Prima Donna (60 page)

Pia stared at Tanner. His eyes were burning brightly with righteous indignation.

‘He can’t force you into anything, no matter what he says,’ Tanner said. ‘Because either way, this all ends tonight. He needed you to lose here so that La Scala took Ava
and he could step in with a counter-offer from the Royal. And it might well have worked too. But he didn’t factor in Tony . . .’

Will looked on, his brain frantically trying to make connections. Who the hell was Tony?

‘It doesn’t
matter
whether you win or lose now. You told me in Brazil that once you had redemption you might retire – or not. So the decision facing you now is not
where, but
if
, you dance. And you’ve got all the time in the world for that. Unlike him.’ He nodded his head casually towards Will. ‘Everleigh’s tired of waiting.
If you don’t sign by tonight, he’s pulling his investment. The Black Harbour fund will go under.’

‘You don’t know what you’re gabbling on about,’ Will sneered, scarcely able to believe that Tanner had cottoned on to his scheme. ‘High finance is above and beyond
the brainpower of a country boy like you,’ he bluffed.

‘You’re quite right. Thank heavens Mrs Bremar was able to fill in all the gaps for me,’ he said casually. ‘You know, you really ought to be careful what you say when your
tea’s being brought in.’

Pia’s hands flew up to her mouth and Will saw she was stifling a shriek of delight. She just loved that woman!

‘You won’t be laughing when she finds she can’t get another job this side of Dublin,’ Will managed.

‘On the contrary, I’ve decided to keep her on.’

Will stared at him, trying to guess his meaning. Only his accountants knew that the house had been seized.

‘You’ve what?’ His skin had turned grey.

‘I’ve bought Plumbridge back, thanks to Velasquez’s very generous patronage. You might recall there’s a clause in the contract that says the bank had to give me first
refusal if the house was sold on again within five years.’ Tanner smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s been four.’

There was a brusque knock on the door and Pavel came in.

‘I’ve been asked to check whether Mr Silk is in here,’ he said, looking at both Tanner and Will blankly – either would do as far as he was concerned. ‘The judges
are going back into the auditorium.’

Pia looked at Will, and felt her elation ebb away. Tanner’s revelations meant one thing was startlingly clear at least: her competition was over.

There was a long silence as she accepted her loss, and she saw the hope fade from Will’s eyes. His competition was over too.

‘Goodbye, Will,’ she said flatly.

Will’s cat-like eyes, always so sharp and sure, deadened. He straightened his jacket and walked past without another word. There really was nothing more to be said. No one had won.

‘And you too, Miss Soto,’ Pavel added. ‘They’re announcing the winners in five minutes. Everyone has to go back on stage.’

Pia looked at Tanner in panic. Her tutu was torn, her tiara broken.

‘But I can’t go back out like this,’ she said, aghast.

‘Yes, you can,’ he said, grabbing a red
Firebird
tutu that was hanging behind the door. ‘Wear that.’

‘But I didn’t wear it tonight,’ she panicked. There was no point in going out there anyway.

‘Nobody cares about what you’re wearing. They just want to see you,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘Now get changed. Your public awaits.’

She came out ninety seconds later, a small smile playing on her lips.

‘Still think its
carnivale
?’ she said archly, pushing a red feathered headdress into her hair as she fluttered past him. Tanner’s eyes tickled the length of her.

‘Bloody fantastic,’ he murmured, as she ran ahead of him, almost colliding with Tony as he hurtled round the corner.

‘Antonio!’ Pia exclaimed, brightening up instantly. ‘Great timing. They’re just doing the prize-giving. Come with us and then we’ll all go out for dinner
afterwards. How was Sophie?’

Tony nodded at Tanner, but he looked frantic. ‘She wasn’t there.’

‘Really?’ Pia replied. ‘Oh, well, don’t worry. She probably just got nobbled by the judges. We’ll catch her later.’

‘No,’ he said urgently. ‘I’ve checked everywhere. One of the security guards said he saw her leave right after the last performance.’

Pia frowned. ‘But that can’t be right. She’s got to stay till the prize-giving. She must be around.’

Tony shook his head. ‘She’s not. I know she’s not.’ He dug into his jeans pocket. ‘She’s gone here.’

He held out a Post-it. It had Sophie’s writing on it, in the same purple as she’d used to write the card earlier. ‘Tregov Klinik.’

‘Where did you find this?’

