The Santiago Sisters (9 page)

Tess saw Monsieur Géroux in the pews, his expression open with happy surprise. The piano struck up a lively tune. The song began.

The first verse went without a hitch. The teachers beamed through all Tess’s carefully constructed sentences, praising Monsieur’s delightful teaching style and prowess on the instruments, and Emily mumbled alongside her, finally falling into the tune. Then something strange happened. As they hit verse two, Tess’s voice gradually receded. She turned to stare at Emily, a practised mask of disbelief on her face, as Emily continued to belt out the words, her cheeks flaming with the effort of her botched—but still, lamentably, understandable—pronunciation, and when she realised she was singing out of kilter with Tess she sang even louder to make up for it.

‘Emily …!’

An elfin blonde named Claudette squeaked from the ranks,
as Emily’s clique, including Fifi, turned ashen, along with the
professeurs.
Emily, thinking the shout had been some show of support, continued to sing as clear as a bell, her voice ringing out above the music, before suddenly, at Madame Aubert’s signal, the piano stopped. Emily’s voice travelled alone to the end of the refrain, and then fizzled out.

The congregation was staring, appalled. A few nervous laughs rose up from the chapel. Madame Aubert rushed over, red and flustered. Without a word she snatched Emily by the elbow and led her off the stage. Tess followed. On the way down they passed Monsieur Géroux, whose eyes were trained on the floor. The tips of his ears were bright red. Tess could sense the gaze of every girl boring into her.

‘
Vous horrible fille!
’ Madame Aubert lambasted Emily when they reached the courtyard. ‘What were you thinking? Was that some kind of joke?
Allez au bureau de la directrice, immédiatement
! Until then, consider yourself a month in detention!’

‘But—’

‘No buts, young lady.’

‘I don’t—’ Emily turned to Tess, but Tess gave her nothing. ‘But she … I—’

‘Go.
Now!’

When Emily had scurried off, Tess said, ‘I’m sorry about that, Madame. I don’t know what got into her. It must have been some prank she and Fifi thought up. I mean,’ she blushed, ‘not to wrongly implicate anyone, it’s just I saw them talking outside and giggling over something. Emily was fine in rehearsal.’

Madame Aubert, who hadn’t been sure whether or not to be cross with Tess, thought a moment then shook her head. ‘Don’t worry,
ma chérie,
it wasn’t your fault.’

It was only later, when Emily Chilcott returned to her dorm and dusted off her long-neglected French dictionary, that she realised what she, alone, had been singing.

‘
Monsieur, we thank you for looking up our skirts and letting us suck your big clarinet … Monsieur, we thank you for playing on our G-strings …’

From that day on, among staff, Tess Geddes remained the perfect angel. Among her class, she became something of a legend, having admitted to a carefully selected band of corridor gossips that she, in fact, had been responsible for Emily’s humiliation. It was little wonder that wherever she went in the school, that month and every month after, she was followed by a tentative wave of admiration: the new girl who had taken on the year’s tyrant—and won.

Emily, meanwhile, was reviled by her tutors and made fun of by her peers, for falling for such an obvious trap. Furious beyond the ability to speak, she immediately requested a room transfer and took her clique with her. She scowled and scowled and hated and bitched, but she never dared cross Tess Geddes again.

Needless to say, Tess considered it a job well done.

The horror of the annual swimming gala blasted into the summer term with all its attendant anxieties: fear of getting undressed, fear of changing-room snarkiness, fear of coming last in every race. As always, Teresa attempted to do the whole undressing thing entirely behind her towel. It took some skill, but she had it perfected. Her own body seemed so much … womanlier than everyone else’s. That was the only way to describe it. Her breasts were large and round, and capped by dark buds. Meanwhile Emily and Fifi stood in open splendour,
showing off their perfect breasts with compact, pink nipples, and the neat flash of the hair between their legs. Why weren’t Tess’s pink like theirs? And why were her hips pear-shaped, instead of streamlined?

‘Oh my God!’ came Emily’s taunting shriek, all of a sudden. ‘Look at her!’

For a second Tess thought she was the one being addressed, before remembering that Emily didn’t go there any more.

Instead their target was a short, dumpy girl by the showers whose name she didn’t know. The girl wore braces. Her hair was dark and she had a fringe.

There followed a burst of shocked whispers. ‘Oh no! I can’t believe it! That’s gross! How
embarrassing.
Ugh, that’s disgusting!’

The girl was blushing from head to toe, confused, blinking like a rabbit behind her glasses. Tess didn’t know what they were talking about either.

