I cannot write again, my love.
I am, yours forever
The letter was signed with the famous flourish, the photocopy not diminishing the magnitude of what Joanna had just read.
A baby princess, born into royalty, sired in the most extraordinary circumstances by a commoner. A baby that at the time was third in line to the throne, the chances of her succession small. But then, through a twist of fate, which saw others putting love before duty too, the baby princess had become a queen.
Joanna stood up with the letter in her hand, temptation to exact revenge for her own and other lives destroyed holding her tightly in its grasp. The anger left her, as quickly as it had come.
‘It’s finally over,’ she whispered to the ghosts who might be listening.
Joanna went to the water’s edge, tore the paper up and watched the pieces as they fluttered in the wind. Then she turned round and walked back to the Cabana Café to drown her sorrows in tequila.
Nursing her drink at the bar, Joanna knew that her new life began today. Somehow, she had to find the strength to embrace it – move on and put the past behind her.
Normally one would do that with the support of friends and family. She was totally alone.
‘How can I do this?’ she muttered as she ordered a second cocktail and realised that she’d been using Simon’s imminent visit as a lifeline. Now that was gone, the thread to all she had ever known was broken forever.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, as the full enormity of the situation hit her.
‘Hi there, got a light?’
‘I don’t smoke, sorry.’ Joanna ignored the male voice, with its strong American accent. Here in Mexico, men hovered around her like bees drawn to honey.
‘Okay, I’ll take a light and an orange juice, please,’ she heard the voice say to the bartender as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man climb onto the bar stool next to hers.
‘Want a top-up?’
‘I …’
The quintessentially English phrase made her turn to her neighbour. He was tanned to a deep nut-brown, wearing a pair of brightly coloured shorts, a T-shirt and a straw hat pulled down over his long dark hair. It was only when she saw his eyes – the deep tan highlighting their blueness – that she recognised him.
‘Don’t I know you?’ He grinned at her. ‘Aren’t you Maggie Cunningham? Think we spent a year at NYU together way back when.’
‘I …’ Joanna stuttered, her heart banging against her chest. Was this some kind of weird hallucination brought on by the tequila? Or a test from Simon to see if she’d blow it? Yet, he had called her ‘Maggie’ …
Joanna knew she was staring at him open-mouthed, wanting to drink in everything her eyes were telling her she saw, but …
‘I’ll get you one anyway.’ He signalled to the bartender to fill her glass up. ‘Then how about we go and catch up on old times?’
As she followed him out of the café, she decided it was best to keep her mouth shut, because this just could not … it could not be real.
As he led her to a quiet table on the rickety wooden terrace, she noticed he walked with a pronounced limp. She sat down abruptly.
‘Who are you?’ she muttered darkly.
‘You know who I am, Maggie,’ he said, in his familiar clipped English. ‘Cheers.’ He lifted his glass to hers.
‘I … How did you get here?’
‘Same way you did, I reckon. My name’s Casper by the way – your very own friendly ghost.’ He looked at her and grinned. ‘And I’m not kidding.’
‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, as one of her hands unconsciously reached out to touch him, needing to confirm he was real.
‘And my surname’s “James”. Thought it was fitting. I’m lucky – I got to choose my name myself, unlike you.’
‘How? Where? Why … ? Marcus, I thought you were—’
‘Dead, yes. And please, call me Casper,’ he muttered. ‘As you know, walls tend to have ears. To be fair, they thought I was going to cop it – I had multiple organ failure and I was in a coma for a time after the surgery. And then, when I actually regained consciousness, they’d already announced my death to the family and the media.’
‘Why did they do that?’
‘I’ve worked out since, it was probably because they didn’t know how much I knew, so they carted me off to some private hospital and put me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. They couldn’t take the risk of me waking up and spilling the beans to a doctor or nurse who happened to be lurking nearby at the time. Given they obviously wanted it to look like a straightforward shooting accident – no questions asked – and that they were convinced I was going to die anyway, they pre-empted my demise. So when I actually woke up and my body began functioning again, they had a bit of a problem.’
‘I’m amazed they didn’t kill you off once and for all,’ Joanna murmured. ‘That’s what they usually do.’
‘I think your mate Simon – or should I say, my long-lost distant cousin –’ Marcus raised an eyebrow – ‘had quite a bit to do with it. He told me later that he’d mentioned to his superiors that I’d grabbed the letter from Ian Simpson and hidden it somewhere before we fell into the water. Which was why the bastard shot me. So they had to keep me alive for a bit when I did wake up to find out if I had. See?’
‘Simon covered for you …’
‘He did. And then he gave me the letter – or what was left of it – to return to them. And told me to say that I knew nothing – that Ian Simpson had simply given me some money to find it. Next thing I know, Simon’s telling me I’m officially dead and asking me what I’d like to be called in my new life.’
‘Did you refuse?’
