A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  Romy picked up the phone receiver from the bedside table and started to dial. But nothing happened. All she heard was a tinny crackling sound on the line. She grabbed her jacket and trousers, frantically searching through her pockets as she heard someone – a man . . . Alfonso? – shouting downstairs. But her mobile phone wasn’t here. It was downstairs, she remembered then . . . it was downstairs in the kitchen with . . .

  Claudia? Max? Nico? There was no one else here.

  More shouting. Then nothing. Only the tick of the clock.

  Romy dressed in a frenzy, tearing buttons and ripping a sleeve as she pulled her shirt over her head. She ran for the door and then stopped, holding it ajar, listening for a second, but hearing only silence in reply.

  She walked out into the corridor. Where had Alfonso gone? Why was the house so quiet?

  Then a figure stepped out of the shadows, making her jump.

  It was Claudia. For a moment Romy felt a surge of relief that she was safe. Then she saw that Claudia was fully dressed in Romy’s clothes, in her jeans and jumper and loafers. Gone was the ravaged, weak look of earlier. With her hair pinned back in a clip, she looked business-like and aloof.

  Then something glinted in the moonlight and, in the time it took Romy to realize that Claudia was holding one of the sharp knives from the block in the kitchen, Claudia had stepped towards her and was pressing the tip of it against Romy’s throat.

  ‘Get downstairs, bitch,’ she said. Her voice was cold and heartless. ‘There’s another old friend dying to see you,’ she added, jabbing the knife tip in harder to make Romy start walking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  September 2001

  She was nearly there, Thea thought, straining to see through the crowds to the block of shops ahead, but at this hour the sidewalk was busy. She looked at all the people filling up the tables at the sidewalk cafes – couples and friends meeting after work in this trendy Manhattan neighbourhood.

  When was the last time she’d come somewhere like this and just hung out at a bar? Thea wondered. Or gone to a restaurant with a friend? Or even, as her assistant Sarah had suggested, gone out on a date? There’d been that one guy last year – Alan someone (she couldn’t even remember his full name). And he’d been nice enough, she supposed. Only the whole time she’d been with him, all she’d actually been thinking about was work. She’d become like her father in that respect, she guessed.

  But so what if Maddox Inc. meant everything to her now? Should that really come as a surprise? Wasn’t it in her blood? And so what if she got lonely from time to time? she thought dismissively, telling herself at the same time to buck up. Wasn’t that just the price one paid for being successful? So what if these people had more fun than her? To get where she was she’d had to use every second she’d been given. She’d had no time to waste.

  She dropped a dime into a street performer’s hat as she passed the subway entrance. His face was painted silver, along with his tailcoat, shirt and trousers. He suddenly, robotically, switched his position and winked.

  ‘Good luck, lady,’ he called after her.

  It’s got nothing to do with luck, Thea told herself. Her life, her career – everything she was – it was to do with strategizing. It was to do with competing just as hard as you could. All the time. Especially when faced with someone like Brett. It was to do with not being cheated out of your birthright. No matter what the personal cost.

  Thea sucked in the smell of the hot New York air, the tang of the subway ventilation shaft mixing with the sweet odour coming from the cupcake cafe on the corner. She puffed out her chest and filled up her lungs. This city, she might not live so much in it as above it, but she still loved it nonetheless and was determined one day to make it hers.

  Two rollerbladers slalomed past, almost crashing into a couple of thirty-something women who’d just stepped out onto the sidewalk from a bookstore, both clutching brand-new matching hardbacks in their hands, and Thea smiled, glad she hadn’t missed the signing.

  After meeting Johnny last year, Thea had tried to find Shelley Lawson’s home number in her old school diaries, but she and Duke had moved from their Cotswold house. So she’d got in touch with Shelley’s publisher, who’d been kind enough to give her details of Shelley’s book tour, starting with two days here in New York. Thea had cancelled three meetings today to make sure she got to this signing at the small, prestigious bookstore, rather than the new Borders store uptown. She joined the back of the line of people waiting.

