Adored (53 page)
Poor child. She looked so terribly confused and hurt, with the visible, lower parts of her face all screwed up in misery and anguish. Claire longed to be able to help her, but having lived with Pete for thirty years, she understood a bit about guilt. This was something Siena would have to work through on her own.
“Try not to think about it now,” she told her time after time. “Concentrate on getting yourself well. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Claire was sitting out in the garden reading under the shade of the willow tree, enjoying a brief respite from nursing duties while Siena slept, when she was disturbed by the vibrating of the cell phone in her pocket.
The screen read
HOME
.
It was Pete.
She glanced nervously around to check that Melissa was nowhere in sight before answering the call.
“Darling!” she said. “How are you?”
There was a pause on the end of the line.
“Mrs. McMahon?” said a familiar female voice. “Claire? It’s not Pete, it’s me. Tara.”
The PA sounded distressed. Claire felt her heartbeat quicken. Had Pete finally found out what she’d been up to? “Is something the matter, Tara?” she asked. “You sound upset. What’s wrong?”
Another pause that seemed to last for hours.
“I’m sorry, but it’s bad news,” the girl stammered. “It’s Pete.”
“What? What about him?” Claire sounded as scared as she felt. It wasn’t like Tara to spare anyone’s feelings, least of all hers. Why couldn’t she spit it out?
“He’s had a heart attack.”
It was Tara’s voice, but it somehow sounded different.
Tinny and distant.
Unreal.
“I’m sorry, but you have to come home, Claire,” she said. “Right away.”
It took a couple of minutes for the initial shock of Tara’s news to sink in. Then Claire began to think practically.
Her first priority was to get back home. Pete had been taken to Cedars and was apparently in intensive care. She needed to talk to his doctor and get an update on his condition. But first she had to talk to Siena.
Now that she was on the lower-dosage painkillers and didn’t need so much sleep, Siena had been moved from the little windowless room at the top of the stairs to a larger, much more cheerful guest bedroom overlooking the sweeping formal gardens and the ocean beyond. Not that she could appreciate the view of course, but she could now tell the difference between light and darkness, even through her bandages, which everyone assumed was a hopeful sign.
Claire rapped gently on the door. “Hey, sweetie. Only me.”
She hadn’t known how to break the news about Pete, what with Siena still being in such a fragile condition. In the end, she just sat down on the end of the bed and told her as calmly and unemotionally as she could.
“I don’t know how serious it is yet,” she finished. “I’m just praying and hoping for the best.”
Siena’s only thoughts were of concern for her mother. For all her dad’s faults, and despite everything that had happened, she knew that Claire loved him desperately.
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” she said, clasping Claire’s hand tightly in her own. “You must be so worried. And of course you have to go back right away, I totally understand. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“But darling.” Claire was taken aback. “You don’t expect me to leave you here, do you?”
Siena’s face gave nothing away, no tightening of the mouth or furrowing of the brow above her bandages. Evidently, she
had
expected it.
“No, no, it’s out of the question,” said Claire. “I’m taking you back with me. We have to get you away from Randall, and besides . . .” She bravely fought back her tears. “This may be your last chance to see your father, to make things right. You have to come with me, Siena. Today.”
Wearily, Siena shook her head. “I can’t, Mom. I can’t come with you right now. Randall’s going to be here in a few days to see me, and I still have no idea how I’m gonna handle that. He can still do a lot of damage to my career, you know. Not to mention the money. And Dr. Sanford’s coming with him to take these damn dressings off my eyes and look at the damage. I can’t just bolt.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Claire’s exasperation at last began to show. “What do career and money matter in comparison to your safety? Please, Siena.” She didn’t have time to debate it. She had to get back to Pete now, and there was no way she was leaving her daughter to the mercy of that maniac and his private doctors. “Forget Sanford. There are other doctors, better doctors, eye specialists in L.A. who can help you. You can’t spend another second in the same house as that man after what he’s done to you. You can’t.”
