Bad Twins

by Rebecca Chance

  The woman returned Bart’s stare with an absolutely impassive expression in her long, greenish eyes. She was like a leopard at the zoo, idly regarding the human on the other side of the bars as if Bart were the exhibit, and one for which she could not summon up much interest.

  Her perfectly shaped lips did not part to answer his question. He might as well have not uttered a word.

  ‘Come in, come in!’ Jeffrey Sachs said irritably. ‘What are you doing piling up there in the doorway like the Keystone Cops?’

  He was nearly eighty, and he looked it. His American contemporaries were permatanned, dermabraded, their liver spots faded with peels and retinol, their hair awkwardly dyed – it seemed impossible for men of a certain age to dye their hair with any plausibility – their cheeks plumped with fillers. It was an interesting phenomenon that these procedures made them seem barely any younger, just different. One would still have looked at them and evaluated their age more or less accurately.

  But they were, perhaps, not aiming for the appearance of eternal youth so much as trying to look less like a memento mori, a reminder of inevitable death. Jeffrey’s deep wrinkles, his skin, like thin tissue stretched over bone, the dark patches of sun damage on his face and hands, the sparse white hairs stretched over his scalp, the sagging body in the grey suit that seemed too large for him, all spoke eloquently of the ravages of time.

  As did the contrast with the beautiful woman who had one hip propped on the arm of his chair, one arm lying along the back of it, whose skin was as firm and peachy and smooth as Jeffrey’s was not. His children, filing into the living room and lining up in front of the armchair, stared at her in frank disbelief. Conway was the last in, and he had turned to pull the sliding doors closed; when he turned back, and got his first clear view of her, he swallowed, his hand going to the knot of his tie in automatic tribute.

  None of the children were going to say a word. Why put your head above the parapet if you were likely to get it blown off? Jeffrey had always been scathing if they came out with a statement that he considered blindingly obvious; they had learned the hard way to think before they spoke. Even Bart, the least inhibited of the quartet, limited himself to staring silently at the tumbling chestnut mane, the flawless, tanned skin and the slender yet curvaceous body of the leopard, sheathed in a sleek snake-print silk dress.

  ‘Well? Cat got your tongues?’ Jeffrey barked eventually.

  Bella knew better than to roll her eyes, or to glance sideways at how her siblings were reacting to this. However, from the restless shifting of their feet, the rustle of their clothing, she was aware that this question had irked her siblings as much as it had her. You were damned if you spoke up, but equally so if you didn’t; with a father like Jeffrey, you couldn’t win for losing.

  ‘What do you want us to say, Daddy?’ asked Charlotte eventually in crisp tones, arching one eyebrow. ‘Clearly some major change is under way, and you’ve summoned us here to show, not tell.’

  Jeffrey barked again, but this time it was more like a laugh.

  ‘Well, sit down, sit down!’ he commanded, waving one thin, liver-spotted hand. ‘What are you all waiting for?’

  As they dutifully sank into the long sofa that faced the armchair, the girls on the cushions, the boys on the arms, Bella noticed that the woman draped over Jeffrey’s armchair had not moved one iota. It couldn’t, she thought, be a particularly comfortable position; she was twisted at the waist, like a model posing for the cameras, not a woman actually reclining comfortably next to her . . . whatever Jeffrey was to her.

  ‘I’m getting a divorce,’ Jeffrey announced, a statement that by now came as no surprise to anyone.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ muttered Bart irrepressibly.

  ‘How’s Jade reacting to this?’ Charlotte asked, leaning forward.

  ‘How d’you think?’ Jeffrey said, a hint of amusement creeping into his voice now. This was as brusque and strong as ever, belying his frail stature, and it still intimidated Bella as if she were a small child. She wondered if it had the same effect on her siblings. Probably not Bart, she thought; Bart was fairly bulletproof, as he simply didn’t have as much to lose. His trust fund was secure, and he had no career ambitions he needed his father to support.