  Shelley Lawson was sitting behind a desk stacked high with copies of her latest novel. She was wearing a white linen suit, with her hair perfectly coiffed and her make-up smooth and professionally done. She looked totally different from the bustling English-countryside mom that Thea remembered. Thea wasn’t the only one who’d become successful in the intervening years.

  Shelley didn’t see Thea until she was right in front of her and presenting her with a book to sign.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘Thea . . .’ But then the smile of recognition fell from her face. ‘How nice to see you,’ she continued, her voice much more formal and stilted now.

  Tom – she was thinking about Tom, Thea guessed. She was remembering how Thea had dumped him and walked out of his life, without so much as a word of explanation as to why. And maybe she was thinking about Bridget too, and how Thea had let her best friend down. How she’d caused a rift between Shelley’s children. Thea had no idea whether that rift had healed in her absence from their lives or not. She hoped it had, but looking at Shelley now, it was clear it was still fresh in her mind.

  ‘Can we talk?’ Thea asked. ‘I’d like to have a few minutes of your time, if I could.’

  As she scribbled her name without any accompanying personal message on the title page of the book Thea had handed her, Shelley peeked behind her at the last few remaining people in the queue, and then over at her publicist.

  ‘OK,’ she said, pushing the signed copy back at Thea. ‘Give me a few more minutes until I’m finished off here. But I haven’t got long,’ she glanced at her watch. ‘Half an hour, then I’m due at a dinner.’

  It was only two blocks to Thea’s home, but even so she had a cab waiting when Shelley was ready. As they set off into the traffic, Shelley sat with her back straight as they made polite small-talk about the weather.

  They drew up outside the stoop of Thea’s brownstone a few moments later. Two perfectly manicured box trees stood on either side of the shiny black door. Splashes of red geraniums contrasted against the window ledges’ cast-iron bars.

  Sandy, Thea’s trusted housekeeper, was just leaving, locking up the door. ‘I picked up the dry-cleaning, like you asked, Thea,’ she said. ‘Supper is in the fridge.’

  Thea thanked her and opened the front door.

  ‘I would have thought you’d be living in Maddox Tower. I hear the penthouse apartments are the most exclusive in the city,’ Shelley said.

  Meaning you have been keeping an eye on what’s going on in my life, Thea thought, realizing that she really was going to have her work cut out to get Shelley to open up to her in any way.

  ‘If I lived there too I don’t think I’d ever leave my desk at all,’ Thea said, leading her inside.

  ‘You’re not married then,’ Shelley said, stepping into the neat hallway and looking round. It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘No,’ Thea said.

  Thea had bought this house last year and had used the very top New York design firm to refurbish it completely. She watched Shelley look around the gunmetal-grey and white-striped walls of the hallway and at the swooping slate staircase.

  ‘Minimalist,’ Shelley said, but the way Thea heard it, it sounded like an insult, as if she were talking about Thea’s life.

  Thea let it pass, hoping Shelley might feel more inclined to talk after letting off some steam and needing to keep her on-side. She led her towards the back of the property and into the brightly lit kitchen, where she opened the huge stee
l fridge and took out one of the bottles of Sauvignon that she imported monthly from the Leveaux estate in South Africa.

  She was glad that Sandy had gone home and they were alone, but even so, as Thea met Shelley’s cool glance, she felt her nerves rising – not because she was in any way intimidated by Shelley, but because of what she was planning to discuss. She poured two glasses and handed one over.

  ‘To old acquaintances,’ Shelley said, raising her glass. Thea could feel the tension radiating from her.

  Thea raised her glass, determined to stay in control, but she didn’t repeat Shelley’s toast. She thought back to those magical holidays in Italy and how close she’d felt to Shelley and to all her family. How much she’d wanted her to be her surrogate mother. But, yes: old acquaintances – that was a fair description of what they were now.

  ‘You’ve done very well for yourself. And you have a beautiful home,’ Shelley said, following Thea through the far kitchen doorway and into the smart drawing room beyond.

