Dillon had been in the States for over a month, much of it sequestered in his ex in-laws’ Malibu guest lodge. He was due to fly back with his daughters tomorrow, and they would spend a week of their summer vacation at West Oddford before going to Scotland to stay with their maternal great aunt while Dillon and Sylva finally put a stop to the press speculation.
The obvious thing was to aim for an amicable split, with nobody else involved, citing too many differences and busy lifestyles pulling in opposite directions, but the fact that the children were involved, as they had been from the start, made that a delicate process.
The parties had only just begun to negotiate. A holiday in Dillon’s favourite St Croix hideaway, far from their young families, was being discussed as a stage-managed ‘make or break’, allowing them both to top up their tans and ensure that they were looking their best for the break.
Sylva had no great desire for a week alone with Dillon’s nerviness and earnest organic food talk while awaiting the go-ahead to split up. It was hurricane season in the Caribbean, after all. If there was already a media storm raging at home, she would rather maximise impact by staying put and going for the big, explosive break-up, with the army of nannies protecting the kids. But the growing attachment between Pom and Zuzi was a sticking point.
When they were apart the girls sent endless emails and instant messages to each other with the help of their mothers, full of bad spellings and smiley faces and even photo attachments. Hana put the children first at all times, backed up by a surprise ally in Fawn, who Sylva was certain was only using her sister as a spy to find out what her ex-husband was up to when he was in the UK.
Sylva resented the way in which Hana was becoming increasingly
interfering. She wanted their secret to be made public, and had even talked to Zuzi about it, preparing the little girl for a short burst of media interest. This infuriated Sylva; the press were already digging very deeply right now and she had no desire to bring any more of her own private scandal into the cat-and-mouse PR game she and Dillon were playing. Mama backed her completely and Hana was clearly livid at being overridden in any decisions about Zuzi’s life. Only that morning Sylva had caught her sneakily texting Dillon with the aid of an English–Slovak dictionary to arrange for Zuzi and Pom to play together while his girls were at West Oddford. When Sylva rounded on her, she was unapologetic. ‘The girls have a real relationship, unlike their parents.’
Sylva needed to escape for a few hours before she and her sister truly crossed swords – never a good thing for two former pentathletes. She opened the throttle on the little scooter and it growled up the hill.
She always loved the moment when she crested the ridge above the valley and Fox Oddfield Abbey loomed into view, the big iced cake of a Regency house ideal for a wedding. Not that there would be a wedding, but the fantasy was nice to spin out. As she swung her new baby-blue scooter into the drive her phone vibrated in her pocket. Under the shade of a tree, she cut the engine and pulled off her helmet to take the call.
‘Sylva, Gaz Pratt –
News on Sunday
,’ came a sneering, mosquito whine of a voice. ‘Just want to let you know about a story we’re running tomorrow concerning your daughter Zuzi, who we believe was adopted at birth in Slovakia by your older sister, Hana.’
Sylva went icy cold with fear.
‘No comment!’ She hung up and rang straight through to Clive Maxwell’s private line. He was at the Cartier polo tournament. She could hear chatter and commentary behind him.
‘I’m heading out to the Cotswolds later, as it happens. Don’t leave the house until I get there.’
‘I already have. I’m at Fox Oddfield Abbey.’ She suddenly wondered how on earth she would get home and what would be waiting for her there. She’d made herself so vulnerable by bringing the scooter, with no driver to threaten to drive over photographers to protect her, nor did she have the blackened windows of the car to shield her. Her visor wasn’t even tinted.
‘Pete Rafferty’s place?’ Clive sounded gobsmacked.
‘He’s never here. I know his wife.’
Clive cleared his throat. ‘Then you’ll know you’re about three days too late for a catch-up. Now get someone to come out there and pick you up. Warn your family what’s happening. Where are Hana and Zuzi?’
‘At home with Mama and the boys,’ she said, a sudden suspicion starting to form.
‘Do they know Zuzi’s their sister?’
‘No, they’re too young to understand, but Zuzi knows.’ Hana has done this, she thought. She’s gone ahead and told the press anyway.
‘Good, then you have already made this situation a lot, lot easier for her. Dillon?’
‘He has no idea about any of it. He’s flying back from the States today.’
‘Can you contact him?’
She looked at her watch, counting back eight hours. ‘Only his management until he lands.’
