The Santiago Sisters (20 page)

‘You’re good,’ said Brandon, ‘seriously good.’

The studio called back and summoned her for an interview. She dressed sharp and spoke sharper, unwilling to let this chance slip through her fingers. Photography had been the one constant to draw her through the past decade, since Diego had died. Her papa had given her this gift and she had held it tight to her heart, unaware the whole time that it would become the thing that set her free. SilverLine Studios was super-league. It shot for the big guns—
Tatler, Elle, Glamour, InStyle
—and its owner Ryan Xiao was one of the hottest properties in America. Calida would start as a runner and welcomed the graft, the climb to the top that her sister had bypassed so regally because she was spoiled and stubborn and cared about no one but herself.

Within the week, the job was hers, and so was the elusive prize she had dreamed of since arriving in America: a work visa. The instant she turned up at SilverLine, she knew it was where she was destined to be. The place was a hub of energy. Rails of clothes were gathered along one wall, an efficiently dressed woman flicking through them and scribbling down notes. Bulb-lined mirrors appeared in a bank alongside crates of make-up, powders and lipsticks, shadows and airbrushes, pots and pastels. A collection of leather seats was positioned around a glass table, topped with neat cubes of glossy magazines; nearby a small fridge was filled with miniature bottles of Perrier and Dom Perignon, and a tray of untouched sandwiches.

Beyond the vibrant mess of preparation rolled a pure-white wasteland: the blank stage awaiting its model. The camera—a huge, handsome thing on a tripod—stood on the line between the two, like a giant punctuation mark.

‘Calida Santiago?’ Ryan Xiao, the most renowned photographer in New York, for bitchiness as well as brilliance, heaped a pile of fabrics in her arms. ‘I’ll say this once and I won’t say it again, so listen up and listen good: I don’t give a rat’s if it’s your first day, you’ll haul ass at my pace, in my way, you’ll do everything I damn well tell you without so much as an answer-back or you’re out on the street before your first paycheck and I’m not kidding. Winona and Mags are here. Tell them they look stunning, they’ve never looked better, do not under any circumstances offer them breakfast, then get them into these and
only
ask Vicki for help if you
absolutely have to
because let me tell you she’s doing my fucking head in today and I can’t take another gripe about her workload. Do whatever the models require and do it with a smile on your face: I haven’t time to crawl up their asses myself and I’ve already got enough shit on my nose to last ten lifetimes. Then go get Starbucks for everyone. Got it?’

Ryan strode back to the set.

‘Got it,’ Calida answered. Over the next few hours she moved between tasks with skill, enthusiasm, and drive. She sensed how to be useful, to have faith in her initiative and earn the trust to be given the same job next time. Her only glitch came when she was introduced to the models. Winona Glazer and Mags Lalique were two of the most in-demand cover queens of the decade: instantly she knew their faces, seen so often gazing out from newsstands across the city and billboards on Times Square. She was awed. She had never been in close proximity to such raw, unfettered beauty.

Is this what Tess Geddes is like? Is she a goddess, just like them
? As Calida positioned reflectors, angled lighting, tweaked garments and cleared the scene for the next storm of images, she conceded the unbridgeable chasm between an
assistant and a star, a minion and a princess, a plain-Jane and a knockout.

A sister left behind and another one taken …

Bullshit. I can be just as good as her. Better.

‘Beautiful!’ Ryan encouraged, as the models posed in an effortless sequence of gorgeousness, their bodies impeccably tanned and toned, the clothes hanging off them like a second skin. Over the coming weeks, Calida learned how adept Ryan was at making the women feel like a million dollars, only to wait until the door slammed behind them at the end of the day and then he’d demand a drink and a smoke and tell anyone who’d listen what an awful bunch of bitches populated the fashion industry.

‘Did you know Winona
dared
criticise her headshots?’ Ryan whined to her on Friday night. ‘Some of the best work I’ve ever shot and she says her cheeks look fat? Lose some fucking weight off your cheeks then! Isn’t that what surgery’s for?’

Slowly but surely, Calida gained her boss’s confidence. Whatever the task, from booking runway royalty to fetching his linen Armani suit from the dry-cleaner’s, she made herself indispensable. Ryan wasn’t one to dole out praise, but refraining from insult was pretty much the same thing. She had been at SilverLine three months when she suggested to Ryan partway through a sitting that they shoot their model from above. Brett Bennett, dashingly handsome but painfully insecure (as she was learning all models were), was anxious about the ‘extra chin’ he had acquired on a pool party shoot in Iceland at which he had drunk one too many Brennivín. Combined with the shadow contrasts she recommended, and the addition of a bunched-up shirt held to Brett’s naked, sweat-gleaming torso, they had a win. Brett was thrilled.

Ryan didn’t comment on it until the end of the day, after everyone had left.

‘You were good,’ he said. ‘You have an eye.’

