Glittering Fortunes (12 page)

In a flash she darted from sight, the maze swallowing her, red dress rippling then dissolving like paint in water. The hedges were higher than her head, dark green and lush and scented like moss. She felt panicked and excited, unable to see further than a foot in front. She held her arms out, palms flat, feeling her way.

‘Cato!’ she called. ‘In here!’

At one moment his footsteps were incredibly close, the next a distant patter. The thrill was flirting on sexual, the promise of release when Susanna imagined rounding the next wall and slamming straight into that broad, brawny chest. Deeper in the hedges were thick and overgrown, a tangle of ivy reaching out to brush her shoulders or the back of her neck as she hurried on: which way she was going she had no idea, only certain that the next junction would be identical to the last, and the huntsman’s cry as it dashed at her from every angle, tempting, tantalising...

‘I’ll root you out, Mole. Then you’ll be in trouble!’

The sky, though black, seemed a lighter shade above the gloomy hulk of foliage, the endless grid as dense as bricks. She wondered if anyone had become lost in here, properly lost, and how far the path could take her in; if there might be a centre to the web in which a lone soul had perished, unable to break free, and Susanna would discover their long-forgotten skeleton, bones glowing like pearls beneath the moon.

The possibility hit her in a sobering punch.

The ghost!

Hadn’t Susanna heard a weeping woman? Hadn’t she sensed a troubled spirit? Who was to say the wailing had come from within the house...and
not outside it
?

Susanna’s breath choked in her throat and she flung herself into the privet, hands across her chest like a vampire in an upright coffin. The hedge resisted her with a gentle bounce, like a testing finger on the surface of a bowl of jelly. A pair of arms locked around her from behind and she screamed.

A hot gust of breath assaulted her ear.

‘Stop right there,’ it commanded. ‘Lift up your skirt.’

Susanna’s stomach contracted with desire. Before she could respond Cato’s bear paws were on the underside of her bottom, raising her, his knee wedged between her legs. Her toes left the ground, her face pressed into the bush, whose flat-leafed creepers were waxy and silk-smooth. She heard him unbuckle his suit pants, the shiver of material as it fell, and the rip of her own underwear as his fingers roughly tore them aside. The inescapability of his cock was exquisite.

Cato took her violently. ‘You’ve been wanting this all night,’ he snarled, slamming into her, his hand snaking round to claim one of her errant breasts.

‘Oh, I have! I have!’ Susanna cried out, close to pain as he delivered a sharp smack across her ass. ‘Say you want me, Cato! Say you want me for ever!’

‘I want you right now, you harlot. Showing me your tits like that when everyone was watching. What do they think of you, hmm? What do they think?’

‘I’m a naughty girl, Lord Cato. I need to be taught a lesson!’

Another slap. The impact stung. She was all but devoured by the shrubbery now, and Cato’s rutting quickened with a series of guttural groans.

‘You like being punished, don’t you?’

‘I do! I do!’ She had a flash of their forthcoming nuptials, and how it might feel to say those words to him on the altar.

‘Ask me, Cato!’ she begged. ‘I’m ready! Ask me!’

‘Do you want me to make you come hard, little nympho?’

She pictured herself in her bridal gown. ‘Yes!’

‘So hard you pass out?’

The ring slipping on to her finger... ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

Susanna was engulfed by a crashing wave of pleasure, ripples of ecstasy chasing up her spine as Cato climaxed in tandem with her, driving through her aftershocks and burying his dark mop of hair in her neck.

‘I will marry you, Cato,’ she whispered through the tingling haze. ‘I will.’

Seconds later she heard him secure his trousers, the flick of the zip.

‘Sober up,’ he instructed her coolly. ‘I’ll meet you inside.’

‘But...’ Her knees were weak, the skirt of her dress up by her head. ‘Cato, please! I’ll get lost! I don’t know how to get out!’

His reply was invisible, taunting her from a direction she couldn’t decipher.

‘Keep left, that’s the trick.’

