The Santiago Sisters (12 page)

‘Goodbye, Calida.’ The door slammed.

Calida saw her sister again just before Christmas 2002.

She had finished eating with Cristian and his family and made her excuses for bed. The children were next door with the TV on. The Ramoses’ television wasn’t the sort they had owned on the ranch. This one was huge and in colour, with dozens of channels. Calida was passing through when suddenly, there it was—a flash of red, a delectable smile; an impossible glimmer, like a butterfly almost caught then gone.

‘Wait.’ The children, confused, stopped the remote.

Simone Geddes assailed her first, a brittle smile locked in place for the cameras. It was as if Calida had seen the actress yesterday, no detail lost, that same ruthless, serene expression, polished beyond humanity. Simone was attending a film premiere in London, swathed in diamonds and a velvet dress the colour of midnight.

And then the butterfly:
Teresita.

Calida gripped the back of a chair. The breath dried in her throat and a cool ribbon spooled down her neck. The siren onscreen bewitched her—her sister and a stranger. She wanted to reach in and pluck her from this fantasy, to dig and dig until she found the girl she had lost—but, thousands of miles across
the ocean and an infinite distance beyond, she understood, finally, why Teresita didn’t want to return.

Her twin shone. That was the only word for it. She had entered paradise. Her black hair had grown into liquid sable, piled high on top of her head. Calida knew that head: she had kissed it good night and smoothed its brow; she had pulled that hair when she was mad and held a fistful in her sleep when she was afraid. Emeralds the size of plums dripped from Teresita’s ears. Her gown was red and pooled to the floor.

Simone did the talking, her arm held proprietorially round Teresita’s waist. Teresita just stood there, and smiled and smiled. Why shouldn’t she? She had it all.

Calida bolted upstairs. She lay on her bed, listening to the air as it filled her lungs: Teresita, Daniel, the world that had exploded in a thousand showering lights.

Cristian’s wife knocked on the door. She couldn’t bring herself to answer it.

Catching her image in the glass, she surveyed her tatty clothes, her bitten nails and her earth-smeared skin. Never had she felt so plain. All the while she had been pining, Teresita had been out there, living a stolen life and basking in her fortune.

When had the sword fallen? When had they come apart? When had it all gone wrong? She had thought it was Daniel, but saw now he’d been merely the catalyst. When Teresita was an infant, squirming like a kitten, fighting free; when she was five and broke out of Calida’s arms to run alone across the prairie; when they went riding together and her sister, strong and wild as the horses, galloped ahead without a backward glance? Calida had taken for granted that they would always be part of each other, sewn into each other’s lives, inseparable. She had been wrong.

Tess Geddes was a pitiless creature.

Ambitious. Cruel. Nakedly unkind.

Bitch,
Calida thought, and with the word came a rush of unexpected heat, like fire rushing through a window. She said it again, this time out loud.

It tasted good.

Her anger came apart. In dismantling it, she took the useful bits and hid them, like treasure. Determination. Grit. The indomitable heart of the wronged.

Selfish bitch. You think you’ve ruined me.

Guess what? I’m only just beginning.

In the morning, Calida said goodbye to Cristian and his family. At the station she knew without hesitation where she was heading, and bought her fare without difficulty. She slept soundly on the coach, dreaming of what was to come.

Teresita had made it the easy way, cheating her pass into wealth and success. Calida intended to match her dollar for dollar—the difference was that she would work for it. And when she had, when she was equally as rich and renowned as her twin, she would look Tess Geddes hard in the eye and demand to be recognised.

I’m your worst nightmare
.

In the gloom of the carriage, Calida smiled.

I’m your dark horse. And I’m coming for you.

St Tropez

‘I
’ve missed you so much!’

Tess arrived at the Port Grimaud villa just as Mia Ferraris stepped out to greet her. The friends embraced and an assistant took Tess’s bags. The waterside retreat was bright and cool, an open kitchen skewered by an ornate spiral that rose to three upper floors, and, at the far end, where a spill of Côte d’Azur sunlight washed in, a forty-foot sailing yacht was tethered in the marina as casually as a car parked on a drive.

Mia’s shoulders were burned and there was a livid strip of pink at her waist. ‘Ugh, I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying all week for an even tan, you know how I have to rotisserie myself or else I miss a bit? Then I fell asleep on one side.’

