The Santiago Sisters (10 page)

Argentina

Calida

Do not contact me again. I have no desire to hear from you.

Everything in your letter reminds me of why I hate it there and why I love it here, and Simone taking me away was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have a new name now, and a new life.

You told me that you never wanted to see me again. Well, you got what you wanted. Why should I care how you feel? I meant every word I said that night. Daniel will never look at you because you are desperate and embarrassing—and ugly. That’s why Simone chose me, not you. That’s why she’s my new mother. She knows you’re ugly. Everyone knows you’re ugly, including Daniel. When I flirted with him, he told me as much. You should give up, Calida.

And you should give up writing to me. I don’t want you. I’m not your twin sister any more. If this doesn’t prove how I couldn’t care less, you’re even more deluded than I thought.

Don’t write again. I won’t read it.

Tess.

Every afternoon, Calida rode the bus into town, and found refuge in the place she always had: her photographs. At the library, she hid with a book, focused on it utterly and lost herself in its faces. She had come with Diego once; they had borrowed this volume and taken it home and looked at it every night. The pages were thick and shiny, the images huge—of cracked golden deserts and lush, tumbling waterfalls, of the ice-white Arctic and the glinting green ocean. But the ones that captured her most were the portraits; the mix of distrust and fascination those subjects held against the camera. For that instant, Calida was looking right into those people’s souls and they were looking back. They were
seeing
each other. It was time travel. It was magic.

Leaving the library one evening, she sat on a wall by the wide-open
lago.
Across the turquoise water, the crags of her family’s land rose in white, snow-capped peaks against the crystal sky. But there was no family left. It belonged to her alone.

My land.

Strange to think of it that way—and, as she did, an uncomfortable sensation came over her. She felt surrounded; tied to the dying acreage against her will, drowning in it, suffering for it, carrying its weight on her seventeen-year-old shoulders and buckling beneath its demands. Meanwhile, Teresita had escaped. She was released, freed from responsibility and able to forget it in the blink of an eye.

It wasn’t fair. Nothing about this was fair. Calida had never been so aware of her limitations. Her inadequacies. How she would always play second to her gorgeous, terrifying sister, and always be the one left to pick up the pieces.

Teresita—Tess—had made that clear. How stupid she had been to rip open that letter with such excitement, such hope, when all it contained was poison.

Calida made her decision at the start of September. It was the only way.

On recent nights, she had taken to sleeping outside. It was too painful to stay in the bedroom she’d shared with Teresita; remembering, as children, their conversations long into the night, shushing each other and tittering beneath their blankets whenever they heard their papa passing outside. Under an empty, star-crusted sky, she could let the earth cradle her, its vastness swallow her up. She closed her eyes and imagined Daniel coming to her, lying down next to her, more addicted to him than she had ever been—worse, stronger—and finding her soul at peace only within these imaginings.

Tonight, in the shadow of the veranda, she closed her eyes. She pulled the covers up over her waist and parted her knees beneath, sighing as she tumbled into her fantasy. Her hand travelled down to the soft nest between her legs.

Come to me, Daniel,
she silently begged, picturing him so clearly.

She could feel the warmth of his body alongside hers, as if it were happening; could feel his fingers on her back as they traced a languid circle. His breath warmed her neck. Calida would turn her head, just a fraction, until their mouths found each other in the silent, sweet-scented dark. Daniel’s kiss would be hot and taste of the rain. She could feel his teeth and the mystery of his tongue, which hesitantly touched hers, and then, finding encouragement, filled her mouth. Daniel’s hand would move from her stomach, down behind the ridge of her
jeans. Deftly, he would unbutton and tug the denim down. His palm hovered over the mound of her cotton knickers.

Calida’s finger plunged into the pit of her heat. She lifted her hips to meet it.

Is this OK?
She could hear his voice. See his eyes, full of concern.

Yes
. Oh, yes.

Have you done this before
?

No.

Do you want to
?