Chapter Seventeen

C
HARLIE
WAS
SMOKING
a cigarette outside the library. His wild black hair and scruffily worn tux made him look like a moody date on prom night.

To the south lay the forest. A highwayman’s moon was slung above the dark peaks of firs. Beyond, the pale grey line of the sea sparkled like a chain.

The dogs were with him, lying on their stomachs, their muzzles on the gravel. When their ears pricked he listened out for sound, deciphering the crunch of approaching footsteps. Olivia came into sight. She was wearing only one shoe.

‘Hello,’ he said.

She stopped and folded her arms. ‘Hi,’ she said tightly. She was still pissed off at him. They hadn’t spoken since the argument last week.

Charlie blew out smoke. He had seen her earlier on the swing seat, kissing the pretty boy: the pastel of her dress and that distinctive swirl of burned-copper hair. He’d turned away before he was seen. The pretty boy wouldn’t know how to kiss. Olivia needed to be kissed properly, with intent. She needed to be kissed hard. She needed to be kissed ambitiously, every hour and every day of her life.

‘Tonight’s awful, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Bloody awful.’

‘No kidding.’ She didn’t sound right, not her usual self. Her eyes met his. She asked, ‘I’m guessing you caught Cato’s speech?’

‘Moving, wasn’t it. I especially liked the quote from
Spiderman
.’

Her smile flickered in the dark. It was surprised. Genuine.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can he really take Usherwood from you?’

Charlie ground the cigarette out.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if he wants. As the eldest he’s entitled. He’s Lord Lomax; the estate belongs to him. I’m not fussed about having the name or the status or any of that. I love Usherwood. That’s all. Cato’s never loved it. It might be different if his reasons were noble, but this is about ego. That’s the way it is with my brother. He wants the house because of how it’s going to look, not how it’s going to be. He has no idea how it’s going to be, he hasn’t even thought about it, and that’s why he’ll get bored after six months. Cato always gets bored.’

He couldn’t remember the last time he had shared this much with anyone.

‘If you hadn’t stayed,’ ventured Olivia, ‘he’d never be in a position to return.’

‘Maybe.’ He drew a hand across the back of his neck. ‘But do you think he cares about that? My staying only makes him want it more.’

‘You could have sold up. You could have moved away, like he did.’

‘Doubtless I’d have had to if I’d wanted Cato’s life. The reality is, it isn’t possible to do both. You can’t have Usherwood at the same time as being away from it. It’s needy. It’s demanding. It takes everything.’

Olivia watched his bowed head. Never had she seen anybody so tired.

Charlie looked at her feet. ‘Where’s your shoe?’

‘I threw it away.’

‘Why?’

‘I had a fight with someone.’

‘About your shoes?’

‘No.’

‘About what, then?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

The leaves shivered on the trees. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. I hate these shoes anyway.’

There was another silence.

‘I should go in,’ he said.

‘I should go home,’ she said.

Charlie fished a pair of boots from the porch. ‘Here.’

‘It’s fine, really.’

‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll cut yourself.’

Grudgingly she took them. ‘Thanks.’

* * *

I
N
THE
END
,
the firework display dictated her path. Susanna reeled blindly through the maze, her dress torn and her hair a mess, at panicked, bewildered intervals weeping at the possibility that she would never emerge from this infinite nightmare. At midnight the explosions ripped through the sky, gold and purple and red, and she could hear her guests’ admiring gasps floating into the air like Chinese lanterns. She thought of old ships navigating their way across oceans by virtue of the constellations, and mapped her way by the serpents and strobes that whistled overhead.

At last she surfaced, the relief dazzling, and was spat out on to the lawn like a dummy from a baby’s mouth. Her own mouth was dry and she had an ache behind the eyes. Stumbling across to the house, Susanna detected the tail end of a procession disappearing through the doors. She wanted to scream:
What about me?
Wait for me!

Wasn’t she hosting this damn party?

