The St Tropez Lonely Hearts Club

by Joan Collins

  At eight thirty it was practically deserted, except for a few empty sailing boats and a couple of empty mega-yachts whose owners were also away. The rich liked to save money, so when they were not on board the captains were usually told to moor their boats in the less expensive port at Cogolin. Mooring charges in Saint-Tropez were astronomical in the season from May to September, but still competition was rife for the best berths.

  Fabrizio, wearing his deepest darkest Ray-Bans, ran quickly up the gangplank and into the gorgeously over-decorated salon. There, Vanessa waited, a vision in Tom Ford’s sexiest black lounging pyjamas, her breasts barely covered by a thin strap of shining black bugle beads, her long legs visible behind transparent chiffon trousers. She handed him a glass of chilled Cristal and smiled seductively. Fabrizio felt himself harden. No need for the blue pill tonight. He raised his glass, took off his shades and locked eyes with her.

  ‘To us,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, to us,’ she replied huskily, and slinked closer to him.

  Vanessa pressed her body to Fabrizio as if she was offering him pastries from a platter – and he was very hungry. She was far more beautiful and sensual than any of the trophy wives or young hookers he’d been banging since he had been living with Lara. Vanessa was top-of-the-line, A1 pussy, and Fabrizio was in his element.

  The sexual tricks Vanessa had learned from Roman Scavolini, her first lover, always fascinated and enchanted any new lover. She tried not to think of Roman and his total rejection of her, but the pain surfaced like maggots on ripe fruit whenever she had one of her rare assignations. Maybe it was the feeling of a new man’s body close to hers but the only way she could assuage those hateful memories was by a toke of coke. As Fabrizio prepared to enter her after what he considered to be an adequate amount of foreplay, Vanessa raised herself on one delicate elbow to reach into a silver box and offered him a generous line of the white powder and a crisp new hundred-dollar bill. Fabrizio didn’t hesitate. Although he was fired with lust for Vanessa, he knew the magic powder would make the sex even more exciting. He sniffed deeply – and the game was on.

  Vanessa Anstruther-Formby had been born to Lord Charles and Lady Elizabeth Anstruther-Formby in a gloomy castle in the wilds of Gloucestershire. Her parents were aristocrats. Their lineage went back to the fourteenth century, when the family owned half the county. But by the 1980s many fortunes had tumbled and they were finding it difficult to make ends meet. They had to sell off great tracts of land and, as their final ignominy, opened part of the castle to visiting tourists, who wandered around in bug-eyed awe at the gorgeous artifacts and paintings in the exquisitely appointed rooms. The third daughter was a surprise, as Lady Anstruther-Formby was well into her forties.

  ‘Another daughter!’ Charles fumed. ‘Another bloody wedding we’ll have to spend a fortune on! Damn it, Elizabeth, couldn’t you have produced another boy? My God, we have four children to bring up now.’

  ‘Darling, it’s the will of God!’ She lay back in a nest of white lace pillows, cradling her baby. ‘Look at her, Charles, she’s beautiful. I’ve never seen such a pretty newborn – I don’t think we’ll have too much of a problem marrying her off.’

  Charles barely gave a glance to the baby as his two elder daughters, Jessica and Jane, came bounding into their mother’s bedroom to inspect the latest arrival. Brother Jeremy had no interest in the infant, and spent most of his time in his room drawing and painting.

  ‘Ooh, she’s got red hair,’ cried Jessica, ‘that’s awful!’

  ‘And dark eyes,’ said nine-year-old Jane. ‘Gross!’

  ‘Most babies have dark blue eyes,’ said Elizabeth with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, they will get lighter like yours, darling.’

  And they did. By the time she was three, Vanessa was a gorgeous, blue-eyed, auburn-haired pin-up baby who could have been plucked from the label of a Gerber’s baby-food jar. People stopped her nanny in the street to coo and comment about how cute and gorgeous she was. However, her sisters felt differently. They loathed the little girl and made no bones about letting her know just how much. Older and taller than she, they played crafty and wicked tricks on her. Since she didn’t take to riding horses and playing the blood sports her sisters loved to indulge in, she was left to her own devices much of the time. She played with her dolls’ house until she was almost fifteen. School friends were few, since she attended the village school and most of the girls were too intimidated to visit the castle.

