A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  When Friday night came around, the two of them could hardly stop talking and giggling, as they set out on the train for Bridget’s home. Thea couldn’t wait to see the tumbledown Cotswolds flint house where Bridget had grown up.

  They were picked up by a farm worker called Joe in a draughty Land Rover, which bumped so vigorously down the lane that Thea wondered whether she’d arrive with any teeth.

  ‘Ah, Pipsqueak,’ a man in tweed said, coming out of a stable door and hugging Bridget, to a cacophony of barking dogs.

  ‘Daddy, this is Thea from school,’ Bridget said.

  ‘Ah. Our gold-medal-winner’s daughter. An honour.’

  Thea smiled at him, feeling something she hadn’t felt about her mother for a long time. Not just loss, but something warmer, fiercer: pride.

  ‘And Bridget tells me you ride yourself?’ her father continued, looking Thea up and down approvingly. He had a bushy moustache and a tweed hat and twinkly eyes, like Bridget’s. ‘Marvellous. The hunt meets at eleven. Bridge will find you the proper togs.’

  ‘There’ll be a hunt ball up at the manor tomorrow night.’ Bridget said, linking arms with Thea and leading her through the hissing geese to the front door. ‘You absolutely must wear my green dress.’

  They walked through the door and into a homely kitchen. A pretty woman with dark-brown wavy hair – clearly Bridget’s mother – wiped her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Bridgey,’ she smiled, embracing Bridget and kissing her cheeks, before holding her face. ‘Oh, look at you,’ she said, her eyes glistening with love. ‘My darling.’

  ‘Mum,’ Bridget said, embarrassed. ‘This is Thea Maddox. My friend from school.’

  ‘Call me Shelley,’ Bridget’s mum said, shaking Thea’s hand. She was wearing a multicoloured baggy woollen cardigan and a long buttoned-up denim skirt. Bangles jangled on her wrist. ‘Your mother was my absolute riding heroine. We were at St Win’s together for a while,’ she said.

  ‘You mean you knew her?’ Thea asked, amazed by this news. ‘You were friends?’

  Shelley nodded. ‘I’ll dig out all my old school photos later.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Thea smiled, adoring Shelley Lawson already.

  She looked around the kitchen. Photographs of Bridget at various horse shows and events graced the walls. The radio blared and a cat meowed around three little kittens in a basket in the corner. On the long wooden dining table were piles of newspapers, as well as eggs, flour and milk, a fruit bowl and a typewriter surrounded by papers.

  ‘How’s the novel going, Ma?’ Bridget asked, lifting up a tea towel that was covering a tray of cakes, and Shelley gave her hand a loving slap.

  ‘Fine. I’m nearly finished.’

  The phone rang, adding to the homely hubbub, and Shelley went to answer it.

  ‘Your mum’s a novelist?’ Thea asked, impressed, crouching down to pet the kittens.

  ‘Bridge has just come home with a girlfriend from school,’ she heard Shelley say, holding a mixing bowl against her, the phone jammed against her shoulder. ‘No. Not at all stuck-up like the others.’ She winked at Thea. ‘Be here early then. You know what your father’s like.’

  She rang off. ‘Tom,’ she said in explanation to Thea and Bridget.

  Bridget put her fingers in her mouth, simulating retching, when Shelley wasn’t looking. ‘My brother.’

  ‘The Lanes and the Exmoors are coming for supper tonight,’ Shelley said. ‘Show Thea around, and then be ready to help me lay the table.’

  Thea followed Bridget through the latched wooden door and the low stone lintel into the drawing room. There was a thick blue carpet and chintzy curtains and an old wood-burner roaring in the hearth. A battered upright piano stood in the corner. Sofas and chairs were dotted all around the room. Even empty, Thea could imagine it filled up with people. It was the kind of room she imagined playing charades in at Christmas.

  ‘I love your house,’ she told Bridget, walking over to a dresser and inspecting the photographs in silver frames.

  ‘That’s Tom,’ Bridget said, as Thea picked up a picture of a boy. He looked about seventeen and had Bridget’s dark hair and freckles.

