by Victoria Fox
Daniel. Her cowboy. Her friend.
The only ‘me’ she would know besides her sister.
Hello, you.
She found her tongue. ‘Hi.’
Words were insufficient to bridge the divide of time and place and hurt. Calida thought of the night she had just spent with Vittorio, and, replacing the triumph she had nursed since breakfast, a creeping uncertainty settled, something close to shame.
As if Daniel knew her better. She wasn’t that person, not really, in her heart. She was the girl on the estancia, thousands of miles away, looking out at the sunset.
‘You’re doing so well, Calida,’ came Daniel’s voice. ‘I’m proud of you.’
Unable to stop herself, Calida smiled into the phone; her eyes filled with tears. Then she imagined his wife in the background, maybe a couple of fair-haired children clinging at her skirts. The thought wounded her still-healing heart.
‘Can I help you with something?’ she asked formally.
‘Maybe,’ said Daniel. ‘If I came to town … could we meet?’
The question surprised her. Of all the things he might have said, that was the last she’d expected. Yes, she wanted to answer. Yes, I want to. Yes, yes, yes …
But she stopped.
I’m too close now. I can’t let this go.
I won’t.
She had come so far. It had taken years to get within touching distance of Tess Geddes, and she was near enough now to reach out and …
‘I can’t,’ she said.
There was a long quiet. ‘Me and Clara didn’t work out,’ Daniel said at last. ‘We’ve separated. I wanted to tell you. I had to tell you.’
Calida absorbed this information. It didn’t gratify her like it might have. Instead, she worried that Daniel was hurt. Worried at what he’d been through.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘It was my fault. I didn’t love her in the way she needed. I couldn’t.’
Calida remembered how she had laid herself on the line that day in Buenos Aires, humiliated when she’d asked him if he loved his new wife and unwilling to hear the answer even when she did. Sí. Daniel had looked her in the face and said that.
Sí. I love her. I love her.
‘I’m with someone else now,’ she said.
Calida forced herself to say it—for her, for him, for them both. For the sake of the rivalry that drove her on every day, from the instant she woke to the moment she fell asleep. Sacrificing Vittorio would mean letting it go. All she had worked for; all she had earned. ‘I don’t want to see you,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear from you. I’m sorry for your marriage but there’s nothing left for us—it’s too long ago. Too much has happened. Good luck in your life, Daniel. I wish you the best. Adios.’
She ended the call, her hand shaking.
You’ve done the right thing. The only thing.
Years had passed since their encounter in Buenos Aires but the scars were still visible. Calida knew where to find them. It was better this way. Life could be lived with minimal pain and upset, if love were removed from the equation.
Part of her expected, hoped, that Daniel would ring back.
He didn’t.
37
December 2014
Night
She must have passed out again, because the next time she woke she was sitting upright. The gag was back in, but a new one, starched and clean and reeking of disinfectant. The scent was dizzying and sickly, rising to her nostrils.
‘I’m sorry I had to do that,’ said her kidnapper. ‘I don’t want you talking. I want you to listen. Can you listen to me?’
Limply, she nodded. Her head was drooping, her neck a cracked stalk. Her left temple throbbed, as if a hard object had clubbed it.
‘I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a very sad story. I hope you won’t cry.’
She tried to pull her wrists apart, but they were tied too tight. A memory surged back at her—of a man, a bedroom—wild and brutal, savagely out of context.
‘Once upon a time,’ the person paced in front of her, moving in and out of light in familiar and unfamiliar shapes, ‘I had a family. I believed in the goodness and decency of people. I thought I was secure. I was wrong.’
She shivered. The window was open; fresh air blew in. Outside, the cold winter night sprayed snow from the sky. The moon peered in. She fought sleep.
I have to get out.
Get out. Get out. Get out.
‘I had it planned, from the moment of your betrayal. Because it was a betrayal, wasn’t it? Even you admit that—now, at the end of things.’
