She said she’d thought I understood what my part in her grand rescue plan for PlanetLove was. She hadn’t realised, she said, quite how naïve I still am. That was her error, she admitted. She should have made things all a bit more overt, but she assured me that we could still rescue this.
I’m not saying much. She seems to think that ridding yourself of the encumbrance of an unwanted pregnancy will be no more difficult than taking an aspirin to cure yourself of a headache. I never thought too much about it before, but when I hear her talk about it in this dispassionate and unconnected way I realise that it’s not going to be so easy for me after all.
I’m feeling really weirded out now. I tell her it’s the long-haul flight but it’s not that. She’s just messed with my head, that’s all. I thought I knew where I was within the PlanetLove structure; the lie of the land, the terrain beneath my feet all seemed comfortable and familiar and welcoming, but now it feels as if all along this woman, who I took to be my friend, was simply using me as a pawn in a bigger game. I was never really that valuable to her after all, not as me, not Scarlett, myself. It was only what I represented that meant something to her. At the end of the day, the cause is more important.
And can I really blame her for that? I’ve backed the cause to the hilt myself. I’ve been prepared to throw my sister out of her home for it. I’ve been prepared to carry another person’s baby for nine months. Will I now have to terminate it, in the name of the same cause?
Then I ask her the one burning question that’s still left in my mind.
‘What about the Klausmann?’ I get out at last. ‘Are you going to tell me now that Guillermo Almeira was the reason I was shortlisted for that as well?’
‘Oh, no,’ Eve attests. ‘The Klausmann nominations have nothing to do with us. They’re judged at King’s College, as you know. The outcome is entirely out of our hands.’
That’s one good thing, then. The relief I feel at this last piece of news is for some reason enormous. Because – almost miraculously – the thesis I sent to PlanetLove has earned me the respect of some of the most prestigious workers in the field today. And that recognition is really worth something to me, despite Eve’s observation that I’m not the most academic bunny in the warren…
‘It’s a highly prestigious award,’ Eve admits. ‘And if you get it, that’ll work to your advantage too. The Almeiras are a highly status-conscious clan, as you know. Winning the Klausmann will be a feather in your cap that Gui can show off to his family – she’s not just a pretty face, sort of thing. He was very proud when I told him, you know.’
He was proud. Despite everything else I feel so shit about right now, that makes me feel good. If Mum were around today, I feel sure she’d be proud of it, too. She’d be proud of the work I’m doing here, too. She wouldn’t have wanted me to give it all up, I know. Not now.
‘Here he comes, honey. Be sweet to him. You know what he means to us so don’t cock it up again…’
And when I turn round to look behind me, there he is.
Red Balloon
Where is Andreis? Jamie rolls the cold beer bottle over his hot forehead, vaguely aware through the haze and the drumbeat of Rio Carnavale that his whole body is covered in sweat. But where is the laughing, thong-clad, feather-adorned girl he met up with at four p.m. yesterday, who has scarcely left his side since? His new…girlfriend. He tilts back the bottle and lets the icy beer trickle over his face. Now he will stink of beer, too.
But it hardly matters here, does it? There must be – he ranges his inexperienced eye over the heaving crowd of Carnavale-goers – what, maybe twenty thousand people here this afternoon and he’s spotted only two Portaloos so far. The roads are already steeped in urine – and worse. The barefooted, light-hearted Andreis hardly seemed to care either, he recalls, as she samba’d the last four hours away with him, their bodies heaving and contorting to the rhythmic drumbeats of the Bloco del Paradaiso.