Fired by rage at Cato’s desertion, she stormed through to the kitchens.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

Caggie Shaw was wiping her hands on a tea towel. Even in raggy old jeans and a blouse that strained over her too-big, heading-south tits, she still looked fresh and sexy—a bit like Helen Mirren, troublingly, in the right light.

‘Crikey,’ Caggie exclaimed, ‘what happened to you?’

‘
Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘Cato.’

‘How should I know? Out there entertaining your guests, I assume.’ Caggie’s eyes travelled downwards. ‘Your dress is undone.’

Susanna consulted her gown. Either Cato or the hedge had ripped her bodice and her left breast was now fully visible, caught in the netting like the catch of the day.

She dragged it up. The disappointment of the night rushed at her unchecked and she blubbed out a sob. She felt dirty and used and stupid.

Caggie held out a glass of water. ‘Perhaps you ought to drink this.’

‘Perhaps you ought to keep your opinions to your damn self!’ Briskly Susanna located a fresh bottle of Bollinger Blanc and wrestled with the neck, angling it perilously like a madman brandishing a shotgun.

‘Turn it to the wall,’ Caggie shrieked, ‘to the wall!’

With a satisfying pop the cork blew off, striking a hanging casserole and then the lip of a copper pot, before bouncing off the bread bin and rolling across the floor. Susanna seized a used flute, wiped the lipstick off the rim and filled it too quickly so that the bubbles surged over the top and spilled down her hand.

‘I don’t think you need any more,’ observed Caggie.

‘Who cares what
you
think?’ Susanna lashed. ‘You figure you’re something special round here, don’t you? Looking down your nose at me, acting like I’m not worthy.’ She caught her reflection in a brass-bottom pan and laughed emptily. ‘Well, newsflash, old lady: you’re a fucking
cook
. Nothing more! And Cato and I will be making some changes once we move in so I would tread carefully if I were you.’

Caggie watched her evenly.

‘I don’t think Cato would get rid of me, if that’s what you’re insinuating.’

There it was again! That
tone
... Oh, she couldn’t bear it!

‘Give me that water,’ Susanna directed, ‘I’ve suddenly got a terrible thirst.’

She snatched the glass from Caggie’s grip, and in a swift, utterly rewarding instant chucked its contents in the woman’s face. The cook stood stunned for a moment, fingers splayed, hair dripping grimly like a creature from the swamp.

‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ Susanna twittered. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

She felt a damn sight better as she threaded her way back to the ballroom. Heads turned as she entered, a frisson of murmurs.

Landing on Cato, she sashayed sexily across the dance floor.

‘Oops!’ Her shoe got caught in the hem of her dress, the heel eliciting a scorching
riiiiiiip
as she burst from the barely-clinging confines of the material. The ceiling cartwheeled and with a slam she was splayed face down on the deck.

Cato was on her, capturing her elbow, dragging her up. ‘This takes the biscuit,’ he hissed, struggling to conceal her naked breasts, which shone like white orbs in the candlelight. ‘What on earth has got into you?’

Susanna buried her face in his neck, inhaling his spicy cologne, and sobbed. Cato steered her towards the exit. Just when the evening couldn’t possibly get any worse, a new voice boomed from the hall.

It was horribly close, and horribly familiar.

‘Well, well, well.’

A six-foot-plus giant was obscuring the doorway, blocking their path. It was jauntily dressed in checkered trousers and a flat cap, its nose purple with port.

‘Susanna Denver,’ the man said, holding out his arms. ‘Remember me?’

Chapter Eighteen

L
USTELL
’
S
CLIFFS
WERE
sparkling chalk. The beach was deserted, white sunshine hazy on the water. Sigmund and Comet frolicked in the morning shallows, dashing for the ebbing tide and barking when it chased them back. Charlie threw a piece of driftwood and the setter bounded after it, pedalling anxiously through the waves, snout raised above the surface like a floral-capped aunt doing a nervous breaststroke.

