‘Michael Sarkis the hotel guy?’ Cate lifted an eyebrow.
‘What’s that look for?’ Serena stomped away towards the boathouse as Venetia caught up with Cate.
‘What’s wrong now?’ asked Venetia, linking arms with her sister. ‘It’s so sad. She looks in so much pain.’
‘Pain?’ smiled Camilla cynically. ‘Fear, more like. She needs Tom and she knows it.’
‘You say that,’ said Cate with a frown, ‘but she’s just off for some secret chat with Michael Sarkis.’
Camilla looked worried. ‘She doesn’t want to get involved with the likes of him. He’s semi-criminal from what I’ve heard. Rumours of arms dealing and all sorts.’
All three girls looked at each other. ‘You know what she’s like.’
They did.
Serena had reached the boathouse – a small half-timbered structure on the far side of the Huntsford Lake. She opened the door with a creak, pushed a cobweb away with her hand and looked around tentatively, scared of mice or spiders. It was eerily quiet inside, but the soft eggshell paint of the interior and the tattered padded wicker chairs overlooking the water gave it a sense of calm.
She brushed some dust off the window seat and sat down, dialling the number that Janey had given her. Her fingernails stabbed at the buttons of the mobile – she was angry at Cate’s reaction to the name Michael Sarkis. Totally competitive, Serena assumed everyone was that way and, as much as she loved them, she was convinced her sisters didn’t want her to shin any higher up the greasy social pole.
She stared out at the lake, shimmering dark silver in front of her as the phone rang out. Her thoughts drifted to Tom and how she wanted to hurt him for making her feel so foolish, so humiliated.
The voice was male and businesslike but immediately softened when Serena announced herself.
‘Serena. How are you, my darling?’ he purred playfully. ‘I saw the pictures in Le Monde. I have no idea how they got pictures on La Mamounia. There must have been a long-lens photographer at the dock.’
Secretly pleased that her story had gone international, Serena still adopted a wounded tone. ‘It’s fine,’ she sighed, in a voice that indicated things were far from fine. ‘But thank you so much for the lift to London. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to just disappear after everything that happened. Not that I can actually return home. I’ve had to come to my father’s place.’
‘I know,’ said Michael firmly, ‘which is why I’m calling. I know you must have a hundred places you can escape to from the paparazzi, but I think my villa in Mustique would be perfect. It’s very, very private.’
Serena’s heart fluttered. She’d heard he had one of the most impressive houses on the island – bigger than Tommy Hilfiger’s, prettier than Princess Margaret’s old villa …
‘Does that sound any good?’
Serena paused, trying not to sound too excited. ‘It sounds lovely.’
‘That’s good. I want to offer it to you for as long as you need. Go, take a friend, relax, have a few spa treatments. You might even enjoy it.’
‘Are you sure?’ she breathed flirtatiously.
‘Of course I’m sure. It will be a pleasure. My secretary will call you tomorrow with further arrangements. Ciao, Serena.’
The line went dead with a click and Serena flopped back on the cushions. Thinking of Tom, her mouth tightened into a sour scowl and then, a second later, broke into a broad, victorious smile. She ran out of the boathouse, as fast as her gumboots would take her, skipping playfully as she approached her sisters.
‘Right then,’ she announced, pulling her arms tightly around her poncho as she felt her hangover kicking in. ‘Who fancies going to Mustique?’
Venetia and Jonathon von Bismarck’s Kensington Park Gardens home was the sort of huge Palladian villa that passers-by would look at, wondering who lived there. But inside the premises, its owners looked totally unaware of their good fortune. The mood was quiet, oppressive, the uncomfortable silence only disturbed by the rustling of Jonathon’s Financial Times. Taking delicate sips of the freshly pressed apple juice that their Polish housekeeper Christina had made, Venetia looked at her husband with both sadness and resentment. She was used to the man of the household being a cold and detached entity. As a little girl, days would go by when the only contact she would have with Daddy was when she crept into his study for a stilted goodnight, hoping against hope that he’d shout at her for some infringement of his arbitrary rules. At least it was attention. But now she was living with another man, once again in the same house, but so far apart they might as well have been living in different cities. And they say you end up marrying your father, thought Venetia.
‘When do we have to leave then?’ said Jonathon finally, folding his paper closed.
‘If you’re going to come, you should at least come with good grace,’ said his wife, pouring a cup of dark Colombian coffee from the cafetiere.
Jonathon looked up sharply. One of London’s most successful hedge-fund managers, he wasn’t used to being told what to do. Fully dressed for work in his Kilgour navy suit, his gold cufflinks winking from under the long jacket sleeves, he looked at his wife in her expensive cream silk dressing gown and snorted irritably.
‘I object because you don’t even seem to be trying to get ready,’ he responded tartly. ‘You know I’m in a hurry this morning. I’ve got back-to-back meetings all afternoon and, frankly, I have better things to be doing than sitting here with you.’
Venetia went behind his chair to wrap her arms around him, kissing the back of his neck gently. ‘Don’t be like that, darling,’ she said softly. ‘We don’t have to be there until ten and, really, it shouldn’t take long.’
He shook her off and pushed his chair back noisily across the terracotta floor, snatching up his mobile phone from the table.
‘Are you sure I have to go?’ he asked coldly, one ear fixed to his mobile. ‘How about I get Gavin to drop you off on the way to my office?’
Venetia felt the familiar rush of hot tears prickling behind her eyes. She was feeling terribly vulnerable these days, and the slightest criticism or offhandedness from Jonathon seemed to set her off.
‘You have to come. I need you,’ she whispered.
‘You need me?’ The corners of his mouth turned upwards slightly. Jonathon craved control and he was enjoying this minute of power over his wife. ‘Very well. Fine. Well, hurry up, get dressed then.’
She watched him stalk into the drawing room. When he had disappeared, she rested her forehead on her arms. She didn’t know why she was so upset. She was used to the cold, frosty interchanges between them, his long absences from the house, the lack of support, the total disregard for her feelings. It wasn’t so much that the honeymoon period was over after eighteen months of marriage: if she was honest it had never really begun. She had never felt that bond, that excitement, the closeness she had shared with Luke Bainbridge, her photographer boyfriend of five years, who had left her abruptly shortly before she met Jonathon. After Luke had slipped out of her life like a shadow, she had felt desperate for someone to protect and look after her. And in the pit of despair and loneliness, Jonathon had come along, introduced to her by Oswald, of all people. And he had sort of fitted the bill. He was handsome, almost beautiful, she admitted, thinking of his fine-boned features and the blond hair curling over his shirt collar. But he was no companion. She might be married, but these days she felt more fragile, more isolated than ever.
She