Midnight Girls (44 page)

Romily was right, it’s much colder down here
, Imogen thought, grateful for the coat.

As soon as they were out on the open water, Marco opened the throttle and the boat zoomed off across the water, almost flying as it skimmed lightly over the surface and then took off again, throwing up spray. The feel of the cold wind whipping their skin and hair was exhilarating.

‘I forgot we needed to wear headscarves!’ Romily laughed above the roar of the engine. ‘Never mind, I have a hairbrush!’

It was too noisy to talk much. Imogen watched the shoreline, the bright colours of the houses fading with the setting of the sun as they roared past over the water. Twenty minutes later they were approaching Como itself, a beautiful medieval town built around the bay at the south-westerly point of the lake. Semi-circles of tall pink, yellow and terracotta buildings were stepped against the dark green mountains behind, all dominated by the verdigris dome of the cathedral. In the marina, rows of white yachts were moored, masts flourished like a battalion of spears against the lake-front.

Marco steered the boat to a temporary mooring so they could disembark.

‘
Può tornare alle dieci, per favore?
’ Romily called and waved him off as he turned the boat round. They walked into the town with Carlo following at a discreet distance, now wearing a pair of mirrored aviator shades and looking exactly like a bodyguard.

‘Don’t you think he just draws attention to you?’ Imogen asked, feeling self-conscious.

‘I suppose so. But at least I’m not surrounded by eight man mountains like some of those pop divas – that’s
really
attention-seeking. But I suppose they need protecting from
their
adoring public, whereas I need protecting from something altogether more sinister.’ She shrugged. ‘The downside of being rich, I guess. Carlo was trained by the best – the SAS. He knows exactly how to look out for me and he’s got a very scary-looking gun in his armpit. Now, let’s find the restaurant.’

They were dining in a simple, stylish restaurant where Romily appeared to be a regular. Carlos was shown to a separate table where he could keep them in his eyeline without overhearing their conversation.

‘I love Italian food,’ Romily confided as they sat down, spreading out the large linen napkins on their laps. ‘I might learn to cook it one of these days.’

Imogen laughed. ‘I seem to recall you used to have trouble working the toaster at Westfield!’

‘It’s true.’ Romily giggled. ‘I’ve never cooked so much as a boiled egg. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been in a kitchen more than a few times. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not exactly normal.’ Imogen picked up her menu. ‘Goodness, this looks amazing. Lobster risotto … how wonderful. I’m starving!’

When they’d ordered their food and each had a large glass of sparkling water, Imogen leant across the white tablecloth to ask the question that had been intriguing her since she’d arrived. ‘So, where is Mitch? Is he away working or something?’

Romily’s face grew serious. ‘No.’ She looked down at her water glass and turned it slowly on the tablecloth. ‘I wasn’t going to talk about this until tomorrow,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve got some other serious things I want to discuss with you then. But of course you want to know, it’s only natural. After all, the last time you saw me, I was getting married and that was only last year. You must imagine I’m still living in love’s young dream.’

Imogen watched her friend’s eyes fill with sadness.
Oh, God
, she thought, panicked.
Mitch has died – he’s been in a car crash or something. Poor Romily!
She put her hand out to cover her friend’s.

Romily looked up and smiled wanly. ‘When I talk about this, I feel such a fool. You see, it seems whatever I touch, I manage to mess it up badly. I wanted to start my own chain of shops and dreamed of having outlets all over the world – I couldn’t manage even one. It failed miserably. Then I thought I’d found the love of my life. You saw us and what we were like. We were head over heels for each other …’

‘I’ve never seen any two people more in love,’ Imogen put in softly.

Romily gave her a grateful look. ‘That’s good to know. You were the only one who really knew me well enough to see that. I’m glad you did. But, as you can imagine, my parents were far from pleased. Mitch and I spent a glorious honeymoon in London, and then we had to go back and face the music. My mother virtually had a nervous breakdown and my father hit the roof. But Mitch and I weren’t going to be deterred by that. I couldn’t live my life in order to please my parents. They’d had their love story, so why couldn’t I have mine? I couldn’t understand why they wanted to me to marry a rich man. I’ve got more money than I can ever spend! I’m one of the few people in the world who never has to worry about that, so surely if anyone can marry for love, it’s me! But they didn’t see it that way. Not at all.’

