by Carmen Reid
‘Yes, is good news,’ Svetlana agreed in a whisper.
‘It’s a breakthrough! You can tell the police. You can get them back.’
‘Yes. We try with police, of course, but the important thing is to follow the boys, try and get them back quickly.’
‘Follow the boys to Vienna? Good idea,’ Annie agreed. ‘Who’s going to do that?’
With eyebrows raised, Svetlana looked at Annie as if the answer was blatantly obvious.
‘Who?’ Annie repeated.
‘Me,’ she replied. ‘I am going to Vienna right now. I will find them.’
‘But it’s—’ Annie looked at her watch – ‘4 a.m. There probably won’t be any planes till …’
Svetlana was looking at her phone, scanning through pages, searching for the information.
‘Nothing till 9.50,’ she said, ‘so we go by car.’
‘Car? We?’ Annie repeated.
Both of these words were worrying.
‘We are in Milan, Annah, is not so far away from Vienna. We find my boys and bring them home.’
Annie swallowed.
‘If we take a car, is perfect. We can follow them, wherever they go.’
‘But we can’t drive to Vienna! It’s thousands of miles away,’ Annie protested.
Svetlana looked at her phone once more.
‘Is 628 kilometres. We leave now, we can be there before the plane from Milan even takes off.’
‘Where are we going to get a car?’
‘We take a hotel car,’ Svetlana replied, unruffled. ‘This is a very good hotel, they do everything for their guests they do every tiny little thing …’
‘Except feed us,’ Annie said under her breath.
‘They will find us a car. They will lend us a car if they have to.’
Annie remembered seeing a little white Fiat parked round the back of the hotel. She tried to imagine Svetlana driving 628 kilometres in a car the size of a roller skate. It couldn’t be done. Svetlana would never be able to fit her handbag, let alone her hair and her heels into a car as small as that.
‘We get car and we drive to Vienna,’ Svetlana insisted.
‘No, we cannot give you one of the hotel’s cars,’ Carlo repeated for the fifth time, ‘it is out of the question.’
In other circumstances, Annie might have found Carlo quite thrillingly attractive. The shirt he’d flung on when the night porter had woken him up with this outlandish request was loosely tucked into his trousers and only half buttoned up, revealing a deeply tanned chest. His inky hair was ruffled and falling over his dark brown eyes, but wrenched from his bed by Svetlana and her, the evil British escapee, he was very definitely not amused.
He kept shooting Annie deeply hostile glares.
‘My children have been kidnapped!’ Svetlana declared once again, ‘I know where they are going and I am going to follow them in a car. I do not care how much it will cost. I must have a car!’
Carlo’s eyes met Svetlana’s. Working here he must have had many dealings with über-wealthy women who were used to getting exactly what they wanted all the time.
He must have realized he could only go on refusing for so long. The moment when Svetlana was going to insist on waking the chief executive was surely approaching.
Carlo glared at Annie again, as if it was all her fault, but then finally said with barely suppressed irritation, ‘The hotel has two cars: a Fiat 500 and a small Fiat van. You could take one of these to drive to Vienna and back. The cost is 200 euro per day.’
‘A van? A Fiat 500? Just who do you think you are talking to?’ Svetlana demanded imperiously. ‘A van? Never. And I wouldn’t go anywhere in a Fiat 500 if it was the last car on the face of the earth.’
‘Aren’t your boys getting closer to Russia with every minute you waste, Ms Wisneski?’ Carlo risked.
‘How dare you! I will have you dismissed.’
But then Svetlana’s furious face cleared, as if inspiration had suddenly come to her.
‘You will take my card –’ she whisked her charge card (Svetlana never needed credit) from the depths of her discreetly logoed lambskin treasure and handed it to Carlo, ‘you will deduct 2,000 euros for three days’ hire and full insurance for the hotel’s Bentley—’
The Bentley! The hotel’s beautiful, liveried Bentley! Annie’s head reeled. But what had Carlo been thinking? Of course Svetlana could not possibly travel in anything less.
