Beautiful Creatures

by Lulu Taylor

  ‘Octavia!’ gasped Flora, looking scared. She immediately glanced over to the stranger at the table. Octavia followed her glance and at once she knew. Fury rushed through her.

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No! No!’ She stared round at them all. ‘How could you? How could you after what I said? You’re traitors, all of you!’

  Then she turned and ran out of the room.

  There was a horrified silence as they all looked at each other, then Flora leapt to her feet and raced off after her sister, calling out, ‘Tavy! Tavy, please!’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Diane Beaufort said. ‘That didn’t go well at all.’ She put her napkin on the table, obviously no longer wanting her breakfast. ‘I should never have come, not when Octavia didn’t want it.’

  ‘She’ll come round,’ Max said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  He put down his porridge spoon. ‘Because she does want it. She might not know it, but she does.’

  Flora found Octavia sobbing in Max’s study.

  ‘How could you, Flora?’ she shouted furiously, tears running down her face. ‘After what we talked about? Everything we said!’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ she said, pleading. ‘It wasn’t me. Vicky arranged it. Nick tracked her down, Vicky found her and she got Max to bring her here in the helicopter. She did it for me … she knew how much I wanted it. You weren’t supposed to know. Vicky planned to get her out of here before you got back. I wasn’t part of it, Tavy, I promise.’

  She went over to her sister and sat next to her, struggling to put her arms around her despite Octavia’s trying to shake her off.

  ‘I don’t want to see her!’ Octavia felt the same wave of hatred as when she’d seen Iseult’s mother at the graveside. ‘I don’t want her in my life.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Flora, her voice beseeching. ‘She’s just a person. She’s not a devil or anything. She’s just a woman who made mistakes.’

  ‘She left us, Flora!’

  ‘But we don’t know why …’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t need to know why. All I know is that she had her chance and she ballsed it up!’

  Flora thought for a moment while Octavia cried a little more quietly. Then she said, ‘She told me we used to live in Scotland when we were little, in a house like this one.’

  ‘Oh?’ Octavia looked up, her attention caught. ‘Did we? Where?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘I see, I see – you want to trick me into talking to her!’

  ‘No, I don’t. I just want to show you that she can tell us things we don’t know. She’s the only one who ever will.’

  Octavia took a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. ‘If we talk to her, it will be like we forgive her.’

  ‘You don’t then?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Octavia said, her eyes welling up again. ‘Not after what we’ve had to go through.’

  ‘But we can never know what other life we might have had. It might have been worse.’

  Octavia laughed hollowly. ‘I’d like to know how it could have been worse.’

  ‘Well, you don’t know.’ Flora put her hand on her sister’s arm. ‘All I’m saying is, you don’t even know what you won’t forgive her for. You don’t know why she left us.’

  Octavia stared at her, wiping her eyes and reddened nose, and then said suddenly, ‘You know what? You’re right. We don’t know why she left us. And I want to find out. Right now. Right this goddamned minute.’

  She got up and strode out of the study, Flora following behind, breathless. At the breakfast room, Octavia stopped in the doorway and said with cool politeness, ‘Would you mind excusing us? Not you, Diane. Flora and I have some questions for you and we’d like some answers.’

  Once the others had gone, Octavia and Flora went in and shut the door behind them.

  Octavia put her hand on her hip. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, Mother, we’d like you to answer us.’

  Diane Beaufort got up and went over to the window. She stared out at the bleak countryside, the way the wind was swaying the branches of the trees. At last she said, ‘I should have known this would happen. Somehow I convinced myself that Vicky was right – a quick, friendly meeting and that would be it. Finished. I should have guessed you’d never leave it there. Perhaps I did know, in my heart. I must have wanted this, I suppose.’

  Octavia went to the table and rested one hand on it. ‘We only have one question. Why? Why did you do it? Why did you leave us?’

  Diane Beaufort turned back to face her daughters, and sighed. ‘Why? Because I loved you, of course. That’s why.’

  They all sat round the table, poured out tepid cups of coffee from the cooling pot and listened as Diane told her side of the story.

  ‘Your aunt was determined to take you from me and I was equally determined to keep you. It was true that our marriage was virtually over when Arthur died. We’d been living separate lives for months but that was largely because of his alcoholism. We were both party animals when we were younger, there was no denying it, but it took its toll on Arthur. He always went at it harder than anyone else and ended up hopelessly addicted. He was charming to the end, but not safe to be around. I’ve always believed that he was drunk at the controls of that plane, but it was never proved. We’d lived in a louche crowd, I must admit. Arthur’s money attracted all kind of sybarites and hangers on, people determined to party at his expense. We were both … somewhat debauched, and enjoyed all the freedoms of youth.’ She looked at her daughters. ‘I mean sexual freedoms. AIDS didn’t bother us then, it was for junkies and gays and we thought we were immune. Life was a free-for-all. A crazy roundabout.

  ‘But then I had you, my gorgeous daughters. Arthur adored you too and our lives quietened down for a while, we were almost normal. We had our little Edinburgh house and Arthur had decided to study, and make a career for himself. For a while he seemed to be better, but then the drinking came back worse than ever. He was constantly drunk, unable to study, and his old friends found us again, ready to tempt him away from his family. And then …’ Diane took a deep breath and traced her finger along the pattern in the white damask tablecloth. ‘Then I fell in love.’

