by Victoria Fox
‘I named you Aurora,’ Reuben said. ‘The light. Because you were my first.’
No, no, no, no, no.
‘I’d done it all. I was bored. Bored with everything. Bored, even, with what we were doing on Cacatra: the surrogacies, the babies, everything. It made money, but it wasn’t testing my ambition. I needed to find another way …’
Aurora’s body went slack. She crumpled against the wall, dripping down it like paint.
‘It felt like a fucking revolution. A shot at the next big thing.’
The gun was hanging from her grip like a dead fish.
‘Not difficult,’ he said. ‘Not after the first time.’
‘Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it—’
‘I don’t know why I picked her.’ Reuben’s tone was resigned to the inevitable. ‘I’d travelled to Finland to see her … there was a complication with the exchange and I never expected her to be so pretty. So I had an idea, a genius idea, and I told her this was the request. That Tom and Sherilyn had asked for it.’
Aurora thought she was going to faint.
‘The Northern Lights … you were conceived beneath them. I felt like God,’ he blathered, deranged, ‘the beginning of a new order. Put on this earth for a single reason. Procreation.’ He licked his lips. ‘The second Adam! My children becoming part of the world … you don’t get more powerful than that.’
Reuben was trembling, cold at his fingertips and his toes. ‘Not unless you do something unprecedented … Don’t you see?’ His eyes snapped to her, insane. ‘Kids born into families right across the world, rich, influential families, who will go on to achieve great, important things that change the world and write history … Kids with my blood running through their veins …’
It came at her like a train down the line.
She leapt for him, clawing.
‘Don’t do it!’ he roared. ‘I’m the only family you have left!’
She scratched at his eyes, his hair, anything she could grab hold of.
‘It’s me, Aurora. I’m your father. Welcome home.’
64
A little way down the beach, a small boy was hunting for sea turtles. His father had told him they came in to lay their eggs at night, leathery things whose shells shone white in troughs of sand. He was supposed to be fast asleep by now—Miss Jensen, the housekeeper, would murder him—but it was boring waiting inside the mansion. He squinted at the yacht, hundreds of miles away, it seemed, and wished he could be there instead of here. They told him that one day it would all be his: his great inheritance. Crouching at the water’s edge, the palm of one hand cradling his chin and the other blindly raking the beach, it was hard to believe. His knees were damp from where he’d been on them, combing the smooth, still-warm sand for that final, important discovery.
His fingers curled round it instinctively at first, like a baby’s around its mother’s thumb. It felt like net, the ones he caught crabs in, but it clung to him too unhappily for that, as if by holding on it could force him, maybe, to look.
Margaret Jensen packed methodically. Something had gone wrong. What? Had Enrique been discovered? Had he been forced into confession? Had he revealed their plan? She knew he would not think twice before giving her away.
Enrique Marquez was as good as dead. And so was she.
The yacht was still out on the water, inching ever closer. It was past midnight. There wasn’t much time. She had to get them off this island.
Battling horror, Margaret dashed to Ralph’s bedroom. His door was ajar and she pushed it, flooding the room with light.
Panic hit. Her son’s bed was empty, the sheets thrown off and the window flung open. She bolted to it, searching hopelessly, and saw where he had climbed down to the beach.
It was then she heard the rupturing scream. His: unmistakably his.
Margaret raced down the stairs and into the night. Every gulp of air froze in her windpipe. Down to the sand as fast as her legs could carry her, not fast enough, never fast enough. Flying wouldn’t be fast enough.
Relief struck in a blinding flash. There he was, her boy, crouching at the shore, a tiny figure alone in the dark.
Only, he wasn’t alone.
Washed up next to him, like a slippery seal, was a woman. Her dark hair was tangled and matted. Her dress was soaked. One arm, below the elbow, was missing, torn, as though…
Margaret held Ralph tight to her chest and turned his sobbing face away. With her foot she rolled the woman, a huge perished sea-creature. The body made a slipslop sound.