‘Sat in some red paint, have you?’ Emily giggled. ‘That is
rancid,
Ferraris. Someone get her a nappy!’ More giggling. More revolted gasps.

Quickly, the girl patted her behind. Tess had never seen the colour drain so quickly from someone’s face. The girl vanished into the nearest loo cubicle and slammed and locked the door. Emily was quick to follow, her fist battering the door.

‘Come out, Little Red Riding Hood! We know you’re in there!’

Tess understood. Weirdly, she had her period, too; it had to be true what they said about girls getting in sync with each other. She was about to intervene and tell Emily to stop being such a poisonous cow when a terrible crash came from inside the cubicle, the sound of the girl’s head hitting the tiled floor, right before she passed out.

Tess went up to the medical ward before afternoon prep, where the
infirmière
showed her to Mia Ferraris’s room. ‘Hi,’ she said, hovering at the door. ‘I’m Tess.’

The girl with the fringe smiled weakly. ‘Hi.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘OK. I just fainted, that’s all.’ She looked mortified.

Tess felt sorry for her. The whole school would know by now, and doubtless Emily had embroidered the tale to make it extra dramatic and gruesome. Mia would be paranoid every time she walked down the corridor. It had been a nasty thing to do.

Tess set down a supper tray. ‘Want me to sit with you for a while?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘That’s OK.’

Mia struggled up on the pillows and picked dejectedly at the fish cake. The sauce on it was congealing. ‘Forget about Emily,’ said Tess. ‘She’s a cow.’

Mia didn’t reply.

‘I hate having mine …’ offered Tess, ‘if it’s any consolation.’ Mia looked up. ‘Not the fish cake,’ Tess said, and smiled a little. Mia smiled back. ‘But that too.’

Mia forced a forkful into her mouth. ‘It’s horrible.’

‘I know!’

‘It tastes like a fish I’ve been carrying around in my pocket all week.’

‘You carry fish in your pocket?’

‘No,’ said Mia. ‘I don’t know why I said that. It just popped into my head.’

Tess laughed. She wondered why she had never seen Mia
Ferraris around before. Probably because Mia was one of those people who blended into a crowd, knocked into obscurity by the glossy bling of Emily Chilcott and her crew.

Mia’s eyes were lovely, Tess thought; green but flecked with gold. Kind eyes.

‘I thought what you did in chapel was cool, by the way,’ said Mia.

Tess raised an eyebrow. ‘Monsieur Géroux?’

‘Yeah! It was so funny.’

Tess caught her eye and they exchanged a naughty grin.

‘Did you see the look on his face?’ she asked.

‘
Playing on our G-strings,
ha ha ha!’ The explosion of Mia’s happy laugh made Tess join in too, and she realised it was a long time since she’d done that.

‘Why do you think Emily has it in for me?’ Mia said.

‘She only made fun of you to get people to stop picking on her,’ Tess replied. ‘That’s how it is with girls like Emily. She feeds on other people’s misfortune. She tried with me and it didn’t work, so now she’s on to someone else.’

‘And that someone’s me,’ uttered Mia miserably.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tess. ‘I can handle Emily.’

‘You know, I was always afraid to talk to you,’ Mia said, ‘because I thought you were too pretty to bother with me. Before you started, Emily was the prettiest girl in school. Next to you she’s about as feminine as Claudette Perault’s
brother
!’

Tess didn’t know what to say. She thought Mia was funny. And maybe she was on to something. Was that why Emily reviled her, because she felt threatened? Was that why Calida hated her? Her sister had always strived to keep her down, to put her back in her place, to discourage her from exploring her potential. In essence, she was just like Emily.
They’re as bad as each other. I don’t need either of them.

Tess swallowed the lump in her throat. She forced herself to brighten.

‘Are you going to eat that?’ She prodded Mia’s chocolate tart.

Mia smiled and offered her a spoon. They shared it.

London

S
imone had known that Sainte-Marthe would do her good. When she had chosen the exclusive French school, she’d thought:
This is what will set my daughter apart.

By the time Tess became ready to embrace the power and prowess of a movie career, she would have ten times the culture and sophistication of every other actress on the block. Of course the press was in rapture over the broadcast. Nobody seemed sure about how the adoption had unfolded, but any lingering queries were quickly extinguished by the magnetism of Simone’s addition. Tess was a raving beauty: on the cusp of womanhood, her age was riveting. Why hadn’t Simone selected a younger child? Because, said Simone, she wanted to help those who were so often overlooked.

