Glittering Fortunes (9 page)

Olivia shrugged off her dress. She had forgotten that the ocean was warmer at night, and the temperature had to be close to her own blood.

When she caught up, he held her, his touch running down her back, skillful and deft, unclipping her bra. Her breasts sprung free, light and buoyant in the water, a strange sensation. Addy grasped them as he kissed her. She felt him grow against her stomach and she moaned. So many times she had imagined what this would be like...what sex with Addy Gold would be like.

His fingers were fumbling a path into her knickers.

‘Hang on—’

‘What?’ He grabbed her hand, dragged it beneath the surface. The surprise of his flesh on hers made her gasp.

‘You like that, don’t you...?’ His mouth moved lower.

‘Wait...’ Her head was thrown back, the sky spinning sickeningly in her vision. This was happening too fast, way too fast. A wave heaved, washing them into shore. Olivia felt the bump of sand against her knees as they hit the shallows.

Addy grabbed her, lifting her on top. Her throat bloated. The wine churned.

‘I want to go in,’ she said, abruptly aware of her nakedness, and the twinkling high street in the distance. She wanted to be there, on the road, going home.

Addy attempted to drag down the elastic on her knickers. ‘Me, too.’

She was horribly drunk and she was about to have sex with Addy. Addy. This was Addy. It wasn’t meant to be like this.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Stop.’

‘I won’t, baby, I won’t...’

‘No, I mean, we can’t...’ She was slurring.

‘Relax; it doesn’t matter. I’ll pull out. I’ve done it loads...’

‘I need water. I don’t feel well.’

‘You’ll feel better after this.’

Somehow she found the strength to push against him. He swiped to catch her but she evaded his grasp, heading for the bundle of clothes and hauling her dress on.

‘Can’t you at least wank me off then?’ He glowered. ‘You’ve got me all hot now. What am I meant to do? I never had you down as a prick-tease, Ol.’

She clutched her head. ‘I’m really drunk.’ The beach was wheeling and tipping, as if all the sand was being poured back into the sea. Her stomach tensed and cramped and then in the most mortifying few seconds of her twenty-three years she vomited a splash of white wine on to the sand.

‘What the fuck—?’ Addy cried, disgusted. ‘Gross-out or what! Are you a lightweight these days or something?’

‘Sorry.’ She wanted to burst into tears. Fragments of people, voices, swung through her addled mind. Charlie Lomax, glaring.
What do you think you’re doing?
For a crazy second she wanted him here, safe and solid, sorting her out; and the wide, musk-scented bulk of his chest. Hot shame crashed through her. Her dress was on inside out but she didn’t care.

‘Let’s get you a cab.’ Addy tugged on his jeans and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right. Pint of water and some Marmite on toast...’

They hailed a taxi on the high street and Olivia crawled inside. After assuring the driver she was purged, Addy leaned in. ‘Call me about the party, yeah?’

The car sped off. His figure receded on the road until he was gone completely.

Chapter Thirteen

S
USANNA
SWEPT
INTO
Usherwood’s Grand Ballroom and raised her arms to the gilded ceiling. ‘This,’ she announced regally, ‘is it!’

‘It’s filthy,’ Cato stated, striding in after her and running his finger along a grubby windowsill. ‘It’s utterly inhabitable.’

‘We don’t have to
inhabit
it.’ Susanna gestured around. ‘It’s one night, darling, and where else should we host the occasion but here?’

Cato could think of a few places. The oval ballroom hadn’t been used since his parents were alive and it showed. Its arched windows were glazed with age, sunlight straining weakly through the glass. Weighty drapes were riddled with mothballs, releasing a musty, mildewed smell. Gauzy cobwebs were strung across the corniced ceiling, in the centre of which an enormous chandelier glinted sleepy-eyed. Most of the furniture had been moved, or sold, and what remained—the oak display cabinet, several ladder-back chairs, a Bechstein grand piano—were shrouded in dustsheets.

‘I mean, what will the villagers think?’ she went on. ‘You said yourself they haven’t seen Usherwood since back in the day: they need to be impressed!’

‘They’re not villagers; it’s a town.’

‘Oh,’ she flapped her hands, ‘what’s the difference?’

Cato stood in front of a relative’s portrait and mirrored his pose, hands on hips, eyebrow slightly raised. Susanna giggled.

