Calvary shook her head.
‘No offence, Josia,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think it’s anything you can help me with.’
‘Try me, I’ve been told I’m a good listener,’ he encouraged.
‘It’s personal,’ Calvary explained, fidgeting uncomfortably on the bench.
‘Well, of course it is,’ Josia shrugged. ‘Everything is personal.’
Calvary dropped her shoulders. Why was he so interested in her problems anyway?
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘It’s just that I sense you want to.’
Calvary snorted with mirth.
‘You certainly sense a lot for a young man, don’t you?’
Josia shrugged again.
‘Young, old, somewhere in between, we’re animals at the end of the day – we sense everything.’
Calvary surreptitiously rolled her eyes at this cod-philosophy. He had an air of confidence about him, like he knew some big secret that she didn’t.
She really wasn’t sure whether she was warming to the stranger or not. Still, what did it matter? It was unlikely she would ever see him again. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps sharing her problems might help.
‘It’s my husband,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a complete and utter bastard.’
Josia looked at Calvary, his expression unchanged.
‘Why’s that?’ he asked, his tone sitting just in the right place between concern and intrigue.
Calvary had never done anything like this in her life, opening up to a complete stranger, telling them her most intimate personal business. Suddenly she felt vulnerable and exposed.
‘Aside from spending our whole married life cheating on me with other women – notably younger ones I must add – I recently walked in on him screwing our son’s fiancée whom he is due to marry in a matter of months.’ Calvary took an audible breath.
Josia blinked.
‘Jesus that’s harsh.’
‘Ha!’ Calvary threw her head back releasing her trademark laugh. ‘If you think that’s harsh then get this …’ She was on a roll now, forgetting where she was and who she was talking to. ‘I can’t even divorce him!’
‘Why?’ Josia asked, watching her intently.
‘Because he’s embezzled all his goddamn money, that’s why. Hidden it from me. He’ll declare himself bankrupt and I’ll get nothing!’
Josia shrugged.
‘But you could still divorce him.’
Calvary laughed again. Harder this time.
‘What, and lose everything? I think not!’
‘Sounds as though you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.’ Josia flicked his long fringe away from his dark eyes.
‘No. You don’t understand,’ she retorted, a little irritated by such a sweeping statement. ‘It’s not as cut and dried as that.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Josia looked a little puzzled.
Calvary noticed he was a day or two off clean shaven and that he was much more attractive up close. Like a young Johnny Depp. She bristled, turning to face him.
‘I have given everything to this man; the best years of my bloody life. I have born him two beautiful children and have remained faithful to him throughout our marriage – not that I haven’t had the opportunity to stray,’ she felt compelled to add.
Josia smiled.
‘He owes me big time. And now he owes our son as well. His own son. How could he do it to his own child?’ Calvary’s voice was shaking now and she felt the light touch of the stranger’s fingers on her arm. Oddly, for someone who fiercely guarded her personal space, she did not seem to mind.
‘Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of standing still,’ Josia spoke softly, almost in a whisper.
Calvary turned to him.
‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s pretty self-explanatory,’ he replied calmly.
‘Not to me it isn’t!’ she interjected, suddenly feeling cross with herself. What had she been thinking? Now he was spouting some irritating New Age crap at her that made no sense at all.
‘It’s a Chinese proverb actually,’ Josia said quietly.
‘Well, thanks a million,’ Calvary snapped derisively. ‘Next time I need advice I’ll buy a bag of fortune cookies.’
Josia blinked at her. He seemed indifferent and this only served to annoy her further.
As she stood to leave, he noticed her hands were shaking.
‘Well, I’d like to say it was nice to meet you,’ Calvary blathered, embarrassed and upset with herself. ‘But I’m not sure that would be entirely true.’
Josia looked up at her with intense, dark eyes. Infuriatingly, his expression was still unchanged.
‘Beluga! Cashmere!’ she called out to her dogs who, sensing playtime was well and truly over, trotted over to their mistress.
