when he thrust as deep as he could, she was only letting him in a few inches. Steven moaned on top of her, rocking back and forth, the palm of his hand sliding beneath her ass and lifting her hips to his. She caught his aftershave, a trace of lavender, and her eyes stung with tears.

  Steven took this for approval and whispered in her ear, ‘I know, baby, I know …’ as he quickened his pace and the arm of the couch slammed against the wall.

  He ejaculated in a series of quivering spasms, and then slumped on top of her. He was very heavy and Tess adjusted her weight to support him. He was holding one of her breasts like a security blanket, fascinated by it, saying over and over how amazing she was and how she had just blown his mind. All she’d done was lie there. ‘We’re so compatible,’ Steven murmured. ‘I’ve waited for this connection, Tess. I feel like I can be anything with you. I feel like I can tell you anything.’

  At last, he withdrew. His cock had shrunk to nothing, the condom hanging off the end of it resembling a sock on a peg. He shrugged out of his trousers and padded naked to the bathroom. Tess listened to him whistle as he started the shower.

  What mattered was that Steven was a good and decent man. He signified escape from Simone Geddes. He could engineer great things for her in America, in excess of her former goals: true, lasting power, what it meant to win her own fortunes and not someone else’s. Money is power. If you have power, you have everything. What Julia hadn’t said was that the money could be hers. The power could be hers.

  It didn’t have to be a man’s at all.

  In February, on Valentine’s Day, Steven surprised her with a trip to his beach house in Santa Barbara. He had instructed her to meet him at his LA home; he’d be a little late coming in from the studio but would be there as soon as he could. Waiting at the mansion was an explosion of white roses. Tess was touched. She hoped he would like the Cartier watch she had picked out, and hadn’t gone to more extravagance.

  At six o’clock, she heard a rumbling in the distance. Tess stepped on to the terrace, her hair and skirt whipping up in the wind. The noise was deafening. As the helicopter came to land like a giant dragonfly, the lawn below shivered and flattened.

  Once it had landed, a man stepped out and saluted her. She thought Steven might jump out after him, or even, at one stage, the president. The man handed her a white card:

  My darling,

  Your carriage awaits … and so do I.

  S

  She had never been in a helicopter before. As the craft’s nose dipped, hovered, then soared off into the sky, she looked down at Steven’s mansion becoming smaller and smaller until it was swallowed by the grid of the Angel City. It was tight in the cabin, but exciting. Through a set of headphones she could hear the pilots on their frequency, liaising with each other and Air Traffic in codes and coordinates she didn’t understand. Soon after, they began the descent over Santa Barbara. She spotted Steven on the headland, yet more white roses cradled in his arms, grinning madly.

  ‘You came!’ He ran to her and locked her in his arms. It was reminiscent of the end scene in the movie she was filming, where two lovers reunite after years torn apart by war. She and Steven had been torn apart by a sunny day in LA.

  ‘That was … unbelievable,’ she said. ‘I loved it.’

  ‘I knew you would.’ Steven piled the bouquet into her arms as though he was
offloading a puppy. ‘Wait until you see what I’ve got planned.’

  She hadn’t been to his place in Santa Barbara before, but he wasn’t interested in showing her round. Instead Steven led her down to the water, to where a sleek fifty-metre yacht was moored. As twilight blossomed, the sky turned to peach Melba. Indigo water lapped at the boat’s flanks. ‘Climb aboard,’ he encouraged.

  Soft music played. Tess marvelled at the polished deck, pristine and sparkling, outrageously expensive, and through the double doors a swathe of luxury furniture and glinting chandeliers. Steven guided her through the interior, waiting slightly peevishly as she put the flowers in water, and out the other side. On the bow, a white-clothed table looked out at the ocean, laid with silver cutlery and elegant stemmed glasses. Candles flickered shadows across the deck. She could smell cooking, flavours in tune with the salt and depth of the sea. Steven pulled out her chair.