Imogen had a feeling something awful lay unspoken and was almost relieved when the waiter arrived with their starters. But when he’d put the plates before them and gone, she said, ‘So what happened?’

Romily picked up her fork and toyed with some rocket at the side of her plate, her mood sombre. ‘We bought a little
flat
in the Marais, and I made it so cosy and comfortable. I loved it – so different from that grand house on the avenue Foch with all its gilt and mirrors and chandeliers. I was tired of all that. I wanted to be normal – to live an ordinary life with my husband. They said I’d be kidnapped or shot if I didn’t live behind their iron gates and bullet-proof windows surrounded by guards, but I thought that I would be fine with Mitch to protect me. I didn’t want to be the de Lisle heiress any more, just plain Mrs Romily Mitchell.’

Imogen smiled. ‘I don’t think you could ever be plain anything, Rom.’

‘I can try, dammit!’ she laughed. ‘Maybe I wasn’t going to give up my couture habit, but I was sure I could do without the gold-plated taps and the ridiculous cars.’

There was a pause before Imogen said quietly, ‘And then?’

‘Something terrible happened.’ Romily pushed her plate away. ‘My father got to Mitch. He offered him money to divorce me. And Mitch took it.’

Imogen gasped, shocked. ‘No! I can’t believe it!’

Romily looked sorrowful. ‘It’s true. He left me. We’d been married only six months.’

‘But that’s astonishing! I saw the two of you on your wedding day. I never would have imagined he would leave you so easily.’

‘There’s no accounting for men and their motives. Perhaps he was the most accomplished actor in the world. So …’ Romily put down her fork. ‘Having been a blushing, hopelessly smitten bride, I was suddenly an abandoned divorcee – in just over than six months.’

Imogen was flooded with sympathy for her friend, mixed with incredulity at Mitch’s behaviour. She never would have believed it of him.
So much for my ability to judge character!
‘Oh, Rom … I’m so sorry! How could he? What an unbelievable shit.’

‘The pain was … terrible. Still is. That’s why I’m here. My parents got what they wanted: they destroyed the love between Mitch and me, poisoned it with their money. But they didn’t realise that in doing so they would lose me forever. Outwardly I’m still the perfect daughter, dutiful and loving, and my father hasn’t cut me off without a cent or whatever it is that angry fathers are supposed to do, but in reality I’ve gone far away from them. I couldn’t stay in Paris, it was too painful and difficult, so I decided to move to Italy and spend some time alone to get over my grief. I came looking for somewhere I could lick my wounds, and when I found the villa, set high above the lake with those views … well, I knew at once that I could find some peace there.’

‘Oh, Romily. You’re here all alone?’ Imogen could hardly bear the thought of it.

‘For now. But even so, I’m always surrounded – the servants, the bodyguards. My little brother Louis comes to stay sometimes and so do a few friends, when they’re passing through. I’ve found it a relief just to be still for a while.’

The girls sat in silence for a moment.
I have no idea what to say¸
Imogen realised.
She’s just like a young nun, shutting herself away from the world
. The waiter came and removed their plates, Romily’s almost untouched, and they were both grateful for the interruption. After it, Romily said in a more cheerful voice, ‘So that’s why you won’t see Mitch here. Just like you, I’ve put it all behind me and I’m moving on. I have a wonderful life otherwise so don’t feel sorry for me. But what about you, Midge? Tell me about what you’re doing. What are your plans now that you’ve finished at Oxford?’

Imogen realised she wanted to change the subject and obediently tried to move the conversation to happier matters, but all the time she felt the sadness that had
enveloped
her friend and wanted to weep for Romily’s broken heart.

It wasn’t until the next day that Romily dropped her bombshell.

They’d spent a happy day sightseeing and then lazing around the villa and were soaking up the warm afternoon sun on the terrace when she said casually, ‘How is Allegra?’