God, she did. Calida plunged her fingers deeper, rocking back and forth on the tingling bud that sent her wild.
I want to,
she pictured herself saying;
yes, I want to …

Daniel would start kissing her neck, his lips soft and slow, practised and confident. She summoned the feel of his penis, rock-hard against her stomach, as his mouth found a path to her breasts. In her dream she was as generously endowed as Teresita. Daniel would suck, squeeze, and lick her nipples. His hair would be near white in the moonlight and she would run her fingers through it, draw it in so she could inhale him, felt the soft shells of his ears and the bristly stubble of his jaw.

You’re beautiful,
she heard him say. He would look right in her eyes, and she would know that he meant it: even if he were wrong, he meant it.
So beautiful …

Calida gasped beneath her touch. She could feel his cock filling her palm, solid and strong and pumping through her fist. She needed it inside her.

Daniel kissed her stomach, moving lower, until finally he met her wetness with his tongue and she eased on to him, his lips soldered and his tongue swirling in deep circles. Her moisture doubled, running and dripping between her legs.
Over every ridge and cleft he tended until she was blind in a fever, her head spinning.

I want to have sex with you …

Calida was ready to come. Her fingers shook and her hips bucked and thrashed. She imagined Daniel kneeling between her legs, his thighs spread, his cock stiff, and her pale ankles hovering on either side. Throwing her head back, she reached for him and drew him down. Daniel would put a hand there to guide himself.

Clasping his backside, she pulled him in.

They would fall into a fast, pounding pace—he driving through her in heroic strokes, lifting her buttocks to draw her closer, pulling back so he was upright on his knees. He would clasp her breasts and massage them together, leaning over to draw one stiff nub into his mouth and then the other. In her mind, she watched, fascinated, from this angle able to see his hard-on engaged with and then withdrawn, engaged and withdrawn … Daniel would push himself up on his elbows, increasing his pace, finding a new angle and shattering her with it. Calida gripped his wrists.

She could feel them. She could feel him.

She was coming.

The sky vanished, the land flew away, the ocean crashed over her and it was all chased by a brilliant, dreadful sensation that she was powerless to stop. Bucking against her own fingers, she smothered the urge to cry out his name as she toppled one surge over the next, plummeting her into spheres of pleasure that killed her over and over until she was panting for breath and every part of her body was sated.

She blinked to the sky, catching her breath, waiting for her vision to restore.

Minutes passed.

‘OK if I sit?’

His words threw her bolt upright. Daniel, the real Daniel, came round the side of the house. How long had he been there? Had he seen?

Panic engulfed her.

No. He couldn’t have …

‘Sure,’ she croaked.

Daniel lowered himself next to her, his elbows hooked over his knees. She could tell from his expression, lost elsewhere, that he hadn’t witnessed her actions. Relief didn’t come close. She watched his back, the sliver of skin between his jeans and T-shirt, and thank God it was dark because her cheeks flamed at the memory of what she’d been doing. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘About Teresita.’

Oh no.
Calida didn’t think she could take it.
Tell me you didn’t …

‘It was my fault,’ Daniel said. ‘Teresita came on to me that night in my cabin. You interrupted us. Do you remember?’ Mutely, she nodded. ‘I told her afterwards that nothing was going to happen between us. I liked someone else. I can’t help feeling that’s what drove her away—or played a part in it, anyway.’ She heard him swallow. ‘I wanted to tell you. I don’t want to keep anything from you, Calida. Ever.’

Calida digested this. There was someone else.

Of course there was.

‘It was nothing to do with you,’ she told him. ‘My sister made her own choice. Nobody forced her to do it. Besides, I wasn’t blameless. Teresita hated me.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true. I ruined her life. That’s what she told me.’

There was a long silence. ‘I know what it’s like to be told that,’ Daniel said.

Calida waited.

‘My father used to tell me that, pretty much every day. That I was a waste of air—that I’d never amount to anything … He beat me up so bad he broke my arm. That’s why I ran from home and why I’ll never go back. He beat up my mother and then when she left he beat up on me. He beat me up every day. He was a drunk.’

