Dirty Aristocrat: British Billionaire Bad Boy Romance (46 page)

Three days later I sit on the toilet seat and watch him immerse himself beneath the bubbles. When he pops up again he is wearing a hat of foam. He wipes the suds from his eyelids. So endearing it makes my heart beat faster. When he opens his eyes I am startled anew by how beautiful they are. I try not to stare at the taut muscles of his shoulders.

‘My mother wants to meet you.’

My eyes widen.

‘You’ll like her.’

‘It’s a bit early.’

A shadow passes his eyes. ‘It’s not too early, Lil. We are a very close family.’

‘I’m not ready, Jake. Anyway, look at the state of me. I can’t meet your mother like this.’

‘OK, I’ll take you when all your bruises have faded.’

I breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks, Jake.’

SEVENTEEN

Mara Eden

M
y firstborn comes to visit me, and the instant he walks through my door I know: there is a new woman in his life. It is there for all to see. The sparkle in his eyes, the faint flush on his cheekbones. And I am ecstatically happy. I am forty-nine and I want to see my first grandchild.

I never tell anyone, but my Jake is my private sorrow. From the time he was fifteen he has known nothing but responsibility and brutality. At fifteen he was held down and made to watch his father cut from ear to ear and given the choice by the men his gambler father had borrowed money from: work for us and pay off your father’s debts or watch your entire family die in the same way.

When he came home that day, the Jake I knew was already dead. There were no tears. No mourning. He set to work immediately and relentlessly. He would work all night, sleep for three hours and go back to work. It took him two years to pay off his father’s debts. I know he had to do a lot of bad things, but he did it for us, for me, Dominic, Shane, and for our little’un, Layla.

In time he made a lot of money, he bought me this beautiful house, the car I have, pays for my holidays, and he gives me a monthly allowance that I never seem to be able to spend all of. He himself lives in a mansion with a swimming pool, wears fancy clothes, owns fancy cars and has too many fancy women, but until yesterday I have never seen him happy.

‘Is she one of us?’ I ask.

‘No. But she’s beautiful, though,’ he replies. And there is such pride in his voice that I marvel at it.

‘Bring her to see me, then,’ I say.

After I tuck a basket of homemade jam and a Tupperware of his favorite Madeleine cakes into the well of his passenger seat, I wave him off, close my door and run to my altar. I go to give thanks to the Black Madonna. She is the patron saint of my family. For generations we have venerated her and she has given us visions. My grandmother, my mother, even me. She told me when my husband was going to be murdered: I was standing in prayer when I had a vision. I saw him raise his hand and apologize to me.

‘I’m sorry, Mara, but I have to leave.’

The next day he was dead.

With a smile I light a red candle and stand in front of the Madonna’s statue. But as I begin to pray I have such an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that my knees buckle and I fall to the floor. While I am sprawled on the floor the vision comes. I see a bullet rushing toward my Jake. And I see blood. It seeps quickly into his clothes. I lie on the floor stunned and biting the fist that I have jerked to my mouth.

You see, from the day Jake’s innocence was snatched away from him I have never known peace. Not even in sleep. The terror lies coiled like a snake in the deep, dark pit of my belly ready to rear its head at a moment’s notice. Its day has come. It stares at me with baleful eyes.

With a cry I race to my phone and call Queenie. She is my grandmother’s friend. A woman with a great gift. The spirits talk to her through the cards. I call her and I am weeping.

‘Come now,’ she says.

She lives in a caravan on a field. I get into my car and drive the twenty miles to her. I park my car at the edge of the field and walk quickly to her home. She opens the door in her dressing gown and invites me in. Her face is round, the eyebrows plucked clean and penciled with brown eyeliner. Underneath them are a pair of large black eyes with a rim of white between the pupil and the lower lid that gives her face the look of a victimized saint. Her mouth is small, the lips shriveled. On Brighton Pier she is known as Madame Q, a charlatan, and loony bin.

I climb the steps and enter her abode. It is spotlessly clean and the sun is shining in through the net curtains, but it is full of mysterious shadows. It reminds me of my grandmother’s caravan—same net curtain, same love of crystals, little painted porcelain figurines, and potted plants on the windowsill.

‘I’ll make some tea. Or would you like something stronger?’ she asks.

‘Tea,’ I say quickly.

She nods and puts a kettle on to boil.

‘Sit down, Mara. You’ll wear my carpet out,’ she says, pouring tea leaves into a teapot.

I stop pacing the tiny area and sit on a dainty sofa with embroidered, tasseled cushions. My leg shakes. It always does when I am nervous or frightened. It shook when my mother was ill, and it shook uncontrollably when Jake used to go out in the night to take care of ‘something’.

She pours boiling water into the teapot and, placing it on a tray that she has already set with dainty cups and saucers, a milk jug and a sugar bowl, carries it to me. She puts the tray down on the small table in front of me, sits back and looks at me with her large, soulful eyes.

‘We’ll let it sit for a moment, shall we?’

I nod gratefully. ‘I’m afraid for my son.’

‘Let’s see what the cards say.’

‘Yes. Please.’

