Sin Tropez

by Aita Ighodaro

  Natalya felt uncharacteristically moved by the invitation. To see such a distinguished-looking father enjoying an evening with his precious daughter made her wistful, comforted and angry all at once. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared a drink with someone purely for the sake of good company rather than because they could be of use to her in some way. She was pleased to have been asked.

  ‘Yes, thenk you, I will join you. My partner is away and I do not relish the idea of a night alone in our huge place in Mayfair.’

  Tara, forced to snap out of her inner turmoil, couldn’t remember anything of either a ‘partner’ or a huge place in Mayfair from their brief conversations in France. She’d obviously got lucky in the meantime.

  The lounge-bar Tara had picked was dimly lit and bass music rumbled from the speakers. Hugo bought a glass of port for himself and vodka tonics for the girls and settled himself beside Natalya on one of the low leather sofas. He was staring at her moronically and Tara felt a flash of shame.

  ‘Where were you educated, Natalya?’ Hugo asked. ‘Tell me about you? Your life? Your childhood?’ The questions tumbled randomly out of his gibbering mouth.

  Natalya flashed a steely smile. ‘I went to the school of poverty, misery and hard graft, but beleaf me, I can tell you more about philosophy and economics than your most learned Oxford professor.’

  She looked Lord Bridges in the eye and he gave a strangulated wail.

  ‘Well …’ Natalya lifted her glass in a toast before taking a sip.

  Hugo downed his sweet port and went to get another.

  Tara leaned across and asked Natalya whether she had any coke on her.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Natalya replied. ‘Thet stuff is not for me. I can’t beleaf you and your father get wasted together, it’s so cool you’ve got such a close relationship.’

  ‘He knows nothing about me,’ Tara spat. ‘He drinks so much that he doesn’t even stop to think about what I’m doing, or how I’m feeling. He doesn’t know about my life – probably still thinks I play with Barbie dolls.’

  ‘He loves you, Tara. You should appreciate thet at least. I … I would keel to have a loving father.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know you weren’t on good terms with yours. I’m so sorry.’

  Tara called across to Hugo at the bar. ‘Papa can you get us some more vodkas?’

  Hugo turned and fluttered his eyelashes drunkenly at Natalya. Then he stopped and peered at her, as though he was studying a bizarre museum exhibit.

  ‘Aaaargh, I’m so sorry about Papa,’ Tara groaned, burying her head in her hands. ‘You just have to ignore him when he gets like this.’

  Natalya laughed. ‘Thet’s OK, he’s sweet really, harmless. We both know what horrors are out there.’

  Both girls thought immediately of Reza.

  ‘So, tell me about your partner,’ Tara said, downing the last of her vodka then staring at the bottom of the empty glass.

  ‘He’s … rich.’ Natalya shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Good start.’ Tara grinned and clinked her empty glass against Natalya’s.

  ‘He’s one of the richest men in the world, actually. And he gives me whatever I want. He dotes on me and he … he tries to control me. But thet’s men for you, I guess.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you hate men.’ Tara was slurring now. ‘Me too, I hate men too, they’re stupid. Look at my father for Christ’s sake.’ Tara gave a hoarse laugh and threw herself back on the sofa. ‘Shall we get some coke?’ she asked.

  Natalya shook her head and reached for her phone, which was vibrating in her bag.

  ‘Hello bébé,’ she shouted above the music. Then, apologizing into the phone and signalling to Tara that she’d be back, she ran out of the bar so that she could better hear Claude.

  ‘Where are you?’ Claude sounded angry.

  ‘I’m just having a quick drink with a girlfriend on the way home.’

  ‘A girlfriend. Who? No men?’

  ‘No, no men, of course not, just an old friend, Tara.’

  ‘I don’t like you going to bars without me all the time.’

  ‘No, no, Claude, I don’t, this is just a one-off.’

  ‘I think it’s time I got you a full-time minder.’

  ‘Wh-what …? But nobody even knows who I am,’ she pleaded. ‘Thet is not at all necessary, darling.’

  ‘Everybody knows who I am, and they know that you’re with me. You’re mine. I’ve got to go to my meeting, it’s 9 a.m. here. Go home now and send a message when you’re back.’

