Vintage (57 page)

This time Christina didn’t demur.

“Let’s go.”

Outside in the car park, those guests who had already made it out huddled together and watched anxiously as the emergency services swung into action. There was a very real danger that the Gloria Hotel would collapse. Guy would have liked to be able to take Kelly and Hilarian farther away from the quivering building but there was really nowhere to go. Behind them, a freeway overpass flipped up and down like a skipping rope. Everywhere was dangerous.

“Do you think there are still people inside?” Kelly asked.

“Alas, almost certainly,” said Hilarian.

Ronald Ginsburg was sitting a few feet away from them, taking greedy gulps of oxygen. He’d sobered up fast. Hilarian wandered across.

“Have you see Odile?” Ronald asked.

“I thought she left to drive up to Napa.”

“Then hopefully she got out of the city before this started,” said Ronald. He wiped at his eyes, which were watery but not just from old age this time. Hilarian realized for the first time that Ronald actually cared about the woman he’d always called the “Frigid Frog.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” said Hilarian. “Hope so.”

Piers Mackesy lurched up to Hilarian. “Have you seen Madeleine Arsenault?” he asked.

Hilarian shrugged. Guy and Kelly had no better answer.

“She left the ballroom ages before the earthquake started,” said Kelly. “She congratulated me on her way out.”

Mackesy was wide-eyed with worry. “I’m going back in there.”

“Are you nuts?” said Ginsburg. “Guy, Hilarian. Hold that man down.”

“She’ll be out,” said Kelly. “She’ll be out of there any minute. She got out of the fire at her house, didn’t she? She knows how to survive.”

“We’re going to die!” Christina shouted as an aftershock rent the building and another chunk of masonry smashed onto the stairs just ahead of them.

“Don’t panic,” said Madeleine though now she could smell smoke. She looked back and saw the glow of flames in the stairwell above them. Her thoughts immediately took her back to Champagne Arsenault and the flames that chased her out of her home. The important thing was just to keep going. To keep Christina going.

“Leave me here. You can get out faster. Send the firefighters back in for me.”

Madeleine wouldn’t do that. She had seen how quickly a fire could take hold. There was no time to fetch reinforcements.

“You’ve just got to keep walking,” she said firmly. “We’re on the thirteenth floor now. In a minute we’ll be on the twelfth floor. In ten minutes we’ll be outside.”

“But there’s nothing to go on for,” Christina said suddenly. “There’s nobody waiting for me out there, you know. My fiancé left me because I slept with Odile Levert.”

“What?” Madeleine couldn’t help but chuckle at the incongruous nature of the confession, given they were fighting for their lives.

“You didn’t know?” said Christina.

“Of course not. French people don’t talk about their private lives. I didn’t even know she liked girls that way.”

“Jesus,” said Christina. “I can’t believe I’m going to my death having just outed someone as a lesbian.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“You won’t have a chance to tell anyone. We’re going to die in here. We’re going to fucking well die.”

“Will you please shut up and keep walking? There is someone I want to see when I get outside.”

Madeleine and Christina were on the seventh floor when the emergency services got to them. An enormous fireman quickly relieved Madeleine of her burden. He threw Christina over his shoulder and effortlessly carried her the rest of the way, emerging from the hotel lobby to give the press
the
photo that would be used to illustrate reports of the earthquake worldwide: the supermodel rescued.

Madeleine was close behind, unharmed but for a couple of scratches.

Mackesy was waiting for her. He enfolded her into his
arms and held her close for a very long time. Madeleine breathed in the familiar scent of him. His had been the face she wanted to see, but now that she knew he was safe, reality was already creeping back in. She pushed him away. It was hopeless. Somehow, realizing how much he meant to her, when she thought she might lose him to the earthquake, only made the fact that she couldn’t really have him anyway sting more than ever. She’d been an idiot. He’d never promised her anything because he didn’t want to. When the earthquake was forgotten, everything would be the same as before.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, pulling her back to his side. “I was so scared when I couldn’t find you.”

“We can’t do this,” she said. “We don’t have the right to be together. You should let your family know you’re all right. I need to make some calls too.”

“Where are you going? It isn’t safe for you to wander off. You might fall into some crack and break your neck.”

“It isn’t safe for me to stay here anymore either. I might end up with a broken heart.”

“Madeleine!”

Mackesy tried to hold on to her hand but she pulled away.

Madeleine slunk past the journalists, who were already buzzing around, keen to interview her on her part in Christina’s rescue. Her thoughts now turned to Axel. Her childhood friend. Her former lover. Where was he? She could see him nowhere in the crowds that huddled in the car park. She found a girl from Maison Randon and asked if she knew anything. The girl shook her head.

“He left before the end of the dinner,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since then.”

It took a while, but at last Madeleine got through to the emergency services hotline.

“Axel Delaflote. D. E. L. A … ” she spelled the word out.

“I found him,” said the hotline worker, with a faint note of amusement.

“Which hospital?” asked Madeleine.

“None. He’s in police custody.”

And so “The Big One,” the earthquake that California had been expecting for decades, had come at last.

