Authors: Joanna Rees
Her father had chosen St Win’s because Thea’s mom, Alyssa Maddox, had boarded here as a child before she’d moved to America. At first Thea had comforted herself with the
thought that it would give her a spiritual connection to her mother. But the only trace of Alyssa McAdams, as she had been then – apart from a glowing eulogy in the ‘Notable
Alumni’ section of the school’s prospectus – was a tiny blurred spec in a school photograph. Her mother wasn’t in any of the school drama-society or sports photos. Most
likely because she’d spent most of her free time at home or out riding, learning how to jump. She probably hated the over-traditional hotbed of bitchiness then, just as much as Thea did
now.
Everyone would be going home later tonight with their parents, except Thea, who would be boarding a flight to New York tomorrow alone. She couldn’t help but picture all those girls back in
their childhood bedrooms, back with their family pets, surrounded by siblings and friends and warmth. It made her ache for Little Elms and all she had lost.
Griffin and Storm had been busy finishing the top two storeys of the newly built Maddox Tower in New York since their wedding last year, and Thea guessed that it was where she was expected to
join them. Her father had sent a curt letter about Christmas being a time for families and he expected her to come home. But nowhere could ever be home when it contained Storm and Brett. Not for
Thea.
Her home had gone.
It still seemed unbelievable that her father had sold Little Elms so fast and had moved on without so much as a hint of regret. Or without mentioning once that it was Thea’s inheritance
that he’d sold. Much more than that too. Her past. Her memories. Her heritage. Her happy childhood. All of that had been woven into the brickwork and turf of Little Elms. They’d just
thrown it away. A fact that had started to rankle more and more.
But the worst part was losing Michael. The awkward public goodbye with him still made Thea shudder when she remembered it. The way Michael had looked at her standing next to her father.
She’d known what he’d been thinking. She’d read it in his face as clearly as if he’d spoken the words out loud. He thought Thea was the same as Griffin and Storm Maddox.
That she’d cast him and his mother out of their home, without so much as a second thought. When nothing could have been further from the truth.
If you’re there, God
, she prayed silently,
please make sure Michael is safe
.
Forty-eight hours later, weary with delays and the boredom of the long journey, Thea was stepping out of her father’s limousine onto the pavement outside Maddox Tower.
She slid the headphones from her head. She’d been listening to Madonna’s ‘Crazy for You’ track non-stop, but now the sounds of the city assaulted her and the smell of
roasting chestnuts and icy pavements.
‘It’s impressive, huh?’ Anthony, her father’s driver, said, looking up at the mammoth steel and glass structure, his breath condensing in the cold. A gold M was on the
top – a recent addition, Thea noticed.
‘Yeah, I guess,’ Thea said nervously. How could a skyscraper ever really be home?
But that’s exactly what Storm considered it to be, Thea thought, as a few minutes later she arrived at the penthouse in the express elevator.
‘You’re here. You’re home,’ Storm said. She threw out her arms, not to embrace Thea, but as a gesture to encompass the sheer grandness of the atrium. ‘I mean,
isn’t it totally, like,
wow
?’ she prompted.
‘It’s . . . big,’ Thea managed, her heavy book-laden bags landing with a thud on the marble tiles. She’d ransacked the school library to swat up on economics over the
Christmas break.
From where she was standing she had a clear view up a staircase, to a vast atrium with a glass roof above. This wasn’t a home. This was more like standing in a spaceship. A very gold
spaceship, she noted.
Everywhere she looked there were flashes of gold – clocks, mirrors, even a golden Buddha, of all things. But it wasn’t just gold that was on display. It was money. In all its forms.
Paintings, tapestries, vases. A white grand piano. The whole place was a gaudy shrine to newly acquired – and spent – wealth.
There were people everywhere too. Corridors stretched off to both left and right – along one a penguin-suited waiter seemed to skate along the marble floor, with a giant tray full of
champagne glasses held aloft.
‘You’re having a party?’ Thea asked, noticing the extravagance of Storm’s floor-length sequinned dress for the first time. Did they really think so little of her that
they’d organized a party the night she came home from school?
‘Oh, don’t sound like that, sweetie,’ Storm said. ‘It’s just a little soirée. In your honour,’ she added, but even as she did so, it sounded like a
lie. ‘Brett’s girlfriend Susie is coming too. You’ll like her.’
