The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet) (14 page)

The question wasn’t fair. It was too close to emotional blackmail for comfort. I was sure that Father had no intention of twisting my arm, that he was just overwrought, tired and that he’d probably lost sense of proportion. Now was the wrong time to make any decisions of such magnitude.

‘Who is he, Daddy?’ I asked again. ‘Why would someone who’s bankrupted you...’

‘He didn’t bankrupt me, he bought me out. I knew flotation was a wrong move. It never felt right. Now I know why. I was right. I’m always right.’

‘Well, whatever,’ I continued, ‘why would he want to marry me? If you know that would give you a chance to recover, so does he. I’m sure it all makes perfect sense, but you’d need to explain if properly. Perhaps we could then come up with...’

His fist slammed the top of his flimsy desk so hard that I was surprised that it didn’t shatter. ‘We? Us? Explain? Do you really expect me to explain myself to you? Do you really think that I’d listen to your reasoning and advice? Do you have the first idea how impudent that is?’

Partly, I could see his point. No one had ever discussed anything with him, asked any questions or doubted his judgement when things were going well. Probably not even my mother, who was a damn sight more entitled to it than I was, had ever tackled him over anything connected with business. So, why was I doing it now? I was tactless. Rude. Arrogant.

To an extent, at any rate.

There was a little voice telling me that outside possibly royal families and similar people whose consequence and fortune rested on tradition, no business of any kind needed to be conducted via the wedding chamber. What would have anyone gained by marrying me? It’s not as if we were a notable, respected family. My father was a foreigner without roots or influential connections, my mother his trophy wife. That was it. I was pretty enough and not entirely stupid, but hardly anything special. There were thousands upon thousands of girls like me around. If the man had already taken everything of any material value from my father, why choose me for a wife?

No, there was something that he wasn’t saying.

I looked back at him, upset and agitated yes, but not frightened.

‘I apologise for impudence, Father, but I need to know. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m sure that it makes all the sense in the world to you, though. Tell us what’s behind it all and we can go from there.’

Slowly, he got up on his feet and walked around his ormolu desk until he stood directly above me.

‘What’s behind it? I’ll tell you what should be behind it. Trust. Loyalty. Obedience. Team spirit.’ He bent over to pick up his briefcase from the floor. ‘I will also tell you what will happen. It’s Thursday today. On Saturday next week, you and your friends here will present yourselves in your best bib and tucker at the as yet unknown address for your engagement ceremony. I would not, under any circumstances,’ he must have caught a glint in my eyes that betrayed my thoughts, ‘I would not recommend any attempt to escape, run to one of your fine friends or, God forbid, the police. If your intended doesn’t find you, I will. Will I not, Bakir?’

‘Miss Sonata will present herself at her ceremony of betrothal as requested.’

‘That wasn’t a request.’ Father walked out of the study without another word.

The three of us remained where he’d left us until we heard the door to the lift click shut.

‘Thank you for your support,’ I snapped at my companions, ran upstairs and locked the door behind me.

Had that just happened?

Was my father really prepared to use me as a currency in a weird deal?

Had my mother failed to put up even a single argument against the monstrous plot?

Had a eunuch just held me pinned down in my chair, unable to move?

Was all that happening in the 21
^st
century London?

Chapter 12

I walked over to the railings on the terrace and looked down. The world was turning around as it always had done. The sun was approaching the horizon at its slow, leisurely pace, using up the last of its daily palette of tints and hues so that it could reload it tomorrow morning in a fresh and ever-changing array.

None of what had just passed had sunk in just yet.

What I needed was time. And space.

As if acting on some pre-recorded inward command, I returned to my room and pulled out my trusted wheely case from under the bed. Quickly, I went through the same sequence of actions. My own bank card, plus a couple of credit cards linked to my father’s account, car keys, both my phones, my laptop, all the chargers, a change of clothes and underwear, toiletries, contraception pills. I gave the binoculars a miss this time. It took me barely five minutes to snap the case close, another five to reach Hugh’s patio doors. Everything was locked up as I’d expected. But the alarm wasn’t on. If it were, I would have seen it blinking under the eaves all the way from the wall. I tried all the doors and windows for a sign of forgetfulness. No luck. The same as in my own flat, there was the ‘lock all’ option by the door to the lift. As long as all the entry points were properly pulled to, the locking mechanism did its job at a single press of a button. As I’d established earlier, all the entry points were firmly locked. I tried to think. Having never tried to break into my own flat, I didn’t know where to start.

