Sabrina lost it, lashing out again, but this time she was really trying to hurt him. ‘I hate you!’ she screamed, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. If she was trying to make him lose his cool, it worked. Jago yelped in pain. ‘Bitch!’ Sabrina lunged, trying to do it again, but he was too quick for her. Flipping her over onto her back, he pinned her down and drove himself inside her like an industrial drill, each thrust so violent that they shot across the floor.
Sabrina shrieked with pleasure. ‘Harder,’ she goaded him. ‘More.’
Jago was a revelation. Who’d have thought Tish’s vain, idiotic brother would turn out to be such an Olympian in the sack? His dick was like a goddamn tree trunk – almost as big as his ego – but it was more than that. Sexually at least, Jago knew how to press all of Sabrina’s buttons. She was no longer thinking about Viorel, but as she raced towards climax, an image of Tish’s disgruntled face at dinner tonight popped into her mind.
How much would Dorian’s Little Miss Perfect hate it if she could see me with her brother right now?
‘Oh fuck, Sabrina, I can’t hold it,’ Jago panted above her. ‘I’m coming!’
‘Me too!’ gasped Sabrina.
As they exploded into one another, a second, even more intoxicating thought came to Sabrina.
What if I married him?
Dorian was so impressed with Tish’s breeding and the Crewe family name. He made out that he only admired Tish for her charitable work and for being such a good mom, but Sabrina recognized the snobbery inherent in their friendship. She was also convinced that Tish looked down on her socially, that she saw through the movie star to the white-trash reject underneath. The thought struck Sabrina now.
Is that why I hate her so much? Because I think she’ll make Dorian and Viorel see me the same way?
If Sabrina were to become Mrs Crewe, all that would change. She wouldn’t need a comeback movie to ‘be’ someone. She would be someone by right. Viorel Hudson could kiss her aristo ass!
‘What are you thinking?’ Jago cuddled up to her. He still could not quite believe that he, Jago Crewe, had just made love to Sabrina Leon. And that, unless Sabrina was a very fine actress indeed, she’d loved every minute of it.
‘Nothing,’ sighed Sabrina. ‘Only that I’m happy you decided to come home.’
Me too
, thought Jago. Life at Loxley Hall had just become considerably more interesting.
For the next ten days, Sabrina and Jago were inseparable. Whenever Sabrina wasn’t working, the pair of them wandered around the house hand in hand, apparently unable to stop kissing and touching one another, and totally unconcerned about who might be watching their PDA-fest. Tish in particular seemed to bear the brunt of it. It seemed as if everywhere she turned she bumped into the two of them entwined and giggling. After one particularly gruesome breakfast, where she’d had to ask them to stop canoodling in front of Abel, she’d confided her worries to Dorian.
‘Do you think it’ll burn itself out?’ she asked nervously, helping Mrs Drummond clear away the dirty cereal bowls.
‘I hope so,’ said Dorian, who didn’t enjoy watching Sabrina and Jago crawling all over each other any more than Tish did. ‘It’s bound to. Sabrina will be in Romania soon and too busy to think about a long-distance love affair. Then she’ll be back in LA, so it can’t last. Unless …’ a hideous thought just occurred to him, ‘… you don’t think your brother’s planning to come with us, do you?’
‘Oh, no. He can’t!’ said Tish, aghast. ‘He hasn’t mentioned anything like that, has he?’
Dorian shook his head, but they both looked worried. Tish’s concern was Loxley Hall. Despite her pleading, Jago still hadn’t sat down to go through the finances with her, nor had he made a single decision since he got back: on the new tenants, on keeping up the farm, on anything. He was totally consumed by Sabrina.
Dorian’s worries were more complex. On the surface, they were all professional. When Sabrina was filming, Jago would moon around the set like a lovesick puppy, and his very presence was proving divisive and distracting. More importantly, the chemistry between Sabrina and Vio seemed to have evaporated, and the atmosphere on set was becoming increasingly toxic. Not good with two of the key Cathy-and-Heathcliff love scenes still to be shot. No, Jago must not be allowed to disrupt things in Romania.
But Dorian’s concern ran deeper than a director’s professional anxieties. He disliked Jago Crewe quite intensely. He’d behaved horribly selfishly towards poor Tish, but beyond that there was something Dorian found instinctively untrustworthy about him. The last thing Sabrina needed in her life right now was another good-looking charlatan to distract her from her work and recovery. Especially a self-indulgent, hedonistic one like Jago.