Calida pushed herself up to a sitting position. Daniel’s admission was a sheet of glass between them and she didn’t want to say anything in case it broke.

‘Then, when I turned sixteen, my father hit me and I didn’t fall. For the longest time, I just kept standing. It hurt, just like all the other times, but I didn’t let him know. So he backed off. And I went to him and I lifted him against the wall, and I came close and I said to him, real slow: “That is the last time you hit me. Do you understand? If you hit me again, I will kill you.” I meant it. I meant every word.’

Calida held her breath.

‘He had a temper,’ finished Daniel. ‘That was all.’

‘How badly did he hurt you?’ she asked.

‘He put me in hospital. Pulled a knife a few times. It wasn’t anything compared with what he did to my mother. I don’t blame her for going. I would have.’

She touched his arm. He flinched. ‘Why didn’t you leave before?’

‘I stayed for her. Without me, she’d have died. Then, when it was just the two of us, he beat me more than physically. He made me believe I would never succeed, never matter to anyone. I shouldn’t have been born. I was nothing. No one.’

In the dark, a tear escaped from Calida’s eye. ‘And did he?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Hit you again.’

‘No, not after that—he knew the next time would be the last time. He never hit me after he realised I was big enough to hit back. He was a coward.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I haven’t heard a thing since I left that place and that’s fine by me. Sometimes you have to get out to save yourself.’

Calida closed her eyes. Was that what Teresita had done?

Daniel lay down next to her, and took her hand. He took a deep breath, exhaling as if this was a truth he had kept inside for too long.

‘I’m glad I told somebody that,’ he said.

‘I’m glad, too.’

Calida stayed awake, Daniel beside her, unable to follow him to dreams.

She gazed up at the host of bright stars, the stars of her home, until the sky turned from pitch to purple to lilac, the lip of the sun rose above the horizon, and dawn broke over the rugged orange peaks. All night, a storm swirled in her head.

You’re desperate and embarrassing and ugly.

Daniel told me as much.

You should give up, Calida.

The shame of her masturbation mocked her, the idiocy of it. How when Daniel had lain beside her, confided in her, it had been so like her fantasy that for a moment she almost believed he might kiss her. But she was a friend to him—nothing more.

She never would be.

No man would ever want to make love to her like that. No
man would ever do those things with her … least of all the man she wanted most in the world.

There was nothing to stay for. Nothing left.

Careful not to disturb him, Calida rose and went back to the house. She dressed, showered, and quickly, quietly, packed a bag.

Then she stepped outside and watched him a while.

Remember this.

It was easier not to say goodbye. It hurt too much.

She recalled the
guanaco
her papa had spared, that day she had taken Teresita away so she didn’t have to see. This was a sacrifice, just like that.

She opened the gate and started walking.

Paris

L
ife at Saint-Marthe improved with Mia Ferraris by her side. Mia was quirky and irreverent, she was funny and silly; she posted notes through Tess’s locker, poems about Madame Fontaine’s beard or her attempts at a slowly improving self-portrait, which she knew made Tess laugh. In lessons the girls teamed up together, and in Games they dragged their heels around the netball court and gossiped in goal about how often they ought to shave their legs, and whether boys liked shaved legs or hairy ones. Mia seemed convinced that they liked hairy ones, but Tess wasn’t sure.

Mia was the only person she confided in about her real family.

‘They did it for the money?’ Mia was incredulous. ‘How could they?’

Tess shrugged. ‘Who cares? I don’t.’

‘You must, though. You must feel sad.’

‘Why should I? They made their decision. They didn’t want me. It’s fine.’

‘Aren’t you upset?’ Mia frowned.

‘No.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’m better off without them.’

Just before autumn term began, the school was rocked
by news that two jets had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City. Images of burning skyscrapers and billowing smoke filled TV screens; weeping masses and blackened faces.

‘My God,’ cried Mia, as she and Tess watched the grim bulletins unfold.

