Beauty

by Louise Mensch

  Copyright © 2014 Louise Mensch

  The right of Louise Mensch to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published in Great Britain as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2014

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  Epub conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 5899 1

  Cover photographs © Roula Revi/Mondadori Scope (model) and Mitchell Funk/Getty Images (New York)

  Author photograph © Back2Back Productions

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  About Louise Mensch

  Also by Louise Mensch

  Praise for Louise Mensch

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About the Book

  From the bestselling Louise Bagshawe, now writing as Louise Mensch.

  Blend it. Sculpt it. Shape it. Use it . . .

  There isn’t a woman on earth who doesn’t have her beauty secrets. But for Dina Kane, beauty is more than just business. It’s power. And it is the secret. She’s dragged herself up from poverty to Park Avenue. She’s rolled with the punches. And she’s learned how to win.

  Now someone is out to destroy her, and all she’s built. They’ve underestimated Dina Kane. She’s staying at the top – and she’s happy to wait for the perfect moment to exact her revenge . . .

  About Louise Mensch

  Louise Mensch is the author of fifteen novels under the name Louise Bagshawe and has been a top ten bestseller. She has also been published in more than eight languages. Her new novel, BEAUTY, is written as Louise Mensch, the name for which she became known in the UK as an MP for the Conservative Party. She is an active user of social media, runs a blog and is the mother of three children. She now lives with her husband, Peter Mensch, in New York.

  By Louise Mensch

  Career Girls

  The Movie

  Tall Poppies

  Venus Envy

  A Kept Woman

  When She Was Bad…

  The Devil You Know

  Monday’s Child

  Tuesday’s Child

  Sparkles

  Glamour

  Glitz

  Passion

  Desire

  Destiny

  Beauty

  Praise for Louise Mensch

  ‘Part thriller, part love story. It’s Bagshawe at her best’ The Sun

  ‘A thrilling mixture of danger and lust, it’s an addictive read that doesn’t disappoint’ Closer

  ‘You’ll be hooked by the racy, romantic intrigues and the twists and turns of the plot’ Daily Mail

  For Peter, my ideal of beauty

  Acknowledgements

  No book is a solo project, and I have been fortunate to be edited by Imogen Taylor and to have the endlessly patient Michael Sissons as my agent. Fiona Petheram, Robert Caskie and Isabel Evans have all shepherded me at PFD; I also want to thank Jateen Patel. At Headline, Emily Furniss in publicity and Emma Holtz have been working on the team and I am grateful to everybody who put Beauty together in record time with an amazing cover.

  And finally, thanks to you for reading it – ultimately all stories are a collaboration between the writer and the reader. Dina’s adventures happen in your head, and that’s the true beauty of this novel.

  Chapter One

  The maternity ward was having a bad day.

  And so was little Dina Kane.

  The newborn lay in her plastic cot, coughing and mewling; she was wrapped in a cotton blanket, and the little beanie on her head had slipped to cover one eye. Her mother lay on a bed a few feet away, passed out from the pain. Nurses rushed around, thankful that the mother was unconscious, the father at work on a building site somewhere in the Bronx. No question of a day off for him; this family needed the money.

  In another room they had a woman bleeding after a botched C-section, and two breech deliveries were going on at the same time. Dina’s mother, Ellen Kane, had screamed all the way through, like she was being tortured. This was her second child, and it arrived fast. By the time Ellen Kane got checked in to a bed, she was already seven centimetres dilated – too late for an epidural.

  Too bad for Ellen.

  It seemed every poverty-struck woman in Westchester County, New York, wanted to pop out a kid at the same time.

  The midwives ignored Ellen’s screeching. They were too busy trying to staunch the horrible flow of blood from the mother who was dying because of their obstetrician’s mistake. Others were massaging and wrestling the breech deliveries round. Nobody cared about the regular birth – agonising or not.

  No health insurance? No goddamned sympathy.

  ‘Hell,’ one of them hissed at Ellen, as she moaned and tossed on her sweat-soaked sheets, ‘just push – push. Women have been doing this forever.’

  ‘Please,’ Ellen shrieked, but she was casting her voice into space.

  Nobody feared a lawsuit. This was a Medicare family, too poor to sue. And so Dina Kane entered the world to the sound of her mother’s horrible screams. As she slithered from the womb, a harassed nurse cut the cord, hung her upside down and slapped her tiny bottom.

  Baby Dina screamed too – a thin little wail.

  But it was the only sound left around the bed.

  Her mother had fainted. The baby was roughly – incompetently – swaddled, dropped in her plastic cot and left alone.

  Faintly, Dina cried, ignored. Making her first bid for attention. Trying to force the world to notice. Her tiny fingers, with their translucent nails, curled into her soft, wet palms.

  Dina Kane was already making a fist.

  The journey home was better. Dina slept in her carrycot in the back of the car, as Paul Kane tried to think of a few nice things to say to his wife.

