“Then you should also know that there are going to be things, many things, that I’m not able to share with you.” Alexia fought back. “It’s just the way it is.”
“So why tell me anything? Why tell me you’re worried about this man and then not let me help?”
Alexia sensed the frustration in his voice, and the hurt. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything. But after the other night, in Lucy Meyer’s kitchen, she’d felt a growing need to talk about her fears.
“I told you because you asked. And because I wanted to be honest, as honest as I can be.”
“Yes, well. It’s not bloody good enough!”
Standing up, she wrapped her arms around Teddy’s waist and pressed her body against his. It was an affectionate gesture. Vulnerable. Needy. Contrite. Despite himself, Teddy felt his heart melting.
Turning around, he pulled her into his arms.
“I want to protect you, Alexia. That’s all. Can’t you understand that?”
“You are protecting me.” Alexia whispered. “Right now. I need you so much Teddy. I couldn’t do any of this without you.”
Teddy kissed her hard on the mouth. He would never stop wanting her.
Never.
Lying naked and sated in bed, wrapped in Michael De Vere’s arms, Summer Meyer stared at the ceiling, grinning from ear to ear.
It was official.
She was over Chad Bates.
Michael’s breath tickled her ear and the warm weight of his body pressed against her back. He smelled of sweat and cologne and sex, and Summer didn’t think she had ever wanted a man quite so badly. Kissing him, she whispered, “I was thinking about what you said before.”
“You mean about your arse being the eighth wonder of the world?” Michael’s hand crept downward.
“No, not that.” Summer giggled.
“Because it is, you know. Honestly, if you were English, I’d be having that thing preserved for the nation. Of course, you Yanks have no sense of heritage.”
“I mean what you said about us not really knowing each other, even after all these years.”
“Oh. That.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, hopefully it’s a little less true now.”
Reaching for her breasts, Michael lazily traced a line around her nipples with his index finger. Summer moaned with pleasure. His hands on her body were pure bliss. She shuddered to think of where and how he had picked up his technique.
“I’m serious. I mean I know your whole family better than I know you. Your mom’s a machine. Your dad’s a saint.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” muttered Michael.
“And Roxie was always so happy-go-lucky and sweet . . . before, you know.”
“Yeah.” Michael smiled sadly. “She was.”
“But I don’t know anything about you. Not really.”
Michael lay back, throwing his arms wide, like a hot version of Jesus. “Ask me anything. I’m an open book.”
“Okay.” Summer propped herself up in bed. Michael loved the way her long chestnut hair spilled over her shoulders onto his sheets.
“Why did you quit Oxford?”
“That’s easy,” said Michael. “It was boring. Next question.”
“Are you easily bored?”
“Very. This is fun.”
“By women?”
“If they’re boring, yes. Don’t worry. You’re not boring.”
He reached between her thighs. Summer firmly removed his hand.
“I’m not worried. And you’re not boring either. Yet.”
Michael grinned. He liked a challenge.
“Any more questions, Miss Meyer, or can the witness be excused?”
“Plenty. Why do you always defend your mother when she and Roxie fight?”
Michael frowned. “Do I?”
“You did at supper the other night.”
He thought for a while, then said, “I suppose I defend her because nobody else does. I love Roxie as much as anyone, and we all feel terrible about what happened to her. But she can be very unfair to Mummy. She blames her for everything.”
“Isn’t your mother to blame, though?” Summer asked.
“She can be cruel to Rox at times,” Michael admitted. “She’s to blame for that.”
“But wasn’t she the one who drove Roxie’s boyfriend away? That’s what I heard.”
“You can’t drive someone away who doesn’t want to be driven. He was a grown man, not a goat.”
Michael was angry, but he wasn’t sure why. He’d never really talked about this with anyone, not even with Tommy, his best friend. No one in the family talked about it. But perhaps, he realized, that was part of the problem, part of what gave Roxie’s tragedy its power. The fact that it had become taboo.
