Hollywood Sinners (11 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

St Tropez

E
lisabeth Sabell stood from the table and tucked in her chair. She and Robert were dining with investors at La Parisienne, an exclusive harbourside restaurant favoured by the rich and famous.

‘Everything OK, puss?’ asked Bernstein, firing Robert an accusing look.

‘Fine,’ said Elisabeth, ‘if you’ll just excuse me.’ She made her way through the tables and into the cool marble of the bathroom. She felt queasy. Pushing open an empty cubicle, she closed the door and leaned back, breathing deeply.

The trip had been extended. Stupidly she hadn’t brought next month’s Pill. She’d been ready to tell Robert that they’d need to use other precautions, before thinking at the weekend,
Why should we?
They both wanted kids, they’d discussed it before. Since arriving in France conversation had been so scant that sex was the only real communication they were sharing. Perhaps a baby would help get things back on track.

Now her period was late.

She extracted the test from her purse.

For the first time since she and Robert had been engaged, she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted it to say.

* * *

Robert St Louis was trying to ignore the fact that one of his investor’s wives, a sharp-featured English woman with a tightly drawn chignon, had been giving him the come-on all night. Earlier, on the way to the restroom, she had pushed herself up against him and promised in a husky upper-class voice, ‘
Later
.’ Somehow he knew that later would never come.

The waiter came to take their order. It was a big table: as well as Robert, Bernstein and his two daughters, they were dining with three key financiers and their immaculately groomed wives. But what was taking Elisabeth so long?

‘Here she comes,’ droned Jessica, stirring her martini.

Elisabeth, her cheeks flushed, resumed her seat. She took the menu. ‘Are we ready?’ she asked in a strained voice.

While the others ordered food, Robert caught his fiancée’s eye and she gave him a wobbly smile. She looked radiant tonight in a bronze figure-skimming dress, her blonde hair piled high on her head. He smiled back, made a face that enquired if everything was OK. She nodded briefly.

‘So I say to them, it’s all about the vision.’ Bernstein tore off a hunk of ciabatta, dunked it in oil and threw it into this mouth. ‘Time an’ again we’ve proved it: it’s not all about the casinos, the gaming enterprises—I’m talkin’ development of conference space, shopping facilities—’

‘Time spent in our hotels,’ interjected Robert. ‘We know what people want before they know it themselves. It has to be about our guests. Everything in this business is.’

Bernstein pointed a chunk of bread at him. ‘Exactly.’

‘And growth into Europe,’ noted Jerry Gollancz, an elderly man with pink-tipped ears and watery eyes.

‘In time,’ said Robert. ‘We’re considering all routes carefully. You’ll see my plans in the spring.’

As the food came, talk turned to leverage and dividends, capital pools and portfolios, and Robert noticed that Elisabeth’s attention was elsewhere. How could Bernstein imagine she was really interested in getting into this business?

But there was more to it. She was on edge tonight: she seemed anxious and jumpy, kept shooting nervous smiles in his direction. He had hoped this trip would bring them closer together, force him to stop thinking about Lana Falcon. Instead it seemed to be having the reverse effect.

‘I assume you’re working towards Asian expansion?’ Jerry Gollancz enquired.

Robert tuned back in. ‘Wynn Resorts has done it,’ he answered smoothly, ‘I don’t see why we can’t. Macau is incredibly fertile casino territory.’

Bernstein refilled his elder daughter’s glass. ‘Elisabeth knows all about that, doncha, doll? She’s been to Macau.’

Jessica snorted loudly. ‘Yeah, on vacation. What does
she
know?’ She drained her martini and instantly ordered another, without asking anyone else if they wanted anything.

Elisabeth took a moment to tune back in. ‘Sorry?’ she asked, a bit dazed.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Robert.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Elisabeth, a little snappily. The table plunged into silence.

Jessica, blissfully unaware, broke it. ‘What
is
this?’ she demanded loudly, holding up her fork, upon the end of which hung a sad-looking anchovy. ‘It’s hairy!’