Jamie laughs deep in his throat at the absurdity of it all. He’s got a girlfriend! He’s barely settled himself into his hotel yet, and already he’s slept with a woman there. When he booked those two nights at the Hotel Village Novo he had no idea that it backed out onto the starting point for the Barra to Ondina Carnavale circuit, or that there’d be so many bodacious babes just crying out for a bit of fun…
‘Bugger off!’ he snarls as a ten-year-old steals her hand into his pockets, hoping to snatch his change. This’d be the best party on earth if it weren’t for those thieving fuckers. They nearly had his mobile yesterday. Now he’s learned to come out with his money in his shoes and to carry nothing on him worth nicking. The only thing he’s got in his pocket is the change from the beer he bought earlier and that red metallic balloon with the letter for that girl on it. He brought that out to show Andreis because she said she’d like to see it. She’d been enchanted by the idea of a balloon travelling so far.
And now Andreis is back, snaking her hips through the sunlit crowd as she moves over to meet him, mesmerising him. She’s just met her uncle, she tells him, who wants Jamie to come and sell beer to the tourists with his nice English accent and he’ll give them some dinner. Maybe her beautiful white boy can work there all summer, she suggests, and stay near her? And why not? he thinks. Forget PlanetLove. There seems to be plenty of rainforest left from what he can judge. And he’s never had a girlfriend before. Andreis smiles at him and her pearly teeth are as white and straight a model’s.
When she puts her arms around his neck, this time Jamie barely feels the tug of the urchin’s hands in his pocket while his girlfriend’s lips work so expertly on his. The urchin gets his small change and then she tugs and pulls at the string attached to the red balloon, hopeful of unearthing some greater treasure. But the envelope turns out to contain no money when she peers inside it. She hurls it into the gutter behind her where it narrowly misses falling into a puddle – whether of urine or rainwater, it is too crowded to tell – and it is kicked about for a while as the Bloco del Paradaiso start up their batucada, the timbaladas and the maracutu rhythms again.
Scarlett
‘So, my dearest heart, you have come back to Brazil. But why is it that I learn this from your boss and not from you?’ Gui’s reproach is restrained, but he’s disappointed, I can feel it.
I pull myself back from him, my fingers lingering over his crisp, expensively-laundered white shirt, and I let him see my eyes filling up with tears. Eve has already silently slipped away.
I know that when I explain how terrible the last couple of weeks have been for me – how Hollie threw me out of the house after I got pregnant for her, and I had nowhere to go – then he will understand. I had nowhere to go. I even had to book into a B&B till I could get a flight out. The humiliating memory rushes back – I couldn’t even go home and get my clothes, I just sneaked in one day when she was out and grabbed what I could, my passport and my laptop and…and it’s been terrible. I feel his fingers softly massaging the back of my neck now, and he ushers me into a more secluded corner of the lobby, his eyes creased with concern.
‘Tell me everything.’ His voice is full of compassion. ‘My darling, what has happened to you?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I can’t meet his gaze and my eyes drop to the floor. I want to tell him. I’m burning to tell him everything and yet…what if Eve is right about how he might take it?
Damn it to hell, because now I really don’t know what I should do. If only I had called Gui first and not Eve, I’d never have been put off my original plan which was to be open and honest with him. Without mentioning Richard of course – even I realise that might be going a bit too far. But Gui would have understood about the surrogacy thing; if Eve hadn’t put her oar in I would have just told him like I always meant to. But now I feel conflicted.
‘I meant to tell you I was arriving today,’ I get out. I try to say more but my throat keeps closing up treacherously. And my face – I can see from his reaction that I must look so odd right at this moment.
/> Bloody stupid Eve! Why did she have to go and tell him I was arriving today? I haven’t had a chance to get my bearings yet. I feel ill. I feel – cut up, disappointed. She should have never said anything to him at all. And yet, I remember, she thought it was his baby I was carrying…I put my face in my hands.
‘Are you not well, my darling?’ The genuine concern in his voice only makes me feel worse.
‘It was a long flight,’ I croak. ‘I just need a little…’I indicate my throat and he calls for some water.
‘Something has upset you? Someone has? What has happened?’ he insists. Am I imagining it, or is there a glint in his eye when he says this? I gulp down the water that the waiter brings and take heart from the thought.
