‘Whoa,’ Bart said slowly, pushing back his blond-streaked hair with both hands. ‘I must admit, Dad, I did not see this coming—’
‘You bastard! You fucking bastard!’ screeched a woman’s voice. It was strangely muffled, but instantly familiar to almost everyone present.
Everyone jumped and looked across the wide living room. At the far side were three big double French windows, running the length of the room, which opened onto a stone terrace bordered by a balustrade elaborately decorated with finials, decorative balls, and cypresses in pots. A dark blur of movement streaked past one set of doors and smacked into the central French windows, resolving itself into a woman’s body, the face pressed up against the glass, glaring into the room: everyone jumped again.
‘You bastard!’ shrieked the woman, grabbing the handle of the door and rattling it madly in an attempt to open it. Having no success, she dashed over to the next set of doors and tried them too. She was dressed entirely in black, a long-sleeved zipped top over exercise tights; with her equally black hair falling over her face, she looked like a deranged ninja.
The second set of doors failed to yield. She doubled back the way she had come, attempting to enter by the French windows she had passed. Everyone’s head turned from side to side, watching her like spectators at a tennis match. It was all so fast; she moved with the speed of a woman who regularly entered competitive triathlons. Which she was.
‘Well, don’t just sit there!’ Jeffrey said sharply to his two sons. ‘Do something!’
The third door was also locked, a tribute to the general security levels necessary when you lived in central London. The woman shrieked again in frustration, slammed her fist against the glass, and disappeared from sight around the side of the house.
‘Shall I ring the police?’ Bart asked, which made his father grind his teeth in frustration.
‘No, you fool!’ Jeffrey yelled; if he had had a cane he would have banged it on the floor. ‘Think I want this story getting in the papers? Go outside and shoo her out!’
‘Shoo her?’ Conway repeated, getting to his feet. ‘Honestly, Dad, the way she looks she’ll take my face off! I’m inclined to agree with Bart – we should ring the police. They have all that gear—’
‘Tell ’em to bring riot shields,’ Bart quipped.
Charlotte huffed out a laugh.
‘She won’t get in,’ Jeffrey said. ‘Maria’s under strict instructions not to let her in the door, no matter what she says.’
‘Lovely,’ Charlotte muttered to Bella. ‘Quite a familiar scenario, isn’t it?’
Bella nodded, vivid memories rushing back. The twins were not close, but at that moment, as their eyes met, they exchanged a look of such absolute understanding and sadness that their resemblance was even more marked than usual.
Because, as Jeffrey’s estranged wife Jade had been screaming and rattling the French windows of the house which had once been hers, Christie’s daughters had been vividly reminded of what Jeffrey had done to them, although their mother had behaved with infinitely more dignity. From one day to the next, their lives had been utterly upended. Christie, too, had been evicted from the house to which she brought back her children as newborns from the St John & St Elizabeth hospital in St John’s Wood; in which she had raised them; from which she had taken them every morning to the Stepping Stones kindergarten on Fitzjohn’s Avenue, then driven the twins to the Francis Holland School in Regent’s Park, while the boys caught the bus to Westminster School.
Christie had been the perfect wife to Jeffrey, faithfully following the routines and rituals of the affluent, society-conscious one per cent who lived in St John’s Wood and Maida Vale. She had produced four attractive and well-bred children, organized their admissions into suitable schools, thrown intimate dinner parties, hosted gala balls, all while sitting on the board of the Sachs Organization and overseeing the decor of the five-star hotels in their portfolio. Jeffrey had been neither the perfect husband nor father, either taking his family for granted or browbeating them for the tiniest of faults, but he had never shown any signs of being likely to stray.
So it had been an utter surprise when, one Tuesday, Christie had picked up Charlotte and Bella from an after-school activity and returned home to find an enormous pantechnicon outside already full of wardrobe rails, suitcases packed with clothes, boxes of her children’s toys, books, musical instruments, the move overseen by a sobbing Maria, whose swollen, puffy face clearly indicated that she had been crying for most of the day. And Christie realized with cold, bitter clarity that Jeffrey had chosen that Tuesday because he knew she had appointments from nine onwards and would be far too busy to pop home before the after-school pickup, so that the coast would be clear for a good eight hours . . .