He had been up since five. Evidence of last night’s revelry had infiltrated far and wide: champagne flutes were found in fireplaces, on bookshelves, in the ancient east-wing loo that had a not in use sign pinned to the door; canapé scraps in the bird bath; extinguished cigars on carpets and in flower pots (and in Caggie’s thyme rockery, which hadn’t been a popular discovery); a sack of smashed china where one of the waitresses had tripped over with a tray of whipped cream. The caterers would arrive mid-morning to collect the hired pieces, and going on the final twenty minutes of her evening it was unlikely that Susanna would be in a fit state to greet them.

After the last of the guests had gone, Charlie had been the one to help her to bed. Cato had been too busy entertaining their surprise arrival to bother.

‘
The old bird’s pissed,’
his brother had diagnosed, before steering their visitor into the drawing room for a brandy nightcap.

‘
Oh
,
no,’
Susanna had whimpered as they had shakily mounted the stairs, Charlie’s arm securing her beneath the waist. ‘
Not him
...
Please not him!’

In the bedroom, he had eased off her shoes and laid her back on the pillows.

‘
I
should have known he’d come,’
Susanna had howled. ‘
It was only a matter of time!’
Panicking, she’d gripped the sheet. ‘
Where’s Cato?
Where is he?’

‘Downstairs.’

‘With...’ She’d shuddered. ‘With him?’

‘Yes.’

She’d mewled. Charlie had pulled a blanket over her. As he did so Susanna had reached for him, taken his hand and brought it to her lips.

‘Do you want to screw me?’ she’d invited huskily.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I’ve seen you looking.’

He’d drawn back. ‘Close your eyes.’

‘I want you, Charles. I’ve wanted you since I got here. Don’t you feel it? The chemistry between us is lethal. I’m one of the most famous women in the world. Aren’t you curious? Millions would kill to be in your position—and I could show you a hundred more positions besides...’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘It could be our secret.’

‘Goodnight, Susanna.’ He’d flicked off the lamp.

She had cried, then. Charlie hadn’t known what to do and so he’d put his arms around her, wet sobs soaking into his shoulder, until eventually her breathing slowed and gave way to a gentle snoring. Quietly he had left the room.

He crouched now and took up a stick. A surfer was out on the ocean, a far-off shape beyond his dog’s bobbing head. The figure was sitting upright, riding the tide. Every so often it would paddle, leaping to take a crest or at the last moment changing its mind. The majestic burst of that vertical position was awesome.

As Comet splashed up the beach, stopping to shake his fur, Charlie carved an arc in the sand. To be that free, he wondered...what must it be like? Weightless: without restraint or responsibility. All his life he had been bound to something—his parents’ legacy, his brother’s ultimatums, his home, always his home—anchored by a load that tied him to the deeps. Usherwood was at once his beloved possession and his cross to bear. It was time to let Cato claim his share.

Last night, his brother’s news had horrified him. Today, it glinted with faint, tentative possibility. He and Cato might not get on, they might never get on, but their partnership could be the only thing that helped the estate.

Each man needed Usherwood for his own reasons. The past was the past. Charlie could spend his whole life eaten up by it, but what kind of a life was that?

He would do it today. He would extend the olive branch. There was no reason why the men couldn’t share their inheritance, and, in doing so, preserve it.

The surfer was drifting in. Nearer to he saw she was a woman, and as she came to land and ran up the shore, a hundred metres or more from where he sat, he recognised Olivia. It was the hair: that warm flame colour a smudge against the blue.

* * *

S
USANNA
DRIFTED
INTO
the dining room at midday. Breakfast had turned into brunch had turned into an all-morning graze, and after dismissing the caterers she took her seat and poured herself a very large, very sweet cup of coffee.

‘How is everybody?’ she sang gaily, flicking out her napkin.

Caggie, busy refilling a fruit bowl, scowled. Baps glanced to the floor. Cato’s disapproving eyes appeared darkly over the top of his newspaper.

At the opposite end of the table, Jonathan ‘Jonty’ Baudelaire, London film and TV agent extraordinaire, grinned at her over his buttered croissant. A flake of pastry clung to his top lip, and when he took a gulp from his mug she noticed he hadn’t got past the irritating habit of slurping his tea.

