Bad Twins

by Rebecca Chance

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  One swift look down was all she had time for, a frantic check that Bart was fully concealed by the skirt of her dress. No telltale gleam of black shoe sticking out from beneath the hem, no distortion in the shape of the hoop from his body pushing against it. She felt him shift against her legs as she said loudly to warn him, in case under the layers of fabric and metal he had failed to hear the door opening:

  ‘Jeffrey! What’s wrong? You look so angry! This is supposed to be the happiest day of our life! And Mummia! What are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s my damn son!’ Jeffrey said furiously, and Adrianna felt Bart, who was still holding her knickers, which he had pulled down to her knees, wobble dangerously at these words.

  ‘He’s got the damn bloody cheek to be flirting with Liilia, right under my nose!’ Jeffrey continued. ‘He’s barely even officially separated – he knows I’m livid with him about leaving Samantha – tomcatting around on her right from the beginning, huge bloody scandal in the making – poor woman, she did nothing to deserve that – and now he’s practically backing your sister against a wall and sticking his tongue down her throat! Friends of mine are joking to me about it, asking me how I feel about my wife’s sister getting off with my son!’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Adrianna mumbled, which was no more than the truth.

  ‘There’s nothing to say!’ Jeffrey said crossly. ‘I just wanted to let you know! I’ve had a word with him, and the wedding planner’s reorganizing the place settings to put her as far from him as possible. I’ve just tried so hard to protect your name, darling! The scandal with Conway and that girl from the bar where you used to work – bringing you down, dragging you into it – birds of a feather and all that . . .’

  ‘Oh, Jeffrey, you worry too much!’ Adrianna cooed, while darting a look at her mother that combined anger and bafflement. ‘Please, let me get myself ready to be beautiful for you for the dinner. I’m going slower than I thought. I’m so happy! I’ve just been standing here taking it all in. I can’t believe I’m finally Mrs Sachs!’

  Jeffrey’s face broke into a smile of pure joy.

  ‘I know!’ he crowed blissfully, coming towards her.

  Since she could not move, she stretched out her hands to him rather, she thought near-hysterically, like Cate Blanchett in a similarly stiffened, full-skirted dress, playing Elizabeth I greeting Sir Walter Raleigh. It was a gesture designed to welcome a courtier while still keeping him at arm’s length, preventing him from coming too disrespectfully close to the reigning monarch, and it worked perfectly. Jeffrey took her hands worshipfully, gazing with fondness at her wedding band.

  Adrianna couldn’t help glancing down at her left hand, too, but her gaze was fastened on the gigantic diamond engagement ring; she looked at it multiple times a day, the physical symbol of everything she had gained. Even now, distracted as she was by her husband’s son hiding under her skirts, his hands hot and sweaty on her bare thighs, that enormous chunk of carbon was able to give her a rush of satisfaction.

  ‘I can’t wait for tonight!’ Jeffrey said lecherously.

  Adrianna shuddered. Jeffrey was insisting on taking Viagra on his wedding night, overruling his doctors’ strict prohibition of its use. He had had to go to a less scrupulous clinic on Harley Street to get it. Adrianna, dreading the prospect, had behaved in a way that she could feel proud of, pointing out nobly that he should listen to his doctors: but he had overruled her. At least when his heart gave out because of the strain, she could honestly say that she had begged him not to take it.

  The old goat was counting the hours until he would pop the pill. Ugh! She couldn’t bear to let him talk about it any more with her mother and Bart listening in. If she had had the fan to go with her eighteenth-century-inspired dress, she would have tapped her husband’s hand with it in flirtatious reproach. Instead she pulled her hands from his and said reprovingly:

  ‘Jeffrey! Mummia is here, please! Though I don’t know why she’s here – I need to get ready!’

  The look she gave her mother, as her husband mumbled apologies and turned away, was a clear command to leave. God knew it was stressful enough to be concealing Bart from Jeffrey without her mother barging in here as well.