‘It’s her own fault,’ came a woman’s voice, floating downstairs. ‘I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time in the sun,
chérie,
it isn’t good for you.’

‘Bonjour,
Madame Ferraris,’ said Tess. She had met Béatrice and her husband Anton at the Sainte-Marthe open day. All the parents had been invited—strange that she should include Simone and Brian in that bracket, but what else were they?—as the students prepared to move into one of Paris’s
Grandes Écoles.
This seemed a
grande
waste of time
given Tess’s impending assignation with LA, and, as far as she was concerned, to hell with the rest of her education. By now she was frantic to reach the big league: Hollywood. Movies. Rich, powerful billionaires … Simone called every day to inform her of meetings being set up, power lunches being booked in, and a meticulously selected troupe of agents already waiting in the wings. Whenever Tess returned to London she was flaunted at some glittering event, while Emily Chilcott looked on with an acid glare. Emily’s envy was a delectable bonus. Brian had sent his daughter to Sainte-Marthe to become a doctor or a lawyer—but that wasn’t what Emily wanted. Emily wanted what Tess had … only Emily couldn’t have it.

‘
You think you’ve got what it takes,
huh?’ Emily hissed. ‘
Dream
on
.’

Tess stayed quiet. She knew she was ready—everyone else could bite. She didn’t plan to become just any actress, oh no: she planned to become the most talked-about, magnificent actress of her generation.
That’ll show them.
She only wished Julia and Calida were alive to see it, tortured by guilt, wishing they’d never done what they had. How much had she been worth, she wondered—a thousand, a million, a billion, more? Whatever, she would earn ten times that amount. A hundred times.

‘Call me Béatrice, please!’ Béatrice smiled. ‘None of this Madame, it makes me feel ancient. How are your mother and father?’

‘Ils sont bien.’

‘We should have invited them out here …
La prochaine fois.’

Tess didn’t like the sound of this reunion one bit. At the school open day, once Simone had finished griping about
Concorde’s imminent closure (‘I suppose I shall be taking the Boeing bus along with the hoi-polloi!’), she had slyly murmured that Béatrice was a ‘hippy’, and that she shouldn’t be wearing Lanvin because it clung to her ‘motherly shape’. Just because Béatrice had a different allure—a natural one that didn’t appear as if she had been hung out on the washing line for three days by her ears—it didn’t make her any less attractive.
‘Peut-être,’
Tess said. ‘Maybe.’

Mia handed her a beer. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s hit the beach!’

The vacation was as enchanting as Mia had promised. The girls spent their days reading and sunbathing, taking the dinghy out to nearby coves, and wandering idly through the old town to pick up bric-a-brac. Tess ate like a queen: fuzzy pink peaches for breakfast, baguette with chocolate spread for lunch, then pizza at midnight.

‘I’ll permit this holiday so long as you
promise
not to put on weight,’ Simone had dictated before she’d left. ‘I’ve got Maximilian Grey-Garner III interested in representation and I guarantee you now he will
not
take on a walrus.’

The idea of Maximilian Grey-Garner III was at once terrifying and fabulous (although including him in the same phrase as ‘walrus’ would have a lasting and troubling effect). With a name like that, he had to be big league. Tess couldn’t wait to impress him; to use him, his people, use whomever she had to, to climb to the top.

On her final weekend, Béatrice and Anton sailed the yacht down the coast to moor at St Tropez. Tess and Mia sat on the bow, their legs dangling over the edge. They each sipped a glass of chilled rosé as the yacht slapped up and down on the
waves, feeling giggly as they compared tans. Tess had gone right off alcohol following puke-gate at the
danse d’éntrée
but was now in full recovery.

Before lunch they swam in the sparkling sea. Mia dived to look for fish. The snorkel bunched her hair into a muffin-top while squishing her top lip out. She made silly kissy faces while Tess laughed so much that she struggled to stay afloat.

‘Time to eat, you two,’ called Béatrice from the stern, her kaftan fluttering.

