Beautiful Creatures

by Lulu Taylor

  Perhaps tonight is the night, she thought, and shivered with delicious anticipation. She’d asked her sister for advice. Just open your mouth and do what comes naturally, Octavia had said with a grin. Great advice, Flora thought wryly. I could have worked that much out myself.

  ‘Flora …’

  She turned. Otto stood in the doorway, smiling at her. He advanced towards her. He had changed, taking off his suit jacket and putting on a soft cashmere jumper. As he neared her, she felt her insides quiver with excitement. His face was solemn but there was the light of happiness glinting in his light brown eyes. He stopped, standing very close to her. Then he lifted one hand and pushed back a strand of golden hair that was hanging loosely over Flora’s shoulder.

  He searched her face with his eyes, smiled and said in a low voice, ‘My darling …’

  Her breath started to come quickly. She had the sudden desire to press her fingers to his mouth and tell him not to say anything, but she couldn’t move and in the next instant he had grasped her hand, lifted it to his lips and pressed them to it.

  Something’s about to happen, she thought, her heart racing.

  ‘My darling, it has been forty-five days since I met you. You have possessed me utterly. I’ve fallen madly in love with you.’ He gazed into her eyes, smiling. ‘I know I’m not worthy of you – you’re so pure and beautiful – and I know that many would consider this madness. But, Flora, I simply cannot live without you. I offer you all I have: my noble title and my family lineage, my home and all I own. You would make my existence paradise on earth if you would agree to share these things with me. Could you … would you … do me the honour of giving me your hand in marriage?’

  Flora gasped. She felt dizzy and strange, almost sick, but happy as well. ‘Oh! Oh … my goodness …’ This was far more than she’d expected. She’d thought they would kiss, perhaps even go further, admit their feelings. But a proposal? He was right, it was crazy, it was beyond whirlwind, but …

  ‘I know it is very fast, my love. We’ve known each other a comparatively short time. But ever since we met, when you were at the mercy of those ruffians, I’ve felt that our destinies are meant to be united.’ He bowed his head over her hand again.

  She remembered that day: the terrible fear, the menace – and then Otto’s bravery, coming to her rescue. ‘Yes …’ she breathed, thinking of it.

  He looked up, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. ‘Yes?’

  Flora stared at him. She had said yes. She’d said yes.

  ‘You’ve made me the happiest man in the world, my darling!’ He threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly, laughing with delight. Then he pulled back, gazed her at tenderly, and she saw his eyes glisten with tears. ‘Am I dreaming? Have you really said that you will be my wife?’

  She felt as though she were standing at an open door, and at this very moment she had to decide whether to step through it or not.

  Otto looked at her beseechingly. ‘We would be so happy,’ he said.

  She saw at once this delightful way of life she had enjoyed with him going on for ever: they would travel together, he would show her everything there was to see. And he would protect her. He would keep her safe, just as he had that very first night.

  She smiled at him. She was ready. What other life was there? What other life could she possibly want? But Otto was right. It was amazingly fast. ‘Otto,’ she said quietly, her voice trembling with emotion, ‘I love you. I think I want to marry you. But … please give me time to think about it? Just a day or two.’

  ‘Of course, my darling. If you think there is the slightest chance for me, I will wait for ever.’ He pressed his lips to hers, tenderly at first and then more passionately. His tongue flicked out and licked her lips lightly. She opened her mouth and felt it dart inside, probing her softly and tentatively. It was a warm, pleasant sensation, if strange at first.

  My first kiss.

  ‘My beauty,’ murmured Otto, his lips moving against hers. ‘My love. My destiny.’

  Yes … yes … Whenever he spoke that, she felt his words chime with her. It was the truth. He was her destiny. She was sure of it.

  29

  The Mysterious Heiresses From the Past!

  Beautiful twins grow up to inherit a dazzling fortune … Last seen during the bitter custody battle of the nineties, the gorgeous girls re-emerge in society … but what is the truth about their doomed family?