“Yes I can, Mom.” Siena pulled the quilt up around her shoulders defensively. “I have to. This is my career we’re talking about. It’s my life. You don’t understand.”
“Oh really?” said Claire. “Don’t I? Well, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you let me
show
you what it is that I don’t understand, Siena.” She moved up the bed toward her and gently but firmly began removing her bandages.
“It’s okay,” protested Siena. “The dressings are clean, Melissa already did them.”
But Claire continued unwinding the strips of cotton until all of her daughter’s bruised and battered face was revealed.
“Now, I want you to trust me,” she said, pushing her daughter’s shoulders back until she was lying flat on the bed. Siena could make out the darkening shadow as her mother leaned over her, blocking out the light from the window.
“I do trust you. But what are you doing?”
“I’m taking off these dressings, and I’m taking out your stitches. I want you to see this for yourself.”
Instinctively, Siena stiffened. “No!” she said. She was desperately afraid. What if she couldn’t see? What if the damage was too bad?
Sensing her nerves, Claire took both her hands and squeezed them. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, in a tone of such confidence and serene certainty that even Siena began to feel comforted. “Trust me.”
She was a deft and practiced nurse, and it took only a few uncomfortable minutes for her to complete the entire operation. Siena had been dreading having her stitches removed, but in the end they came away with such slithering ease that all she felt was a mild discomfort.
That was nothing, though, compared to the inner fear that gripped her.
“All right,” said Claire, wiping warm, wet cotton wool firmly across the gluey mass that caked Siena’s lashes. “Let’s do it.”
She unhooked the oval antique mirror from above the washbasin and brought it over to the bed before propping Siena comfortably against the plumped-up pillows. She looked white as a sheet.
“We’ll do your left eye first,” said Claire. She knew from Melissa that this was the eye that had been less damaged by Randall’s beating, and that Dr. Sanford was optimistic that Siena would regain at least partial sight on that side. “I’m going to open your eyelid with my fingers now, all right?” Siena managed a tiny nod. “It’ll probably sting a little bit, so try not to panic.”
Siena felt her left lid peel open and instinctively pushed her mother away as a rush of dry, stinging cold air hit her eyeball. It was agony, and she was blinking furiously, tears streaming down her cheeks, but in those few split seconds she could make out the contours of the room and Claire’s loving, anxious face looking down at her, willing her to be okay.
The relief was so overwhelming, she could hardly breathe. “I can see!” she said ecstatically, flinging her arms around Claire’s neck. “I can fucking see!”
Her elation was dampened somewhat a few minutes later when they tried her right eye. It wasn’t a total loss—she could see shades of light and darkness and, she thought, the occasional recognizable shape. But the damage was still severe.
Claire was quick to comfort her. “Eye surgeons can do incredible things these days, you know, honey,” she said, forcing the optimism into her voice. “As soon as we get you back to L.A., I’ll take you to see the very best.”
L.A. The very word brought Siena crashing down to earth with a bang. The joy of knowing that she could still see had been indescribable, overwhelming. But her problems were far from over.
Her father was seriously ill, perhaps dying. She would have to see him, and that thought alone filled her with emotions so painful and conflicting, she couldn’t begin to untangle them. And then there was Randall.
She knew her mom was right: She had to get away from him, and the sooner the better. But still, his words to her at the surgery center as she’d lain there in agony ran through her brain now like a broken record:
“If you go after me, Siena, believe me, I will crush you.”
He could still destroy her career. He had threatened to ruin her professionally and financially. The thought of losing everything she had worked for filled her with a sickening dread that not even the thrill of being able to see could banish completely.
When Claire’s voice cut through her reverie, it was firm and confident. “I said I wanted you to see something for yourself.”
She held up the oval mirror and clasped it against her chest with its worn wooden back facing Siena. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Siena nodded mutely. She was frightened, but it had to be faced. She wanted to know what she looked like.
Claire turned the mirror around.
At first, she made no sound at all. She just slumped back against the pillows and lay there like a terrified insect in the presence of a predator, frozen and motionless with shock.