She whimpered. Tried to contain it, but it spilled out of her all the same.
‘I’m sorry I had to hurt you.’ The person knelt in front of her. ‘You understand that I had to, don’t you? I couldn’t let you get away. Not again.’
She waited, eyes stinging, lungs burning. In the dark, behind her back, she worked the binds together. It was no use. They were taut and she had no strength.
‘I thought I knew what love was then,’ her captor said. ‘Vital love, blood love, the love that lasts a lifetime—but I was fooling myself. You proved that. There were so many times I tried to reach you, tried to show you my face. But you didn’t see me. You refused. You were blind. All you cared about was yourself. You still do.’
She went to shake her head but found she couldn’t lift it.
‘Have you ever experienced that love?’ Her abductor’s head cocked, interested in her response. She was unable to give it, the gag resolutely in place.
Yes, she had. Yes, she still did. With all her might, she nodded. Her assailant leaned forward. For a crazy second, she thought she was about to be kissed.
A swift slap stung her cheek.
‘Liar! Don’t you dare say you have. You don’t know what the word means. You’re a loveless, heartless bitch!’
Her throat loaded with all the things she longed to voice but couldn’t, and she wasn’t sure they would make a difference even if she were able.
Suddenly, a flick of silver flourished in the pitch. A knife blade glinted.
‘It’s over.’
The voice was close now, all around, inescapable.
‘Say good night, sister.’ The blade touched her neck. She thought of Christmas unfolding outside, of joy and laughter and lights. That was the last thought she had.
‘This is the end for you.’
PART FOUR
2011–2014
38
Los Angeles
Kendra was the worst of them.
Scarlet Schuhausen sat among her so-called friends and concentrated on eating her tuna ceviche as unbiologically as she could, as if she weren’t a living mammal after all but a mannequin in a store window whose mouth was better designed for pouting than for accepting food. Yes, it was a dinner party—one of socialite Kendra King’s exclusive soirees—but it didn’t mean anyone ought to actually eat anything.
‘So, I said to Tim, the Bahamas? Seriously? I am so over it. What about Capri, or Monaco, somewhere more refined? Not to mention the fact that Danny took me there for our honeymoon—that soon got Tim changing his mind, let me tell you …’
The seven women gathered around Kendra’s table chimed obedient laughter. Kendra sat at the head like some terrible fur-drenched queen, her platinum hair scraped off a high, alabaster forehead, rather resembling Elizabeth I.
‘Kendra, you are awful!’ trilled Greta Sykes.
‘If only my Dougie were so obliging!’ sang Laura Sinclair-Beaumont.
‘The thing about husbands,’ Kendra went on, ‘is that you’ve got to keep them on a tight leash. They have to know their place—or else they’ll run all over you.’
‘I quite agree,’ said Nancy Montefiore.
‘To the outside world it appears that they make the decisions.’ Kendra nodded, then added wickedly: ‘Let me tell you—behind closed doors that is not the case!’
The women giggled. Scarlet joined in, althou
gh she was already squirming in her seat. Say something, she frantically thought. Before they single you out.
It was too late. Kendra’s eyes found hers like a cat peering in a mouse hole.
‘You’re very quiet down there, Scarlet. Do tell: how does Vittorio match up?’
Seven heads cocked to hear her response. Or, first, view it, for her cheeks were burning up like a furnace. Scarlet hated discussing her marriage with anyone, let alone these sniping, catty, competitive wives who would gossip and bitch about her as soon as her back was turned. How was she meant to tell the truth, when she couldn’t even admit it to herself? As always, she fibbed. She fibbed until her tongue hurt.
‘Vittorio and I have always had an equal partnership,’ she managed.
‘Equal?’ scoffed Kendra. ‘How so?’
‘He respects me.’
It was the most ludicrous thing she could have said. Intending to deny the truth, instead she had showcased it. Respect was the last thing Vittorio Da Strovisi had. He had been screwing around on his wife for years and all the ladies knew it.
