Paradise End

by Elizabeth Laird

  Still a little young for wedding bells, but here’s one well all be hearing about soon. Anastasia Krukovsky, the sole heiress to one of the world’s greatest private fortunes, was born with the biggest jewel-encrusted spoon in her mouth that any lucky little girl could wish for. Her mother, ‘Dixie’ Braithwaite, had a short-lived film career, which fizzled out almost as soon as it had begun. The wild parties she gave filled the gossip columns a decade or more ago. Not that Dixie (forty-five) needs the support of a career. She is twin sister to the banker ‘Frost’ Braithwaite, and co-heiress of the fabulous Braithwaite fortune.

  Joshua Braithwaite, the twins’ great-grandfather, started life as a penniless labourer. He rose from rags to riches a century and a half ago, founding a coal-and-steel empire that buried acres of the Midlands under bricks and mortar. Unless Anastasia’s Uncle Frost decides to marry at last and produce an heir, the little blonde beauty with the big blue eyes will scoop the lot.

  Dixie’s family made their pile out of muck and sweat, but Anastasia’s dad (now divorced from Dixie) has a touch of class. Count Rudolf (‘Rudi’) Krukovsky, ex-playboy Argentinian racing-stud owner, is a descendant of a bona-fide aristocratic Russian family. And, as the photograph shows, young Anastasia looks every inch a countess. So polish up your manners, boys, and dust down your best clothes. This little sleeping beauty will soon be looking for her handsome prince!

  It felt really peculiar, reading all that stuff in a magazine about someone I actually knew, with a photo and everything. It made Tia seem a long way away.

  ‘She’s like a film star herself, or royalty or something,’ I said. The girl in the picture seemed unreal to me, as if the magazine had made her up.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ said Mum. ‘I wouldn’t wish the paparazzi on my worst enemy.’

  Lauren seemed to have come out of her trance. She’d trailed down the stairs and was sitting on the bottom step, holding her doll.

  ‘Tia’s not a poor thing. She’s a princess and she’s going to make my Barbie an evening dress,’ she said. ‘Midnight-blue velvet with a sequinned jacket.’

  Mum looked sceptical and shook her head. I knew the look on her face.

  ‘She is,’ insisted Lauren. ‘She promised.’

  ‘You don’t like her, Mum, do you? What’s the matter with her? Tia’s a really nice person. She knows she’s not a brainbox. She’s really modest. Not stuck up at all. She was lovely about how awful it was at teatime.’

  ‘Oh?’ There were bright-red spots in Mum’s cheeks. ‘And what was so awful about teatime?’

  ‘Mum! Sam was horrible! You know he was. I was so embarrassed I wanted to lie down and die.’

  ‘If you’re invited to other people’s houses,’ Mum said, ‘you have to take them as you find them. I noticed that the food wasn’t up to Miss Tia’s standards. She left most of her pizza and hardly tasted her chocolate roll. Two mouthfuls, then she pushed it away as if it was muck. That’s what I call rude.’

  ‘She didn’t mean to be rude!’ My face was red now. ‘She’s not used to families like ours. Her mother doesn’t have to cook and do the ironing and housework and everything, and go out to work like you do. She doesn’t understand.’

  Mum’s eyebrows snapped together, and I was bracing myself for a real row, but then I saw that she was forcing herself to calm down.

  ‘Look, love,’ she said, ‘I’ve got nothing against Tia. She seems like a nice kid. Not overly blessed in the brains department, perhaps, but. . .’

  ‘She speaks Italian,’ I muttered, not wanting to spark her off again. ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Mum didn’t seem impressed.

  Dad had been half listening while he cleared up his tools from the sitting-room floor. Now he came out into the hall.

  ‘I was glad to see they’d got a proper security man on the job,’ he said. ‘If there’s that kind of money involved, the kid’s a sitting duck for kidnappers. I hope they’ve taken proper precautions on alarms and security systems up at Paradise End. I don’t like the idea of you getting mixed up in all of that, Carly.’

