Christine’s professional memory flicked back to a similar strand sold at Christie’s last year: over a million dollars, bought by the Earl of Rutland to celebrate his wife, the Countess, having given birth to twin daughters. A modern version of the British aristocrats who had married American brides in the nineteenth century to restore their family fortunes, the Countess, who owned a gigantic American fracking empire, had brought multiple millions to the marriage, which had restored the crumbling Rutland stately home to its former splendour. A million dollars was small change to the Earl. Christine made a mental note to approach the Rutlands as possible pre-buyers for the auction; they really should have been on her list already.
The Countess had had quite a reputation for wild partying before she married. She would probably have loved a copy of a photograph Randon Cliffe had taken of his private parts – it was obvious from the angle of the shot that the owner of the penis had been the one holding the camera. But Christine was going to have to screen this kind of picture very carefully. There was no way anything too sexual could make it into the auction catalogue, and if they decided to sell the rights to any of them, extremely strict conditions would have to be imposed upon the buyers.
I’m definitely going to have a ‘no engorged private parts rule’, though, Christine decided firmly. Not even in, err, private sales. Goodness, I never thought I’d use those words in a professional context!
If there were images of Randon naked, she wondered, how would she and Berkeley deal with that? Christine was sure that the partners would take the old-fashioned view that a nude woman’s body was much more acceptable, more artistic, than a man’s; she had even been informed earnestly by an older partner that women did not like looking at naked men.
Because the men who run things don’t like the idea of comparisons being drawn between their willies and the ones on screen, Christine thought cynically. Well, if there are naked ones Vivienne wants to sell, I should pitch this as a celebration. Make the nudity almost incidental, suggest that people are being vulgar if they focus on the fact that Vivienne and Randon happen not to have many clothes on, if any . . .
Vivienne would surely be in favour of that approach. Christine looked down at the photograph again, still amazed by its existence.
‘Oh my God, it’s a prehistoric dick pic!’
Angel plucked the photograph of Randon’s pearl-draped penis from her hands.
‘Can you believe it!’ he marvelled, staring at it appreciatively. ‘Talk about early adopters! God, that’s a very nice cock, I must say. One sees why Granny Viv kept going back to him, doesn’t one?’
‘Angel – that’s your grandma!’ Christine protested.
‘Oh, come on. It’s not like you weren’t thinking it too,’ Angel said cheerfully.
After Angel’s comments about sucking cock at school, this line of conversation made Christine distinctly uncomfortable. She reached into the box and picked up a photograph of Vivienne on top of another stack, one she was sure would distract him; it was a head shot of her wearing the famous pearl and diamond choker, her black hair drawn back to show it off.
‘You know that Randon had a miniature version of the choker, right down to the hanging pearl, made for your mum?’
Angel’s nod was the briefest sketch, but Christine was too excited to notice.
‘I’d love to find a picture in here of her as a little girl wearing it!’ she enthused. ‘There are lots of photos of Vivienne and Pearl in them, of course, but a behind-the-scenes one would be incredible. We’re selling the chokers together as one lot.’
Angel plucked the photograph from Christine’s hands, gazing at his grandmother wearing the choker, the enormous pearl sitting at the hollow of her throat, opalescent against her equally smooth and pearly skin. To a gemmologist, the word ‘priceless’ was mere hyperbole: there was a value to everything, although often that was simply whatever a client was prepared to pay. Randon Cliffe had bought the choker for fifty thousand pounds in 1975. Today, Christine had tentatively estimated the value of both chokers at eleven million. Much more, if the rights to this private photograph of Vivienne were included.
‘Mummy had to sell her choker because Granny Viv cut her off,’ Angel said, his tone hardening. ‘And as soon as she did, Granny Viv bought it back for her own collection but didn’t give Mummy a penny, even though she knew how desperate things were. My grandmother’s always cared about her jewellery more than she does her family. No wonder Mummy died the way she did. She knew her mother didn’t give a shit about her.’
‘Oh Angel! I’m sure that’s not true! I can see how much she loves you!’
Jumping to her feet, Christine embraced him wholeheartedly, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing tight.
Naturally the subject of his dead mother would be hugely painful for him. Never before, however, had Angel articulated the awful belief that his grandmother was responsible for his mother’s death. This was the first time that Christine realized how damaged he had been by his upbringing, and it made some of the doubts she had had about him seem much less important.
Of course, she was aware that Angel had been living with Vivienne at the time of Pearl’s death because of the latter’s drug addiction; and she had gathered, from things that Angel had let slip, that the transfer of custody from mother to grandmother had been extremely fraught. Angel had been sent away to school rather than staying with his grandmother, and his stories from that period in his life were incredibly lurid. He had never had a job in his life, lived off a lavish trust fund, and had a reputation as a high-living, modelizing playboy. Charming as Vivienne was to her, Christine couldn’t help realizing that Vivienne had done almost as poor a job of bringing up her orphaned grandson as she had previously done with her daughter.
To Christine, Angel seemed like a hero from a romance novel: too handsome, too debonair, too sexually skilful to be real. Now, she understood why. All the modern romantic heroes had dark pasts with which they struggled, were flawed and damaged by their tragic childhoods. Their shiny, perfect facades were just that: facades. A crucial piece of information had just fallen into place for her.
