The House on Sunset Lake

by Tasmina Perry

  Of course, Jim was the sidekick today. Simon had decided to fly out to see the RedReef development in person – hence the private jet – and Jim was really only going along as a go-between, a middleman to oil the wheels between Simon as the potential buyer and the vendor of RedReef, Connor Gilbert’s investment vehicle, CJI. Perhaps he had oversold the ‘old friends’ dynamic between him and Connor, but in all honesty, it could work for everyone. The resort would be a good fit for Simon’s portfolio and a quick sale would be a dream solution to Connor’s cash-flow problems. Plus it meant that Jim got a couple of days in the sunshine, which was never a chore.

  ‘RedReef,’ said Connor’s lawyer, Lance Freer. ‘Even sounds pretty, doesn’t it?’

  ‘When did you buy it?’ asked Simon, looking out of the porthole. They had been in the air for over three hours and had made convivial conversation throughout, but now Jim could see Simon shifting the conversation to a more professional footing.

  ‘Three years ago,’ replied Connor stiffly.

  ‘Not long,’ Simon said thoughtfully, still staring out of the glass.

  ‘Long enough to know the dangers of diversifying too far out of sectors I don’t have much experience in,’ added Connor with more modesty than Jim had ever heard from him before.

  Simon nodded as if this was an acceptable answer.

  A shiny black car met them on the far side of customs and drove them the short distance to a jetty, where a sleek motor launch was waiting.

  ‘It will only take twenty minutes,’ said Connor, leading the way up the gangplank. ‘Plus it’s the best way to approach RedReef: absolutely spectacular, as you will see.’

  Jim breathed a sigh of relief as the boat drew closer to Baruda. The sea had been a dazzling emerald for some distance from the shore, but as they neared the island, the vivid colour faded until it was gin clear, which only served to show off the pink-tinged whiteness of the sand. Connor hadn’t been wrong about the beauty of his resort, and for that Jim could be thankful; it had certainly been a risk inviting Simon out here sight unseen.

  A uniformed waiter had been standing on the aft deck ready with cocktails for the VIP guests, and Jim had winced as Connor quickly gulped his down and gestured for another.

  ‘When in Rome, eh?’ he grinned.

  Connor had been a ball of nervous energy ever since they had met at Teterboro airport in New Jersey for the flight, and had tried to steady himself with champagne on the plane. Jim was no psychologist, but even he knew that communicating your desperation to a potential buyer was a poor strategy.

  As the boat docked at a wooden quayside, Connor offered Simon a hand to step up on to the jetty.

  ‘Welcome to RedReef,’ he said, sweeping an arm grandly towards the complex. ‘The finest luxury destination in the Caribbean.’

  He really didn’t need the hyperbole. The resort did all the talking for itself. Built around a glistening lagoon, it was made up of a series of stand-alone villas, each facing the water, many with their own strip of private beach. Painted in candy colours, they had a traditional Caribbean feel. The shabby-chic look was intentional, noted Jim, taking in the deceptively high finish.

  ‘I thought we’d get you settled into your suites, then I’ll get Udo, the general manager, to give you the tour.’

  As Jim and Simon travelled round the resort in a golf cart, Jim made a mental inventory. He could see Simon taking in the same details: the spa, restaurant, beachside bar and water sports centre. The fine details of the hotel – the bright hand-crafted Creole bed linens, the outdoor showers, the wood-panelled library stocked with books about the island – were all well done to produce an effect that was chic, casual and comfortable. The only problem was that it did not fit into Omari’s aesthetic at all.

  ‘So what do you think?’ asked Jim when Connor and the general manager had left them alone.

  ‘It’s a good location, that much I can see. But it’s not an Omari. It’s too rustic, too basic,’ Simon said, echoing Jim’s own concerns. ‘We’d have to pull it down and start again. The spec is good, but not the best, and the best is everything Omari represents.’

  ‘That Omari represents,’ said Jim slowly.

  Simon frowned.

  ‘I’ve had an idea for a while, but coming here has brought it to the table.’

  Simon was listening with interest.