For weeks now, she had probed her wounded skin with her fingers and tried to visualize her facial injuries. But nothing could have prepared her for the reality of what she saw gazing back at her. A long livid-red scar ran all the way from the corner of her right eye down to just above her mouth in a jagged line where the glass had sliced into the flesh. Although the swellings around both eyes had eased considerably, the bruising was still extensive and disfiguring, and her famous bone structure had been thrown off kilter by a broken cheekbone that made the whole left side of her face look sunken and lopsided. The skin that was stretched like paper over the shattered bones was sickly and preternaturally pale after so many weeks out of sunlight, and she looked frighteningly gaunt, her hands incongruously oversize and bony on the end of her scarred and stick-thin arms.
She felt sick.
Randall had destroyed her.
She had
let
him destroy her.
“I know it’s hard,” said Claire softly, seeing the pain in her daughter’s face. “But a few moments ago you told me that I didn’t understand. That your career was your life. That you couldn’t just walk away from here, from that man. And I think . . .” She didn’t want to hurt her any more, and struggled for the kindest way to say it. “I think you needed to see this. To see what he’s done. Because it’s
you
who doesn’t understand, darling. A career is
not
a life. And you
can
just leave him. You can and you must.”
For Siena, it was a moment of revelation. It wasn’t just her face that had been battered, she realized. It was her spirit.
For so long she had strived to be like Duke, to live up to all the hopes and dreams he’d had for her. Getting back to Hollywood. Making her fortune. Becoming a star. From her earliest childhood, she had craved nothing so desperately and totally as her grandfather’s approval, his admiration, and his love. Even after his death, she had carried on her blind pursuit of everything she believed he would have wanted for her.
But at what cost?
How many people had she pushed away? How many people had she hurt as she battled and clawed her way up to become what Duke had wanted her to be? Staring at her shattered face, she realized that the one person she had hurt the most was staring straight back at her.
She loved Duke. She always had, and she always would. But she had finally realized that he had been wrong all along. He was wrong to despise people for being weak. Weakness was what made people human—it was cruelty that was to be despised.
Randall was cruel. And Siena had been weak, holding on to him out of fear and desperation.
Just as Minnie had held on to Duke.
Just as Claire had held on to Pete.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with a surge of empathy and pity for her mother and grandmother. All these years she had hated them for their weakness. But were they really so different from her? In many ways, they were
better
than her, and braver. At least Minnie had loved Duke. And no one could deny that her mother loved her father, despite everything.
Siena had never loved Randall.
So what was her excuse for staying with him?
Money? Fame?
Duke had built his emotional security on money and fame. Blindly, stupidly, still desperate to please him even years after his death, Siena had tried to do the same. And look where it had gotten her.
Duke’s blood ran in her veins. She knew that. But so, she now realized, did Claire’s. And for the first time in her life, she felt proud of that fact.
A lone ray of sunlight had fought its way through the gap in the curtains and fallen in a bright white wedge across the bed and polished wood of the floor, glinting off the mirror into her still-sensitive eyes. She winced.
Claire reached out to take the mirror from her, but Siena held fast, and for a moment the two women’s hands touched in sympathy.
“Would you do me a favor?” Siena asked, still blinking against the sunlight.
“Of course, darling,” said Claire, her voice choked with love. She knew how hard it must be for her daughter to have to see what that bastard had done to her, and she prayed that in time, she’d find the strength and the courage to come to terms with her injuries. “Anything you want, my angel. Anything at all.”
Siena let go of the mirror and smiled. “Pass me my suitcase.”
Max was reading scripts in the little box room that served as his study at Batcombe when he heard the news about Pete’s heart attack on the radio.
Although the name McMahon always sent a shiver down his spine, he didn’t feel any particular emotion about Siena’s father being on the way out. From the little he’d known of him, the guy had always been a card-carrying arsehole, just the type of manipulative, megalomaniac wanker who made him glad he no longer lived and worked in L.A.
He imagined Siena wouldn’t be shedding too many tears, either, wherever she was.