Bella and Charlotte, lost in memory of their mother’s tears that long-ago Tuesday, were the last to realize that silence had finally fallen in the living room. Jade had stopped screaming. Everyone was frozen in place, wondering if she had given up and gone away.
‘It’s too quiet,’ Bart said suddenly.
As if on cue, the double doors slid open so violently that they smashed into their recesses and a slender black figure stumbled through the gap, her eyes wild.
‘Fuck you, you bastard!’ she screamed. ‘You can’t do this to me and the boys! You can’t just throw us away like we were nothing! I won’t let you, I won’t! Where is she? I’ll tear her to pieces! Where is she?’
The mansion was entirely surrounded by a high hedge which Jade would have had to scale, or push through, in order to gain access to the garden; the entrance gates were specifically designed to be climb-proof. It was clear that she had come by the hedge route from the leaves and small twigs in her dishevelled hair and sticking to the fleece of her fitted, zipped jacket, and from the nasty graze on her cheek. In contrast to her previous swift-as-lightning pace, she was now limping slightly.
Behind her Maria appeared, wringing her hands.
‘The toilet window!’ she said miserably. ‘I hear Mrs Jade and check the side door is locked, but I was wanting to make the air in the guest toilet to be fresh, as we have guests – I forget I leave the window open—’
She looked unhappily at the children, hating to call them ‘guests’.
‘I had to scramble through the hedge and bang my leg climbing in through the guest toilet in my own fucking house!’ Jade shrilled. ‘Look!’
She dragged up one leg of her exercise tights to show a large bruise rapidly forming on her shin.
‘Nasty,’ Bart said sympathetically. ‘You want to get some arnica on that. Shall I—’
But Jade totally ignored him. Since she had always done her best to pretend Jeffrey’s children by Christie didn’t exist, this came as no surprise to anyone.
‘You!’ she said, her eyes lighting on Adrianna, whom she had not spotted when she had peered frantically through the window, as Adrianna had been sitting on the far side of the large, high-backed armchair. ‘I knew you’d be here, you bitch! What’s he doing, introducing you to the fucking family? They should see the pictures of you on his phone, you dirty slut! That’d be the real introduction!’
‘Nooo!’ Bart exclaimed. ‘Dad! I don’t know whether to be shocked or impressed.’
‘Oh, yuck,’ Charlotte muttered.
The leg of her tights still pulled up, Jade launched herself towards Adrianna, who jumped up, strategically putting the armchair between her and her assailant. Jade tore round the chair, and Adrianna shot away, moving at a good rate of speed, but hampered by her tight-fitting dress and five-inch strappy heels; even limping, Jade was much faster. Adrianna was sensibly making for the sofa, which would be a much more effective barrier than the armchair, but Jade lunged forward and grabbed at her hair, managing to clasp a full handful.
Adrianna gasped and staggered on her heels, trying to get her balance. Jade tumbled towards her, jerking Adrianna’s head back. Adrianna reached behind her, grabbed Jade’s fingers, and dragged open their grip, b
ending the fingers back painfully to force Jade to release her hair. Jade screamed in pain.
With Jade’s hands now clutched in each of her own, her arms behind her, Adrianna raised one knee high, the sound of her dress ripping audible as she did so, and kicked back, a donkey kick that hit her assailant in the stomach and sent her flying back through the air. The wind knocked out of her, Jade landed on the carpet, bottom plopping down, hands over her stomach, mouth open in shock. Adrianna drew a long, deep breath, stabilized herself on her high heels and shook out her hair.
‘Bloody hell,’ Bart said admiringly. ‘Were you in the secret service back wherever you come from? Nice moves!’
Adrianna shot him a sideways glance from those long green eyes, clear and cool, acknowledging nothing.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ Jeffrey, who had sat out the scuffle to protect his ageing bones, stood up now and walked towards his girlfriend. ‘That was very fast of you! All that dance training, eh?’
