Chelsea Wives

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

  Yasmin blinked at her, incredulous. How on earth did she know this stuff?

  ‘Look, Stacey,’ Sammie said, her voice softening. ‘I know about your sister. I know about everything.’

  A waiter approached their table.

  ‘I’ll have a vodka tonic. Large,’ Yasmin barked before he’d had a chance to open his mouth.

  Although she knew she shouldn’t, Sammie was really enjoying this moment. Not because she wanted to hurt Stacey Jones – she’d had more than her fair share of pain in her life by anyone’s standards and Sammie had no desire to add to it – but because for the first time in her career she felt like a real journalist. One that investigated and unearthed truths.

  There was a pause while Yasmin gathered her thoughts.

  ‘I think … I think you must have me confused with someone else,’ she said with as much conviction as she could muster. ‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m quite hurt that you don’t remember me,’ Sammie blithely continued. ‘I mean, I remember you. I’ve even got a photograph of the two of us together.’ She took the dog-eared picture her flatmate had found out of her handbag and slid it across the table.

  Yasmin stared at it for a few moments, paralysed. Seeing herself so young, her life already blighted by so much tragedy, made her want to break down and cry on the spot. She had been all alone in the world and yet she was still smiling for the camera, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Yasmin pushed the picture away, fighting back tears.

  The waiter appeared with her drink and she snatched it from the tray, downing it in one hit.

  Sammie smiled.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I? That is you in the picture. You are Stacey Jones, aren’t you?’

  Yasmin did not answer. She would listen to what Grainger had to say, and then she would do whatever she had to do to make the problem go away. She’d offer her money – a lot of it if she had to, to buy her silence. If that didn’t work, she’d put the frighteners on her. Have her followed, see if there wasn’t any dirt of her own she could dig up. And if that failed, well, then she would just have to think again.

  ‘Look. Yasmin. Shall I call you Yasmin or Stacey?’

  ‘“Lady Belmont” is fine,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Sammie said, realising she had over-stepped the mark. ‘I take it Lord Belmont and your newfound friends know nothing about your true provenance, then?’

  Yasmin slammed her hand down hard onto the table, narrowly missing Sammie’s fingers and causing her to gasp in shock.

  ‘Now you listen to me, you filthy, no-mark hack,’ she smiled at her though it belied her fear. ‘Whatever you think you know about me, you don’t know the half of it.’ Yasmin was in a blind state of panic now, her mind awash with fractured thoughts of how she could resolve this mess without her true motives coming to light too soon. Help me, Chloe, she said a silent prayer in her mind. Don’t desert me now.

  ‘I want you to stay out of my business, Grainger. Come near me again and I’ll get an injunction slapped on you so hard you’ll feel the sting into old age, am I making myself clear?’

  Sammie was terrified. Terrified and elated at the same time. This was as good as an admission of truth! She really was onto something.

  ‘Oh, but I think you must have misunderstood me,’ she said, her voice thick with adrenalin. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Stacey. I want to help you.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Yasmin smirked, her lip curling into a snarl. ‘Supposing I even wanted it, how could you help me?’

  Sammie looked up into Yasmin’s impossibly blue eyes and saw a desperate sadness behind her cold, icy stare.

  ‘I could start by telling you where you might find that tape.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Nothing in life, thought Imogen, was ever quite how you expected it to be. And the inside of the vault at Forbes Bank was no exception. Cold and clinical with a grey slate floor, it was hardly the plush, relaxing carpeted space she had envisaged in her mind.

  Imogen pulled a face and looked up as a squeaky, oscillating fan churned the fetid air above them, adding to the chilly ambience. It felt like what it was: a cold, dark basement full of steel boxes. Only these weren’t just any old boxes; Imogen knew that inside them lay a thousand secrets, not to mention millions in cash and jewels. She noted the security cameras in each corner, tiny red dots following her every move.

  Catching her expression, Sebastian raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Not what you were expecting?’

  ‘No. I suppose it isn’t.’

  ‘Well, this is a secure room, Imogen, not a health spa. This is where people come to deposit their valuables. They don’t hang around discussing the latest cosmetic surgery procedures.’ His tone was the usual mix of condescension and sarcasm and she turned away from him. She could not afford an atmosphere between them at the moment. Imogen knew that if the plan that had been formulating inside her mind these last few days had a cat in hell’s chance of reaching any kind of fruition, then she would need to embark upon a charm offensive of epic proportions and get that bastard of a husband of hers onside. Painful though this thought was, buttering him up would be a necessary evil.

  ‘And I’d appreciate it if you could hurry it along a bit.’ Seb checked his Cartier watch impatiently. ‘I’ve got a lunch meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a couple of hours and I’ve a list of calls as long as your arm to return before then.’

  ‘It’s number 1168,’ she said, scanning the boxes.

  Under the strict, detailed instructions of Cressida’s solicitor, Imogen had been asked to go down into the vaults and open Cressida’s strong box in person, giving her the perfect excuse to have a dig around. It made her smile to think that even from the grave, her old friend had come to her rescue in her hour of need.

  Sebastian tapped his fingers against the metal and a sharp echo cut through the eerie silence of the room.