Christine often flashed back to that extraordinary day when she had been interviewed by Vivienne in the morning in Tylösand, and courted by Angel in the evening in London; the day when her mundane, everyday life had morphed into something out of Hello! magazine crossed with Vanity Fair. It had never seemed completely real to her before. Cinderella stories did happen in her profession: she knew a young woman who had been on the front desk at Berkeley when a newly divorced Greek billionaire walked in, decided Gemma was precisely what he wanted in a second wife, and whisked her away on his private plane to his private yacht. In itself, that would just be a business arrangement: a beautiful blonde trading her looks for his money. But the billionaire was charming, and Gemma really had fallen in love with him. When she popped in to visit her ex-colleagues after a year and a half, accompanied by a nanny pushing baby Spiros in a top-of-the-range Bugaboo pram, Gemma had been clad from head to toe in Chanel, dripping with diamonds and flushed with happiness.
The world of fine art was full of rich men looking for trophy wives. Galleries and auction houses – and their feeding grounds, the art history faculties of universities – were well known for being stocked with employees much more attractive than those found in other professions. After all, if you stripped away the elaborate language and exquisitely polished manners, galleries and auction houses were in the business of selling – and salespeople were statistically better looking than the average person.
Even though Christine had been hired as an expert, rather than front-desk arm candy – and there was the male version of that, too, slender sprigs in perfect tailoring and silk ties, with butter-yellow hair even silkier than their ties – she had quickly realized that her girl-next-door looks didn’t hurt. Every single male Berkeley partner or director, and every male client over forty, had taken an interest in her that was best described as inappropri
ately avuncular. Looks could be so misleading. Her big blue eyes, her freckled snub nose and her rounded cheeks gave her an air of freshness and innocence that made most men assume she was a sweet girl from a nice, sheltered suburban home, part of a close and loving family. Just as people looked at Angel’s dazzlingly handsome face, his poise and charm, his confidence, and naturally thought that he had been cherished and coddled for his entire life by an adoring grandmother.
The Winters might be rich and famous, but as a family they were seriously flawed. Pearl had chosen drugs over her son; Vivienne had abandoned him to a boarding school with some sort of bizarre sexual regime. No one had looked out for Angel, just as no one had ever looked out for Christine. That must be why he had chosen her, Christine realized, out of all the women he could have dated: because, instinctively, he had sensed how much their backgrounds mirrored each other’s.
Angel might never have had to work for a living, but he had been forced to survive in other ways. No wonder he had some sexual tastes that were barely on the edge of acceptability; look what he had been through! He talked about his school experiences as if it had all been a wonderful game; but how was it possible for a boy his age to go through that without coming out warped to some degree?
This wasn’t a fairy tale – or at least not the Disney kind, with all the raw, bloody edges smoothed over, the neglectful, cruel parents sanitized and nothing real left from the original, gruesome Brothers Grimm versions. The revelation brought Christine an overwhelming sense of relief. She didn’t want to be a passive, grateful Cinderella, raised up to dizzying heights by a perfect Prince Charming. Instead, here was something she could actively do – she could help Angel and Vivienne reconcile, encourage them to heal their wounds. They were, after all, the only family each other had.
‘I’m so sorry about your mum, Angel,’ she said, kissing his neck. ‘I’m so sorry you grew up without her, and that bad things happened to you. But honestly, your grandmother really does love you. Whenever she talks about you, her eyes light up. I really hope you two can sort things out and you can forgive her for what happened with your mum.’
‘You’re a nice girl, Christine,’ Angel said, patting her head. ‘A genuinely nice girl.’
Christine flushed with happiness, her arms round his neck, her head resting on his chest. If she could have seen his face, however, she would have had a very different reaction. Angel’s eyes were crossed, his features contorted into a gargoyle grimace.
Oh Lord, how long do I have to put up with this? he was thinking. God help me, she’s seeing me now as some sort of wounded soul that needs saving, and I’ll have to play along with it so Granny Viv keeps the money fountain flowing. All this vanilla sex is driving me mad with frustration. I can’t wait for Nicole to get back from Atlanta so I can really let loose! One little bruise on her bum, and Christine acts like I flogged her for an hour before hog-tying her and fucking her up the arse.
Which, frankly, isn’t the worst idea in the world . . .
His cock was hardening at the image. She’d be crying, of course, pleading with him to stop, those big blue eyes wet with tears, her make-up smeared, her pale buttocks striped and welted as he held them open, her helpless wriggling making him even more excited as he lubed her up . . .
It was a stroke of luck, all things considered, that he found Christine very attractive. It was partly to do with the impulse to see how far he could push her, how many dirty, perverted sex acts he could coax and coerce her into performing; he certainly never needed to picture another woman in order to get an erection with Christine. He was already counting the hours until he could drape her over his bed and sink his cock deep into her throat, just as he had told her he would. But as soon as Nicole returned from Atlanta, where she was meeting Lil’ Biscuit and Silantra, Angel would be ringing up the escort agency and booking that pretty blonde who liked role play for a threesome that would make the last one look as tame as – well, as most sex with Christine.