Anton detached the inflatable from the back of the boat and piloted it to shore. The beach shuddered closer in the hazy midday heat, a strip of gold peppered with flickering white parasols, beneath which neat-suited waiters hurried with piled-high plates of lobster and mussels. They took a table by the water and ordered
jambon cru
and melon,
steak-frites
and salad, and bottles of wine and Badoit. Tess was stuffed.

‘Why don’t you girls walk into port?’ suggested Anton, as they debated the possibility of swimming after such a big meal. So the girls set off for the marina. St Tropez was a hive, crammed with shops and bars and holidaymakers posing in designer beachwear. The quay was stage to an unbelievable parade of gleaming super-yachts, monsters of the sea with elevated sun decks and upholstered patio furniture. Tess thought:
One day, I’ll buy one of these. I’ll buy ten.
On one, a three-tiered giant named
Le Grand Mystère,
a woman in a gold bikini was reclining on a velvet chaise.

‘Oh, shit.’ Tess stopped, digging an elbow in Mia’s ribs.

‘Ow!’

‘Do you see who it is?’

Mia squinted. Joining the gold-bikinied woman were two girls: one with an elegant corn-blonde topknot, the other boasting a fiery mane. ‘Emily and Fifi!’

Tess yanked her behind the nearest tree—but it was too late. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ Emily sang. ‘Don’t think you can hide, Mia Ferraris, that tree isn’t nearly wide enough.’

‘She is
such
a bitch.’ Tess balled a fist. ‘I swear to God I’ll—’

‘Ignore it,’ said Mia, pulling her back. They heard a weakly chiding response from the gold-bikinied woman, whom they surmised to be Fifi’s mother.

‘Are these your friends from school, darling?’ the woman enquired, removing enormous Prada sunglasses and beckoning them over. ‘Come join us, do!’

As Tess climbed aboard
Le Grand Mystère,
Mia trailing reluctantly behind, the woman went to greet them. At the same time, Fifi cried out: ‘Oh my God,
don’t
stand up,
Maman
! I can see, like,
all
your rolls of fat when you stand up.’

‘Sorry,
ma petite fleur
.’ The woman shrank back down.

‘I told you not to get that bikini. You look like a whale in it.’

The woman chuckled, rolling her eyes. ‘Darling, behave …’

‘I suppose you’ll be in good company now that Mia’s with us. Good job there are life rafts on this thing, otherwise we’d be underwater!’

Emily snorted a burst of unkind laughter, while Fifi’s mother tutted: ‘The way you youngsters speak to each other these days …’

‘What are you doing here?’ Tess asked Emily.

‘Fi invited me.’ Emily folded her arms. ‘It’s fucking dead at home.’

‘We always come when Papa needs a rest,’ put in Fifi. ‘He’s in town right now, screwing everything in sight. Right,
Maman?’

Maman
’s face cracked like sheet ice. ‘Don’t be absurd, sweetheart.’

‘I wanted to bring Claudette, too,’ Fifi said, ‘but my stingy bastard parents wouldn’t let me. Thank God for the party over at Plage d’Aqua tonight, hey, Em?’

‘There’s a party?’ said Tess.

‘You’d hardly fit in,’ sniped Emily. ‘This is the big league. Not like you deserve to know, but rumour has it Alex Dalton’s in town.’

Maman
couldn’t help but stir. ‘Alex Dalton!’ she trilled.

‘Shut up,
Maman
,’ said Fifi. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself.’

‘I met him,’ said Tess. She practically heard Emily’s jaw drop. Next to her, Mia couldn’t contain her gasp. What was the deal? He was only a waiter.

‘Nice try, loser,’ Emily sneered. ‘Like,
nobody’s
met Alex Dalton.’

‘I have. I met him in Paris, at the dance.’

Emily’s expression tightened. Everyone knew the
danse d’éntrée
was a sore point for Sainte-Marthe’s golden girl because she had wound up kissing a boy with no thumbs and locking herself in the portable loos for the rest of the night, sobbing.

‘I don’t know what you’re getting so excited about,’ said Tess. ‘He was waiting tables—just seemed like an ordinary guy to me.’

The relief on Emily’s face was palpable. ‘Well, you can bet
your
Alex Dalton was
not
the AD I’m talking about.
The
Alex Dalton is heir to, like, the biggest oil company in America? His dad’s Richard Dalton? Fuck, you must have been living under a rock. Alex is the ultimate bachelor. And
I’m
planning to bag him.’

