by Carmen Reid
‘But Mr Igor … and Miss Wisneski is not here.’ Maria frowned. ‘I would like to check with her. Is possible to check with her?’
Elena sighed. Ever since Igor had managed to get the boys to Luton airport and within several hundred metres of his private jet, Svetlana had been paranoid. There were all kinds of legal protection around the boys. There was no way Igor could move them near the border without alarm bells ringing all over the country.
Now some poor coach was getting hassled because he couldn’t fill in a registration form without everyone jumping into panic mode. It was all completely over the top. But then so was Svetlana.
‘It will be fine – but if you like, I will phone her.’
Maria’s face broke into a relieved smile.
‘Thank you, shall I wait outside?’
‘You wait with the boys. I’ll come up in a few minutes.’
Elena picked up her mobile and clicked onto Svetlana’s number. It went straight through to voicemail.
Svetlana was probably getting her first massage of the day, being rubbed down and pampered by the minions she liked to surround herself with while poor Maria was worrying herself into a frenzy because as usual Svetlana had forgotten to tell her about the boys’ plans for the day.
Elena made her way to the marble-floored splendour of the entrance hall. Maria was hovering anxiously behind Michael and Petrov, while a tanned young man in a tracksuit waited beside them.
‘Hi,’ Elena greeted them.
‘Hello, I’m Yann,’ the coach replied. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss …’
‘Elena,’ she said. ‘Where is the tournament?’
‘In Richmond, all day long. We should be back by six.’
‘How are you getting there?’ she wondered.
‘I know the boys sometimes have a driver, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble, so I was going to order a taxi.’
‘Maria and I didn’t know about the tournament, so the driver is having the day off.’
‘No problem,’ the coach reassured her.
‘And you need their passports?’
‘Just to prove their dates of birth. It’s an official requirement. I’m sorry if there’s any inconvenience, I did explain this to Miss Wisneski.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you speak with Miss Wisneski?’ Maria asked, looking up at Elena hopefully.
Elena hadn’t planned on lying. She meant to check out the coach herself and if it all made sense, she’d say she couldn’t reach Svetlana but she was sure it was fine.
But now that Maria was looking at her, all troubled and sorrowful eyes, Elena thought a little white lie would be OK. She didn’t want poor Maria to worry all day long. It wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet: that meant eight full hours of worrying ahead.
‘Yes I spoke to her, everything is fine,’ Elena said with her most confident smile.
‘Ah!’
Maria’s face relaxed.
‘Are you looking forward to the tournament?’ Elena asked the boys, who were dressed in bright, immaculately ironed tennis whites.
Petrov gave an eager smile while Michael shrugged. He was holding a tennis racket in one hand and an iPhone in the other. He didn’t bother taking his earplugs out to talk to her.
‘I hope you have a really nice day. I bet you’ll both do really well.’
‘What about food?’ Maria asked, looking alarmed all over again. ‘If it is all day, I must make more than the drinks and snacks I pack.’
Yann glanced at his watch. ‘Please don’t worry, I’ll take care of that. We should go …’
‘Are you sure? Really?’ Maria asked.
‘Maria, they will be fine,’ Elena said a little sternly. ‘Boys, have a great time. We’ll see you later.’
‘This is so cool,’ Petrov said as he stepped out of the front door behind Yann and his big brother. ‘I get to play in a tournament – and I’m not even any good!’
Chapter Thirteen
Milan
Svetlana at ease:
Navy and gold swimsuit (Melissa Odabash)
Gold mules (Manolo Blahnik)
White towelling robe (hotel property)
White towel round head (same)
Black and gold shades (Chanel)
Gold and sapphire earrings (Harry Winston – jeweller)
Marquise-shaped solitaire diamond ring
(Harry Roscoff – husband)
Total est. cost: £36,000
FINALLY IT WAS lunchtime on day two of Annie’s spa stay. She had staggered to the dining room feeling barely alive.