‘Fine, I think,’ Imogen answered, enjoying the feeling of sunshine on her face. She looked over at Romily, who was in a loose linen top and casual slouchy trousers. Her eyes were hidden behind a large pair of Versace sunglasses. She said nothing. Imogen continued, ‘I’ve hardly seen her over the last year. She’s been in London and I’ve been slaving away in Oxford. We’ve swapped the odd email but that’s about it. I hope we’ll see more of each other when I get to law school.’

Romily nodded, her expression inscrutable. ‘You know, I never understood why Allegra went cold on me. For ages she didn’t reply to any letters or texts or emails, and I wondered what I’d done to offend her. Then, after I got married, Mitch and I went to London on honeymoon and I contacted her at Colette’s. You told me she worked there, remember? We went out for tea together at the Ritz. That was the last time I saw her.’

‘And how was it?’ Imogen said cautiously, surprised. She had told Allegra all about the wedding, and often spoken about Romily to her after it, but Allegra had never mentioned their meeting at the Ritz. Romily was right: Allegra
had
gone cold on her, though she would never say why.

Romily said nothing while she poured out some tea. Imogen waited, sure that she was going to add something that would clear up the mystery of the coolness between her and Allegra.

‘Do you remember school?’ she said at last.

‘Of course.’

‘Our silly little club. The Midnight Girls. The three of us against everyone else.’ Romily laughed with an edge of bitterness to her voice. ‘I believed in that and everything we promised each other, just like I used to believe in love. Well, all that’s been kicked out of me.’

‘Has something happened between you and Allegra?’ asked Imogen slowly.

Romily took off her sunglasses and fixed her with a serious stare. ‘She betrayed me, Imogen. In a way I could never have believed her capable of.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She colluded with my father in persuading Mitch to divorce me.’

‘What? No!’ Imogen was amazed. She clutched the table. ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Yes.’ Romily’s face became stony and her voice cold. ‘Mitch was played a recording in which I appeared to be saying that I didn’t love him, had only married him for fun and that I would buy him off when I was tired of him. Of course, it was a fake. A perfectly innocent conversation had been recorded and then cleverly cut and edited. It was so well done it was almost impossible to tell that it was a forgery, but I managed to buy the original recording from my father’s assistant, thanks to some bribery and very sweet talking. I gave it to a sound expert who analysed it and discovered exactly where my words had been pasted together.’

‘Did you play that to Mitch? Tell him it was a set-up?’

Romily shook her head, and looked out over the lake for a moment. The late-afternoon sun caught the gold of her earrings and they sparkled. She turned back to Imogen. ‘It was over by then. There was no way back. He hadn’t trusted
in
me. Refused to listen when I tried to defend myself. That was enough for me. It showed he wasn’t the man I thought he was. That he didn’t truly love me.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ Imogen said, confused. ‘What does this have to do with Allegra?’

There was a pause and then Romily said clearly, ‘She was the one who recorded me.’

Imogen’s mouth dropped open and she could only stare at her friend, hardly able to take in what she had just heard.

‘I know it without a doubt,’ Romily continued. Her firm tone brooked no argument. ‘There were two voices on the tape, mine and hers. There is no way anyone else was present or that we could have been recorded without her knowledge. We only decided on the Ritz at the last minute – we had been going to the Wolseley. No one else knew our plans. The conversation was recorded in such a way that whoever it was had to have been present the entire time.’ Romily shrugged. ‘It was her.’

‘But why would she?’ Baffled, Imogen stared at her fine china tea cup, not seeing what was in front of her as questions whirled round in her head.

‘I don’t know, Imogen, and if you can’t tell me, then we’re both in the dark.’ Romily’s eyes flashed and her face coloured with anger as she said bitterly, ‘I’ve never been anything but a friend to her! She came to stay with me in Paris, we had a wonderful time and then … I never heard from her again. I was hurt but kept on trying because I treasured our friendship and meant to stand by our promises. When she agreed to see me after the wedding, I was elated because I thought that whatever it was had gone away and we were friends again. But she only did it in order to betray me … to ruin my life. It is beyond any doubt.’ Her eyes glittered, although whether with tears or anger Imogen couldn’t tell. ‘I don’t know why she wanted to destroy me,
but
I do know that I can never forgive her. And I also know that no friend of hers can be a friend of mine. That is why I had to see you, do you understand now? So, Imogen, who do you choose? Her or me?’