  ‘Yes. Yes alright. I love you.’

  Natalya hung up and returned inside. She could see that a swaying Hugo had been watching her through the big glass windows for the duration of her phone call and he now caught her by the waist as she approached the sofa.

  ‘Where did you get to young lady? Don’t tell me you’re a naughty one – just like Tara-Bara.’ He guffawed loudly as Tara wrinkled her nose in distaste and took four large sips of her vodka.

  Hugo had by now switched to vodka as well, so he’d bought a bottle. Minutes later, the bottle was empty and the girls watched, horrified, as first Hugo’s knees buckled and then the rest of his body collapsed in a thud to the floor.

  Tara had seen her father drunk on many occasions but had never seen him collapse before. She had no idea how to respond. She was sure he’d come to, but she couldn’t very well send him off to Uncle Rupert in this state.

  Natalya, however, was unfazed and she quickly mobilized into action. ‘Come and stay with me,’ she said. ‘I’ve plenty of rooms.’

  Tara wanted to get home to her own flat because she thought she had a little coke left but Natalya seemed so focused and together that she found herself passively following orders. Natalya hailed a cab and got someone to help them hoist Hugo into the back seat, reassuring the reluctant cabbie that he wouldn’t throw up all over the newly cleaned interior. She handed Tara one of the bottles of water she’d demanded from the bar before leaving. ‘Drink this,’ she said. Then she opened another bottle and forced it into Hugo’s drooling mouth.

  Natalya felt a surge of compassion for Tara. In St Tropez she’d envied her, but, looking at her skinny frame and blotchy skin, and at her daddy, she saw that here was somebody whose problems might even rival her own. She herself had learnt to cope, and now she could help Tara, she wanted to help her, and the knowledge filled her with joy. Perhaps she and Tara could even become friends.

  Hugo had not, as the cabbie had feared, been sick on the journey home; instead, even more humiliatingly, he’d wet himself. Unable to face the grisly sight of her father’s sodden, naked body, Tara left Natalya to undress him and put him to bed – on his front so he wouldn’t choke if he threw up in the night. By the time Natalya had finished dealing with Hugo, Tara had already fallen asleep upstairs on the master bed. Natalya climbed in beside her, remembering to first send Claude a message saying that all was well, that she missed him, and that she was in bed thinking of him. Natalya looked down at Tara, restless in her sleep, and kissed her temple.

  Chapter 22

  Abena didn’t know what she was still doing with Bertrand. That amazing night after Annabel’s should have been a one-off. But Bertrand had had other ideas, and what had begun as a sexy dance was now a torrid affair.

  So here she was again, back in Bertrand’s gorgeous Belgravia house, sneaking in a couple of passionate days while his wife was away on another business trip. Despite what she’d said to Sarah, Abena knew it was wrong and she felt horribly guilty. But she lacked the strength to end the affair herself. The prospect of months and months of nothing but Mallinder, without Sebastian’s wild hedonism to offset it, was too depressing to contemplate. And she wasn’t even welcome at Reza’s glamorous events any more – after her disastrous entrance with Sebastian at Sin, she’d become persona non grata with him.

  Shutting herself into one of Bertrand’s many bathrooms, Abena picked up her phone. She needed to talk it through with someone. She wen
t to call Tara, the only friend she could rely on not to judge her even a tiny bit, but stopped herself – after all, the girl was in no fit state to offer a valid opinion. And she could hardly talk it through with Sarah after their chat about infidelity the other day. She thought of Benedict. She longed to speak to him, and had a funny feeling he might not judge her either, but then he hadn’t returned her last call, and neither had he shown up at Annabel’s, so she guessed he hadn’t enjoyed her company that much.

  What the hell. She was enjoying herself with Bertrand so why beat herself up with guilt? She grabbed her make-up bag from where she had slung it, on the teak lid of the toilet seat, and put the finishing touches to her face. A night on the tiles was just what she needed.

  ‘Oh hellooo,’ purred Bertrand in as seedy an accent as he could manage. Abena giggled.

  ‘You certainly scrub up well. Can it really be just half an hour ago that you were sweaty, naked and dishevelled on my bedroom floor? Come, let’s go, angel.’