  ‘She’s real pretty,’ he lied. ‘You did good.’

  What the hell? His daughter looked like a hairless gnome, all wet and wrinkled – like all babies.

  ‘Thanks, honey,’ Ellen said, wearily.

  She didn’t look back at her daughter. Ellen excused herself with trauma and exhaustion. Before the birth, big as a house, she hadn’t slept for days. Now, here Dina was, the fruit of all that effort.

  Not like when Johnny was born: her firstborn, her son and the apple of her eye. Of course, Ellen had been younger then – four y
ears younger – and the birth was OK and, besides, they’d both wanted a kid – and he was a boy, which everybody said was easier.

  Turned out kids were expensive.

  Ellen prided herself on running a tight ship. Paulie made good money on the construction site, and she had big dreams. They rented an apartment in Mount Vernon, but she wanted to own her own house one day. Maybe even something in Tuckahoe, a village a few miles away – but a world of difference. Ellen wanted the family to drive a better car, maybe go on a vacation to Florida once a year. She even had dreams of Catholic school for Johnny. Ellen could see herself, still trim and pretty, going to meetings of the PTA with those rich suburban moms, putting Christmas decorations on her own lawn, hosting her parents for Thanksgiving.

  She wanted to stay pretty and young, not beat down like those other wives of the construction guys, the ones who got slobby and spent all day in sweat pants, or went to answer the door with their curlers in. Ellen Kane spent a bit of money on keeping herself groomed, as cheap as she could manage, and she had a gift for style. She could pick out the one pair of well-cut slacks donated to the charity store, she found the best cheap place to have her eyebrows plucked, and she dyed her own hair. Paulie was happy – he loved that his wife looked good, loved all the jokes the guys on the construction site made about it – and Ellen worked on her dream.

  Johnny was a good boy. They loved him; they spoiled him. He took the breast, and didn’t complain when Ellen switched him to the bottle aged three months.

  ‘I want to keep myself nice,’ she said, coyly, to Paulie, as the baby slept in his bassinet, out in their closet.

  ‘Yeah.’ Paulie nuzzled his face against her tits; they still felt full, bouncy. He was so relieved. He didn’t want Ellen getting floppy and loose like all those women he saw around their way. ‘Real nice, baby; real nice.’

  He had a good marriage, mostly. Ellen wasn’t the best cook, but she looked sexy. He valued that a lot more than a pot roast. Paulie earned the wage, his house looked neat, he had a wife that was a step above, and a boy. He was happy.

  The trouble came as Johnny started to grow. Baby clothes – new ones every couple of weeks. Formula was expensive. The kid needed toys, bibs, diapers, a play mat . . . Paulie felt like every day he was being asked to shell out more cash.

  They cut back. His night at the bowling alley became a once a fortnight thing. That truly sucked, and he wasn’t happy. Paulie found himself working extra shifts, longer hours.

  ‘Jesus! Borrow the fucking clothes,’ he hissed at Ellen.

  She pouted. ‘I can’t, Paulie. I don’t want Susan DiAngelo’s castoffs. She’ll tell all the girls. They’ll laugh at us.’

  He nodded, grimly. Saving face was very important around the neighbourhood.

  Then the teething started.

  ‘Fuck!’ Paulie tossed in his bed, staring at the ceiling, their bedside alarm clock saying 2:15 a.m. ‘Won’t that goddamned kid ever shut up? I have to work.’

  Ellen dragged herself out from under the covers, teary-eyed from lack of sleep, and walked to the closet to pick the baby up. He was bigger now, and his cot filled almost all the small space.

  ‘We need a bigger apartment,’ she said, weakly. ‘Like, with a second bedroom.’

  Paulie couldn’t disagree. He worked still more hours, took on a second job at weekends and went to his local capo for help. Paulie Kane was exactly the kind of guy the mob took care of, wanting little in return: he worked their sites, didn’t bitch about joining any unions, took on overtime and kept his mouth shut about the things he saw there.

  And he had no ambition. Guys like that, the fodder, prospered.

  They gave him a rise. Then another. Within three months, they were renting a bigger apartment, a place with a tiny second bedroom of its own.

  Sex resumed, and Paulie liked it when Ellen was happier. He took on another job on Sundays, when most of the guys were resting. Six months moonlighting at the bowling alley added a little pot to their savings, and soon they had a deposit down on the longed-for three-bedroom colonial on the Tuckahoe borders. It was more Eastchester, the lousy end of town, but Ellen didn’t care. She had a tiny scrap of garden and they could see a church spire from their bedroom window. The fence in the back was chain link, not picket, but this was their dream and everything was going so well. Ellen had plans to train as a hairdresser when Johnny went to nursery next year; she could make good pocket money doing a shampoo and set for the old ladies that wandered into the village’s only salon during the daytime.

  And then the disaster happened.

  Just when they were on top of it. Just when he was getting straight. The baby was sleeping nights and Paulie was back to bowling in the alley, not cleaning up behind the bar.

