‘And I get extra for promising never to have kids!’ Sirje said blissfully. ‘I’m the luckiest girl in the world! It’s perfect, Adri, really it is. You know I always worried that when I met a guy I was serious about, the kid thing would be an issue. Of course there’re all sorts of ways to have them nowadays, but still, I know lots of girls who’ve been dumped for not being able to have their own. Bastards, eh? They like that we’ve got our extra bits for fun and games, but then they bitch that we don’t have the full package. Like anyone has the full package!’
Sirje reached up to adjust a hairgrip that was digging into her scalp.
‘But Con says he’s done with kids,’ she continued. ‘He’s not that keen on his own, to be honest. I spend more time with them when they’re visiting than he does. So I’ve promised never to push for adoption, buying eggs, anything like that. Not a problem. I’m making just as much from not having them as if I did, and none of the hassle.’
She met her sister’s eyes in the mirror.
‘Don’t worry, Adri,’ she said gently. ‘It may not last, but who cares! We’ll have a ton of fun together, and if he does leave me in ten years’ time for a younger model, I’ll be a very, very rich ex-wife. I’ll probably end up like his mother – go to live in the South of France and work my way through one toy boy after another.’
She grinned.
‘I will turn those boys out,’ she observed. ‘After a while with me, there isn’t anything they won’t know how to do! Oh, you know Christie’s asked Mummia to come and stay? We’d better watch out for her with Christie’s young men!’
‘Oh, why shouldn’t she have some fun?’ Adrianna said tolerantly. ‘God knows, I can afford as many toy boys for her as she wants. She’s worked so hard for us all.’
‘My operations,’ Sirje said, raising her hand to her throat and jawline. ‘She was so wonderful. Never a word of anger. She just accepted me as I was and wouldn’t let anyone else in the family say a nasty word to me. And now I can pay her back. I’ll pay for her toy boys, Adri. God, how wonderful to have money to take care of Mummia! Remember when we promised ourselves we’d come to London and make our fortunes and finally Mummia would live like a queen? And now she can! This – ’ she gestured around her, encompassing not just the lavish bedroom, but the entire world they were now inhabiting – ‘this is crazy. Beyond our wildest dreams.’
‘Beyond our wildest dreams,’ Adrianna echoed tenderly.
It was a line from a film they had watched when they were young: it had become the sisters’ catchphrase, invocation, mission statement. And now it had come true. Having finished her careful pinning, Adrianna draped the front section of the veil over her sister’s face.
‘You look beautiful,’ she said contentedly. ‘Even through a net curtain.’
Sirje giggled.
‘I look good through a net curtain because I’m wearing as much make-up as a fucking stripper,’ she said. ‘Conway likes the hooker effect. I literally can’t wear too much make-up for him. And he prefers when my hair looks dyed, too! I went to get really subtle streaks done – you know, that balayage thing, with the toning and highlights they paint on by hand? It looked fantastic. But he made me go straight back and get it all done one colour again, like a cheap whore with a packet of dye to cover the grey. He’s such a cliché! I don’t know how he stayed so long with his nice little country housewife.’
‘Hey, I like Samantha very much,’ Adrianna said reprovingly. ‘She’s a lady, which is more than you are, you slut.’
‘Trust me, he never wanted a lady,’ Sirje said wryly. ‘Even if I hadn’t had a dick, Liilia wouldn’t have lasted long with him. She might look the part, but she’s way too much of a good girl for Con. Did I tell you how I snagged him at your wedding? Jeffrey gave him a stern warning to stay away from Liilia, so he started to flirt with me instead, but more discreetly. So I thought, let’s just go for it, and we sneaked away and found some shitty storage room and I blew him. It was filthy! I mean, literally,’ she clarified. ‘The floor was really dirty. Con loved it. Liilia was pissed off when I told her, but when she calmed down she did admit that she wouldn’t want a guy who expected her to get down on her knees and blow him in storage rooms on a regular basis.’
‘Wait, I didn’t know that!’ Adrianna exclaimed. ‘Why did you never tell me?’ She shook her head. ‘God, my wedding day! By the time I got downstairs and we went in to dinner, I felt as if I’d run a marathon. So much family drama. And Jeffrey was far too exhausted to fuck me that night, so that was a happy ending.’
