The Eden Inheritance (42 page)

‘Daddy!' she called in a frightened voice. ‘Daddy – what is it?'

He seemed not to hear her but suddenly Patsy was there in the doorway. She was wearing her dressing gown and from the look of her Lilli knew that it was she who had been wailing.

‘Patsy!' Lilli cried. ‘Patsy – what's happening?' She ran down the stairs but Patsy was there blocking her way.

‘No, Miss Lilli, you don't want to go down there.'

‘I do! I want Mama …'

‘Come on, Miss lilli, you come with me. That's no place for you down there. I'll take you back to bed.'

For once in her life Lilli totally ignored her nurse. She ducked beneath Patsy's outstretched arm and ran towards the salon.

‘Daddy …'

She dived through the doorway, then stopped dead in her tracks. Magdalene was lying on the floor, half hidden by the rattan sofa. One scarlet-ripped hand was flung out, her scarlet silk dress spread around her like a broken butterfly. And there was blood running in a scarlet stream across the tiled floor.

‘Mama!' Lilli tried to say, but no words would come and she stood transfixed. Then Patsy reached her, turning her face into the voluminous skirt of her dressing gown, keening in distress.

‘I told you not to come down here, Miss Lilli! I told you, didn't I?'

She scooped Lilli up into her arms and carried her back upstairs where she pushed the mosquito nets aside and sat down on the bed, still holding Lilli, rocking her to and fro and weeping noisily.

Lilli let her do it. She was in total shock. The world had gone black. Black – and scarlet. There was nothing but Patsy's bosom, smothering her, no sound now but the awful weeping and the ringing in her own ears.

The next morning her father had come to her room. He seemed to have aged beyond recognition. He sat down beside her on the bed, taking her hands in his, and his voice, when he spoke, was low and almost totally lacking in emotion.

‘Lilli,' he said, ‘you have to be brave. We all have to be brave. I have some terrible news for you.'

Lilli said nothing. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears so as not to hear what he had to say. She already knew in her heart what it was but words would make it real, extinguish any last hope that what had happened last night had been no more than a nightmare. But she simply sat, staring at him, feeling her world crumble around her.

‘Lilli, your mother is dead,' he said. And she knew there was no more room for hope.

Magdalene's remains had been returned to Venezuela for interment and gradually, very gradually, life on Madrepora had resumed a pattern. Patsy had become Lilli's surrogate mother, and though she still cried sometimes in the night for Magdalene, Lilli's childish resilience overcame her grief. But somehow Daddy had never been quite the same again. His temper was shorter and the stern side of him came to the fore more often. Lilli knew how to get around him, though. She practised all her feminine wiles on him, and he doted on her.

Shortly after Magdalene's death Jorge had disappeared from the island and it was Fabio, his brother, who came to stay in the gingerbread house. Lilli asked her father the reason for this, but he merely Said: ‘Jorge is busy elsewhere,' and did not elaborate. After a while Lilli had accepted the change as she accepted everything else, and though she never quite forgot Jorge, he ceased to be the centre of her universe.

It was not until years later, when she was sixteen years old, that Jorge had come back into her life and it had all begun again.

Now, flying home to Madrepora, Lilli wondered if this hiatus would be any different to the last. The parting four years ago had seemed to be final and, though her heart had been breaking, she had been determined that never again would she allow him to dominate her life and manipulate her emotions.

But for all that she could not be certain that it would be so. She was not at all sure that she would be able to trust herself to keep the vow she had made the day she had left. Jorge was her weakness, he always had been and Lilli was very much afraid he always would be.

If he was there and he wanted her, would she be able to resist?

Lilli hoped very much he would not be there.

G
UY DE SAVIGNY
stood in the transit lounge at Barbados International Airport watching the flow of passengers who had just arrived from New York. Most had the appearance of holidaymakers, dressed in jogging suits or casual wear, carrying the parkas they had needed in wintry New York and struggling with suitcases, holdalls and cameras. A few, already suitably attired for the Caribbean sunshine in brightly coloured short-sleeved shirts, were, he guessed, locals returning from a trip abroad. But so far he had seen no one remotely resembling the passenger he was waiting for. She would be a woman alone, about his own age, he imagined, and probably instantly recognisable as a German with the fair hair and blue eyes of a typical Aryan.

