Beautiful People (50 page)

    "That's crazy," Greg opined. "That's gotta be an act. She's an actress, after all," he reminded Mitch.

    "Yeah, but a British one, remember. You know what they're like."

    "Crazy."

    "Really crazy," Mitch rejoined. He frowned. "You know, I could have sworn she was almost relieved about it."

    "You're kidding."

    "No, really. All she seemed to care about was the money."

    "That figures," Greg said, nodding. "Not that crazy after all, then."

    "Except that she said she wanted to put it into a nursery."

    Greg blinked. "She said a nursery? Not 'up her nose'?"

    "A nursery. Like, you know, for kids."

    There was a silence. Mitch reached for a jelly doughnut from the bag on the desk. "Want one?" he offered.

    His lean, trim co-worker looked at the fistful of sugar-encrusted fried dough being brandished at him. He looked about to refuse, then his trim eyebrows raised themselves in resignation. He reached for it. "Hey," he said, chewing. "They're not half bad."

    Mitch, eyeing his colleague, was starting to think that perhaps Greg wasn't so bad either.

    "They say Saint's got no idea about anything," Greg mused morosely as he chewed. "That knock from the accident's completely changed his personality. He's got no recollection he's a filmmaker at all. He thinks he's a cat now." Cucarachi shook his wire wool hair. "Like—what's that about?"

    Mitch shook his head. "What a business. Who'd be an agent?"

    "You said it, buddy."

    The two agents looked at each other in sorrowful complicity.

In the aubergo, Hugh Faugh was slamming his meaty fists against the newspaper spread out on the table.

    The picture that formed the centre spread of the newspaper was of Ivo and Jago laughing on a park bench with a blonde in a miniskirt who was placing small sachets of white powder in their hands. "Peer's daughter Totty de Belvedere (right)," read the caption, "passes the drugs to MP's sons Ivo and Jago Faugh."

    "Oh, Christ. How could you. How bloody could you?" Hugh groaned to his sons, his fingers over his eyes so as not to see, yet again, the headline '"Family Values?" in massive fat black type. "How could you be so stupid?"

    Family values indeed, Orlando thought sardonically. Hugh's anger seemed directed less at what had been done than at the fact the twins had been caught doing it. He almost felt a stir of pity for Ivo and Jago. With a father like this, what chance had either of them ever had?

    "You're a pair of fucking idiots!" Hugh roared at his sons. "Not only have you been kicked out of Oxford, you've probably cost me my job."

    Alerted by some party factotum in London that the pictures had appeared, Hugh had rushed straight out to the Rocolo news agent and then spent an agonized hour waiting for the British papers to arrive. But that agony had been sweet relief compared to his anguish when he had finally seen what the papers contained. From the blizzard of phone calls he then proceeded to field, and the loud protestations and pleadings he was heard to make, it was clear that Hugh was determinedly fighting for his political life and that his political masters were equally determined to switch off his life support.

    It couldn't have happened to a nicer family, Orlando tried to make himself think. He dredged up every miserable memory of their stay he could remember to force himself to rejoice in the Faughs' downfall. What had happened was, after all, a sweeter and more agonising revenge on his tormentors than he could ever have planned, even in his wildest flights of retaliatory fantasy. Odd then, that he felt far from exultant. If anything, he felt rather sorry for them.

    It turned out that Totty de Belvedere had something of a talent for destroying careers. Orlando had learnt with outraged bewilderment what she had tried to do to Emma's, although there had been a happy ending. As Totty and the Faugh twins were led away by the local police, there had been tears, apologies, and heartfelt hugs from the couple who had arrived so suddenly and turned out to be Cosmo and Hero's parents. The reunion had been so dramatic that he had left Emma to it in the end; it seemed to have nothing to do with him.

    A sharp cry had stopped him in his tracks as he reached the edge of the courtyard. "Hey!" cried Emma, dashing after him. "Phone number, please. And address, and mobile, and NHS number, and blood group, and…"

    And then, yet more drama. As he had left the restaurant, his A-level results had been texted through. He had got a D and an E, better than he had expected. Two whole passes. Enough, even, to take some sort of course.

    He was no longer a failure. On the contrary, it was the gilded youth of Oxford that had fallen.

Orlando pushed his mother's trolley across the smooth marble surface of the airport floor. There was so much marble around; part of being in Italy, he supposed.

    Georgie's luggage was heavy. He found himself wondering vaguely how so many flimsy bits of material came to weigh so much. And how Georgie could bear to spend so much time in the airport shops, which seemed universally boring to Orlando. Still, they probably kept her mind off things.

    "Orlando!"

    "Orlando!"

    Someone in blue and white. Jeans and a polo top. Emma, standing there, exactly where they had arranged to meet, smiling at him.

    "Great!" he exclaimed, wheeling Georgie's heap over at such speed he could hardly stop it. "You made it."

    He held her close. She held her face up to his. It was fresh and glowing, like a new pink rose, he thought. He longed to kiss it but felt shy in such a public place. Then, as she continued to look at him, he decided that he didn't feel so shy after all. When he had finished, her eyes were still closed. Encouraged, he bent his neck and kissed her again.

