The Santiago Sisters (24 page)

Alex looked sad. ‘Talk to me, Pirate.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘You’ve always got something to say.’

‘Yeah, that was the problem.’

‘I hope you don’t regret telling me. If that’s the reason …’

‘Why should I? I don’t care what you know.’

‘It takes a lot to open up. I don’t do it. You’re a braver person than me.’

‘What would you have to open up about? Aren’t you perfect? Haven’t you got it all? Go on—surprise me, Alex, tell me something I don’t know.’

‘I could tell you a lot of things.’

‘But you won’t.’

‘I don’t need to. Not yet.’

She pushed her chair back. He reached across and put a hand over hers.

‘Don’t go,’ he said.

‘I have to.’ She lied. ‘Steven’s waiting for me.’

‘Is he looking after you? Is he making you happy?’

‘Of course he is,’ she said. ‘He’s my husband. Isn’t that what marriage is about? I guess you wouldn’t know: you’ve never done it.’

Alex looked at her. ‘No, I haven’t. I guess all the good ones are taken.’

Tess stood. ‘This has been fun,’ she said, knowing she was being a complete bitch but unable to stop, as if she had flicked self-destruct and had to keep going until there was nothing left. ‘We should do it again.’ Alex went to stop her but she escaped his grasp, heels spiking the floor as she made for the door.

Outside, the street tipped and swayed. She realised she wanted him to follow her, to call out her name … and then what? He felt sorry for her—that was all. She was trapped in a nightmare that had once been a dream, imprisoned, frightened, and alone.

Hauling open the door to her Jeep, she cried for her twin. She slammed the wheel, imagining it was her sister, hitting her and smacking her just as Calida had done on the night they’d fought; the last time she had seen her.

You died thinking I hated you. I told you I hated you.

Tess swerved out of the parking lot and careened into her
lane. At the lights she skipped a red and navigated a blare of car horns and squealing tyres, though she was too out of it to know if the smell of burned rubber was her own burst wheel or another’s. She gripped the steering wheel one second then let it spin loose the next.

She didn’t know or care where she was headed—the mansion was unbearable but there was nowhere else. Simone despised her. She’d neglected Mia.

It would be better off if she didn’t exist. What was life worth now?

Lights, other cars, hurtled towards her and rashly she ducked between them, gears grinding, the Jeep plunging onto the sidewalk. A police siren started up and that was when she saw it: the grey lamppost dashing towards her, a final full stop if only she had the courage to meet it.

She met it.

There was light and then there was dark, and not a thing in between.

C
alida was surprised to find Lucy up so early, especially on a Saturday. Her friend was in her dressing gown, sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes glued to the TV.

‘Have you seen this?’ she asked, not turning round.

Calida was about to ask what, but then she didn’t need to. One look at the BREAKING NEWS footage told her everything. A scarlet banner ran across the foot of the screen, each word peeling out fresh horror.
Hollywood icon Tess Geddes in high-speed crash … Tess Geddes fighting for life … Recovery needs miracle, say doctors …

She dropped her cup of coffee.

‘Shit, are you OK?’ Lucy jumped up. ‘Are you burned?’

‘No, I—I’m fine.’

‘Here, sit down. You look awful—do you have a fever?’

Calida couldn’t speak. Her lips opened but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. TV crews piled up outside a hospital. Headshots of her twin, old coverage of her gracing the red carpet, pictures of her wedding to Steven Krakowski, adorned the report. Anxious journalists spouted into mics, pressing their earpieces for updates.

‘Calida …?’

‘I think I’m going to faint.’

‘What is it? Are you sick?’

‘That’s my sister.’

Lucy’s expression was blank. ‘Sorry?’

‘Tess Geddes is my sister. She’s dying. My sister is going to die.’

She told Lucy the truth. What choice did she have? Her friend was dumbstruck.

‘You have to go to her,’ she said. ‘You have to.’

‘Never.’ Calida was shaking, her second cup of coffee cold in her hands. ‘She told me how she feels about me. I’m not going. It’s over between us. It has been for years.’

