by Victoria Fox
Who is this man I’m kissing?
It was probably why he had asked her to marry him. Tess’s rejection had been a blow to a man like him. Vittorio Da Strovisi didn’t get dumped.
‘Good luck, Vitto,’ Calida said now, twisting off her engagement ring and tossing it on the seat between them. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
She opened the car door and disappeared on to the street.
The following week, Calida attended a drinks reception at designer Mateo Frank’s warehouse studio. Ordinarily she would share Ryan’s ride home, but since he’d had obligations elsewhere, she decided to sober up by taking a walk back to her apartment. It was nine p.m. when she left and the evening was warm and calm.
Partway down Bleecker, she heard her name being called.
‘Calida!’
She stopped. A woman she didn’t know was rushing towards her. The woman was dressed in cheap furs and plastic jewellery, as if she had raided a second-hand clothes store. As she came closer, Calida saw her make-up was badly applied and clownish. Fake diamonds pulled her earlobes and her dress was worn and frayed.
‘Calida!’ the woman said again, breathless, and went to embrace her.
Calida pushed her off. It had been a bad idea to venture on to the streets alone—she wasn’t recognised often, but once was once too much. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
The woman searched her eyes. Calida resumed walking.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ came the voice.
And with it, she stood still. The stranger had spoken in Spanish, her native Argentinian tongue. The incredible truth speared her in the back.
Calida turned.
‘Mama …?’
Julia Santiago nodded, her eyes shimmering with tears. She held her arms out.
‘Oh, chica,’ their lost language rolled off her mother’s tongue, ‘I have waited so long for this. I have searched for you everywhere. Finally, I have found you.’
Calida’s mouth filled with grit.
‘How?’ she managed. ‘How did you find me?’
Julia’s arms went down, empty, but her smile did not waver.
‘I’ve followed my daughters’ successes. I see how rich you’ve become. I came to New York and discovered where you worked. I went with you to the party tonight.’
It was too much to take. This person, this stranger who had abandoned her on the estancia as carelessly as if she were leaving for a morning’s shopping, here, now, unrecognisable apart from the grasping, avaricious glint in her still-hungry eyes.
‘I was outside, waiting for you,’ said Julia. ‘I thought I’d surprise you.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Calida, numb. ‘I’m surprised.’
Julia’s painted lips parted in a smile. Her teeth had yellowed; one of them was chipped. She had aged gracelessly, unkindly, coarse lines around her mouth and the ghosts of a scowl etched into her brow. This was her mother? Calida would have walked straight past her on the street. She nearly had. She had thought about Julia sparingly over the years, wondered about her, reviled her—but never longed for her.
‘Come, chica, come to your mama,’ said Julia. ‘Be happy to see me, at least. I need looking after, mi corazón: the years haven’t been kind. I—I lost all my money.’ Her eyes glazed. ‘All that lovely money … I gave you your half, but I lost my own.’
‘My half?’ Calida baulked.
She had been left nothing. Remembered Julia’s departure, the last words her mother had spat—but no money. Julia hadn’t cared. She’d left her penniless, left her for dead for all she knew, filled only with ruthless intent at building her own fortunes.
‘What happened to the money?’ Calida asked.
‘I spent it.’ Julia lifted her shoulders; the fur rose and fell. ‘Money is for spending, isn’t it?’ Bitterness stitched into her voice. ‘Oh, it wasn’t enough. A couple of years it lasted me, that was all. I’ve tried to get more. Don’t you realise I was rich, Calida, once upon a time? Before your disgusting papa came along and ruined it all.’
Calida took a step closer. ‘Don’t ever say anything bad about my papa again.’
‘I’ll say what I like,’ Julia exploded, ‘you don’t know what your precious papa got up to right there under our roof!’ Then she gathered herself, as if reminded this wasn’t why she was here. ‘I mean, chica,’ she said softly, ‘you must understand, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to leave you that day. I had to. I knew our funds would run dry. I had to make more, for both our sakes! I was always going to come back …’
Calida watched her, this pathetic, broken, heartless woman, and felt nothing.
