Bad Twins

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘Conway,’ their father announced at top volume, ‘is not welcome here this weekend.’

  Going a bit deaf, poor old chap, Bart thought, noticing the overloud tone of voice. You can always tell when they start shouting.

  Adrianna sashayed over to the drinks cabinet by the far wall, a beautiful curving piece of furniture, and started to do complicated things with bottles.

  ‘If you’re making drinks, I’d like—’ he began, but Adrianna, without turning round, held up one French-manicured hand, her elegant fingertips pressed to her thumb in the universal gesture that signified he should stop talking.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said sotto voce, as Jeffrey continued:

  ‘Bloody outrage. Samantha won’t say a word to criticize him, of course. Perfect wife, which makes it all so much worse. Doing a wonderful job with the little ones.’

  He shook his head in frustration.

  ‘But there’s no point denying it leaves the field wide open for you three!’ he added, with the bluntness for which he was well known. ‘You must all be thanking your lucky stars, eh?’

  Bella, Bart noticed, actually cringed back as if she were trying to hide in one of the button indentations of the chesterfield, looking strangely guilty. Odd, he thought.

  Charlotte looked their father in the eye and said, ‘Frankly, yes. I’m ambitious, Daddy. I’m not going to deny it.’

  Jeffrey sighed.

  ‘Such a shame you weren’t born a boy,’ he said, which made Charlotte’s eyebrows shoot up practically to the ceiling.

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded being born a girl,’ Bart mused. ‘But would I ever get out of bed in the morning if I had bosoms? Wouldn’t I just lie there happily playing with them? How do women get out of bed in the morning, come to think of it?’

  Jeffrey laughed at this.

  ‘Damned if I know!’ he said, raising his glass to his son.

  ‘What on earth are you drinking, Daddy?’ Bart said, looking at the bright-red concoction his father was holding.

  ‘A negroni,’ Jeffrey said, sipping some. ‘I don’t even like Campari. But Adrianna knows what’s best.’

  ‘He needs to wake up before dinner,’ Adrianna said briskly, appearing by Bart’s side as if by magic. ‘Or he gets too sleepy before the dessert comes with sugar to wake him up. So he needs a bitter drink.’

  She handed Bart a Martini glass garnished with a cocktail stick skewering three small silverskin onions.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is for you.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Bart said. ‘Not very James Bond of me! But I’m not really a martini drinker.’

  To his surprise, everyone else in the room let out a chuckle of amusement. Thomas leant forward.

  ‘Apparently, we drink what we’re given,’ he informed his brother-in-law gravely.

  ‘I got a French ’75,’ Bella said. ‘Which is very nice, though—’

  ‘With cognac,’ Adrianna said. ‘Not gin. This is the classic French ’75, with cognac. Gin is a variation, but I did not give it. It is not good for you.’

  She fixed Bella with a green stare.

  ‘It will make you sad.’

  She turned back to Bart, who was still awkwardly holding the glass he didn’t want.

  ‘Gin is good for you,’ she said. ‘Nothing can make you sad. And this is a Gibson, very dry, with onions, to balance you, because you are always sweet.’

  ‘Uh, thank you?’ Bart said, cautiously feeling his way.

  ‘It is not a compliment,’ Adrianna said. ‘It is an observation. Drink.’

  ‘She’s always right!’ Jeffrey said, so fondly that all three of his children present jerked their heads round to look at him in shock; they had never heard that tone from their father before. ‘She’s the Drink Whisperer! That’s what they used to call her at the club, you know.’

  ‘I like to make drinks for people,’ Adrianna said calmly. ‘I know what they need. Not what they want, but what they need.’

  ‘I must say,’ Thomas observed, ‘I don’t usually drink rum, but—’

  ‘You need spice,’ Adrianna said matter-of-factly. ‘Much spice.’

  Since the attention was entirely on her as she walked over to Jeffrey and took a seat next to him on the central chesterfield, no one noticed Bella flinch at this, not even her husband.

  Bart sipped at his Gibson. It tasted better than he expected, but that might be the sheer social pressure; clearly, even if it had been a mix of Jägermeister and crème de menthe, he would have been required to finish it off while saying how much he liked it. Still, it was stimulating, and with Adrianna’s sphinx-like gaze on him, it went down surprisingly easily.