‘Forgive me,’ she coughed, turning away from him, ready to leave. ‘I should’ve known better than to pour my heart out to a complete stranger – and one so young. It was a silly idea.’
‘I’m thirty-four,’ he replied, a look of bemusement on his boyish face. This woman was troubled, he thought. Really troubled. ‘And a stranger is simply a friend you have not yet met.’
Calvary laughed, a mocking sound that rang through the air like a bell tolling.
‘You’ve been reading the back of too many cereal packets.’ She raised her eyebrows, though she did not really know why she was mocking him, it was obvious that he was only trying to be friendly. And she was surprised by his age. She really had thought he was much younger.
‘You know, I see something else in your face,’ he said, hoping to stall this caustic, enchanting woman a moment longer. He did not want her to leave their encounter feeling more upset than when she had arrived.
‘Don’t tell me,’ she deadpanned, ‘Botox?’
He didn’t laugh.
‘Kindness, selflessness – and beauty. You really are a very beautiful woman, Calvary Rothschild.’
The fact that he had remembered her name – and then used it in such a familiar way – stopped her dead in her tracks. Unable to make eye contact with him for fear of blushing, something Calvary had not done in years, she turned on her heels.
‘I’d like to paint you sometime,’ he called out after her. ‘I think you’d really be something on canvas.’ He watched her as she stalked off, her dogs trotting haphazardly behind her. ‘Really something,’ he said quietly as she shrank into the distance.
CHAPTER 16
Sammie Grainger stared at the cardboard boxes in front of her. It wasn’t a lot to show for twenty-four years on the planet, she decided, as she stacked the last of them, but at least she wouldn’t even need to enlist the help of a friend to shift this lot. She was moving onwards and upwards at least, waving goodbye to her old student lifestyle and saying hello to independence, to her own studio crash pad in Earls Court, no less.
Sammie exhaled deeply. She had thought this day would never come, but now that it had, she was beginning to have some reservations. Would she be lonely all on her own?
The people she lived with, her housemates – two guys and a girl – had started out as perfect strangers, thrown together at random, all sharing a need to find shelter in this crazy, relentless metropolis they found themselves calling home. Now though, they had become friends, their lives forever intrinsically linked by circumstance. And she would miss them all.
As if on cue, Krista burst into Sammie’s room. As usual, she didn’t bother knocking.
Krista was a particularly vivacious twenty-three-year-old blonde Aussie girl with beach babe sun-kissed yellow hair and a smile as wide as the Thames. She was enviously unself-conscious and boundlessly enthusiastic about everything, even her overworked and underpaid barmaid’s job in a local backpackers’ bar in West Kensington. Life according to Krista was always ‘awesome’ and in the three years that Sammie had known her she had never once seen her in anything other than an eff
ervescent, upbeat mood.
‘So you’re all packed then, hon?’ Krista nodded in the direction of Sammie’s meagre collection of boxes.
‘Uh-huh,’ Sammie sighed. ‘Not much to show for my life is it?’
Krista shrugged. ‘Who wants baggage? Besides, it saves on removal costs. Aw,’ she cooed, picking up Sammie’s old moth-eaten teddy bear from the top of an open box. ‘I see you’re taking Tinker with you. I was hoping you might leave him,’ she said, clutching him to her chest. ‘He’s kinda cute.’
‘Not a chance,’ Sammie smiled. ‘Wherever I go, Tinker goes. It’s the law.’
Krista beamed her mile-wide smile and began digging around in the open box, hoping to unearth a little keepsake in memory of her favourite housemate.
‘So, you’ll be inviting us round to help christen the new pad, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Sammie nodded, fretting at the thought of the damage to her new carpet already.
‘And you promise to call me and tell me all about this swanky party you’re off to. Ford’s thingemywotsit.’
Sammie giggled. ‘Forbes’s Annual Ball.’
‘That’s the one. Man, your job is just the coolest.’
Sammie had had to stop herself from openly whooping for joy when old Sasquatch had invited her to be his plus one at Forbes’s Annual Ball.