‘Calida, listen to me. What happened in the past—’

‘It’s not the past. It’s right now. It’s a fight I’ve been fighting for seven years.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I always told myself the next time I saw her it would be to claim revenge. I’m not going now. I can’t. What would I say? She doesn’t want to see me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Trust me.’

‘Because of some letter?’

‘It’s more than that.’

‘Whatever it is, it can’t be more important than this.’ Lucy touched her arm. ‘Calida, what if this choice gets taken away from you? What if you never see her again because you never get the chance? Could you live with that?’

‘I don’t know. I could try.’ But the words were hollow. She didn’t mean them. All she could think about was her twin, that other, strange part of herself, as known to her as the lines on her palm but as pale and distant as the moon, struggling in a hospital bed. She strived to put her anger back together, but just as fast it came apart.

‘You really don’t care, then?’ said Lucy. ‘That’s why you wear that locket around your neck every day and you never take it off, not even to get in the shower. You told me back at Brandon’s your sister has one the same.’

Calida went to deny it but knew by Lucy’s expression it was pointless. So many times she had wanted to tear the locket off and throw it away, but she couldn’t. She told herself it was because Diego had given it to her … but in truth it was the last vestige. A gossamer-fine cord, no more than a spider’s web, continued to bind them.

I hate you. I hate you.
She repeated it to herself over and over again.

Lucy continued to stare at her, waiting for her to change her mind.

Within the hour, she was on a flight to LA. She didn’t have time to think about what she was doing; it happened so fast. It was enough to put one foot in front of the other, impossible to think beyond that. What they would say to each other, how it would play out: the reunion she had imagined so many times but never like this.

The closer she got, the less possible it became for it to be too late.

Now she had made this decision, Teresita had better not back out on her.
Don’t you dare do it again; you stick around for me this time.

Landing at LAX, Calida rushed through Arrivals and dived into a cab, prompting the man who had hailed it to yell, ‘Hey—!’

Streets shot past in a blur. She wanted to scream to the driver to put his foot on the gas but he was going as fast as he
could. Finally, they reached the County Memorial Medical Center. A bank of press swarmed against police barriers, cameras surging to life every time the entrance swung open. Fans wept; others, less concerned with the situation than with being in proximity to the hype, stood about chatting and filming on their phones. A TV helicopter circled overhead. Calida had been aware of her sister’s celebrity but had never witnessed it at such close quarters. Even back in New York, seeing the cyclone surrounding Winona and her crew, it was nothing like this. Here, at the moment of tragedy, her twin was more famous than she’d ever been.

As she came closer, she spied Simone Geddes by the door, tear-streaked and surrounded by bodyguards. The woman hadn’t changed; she didn’t appear to have aged at all. Still the same harsh, bitten expression, as if life had done her wrong.

‘I’m utterly distraught,’ Simone was prattling into a microphone. ‘Tess and I are so close. We’re best friends as well as family. I can’t believe this has happened …’

Fake.
Simone wouldn’t know what family was if it bit her in the face.

Calida stood in the heaving crowd like a ball buffeted on the waves. She dared Simone to look up and meet her eye. Unbelievably, it happened. The actress’s gaze flicked over her—Calida felt certain it would return, a double take, surely, but no. She was as invisible to Simone now as she had been then. The ugly sister.

Calida shoved her way to the front. ‘I’m family,’ she fought through the seething bodies, ‘I have to get through …’ Surfacing at last, she met a wall of security.

‘I’m her sister,’ she told them, breathless. It felt good to say it. True.

The big guy snorted. ‘Yeah, you and everyone else.’

‘I’m not leaving until I see her.’

‘No way, lady.’

Calida fished in her bag. She brought out a photograph from her portfolio of Argentina—she and Teresita together on the farm, by the stables, innocent.

The guard took it and his expression shifted.

He glanced up at Calida, then down again. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

Tess Geddes opened her eyes to a world she didn’t recognise. Everything was white. Blurred figures stood in a circle, emitting a low, continuous hum. There was a faint, mechanical
beep-beep
coming from her left side. She could smell plastic.

Her body didn’t feel like hers. One moment she was inside it, looking out; the next, she was above it, looking down. Lying in bed, tiny and frail.