  ‘I’m not sure if I’m being hypnotized into finding this quite tolerable,’ he said, ‘or if I actually like it.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Jeffrey said cheerfully.

  ‘I used to run the bar at Farouche,’ Adrianna said, sitting back and crossing her ridiculously long legs. ‘I was very strict. That was how I met Jeffrey. He asked for a red wine and I said no, I would not serve him that. I made him a whisky sour.’

  Her fiancé patted her knee with great affection.

  ‘And she was right!’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ Adrianna said seriously, ‘these are cocktails. Separate from food. Wine pairings are different. But this is why I am not a sommelier. It is a separate experience.’

  ‘No side to this girl, eh? This is what I love about her,’ Jeffrey said happily. ‘Met her in a bar. She doesn’t pretend to be anything she isn’t.’

  Farouche was an exclusive members’ club off Old Bond Street, stocked with leggy beauties who were unquestionably available to the hedge funders, playboys and art collectors rich enough to buy old masters from the Pall Mall galleries. Being a bartender, a job that required skill and knowledge, was certainly a step up from cocktail waitress or bar-stool decoration. But Jeffrey was still quite right: Adrianna could easily have chosen to say that she met him at the polo, or a gala, a social engagement at which she was a guest, not an employee. That she had decided not to was impressively honest of her.

  ‘So, Adrianna – and Daddy too –’ Charlotte said, ‘thank you so much for asking us to stay the weekend! I’m sure I speak for the whole family.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Bart said, raising his glass as Thomas and Bella nodded in unison.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Adrianna said. ‘After all, you are Jeffrey’s family. And it is nice to see the children.’

  Anyone less maternal-seeming, Bart thought, would be hard to imagine; but Adrianna seemed genuine, and she certainly hadn’t needed to issue the invitation in the first place.

  ‘Are you planning to make any changes to the house?’ Charlotte asked, looking around the panelled drawing room, with its very conventional antique furniture, its landscape paintings in heavy gilt frames, its heavy rugs.

  ‘How do you know I haven’t?’ Adrianna asked, neutral-faced.

  Charlotte was equal to this, however.

  ‘Oh, this isn’t your style at all!’ she said, raising her glass of Sauvignon Blanc to Adrianna. ‘You’re classic, yes, but entirely contemporary! Actually,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘you’re very Sash Woman – you know, my boutique brand? I’d love to see you as part of our advertising – in due course,’ she added, glancing at her father, aware of his aversion to any publicity surrounding his engagement. ‘Whenever you feel like it. Obviously that’s a question for you and Daddy to discuss, but please do at least think about it.’

  Bella shot a vicious look across the coffee table at her sister, Bart noticed, as this was unquestionably a successful tactic of Charlotte’s. Adrianna was, as might be expected, not reacting beyond a nod of acknowledgement, but Jeffrey was beaming at the compliment to his fiancée.

  ‘We’re up for so many boutique chain awards, by the way!’ Charlotte added nonchalantly. ‘It’s terribly exciting. And people respond so well to the fact that there’s a real family behind this big enterprise. Now you’re going to b
e part of it, I could absolutely see you becoming the face of Sash. You’re very aspirational. Are you on Instagram?’

  ‘No,’ Adrianna said. ‘That is not for me. I am more private as a person.’

  ‘So are you going to make changes, darling?’ Jeffrey asked her, turning to look up at his beautiful, impassive fiancée. ‘I know what women are like! You have to come in and put your own stamp on a place just because the previous woman’s done it up her way! God knows Jade did that in London. Stripped out half of the house before she was done.’

  Despite the fact that they were both trying to make the best possible impression on their father, neither Bella nor Charlotte could keep their expressions completely neutral at this casual observation. The ‘previous woman’ who had been supplanted had been their mother, the ‘London place’ their childhood home, which Christie had spent so much love and care decorating to make a haven for her husband and children, only for it to be ripped up at the whim of the woman who had seduced their father.