‘I like to give the younger members of my team the opportunity to come along to these events,’ Pugh, her hirsute editor, had said as he eyed his latest recruit with a quietly lascivious eye. ‘It’s good practice, great for making contacts. I was impressed with your Chelsea Wives piece, it showed a maturity beyond your years. I think it’s time for you to take the next step, Samantha,’ he had said, wondering how many bottles of Chateau Margaux he would have to pour down her neck before she let him screw her.
‘I don’t know what to say!’ Sammie had had to stop herself from leaning over her editor’s desk and planting a big smacker on his swarthy old face. Perhaps he wasn’t such an old bastard after all. This was the best news she had heard all year, bar actually getting the job on ESL itself of course, and what was even better about it was that Yasmin Belmont-Jones was undoubtedly going to be there.
‘Lady Belmont-Jones’ had become Sammie’s secret obsession. Ever since their first meeting she had almost turned herself inside out trying to fathom just how and why this aristocratic young woman seemed so familiar to her. Not that she’d let on to old Sasquatch of course, she was going to make this her story – for she was absolutely convinced there was one and sensed that if she could just get to the bottom of it, it would be the making of her career.
*
Krista pulled out a wallet of old photographs and brazenly began to look through them. She had no sense of privacy.
‘Oh my God!’ Krista began to laugh, ‘is this you as a kid?’
She held up a picture of a young teenage girl with mad curls and braces who was smiling up into the camera and giving the peace sign.
Sammie lurched forward in an attempt to snatch the offending photo from her but Krista was way too quick for her and held it high above her head.
‘Give me that!’ Sammie cried, mildly annoyed and embarrassed.
‘Nah-ah!’ Krista teased, flicking through the rest of them. ‘What else have we got here?’
‘Krista, give them back!’ Sammie pleaded, trying to grab hold of her friend’s wrist.
‘Look at you in this one! Wow! You look so different, Sam, like a proper black girl with cornrows and shit.’ Krista shook her head and giggled. ‘Man, you know I forget when I look at you that you’ve got a touch of the tar brush in there.’
Sammie felt a little offended but hid it. She was used to such comments.
‘Is this you with your mum?’ Krista asked, holding up a picture of Sammie and another girl standing next to a pretty, well-dressed woman.
Sammie sighed. It was futile trying to prevent Krista from looking so she went along with it, standing next to her as she shuffled through the pictures.
‘No, that’s my friend Rachel’s mum. Jesus, what was her surname? Rachel … Rachel … Adsmith, yeah, that was it. Her mum ran the local youth centre. We hung out there most nights when we were kids. There wasn’t much else to do where I came from.’
‘How old were you in this one?’ Krista asked, giggling at a snapshot of Sammie dressed in a pair of baggy jeans with braces and DMs. ‘Bit of a tomboy, weren’t you?’
Sammie blushed. She hadn’t seen these photographs in years, had forgotten they even existed.
‘I must’ve been about ten there. Nine or ten perhaps.’
‘God. That’s like, fifteen or so years ago, dude! I swear I don’t remember anything that far back.’
‘That’ll be all the Thai grass you smoke,’ Sammie deadpanned.
Krista laughed and rolled her eyes.
‘You look like a boy.’
Sammie felt herself blush again.
‘It was the fashion!’ she protested. ‘Look!’ Sammie replied defensively. ‘Look at what everyone else is wearing!’
She took the bunch of photographs from Krista now and began searching through them herself.
‘Look, see!’ she said, finding a group shot that showed a bunch of kids all together, smiling and pulling faces at the camera.
‘There’s Susan Roper in the stripy jumpsuit, rocking the Andy Pandy vibe, and there’s Caroline Baker – she was another estate kid, thought she was a hard nut – she’s the one in the England football shirt, and … Oh, God!’ Sammie stared open-mouthed at the picture.
‘What?’ Krista said, sensing real shock in her friend’s voice. ‘What is it?’
Clutching the photograph, Sammie’s hand began to shake.