‘Respect is a precious thing, isn’t it?’ mused Kendra. ‘It’s hard to get back once it’s lost. Tim respects me. Well, I don’t know if it’s respect or fear, but either one will do.’ The women hummed their approval; there were a few fawning titters. ‘For instance, I know he’d never dare stray. I’d slice his balls off in his sleep!’
Scarlet blushed. She felt Kendra’s gaze bore into her. Times like this she hated Vittorio, really hated him. How could you do this to me? She had believed his gilded promises of love and security—how was she to know he couldn’t keep it in his pants?
She knew he had urges. She had tried to fulfil them. She’d played nurses, teachers, air stewards, bakers; she’d surprised him on work trips wearing nothing but a pair of sky-high Louboutins; she’d taken part in threesomes with other women.
Nothing was enough. She had even attempted to make him jealous—see how he liked being a victim of his own game—and slept with heavyweights like Steven Krakowski. Well, that had been without doubt the most uncomfortable night of her life. When she had confessed Steven’s travesties to Vittorio, fully expecting him to yell that if another man so much as glanced at her he would kill the motherfucker, he just nodded tolerantly and said, ‘Krakowski has eclectic tastes.’
Vittorio didn’t care what she did, or with whom. He had made a joke of her.
‘What would you do,’ taunted Kendra, ‘if you found out Vitto was playing around?’ She trailed her index finger around the rim of her glass.
Scarlet knew she would cry soon; she could feel it rising up from the point her feet met the marble-mosaic floor, and she stood and placed her napkin on the table.
‘Please excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m not feeling too well.’
For months, Kendra’s dinner party stayed in her mind.
What would you do? Come on, Scarlet, what would you do …?
Her husband was away in New York. She hadn’t seen him in weeks. Mostly, when Vittorio went abroad, Scarlet sought refuge in distraction, tried her best not to think about the harem of women he was making love to. No matter how accustomed she had become to it, the pain never lessened. Vitto was a master between the sheets. But, this time, his absence felt different. It felt like an opportunity.
I have to act. I can’t carry on like this.
Vittorio knew he could get away with it—that was the problem. When they’d met, he had been a twenty-five-year-old entrepreneur with the world at his feet. She’d been nineteen, heir to Daddy’s millions, pretty, and utterly devoted to him. After learning of his affairs, for a while she had tried to get pregnant; thought that might encourage him to stay. It hadn’t worked. Vitto was militant about contraception, and though she tried to sabotage it, a pinprick here, a missed pill there, no baby arrived.
If Scarlet lost him, she didn’t know what she would do. Occasionally, there were moments of reassurance—Vitto would send her flowers, or a message telling her he loved her—but, most of the time, she was filled with a bleak sense of doom. It was only a matter of time before he left her for one of his lovers. If not now, then when he realised she was unable to produce the heir he would one day require.
She could not let that happen.
Wrong as it was, foolish as it was, Vittorio Da Strovisi was her life. She was nothing without him. Whatever it took, she could not let him go.
In the end, the call wasn’t as awkward as she’d feared. She had put it off long enough, praying as the weeks passed that her suspicions (who was she kidding, her certainties) might be mistaken. The only thing for it was to grab the phone one Friday morning and punch in the numbers before she could think twice about it. The man told her a place and a time to meet—of the utmost discretion, of course—and that was that.
The hook-up was beneath the railway arches. It was raining, and Scarlet hid beneath a wide, dark umbrella. The man approached, purposeful, striding, and smiled when he saw her. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting,’ he said.
‘Not at all.’
‘I thought this might be safer. You wouldn’t want to get photographed.’
‘No, absolutely.’ Just imagine what a field day Kendra and Nancy would have with that! SCARLET SCHUHAUSEN HIRES PRIVATE DETECTIVE.
‘Come inside.’ He took her coat, flapped off the wet and did the same with his own, before hanging both up. It was a cosy cabin, a wooden desk and two chairs, a lamp, and a stack of newspapers. ‘Please,’ he gestured, ‘make yourself comfortable.’