  Even despite the fact that Jade had now been displaced as unceremoniously as Christie had once been, Jeffrey’s airy ability to talk about one woman replacing another was very hard to hear. Thomas reached out to take his wife’s hand in sympathy.

  Bart’s gaze flickered to Adrianna’s face, and he saw, to his considerable surprise, that for the first time it was actually registering emotion; even more surprisingly, that emotion was empathy for her fiancé’s children. Reaching out to Jeffrey, she patted him firmly on the shoulder to make him stop talking.

  ‘Nothing will be stripped out. There is only one change I would like to make,’ she said. ‘I want a full wet bar in this room so that I can stock it with everything I want to make my drinks. I need shelves, too, but that may be a problem for the panelling. All the reception rooms have panelling, very beautiful. I will need to get a special carpenter, I think, to make sure it is not damaged.’

  Her eyes gleamed.

  ‘I want to collect many vermouths,’ she said. ‘Right now I am – what is the word – obsessed with vermouths. I think maybe I would like to make my own.’

  ‘We could get you to create a signature cocktail for Sash!’ Charlotte said brightly, and Bella’s eyes narrowed as Adrianna tilted her head, considering this, then nodded as she said:

  ‘I would like that. Yes. I prefer to be associated with the cocktails, I think. Not just to be a model.’

  ‘I love it!’ her fiancé beamed. ‘We’ll go ahead with this after the wedding, shall we?’

  Jeffrey Sachs actually simpered coyly, something none of his children had ever seen, and a sight they could happily have done without ever experiencing.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, with the same uncomfortably coquettish expression, ‘after the honeymoon, I should say.’

  As one, Bart, Charlotte and Bella picked up their glasses and took swigs of their drinks, their heads ducked in a synchronized effort to avoid watching their elderly father leer suggestively at a woman who was younger than any of them. Again, Adrianna ignored Jeffrey’s comments, expertly directing the conversation back to a subject with which his children would be more comfortable.

  ‘So yes, the house will stay as it is.’ She swept one hand in a wide gesture, encompassing the drawing room. ‘This is perfect. We are in the countryside, it is a country house. It looks the way it is supposed to be. I know Russians or Arabs buy this kind of house and then put gold everywhere – gold and black marble – but that is not right for England.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure Charlotte didn’t mean that you were going to be so clichéd just because you’re from Estonia!’ Bella said, managing to land a little snark on her sister; it was Charlotte’s turn to narrow her eyes.

  Oh dear, Bart thought. Bad twins! Due to the common stereotypes about twins being closely bonded, Bart’s friends had always assumed that his sisters would be joined at the hip; when he had told them that, actually, they had never had much in common, the reaction had always been surprise. It hadn’t helped, of course, that their father had always pitted his children against each other.

  Bart sighed. He really did hope that the four of them could settle down and accept whatever decision Jeffrey eventually made about the future of the Sachs Organization. Bart hated a bad atmosphere, and the family wasn’t particularly close now; if this struggle for power led to a genuine rift between the siblings, something which had never happened before, it would really be a pity, especially with this extraordinary new stepmother-elect seeming to want to bring the family together.

  Personally, Bart was still assuming that Conway would be made CEO, his father’s current ire against him not withstanding. In Bart’s considered opinion, the scandal would blow over. Samantha and Conway would reconcile, upon which Jeffrey would simmer down and decide that that his firstborn son, the one he had groomed for power by making CFO, would be the natural heir. Jeffrey was an irredeemable sexist who wouldn’t be comfortable handing the reins to a woman. Look at what he had just said to Charlotte about it being a shame she hadn’t been born a boy!

  People tended to think, Bart knew, that he didn’t notice much that went on around him. But he did. It was just that he didn’t care about most of it.

  Now, however, that observation of Jeffrey’s, the son thing, gave him food for thought. If Conway genuinely was out of the running, and Jeffrey wouldn’t consider one of his daughters for the job, that only left Bart! Did he actually want the job?

  He was still debating that. But he remembered what he had said to Bella in her office, the day Jeffrey reamed out Conway, his idea of being a peacemaker. That would certainly be preferable to the prospect of the twins waging out-and-out war against Conway from the moment he took over as CEO, which he was sure they would . . .