  Ellen got pregnant.

  ‘Jesus! You’re kidding?’

  She whimpered, looking grey. ‘The doctor ran the tests, Paulie.’

  He was stunned. ‘What the fuck happened?’

  Ellen shrugged. ‘The pills didn’t work, I guess.’

  No use saying Paulie should have used a condom. Ellen thought she’d been OK, taken most of her pills through the cycle, but she did forget things sometimes, got busy, got distracted by another diaper or the pasta on the stove . . .

  ‘You forgot.’ Her husband’s voice was tight with accusation.

  ‘No way, Paulie. I took them every day.’ Ellen was so definite, she’d almost convinced herself.

  ‘We can’t. We don’t need more.’ Screw what his mother said; Paulie Kane had no intention of being a big Irish family. His small, neat family suited him down to the ground. With horror, he glanced at his wife – still slim, with those perky tits. Would they survive another go round? He liked Ellen’s body, liked how she kept herself pretty, kept herself lithe and sweet in his bed. Soon that handspan waist would soften, grow, she would pack on the pounds, her tits would be milky, motherly, far from anything he wanted to know about.

  A surge of fury bubbled deep within his belly.

  ‘Get it seen to.’

  Ellen’s eyes widened. ‘Paulie, no. No.’

  ‘What are you, some kind of God-botherer?’

  They were Catholics – sort of. Not that they went to Mass outside of Christmas and Easter, but that was the tribe – St Patrick’s day and going to your friends’ kids’ Holy Communions. Paulie didn’t know if he believed in God and he’d certainly not discussed it with Ellen. Their church wedding was fun, but so what?

  Paulie believed in Paulie. And perky tits. And weekends off.

  ‘We can’t afford another kid. Get it done.’

  And, although Ellen ran into the next room crying like a baby, he was unmoved. He went to the bar and got drunk, then spent the night crashed on his friend Mikey’s couch, just so as to ram the message home.

  Paulie thought that would do it. But, when he came back from work the next night, Ellen was waiting for him.

  ‘I can’t.’

  She sat at the kitchen table, her hands twisted in her lap. Ellen had never defied Paulie before, but he could see instantly that she was about to now.

  ‘I went down there,’ she said, ‘to the clinic. And they put me on the table and poked around and I said, “I need some time to think,” and I got up and ran back here. I can’t do it.’

  Ellen Kane looked sick.

  ‘You got pregnant on purpose,’ Paulie accused.

  ‘The hell I did! I don’t want another baby, either.’ Ellen turned her big green eyes towards her husband. ‘But, Paulie, you know how it is. People know I’m pregnant.’

  His heart sank. ‘What people? How do they know?’

  ‘Mona Ruffalo. And Agnes Monticello knows. They were in the doctor’s when I got tested – congratulating me and such.’

  Paulie was never going to graduate the Ivy League, but he had a good amount of native cunning. He saw immediately where this was going.

  Mona and Agnes were both soldiers’ wives, part of the Italian ruling clique that controlled a
ll the sites locally. They were fat and greasy and wore too much make-up, not like his Ellen, but their husbands were mafiosi – made men – and they gave Paulie his orders.

  Crime round here ran strictly on its own morals. Steal from the poor, but never show disrespect; fuck all the whores you want, but out of sight of the family; kill husbands, brothers, sons – but don’t abort a baby.

  He wasn’t Italian. He would never rise, not really. But Paulie could be one of the best-paid worker bees, somebody the boys liked to drink with, trusted and rewarded. The famiglia didn’t like abortion. Might give their own wives ideas.

  ‘We have to do it,’ Ellen said, and burst into tears.

  Paulie kicked the garbage can, but made the best of it. He went to the capo again, explained the predicament, got a little more money and a stern shake of the head.

  At least the house had three bedrooms.

  ‘No more mistakes,’ he hissed to Ellen.

  The little mistake, Dina, grew unwanted and unconscious in her mother’s belly. She didn’t hear her father’s sighs of disappointment when the scans reported back that it was a girl. She didn’t hear her mother privately curse and rage at the gods because they had given her another baby.

  There would be plenty of time for that once Dina kicked painfully out of the womb and tried to make herself heard in a world that wanted to ignore her.

  Paul Kane stopped at a red light and glanced back at the baby. She was sleeping – that was good. He related to babies best when they were sleeping.

  ‘Hey, it’s not so bad,’ he said to his wife. ‘We can make the best of it, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Ellen said, wearily.

  The first thing she’d done when she came round was ask for her purse. Inside were her birth-control pills, the ones she’d lumbered to the pharmacy to purchase last month. They said breast-feeding protects you, but Ellen wasn’t taking any chances – ever again.

  She looked over at the sleeping baby and felt nothing but resentment. This one was going to ruin her figure, empty their bank account and keep her away from her little Johnny. Plus, the Italians always said girls were the difficult ones.