  ‘I think we need to create a spin-off brand from Omari. A junior Omari. A feeder for the main brand, which represents the very best – and the highest price points – that the hotel industry has to offer.’

  ‘Keep talking.’

  Jim’s thoughts gained momentum. ‘You know the client demographic of the Omari hotels – CEOs, high-net-worths – but I think there’s a class of luxury traveller that doesn’t want anything too lavish. I’m dating a girl at the moment. She’s twenty-seven and she likes the nice things in life, but it’s feeling the sand between her toes and drinking green organic smoothies that matter to her. She wants a ceiling fan, not air con; fresh, simple food, not complicated Michelin-starred meals.’

  ‘So we’re aiming at millennials?’

  Jim had been a long-time admirer of Chris Blackwell’s Island Outpost chain. Yes, its properties were luxurious, but they also had a bohemian hipness to them that appealed to rock stars and supermodels, and he could see the Omari group launching something similar.

  ‘I just think there is an opportunity for us in the market, a younger, lo-fi brand that uses the luxury of nature, and RedReef would be perfect as our debut resort. It needs very little work, purely cosmetic stuff. It closes anyway for hurricane season in a couple of weeks. We can do a soft launch in December, give the new brand a fanfare after we’ve opened Casa D’Or.’

  ‘Ambitious.’

  ‘You know me.’

  Simon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘What do you think about the low occupancy rates?’

  ‘Well there’s obviously room for improvement, but that’s one of the reasons why this hotel interests me.’

  ‘And the lack of an international airport on the island?’

  ‘Being a little bit off the beaten tracks fits in with the ethos of the brand.’

  ‘Our new brand,’ smiled Simon, looking at Jim with pride.

  ‘If I get the green light . . . If you trust me.’

  ‘When my beverage company launches a new drink, of course I try it. But I don’t design the can, or concoct the flavour. I have a team that I trust to do that, and with Omari, if you believe this is the right property to kick-start a new diffusion brand, then I will support you, provided your decisions are professional ones, not sentimental.’

  ‘Sentimental?’

  ‘Connor is a childhood friend, Jim. I do my research too. I know his New York business is in trouble. I know this is essentially a fire sale.’

  ‘I knew Connor when I was twenty and I wouldn’t call him a friend,’ said Jim, feeling as if he had been caught out. ‘But I happen to think RedReef represents an incredible opportunity for us to do something different.’

  Simon nodded, and Jim felt a palpable sense of relief.

  ‘I want you to negotiate hard on price. He’s desperate. We need to take advantage of that.’

  Jim smiled unconvincingly as Simon glanced at his watch, making it clear that their conversation was over.

  ‘I’m going back to my room. Catch up on emails.’

  ‘Do you ever stop?’

  ‘Remember the shack in Jaipur, Jimmy. I didn’t get from there to here sitting back and watching the sunset.’ Simon smiled, lifting his hand to wave goodnight, and disappeared in the direction of his suite.

  Jim grabbed a beer and wandered down to the shore, enjoying the sour sensation of the cold drink on his tongue. He had never been one for beach holidays. His perfect vacation was motorcycling along a stretch of coast or scuba diving in the warm waters of Thailand or Australia rather than lazing on a sunlounger pretending to read. But as his mind drifted to whether he too should be checking his em
ails or making some calls, he admitted to himself that he’d forgotten how to relax. The act of doing nothing had been filed away under self-indulgent and prohibited, a problem that he suspected was exacerbated by being surrounded by people who lived life in exactly the same way.

  He tried to remember the last time he had been scuba diving, but the answer, for the moment, eluded him. Somewhere over the course of time, work had become inseparable from being somewhere hot and sunny. He didn’t go anywhere these days without doing a site visit, researching an area for commercial opportunities or at the very least sitting on a veranda with his laptop.

  Squinting up, he saw a teenage boy, maybe twelve or thirteen.

  ‘Coconut, boss?’ The smiling youth had already cracked one open, with a straw poking from the hole.

  Jim gestured to his beer. ‘Got a drink, thanks,’ he said.

  ‘No, no,’ said the kid. ‘Alcohol’s no good for you in the sun. You need real refreshment. And coconut only two American dollar.’