Somehow she had survived yesterday: a lunch of vile slimy green vegetable juice, an afternoon of brutal lymphatic drainage massage, and dinner, a measly bowl of vegetable broth. She’d escaped the enema action too – so far.
Her stomach sloshing with the huge jug of water she’d drunk before bed in an attempt to feel slightly fuller, she’d managed to sleep for six hours or so before violent hunger pangs and a pressing need to wee had woken her up early.
From 5.30 a.m. till 7 a.m., she’d made an exhaustive search of her room, trying to find something – anything – to eat. She’d even considered shredding some of the bedding and chewing it down.
She’d made it through the two cups of water with lemon juice labelled ‘breakfast’ then a torturous two-hour yoga class. Then she’d practically had to crawl half delirious with fatigue and hunger into the dining room where she knew that only an evil vegetable juice awaited her.
She was now halfway down the glass of dismal green goo – she suspected both celery and raw courgette were lurking in there – and was honestly contemplating eating the starched white napkin when Svetlana swanned in, swathed in white towelling, bling jewels and glowing with unbearable smug happiness.
‘Look at my stomach,’ were Svetlana’s words of greeting as a waiter moved forward to pull up a chair for her at Annie’s table.
‘Your stomach is always as flat as a washboard,’ Annie said, trying to keep the resentment out of her voice. Extreme dieting always made her feel like this: vicious, wounded and malevolent.
‘I’ve had two enemas already today. This is the secret,’ Svetlana confided. ‘This is how to get your colon moving, cleansing, shedding all your debris. I already lose four kilos!’
More than eight pounds. It wasn’t possible. How could Svetlana have already lost more than eight pounds?
‘Have you had enema yet?’ Svetlana asked.
Annie put her lips to her juice straw and avoided eye contact.
‘Annah,’ Svetlana’s tone was stern, ‘you cannot come for the programme and not have the enemas. This is the most important part. Everyone is nervous the first time. But after one, is easy.’
‘But—’
‘No but. The people here are so professional and so caring. You will find it relaxing: the water draining in, the toxins draining out.’
‘But—’
‘Shhh!’ Svetlana shook her head. ‘Is no problem. I promise you.’
‘I can’t! I just can’t do it,’ Annie blurted out.
‘They help you to put everything in place, then they leave you to relax for about forty minutes.’
‘Forty minutes!’
It sounded worse than she’d imagined.
‘Some litres of coffee need to go up. It takes time.’
Annie’s mouth hung open with astonishment.
Litres of coffee had to go up and come back out again … unbelievable. She looked around the dining room at the other guests swathed in white gowns. They were all doing this? They were all in on it?
‘Is interesting,’ Svetlana added. ‘You get a little sieve, you can examine what horrrrrrible things come out. I will never eat filet mignon again. I have been passing lumps of undigested meat. Unspeakable. By day five, out come little black pellets, as hard as tyre rubber.’
This conversation was making Annie shudder.
‘When you leave here, your colon will be as clean as a baby’s.’
�
�I don’t think I can do it,’ Annie whimpered.
When the knock had come on her hotel room door for her 9 a.m. appointment with the coffee nozzle this morning, she’d sent the woman away, informing her that she wasn’t feeling well. But she knew the nurse would come back at 3 p.m. and if Annie still wasn’t ‘well’, she was to be taken to see Dr Delicioso, who would no doubt prescribe an immediate enema.
‘I feel terrible,’ she told Svetlana with total honesty, ‘my head is pounding, my hands are shaking; I have got to get something proper to eat.’
‘Tschaaaaa! This is just the toxins talking,’ Svetlana informed her between happy, dainty sips of her juice. Clearly a diet of liquid vegetables in various forms was not causing this dieting disciplinarian the slightest amount of trouble.
Annie’s toxins weren’t just talking, they were screaming, they were rioting through her system! As she’d walked through the corridor towards the dining room, she’d caught the faintest whiff of coffee and she’d stopped in her tracks like a sniffer dog, wondering how she could beg or bribe her way to a cup of her rich, dark, number one drug of choice.