  Octavia picked up the paper with a trembling hand. Molly had brought in the breakfast tray and said that she thought Octavia ought to see the morning papers. Not that it was really the morning any more – it was well after lunch, in fact. But she was stunned to see on the front pages of the tabloids huge pictures of her wearing Roddy’s amazing wedding gown, and next to them the screaming headlines. And there were other pictures: of two small girls, identical in looks and dress, walking beside their mother, one smiling broadly, the other looking white-faced and wide-eyed.

  Octavia stared at them. Did this really happen? She had no memory of it at all. She could barely remember her mother, but here she herself was aged about four. Didn’t most four-year-olds have proper memories?

  Her heart pounded as she looked at her younger self and the glamorous woman whose hand she was holding. They were connected. There was a relationship. That small hand was tucked inside the larger one with absolute trust.

  Aunt Frances had rarely spoken of their mother and the girls had learnt not to ask, for what they invariably received instead of an answer to their question was a lecture on the merits of their father. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested in their father – they loved looking at the wedding pictures they’d secretly discovered – but Aunt Frances had managed to dilute the romance around him by making him sound so terribly dull. It was hard to feel anything for someone so perfect, like a saint in a Bible story, although they dutifully sniffed and looked sad whenever Aunt Frances described his death in the plane crash, with tears flooding her own cheeks.

  Their mother was never allowed to become deified into oblivion because she was never mentioned except when a direct question was asked, and even then Aunt Frances would become so icy and rigid it was not at all conducive to a conversation.

  ‘Your mother,’ she would spit, her eyes hard, ‘was not a proper person. She should never have married Arthur and she certainly should never have had babies. She was damaged, girls, and that is why she went away.’

  Damaged, they assumed, meant sick and unwell, and therefore they reasoned that their mother must have died, just as their father had. It was fitting that she should waste away and expire, it was how a true love affair ought to end, beautifully tragic like Romeo and Juliet.

  So what is this? Octavia wondered. What the hell is this?

  She read the article. When she had finished, she was shaking from head to foot. Throwing the paper down, she buried her head in her pillow and wept.

  Flora raced to her sister’s room, elated and fizzing with happiness. She knocked on the door and then flung it open.

  ‘Tavy? Tavy? Are you awake? I can’t wait any longer, you’ve been asleep for ages and Vicky isn’t here so …’ She came to an abrupt halt as she realised her sister was twisted in the covers of her bed, a satin duvet wrapped round her. ‘Tavy, are you all right?’

  Octavia lifted her head, showing her tear-stained face and reddened eyes. ‘No … no, I’m not.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Flora advanced and sat on the bed, looking anxiously at her sister.

  Octavia picked up the newspaper and pushed it towards Flora, who took it and scanned it. As soon as she saw the headlines, she gasped. She went paler and paler as she read. Her fists clenched and she shuddered as she reached certain revelations. When she’d finished, she looked up at her sister, her own eyes burning. ‘But … I don’t understand! We’ve never been told any of this!’

  ‘I know,’ replied Octavia. She sat up. ‘Aunt Frances never said anything. Did she think we wouldn’t find out? And how come we ca
n’t remember anything about it?’

  Flora stared at the article, her face strained. ‘This is incredible,’ she muttered. ‘Just incredible. We’ve been such idiots. Why haven’t we asked more, demanded to be told?’

  ‘Because we’ve been controlled,’ declared Octavia. ‘We’ve been kept back like stupid children, and taught never to ask questions. Well … I’m damn well going to ask them now, I can tell you that.’

  ‘It says here that after the custody battle, our mother simply vanished. Disappeared.’ Flora pushed the paper aside and fixed her sister with a look. ‘It doesn’t say anything about what happened next.’

  ‘But what about all the things Aunt Frances said about her and why she was unfit to look after us … She was a drunk, a drug-user, lived like some kind of prostitute from the sounds of it.’

  ‘Our mother’s lawyer argued against all that, if this report is right,’ Flora said softly. ‘It sounds like she lived a bohemian life, all right, and maybe she did do some of the things they said …’

  ‘Why would they make it up?’ Octavia asked. ‘Why? And after everything that happened in court, she still left. She didn’t have to leave, but she did. She gave us up … left with us with Frances. Why would she do that if the things Aunt Frances said about her weren’t true?’