The rush thinned to a trickle. Guy fiddled with his sunglasses, beginning to wonder if Otto's daughter had been on the flight after all and feeling a fatalistic disappointment creeping in to take the place of anticipation. He'd thought a chance like this was too good to be true – lucky breaks like this didn't often come his way. Perhaps Fräulein Lilli Brandt had missed the flight or changed her plans too late for them to stop him leaving. But the jumbo must have already taken off from New York before he left Madrepora so there would have been no reason for Frau Brandt not to have called the airstrip and cancelled the taxi – unless of course she had, and Manuel had taken the call and forgotten to tell him.

Manuel had been busy this morning with one of his freight runs for Jorge Sanchez. Maybe it had slipped his mind – or, more likely, he'd taken malicious pleasure in letting Guy make the trip, knowing it would turn out to be a fool's errand. Manuel had seemed annoyed that Guy had taken the booking from Frau Brandt the previous afternoon, though he had no one to blame but himself for forcing Guy to answer the telephone. But Manuel seemed to look upon anything connected with the Brandts or Jorge Sanchez as his own personal responsibility – which of course it usually was – and Guy found himself wondering, as he had done at the time, why Frau Brandt should have asked him to meet her stepdaughter. Since Jorge generally flew the family in his private plane or got Manuel to cover for him, that would have seemed the most likely arrangement in this case too.

Guy sighed, on the point of turning away, when a young woman caught his eye, stirring his interest for quite a different reason. Slim, dark, probably of Spanish South American descent, dressed simply but strikingly in a lemon-yellow trouser suit and carrying only an Yves St Laurent purse and an expensive-looking Italian leather tote bag. One step behind her a local porter lumbered along with a suitcase – also labelled with the YSL logo. He was grinning with pleasure, yet somehow, following behind her like that, he resembled nothing so much as a native bearer on an expedition. If he had suddenly shifted the suitcase on to his head Guy would not have been surprised.

What a beauty! Guy thought – and still failed to make the connection. It was only when she came towards him, smiling faintly, that he realised the truth.

‘Air Perpetua?' she said in a low, sweet voice. ‘I am Lilli Brandt. I think you are taking me to Madrepora.'

The moment she had stepped off the plane Lilli had smelled the Caribbean. No – even before that. The warm scented air had come rushing in as soon as the doors were thrown open and a wave of emotion had engulfed her, conjuring up not the traumas of her last months on the island but all the other, happier days. As she breathed in the perfume of the islands Lilli forgot that her father was dying, forgot Jorge, forgot everything except that she was home. Or almost home. This was where she belonged. For the moment nothing else mattered.

The euphoria lasted as she collected her luggage and went with her as the pilot who had come to meet her escorted her across the apron to where the Twin Otter in the blue-and-gold livery of Air Perpetua stood parked and waiting. He was a stranger to her, dark and strikingly good-looking in his black trousers and white uniform shirt with the captain's insignia gleaming on the epaulettes, but she liked him instantly, an easy rapport which reflected her new happy mood. He settled her into the seat immediately behind his and stowed her luggage whilst she waited, bursting with a new impatience. ‘The longest mile is the last mile, home.' The words of the old song came into her mind and the departure checks and clearance seemed to her to take forever. Then they were airborne, skimming out over the sparkling blue and silver of the sea, skimming with a careless ease the airliner that had brought her from New York had lacked, rising and falling gently on the air currents so that she felt as if she might be riding on the back of a seabird rather than flying in a man-made machine.

‘Have you been here long?' Lilli asked.

He half turned his head, looking at her quizzically, and Lilli laughed at her own foolishness. Of course he couldn't hear what she said – he was wearing a headset and only the voices of the radio controllers would be clear to him. She waved a hand apologetically in front of her face, indicating that she understood, and settled back, but a moment later she noticed him fumbling under the control panel, plugging contacts into sockets, and with a grin he passed a headset similar to his own back to her.

