by Wendy Holden
Christian!
Skipping between the shining bonnets of the red-hot cars in the carpark, Darcy dashed across.
As she approached, she recognised the dark, oily quiff of Christian's head, his tanned and handsome brow facing downwards, bobbing up and down. She could hear a grunt. Were there problems with the car? Was he fixing something?
"Christian!"
The word hung in the air, in the bright, hot sunshine. Darcy could now see that he was indeed fixing something. Someone. Christian, a climactic cry breaking from his throat, looked up and met Darcy's horrified eyes.
For a second, she was stunned. Then her eyes rolled from his face to the woman writhing below him; her breasts jutting upwards, her bare thighs wound round his muscular buttocks like the tentacles of a tanned octopus, snakes of platinum hair shaking across the car seat like Medusa's own.
Belle!
"Darcy!" Belle's tousled blonde head now emerged. "Fancy running into you! It seems like ages!" She flashed a brilliant smile through extravagantly smeared lipstick. "Hope you don't mind me saying, sweetie. But I'm not sure it's working."
The woolly feeling was still enveloping Darcy. She moved her tongue, but it felt as dry and heavy as a block of wood. Her eyes rolled over Christian, who seemed similarly lost for words, stuttering in his sunglasses above his lipstick-smeared torso.
"Of course," Belle added smugly, "some people just have to face the fact that exercise doesn't work for them. I'm so lucky, of course, not having to do anything to keep my shape. But—and I'm saying this as a friend," she added, batting her somewhat bent eyelashes, "I gotta say, Darcy, that you've actually gotten bigger since you started running."
Christian, meanwhile, was following his instincts. Selfpreservation, which dictated his every move, was dictating now that he started the engine and got the hell out. There was nothing to be gained from hanging around and trying to explain himself to both of the women at the same time. Even if he could have done.
"Hey, c'mon," Belle was calling to Darcy. "Don't get mad. You win some; you lose some. Although, to be honest, sweetie, you haven't lost any."
Christian screeched the car into reverse and roared around the carpark to the exit, heedless of anything or anyone that might have been in his way. Belle's hair streamed out like a white flag. "But don't take it personally," she was shouting. "It's not you, it's your metabolism."
As the cloud of blue smoke from the Ferrari's exhaust enveloped her, Darcy felt light-headed and nauseous. There was a buzzing sensation around the edge of her vision. The trees looked blurred; the shining vehicles in the carpark wobbled violently. She took a step back and stumbled. Oh, God, Darcy thought, I'm going to faint.
Christian roared off down the road. Belle's shrieks in his ear and the scream of the wind merged into one. She was clutching at her clothes, and her hair whipped around her face like a lash.
Rounding a bend, Christian saw too late the red Vespa scooter coming towards him. He slammed on the brake, clung to the steering wheel, battling for control as the heavy, blood-red car screamed, skidded, and convulsed into a great sliding side arc that crashed violently into the shoulder of the road, taking the motorbike and its bearded, cowboy-booted rider with it.
A couple were walking up through Rocolo village. The man was tall, thin, and pale, with sparse, sandy hair and wonky glasses that slipped down his nose, no matter how often he pushed them up. He looked worried and cross and was striding some distance ahead of the woman, a trim blonde in a red flowered dress and with redrimmed blue eyes.
Vanessa had cried all the way from the airport. She had never thought it was possible for James to be so angry. He had been stonily furious throughout the flight, but it was only when they were alone in the rental car that he had really let rip. "You let the children go by themselves to Italy? I just can't believe it." His knuckles, clenching the steering wheel in fury, were bone-white. His neck was thrust forward, and his eyes strained through the windscreen.
"They're not on their own. They're with Totty…" Vanessa bleated, for what seemed the hundredth time.
"Totty!" James snorted, with a depth of loathing Vanessa had never heard before. "Totty! You know I never liked her. Never trusted her. But you let her take the children. The most precious things we have. And now we can't get hold of her, we don't know what's going on…" His voice rose to a desperate wail, a cry of fearful misery that Vanessa found more terrifying than his anger. "What possessed you?" he hurled at her, his usually mild blue eyes now turned to balls of aquamarine fire as he glared through his spectacles.
"I've told you," Vanessa wailed, her fingers on her lap tearing at each other in terror. "It was a last-minute work thing. A feature I couldn't turn down…"
"You mean a free couple of days at a luxury spa run by some duchess," James screamed. "You've lost our children—all for the sake of a free back rub and a complimentary pedicure and tea with some fucking aristo."