When she saw who it was, she seized her son’s hand and ran.
Epilogue
The ceremony was held beneath a clear blue, sun-scorched sky. Spring was here and with it the first warmth of the year. Guests gathered under a canopy of twisting vines and pink blossoms shaken gently by the ocean breeze.
The bride was barefoot, radiant in a floor-length gown that pooled at her ankles, her hair loose and her skin glowing. Countless times she had imagined this day, what she would wear, how she would feel—and who, always who, would be waiting to take her hand.
‘Are you ready?’ Next to her, her father smiled and patted her arm.
The moment had arrived. She nodded.
Together, they made their way down the aisle. Heads turned to admire her approach. For each recognised face, she remembered one that was absent.
Maximo Diaz’s funeral took place a little less than a month after Reuben van der Meyde’s sixtieth birthday party. The autopsy had gone on longer than expected, with van der Meyde’s people keen to maintain the man had suffered an extreme allergic reaction and the Diaz clan making waves in the press about suspected murder. It came as almost a relief when they were proven right and the killer was found. Poor Maximo could finally be laid to rest.
The funeral itself was sombre and protracted, a turnout of stooped figures hulked in black around the hole in the ground, dark yews soaring behind. It rained non-stop.
Lori Garcia lost a part of her soul that day.
Enrique Marquez.
Murderer, terrorist, assassin. Evil, through and through.
The boy she had known a lifetime ago, the boy with the kind eyes and the gentle laugh and the ambition and drive and heart had ended up in this wild and lonely place. That boy had died long before she’d met those pitiless eyes across the yacht’s saloon.
As summer moved into fall and the world kept turning though Lori couldn’t turn with it, life was agony. Hours, days, weeks of uncertainty before the final revelation that the man who had been responsible, who had followed her, stalked her, sent her that filthy hate mail, was the same man who had laced Maximo’s food with poison and, in a tragic case of mistaken identity, taken Rebecca Stuttgart’s life. He was the man the media labelled an obsessive psychopath, a narcissist and a savage animal, the man who had tracked Lori right on to what was intended to be the scene of her death and countless others.
She couldn’t believe it. It was too shocking, too macabre, too like a nightmare.
Questions raged. How had this criminal been permitted on-board, in this day and age when security was rigorous to the point of intrusion? How had a man like van der Meyde even considered hiring help from such a controversial source? How had nobody picked up on Enrique’s behaviour? It seemed Reuben’s plan to give back to ordinary people had miscarried. Ordinary people weren’t interested in being given back to. Wealth and power changed a man: they made him a pariah. Reuben had thought he was invincible. Turned out, he wasn’t.
On the ship’s lower deck, the bomb was eventually uncovered. In the beginning there had been too many other lines of pursuit. No one guessed at the magnitude of Enrique’s plan and it was only by chance, the last of the CSIs exploring below, it was located.
Lori believed God had been watching over them that night. The device hadn’t detonated. But, while it was found, what wasn’t found was any trace whatsoever of Enrique Marquez—or, as he’d been known that night, Juan Romero.
Mon
ths later, sometime before Christmas, a great white shark would be caught off the South African coast and brought into Port Elizabeth. When its stomach was slit, among its contents glinted a plain silver band. Lori shook to her core when she saw it.
A kid from the wrong side of the tracks, driven to destruction by desire for a woman he couldn’t have. It made a good story.
Desideria Gomez joined her at the funeral. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’
‘I’m taking a break,’ Lori told her. ‘I’ll call when I’m back.’
‘Where are you going?’ Desideria searched her eyes for need but was left wanting.
‘Spain. Just me and Omar. The two of us.’
‘You know I’m here for you, Lori. If you ever—’
‘I know.’
Desideria watched through the driving rain as Lori returned to her car.
By winter, still shaken by events and unable to sleep soundly in LA, Desideria quit her role at La Lumière and moved to the East Coast. She was tired of California, its egos and vanities, the secrets it carried. There, she began work for a charity helping victims of natural disasters and, on her third day, met a photographer named Polly.