  ‘It’s spooky,’ said Beryl, one of her few friends. ‘I’m sure it’s haunted, Vanessa. How do you sleep at night?’

  Vanessa had more than her fair share of ‘apple-pie’ beds and ghost-like apparitions in the middle of the night, when the older girls would come into her room covered in black from head to toe, making scary noises and waking her up screaming. Luckily the pranks stopped when Jane and Jessica were both married off, before they were twenty and within a year of each other, leaving Vanessa to sleep alone in the top wing of the castle. Even though they had been unkind to her, she missed her sisters. Worse was to come when her father Charles died, exactly on the day when his first grandchild, a boy, was born. Lady Anstruther-Formby took to her bed for most of the next year and the teenaged Vanessa was pretty much left to fend for herself.

  The castle really did have an empty and intimidating feeling to it. When the winds whistled through the bare branches of the oak trees and barged relentlessly against the mullioned windows of the castle, Vanessa was scared. She started to keep a diary; she felt abandoned and alone and had the spooky feeling that her father was watching her. The diary became a means of support; she could commit her inner thoughts to these pages.

  The winds have become ridiculously strong. Woke up, yet again, in the middle of the night and had to take a pill. For somebody who is anti-drug and anti-pill, this is becoming ridiculous, but I do feel that sleep is necessary, she wrote.

  One night her mother rushed into Vanessa’s bedroom. Both of them had heard a horrible, terrifying creaking in the walls.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ her mother told her. ‘It’s awful, how can you sleep?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Vanessa said simply. ‘It’s a continuing nightmare.’

  ‘I’ll send you to stay with your aunt,’ said her mother.

  ‘No, please! You always said I could go to art school to study design, like Jeremy.’

  Lady Anstruther-Formby wasn’t averse to the idea. Motherhood had not been her forte, and with her youngest daughter gone she could dedicate her days to riding and taking care of the tourist trade at the castle’s shop, selling hampers, gift sets featuring the family crest and concocting delicious organic preserves and biscuits made from the finest ingredients. Trade had increased significantly, and Lady Anstruther-Formby was now in her element.

  Vanessa thrived at the London School of Art and Design and she made many friends, mostly boys. The male population at university hit upon her relentlessly, but she simply wasn’t interested in men until she met Roman Scavolini. A little-known Italian artist, he had been giving a lecture to the students on post-Impressionist paintings. Afterwards they asked him questions, and when the beauteous Honourable Vanessa Anstruther-Formby cast her guileless blue eyes upon him, he was more than intrigued. Although it was totally against college rules, Signor Scavolini managed to wangle a date with Vanessa. She was thrilled. All the girls in her class fancied him, and now he had actually asked her out – it was exhilarating. It was also inevitable that Vanessa would sleep with him. He was not only the most alluring and seductive man she had ever met, but he was a brilliant and expert lover and, at eighteen, she was the only virgin in college – a fact she didn’t like to advertise. He played Vanessa as he would a fine violin and brought her to peaks of joy she had never known existed.

  And then he dumped her. It wasn’t gradual, it wasn’t expected and it wasn’t kind. One day she just couldn’t reach him. After she had sweated it out for three of the longest days of her life, she found
out he had left the hotel where he had been staying with no forwarding address. His phone went straight to voicemail and her texts and emails went unanswered.

  Broken-hearted, Vanessa had no one to comfort her. At home with her mother, she couldn’t admit what had happened, but a phrase Lady Anstruther-Formby had used many years ago kept resonating in her head: ‘Men only want one thing.’

  The following year, Vanessa won a scholarship to the Parsons School of Design in New York, and was delighted that her mother had no qualms about letting her leave England. Lady Anstruther-Formby’s line was turning over a tidy profit so she could afford to help Vanessa along in her dreams. She hit New York feeling just like the song: ‘I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps’.