  Flora looked thoughtful. ‘This is a hell of a lot to take in. I just can’t absorb it. But something is telling me that there’s stuff here that’s wrong. And look what it says at the end …’ She picked up the paper and read aloud: ‘“Diane Beaufort is believed to have left the country and moved abroad, but nothing has been heard of her in over fifteen years.”’

  Octavia blinked at her sister. ‘How can they hear anything of her if she’s dead?’

  ‘It doesn’t say she’s dead,’ Flora pointed out. ‘And if no one knows she’s dead, then is she?’

  ‘Of course she is!’ blurted Octavia, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘How could she be alive? She would have come to find us years ago if she was, wouldn’t she? She must be dead.’

  Flora said nothing, putting the paper aside. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I just hate this – our private lives, our pasts, all over the papers, and we’ve never known anything about it! This is horrible!’ Octavia rubbed hard at her eyes and sniffed. ‘But what did you want to tell me? You looked so happy when you came in.’

  ‘Something rather exciting happened last night.’ Flora smiled at her sister. ‘Otto proposed to me!’ Then she laughed at the sight of Octavia’s astonished face.

  ‘What did you say?’ Octavia demanded, her eyes revealing a flash of panic.

  ‘I said I’d think about it.’ She grabbed her sister’s arm. ‘Come on, get up and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  While they were having breakfast and Flora was telling Octavia the events of the previous night, the first taxi arrived. It was full to the brim with the same dark red roses he had sent last time. They’d used up almost every vase in the house by the time the second taxi arrived, this one full of lilies.

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do with all these!’ cried Vicky, as the twins helped unload the flowers, laughing.

  ‘There must be a hospital or a nursing home nearby that would like some flowers,’ Flora said, taking out another huge bouquet.

  ‘I wonder how they would feel about balloons?’ wondered Octavia as a third taxi arrived, silver and pink heart-shaped balloons bobbing against its back windows.

  ‘And here’s another one, full of peonies!’ Vicky looked at the sisters, and they all burst out laughing. ‘Otto’s really going for it!’

  They were still finding homes for bunches of flowers when the doorbell sounded. Vicky answered it, wondering aloud what on earth they could expect now. ‘A parade of baby elephants?’ she quipped. ‘A partridge in a pear tree, perhaps?’

  She came back with a package addressed to Flora. ‘Ooh, what can this be?’

  ‘How exciting,’ cried Octavia. ‘Good things come in small packages! Open it, open it.’

  Flora obediently pulled off the tape and opened the packet. Inside she saw a green velvet box stamped with a gold coat of arms and accompanied by a tiny engraved card that read With the compliments of the Baron von Schwetten. She pulled it out.

  ‘Looks promising,’ Octavia said, peering over her sister’s shoulder.

  Flora, who had gone pink with pleasure, opened the box to reveal an antique ring of white gold with a cluster of diamonds in the centre, arranged to look like a flower. She gasped.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Octavia said, grasping her sister’s arm. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  Flora lifted the ring from its green velvet cushion and held it up. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Flora,’ said Vicky in astonishment, ‘that’s not an engagement ring, is it?’

  ‘Call me an old romantic,’ remarked Octavia, ‘but isn’t the man supposed to put the ring on the girl’s finger himself? Rather than have it delivered by a man on a motorcycle and let her slip it on without him?’

  ‘He showed it to me last night,’ Flora said dreamily. ‘He said it wasn’t an engagement ring. It’s his grandmother’s dress ring. It’s a gift, to remind me not to forget his proposal – as if I could. I tried it on last night, but it was too big so he’s had it altered to fit me … how amazing.’ She slid it on to the middle finger of her left hand and held it out so that she could admire it.

  ‘Otto’s proposed?’ Vicky looked bewildered. ‘That was quick work.’

  ‘The ring is gorgeous.’ Octavia took her sister’s hand, her eyes anxious. ‘But you won’t rush into anything, will you, Flo-flo? I don’t want you to get married and leave me.’