  Thea stared at the photo for a moment longer, until Bridget snatched it away.

  ‘He’s a horror,’ Bridget said. ‘Don’t fall for his charms. Promise me? He’s totally unscrupulous when it comes to women. He’ll lure you in and then hurt you.’

  ‘Wow,’ Thea said, stunned by how adamant Bridget seemed to be.

  ‘Seriously. I’m not joking. I absolutely insist you totally avoid him. If we’re to be best friends, then that’s the deal.’

  Thea laughed and shook hands with Bridget, thrilled at the thought of finally having a best friend. ‘Deal.’

  But despite Bridget’s warning, Thea couldn’t help but look out for Tom Lawson early the next morning. She was curious to know if he really was as handsome in the flesh as his photo implied.

  She’d never been out on a proper English hunt and loved the atmosphere as the horses gathered in front of the ancient manor house up the road, with its diamond-patterned windows and Elizabethan chimneystacks. There were about forty riders or so, the men dressed in white jodhpurs and pink jackets. The earlier mist that had hung over the fields had evaporated, but the trees were still blurry against the pale sky.

  ‘Down the hatch,’ Bridget said, grinning from beneath her black riding hat, as she handed Thea a silver goblet of sherry, which was being offered around by men in long brown Barbours. Thea downed the sherry like Bridget, gasping and laughing.

  Thea had been given a young mare, Frollick, from the Lawson stables. Shelley waved at Thea and Bridget and rode up. Dressed like the others in her hunting attire, Shelley looked younger than she had done last night, as they’d sat around the cosy kitchen table laughing and talking late into the night.

  Thea had stayed up even later alone in her comfortable guest bed, studying the photographs of her mother that Shelley had given her. Thea had always imagined her mama to look just like she did now, at the same age. But they were so different. Both tall, yes, but Alyssa had always had dark hair, even as a child. Thea adored these images of her young mother and couldn’t wait to show them to her father.

  ‘She’s jittery at first, but you’ll soon get the hang of her,’ Shelley said, circling round with her own shiny chestnut mare. ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful having you here, Thea,’ she beamed. ‘It’s just like the old days and having Lis around.’

  ‘You hunted with her?’

  ‘Once or twice.’ Shelley smiled, looking up as if trying to remember something. ‘What was that boy who was always around her?’ She bit her lip and squinted. ‘They were quite a pair. Ah,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘Johnny. Johnny Faraday. That was it. He was quite a dish.’

  ‘Johnny?’ Thea asked. She couldn’t possibly mean the same Johnny. Her Johnny at Little Elms?

  Thea’s mind whirred. What did she mean by ‘quite a pair’? Was she saying that her mother and Johnny had been boyfriend and girlfriend?

  But before Thea could even start to contemplate any of these thoughts, a horn blasted out, signalling for the hunt to follow the hounds. Thea’s heart was racing as she galloped after Bridget, jumping the first fence and racing into the countryside beyond.

  The pace was frenetic, but Frollick seemed to have a mind of her own and soon she’d veered off, taking an alternate route across the fields. Thea held on, seeing the hedgerow coming up fast towards her. Kicking her heels in, she tried to steer Frollick towards the gap, realizing too late that she had to jump the ditch.

  ‘Shit!’ Thea yelled, almost going over Frollick’s head and saving herself just in time, as they came to a halt in the muddy water. She tried to coax the stubborn beast out of the deep ditch, but Frollick wouldn’t budge. Instead she whinnied, annoyed, trying to stamp her back foot, which was stuck.

  Thea looked around her frantically, but she could hear that the hunt had moved off ahead. If she didn’t get
going soon, she’d be completely lost.

  She jumped down, the cold water making her gasp as it poured over the top of her boots. She scrambled out of the ditch the other side, mud splattering into her hair and all over her face. Grabbing the reins, she heaved with all her might, but only succeeded in slipping down the bank on her bottom, back into the water.

  She scrambled up onto the bank again and pushed her hair out of her face. She looked down at her once-pristine jodhpurs and jacket. They were ruined.

  ‘I didn’t realize there was mud-wrestling too?’