  The sisters looked at one another, wide-eyed and almost holding their breath as they took in every detail of the story.

  ‘Arthur and I were, in effect, separated when he died. Frances couldn’t believe that anyone could leave her darling brother, let alone a woman she’d always considered a trollopy little golddigger who was no better than she should be. As soon as he was killed, she began her bid to get you for herself and she wasted no time in recruiting Arthur’s old friends to give her the evidence she needed, no doubt paying them well as she went. They obliged with plenty of stories about my moral degeneracy. Nevertheless, the courts weren’t about to take you away from me, not when I could show I was a perfectly good mother and that my wild days, such as they had been, were long behind me.’

  Octavia spoke up then. ‘They said you had practically won the case,’ she said quietly. ‘But on the morning of the judgement, you took us in, handed us over and went away for ever.’

  Diane looked at her. ‘I was forced into that position. You see, your aunt discovered something about me and threatened to use it. The man I loved – he wasn’t any man.’ She stared at the table for a while then said, ‘I promised myself I would never tell you. That you would never know. And here I am, about to say it.’

  They gazed at her, waiting.

  ‘The man I fell in love with was my own brother. Or, at least, my half-brother, the product of a fling my father had in his youth. I hadn’t known him while I was growing up … I hadn’t even known he existed. But he found me when we were adults, and we simply couldn’t help ourselves. We fell passionately in love. No one knew he was related to me – we had different names and no obvious link. But in the course of digging up the dirt, Frances found out. She must have been so jubilant when she did. She must have realised she’d won.’ Diane
smiled sadly. ‘She came to me with a bargain. If I gave you up, she would leave me in peace in my incestuous filth, as she put it. If I refused, she would expose me to the world. I would be considered unnatural and repellent, my lover would be forced to leave me … and if he did not, I would lose my daughters anyway. Whatever happened, you girls would be stigmatised by association with me.

  ‘And then she played her trump card: she would claim that I was having sex with my brother before you were born. That you were possibly children of that union. It was a lie, of course. A court case and blood tests and DNA would have proved all that. But we both knew that the scandal would taint you girls for life, and that wasn’t a price I was willing to pay. If I left you with her, you’d be safe, untouched, pure. If you came with me, you’d be ruined. I couldn’t spoil your lives. So I left you with her. It broke my heart, but I trusted she would do right by you. She loved her own brother so much, you see. I sometimes wonder if her terrible anger towards me came from a subconscious jealousy. I got to sleep with my brother. She could only adore hers from afar.’

  Diane got up and went back to the window, staring out at the countryside again.

  ‘I agreed to leave Britain and the States for ever. My lover and I went to live in Africa, where we were anonymous and very, very happy. We had eight years of bliss together, and then he died. After that, my life was pretty much over. I travelled for some years then went to France, to settle in the mountains by myself, to see my life out there.’ She turned back to her daughters. ‘I thought about you every day. But I forced myself to let you be and never contact you. Frances’s threat always hung over my head.’

  ‘So …’ Flora spoke up for the first time, her voice tremulous ‘So it was fear of this scandal that made you give us up?’

  Diane nodded. ‘Public outrage is a terrible thing. It can blight an existence.’

  ‘But she didn’t keep us pure and safe,’ Flora protested. ‘She didn’t.’

  Diane looked at her, her face fearful. ‘She … didn’t?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘N-n-n-no.’

  The three women emerged from the breakfast room some hours later, all tear-stained and obviously shaken by what they’d been through, but with an air of catharsis. Something had been exorcised. There was a feeling of peace in the air, the kind of calm that comes after a fierce storm of crying, when all passions are spent.

  ‘Max,’ Diane said. ‘You said I could go home. Is that possible? Can you take me to the airport, please?’

  ‘It’s late to start,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Perhaps best stay another night.’

  ‘No. There’s a late flight to London. I have to go now. I haven’t spent this long with other people in many years. I need to be alone.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. As Diane went to collect her things, he turned to Octavia and said quietly, ‘It’s only twenty minutes to Glasgow. And then I’m coming straight back, so don’t you go anywhere.’

  Nick was waiting for Flora in the upstairs hallway, pacing about anxiously. As she came up, he strode over to her. ‘Hey, are you okay? I think you girls have had quite a day of it.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s been hard. But, yes, it’s been good too. It was what we needed.’

  ‘I’m glad. I know how much you wanted to find out the truth about your mom.’ He hesitated then said, ‘Listen, I think I’ll hitch a lift to the airport and catch that ride back to London. We’ve only got a day or two left to deal with Otto, and I’d better make the arrangements for that annual payment. If that’s what you want?’

  ‘Actually …’ Flora stared up into his black eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  He frowned. ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t want to give him a penny. I intend to seek an official annulment of our marriage and pursue him through the courts for all the money he’s stolen from me.’