‘Jesus, it can’t be …’ Her eyes were focussed on the face of a young, mousey brown-haired girl wearing a tatty pair of tight jeans and an old smiley-face t-shirt. She was standing to the far left of the shot, a little further back from the others. Her face wasn’t as sharp as the others but Sammie recognised it instantly. The prominent cheekbones, the rosebud lips and those sad, yet mesmerising sapphire blue eyes. It was her, alright.
‘Well, I’ll be damned …’ Sammie whispered aloud, lost in the moment, forgetting that Krista was even in the room.
‘What, what will you be damned?’ Krista was insistent now, desperately trying to see whatever it was that had got Sammie so unusually worked up.
‘I knew that I had seen her somewhere before.’
‘Seen who?’ Krista was almost beside herself now.
‘Let’s just say you’ve helped me solve a riddle,’ she said, feeling a potent rush of excitement.
‘You talk in riddles,’ Krista said, raising her eyebrows.
Sammie smiled obliviously, unable to remove her gaze from the picture.
Well, well, well, she thought to herself as she gripped the dog-eared photo. Her instincts had been correct all along.
Krista, having lost interest already, was busying herself with Sammie’s CD collection now.
‘Do you think you’ll still remember me in fifteen years’ time?’ she pouted, as she held up an old Smiths CD.
Sammie stared up at her friend and smiled so broadly that her cheeks hurt.
‘Oh, I think so,’ she said, reassuring her. ‘I never forget a face.’
CHAPTER 17
Imogen held her breath as the chauffeur-driven Bentley drew up towards the magnificent rose-coloured up-lit splendour of Lancaster House, its wheels making a satisfactory crunch against asphalt as it came to a halt.
‘Sir, madam. We’ve arrived,’ their driver announced.
‘Jolly good, Raoul, but give it five minutes will you. I just need to gather my thoughts.’ Sebastian snapped, his mood tetchy. He had been fretting the whole journey there, barking last minute orders into his phone to his numerous minions, his voice hoarse with discord. In truth, however, as much as anything else, he wanted to make sure there were as many paparazzi as possible waiting for him when he
made his grand entrance.
‘Those bloody flowers better have turned up,’ he spat, tapping his fingers nervously against the leather seat. ‘I’ll have that Mark Wainwright out of business if not.’
‘Stay calm, Seb. You’ve got Janet and a whole team of people to worry about all that sort of thing for you. Just try and concentrate on having a good evening.’ Imogen did her best to placate her husband, even if a little bit of her was relishing his anxiety.
It was the same thing every year when it came to the night of the annual ball, Sebastian working himself up into a lather of epic proportions over the tiniest detail. Only this year he seemed even more fretful than usual.
Sebastian ignored her.
‘I said white and green and blue hydrangeas in the foyer,’ he hissed, glimpsing up at the pastel coloured blooms that were just visible from inside the huge entrance. ‘Bloody great faggot. You can never trust those gays. Too busy preening themselves in the mirror to know what’s what.’
Imogen sighed and looked out of the car window. It had been a hellish few weeks, what with losing Cressida, and then the bombshell discovery about the terrible lie. Now, on top of everything, she had to endure the chore that was the annual ball, where false smiles and strained conversation were the order of the day. Just thinking about the evening ahead exhausted her.
‘I just hope he hasn’t mucked up the Dorchester,’ Sebastian spat. ‘I said a thousand white roses for the prince. I mean, what part of one thousand white roses could the man not understand? Bloody fool’s one teddy bear short of a picnic.’
‘Why all the flowers anyway?’ Imogen queried. ‘Bit over the top, isn’t it?’ Sebastian cursed himself for having mentioned it. He had wanted it kept quiet that it was his hospitality that Prince Saud and his entourage would be enjoying during their stay in London, lest anyone think – rightly as it happened – that he had attempted to buy his way into the prince’s confidence. He had even arranged to have that little actress the prince had taken a shine to flown in from LA. He had gone to a lot of trouble. A hell of a lot of trouble. Still, it would all be worth it, he thought smugly, once he made his spectacular announcement tonight.
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