Nothing.
‘You’ve found Teresita?’ Calida asked, afraid of the answer.
Julia’s eyes lit. ‘Oh, I’ve tried, Lord knows I’ve tried. What a splendour your sister’s become, Calida! She’s far too important these days. I haven’t been able to get close. I was hoping you might have. Have you? Do you think Teresita will see me?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Calida coldly, her mother’s preference as stark and whole as it had been when they were children. ‘We’re not in touch.’
‘I thought she could help me,’ Julia babbled. ‘Teresita couldn’t turn her own mother away, could she? Nor could you, I suspect, not since—’
‘Like I said, we’re not in touch.’
Julia’s disappointment was as false as her attire. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said.
‘Teresita made it clear when she left home that I meant nothing to her.’
Julia frowned. Calida wondered if her mother might be drunk. There was a dark patch down her faux-fur collar. Her words slipped over each other.
‘Did she?’ said Julia. ‘I don’t recall that.’
‘You told me she begged you to let her go. She begged Simone to take her.’
‘Really? Oh. Yes. Right. Of course.’
Calida’s locket scalded her chest. ‘Teresita did say that—didn’t she, Mama?’
‘Say what, chica?’
‘That she was ready to go to England. That she was desperate. That she wanted it to be permanent. That is what she said, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
Calida saw herself from outside, the rest of the city rushing by, just two friends arguing on the street. But the world was turning upside-down, slowly, slowly.
‘I can’t think why you’re getting so upset,’ said Julia, patting her nest of hair. ‘How about we go for a late supper, hmm? Your treat. I’m sure you can’t wait to shower your poor mama with a taste of the high life.’
‘Answer my question,’ said Calida.
‘What question?’
‘You know damn well what question.’ Blood rang in Calida’s ears. Her head throbbed. People and sounds passed by like holograms, surreal and meaningless.
‘Don’t worry, Calida. We’ll make your sister see sense. She is your twin, after all. We’ll find her and then we can all be a family again. See? Easy.’
‘Did she say those things, Mama? I need to know.’
Julia weighed her options. Calida’s expression must have tipped it, knowing she wouldn’t get a single thing out of her until she told the truth.
‘No, she didn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be better for you if I told you that. And it was, wasn’t it? Look at you now! You’ve got me to thank for that.’
Calida took a step back. Her knees threatened to buckle but somehow she stayed standing. Julia said: ‘So, how about that dinner? Where are you taking me?’
Somehow Calida found the words. An echo of the words Julia had hit her with the last time she had seen her. ‘Come now, Mama,’ she whispered. ‘You’re an adult. I’ve started my new life. You can’t expect me to hang around for the rest of my days playing the doting daughter.’ And she turned on her heel and didn’t look back.
45
New York
‘Tess, are you there …? You’re breaking up. I can hardly hear you.’
Tess opened the door to her newl
y purchased Manhattan hideout with a trembling hand, closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the lock and applied the ladder of chains. She flicked the hall light on and leaned, in relief, against the wall.
She was safe. Only then did she allow herself to speak at normal volume.
‘Is that better?’
‘Yes,’ said Simone. ‘Are you travelling?’
‘I just got in.’
‘I thought you had a dinner with Max.’
‘We finished early. He went on to a party at Liz Goldstein’s house.’ Tess went through to the lounge, clicking lamps on as she went. ‘I didn’t feel like joining.’
Before she unhooked the blind on the final window, she spotted a figure on the sidewalk. The figure was absolutely still. Tess couldn’t work out if it was facing her or facing away, so black and total was its silhouette. Fear somersaulted.
It’s no one—just a guy out walking his dog.
There was no dog.
The blind fell.
‘Tess, you ought to be accompanying Max to things like that,’ said Simone. ‘Show your face. Show them they haven’t got to you.’
