by Jessie Keane
Now she was home. And suddenly, she was so glad of that.
Chapter 35
She was betting that Lucco wasn’t quite as thorough as his father. That he would forget little things, little loopholes that he maybe ought to have closed up. Like . . . oh, like she still had the keys to the Holland Park mansion. Although Lucco had closed her off in New York, maybe he hadn’t thought it important enough to shut her down with quite such thorough ruthlessness across the pond in England.
The fact was, he thought she was whipped, finished. Well, maybe he was right. Nico had told him she was going home to England, and she could imagine the pleasure that had given him. But maybe here he would get careless.
What the hell, she thought as their cab pulled up in front of the big, red-brick William and Mary house where she had first met Constantine. They piled out with their cases, Nico paid the driver and the cab roared off.
Annie paused there, looking up at the impressive frontage of the house, the identical bay trees in terracotta pots on either side of the elaborately stepped entrance where the door was painted a discreet and glossy dark blue and furnished with a big brass lion’s-head knocker.
Shit, I’m never going to see him again, she thought with a stab of familiar anguish. Only in my nightmares.
But Layla was tugging at her hand, hauling her up the path, Nico and Gerda following close behind.
Well, here goes nothing.
If everything was as it should be, the staff would be here. Maybe she should have phoned ahead, but she felt that might have given Lucco a tip-off. At which point the little slime-ball would quite likely have the locks changed and instruct the staff that she was not to be admitted.
Annie walked up the steps to the front entrance.
She remembered so vividly standing here once before, coming to petition Constantine for his help when Layla was snatched. People staring at her, wondering what on earth she was playing at. Cara had been getting married that day. But against all her expectations, that had worked out. Constantine had helped. Layla had been safely recovered. And . . . she’d fallen in love with him. Expecting never to fall in love again, not after Max. But she had, and it had been a kind of miracle.
And now look how it’s ended.
She got out the key with a shaking hand, inserted it in the lock. Turned it.
Oh please, she thought. Just this one break. Please.
There was a moment’s resistance.
He’s changed them, he’s already done it . . .
Then the door swung open.
She shot a look at Nico. He was watching her, his big friendly avuncular face carefully devoid of expression. Layla jumped and twirled between them, oblivious to the tension above her head. Gerda grabbed Layla’s hand and started talking to her.
Annie stepped inside and came face to face with Rosa, the squat Spanish maid, her greying hair scraped back in a bun, her dark eyes wide with surprise when she saw Annie standing there.
‘Señora Barolli!’
‘Hi, Rosa,’ said Annie, pushing into the hall before the maid had time to change her mind about the warm welcome. She didn’t know what to expect here. But she feared the worst.
‘But what you doing here?’ Rosa’s face clouded with sadness. ‘So sorry, Señora, about Señor Barolli. So sorry.’
Annie swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. Nico had phoned ahead, explained. And probably told Rosa to tell no one else Annie was coming. Not even Lucco. ‘Thanks, Rosa. We’re going to be staying here for a while.’
Rosa nodded and started fussing around with the bags.
It was as easy as that.
Lucco had dropped a stitch; she was in.
London
Chapter 36
‘You know what?’ said Ellie. ‘If I’d known there was such a good living to be made out of galloping the maggot, I’d have started up my own place years ago.’
Chris, eighteen ugly, bald-headed stone of meaty muscle, put down his paper. They were sitting in the kitchen at the Limehouse knocking-shop, where Ellie – formerly prostitute and cleaner – now held sway as Madam. She liked being Madam. It was so much more fun dishing out orders than taking them. But Chris looked at her and knew this was all hot air; Ellie didn’t have the business nous to have launched her own place. Ellie was a worker who’d got lucky by being kicked upstairs.
To be fair, though, she’d made a pretty good job of it so far. This place – first under the command of Celia, then Annie, then Dolly – had always done a roaring trade in punters, and it was continuing to thrive with Ellie at the helm.
There had been major changes over the years, of course; brasses came and went, punters fell off the twig and new ones came in to have the old man given a polish or a whipping. Life went on. Now, he was doorman here once again and it was a job that suited him better than his last one, on permanent nights in security at Heathrow. This job kept him more fully occupied, since he’d lost his wife – who had also been a working girl, God rest her.
‘Yeah, but it’s not all profit, is it?’ he reminded Ellie.
Ellie shrugged. No, it wasn’t. Once this busy establishment had paid protection to the Delaney mob; now they handed a weekly wedge over to the Carter boys. The Carters kept the lid on any trouble, so it all ran like clockwork.
And today was party day! Friday. Her favourite day of the week. There were eats and drinks laid out ready for the clients in the front parlour, the music was playing, there were willing trollops aplenty, a new dominatrix occupied the Punishment Room upstairs; the whole place was abuzz.
The doorbell rang.
‘First punter of the day,’ trilled Ellie, and hopped to her feet to check out her appearance in the mirror behind the door. Once, she’d porked up like a mini barrage balloon, neglected herself, fed her anxiety and misery with biscuits and cakes. Now, she saw reflected there a still curvy but well-groomed woman of medium height, wearing a red skirt suit, her dark hair neatly coiled up in a French pleat, her skin pale and pearlescent, her pretty hazel eyes alight with the challenge of a new day.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Chris, and walked off down the hall.