‘Oh – thanks,' Lilli mouthed.

She had worn a headset before – flying with Jorge – but that was a long time ago and it took her a minute to two to get it on, tucking her long dark hair behind her ears so that the muffs fitted snugly and twisting the mouthpiece into position.

‘Thanks,' she said, ‘I forgot you couldn't hear me. All I said was – have you been here long?'

‘No – I'm a new boy. Less than three weeks.' The microphone added extra resonance to his already deep voice.

‘I thought I hadn't seen you before. Do you like it here?'

‘Sun, sea and deserted beaches? How could I not like it! This is your home, I take it?'

‘I was born here, yes. I live in New York now.'

‘Some difference!'

‘You could say. It's real winter there.'

‘I was in England just three weeks ago. It's pretty cold there too. I'm not surprised you wanted to come home for some sunshine.'

‘Oh – it's not that,' Lilli said, and broke off as a small sharp barb of reality pricked at the bubble of euphoria.

‘What do you do in New York?' he asked, unaware of her sudden discomfort.

‘I'm in publishing. Public relations. It can be quite good fun but very tiring. All those business lunches and champagne receptions.'

‘Tough!' he said with a laugh.

‘Yes, I know,' Lillie said ruefully. ‘I'm spoiled.'

‘I'm sure you're not. That's the trouble with jobs like yours and mine. They seem very glamorous to everyone but the person doing them. The reality can be very different.'

‘That's it,' she said. ‘That's it exactly. They don't see me dead tired, wanting nothing but a quiet evening with my feet up in front of the television and a cup of cocoa to drink.'

‘But we put up with it.'

‘Yes,' she laughed. ‘We put up with it.'

The crackle of the radio ended their conversation and Lilli realised that the pilot was busy now with preparations to land. She turned to look out of the window and with a little lurch of excitement saw Madrepora almost immediately beneath them, a tiny speck of land in the blue of the sea taking shape as the plane descended and overflew. So many times before Lilli had seen it, yet the sight never failed to thrill her – the wooded hillsides and white sandy beaches, the hotel and marina, well stocked with yachts, the corrugated tin roofs of the shacks that comprised the shanty town where Josie and the other locals lived the half-dozen houses dotted amongst the trees, and the villa, with its manicured lawns and swimming pool. Her father's villa. Her home. Once again Lilli's stomach twisted with an emotion that was part pleasure, part pain. Then the plane was skimming in low, too low to see anything but the tiny airstrip and the trees that lined the ridge to the east. She braced herself, slightly nervous as always at landing, but the plane touched down sweetly, wheels almost kissing tarmac, and slowed to a gentle taxi.

‘Well done,' Lilli said. ‘I'm told this is a very difficult strip to land on.'

‘What I'm trained to do,' he said lightly.

She took off the headset, passing it back to him, and unbuckled her seatbelt, stretching comfortably and smoothing her cool-wool lemon trousers over her knees.

Home. Home! In spite of everything it felt so good.

And then she looked out across the grassy apron and saw it, and instantly her happy mood was dissipated. A small white aeroplane gleaming in the sun. Jorge's aeroplane. So – he was here. Lilli felt her heart begin to pound uncomfortably, sending echoes through each and every pulse point.

The pilot was running expertly through his shut-down checks, opening the hatch to let some air into the cabin, climbing out, helping her down. The panic was tightening her throat and she wanted, suddenly, to cling to this pleasant, attractive, efficient man who seemed oddly to be the last bastion of stability before she had to face all kinds of problems and emotional traumas.

‘Thank you,' she said. ‘That was wonderful. You must come over for drinks sometime.'

‘I'd like that,' he said but she could see he was surprised. The daughter of the house inviting the taxi driver for drinks – unheard of!

‘I meant it,' she said. ‘ That's not just a pleasantry. Only I don't know your name.'

‘Guy de Savigny.'

‘Do I call you Captain de Savigny or Guy?'

‘Guy will do nicely.'

The exchange had made her feel better. She felt she had an ally. She was almost calm again as he unloaded her luggage, watched her father's driver collect it and stow it in the Mercedes which stood waiting at the edge of the airstrip.