‘Maggie,’ Marcus sighed, ‘you’ll probably call me a coward again, but those people … wow, they’ll stop at nothing. I’d just come back from the dead and I wasn’t particularly keen on returning any time soon.’
‘You’re not a coward, Marcus … I mean, Casper.’ She reached out a tentative hand and put it on his. ‘You saved my life that night.’
‘And I’m sure Simon saved mine. He’s a seriously good guy, though I’ve still no idea what the hell was going on. Maybe one day you’ll enlighten me.’ Marcus lit up a cigarette and Joanna saw that his left hand shook continuously.
‘Maybe I will.’
‘So,’ he smiled, ‘here I am.’
‘Where have you been living?’
‘In a rehabilitation centre in Miami. Apparently the bullets I took in the abdomen grazed my spine, and I woke up with my lower body paralysed. I’m better now, although it took a long time to learn how to walk again. And no more whiskies for me any more, unfortunately.’ He gestured to the juice in front of him. ‘Bloody nice place Simon set me up in, though, all expenses paid …’ He grinned.
‘Good.’
They sat in silence for a while, simply staring at each other.
‘This is surreal,’ Marcus said eventually.
‘You’re telling me,’ Joanna replied.
‘I thought Simon was having me on when he called to say he was bringing me down to Mexico to meet someone I knew. I just … I just can’t believe you’re here.’ Marcus shook his head in wonder.
‘No … especially as we’re both “dead”.’
‘Maybe this is the afterlife … If it is –’ he swept his hand towards the beach – ‘I quite like it. And you know I’ve always had a thing for blondes …’
‘Mar—Casper, behave, please!’
‘Well, some things never change.’ He smiled at her, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘I’ve missed you, Jo,’ he whispered. ‘Terribly.’
‘I’ve missed you too.’
‘So, where do we go from here?’ he asked her.
‘Anywhere we want, I suppose. The world – apart from England, of course – is our oyster.’
‘How about Brazil?’ he suggested. ‘I know of a great film project.’
Joanna chuckled. ‘Well, even MI5 might struggle to find us
in the Amazon. I’m up for it.’
‘Good, come on,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Before we plan out the rest of our future together, why don’t you help what’s left of me down to the beach? I have a violent urge to lie on the sand and kiss every part of you. Even without the chocolate sauce.’
‘Okay.’ Joanna smiled and stood up too.
From his vantage point above the beach, Simon watched the young couple, their arms wound tightly around each other, walk slowly across the sand and into their new life.
Epilogue
Los Angeles, September 2017
Simon found Zoe out on a sun lounger by the pool. He looked at her still-taut body and lightly tanned skin, which didn’t seem to have aged at all in twenty years and with two pregnancies.
He kissed her on the top of her head. ‘Where are the kids?’
‘Joanna has gone off to a friend’s eighteenth party – in the shortest miniskirt I’ve ever seen, I might add – and Tom is at a baseball game. You’re home early. Was the restaurant quieter today?’
‘No, it was packed, but I came back to do some paperwork. I can’t concentrate there, even in my office – everyone keeps interrupting me. What’s that you’re reading?’ he asked as he peered over her shoulder.
‘Oh, it’s a new thriller that came out last week and everyone here is talking about it. It involves hidden secrets about the British royal family, so I thought I’d give it a go,’ she said with a smile.
His heart pounding in the way it hadn’t since he’d left his old job, Simon glanced down at the cover.
The Love Letter
By
M. Cunningham
Joanna, no!
‘Right,’ Simon said.
‘It’s gripping, actually, though utterly unbelievable, of course. I mean, this stuff just doesn’t happen, does it? Does it, Simon?’ she prompted him.
‘No, of course it doesn’t. Right, I’m going inside to get a cool drink. Want anything?’
‘Some iced tea would be great.’
Simon walked up to the house, sweating profusely. He went into his office and dumped the files containing the restaurant accounts on his desk, then checked his emails on his iPhone.
[email protected]
Subject: Urgent
Call me. Something’s come up.
OUT NOW
The Seven Sisters
A MAJOR NEW SERIES FROM LUCINDA RILEY
Maia’s Story
Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, ‘Atlantis’ – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Maia and her sisters were all adopted by him as babies and, discovering he has already been buried at sea, each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue that takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of where her story began …
Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Epoque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is working on a statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela – passionate and longing to see the world – convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafés of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.
In this sweeping, epic tale of love and loss – the first in a unique series of seven books, based on the legends of the Seven Sisters star constellation – Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before.
Turn the page to read the spellbinding opening chapters now.
1
I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died.
I was sitting in the pretty garden of my old schoolfriend’s townhouse in London, a copy of The Penelopiad open but unread in my lap, enjoying the June sun while Jenny collected her little boy from nursery.
I felt calm and appreciated what a good idea it had been to get away. I was studying the burgeoning clematis, encouraged by its sunny midwife to give birth to a riot of colour, when my mobile phone rang. I glanced at the screen and saw it was Marina.