Why? What was the point? They had got to her. With poison and threats and the horrible, horrible things they said about her every day. That was why, as the year rolled on and the hate drilled into every part, carrying with it the threat that one day somebody might act on that hate and then where would she be, she’d had to move to New York. Nobody except Simone, Mia, and Maximilian knew the place existed. It had meant she couldn’t appoint her usual security: there was nothing like two stacked guys hovering about outside a property to draw unwanted attention—but what good had they done her recently, anyway?
This time she was going it alone. Scarlet would never find her here.
‘It’s under control,’ said Tess. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘What about Steven?’
Tess exhaled. One good thing had come of her exile, at least.
‘Steven’s agreed to my terms. Clean split. Clean payout.’
‘Oh, darling, that’s wonderful.’
Didn’t she know it? As if she needed further proof, the Scarlet ordeal had exposed her estranged husband in all his true colours. Hearing of her affair with Vittorio, Steven wasted no time in joining the hate wagon against her, using Scarlet’s army to fight his battles and conceal his own looming secrets. Naturally, one of the details of the divorce was that Tess could never reveal his fetishes—though now she had been exposed as a cheat and a fraud, no one was likely to believe her anyway. It had been noted in recent months that the couple were rarely seen out together, and now Steven’s diligently enigmatic comments drip-fed through the media until the picture was complete: ‘Tess was never easy to be with,’ he said; or ‘Every time we went out, her mind was elsewhere’; or ‘She was forever making friends and refusing to let me meet them.’ Nothing so overt as to taunt her into revealing his perversions, but enough to make certain their separation had been entirely down to her shortcomings.
Still, Tess couldn’t care how it was done. It was over. She was free of him.
And suddenly her ambitions to take over Hollywood, California, the States, the whole world, seemed less necessary than they had. Perhaps it was fearing for her life that had put things in perspective, perhaps it was the realisation that fame and money didn’t buy peace. Perhaps it was Alex Dalton, and the memory of their night …
Alex hadn’t contacted her. Could she blame him? It had been so long: there could only be one explanation. The media told him what to think and that was that: he would be disgusted by her, thankful for the purity of his bride-to-be, whom, in contrast, he would hold on to like his life depended on it. Tess was sad for what might have been, but reasoning with Alex, trying to make him understand, would shift her betrayal of Mia to new depths. One night she could reconcile as a grave mistake. Telling him she loved him was a deliberate hurt.
Time went on, and whenever Mia called, Tess’s heart lodged in her throat. Had Alex confessed? Was this the showdown? But the showdown never came. Her anxiety wasn’t helped by Mia’s increasing indifference about the wedding, vagueness when asked about Alex, and reluctance to discuss the details of the nuptials. Tess told herself that if Mia had suspicions, she would surely know about them. Mia wouldn’t keep calling her up. She wouldn’t tell Tess not to care about what the papers said because the people who knew her loved her, and understood she wasn’t any of those things.
I am though, thought Tess. I am a slut and a whore. If only you knew.
‘Well,’ said Simone, ‘I’m coming to LA. Emily has an audition and I promised I’d go with her. I can fly out and check on you then.’
‘Emily … as in Emily?’
‘Darling, what’s important to Lysander is important to me. Emily asked for my help and I told her I’d give it. Now Brian’s away, I’m all that girl has.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘Brian’s checked into a fat farm—and about time, too. He’s mammoth—as big as a house. I mean I always knew he was prone, but now he’s let go. The press here is full of it. Brian’s full of it, too, by the looks of things: burgers, fries, KFC …’
‘I feel for him.’
‘Don’t. Michelle saw his picture in GQ. He was at a bar opening and had some huge-titted wannabe hanging off his arm. Needless to say, he’s got an appetite for those as well.’ There was a tense moment before Simone asked: ‘Did he ever try it on with you, Tess? I’ve thought about this. The notion appals me. You can be honest.’
‘No!’
‘I’d hate to think he did anything—all those times you were alone in the house together … Please tell me he didn’t. I’ll kill him. My duty was always to protect you.’