She tried to move but it hurt too much. Her tongue was dry and she was aware of her bones, the shape of her skeleton resting on the mattress, feather light.

The next time she regained consciousness, she saw a face she knew. At first, coming at her through kaleidoscopic shadow, she thought it was Calida.

Of course it wasn’t Calida. Her sister was dead.
Am I dead too
?

Blinding flashes of the accident sailed through her head. The road, the slippery wheel, the lamppost hurtling towards her, and she’d known what she was doing and still made the decision to … The shadowy figure touched her arm, pulled into
focus and became Simone. ‘Darling, sweetheart, it’s me,’ she sobbed. ‘Your mother.’

Another visitor took her hand. She saw Steven Krakowski as one might a stranger, and flinched from his touch before remembering he was her husband.

Steven lifted her limp hand, kissed it and cradled it, held it to his cheek. She had a sudden, nightmarish vision of him crawling about in a cot. ‘The doctors say you banged your head,’ he explained. ‘It may be a while before your memory returns.’

You wish,
thought Tess.
I can remember just fine.

‘She needs to sleep,’ soothed Simone, bending to kiss her forehead. ‘You’ll be better soon, my angel, I promise. I’ll be here when you wake up.’

In the event, Simone wasn’t. Alex was. When Tess came round, he was sitting in a chair attempting to read. Every few seconds he would look up, and this time, when he did, he met her open eyes. ‘Thank God.’ He was at her side, his warm, coarse hand in hers and his dark head bent over their clasped fingers. ‘It’s good to see you.’

She watched his hair and thought how soft it looked. It was a head she knew well. She had known it for a long time, longer than she gave him credit for.

‘I never paid,’ Tess said. Words caught up with her before memory did.

Alex frowned. He wasn’t quite how she remembered, somehow. ‘What?’

‘For my drink … I never paid.’

He held tight to her fingers and smiled. ‘You can make it up to me sometime.’

She smiled back. In that instant she felt a peace she hadn’t known in months—years, maybe. She wanted to stay here, in this moment, and nothing would change.

The door opened. ‘Ms Geddes?’ The man stepped inside. ‘Is she awake?’

‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘I’m here.’

‘There’s a woman outside who claims she’s your sister. Should I let her in?’

Tess allowed herself that brief glimmer of denial, of what might have been, another time and another fate in which he might actually have been talking about Calida. Instead, Emily Chilcott, that despot, that brat, usurped the title and not once stopped to consider the hurt it would cause. None of that family had. They had never imagined what it was like for her in a house full of strangers, ripped from her home.

Emily isn’t my sister.

‘I don’t have a sister,’ said Tess, turning away. ‘Tell her to leave.’

Calida returned to New York that night.

As the plane climbed high above moon-bathed clouds, she cursed her foolish, futile mission. She knew now beyond doubt that Teresita had been driven away that day when she was fifteen and had died within the week. Tess Geddes had replaced her. Tess Geddes had written that poison letter, scaling her way from London to Paris to LA without so much as a downward glance. Tess Geddes had cut her off absolutely and without remorse. As far as Tess Geddes was concerned, Calida no longer existed.

I don’t have a sister …
She might as well be dead.

The next morning, Calida woke early, looked in the mirror,
and told herself she had lost nothing. She was back where she’d been two days ago: fighting for a place opposite her twin, to be stronger and harder and better than she could ever hope to be.

She had more reason for that than ever. Payback powered her every thought.

I’m going to get you. I’m going to get you where it really, truly hurts.

Weeks passed. Work continued at breakneck pace. Commissions piled in to XS Studios, more than she and Ryan could handle, and they cherry-picked their projects. Trips abroad were a welcome distraction. New people helped her forget.

In November, when Barack Obama was elected as the first black president to the White House, they turned SilverLine into a party pad and celebrated till dawn. Calida drank too much and wound up passing out in a male model’s lap.

The next day, through a gruelling hangover, Ryan informed her that her biggest commission to date had arrived. ‘Vittorio Da Strovisi,’ he told her, barely able to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Honey, you’re heading for Milan.’

Los Angeles

E
verybody told her that she shouldn’t have survived the accident. Tess had been certain it was her time and that the world would be a better place without her in it.