‘Hello, Ma, how are you?’ I said, hoping she could hear the warmth in my voice too.
‘Maia, I …’
Marina paused, and in that instant I knew something was dreadfully wrong. ‘What is it?’
‘Maia, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but your father had a heart attack here at home yesterday afternoon, and in the early hours of this morning, he … passed away.’
I remained silent, as a million different and ridiculous thoughts raced through my mind. The first one being that Marina, for some unknown reason, had decided to play some form of tasteless joke on me.
‘You’re the first of the sisters I’ve told, Maia, as you’re the eldest. And I wanted to ask you whether you would prefer to tell the rest of your sisters yourself, or leave it to me.’
‘I …’
Still no words would form coherently on my lips, as I began to realise that Marina, dear, beloved Marina, the woman who had been the closest thing to a mother I’d ever known, would never tell me this if it wasn’t true. So it had to be. And at that moment, my entire world shifted on its axis.
‘Maia, please, tell me you’re all right. This really is the most dreadful call I’ve ever had to make, but what else could I do? God only knows how the other girls are going to take it.’
It was then that I heard the suffering in her voice and understood she’d needed to tell me as much for her own sake as mine. So I switched into my normal comfort zone, which was to comfort others.
‘Of course I’ll tell my sisters if you’d prefer, Ma, although I’m not positive where they all are. Isn’t Ally away training for a regatta?’
And as we continued to discuss where each of my younger sisters was, as though we needed to get them together for a birthday party rather than to mourn the death of our father, the entire conversation took on a sense of the surreal.
‘When should we plan on having the funeral, do you think? What with Electra being in Los Angeles and Ally somewhere on the high seas, surely we can’t think about it until next week at the earliest?’ I said.
‘Well …’ I heard the hesitation in Marina’s voice. ‘Perhaps the best thing is for you and I to discuss it when you arrive back home. There really is no rush now, Maia, so if you’d prefer to continue the last couple of days of your holiday in London, that would be fine. There’s nothing more to be done for him here …’ Her voice trailed off miserably.
‘Ma, of course I’ll be on the next flight to Geneva I can get! I’ll call the airline immediately, and then I’ll do my best to get in touch with everyone.’
‘I’m so terribly sorry, chérie,’ Marina said sadly. ‘I know how you adored him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, the strange calm that I had felt while we discussed arrangements suddenly deserting me like the stillness before a violent thunderstorm. ‘I’ll call you later, when I know what time I’ll be arriving.’
‘Please take care of yourself, Maia. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
I pressed the button to end the call, and before the storm clouds in my heart opened up and drowned me, I went upstairs to my bedroom to retrieve my flight documents and contact the airline. As I waited in the calling queue, I glanced at the bed where I’d woken up this morning to Simply Another Day. And I thanked God that human beings don’t have the power to see into the future.
The officious woman who eventually answered wasn’t helpful and I knew, as she spoke of full flights, financial penalties and credit card details, that my emotional dam was r
eady to burst. Finally, once I’d grudgingly been granted a seat on the four o’clock flight to Geneva, which would mean throwing everything into my holdall immediately and taking a taxi to Heathrow, I sat down on the bed and stared for so long at the sprigged wallpaper that the pattern began to dance in front of my eyes.
‘He’s gone,’ I whispered, ‘gone forever. I’ll never see him again.’
Expecting the spoken words to provoke a raging torrent of tears, I was surprised that nothing actually happened. Instead, I sat there numbly, my head still full of practicalities. The thought of telling my sisters – all five of them – was horrendous, and I searched through my emotional filing system for the one I would call first. Inevitably, it was Tiggy, the second youngest of the six of us girls and the sibling to whom I’d always felt closest.
With trembling fingers, I scrolled down to find her number and dialled it. When her voicemail answered, I didn’t know what to say, other than a few garbled words asking her to call me back urgently. She was currently somewhere in the Scottish Highlands working at a centre for orphaned and sick wild deer.
As for the other sisters … I knew their reactions would vary, outwardly at least, from indifference to a dramatic outpouring of emotion.
Given that I wasn’t currently sure quite which way I would go on the scale of grief when I did speak to any of them, I decided to take the coward’s way out and texted them all, asking them to call me as soon as they could. Then I hurriedly packed my holdall and walked down the narrow stairs to the kitchen to write a note for Jenny explaining why I’d had to leave in such a hurry.
Deciding to take my chances hailing a black cab on the London streets, I left the house, walking briskly around the leafy Chelsea crescent just as any normal person would do on any normal day. I believe I actually said hello to someone walking a dog when I passed him in the street and managed a smile.
No one would know what had just happened to me, I thought, as I managed to find a taxi on the busy King’s Road and climbed inside, directing the driver to Heathrow.
The Love Letter Page 46
