The Winter Secret

by Lulu Taylor

  Her grandmother’s dignity came blazing out of her. There was no question that she was a person of stature and importance. It wasn’t only the jewels she wore; even though she was bent with age, she seemed to be stiff and straight and haughty.

  A real princess, Xenia thought. Is that what I am expected to be? She tried to adopt her best princess manners and said politely, ‘How was your journey, Grandmama?’

  ‘Extremely tiresome. The boat train from Paris is not much better than cattle transport. I have survived but I’m certainly too old to do anything like it again. Next time, you must come to me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’d like to go to Paris,’ Xenia said eagerly. ‘I’ve never been.’

  ‘I know that only too well. For some reason, your father has never brought you.’

  Papa said, almost stuttering, ‘Xenia has her studies, and Natalie her work—’

  ‘Indeed.’ Princess Arkadyoff looked around the room. ‘You have done extremely well for yourself, that’s clear. You live in style.’

  ‘I’m happy to say that my investments have paid off handsomely.’ Papa looked over at his wife with pride. ‘And Natalie has enjoyed a huge success, as you know.’

  ‘I do know.’ The old lady raised her eyebrows at Mama and said, ‘In my day, an actress was hardly a fitting match for someone like my son. A man might spend his leisure hours with her, but he would never marry her. He would never elevate her.’ Grandmama paused and then said, ‘Do you intend to carry on acting?’

  Mama looked paler than ever, glanced at Papa and then back at Grandmama, seeming to be at a complete loss. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so,’ she said, helplessly. ‘Paul wants me to, don’t you, Paul?’

  ‘Times have changed, my dear mother,’ Papa said stiffly. ‘Respectable people are actresses. Here, they are made dames and considered to be women of stature.’

  Grandmama sniffed. ‘That is most peculiar. I don’t believe that taking an actress wife is something that Nicholas would have done. He was set on marrying Countess Palinov but goodness knows what happened to her. After their palace was requisitioned, they left for the country where they were no doubt murdered in their beds.’

  ‘How terrible,’ Mama said in a small voice.

  ‘One prays they escaped,’ Papa said fervently.

  ‘Hmm. Well, it was a long time ago.’ Grandmama looked around, frowning. ‘My dear boy, where is that tea? I’m quite fainting with thirst.’

  Just then the door opened, and the maid came in with the tea tray. Xenia was sent away, back to the nursery.

  Grandmama stayed only three days, and before she left, she sent for Xenia.

  ‘You seem a good child,’ Grandmama said when they were sitting together in the drawing room in front of the crackling fire. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirteen. Nearly fourteen.’

  ‘Do you go to school?’

  ‘Papa says I must go back to school in London soon, but I don’t much want to.’

  Grandmama was regarding her gravely. ‘You seem a sensible child, despite everything. A shame about your mother, but there we are.’

  Xenia didn’t know what to say. Mama was practically perfect, and everyone in the world loved her. It seemed contrary to think anything else.

  ‘Now.’ Grandmama smiled a thin-lipped smile. She looked as imperiously elegant as always in a turquoise dress, her customary pearls in thick ropes around her neck. Her hand went to the sapphire brooch sparkling on her chest, the large tear-drop pearl glimmered beneath. ‘Do you like my jewel?’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘It should be. It was a wedding gift to the Empress Maria Feodorovna. Many years ago, I accompanied her into exile and she gave it to me. It is extremely precious and valuable. One day, it shall be yours.’

  Xenia stared at it again in wonderment. The jewel of an empress was to be hers? She could hardly imagine owning such a thing, the responsibility seemed too great. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘I will be ever so careful with it.’

  ‘You are my only Arkadyoff grandchild. My son Nicholas was killed in the revolution, murdered by the Bolsheviks. He should have fled but he stayed.’ There was a pause while Grandmama seemed to compose herself. ‘Your father was just a boy. My youngest. He has grown up in exile and never understood what we went through. He cannot be blamed for what he has become.’