  Thea thought of Shelley’s old home, that cosy, chaotic kitchen and how much she had fallen in love with it the first time she’d gone there with Bridget. The memory seemed so homely compared to Thea’s own immaculate living space, where even the magazines on the table had been placed just so. Her own picture was on the cover of last month’s Time magazine, just visible beneath this month’s Vogue.

  ‘So . . . I guess you want to know about Bridget and Tom?’ Shelley traced her finger along the back of the candy-striped silk sofa.

  ‘No. Actually I don’t,’ Thea said. ‘I mean, I do hope they’re both very happy. And I’m sure they are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But please,’ Thea said, pointing to the sofa. ‘There’s something else entirely that I’ve brought you here to discuss.’

  For the first time since they’d got here Shelley’s self-assurance seemed to waver. But she did what she was asked and sat down.

  ‘So what do you think of the wine?’ Thea asked.

  Shelley looked confused, but she took a sip. ‘Very nice,’ she said.

  ‘I import it from an estate in South Africa,’ Thea said. ‘There’s a famous stud-farm there too.’ She locked her eyes on Shelley. ‘It’s where Johnny Faraday works.’

  Something in Shelley’s face altered. She looked away.

  ‘So imagine my shock when I went to visit and Johnny told me about my mother’s baby. Or how I felt when I realized that the scene you wrote in your book, Sons and Daughters, was true.’

  Shelley pressed her lips together, then she closed her eyes. She slowly put her wine down on the glass-topped table in front of her. Thea held onto the edge of the high white marble mantel above the fireplace.

  ‘But what I don’t understand,’ Thea went on, ‘is, after my mother died, how could you have known that I had a sister and not have told me? When you knew how lonely I was. When you knew how much I missed Mom.’

  She was trying to keep the anger from her voice, but her words had become sharp with it all the same. Deceit. This woman – this woman she’d thought of as a friend, whose son she might even, under different circumstances, have married – had kept the truth from her over something as important as this.

  ‘It wasn’t my place,’ Shelley said quietly. ‘It happened years ago, and I kept my promise to your mother to keep it a secret—’

  ‘But you were there when she had my sister?’

  Sister.

  Shelley seemed to recoil from the word. She seemed to deflate right there in front of Thea. Then, slowly, she started to talk.

  Her shoulders sagged further and further as she unburdened herself of her past. She described how the schoolfriend she’d most idolized, Alyssa McAdams, had come to her and begged her for help.

  She’d been eight months pregnant – a fact Shelley had been astonished to discover as Lis had gone to huge lengths to conceal her condition.

  She could have got rid of the baby before, she had known. But Lis had put it off and off until it had been too late. She’d been terrified that her parents would throw her out if they found out. She knew that they believed that having a child outside wedlock was a sin and a social disgrace. She’d been terrified too of what they might do to Johnny.

  Shelley had comforted her friend. And then she’d got practical. Shelley’s father, a doctor, had been running a local country medical practice at the time, so she’d told Alyssa that perhaps the best thing to do would be to go and talk to them, now that she was almost due, and ask them if she could have the baby at their house. Her father would know what to do. He’d either be able to talk to Alyssa’s parents himself or arrange an adoption.

  Alyssa had agreed and they’d left boarding school one afternoon and caught the train together to Shelley’s parents. Their hope had been that Shelley’s father would then call the school, making up an excuse for their sudden absence. But by the time the taxi had got them to Shelley’s house, Alyssa had already gone into labour. Worse, Shelley’s parents – Shelley had totally, stupidly, she now said, forgotten – had gone away on holiday.

  So together Shelley and Lis had battled through the whole terrifying ordeal of childbirth alone.

  The baby and Alyssa had slept for ages afterwards, but then when Lis had woken up, she’d lain in bed and stared in silence at the bedroom wall, leaving Shelley to cope with the infant and feed her with powdered milk.

  But the next day – the day Shelley’s parents were coming home – Alyssa was up at dawn, her bags packed. She still wouldn’t look at the baby. She’d said she couldn’t help it, that keeping it would only make everything even worse. She’d told Shelley to lie to her parents and tell them that the baby had been left anonymously here at their home.