‘Brett has a girlfriend?’
‘Oh, and they’re so good together,’ Storm said. ‘Just you wait.’
Thea felt a small bloom of relief. If Brett had a girlfriend . . . then maybe, just maybe, this vacation wouldn’t be so bad after all. But once again she felt the sting of Storm’s
betrayal. This was the woman who had called Thea a ‘freakish brat’ behind her back and had sent her away to boarding school. No amount of twinkly-eyed smiles could ever erase that.
But maybe those harsh words had just been Storm’s stress talking? For Brett’s benefit. Because Brett had been so argumentative and aggressive on her wedding day. Maybe she
hadn’t really meant what she’d said – it had just slipped out.
‘Oh, darling, it’s so wonderful to see you,’ Storm said, finally enveloping Thea in a hug. Her scent – the exotic perfume that Thea had once found so beguiling –
now made her nose tickle with its overwhelming saccharine smell.
Did she mean it? Was this love and affection that she felt? Or some other kind of connection? An altogether darker grip. Thea couldn’t tell.
‘My, you’ve put on some pounds,’ Storm said, pulling back and appraising Thea, who felt her cheeks burning. Was it really that obvious? ‘We’ll have to shift those,
won’t we. Being fat is just too sloppy,’ Storm continued with a bright smile. ‘Oh, there’s so much to show you, honey, and I just can’t wait to catch up. How’s
school. Is it a riot?’ Storm continued, keeping her hands on Thea’s shoulders and her smile fixed in place.
‘Yeah,’ Thea lied, noticing that something odd had happened to Storm’s face. Her lips seemed to have changed shape since the summer. They were puffier. More pouty.
‘See?’ Storm said, beaming. She rubbed her knuckle on Thea’s cheek. ‘I knew you’d love it.’
Thea smiled weakly and followed Storm along the hall, noticing how the heavy sequins of her dress crackled around her curves.
‘Griff’s still at the office downstairs,’ Storm announced, ‘but he should be here soon. Although these days all he does is work, work, work.’
Thea picked up a petulance in her tone. So much for being the perfect corporate wife, she thought, as Storm threw open a door to what was clearly a guest room.
It had bronze-patterned wallpaper and bronzy-gold flouncy silk curtains over the windows. Three sepia aerial photographs of
Alyssa
, her father’s yacht, in full sail were framed on
the wall. When had he commissioned those? Thea wondered. Her father was smiling, stretching out to wave at the camera. Was that
Brett
with him? Is that what they’d been doing whilst
she’d been at boarding school?
‘There’s boxes and boxes of your things,’ Storm said. ‘We’ve put them in storage until you’ve decided which room you want.’
There was a choice? Thea wondered. How big was this place?
‘Oh, look, there’s my baby,’ Storm gasped.
A small shih-tzu dog with a diamanté collar jumped up at Storm. She let the dog lick her face as she petted him.
‘Oh, my baby, my baby,’ Storm cooed. She turned to Thea. ‘This is Cha-Chi. My Christmas present from Griff.’
Her father had given Storm a puppy? Thea thought. Why had he never given
her
a puppy, when she’d wanted one all her life?
‘He’s very . . . er . . . cute?’ Thea said, trying to find the right word. Cha-Chi snarled, baring his needle-sharp teeth.
‘He doesn’t like strangers, do you, my handsome?’ Storm said, hugging him tighter.
Strangers. So I’m now one of those, am I?
Thea thought.
Even here in my father’s home.
‘If only he was a real baby,’ Storm added wistfully, smooching the dog on the lips, setting it back down on the floor. ‘Now
that
would have been the perfect Christmas
present.’
Thea took a long shower, then put mousse in her hair and switched on the TV. As she tipped her hair upside-down, scrunching it to dry it with the hair-dryer, she looked at the
pictures of the President, Ronald Reagan, at some sort of Christmas party with Nancy, stick-thin in a red dress next to a huge twinkling tree. Then, once again, the video came on for ‘We Are
the World’ and all the pictures of the dying children in Africa, and she switched off the TV. She’d seen it so many times and had helped the charity do the fund-raiser in school, but
the images left her depressed. What with nuclear missiles and famine and AIDS, she wondered how everyone was so upbeat about the future.