  They clambered into Bertrand’s Bentley and he directed the driver to a Mayfair casino.

  ‘Precious, I’m afraid my wife returns home tomorrow afternoon, so I will need you to be out of the house tomorrow morning.’ Bertrand sounded apologetic.

  ‘No worries, I was only imagining I’d stay for a couple of days anyway,’ Abena breezed. At the back of her mind, she hoped that his wife’s return would put a natural end to this delicious affair.

  ‘So. Casino hey?’ Abena teased. ‘What makes a man who looks after other people’s money want to throw all his own away?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not a gambling man, but it’s a very social casino and the real money is made over the entrecôte steak, long before the gaming begins.’

  ‘I don’t know why you want to make any more – you’ve already far more than you know what to do with.’

  Bertrand was silent for a while and Abena feared she’d angered him in some way. After all, now that bankers were being vilified in the press for bringing about the recession, he might be racked with remorse for earning so much from his stake in the bank.

  ‘Sorry,’ she backtracked, ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s fine, good question.’ Bertrand leaned back and threw a lazy arm around her shoulder. A broad, deeply contented smile split his face. ‘I was just trying to work out the answer. I think it’s the thrill of the chase, and the acquisition. It’s the same for everything in life really. Once I’ve made it, I move on and try to make more elsewhere. I don’t need it, don’t always spend it or use it, or treat it with the respect I should. But I enjoy the process of making it mine.’

  ‘Oh,’ Abena said. The rest of the journey passed in silence.

  ****

  Natalya had been thinking a lot about Tara, and decided to pay her a visit. She had seen an unexpected side of her the other night, quite different from the spoilt, carefree English rich kid she’d taken her to be. She had always despised girls like that, who seemed to look down on her for trying to better her life; who seemed to consider themselves too well bred to care about money, even though they would lose every shred of self-dignity if it were taken from them. But Tara had shown her that even those girls could be miserable. Maybe happiness really wasn’t connected to wealth and status. Maybe that old chestnut was true: all you need is love. No, not for someone like her, anyway.

  Stopping off at Harrods’ food hall and then Hermès, where she bought a little scarf for Tara with money from the allowance Claude had set up for her, Natalya took a cab to Tara’s Ladbroke Grove flat. Claude was keen to assign her a personal driver but Natalya wanted to put that off for as long as possible as it would be yet another way for Claude to spy on her from abroad.

  ‘Hey, come in.’ Tara let Natalya into the flat. ‘Sorry it’s such a mess,’ she sighed, and sank down on to the sofa, pulling a thick duvet on top of her. ‘Sorry I look a wreck; I think I’m coming down with something.’

  ‘I can get you a cleaner?’ Natalya offered, stepping gingerly into the room. ‘This is for you.’

  Pinched and drawn as she was, Tara’s eyes lit up when she saw the Hermès packaging. ‘Wow, thank you darling.’ She opened the parcel and smiled before dropping the package and its contents on to the floor and sighing once more. ‘So, how are you?’ she asked Natalya. Natalya could tell that she didn’t really care what the answer was and so didn’t bother to respond. Instead she plunged straight in.

  ‘You can still kind of manage your habit, Tara, but you should seek help, otherwise you might end up like your father.’

  Tara couldn’t even muster the energy to get angry. ‘My father doesn’t take drugs.’ She wiped her snotty nose on her sleeve.

  ‘No, but he is an alcoholic,’ Natalya replied. There was no point in pussy-footing around at this stage. She reached into her bag and arranged the various treats she’d bought in the food hall: some sushi, a selection of salads, and some Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a sugar boost. ‘Eat something.’ It was more of an order than a question, so Tara reached for a doughnut and took a couple of nibbles.

  ‘Now, I know a very good place for you to go to, and your father too if he wants. It’s called Appletons Rehabilitation Centre. It’s expensive, but is supposed to be excellent. Many models go there. They hef a 99 per cent recovery rate and only 2 per cent relapse.’

  ‘I’ve been to rehab before,’ Tara sulked.

  ‘Seriously, when?’ Natalya asked.