  Jim liked the kid’s moxie and handed him a five. His name was Victor and he had been working the beach since he was old enough to walk: jewellery, sunglasses, rugs, anything he could lay his hands on.

  ‘Beats paying tax, I guess,’ smiled Jim.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Victor. ‘I still pay tax, everyone does. Unless you want to wake up with a rock tied to your feet.’

  Jim turned as he heard Connor call him. He circled back to the beachside bar, where Connor was waiting for him.

  ‘I hope you like seafood. I’ve ordered the fruits de mer platter,’ he said, sitting back in his Adirondack chair.

  ‘You sure you really want to sell this place?’ said Jim. ‘I mean . . .’ he waved his glass in the air, ‘it is pretty special.’

  ‘No choice,’ said Connor. ‘It’s this or . . . Well, there isn’t really an alternative.’

  ‘Does Jennifer know we’re here? You said she had issues about Casa D’Or. I don’t want any more awkwardness.’

  ‘That was different,’ said Connor, not looking at him.

  ‘I’m grateful for this,’ he said after another moment. ‘You know I really don’t want my business to go the way of my father’s.’

  ‘What happened there?’ asked Jim, remembering how Robert Gilbert had been the Deep South hotshot.

  Connor shrugged. ‘He took his eye off the ball. He never really managed to leave the eighties, didn’t understand the global economy, wanted to keep doing business in Charleston in the clubs and on the golf course. Got too comfortable. Started enjoying moments like this a bit too much.’

  ‘Isn’t that what it’s all about?’ said Jim.

  ‘He lost his business, his marriage when my mother decided to divorce him. I’m not sure that was worth the daily pina coladas, are you?’

  ‘Connor, sometimes you have to remind yourself how lucky you are. You’re got your health, a property empire, a beautiful wife . . .’ He tried not to linger on the last words of that sentence.

  ‘A wife with a chronic drink problem,’ Connor said quietly. ‘Maybe you can help solve that next. She seems to listen to what you say.’ That familiar challenge was back in his eyes.

  ‘Drink problem?’

  Jim frowned. From his observations, Jennifer seemed to have the perfect life now. The Hamptons estate, the New York town house, the society profile and the sideline in philanthropy. At the Memorial Day party, people had waxed lyrical about what a wonderful woman she was. The millions she quietly raised for charity – smaller and more unfashionable causes than say the ballet or the opera, Jim had noted with some degree of pride. They had been bittersweet observations, of course, that she lived such a seemingly happy existence without him in it. But ultimately all he cared about, had ever cared about, was Jennifer’s safety and happiness.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Have you not noticed the exuberance with which she drinks martinis?’ replied Connor, lifting a brow. ‘Although that’s only the half of it. It’s the vodka bottles hidden in her boot collection you have to worry about. I’ve tried doctors, shrinks, even suggested getting her out of the country, maybe Europe somewhere.’

  ‘You think it’s that bad?’ asked Jim with panic.

  Connor laughed mirthlessly. ‘She wouldn’t say so. It’s more common than you’d think, especially in our perfect world. And of course Jennifer has certain things she is drinking to forget.’

  Jim stayed silent.

  ‘You know we never had children,’ said Connor, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear him. ‘We tried. There were two miscarriages, and an ectopic pregnancy, but no baby.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He thought about his old friend’s warm way with people. She would have been a wonderful mother.

  ‘Jen nearly died with that ectopic pregnancy. There was blood . . . so much blood. It was a long night, but she got through it, and the next morning she cried so much I thought she would never stop. I held her and told her it didn’t matter, that the two of us was enough, and that was when she told me how guilty she felt.’

  ‘Guilty?’

  ‘She told me that she’d had an abortion when she was twenty-one and that the miscarriages, the ectopic pregnancy, were a punishment for what she had done.’

  Jim took a second to process it.

  ‘She had an abortion when she was twenty-one?’ he said slowly, unable to hide the quaver in his voice.

  Connor sat back in his chair and looked at him.