Unnoticed by him, Charlotte looked at her twin and hissed, ‘“Dance training”!’ sarcastically, adding, ‘Catfights at the pole-dancing club, more like!’
Adrianna was rubbing her scalp ruefully. The act of lifting her arms had the effect of raising her perfect round breasts and pushing them against the snakeprint fabric of her dress. Conway, Bart and Jeffrey were so hypnotized by this that even when she assured them, her voice as low and husky as ever, ‘I am okay. It was not so bad,’ they continued to stare in silent worship at her bosom. With Charlotte bitching to Bella, this left only Maria to notice that Jade, having got her second wind, was climbing to her feet. Maria yelled an incoherent warning, pointing at Jade, who was coming forward to tackle Adrianna.
Bella had only a split second to react. She had never been involved in a physical altercation in her life, and lacked fast reactions. Charlotte had been the sporty one, playing lacrosse and hockey at school; if Bella was unlucky enough to be assigned to a team, it had always been as a defender on the stronger one to limit her access to the ball as much as possible.
But her heart was racing, and she was fired up with anger and resentment at her memories of being locked out of this very house by the woman who was now running towards her. Snatching up a bolster from the sofa, Bella swivelled at the waist and smashed it into Jade’s face. Jade staggered back; the bolster was firmly stuffed, and it landed a significant buffet.
Adrianna, seeing Jade advance on her, had started forward, a martial look in her eyes, her fists clenching. Bart, seeing his opportunity, stepped behind his stepmother-to-be and grabbed her by the elbows, pulling her back against him.
‘Steady on, tiger,’ he said in her ear. ‘No need to break one of those pretty nails. Con, grab Jade, will you?’
But there was no need. Bella was dealing with Jade all by herself. Advancing on her stepmother, she whacked her with the bolster over and over again, the action incredibly satisfying. Sheer rage flooded out of her, rage she had pent up ever since her childhood, since the day she had come home with her mother and sister to find their belongings being loaded onto a moving van, and they had looked up to see, at the landing window, a strange dark-haired woman standing there, gazing down at the scene with a smile on her face . . .
Now Bella had that woman at her mercy, and nothing had ever been so satisfying. An impulse buried deep inside her, one she had repressed so profoundly that she hadn’t even known it existed, had burst forth, and she was relishing it with every fibre of her being. Jade was reeling under the repeated buffets, retreating under the assault, driven back against an armchair, screeching in pain as she banged her bruised leg against its solid frame.
But Bella kept on going, gripping the bolster with both hands spaced wide. She might have been a contestant on a TV show she and her siblings had loved when they were young, called Gladiators. One of the challenges had been for the contestant, dressed in padded clothes, to battle a gladiator, the pair trying to knock each other down with big padded cylinders.
This was how they had held those weapons for maximum effectiveness, and they had known what they were doing. The bolster was fearsomely effective. Bella forced Jade so far back she stumbled and fell into the armchair, legs flying into the air, doubling up once again.
And then it was over. Bella couldn’t whack her any more, because it would look bad to keep hitting Jade once she had her down, but she wanted to, she wanted to really badly, she wanted, honestly, to beat the shit out of her . . .
She stopped, the bolster clasped tightly in her sweaty hands. She was sweaty all over, her breath coming fast, her scalp prickling. The impulse to keep going was so powerful that she was wrestling it with all the willpower she possessed, a silent struggle: she knew if she hit Jade again that her siblings and father would consider that she had crossed the line.
‘Well done, Bella!’ Conway exclaimed, starting to clap. ‘Really well done! I didn’t know you had it in you!’
‘I didn’t either,’ she mumbled.
She realized that her fingers were cramped from digging into the bolster so tightly, and started to release them. Someone else was clapping: as she turned away from Jade, to stop herself being tempted to keep hitting her, Bella saw, to her great surprise, that it was her father.
‘Very efficiently done,’ Jeffrey said, smiling at her.
Bella felt like a little girl again, blossoming under rare praise from her father. Cheeks pinkening, she busied herself tucking the bolster back into place on the sofa.