  Nick looked astonished, then his face creased with anxiety. ‘But, Flora, I gotta warn you … You know what this means. He’ll put those pictures and that film up on the internet and you’ll be splashed all over the papers, probably all over the world.’

  ‘I know.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘It will be horrible. But I’ll live it down. You see, I’ve discovered what happens when you live your life afraid of what the world will think. You become the prisoner of all your secrets, and so does your family. I need to be free, and I’ll do whatever it takes.’

  He gazed down at her with shining eyes. ‘Flora, you’re amazing.’

  ‘Am I?’ She laughed. ‘I don’t feel very amazing.’

  ‘Well, you are.’ He put his arms around her and hugged her. ‘And very brave. I’m in awe of you.’

  They pulled away and gazed at one another for a moment, and there was a strange, excited awkwardness between them as they both remembered the kiss of the night before but couldn’t mention it, like embarrassed teenagers.

  ‘You’ve done the right thing, I know it,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Nick?’ Max was calling from downstairs. ‘We’re making tracks, if you’re coming?’

  ‘I’ll be right there!’ he called back, not taking his eyes off Flora. ‘Take care,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ll see you very soon.’

  86

  When Max returned, Flora and Vicky had gone to bed but Octavia had waited up for him, a bottle of his favourite Scotch ready.

  He came in, cold and tired, raising his eyebrows when he saw her, sitting in the dimly lit kitchen. ‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sleepy. But it was a hell of an emotional day.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through.’

  ‘I’ve got some supper for you.’

  ‘That’s thoughtful of you. Thanks.’

  They took a plate of sourdough bread, ham and cheese, and the Scotch, through to the drawing room, sat on the comfortable old sofa and Octavia watched Max while he ate his late supper.

  ‘Did you help Vicky bring our mother here?’ she asked softly.

  Max shot her a quick look. ‘Well … yes. I lent her the Gazelle and my pilot, and they collected her and your mother from France. I hope you don’t mind? I was under the impression that was what you and Flora wanted.’

  ‘It was very kind of you. Thank you. I didn’t want it – but I’m glad now.’

  He munched thoughtfully. ‘She’s quite a woman, your mother. I can see where you get your strength.’

  When the plate had been put aside and the glass refilled, he took his Scotch in his hand and observed the orangey-brown liquid and the way it changed colour with the light from the fireplace. Then he looked up at her, his eyes serious.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you, Octavia. I’ve heard about what happened with Ethan. It’s very bad news. I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am.’

  ‘It’s a mess,’ she said frankly. ‘I’ve got to appoint a business advisor to help me sort it out.’

  ‘You’re lucky in a way that Brody used the investment company for his main fraud. That can be put in abeyance until the court case without too much trouble. Noble’s pays BC Investments for the lease of the property, doesn’t it? Well, that can go on as before. Butterfly can continue as long as Brody is voted off the board immediately and a new chief executive is appointed, ideally someone who knows the company very well.’

  ‘A little bit easier said than done,’ Octavia said with a sigh. ‘I’ve never done anything without Ethan before. I guess this is my chance to step up to the mark.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help … you can count on me.’

  ‘Thank you, Max.’ The sense that he was there to help had filled her with quiet happiness. But she didn’t want to rely on him. She needed to prove herself too.

  He leant back on the sofa and sipped his Scotch. His expression was solemn. ‘Money is a very serious thing. It’s not your fault that your father didn’t put your inheritance into a
safe form. Perhaps he meant to, who knows? But the reality is he left you entirely unprotected and that has attracted these terrible fraudsters. Money can do amazing things in the world but it also brings out the very worst in the human character: meanness, venality, greed. It’s sad, but true.’

  ‘I know. I’m not going to let anything like this happen again. I’m going to hire the best lawyers, the best advisors, and make sure I protect what I’ve got – and the jobs of everyone who works for me. I’m never letting a criminal get near me again.’ Octavia looked at him sadly. ‘Ethan frittered it away on nothing. On himself. It’s the waste of it that makes me so angry. That’s not going to happen again.’

  Max stared at her intently. ‘I believe you,’ he said simply.

  Octavia found she couldn’t meet his gaze, even though his faith in her filled her with pleasure. His opinion matters to me. I feel better about myself when I’m with him. And this place feels like home. She looked up at him, into that strong face with the force of his personality shining from its eyes, thinking how amazing he was. Suddenly the air crackled with the tension between them.

  Max, she realised, was staring back at her, a fierce light in his eyes that she’d never seen before. ‘What a beautiful girl you are,’ he said. ‘You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever met. You’re passionate, unusual – so much older in some ways than your years …’

  ‘Max,’ she whispered, an intense warmth growing in her stomach and spreading out all over her.

  ‘You do something to me, Octavia. You make me feel alive again …’

  She pulled in a breath. So it wasn’t her imagination, that curious magnetic force between them. He felt it too.

  ‘It’s the same for me,’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘It’s been there from that start hasn’t it? From the very first time.’

  He nodded, a smile curling about his lips. ‘From the moment we met.’ Then his eyes darkened. ‘But …’

  Her heart swooped. ‘What?’

  Max frowned almost helplessly. ‘It’s not as simple as that. I’m somewhat older than you are. And I’m married.’