by Victoria Fox
When he didn’t speak, Lori gestured inside. ‘Can we …?’
‘Yes,’ he said, standing back. ‘Of course you can, of course, of course.’
The house was tidy and organised and calm, all the things her stepfamily wasn’t.
‘Where’s Angélica?’ Lori asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table. Everything looked smaller than it had three years ago, as if she had grown.
Tony made them drinks. He was nervous, determined to get things right.
‘Angélica isn’t here.’
‘She isn’t?’ Lori took Omar from his pram and held him.
‘No.’ A beat. ‘Have you seen Maria’s?’
‘I stopped by on my way. What can I say? It’s wonderful.’
‘It’s thanks to you,’ he said, joining her. ‘I don’t think Angélica could handle that.’ Omar’s fat hands reached for his grandpa. ‘She never supported your success. She hated it. Especially when things were so different for her own daughters.’
Lori frowned. ‘Anita and Rosa don’t work there any more?’
Tony sighed. ‘There’s much to tell, Lori. After you left, they could no longer manage Tres Hermanas. And since then … well, Rosa got pregnant by a local boy. She’s living in Glassell Park with twins, another on the way. Anita—’ his face clouded ‘—she thought she could follow your footsteps into modelling. She hoped your name would carry her.’
‘Did it?’
Tony stroked the child’s cheek, mesmerised. ‘Did what?’
‘Did it carry her?’
Tony pulled away, not wanting to contaminate Omar with his news. ‘Anita got in with a bad crowd. The type of work she was doing wasn’t good; it wasn’t legitimate. She was promised things would change but …’ He trailed off. ‘This is the last I heard. They refuse to see me now Angélica’s gone.’
Lori was surprised. ‘Angélica left as well?’
‘Actually, I asked her to.’
She experienced a moment, fleeting but all the lovelier for its brevity, of joy.
‘We fought,’ Tony explained, ‘about your pregnancy. I told her your situation after we came back from Spain. I was confused and angry, Lori, but most of all I was worried.’ He searched her face. ‘This was the sort of thing you needed your mama for, not me, and I didn’t know what to do. Angélica said some unforgivable things—things that weren’t true and I knew I could never forget. I could not keep her under my roof.’
What her stepmother might have said no longer affected her. ‘How did she take it?’
‘She begged to stay but I told her no. Because it wasn’t only her bitterness, it was the fact Maria’s was doing so well and she couldn’t embrace its success. It made me see that she never understood what was important to me and never wanted to try.’
‘Papa, I’m sorry.’
‘No. I am sorry.’ He met her eyes. In that glimpse he told her more than words ever could. ‘I realised something I should have realised a long time ago.’
She looked to Omar. ‘Do you want to hold him?’
Tony’s face lit up. Lori passed the child into his arms and watched as he gazed down, with total absorption, at Omar’s matching inquisitive expression.
She and her father smiled at each other, the wonder of the baby between them. Lori’s smile turned into a laugh, and, with it, the lump in her throat ruptured and exploded into beads of relief.
It was late by the time she returned home. Maximo’s Lexus was in the drive, alongside another car that she didn’t recognise.
‘Max?’ The hall was in darkness, a lonely glow emanating from the lounge. She parked Omar’s pram and scooped him into her arms, following the light.
In the lounge, Maximo was seated with a woman. He stood when Lori came in, as though he’d been caught out, though judging by the woman’s countenance it was a formal visit. The woman was dark-haired, her pale knees held together in a crimson pencil skirt.
Shock was pursued by fear.
Rebecca Stuttgart.
The woman who had sent her those filthy notes. Here, in her house.
‘What’s going on?’ Lori demanded.
Rebecca’s eyes fell to Omar, affection and desire ripe in her gaze, and all Lori could think was: She wants my baby. She wants to take my baby.
‘What are you doing here?’
Omar began to cry.
‘I must speak with you.’ Rebecca got to her feet. Her eyes kept switching back to the baby and Lori held him tight. She remembered JB’s regret.