Even so, when she heard Lori’s news, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to attend.
Angélica Ruiz and her daughters watched events unfold on live TV. They were at the mall, shopping for Rosa’s fifth child, queueing with their hair removal creams at the pharmacy counter, trying to ignore the images of beautiful Loriana every way they turned, when, passing an electrical store and catching a glimpse of the boy she had known as Rico, Anita came to an abrupt halt. Rosa and her quadruple buggy slammed into her.
‘Watch it, fatass!’ she crowed.
Sensitive to her ballooning weight, Anita snapped back, ‘At least I can keep from getting knocked up every five minutes.’
‘Yeah, like anyone’d wanna knock you up. Do me a favour and bleach that moustache.’
Angélica intervened, pulling them apart. The screens were filled with news of the island murders, Rico Marquez taking centre stage.
Afterwards, they’d be smug about it, treat themselves to shoes and cakes and bitch about how Loriana’s life would never be as perfect as everyone made out.
But, later that night, as Angélica gritted her teeth in bed with her rich, octogenarian lover, praying, as she did every time, for a heart attack, as Rosa changed her fourteenth shitty diaper of the day, as Anita stared miserably at her naked reflection, trying to block the savage taunts of her pimp photographer boyfriend, they’d wonder if their own lives were so much better, after all.
‘Two minutes, Ms Reiner.’
Bibi Reiner looked up from her dressing table on Broadway and nodded to her assistant. Her audience was waiting. Bright lights gleaming. She imagined the stage and the rows of captivated faces. At the close of the final act, the thunderous applause rushing at her like a tide, roses being thrown to her feet and her name clamoured from the ranks.
Bibi was a new woman. Not because she was famous, or free, or doing what she loved, but because, for the first time, she was in control. She had the power, and nobody, no matter what they promised, would ever be able to take it from her.
Days after Reuben van der Meyde’s notorious party, a courier had arrived at Bibi’s home and delivered a parcel. In it was a disc identical to the one she had previously received from Dirk Michaels. Except this time, it was a recording of him in conversation with Stevie Speller, presumably on the night it all happened. Dirk’s words incriminated both him and Linus categorically. She knew he would not dare come near her again.
On the front of the disc was a label, in Stevie’s handwriting, which read:
SECURITY—NOW AND ALWAYS.
Awaiting her cue in the wings, accustomed by now to that potent mix of fear and adrenalin, Bibi couldn’t help her smile. She had friends, she had family—save for her brother, admittedly, who had moved overseas and was terrible at staying in touch—and at last she had a future. It had been a long, difficult road, but she had made it.
Fame was everything Bibi had dreamed it to be.
No one understood more than her the cost at which it came.
The curtains parted and the roar went up.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … Bibi Reiner!’
Dirk and Christina Michaels lasted until the end of the year before embarking on a very messy and public divorce. Dirk had been caught in a prostitute’s car on Hollywood Boulevard and was remanded in custody ample time for the press to catch wind of the episode and broadcast it across every newspaper in the country, along with his sorry mug shot.
His wife had long been acclimatised to a marriage of infidelity: Christina herself had three concurrent lovers and possessed a fulfilling and adventurous sex life, the difference being she was clever enough to hide it. When Dirk’s latest misdemeanour emerged, she knew, and so did her PR, that to stay with America’s most notorious love rat was a point-blank bad idea. Especially since their wild-child daughter Farrah had been arrested by turns for drug possession, indecent exposure in a moving vehicle and assault on a police officer. Christina’s filing for divorce spoke volumes about which party was to blame.
Dirk hit back with a series of ill-advised transmissions on social networking sites about the couple’s bedroom antics. His bizarre, drunken near-confession to the affairs at Linus’s birthday party was, apparently, just the beginning. Each was met with stoic silence from Christina’s side and seemed to chip further at his credibility while only boosting hers. He began to drink, fired his spokesperson and embraced a lifestyle of partying, Playmates and pill popping. It wasn’t long before the board at Searchbeam Studios rose against him and drove him out.