I couldn’t bear the thought of returning home with my tail between my legs yet again. Giving up wasn’t an option. Eventually, I remembered the plant room. It contained whatever gear was needed to operate the pool and clean the terrace. I seemed to remember that the Boys stored the terrace furniture there as well. On our side it was situated next to the kitchen end of the flat. It was reasonable to assume that was the case here as well. The tell-tale shape of the rubbish chute made it easy to find. Another locked door. But, one of the windows was open. Not just a top section left open by a notch as is usually the case, but an entire comfortably sized wing. I scrambled in, very nearly impaled myself on the handle of a vacuum cleaner, but managed to ease myself down to the floor in the space between one metal cabinet and a watering hose. By the mixture touch and sight adjustment to the darkness I found the door into the kitchen. Unlocked! Security wasn’t very high on the list of Hugh Carrington’s priorities.

It was all plain sailing from there on. I found the locking switch to open the doors, brought in my luggage, carefully closed the patio doors again and sat down to think. I left the flat in darkness, just in case.

Just in case of what?

If Mother and Bakir knew about my escape route, they would have been here already. It was very unlikely that they haven’t discovered me missing by now. They probably thought that I slipped into the lift when neither of them was looking. Oddly, though, there was no sign of any attempts to contact me on my official phone.

Ok, one question at a time.

I could stay in Hugh’s flat. He was due back tomorrow. That would give me enough time to work out my strategy and minimise the gap between what I wanted to do and what I may have to do. I walked over to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Lots of mineral water, a loaf of sliced bread wrapped in grease paper, several jars of pesto, an unopened pack of butter, radishes, sugar-snap peas and a bunch of basil in the cool box at the bottom. Duck and hen eggs. Kitchen cupboards housed an array of tins and bottles. Couldn’t tell what of in the dark. Whatever, there was enough to live on until his return. The downside was that I didn’t want to involve Hugh in all this. Certainly not without his say-so.

That reluctance to expose him to the fallout of what maybe afoot should have told me a lot. But, it didn’t. Not then.

I grabbed a small bottle of mineral water, opened it and returned to the sofa.

The implications of father’s losses hadn’t sunk in yet. I was well aware of that. Even if he managed to keep the penthouse and the country estate, he wouldn’t be able to afford the upkeep. Rates alone amounted to king’s ransom, as I’d often heard him say. Maybe because I was more aware of the downside of wealth than its benefits, that didn’t worry me at all. My school fees were fully paid and the money that I’d put aside over the years would be sufficient to put me through a university course. I’d probably need to earn extra money for small luxuries like food and clothes, but either way, the future of relative poverty didn’t seem too glum. I know, I know, this is where everyone says that only the rich believe that money doesn’t matter. But, I had never been rich. As my mother said only yesterday, she wasn’t rich, she was a rich man’s wife. I was a rich man’s daughter. Deep down, I’d always known that. I could have had hundreds of exorbitantly expensive shoes and handbags, and wardrobes creaking under the weight of once-worn designer outfits. I could have had a hand-made car, a personal stylist and beautician, and Lord only knows what else. But what good would any of that do me if I could only wear the clothes for occasions chosen by my father and drive to destinations where I was ordered to appear?

Hence the money in the bank.

I wondered if my mother did the same. She was luxuriously dressed for public appearances. But, if her allowance was higher than mine, as it should have been, there could be a lot left over. Her personal needs always seemed very modest to me.

The only problem left was to persuade my father that the loss of the riches could make his personal life could infinitely richer. If he let it.

Back to practicalities.

What could possibly happen if I disappeared and didn’t turn up for the engagement?