‘Isn’t she luminous?’
It was late afternoon in Loxley’s deer park and Jago was gushing to the sound engineer between takes about his ‘girlfriend’, as he now referred to Sabrina.
‘Uh-huh,’ said the sound engineer, pulling on his headphones so he wouldn’t have to endure any more of Jago’s drooling. ‘Luminous’ wasn’t the first word that sprang to mind when the sound engineer thought of Sabrina Leon – ‘late’, ‘spoiled’ and ‘rude’ all had more of an authentic ring to them – but he wasn’t in the mood to debate the point with Lord Snooty.
‘Fabulous energy, darling!’ Jago called to Sabrina. ‘I can’t take my eyes off you.’
Sabrina smiled and blew him a kiss. Next to her, Viorel failed to conceal his irritation.
‘How long are you planning to keep up this charade?’ he hissed through clenched teeth as the make-up girl re-powdered his forehead. ‘
Fabulous energy
, indeed. You can’t possibly be attracted to that idiotic hippy.’
They both looked at Jago. Wearing an open-necked hemp shirt with prayer beads strung around his neck and an orange bandana tied around his forehead, Sabrina had to admit that his dress sense did err on the alternative side. The headband made him look like a Buddhist tennis player. But even whilst doing his best John Lennon impression, he was still improbably good-looking. And Vio knew it.
‘Can’t I?’ Sabrina fluttered her eyelashes innocently. ‘Why not? Just because you’ve taken a vow of celibacy, honey, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. For your information, Jago’s one of the best lovers I’ve ever had. Why, only last night he—’
‘Take Three!’ Dorian’s voice boomed out through the loudhailer.
Thank God for small mercies
, thought Vio. For the last six nights he’d been forced to listen through the wall to Jago and Sabrina’s highly vocal and athletic lovemaking. Hearing Sabrina gasp in pleasure at another man’s touch was torturous, and at the same time disconcertingly arousing; like getting a lap dance from a gorgeous stripper you know you can’t touch. As much as it pained Vio to admit it, clearly Tish Crewe’s moronic lug of a brother was doing something right in bed. Sabrina was a good actress, but nobody was
that
good.
Reciting his lines mechanically, Viorel was distracted by an extra running across the corner of the set and lost his thread. After a sleepless night and frustrating day, this was the last straw.
‘What the fuck?’ he exploded.
Dorian made the signal to cut the take.
‘Hey, you!’ Viorel shouted, advancing menacingly towards the culprit. ‘Kid! Are you blind?’
The extra turned around, looking confused. He was only about sixteen, and Viorel Hudson was one of his heroes.
‘Sorry, sir,’ he mumbled, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t realize we were rolling.’
‘You didn’t
realize
?’ bellowed Viorel. ‘You just walked right through my fucking shot, you moron.’
It was so unlike him to lose his temper, the whole set turned around to stare. ‘Go easy on the boy,’ said Chuck MacNamee, but Viorel shot him down with a withering glance.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked the boy.
‘M-M-Michael,’ stammered the extra. ‘Michael Lega.’
‘Well, Michael Lega, you are a fucking prick.’ Vio reached out his hands and pushed the boy in the chest, making him stagger backwards.
‘All right, that’s enough.’ Dorian walked over and broke the two of them up. ‘Mike, go get us some coffee. We’re taking a break. We’ll shoot again in five.’
‘No, screw that,’ said Vio angrily as the extra scurried away. ‘I don’t want him back on set. He’s a fucking liability.’
Dorian grabbed Viorel roughly by the arm and pulled him to one side. ‘What the fuck is the matter with you?’
‘What do you mean? Nothing’s the matter with me. The kid fucked up my shot.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Dorian. ‘I’d have cut the scene anyway. I’ve seen better acting from a goddamn waxwork.’
Viorel grimaced. He knew Dorian was right.
‘What’s going on with you?’ Dorian went on angrily. ‘You’ve been like this for days now.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Vio, not meeting Dorian’s eye. ‘I’m not sleeping.’
‘Yeah, well, you and me both,’ said Dorian. ‘Less than two weeks till we leave for Romania, and my Heathcliff’s decided he’s got nothing better to do than take out his shit on the set hands.’
‘Sorry.’
For once, Viorel looked it.
‘Good,’ said Dorian. ‘And you can apologize to that poor kid when he gets back. Now let’s please make this our last take, OK? Get your head in the game.’