‘And you will bring me the keys. Now!’ Svetlana added.
‘But … I will need to check this …’
‘No, you will not. You will tell your boss that I will more than compensate him for his trouble. Now bring me the keys.’
Carlo stepped into a small room behind the reception desk and when he returned, he had car keys in his hand. In silence, he led them out of the hotel and across the gravel to where the majestic car was parked, polished to perfection and gleaming in the moonlight.
‘This is an expensive car,’ Carlo began.
‘Yes. The best. This is the car I have, much better than Rolls-Royce. We can look after it, Carlo, it will be returned before you even know it’s gone,’ Svetlana assured him. ‘If there are any problems, I can pay.’
Svetlana, handbag and overnight case in one hand, stood expectantly beside the rear passenger door as if waiting for her chauffeur to take her belongings, open the door and drive her around the streets of Mayfair.
‘But you’re not going in the back,’ Annie reminded her.
‘No … you are right, I could come and sit in the front beside you.’ With those words she walked towards the front passenger’s door.
‘But … but aren’t you going to drive?’ Annie asked.
Svetlana looked at Annie with astonishment.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘I have no idea how to drive this car. This is why you have to come with me, Annah.’
Chapter Nineteen
New York
Gracie’s party outfit:
Bright yellow sundress (Domseys Warehouse Outlet)
Red sparkly shoes (theatrical suppliers sale)
White hand-held basket (Alice’s Toy Store)
Gold hoop earrings (hand-me-down from big sister)
Red lipstick (Elizabeth Arden)
Total est. cost: $55
‘SO WE’RE DANCING? Fabulous, I love to dance.’
Gracie sidled onto the dance floor and somehow managed to get between Lana and Parker. She was smiling hard and Lana couldn’t tell whether this was genuine Gracie or if she had spotted Parker leaning in to kiss her and was now flat out trying to stop them.
The music kicked up a notch, Gracie’s arms moved out to the side and she began the kind of sophisticated, complicated dance that Lana might have expected from a girl who almost always wore dance shoes.
As Parker turned to face Gracie and tried to join in with her dance, Lana let a sigh of annoyed disappointment escape. They had been been about to kiss! Now Gracie had stolen the show.
‘I’ll be right back,’ she called in their direction, but neither head even turned to acknowledge her.
‘Or maybe not,’ she said to herself and swallowed hard.
Lana turned the key, opened the apartment door and tiptoed in expecting to find darkness and quiet waiting for her.
‘You’re back early.’
The sound of Elena’s voice startled her.
‘Oh, I thought you’d be in bed,’ Lana said, entering the small but all-white and calmly organized living space. Her boss and flatmate Elena was curled up on the small sofa with her laptop.
‘Too much to organize, plus jet lag,’ Elena said: ‘short trips to London mess you up. Seth recommends watching sunsets and sunrises “so that your body understands”, but it doesn’t work for me.’
Elena was wrapped in a fluffy white dressing gown with a takeaway coffee beside her, which probably wasn’t helping to make her feel sleepy.
‘How was your evening? It’s only midnight – for Manhattan that’s very early home
.’
Lana shrugged: ‘OK, nothing special.’
‘But weren’t you at the opening of that new place, the Spider’s Nest? It’s already famous, apparently Blake Lively was there.’
‘Really? I didn’t see her.’
Elena gave a little smile: ‘No? But maybe this is because you were so busy trying to get the attention of the sexy Mr Parker Bain, am I right?’
Lana shrugged again, set her bag down on the white tiled floor and kicked off the polka-dot shoes.
‘Don’t pretend,’ Elena teased. ‘When he came into the office, I noticed you. You couldn’t take your eyes from him. No wonder, he is a very nice boy. Cute looking.’
‘He’s OK,’ Lana said, stepping into the kitchenette so that Elena couldn’t read anything too obvious from her face.
‘Ah … but do you know what else I saw?’ Elena went on. ‘I saw that Gracie likes him very much too.’