‘Do it,’ Clive said darkly. ‘We’re all aware that the only thing the public will really want to know about this story right now is how you react to this as a couple. Now let’s get off this line so we can both make some calls. I’ll see you later and we’ll put a statement together.’
As she rang off she heard an engine approaching and, to her horror, recognised the distinctive green livery of the Cotswolds Celebrity Tours minibus heading towards her along the tiny, wooded lane that ran in front of Fox Oddfield Abbey, packed with eager tourists and their cameras fresh from checking out Liz Hurley’s pad and Pete Doherty’s den, now dying for a gawp at the Rockfather’s base.
She pulled on her helmet and scrabbled with the Lambretta’s ignition, but in her panic she over-choked it and it wouldn’t start.
The big gates in front of her were closed, but she knew the key code and punched it in. To her relief, the gates started to crank open just as the minibus drew level and Sylva pushed the scooter through the gap as soon as it was wide enough.
‘That will be a member of Pete’s huge army of staff,’ she heard a thick Gloucestershire accent announce as she hurriedly pushed the little bike along the tree-lined drive so that it was out of the line of view from the road. She propped it on its stand behind a big cedar
and called Mama, wandering distractedly along the shaded outskirts of the parkland in front of the house. Glancing through the trees she noticed to her surprise that the helicopter was on its pad. Her heart lurched with unexpected force.
Mama was close to hysterics, convinced that it would blow everything, and shouting at Hana in Slovakian that she would pay for this. But Sylva felt curiously calm as she soothed her: ‘It’s a story about a very special, very loved little girl, Mama. We will deal with it.’
Having placated her mother and arranged for her to organise cars and decoys, she made another call, walking a little closer to the house. The Ferraris were gleaming in a neat red line around the gravel sweep like overpriced ornamental boulders. They only came out of their climate-controlled garages when Pete was in residence.
As she waited for Dillon’s answering service to kick in she drew level with the first Ferrari. Just as the voicemail beep rang in her ear to start recording her message, she felt a click underfoot as she stepped on some sort of pressure pad, and suddenly a siren started to wail. Moments later a figure appeared beneath the portico.
‘Oi!’ a voice shouted and then, without any further warning, a gunshot rang out.
With a shriek Sylva turned and ran, dropping her phone, the line still open to Dillon’s voicemail as it recorded the encounter in full.
She almost made it as far as her scooter when she heard a huge, growling engine behind her. She was no match for its speed as it overtook her, swinging perpendicular in a cloud of burning tyres to stop right in front of her, cutting off her exit route.
Sitting aboard a massive Harley-Davidson, cowboy boots on the pegs, was Pete Rafferty. He was laughing his head off, his battered leather face creased with delight, his very white teeth and very blue eyes sparkling like roulette chips.
He cut the throbbing engine.
‘I said,’ he rasped in his trademark voice, ‘oi!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She held up her hands, sounding more like a Bond girl than ever. ‘I will leave straight away.’
‘Do that, Trouble, and I might be forced to use this again.’ He picked up the gun that he’d wedged behind him.
She held her hands higher, making him laugh even more. ‘You are the sweetest thing. Come in for a drink. You liked the scooter
then?’ He shouldered the gun and indicated the Lambretta with a jerk of his head.
Sylva was too frightened to do more than nod, but things were starting to add up rather thrillingly.
‘Race you,’ he laughed, stretching down to pick up her abandoned helmet and hand it to her.
‘That’s not a fair match,’ she managed to squeak. ‘Your bike is bigger.’
He swung his leg off the Harley and stepped back, bowing to her as he indicated its leather seat. ‘All yours, Trouble. I’ll take the little Italian.’ And he straddled the Lambretta. He was no giant – maybe five ten and wiry rather than muscular – but he still looked like a Highland chieftain on a Shetland pony.
Sylva cautiously swung her leg over the Harley, loving the sensation of warm leather against her groin. She was only wearing a tiny slip dress and the flimsiest of bikini briefs ready for a swim.
She’d posed on Harleys several times in her career; it was a classic glamour-model cliché. And she wasn’t the sort of girl to let opportunities like that slip by without taking one for a run on several occasions. As Pete started the little scooter and raced ahead whooping, she kicked the hog back into life and roared after him. His expression of surprise as she raced past was one she would treasure. She slid the big bike to an angled halt in front of his house and wriggled back on the seat to make space for him.
‘You show me how to really ride this thing!’
Grinning, he ditched the scooter in a flash and climbed aboard, trying not to show the wince of pain at his stiff hips.
