The Santiago Sisters (32 page)

‘You know damn well what question.’ Blood rang in Calida’s ears. Her head throbbed. People and sounds passed by like holograms, surreal and meaningless.

‘Don’t worry, Calida. We’ll make your sister see sense. She
is
your twin, after all. We’ll find her and then we can all be a family again. See? Easy.’

‘Did she say those things, Mama? I need to know.’

Julia weighed her options. Calida’s expression must have tipped it, knowing she wouldn’t get a single thing out of her until she told the truth.

‘No, she didn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be better for you if I told you that. And it was, wasn’t it? Look at you now! You’ve got me to thank for that.’

Calida took a step back. Her knees threatened to buckle but somehow she stayed standing. Julia said: ‘So, how about that dinner? Where are you taking me?’

Somehow Calida found the words. An echo of the words Julia had hit her with the last time she had seen her. ‘Come now, Mama,’ she whispered. ‘You’re an adult. I’ve started my new life. You can’t expect me to hang around for the rest of my days playing the doting daughter.’ And she turned on her heel and didn’t look back.

New York

‘
T
ess, are you there …? You’re breaking up. I can hardly hear you.’

Tess opened the door to her newly purchased Manhattan hideout with a trembling hand, closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the lock and applied the ladder of chains. She flicked the hall light on and leaned, in relief, against the wall.

She was safe. Only then did she allow herself to speak at normal volume.

‘Is that better?’

‘Yes,’ said Simone. ‘Are you travelling?’

‘I just got in.’

‘I thought you had a dinner with Max.’

‘We finished early. He went on to a party at Liz Goldstein’s house.’ Tess went through to the lounge, clicking lamps on as she went. ‘I didn’t feel like joining.’

Before she unhooked the blind on the final window, she spotted a figure on the sidewalk. The figure was absolutely still. Tess couldn’t work out if it was facing her or facing away, so black and total was its silhouette. Fear somersaulted.

It’s
no one—just a guy out walking his dog.

There was no dog.

The blind fell.

‘Tess, you ought to be accompanying Max to things like that,’ said Simone. ‘Show your face. Show them they haven’t got to you.’

Why? What was the point? They had got to her. With poison and threats and the horrible, horrible things they said about her every day. That was why, as the year rolled on and the hate drilled into every part, carrying with it the threat that one day somebody might act on that hate and then where would she be, she’d had to move to New York. Nobody except Simone, Mia, and Maximilian knew the place existed. It had meant she couldn’t appoint her usual security: there was nothing like two stacked guys hovering about outside a property to draw unwanted attention—but what good had they done her recently, anyway?

This time she was going it alone. Scarlet would never find her here.

‘It’s under control,’ said Tess. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘What about Steven?’

Tess exhaled. One good thing had come of her exile, at least.

‘Steven’s agreed to my terms. Clean split. Clean payout.’

‘Oh, darling, that’s wonderful.’

Didn’t she know it? As if she needed further proof, the Scarlet ordeal had exposed her estranged husband in all his true colours. Hearing of her affair with Vittorio, Steven wasted no time in joining the hate wagon against her, using Scarlet’s army to fight his battles and conceal his own looming secrets. Naturally, one of the details of the divorce was that Tess could never reveal his fetishes—though now she had been exposed as a cheat and a fraud, no one was likely to believe her anyway. It had been noted in recent months that the couple were rarely seen out together, and now Steven’s diligently enigmatic
comments drip-fed through the media until the picture was complete:
‘Tess was never easy to be with
,’ he said; or ‘
Every time we went out, her mind was elsewhere
’; or ‘
She was forever making friends and refusing to let me meet them
.’ Nothing so overt as to taunt her into revealing his perversions, but enough to make certain their separation had been entirely down to her shortcomings.

Still, Tess couldn’t care how it was done. It was over. She was free of him.

And suddenly her ambitions to take over Hollywood, California, the States, the whole world, seemed less necessary than they had. Perhaps it was fearing for her life that had put things in perspective, perhaps it was the realisation that fame and money didn’t buy peace. Perhaps it was Alex Dalton, and the memory of their night …

Alex hadn’t contacted her. Could she blame him? It had been so long: there could only be one explanation. The media told him what to think and that was that: he would be disgusted by her, thankful for the purity of his bride-to-be, whom, in contrast, he would hold on to like his life depended on it. Tess was sad for what might have been, but reasoning with Alex, trying to make him understand, would shift her betrayal of Mia to new depths. One night she could reconcile as a grave mistake. Telling him she loved him was a deliberate hurt.