  ‘Hi, everyone! You look very comfortable!’

  Paul appeared in the doorway, and as always when Bart saw his brother-in-law, his first thought was: ‘Damn, Paul really is bloody handsome.’ Paul was the kind of man who, while not exactly pushing a straight male to question his entire sexual orientation, still made you think that being locked up with him as your cellmate, or stranded with him on a desert island, might not actually be a fate worse than death. Since Paul was clearly as heterosexual as they came, that only increased his attraction: there wouldn’t be any messy assumptions about blossoming romance, just two guys, taking care of each other’s business in a sticky situation . . .

  This line of thought amused Bart so much that he realized first that he was grinning, and secondly that someone was looking at him. Hadn’t he just observed to himself that people assumed he wandered through life oblivious to his surroundings? Well, they were wrong. He noticed what he needed to. And now he realized that his father’s fiancée was staring at him curiously.

  He turned his head and met her eyes. Christ, she really was a stunner. Quite enough to stop a man from having momentarily inappropriate thoughts about his male-model brother-in-law! And the weird thing was that, somehow, he had the idea that Adrianna had known exactly what he was thinking, though that was obviously impossible . . . but she was smiling, just a tiny little smile, and those extraordinary eyes were flickering from him to Paul and back again . . .

  ‘How are the kids, darling?’ Charlotte asked her husband without getting up from the sofa.

  ‘Oh, very happy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They’ve had their dinner and bath, and now they’re all four playing together beautifully.’

  ‘It’s a bit earlier than our normal schedule,’ Samantha chimed in, following Paul, ‘but we’re very happy to fit into your hours’ – she smiled at Jeffrey and Adrianna – ‘and besides, they’re so enjoying being with their cousins!’

  ‘The playroom is wonderful,’ Paul said admiringly. ‘So many toys, and really creative ones. It really is a pleasure to walk into a room for kids and not see it entirely full of plastic. A lot of that wood actually looks sustainably produced.’

  Boner gone. He kills it every single time, Bart thought, even as he got up to greet his sis
ter-in-law; he always rose to his feet when a woman entered the room. Paul opens his mouth, bless him, and instantly turns into a total passion-killer. How does Charlotte stand it?

  Probably duct-tapes his mouth shut during sex unless he needs it for a specific task, came the answer. And reminds herself how fantastic he looks on her Instagram, which is really all she cares about. If one of those kids had had the bad luck to come out ugly she’d have had it adopted.

  Yet again, he had the strange sensation that Adrianna was reading his mind; as he passed the sofa, he shot a swift look at her. Yes, she was still looking at him, and yes, the smile had deepened.

  She’s a bloody odd woman, he thought uneasily. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were a witch. Do they have witches in Estonia?

  ‘Sam!’ he exclaimed, enfolding his sister-in-law in a friendly hug, then pulling back to hold her by the shoulders and look down at her fondly.

  He hadn’t seen Samantha since the whole dust-up with Conway. You couldn’t tell that she had been through anything more taxing than bad traffic on the way here, perhaps. There might be the faintest sign of strain around her eyes, but that was all. This was what it meant when you came from really solid stock, the old military families; the women just picked themselves up and carried on, whatever had happened.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ he said, enjoying her Penhaligon perfume. Bluebells or snowdrops or something British like that, nothing hothouse. Trouble was, of course, Conway had clearly wanted something a damn sight more exotic than wild meadow flowers every so often. ‘Lovely to see you! Have you done something new with your hair?’

  ‘Oh Bart, you are sweet,’ Samantha said, patting his cheek. ‘No, I haven’t. I haven’t changed a thing. But I know you really mean it. Thank you.’

  She was a nice brunette with a tidy little figure, just like Mrs Stratford, her dark hair brushed back in wings that fell behind her ears, pale-pink lipstick, competence exuding from every pore. Mrs Stratford would probably have worn this kind of outfit for a smart family dinner, too: a simple navy silk dress with blousy transparent sleeves to show that she wasn’t completely dowdy, some kind of arty gold earrings dangling prettily, sensible shoes with low heels, suitable for running round after children.