  Mortified, Thea looked up to see another rider trotting up on his horse. He dismounted and came over.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he laughed. ‘Quite a pickle you two are in.’

  He helped Thea to her feet, then took Frollick’s reins and, clicking his tongue and yanking the leather straps, got Frollick to move up out of the ditch and into the ploughed field beyond. He leant in close and smoothed Frollick’s mane, whispering, ‘It’s OK, girl.’ The horse nudged him, clearly familiar with his voice.

  Then he turned to Thea, who had scrambled to her feet. Her teeth had started to chatter.

  ‘Hi. I’m Tom, Bridget’s brother. You must be her friend from school?’ His voice was deep and his eyes bored into her, until she felt herself flushing a deep red. She recognized him now, from his photo. But he was even more handsome in the flesh. He had floppy dark hair and big green eyes with long lashes.

  Of all the ways to be introduced. She looked down at herself, ashamed. Then back at Tom, who was still staring at her. ‘I’m Thea Maddox,’ she mumbled.

  Right at that moment, as Thea’s eyes connected with his, she felt something strange happening, as if she were driving fast over a hump-backed bridge.

  Oh my God, she thought, her promise to Bridget forgotten. This is Tom Lawson?

  CHAPTER TEN

  July 1987

  The horn of the cruise ship Norway blasted out, making Romy jump. She leant over the top railing, hearing its echo across the Hudson River.

  ‘Wow,’ she gasped out loud. It wasn’t every day a girl arrived in New York.

  She was so high up, it was like staring down from a cloud. She looked past the red and white lifeboats, past the fluttering bunting, past the vast blue mass of Norway’s hull, to the wide channel where five tugs were spraying huge plumes of water into the air, welcoming the biggest cruise ship in the world to America, as they helped steer her into port.

  It was magical, Romy thought, looking out at the Statue of Liberty in the heat-haze. In the other direction the whole of Manhattan stretched out before her, the familiar skyline even more glamorous and enticing than she’d ever imagined. She could feel the sheer buzz of the place, even just standing here.

  She glanced behind her, knowing that she was stealing these precious moments alone. Donna and the others would be waiting for her below deck. Whenever they docked somewhere new, the ship was a hive of activity, and Romy and her fellow crew members were expected to help out, cleaning the five-star berths, ready for the new influx of guests.

  But look at it, she thought. She couldn’t miss a moment like this.

  She ached to go ashore, but she knew the crew were forbidden shore leave without permission from the Chief Purser, Mic. Romy knew it was sensible to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself. In the last six months Mic had handed over all the crew passports to each new customs authority they’d encountered, and hers had been stamped along with the others, without question. So far her luck hadn’t run out, but she wasn’t about to tempt fate.

  The fake British passport had cost her four months’ wages, but it had been worth every penny. She’d taken the opportunity to change her name for good. Gerte Neumann no longer existed. Now she was Romy Jane Valentine. Romy because it was the name Claudia had given to her and was the only thing that she really felt was hers; Jane because it sounded English; and Valentine because Romy liked the romance of it. With a name like that, she was pretty sure nobody from Germany would ever be able to track her down.

  She’d faked her birth certificate too, stating her place of birth as a little village near Reading in England – a nothing kind of place; Christian had told her he’d passed through it on a train once.

  She sighed again, sending a little prayer of good fortune to her friend on the breeze. Christian would have loved it here, she thought. But since his diagnosis of AIDS, his own travels had been traded in for an exhausting regime of experimental treatments and counselling in London. Not that it had stopped him from encouraging Romy to travel the world. She was his chance to do something with his life, he’d told her. Even if it was only vicariously.

  She’d send him a postcard in the morning, she vowed. She pictured his familiar room in the hotel near Tottenham Court Road, decorated with the postcards she’d sent over the last six months: Puerto Rico, Miami, St Barts, St Lucia. She knew how important each one was to him, and she remembered now the postcard she’d kept for years of the Hotel Amalfi in Italy.

  She’d left the postcard with her clothes in that horrible place of Carlos’s. That was the night she’d met Christian. That night he’d rescued her in London. The night her luck had changed. That sure seems a million miles away now.