Time went on, and whenever Mia called, Tess’s heart lodged in her throat. Had Alex confessed? Was this the showdown? But the showdown never came. Her anxiety wasn’t helped by Mia’s increasing indifference about the wedding, vagueness when asked about Alex, and reluctance to discuss the details of the nuptials. Tess told herself that if Mia had suspicions, she would surely know about them. Mia wouldn’t keep calling her up. She wouldn’t tell Tess not to care about what the
papers said because the people who knew her loved her, and understood she wasn’t any of those things.

I am though,
thought Tess.
I am a slut and a whore. If only you knew.

‘Well,’ said Simone, ‘I’m coming to LA. Emily has an audition and I promised I’d go with her. I can fly out and check on you then.’

‘Emily … as in
Emily
?’

‘Darling, what’s important to Lysander is important to me. Emily asked for my help and I told her I’d give it. Now Brian’s away, I’m all that girl has.’

‘Have you heard from him?’

‘Brian’s checked into a fat farm—and about time, too. He’s mammoth—as big as a house. I mean I always knew he was prone, but now he’s let go. The press here is full of it. Brian’s full of it, too, by the looks of things: burgers, fries, KFC …’

‘I feel for him.’

‘Don’t. Michelle saw his picture in
GQ.
He was at a bar opening and had some huge-titted wannabe hanging off his arm. Needless to say, he’s got an appetite for those as well.’ There was a tense moment before Simone asked: ‘Did he ever try it on with you, Tess? I’ve thought about this. The notion appals me. You can be honest.’

‘No!’

‘I’d hate to think he did anything—all those times you were alone in the house together … Please tell me he didn’t. I’ll kill him. My duty was always to protect you.’

‘He didn’t.’

Simone’s relief was audible. ‘You have no idea what a comfort that is.’

In the wake of another lie—she seemed to be surrounded by them these days—Tess said goodbye and hung up. If only
she could be as honest with Simone as Simone was with her. Tess trusted her completely. She’d never had reason to doubt it.

Soothed by that knowledge, that in the midst of this maelstrom there was someone upon whom she could always lean, she settled in for the night.

The year of Mia’s wedding arrived, and with it a catalogue of disasters. Missing aeroplanes, a drowned ferry, catastrophe on the Gaza Strip … Trauma shook the world and grimly Tess looked on, frightened in the bubble of her own shrunken universe and even more frightened by what lay outside it. She thought of those days on the ranch, with Calida, when the wide earth and everything in it seemed a distant, irrelevant reality. Then, she had felt so far from danger and anger and sadness. Now, they were everywhere.

I wanted to run from that place. I wanted it every day.

But she’d had no clue, then, what she was running towards. She’d been ignorant; a child, a dreamer. If only she’d had a pinch of her twin’s good sense.

I miss you,
she thought.

I wish you were with me. I really wish you were.

As promised, Simone flew out to meet her, buzzing with news of Emily Chilcott’s success on heavyweight Bruce ‘Ace’ Latimer’s casting couch. Since Tess had retreated from the public eye, Simone was doing all she could to maintain the Geddes brand and keep the family on a climbing curve. Her own career had boosted after Lysander-gate, as Simone re-invented herself Demi Moore style, and tonight she was expected at an awards dinner. She persuaded Tess to accompany her.

At the party, Tess kept her head down, aware of the bitchy stares and whispers that followed her round the room. Her
affair with Vittorio was leprosy, her exile a dreadful contagion that could slaughter the career of any who came too close. She wished she could find her gold locket, the weight of it round her neck gave her comfort, but to her dismay it was nowhere to be seen.
What have I done with it
? She prickled whenever she thought of it.
How could I have been so careless
?

She counted the minutes until they could leave.

‘Oh, wow, Tess …?’

She was emerging from the bathroom when a face she couldn’t quite place accosted her in the hall. The woman, a few years older than her, eyed her expectantly.

‘Sarah Quentin,’ the stranger prompted.

Tess steeled herself for an attack, some reporter who had it in for her.

‘Tess—it’s Sarah. Remember? From Michelle Horner’s office?’ The woman smiled, apparently immune to Tess’s noxious reputation, and held out her hand.

Carefully, Tess took it.

‘I was Michelle’s assistant back in London,’ Sarah elaborated, ‘just after you came over from South America. It seems like an age ago now. That was my first job out of uni. God, I was petrified working for Michelle! But what a great experience.’

Tess was surprised at the connection. She thought back to when she had first landed in the UK. She must have run into Sarah Quentin from time to time during protracted meetings with Simone and Michelle, but hadn’t banked her face. Vaguely, she recalled Simone blasting through the mansion and cursing Sarah’s name, calling her ‘incompetent’ and ‘a wretched liability’. Soon after, Sarah had been fired.