Ellen Fontaine, the woman who had propositioned Robert earlier, leaned over to explain. She regarded Jessica with some distaste, before turning her gaze to Robert and suggestively feeding a stick of grissini into her mouth.

‘Eat up and go to bed, cookie,’ Bernstein told his younger daughter. ‘It’s no fun for you.’

‘Like hell I will,’ said Jessica, fishing for the olive in her fresh vermouth.

‘Frank tells me you’ve got Sam Lucas’s premiere coming to the Orient next year,’ said Glenn Fontaine, steering the conversation on to safer ground.

‘Yes,’ said Robert, relaxing. ‘It’s a bold move.’

‘I’d love to be there,’ enthused Ellen Fontaine, touching a hand to her white throat, where a grape-sized diamond clung to her skin. ‘We met Lana Falcon at something or other last year, didn’t we, darling? And that rather wonderful husband of hers.’

‘How was she?’ Robert jumped in, without thinking. Elisabeth’s eyes darted to his.

The question threw Ellen, but before Robert could begin to unpick it, she answered, ‘Well, we didn’t speak to them for long. I remember thinking how charming she was.’ Then to be polite she asked, ‘Do you know her?’

The quiet felt longer than it actually was.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Robert. ‘I don’t know her at all.’

* * *

‘What
is
it about goddamn Lana Falcon?’ stormed Elisabeth. ‘Every time I bring up her name you go all weird on me. Look at you now, it’s like you’ve seen a ghost!’

They reached the jetty, where a boat was waiting to take them back to the moored yacht. The others had gone ahead.

Robert stared straight ahead. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘You can tell me it’s nothing all you like,’ she said tearfully. ‘I wish you could be honest with me. Is that too much to ask?’

Robert watched her beautiful, expectant face and felt suddenly sorry. How could he possibly explain to her the history he and Lana shared? Elisabeth, so upstanding, so respectable; and he hiding a terrible secret, a monstrous crime that would bury them both. No, she didn’t know what he was capable of—and she didn’t want to.

‘It’s not too much,’ he said. He wanted to say more but the words didn’t come. It was hopelessly inadequate.

Instead he guided her on to the boat, slipping an arm round her bare shoulders as they took a seat on the padded leather bench. ‘You look wonderful,’ he murmured.

She nodded, not looking at him.

The dark water below sparkled in the moonlight. As they moved off the smell of salt filled the night air.

Elisabeth feared that if she spoke she would burst into tears. She watched the open water and the bobbing, distant red lights of vessels on the horizon.

Back on the yacht they had fumbling, drunk sex before Elisabeth fell asleep.

Robert lay awake for a while, the gentle rock of water beneath him, before giving up and going out on deck. The still-warm air filled his lungs and he looked out across the black sea, stars twinkling above like air-holes punched in the sky. And that was what they were, for he could breathe better at night. He could be alone and remember the evenings he had spent all those years ago in Belleville, before the tragedy. When they had been young and innocent and free and in love.

He wondered what she was doing now. Was she thinking about him? For all his money and success he didn’t have the one person he would give it all up for in a heartbeat. She couldn’t be happy with Cole Steel, could she? Not the same kind of happiness they had shared.

It couldn’t go on. He had to tell Elisabeth the truth, and if it was out in the open he could decide if they still had a future. And yet it was a risk. He hated himself for still caring this way, couldn’t understand why he did, but, damn it, he had to protect Lana.

But, then, it wasn’t Lana who had done that awful thing back in Belleville, was it?

It was him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Belleville, Ohio, 1997

‘D
’you need some help with those?’

Laura turned round at the school gates, her arms laden with books. She regarded him with wide, serious eyes.

‘No, thanks.’ She kept going.

Undeterred, he followed. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you home.’ He went to take the books off her and she flinched as though she’d been stung.

‘I said I can manage.’ Her green gaze stared at the ground, too afraid to look at him. But there was a catch to her voice that belied her assurance.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’m going this way anyway.’

She seemed to hesitate a moment. Then from nowhere a stampede of boys rushed past, knocking into her and sending her armful thumping to the ground. She stooped to gather the books, humiliation burning. The boys’ shouts faded into the distance.

Robbie knelt to help. ‘Jerks,’ he said.