‘Nothing’s happened to me today, Gui. And I’ve been longing to see you, truly I have. I just wasn’t sure if I’d make it out on the standby flight. I didn’t want to waste your time.’ He gives a little impatient gesture, as if standby flights are beneath his consideration, but my excuse seems to have appeased him. ‘But you’re right that I’m upset. Something has happened that I need to speak to you about…Gui, I haven’t told you the whole reason why I stayed away for so long. And I know that while I’ve been away I haven’t paid you half enough attention, but I’ve thought about you. A lot.’
The number of phone calls and texts coming in from him have slowed down a lot in the last few weeks too, I remember. He shifts in his chair – is he waiting for me to cut to the chase?
‘The truth is…some very…difficult…things have happened to me while I’ve been back home in England with my family. I didn’t know who to turn to…’
‘My darling.’ He looks shocked, his face darkening with sudden anger. ‘Has someone hurt you?’
Gui will support me. I know he will. He loves me. I throw my arms about his neck suddenly, desperately, and I feel the protectiveness in his arms as he pulls me in close. If there’s one person I can rely on to support me after all the shit that’s happened, it’s him.
‘Is that it? Has somebody hurt you? Some man?’
I swallow back my tears. Something about the way he just said ‘some man’ is ringing very loud warning bells in my head. It has never occurred to me before and I thought Eve was totally wrong when she warned me that Gui would be the jealous type – but I see now she might very well be right.
‘No.’ I shake my head rapidly, deflecting his anger. ‘It’s my sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes, my sister. She…’ My thoughts are spinning out of control suddenly, jumping like bubbles in a steaming pot. If I confess that Hollie threw me out of her house then I’ll have to give Gui a very plausible reason why. If I tell him just part of the truth then he’ll know straightaway that it doesn’t add up. He’s looking at me intently now, his instincts alert and sharpened down to a fine razor point.
I am never going to be able to blag this. But I have got to. ‘You’ve got to turn this around’, Eve’s words return to haunt me. This isn’t just my future and wellbeing at stake here. I wipe my sweltering brow with the back of my hand.
‘It’s not been an easy time for me,’ I mutter brokenly. ‘My sister’s been very upset and – unwell,’ I invent. ‘And unhappy, because she and her husband can’t have babies. And I felt…’ I stutter ‘…I felt so sorry for them and I wanted to do what I could to help.’
‘What could you do, my beautiful girl?’ Gui’s hands are around my shoulders now, rubbing them comfortingly. He cares. He really cares.
‘What could I do?’ I hesitate. Has he ever even heard about surrogacy? He must have. ‘Sometimes, when you love somebody, you feel you would do anything in the world to help them, do you understand that?’
‘That’s natural,’ he murmurs approvingly. ‘She’s your family, after all. And you told me your sister has been almost like a mother to you in many ways. Family is the most important thing we have. What else matters, in the end?’
‘I promised her I’d help her out,’ I say brokenly. ‘But I betrayed that promise.’
‘Ah,’ he says at last. ‘I see now why you have flown back from Europe so sad. But come, it distresses me to see you so upset. Your heart is too large, Scarlett.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘Sometimes I think that you want to heal the whole world.’
As we have been speaking he has ushered me into the marble-floored dining room. The opulence inside is at once dazzling and shocking.
‘What? It is beautiful, no?’ he smiles softly. ‘You would like us to eat here?’
‘This place is such a bubble, isn’t it?’ I turn to him once I can manage to drag my eyes away from the gleaming chandeliers that hang from the ceiling, the immaculately turned out women with their smart-suited husbands, the cut-crystal glasses on every table. Even wearing Eve’s pretty white halterneck frock, I look distinctly underdressed in this place.