  ‘You go to entertain your guests, Jeffrey,’ Mrs Rootare said to the son-in-law who was thirty-five years older than her. ‘Please! I will come straight away. There is just one thing I wanted to say to my little girl now that she is a wife. I will be right behind you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jeffrey said, nodding. ‘Of course. A mother with her daughter on her wedding day . . .’ He beamed as sentimentally as if Adrianna were a virgin, and her mother about to sit her down for the talk about the facts of life. ‘Darling, you’ll send someone to get me when you’re ready?’

  ‘Of course I will!’ Adrianna said, much too loudly, as if he were deaf. But the relief she felt that he was leaving the room was so overwhelming that she had to let it out somehow. ‘The dresser from the designer will come to fetch you while they’re finishing my hair and make-up, just like we planned – now go, go on, or by the time I’m ready our guests will be completely drunk—’

  ‘Always so practical!’ Jeffrey said fondly. ‘I love you so much!’

  He bustled out of the suite. As he did so, Bart half-pulled, half-shoved Adrianna’s silk knickers up her legs again, clumsily pushing them over her buttocks. Adrianna’s eyes widened in surprise, and she staggered a little off balance, which she covered as best she could by going on the offensive. Putting her hands on her hips, she glared at her mother and snapped in their native Estonian:

  ‘What the hell, Mummia? What are you doing up here? Why aren’t you downstairs telling Liilia to back the fuck off Conway because it’s driving Jeffrey crazy? How difficult is it for her to keep her legs together so that my husband doesn’t have a heart attack on our wedding day because she’s making out with his son, the little whore?’

  Huh, she thought suddenly. And would that be such a bad thing?

  The ring was on her finger, and, in consideration of Jeffrey’s advanced age, there was no requirement in the prenup for their marriage to last for a specific period in order for Adrianna to get her full settlement. She had been so careful up till now taking care of his health, making sure he didn’t get over-excited; but now, who cared? Let him work himself into a frenzy over Liilia and Conway if he wanted! It would save her having to pretend she was looking forward to the prospect of him finally fucking her . . .

  ‘So? Who cares if he drops dead?’ Mrs Rootare said, echoing her thoughts, and Adrianna was extremely grateful that Bart could not possibly understand a word of Estonian. ‘You’re married now! And he’s not blaming Liilia, is he? Let him make himself crazy so he has a heart attack! Every time his blood pressure goes up it’s a good thing, eh? Dirty old bastard! Now, where is that son of his? He came up here, I saw him! He’s hiding somewhere, isn’t he? Next door, I bet!’

  She darted across to open the door that connected the bedroom to the sitting room of the suite, disappearing inside to search for Bart. Adrianna felt a kind of eruption underneath her skirt, a tipping up of the hoop behind her that sent her off balance. She took a step or two forward to avoid falling as the hoop rose precipitously and Bart, like a human tidal wave, surged out from below it and rolled away. After a split second of panic, she realized that she was standing in front of the canopied four-poster bed and that he was heading for concealment underneath it. Thinking fast, she made a big production of calling out to her mother, ‘Mummia, what’s going on? What are you doing? I need to start getting changed!’ while she walked further across the room, swishing her hoop skirt as loudly as possible to cover the sounds that Bart was making as he lifted the valance and wriggled on stomach and elbows under the bed, like a paratrooper on manoeuvres. By the time Mrs Rootare re-entered the bedroom, Bart was safely stowed away and Adrianna was turning around, presenting her back to her mother, saying:

  ‘I really need
to wee! I have to get this dress off! Unzip me,’ just in case her very acute mother decided to conduct a detailed search of the bedroom as well.

  ‘I saw him sneak away and come upstairs,’ Mrs Rootare said, even as she started to unhook the top of the dress. ‘And I saw the way he was looking at you, Adrianna. He’s a gorgeous boy, and just your type. You always had a weakness for the tall blond ones. But you can’t let him anywhere near you! If Jeffrey had any idea!’

  ‘I haven’t!’ Adrianna lied. ‘He knocked on the door, but I sent him away.’

  ‘You have to tell him he can’t do that! I will tell him,’ Mrs Rootare said so firmly that Adrianna couldn’t help but smile as she thought of poor Bart being lectured by her dragon of a mother.