‘They’d be impressed by a tent in the garden, Mole. How could they not? They’re plebs.’ He yawned. ‘Merely setting foot across the threshold will have them wetting their knick-knacks. They’ll be living off this party’s coat tails for a year.’ His footsteps smacked cleanly across the floor. ‘Are we getting coverage?’

‘Four nationals have already confirmed,’ Susanna rhapsodised, ‘as well as
What’s Up?
magazine. It’s going to be just perfect!’

‘I’m sure it will be, with you in charge.’

Susanna beamed in the spotlight of his praise. Cato wanted everything to be just right because she knew, she just
knew
, it was the night he planned to propose.

‘Do you want a run-down of the itinerary?’ she fished, checking his response for a flicker of his intentions—but of course Cato was far too composed for that. ‘Guests arrive at seven for drinks and canapés in the main hall, after which we’ll invite them through to the ballroom for dinner and dancing. I thought round tables, not long, and no less than eight to each or else conversation flags. I’ve booked the caterers. Oh, that reminds me, we’re shipping them over from France. I couldn’t find one I liked over here and
L’Atelier Noir
looks sublime...’

‘Very well.’

‘I spoke to Jennifer this morning.’ Jennifer was her powerhouse agent. ‘Word of the party’s made it back home. There’s a piece running in tomorrow’s
USay
. It’s entitled “From Hollywood Royalty to Usherwood Royalty”.’

Cato whipped the dustsheet off the piano and sat on the stool, adjusting the height so he was comfortable. ‘Hmm. I rather like that.’

‘I thought you might. Getting the family name on the map.’ She was about to add something about the family they might start together when he began a stumbling rendition of
Für Elise
. The instrument was pitifully out of tune.

‘Any news on the
City Sirens
role?’ he asked, wafting from side to side like a tormented maestro.

Susanna’s good mood was momentarily pricked.

‘It went to Carla Jessop,’ she answered crisply. ‘
The bitch!’

‘She’s ugly, Mole. Her teeth are too big for her mouth.’

‘Clearly the director didn’t think so.’

Cato stopped playing with an elaborate flourish. ‘Probably because he had said mouth bobbing up and down in his lap on the casting couch.’

‘I suppose the teeth ought to be good for something,’ she agreed. But it still stung that she hadn’t had a sniff of a decent script in months, and when finally she did it was snatched from her grasp by a younger model. Jennifer had told her not to fret, but Susanna couldn’t help wondering if she ought to have perhaps said yes to that complimentary eyelift she had been offered in the spring.

‘Right,’ Cato boomed, rising. ‘I’ll leave these affairs with you, shall I?’

Susanna glanced around, thrilled more than daunted at the task. Carla Jessop didn’t have all
this
, did she? The designers would be arriving any minute. Perhaps she could persuade them to take a look at the rest of the house while they were at it.

‘Do you want to help?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no.’ Cato crossed the room. ‘I’ve other matters to attend to.’

‘Charles?’

‘To hell with Charles: he may not like my way of doing things but he’ll soon get used to it. I plan to tell him my takeover intentions the night of the party.’

‘Gosh.’

‘Quite. But for now, I’m ravenous. I think I’ll seek out the cook and have her,’ he licked his lips, ‘serve me up an old favourite. I wouldn’t want to interfere with your artistic vision.’

‘I won’t let you down,’ Susanna pledged, coming to kiss him.

‘I know you won’t, Mole.’

‘By the way, Cato...?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think you might refrain from calling me that at the party?’

He turned to her quizzically. ‘Mole?’

‘Yes.’

‘See?’ He touched a finger to her nose. ‘You can’t help but respond to it.’

‘That was a trick,’ she protested coquettishly.

‘As may be. But I’ll call you what I like, understand?’

The door closed. Susanna breathed the silent grandeur of the space.

Cato liked to tease, but she felt certain that when he popped the question in front of everybody, he would do the right thing. He would call her by her name—Susanna Genevieve Alexandra Denver—and she would clamour her acceptance from the rooftops. It was going to be the most magical night of her life.

She clasped her hands together.

‘Right,’ she said jubilantly, ‘now where do we start?’

Chapter Fourteen

M
IDDAY
. T
HE
SUN
was climbing. Charlie drove the axe into the butt of the decapitated oak. It caught on the wood and required a quick, sharp tug to bring it free. Raising the blade, he pounded into it once more. Chunks of kindling felled with every chop.