‘Jonty,’ Susanna got straight to it (it was always best to address the elephant in the room, and ‘elephant’ really was the word—he was so fat these days!), ‘how long are you planning on staying?’

‘I was just saying to the girls,’ Jonty tossed a cavalier glance at Baps and Caggie, ‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping by unannounced. Only, when we heard you were over—and how could we avoid it, darling: you always knew how to court the press—the opportunity seemed too good to miss.’ He guzzled more tea.

Susanna forced down a mouthful of grapefruit, and with it her conscience. Of course Jonty had been going to make contact: she’d hardly kept this visit under wraps, had she? The society pages were full of it. It was just that her life with Cato, her life
now
, was so far removed from the foolish misdemeanours of the past that it was easier to bury her head in the sand and pretend like they’d never happened.

Hopefully he’d be gone by tonight. The reconciliation had been inevitable, but that didn’t mean it had to last any longer than was necessary.

‘You weren’t hiding from us,’ Jonty raised a bushy eyebrow, ‘were you?’

‘Of course not,’ she replied primly. She’d had every intention of making contact with them before returning to the States, of course she had. It wasn’t her fault Jonty had beaten her to it! ‘I suppose you brought Thorn?’

‘Naturally.’

Caggie and Baps retreated. Cato raised his paper. Jonty continued beaming inanely, his crab-apple cheeks and gammon-pink jowls badges of a decade spent boozing over power lunches and living on a diet of steak tartare and quails’ eggs. She found him repellent. In his green-and-yellow country gent’s get-up he looked absurd. It was hard to believe she had ever slept with him. He was like Toad of Toad Hall.

Yet Susanna had resolved that morning, surfacing through a migraine that felt as if someone were wringing her brain like a sponge, that it was better to face these things with dignity. She had made a rotten fool of herself last night, and while Jonty’s reappearance was an unsavoury surprise, she would simply have to deal with it.

‘A boy does need his mother,’ put in Cato unhelpfully.

‘Indeed,’ resumed Jonty, done with the croissant and now slathering jam on to a hunk of toast, ‘which is why we’re here. I know how much you’ve wanted to see us, darling, and how difficult it must be with a schedule as...’ he narrowed his eyes, no doubt kept abreast by his LA associates of her floundering career, ‘
demanding
as yours. So if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed... Well, I thought Thorn could stay with you for a few days, get to know a little about his absent mum.’

Absent mum.
Jonty always did know how to put the knife in.

‘You put it so charmingly,’ she responded archly, ‘how can I resist?’

The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Jonty bit into his toast.

‘He’s six, Susie.’ She didn’t know which was worse—Susie or Mole. ‘Don’t be alarmed if he needs a little reminding. I mean, when were you last in touch?’

‘I sent him a card on his birthday,’ she threw back, fully aware of how weak that sounded. ‘And I visited last summer. I took him to see
The Marriage of Figaro
at the Royal Opera House, remember?’

‘Which was grossly inappropriate for a five-year-old.’

Cato smirked.

‘Where is he?’

‘In the garden.’

Susanna peered out of the window in trepidation. Bless the child, for he had not been planned...a two-week love affair and a single mistake. She had been naïve at twenty-six, her dreams of becoming an actress only just flourishing, and during a publicity jaunt to the UK Jonty had taken her under his wing. In the end she had been persuaded to go through with the pregnancy, consoled by the idea that at least life with Jonty would be financially viable
and
a boost to her career, but after Thorn had been born (Thorn?
Thorn?
However had Jonty talked her into that one? It had been his grandpa’s nickname or some such nonsense—she must have been off her head), the arguments had begun. Susanna had fled, her Hollywood debut at last within reach, and though she had tried to justify her abandonment in a number of ways over the years, it always came to the same thing: Jonty had fought harder than her, for Thorn to stay in England, to be raised the English way, to know his country. Put simply, he had
wanted
the boy more than she had. But, then, he always had.