  ‘What’s all this for?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Valentine’s Day,’ Steven said, helping her in, ‘and I love you.’

  It was the first time either of them had said it. Steven delivered the sentiment with unselfconscious ease, as simply as he might say them to his mother or his sister. Tess, for many years, had agonised over this exotic triumvirate of words, imagined the many scenarios in which she might voice them, the possible suitors she might find the courage to express them to, and now, sitting here, she had absolutely no impulse to say them back. Thankfully, Steven’s carefree comment didn’t require it.

  The vessel began to move, a rumble as it backed out of the harbour, then, as it crossed into open sea, gaining momentum, slicing through the violet sheet. When land was out of sight, a waiter brought their first course. The feast was sumptuous. Fried shrimp with hunks of bright lemon and saffron cream; swordfish fillet with crunchy fennel, vivid orange and plump black olives; then vanilla panna cotta to finish, which Steven insisted on feeding her. Throughout, he talked happily about a new project the studio had signed, every so often reaching under the table to stroke her knee, or across to clasp her fingers. Afterwards, she felt full and content.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Steven’s eyes glittered in the dark. He tossed down his napkin. ‘Come on,’ he murmured. ‘Time for another surprise.’

  He darted off into the night, down a set of steps, and, by the time she followed and reached him on the lower deck, he was stripping off. His trousers were in a heap, then his tie was loosening, tugged off, dropped, then his shirt. Finally he stepped out of his underwear, scaled the low safety rope and flung his body into the black ocean.

  Seconds later, he surfaced, shaking his head. ‘It’s beautiful!’ he called, his face pale against the inky water. Above, in the sky, a whole moon shone down as perfect as a pearl. The Big Dipper swung above them, huge and ancient.

  Tess peeled off her dress, bra, knickers, and went in after him. The water was freezing and had the same effect as being tickled, making her catch her breath.

  ‘You’re incredible,’ said Steven, kissing her. His hands cupped her ass and lifted her so her knees hitched around his hips. He was working a thumb inside her and she tried to take pleasure from it, pressing against him. Encouraged by this, he drove harder, pushing deeper as he nibbled and grazed her collarbone. It felt strange to be opened up in the sea, but at the same time made urgent, primal sense; Tess felt her body being returned to the water, some place it had always belonged.

  Treading water, it was hard for Steven to get purchase. Knowing their goal, they swam to the boat and Tess clasped the bottom rung of the ladder, then turned away from him, as he prodded and bucked against her back. Water slurped beneath the prow, sinking her ass one minute and lifting it to the surface the next. With one hand Steven gripped the ladder and with the other he guided himself inside her. It had stopped hurting by now, but Tess still felt that familiar squeeze of discomfort as he broke through and began to rut. She was thankful he wasn’t more generously endowed. Finally, it was over. Steven came silently, intensely, and the second he pulled away she felt him spill out from her into the sea. She had decided the female orgasm was a myth. ‘I love you,’ he said again, and this time it wasn’t so casual. The moment hung for her to say it back, and instead she kissed him, deeply, to make up for it.

  Back on board, Steven fetched them towels. They sat, huddled together, beneath the stars. ‘This is the most amazing night of my life,’ said Steven.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ agreed Tess.

  Abruptly, he got up, vanishing inside for a moment before he returned, and then everything that followed seemed to do so in a blur. First, Steven dropped to his knees, the towel around his shoulders falling with the motion. Then he knelt, naked, one foot flat on the deck. At last, he produced a box. Small, crimson, unequivocal; she fought panic. He opened it. A diamond the size of a grape blinked up at her.

  ‘Tess Geddes …’ he said, and in that moment she realised that another girl was being proposed to, not her, not the real her, not Teresa Santiago. ‘Will you marry me?’

  One small word gave way to a media frenzy. Every paper wanted an exclusive. Every channel craved coverage. Every site demanded an interview. The press went into overdrive, reporters camping outside the villa, Maximilian’s office ringing off the hook, designers and artists trampling over each other to pitch their ideas. Tess and Steven became the most photographed, talked-about duo in Hollywood. They were royalty. Before, she had been popular; with Steven Krakowski, she was gold.