  ‘At school, when I was caught smoking weed, but I didn’t really need it then. I guess I need it now.’

  ‘I guess you do.’

  ‘I’m not gonna spend Christmas in a fucking loony bin – it’s not the glamorous jolly that all the celebrities make it look like.’

  ‘I know this.’ Natalya was sympathetic.

  ‘I have to go home for Christmas. And then maybe I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Progress, at least. Eat some more.’

  Natalya moved closer to sit beside Tara and slid her own body under the duvet. Then she reached out a hand and stroked Tara’s greasy hair.

  They lay together, wordlessly, for a long while. Natalya let her eyes close as she savoured Tara’s listless company. She tried to think of other things, but she couldn’t force him out of her mind. The father that didn’t want her around – didn’t want her alive? Would he really go that far to protect whatever life he had cultivated in England since that fateful night twenty-one years ago? Natalya supposed he had a family now, a wife perhaps, and new children – legitimate ones. He had warned her not to come near ‘us’, whoever ‘us’ entailed. She sensed it was simply a matter of time before they would come head to head. The feeling repulsed and frightened her. Yet somewhere deep down she was strangely excited. Whatever he was, he was her daddy. And if he killed her, he would have to acknowledge her first. Natalya tasted bile rising into her throat and forced her thoughts back to the present. She hugged Tara tightly. ‘It’s OK, honey,’ she whispered.

  ****

  Abena and Bertrand were staying at a country-house hotel for the weekend. The beds were enormous and feather-soft, each room had a roaring fire, and there was a three-Michelin-star restaurant and a world-class spa on hand to feed body and mind. The hotel was famous for its service and boasted more than thirty staff members to every one guest. Staff who would find themselves mostly idle tonight as Bertrand had booked all twelve of the rooms to ensure that he and Abena wouldn’t be disturbed. They were lying facing each other on parallel massage beds, being pummelled and stroked by expert masseurs in spotless white uniforms. Scented candles encircled the beds and the surround-sound speakers played the sound of a sea rippling under a soft breeze and lapping the shore again and again and again.

  Abena had almost dozed off when she realized Bertrand was talking to her.

  ‘I’m going away to France for work next week. Merging one of Willy Eckhardt’s projects with a foreign investment of mine, so your pal Sarah will be coming along too. She’s brilliant, very capable and eff
icient in the office and a good professional attitude.’

  ‘Well, whatever you do, don’t tell her about us.’

  ‘Are you mad, angel?’

  The waves continued to lap and then Bertrand began talking again. ‘I’ve been thinking. Let me take care of your rent, precious. I hate the thought of Olympia being mean to you. Let me take care of you.’

  Abena closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.

  That night, after the staff had left, she offered to give Bertrand her own, special massage. Not for the faint-hearted.

  ‘Baby! Yes please!’ He gazed at her, eyes shining.

  Chuckling to herself, she tied Bertrand to the bed so that he couldn’t escape.

  ‘Ow!’ Bertrand yelped as she slammed a fist into his shoulder blade. Another blow followed. And then she pummelled, jabbed and beat the man until he was whimpering and sobbing into his pillow.

  ‘Baby, this isn’t quite the type of massage I had in mind.’

  Abena brought her elbows down sharply on his lower back for the last time, and leant to speak in his ear.

  ‘B, please don’t ever ask to “keep” me again.’

  ‘Oh, baby, is that what this is about? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disrespect you. It’s just you seem so upset about your career, and your friend Tara. And the money really is negligible to me. I thought it would be a nice gesture – one less thing in your life to worry about.’

  ‘Worry about my pleasure, darling, not my rent.’

  After an hour had passed, Abena untied him, kissing the sore marks on his skin where he’d been bound. Bertrand rubbed his wrists and looked at her slyly.

  ‘Well, you’ve taught me my lesson, so I better teach you yours …’

  Abena ran whooping through their suite, bracing herself for the mother of all punishments.

  ****

  Tara’s emaciated back bobbed up und down in quick, convulsive movements as she retched into her blood-splattered pillow. It was three days since she’d last had a hit but her nose still bled intermittently. Despite pains in her chest and her arm, she couldn’t stop wanting more.