‘I’m not sure when we’re heading back to LA,’ she said lightly, pushing around the fruit in her bowl. ‘I wouldn’t want to mess Thorn about. Cato?’

‘You can do what you like, Mole.’

How she wanted to wring his neck! It was his fault. If her boyfriend had done the honourable thing and proposed, she could have brandished her sparkler in Jonty’s direction this very morning. That would have sent him on his merry way.

‘Oh, do shut up,’ she snipped. ‘If you haven’t anything useful to contribute then don’t contribute at all.’

He didn’t look up from his paper. ‘Don’t get in a strop because I didn’t share a bed with you last night,’ he said languidly. ‘You were doing the most beastly snoring—I could scarcely hear myself think!’

She went hot with embarrassment. ‘As a matter of fact
I
barely slept.’

‘Could have fooled me...’

She bit her tongue. Cato would ridicule her if she told him her suspicions.

The ghost of Usherwood was back. Last night Susanna had seen her, actually
seen
the spectre with her own eyes, floating down the corridor in a gossamer gown. She had woken at two a.m., her rise to consciousness sudden and clean, breaking into darkness like a diver into water. Moonlight swam through the glass. She’d gasped for liquid, groping her way to the door, and stilled in her tracks as the first wail hit: that reedy, haunting yowl that spoke of such passion, such yearning. Her heart had lodged in her throat. She’d felt paralysed, waiting for the ever-increasing yelps to die down, before gently prising open the door. Silence. Head pounding, hoping the soundtrack might be a result of her drunken delirium, Susanna had crept into the hall.

That was when she had seen her. A flash of white, like a handkerchief waved by someone in distress, a slender figure glimpsed as it darted out of sight.

Susanna had retreated back inside like a fox down a hole. To think if she’d opened the door just a second earlier, she would have collided with the ghost head-on!

‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’ The din of her child’s voice pricked Susanna’s reverie like a pin on a balloon. ‘Look what I’ve got!’

Thorn came rushing him, grubby hands outstretched as he presented Jonty with a particularly ugly-looking snail.

‘Me and Olivia found it,’ he announced proudly.

Jonty ruffled the boy’s wisp of blond hair and Susanna smiled back in a pained way. Trust that gardener to go encouraging him to forage about in the dirty undergrowth: the girl had no class.

‘Do you know who this is, darling?’ Jonty asked, patting the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Do you remember your mother?’

Thorn was shy, clinging to his father’s wrist as Susanna lasered him with her most encouraging expression, and held her arms out because that was the sort of thing long-lost mothers did. Thorn regarded her warily. She replaced her hands in her lap.

‘Why don’t you show her what you’ve found?’ Jonty prompted.

Uneasily Thorn approached, and even more uneasily Susanna extended an upturned palm to receive the slimy offering. The snail soldered wetly to her skin.

‘Is this a gift for Mommy?’ she crooned.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I want it back.’

‘Like mother, like son,’ murmured Cato from behind the paper.

‘See how he’s missed her?’ Jonty said affectionately, as Thorn clambered on to her lap. God, he was heavy. Wasn’t he too old to be throwing his weight around? He didn’t feel like her child; she might as well have been passed a wriggling piglet.

Susanna spied Olivia outside, digging the plots. Her hair was damp, her cheeks flushed with the bite of fresh air. She caught her own reflection in a silver teapot and the distorted throwback made her look like a beak-nosed witch.

‘Would you like to go outside again?’ She adjusted her position in the hope her son might just slide off, lifting slightly from the chair like someone trying to shift a cat. ‘I’ve got the most terrible migraine, is anyone else suffering? I think it was that
fricassée de poussin
.’

‘That’ll teach you to rope in the French,’ said Cato.

‘I take it everybody’s happy, then,’ said Jonty, pleased, reaching for another mug of tea. ‘Thorn stays with you for a week or two, Susie—he’s going to love it.’

Susanna replaced her fork. The food looked as appetising as gravel.