‘Rebecca and I tried for years for a child … I’m not able to …’
Her words were out before she had time to check them. ‘I want you gone,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you here.’
Maximo intervened, confused by her outburst. ‘Darling, aren’t you being—?’
‘What? A concerned mother? You have no clue what this woman is capable of. I don’t want her anywhere near my son.’ She backed away, attempting to soothe the infant’s cries. ‘She’s been sending me letters. Despicable, horrible letters.’
Rebecca frowned. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t pretend. I know it was you.’
‘What was me?’
‘Get out. And don’t think about coming back.’
‘I’m not going until you hear what I have to say.’
Lori passed the screaming child to Maximo. ‘Take him upstairs,’ she ordered, he being the lesser of two evils. ‘And promise me you won’t leave him, even for a second.’
The instant they were gone, Lori turned on the woman. ‘Whatever it is, Rebecca, make it quick. And then leave me, and my son, alone.’
Rebecca matched her defiance.
‘Lori,’ she said simply, ‘I know Omar’s his.’
‘Did you honestly think I wouldn’t be able to see it? I’ve been married to the man for ten years—do you think I haven’t imagined a thousand times what his child would look like? In such detail that when I saw your boy I knew instantly, without a shadow of doubt, that he was JB’s?’
Lori had slept with a married man. For the first time she saw the devastating result, woman to woman, of her selfishness. She sank to the couch in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’m sorry for what I did,’ she said. ‘It was wrong. Believe me, I see that now.’
The apology was final proof, a confession that quashed any shoot of hope Rebecca might yet have had, and it broke her. Her neck fell, the knots of her spine white as sand-blown pebbles.
‘You know we can’t have our own?’ She emitted a short, harsh laugh. ‘I told him it was his fault. I told him the problem lay with him, not me. It was a lie. He’s perfectly able, as you well know.’
Lori didn’t reply. In her mind, gears were starting to shift: slowly, grinding, gaining momentum.
‘That’s why he has no idea about Omar,’ Rebecca continued grimly. ‘As far as JB’s concerned, it’s a physical impossibility.’
The facts began to settle, like mist on a dewy morning.
‘You lied to him?’
‘I was losing him.’ The older woman’s voice was snappish, switched on the defence. ‘I could feel him slipping away. Come on, Lori, you must know what that’s like. It was wicked revenge: I admit it. It felt too unkind that I should be the one struggling. Why should I? So I turned it round on him. One lie after another, mounting and mounting, till I no longer knew how to unpick it.’ She looked up. ‘He believes Maximo is the child’s father, Lori. Why shouldn’t he?’
Pieces of the past year slipped over each other, rearranging themselves into a new picture. She blinked.
‘But I tried to tell him,’ she murmured. ‘I tried to get in touch—’
‘And I made sure he never heard a damn word.’ Rebecca turned to face her adversary. There wasn’t a note of regret in her words and Lori wasn’t expecting one. ‘I instructed my contacts at La Lumière to disregard every missive you attempted.’
‘But his cell, what about the messages I left—?’
‘Do you r
eally know so little of JB?’ Rebecca laughed incredulously. ‘You’re nobody to him now. He’d have blocked you as soon as he realised.’
It made sense. It made complete sense.
‘Is he back?’
‘JB’s never back. He’s always absent, one way or another.’
Lori saw the key. The key was Rebecca: it had been all along. She went to turn it, fingers outstretched, afraid of what she’d find behind the door but knowing she had to look.
‘Where has he been?’
JB’s wife poured herself a drink. ‘On business.’
‘What business?’
The liquid vanished down Rebecca’s white throat and her next words were soft, a low rasp, so that Lori had to strain to hear.
‘You were just a number …’
She leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry?’
Rebecca’s bloodshot eyes were red-rimmed, their emotion closer to pity than anger.
‘You were just a number,’ she repeated. ‘You were meant to be just a number. One of them, that was all, no different.’
It flashed through Lori’s mind. LA864.