‘Really? I didn’t tell you about the blow job? I was sure I did!’ Sirje said cheerfully. ‘That’s why I was late to dinner, didn’t you wonder why? I got my dress dirty and I had to go back to my room and wash it and dry it with the hairdryer. It took forever.’
‘I wouldn’t have noticed if you’d come back in halfway through, riding on an elephant,’ Adrianna said, remembering that evening. She had been in a state of intense relaxation after she and Bart had given each other head – which, as it turned out, seemed to have been the theme of the day. It had been the oddest experience, sitting at the top table, knowing how radiant she looked, glowing, and not just from world-class sex. For the first time in her life she was in love, and it showed.
Ironically, it was exactly how a bride should seem on her wedding day. The contrast between her and Jeffrey had been excruciating. Though slowly recovering, he still looked ashen, like his own death mask. She was very aware that their guests were excitedly speculating on what had happened between him and his new bride to turn him from the ecstatic groom of an hour before into an eighty-year-old teetering on the verge of the grave.
Well, she had thought cheerfully, let them chatter and gossip all they want. God knows, it’s nothing I caused. Jeffrey’s made a complete mess of his family, and I’ll do my best to straighten it out. But right now, I’m going to sit here and work my way through this amazing dinner. For once in my life, I’m not going to count calories.
It had been a feast. The delicate baccalà mantecato on polenta squares, for which she had developed a real taste; the linguine with clams the size of her smallest fingernail, tiny and delicious, dripping with olive oil, garlic and parsley; the cold poached salmon and the vitello tonnato. This was finely sliced veal dressed with tuna mayonnaise, something that she had thought sounded appalling before she tried it, and which she had immediately loved.
It was insanely fattening. She was going to allow herself one serving, once a year. She had drunk white wine, first Tocai and then Grechetto, watching the guests with a smile on her face as cool as the alcohol, knowing herself to be entirely secure.
Jeffrey’s children were scattered among the tables, kept apart by her carefully worked-out seating plan. Bella had duly spoken to Conway and Bart, informing them that there would be no announcement of the CEO role, while Charlotte, pleading food poisoning, was still in her room; so there was no tension when the after-dinner toasts concluded. Instead, Jeffrey, who had recovered to some degree, stood up and led Adrianna out onto the dance floor as the orchestra struck up a waltz.
The way he looked at his bride as they moved slowly over the tiled floor, Adrianna’s strong arm around his waist half carrying his weight, made it clear to everyone present that, no matter what shock he had suffered post-ceremony, Jeffrey Sachs doted on his new young wife. Conway had followed, partnering Sirje, and Bart, very sweetly, had escorted Mrs Rootare to the dance floor. If Adrianna hadn’t already known she loved Bart, the awareness would have flooded over her as she saw him waltzing with her mother, smiling down at her with as much admiration as if she were twenty-three-year-old Liilia with her new D-cup breasts and her skin as smooth as silk.
Bart had asked Bella to dance, since she was alone at the wedding, but Adrianna had seen Bella shake her head, stand up and slip away. That was fine with Adrianna. Bella had kept up appearances by staying for the dinner, which was as much as she could expect in the circumstances.
; She wondered whether the twin sisters would ever be able to reconcile. It was something on which even Adrianna could not speculate. She was so close to her two sisters, so loyal to them, as they were to her. She could not imagine ever betraying one of them the way Charlotte had done to Bella, nor how the relationship could possibly recover afterwards.
When, eventually, Bart led Adrianna out onto the dance floor, their bearing was impeccably neutral. No one, not even the most salacious of gossipmongers, would have thought for a moment that Jeffrey’s bride and his younger son had just declared their love for each other while engaging in a passionate quickie in the marital bedroom. Bart was very deliberately proving to Adrianna that he could control himself in public, behave with utter decorum, act as the adult she would need him to be if they were to embark on a secret affair. She understood this completely, and her heart was singing at the awareness that he was able to summon up so much maturity for the woman he loved.