  ‘I had to work that one out too, Jim,’ he said evenly. ‘Couldn’t understand. I mean, I loved her. She loved me. We were living in New York together by that point. Why would she abort our baby when she knew how serious we were about each other? She admitted it in the end. It was because she didn’t know if it was my baby. Or yours.’

  He knocked back the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle on the sand.

  ‘So, if you’ve wondered why I’ve hated you for twenty years, that’s why. If you wonder why Jen drinks so much, why she doesn’t like to see you too often . . . It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? And while I’m grateful, really grateful, that you’re throwing me a lifeline here, buying RedReef, helping me get my finances in order . . . well, it’s really the very least that you owe me.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  1994

  Casa D’Or had been transformed into a fairy-tale palace, a Gatsby dream, for Jennifer’s twenty-first birthday party. Three days earlier, a team of four carpenters had arrived, and under Sylvia Wyatt’s strict instructions had built a stage by the shores of the lake where tonight one of Savannah’s best jazz bands was playing a medley of soft, soulful songs. Four hundred guests milled around the gardens, lit up by thousands of fairy lights: her parents’ smart Savannah circle, a considerable number of her father’s business contacts. ‘Everyone will want to keep on doing business with you, just to come back to Casa D’Or,’ she’d overheard her mother reason when they were compiling the guest list.

  At least fifty of the partygoers were her own friends. Some had even made the journey down from New York, although Jennifer had been disappointed by how few of her college friends had shown up. She’d sent over thirty invitations to her favourite people from Wellesley, but the excuses had trickled in and some hadn’t even bothered to reply at all. It was almost as if the past three years at university hadn’t existed, as if the people she had once cared about had forgotten about her already.

  Jennifer accepted a glass of champagne from the waiter as she glanced around the party wondering where to go next. She had been inundated by well-wishers all evening and was looking forward to a few moments of time out when Jeanne approached her, smiling.

  ‘This is a seriously smart party,’ grinned her friend, linking her arm through Jennifer’s. ‘I feel as if I’m on the set of a Hepburn movie.’

  ‘Audrey or Katharine?’ said Jennifer, glad to have a reassuring presence by her side.

  ‘Usually I’m a Katharine kinda girl, but tonight looks like Sabrina
.’

  ‘I love that movie,’ said Jennifer, smiling as she remembered the classic Billy Wilder film about two brothers competing for the love of their chauffeur’s beautiful daughter.

  ‘And how’s your own little love triangle getting on?’ said Jeanne, nudging her friend gently with her elbow.

  ‘What love triangle?’ asked Jennifer, trying not to blush.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Jeanne said, holding her hands up in the air. ‘You’ve still not told me if anything happened between you and Jim Johnson at the beach the other night.’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘He was moon-eyed after you all day and I’d usually just write that off as another Jennifer Wyatt admirer, but you like him too, admit it.’

  Jennifer looked away, not wanting to talk about it. It had been ten days since their trip to Tybee Island, and she had not seen or spoken to Jim since. Part of her was glad that he was out of sight, if not out of mind.

  Her mother had been a changed woman since their conversation. She had taken Jennifer out for lunch, and tennis, and whilst they had been shopping in downtown Savannah the day before, she had treated her to a beautiful gold hummingbird necklace, which she had presented to her with the warmest of embraces.

  But still, Jennifer had spent the past week and a half feeling sad and empty. It just didn’t make sense that Jim wasn’t around any more. He hadn’t called her or popped round, even when her mother had left for a trip downtown or to the country club. It was almost as if he wasn’t there, as if she had dreamed him. The one time she had seen the red pickup truck drive past the entrance to Casa D’Or, her heart had stopped as the driver had waved, only for her to realise that it was Bryn Johnson and not his son.

  Getting ready for the party that evening, she had found herself staring out of her bedroom window towards the Lake House, wondering whether he would turn up to say goodbye.

  She wasn’t sure what part of Jim’s vanishing trick had hurt the most: that the frisson of attraction between them outside Casa D’Or had been a lie, some meaningless consequence of the amount they’d had to drink, or the fact that he was about to slip out of her life for ever and she wouldn’t get to see him again.