Tess thought briefly of Calida. She didn’t know why—Calida wasn’t in New York—but the disaster roused old instincts: the urge to reach for her twin in times of crisis, to make sure she was still there, still OK, her other half, or the ghost of it.

In the spring Tess Geddes turned eighteen, she was sent to stay at the
appartement
of a Parisian socialite named Madame Hélène Comtois. All the girls at Sainte-Marthe were referred to similar posts during the Easter holidays, the idea being to learn the refinement befitting their social standing: the poise, finesse and general
savoir vivre
that marked the difference between girls and ladies. Madame Comtois lived in the 16th arrondissement at the top of an ornate Belle Epoque building, whose interior was bigger than Simone Geddes’ London mansion, only on one floor instead of seven.

In her youth Madame had been a fashion model, and was now married to an eminent member of the
Parlement Français.
She was unusually thin and tall, with cropped dark hair and grey, feline eyes, which were obscured by green-tinted circular spectacles that she kept on a chain around her neck. She smoked constantly.

‘While you stay under my roof, you live by my rules,’ Madame told her when she arrived. But, three weeks in, there didn’t seem to be many rules to live by. Aside from her
evening tutelage in comportment, conduct, and carriage, and the obligation to speak to Madame exclusively in French, Tess was left to her own devices. She took herself to museums by the Place du Trocadéro, and read her book (
Le Comte de Monte Cristo,
given to her by Madame) in the Bois de Boulogne. She wandered the avenues off the Place de l’Étoile and took the Métro to the Basilica in Montmartre.

Mia Ferraris called every day. Her best friend was being instructed on La Rive Gauche and her madame was a tyrant. ‘She looks like a steamed pudding,’ said Mia.

Tess smiled. But even as she wanted to lean on Mia, to rely on her completely, she held back. She kept a part of herself protected, a part that no one could touch.

‘She’s wild,’ Tess heard Madame Comtois say into the telephone one night, during one of her many conversations with Simone, ‘but her beauty is
divine
.’

The following week, Simone flew to Paris. She arrived with Madame shortly after midday, complaining about the trouble she’d had with changing her euros. ‘Why ever you let the franc go I
do
not know. We’ll never lose the pound!’

She had been there ten minutes when she asked to speak to Tess—alone.

‘Sit down,’ said Simone matter-of-factly, when Madame had gone next door.

Tess watched as Simone peeled off a pair of leather gloves and placed them neatly on the cabinet. Her lips were painted red and her recently highlighted locks were pulled back in an elegant chignon. She observed Tess before glancing away.

‘I was informed this morning that Julia and Calida are dead,’ relayed Simone in a peculiar, disembodied voice. ‘There was a robbery at the store they were in and they were
shot and killed at the scene.’ She blinked. ‘I’m sorry, Tess. The farm, its contents, and the land will be sold. There’s nothing left. I thought you should know.’

The wave that hit her was silent. Momentarily, it stole her breath.

‘It’s a terrible blow,’ said Simone, ‘but never mind. It’s over now.’

Tess waited for the tears to come, but her eyes were dry. She just kept staring at the floor, at the gold swirl on Madame’s carpet in the shape of an oil lamp.

They didn’t love you. They didn’t care about you.

They’re nothing to you any more—just two strangers who died.

She swallowed the tidal wave of despair, a trace of salt on her tongue.

‘Come along.’ Simone sat next to her, and placed an arm round her shoulders. ‘I’ll take you to breakfast. I know a charming little place by the river.’

In June, Madame Comtois confirmed her attendance at the annual
danse d’éntrée.
The ball was a mingling ground for the city’s elite sons and daughters. Madame had sent her protégées there since day one, and Tess was to be no exception. ‘It sounds lame,’ she protested in her dorm at Sainte-Marthe, as she was made to pack for the weekend away. Madame Aubert was obliged to sign girls off for their debutante reception.