The world, it seemed, had other ideas.

Early in 2009 she resumed working. The near miss had made her dynamite, and Maximilian, while exhibiting a fatherly concern, was in fact more concerned with the fact that the phones were buzzing off the hook. Tess’s new movie
Grit Girl
was the perfect comeback. She was filming opposite Natalie Portis, who assumed the role of Tess’s guardian until she was back on her feet. Tess protested, but Natalie heard none of it. When the project wrapped, Natalie took her for a celebratory lunch at Belfont.

‘Vitto’s been asking after you,’ she said, once they had ordered appetisers.

‘Who?’

‘Vittorio Da Strovisi. Remember? You met him in Argentina.’

‘Oh, yes—of course.’ She had known exactly who Natalie meant, just hadn’t wanted to admit it. The sound of Vittorio’s name made her shiver. Since coming out of hospital, she’d had
a libido for the very first time in her life. Tess thought about sex constantly, with Vittorio, with Greg, even with Lysander—with everyone, in fact, except her husband. The accident had reconnected her with her body, shown her the true nature of survival; it was as if something that was missing before had suddenly clicked into place. The memory of Vittorio’s magnetism was irresistible.

‘He’s been worried about you,’ said Natalie.

‘Why?’ She tried to sound casual. ‘He doesn’t know me.’

‘My guess is he’d like to.’

Tess laughed it off, but inside she caught fire. ‘I thought he and Steven were friends?’ she said. ‘And doesn’t he have a wife?’

Natalie raised an eyebrow. ‘Let’s just say it’s an easy-going friendship. And, I suspect, an easy-going marriage.’

At home, her partnership with Steven limped on. Tess fulfilled her part by pasting on a smile at every public outing and swooning over the care her husband had shown since her emergence from the clinic. Alone, they occupied opposite ends of the mansion and spoke only when necessary. Steven had hoped that Tess’s concussion might have dislodged certain recalls, but no such luck. He refused to give her a divorce, instead plying her with gifts and toys. She felt like a goldfish at a fairground that he had resolutely decided to win, in that spoiled, entitled way of someone unaccustomed to losing. Throw enough hoops over her and she’d be unable to escape.

Her sex drive was so high that she had considered gritting her teeth and fucking him, testing her newfound capacity for gratification, but there was no way. Steven was as asexual as he’d ever been. The thought of him with a pacifier rammed in his mouth and a diaper tied round his ass was enough to make her retch over the toilet bowl. Each time he stayed out
for the night, or visited friends she had never heard of, Tess did her best to ignore her suspicions. Meanwhile his fetishes rumbled silently on, the rot creeping into every crack and corner of their fake union until its infestation was complete. Some days she reasoned through the pretence and it didn’t seem so bad: every couple in Hollywood cheated—Natalie had confided that both she and Greg had strayed—so what made them any different? Other days, she was reminded of Steven’s outrageous perversions, that horrendous scene unfolding in the Santa Barbara house like a grim nursery rhyme, and the illusion came tumbling down.

Mia called every day. She had moved to a farm in the English countryside and was writing a book on Ford Madox Brown. ‘Visit me,’ she urged. ‘You should see it here, Tess—you’d love it. Rolling hills, open skies, it’s exactly what you need.’

It was tempting, but Tess had a life here to get in order first. Starting with Simone. She felt ashamed of the harsh words she had thrown at her adoptive mother; she should never have shown such disrespect. This was the woman who had taken her in and given her a home. She had never thought of it like that before, but there it was, the truth. Meeting death made Tess count every last blessing in her life—and Simone Geddes, surely, was the biggest of them all. What would she have done, if it weren’t for her? Cast out by her own family, unwanted, unloved. She owed her everything.

‘There’s no need for apology, sweetheart,’ Simone told her over the phone. ‘Let’s forget it happened. I love you, you’re my daughter, nothing you say or do can change that.’ When Tess thanked her, she realised there were a great many things besides that she had never thanked Simone for, and promised to make up for it.

In June, news swept through the city that Michael Jackson had died. A strange mist descended, part grief, part disbelief that a man who had escaped so many other definitions had been caught by the final one. Life was a roulette wheel, a lucky spin of the dice. It made Tess feel stupid and irresponsible for being so careless with her own, and she vowed from now on to live every moment to its absolute maximum potential.