  I was hopping up and down by now.

  ‘What are you talking about? Tia’s my friend! I’m not going to get mixed up in anything! Why don’t you be honest for once and say what you really think? You’re jealous, that’s all it is. You know we live in a crappy house at the crappy end of a crappy village, and we can never afford to buy nice clothes or have a decent car, and you’re ashamed of it, just like I am.’

  There was an awful silence. Dad looked at Mum. He looked a bit sad. She just looked tired. I felt really, really bad.

  ‘Carly, that’s not very nice and it’s also very silly’ Mum said in a hurt voice. ‘I don’t dislike Tia at all. I just can’t quite work out what’s going on inside that cool little head of hers. I grant you, her manners are perfect – except when it comes to finishing off what’s on her plate – which is only what you’d expect, with all the money that’s no doubt been spent on her education, and she seems perfectly sweet and good-natured. A little too sweet, perhaps. I can’t quite make up my mind about her. I’ve known girls like Tia who can be quite sly and manipulative. On the other hand, she might be so keen to please because she’s desperate for affection. I just think you should be careful, that’s all. I don’t want you to fling yourself into a situation with these people, and then be rejected when they decide they’ve had enough.’

  She was making me see red again.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I shouted at her. ‘You just don’t understand!’

  I couldn’t take any more of it. I raced upstairs to our bedroom, slammed the door and pulled the chest of drawers across it, so that Lauren couldn’t come in and see me cry.

  11

  It took me the rest of the evening to calm down, and the next morning, which was Sunday, I was still seething. It was worse because I was feeling guilty too. I couldn’t believe I’d said such cruel, awful things to Mum and Dad. I hated myself for that.

  Everyone does their own thing in our house on Sunday morning. Mum sleeps in. Dad does too, when he’s not on duty. Sam never gets up till gone one o’clock. Lauren watches TV. I do what I like.

  I woke with a start, quite early for me, at ten o’clock, and lay in bed waiting for the phone to ring. When it did, I shot downstairs as if an axe-murderer was after me and snatched the receiver off the hook.

  I knew it would be Tia, and it was.

  ‘Can you come over, Carly?’ she said. ‘This morning? How soon?’

  ‘Now. I’ve just got to get dressed.’

  I ran back upstairs and put on my nicest casual clothes. There wasn’t a lot of choice, but I did my best. It was hot that day, so I didn’t need a sweater or anything, just my favourite denim trousers and my little cut-off white top. My hair was the problem as usual, sticking up all over my head like a black bottlebrush.

  By the time I was ready, Mum was up. Her bedroom door was open and I could hear her moving around. I went downstairs and opened the sitting-room door.

  ‘Tell Mum,’ I said loudly to Lauren, who was sitting on the floor sucking her fingers like a toddler and gawping at the TV, ‘that Tia’s called, and I’ve gone up to Paradise End. I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

  Lauren didn’t budge. Mum had come out on to the landing above, and I knew she’d heard me.

  ‘Did you get that, Lauren?’ I said very clearly. ‘Tell Mum. I’m going to Paradise End. I’ll probably be there all day.’

  Lauren only grunted. She hadn’t taken in a single word. But Mum had. I heard her slippered feet move towards the top of the stairs.

  ‘Goodbye!’ I called and went out of the front door.

  I waited outside for a moment, in case she came after me, but she didn’t, so I ran off up the road.

  For the first time, there was no Tia to let me in between the big steely gates. I stood uncertainly, looking through the bars, not knowing what to do. Then, from out of one of the garages on
the left of the wide gravel drive, came the bouncer-looking man, Mr Hollins.

  He saw me standing there and walked up towards me, his bulging arms swinging, the thick crêpe soles of his heavy black boots crunching on the gravel.

  ‘What do you want?’

  He looked so scary I almost wanted to turn and run, but his voice was surprisingly high and quite kind.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘Tia called me. She asked me to come round.’