Besides, right now he had problems enough of his own to worry about.
Dark Hearts
was now definitely moving to New York in the New Year. It was amazing how well they’d done, for what he’d always considered a brave and uncommercial play, and he thanked his lucky stars that he’d negotiated himself a big slice of the equity early on. No doubt about it, it was a fantastic opportunity and, in theater terms, great money. But moving back to the States presented other difficulties. He would have to leave Henry just when things at the farm were at their most stressful, with the developers due to arrive any day now.
And then, of course, there was Freddie.
Ever since making up after their titanic fight over Siena’s engagement, things had been calm between the two of them. But deep down, Max was becoming increasingly unhappy, consumed by a loneliness that he couldn’t shake. He guessed, correctly, that Freddie sensed this, and his guilt about letting her down made him feel even lower.
When Hunter had called him about Siena’s reported breakdown, Freddie had tactfully avoided mentioning it, wary of upsetting him further or provoking another crisis in their relationship. Although he was grateful for her sensitivity, the result was that he didn’t confide in her about his feelings, and the emotional distance between the two of them widened still further.
At least once a week he steeled himself to talk to her and call it quits. But every time he looked at her kind, loving, trusting face, his nerve failed him. He hadn’t even broached the subject of New York yet. He didn’t want to be responsible for yet another woman’s unhappiness. Or to explode another misery bomb in the already struggling Arkell household.
Switching off the ancient Roberts radio on the windowsill and turning back to his script, he was jolted out of his private thoughts by a loud rumble that seemed to be coming from the driveway. Moments later, the first of the eighteen-wheelers appeared, roaring and rattling its way toward the farmyard. It was followed by another and another until soon the noise was deafening.
“They’re here.”
Muffy had put her head around the door. Her hair was pulled back off her face with one of Henry’s colorful handkerchiefs, and Max noticed how pale she was and how pronounced the dark shadows were under her eyes. Poor thing. She’d had a terrible time of it these past few months, but Henry had been too caught up in his own guilt and misery about leasing the estate to be able to comfort her. She’d tried to be so strong for everybody else’s sake. But now that the developers were actually here, she looked like she was right on the verge of losing it completely.
“They’re here! They’re here!” Bertie and Maddie ran tearing down the corridor behind her, whooping with excitement at all the commotion.
“I’m going to go in the digger!”
“No, me! I’m going first!”
“Looks like somebody’s pleased to see them,” said Max, getting up and putting an affectionate arm around his sister-in-law.
“Come out there with me, Max?” she pleaded. God, she looked miserable, gazing past him to the fleet of trucks that were pulling up, exhausts belching, outside the study window. “I can’t face playing welcoming committee all on my own.”
“Of course,” he said, giving her an encouraging squeeze. “Don’t worry. We can meet and greet in five minutes, and then I’ll walk the foreman over to the farm office. But where’s Henry?”
“Out shooting, over at Millhole Wood. Won’t be back till this evening.”
“Well, d’you want me to drive over there and get him? I don’t mind.”
“No, no, really,” said Muffy. She was grateful for the offer, grateful for all of Max’s support in fact. He’d been a rock these last few weeks. But she couldn’t drag Henry back from a happy day’s shooting to face all this. He’d be living with the horrible reality soon enough. Why begrudge him his last few hours of blissful ignorance. “I’ll be fine. Just stand next to me, all right? And if you see me crying, kick me. As hard as you like.”
Outside, the trucks had parked in a rough semi-circle at the entrance to the yard, with their drivers gathered in an awkward-looking huddle to one side. A steady drizzle had been falling throughout the morning, and the heavy tires had already begun to turn Henry’s drive into a quagmire. Behind the fleet of dirty eighteen-wheelers and in striking, shiny contrast at the top of the drive was one spanking-new dark blue Range Rover, of the kind that was clearly more used to cruising around South Kensington than dirtying its wheels on muddy tracks out in the country.