‘Em can bag any guy she wants,’ said Fifi loyally.

‘That’s right, darling,’ said
Maman.
‘Just like I bagged your father.’

‘Er—it’s nothing like you actually,
Maman
? For starters, you’re old and ugly.’

Maman
giggled, loving the joke. ‘So you girls will come,
non
?
’

‘Oh, we—’ said Mia, at the same time as Emily spluttered, ‘Over my dead—’ and Tess smiled sweetly and accepted with a, ‘Yes, we’d love to.’

Plage d’Aqua was the realm of the Beautiful People. The club comprised a wicker canopy over a doughnut-shaped bar, in the centre of which a team of impossibly attractive cocktailmakers rattled metal shuttles and tossed bottles of tequila high into the air. Soft white sand coasted down to the Med, fading to cobalt in the dusk. Some of the glamorous clientele had come directly from their loungers, clad as they were in beach-come-evening-attire, an impression only the seriously moneyed could pull off.

‘Wow,’ said Mia, as she helped herself to a drink. ‘See who’s playing!’

Thumping beats emanated from down the shore. ‘Who?’ asked Tess.

‘Felix Bazinet, the DJ—I’m obsessed with him. He’s
so
hot.’

‘I’ve never heard of him. Want to say hi?’

‘We can’t!’ choked Mia.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know, we just … we can’t! He’s famous!’

Tess grabbed her hand. As they approached Felix’s booth, she saw that he was tall and dark with an appealing rash of stubble. Her tummy did a flip in time with the music, but with
fear, not excitement.
Get a grip,
she told herself.
You’ve got to do it sooner or later. Tonight’s perfect. He’s perfect.
She had to be the last girl in her year to lose her virginity—not that anyone apart from Mia knew. Felix would be the ideal rehearsal. She had to do it before Hollywood and the men she truly wanted to impress.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I’m Tess—and this is Mia.’ Felix liked her confidence—she could tell. Knocking back her drink, she decided alcohol was the way to go.

In the end, they wound up hanging round the DJ booth like groupies. Every so often, between sets, Felix glanced Tess’s way and shot a lopsided grin.

‘Did you see that?’ Mia elbowed her. There was no jealousy with Mia—if Felix was interested in either of them it was considered a win. ‘He’s totally into you!’

‘Maybe.’

‘OhmyGodhejustlookedoveragain.’ She spun round. ‘Do you think this is it?’

‘What?’

‘You
know …’

Tess swigged back the last of her glass and didn’t answer the question.

‘Another?’ she asked instead. Mia nodded.

Alone, she padded across the sand. Lights strewn around the bar liquefied her vision and she stumbled on the uneven beach.
Sober up or they won’t serve you.

She was waiting in line when someone said from behind: ‘Hello, Pirate.’

To her surprise, Alex Dalton appeared next to her. He was wearing a white T-shirt and his skin was tanned. It made specks of blond appear in his eyebrows.

‘I thought you were never drinking again?’ he teased. He spoke to her in English, and now she could hear his American twang.

‘I lied,’ she said. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I come out every summer.’

Tess was about to strike back with ‘On a waiter’s salary?’ when she became aware of something strange happening in her peripheral. Every girl was gazing soupy-eyed at Alex, whispering in groups and biting their lips. An aura of space surrounded him, as if people were afraid to come too close. And there, sure enough, was Emily Chilcott, wearing a barely-there skirt and looking as if she’d swallowed a wasp.

You can bet
your
Alex Dalton was
not
the AD I’m talking about …

It made sense. Tess looked at him and said: ‘You’re not a waiter.’

‘You’re not a pirate.’

She wanted to bat back a smart response but nothing came. His conceited handsomeness left her at a loss for words, and she hated admitting he was handsome, because right now it was in that irritating way of a friend’s older brother who liked to constantly remind you that you were nothing more than a mildly entertaining kid.

It occurred to her that Alex was exactly the sort of guy she should go for. Rich beyond measure, good-looking, heir to a massive fortune. But, after that first meeting, and it made her want to wither and die whenever she thought of it, she could never contemplate it: she’d given far too much of herself away. Besides, where did he get off being such a smug bastard? One look in his eye and she couldn’t stand him.