‘You kidding, right?’ Mia spluttered. ‘I’m soooo jealous! Mine isn’t coming up until winter—and even then I bet Madame Pudding won’t let me go …’

‘Want to take my place?’

‘Don’t talk rubbish. You’ll have a great time.’ Mia beamed
and buoyed Tess’s spirits and by the time the evening came around, she was almost convinced herself.

‘Remember,’ instructed Madame Comtois as she deposited Tess at the grand entrance to L’Hotel Aquitaine, ‘the secret is
la modération
: grace and restraint at all times. You are a lady now, and a lady has a reputation to uphold.’

Another group of so-called ladies was clustered round the portico. Emily Chilcott and her gang resembled a nest of flamingos, dressed as they were in varied shades of pink. ‘Look who it is,’ Emily muttered,
‘la petite orpheline.
’

‘Piss off, Emily.’

‘I didn’t know Madame Comtois had such pretty curtains or I would have made a dress of them myself!’ The clique sniggered. Madame had chosen her gown, reams of floaty chiffon with a nipped-in waist, but while it mightn’t have been Tess’s first choice, she conceded the colour suited her: against her bronzed skin and tumble of jet curls, she looked dangerous and alternative, a far cry from the rest of them.

Emily’s own hair was bandaged up in a sleek yellow topknot, secured so tightly on the crown of her head that it was tugging her eyes to her ears. Her dress clashed badly and Tess considered telling her, before remembering Madame’s words:
grace and restraint at all times.
Emily might not possess them, but she did.

Alone, Tess went inside, where a porter took her coat. Music drifted out of
la grande salle.
In the bathroom she killed time, sampling hand lotions and dozens of perfume spritzers, which she dabbed on her wrists and ears as she had seen Madame do. After a while, she emerged. Beneath the domed vault of the impressive ballroom, rings of whispering girls eyed squads of posturing boys and occasionally a representative of one would pair off with a member of the other. First kisses, first
fumbles—Tess knew she was a late bloomer compared with the others girls at Sainte-Marthe (even Mia had crossed that elusive bridge, spending the night with her brother’s best friend during the autumn half-term, although she was adamant they hadn’t had sex), but, even so, she wasn’t sure this enforced mating ceremony was necessarily the best place to do it.

‘Uh, excuse me …?’

Tess turned. The boy had gel-soaked curtains plastered to his forehead and the frightened eyes of a hare tangled in chicken wire. She could sense his blush, wafting out of him like an open oven. ‘I’m Gilbert Toupin,’ he stumbled. ‘You can call me … uh … Gilbert. Would you like to dance?’

She had heard the Toupin name. Old money. Their ancestral home was a sprawling château in Bordeaux and the parents were reclusive aristocrats.

Over by the drinks, she observed Emily and Fifi pointing and giggling. Gilbert saw it too. Ashamed, he bowed his head. Tess took his hand. ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

Throughout their dance she was aware of his erection pressed against her leg, and was too afraid to move in case it did something unexpected, or it got caught or she hurt it, and Gilbert, for all his bumbling ineptitude, would expose her own glaring inexperience. She thought of the bravado she had worn on the farm, the foolishness of her flirtation with Daniel. If it had gone any further she wouldn’t have known what to do. She would have feared ending up like her father, in the stables with Señorita Gonzalez. Even now, she could hear his groan. Could smell the sickly lavender …

Gilbert’s embrace was clamped around her.

‘You’re so pretty …’ Gilbert mumbled into her ear. When the moment came and he adjusted his head to kiss her, homing in like a missile, she at last broke free.

‘I’m going to get a drink,’ she told him. ‘Back in a second.’

‘I’ll come with you—’

‘No. It’s OK. You wait here.’

