Killer Queens (11 page)

And Rahim had waited patiently for her. He was the man she had thought Oliver was when, as a naïve eighteen-year-old, she had walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey to become Oliver’s bride.

Well, first she had turned her back on the prospect of one day becoming Queen, and now she had rejected, too, the social status of being a princess. She had given up so much, but she was alive and safe, where Oliver’s plotting couldn’t reach.

‘I would never have said a word about him,’ she said, setting the cup back on the table, still gazing at Rahim. ‘Not a
word
. For the sake of our children, if nothing else. But Oliver was too paranoid to believe me. If I go back, he’ll have me killed.’

She swallowed hard.

‘Then I won’t try to persuade you to go back any more.’ Rahim reached out and took her hand. His skin was soft; he moisturized with almond oil night and morning.

Belinda felt her throat close up. Now that she had lost the last sliver of opportunity to turn back, to be persuaded by Rahim to do so, it was the moment at which she truly absorbed how her life had changed for ever. She would never hold her children again, never see Hugo and Sophie grow into adults. Never see them smile up at her, run to her, wrap their arms around her legs and hold on for dear life, call her Mummy. There had been complications at Sophie’s birth; Belinda would never have another child, something that hurt her deeply every time she remembered it. She might still have been young enough to try for a baby with Rahim if not for that.

But Oliver would have killed you if you’d stayed. This way, at least you can see Hugo and Sophie, the only two children you’ll ever have, from a distance.

Her fingers tightened around Rahim’s.

‘This will be our honeymoon,’ he said softly. ‘A few weeks together, on this island. Out of time. It’s a very odd honeymoon, I know, but to me, you’re my wife, Belinda. And this is the start of our life together.’

Belinda was a survivor; she had fought her way through her appalling marriage without losing her mind or her life, and the decision to fake her own death in order to be free of Oliver had been all hers. She was determined not to cry any more. She didn’t have everything she wanted, but she had her life, and the man she loved, and that was a very great deal.

So she picked up Rahim’s smooth hand and kissed it as she said: ‘Darling, you know something? You mustn’t call me Belinda any more. Belinda’s dead and gone.’

Rahim nodded.

‘I thought that maybe,’ he said, ‘if you like it, from now on I would call you Hana. It means happiness in Arabic. No—’ he thought quickly. ‘More than happiness. Bliss. It means bliss.’

‘I think that’s
lovely
,’ the woman who had been Her Royal Highness, Princess Belinda, and was now Hana, the official consort of Prince Rahim Mohajeri bin Azhari, said, smiling at her lover. ‘I’m about bloody due some bliss.’

She stood up, and with one swift movement slid onto her lover’s lap and wound her arms around his neck.

‘You know what? Let’s get started on some bliss right now. I’ve got
years
to make up for!’ she said, and kissed him so hard he tipped back in the chair, and they nearly both went crashing down to the mosaic floor.

Present day

‘Bollocks! Bollocks bollocks fuckety-fuck!’

As Chloe emerged from the treatment room of the clinic, patting her chin rather gingerly after the vigorous salt microdermabrasion and UV light treatment she had just undergone, the loud voice of her new lady-in-waiting could be heard even through the glass entrance door; it sounded as if Lauren were standing on the staircase that led down to the ground floor.

‘What is she
doing
?’ Chloe muttered, as Lauren burst back through the door and stood, arms akimbo, in the hallway, shaking her head so furiously that even the several layers of hairspray she had applied that morning couldn’t hold her extensions perfectly in place.

‘Chlo, I’m sorry, babe, but the paps are outside!’ Lauren announced. ‘What a fucking disaster!’

‘What? Oh
no
!’ Both Chloe’s hands rose to her face now in an instinctive effort to cover it.

‘I didn’t say a word to anyone!’ Sujata, the owner of GiGi Medical Aesthetics, assured both girls, her expression horrified. ‘I cleared the whole appointments book so that no one would come in while you’re here, Chloe! I do all your treatments myself so I’m the only technician in the clinic—’

‘I know, I know,’ Chloe said swiftly to reassure Sujata. ‘I don’t think for a moment it was you.’

‘Client confidentiality is
so
crucial!’ Sujata wailed, going into her office, which had a window on the street, and angling herself to look down without showing her face at the glass. As soon as she did so, she screamed. ‘Oh my God, there’s a whole
crowd
of them!’