“I’ll tell you what happened. Mum hired a tennis pro one summer, a guy named Andrew Beesley.” Michael spat out the name as if it were poison.
“You didn’t like him.”
“No, I didn’t. Not from the start. He was a snake. Good-looking, but by God he knew it.”
Look who’s talking, thought Summer, but she wisely said nothing.
“All Beesley was interested in was screwing women. I don’t think he ever really cared about Roxie, but she fell for him hard.”
“And your mother didn’t approve?”
“Neither of my parents approved. Nor did I, nor did most of Rox’s friends. By the time Roxie and Andrew got together, he’d already shagged half of Oxfordshire.”
And I’ll bet you shagged the other half.
“Anyway, he and Rox became an item. After a few months Andrew proposed. Roxie was beside herself with joy. She accepted right away. But Mum was worried he was a gold digger, with good reason, as it turned out. She invited him out to lunch one day, when Roxie was up in London. As I understand it, she offered him money if he would break off the engagement, move to Australia, and never contact Roxie again.”
“She bribed him.”
“Yes. Against my father’s wishes.”
“How much money did she offer him?”
Michael shrugged. “Dunno. Enough to set him up in a private coaching business. I suspect a few hundred grand. Anyway, whatever it was, he took it. Pretty much bit Mummy’s hand off apparently, which in my book goes to show how little he cared about Rox in the first place. All Andrew Beesley ever wanted was a slice of my sister’s inheritance. When Mum made it clear she wouldn’t get a penny if the marriage went ahead, he was out of there faster than Boris Becker could drop his trousers in a broom cupboard.
“Roxie blamed Mummy entirely. Said she shouldn’t have interfered, that she’d poisoned Andrew against her. I believe she even accused Mummy of sleeping with him at one point, that’s how unhinged she’d become.” He shook his head sadly. “It was awful.”
“I’m sure.” Summer’s sympathy was genuine. She could imagine how painful it must have been, for all of them.
“The truth is, Rox had totally lost her marbles at that point. She was so in love with this bastard, so totally, hopelessly, dangerously in love. It broke her when Andrew left, it really did. I don’t think even Mummy expected her to take it as hard as she did.”
There were tears in his eyes. Tentatively, Summer reached out a hand and stroked his face.
“Don’t go on if you don’t want to.”
Michael grabbed her hand and kissed it. “No. It’s good to talk about it, actually. It’s a relief. About two weeks after Beesley took off, I got a call from Dad telling me Roxie had jumped out of her bedroom window at Kingsmere.
“She definitely intended to die. It wasn’t a cry for help or any of that bollocks. She left a note eviscerating poor Mum.”
“How horrendous. For all of you.”
“Yes,” said Michael. “But, you know. She didn’t die. It could have been worse.”
“Something died, though.”
“Yes. Something died. The girl that she was died. The family that we were. It’s so fucking sad, but
there was nothing I could do about it then, and there still isn’t.”
Summer wrapped her arms around him, cushioning his head against the soft pillow of her breasts. “Of course there isn’t. It’s not your fault, you know.”
“It’s not Mum’s fault either. Not entirely, anyway. But she doesn’t help herself. After Roxie’s fall, Dad was so loving and sympathetic, and Mum just . . . wasn’t. It’s not that she doesn’t care. She’s just not very expressive when it comes to emotions.”
She’s a total fucking machine, thought Summer. Alexia had always intimidated her, and still did to some degree. They didn’t call Michael’s mother the Iron Lady for nothing. She’d always had an edgy relationship with Roxie, even before the boyfriend came on the scene.
As if reading Summer’s mind, Michael said, “Mum’s not a warm and cuddly person like your mother. She’s practical and she gets on with things. She doesn’t like wallowing.”
“She thinks Roxie’s wallowing? That’s a little harsh under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not really,” Michael said defensively. But then he relented. “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s tough, my mother, and Roxie isn’t tough, and I think fundamentally Mum just couldn’t understand why Roxie did what she did.”