‘And I know I can’t heal the whole world,’ I tell him uneasily. ‘I’m too selfish and unworthy and…’
‘You are none of those things.’ He frowns, shaking his head dismissively. You think that only because you don’t know the real me, my heart is crying out. If only I could be real with you, Guillermo! If I could tell you everything…but I can’t. I let my head sag as we’re led to our table. I sit down and immediately a soft damask white napkin lands in my lap.
‘You could help heal some people in the world, my darling. You could heal me.’
I manage a smile. I could, perhaps, and he could do the same for me. I want to tell him the whole truth. It would be such a sweet release to be open and honest with him; to find that he would support me and love me and care for me, even after…after that.
Because that – what I did with Rich – was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Hol. My sister never wants to see me again. Even Lucy thinks I’m a bitch. If I could tell Gui – confess to him – and he still loved me, then that would be true love, I decide. That would be worth giving up everything for.
One thing at a time, though. I need to get him on board again with the cause. I don’t want to give him any excuse to back away from me right now.
‘I missed you,’ I confess. ‘More than I ever thought I would.’
He smiles. ‘Did you? Is that why you came back?’
‘Of course. I want to make my home here. I’ve decided I want to stay.’
‘With me?’
‘Definitely. If you’ll have me.’ And it is true. Why have I never seen it before? Gui is the man for me. He is handsome, generous, kind and he loves me. ‘And that means he can offer you something that I never can’ – isn’t that what Richard said? At the time that he said them, the words felt like a knife to my heart. I didn’t appreciate the truth of it.
‘I am so glad, Scarlett.’
The feeling of relief flooding through me at this moment is nothing short of overwhelming.
‘You don’t know how many prayers have been said that you might come back,’ he continues. ‘Tonight, you will drink champagne. You will sleep in a bed strewn with rose petals…if you can stand to live in this bubble’ He laughs disparagingly.
‘Gui, I can’t,’ I put in. ‘I’m planning on travelling back to base camp with Eve later on tonight. I can’t abandon all my friends right now. You have been in touch with Eve so you’ll be aware of all the things that’ve been happening to PlanetLove since I left?’
‘Ah, yes.’ An impatient look crosses his face for an instant before he throws his napkin onto the table and leans forward to look at me earnestly. ‘PlanetLove. I’ve heard. Your loyalty to your friends commends you. You are a good and beautiful woman, and of course you care deeply,’ he says soothingly. ‘What is happening out there – it’s a shame.’
No, it’s more than a shame, I want to shout. He’s an educated native of this country. Doesn’t he know, can he really not see that what’s happening here is going to affect the whole world, and sooner than everyone thinks, too…?
I bite back my words. ‘Will you help?’ I ask him tent
atively instead.
He draws back a little now, chooses his words carefully. ‘Perhaps this is a discussion for another time, my darling. I haven’t seen you for so long. I want us to be together as a man and a woman tonight. Not as – how shall I say it? – an employee and her boss. We don’t have to talk about work matters.’
No, I frown, but we do. And what does he mean, employee and boss anyway?
‘I’m not your employee, Guillermo. Chiquitin-Almeira have all but pulled out. We’ve got that European Alliance Group running the show now, and a pretty poor show it is too…’ I stop, seeing his face, feeling his hand encircle my wrist.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘You are a compassionate woman, a loyal ally to your friends, and I appreciate that. But you aren’t going to be able to help them any more. Not in the way you wanted to. We will speak more of this, I promise you. But for tonight, let me just enjoy being once more in your company. Let us not talk of hardship and despair…’
‘Only rose petals?’ I offer, pulling my hand away from his, even though I’m tempted to do exactly as he says – to leave, to forget that other, harsh mosquito-infested world – for now and just enjoy the luxury and opulence of his.
‘That is my world, my love. It is full of beautiful things, and luxury and privilege, I grant you that. But never think for one moment that it is not real. It is every bit as real as yours, don’t doubt it. You are one of the lucky ones though – you get to take your pick, which of them would you rather inhabit?’
A Sister’s Gift Page 31