Some nights, a blonde’s head bobbing in his lap, Dirk imagined he was living the life of Riley. Others, he caught sight of his fat, ageing body and was filled with a blank sort of terror.
Mostly, he was too out of it to care.
Pascale Devereux was in a Swiss ski-chalet when news of the island deaths ricocheted through the world’s media. Her boyfriend, a forty-one-year-old musician named Benoit, wandered on to the terrace in a red and white Argyll sweater, scratched his beard and asked, ‘What’s up?’
Pascale put down her novel and squinted into the distance. ‘She found out.’
Benoit frowned. He was stirring a mug of tea, spoon tinkling against the sides. ‘Who found out what?’
From her position on the wooden swing-seat, Pascale took in the icy mountains, the ski lifts beginning their slow descent to the summits.
‘Pascale?’ He cocked his head. ‘Is everything OK?’
The French girl reached into the pocket of her jeans and removed her cell phone. She scrolled until she found Aurora’s number and let her thumb hover over the call button.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing.’
Casey Amos found out while in a friend’s condo in Santa Monica. Had he not been there, he probably wouldn’t have heard for months. Casey didn’t do news.
‘Man, that’s deep,’ his companion diagnosed through a haze of weed.
Even in his addled state, Casey sensed something was missing from the reported accounts. He’d neither seen nor heard from Aurora Nash since her mother died, and rumour had it she was considering ‘divorcing’ Tom Nash on the grounds of an ‘irreconcilable family matter’.
Casey wasn’t bright. He was self-seeking and idle, content to disregard anything that challenged or compromised his easy, listless way of life or his steadfast pursuit of gummy bears.
Exactly why it was inconvenient to remember, just once in a while, what Aurora had told him that day in his dad’s home theatre. His eyes flicked uncertainly to the lovingly mounted family photograph on his friend’s wall. He thought of similar ones at his own mom and dad’s: proud parents with their adored, immaculate children.
He sparked up another joint. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess so.’
‘Can you believe it?’ Rita Clay insisted on updates every hour following the scandal. She sat up, scrolling through developments on her BlackBerry. ‘All down to that one maniac. To think of the people who could have died …’
Marty King plumped the pillows behind his head. He reached out and stroked Rita’s back, thanking everything good in the world that his woman hadn’t been on van der Meyde’s boat that night. Rita was the one for him: she knew her own mind, she didn’t take shit from anyone and that was exactly the kind of broad he needed. Not that he needed anyone, but, hey.
‘What about your kid?’ he asked.
‘Aurora?’ Rita leaned into his arms, concern clouding her face. ‘She’ll be back. She hit a dark place … a very dark place if the reports about her and van der Meyde are to be believed.’ She frowned. ‘They found her in his cabin, did you know? The room was turned upside down. I know she’s been all over the place lately, but him? He’s old enough to be her father.’
Marty pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the top of her head. ‘It happens to kids her age,’ he said gruffly. ‘She’ll get over it.’
In the aftermath of Cacatra’s devastation, Tom Nash disappeared from the public eye. He holed himself up on the ranch in Texas and spoke to no one. His only visitor, Stuart Lovell, came to Creekside under the guise of discussing Tom’s new venture. Only then did Tom experience a whisper of peace, lying safe in the cocoon of Stuart’s loving embrace. The men stayed in bed for days on end, content to be alone, together.
Tom had been forced to retreat. The memory of his confrontation with Aurora still brought him to tears, and he knew it would be a long time before he earned the right to look her in the eye. His daughter. His sweetheart. The wrong he and Sherilyn had dealt would never be made right. But Aurora was his daughter, damn it. She always would be.
What kind of a word was sorry?
Aurora had uncovered the secret he and Sherilyn had battled their entire married life to silence. She had found out in the worst possible way. Everything there was—and more.