“What about you?” Summer asked.
“What about me?”
“Do you understand it?”
“No. I’ve tried to. But I don’t. I understand loving someone, but not losing yourself to that degree. It’s not healthy.”
No, thought Summer, it’s not. But it’s human.
She wondered if Michael De Vere had ever been in love.
But that was one question she was too afraid to ask.
Chapter Nineteen
Alexia De Vere closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the feeling of the salt breeze in her hair and the warm sand between her toes. For years, her entire twenties, she had avoided beaches. It was the sounds that bothered her most: the rhythmic lapping of the waves, the distant peal of children’s laughter. Just thinking about those sounds made her feel sick and anxious. But since Teddy had persuaded her to buy the Gables in the early nineties, she’d slowly rediscovered her love of the ocean. The irony was that Teddy, probably the most English man in the world, had chosen to buy in the States. But Arnie Meyer had offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse, and over the years both he and Alexia had come to love Martha’s Vineyard.
These days, Alexia found the vastness of the ocean calming rather than frightening. She enjoyed the sense of nature being so big, and her own life and struggles so small by comparison. All her life, Alexia De Vere had struggled to be someone, someone important, someone whose life mattered. A little boy had lost his life because of her, and a decent man had had his life destroyed. She owed it to both of them to make her own life count, to achieve something significant. So it was ironic in a way that the feeling of insignificance the ocean gave her should bring her such profound peace.
“Spit spot, no dawdling!” Lucy Meyer’s Mary Poppins impression was embarrassingly bad, but it always made Alexia laugh. Because Lucy truly was Mary Poppins, in so many ways. “We’ll never get to the beach by lunchtime if you keep standing there with your eyes closed like Kate Winslet on the Titanic.”
It was an unfortunate allusion. Too often these days Alexia felt as if she were aboard the Titanic, sailing inexorably toward her doom. She’d worked things out with the prime minister before Parliament broke for the summer—at least she thought she had. And despite the storm of disapproval within the party over her handling of the flag-burning affair, in all the opinion polls Alexia’s popularity rating was high. Even the Daily Mail was changing its tune in support of her tough-on-immigration stance. But the turmoil in her personal life had stopped her from savoring these successes. Not being able to talk properly to Teddy about the pressure she was under was the hardest part of all. Just alluding to Billy Hamlin the other night had sent Teddy into a full-fledged panic. If she hadn’t known it before, she knew it now: she had to solve her problems on her own.
“Sorry,” she called ahead to Lucy. “Lead on.”
Lucy and Alexia had finally found time for their much-postponed hike to the Gay Head Lighthouse. Perilously close to the ever-eroding cliffs, the current redbrick structure had been built in 1844 to replace a wooden tower authorized by President John Quincy Adams, and was a popular tourist attraction on the island. With her encyclopedic knowledge of Martha’s Vineyard’s sandy tracks and back roads, however, Lucy had devised a route where no other sightseers would bother her and Alexia.
Since their tête-à-tête in Lucy’s kitchen two weeks earlier, neither woman had alluded to the “secrets” of Alexia’s past. They’d been walking for over an hour now, and still Alexia had said nothing, leaving Lucy to fill the silence with excited prattle about Michael and Summer’s burgeoning love affair.
“I’m telling you, I hear wedding bells.”
“You always hear bells.” Alexia laughed. “You’re Quasimodo.”
Alexia wanted desperately to talk about Billy Hamlin and her past. But starting the conversation was harder than she’d thought it would be. Back at Pilgrim Farm that first night, buoyed by everybody’s kindness and warm wishes, the subject had all come up naturally. Now, in the cold light of day, she would have to begin again.
How does one do that, after forty years of silence?
In the end, Lucy broke the ice for her.
“So,” she said, when they finally stopped for lunch at a clearing on top of the cliffs. “Do you still want to talk to me about Billy?”
She remembers the name. She’s been thinking about it.
“It’s fine if you don’t. I just thought I’d ask. In case it’s still bothering you.”