For a heady twenty minutes, the Rockfather was in his element, the wind in his long hair as he took her on a whistle-stop tour of the freshly tarmaced private roads on his estate, beautiful black stripes snaking through an immaculate green playpen with its pollarded and fenced trees, shady walks and follies, the ultimate park for a latter-day rake, his thousands of acres kept show-stoppingly pristine for his very few visits each year.
Which could not be said of the house when they finally spilled inside, sun-drenched and wind-swept, weaving their way from one of the back entrances through a labyrinth of corridors.
‘Brace yourself,’ Pete warned her as they passed endless domestic
offices with panelled, half-glazed walls. ‘It’s worse than you remember it. Indigo’s wreaked havoc,’ he moaned. ‘She trashed the place before she walked out. It’ll take years to put right.’
Sylva suddenly realised what he was saying.
‘She’s left?’
‘A couple of days ago. Run off with her shrink – in every sense of the word. The man’s a midget. Dong. Have you met him?’
They’d arrived in a basement kitchen as big as a squash court, which had been decorated to resemble a rainforest, with floor-to-ceiling ipé cabinets and an extraordinary chandelier of green glass mouldings like a tree canopy suspended over a central island that had a waterfall running through it and eight little breakfast-bar settings still laid around it.
‘Took the kids.’ Pete sighed deeply. ‘Says I’m no father to them, which is probably right, but she kept getting more of the little bleeders. How was I supposed to remember all their names?’ He opened a fridge as big as a garage. ‘Krug or Cristal?’
‘Whatever you prefer.’
‘I’m teetotal,’ he said ruefully, popping the cork on a vintage Cristal rosé. ‘I still miss boozing. It just doesn’t feel the same emptying a bottle of Perrier water over a groupie in a hotel room.’
He handed her a brimming flute and they headed up in to the main house.
It looked immaculate, the minimalist rooms with their wicker and carpet panelling, tribal masks and shields on the walls, earthy Budda Bags, central fires, prayer mats and exotic musical instruments all as strange and staged as Sylva remembered.
‘I thought you said Indigo trashed this place when she left?’
‘Not
when
she left,’ he said, following her carrying a can of Coke. ‘Before she left, when she lived here. Look at it! It’s like living in a fucking African village.’
‘It’s where she came from,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s how she felt at home.’
‘She came from Bishops Stortford. Her dad’s a postman. She made up all that Somali stuff to further her career.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Sylva was agog.
‘Bloody hell, it’s over!’ He let out a whoop, kicking a sag bag into orbit. ‘She has been a living nightmare these last couple of years, collecting another orphan every time we had a row or I had a quick roll
in the hay. At least the first Mrs Rafferty only collected dogs, cats and the odd horse. Indigo was out of control.’
‘It really is over?’ Sylva checked.
‘It really is over,’ he confirmed, settling on a huge floor cushion with a low groan as his hips gave another twinge. ‘She’s been banging on about divorce all year. She just needed an excuse.’ He fixed her with his wicked gaze. ‘I reckon they brought you in to test my mettle.’
‘Me?’
‘Indigo knows our pre-nup pays out double if I get caught with my pants down, so they brought in bait to tempt me – a gorgeous blonde who just happens to be my son’s new bird. Bad old Pete would have had you upside down and pulling your pants off with his teeth within five minutes.’ He chuckled fondly at the memory.
‘So why didn’t you?’ Sylva thought it sounded great fun.
Pete gave her a look that made her bikini hot up against her skin. ‘Believe me, I was tempted. But I’ve mellowed. My son’s a good lad and I want him back in my life.’
Sylva looked away, irritated by the direction of the conversation and his shift from groupie shagger to indulgent father.
‘So Indigo won’t double her money after all.’ Pete heaved himself upright with another groan of effort. ‘And she won’t get her Abbey Ever After either.’ He walked up to a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over his immaculate parkland. ‘But she will get a father for her kids, and now she’s found Ding-Dong, she doesn’t need the Rockfather any more. She even reckons they’re in love, which is quite cute really, ’cos she scares me shitless.’ He cackled, turning back to look around the room again. ‘I reckon I could like it here without the bongos and raffia. Time to get the decorators in.’ He turned to her, wicked smile dancing. ‘I’ll get some of your new bedding, I reckon. Saw an ad in the Sunday papers last week and thought, that looks like something I want spread out on my bed every night.’