  Turning to look at her sister, Bella saw, just as she had expected, that a smile of pure pleasure was lighting up Charlotte’s face. Out of the four children, Charlotte hated their stepmother Jade the most. Once Jade had grappled her hooks into Jeffrey, she had swiftly proceeded to alienate him from his children as much as possible. Jeffrey’s children were banished from the house along with their mother, forbidden to show up without an invitation, not even to come in through the tradesman’s entrance to sit in the kitchen with Maria and have a cup of tea and one of the pastel de nata pastries she brought to the house every day from the Lisboa Patisserie on the Golborne Road.

  Naturally, those invitations had been very few and far between. Jade had got pregnant almost immediately, the classic gold-digger move to ensure not just alimony but child support and much better accommodation if a divorce should happen. Which, considering that Jeffrey had shown himself vulnerable to gold-diggers by leaving his wife for her, was by no means unlikely . . .

  Jade had used the birth of baby Roman, and then baby Brutus, to effectively exclude Jeffrey’s children by Christie from their father’s life. Jeffrey had not raised a finger to stop Jade when she declared that she would no longer be hosting the extended family in Warwick Avenue for Christmas and birthdays. Jeffrey’s children, Jade said, were much too loud and boisterous, and upset hers; they interfered with the new family that Jeffrey was building with her.

  Even as the four children grew to adulthood, as Conway and Charlotte had children of their own, there was almost always a problem when they tried to arrange events with their father and his new wife, some fresh roadblock that was thrown up. Like many fathers in this situation, depressingly enough, Jeffrey seemed oblivious every time this happened.

  Charlotte was significantly incensed by this treatment, more than any of the others. Having been her father’s favourite daughter, Daddy’s little girl, she felt that it was not just her mother, but herself who had been supplanted by another woman. It was insult added to injury when her precious children were banned from seeing her father, from playing happily in the house in which she had grown up.

  For Conway, it had not seemed that important. He was not particularly invested in his children, who were being brought up principally by his stay-at-home wife Samantha, and he had always been encouraged by his father to see himself as the favoured son, the presumed heir-apparent to Jeffrey’s empire. Family gatherings were not his priority. Bella had always been overlooked anyway, so expected nothing else, and Bart flitted through life so lightly that very little bothered him.

  So it was Charlotte who was positively beaming now.

  ‘Where is Jade?’ she asked. ‘And the kids?’

  ‘Oh, she’s renting a house in Mayfair,’ Jeffrey said with a little shrug. ‘We’re working out the details now.’

  ‘I imagine the prenup will have been pretty much ironclad,’ Conway said, his focus on the finances rather than personal revenge.

  ‘That’s what my lawyers say,’ Jeffrey agreed blithely. ‘Hopefully we’ll get it sorted out as soon as possible. It should be fairly straightforward.’

  Charlotte’s lips pursed together as she remembered the brutality of the previous divorce negotiations. At least Christie had emerged from them with a considerable chunk of money, and had negotiated even more fiercely for her children than herself. Jeffrey and Christie had not had a prenup, and Christie had helped to build up a considerable part of his hotel empire; she had been furious at being ousted by a woman twenty-five years younger than her who had made the running while Christie was struggling with early-onset menopause. The delicate process of balancing her hormones, adding testosterone to combat lack of sexual desire, then booking in lipo for the pot belly which had grown inexorably
despite her iron discipline with diet and exercise, had fatally distracted Christie while Jade, the consultant hired to curate the Sachses’ expanding art collection, had moved in for the kill.

  What Jade’s weakness had been, Charlotte had no idea. But as Jeffrey reached up his liver-spotted hand to take that of the young woman lounging on his armchair, it was eminently clear that, in turn, there had been a chink in Jade’s armour. And it made Charlotte’s heart sing like Callas and Caruso’s voices soaring in a glorious duet.

  ‘And it won’t come as any surprise,’ Jeffrey continued, ‘that as soon as the divorce is finalized, I’ll be marrying Adrianna.’

  As if she had been under an enchantment till this point, only stirring to life at the mention of her name, Jeffrey Sachs’s future wife uncoiled herself. Sitting up straight on the arm of the chair, she gazed directly at her future step-daughter, giving a little nod to acknowledge their presence. She did not, however, feel the need to utter a word.

  ‘She’s making this old man very happy,’ Jeffrey announced unnecessarily.

  ‘I bet she is,’ Bart agreed enthusiastically.