  That fall, Vanessa met the mega-rich mogul Jonathan Meyer. Although still married to the volatile Russian ex-dancer Lara, but unable to keep his zipper zipped, he wooed gorgeous Vanessa with every trick in his book. She was so cool, so English, so refined – he wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before; and what Jonathan wanted, Jonathan always got.

  She gave him her body and showed him all the sensual tricks that Roman had taught her, but there was a part of her he could never possess. He wanted her to love him, but she couldn’t. Her wounds were still too open. The hurt had healed but a part of her heart had been injured for ever. But when Vanessa became pregnant and Jonathan begged her to marry him, she decided to take on the life of a Manhattan trophy wife of one of the richest men in the world. Why not? Even a damaged heart can be fixed. He adored her, he was handsome, albeit somewhat balding, and he let her do anything she wanted, within reason. And when their son was born, Vanessa felt almost complete for the first time in her life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  No one had any idea who had sent the bomb to Sophie. But whoever it was would have been delighted with the completely shocking effect it had had on everyone connected to her.

  Still grieving over the death of Frick in the funicular, and now with the loss of her faithful old maid Teresa, Sophie felt so frail, weak and old that she took to her bed. Nevertheless, Captain Poulpe had gently tried to coax any information from her – she still had to be interrogated.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who would wish you ill, madame?’

  ‘Plenty,’ she snarled. Lying on her bed in her over-decorated purple bedroom, she was swathed in cashmere and fox-fur wraps against the cold, even though it was eighty degrees outside. For her it was perpetually chilly in the old stone villa – it never really became warm until the July sun had penetrated the ancient walls and flies started buzzing in the main salon and in Sophie’s bedroom.

  ‘I have a lot of enemies.’ She handed him an envelope. ‘Read it.’

  Poulpe took rubber gloves from his pocket and gently removed the note.

  ‘You won’t escape next time,’ was printed in block letters on the kind of cheap lined paper that was available from any supermarket.

  ‘When did this come?’

  ‘This morning. Adolpho found it under the front door – now I’m having to hire security guards.’ She started to weep and Gabrielle Poulpe, who had been standing quietly in the door, handed her a tissue and plumped the cushions behind the old actress’s bewigged head.

  ‘Of course I have enemies. Many people are – or were – jealous of me. I was famous, I was beautiful, I had many lovers, some of whom I stole from their partners.’ She blew her nose and looked contrite. ‘This I regret, of course.’

  ‘Is there anyone in Saint-Tropez now who you believe might bear you a grudge?’ asked Poulpe.

  ‘Well, Lara Meyer, of course. She hated me when I was successful and she tried to ruin me with that debacle of my boutique opening.’

  Poulpe wrote rapidly in his old-fashioned notebook as Sophie expounded on the long-ago event, while Gabrielle took notes on her cell phone.

  ‘Hmmm, now is there someone else who is not persistently drunk and half-comatose who you believe might bear you a grudge?’ enquired Poulpe with an edge of irony.

  ‘Maybe that stupid gigolo she lives with – Fabrizio. He hates me too, I think.’

  ‘You mean Fabrizio Bricconni. Why is that?’

  ‘I rejected him,’ Sophie said. ‘Last month he came to me and asked if I would sponsor him in some TV show – that X Factor thing in a country I’d never heard of. Of course I said no. I would have had to go there to sponsor him and be on TV; become a laughing stock for him,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘He was quite angry – told me it would be a great opportunity to . . . how did he put it? Ah, yes – to regain my fanbase. Ha! As if I’d ever lost it!’

  ‘But you are in the same social circle, are you not?’

  ‘We are, unfortunately. I am always civil to him because, as the saying goes, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”.’

  ‘What about Mademoiselle Martez?’ asked the Captain.

  Madeleine Martez was a somewhat mythical figure in Saint-Tropez. A major star in the 1950s, she was now rarely seen either out or at any of the parties. Rumour had it that she and Sophie had been enemies for years although no one ever knew why.

  ‘That cow! She’s always hated me, from the very beginning when I moved here. I’m younger than her, and I was more popular in Hollywood. She never made it in Hollywood, you know.’

  ‘I did not know that; I thought she was a big star there?’