The heat was extreme, even in the spotted shade of the Thistle Wood canopy. He shed his T-shirt, a film of perspiration across his chest and shoulders, gleaming in the dappled light. He pitched another log on to the mounting pile.

A creature rustled in the undergrowth, a flap of agitated wings followed by a panicked ruffle, then silence. Charlie rested the axe and followed the sound. Comet darted to join him in the pursuit. He put a palm flat to the dog’s nose.

‘Wait, boy,’ he said gently. ‘Stay back.’

It was a swift. One wing was torn and beating hopelessly at the ground in an attempt to take flight. The bird’s tiny body hopped dizzily beneath a dried, brittle leaf. Charlie scooped it up and held it in his hands. It was quivering, the heartbeat faint and frantic against his thumb. Carefully he lifted the wounded limb. The feathers twitched and cowered in his hands, damaged beyond repair: a flightless bird would die slowly and in pain, if it weren’t claimed first by a cat or a fox. He knew what he had to do.

He tethered Comet to the tree and found a smooth, flat stone, on which he rested the injured creature. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all right now.’

The bird’s chest was swelling and collapsing, swelling and collapsing, taut with fear. Charlie raised the rock and brought it down hard. After that, it was still.

* * *

H
E
SPENT
ALL
morning heaving wood through the entrance. Susanna was relaxing on the terrace, sheltered beneath a wide-brimmed hat and punching arrangements into her iPad. Every so often Charlie would catch her glimpsing him over the top of her Prada sunglasses, before glancing away when she thought she’d been seen.

‘Need any assistance?’ Cato emerged from the house, as usual with precision timing: Charlie was bringing in the last armful.

‘All done.’

‘You’ll do yourself an injury, boy,’ his brother commented, splaying his expensively moisturised hands as if to prove that wealth should be a natural precursor to inactivity. ‘Oughtn’t you to hire some numbskull to do it?’

Charlie wiped his brow with his T-shirt. It rucked up over his stomach and he saw Susanna’s eyes flash over the exposed skin. ‘How am I meant to pay for that?’

‘I’d give you an allowance,’ Cato said generously.

‘Really? How much?’

As usual, his brother changed the subject.

‘Speaking of roping in the cavalry, where’s that English Rose of yours?’

Charlie streaked his hands on his jeans. ‘Olivia’s off sick.’

‘Fat lot of good that is.’

Susanna muttered snippily: ‘“Fat” being the operative word.’

‘She called on Monday; she’s got flu.’

‘I expect she’ll come back in time for the party,’ Cato offered cynically.

Charlie wondered if Cato had made a pass at Olivia and she had rejected him. Once his brother got bored with Susanna, bored with Caggie, she was undoubtedly next in line. The thought bothered him deeply.

‘Excuse me.’

He entered the empty solace of the hall, leaving Susanna gushing over the menu for Saturday night. Charlie was dreading it, but had to set his concerns to one side. Despite himself he had been unable to stop imagining what the cash injection might achieve. He would be able to repair the roofs, to restore the chapel, to rectify the heating... All he had to do was swallow his pride. It was a bitter pill, but still.

He pushed the door to the hallowed ballroom. Susanna had done a fine job, even if it was a little outré for his taste. A stately array of tables and chairs had been imported—-he’d witnessed a team of designers arriving on the estate earlier that morning—and were laid with elegant porcelain and elaborate floral displays. The surfaces had been cleaned and polished to perfection, the Corinthian pillars shining pearly-white, and the raised platform at one end played host to a beautifully buffed Bechstein grand. He looked up. The higher windows had been harder to reach and the diamond skylight hosted a lace of telltale gossamers that shivered in the draught.

The last occasion he had spent time in here, proper time, had been with Penny. In the depths of a freezing winter, the Usherwood grounds had been blanketed in snow, and every sound, every birdcall, muted in the frost. The east had been the last to receive a faltering heat so they had camped here, bringing a mattress, blankets, socks for Penny because her toes stung in the cold. Charlie had stoked the burner. The moon had risen bright-eyed in the night, visible at the very window he was looking through now, and they’d had blazing, breathless sex in the glow of the flames.

Distantly he could hear Cato’s untroubled chatter, flirting carelessly with his girlfriend and eliciting her laugh. How could his brother have forgotten?
Had
he forgotten, or was it just another act?