Lana made no reply to this. She poured herself a glass of water and gulped it down, then came back into the room with a second glass in her hand. She tried to brush away the memory of Parker on the dance floor. When he’d held her waist and leaned in towards her, she’d felt her heart leap with happiness, but when he’d turned away to dance with Gracie, it had sunk like a stone.
‘This is a problem,’ Elena persisted: ‘you and Gracie are good friends and now you both like the same boy.’
Lana might have made a scornful reply – along the lines of: ‘If we’re all so easy to read, maybe you could just tell me which one of us Parker likes best? It would save a lot of trouble’ – but Elena’s mobile, on the heart-shaped pink rug beside her coffee cup began to buzz for attention. She picked it up, checked the screen, then put it down again.
‘My mother,’ she said, sounding exasperated. ‘I already have five missed calls from her and six messages. I don’t even listen to them, I hit delete. Ever since she refused to listen about the dresses, I refuse to listen to her.’
‘But she does own the company,’ Lana pointed out, ‘I mean, if we’re not careful, she could wind the whole thing up – or sack us.’
‘Yes, but I don’t think so,’ Elena replied. ‘We have a plan and we have to carry it out. We all must stop worrying about the Mothers and focus on NY Perfect Dress. I already have the first dresses ready to collect tomorrow and they are going to be good. Really good. There is no possibility of this not working. No possibility.’
‘Tomorrow? But it’s Sunday tomorrow,’ Lana pointed out.
Elena shrugged: ‘I ask for special treatment, for favours and everyone is working extra to help us out. The first dresses could be unpacked and for sale by Tuesday. I want to be big success in London first. I want Svetlana to walk past shops with our beautiful dresses in the window and understand just how wrong she was.’
‘Wow, that would be great,’ Lana agreed, imagining the scene. ‘I hope my mum is with her when it happens. I hope they’re both walking arm in arm feeling completely smug when our amazing dress stops them in their tracks. That is definitely the aim.’
Chapter Twenty
Italy
Annie behind the wheel:
Trusty brown linen wrap dress (Hobbs)
Tan heels low enough to drive in (LK Bennett)
Trusty Daria Hobo, well-worn, scuffed and squished (Mulberry)
Wristwatch (Prada)
Lipstick (Mac)
Squirt of morale-boosting perfume (Chanel No. 19)
Total est. cost: £1,200
ANNIE WAS USED to big cars. Before the practical seven-seater familymobile had come into her life, complete with its baby-barf-stained seats, side doors stuffed with rotting banana skins, used baby wipes and empty crisp packets, she’d driven a huge, indestructible gas-guzzler Jeep all over London.
But the vintage Bentley was big on a whole new scale. The driver’s seat was as wide and leathery as an armchair. The steering wheel was a huge, carved wooden affair and now, as she aimed the bonnet of the car at the hotel’s opening gates, she felt as if she was steering a barge towards a mouse hole.
Help, I can’t do this! I can’t drive this thing! How have I got myself into this?! her inner voice protested as she tried to maintain outer calm.
‘The engine is roaring, you are still in first gear, you need to move up,’ Svetlana instructed from the passenger’s seat.
Annie was tempted to reply: ‘Darlin’, if you want to drive, be my guest,’ but instead she managed: ‘I’m going slowly until I know what I’m doing. I’ll speed up once I’ve got my bearings.’
Unfortunately, her foot, clad in the lowest shoes she could find, slipped from the heavy metal brake pedal as she reached the gate, so she turned into the road with much more speed than she might have liked.
A brief but ugly scraping sound meant Bentley had met gatepost, but she carried on regardless.
‘Annah! Annah! We said we would look after the car,’ Svetlana protested.
‘I’m trying,’ Annie replied through gritted teeth, her knuckles already white on the steering wheel.
‘Left? Is this the way we should go? We need map!’
‘We have a map,’ Annie reminded her, still trying to sound calm. ‘Carlo put a map into your car door. Now take it out and look it up. Left leads to the main road. I remember that from my trip in the taxi.’