That was bullshit. Nobody except her knew the real reason.

Just as everything was looking as close to perfect as could be, at the start of the summer holidays, someone fucked up. And what a fuck-up it was.

Had Simone not been wearing her sea courgette face pack when she found the letter, her features might have betrayed some iota of the shock and horror that washed over her like a bucket of sick. As it was, she calmly knelt to the doormat,
flicked through the pile of mail her PA had dropped, and released a dainty gasp.

‘Vera!’ she squawked. The maid came running. ‘Tell me what this says,’ she thrust the ream of pages into Vera’s hands, ‘word for word—leave
nothing
out.’

Vera did as she was told. Simone clutched the banister as each phrase assaulted her.
‘Teresita, please come home. I’m sorry for what happened between us and I want to make things right. I love you and I miss you … I need you back here …’

‘Jesus Christ!’ screeched Simone after Vera had concluded her translation. She grabbed the letter: it was dated months ago, must have been sitting in Michelle Horner’s in-tray all that time like a silent assassin. She ripped it up, then, deciding that wasn’t enough, stormed into Brian’s office and fed it into the shredder.

Immediately she got her manager on the phone. She was aware of Calida Santiago’s countless notes to Michelle’s office, all of which had been destroyed on receipt. Everyone there had strict instructions
never
to allow such a missive to arrive on Simone’s doorstep: the last thing she needed was for Tess to start believing there was a long-lost twin out there pining for her return. Who had disobeyed the rules? Who had been idiotic enough to forward it to the house? Supposing Tess had seen it?

‘I don’t know how this happened,’ Michelle said, uncharacteristically flustered. ‘I hired a new assistant, she’s learning the ropes, perhaps she—’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Sarah.’

‘Sarah what?’

‘Sarah Quentin.’

‘Fire her,’ Simone spat. ‘Do you realise that Tess could have
been here? Thank God she’s out with Lucie today.’ Lucie was Simone’s personal shopper.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t cut it,’ said Simone crisply. She banged the phone down.

The courgette facemask was a waste of fucking time. So much for a de-stress compress! She scrubbed it off. Action was the only route. She stormed up to Tess’s bedroom and started rifling through her belongings. Then …
A-ha!

There it was: her daughter’s precious diary. Opening it, she scanned the Spanish and shouted to Vera, thrusting it into her hands. ‘Tess is back at four,’ she drilled. ‘I want you to read the whole damn thing, do you understand? Then give me what I need: something only Tess would know. Something entirely personal to her.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Use your goddamn imagination. Report to me in an hour. If you fail, you can consider yourself fired.’

Simone wanted to fire fucking everybody. She wondered whom else she could fire today. She’d like to fire Brian. Fat lot of good he was! And ‘fat’ really was the word. Right now he was out lunching with his producer buddies. When was he going to run another project? It had been years. Brian’s name was flagging, while hers was on the rise. She could see her husband now, tossing back mounds of caviar and quaffing a vat of red wine as he loosened the notch on his belt. He was so fat!

Simone had to relocate to the Japanese garden in order to calm down.

It’s OK.
The letter was a blip, and easily rectifiable. They would forge a response to that Argentinian hillbilly, copying out Tess’s handwriting and relying on Vera for the words, and that would spell the end of it. Goodbye, long-lost sister.

On the rim of the koi pond, she trailed her hand through the emerald water. It looked pale and ghostly, as if it didn’t belong to her. Fish darted through lush green weeds, a flicker of red and a glimmer of white. Simone closed her eyes.

In a flash, she was back there: Surrey, 1966.

Her grandparents’ house, dark and austere … The sharp stench of cabbage … Looming clocks that ticked mournfully in dimly lit corners. Floors echoed and boards creaked. A mausoleum, and not just in bricks and mortar: this was a couple in mourning. Their only child, Simone’s mother, had been snatched in labour, and they had been charged with raising the girl, a killer in their eyes. They never forgave her the crime of her birth. Each time they saw her, they saw the woman God had swapped her for.

As Simone blossomed into her teens, the comparison became more striking.

At fifteen, she had fallen pregnant—a stupid mistake. She tried to conceal it, hid her sickness and concealed her bump … But, months in, by which time it was too late, her grandparents found out. They were enraged. They consigned Simone to the attic, kept her prisoner. In the end, she bore the child there. Her grandmother laid towels on the wooden floor. The agony had been extreme. It was pain beyond pain.