  Xenia blinked at her grandmother. Here they were, sitting in a grand house. What had Papa become that Grandmama did not approve of?

  ‘Come and kiss me, my dear. When this jewel is yours, you must look after it, do you understand? It may be all you have in the end.’

  Xenia went over obediently and kissed her grandmother’s powdery-smelling cheek. Her gaze drifted to the sparkling blue jewel on the front of her dress.

  Will that truly be mine? I can’t believe it.

  After Grandmama returned to Paris, Mama and Papa went back to America, so that Mama could attend the awards ceremony in which she was nominated as the best actress of the year. This time, they flew, Mama heavily sedated by special injections to keep her calm as she was so terrified of aeroplanes.

  Xenia returned to London with Gunter, to follow her old routine, going back to school with her friends and marching around the chilly park in the afternoons with boring old Gunter, who now walked so slowly and was going deaf. Xenia felt she was too old for all this now, and longed with all her heart to be in Hollywood with her parents. Instead, she had to make do with watching the newsreels at the cinema. When Mama’s triumph was reported, Xenia went as often as she could, to see Mama in her wonderful gown going into the ceremony on Papa’s arm, sparkling and gorgeous, and then posing with her golden statuette, smiling and evidently delighted.

  At last Mama will be happy, Xenia thought. What could make anyone happier than to be beautiful, rich and successful, a film star and a princess?

  But when her parents returned and she joined them at Charcombe, Xenia found everything was worse than before. Mama was sick: wracked by a cough, thin, pale and feverish, her green eyes enormous in her hollow-cheeked face. She could hardly speak when they finally arrived home, but went at once to bed.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Xenia asked, frightened. ‘Does she have a disease?’

  ‘A kind of disease,’ Papa said, looking pale and ill himself. ‘It’s a breakdown. The journey home was simply terrible. She panicked and needed several people to restrain her from trying to leap out of the plane. They almost diverted us, but I managed to calm her.’

  ‘What’s a . . . a breakdown?’

  ‘It’s hard to describe. Her nerves are tired. She needs complete rest, peace and quiet.’ He hugged Xenia. ‘She’ll get well again, dear one, if we can only help her. Then she will make a film like Delilah again. That’s her destiny, I know it.’

  It was obvious to Xenia that making another film was not something Mama would be capable of for some time. There was no question of her acting. Too sick to do anything at all, she was put to bed in the large bedroom in the east wing, where she had a view of the garden as the winter finally began to make way to spring.

  For as long as Xenia could remember, Mama had slept patchily. At times, she was exhausted and had to sink into unconsciousness for long hours, but mostly she was full of energy, so much that she barely knew what to do with it. She would be up at dawn, arranging everything just so, fulfilling hundreds of tiny tasks with ceaseless activity. She could keep going all day and late into the night when, despite drinking several martinis and plenty of red wine with dinner, she would still want to play games and sing songs when others were flagging and desperate for bed.

  But now, ill and utterly lacking in energy, she was forced to remain in bed and sleep and at last she seemed to find some peace. The view of the garden and the park beyond seemed to comfort her. When she gained a little more strength, she drew up plans for the garden and how lovely she would make it, to please Papa.

  Xenia brought her bowls of nourishing soup and cups of tea, and re
fused whenever Mama asked for cigarettes. Slowly, her mother grew brighter. She gained weight, the cough eased off, the colour returned to her face. She came downstairs more and more.

  ‘Are you well again, Mama?’ Xenia asked, hopefully, as they sat together on the terrace in the weak spring sunshine, wrapped in coats and blankets.

  ‘I think so, darling. I hope so.’ Mama leaned her head back to let the sunshine fall on her face and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t want to be ill again, it’s the worst thing in the world.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Xenia said stoutly.

  ‘I can’t bear to be a burden on you and Papa.’

  ‘You could never be that, Mama. Never, never.’