  ‘Hah! There’s life in the old dog yet, eh?’ Jeffrey said, grinning at Adrianna, who smiled back at him, her face so devastatingly beautiful in movement that everyone but Charlotte caught their breath.

  ‘I look forward to many years with my Jeffrey,’ she said, her voice husky, her accent Eastern European. ‘I feel very lucky to have found my soulmate.’

  ‘Dad, what’s going to happen with the family trust?’ asked Conway, and at this question every single one of the children stirred eagerly.

  Typical of Conway, Bella thought, to go straight to the finances. He was the most selfish person she had ever known. He hadn’t cared about his mother being set aside for Jade; even when Jade had had sons, he had calculated that they were simply too young to be a threat to him at the Sachs Organization. Should they want to challenge him for the position of CEO, they would need to graduate and attend business school first, and by that time he was confident that he would have consolidated power over his father’s entire business empire.

  However, the family trust was something to take very seriously. Currently, only Jeffrey and the four children by Christie had an interest in it; he had five votes, his children one each, so that he would always have the majority. There had been no suggestion up till now that Roman and Brutus should be given voting rights, but none of the adult children knew the terms of the prenup, or what Jeffrey might be prepared to concede in a divorce settlement.

  The Sachs family trust was as safe as Fort Knox, established by the best trust lawyers in the country at Christie’s insistence during the divorce. Conway, Charlotte, Bella and Bart could be sidelined from power, but they could never be disinherited. They could, however, conceivably have to share that inheritance, to a minor degree, with Roman and Brutus.

  Jeffrey looked levelly at his older son.

  ‘Might’ve known you’d be the one to cut to the chase, Conway,’ he said, without any expression in his voice.

  His son shrugged.

  ‘It was bound to come up,’ he said. ‘I know I speak for my siblings when I say we’d all strongly object to the little boys being put on an equal footing with us after we’ve devoted our lives to the family business.’

  Even Bart nodded along with his sisters. He wasn’t completely oblivious; he could see that there was no benefit to him of voting rights being extended to his two younger half-brothers.

  ‘Nice to see you four agreeing on something for a change,’ Jeffrey said, cracking a smile that made Bella, very attuned to his moods, instantly wary. She was suddenly acutely aware of the hairs on the back of her neck, prickling with sweat. ‘Enjoy the moment. I doubt you’ll all be singing from the same song book when I tell you why I’ve got you here.’

  Bella darted glances at her siblings and saw that they were all staring at their father, on high alert. Moments before, they had been as relaxed as they could be in his presence. Jade, the interloper, had been pushed out by a younger version. Jeffrey’s tastes in women were clearly catholic: he had progressed from Christie’s Germanic blonde beauty to Jade’s striking Chinese-American good looks, and now this statuesque Eastern European dazzler. Jade having been discarded meant that her sons were much less of a danger to Jeffrey’s older children than they had been up till now: with the mother rejected, the children’s value automatically decreased. Adrianna would certainly have children, but no matter how much Jeffrey might dote on them, they would be much too young to pose a challenge to their elder siblings’ careers at the Sachs Organization.

  The ground had just fallen away from beneath their feet, however. Because surely Jeffrey had summoned them here to tell them that he was divorcing Jade and had a new, younger wife already lined up? How could that not be the key piece of information he wanted to divulge?

  ‘I’m retiring,’ Jeffrey announced. ‘On the day Adrianna and I get married. And one of you is going to take over my job.’

  His pale-blue eyes, as keen and sharp as ever, scanned his children’s faces, his amusement at their reaction very obvious.

  ‘Nothing’s set in stone,’ he said, to make his point absolutely clear. ‘I haven’t made any decisions yet. But in six months, one of you four will be running the entire company.’

  Chapter Three

  Up till that moment, Adrianna’s physical control of her body had been extraordinary. Bella guessed that as well as the modelling Adrianna had doubtless done, she had taken extensive yoga classes, enabling her to hold positions for a considerable length of time. This brought images to Bella’s mind that she would much rather not contemplate, and she pushed them firmly aside, noticing instead that, for the first time, Adrianna had made a spontaneous movement. Instead of staring serenely out into the room over the heads of her lover’s children, as she had been doing, she was now looking straight at Jeffrey. Her sculpted features were clearly Botoxed into immaculate smoothness, but her heavy brows were struggling to meet in a frown.