Fired by fresh resolve, she saw her future more brightly than ever, as an unwritten map beneath her control. She alone would be responsible for her actions—no husband, no sister, nobody telling her no—and she alone would pleasure in them.

‘I have news.’ A month later, Natalie invited her for coffee. The women took their customary spot at No. 1 Townhouse and signalled the waiter for their usual. ‘Vitto’s having a party at his pad in New York,’ said Natalie. ‘He’s requested your company.’

‘Steven’s out of town,’ Tess explained.

‘That’s probably why he asked,’ Natalie said mischievously.

Tess blushed. ‘I don’t know …’

‘You have to get a look at this place. Seriously.’

Tess had to admit that the thought of seeing Vittorio again was intoxicating. The other day she had seen pictures of him and his wife at a gala in Boston, and vaguely wondered what Scarlet Schuhausen would make of the enormous bunch of peonies and orchids Vittorio had sent her at County Memorial. She couldn’t deny that she had been thinking of him too. It was as if he had attached a thread when they’d met in South America, and every so often would tug it to remind her he was there. The more she resisted, the more she realised to which
place he had tied it: a secret, special, private place, a tingle and a pulse, a whisper of unspoken desire …

‘When is it?’ she asked, as if she didn’t care.

‘Saturday night.’ Natalie popped an olive in her mouth. ‘Ooh,’ she trilled, ‘I
love
a Vitto virgin. Once you’ve been to one of his parties, you’ll
never
look back.’

Tess got an idea that Natalie might be right when, at the weekend, Vittorio sent a plane from NYC to collect them. It had a VDS logo splashed down one side.

‘It’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?’ Tess marvelled, scoping the opulent interior. ‘Everything about Vitto is excessive,’ replied Natalie.

When they arrived at the Glen Cove mansion, any hesitations Tess might have had that this was the case were swiftly obliterated. Vittorio’s estate was nothing short of obscene—an early-twentieth-century replica of an English country house, complete with Corinthian columns and twenty facing windows. Through twisting wrought-iron gates their car navigated a serpentine drive to a stately portico entrance, where a silver fountain comprised enough writhing marble bodies to rival the Trevi. Sparkling jets shone in the floodlit night. An array of insane sports cars was gathered, from which impossibly beautiful creatures emerged. Sultry beats pounded from inside.

‘Shit,’ said Tess.

‘I know,’ murmured Natalie. ‘Wait until you get inside.’

In the foyer, a baronial double staircase swept majestically between floors. Gilt-framed portraits lined the walls. Candles burned. It was Gothic in feel, brooding and romantic, not at all what she would have expected from Vittorio’s gaudy façade.

‘Does he live here?’

‘Vitto’s got ten places just like this,’ said Natalie wryly. ‘His main home’s in Italy—this is more of a … I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a plaything.’

Once more, Tess felt that pull, a mischievous switch that promised to draw her to a place she had never accessed before. Vittorio Da Strovisi was shameless, his wealth was shameless, and his manners were shameless; his looks were shameless and his house and cars and private aircraft were shameless. His flirtation was shameless.

Tess wanted to be shamed. For the first time in her life, she did.

It was a while before she saw the man himself. She caught glimpses of him, tantalising as an exotic bird through a shivering tree canopy, and felt his eyes on her back, but he didn’t come to say hello. He was playing with her, and with every passing second she was focusing less and less on whomever she was talking to and more and more on the red-hot burn between her legs. Several times she had to excuse herself to go to the bathroom, splash her face and wrists, and pull herself together. Something had been set free in her, dislodged, unfastened. She felt like an animal, savage and powerful. Sex wasn’t about making her the victim, no, not any more. She could be in charge. She
would
be in charge. Seeing Vittorio reminded her of the men on the front of those romance novels she had devoured as a child.
The Billionaire’s Mistress …

Books Calida had told her were rubbish. People like that didn’t exist. Money like that didn’t exist. Men like that didn’t exist.
Well, look at me now.