‘It’s all the foreign press too,’ Lauren said grimly. ‘Fucking hell, it’s a sodding mess, isn’t it? Let’s have a look at you, Chlo. Shit.’

She winced at the sight of Chloe’s face, which was not only pink and shiny all over, but dotted with small red marks where the tracer gun of the salt microdermabrasion had taken off the tops of several little bumps on Chloe’s skin. Chloe didn’t have a perfect complexion, and had been plastering on increasing quantities of foundation to protect herself from the scrutiny of the paparazzi over the years, clogging her pores more and more, which only compounded the problem. Facials had failed to help, so Chloe had resorted to more serious methods: the skin polish to smooth out her bumpiness, the light treatment to kill bacteria below the surface of the epidermis, and then a soothing papaya mask. She could already feel how much smoother her skin was, but Sujata had warned that she wouldn’t want to go on somewhere directly afterwards, because of the possibility of temporary red rash marks, and she had been absolutely right.

‘What am I going to
do
?’ Chloe moaned, looking in the large mirror in the elegant reception room.

‘We can cover up the dots,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ve got enough slap in me kit to make an orang-utan look nice and smooth. But—’

‘I don’t want to be papped coming out of here!’ Chloe broke in. ‘Oh, sorry, Sujata – no offence—’

‘Oh, none taken! None at all!’ Sujata interjected. ‘I
quite
understand about your wanting to be discreet!’

‘It just looks so
vain
!’ Chloe sank into one of the leather chairs. ‘I
can’t
be seen here! They’ll go on the website and start looking at all the treatments you do here, and start speculating about what I’m having, and the next thing you know they’ll be printing that I’m having anti-cellulite treatments and photoshopping me to look all cellulitey—’

‘You
are
having cellulite treatments, you dozy mare,’ Lauren pointed out. ‘That Indiba thingy-whatsit.’

‘It’s really helping!’ Chloe said, perking up for a moment. ‘And my tummy’s definitely flatter, too.’

‘The high radiofrequency treatments are really
very
effective,’ Sujata said happily, forgetting about the paparazzi as she smiled at her client.

Lauren rolled her eyes. She never lost focus for a second on whatever goal she had fixed upon; it was a huge strength of hers, one of the main reasons Chloe had chosen her when the Palace had instructed her that she needed a lady-in-waiting. The job was, effectively, to be Chloe’s personal assistant, organize her schedule and her calendar, and keep her life running smoothly as she embarked upon a series of official engagements. Chloe was determined to use her status as a way to publicize Rescue Children, the charity for which she had worked for years, and to expand her remit to a raft of not only other children’s charities, but ones for trafficked women too, which was a new cause behind which she was determined to throw all the power and influence that she could muster.

So who better than Lauren, who had risen through the ranks at Rescue Children with Chloe, and was now head of fundraising at the impressively young age of twenty-eight, to work with Chloe on what Chloe saw, in great part, as a whole new charity venture? Chloe had been worried that Lauren would be hugely offended by effectively being asked to be Chloe’s assistant, plus taking a salary cut into the bargain – the Palace considering, naturally, that ladies-in-waiting would already have their own family money, and be prepared to take on the role for a sum that would simply allow them a few extra holidays and some custom-made Philip Treacy hats for summer weddings.

But Lauren had jumped at the opportunity.

‘Once in a lifetime, innit?’ she’d said excitedly. ‘I’ll get all me expenses paid, too, won’t I? Cars and food and that. Tell you what, I’ll do it for a year, see you married, wedding done and dusted, then I’ll train someone up for you, start me own charity and you can be the patron. Sorted!’

The Palace – incarnated in the person of Lady Margaret McArdle, ex-lady-in-waiting to Princess Belinda and now the unofficial doyenne of Royal etiquette – had raised its eyebrows almost to its hairline at the introduction of Lauren Plodger into its hallowed inner circle. But Chloe had held firm. Lauren was the best person, the
only
person for the job. No, she did not want someone of a more ‘suitable’ background; Chloe had bitten her lip to avoid saying that Princess Sophie, the Hon Araminta and the rest of the poisonous females in their circle had left her completely unable to trust anyone remotely ‘suitable’.