Vio nodded and walked glumly back to Sabrina, who was now perched on Jago’s lap, stroking his hair the way one might pet a well-behaved dog. ‘Temper, temper,’ she goaded Viorel.
He ignored her.
‘You know, anger is one of the three poisons that prompts samsara,’ said Jago, his voice taking on the sanctimonious lilt he preferred when delivering such nuggets of spiritual wisdom. ‘Samsara means rebirth. We need to cleanse ourself of poison before we can progress our journey towards the truth.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Vio sarcastically, determined not to give Sabrina the satisfaction of losing it a second time. ‘You’re quite the font of wisdom, Jago.’
As soon as they wrapped tonight, Vio decided, he was going to ask Dorian for a week off to go home to LA. He shot his last moorland scene tomorrow, and the thought of hanging around Loxley like a spare part with nothing to do but watch the Sabrina and Jago show was more than he could stomach.
The only thing holding him back was Abel. With things so strained between him and Tish, Viorel had seen less of the boy than he would have liked over the past few weeks. He’d promised Abi they’d spend more time together once his scenes were over, and he didn’t relish seeing the in evitable look of disappointment on the boy’s sweet little face when he told him he was leaving.
But it couldn’t be helped.
If he didn’t get out of here soon, he was in danger of losing his sanity.
The next day, Tish took Abel into Manchester to shop for some new winter clothes. They’d be back in Oradea soon, where the winters made Derbyshire look like the Costa del Sol, and none of his warm things from last year came anywhere close to fitting him now.
It was a trying trip. Like most small boys, Abel detested shopping, unless it was for a Ben 10 omnitrix or anything ‘dinosaurish’. He whined and moaned his way through the boys’ department of Marks & Spencer, complaining about everything. Every shirt Tish picked out was ‘girlish’. Every sweater was itchy, every pair of shoes too tight. Tish tried hard not to lose her temper with him. He was having a tough enough time dealing with Viorel’s imminent departure.
Vio had told Tish last night that he was leaving early and he had broken the news to Abel today.
‘I’ll be sorry to leave him,’ Viorel told Tish, and on this point at least she believed him. ‘But there’s a bunch of stuff I need to deal with back home.’
He’d come to find her in her father’s study, which somehow felt even more like Tish’s home turf and put him even less at ease. The last time the two of them had been alone together had been the afternoon Tish caught him in bed with Chrissie Rasmirez. Then he’d felt like a naughty, inadequate schoolboy. He felt the same way now, as though he’d been sent to the principal’s office, complete with desk and globe and wood-panelled walls.
‘Of course,’ Tish nodded. ‘I understand.’
Although, the thought struck her that in fact she understood almost nothing about Viorel Hudson. He adored her son but loathed her. Or did he? They were friends; then they weren’t. It was all very confusing. At times, Tish still felt a connection to Vio, an echo of the attraction they had both felt that first day when she’d met him half dressed and covered in soot. But whatever it was that drew them together then seemed destined to repel them now. Perhaps, in the end, they were just too different to get along? Vio clearly found her preachy and self-righteous, that much was clear, and it was true Tish disapproved of him wildly. Sleeping with your friend’s wife was pretty shabby in Tish’s book, and Dorian and Viorel were friends of a sort. Then there were his more general faults, his arrogance and his vanity. And yet there were flashes of real goodness in Viorel, his love for Abel chief amongst them. The man was a mess of contradictions. He claimed to despise the English upper classes, yet he radiated public-school poise and confidence, and gave Tish a hard time for taking Abel away from a life of privilege at Loxley. None of it made any real sense.
‘I’d like to keep in touch with him,’ Viorel said to the floor. ‘If that’s all right with you.’
‘Of course,’ said Tish. She was surprised by his hesitance. He was usually so arrogant around her, around everyone, but tonight he seemed nervous. ‘He’ll be sad to see you go, you know,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He loves you.’
Viorel looked up suddenly, like a driver with whiplash. For a split second, Tish caught a glimpse of anguish in his eyes. He
almost
looked as if he might be about to cry. But then he turned away, mumbling a hurried ‘thanks’ and something about packing as he hurried out of the door.
Back in Marks & Spencer, Tish tried to put Viorel Hudson out of her mind.
‘What about this one?’ She held up a puffa jacket covered in flying ace badges and with zips in the shape of aeroplanes. ‘Shall we try it on?’