  ‘It’s one of the smaller ones, as I expected,’ he sniffed, feigning a lack of interest. Truth was, he was just as intrigued as Imogen was to find out what was inside Cressida’s strong box.

  Sebastian had never much liked coming down into ‘the bowels’ of the bank, as he described it, which was why he made the trip for VIP clients only and left the ‘hoi polloi’ to his most trusted member of Forbes Security, Derrell ‘Dickie’ Richards.

  ‘I’ve found it!’ Imogen squealed excitedly as she placed the key in the small lock and began to jiggle it.

  ‘Well, come on then – open the damn thing!’

  Imogen twiddled the key and wondered if her husband had always been this acerbic or if he had got worse just lately. Truth was, she honestly didn’t know. She had been so entrenched in heartache back then that she couldn’t really remember.

  Imogen was hard pushed to recall any ‘firsts’ with Seb; their first proper conversation, making love to him for the first time, not even their first argument. All she could remember was the grief she had felt about losing him, the perennial knot in her gut that had simply refused to budge. That ache had taken months to soften, and when it finally had, she had found that she missed it. In the end, the pain was all she’d had left.

  Imogen would never forget the look of despair on his face as he heard the news about Aimee. It would haunt her to her grave.

  It was supposed to have been their first proper holiday together. They had flown into Ibiza late at night, arriving at the stunning hilltop villa in the northern part of the island – their own perfect hacienda that Cressida had arranged, ‘a little break, darling, before the chaos of London Fashion Week’ – and fallen into bed, exhausted. The following morning, Imogen, always an early riser, had beaten him to the small private beach. She had left him gently snoring, allowing him extra time to restore his energies for the days ahead.

  As far as they had both been concerned, the next five days signalled the start of the rest of their lives together and they
had not wanted to waste a single moment. They had planned to hang out with the beautiful people on Playa d’en Bossa beach and Las Salinas, buy beads and leather goods down at the infamous hippie market in Es Cana and go crazy together at Pacha, dancing until sunrise with all the energy and exuberance that only the young and desperately in love can truly possess.

  ‘Hey, sleepyhead, look what I found!’ Imogen had held the conch shell up above her head proudly like a trophy as she walked through the gentle waves towards him. ‘Come on in, the water’s like a bath,’ she’d encouraged. He had walked towards her and their bodies had met, knee deep in the sea. His mouth pressed against hers and she felt the goose bumps on her flesh as he wrapped himself around her, her nipples as hard as diamonds, brushing against his chest as he pulled her closer.

  It would be the first time they had made love since he’d been free – properly free – and it had felt like the first time all over again.

  She had cast her eyes down towards his impressive hardness. ‘I could get used to this as a wake-up call,’ she had teased him, raising an eyebrow.

  Afterwards, they had lain together on the sand, their bodies warmed with passion and the sun, neither wanting to break the physical bond between them.

  ‘I could stay like this forever,’ she remembered him saying as he had traced his finger lightly over her sandy breast.

  ‘Me too,’ she had replied, squinting up at the sky. ‘Only it might be a bit tricky, you know, taking a bath, using the toilet, that sort of thing,’ she’d giggled and he’d squeezed her ribs playfully.

  ‘Stop!’ she’d squirmed, laughing.

  ‘Imp,’ he’d said.

  She pushed him off her playfully, his hotness trickling down her thigh as she had stood.

  ‘Last one to the house has to wash up!’ she’d squealed, adopting a runner’s stance.

  He had shook his head wearily and then suddenly shot past her, laughing as he sprinted off.

  ‘Oooh, you … you cheat!’ she’d yelled as she hotfooted after him, mimicking his deep footprints, kicking sand behind her as she ran.

  Imogen almost laughed out loud as she relived those precious moments they had shared. But her smile soon waned when she thought of what had followed.

  After showering, she had gone to look for him in the vast villa.

  ‘There you are,’ she had said mock crossly as she had padded outside to the balcony, looking out towards the spectacular view. ‘For a moment I thought you were hiding from me.’

  The look on his face had told her instantly that something was wrong. Very wrong.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ he’d said, his voice low and husky. ‘It’s Aimee. She’s fallen down some stairs …’

  It transpired that in a desperate and foolish bid to win his affection back, a drunken Aimee had thrown herself down a flight of stairs. In her damaged young mind, her plan was to have a little accident, something that was just serious enough to bring him home to her, jolt him into realising that he still loved her. Only the consequences were far more tragic than she could ever have anticipated. Aimee had severed her spinal column in the fall. At just twenty-five years old, she was paralysed from the waist down and would never walk again.

  Imogen closed her eyes as she remembered the expression on his face as he had turned to look at her, so sad and desperate that it had taken the breath from her. And he had not needed to speak; in that moment, she knew she had lost him.

  They had made love for the final time on the beach before he left later that morning. Even to this day, she still thought of his lips, soft and trembling against her own, resisting the inevitability of their parting.

  That day, a beautiful summer’s day in Ibiza with the sun high above her, Imogen Lennard had watched the only man she had ever loved walk away from her into the distance, leaving only his footprints in the sand behind.