‘On her easel. Beneath the papers.’

‘Beneath . . . ?’ Pia murmured, remembering the call Sophie had taken the day of the second round and how it seemed to have disturbed her. She handed it back to him. ‘That call
really upset her,’ she mumbled. ‘She played it down but I could tell it had bothered her.’ She looked back at the address. ‘But why does she need to go to a clinic? Is she
sick?’

As the words came out, a jumble of images and memories flashed through her brain – the grey pallor, the exhaustion, off her customary coffee, this weird obsession about polystyrene cups. I
mean, polystyr— Her eyes widened. Sophie’s heightened sense of smell . . .

‘Oh my God! She’s pregnant!’ she cried.

‘I know,’ Tony said, looking anxiously at the Post-it, seeming to turn grey in front of her. ‘And I think she’s come here to have an abortion.’

Tony ran through the streets, trying to keep up with Pavel, who was surprisingly nimble and parting the sea of pedestrians in his path, like Moses. Pavel had known the address
instantly, it was only four blocks away, and Tony felt his throat burn as he tore through the air to get to Sophie. They careered to a halt outside a tall sand-coloured building with balconies
stepped all the way up. Pavel checked the lettering on the plastic sign before nodding to Tony. ‘This is it.’

They shook hands briefly and Tony bounded up the steps.

A severe-looking woman in glasses was sitting behind a curved reception desk, tapping into a computer.

‘May I help you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, please. I’m looking for the Tregov Klinik,’ he panted.

‘Third floor,’ the woman said, looking back down at her screen.

He ran towards the stairs. ‘Uh . . . we have lifts,’ she said, motioning in the opposite direction.

‘These are quicker, thanks,’ he said, sprinting up two at a time.

He rounded the corner on the third floor and came out into an open-plan waiting area. A bold blue carpet patterned with a yellow lattice covered the floors, and fluorescent lights hanging from
the plastic ceiling tiles buzzed overhead. There was no sign of Sophie.

Frantically, he scanned the area again. Maybe she’d gone to the loo . . . ‘Oh please, God!’ he prayed. ‘Don’t let me be too late.’ He couldn’t have
tracked her down all this way only to be ten minutes too late.

He saw a grey-haired man with a clipboard coming out of a side room. He ran over.

‘Please . . . I’m looking for Sophie O’Farrell,’ he said urgently. ‘Is she here?’

The man looked at him. ‘I’m sorry Mr . . . ?’

‘Byrne. Tony Byrne.’

‘I’m afraid our client list is strictly confidential.’

‘But I’m the father,’ Tony pleaded. ‘I have a right to be here. I have to see her.’

He scanned the room again, his line of sight curtailed by the rows of shut doors.

‘Sophie!’ he hollered. ‘Sophie!’

‘Please, sir,’ the doctor said nervously, glancing at one of the doors. It was enough for Tony. He darted over.

‘Sophie?’ he shouted, bursting in.

She was leaning, fully dressed, against the bed, her arms folded around her, her chin dropped down, like a lonely swan’s. She looked deathly pale and her eyes were red from crying.

‘Sophie! Oh God, Soph!’ he cried. ‘Don’t say you’ve done it.’

She stared at him, bewildered. She couldn’t work out what he was doing here, how he had found her . . . He put his arms round her, whispering into her hair.

‘Am I too late? Please tell me,’ he begged, clamping his hands over her ears and pleading into her eyes.

She shook her head.

‘Oh thank God,’ he said, burying his face in her hair, and beginning to cry with her. ‘Why did you disappear? Why didn’t you talk to me about it?’ he asked,
standing up straight.

‘I ruined it for us,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I forgot to take my pill the morning after our first night together. I got home the next morning and I have to hide them,
see, from my parents, and I just forgot ’cos I always take it before bed and I could only think about you, and then when I realized . . . we’ve only been together a few
months.’

‘So? It’s
us
, Sophie. You and me. We both know we’re forever.’

She cried harder at his confidence.

‘I panicked,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t deserve to have a baby.’

‘How can you even think that?’ Tony asked, aghast.

‘Because of . . . because of . . .’ she hiccuped.

‘When you were fifteen?’

She stopped. ‘How did you know?’ she whispered.

‘Esther told me. Don’t be mad – I made her. She told me what happened.’ He shrugged. ‘I can see why it would have been so difficult for you. Why you felt you had to
go.’