  Flora gazed into her sister’s eyes, her expression candid. ‘I’ll never leave you, Tavy. But we have our own lives to live, haven’t we?’

  Octavia stared back at her and then dropped her eyes, almost as if she were embarrassed to acknowledge that she had been the one who’d been absent most of the time, away with her new and exciting circle of friends. When she looked up again, Flora saw that Octavia’s eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Don’t cry!’ she said, throwing her arms around her sister. ‘Please …’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just been such a strange day. First finding out about our mother, and now this …’ Octavia sniffed, and gave her a woebegone smile. ‘I’m pleased for you, I really am – I like Otto and it’s obvious he makes you happy. But please don’t do anything rash. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.’

  ‘I won’t, don’t worry.’

  The twins hugged as Vicky looked on silently.

  30

  Octavia tried to forget the emotional upheaval produced by the press revelations the best way she knew how – by partying. The usual call came from Jasmine, with arrangements for another riotous night. This time the excuse for it was to thank Iseult and Roddy for throwing a wonderful fashion show and sizzling after party, and the venue was to be Jasmine’s Camden flat, an area where the journalists and paparazzi roamed free, hoping to catch bright young things and up-and-coming stars out socialising. The big prize would be to find one drunk, perhaps stumbling and half-dressed, doing a drugs deal or wiping white powder from a nostril.

  The young ones – Jasmine, Rosie, Ferdy and the rest – met in a Camden pub first and lounged in a private upstairs seating area, alternating pints with tequila shots, talking and laughing and pulling out the press coverage of the fashion show to giggle over. It had been featured in all the papers, and in the weekly magazines too – photographs of the girls and detailed analyses of what they were wearing. But the coverage was dominated by Octavia’s involvement: her sudden appearance on the social scene, at the heart of the glamorous young crowd led by Jasmine and Rosie, had piqued the interest of the press. There were many articles about her, and wherever there was an article, there was that vintage photograph of the twins and their mother going into the courtroom.

&nbs
p; The gang seemed unimpressed by the revelations, however, which were almost pointedly ignored. ‘We’ve all been there, sweetie,’ Rosie mumbled. She was dressed entirely in black today – torn leggings, a tight black dress, ballet pumps and a black leather jacket. Her make-up was Goth as well, more of her favourite heavy kohl pencil outlining her eyes, this time worn with white lipstick as well for a touch of eighties retro. ‘It’ll blow over, it always does.’

  Octavia was relieved that she didn’t have to talk about it. She’d been dreading questions, but her crowd were not interested in the past, only in the pleasure to be had here and now.

  When they left the pub at 11, a couple of shabbily dressed men emerged from the darkness and snapped shots of Octavia with large telephoto-lens cameras, so that the flashes popped in her face. As she walked, they ran backwards down the pavement in front of her, clicking away. They were taking photographs of the others as well, but Octavia seemed to be their main target. Despite Jasmine shouting at them to fuck off and giving them the finger, they followed the group all the way back to the flat, only letting up when the door was shut on them.

  ‘Arseholes,’ commented Rosie.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Jasmine, lighting up a cigarette. ‘Fucking paps! Glad they got this outfit though, I kind of like it.’ She was wearing a vintage fifties prom dress in lemon yellow with polka-dot netting over the top, which she’d teamed with a denim jacket and gladiator sandals. ‘Maybe they’ll put me in heat.’

  Jasmine and Rosie were always vying with each other to appear in the best-dressed sections of the gossip magazines, and Rosie was currently winning by a nose after heat magazine had breathlessly dissected her latest look.

  Inside the flat a crowd had already gathered, a bottle of Grey Goose open on the oriental dark-wood coffee table, along with cranberry and grapefruit juices for mixers and a silver bucket of ice cubes. A small bonbon dish held a collection of pills for anyone who wanted one. Iseult, resplendent as usual in a cheong-sam of violet and silver silk, wedge-heeled violet metallic shoes and an orchid in her hair, was holding court in Jasmine’s kitchen, wielding her cigarette holder like a conductor’s baton as she talked.