‘You can let me go now,’ Adrianna said over her shoulder to Bart.
‘Whatever the lady wants,’ Bart said, releasing his grip on her elbows and stepping back. Adrianna glided across the carpet to Jeffrey, sliding her arm through his.
‘Jeffrey will be tired now,’ she said. ‘He should rest.’
‘She’s quite right,’ Jeffrey agreed, smiling up at his statuesque girlfriend, beside whom he looked even more like a wrinkled, aged elf. ‘But I could do with a cup of tea first. Maria?’
‘I make it now,’ Maria said, bustling away to suit the action to the words.
‘Oh, and take your stepmother out with you when you go,’ Jeffrey said to his sons. ‘She shouldn’t cause you any trouble. Bella seems to have delivered the coup de grâce.’
Gingerly, Conway and Bart approached Jade, who was struggling in the armchair like an upended turtle trying to right itself.
‘Best to grab the elbows,’ Bart said to his brother. ‘Then they can’t hit you with ’em.’
‘I wonder how you know that, Bart,’ Charlotte said dryly. ‘Have you had to restrain lots of women in your time?’
Bart flashed her a cheeky smile.
‘Just occasionally I’ve had a girlfriend kick off a bit when she found out she wasn’t the only one,’ he said. ‘Things tend to get a bit – well, breaky.’
Approaching Jade from behind, Conway and Bart leant down and grabbed her under the arms, taking hold of an elbow each, hoisting her up and out of the chair. They were both well-built young men, and Jade was very slight. It was easy enough to lift her up and set her on her feet, pushing her shoulders gently to start her walking in front of them as they crossed the living room. Charlotte and Bella fell in behind their brothers.
‘Uh, goodbye, Dad,’ Charlotte said as they passed Jeffrey, the other siblings swiftly chiming in.
‘Goodbye!’ their father said cheerfully. ‘Remember what I said, eh? Six months, no more. Then I walk into the sunset with my lovely bride and one of you takes over. May the best man win!’
Charlotte rolled her eyes at the word ‘man’, but kept her face averted from her father. The group crossed the entrance hall in silence, Jade wriggling now in Conway and Bart’s grip; Bella went ahead to open the front door, and stood back on the terrace as Conway and Bart half-carried their stepmother down the steps and along the garden path. Bella opened the high garden gate. Once through, the brothers looked at each other and, as one, let go of Jade while giving her a firm push away down the pavement, as if she
might turn and bite them if she were too close.
Jade righted herself, and bent over to finally pull down the leg of her exercise tights. Her thick, straight black bob was tangled, hair plastered to her face, her breathing sharp and angry.
‘Fuck you all!’ she spat.
‘It doesn’t feel good, does it?’ Charlotte hissed. ‘Being thrown out of the house you used to live in, that you saw your kids grow up in? All your stuff chucked out as well? Your life totally turned around from morning to evening? I hope you’re enjoying it, because I am!’
Jade pushed her hair back from her sweaty face, looked as if she were about to say something, then didn’t.
‘You know what my mother used to say when we cried about what had happened to her?’ Charlotte pursued inexorably. ‘You lose them how you get them. And she was right. Our father would never have left our mother if it weren’t for you. You got him to trade her in for a younger model and then you got hoist with your own petard. I literally could not be happier right now. Think it’s hard being kicked out of your house and seeing another woman in there? Try being a kid going through that!’
‘I know!’ Jade retorted. ‘How do you think my boys are feeling right now?’
‘Boo fucking hoo,’ Charlotte snapped. ‘My heart’s breaking for your brats. And don’t think for a moment they’re getting a vote in the family trust. You just pissed all over any chance they had of that. Dad’ll never give voting rights to the kids of someone who just behaved like you did. Our mother was dignified. She acted like a lady the entire time and my father respected her for that, all through the divorce where I’m sure you tried to get him to cut us off without a penny!’
She took a deep breath, staring narrowly at Jade, positively daring her to contradict this. Jade was still silent.
Bad Twins Page 3