Tess spent the rest of the night doing all she could to avoid Gilbert Toupin. She hid in the loos, she disappeared outside; she smoked four cigarettes with a girl in her History class who everyone said was anorexic. Miserably she watched the clock, praying for the time to come when she could escape this torture, when all at once someone produced a bottle of vodka. Finally, the chance to get drunk; as the alcohol coursed through her bloodstream Emily’s acid scowls barely registered and, when Fifi Bissette cornered her with a lecture about how liquor didn’t suit fat girls because it made them believe they were pretty and thin and then they made idiots of themselves, Tess frowned, nodded seriously, and then smiled nicely and said:

‘Go fuck yourself, Fifi.’

She had just refuelled for the umpteenth time, she’d lost count, when, turning, she knocked into somebody; the liquid splashed out in a silver arc and spilled all down his pristine white shirt. ‘
Lo
siento,’
she gasped. ‘I mean,
excuse-moi
! I’m sorry!’

The man touched the material. She saw his hands; wide, capable hands, the fingers long, and the light covering of dark hair that escaped his wrists.

‘It’s no big deal.’

She put her glass down and started dabbing his shirt with the drapery of her skirt. A blue stain started to spread. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Leave it. It’s fine. It was an accident.’

Tess glanced up, but, instead of the hostile reception she was expecting, the face that met hers was gently amused. He had dark hair and a soft mouth, a square jaw, and the chest she had slammed into was warm and hard.

‘Alex Dalton,’ he said, holding out his hand.

She shook it. ‘That sounds English.’

‘American, actually.’

‘Then why are you speaking French?’

‘Because you are,’ he replied. ‘We can speak Spanish, if you prefer.’

‘I’m not Spanish. I’m Argentinian.’ She tried to focus through the blur.

‘Oh,’ the man said, smiling a little. ‘
Lo
siento.’

‘Are you at school here?’ she blurted. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, as if she was funny. She wasn’t funny.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you’re as rich and spoiled as everyone else.’ She would never have been so rude had she been sober, but in saying the words she realised she meant them. Tess wasn’t like them, or him, however much she kidded herself. She was slurring now and she could see two Alex Daltons, one overlapping the other.

‘Aren’t you?’ he challenged.

‘No. I was sold and kidnapped. I don’t belong here.’

Alex Dalton laughed. ‘Well, I ran away from home and now I’m hiding in a jewel thief’s cellar, and he only lets me out after dark. So I work here, as a waiter, filling up glasses for all these rich, spoiled kids. People like you don’t normally speak to me, so it’s a really special night when someone spills their illegally smuggled vodka all down my uniform. Do you need some fresh air?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

Haughtily Tess moved away, but as she did her foot got caught in the hem of her dress and she tripped. Alex Dalton caught her. She straightened, smoothed her skirt, and, filled with shame, shrugged him off and stormed out on to the terrace.

Fresh air hit and with it arrived a slam of nausea. Her tummy flipped and her mouth filled with saliva. Panicking, Tess located the nearest plant pot—an elaborate Roman basin filled with bougainvillea—and hurled a spurt of raw alcohol into it.

Someone was holding her hair back and for a crazy moment she believed it to be Mia, before remembering Mia wasn’t there. ‘Are you all right?’ came a voice.

‘Ugh! Get away from me! Can’t you see I’m being sick?’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Alex Dalton.

‘Go away. I feel terrible. Leave me alone.’

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘I can get home by myself.’

‘Come here,’ he held out his jacket, ‘put this on.’

‘I’m not cold.’ But when he came close to wrap it round her shoulders, she didn’t object. ‘Sorry if I smell,’ she said meekly.

‘Actually,’ he said in English, ‘you smell like a florist’s. Do you always wear this much perfume?’ Tess thought of all the samples she had doused herself in earlier, in the bathroom. How rude of him to comment on it! She pushed him away.

‘I’m teasing,’ he said. ‘Come on. I’ll bring a car round.’

‘Aren’t you working?’

Alex frowned, as if he didn’t understand. Then he smiled. ‘They’ll manage.’

The ride back to Madame’s
appartement
was hell, every swerve and turn causing her to grit her teeth and blanch a shade whiter. Alex instructed the driver to pull over by the Parc de Buttes-Chaumont so she could puke again.