‘It’s a new generation,’ Chloe had said firmly to Lady Margaret. ‘Hugo’s marrying a middle-class girl who works for a living. The Civil List has been cut down radically – the King’s not supporting half the minor royals he was maintaining financially ten years ago. The royal family’s moving forward, modernising—’

Lady Margaret flinched at this brutal word, but Chloe pressed on regardless –

‘ – and that’s the right thing to do.’ She smiled. ‘Lauren’s a twenty-first century lady-in-waiting. You’ll see. She’ll run things wonderfully efficiently. I really hope you’ll help her in any way you can. She’ll have so much to learn from you.’

Lady Margaret was experienced enough to yield to defeat graciously, while extorting any concession she could from the victor.

‘She will
have
to agree to modify her language,’ she said firmly. ‘I will be
quite
unable to recommend a lady-in-waiting who swears like a stable boy.’

‘I wouldn’t know – I’ve never met a stable boy,’ Chloe said dryly. ‘But don’t worry – Lauren hasn’t worked for Rescue Children for years without being able to posh up her accent for rich donors and board meetings. She’ll be fine in public, though she won’t exactly sound like Sophie or Minty. And I’ll tell her to watch the language with you, of course.’

Lady Margaret had winced again at the expression ‘posh up’, as Chloe had known she would.
But now I’m engaged to Hugo,
Chloe had thought, smugly looking down at the cabochon emerald ring on the third finger of her left hand,
I don’t need to worry quite as much about that, do I?

And then Chloe had realized that Lady Margaret, post-instinctive wince, was regarding her with a surprisingly sympathetic gaze.

‘No one is suggesting that Sophie or Araminta are role models
anyone
should be emulating, my dear,’ Lady Margaret had said. ‘You are a nice, hard-working girl with good moral values. Hugo has made a choice of which I thoroughly approve.’

Chloe had stared at her, genuinely taken aback: prim and proper in her camel cashmere twinset over tweed trousers, pearl stud earrings contrasting with the weather-beaten skin of an outdoorsy woman who gardened, rode to hounds and hacked with the dogs out of hunt season, Lady Margaret, an Anglo-Irish duke’s daughter, incarnated the British aristocracy. Chloe had never imagined eliciting this degree of approval from her.

‘Thank you,’ she managed to say. But Lady Margaret hadn’t finished.

‘Hugo remembers his mother a little,’ she said. ‘Sophie really doesn’t – she was too young when darling Belinda died. I did my best for them, but Sophie has grown up without any maternal influence at all. And Oliver is . . .’ She removed her gaze from Chloe and transferred it to the arrangement of salmon and yellow roses on the console table on the far wall of the Buckingham Palace sitting room in which they were meeting.

‘Oliver,’ she continued, ‘was brought up in a children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard atmosphere which has obviously very much fallen out of fashion nowadays. Hugo and Sophie had very pleasant nannies, but that isn’t really a substitute, is it?’

Chloe wasn’t sure whether this required a response; she shook her head tentatively as Lady Margaret concluded:

‘Sophie may take a little time to welcome you into the family. But I’m sure that you two will end up being the best of friends.’

Chloe had taken great amusement in relating this to Lauren, who had laughed like a drain and translated:

‘Sophie’s a fucking bitch who’ll screw you over any way you can. Watch your back, girl.
Especially
if she starts pretending to be your mate.’

Well, Sophie might not be pretending to be my friend yet, but she’s doing enough damage as my enemy,
Chloe thought grimly now.

‘Could they have followed you here?’ Sujata was asking of the paparazzi outside.

‘Doubt it,’ Lauren said tersely. She exchanged glances with Chloe, mouthing ‘that bitch Sophie’ behind Sujata’s back; Chloe nodded. Neither of them had any doubt that Sophie had set them up.

‘What we need to concentrate on right now,’ Lauren went on, ‘is sorting out some way so Chlo isn’t photographed anywhere sodding near this flipping clinic. There a back door?’

Sujata shook her head.

‘Fuck,’ Lauren said. ‘It’s a bugger that I can’t pass for you, Chlo. Walk out with a scarf round me face, get them to follow me down the street, you nip out when they’re all racing after me, then I take the scarf off and they all feel like wankers. But me arse’d give me away if I tried to get your coat on over it. Not to mention me tits.’

Lauren was a statuesque size sixteen, and proud of every curve.

She tapped her foot, shod in a ponyskin high heel whose leopard print echoed the lining of her belted raincoat.