Afterwards, exhausted and half dead, Simone had held her son and kissed his tiny head. Not for long. Her grandparents were unwilling to face the scandal. The baby was prised from her arms, whisked away and put up for adoption. Simone had held her son for mere moments, but those moments she would remember for the rest of her life. Days later they told her she had done the right thing, and now they could sweep it under the carpet, forget all about it. That baby was best off without her …

Later, when Simone finally escaped her grandparents’
clutches, she found she could not get pregnant. Initially it had been a lottery, an amusing game—how many men could she sleep with before it eventually happened? But then the doctor told her. The trauma of her childbirth had dried her up inside. It had left her barren.
Hostile.

That was it for her. Simone buried herself in her acting career, and eventually in Brian. She had hoped that Emily and Lysander might fill the void, but they didn’t. Simone wanted her own child, just like the one she had been forced to surrender.

When it came to it, she could not face a baby again. Or a boy …

And so here was Tess. After it all, didn’t Simone deserve her second shot?

She was giving another child up over her dead body. Not again. Never again.

She found Lysander in the basement gym. ‘Fuck me,’ she ordered. ‘Now. Do it hard.’

Simone needed it—the thrill, the release, the reminder that she was in control. She hated him and she wanted him; she despised him and she desired him.

Lysander was topless, his shorts damp with exertion. He replaced the weights, stood from the pull-down and wiped a towel over his glistening torso.

‘Don’t mess with me, Lysander,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Who’s messing?’

‘You’re making me wait. I’m not waiting. Do it now. Fuck me.’

Lysander’s handsome face fell into a satisfied grin. He
was used to their spontaneous liaisons, and it was always on his stepmother’s terms. She was a horny bitch and he was a motherfucker—literally. The wrongness of it made it so right.

Roughly, Lysander pushed her down on to the sit-up bench. She faced away from him, her legs either side of the leather, waiting. He lifted her skirt.

‘Come on,’ Simone instructed, ‘I need you. I need your big, fat, hard cock. Fuck me harder than you’ve ever fucked me before.’

She was so wet she thought she might slip off the bench. Lysander tore down her knickers. Without preamble, three fingers entered her from behind. She slid on to his wrist, the gym silent apart from the husk of their breathing and the warm sucking sound of her body joined with his. ‘Fuck, yes,’ she snarled. In the mirror she clocked his dark, concentrated face as he kneaded her to climax. Only at the point where she began to feel like a cow with a farmer’s arm up its backside did she instruct him to produce his erection. Boy, was it huge. Lysander’s dick sprang from his shorts.

‘Make it hurt,’ she commanded. ‘And slap me. Slap me till I scream!’

Her stepson didn’t have to work long for that. Plunging into her in one triumphant stroke, Simone released a yodelling sound from deep in her throat.

‘Do it!’ she cried. ‘Yes, yes, harder—! Come on, is that all you’ve got?’

Lysander grabbed her hips and drove her ferociously against his root, his balls slapping the neatly waxed fuzz between her legs. He pulled her hair and smacked her arse until a patch of pink began to flower there. ‘You like that?’ he rasped.

‘No, it’s fucking terrible. Fuck me harder.’

He slammed deeper, hotter, faster, her pussy drenched around him.

‘Get your tits out,’ grunted Lysander, who was partial to tits.

Simone managed to unbutton her blouse. Lysander yanked down her bra, revealing one breast. His gaze went syrupy at the sight and he caressed the pouch, still perky despite her age. She arched beneath his touch, lithe as a cat.

‘You know what’s going to make me come,’ she moaned, on the brink of ecstasy. ‘Make it happen, you dirty fucking bastard. Nail me there.’

He didn’t need to be told twice. Obediently, Lysander coursed down to that rim of skin, fingers still soaking from the honey pot. He eased his index finger inside, then his thumb, feeling her tight passage loosen around him.

‘Whatever you say …’ he murmured, ‘…
Mummy
.’

Simone cried out.

Wow, she must be pissed at something. The only time Lysander had gained rear entry was last winter, after his dad had backed the SG1 Range Rover into the front-drive ornamental fountain. Marvelling at the bulging tip of his cock, Lysander poised it against the knot of her arsehole and then, like a knife, sank in.

‘Oh my God, yes,’ sighed Simone, as they fell into rhythm.

This was what she needed. She needed to hurt, to be punished—to be a bad girl and a wicked wife. Nobody told Simone Geddes how to behave.

She would do whatever and whomever she wanted. She’d earned her right.