Now, standing behind Sirje on her wedding day, Adrianna shook her head in disbelief at the craziness of her own. That day, that bizarre, dramatic, beautiful day! She had ended it lying next to a snoring Jeffrey, but thinking of Bart: his eyes, his mouth, his body, his arms around her on the dance floor, his tongue making her come over and over again in that very room.
They had sworn they would make it work, and they had. She did not have a single regret about any choice she had made in her life. How many women could say that?
‘Oh, Sirje, you look so beautiful!’ Mrs Rootare cooed, sweeping into the bedroom. ‘So much make-up! But I know that’s what Conway likes.’
Liilia was just behind her mother, dressed in the same flowing pale green that Adrianna was wearing, ankle-length, with matching shoulder corsages of white flowers. Their mother, in her smart hat and matching coat dress, was matron of honour, while Adrianna and Liilia would carry Sirje’s train up the aisle of the village church. For all Conway and Sirje’s taste for the wild party life, they had chosen not a beach wedding in Antibes, followed by an evening party lit by torches, with bare-chested waiters and scantily-clad waitresses bringing cocktails bubbling with dry ice, but the most conventional ceremony imaginable.
They would be compensating for it, however, when they headed off on their honeymoon in Ibiza. Conway, no longer restricted by the lifelong pressure of being his father’s perfect son, had already lined up a highly recommended drug dealer and was eagerly looking forward to moving from VIP privé area to extremely discreet sex club to privé again, out of his mind on various substances, his beautiful wife beside him, more make-up on her face than clothes on her body, ready and willing to indulge in any kind of erotic activity that would keep her husband happy and satisfied.
The revelation that his father had made not Conway, the expected heir, CEO but Bella, had acted on him like a huge release. After an initial bout of fury, he had realized how much he would enjoy the freedom of no longer having to pretend to be someone he was not. Following his initial rush of partying, however, Adrianna was relying on Sirje to keep her husband under control. The CFO of Sachs could not be seen to be falling out of clubs, sweat-soaked and gurning, at 6 a.m. There were plenty of private, highly discreet members’ only establishments where he and Sirje could let their hair down, and the couple would have to stick to those if they wanted Conway to keep his job.
‘Time to go!’ Mrs Rootare trilled, beaming from ear to ear. ‘Two girls married so well in a year – how lucky I am! It’s more than any mother could ever pray for! I don’t know which one of you looked more lovely! Everything is ready, the carriages are waiting, it’s like a fairy tale – the carriages! Pinch me, I must be dreaming! Oh, Sirje, I’m so happy for you! There’s just one little thing I need to say—’
‘I know, Mummia,’ her daughter said, rising gracefully from the stool in front of the dressing table and shaking out her skirts. Her dress was full-skirted, antique white lace over the palest green fabric, but she had, on Adrianna’s advice, eschewed a hoop. ‘Adrianna’s already had the conversation with me. I know what I’m taking on. Don’t worry about me. Conway likes to be married – if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have proposed as soon as the divorce came through. He’s like his father that way. He needs someone like me. Someone who likes to have a good time, let her hair down, not a boring housewife. Trust me, I know exactly what makes him happy! I’ll be fine.’
Liilia permitted herself a little eye roll, for which Adrianna could not blame her. Liilia had unquestionably been the sister on whom Conway’s eye had alighted first, and although she could tell herself that she was perfectly happy not to be marrying a man whose idea of a perfect honeymoon was sex, drugs, and orgiastic partying, it still couldn’t help but rankle that Sirje had cut her out with an extremely handsome multimillionaire by dropping on her knees in front of him in a filthy kitchen storage room. Sirje’s anatomy was a considerable consolation to her younger sister, as it meant that she could tell herself that things could never have worked out between her and Conway in any case, even if Sirje hadn’t acted like a massive slut as soon as Liilia’s back was turned.
‘Good, good,’ Mrs Rootare said in relief. ‘You are a good sister, Adrianna. Now we just need to find someone for Liilia, and my work will be done!’
‘And you can head off to Cannes to stay with Christie and see if her current toy boy has any friends!’ her oldest daughter said teasingly.