All their lives Cato had possessed this ability to simply
flatten
events, to take traumas, accidents,
distasteful
occurrences, and press them into a thin even line that he could fold and then fold again until it was a tight nub that could be hidden in a drawer and locked away. Anything that marred Cato’s impeccable image was as good as extinguished. Perhaps Charlie should learn from it: he could benefit from letting go, he knew.

How different the brothers were. It was a leap sometimes to believe that they had come from the same parents. If they hadn’t, if they had been mere acquaintances, it would have been so much easier. Charlie wouldn’t have to be reminded every day that the person responsible was his flesh and blood. As if their parents dying—no, disappearing: for who knew if Lord and Lady Lomax weren’t marooned on an island somewhere, or snatched by pirates, or floating on the water in the thirteen-year-old remains of their lost biplane?—hadn’t been enough. Cato had stolen it all from him.

Five years ago. His brother’s first film had just been released. Cato had returned for a flying visit, instantly captivating, hopelessly glamorous, fragrant with a promise beyond the Usherwood walls, both exotic and tantalising.

Charlie had found them together. The pale lines of Penny’s ankles wrapped around his brother as the lovers writhed against the walls of the cellar stairs.

I’m sorry
,
Charlie
, she’d said.
Cato and I are going to be together.
We’re helpless to resist it.
We have to follow our hearts
...

In retrospect, he should have known. Perhaps he had been foolish to expect more of Penny; he had reckoned her to be unfazed by those pretensions. Yet Cato’s fame had proved a temptation too hard to resist. He had vowed to whisk her off to LA; even, at one point, to announce their imminent marriage. The months she had spent with Charlie and the connection they had shared (or he had imagined?) evaporated in a single, horrifying evening: for her, it had been worth the sacrifice.

He would never forget the night of the storm. Their bags had been packed, set for the airport, and a swift, useless kiss had hit him like a slap in the face.

The Jaguar’s tail lights disappearing down the drive, rain slashing the windows, a red torch bleeding into darkness...

The very last time he had seen her.

News had come in later that night. Barbara had delivered the only blow that could possibly contend with the one revealed eight years before. Cato had drunk too much. He had slammed the car into a tree.

Police and paramedics had been quick to arrive on the scene. Charlie had swerved through the night, crashing through country lanes in the driving rain, almost killing himself in the process and not much caring if he did. His brother had been taken to hospital, where he recovered over the course of a week, surrounded by sympathetic nurses and the respectful (though not discouraged) curiosity of the press. Penny died in Intensive Care at 11.29 on a Thursday morning.

As was Cato’s way, his own denial about what happened somehow filtered into the world around him: if Cato didn’t talk about it then there was nothing to talk about. The manslaughter charge had been short-lived. Charlie had his suspicions about the cheque Cato had written, a vast sum in exchange for his freedom. After a brief ripple of interest, followed by a couple of feeble eyewitness accounts that put bad weather at the wheel instead of Cato, the incident was all but forgotten.

It might be forgotten for them, but it wasn’t for Charlie. Cato had never apologised, never got to his knees and begged his brother’s forgiveness, never even
mentioned
it. Charlie wondered if he might have been able to mourn better (was grieving a skill, something you could improve at the more you had to do it?) if this conversation had happened. There were so many things he wanted to ask Cato, so many ways in which he needed to express his fury, but always there was this suspicion that the second he did, Cato would turn and sneer:
I
don’t know what you’re on about
,
old bean
...

So much for Now and Always... And yet Charlie knew that he had lost Penny before she was gone. It was typical of Cato (how petty that sounded,
typical
, but there was no other word). Never had he been able to stand Charlie having something he didn’t. Even though Cato had jetted halfway across the world to claim a life of fame and riches, his brother’s happiness at Usherwood was something he could not abide.

All their lives there had been this jealousy, latent but potent, festering under the surface. Why? What could Cato possibly have to be envious of?

A voice snapped him out of his reverie. Barbara was at the door.

‘Mr Lomax, there’s a photographer outside. I’m afraid Cato’s disappeared. Would you be able to deal with him?’ The housekeeper’s expression was a practised kind of neutral. ‘I’ve explained he’s a day early, but...’

‘Of course.’ Charlie dragged himself from his thoughts. They clung on; it was like wading through a sucking marsh, sticky and cloying on the calves.

When he passed Barbara they exchanged a look of understanding, so fleeting it was barely there, which stemmed from a lifetime of knowing just what the other was thinking. Barbara didn’t want this party to happen, and neither did he.

But, it was beginning.