‘If I could just get a sandwich … or a cappuccino … just one tiny little macchiato, even,’ she pleaded, ‘I mean, this is a very expensive hotel, surely guests are allowed to order something to eat if they feel as weak and as bad as I do?’
Svetlana shook her head. ‘But this is what we pay for: to stick to the programme. If the doctor says you can do the programme then you will do the programme, no matter how much you protest. You can offer the staff as much money as you like – my first time here I took off my diamond necklace and said I would swap it for a pizza – but they are trained not to give in. This is why the programme works, for everyone. When you are desperate, they will bring you a celery and nettle cleanser, to speed up the detox. Maybe this is what you need.’
‘I might have to leave,’ Annie said weakly.
Once again, Svetlana shook her head. ‘They will stop you. Always with tact and charm, but they will persuade you to come back. Please, drink some more water, have your enema, then your massage. At dinner tonight you will eat the soup and feel much, much better.’
Svetlana’s juice was finished. She looked happy and satisfied. No sign there of the hammering head, the trembling hands or terrible, killer mood Annie was suffering. Obviously, Svetlana’s toxins were leaving her perfect, first class system with barely a murmur of protest.
‘I think I lie beside the pool before my programme for the afternoon,’ Svetlana said, ‘it is beautiful to look out over the lake. Why don’t you join me?’
No.
Annie was not going to lie out on a sun lounger in her reinforced, tummy tuck swimsuit waiting to be led like a lamb to the enema.
The enema was the enemy. It had to be outwitted. It had to be avoided at all costs.
Just how hard could it be to escape from an exclusive, ultra-luxurious, six star hotel?
In a bright red swimsuit, flip-flops, Svetlana’s Chanel sunglasses and a broad-brimmed sunhat, Annie strode casually out of the front door of the hotel.
It was 2.37 p.m. and she couldn’t wait in her room any longer for the knock: the dreaded knock that would mean it was time for either the procedure or a trip to Dr Delicious.
Over her shoulder was a large straw bag. The magazine and a hotel towel poking from it were meant to show that she was heading for the pool.
But tucked inside the straw bag was a sundress and her handbag, packed with all the essentials for a break-out: money, cards, her mobile – even her passport, because she was considering running away not just to Milan, but all the way home.
Right, she was going to walk casually across the lawn until she found a nice, quiet spot away from the eyes of the staff but close to the gate at the end of the driveway. There, she would put out her towel and pretend to read her brand new copy of Vogue Italia, but as soon as she heard a car approaching, she was going to jump to it and slip out of the open gates before anyone could stop her.
After that, her plan was a little more vague.
Maybe she would find a bus somewhere. All she knew, her guiding principle, was that she had to get to a town and a plateful of food and a glass or six of wine and a huge, steaming, heart-hammering cafetière of coffee very soon, before she started eating grass, or the geraniums in the flowerpots – or began to consider hunting down songbirds.
The electric gates were in sight. Beside them was an elegant pale green painted wooden fence she’d not appreciated before, which probably ran the length of the grounds. It was well over six feet high and obviously designed not to keep intruders out but to keep semi-starved, half-delirious guests in.
She could also see a gardener with a rake in his hand and he seemed to have spotted her. Annie pulled the towel from her bag and began to lay it out across the grass, trying to make it look as if her intentions were entirely innocent.
But he was striding towards her. Maybe he was planning to herd her back towards the pool with several prods of his rake.
She sat down on the towel, opened up her magazine and pretended to read although he was drawing closer now.
‘Signorina?’ he called over as he approached.
Aw, he’d called her ‘Miss’, she couldn’t help being pleased. Obviously the sunglasses and the hideously expensive swimsuit’s superb, curve-minimizing structure were working their magic.
‘Ciao,’ she offered, ‘es una bella giornata.’
‘Si, Signora.’
Ah, back to ‘Mrs’. Evidently on closer inspection he’d come to a more accurate idea of her age.
Then he said something much more complicated and beyond her grasp of basic Italian, but as it ended with ‘piscina’, she guessed it was to do with the swimming pool and why wasn’t she over there instead of hovering suspiciously beside the gates?