Back at the Williamsburg house, Lucy was euphoric when she heard of his approval. ‘So, go on, then,’ she urged, ‘spill the beans! What’s it like mixing with the A-list? Are they hideous? I’ve heard Mags is a witch.’ As Calida was forming a response, Lucy barrelled on. ‘Ooh! You know that six degrees of separation thing? By now you’ve got to be less than that away from, oh, I don’t know …’ her eyes fell to the table and an edition of
Vanity Fair,
which she leafed through to find the first acceptable celebrity, ‘Tom Cruise! Or Anne Hathaway—or, look, Tess Geddes!’

Calida tensed. ‘I guess so,’ she replied.

‘Did you know she’s getting married?’

The room went cold. ‘What?’

Lucy tapped the page. ‘Tess is getting married to Steven.’ She sighed. ‘She’ll make
such
a beautiful bride. Hey, they should hire you to photograph it!’

Somehow Calida managed to raise a smile. What she wanted to do was scream and scream until her throat bled. Seeing the pictures, she wanted to tear them up, see Tess Geddes’ smile ripped corner to corner, her perfect face slashed in two. But what had she expected? Steven Krakowski was one of the richest men in the world, and there was Teresita, just as her twin had planned, her arm in his, the perfect couple.

Cheat,
Calida thought.

Well, she had done it. Teresita had done it.
I’m going to make it, Calida. I hope I never see you or this dying shit-hole ever again.
And there it was in black and white: her sister’s wedding day. Calida pictured Tess Geddes in her gleaming LA mansion, occupying a world in which everything was brilliant
and bold, and the only thing bigger than her fleet of cars and the size of her bank account was her black soul.

Calida didn’t intend to stay six degrees separated.
Bad luck, bitch. Looks like you’ll be seeing me sooner than you thought.
Six degrees was about to become one.

Barbados

S
imone Geddes knew what made a spectacular wedding—not a good one, not a great one, but a remarkable one that would be talked about in every gossip column on the planet. Despite her misgivings, she’d been adamant that her daughter should marry in style … and what style it turned out to be. Gold sand swept to the water’s edge, where azure waves rolled idly to shore. White linen chairs ran in neat rows down the aisle, pastel-pink ribbons tied to their backs, fluttering in the warm breeze. A grass-capped pagoda, strung with tiny white roses, housed the minister, who appeared less like a man of God and more like an Abercrombie catalogue model. Swarms of press set up equipment on the exclusive seven-star Sundown terrace, ready to record each second this momentous day had to offer. Geddes and Krakowski: a match made in heaven.

Or so the story went. Simone wouldn’t have picked this alliance in a million fucking years. She hoped Tess knew what the hell she was getting herself into. On the surface, Steven had it all; on paper, he was perfect. But beneath … Well, she could only pray the stories weren’t true. Or that he had ceased to indulge in extra-curricular activities. Perhaps Tess already knew, in which case it was none of her business. But even
if her beloved daughter was being kept in the dark, Simone knew her accusations would only be thrown back at her. She was hardly Wife of the Year, was she?

Guests were starting to arrive, that mingling hum of civilised conversation that Simone associated with elite dinner parties and wine tastings in the Dordogne. But she was too wired to embark on a meet and greet and instead set off to check on the Gateau de Résistance, a six-tiered creation spiked with edible pearls and sugar-spun diamonds. No sooner had she ducked into the cake’s personal refrigerator, a space the size of a Harvey Nicks changing room, than she heard a familiar voice from behind.

‘You’ve been avoiding me.’

Simone turned. The door closed with a tantalising hush and there stood Lysander like some handsome assassin, dark gaze roaming her body, hungry as a fox in a chicken coop. Her resolve crumbled like rocks into the sea.
Fuck it.
She had tried to resist her stepson. When he’d finally moved out of the mansion she had thought that might mark the end of the spell, a temptation now easier to defy … but it was impossible. Each time Brian was out she grappled for the phone like a drug addict, wild-eyed and frothing. Their combats were wordless—he showed up, they screwed right there in the hall, at the bottom of the stairs, an urgent, animal, breathless fusion.

In a dreadful, delicious way he reminded her of the boy who had got her pregnant. She knew she should hate that man, but she couldn’t: her grandparents had decided he was a dropout, a degenerate, and Simone never had the chance to inform him. Each time she screwed Lysander she was taking back a piece of the frightened fifteen-year-old who had bent to her guardians’ command. She was rescuing the lust she’d felt, the abandon, the rebellion, in that heady recklessness of youth.

The Chilcotts had descended yesterday. She and Lysander hadn’t had a chance to be alone—until now. Knowing Brian was yards away turned her on even more.

‘We mustn’t—’ Simone objected. She backed into a caged stand, inside which the understudy wedding cake stood in immaculate isolation, in case of any mishaps.