‘He didn’t.’
Simone’s relief was audible. ‘You have no idea what a comfort that is.’
In the wake of another lie—she seemed to be surrounded by them these days—Tess said goodbye and hung up. If only she could be as honest with Simone as Simone was with her. Tess trusted her completely. She’d never had reason to doubt it.
Soothed by that knowledge, that in the midst of this maelstrom there was someone upon whom she could always lean, she settled in for the night.
The year of Mia’s wedding arrived, and with it a catalogue of disasters. Missing aeroplanes, a drowned ferry, catastrophe on the Gaza Strip … Trauma shook the world and grimly Tess looked on, frightened in the bubble of her own shrunken universe and even more frightened by what lay outside it. She thought of those days on the ranch, with Calida, when the wide earth and everything in it seemed a distant, irrelevant reality. Then, she had felt so far from danger and anger and sadness. Now, they were everywhere.
I wanted to run from that place. I wanted it every day.
But she’d had no clue, then, what she was running towards. She’d been ignorant; a child, a dreamer. If only she’d had a pinch of her twin’s good sense.
I miss you, she thought.
I wish you were with me. I really wish you were.
As promised, Simone flew out to meet her, buzzing with news of Emily Chilcott’s success on heavyweight Bruce ‘Ace’ Latimer’s casting couch. Since Tess had retreated from the public eye, Simone was doing all she could to maintain the Geddes brand and keep the family on a climbing curve. Her own career had boosted after Lysander-gate, as Simone re-invented herself Demi Moore style, and tonight she was expected at an awards dinner. She persuaded Tess to accompany her.
At the party, Tess kept her head down, aware of the bitchy stares and whispers that followed her round the room. Her affair with Vittorio was leprosy, her exile a dreadful contagion that could slaughter the career of any who came too close. She wished she could find her gold locket, the weight of it round her neck gave her comfort, but to her dismay it was nowhere to be seen. What have I done with it? She prickled whenever she thought of it. How could I have been so careless?
She counted the minutes until they could leave.
‘Oh, wow, Tess …?’
She was emerging from the bathroom when a face she couldn’t quite place accosted her in the hall. The woman, a few years older than her, eyed her expectantly.
‘Sarah Quentin,’ the stranger prompted.
Tess steeled herself for an attack, some reporter who had it in for her.
‘Tess—it’s Sarah. Remember? From Michelle Horner’s office?’ The woman smiled, apparently immune to Tess’s noxious reputation, and held out her hand.
Carefully, Tess took it.
‘I was Michelle’s assistant back in London,’ Sarah elaborated, ‘just after you came over from South America. It seems like an age ago now. That was my first job out of uni. God, I was petrified working for Michelle! But what a great experience.’
Tess was surprised at the connection. She thought back to when she had first landed in the UK. She must have run into Sarah Quentin from time to time during protracted meetings with Simone and Michelle, but hadn’t banked her face. Vaguely, she recalled Simone blasting through the mansion and cursing Sarah’s name, calling her ‘incompetent’ and ‘a wretched liability’. Soon after, Sarah had been fired.
‘Of course,’ said Tess. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m at Laney’s office now.’ Laney Derrickson was an author turned screenwriter turned producer, and a great friend of Steven’s; Tess had met her once.
‘To anyone else Laney would be Boss-zilla,’ Sarah said, lowering her voice and draining the last of her fizz. ‘But after Michelle, she’s a kitten. That woman was terrifying!’
‘You never let on.’ But Tess wouldn’t know if she had or not.
‘It didn’t help that I kept tripping up,’ Sarah continued, ‘it being my first proper job and everything.’ An actress-slash-model passed them in the corridor and tilted her face away, as if a bad smell had passed under her nose. Sarah didn’t appear to notice. ‘And Michelle kept saying, “Sarah, you do not want to make mistakes with Simone Geddes because she is my number one client! This adoption is the most important project I’ve ever worked on!” I was, like, OK, no pressure then!’