She rifled through her suitcase for the black cocktail dress Storm had bought Thea to take with her to England for ‘all the parties’ at school. What a joke. There had been no
parties. Well, certainly not ones Thea had been invited to. She thought of Bridget Lawson and Alicia Montgomery and all those girls who giggled about Thea behind her back, and who made it
abundantly clear how left out Thea was from their inner clique. They did everything together – from quoting
Back to the Future
and religiously watching
Fame
, to shopping for the
same black miniskirts and metallic pink lipstick. Thea was glad to be away from them for a while.
Now she smoothed out the wrinkles on the much-travelled – never worn – dress. She hoped she could still squeeze into it. Was it that obvious how much weight she’d put on? But
that wasn’t all. In the last year her breasts had grown three cup sizes and, judging from the length of her jeans, she’d grown several inches too.
She quickly drained a bottle of Coca-Cola from her backpack in the hope of staying awake and put on some blue eyeshadow in the bathroom and her black velvet headband, fluffing out her hair
behind it.
‘Come on,’ she told herself, forcing a smile in the mirror, ‘you can do this. It’s only a party.’
And tomorrow . . . tomorrow she could spend time with her father and she could ask him what he’d done with everything from Little Elms. But right now she had to concentrate on fitting into
this weird new family.
Steeling herself to be on show once again, she slipped out of the bedroom towards the sound of music and laughter. But just as she was about to go up the wide staircase to the mezzanine floor,
she heard an insistent knocking. It must be some kind of private entrance from the Tower’s service-lift elevator, she figured, trying to work out the vast geography of the apartment as she
walked towards the door.
Opening the tricky bolts, she saw a woman in a fawn cashmere coat on the threshold.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
The woman looked far too sensible to be one of Storm’s guests. She had no make-up on, which only exaggerated her anxious expression.
‘Is this the Maddox household?’ the woman asked.
Thea nodded. ‘I’m Thea Maddox.’
The woman was craning her neck to look into the apartment. ‘Is your father here? May I see him? It’s a personal matter.’
A personal matter? Thea looked at the woman, but her soft grey eyes didn’t seem threatening. ‘I think he is. Yeah, sure. Come in.’
As the woman talked politely about the snow outside, Thea took her upstairs into the living room. There were already lots of people – more than Thea had expected – about fifty
guests, standing around with colourful cocktail and champagne glasses, and the hubbub of chatter and laughter filled the air. A man was playing the grand piano in a corner and singing ‘Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, next to an enormous Christmas tree, which was lit up in gold lights.
‘There you are,’ Griffin Maddox said, breaking away from a conversation and coming over to greet Thea, kissing her on both cheeks. He was wearing a red smoking jacket – a
garment Thea didn’t even know he possessed.
‘Oh. Hello?’ he said, his look demanding an explanation as he greeted the woman.
‘Is Brett . . . Brett Maddox here?’ the woman asked.
‘Sure. He’s over there.’
The woman stiffened as she followed Griffin’s glance across the room to the sofa where Brett sat, his arm spread out along the back of the seat. He was wearing pink jeans and a white shirt
with the collar turned up. A pretty blonde girl in a miniskirt was sitting in the crook of his arm. Brett was feeding her caviar canapés and laughing.
In an instant the woman had crossed the room and stood facing him.
‘You – you . . . monster,’ Thea heard her say.
‘Hey . . . hey, what’s going on?’ Griffin Maddox asked, quickly catching up.
Thea followed, feeling her cheeks burning with apprehension. The whole atmosphere of the room had suddenly changed, as tension radiated out of the woman. Storm was striding across the room.
‘He . . .’ the woman said, her eyes glittering with fury as they bored into Griffin Maddox and then back at Brett, ‘. . . he did something unspeakable to my
daughter.’
Storm arrived at Griffin’s side. ‘Who is she? Who let this woman in?’ Then she glared at Thea. She must have seen her introducing the woman to Maddox. Her eyes blazed with
fury.
But suddenly Thea didn’t care. Whatever this stranger was saying Brett had done, Thea knew in an instant that it was true. That look in his eyes. She’d seen it that first night when
he’d sat on her bed. The way he’d instructed Storm to send Thea away – it all made sense.
But now . . . now he’d been publicly caught out.
‘Your daughter . . . ?’ Griffin Maddox asked.
‘Ally. Ally Munroe.’ The woman’s voice cracked.