Rebecca smoothed her skirt and Lori noticed her fingers were shaking. In her head was a rushing sound, like water being poured from a great height.
‘I knew about you long before I met you, Lori Garcia.’ She nodded, as if to confirm it was still the truth. ‘You were perfect. JB had been seeking a Hispanic woman for a long time, the remit was so particular, and then, suddenly, there you were. The first time he saw you, at the harbour with your boyfriend, he knew. Both of them did: he and Reuben van der Meyde.
‘Van der Meyde brought his boat there once, to the San Pedro harbour. JB and I were with him. That was it. He saw you and that was it. He knew you were the one. JB chased you down, he had his people find out everything they could and he came back and he told us you were the answer.’ Rebecca looked to the floor, unable to meet Lori’s stare. ‘My husband found out about your poor dead mother, and your father and your stepfamily, and how unhappy you were, and how little money or means you had, and about your boyfriend and his brother and how desperate things had become. All of you, crying out for help. Help the organisation could give.’
Lori’s voice cracked. ‘The organisation?’
‘He became obsessed by you. And, do you know what? I should have seen it coming. So many women, so many he’d tracked over the years but you … you were too special to let go. I never incited that passion in him. No one did.
‘For a long time he watched over you, under the pretence of making sure you were viable but I knew it was more than that. He wanted to take care of you. He told me you reminded him of a girl he used to know. And the saddest thing? That’s one of the only times my husband has ever come close to confiding in me. Oh, I’ve tried to join the dots. Hasn’t everyone? Unhappy childhood, distant parents, accident child, solitary upbringing … Only he couldn’t help himself. He got too close.’
‘But La Lumière …’
‘JB sent Desideria Gomez. He feared for you. He wanted you near, even if it killed him. And it did. In the end, temptation was too hard to resist.’
Lori couldn’t get her head around it. ‘What are you telling me?’
Rebecca rolled the empty glass between her palms.
‘I’m telling you that you were meant to have a child,’ she said, ‘but not this one. Not Omar.’ Her tone was measured. ‘You were meant to carry a child for a couple who wanted to pay you for it. They would have paid you a fortune. More money than you have today.’
Lori waited for the punchline but it didn’t come. She burst out laughing.
‘A Spanish couple,’ Rebecca went on, ‘one of the enterprise’s most exacting to date. Willing to pay the highest rate yet. But no woman was good enough, no woman fitted their specifications … Until you.’
‘That’s enough.’ These were the ramblings of a crazy woman. ‘You should leave.’
‘Listen to me! You were meant to be a surrogate to these people, Lori, for God’s sake. That’s why JB found you. That’s why all of this happened!’
Lori grasped the woman’s error and clung to it, grappling for any explanation other than the one she was hearing. ‘But JB didn’t find me,’ she countered, fumbling for an alternative, ‘Desideria did.’
Rebecca slammed her glass down. ‘Aren’t you hearing me? JB sent Desideria for you. He’s been looking after you since day one!’
She was desperate to refute it. Yet Rebecca Stuttgart’s story, parts of it, shades of it, rang appallingly true.
‘LA864 …’
She didn’t realise she’d said it aloud, but Rebecca nodded sadly.
‘You did end up having a baby for him,’ she said softly. A single tear escaped down her cheek. ‘Only not in the way he had planned.’
‘I have to see him,’ Lori mumbled. ‘He has to know.’
‘Then come back to the island.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can. I’ve told you because I can’t keep living the lie—not about what’s going on on Cacatra and not about your child.’ She took a step closer. ‘Now, it’s your turn. You have to tell him. You. At Reuben van der Meyde’s party, a month from now.’
Lori’s eyes were hollow. She raised them to the other woman’s face.
‘I need to know the whole story.’
‘And you’ll get it,’ Rebecca said gravely. ‘But after this, there’s no going back.’