As Max and Muffy came out onto the porch, both the car doors swung open, and two men emerged and started walking toward them, their hands extended in greeting. One of them Max instantly recognized from Henry’s descriptions as Gary Ellis. He was short and fat and had squeezed his blubbery body into a hideous checked suit, which gave him a look of a cockney Dom DeLuise. A trademark cigar was clamped between his teeth, and he had topped off what he fondly thought of as his country-gent look with a flat cap that, like the car, looked as though it had been bought on Bond Street the day before.
“’Allo. Muffy, isn’t it?” he said, ignoring Max and grabbing and kissing Muff’s hand before she had a chance to protest. Neither she nor Henry had expected Ellis to show up in person at the farm, or certainly not on the first day.
“Hello, Mr. Ellis,” she said stiffly, trying to hide her distaste as his wet, flabby lips left their imprint on her wrist. He had leased the farm fair and square and had a legitimate right to be there, so it was no good being churlish about it. “This is my brother-in-law, Max De Seville. And my children . . .” She gestured around vaguely but was horrified to discover that Bertie and Maddie had run off and were already clambering all over one of the diggers, covered from head to toe in mud.
“Bertie! Madeleine! Get down from there this instant!” she yelled. Two guilty, clay-splattered faces peered back at her from beneath the long neck of the machine.
“Don’t worry,” said Gary with a smug, leery grin that made Max want to hit him. Henry had told him the developer had a crush on Muffy, but that seemed like far too innocent a word to describe the blatant, predatory way he looked at her. “Kids, eh? What can you do?”
The other man from the Range Rover, a tall, diffident-looking fellow who Max guessed to be in his early fifties, had been hanging back but now moved forward and introduced himself. “Ben McIntyre. I’m the foreman here, so I’ll be overseeing the construction.” His handshake was dry and firm. He seemed honest. “Pleased to meet you.”
“And you,” said Max. He didn’t know why, but he found himself instantly warming to Ben. He hoped that a decent foreman might help make the nightmare of construction slightly more bearable for poor Henry.
“No point talkin’ to ’im,” interrupted Gary rudely, waving a hand dismissively in Max’s direction. “’E’s just the monkey. ’Is bruvver’s the organ grinder, isn’t that right, love?” He winked at Muffy. “So where is the man of the ’ahse, anyway?”
Gary had been looking forward to his moment of triumph over Henry and was put out that he hadn’t been there to witness his grand entrance. Over the years he had nursed his resentment at what he perceived to be Henry’s snobbery and standoffishness into a constantly simmering hatred. Lord Snooty was so far up his own arse, he’d even turned down the very decent offer Gary had made him last year to buy the place outright. That had annoyed Gary at the time—given the colossal size of his debts, he’d assumed that Henry would have caved in and sold straightaway—but now he was pleased that things had worked out the way they had.
He knew when he offered it that the option of a lease would look like a lifeline to Henry, so desperate was he not to be forced to sell his ancestral home to a stranger. The stupid, sentimental sod. Gary had no time for whimsical aristocratic notions of heritage when it came to property, and he thought Henry an out-and-out fool for agreeing to the deal.
Because the reality was that a lease meant that the Arkells would be shackled to him for the rest of their lives. He could come and go as he pleased, running roughshod through their precious bloody estate whenever, and however, he wanted to.
Just the thought of that made him smile.
He’d have paid twice the value of the lease simply for the pleasure of seeing that stuck-up cunt Henry Arkell cut down to size. And in the meantime, as well as building himself a nice little earner of a golf course, he could amuse himself by making a play for Henry’s still very tasty missus.
“He’s out,” said Max frostily, moving back to Muffy’s side and putting a protective, possessive arm around her shoulder. “I can show you and Mr. McIntyre to the farm office. You’ll find everything you need in there.”
By four o’clock it was starting to get dark, and Max decided to take a stroll up to the village. He needed to get out of the house. Ellis had been strutting arrogantly around the farm all afternoon, barking instructions at his foreman and arguing loudly with the two terrified-looking local architects who had turned up at lunchtime to go through plans for the new clubhouse.