  In the weeks that had followed, Imogen had thrown herself into her modelling work, and the party scene that invariably accompanied it, in a bid to help her forget the ache inside her chest that had refused to budge. And that’s when she had met Sebastian Forbes. Introduced by a mutual acquaintance, his attentions had been a welcome distraction for her, at least at first.

  The truth was Sebastian had been keeping a close eye on his object of affection for some months, waiting in the wings for his moment to strike with a carefully orchestrated charm offensive. Eventually, his patience paid off.

  As unfair as it was in hindsight, Imogen had initially thought of Seb as little more than a ‘band-aid’ boyfriend. But before long, she had found herself sucked into the vortex of the much older and manipulative Sebastian’s seductive world.

  Within weeks, he had whisked her off to Necker Island for the holiday of a lifetime and, little more than a month later, he asked for her hand in marriage. Only what Sebastian had failed to realise at the time was that Imogen’s heart belonged to someone else …

  Sebastian looked at his wife then and wondered if now was a good time to tell her that Bryony had called the house that morning and told him that she would be coming home for the summer term, just in time to help her father celebrate his birthday! He had wanted to feel happy about this, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to. As far as Imogen was concerned, the moment Bryony came into the picture, he became as good as invisible.

  Imogen’s subjugation was seemingly working like a dream. Ever since the night of the ball she appeared to have abandoned any notion of a career resurrection. It was as if, at last, she had seen sense and accepted her place in their marriage. Last night, for the first time in months, they had made love. There had even been talk of them spending more time together as a couple; a holiday, perhaps. But now with Bryony coming home, as far as Sebastian was concerned, it would all be spoiled.

  ‘Look, are you opening the damn thing or not?’ he barked at her impatiently, his thoughts beginning to irritate him. ‘I’m pushed for time here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Seb. It’s stuck, I … oh, here we go.’ The tiny wheels made a high-pitched squeak along the runners of the drawer, setting her teeth on edge as she tentatively opened it.

  Peering inside Imogen was disappointed to see that it was empty. Cressida had obviously cleaned it out, which only added to her paranoia that the conversation she had overheard between the two women at Cressida’s funeral about her being bankrupt were probably true.

  ‘What a bloody anticlimax,’ Sebastian remarked and on this occasion Imogen was inclined to agree with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, a little melancholy, ‘I was rather hoping, knowing Cress as I do – as I did – that it might be full to the brim with diamonds.’

  ‘Diamonds? Ha!’ Sebastian threw his head back. ‘If it’s diamonds you want to see,’ he scoffed, ‘then I’ll show you a diamond.’

  She looked up at him then, her eyes shining like the jewels themselves.

  ‘The Bluebird, you mean?’

  He raised an eyebrow, aroused by her sudden interest.

  ‘But I thought you had things to do,’ she said, calling his bluff. ‘The Chancellor …’

  ‘Do you want to see it or not?’ he snapped.

  ‘Well, I’d love to, of course, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I know how busy you are.’

  Sebastian grinned. Grateful suited her.

  ‘Wait until you see her up close, and whatever you do, do not touch anything. The room we are about to enter is heat censored as well as sound and touch sensitive. Get too close and the whole goddamn alarm system will go off.’

  ‘Really? And what would happen then?’ Imogen asked, wide-eyed with the thought of such impending drama.

  ‘A swat team would be on the scene within seconds. And Prince Saud would have my head on a stick! The bloody fool thinks this diamond is in possession of his dead mother’s spirit or some such ridiculousness – he doesn’t want to have her upset.’

  Imogen raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I see. Best we go careful then.’

  She
watched as Sebastian began to run his hand alongside the far facing wall.

  ‘Ah ha!’ he said, pressing a small button.

  Imogen gasped as the seamless wall suddenly opened up in the middle like a set of electric gates, exposing another set of steel doors behind it. Sebastian stood in front of the door and pulled down a large metal flap.

  ‘A secret room!’ Imogen breathed.

  Sebastian nodded, pleased with himself.

  ‘And what’s that?’ she asked, looking up at the wall.

  ‘It’s a state of the art sensor lock,’ he said excitedly, keeping his head still as what looked like a small camera came into view. ‘This machine here is scanning my face. It’s actually reading my skin like a fingerprint! The contours of my nose, the colour of my eyes, that tiny scar on my lip … every pore, every wrinkle unique to me.’ He turned to her and grinned. ‘Effectively, I am the key!’ Seb laughed again then, a horrible startling laugh that could cause a horse to rear.

  ‘It’s the most sophisticated piece of security in the world,’ he boasted, ‘and the most expensive. It’s been ten years in project and another ten in production it’s a sublime piece of equipment,’ he said, gazing at it admiringly. ‘There’s not another system like it on the planet.’

  Imogen watched and listened with a curious mixture of wonder and discomfiture. The whole thing was quite surreal, like something from a James Bond film, with her husband cast as the baddie.

  With a low sinister hiss, the steel doors parted. The room was small and everything inside it was perfectly white, from the pristine, plush soft carpet to the flocked-fabric padded walls. It was like the inside of a giant jewellery box, with the Bluebird, in all its stunning, magnificent glory, situated on a cushioned plinth in the middle.