The following morning the sun rose on a very subdued San Francisco as the emergency services continued to search the wreckage for survivors and residents of a city that had been living on borrowed time returned to their damaged homes to salvage what they could. The design flaws that caused the Gloria Hotel to fare so badly would be debated for months and later in court as the residents and partygoers who had suffered injuries as a result sought compensation.

There was damage outside the city too. Tremors had been felt as far north as the Napa Valley. The cellar master at Domaine Randon wept openly when he arrived to inspect the damage there. Three hundred new French oak barrels filled with pinot noir had been shaken free from their “unshakeable” cages. But there was worse to come.

“I think there’s somebody under here!” a rescue worker yelled.

C
hristina had, as she suspected the moment she fell, broken her ankle.

The newspapers all carried the photograph of her being evacuated from the Gloria Hotel. After that she was airlifted to a hospital well outside the earthquake zone. At Marisa’s suggestion, Christina issued a statement from her hospital bed saying that she would be making a huge donation to the San Francisco emergency services. She also pledged that she would throw a party at Villa Bacchante for the brave men and women, just as soon as she was well enough to do the catering!

Flowers started to flood into the private hospital where Christina was being cared for. Within an hour there were too many for her room. She authorized the nurses to distribute the excess flowers throughout the hospital and to local seniors’ homes. She asked, however, that the cards be delivered to her, so that she might look through the good wishes. She needed cheering up.

And that was how she found out that Greg had sent her flowers.

“I’m sure they were lovely!” Christina said when she called him. “I’m afraid they’re probably cheering up the room of some little old lady now.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Greg. “As long as you’re safe. I was so worried. Marisa had to stop me from driving straight up to San Francisco and into all the chaos.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Will you come and visit me here in the hospital?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re going to be in the area.”

“I think I could make a little trip out of my way,” said Greg. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

“Half an hour?”

She had assumed that Greg was in Los Angeles. In fact, he was waiting by a baggage claim conveyor in the Oakland airport.

Christina was discharged from hospital the very same day but there was no doubt that it would be a long time before she could look after herself properly again. Her housekeeper, Ernestina, said that she was only too pleased to have the extra hours, but Greg said it wouldn’t be necessary.

“You think I’m going to miss the opportunity to give you a bed bath?” he joked.

Christina knew that the hard work would begin once she was back home. She and Greg still had plenty to talk about. She’d been unfaithful. Greg was within his rights to be angry with that for a very long time. But now she dared to believe that he would forgive her. She thought she understood what had attracted her to Odile. That horrible need to be validated, to feel that she was beautiful by seeing her worth in someone else’s uncontrollable lust for her.

Having lost Greg, she had finally realized that the validation of strangers wasn’t worth nearly so much as the steady kind of love he offered. And that Greg saw something more in her than physical charm. Something enduring. Something real.

When Christina told Greg as much, he covered her face with kisses.

“Did you really believe that I wouldn’t come back to you?” he said. “I am never leaving you again.”

M
eanwhile, the Froggy Bottom team returned to England in a strange mood. On the one hand, they were triumphant. They’d beaten the French and the Americans and come home with the cash. On the other hand, their victory at the wine awards had been all but forgotten in the aftermath of the earthquake. And then, of course, there were still tremors to face at home.

Kelly knew she would be flying back to hear whether or not she had to take a DNA test to prove she was Dougal Mollison’s daughter.

“It’s bad news,” said the lawyer.

A week later, a courier arrived at Froggy Bottom with the results of the DNA test. They suggested, with ninety-nine point nine percent certainty, that Kelly was not in any way related to Dougal’s legitimate children, which could mean only one thing: she wasn’t related to Dougal either. Dougal’s true heirs began proceedings to have Kelly removed from Froggy Bottom at once.

Kelly tried to seem brave. She managed not to cry when she first heard the bad news. Likewise, she kept up a stoic demeanor when she relayed the information to Guy. But inside, her heart was breaking. She walked back into the farmhouse and saw the place that had become her home as though she were seeing it for the very first time. But how different this was from the actual first time she saw Froggy Bottom. The Aga that had looked like a relic from a different age seemed so friendly. She stroked the
worn-out kitchen table that she’d once pronounced scruffy. The Welsh dresser with its sticky drawers was a treasure to her now. The kitchen chair with the tattered wicker seat. It was all so precious.

Would Froggy Bottom’s new owners ever love this place the way she had grown to?

And what would become of her? She was an entirely different woman from the one who had arrived in the middle of the night wearing boots that were perfect for sticky nightclub floors but useless in the mud. Would she have to go back to working as a chambermaid? She couldn’t, could she? She spent the night crying into her pillow.

The following morning, Hilarian arrived. He assured Kelly that he had resigned from the board of trustees and would have nothing more to do with Froggy Bottom either. Not only were the Mollisons taking back the farm, they were claiming the hundred thousand pounds that Kelly had won in San Francisco.

“They’re a bunch of shits,” said Hilarian. “This place will go to ruin without us here. Dougal’s children don’t know the first thing about wine. It’s an absolute disaster. They have made an enormous mistake.”