‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Cate. ‘Chanel make clothes up to a size twenty.’
They almost laughed.
‘Catey, what should I do?’ sighed Serena, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder, all the bluster and confidence of the movie star gone now.
‘Let’s get an early night,’ said Cate. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning.’
Serena couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning on the lumpy bed in Cate’s spare room, her dilemma would simply not go away. In the rare minutes she did close her eyes and fall into slumber, her dreams were full of crocodiles and helterskelters and other things that Serena recognized from women’s magazines as pure anxiety dreams.
Serena gave up. Sitting up in the bed, she lit a cigarette, then immediately stubbed it out. She had to find a way out of this mess. There was no question that now was the wrong time to have a baby: it was professional suicide. But the thought of an abortion; she didn’t even want the word in her head. She was surprised how strongly she felt. She’d always regarded abortion as just another one of those handy surgical procedures that a modern woman could keep in her arsenal, just like Botox or lipo. But now … she shook her head. Maybe it was something to do with losing her mother so young that made the prospect of termination seem so wrong. But there was another reason.
She stroked her stomach, the taut, bronzed skin still flat, still smooth, and a smile began to form on her lips. Serena’s baby was Michael’s baby. As Michael had no children, that made the baby Michael’s first-born and therefore heir to a billion-dollar fortune. If they had a son, it would also mean he was directly in line for the Huntsford house and title. Their baby would have wealth, position and status. So would she. So would Michael. It was a win-win situation, definitely worth taking a year off from film sets and photo-shoots. She snuggled back down in the pillows, still hugging her belly, a sleepy fog pulling her eyelids closed. There were no more anxiety dreams that night.
Jack Kidman was already in the British Airways executive lounge by the time Venetia had got to Heathrow, sipping a bottle of mineral water and flicking distractedly through his Financial Times. As Venetia approached, he looked up and smiled, a gesture Venetia found somehow disconcerting. She had been abroad on countless occasions on design jobs for clients: hotels in Dubai, country clubs in Florida, second homes in Tuscany; but this felt different, more intimate. Jonathon never looked so casual, so relaxed, she thought, her eyes slowly appraising Jack. In a marl-grey polo shirt, dark blue jeans, brown leather loafers, a suggestion of stubble on his jaw, he looked like a wealthy businessman about to take a holiday. Damn, he was good-looking, she thought, and going over to meet him with her small overnight bag felt illicit.
Stop it, she chided herself. This was not a dirty weekend. It was an overnight business trip. It hadn’t, however, stopped her lying to Jonathon when he had quizzed her about it the previous evening.
‘So who’s going?’ her husband had asked coolly over supper.
‘Myself, the client, and Nina one of our stylists.’
Even though his interest had seemed decidedly feigned and Jonathon’s question had been made without any trace of suspicion, why had she lied about Nina coming on the trip? What had possessed her? It was a harmless visit to discuss the project. She shook her head to dismiss it from her mind and strode over to say hello.
‘Good morning. I see you’re travelling lighter than I am,’ smiled Jack, looking down to a small brown holdall by his foot.
‘I’ve checked my four cases and my shoe trunks in already,’ she deadpanned.
‘Shoe trunk?’
‘It’s a joke.’
‘Ah, the ice queen melteth,’ he grinned.
‘Are you saying I don’t have a sense of humour?’ It came out in a slightly peevish tone that Venetia instantly regretted. Jack was, after all, a client.
‘I don’t know you well enough. Yet …’ he smiled.
She could feel herself flush, just as she had ever since she was a child, when the slightest embarrassment would set off a scarlet rash that crawled from her cleavage all the way up to her neck.
‘Anyway. This is all my work stuff,’ she smiled, holding up a black leather case. ‘I’ve got some things for you to look at already.’
‘I look forward to it,’ he grinned flirtatiously. The corners of his dark green eyes creased up, sparkling mischievously, ‘but there’ll be plenty of time for that later at the hotel. I’ve checked us into the Casa Della Flora.’
There it goes again, she thought, feeling the flush flare up once more. She twisted the band on her wedding finger nervously. She was completely on edge. She’d hardly exchanged a hundred words with the man, so why did it feel as if they were having an affair?
Seven hours later – as long as it’d take to get to New York, grumbled Venetia – the silver four-by-four that Jack had hired from the airport pulled up outside his finca in Andalusia. A huge dilapidated farmhouse hanging on the side of a sun-blasted hill, with a small Andalusian village, nestling like tiny white cubes of sugar beneath them, Venetia hadn’t seen a more splendidly isolated spot in years. The main house had old shutters creaking off arched windows, framed by clouds of wisteria vines climbing its whitewashed walls. The terracotta tiled roof rippled in the sun like tide marks on the sand, and outbuildings surrounded a vast courtyard overrun by wild lavender and lined with huge, cracked earthenware pots. It was breathtaking in its raw simplicity and, from Venetia’s point of view, bubbling over with potential.
‘So, this is it,’ said Jack with undisguised pride. ‘I know you’re probably knackered, but did you mind coming here first, rather than to the hotel? It’s just that it’s four o’clock already. I wanted you to see it before the sun started to go down.’
She clambered out of the car, her Tod’s loafers scuffing on the dirt track that rose up in a cloud of saffron dust. The sun beat so hard on her forehead that she had to take her neck scarf off to mop up beads of sweat.
‘No. It’s fine. I want to see it in as much natural light as possible,’ she said, striding towards the building, her eye absorbing every detail as she proceeded. A lot of the structural work had already been done, but it was still a shell. The walls were roughly plastered, the floors were just a series of boards, but the old tower, complete with ancient bell had been saved, much of the original woodwork salvaged, and the brick walls re-pointed back to old glories. Even the air smelt sweetly of jasmine.
She got out her Nikon digital camera and began snapping away, taking in the ceilings where mahogany rustic beams stretched across the soaring roof. A huge olive press loomed impressively in the atrium. Venetia walked out of a pair of unrestored French windows onto a vast terrace that overlooked the sun-scorched valley. Daunting, beautiful, timeless. Looking at that view she could have been a Spaghetti-western heroine or an Andalusian gypsy. This was the kind of place in which you could reinvent yourself, she thought, letting her imagination run wild. Jonathon would never decamp to somewhere like this, she decided suddenly, sadly. But moving to somewhere like this wasn’t about money – it was about spirit, it was about adventure.
Hearing the slow advance of footsteps behind her, she turned round.
‘So what do you think?’
‘I love it,’ she said softly, her eyes fixed on the digital camera screen.
She walked back into the house, her mind full of thoughts about how to breathe new life into this stunning house.
‘Follow me.’
As they walked from room to room, Venetia’s eyes focused on the building, the floor, the light; talking to Jack but not looking at him.
‘How often do you intend to be here?’ she asked when they reached a huge space she knew immediately should be the main reception room.
‘I