At midnight, Vittorio stood before his guests and made a speech. Scarlet Schuhausen hovered close by, elegant and palely sleek as a swan, yet with the feral glare of an Alsatian
guarding the homestead. It was weird to think of Scarlet and Vittorio swapping partners, if that was what they did, because the way Scarlet looked at her man implied she would claw the eyes off any bitch who dared glance at him.

Afterwards, as Natalie disappeared to take a call from Greg, Tess went alone to refresh her make-up. Away from the crowds, she crossed the open-air terrace with its shimmering blue baths and hexagonal pool house; the water twinkled invitingly and she wondered how many excessive parties it had been host to.

She padded through to the east wing, silent and empty, and descended an old stone staircase that wound like honeycomb to a lower floor. A chain of cavernous, low-ceilinged chambers greeted her, flickering with bulbs and running as far as the eye could see towards a dim inkpot of black. A draught whispered round her neck and she shivered. Her footsteps were hollow and echoing. Where did this lead?

The scent was inebriating, musty as cellars and rich as plum. Tess arrived at a chamber filled wall to wall, ceiling to floor, with dust-caked bottles of wine, their necks protruding like raised pistols and their bottoms deep and concave with age.

A wide arched door led off one wall and she went to it, pushing it open with an ancient creak, as blind in the labyrinth as Alice down the rabbit hole. Inside, she gasped as if she had stumbled across another, separate gathering; she thought she had company but then realised she didn’t. Dozens of suits of armour gleamed in the moonlight, dead but somehow living. Tess stepped between the ghosts and touched the smooth, cold metal of a chest, half expecting a drum to be beating inside. Two eyes were carved from the pewter helmet, dark and sightless. She held her breath.

‘Hello.’

She turned. Vittorio stood before her, as still as the army surrounding him.

‘A hobby of mine,’ he explained. ‘I like to collect things that inspire me.’

Tess forced herself to speak. ‘They’re magnificent.’

‘You find them unnerving.’

‘A little.’

‘Why?’

Vittorio took a step towards her, so she was forced to move backwards and felt her spine come up against the hard, smooth chest of a phantom soldier; caught between them, the living and the dead. Vittorio’s blue eyes appeared silver.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I always think it is because they are watching me,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you feel it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you like how it feels?’

‘Yes.’

‘I like that you like it.’

Her throat was dry. There was a long silence.

‘There is energy in them,’ said Vittorio at length, ‘but it is quiet and unmoving. They watch but they cannot comment on the things that they see.’

‘What do they see?’ Tess tried for lightness but the question emerged full of promise. Vittorio’s face was close to hers. His hand landed on her waist.

‘What do you think your husband would say if he could see us now?’

‘What would your wife say?’ she countered.

Vittorio’s eyes narrowed in amusement. ‘Scarlet doesn’t
like my extra-marital liaisons. Call me wicked, but that makes me enjoy it more.’

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Vittorio’s hand moved down Tess’s leg and his fingers crept under the hem of her skirt. Their mouths were a pinch apart, close enough to feel his breath, warm and sweet with a note of brandy.

Tess’s flesh trembled beneath his touch. His thumb hooked under the elastic of her panties; he was millimetres from her sweet spot but he didn’t move.

Neither of them did. One slip and his thumb would be inside her. Tess was pulsing with want. Every fibre yearned to thrust on to him. Her chest rose and fell between them; she imagined Vittorio tearing open her blouse and devouring her breasts and she would come straight away, she would come for the first time ever, the elusive orgasm she had heard so much about but thought was impossible.

But Vittorio’s thumb didn’t move. Neither did he. The empty suit at her back seemed to hold her from behind; the soldier was in conspiracy with Vittorio, together they had her pinned, they would claim her and she would fall at their mercy.

‘Steven’s your friend,’ she whispered. Even speaking her husband’s name had no effect; he had lost all power over her. Vittorio’s thumb stayed where it was, on an out breath grazing her strip of pubic hair, the very edge, incidentally, as if neither were aware it was happening. Having a conversation with a stranger in a store, with their thumb inside her knickers. A tide of heat surged up from her toes.

‘He had sex with my wife, you know,’ said Vittorio. ‘Before you.’