Once she’d got past the initial shock, she’d known at once that her mother was the culprit—that it wasn’t some kind of mistake. She’d hated that she’d known, and she’d hated the nausea that went with that knowing, but she’d known even so. It was not the first time Chantelle had “borrowed” money from Angel, nor even the first “accident”, but it was the first time she’d let herself get this carried away.
“I’ve just received a shocking bill from a credit card account I never opened,” she’d snapped down the phone when her mother had answered in her usual breezy, careless manner, as if all was right with her world. Which, at fifty thousand pounds the richer, perhaps it was.
“Right,” Chantelle had drawled out, in that slightly shocked way of hers that told Angel that, as usual, her mother had not thought through to the consequences of her actions. Had she ever? Would she ever? “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, love,” Chantelle had murmured. “You won’t want to ruin Allegra’s do this weekend with this sort of unpleasantness, of course, but we’ll have loads of time afterward to—”
Angel had simply ended the call with a violent jerk of her hand, unable to speak for fear that she would scream herself hoarse. And then cry like the child she’d never really been, not when she’d had to play the adult to Chantelle’s excesses from such a young age—and she never cried. Never. Not over Chantelle’s innumerable deficiencies as a mother and a human being. Not for a single reason that she could recall. What problem did tears ever solve?
Fifty thousand, she thought now, standing in the middle of the dazzling ballroom, but it didn’t feel real. Not the fairy-tale beauty and elegance of the palace around her, and not that stunning number either. The sickening enormity of that sum of money rolled through Angel like thunder, low and long, and she wasn’t sure, for a moment, if she could breathe through the sheer panic that followed in its wake, making her skin feel clammy and her breath shallow. Fifty thousand pounds.
Neither she nor Chantelle had a hope in hell of paying off a sum that large. In what universe? Chantelle’s single claim to fame was her marriage to beloved ex-footballer and regular subject of tabloid speculation and gossip Bobby Jackson. It had resulted in Angel’s wild-child half sister, the sometime pop idol, Izzy, who Angel did not pretend to understand, and very little else. Aside from notoriety, of course. Chantelle had been a market stall owner before she’d set out to net herself one of England’s favorite sons. No one had ever let her forget it. Not that Chantelle seemed to care—she got to bask in Bobby’s reflected glory, didn’t she?
Angel had learned better than to inquire after the state of Bobby and Chantelle’s deeply cynical union a long, long time ago, lest she be subject to another lecture from her relentless social climber of a mother on how marriage, if done correctly and to a minor celebrity like big-spending and large-living Bobby, was simple common sense and good business. Angel shuddered now, trying to imagine what it was like to remain married to a man that everyone in the whole of England knew was still sleeping with his ex-wife, Julie. If not many others besides. How could Chantelle be so proud of her marriage when every tabloid in the UK knew the shameful state of it? Angel didn’t know.
What she did know was that there were certainly no heretofore undiscovered stashes of pounds sterling lying about Bobby’s house in Hertfordshire or the flat in Knightsbridge Chantelle preferred, or Chantelle wouldn’t have had to “borrow” from her own daughter in the first place, would she? The truth was, Angel suspected that Bobby had cut Chantelle off from his purse strings long ago. Or had emptied out that purse all by himself, with all of his good-natured if shortsighted ways.
Angel couldn’t seem to fight off the sadness that moved through her then as she thought—not for the first time—what her life might have been like if Chantelle had been a normal sort of mother. If Chantelle had cared about someone other than herself. Not that Angel could complain. Not really. She’d always been treated well enough by Bobby’s rowdy brood of children from his various wives and lovers—even by Julie, if she was honest—and the truth was that carelessly genial Bobby was the only father she’d ever known. Angel’s real, biological father had done a runner the moment seventeen-year-old Chantelle had told him she was pregnant. Angel had always been grateful for the way the Jackson clan—especially Bobby—had included her. They’d tried, and that was more than others might have done. But at the end of the day she wasn’t a Jackson like the rest of them, was she?
Angel had always been far too aware of that crucial distinction. She’d always felt that boundary line, invisible but impossible to ignore, marking the difference between all of them, and her. She’d always been on the outside looking in, no matter how many Christmases she spent with them, pretending. The Jacksons were the only family she had, but that didn’t make them hers. All she had, for her sins, was Chantelle.
Angel wished, not for the first time, that she’d gone on to university. That she’d dedicated herself to an education, a career—something. But she’d been so very pretty at sixteen, blessed with her mother’s infamous blagging skills and the body to back them up. She’d been confident that she could make her own way in the world, and she had, one way or another. She’d talked her way into more jobs than she could count since then, none of them long-lasting, but she’d always told herself that that was how she liked it. No ties. Nothing that could hold her back should she need to move on. She’d been muse and model to a fashion designer, had run her own retail shop for a year or two, and could usually pick up some kind of modeling job or another in a pinch. It was always a struggle, but she paid her rent and her bills, and often had a little bit left over, as well.
Not fifty thousand quid, of course. Not anything even remotely close to that.
Her stomach heaved, and she pressed her fist against her belly as if that would settle it, by force. By her will alone. What was she supposed to do? Declare bankruptcy? Have her mother arrested for identity fraud? However angry she was, however hurt, again, she couldn’t quite see taking either route. One was humiliating and unfair. The other was unthinkable.
Right, she thought then, her usual cool and practical nature taking over at last, shoving the unfamiliar lashings of self-pity aside. Enough whingeing, Angel. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity tonight. Pull yourself together and use it!
Angel helped herself to a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, took a restorative sip and squared her shoulders. She decided to ignore the faint trembling in her hands. She was Angel Tilson. She was tough—she’d had to be, the whole of her life. She did not break at the first sign of adversity—or even at fifty thousand pounds’ worth of signs. She did not recognize defeat. As Bobby had always said—while throwing the odd drink down his throat, but the sentiment was the same regardless—defeat was nothing more than an opportunity to succeed the next time. And the glorious thing about having no options was that she had absolutely no choice but to succeed.
“So,” she murmured to herself, fiercely, “I bloody well will.”
Her reasons for going ahead and playing this game might have been desperate, but that didn’t change the fact that it was a game she was very good at playing. How could she not be, she thought with something like dark humor. It was in her genes.
She ran her free hand over the curve of her hip, making sure her dress was in place, sticking like glue to the tight, toned curves she’d inherited directly from her mother. She could not quite bring herself to be grateful to Chantelle for that little gift. Not quite. Not tonight. The dress was strapless, short and black as sin—and pretended to be decorous while instead showing off every mouthwatering inch of what was, she knew, her only weapon and greatest asset. Her body.
Nearby, a gaunt-faced older man with centuries of breeding stamped into his sunken bones and his so-proper-it-hurt wife stared at her as if she’d committed some hideous breach of etiquette right there in front of them. Anything was possible, of course, but Angel knew she’d successfully kept a low profile here at Allegra’s party—so outside her realm of experience was it to find herself in a palace. The well-bred couple averted their eyes in apparent horror,