Their mother’s cheeks pinkened.
‘Yes, Christie has asked me to visit her for a while,’ she said with dignity. ‘Two elderly ladies, enjoying the sunshine and a glass of wine by the sea at sunset . . .’
Her three daughters burst out laughing.
‘Come on, Mummia! The two of you in leopard-skin bikinis, lying out on loungers at a beach bar on the Promenade des Anglais, watching the good-looking young men, more like!’ Adrianna said as she and Liilia gathered up Sirje’s train.
They had practised the train manoeuvre in advance, so they were able to follow the bride without a hitch as she proceeded graciously from the room and down the curved staircase to the main hall. Most of the wedding guests were waiting at the church, but the bridal party were gathered downstairs; they greeted the veiled bride in her flowing lace dress with flattering gasps and even a pattering of applause.
Samantha was there, naturally, looking after George and Emily, who were reprising their roles as bridesmaid and pageboy at their father’s wedding. Samantha’s fiancé, the younger son of a baronet, a childhood friend who had swooped in to console her after Conway’s betrayal and stayed to propose to her as soon as he decently could, was staunchly by her side, dapper in his uniform of Major in the Horse Guards.
A male presence was not precisely required in this group, but it was what Samantha needed to be able to supervise her children with complete composure while watching a young Estonian woman in hooker make-up, the spitting image of the many Eastern Europeans with whom her husband had cheated on her, sweep off to become the second Mrs Conway Sachs. Even as she set a good example for George and Emily by politely smiling at the bride and telling her how beautiful she looked, Samantha took the dashing Major’s hand for reassurance.
Beside Samantha, Charlotte was busying herself with Posy and Quant, ensuring that their outfits were as immaculate as always. She had lost a great deal of weight after the revelation about Ronaldo, or Lee. Painfully skinny, her cheeks so hollow they were almost gaunt, she was wearing too much pale-orange blusher to compensate, an error that she would never have made a year ago.
Charlotte was only too aware that people assumed her air of strain, her unflattering thinness, were due to her twin sister’s being promoted over her to the top job at Sachs. It had been considered quite a controversial decision, since Charlotte’s Sash chain had won a string of awards in the run-up to the announcement, while Bella’s relaunch had seemingly been plagued with IT problems as bad as British Airways’, the hacker cover story notwithstanding. At the time there had been a considerable outpouring of sympathy for Charlotte in t
he industry, but by now the general view was that Charlotte needed to deal with it and move on.
But that was exactly what she couldn’t do: ‘it’, of course, was not what the world supposed. Not her disappointment at work, but the horror of finding out that she had been in a long-term sexual relationship with her half-brother. Ever since she had rushed to the bathroom in her father’s suite to void her stomach, Charlotte had been unable to keep down food. She was existing on a regime of smoothies and protein shakes. It was as if Lee had put a curse on her.
Bella had observed that it was worse for Charlotte than for herself, and she had been right, because Lee had been real to Charlotte in a way he had never been to her sister. His courtship of Bella had been fake, but his relationship with Charlotte had been, as far as she had known, brutally honest from the very beginning. She had thought she knew everything about Lee, had accepted him for who he was, and the revelation that he had kept the most important secret of all from her had been a devastating blow.
Although Charlotte had behaved abominably to her siblings, there was one revelation she had spared her sister. Ronaldo/Lee, as Bella’s investigator had found out, was not employed by a big Chicago advertising firm, but neither was he a travel consultant. That was merely his cover story. Ronaldo did circumnavigate the world very frequently, his services in high demand, but they were entirely sexual in nature.
When they met as adults and he informed Charlotte that he was a gigolo, she had accepted his job willingly, even eagerly; she had thought she was so sophisticated, so worldly, on a par with him, relishing the game of paying for sex – she, who could have any man she wanted for free. But Lee had always been ahead of her. She knew that now. They had never been equals. His game had been on a much higher level and played with more cruelty than she could ever have imagined. They had not been in touch since that last Skype conversation in her father and Adrianna’s bathroom in Venice, but the memory of it was a knife to her gut which she couldn’t pull out. It twisted constantly inside her.
Bad Twins Page 38