  He seemed to recognize me then, and without a word he pressed the secret button and the gates swung open. I walked past him, feeling an odd mixture of indignation and pleasure. I’d hated the way he’d looked at me at first, as if I was something the cat had been trying to bring in, but now I was in through the gates I felt special. I was one of the privileged few to be allowed inside the high walls of Paradise End.

  All the way up the drive, I was expecting the front door to open and Tia to fly out, but she didn’t, and when I arrived at the huge stone front step, I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like an ordinary house, where you ring on the doorbell and hear the chimes inside and know someone’s there because you hear their feet coming. I couldn’t even see a bell on this door, just a big brass knocker.

  I was standing there, hesitating, when the door swung silently open in front of me.

  ‘Tia,’ I said eagerly, ready to run inside, but the person looking down at me wasn’t Tia. It was a tall man, with brown hair cut neatly in an old-fashioned style, a long nose and an upper lip that stuck out a bit over the lower one. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but he was quite handsome, in a middle-aged kind of way.

  I knew at once that it was Tia’s uncle, Frost Braithwaite. His eyes were pale, not beautiful like Tia’s, but nearly the same strange colour. As I looked up into them, I thought they were the saddest and coldest eyes I’d ever seen.

  ‘You must be Tia’s friend,’ he said. ‘How do you do.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was sneering at me. He was looking solemn, but the way he said it, as if I was some posh grown-up, made me feel uneasy, and when I feel like that I start getting bolshie. So I looked right back at him and stuck my chin up in the air and said, ‘I’m all right, thanks. Is Tia around?’

  ‘With Graziella, in the kitchen, I believe,’ said Mr Braithwaite. ‘Come into the library. You can wait for her there.’

  I felt about as high as a beetle in the grass as I followed him across that huge hall, under the gallery at the back and in through a high door on the right that I’d never noticed before.

  The library was long and really, really beautiful. I had to hold on to myself not to gasp. It looked like something out of one of those TV costume dramas, with books round the walls, and a great desk made of dark, polished wood, and old leather sofas and armchairs, and a huge globe in a wooden frame.

  Mr Braithwaite sat down on one of the sofas. I sat opposite him on another, feeling as if the head teacher had called me into his office. Neither of us said anything for a moment, and I was starting to feel twitchy when I noticed that his left foot was bouncing up and down (he’d crossed his left leg over his right) and realized that he didn’t know what to say to me either.

  At last he said, ‘It’s Carly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I was sitting on the edge of the sofa, trying to look confident. There was something about him that irritated me, and I decided I’d better give as good as I got. I didn’t see why he should get all the questions in, so I said, ‘You’re Tia’s uncle, aren’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you really a billionaire, like it says in the papers?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.’

  I didn’t know what to say then. I suppose I made a face. Anyway, a smile edged itself on to his mouth and he seemed almost human for the first time. I didn’t like the way he was studying me though.

  He’s going to start patronizing me in a minute, I thought.

  I frowned. I must have looked quite disapproving.

  ‘I’m not used to billionaires,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met one before. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to call you.’

  He smiled properly, all over his face, and what he said next was really unexpected.

  ‘Good for you, Carly. Always say what you want to say. Never pretend.’

  He sounded as if he’d been trying to decide about me and that accidentally I’d said the right thing. I’d passed some kind of test. It was so dead patronizing that I was beginning to feel really offended, but then I remembered what Dad had said about Tia. ‘A sitting duck for kidnappers’, were the words he’d used. I suppose Tia’s uncle felt he had to check me out. He didn’t know a thing about me or my family. We could have been a criminal gang for all he knew, plotting to take Tia hostage and ransom her for millions of pounds. I could have been their stooge.

  He wasn’t the only one doing the checking though. I was taking a good look at him. If he was anything like his sister, Dixie, I reckoned Tia might need protecting from him too.