  ‘She was such a sweet little thing,’ Shelley said. ‘When my parents came back that evening, they were horrified that a baby had been left on the doorstep. I lied to explain the fact I was there, by saying that Alyssa and I had run away from school because we’d been worried about our exams, but Alyssa had gone back now. And that much was true. She’d gone back and got on with her life. I’d find that out later. She’d shut it all out, as if it had never happened, as if that baby had never really been hers at all.’

  ‘I got sent back to school while my mother looked after the baby. My father trawled the countryside looking for the baby’s mother. A week later a lady from the adoption agency came round. She took the baby away.’

  The baby, Thea thought. My half-sister. Taken away.

  Those few words seemed so big to Thea. So solid. Such a huge wrong, which she knew instinctively that she must right.

  ‘After she went to America, your mother wrote to me. Only twice,’ Shelley said. ‘She’d got engaged to Griffin Maddox. Her family were over the moon about the match, but Lis had regrets.’

  ‘She must have missed England. And Johnny.’

  Shelley nodded. ‘Yes.’ She looked uncertain. ‘But what had happened between her and Johnny – everything that had happened with the baby – it finished whatever chance she and Johnny had ever had.’ Shelley smiled tentatively. ‘And she did love your father, Thea. You need to know that. He came into her life at the right time. Together they moved on.’

  But how far? Thea wondered, thinking of Johnny, always there, always near. Had her mother ever really truly belonged to her father at all?

  ‘Did my father know?’

  ‘When she had you, the doctors would have known that she’d had a baby previously. She might have told him she’d had a baby. But I doubt she’d ever have told him the father’s name. Griffin Maddox – your father – I can’t imagine a man like him would ever have let Johnny be near her, if he’d known that.’ Shelley sighed. ‘And that’s it. That’s all there is. You know it all now.’

  ‘Did she ever mention the baby – my half-sister – to you?’

  ‘No. She cut me out of her life after that.’

  There was a small silence. Shelley took a sip of wine and sighed. Then she looked at her watch. Thea sensed
that she wanted to leave now that she’d unburdened herself.

  She stood up.

  ‘I want to find her,’ Thea said.

  Shelley looked up at her, surprised.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to her? To the baby?’ Thea asked.

  ‘Of course I do. But, Thea, it was a long time ago. She’s probably living an ordinary life somewhere.’

  ‘But what if she’s not? What if she needs help?’

  Shelley exhaled, clearly torn.

  ‘Will you help me? The adoption agency in England. They must have records. Your mother must have known where the baby went.’

  Shelley looked uncomfortable. ‘I can try,’ she said, unconvincingly.

  ‘Would you?’ Thea asked, her eyes searching out Shelley’s. ‘Please?’

  Suddenly she felt overwhelmingly emotional. It had been so long since she’d asked anyone for anything. She swallowed back tears. ‘It’s just that finding her . . . my sister . . . would mean a great deal to me. A great deal.’

  She saw Shelley soften. ‘OK, I’ll try and do what I can. But I want to know something too, since we seem to be getting everything off our chests.’

  ‘What?’

  She paused for a moment, then obviously decided to come right out with it. ‘Thea, why did you break Tom’s heart? Why did you just end it like you did? He suffered.’

  Tom. Thea felt goosebumps rush up her spine, remembering how much she’d loved him.

  He suffered.

  Thea imagined Tom sitting at that long kitchen table being comforted by his parents, and the pain felt as raw as it had done when she was twenty-one.

  But she’d never tell Shelley Lawson the truth. Never tell anyone about what Brett had done. Or the baby she’d aborted afterwards. Thea cleared her throat and stared down at her hands.

  ‘I had a change of heart,’ she said instead. ‘And I know, I dealt with it badly. But I decided I had to move on.’

  ‘Move on?’ Shelley looked aghast, clearly shocked by the casualness of the phrase and its dishonesty. ‘He really loved you.’