She reaches under the table and takes out an old wooden box. It is carved with intricate patterns. She puts it on the floor next to her legs and takes the cards out. They have strange markings on the back that are almost obliterated with use, and yellowed dirty edges. She shuffles them lovingly in her gnarled hands—the arthritic knuckles are the hue of church candles. She hands the pack to me.

I take it with frightened hands. Many times in my life the cards have revealed true things about my life—some small, some vitally important, some painful.

‘Think of him,’ she instructs.

I shuffle the cards and think of Jake. Deliberately, I think of him looking happy. I think of him strong and vital. I don’t infect the cards with my own fear and worry.

‘Give them back to me when you are ready.’ Her voice is level and diagnostic, and as pitiless as an immigration officer or prison warden.

I shuffle the deck one more time and give the cards back to her.

She takes them and spreads them into a semicircle on the table. ‘The Black Madonna protects you. Let your cry come unto her,’ she says softly.

I make the sign of the cross over my chest.

‘Pick only one.’

I ignore the creeping sense of foreboding and choose a card.
The lovers
.

She glances at it with a carefully blank expression. ‘Pick another.’

I take the card that is second from the last on the left-hand side and hand it to her silently. My heart is thudding against my ribs. My hands are clasping and unclasping incessantly on my lap.
A diabhal.
The devil.

She looks at the card and raises her eyes appraisingly toward me.

‘One last card.’

I close my eyes and let my trembling hand hover over the semicircle. With a prayer in my heart I fish one out. I hand the card to her without looking at it, but I already know. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

She frowns at the cards. It’s a hot day but I feel the chill spread over my skin, making my hair stand on end. She lays the three cards down on the table. Slowly she strokes the card in the middle with her forefinger. Her nail is thick and yellow.

‘
An túr
,’ she says. The tower. She doesn’t look up at me. Finally, she raises her martyr’s eyes, her expression portentous, and speaks.

‘Beware the woman who is wounded, beautiful and ruthless. She has soot and death in her mouth.’

My mouth opens with horror at her terrible words.

Her black eyes flash, her voice is a shade fainter. ‘You can still pray to the Madonna for a miracle. The abyss may not come to pass.’ She gathers the cards with a snap. ‘Perhaps.’

There is a sign on the door that can’t be missed.

It reads:

Enter but at your own risk.

                        —Whodini

EIGHTEEN

Lily

T
hat morning Jake gets up early. There is something he must do at the office.

‘Unimportant, but necessary,’ he says when I ask him what.

It is too early for me to eat, but I sit and watch him wolf down three slices of toast thickly spread with butter and homemade marmalade that his mother bottles for him. I walk him to the front door, snake my arms around his neck and stand on tiptoe to kiss him and he lifts me up.

‘I’ll crumple your suit,’ I whisper in his ear.

‘Wrap your legs around me, woman,’ he growls.

I laugh and wrap my legs around his hips.

‘Have I told you today how beautiful you are?’

I tilt my head and pretend to think. ‘Let me see. Yes. Yes, you have.’

He looks into my eyes seriously. ‘You’re beautiful, Lily. Truly beautiful.’

‘Is everything OK?’ I ask him.

He smiles softly. ‘Yes, everything is just the way it should be.’

We kiss gently and then he leaves me.

I stand for a moment looking at the door. A small cold leaf of worry clings to my back
. Is he doing something dangerous today?
I go back to bed and lie down for a while, thinking. Why has he not told me where he is going?

By nine thirty a.m. I have showered, dressed and am closing the front door behind me. I walk to the bus stand down the road, and I sit on one of the red plastic seats and wait for the bus. It comes at nine fifty-two a.m.

I climb aboard, pay the bus driver, and take a seat upstairs. The bus takes me all the way to Leicester Square. I get off and walk up to Piccadilly Circus. It is full of tourists and I sit on the stone steps under the statue and look at them, with their maps and their cameras and their great enthusiasm.

Afterwards, I walk down Regent Street ambling in and out of shops. I try on a hat. When I look in the mirror I find my eyes huge and frightened. I turn away quickly. I flick through the hangers without real interest and my behavior earns me the attention of a security guard, who starts following me around. I leave that shop quickly.

I enter a shoe shop and after trying on about ten pairs I buy a pair. I am outside the shop when I realize I don’t even know what color the shoes are. By now it is one forty-five p.m. I go into a small café and order a salmon and cucumber sandwich, but I am unable to finish it. I pay my bill and set off toward the Embankment Bridge.

As I walk across the bridge I start to feel the first frisson of nervousness. It settles like lead in the pit of my stomach. I have blocked it out all this time, but the moment is here. It is time. I train my eyes not on the Tate Modern, but on St Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Eventually I come upon the giant black insect creature made of metal. Creepy and perfectly War of the Worlds.

I go through the front door of the Tate Modern and up the stairs. Down the corridor there is an exhibition by Marlene Dumas that I would like to see but I don’t go in there. Instead I pass into one of the smaller rooms where a man is sitting on a bench contemplating a collage called ‘Pandora’ by a new artist, Miranda Johnson.

The colors are bright and bold, but there is no difference between this painting and Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’. Both are violent and raw with suffering. To enter the painting is to enter pain. I let my eyes wander over it. There is an eye in the collage, a full pair of bright pink lips, and a flower. There are also words like bitch, suck, liar, arsehole, abuse, and on the very top, cursive writing that says,
You are invited
…