  She’d been wandering the streets through the dead of night, she remembered, when she’d found a guy in kitchen whites smoking a cigarette by some big steel bins. She’d stopped, levering her white shoe off to relieve the giant blister, when he’d kicked the bin next to her. Then, when he’d seen her, he’d apologized. In German.

  Romy, still in shock from her ordeal in the brothel, had been relieved to find someone having a worse night than her and had struck up a conversation with Christian. Glad to be talking in her native language, she’d asked him what he was doing and why he was annoyed.

  ‘I’m playing cards,’ he’d said. ‘I’m losing.’

  She’d peeked around him through the open doors into the warm kitchens beyond. She’d been willing to bet anything there’d be hot food in there.

  ‘Why don’t you let me play in your place?’ she’d suggested, seizing her chance.

  ‘You?’ The German guy had looked her up and down.

  Romy had held up the note the girl at the Tube station gave her. ‘I’m good. An expert. I’ll split my winnings fifty-fifty with you.’

  He’d nodded. ‘OK, you’re in. Don’t let me down.’

  That night Romy had cleaned up, to the delight of Christian and the amazement of Dieter, Gazim, Harry, Bernard and Luca. After the game, when the guys had discovered that Romy was homeless and she’d told them about her journey from Germany, Christian had taken pity on her and smuggled her up the staff stairwell to a spare room, where she’d broken down and told Christian what had happened to her with Carlos and about her horrible ordeal with Jimmy.

  Christian had given her a big hug. ‘You make your own luck,’ he’d told her. ‘You just made yours, by finding me.’

  The next morning he’d woken her gently, given her a staff uniform and taken her hooker’s clothes to burn in the incinerator.

  ‘It didn’t happen,’ he’d told her. ‘I’ve made you an appointment with a doctor to check you’re OK, then you’re going to forget all about last night. Forever. But for now, you’d better get up. I’ve got you an interview lined up with the hotel manager at nine. Here’s a list of places I want you to memorize to tell him that you’ve worked.’ He handed her a piece of paper. ‘The fact that I’ve vouched for you should seal it, I think.’

  He’d been right. Romy had started work at the hotel that very afternoon. Christian had even fudged some typed references for her. Two days later her results from the doctor had come back clean. More of that luck that Christian had told her was hers.

  Romy had loved her time at the hotel. Working out with Christian, she’d learnt how to use the weights in the gym and build up her stamina. She’d learnt to cook and clean properly and had improved her English beyond measure, obliterating her crude German acce
nt, by mimicking the snatches of television soaps that she caught every day, until she could do a perfect Bet Lynch from Coronation Street and Sharon Gless from Cagney & Lacey.

  But most of all she loved hearing all the stories from the guys when they played poker at night. Secret relationships, tales of being an outcast – Romy related to them all. As the hotel guests came and went, she’d strike up conversations with them, and later identified all the places they’d been in the atlas she’d bought in a second-hand charity shop, along with a growing assortment of funky second-hand clothes and boots.

  When Christian had discovered her thirst for knowledge of the world, he’d put her in touch with one of his friends, a chef on the cruise ship Norway. Once Romy’s passport had come through from Yanos, the Pole who could procure anything for the right price, she’d got a job as crew.

  Yes, she was on her way, she thought, looking out again at New York and the cars in the distance glinting along the edge of Central Park. And those buildings. They were amazing, she thought, looking at one of the skyscrapers with a big gold M on the top. What would it be like to stand on the top of there? she wondered.

  Closer to, on the Norway, she could hear the whoops of the kids jumping in the pool on the aft upper deck, and a band playing ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’ wafting towards her on the breeze. Then a noise right behind her made her jump.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ Donna asked, in her rough Australian accent. She flopped against the railings breathlessly. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

  Donna was Romy’s friend and room-mate on board Norway. She was small with blonde hair, tapered up the back of her head, with a long fringe that she liked to backcomb. She had an infectious laugh and the drinking capacity of a man three times her size.

  ‘There’ll be a party later on, when we dock. Clark’s got some mates he can hook you up with,’ Donna said, wiggling her eyebrows.