    "Guess what," he whispered into her clean-smelling hair. "I got two A levels!"

    "Orlando! You didn't!" The air was filled with her delighted shriek.

    "It's especially fantastic," Emma added into his chest, which was

as far as the top of her head reached, "because I was going to offer you a job."

    "A job!" he squawked.

    She nodded. "I'd have offered you it anyway, but now that you've got the A levels, you can train properly."

    He blinked. Training? What was she talking about?

    "I'm opening my nursery," Emma explained. "Darcy's given me the start-up money. I want you to join it."

    "What—as a nanny?" He screwed up his eyes in disbelief.

    "A manny," Emma corrected him. "A male nanny. Men make great nannies, I told you. And I'm planning to recruit a lot of them."

    A great surge of excitement possessed Orlando. Along with a great clench of fear. His beam faded. His mother had been dealt many blows of late. Could she bear what might be the bitterest of all, that her son was about to be a nursemaid?

    "I'll pay you plenty, don't worry," Emma added chuckling. "Enough to make your mother realise it's a proper career with proper rewards. And don't worry, there'll be rewards. It's going to be a massive success."

    Orlando felt more cheerful. If Emma said it, it would happen. "That would be great." He shook his head in a puzzled way. "Fantastic. Really cool. Wow!"

    "It's a deal then," Emma exulted, hugging him again and pulling his face down towards her. Her insides were popping with joy.

    "Cosmo and Hero will be there too," she told him. "James and Vanessa are desperate for me to look after them again." She permitted herself a small, triumphant smile. "Oh, and Morning will be coming too. He'll be in the baby room."

    "Morning?" Orlando looked Emma up and down, as if she had hidden the child who so evidently was not hanging from her front somewhere else about her person.

    "I've been given temporary custody of him. Belle's in no state to look after him—not that she was when she wasn't in traction in a hospital," Emma added, rolling her eyes.

    Orlando looked puzzled. He knew nothing about Belle, Emma remembered. Oh well. Perhaps she would tell him. Then again, perhaps she wouldn't. It was all water under the bridge now. "If all goes well, it'll be full adoption," she added. "I'm adopting him. Going through all the official channels that Belle ignored."

    "Adoption!" Orlando exclaimed. "That's quite…a responsibility," he added, as she gave him a rather defiant look.

    Emma shrugged. "So what? No change from what I've been doing for him so far really. Just on a slightly more permanent basis. And at least at the nursery there'll be other people besides me to look after him. You, for instance," she grinned.

    Orlando nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. Yes. That sounded like a good idea. Looking after Morning. He would like that. "Where is he now?" he asked.

    "With Mara somewhere. She's giving him his bottle."

    "Mara?"

    "The housekeeper at the villa," Emma told him, only now realising how closely she had stuck to the terms of the confidentiality agreement. There was a whole side of her life about which Orlando had no idea at all. "She's coming to advise on the food. She wanted a change of scene, and she's got family in London."

    "Wow." Orlando nodded. "That sounds…cool." He felt rather bewildered by it all.

    "Your parents recovered from the awful pictures in the paper?" Emma asked, her joyous beam giving way to an expression of concern. "It must have been really embarrassing, as that family were staying with them and everything."

    Orlando looked surprised. His present happiness so filled his vision that the miseries of the very recent past seemed like years ago.

"What about your father and Parliament?" Emma probed worriedly.

Orlando brightened. "Actually, he's decided to step down."

"Oh, no!"

    "It's good news," Orlando countered. "Some think tank specialising in the regeneration of inner cities has asked him to join. It's always what Dad's been most interested in. He's been fed up with Parliament for ages, to be honest. He doesn't do backbiting and sleaze, and I don't think the Faugh business helped, apart from finally convincing my mother that it's not worth herding Dad through it all anymore. She's finally accepted he's never going to be Prime Minister. Funnily enough, she seems happier for it."

    It was a long speech, and he felt rather exhausted at the end of it. It reminded him of how much had happened in so short a time. All for the better. He spotted Georgie, waving frantically from across a bank of seating.

    "Better go and get the plane," he grinned, taking her hand. "I'll see you in London," he added, giving her a final tight squeeze. "Boss," he added.

The day seemed to Darcy not quite so sunny as usual, and so the road up through Rocolo seemed to wear a more sullen aspect than normal. At the restaurant, all the chairs were set out as usual, and it had its vine, its sage paintwork, and its sunshades. Only one crucial element was missing.

    Marco was nowhere to be seen, and a terrible fear now gripped her heart. During all the rehearsals she had held in her mind for this moment, the possibility that Marco would not be there had never occurred to her. It couldn't, it just couldn't be possible that Marco had chosen this morning of all mornings to be out somewhere—at the market, the artisanal cheesemakers, the vineyard. As she approached, her knees felt weak beneath her.

    The restaurant was open; she could hear the chefs chatting and singing inside. She knocked timidly on the glass of the open door. One of the sous chefs appeared and smiled in recognition.