56
Present Day
Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean
One hour to departure
Enrique Marquez was smoking: a still, solitary island amid the tumultuous waves of organisers, caterers, planners, managers and assistants, all rushing and darting like wasps to sugar, desperate to be involved and important. Enrique regarded them with ill-concealed loathing.
He’d had to escape the yacht; the atmosphere there made him sick. Morons fawning over what van der Meyde was going to like or not like, what was good enough or not good enough, each and every one of them falling over themselves to please a man who couldn’t give a crap, had never in his privileged fucking life given a crap, about pleasing other people. Enrique was here for one reason and one reason alone. Revenge.
The sun was setting. Apricot light spilled on to the water as if a great fire burned beneath the surface. Had Enrique not known better, he’d have said this was what heaven looked like.
A trio of sharp-suited caterers were loading crates on to the boat, pursued by a big, moustachioed bald guy, head of the company organising tonight’s event.
‘Are you gonna put that out, or do I have to make you?’
Enrique dragged deeply. ‘A man’s allowed a smoke—it’s a free country.’
‘You’re in van der Meyde’s country now, son. Put it out.’
He extinguished it on the web of skin between first finger and thumb.
Disgusted, the man pushed past. ‘I’ll be watching you like a hawk tonight, Romero.’ It was the name he’d given the agency.
Enrique grinned. Sure. Let the whole world watch and they’d still be facing the wrong way. Where they ought to be looking was right beneath their feet, to the blinking device he’d fixed earlier in the lower deck. The detonator clipped to the inside of his shirt. One button, one contact, one second was all it took. He closed his eyes and pictured it now, the small black box awaiting his instruction, time running down like sand through a glass.
Shouldn’t he be on that boat?
From the top of the van der Meyde mansion, Margaret Jensen shivered in her plum-coloured evening gown. She glared down at the beach and wrung her hands. Enrique Marquez was a risk—and he had to be, for who planned to execute a stunt as ambitious, as grisly, as this, if they weren’t prepared to lay it all on the line?
‘Can we go see Daddy now?’
Ralph was in the doorway, dressed in a tux and with a toy boat dangling from one arm.
‘In a minute, darling. Your father’s busy.’
‘He’s a
lways busy.’
Margaret crouched, holding him close and inhaling his soapy smell and the softness of his hair. Her son. Beloved.
‘I know,’ she told him. ‘But this is a special night for him. Tomorrow, everything’s going to be different. Just you wait and see.’
Through the open doors of the van der Meyde mansion, Rebecca Stuttgart could hear the bustle and flurry of preparations down below. In less than an hour, four hundred VIP guests would be shown on to the most opulent yacht the world had ever seen.
She and JB were awaiting Reuben’s emergence in the mansion’s lobby.
As she watched her husband, his hands in his suit pockets, his blue gaze cool on the marble floor, she braced herself.
I’m one of them, Lori had warned: for who else could have sent the message?
The truth comes out.
The girl was braver than Rebecca had given her credit for. She wasn’t content with bringing JB the truth about her son. Now she wanted to blow the lid on Cacatra.
Rebecca should have been immobilised with fear. It had been her disclosure, after all.
Only tomorrow, she knew, she’d be long gone. Her destination was set, her new beginning planned. Her husband and his fury, the island and its secret—come the morning, they’d be distant memories, carried on the wind.
‘You look amazing.’
Maximo Diaz looped his arms around Lori’s waist and kissed her on the lips.
She could not stand his touch. ‘Don’t.’
He raised her hand and kissed her fingers instead. His eyes were framed by soft lashes and his skin was porcelain. She thought of him growing up in his European castle, Gothic spires buried deep in a pit of ferns, and imagined herself to be trapped there, chained to an underground wall, hearing his vampire tread and the long, lonely cries as he consumed his women, knowing he would live on and on with no end to her suffering, locked in till the end of time.
‘You know the pretend thing turns me on,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I can’t help myself.’
Lori removed herself under the pretext of adjusting her dress, a simple, elegant fishtail silhouette in blazing ochre. Her dark hair was loose, tumbling in jet waves.