Muffy had spent the day wandering around the house like an automaton, mindlessly putting in load after load of laundry to avoid having to go outside. She was so distracted that she accidentally put one of Maddie’s red socks in a white wash and dyed all of Max’s white boxer shorts a none too subtle shade of pink. She burst into tears when she pulled them out of the machine, despite his protestations that he really quite liked them like that.
Not that he could blame her for being highly strung. The two younger children were in a sulk, having been banned from pestering any of the workmen by their mother and forced to stay indoors till Henry got home. Charlie, the only child old enough to grasp the seriousness of what was happening, had taken up a sentry post by the window on the landing from which he scowled furiously at everyone who came and went, refusing to be lured downstairs even by Freddie’s tempting offer of a slice of Mr. Kipling’s chocolate fudge cake at tea.
Max wanted to help, but as no one wanted to talk about what was happening, it was hard to know where to begin. Besides, he was ashamed to admit that even with the nightmare of Ellis’s goons moving in, his mind kept wandering back to Siena. Whether it was the earlier news of Pete McMahon’s heart attack that had made it worse, he didn’t know, but he found himself continually replaying her image in his head, like picking at a mental scab, until it was driving him absolutely insane. Not knowing how she was, or where she was, was killing him.
After a couple of abortive hours of attempted work, he decided a breath of fresh air might help, and set out for the village with Titus and Boris yapping excitedly at his heels. They’d barely reached the bottom of the drive when the familiar silhouette of Henry’s ancient four-wheel drive came hurtling around the corner. He pulled over and put down the window when he saw Max.
“Is that what I think it is?” he said, gesturing to the faint shadows of the trucks in the farmyard. Max nodded. “How long have they been here? And why the fuck didn’t anyone call me?”
“I offered,” said Max, wishing he could take away even an ounce of the pain that was written all over his brother’s face. “But Muffy didn’t want to ruin your day’s shooting.”
“Jesus Christ.” Henry ran his hands through his hair. “There’s so many of them. It looks like the M1 up there.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” lied Max. Titus and Boris began jumping up and scrabbling at the side of the car. There were three dead rabbits lying on the passenger seat, and their scent was driving both the dogs crazy. Max grabbed each of them by the collar and pulled them back onto the verge.
“I’d better get up there,” said Henry, grinding the car back into first.
“Oh, Henry!” shouted Max. He’d been going to warn his brother that Ellis had shown up in person, but his voice was drowned out by the spinning screech of wheels as Henry lurched forward, desperate to get home and see the full extent of the damage.
Oh well. He would find out for himself soon enough.
Henry pulled up in front of the house, and for a few moments he sat in stunned silence. He had known the construction would be beginning sometime this week. Logically, he knew that would mean months of industrial-sized vehicles and scores of manual workers scurrying all over the farm. But somehow the physical sight of the diggers and skips and cranes, and the strangers hurrying back and forth across his farmyard and in and out of his office, was still a shock. Feeling winded and numb, he eventually managed to open the door, gathering up his gun in one hand and the rabbits in the other, and walked around to the kitchen door; he was too muddy to use the front entrance.
Moving along the path into the kitchen garden, he thought he heard a cry. The next thing he knew, he was outside the door just in time to see Muffy pushing the heavy, insistent form of the loathsome Gary Ellis away from her, sending him stumbling back against the kitchen counter.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” she shouted, her face flushed with the exertion of extricating herself from his unwanted embrace. “Are you mad?”
Before Ellis had a moment to answer, Henry was through the door like a shot, dropping both gun and rabbits with a clatter as he flew at Ellis, fists flying. “You fucker.”
“Henry, don’t!” pleaded Muffy as the fat man hit the ground, his head grinding against the corner of the counter with a sickening crunch as he fell. “It’s all right. It was nothing, please.”
Gary whimpered in pain and brought his arms up to his head as he lay on the floor, trying to shield himself from further blows. Henry dropped to his knees and, grabbing the developer by his collar, pulled back his arm for one final punch before apparently thinking better of it and letting his head drop back on the flagstone floor.