Something told Simone there was about to be a mishap.

Lysander’s kiss hit her with delectable force, his tongue filling her mouth and his hands kneading her breasts. Together they stumbled into the chill. Her ass hit a freezer compartment and the purring buzz stung between her legs, making her throb.

‘I’ve got to have you,’ Lysander growled. ‘I’ve got to fuck you.’

Simone hitched her skirt up—a scrupulously elegant Valentino creation for the discerning mother of the bride: none of those frumpy-pudding ensembles so many women seemed to favour, thank you very much—and parted her legs. Lysander was unbuckling. No matter how many times she saw his powerful cock, such a contrast to her husband’s flagging member, it still had the ability to shock. His balls were swollen to bursting and she reached down to collect them in her hand. He groaned.

‘Lysander, I …’ Simone closed her eyes, lost for words as his dick ploughed into her like a battering ram. She collapsed back on the fridge. Lysander began to pump, her Valentino blazer cast aside and the peach-silk blouse beneath straining to contain her bullet-hard nipples. He tore through the buttons with deft fingers and ducked his head, drawing her nipples into his mouth. Simone cradled his head as his kisses travelled north, arriving at her neck, her collar, her earlobe, which he bit ever so gently. Sparks whizzed from her groin to the tips of her toes. Why couldn’t Brian make her feel like this? He never had. These days it was like living with a monk. She was
convinced her husband had started sleeping with prostitutes, but so what? It didn’t bother her—at least it got him off her back, literally, at the end of a long day.

The papers were full of the marriage crisis, but let them speculate.

They would never reach the truth.

Lysander is your stepchild … your family … What are you doing
? The facts should have put her off. But they didn’t. If anything, they sharpened her hunger.

Simone cried out, louder than she should. Beneath the zinging coolers they could hear guests circulating, the light tinkle of harp music as people took their seats for the ceremony. Lysander fucked expertly, transporting them both to the brink.

‘Oh, yes! Yes! Do it to me, yes!’

‘Shh …’ he hissed in her ear. ‘
Stay quiet, Mummy.
’

Jesus
! It was too much. Simone squealed as his hard-on drove deeper, her juices spilling all over him, so wet he could hardly keep inside. She loved to watch his cock severing her, the tumescent pink of its tip like a one-eyed sea creature, or the crown of an exotic flower, captured in a botanical drawing.

‘Make me come,’ she moaned. ‘I can’t take any more!’

‘Shh!’ He clamped a hand over her mouth, at odds with the rampant pulse he sustained between her legs. ‘Shut up, you dirty bitch, or I’ll have to punish you.’

Punish me
! Simone went to yell—but, before she could, a slab of something sticky and sweet landed on her tongue, filling her cheeks. She almost choked on it, on the shock, then, as Lysander’s fingers chased it up, dipping between her lips as if it was the tenderest cavity he had ever explored, her tongue came alive and she tasted the familiar, sugary nectar of forbidden fruit. Moist sponge oozed creamy butter icing in her mouth and then Lysander was cramming in more, never once
breaking the relentless piston of his cock as he reached into the cage to gouge out yet more of the backup cake. He wrecked it, tore it inside out, flinging hunks of vanilla loaf so it dripped and leached and seeped between his knuckles and looked as if a wild animal had been at it. Lysander brought the cake to her, rubbing icing across her breasts and then sucking it off, piling more and more into her mouth to strangle her cries, but the more he squidged the crazier she became. Sponge sprayed from Simone’s mouth as her muffled screams grew savage and fraught, and, when Lysander licked his fingers and attended the insanely swollen bud above where his body was locked with hers, she shuddered hot and cold, hot and cold, and everything went black then white then black again as rapture struck and her cunt was filled with sun and rain then quiet.

Lysander ejaculated, crumpling into her arms.

‘Oh, Lysander …’ Simone kept saying it; his name was all she could say.

They lay there a while, skins thick and slick with crumbs and slashes of mown-down cake, hair matted with gluey icing, until reality crept back in. It was a critical situation. Lysander tackled the cake mess while at lightning speed Simone cleaned her hair and face, corrected her outfit in the Miele’s reflection, and had to admit that, despite the slightly rumpled chignon and the skew-whiff button at the top of her blouse, the recently-fucked flush gave her an appealing glow that all the
laboratoires
in Paris could spend a century working on and still not come up with.

She exited without him, rounding the hotel terrace and entering a pit of press.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ Brian simpered; how this man had spawned such an Adonis was beyond her. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’

Not hard enough,
Simone thought. Then again, when had Brian ever been?

‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ she replied tartly. ‘Now, let’s have a wedding.’

Tess stepped out of the wings and took Brian Chilcott’s arm. He was puffed up next to her like a stuffed quail. At the pagoda, beyond the ranks of guests, Steven waited, beaming, his handsome face alight. Harp music plucked and the sun bore down.