The very word,
engagement
, made me giggle. Engaged to be married. Married to someone I didn’t even know. How absurd was that? My father was out of his mind to even consider something like that. Which wasn’t surprising, considering how hard he’d worked for his achievement and how hard he’d been battling to salvage his empire. He needed time to calm down and come to terms with reality.

My phone pinged.

‘I’m on my way to Ela’s. You coming?’

Rosie. Very enthusiastic about the holiday in Brazil.

That brought home another kind of reality. I may have been a little naive about consequences of dropping out of the top drawer. How long would it take before my current friends dropped me? That wouldn’t happen immediately. Just the opposite. Asha would ask for a week’s leave to be with me. Rosie wouldn’t leave my side. She’d appoint herself as my personal Cerberus against the press and any other invaders of privacy. Ela would very probably try to talk her father into transferring a considerable amount of money to my account, enough to keep me socially acceptable. But eventually, the time would come when I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them and my usefulness as a companion would diminish to the level of Christmas cards and occasional Likes on Facebook. To Facebook birthday greetings, ending in ‘How are you, my dearest friend? Must meet up sometime very soon for a good old chat.’ Then nothing for another year.

Well, I shrugged, I’ll worry about that bridge when I come to it.

‘See you there soon.’ I answered without thinking.

Why not, I thought. Maybe we could lock up the cousins in the basement of the villa on Hampstead that the Cavalcantis had rented for the duration of the girl’s visit, call up Asha on the Skype and have a good old huddle together.

The one good thing about being rich was that I didn’t have to worry about my appearance. My nerdy dungarees and total absence of makeup would pass for mildly eccentric, cool, hip and trendy, a deliberate choice. It would also save me from a night out on the tiles, should the cousins fancy swamping their overseas friends with trillions of pictures of themselves traipsing around London nightclubs.

I finished off my mineral water, paid a quick visit to the toilet, drew XXX on the mirror with the lipstick that I’d never used, and called the lift up.

I fully expected to find Bakir by my car, but I was wrong. It was my mother. Sprawled along the back seat, she was dozing.

‘Where have you been? It’s freezing here,’ she struggled out of the narrow space.

‘You broke into my flat,’ I grumped.

‘Me? You’re joking. One of the Boys is quite good at that sort of thing.’

I loaded up the luggage and fitted myself behind the wheel. ‘You won’t talk me out of it.’

‘No, I wouldn’t dream of it. Here,’ she handed me a dark blue wallet that looked familiar but the situation was much too awkward to recognise it.

The second object was unmistakeable. My passport.

I snatched both out of her hands. ‘Thanks,’ I muttered ungraciously. As I pushed both into the glove compartment, I worked out the contents of the navy wallet. My car documents. ‘What do I need those for?’

‘You don’t have to use them unless you want or need to.’ She walked over to my side of the car and kissed me on the head. ‘The Cavalcantis are in diplomatic service. Connection with any kind of scandal could do them a great deal of harm. It might be kinder to bear that in mind.’

‘What scandal? What do you know?’

‘I know that the media will turn anything into s scandal. If there is no scandal, they’ll make it up. Take care, Nat.’

I joined the traffic in a state of distress. It was like being pushed by your own mother into a torrent in a flimsy coracle with no means of controlling it. She’d called me Nat. I felt that I’d just attended Kitten’s funeral.

* * *

There’s one thing that all teenagers have in common. Their response to anything, a desperate crisis or ecstatic joy is hunger. I directed the car to Asha’s favourite oyster bar near the school. Their exquisite menu wasn’t their only attraction. Not widely known, there was a car park at the back.

Oddly enough, now that I was free to move about at will, I felt exposed and vulnerable. I used to imagine my first experience of independence akin to deep breath of fresh air or a long drink of cold water from the spring. Right now the absence of anyone’s seal of approval brought on hitherto unknown apprehension. I kept telling myself that I needn’t worry about kidnapping for ransom because, according to my father, there wasn’t any serious money left, but would anyone else know that? And there were other dangers, a menace I’d that had always felt around me even if I could never define it.