  Mama took her hand and held it tightly. ‘Dearest Xenia. What did I do to deserve you? Of course I’ll get better. You’ll see.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Buttercup stared at the contents of her life, all carefully organised and labelled, made to look orderly and controllable. There they were in front of her: fat hanging folders full of information about all her comings and goings, her history, her friends . . .

  I just don’t understand why he would need this!

  ‘Does Charles read all of this stuff?’ she asked, still unable to take it in.

  ‘He certainly gets sent it. I don’t know if he reads it all.’

  Buttercup pulled out a file labelled ‘BR – internet history’ and took it over the table. She sat down and opened it as Rose went back to her desk and continued her work.

  In front of her were dozens of printouts going back over the time that she and Charles had been married, beginning as soon as she started using the laptop Charles had given her as a present not long after they met. Every website she had visited since then was listed.

  But it’s unbelievably tedious!

  She flicked back to the time just after her engagement where the search history bulged with wedding dress designers, florists and caterers as she’d done all the research for her wedding.

  Why on earth would he be interested in all of this?

  It wasn’t just that he was curious. It was the fact that it had all been downloaded, printed out, looked at and filed away, like evidence for some very long court case.

  As she went on through the records, remembering searches she had made and websites she had visited, she realised that actually they gave a clear window onto her personality and her views, her likes and dislikes, the things that caught her fancy, from recipes, to diet ideas, to the latest yoga craze. So much could be learned about her, from which news websites she read, to where she shopped, to where she might like to go on holiday and what she was planning to buy Charles for Christmas.

  So the monogrammed briefcase was no surprise, I guess, she thought grimly as she saw the page history: product, shopping basket, payment confirmation. Unless he got the report after Christmas. But maybe it explains why he got me that necklace I had no idea he knew I liked.

  She found herself sighing in frustration because she would tell him all this, if he asked her. She probably had told him plenty. But he still wanted to see it in black and white, as though he didn’t trust her.

  Her heart ached as she flicked forward to the time of the miscarriage, and her searches for information and for help; the forums she’d visited, the bereavement pages she’d read and, later, the tips for increasing fertility and investigating a lack of pregnancy.

  So he knows how much I care. There’s no doubt about that. A wash of sadness came over her; he knew how much the hunger for a baby had possessed her, and yet he’d still told her to relax and wait, that it would all be fine, as though that would relieve the oppressive need to know why she couldn’t seem to have another child.

  And yet, weirdly, he won’t find out about the fertility clinic from my internet searches, because I never looked it up online.

  Then she realised that her phone records and credit card statements would fill that gap.

  He really can find out everything he wants.

  She gathered up the pile of printed pages and pushed them back into their folder. Putting them back in the cabinet, she selected another file she hadn’t seen at first, this one labelled ‘BR – Charcombe reports’. Taking it back to the table, she sat down to inspect it. It contained printouts of emails written by Carol, one for each week she had lived in the house. Buttercup pulled one out dated after the miscarriage and started reading:

  Mrs R is still in low spirits. I heard her crying today when she was in her bedroom and she didn’t come out until almost midday. She ate almost nothing but I managed to persuade her to have a bit of soup before she went out riding. She seemed a little better when she got back. She stayed in the stable with the horses until the afternoon, then she came in and watched television. She had a bit of supper this evening, just fish and greens, and went to bed quite early to read. My opinion is that she seems a bit more stable than she did last week.

  There was more, a short paragraph for every day of the week, like a diary but all about her.

  Oh Carol.

  She felt a weight of sadness drop on her. So Carol was a spy, after all. All the cheery chirpiness and calling her ‘love’ and pretending to look after her, and all along she was reporting back to Mission Control, like some kind of double agent. So it was most likely Carol who’d snooped on the email she’d written to Lazlo and told Charles about it, assuming she’d sent it. Then Charles had made up some kind of weird story to stop her pursuing a job and, no doubt, being less available for him.