  ‘Please do,’ she agreed, and she meant it. ‘You’ll scare him even more than I will.’

  The zipper was sliding down, and she gasped at the relief of feeling the boning of the corset loosening its iron pressure into her flesh. She was perfectly happy to suffer to be beautiful, to quote the French expression, but it was a tremendous relief when that suffering relaxed its grip. She reached up ruefully to massage one of the long red dents imprinted in her flesh.

  ‘I will tell him that he is a spoilt boy who is putting you in danger,’ Mrs Rootare said grimly. ‘That you were not born rich, like him, and you have worked so hard to help your mother and sisters and send money back to us, and he is a selfish, spoilt boy who is putting everything at risk by thinking with his penis!’

  ‘You’re right, tell him to stay away from me, Mummia,’ Adrianna said, suddenly feeling very weary again. ‘He’s a spoilt, selfish boy. Useless. A pretty toy.’

  Mrs Rootare nodded so vehemently that Adrianna could feel her entire body bobbing up and down with the gesture.

  ‘Stand still,’ she said, easing the dress off Adrianna’s arms, working the corset down over the hoop, walking in a slow circle around her daughter, protecting the fragile silk, the pearls stitched to it, the heavy embroidery. The wedding dress had cost upwards of £200,000: despite the fact that Adrianna would probably never wear it again, both women were highly respectful of that amount of expenditure.

  Finally, Mrs Rootare had the dress puddled in a wide white circle on the carpet at the base of the hoop. Adrianna bent down, lifted the metal cage so that it wouldn’t snag on the delicate material, and took several big steps forward, moving well away from the dress before she set the cage down again and started to unfasten it. It opened like the medieval torture device known as the iron maiden: she stepped out with the relief of someone released from confinement.

  I looked wonderful, she told herself. I had my dream wedding as Princess Cinderella. It was everything I ever imagined it would be.

  But for my second wedding, I’m wearing the simplest dress I can possibly find. Maybe just a bikini.

  Walking across the bedroom to the ensuite bathroom with its frescoed ceiling was like floating now that the cage was finally unstrapped from her waist. Above her, fat naked cherubs cavorted with curvaceous maidens whose modesty was barely concealed by wisps of gauzy fabric, just like modern starlets looking for tabloid coverage that would raise their price when they sold themselves on yachts during the summer season on the Riviera.

  Washing her hands, Adrianna stared at herself briefly in the mirror. The contrast between her head, elaborately adorned with tiara and earrings, make-up and hair still immaculate, and her body, clad just in bra, knickers and soft, flat leather slipper-shoes, seemed symbolic of her life; perfectly controlled on the surface, vulnerable beneath. Her expression remained inscrutable as she reached for the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door and belted it around her waist.

  In the bedroom, her mother had lifted the dress and draped it very carefully over the velvet sofa, its skirt spread out so wide that it covered the entire piece of furniture. She was beaming down at it in pure pleasure.

  ‘So much money!’ she said happily. ‘So much that Jeffrey spent just for your dress! With thousands of real pearls! You have done very well, Adrianna. I am so proud of you.’

  Once more, Adrianna looked down at the enormous diamond on her finger for comfort.

  ‘I need to ring my team and get ready for dinner,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Of course! I’ll get your phone,’ her mother said.

  But just then, the suite door swung open once more. As before, there was only one person who would walk into the bedroom without knocking first. Jeffrey’s face was unhealthily flushed, and he was hunching over, walking slowly, while Charlotte, following him in, looked triumphant, her eyes bright with excitement.

  ‘Jeffrey?’ Adrianna exclaimed, looking from him to Charlotte. ‘What’s happening?’

  Rather than rushing to support her husband, however, she found herself walking over to the marble table and retrieving the flute of champagne that she had been about to drink when Bart had knocked on the door of the suite. That felt as if it had been hours ago! And now her husband was back yet again with his bitch daughter behind him, the one who had tried to backstab her hardworking sister and nearly taken the company down with her, while her younger brother lay under the bed on which Adrianna would be celebrating her wedding night by letting her husband put his dick in her for the first time . . .