Admiring murmurs followed her down the aisle. Her Vera Wang scoop-back gown pooled to the floor like a rink of milk and in her arms she clutched a bouquet of jasmine and orchids, studded with miniature gemstones. Mia followed in a pretty satin silhouette that Tess had fought for, because Simone wanted her bridesmaid to wear an awful sack-like design: ‘But that’s what they’re for, darling—to make
you
look good!’ Knowing Mia was there offered comfort, for so many of the faces grinning up at her she had never seen before in her life. Simone had held final control over the invitations and her army of industry cronies outnumbered Tess’s contacts ten to one.

She noticed him because his head was the only one not turned.

Alex. A scruff of black hair, facing front, and those familiar square-set shoulders; Simone had insisted she invite him—’You know a Dalton? Christ alive, Tess, are you aware who his father is?’ But she knew what he would think: that she was marrying for status. That this location was extravagant and her dress was tacky; that nobody here really knew her, the real her, so the whole thing was as fake as socialite Bette Danziger’s spray tan. Well, if that’s what he thought he could forget it.

Love was a trap only fools fell into. She was no fool. She had a plan.

‘Darling,’ Steven crooned when she reached his side, ‘you look incredible.’

Brian slunk off to the front pew and Mia arranged her train. When she took Tess’s bouquet, she squeezed Tess’s hand and the gesture made tears rush to her eyes.

Twenty minutes later, she was married to Steven Krakowski.

‘Congratulations.’ He caught her at the champagne fountain in between photo appointments. If Steven summoned her one more time like a dog to its master’s heel, or told her to, ‘Slow down, darling,’ she would scream. Hence the alcohol.

‘Hi.’ Tess swigged the remainder of her glass.

‘You look great.’

It was the least embroidered comment on her appearance she had received, yet the most sincere. ‘Thanks.’ She waited for his caveat, and sure enough it came.

‘Aren’t brides meant to smile all day?’

‘I am smiling.’

‘Not right now.’

‘Probably because I’m talking to you.’

Alex Dalton grinned. His eyes were warm, a rich, soulful brown. She felt at a disadvantage to his composure. ‘I guess you disapprove of all this,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I can tell.’

Alex adjusted his tie. ‘As long as you’re happy, that’s what counts.’

‘Of course I’m happy.’

‘Good. I’d hate you not to be.’

‘That’s very generous of you. But I’m not an idiot, Alex.’

‘I never said you were.’

‘You might as well have done.’ All of a sudden the emotion of the day rushed at her and she wanted to lash out—not against him, necessarily, but against Steven, Simone, herself.
I’m not happy with any man. I never will be. I’m a freak.

Alex made things worse. ‘I didn’t think you went in for this scene.’

‘What?’

‘Hollywood. This crowd. Your husband.’

Remember why you’re doing this. Steven’s a good man. In five years’ time, pretty, rich boys like Alex Dalton will be shining your fucking shoes. So suck it up.

‘You’re hardly living in a cardboard box at Union Station.’

‘Maybe not—but I would if it was with the right person.’

Tess snorted, ungainly and messy but the realest she had been all day. Alex had dumped Victoria’s Secret and moved on to Winona Glazer, another lingerie superstar. What right did he have to talk about ‘this crowd’, as if he was immune?

What do you care
? Tess asked herself.
Why do you even know
? But she did know that despite his censorious pontifications he was just as shallow as the rest of them.

Then she remembered his mother, who’d died. Those sympathies on Facebook she’d seen ages ago, when they were kids. The father who couldn’t give a shit; Alex’s attempts to be a writer and how he’d made fun of himself; the jacket he’d lent her and never picked up; the messages he’d sent her over the years. It complicated her image of him. None of it fitted with what she’d decided, so she pushed those thoughts away.

‘It’s like you’ve forgotten the person you are,’ Alex went on. Tess blinked, unable to believe the words were coming out of his mouth: he was saying this
on her wedding day
?
‘You can’t deny where you came from. It’s inside you. It’s part of you.’

She was stunned. ‘How dare you talk to me about what I’ve been through?’

‘The hair isn’t you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your hair, pulled back like that—it doesn’t look like you.’

Who the hell did he think he was
?

Mia bowled into them. ‘Hello!’ She nudged Alex. ‘You know she’s married now, don’t you?’

‘Give it up, Mia,’ said Alex.

Tess found her tongue. She couldn’t look at him. She was too angry with him.

‘When did you two meet?’ she blurted.

‘On the flight over,’ said Mia, linking her arm through Alex’s. ‘Alex shared his cinnamon brownie with me. I’d say that makes us friends, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s a damn sight more than we are,’ said Tess, slamming down her glass and crossing to meet Steven, who was calling her for a family shot with people who weren’t her family, and never would be. That was what stung. Alex Dalton was right.