"I thought it would be okay," Vanessa wept, trying weakly to defend herself even though she felt like a mouse in the claws of a huge and pitiless eagle. "I thought Hengist's parents were there, in their villa, to keep an eye on things. I didn't realise it would only be Hengist's nanny. I thought Lord and Lady Westonbirt were there…"
"Lord and Lady Westonbirt," James spat. "That's you all over," he snarled, hurling the blue fireballs at her again. "You'll believe anything, accept anything, give anyone anything, even our children, if you think they're upmarket. And now you've ruined both our lives with your fucking pointless, ridiculous, contemptible snobbery…"
"Don't!" cried Vanessa. As the car hurtled along, she stared at the blurred scenery, pressing away the realisation that any of this was really happening. That she had called Totty several times now, and there was no reply. That the children had been in Italy for several days without her, and she had no idea where they were. That she was the worst mother who had ever lived, the worst wife, the worst person.
Chapter Fifty-four
Hero nudged Orlando again. Realising she wanted his chocolatesprinkled cappuccino foam, he obediently began to dispense spoonfuls with his huge, brown hands.
Hero and Cosmo had eaten their lunch now, in two seconds flat it had seemed. His own planned beer and panini had transmogrified into a bowl of the most delicious minestrone he had ever eaten, with a glass of light red wine. He had been reluctant to order this at first, wine, in his mind, being strongly associated with the horrible Hugh Faugh. But Marco had insisted, and the combination was, Orlando had had to admit, a good one.
The benefits of the lunch had gone beyond mere flavour, it seemed to him. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, a bowlful of minestrone before each exam might have considerably improved his A-level results. Certainly, it had affected his brain for the better.
The evidence of this was that Orlando had had a good idea. A feasible way forward had finally suggested itself with regard to the children. He was still certain that Totty could not be far away, but, in her continued absence, the most obvious thing to do was return to the playground. If Totty was not there, surely one of the other so-called nannies would know where the children were staying. And if that route failed, then the police were the obvious next stage.
Marco looked lovingly at the chicken stock reduction boiling away in the pan. It was almost ready now, mere minutes from reaching its perfect state of being a shallow pool of unctuous, gloopy, dark, silky flavour, almost like chocolate sauce but with a taste at the opposite end of the spectrum: savoury, deep, intense, essential.
Yes, just a minute or so more now. Some chefs, he knew, would have taken the stock off at this point, but he liked to take it to the brink, to risk it, to literally play with fire, reach the moment when the reduction nearly burnt, then just scoop it off in time, caramelly, thick, rich, and brown. Like Darcy's hair.
He thought about the truffles he had promised her, for when she came next.
Truffles!
Exciting, mysterious, expensive, pungent, powerfully earth sce
nted; vital, sweaty, and yes…sexy. Very sexy.
He could hardly wait to introduce her to real Italian truffles. He could see her face as she tasted them, her eyes closing, her mouth falling open…
His felt his heart rate increase. He began to breathe deeply. Steam was almost coming out of his nostrils, smoke even. But no, not out of his nostrils. The brown and billowing acrid clouds were coming from somewhere below him, in the pan.
Damn. He had burnt the reduction.
Emma struggled up the steep, cobbled incline to the village. Even without Morning round her neck, it was a struggle. How Darcy managed to get up here every day was incredible.
Everything seemed a struggle this morning, however. She had struggled with her mood after Darcy had left for her run, sitting on the terrace lost in gloomy contemplation of the subject they had talked about—the nursery she longed to start but probably never would. Eventually Mara had appeared.
"Why you sit here sulking?" the housekeeper had demanded. "You waste your time. You should go out. Go into Rocolo. I look after the baby here." She had looked at her watch. "If you go now, you will catch the bus. Go on. It will do you good."
Was it doing her good, Emma wondered. Now, ahead of her, was the restaurant, with its pretty white shades shining in the sun over its pretty green tables. When she got that far up, she'd treat herself to a cappuccino.
"Emma!" Children's voices.
Emma blinked. She knew those voices. She peered into the dazzlingly sunny courtyard.
The boy in his navy shorts and striped T-shirt, his blonde fringe shimmering in the sun, scampered excitedly towards her. His sister, an eager, pale little face under a mop of white hair, scampered after him. Her spoon, so recently an essential accomplice in the all-important matter of eating Orlando's coffee foam, clattered, unwanted, to the cobbles.
"Hero?" Emma whispered. "Cosmo…oof!" The child had cannoned into her and thrown his arms tightly round her knees.
She placed a trembling hand on the familiar, small sandy head. Through her blurry vision, she now saw someone tall come towards her. He shook his hair awkwardly, an unmistakeable gesture.
"Emma!" There was a strange, fizzing sensation in Orlando's feet. A warm feeling spread within him until it glowed in his throat and in his stomach at the same time. He felt light and wobbly, as if he could sing, dance, or even fly.
"Orlando?" A flock of butterflies so big that they could actually have been seagulls swerved through her stomach.
"Choo choo!" Cosmo steamed up. "You're blocking the line," he said sternly to Orlando.
"You never told me you were going to let her take them," James growled, as he and Vanessa struggled up the cobbled hill into the village.
There were tears on his cheeks, she saw. Her heart twisted and tore within her. "The last thing you told me was that you and Totty were going together. And then I come back from this trip, ring you on your mobile from the airport to find you're still in London and they're… they're…God knows where," he added, his voice a broken whisper.