  Not even Adrianna could deal with this situation without fortifying herself with alcohol. Picking up the flute, she drank half the contents in one go, then swivelled to face the scene which was under way.

  ‘I needed to talk to Daddy before dinner,’ Charlotte said, meeting Adrianna’s eyes with a placatory look that signalled that she had obeyed Adrianna’s command and not raised anything contentious until the wedding band was on her stepmother’s finger. ‘It’s really important! He’s going to make his announcement about who runs Sachs in a couple of hours, and he needs to have all the information possible so he can be sure he’s got the right person for the job—’

  Jeffrey was stumbling over to the bed: he collapsed on it, more like a bag of bones being unloaded than an old man sitting down.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Adrianna asked, walking over to sit down next to her husband. The mattress sagged; she couldn’t help wondering how low it went, how much breathing room Bart had beneath it.

  ‘Jeffrey, some champagne?’ she asked, handing him the glass, only to be waved away by her husband. His face was greyish now, the colour draining away. He looked like a man who has had a terrible shock and is only slowly adjusting to the new reality, his breathing stertorous. Mrs Rootare, who had no intention of missing this juicy scene, sank quietly into one of the armchairs that flanked the sofa, folding her hands in her lap, face agog.

  ‘Bella’s been having an affair with Ronaldo, Maria’s son!’ Charlotte announced. ‘Since before poor Thomas had his accident! Think of the publicity! That’s absolutely not something we want in the press! She’s serious about him, too – it’s not just a fling!’

  Adrianna never goggled, but then, as she had already acknowledged, it was a day of firsts. She felt as if her eyes were about to pop out of their sockets. Under the bed she heard a movement, faint enough to be unnoticeable by anyone who didn’t know there was a six-foot-two man lying beneath it.

  ‘Maria . . . the housekeeper?’ she asked. ‘In Maida Vale?’

  ‘Yes!’ Charlotte said. ‘Can you imagine?’

  Adrianna finished the rest of her champagne.

  ‘Well,’ she said with her characteristic understatement, ‘no wonder Jeffrey is upset.’

  ‘Daddy? Daddy, are you in there? Daddy? Let me in!’

  Someone was pounding on the door, calling out: the voice was muffled, but it had to be Bella. Adrianna looked at her mother, shrugging: a clear ‘Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound’ signal which had Mrs Rootare on her feet, slipping across the room to open the door to Jeffrey’s other daughter.

  Bella came in like a hurricane, not even thanking Adrianna’s mother for opening the door, which was quite unlike her. She stormed across the bed
room, setting a course that brought her to the centre of the room, triangulating the confrontation. Adrianna and Jeffrey were on the bed, Charlotte closer to it, while Bella, to Adrianna’s surprise, had taken the most dominant position, controlling the situation: Bella could see everyone, while Charlotte had to shift to look at her sister.

  ‘What’s she been telling you?’ Bella demanded, her hands on her hips, staring at her father. ‘You’d better be careful, Charlotte! Really careful! What’s she said to you, Daddy? Tell me!’

  Jeffrey raised one hand to his throat in a claw, as if he were having trouble breathing. Since he didn’t answer straight away, Adrianna said matter-of-factly:

  ‘Charlotte just told us that you are having an affair with Ronaldo, Maria’s son.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  Bella gave Charlotte a death glare.

  ‘Well, if we’re putting all our cards on the table,’ Bella said, ‘here goes!’

  My God, Adrianna thought. She’s going to tell Jeffrey that Charlotte sabotaged her upgrade scheme, messed with the VIP bookings? Does she have any proof?

  Adrianna was quite positive that this was the truth of what had happened, and so was Tania, Jeffrey’s executive assistant. Adrianna had put a great deal of effort into befriending Tania, and she had been successful. It helped that Tania had loathed Jade, as most people seemed to have done. It was very rare for a younger trophy wife to have an easy transition when she supplanted the previous spouse, but Adrianna’s had been surprisingly smooth.

  It had also made a difference that she had treated everyone who worked for Jeffrey with the respect that Jade had failed to show. Tania had been particularly struck by the fact that Adrianna had worked as hard to reunite Jeffrey with his first four children as Jade had done to alienate him from them.