‘Oh yes, your escape,’ Svetlana said darkly. ‘I am still angry that you run away from my all-expenses-paid spa visit.’
‘In my defence, I was delirious with hunger, I hardly knew what I was doing.’
Svetlana brought out a thick map book and immediately complained: ‘This is just for Italy.’
‘Well, find the motorway which will take us from here to the border and we’ll pick up another map on the way.’
‘The border,’ Svetlana repeated. She opened the book and began to look for the relevant pages: ‘we need the computer in the front of the car … the satnav.’
‘This is a vintage Bentley, I don’t think it does satnav. Have you heard anything more from Michael?’
Svetlana looked at her phone, held at the ready in her hand.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I’m frightened that when I sent him my reply it bleeped and the men guessed what he was doing. I’m frightened we won’t hear anything more.’
‘OK, you need to calm down, sweetheart. And I need to calm down.’
Annie took a deep breath in, let it out slowly then added: ‘Let’s try to trust in luck and good fortune and everyone doing all they can to find your boys. Let’s not freak out …’
Let’s not freak out, she repeated to herself as she tried not to think about what she would do if she met another car on this tiny, twisty road. The Bentley seemed to take up every inch of available space.
Svetlana switched on the reading light and shone it into her lap because although the first palest hint of dawn was emerging on the horizon, it was still dark. After several minutes of study, she told Annie: ‘Is a long way to the border and we have to go over the mountains.’
Annie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
‘Mountains?!’ she repeated.
Mountains … mountains?! Who said anything about mountains? She was expecting a nice, wide-laned motorway between Italy and Austria. She was barely managing to keep control of this beast on a B-road.
‘Just drive, Annah, you are good driver, you will get used to this car.’
The little country road came to an end and as Annie nosed the Bentley along a wider, smoother main road, her tense shoulders began to lower from her ears. With each gear change she grew a little more in confidence, until at last she began to feel in control of the great purring luxurymobile.
Svetlana seemed more relaxed too. Ever since they’d been on the road, heading somewhere, doing something, her face had lost its terrible haunted look. It was obviously helping her enormously to know that each mile they drove was bringing her closer to her beloved boys.
‘Michael’s very clever to think of emailing you,’ An
nie said. She knew that Svetlana’s relationship with her older son was a little prickly so she always did what she could to try and remedy that.
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s obviously brave. I mean, he’s been bundled into a car by strangers and he’s got the nerve to send an email he knows could get him into loads of trouble.’
‘He is afraid of no one – just like his father.’
‘Just like his mother,’ Annie said, with a sidelong glance at her friend.
‘Ha … maybe,’ Svetlana admitted.
She didn’t add anything else and for many miles there was a companionable silence between the two, broken only by map directions from Svetlana.
The early morning sky, pale apricot, dotted with dark blue-grey clouds, spread out before them as they roared along the motorway towards the border. The dark blue Italian Alps rose ahead of them, snow-capped, in the distance.
The mountain range separating them from where they wanted to be looked vast and Annie had a growing suspicion that the roads would be twisting and demanding. But she tried not to worry about the hours of difficult driving ahead.
‘I’ve never been to Austria, have you?’ she asked, when the silence in the car seemed to have been going on for too long.
‘Yes, many times,’ Svetlana replied: ‘the opera, the concert halls, always with Russians making deals – so many Russians in Vienna and in the big houses in the mountains all around. Is interesting country. Very formal. Very old-fashioned. Is one of last places left in civilized world where you can smoke in a café.’
‘I’ve known you for – how many years? – and I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t smoke any more.’
Annie was about to remind her about the box of gold-tipped, multi-coloured cigarettes inhaled just a few hours ago, but then, people did all kinds of strange things in a crisis.
‘Smoking terrrrrrrrible for the skin,’ Svetlana added. ‘My first Botox was my last cigarette. Last night, a … a …’ she waved her hand as she struggled for the right word.
‘One-off?’
‘Yes. One-off. Never again, no matter how bad things get. My throat feels like is missing one layer of skin.’