  Simone flew in and spent a couple of days playing the role of Dejected Mother, for which she could have safely added to her awards collection, before grudgingly partaking in the preparations. After all, she was a woman who embraced the limelight. In all her painstaking plans for Tess, she could never have rehearsed such a windfall. ‘As long as you know what you’re doing,’ she counselled.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Steven’s … an acquired taste.’

  ‘I guess I’ve acquired it.’

  Simone gave her a strange look, but promised to bite her tongue from now on: Steven was to be Tess’s husband and he deserved the family’s respect. Instead she took it upon herself to organise every aspect of the big day, while Tess gritted her teeth and humoured her as best she could. Steven smiled indulgently as the women went about their daily meetings, comparing fabrics, favours, and menu cards.

  Tess wondered what Simone’s own wedding day had been like. If she ever thought of marrying again; if she thought of marrying Lysander … After Tess had overheard their dialogue at the White Candle audition, Lysander was rarely, if ever, spoken of: a glaring elephant between them. The UK tabloids reported difficulties in the marriage with Brian, having not seen the couple together since a premiere in the spring. GEDDA LOAD OF GEDDES, one declared, on capturing Simone chatting quite platonically with a man who wasn’t her husband. CHILCOTTS’ MARRIAGE BLOWS COLD. Maybe that explained Simone’s unwillingness to push the Steven issue. Tess had an ace in her hand and she sure as shit couldn’t be made to play it.

  One day, a note arrived from Alex Dalton. Tess was surprised to receive it.

  Congratulations on your engagement, Pirate. I hope he makes you happy, because you truly deserve it. Alex.

  The note should have made her smile; the sentiment was kind, but for reasons she didn’t care to analyse, it didn’t. She hated his pitying tone, his consolatory words: the inference that she was some poor foundling who deserved a break. I’m making my own breaks, thanks very much. I neither need your sympathy nor welcome it.

  At the weekend, Mia flew out. Her friend was into her second year at Zurich’s most prestigious Art Institute and full of tales about the guy she was seeing. Tess was elated to see her. ‘Would you be my bridesmaid?’ she asked one day over lunch.

  Mia hugged her hard. ‘I’d love to.’ Then she pulled back, concerned. ‘Hey, why do you look so scared?’

  ‘I am scared,’ Tess adm
itted. ‘Of everything.’

  ‘Don’t be. Everything’s going to be great for you. I know it.’

  But that night, like every night, the past surfaced in dreams. Those things Tess wanted most to be rid of were the same that inched their way towards her in the dark. She had always thought that Calida would be with her on her wedding day. It had been a safe assumption, a given that as twins they would in some way share the most momentous day of their lives. Calida would never have the chance to get married.

  Instead, she had been shot dead on a store floor and left to bleed to death.

  It serves her right, a voice told Tess. And when she thought that, she was strong. She was filled with hate and hate kept her going, like coal in a fire.

  Other times, Tess dreamed of her twin. That she was still alive.

  She dreamed of the life she might be living.

  27

  New York

  Calida Santiago travelled to New York on a sweltering hot day in June. The city was alive and insistent: corridors of skyscrapers, metallic and towering, a maze of mirrors that reflected their neighbours in silver-sharp angles, doubling and tripling her vision—she was disorientated at being unable to see through or over them; the cauldron of streets; the surge of Manhattanites rolling in a relentless wave down Fifth Avenue, in suits, on phones, carrying coffee, and the tourists, like her, out of sync as they gazed up at tiers of life piled one on top of the other. High above, mosaics of clear blue sky danced between spires. Calida took one look and thought: Yes. It’s here. This is mine.

  Paola Ortiz had a cousin who lived in Belmont and had arranged for Calida to housesit a couple of weeks while the cousin was away. The apartment was tiny but cosy, a flavour of her beloved Argentina on every wall and in every picture frame.