Hearing footsteps in the hallway, he immediately got his facial expression under control. As Vivienne came into the foyer, he was gazing down at Christine with a tender light in his eyes.
Vivienne sighed in pleasure at the sight of them. It was exactly what she had planned, and Vivienne adored it when things went according to plan. She had neatly separated Christine from a romance that had been burgeoning with Tor, pushed her firmly into Angel’s arms, and here she was, well on the way to finding herself pregnant with Vivienne’s first great-grandchild . . .
Christine pulled back on seeing Vivienne. Pink-cheeked, embarrassed, she babbled apologies about hugging her boyfriend during work time, which turned into a stream of excitement about the photographs and urgent pleas for Vivienne to go through them with her as soon as possible. Vivienne nodded with a smile, but she was barely listening. She was looking back and forth between the two of them: her near-mythically handsome grandson, and pretty Christine with her clever brain, sweet nature, and colouring that was similar enough to Angel’s to mean that any children he fathered with her would not look too different from the Winter template.
Frankly, Christine could have been one of myriad young women of breeding age with the right looks, a good job and a nice personality. She had simply happened to be under Vivienne’s nose when she had been told that Angel might die, that his fertility might be compromised, and an impulse had stirred in her that was as violent as it was unexpected: the terror that her genes would die out. She was like one of those disgusting rich men who fathered children late into old age on nubile young things. Fear of mortality was countered by the need to reproduce, to leave something behind when one left this world. That impulse had worked fast in Vivienne. She hadn’t hesitated for a moment in telling Angel she would be raising his monthly trust fund payments significantly, as well as giving him a large lump sum, the day he told her Christine was carrying a Winter baby.
Fear of mortality, of course, was also the reason for the jewellery auction – it was really nothing to do with charity. Vivienne’s seventieth birthday a few years ago had been such a depressing milestone. And, although she hated that she was now well into her eighth decade, the issue upsetting her the most was how little interest the media seemed to have in her decades’ worth of achievements.
Vivienne Winter had once merely had to leave the house to be surrounded by reporters and photographers; these days, she’d be lucky to get a feature that didn’t spend most of its copy discussing whether she’d had plastic surgery. It drove her mad that they never asked the men about surgeries, despite the fact that so many of her male contemporaries had clearly undergone more carefully executed nips and tucks over the years than Leonardo DiCaprio had dated Victoria’s Secret models.
Now, however, reams of press and TV would be generated about her glamour, her generosity, the talent and beauty that had allowed her to acquire so many extraordinary pieces of jewellery. Her advancing age would be much less important than the celebration of her life and career. Christine’s suggestion of A Life in Jewels as the title for the catalogue had chimed perfectly with Vivienne’s own vision of what the auction signified to her.
Looking at Christine busying herself with the boxes of photographs, Vivienne nodded in approval.
I want her pregnant by the end of the year, she decided. I’ve told Angel he gets a million on me hearing she’s pregnant, five when she gives birth to a healthy baby. And he’ll have to marry her. I want my grandchild raised in a stable, two-parent household. She’ll have to give up work, of course. I don’t want a career woman farming my grandchild out to nannies. God knows, I don’t see Angel as one of those modern fathers with the baby carrier on his chest!
They’ll get another five million and a house on their marriage. Notting Hill, maybe, with a nice garden: close to Mayfair, so I can visit whenever I want. And another baby in a couple of years, maximum.
This was all, of course, predicated on Angel’s ‘cancer’ going into remission. He had told Vivienne that the radiation trea
tments were going extremely well, that the doctor was already cautiously optimistic, and that he would be able to have sex with Christine without contraception soon after the end of the radiotherapy, news that Vivienne had greeted with delight. She was refusing to believe that Angel would not survive. Her plans were entirely centred around this illness being a momentary blip, something that would be remembered in a year or two merely as the catalyst which had not only miraculously reunited her and Angel, but given her great-grandchildren.
Vivienne would allow Angel six months, once he had been given the all-clear by the doctor, to see if Christine could get pregnant. If not, he would have to move on and find someone who could. Or maybe – Vivienne debated this – Christine could undergo IVF. Trying for more than one baby at once would be the most efficient strategy. But either way, the timetable must be kept, the quest for a great-grandchild be rewarded with success.
And if there had been a way to pay a doctor extra to ensure that the baby had the Winter amethyst eyes, Vivienne would have done it without a moment’s hesitation.
Chapter Thirteen
Atlanta – the next day
‘Oh my God,’ the most famous reality star in the world breathed, as she studied the close-up photographs of Vivienne’s pearl and diamond choker. ‘Bae, look at the size of that pearl!’
‘It pops great against that black velvet,’ her husband drawled, one big finger touching the image of the Italian pearl hanging from the choker. ‘It’ll be way better on you than some skinny white chick.’
‘It so will,’ Silantra sighed in ecstatic contemplation. ‘What should I wear with it in the video?’
‘I kinda think a white leather bikini?’ Lil’ Biscuit said, knitting his brows in contemplation.
Killer Diamonds Page 22