Ellie watched him go with a sigh of longing.
All right, she still had a few problems. She was head over heels in love with Chris and she still couldn’t bring herself to tell him so. And she thought one of her prossies was meeting clients on the side, working out her own rates with the bastard outside somewhere and bypassing the knocking-shop.
However . . .
Apart from all that, things were good. She was still in regular touch with her old mate Dolly, who ran the trio of Carter clubs. Back in the day, they’d been called the Palermo, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar; they’d been old-fashioned nightclubs, then seedy strip joints, now they were all called Annie’s and the clientele were decent people out for a night’s clean, wholesome entertainment; the dirty-mac brigade was long gone.
She hurried out into the hall after Chris, fixing her bright professional smile in place to greet the first punter.
Chris was blocking the doorway, and Ellie noted with a little irritation that he wasn’t saying hello, come in, kiss-my-arse or nothing. He was just standing there like a lemon. She came forward and peered around his bulk, smiling broadly.
‘Hello, do come . . .’ Her voice – her best posh voice, the one she always used on the clients – died on her in an instant.
She felt all the blood drain from her head and plummet down into her elegant patent-leather court shoes as she saw who was standing there.
‘Holy shit,’ she said instead, forgetting to sound posh in the extremity of her shock.
There was a ghost standing on her doorstep.
Chapter 37
Dolly Farrell put the phone down and wondered what the fuck was going on. It was a warm evening and she was up in the office over Annie’s, one of the three clubs that Annie Carter had put her in charge of before shooting off to America to discover love’s young – well, maybe not so young
– dream.
She could see the lure of that lifestyle. Endless amounts of money, couture clothes, a swanky home in the Hamptons, exclusive Caribbean hideaways, olive and orange and lemon groves in the Med, racehorse studs in England and sunlit vineyards in France, all peppered around the world like a string of precious jewels that could be picked up and put down at a moment’s notice. Even if the guy had been plug-ugly, Dolly might have considered going for it.
Or maybe not.
Personally, she was now wondering if Annie had dropped her wits along with her underpants. All right, Constantine was gorgeous. She’d been pretty smitten herself when she’d met him at the club opening – the silver fox. That aura of power, the dazzling white hair, those snazzy silver-grey suits, that fit tanned body of his and those blue, blue eyes . . . oh yes, she could have gone for that, she could understand that. But he was also trouble with a capital T. Mafia. Dangerous.
But then – Annie had always pushed the boundaries. Ever since Dolly had first met her, when Annie had been in disgrace for snatching her sister’s man and Dolly had been a working girl at Aunt Celia’s place in Limehouse; ever since then, it had been clear that Annie would never, ever play by anyone else’s rules. Try to confine Annie Carter, and she’d kick the door down and boot your arse right up between your armpits.
Dolly loved being manager here at Annie’s flagship London club; she loved directing the staff, seeing that everything ran smoothly, swanking around town in the long black Jag with Tony – once Annie’s driver, and before that Max Carter’s – at the wheel. Dolly sat at her desk with the boom-boom-boom of the sound system thrumming up through the floorboards and knew that she had come a long, long way. From tart to Madam to nightclub manager, acquiring a little gloss, a soupçon of polish, along the way. Oh, she could still curse and drink and smoke along with the best of them when she was off-duty, but Annie had taught her a long, long time ago that in the work environment you had to behave in a certain way to make people respect you.
She’d learned her lessons. Been bumped up the ladder to success. Left tarting behind and embraced the life of the boss lady – as had her mate Ellie, who was now running the Limehouse knocking-shop, ruling the roost there as Madam. She was pleased for Ellie and they had remained great mates, meeting up for a voddy and tonic and a laugh whenever they could find the time.
Now, Dolly sat there and stared at the phone. Ellie had just called her, gabbling at top speed. She’d thought Ellie had phoned to suggest a meet, but no; Ellie had been in a right state, nearly gibbering like a lunatic with the need to impart her news. And impart it she had, after Dolly had told her several times to calm down, what the hell was the matter?
Ellie had told her the most incredible thing.
Now Dolly let out a heavy breath and leaned back in her chair.
‘Fucking hell,’ she murmured.
She felt like someone had punched her in the gut, knocking all the wind out of her.
Jesus. Such news. Unbelievable news.
With a trembling hand she reached out and picked up the phone, listened to the dial tone and wondered how you were supposed to break news like this. She gulped and thought she didn’t know how she was going to do it. But she knew she had to. She opened the top drawer and pulled out her notebook with all her telephone contact numbers inside. Went through all the business of phoning the operator and finally getting a connection to the New York penthouse. She was roughly working out the time zones as she did so. They were five hours behind England. She checked her watch. Nearly nine o’clock here, so about four there; Annie should be home. Dolly almost hoped she wasn’t.
How was she going to say this?