Lucy said it so casually, between mouthfuls of an egg and watercress sandwich. Even her choice of words was harmless. Billy Hamlin had been “bothering” Alexia. Not terrorizing. Not haunting. Bothering. Like a fly, or a hole in one’s sock.
Alexia bit her lip nervously. It was now or never.
“What would you say if I told you I’d once done something terrible? Something that I would give anything to take back, but that I can’t change.”
Lucy tried not to betray her own nerves when she answered.
“I’d say welcome to the human race. We all have regrets, Alexia. Especially at our age.”
Regrets. Bothering. Lucy made it all sound so acceptable, so normal. But then Lucy didn’t know the truth. Not yet.
“This is more than a regret. It’s something I’ve buried for almost forty years. Nobody knows about it. Not even Teddy. And if it ever became public, it would mean the end of my political career. Maybe even the end of my marriage.”
Lucy Meyer took a deep, steadying breath.
“I’m listening.”
Teddy De Vere leaned back in his first-class seat and closed his eyes as the 747 shuddered upward over Boston. He worried about leaving Alexia on her own, especially with Roxie still being so difficult. But his business couldn’t completely run itself for an entire summer. Besides, he had other things to deal with in London.
As home secretary, Alexia was a public figure. A certain amount of unwanted attention was inevitable. But she was also Mrs. Edward De Vere, a wife, a mother, and a member of one of the oldest, grandest families in England. Protecting the De Vere family name was Teddy’s job. And he couldn’t protect it if he only knew half the facts.
It was time for a little chat with Sir Edward Manning.
“How was your hike?”
Summer Meyer was in the kitchen at Pilgrim Farm, arranging the latest bouquet of flowers that Michael De Vere had brought her, when her mother walked in. In her yellow sundress and flip-flops, her newly washed hair hanging damp down her back, Summer was a vision of happiness. But Lucy was oblivious, walking straight past her toward the stairs.
“Mom? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” said Lucy.
She went upstairs to he
r bedroom and closed the door, sinking down onto the bed. The story Alexia had told her had shaken Lucy deeply. She was grateful to be alone, grateful that Arnie wasn’t here to pester her with questions. She needed to think.
She thought about Teddy De Vere. According to Alexia, Teddy knew nothing of her past. Lucy had no reason to disbelieve this. But still the thought of it shocked her to the core. A thirty-year marriage, a rock-solid marriage to all appearances, but built on a sham! Alexia De Vere wasn’t a real person at all. She was a character, a fake, an impostor created out of willpower and dust by a girl named Toni Gilletti, almost forty years ago.
An American girl.
A “bad” girl.
A girl with no hope, no future, no prospects.
Lucy Meyer would never have become friends with Toni Gilletti. Never in a million years. And yet Alexia had been her closest friend, almost a sister, for half of her adult life.
In the moment, when Alexia had poured out her confession, Lucy had remained calm and practical, reassuring her that deporting Billy Hamlin had been the right thing to do.
“You did what you had to do to protect yourself and your family. That’s it, end of story.”
“But he gave up so much, Lucy, to protect me.”
“That was his decision. He’s responsible for his actions. You’re responsible for yours.”
Outwardly, Lucy hoped, she’d been supportive, unruffled, staunch. But inside, her emotions raged and roiled like a violent, stormy sea.
There was a tentative knock on the door.
“Only me. Are you sure you’re okay?” Summer walked in with a jug of peonies held out like a peace offering. “Can I help?”
Lucy painted her usual smile back on.
“I’m fine, sweetie. I think maybe Alexia and I overdid it on our hike, that’s all. I’m really bushed.”
“Do you want me to run you a bath?”
Lucy kissed her on the cheek. “No, honey. I’m not that old. I can do it. You should be down at the beach with Michael, having fun.”
At the mention of Michael’s name, Summer’s face lit up like the sun.
Lucy thought: Young love. How wonderful it is!
Sidney Sheldon's the Tides of Memory Page 16