  We must have looked like a couple of dummies, sitting there on those old leather sofas in that vast room, staring at each other. All of a sudden I felt I wasn’t scared of him any more. He’d more or less told me to play it straight with him, and that’s what I was going to do.

  He seemed to come to the same conclusion about me. He pushed his long upper lip out, as if he’d made a decision, and said, ‘You can call me Mr Braithwaite, if you like, but since you’re Anastasia’s friend, I’d rather you called me Frost.’

  The word ‘friend’ gave me a warm feeling all the way through, and I grinned at him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll play it by ear, if you don’t mind.’

  I knew I’d never be able to call him Frost, right out loud to his face. I decided I’d have to avoid calling him anything at all, if I could help it.

  Neither of us heard Tia coming. I noticed then for the first time how quietly she moved around Paradise End. Even if she’d worn hard-soled sandals, like mine, she wouldn’t have let them clatter on the wooden floors. She seemed to glide from room to room like a shadow.

  One minute, only the two of us were in the room, and the next minute Tia was standing between us.

  ‘Carly! How long have you been here?’

  She was looking nervously at Frost.

  ‘Hi, Tia.’ I was relieved. Her uncle Frost was turning out to not to be too scary, after all, but I didn’t know what on earth I was going to say to him next.

  ‘Carly and I introduced ourselves,’ he said.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘But we haven’t said much yet.’

  I don’t know what it was about Frost Braithwaite that made me talk so sharply. He didn’t seem to mind though.

  ‘What are you girls going to do this morning?’ he said to Tia. ‘Tennis? Swimming?’

  I sensed Tia relax. She turned and smiled at me triumphantly.

  He thinks you’re great. He approves of you, she seemed to say.

  ‘We’re going up to my room,’ she said. ‘We’ve got things to do. With Graziella.’

  ‘Is your mother up yet?’ he said.

  Tia’s face changed, and the still look I’d noticed before came into it.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘They never came back last night.’

  His eyebrows snapped together in a frown above the high arch of his nose.

  ‘They?’

  ‘She went out with Otto.’

  His long upper lip curled sideways.

  ‘Otto? Otto Sanger?’

  He sounded disgusted, as if he’d put his foot in something smelly on the carpet. He was about to say something else, but he stopped himself, and turned on Tia what he obviously hoped was a reassuring smile.

  ‘They must have got held up somewhere. Don’t worry, my dear. They’ll be back soon, I’m sure. Now off you go. I’ve got some calls to make. Shall we be seeing you at lunch, Carly?’

  Tia looked at me with raised
eyebrows. I shrugged.

  ‘I can stay if you want me to,’ I said.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Frost, and he walked over to the desk and sat down in the great polished chair behind it.

  Tia took my hand and pulled me out of the library. The heavy door swung silently shut behind us.

  ‘He likes you,’ she said triumphantly. ‘You’re so brilliant, Tia. You can never tell with Frost. He’s horrible to people sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ I didn’t want to look too pleased. ‘I thought he was going to patronize me, but he didn’t. I hate it when people treat me like some thick little kid.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I know what you mean.’

  She didn’t, I knew. I wanted to say, You haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t notice if the biggest patronizer in the world patted you on the head and called you a dear little girlie. You’d smile and feel grateful, you sad idiot.

  But I didn’t say anything out loud. I just felt stronger inside, and protective too.

  We were standing in the hall and the big front door was open. A glint of light caught my eye, and I looked out and saw that the metal gates had swung open. The silver sports car I’d seen before was driving up to the house. It turned sharply in a shower of gravel and stopped outside the front door.

  Tia said, ‘Oh there she is. At last.’

  She started towards the door, then saw who was driving the sports car and stopped.

  ‘Otto!’ she said with a groan. ‘Come on, Carly. Let’s get out of the way.’

  She went into the dining room. I was still looking out at the stunning lines of the sports car, thinking of what Sam would say if he could see it too.

  ‘Carly! In here, quick!’ she hissed at me, and a second later we were both in the dining room with the door shut behind us.