"I couldn't get hold of you," she said weakly, more as a statement of fact than any attempt to defend herself. That was obviously impossible. "The spa thing came up suddenly. And like I said, I thought it would be alright…"
"You knew I was going to the Congo," James stormed, his voice rising so that passersby stared at him in surprise. "You knew the FO was sending me out there again. All the more reason for you to take full responsibility for once, I'd have thought. But, oh, no. Oh, no."
There was such contempt, such hatred in his voice. This was not James. This was not her mild, hardworking husband. Not the man she had routinely put down, overruled, shouted at, bullied. This was a father who had returned from a work trip to find his wife had sent their children away with someone he neither trusted nor liked. And who Vanessa, were she able to admit it to herself, increasingly neither trusted nor liked either.
There had been many incidents with Totty—small but significant. The way she never made the children wash their hands before and after meals. The way she frequently put them to bed without bathing them or insisting they cleaned their teeth. The way in which, at every opportunity, she parked them in front of the television, Hero with a pacifier in her mouth. A pacifier!
Vanessa reserved particular unease for the memory, which she tried hard to suppress, of the way Totty had lingered in Emma's room when she had showed her it at Hero's party. Vanessa had gone to the loo and had expected to find Totty back in the kitchen, but instead she had appeared there some minutes after Vanessa and with the dramatic news that there was something up there she must see. Vanessa could see herself now, leaping upstairs, seeing the handbag with the tiny, incriminating piece of folded white paper in it, calling Emma up, sacking her on the spot…
Oh, God. She had asked no questions at the time. Getting rid of Emma was all she had wanted. She had never admitted the true circumstances to James about her conversation in the kitchen with Totty and had vigorously beaten off all his suggestions that it could not possibly be true about Emma. Of course, it was true. It had to be, because if it wasn't, then where had that wrap of cocaine come from? How had Totty, in the less than five minutes she was up there, known where to look for it?
As the ascent tugged painfully on her calf muscles and the sun beat mercilessly down, Vanessa went hot and cold as she thought again of the clues she had not so much missed, as wilfully ignored.
It seemed incredible now that she had been willing to overlook all of this on the grounds that Totty's father was a member of the aristocracy. Oh, God, what a fool she had been. Please, God, forgive her; let the children be alright. Please, let them be here.
Vanessa felt a huge, desperate sob tear her chest. Her life was over. Her children were gone, and her husband hated her.
She watched him striding contemptuously ahead, almost shoving people out of his way. James, gentle James, who had never shoved anyone in his life. His idea was to get as fast as possible to the police station, which was apparently in the square at the top. This village was the last place she had had live contact with the children. They hadn't sounded very happy. "When are you coming, Mummy?" Cosmo had whispered, as if someone was listening to him.
James's back blurred as the tears rose. But she could still see how it radiated loathing. Loathing of her. And he had loved her so much. Devotedly and absolutely, Vanessa knew, stung by the additional knowledge that she had never really appreciated it. Had not only taken it utterly for granted but had occasionally affected to doubt it, as when she had toyed with the idea his interest in Emma went beyond the strictly professional.
As if! James's interest in Emma, Vanessa now knew—had always known, in fact—was gratitude for the effort and enthusiasm she brought to the job of looking after their children. Their children! The children he obviously adored, but which she had never really allowed him to spend any time with, so desperate was she to force him, against his will, up the greasy Foreign Office pole. And yet, even despite all this, James had never wanted another woman. He had adored her. And she had treated him like a dog.
He was a gentleman to the backbone. He had borne her tempers, her spite, her unfairness without complaint. He had never judged her, try as he might sometimes to discourage her.
Vanessa had never known pain in her heart like this. Guilt, regret, self-loathing were infinitely more agonising than anything physical she had ever suffered, the births of the children included. The children! As she crossed the bridge, the formerly proud Vanessa, broken and pathetic, all her former fire gone, contemplated throwing herself over it. Had the water below been anything more than a tricklesome stream, she would have.
If only she had listened to James about Emma. If only, Vanessa thought in silent anguish as they walked up into the village their children were last known to have been in, she had never let Emma go.
"Emma! Emma! Where have you been?" Hero and Cosmo were chanting as they choo-chooed round the tables.
"We've missed you."
She glanced at the children and back at Orlando, puzzled and delighted, her eyes framing the question.
"I found them in the square," he explained. "No one was with them."
"No one…?" Emma gasped. "They had no nanny?"
"Well, there is a nanny, but…"
"We've had no one to play Uno with," Hero was complaining. "Totty doesn't know how to play Uno…"
"Totty?" Emma was gripped immediately by a terrible force. "Totty…?"
It was, Emma thought afterwards, as if merely speaking the name had summoned an evil spirit. For, at that very moment, Totty rounded the corner and stormed through the restaurant, blonde hair streaming in her wake, legs flashing vengefully in a tiny miniskirt, scrappy breasts heaving behind a barely there black top.