‘La pelle inglese,’ she said, English skin.
This made him laugh.
‘Che hai?’
‘La pelle Inglese,’ she repeated, ‘seccato al sole.’
She thought that meant sunburn, but when the gardener looked at her in confusion, she wondered if maybe it meant sun-dried … Had she in fact seen it on the side of a jar of tomatoes?
Now she could hear a car in the distance. What if it was driving up to the hotel? What if it was her one and only chance to get through the open gates this afternoon? She had to get rid of the gardener sharpish.
With a flash of inspiration, she decided to play the luxury guest card. Surely in a place like this, even the gardener was trained to do the bidding of the pampered inmates?
‘No bevanda,’ she told him, hoping that meant ‘no drink’ and she tried to look a little sad and pleading: ‘cosi caldo e no bevanda.’
Hopefully that meant: so hot and no drink.
The gardener jumped to attention: ‘No problema. Acqua con limone?’ he offered, as if there was a choice.
‘Si, grazie, grazie multo.’
As he sprinted off in the direction of the hotel to carry out her request, Annie heard the hum, which surely had to indicate that the gates were about to open. Leaving her towel on the lawn, she darted towards the nearest gatepost so that she would be hidden by the gate as it opened.
A taxi! Hallelujah! A real, live, Italian taxi was sweeping up the driveway. Of course she knew what this meant: within a few minutes, an empty taxi in need of a fare would be sweeping back out again.
Tucking her bag under her arm, Annie broke cover and ran for the gap between the gates. They were closing surprisingly quickly and for a hideous moment, when her flip-flop snagged and didn’t keep pace with her foot, she thought she was going to be trapped: a chubby Englishwoman in a reinforced swimsuit impaled on the electric gates.
As she tried to wrench the flip-flop free, the thought flashed through her panicked mind that they’d probably keep her there for ever – as a warning to all those who didn’t want to complete the programme and tried to get away. But then she was out.
A wide
open view of the countryside lay before her: fields of green and gold, hilltop villages shimmering in the afternoon haze and a big blue sky.
She allowed herself a brief moment of elation and considered jogging away from the gates hastily before the gardener or anyone else had time to work out that she was missing.
But she had to wait for the taxi. She could already hear the crunching as it travelled back down the drive. Then came the hum of the gates.
Forgetting that she was dressed only in a swimsuit, she rushed at the car, waving it down and yelling in her Italian for Beginners: ‘Buon giorno. A Milano, per favore! Rapido! Pronto! Presto!’
Only when she was safely in the back seat did she realize that the driver wasn’t just smiling from ear to ear because he was a happy man. He was smiling hard because she was dressed in a swimsuit and on the run from Camp Detox.
‘Many peoples try to leave,’ he began. ‘When I here in taxi, always peoples try to leave. But you – first one in a costume de bagno.’
Chapter Fourteen
Milan
Annie on the run:
Brown and blue print maxi sundress (Diane von Furstenberg)
Strappy sandals (Hobbs)
Sunglasses (Chanel, via Svetlana)
Total est. cost: £790
‘SOMETHING ELSE FOR Madam?’
The waiter raised an eyebrow and Annie knew what he was thinking: that she was the greediest woman who had ever eaten at his restaurant. Well she didn’t care.
Had he been locked up in a gilded, frescoed, marbled hell and denied anything but water with bloody lemon juice or celery and courgette cocktails?
‘Maybe just one more coffee, please,’ she replied.
She was sitting at an outdoor table in the haze of contentment she had promised herself. In front of her were two drained coffee cups, an empty wine bottle, and the bowl, scraped clean, which had once contained a mound of creamy, chocolate-drenched profiteroles.
Before that she’d eaten a dreamy thin-crusted pizza and the portion of garlic-infused, pasta-layered lasagne of her dreams.
Caffeine, alcohol and sugar pumping furiously around her deprived system, she watched as the people in this Milan square went by in the afternoon sunshine.