Scarlet sat. Henry Doric settled opposite her. He was a good-looking man, early thirties she supposed, with a crop of dishevelled brown hair.
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he encouraged.
She cleared her throat, wrung her hands in her lap.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Henry asked kindly. When she shook her head, he said, ‘I know this is hard. No one finds it easy. Just take your time, explain it as best you can, and I promise I will do all I can to help you.’
Scarlet took a deep breath. When she exhaled, the words came too. She explained everything in a long rush, from her marriage to Vitto right through the years of her torment. Unlike many of the people who came to see Henry, she had already resigned herself to her spouse doing the dirty. What she wanted was to find out whom he was screwing and how serious it was. Henry nodded and took copious notes.
‘I need to know if he intends to leave me,’ she concluded.
There followed a few moments’ silence. Scarlet wasn’t sure if she was meant to say more, but Henry continued writing and she continued sitting.
‘OK,’ he looked up and removed his glasses. ‘I have all I need.’
‘I bet you think I’m stupid, right?’
‘No.’
‘Still with a guy even though I know he cheats on me?’
‘Love makes us do strange things, Ms Schuhausen. I understand.’
He said it so genuinely that she managed a weak smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I have news.’
Henry Doric didn’t make her wait. Six days later, the envelope arrived, marked:
CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS—DO NOT BEND.
Scarlet ran a nail along the seal and opened it. A dozen black-and-white prints slipped out, and immediately she recognised her husband. The prints were glossy, as if they belonged in an art gallery. Hands shaking, she flicked through them. Vitto in a café, laughing down a side street, entering a hotel then exiting hours later; holding her hands, kissing her lips, his arms around her in the rain, her face in his collar …
At first, it was unbelievable. Then, it made sense.
Her.
The same woman in every photograph, a woman Scarlet recognised with bile in her throat and hate in her heart. The woman was vivid and dark—so different from her own regal fairness—and regarded Vittorio with unabashed adoration in every frame.
It was the same woman all the way through. Would have been bet
ter if there had been a selection, a few of her husband’s playthings, none that posed a real threat.
She had asked Henry to uncover any serious affair. Here was her answer.
The photographs were timed and dated. It seemed that Vitto had been busy in Italy, at the Tuscan house they’d bought together on their fifth wedding anniversary. He’d been there fucking this other woman. This whore.
Scarlet’s tears began quietly then turned into howls. She howled her grief to the empty, loveless mansion of her hopeless marriage; she bunched the pictures in her fists and tore them into pieces and let them scatter around her like confetti. In one shard, like broken glass, she could still see the tramp’s face. The confession it wore.
Love. And Vittorio loved the tramp right back.
It was over for Scarlet. There was only one thing she could do.
She stood, let herself stop crying, and then calmly mounted the stairs.
39
London
The headline ran in a blood-coloured banner across the foot of the news screen:
SOCIALITE IN SUICIDE SLASH! SCHUHAUSEN IN TRAGIC ATTEMPT!
Tess sat up in bed, alarmed. ‘Vitto?’ she called. Then, louder: ‘Vittorio?’
In the en suite bathroom of their lavish Park Street hotel room, the shower turned off. Tess called again and the door opened. Vittorio emerged, naked, his black hair dripping. He launched himself on to the bed but she pushed him away, stricken.
‘Look. Vitto. My God, look.’
Vittorio turned to the TV and his face went the colour of egg whites. Tess tried to take his hand but he pulled away. A reporter was talking into camera:
‘Ms Schuhausen, wife of celebrated tycoon and CEO of Tekstar Corporations Vittorio Da Strovisi, was found unconscious at her home in Los Angeles early this morning. She was taken to the Willow Central Memorial, where she is said to be in a stable condition. Ms Schuhausen had been suffering with depression and anxiety before her suicide attempt; our thoughts are with her friends and family at this time.’