  ‘Star? Bah! She did one Hollywood film and that was the end. No one could understand her accent. I speak perfect English, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know that – most impressive. Well, I think I must interview Ms Martez as soon as possible.’

  ‘Oh, good luck with that!’ crowed Sophie. ‘She’s more of a recluse than I am. Too ashamed to be seen because she looks so hideous.’

  ‘Really – I see her photos everywhere,’ mused Poulpe.

  ‘Yes, you do, parading around in tiny shorts and bikinis. Yes, you actually do, Captain. What you don’t see is that those photographs were taken over fifty years ago . . . when I admit she was good-looking,’ she added grudgingly.

  ‘Ah yes, of course!’ He scribbled some more then asked, ‘Anyone else you can think of, madame?’

  ‘Deneuve,’ she hissed. ‘Catherine has always detested me.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ This woman is completely deluded, thought Poulpe.

  At over seventy, Catherine Deneuve was still one of the most popular Gallic actresses. The chances that she resented Sophie Silvestri, who had definitely seen better days, were slim to nil. Still, he’d have one of his colleagues in Paris check her out.

  François Lardon stood naked in front of the mirror, admiring himself.

  ‘You are gorgeous,’ he said, smiling at his stunning reflection. Deeply tanned, six foot three of rippling muscles, black curly hair and a movie-star face, he was well aware of his genetic luck, and he spent plenty of time taking care of his gift.

  He hummed as he anointed himself with Tom Ford’s latest men’s scent, and admired the tattoo on his shoulder, which he always kept covered with a shirt or a white T-shirt. It was a fierce black and yellow snake that coiled down one arm, its viperish tongue reaching out to devour a tiger’s head etched around his left nipple. Underneath was a motto in Latin: Causa Mortis – cause of death.

  Tonight he was going out with the luscious Gabrielle Poulpe, and he couldn’t wait. Although he pulled girls regularly, young tourists from Scandinavia and America, they were all too easy. They were all suckers for a handsome waiter in white and he never slept with them more than once. Gabrielle was different. Conquering her was like flying too close to the sun and the danger was exhilarating. And besides, if he wasn’t mistaken, she hadn’t had much experience with men. He wanted her, and he was going to get her.

  She had insisted that he pick her up at Le Gorille, a restaurant in front of the port, but he was late. He liked to keep them waiting just a little bit – it kept them insecure. She looked beautiful in tight pale blue jeans, sandals and a flowered top. She wore no make
-up as usual, but her red curls had been freshly washed and framed her face perfectly.

  He took her to see an old Fellini movie at the cinema in the Place des Lices and then he bought her dinner at a charming little boîte in one of the back streets of Saint-Tropez. Gabrielle found him amusing and intelligent, full of gossip and anecdotes about the rich denizens of the Côte d’Azur, where he claimed to have been a waiter for three years now, with an ambition to become a master chef, he told her.

  When he walked her back to her car in the underground parking lot, he kissed her gently. Gabrielle was leaning back against her car and she enjoyed the touch of the handsome waiter’s lips on hers, the feel of his body against hers. But when his kiss began to be more insistent she pulled back.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why? Don’t you like me?’

  ‘Yes, but please, I’m working on a case and I cannot get involved with anyone. Try and understand.’ She wriggled free and jumped into her car. ‘But I enjoyed the evening, François, and I promise we’ll do it again when this is all over.’

  ‘Okay.’ He slumped against a concrete pillar, watching the car’s rear lights disappear up the incline.

  ‘Frigid bitch,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll get you yet.’

  Carlotta and Sophie had become extremely close during Sophie’s recuperation. Sophie loved Carlotta’s freshness and innocence, often remarking, ‘You remind me of myself when I was young.’ Carlotta had recently confided to Sophie the horrors of her dreadful marriage to Nicanor and Sophie had been most understanding and sympathetic.

  ‘But now, my dear, you must forget all that distress. You must move on.’

  ‘I want to,’ said Carlotta, ‘I really want to put that nightmare life with Nicanor behind me, but when I try to . . . to become closer to Nick, those awful memories come flooding back. Oh, God! Nick is being so patient with me. He loves me and I think I love him, but I’ve still not been able to . . . to . . .’