He picked up one of the heavy tomes and flipped it over, scanning the spine. ‘You can’t be reading
all
these,’ he teased. When he passed them over he pretended not to notice the cut on her lip. Or the mottled grey bruise that wrapped itself round her delicate white wrist, visible when her sleeve pulled back.

The ghost of a smile. ‘I like stories,’ she said, brushing a lock of copper hair from her eyes. Getting to her feet, she gripped the books to her like armour.

They walked together for a while.

‘You don’t talk much,’ he observed.

She opened her mouth to think of an answer and he smoothly lifted the stack from her. Without it she looked defenceless, and folded and unfolded her arms as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, meeting his eye for the first time.

‘Doing what?’

‘Being nice to me.’ She couldn’t understand it. At seventeen Robbie Lewis was nearly three years older than her, clever and popular and handsome. His friends must have put him up to it—let the poor little orphan imagine for a second that she had a chance.

His expression was difficult to read. ‘What do you mean?’

Laura wasn’t stupid. Boys were only after one thing. She’d learned that from her own brother. Sometimes he brought a girl home after she’d gone to bed: she’d lie down in the darkness, listening to the filthy scrabble of rats and mice, and among them, below them, the weird frantic sounds coming from Lester’s room.

But if he didn’t go out it was worse. It meant he would stay with her, watching her sideways, and if he got drunk enough he would do that terrible thing and make her undress for bed in front of him. Just sitting there, not daring to touch, his lizard eyes taking in every inch of her body. She, racked with shame, would stand shivering, with each shaky breath fighting the instinct to cover herself. But she knew she could not: one time she had put a hand on that part between her legs and Lester had hit her across the face, so hard she couldn’t hear properly for a week. And recently he had developed a taste for that.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being nice,’ said Robbie.

Tears sprang to Laura’s eyes and she turned her head so he couldn’t see.

Robbie kept pace as she quickened her step. ‘Wait up a second, what’s the big hurry?’

‘Just leave me alone.’

‘Hey, hang on—’

Abruptly she stopped. ‘I’m not interested,’ she said primly, sticking her chin in the air.

‘In what?’

‘You know.’

Robbie frowned. ‘Not really.’

Laura was so unlike all the other girls at school, those catty girls he’d heard gossiping in the corridor, saying mean things about her old clothes and her messy hair. She was a thousand times more lovely than they’d ever be. And yet his urge was to protect her, to look after her. He’d seen her walking with her head bowed; rigid, like with each step she defied collapse. He’d seen the sadness in her eyes.

And he knew why. He knew her brother was a drunk, a bully. A month back his father had returned from a business trip and Lester Fallon had started a brawl in the local bar—Vincent had got caught up in it and come home with a black eye and a mouthful of blood. God only knew what he was doing to his little sister.

‘Well, anyway,’ she said. ‘You can forget it.’

Her defiance made him smile. Seeing this, she laughed a little. It was a clean, honest sound, he thought, straight as water.

They walked in silence and he kept trying to glimpse her. Her hair was the colour of autumn, a fire at the corners of his vision. Her eyes were green, but darker in recent months, and there was something resilient about her stare, a belief that refused to be crushed.

When they reached the trailer park she stopped. He didn’t want to let her go, not back to that trailer and whatever was waiting for her there. But he didn’t know what to say to stop her. This was bigger than he was.

‘Thanks,’ she said, lifting the books from him.

He fumbled for words, knowing whatever came out would be laced in pity. ‘You live here?’ he said at last.

Her gaze hardened. ‘Why? Not everyone can afford to live in a house like yours.’

Chastened, he went to apologise. Laura got there first.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘It’s not.’

A beat. ‘Yes, it is.’

She bent her head to the books and grazed the lip of one with hers. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Sure.’

There was a moment’s pause, before she gave him a brief, brave smile. It squeezed his heart. ‘See you at school.’

He watched her for a long while, picking her way across the scratched-out land towards her brother’s trailer.

Eventually she disappeared from sight.

‘If he touches her again,’ Robbie Lewis vowed, ‘God help me, I’ll kill him.’