‘Of course,’ said Tess. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m at Laney’s office now.’ Laney Derrickson was an
author turned screenwriter turned producer, and a great friend of Steven’s; Tess had met her once.

‘To anyone else Laney would be Boss-zilla,’ Sarah said, lowering her voice and draining the last of her fizz. ‘But after Michelle, she’s a kitten. That woman was terrifying!’

‘You never let on.’ But Tess wouldn’t know if she had or not.

‘It didn’t help that I kept tripping up,’ Sarah continued, ‘it being my first proper job and everything.’ An actress-slash-model passed them in the corridor and tilted her face away, as if a bad smell had passed under her nose. Sarah didn’t appear to notice. ‘And Michelle kept saying, “Sarah, you do not want to make mistakes with Simone Geddes because she is my number one client! This adoption is the most important project I’ve ever worked on!” I was, like, OK, no pressure then!’

Tess was getting the impression that Sarah Quentin was quite loose-tongued.

‘And then I messed up big style,’ said Sarah. ‘Well, you’ll know about that. Michelle went ape. Simone demanded I got the sack. Over a fucking letter! Sorry, abysmal language, I’m working on it. But you can tell I’m over it, right? I guess you never get over being fired, and let me tell you it was hard enough convincing—’

Tess cut her off. ‘Letter?’ she asked, frowning. ‘What letter?’

‘Oh,’ Sarah waved a hand, ‘I can’t remember. They were always really strict about stuff that got redirected from the office. Simone came in to check every day.’

Tess’s mind was working. She wasn’t sure towards what.

‘Who was the letter from?’

Sarah squinted—then her expression changed, pulled back,
as if realising she had disclosed too much, or that Tess knew too little, or a combination of the two.

‘It wasn’t important,’ she clarified quickly.

‘Who was it from?’

Sarah took a moment. Tess saw that she was deciding whether or not to lie.

‘Your sister,’ she said eventually. ‘That was why it was weird, you know, that you weren’t allowed to see it. That’s why I sent it on, because obviously I thought it was fine, and then the next thing I know Michelle’s telling me Simone’s thrown a shit fit and I’m packing up my desk. There were others, too, for Simone, for Michelle, but mostly for you. Michelle even got the phones re-routed to her personal line.’

There was a nagging feeling in Tess’s throat. Her voice became small.

‘My sister wrote to me? She wrote to Simone?’

Sarah seemed to know she had gone too far. ‘I’m sorry, Tess. I really think you should talk this through with Simone. It’s not any of my business.’

Down the hall, a man called her name.

‘I’ve got to shoot,’ she said. ‘But let’s catch up soon, yes? I’d like that.’ Before she left, she hugged Tess warmly. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘You deserve it.’

They arrived back shortly after twelve. Simone stood at the counter, making tea, her back turned, and when Tess told her she had run into Sarah Quentin, all the muscles there tensed. Simone stirred the tea carefully then put the spoon to one side.

‘What did you talk about?’ she asked.

‘Sarah mentioned working for Michelle. All the letters
and calls she had to field at the office. A substantial number, apparently.’

‘Oh?’ Still, the back was turned. ‘What letters were those?’

‘The ones from Calida.’ It was strange and magical to say her twin’s name out loud after all this time. It felt amazing in Tess’s mouth; it was more than words: a song.

Simone’s posture changed. Hours before, she had been strutting around Paul Gerhardt’s SoHo mansion like a peahen; now, she drooped like a wilting tulip.

Slowly, she turned.

‘I did it for you, Tess,’ she said quietly. ‘I did what was best for you, to protect you. The last thing we needed was your sister wading in and complicating things.’

Tess held her breath. Every question she had kept in check on the drive home surfaced like floats, one after another after another.
Was Calida looking for me? Was she trying to find me? Did she regret what she did
? The possibility was too wonderful and tragic to trust, even for a second. It cracked her already broken heart, reminding her that it was still there, still beating, still whole, and that part of it had and would always belong to her twin alone, whom she loved with all that made her who she was.

Did Calida want me back
?

‘Darling,’ Simone’s eyes lifted to her daughter’s, brimming with fear and regret, ‘ask yourself: what would your life have been without me? You were born a peasant and you’d have died a peasant. I gave you the world. I saw it in that good-for-nothing mother of yours—she coveted what I had. So did you. Julia told me as much. And I said to Julia: I can give your daughter all this, I can take her for you. You said yourself how grateful you are. That you’d have been lost if I hadn’t come along …’