  ‘This old guy wants to spend the rest of his life with his beautiful new bride,’ Jeffrey said, squeezing Adrianna’s hand. ‘I never thought I’d say this – I’ve always been such a workaholic! But she’s a gem, and I want to enjoy every minute I have with her. We’ve got so much in common.’

  ‘Really,’ Charlotte was unable to resist muttering.

  ‘Chess!’ Jeffrey said surprisingly. ‘We play a lot of chess.’

  Adrianna nodded automatically, but her brows were still quivering in an attempt to move close together. Also, her nostrils were twitching slightly, a sign that the twitcher has had so much Botox that the normal muscles that show emotion are entirely paralysed.

  ‘I’ve got plenty of time left,’ Jeffrey said cheerfully. ‘I might even go to LA and get all those treatments the tech guys have. Blood transfusions, cryogenic chambers, the works. Hire myself a personal trainer. I used to scoff at ’em, but now I get it. You want to stay active as long as possible when you’ve got a beautiful young wife to keep up with. I don’t think Adrianna much fancies pushing me around in a wheelchair for twenty years! She’d much rather have a husband with a bit of vim and vigour, wouldn’t you, darling?’

  He winked at his fiancée, who made no sign of agreement. Instead, her face stopped struggling to express itself, reverting to the perfect impassive mask it had been for most of the conversation. Bella concluded that this meant that Adrianna would infinitely prefer a husband she had to push around in a wheelchair to one who was submitting himself to a range of probably humiliating and invasive treatments in order to keep himself sprightly enough to . . .

  ‘Yikes, Dad, TMI alert,’ Bart said frankly as Conway, unable to restrain himself a moment longer, exploded with:

  ‘What did you mean, one of us is going to take over the company? Who is it?’

  ‘That’s up to you!’ Jeffrey said, with the peculiarly crocodile-like smile that he used as a challenge. ‘I’ve been told by my lawyers that I
can get this divorce done and dusted in six months. I’ll be marrying Adrianna pretty much the day after it goes through, and on my wedding day, I’ll announce which one of you takes over from me as CEO of the Sachs Organization.’

  On hearing this confirmation that Conway was in fact not the designated heir after all, Bella’s heart pounded in her chest so violently that it was all she could do to keep still. She felt as if she were being resuscitated with the metal plates doctors applied to patients in extremis to shock their heart back into beating. Heat flooded her body. Her hairline prickled again with sweat. She did not look at her siblings; she didn’t dare, as she knew her facial expression would be much too revealing.

  ‘It’s a competition, then,’ Charlotte said, her voice crystal clear, each word dripping ice. ‘But what are we being judged by?’

  Their father emitted what could only be described as a cackle. Bella thought he looked like a wicked old elf from a fable as he rubbed his brown-spotted hands together gleefully.

  ‘Everything!’ he said briskly. ‘Absolutely everything! I’m not setting any targets for any of you. That would be much too easy, wouldn’t it? You’ll have to challenge yourselves. Pull out rabbits from hats I didn’t even know existed. Go an extra hundred miles. I’ve got no favourites here, despite what some of you might think.’

  Charlotte, Bart and Bella promptly turned to look at Conway, whose jaw was set.

  ‘Hah, yes! I know you all thought Conway was set to take over from me!’ Jeffrey chuckled. ‘And maybe he was, once upon a time.’

  This fairy-tale reference made Bella start in surprise, having just made that comparison herself.

  Though there should be three of us, not four, for it to be a proper fairy tale, she thought. Three sons sent off on a quest to see who gets to rule the kingdom. It’s always the youngest who wins, but the likelihood of Bart pulling it off is practically nil . . .

  ‘But everything’s up for grabs now, as the Americans say!’ Jeffrey continued. ‘Exciting, isn’t it? Go forth and conquer! Knock my socks off! I’m going to have my hands full negotiating with Jade and organizing my new life with my lovely bride-to-be – I won’t be overseeing you much for the next six months. There’ll still be my board, of course. You’ll have to answer to them. Take risks, but don’t fuck up. Impress me.’