Dolly was sweating, her thoughts tumbling over themselves. She really, really didn’t want to do this, but friendship dictated that she must, and as quickly as possible.
The phone rang.
Endlessly, it rang.
‘I’m sorry, would you like me to keep trying?’ asked the operator.
‘No. Don’t bother. No wait. In half an hour, can you try it again?’
So she tried again half an hour later, then half an hour after that, and so on until with relief she accepted that she wasn’t going to get an answer. Well, she’d done her best. She went to bed shortly after midnight. She couldn’t raise Annie, although she had tried.
A cowardly part of her was glad; and she went to bed in her cosy flat over Annie’s nightclub feeling relieved that she’d put off the evil moment for now and wouldn’t have to think about it again until tomorrow. As she drifted off to sleep she thought of Ellie’s frantic call again, and she wondered: how did you tell someone that their first husband, the one they believed to be dead, was in fact alive?
How did you tell your best mate in all the world that Max Carter was right here, in London, and that he now knew what she had done – cleared off to America with another man and married him (and didn’t that mean Annie was a bigamist? Dolly thought it did).
What she also thought was that Max Carter wouldn’t take very kindly to his wife – even if she did believe him to be dead – scarcely waiting for his supposed body to rot before fucking off with another man.
She didn’t know how she was going to break any of this to Annie.
She turned over, thumped the pillow.
Fuck it.
Like Scarlett O’Hara, she was going to think about it tomorrow.
Chapter 38
Annie had breakfast in the dining room with Layla, Gerda and Nico and then she went into Constantine’s study at the front of the house and gratefully closed the door.
Gerda was taking Layla over to the park to feed the ducks; Nico was taking a walk. Apart from two staff, she was alone in the house. The effort to be cheerful for Layla was exhausting her now. She didn’t want to be cheerful; she wanted to lie down and die.
She couldn’t even sleep any more. Lying in the big bed upstairs last night she had tossed and turned, unable to rest. She had always slept soundly until last year’s disaster, but now she had lost the knack of it. She kept seeing him. Waking in the night to dimness, she could see his outline across the room, standing beside the window. She would scramble out of bed, half asleep, half awake . . . but then he would vanish.
And then, in dawn’s first light, he had been there again when her eyes flickered open. Sitting across the room in the Louis Quinze chair. Constantine, watching her with those laser-blue eyes. She could see the dim light forming a halo of silver on his hair, could see how tanned he was, how healthy. She could see the diamond ring winking on his finger as he breathed. He was there.
But now she knew how this went. Now she didn’t hurry from the bed to embrace him. Now she just waited . . . and it happened. His skin, his hair, the bright diamond ring; everything faded to black with a grim inevitability. A charred corpse was there now, not Constantine, not any more. And Annie had to bite down hard on her knuckle to stop herself from screaming. She didn’t want to frighten Layla. She didn’t want Nico thinking she was losing her mind.
But she was. Wasn’t she?
Thank God, the next time she looked – the next time she dared – the chair was empty. And now . . . now she sat in Constantine’s study, at Constantine’s desk, and wondered – seriously – if she was going mad.
She looked around the study with its rows of books, the bankers’ lamps, the big tan Chesterfield sofas and costly rugs, the elaborate marble fireplace. Here was where she had first met Constantine, on the day of Cara’s wedding to Rocco. Here was where he had helped her find Layla, and here was where he had told her he wanted her for the very first time.
Now it was nothing but an empty room. She let out a sigh and became aware that her eyes were wet. Angrily, she wiped at them with her fist. She never cried. She was tough.
Dig deep and stand alone.
That was the credo she had always lived by.
But now . . . now she just wanted it all to be over for her. She didn’t want to go on, she was too weary, too beaten.
/> She could hear voices out in the hall; Gerda’s, raised and shrill.
A bolt of anxiety shot up through her midriff. She stood up and hurried over to the door.
Please, she thought, no more . . .
Not more trouble. She couldn’t take it. Not now.
She hurried across the big hallway with its black-and-white chequered tiles and huge dazzling chandeliers. Crime didn’t pay? You only had to look around this place to know that was bullshit.
The front door was open. Nico was standing there, alongside Gerda and Layla and Rosa the Spanish maid. Gerda was waving her arms around and the maid seemed to be remonstrating with her. Nico was listening attentively as Annie crossed the hall and joined them. With a brief glance at her, he went outside and they could see him going out onto the roadway, looking left and right.
‘Mommy . . .’ Layla was reaching out for Annie.
Annie grabbed her hand and pulled her in close. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked quickly.
‘There was someone following us in the park,’ said Gerda. ‘A man.’
Christ. ‘Did you get a good look at him?’
Gerda shook her head. ‘Only that he was tall. And dark. Everywhere we went, he went too. So I came back right away. We ran . . . didn’t we, Layla? And then when we left the park he followed us right up to the end of the square.’
Gerda looked frantic. Annie could see that she had been really, really scared. And Gerda normally wasn’t the type to panic. But who would be following Layla and her nanny in the park? All right, Gerda was a beautiful Nordic blonde – men were attracted to her.