  A thought struck her. Carol might have seen that I’ve been looking up Ingrid.

  But what did it matter? Her internet searches would show that soon enough.

  She sat back in her chair, overwhelmed by it all. There was virtually no move she had made for the last two years that wasn’t known about, and she had been almost completely unaware of it. She’d known that the Hub knew where she was, arranged appointments for her, smoothed life out for her. She hadn’t guessed they were a secret service, gathering information, collecting facts to pass up the chain to their boss, for whom no detail was too small to be of interest.

  She leafed through more of Carol’s reports, and something caught her eye:

  Mrs R started her period today, on time. She is not pregnant.

  So he did know. No detail too small. Well, he knew what I’d eaten for breakfast for two years, why wouldn’t he know my cycle too?

  But it brought a bitter taste to her mouth. She looked up at Rose.

  ‘You must have known about this, Rose.’

  Rose looked over. ‘What?’

  Buttercup gestured with a print-out towards the filing cabinet. ‘All this. You must have known how much they were watching me.’

  ‘I had an idea,’ Rose said softly, looking shame-faced, ‘but they kept it back from me as much as they could. I’m not quite in the inner circle, you see.’

  The circle. Charles’s circle. His lovely circle where life is lovely. But is it?

  ‘But you had a feeling?’

  ‘Yes, because of what’s in the other drawer.’

  Buttercup looked slowly back at the other drawer. There were three. She was contained in the top one. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘The stuff about Mrs Redmain—’ Rose stumbled over her words and said quickly, ‘the other Mrs Redmain.’

  Buttercup went to the cabinet and put back the files containing the information about her, then pulled open the second drawer. There were many more of the bulging hanging files, now with ‘IR’ in their labels. She pulled out a file titled ‘IR – Fitzroy House’, taking it out with trembling hands. ‘Oh my goodness.’ It felt suddenly so invasive, to have all this confidential information in her possession. There’s still time to put it back. But she couldn’t do that either. She had to look.

  She took the file back to the table, sat down and opened it. The first page was a recent utility bill. She began to rifle back through the papers, and found it was mostly administration: council tax, water, gas and
electricity. There were bills for work on the house and grounds. So Charles pays for everything. Then she found that she was looking at an itemised phone bill, dated only last month. She saw at once that Charles’s mobile phone number was listed several times, with calls lasting sometimes a minute and sometimes up to half an hour.

  Oh my God. How often does he talk to her?

  It was the same on all the other bills she looked at. She stared at it, shocked. Charles had most definitely told her that he had no contact with Ingrid, it all went through Elaine. But he had lied to her.

  She closed the file and went to pick out another. This one had no title. Slowly, she opened the cover and looked at the first page. It was a legal letter about custody arrangements. Only recently, it seemed, Charles had queried Ingrid’s right to take Charlotte out of the country.

  Why would he do that? He took her to Rome himself only a few weeks ago.

  The letter had an air of long-suffering irritation:

  Your client will not cease to make these vexatious objections whenever my client wishes to go on holiday with her daughter, even though it is well established that there is no flight risk . . . your client has been able to take his daughter abroad without objection from my client . . . please confirm as soon as possible that your client will consent to this trip and desist from further action in this matter now and in the future . . .

  Buttercup knew nothing of ongoing custody issues, or that Charles was frequently making objections to Charlotte going away. She was too perplexed to feel angry, almost too overwhelmed by the rush of information engulfing her.

  But the truth is that I don’t know anything at all.

  She turned over the papers until she found something else that caught her eye. Another legal letter from the same firm of solicitors, who must represent Ingrid.

  My client demands the return of her family property and memorabilia including irreplaceable photograph albums that contain precious photographs of deceased family members. All have been previously itemised and sent to your client via your office. Your client agreed verbally to do this some years ago and my client accepted that he would act in good faith. As there is no written agreement, we cannot enforce this request in the courts but must ask again, in the interests of ongoing relationships, that your client makes good his promise . . .