‘I had no choice. I couldn’t stay! It would have humiliated my father. How could he have remained in his post if everyone in the village knew I’d had an abortion? It would have
made him a laughing stock. It’s so traditional there, still . . .’ Her sobs grew deeper at the memory and he muffled her head in his chest. She clasped her arms around his waist,
gratefully. ‘I was too young. Barely fifteen. And Jerry . . . God, Jerry. He was going to stand by me, you know? He wanted to get married and settle down.’ She gave a joyless laugh.
‘I hadn’t even
started
my life by then but he was already trying to shackle me down with a kid a year and a pinny.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘I just knew there was more for me out there. That I had a life to live first.’ She looked up at him, her owlish eyes filling up. ‘I’m
disgusting, aren’t I? For putting my life before my baby’s?’ Her shoulders shook as the tears began to spill again. ‘I’m disgusting!’

Tony looked at her, horrified by her vehemence. ‘Stop it, Soph! Don’t talk like that! Of course you’re not disgusting. You were a child, for God’s sake. You’ve got
to forgive yourself.’

‘I can’t!’ she cried, shaking her head. ‘I’ve tried, really I have. After I had the abortion in London. I tried but I . . . I just couldn’t cope with what
I’d done. I had nightmares about it every night for years.’ She bit her lip, trying to keep the hysteria at bay. ‘Sleeping with you in the cottage was the first time I
didn’t
have the nightmares. But then, when I found out I was pregnant again, they came back and I realized . . . well, how could I choose one baby over another? How could I let one
baby die and the other live? What right do I have to any happiness after I did such a terrible thing?’ She started to shake and Tony hugged her tightly.

‘You were a child, Sophie. Anyone would understand. God knows, I wouldn’t have been able to become a parent at fifteen. I wouldn’t even have been capable last Christmas! I
spent my childhood so filled with rage and hate for my mother that I grew up just despising the idea of family. It was the absolute opposite of what I knew. I couldn’t imagine a time when I
would ever be free of those feelings, when I would ever
dare
to try to break that cycle and hope for anything good to come out of it.’

He raised her chin with his finger and stared into her eyes. ‘Not until I met you, anyway.’

Sophie swallowed. ‘But . . . but . . . you said . . .’

‘I know what I said. And I was wrong – about everything. About my father; but about my mother, most of all.’ He shook his head, the sediment of the past week’s
revelations still trying to settle. ‘She didn’t abandon me; she didn’t give me up for drugs. She died trying to save me . . . When I think of all the curses I threw at her memory
. . . I thought she was the worst mother in the world. Literally the worst . . .’ He swallowed and nodded sombrely, his own eyes wet. ‘But I found out last week that she died for me.
She died in Rio trying to find me and my sister.’

‘You’ve got a sister?’

His eyes widened as he remembered she didn’t know the final piece of the puzzle yet. ‘Yes. I thought she was dead but it turns out she’s been right in front of me, for
years.’

‘She has?’

‘It’s because of her that I found you actually.’ He stopped and considered. ‘Or is it the other way round?’

Sophie shook her head, baffled. ‘You’ve lost me.’

‘It’s Pia,’ he smiled. ‘She’s my sister.’

Sophie gasped and her hands flew to her mouth as the connections began to link up. She scrutinized his face – the one she adored and which she had recognized at a spiritual level that
first night in the pub. She matched up the Irish eyes, the caramel skin, and their cameo-perfect profiles. How could she not have seen it before?

‘She’s the one who told me where to find you. She’s worried sick about you.’ He shrugged. ‘And she really wants to be an aunty, you know.’

Sophie gave a small hysterical giggle. ‘Oh God! Pia, my baby’s aunt? Can you imagine a mini-her with the terrible twos? I’m not sure I can cope with her DNA in my
kids!’

Tony grinned and leant down to kiss her. ‘Tough.’

She sighed and looked up at him. ‘So we’re doing this, then? You, me and –’ she placed her hands over her tummy – ‘Bump?’

Tony nodded. She bit her lip anxiously. ‘But how am I going to tell my father? The abortion’s like the elephant in the room at home. He knows what I did – they all do –
but we don’t talk about it. How can I go back again and say I’m now having your baby
out of wedlock
? You don’t know my father,’ she said, shaking her fists in the
air. ‘Hellfire and brimstones!’

‘Actually, he already knows,’ Tony shrugged. ‘I went over to your house after Esther told me what happened – and I told him why you’d run away again.’