‘Aren’t they just?’ the girl said, looking terribly pleased with herself.
‘Whoever he is, he obviously thinks the world of you,’ Calvary remarked.
The receptionist smiled.
‘You really think so?’
‘Oh yes,’ Calvary replied before stepping into the lift. ‘A man who sends you flowers as beautiful as that shouldn’t be kept waiting too long. Mark my words!’
As the lift doors closed behind Calvary the receptionist inhaled the scent of one of the roses and sighed as she read the accompanying card; ‘To Luci, thanks for everything. Dinner tonight? Douglas. X’
She smiled smugly as she picked up the phone and began to dial.
CHAPTER 9
Yasmin observed herself with pleasure in the ornate full-length mirror and poured herself a glass of pink champagne from the well-chilled complimentary bottle. The skin-tight grey boned cashmere Bottega Veneta dress she was wearing caressed her neat curves perfectly, displaying her breasts to their pneumatic best. She ran her hands along her minuscule waist and down to her thighs satisfactorily. Hmm, not bad, she thought approvingly. But not quite right for the ball. Not fancy enough, she mused, unzipping herself and allowing the dress to slide provocatively to the floor.
‘I want people to gasp out loud when I enter the room,’ she called out to the assistant loudly without taking her eyes from the mirror. ‘It has to be a complete show stopper.’ The harried-looking sales assistant nodded emphatically from behind her.
‘Ah, now that’s more like it,’ Yasmin said, spying an Oscar de la Renta strapless feather embellished number and snatching it up from the assistant’s arm.
‘Help me into it, will you?’
‘Certainly, madam,’ she said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. She had been helping Lady Belmont-Jones try on dresses solidly for the past two hours, watching as she stalked up and down the plush carpeted dressing room, casting admiring glances at herself in the mirror only to discard each and every one, tossing thousands of pounds’ worth of designer gowns onto the floor in a heap like they were cheap tat from Primark. ‘This special something you’re looking for, Lady Belmont, is it for Forbes’ annual ball?’ she asked, feigning interest.
‘It is for the ball, as a matter of fact,’ Yasmin said, her ears pricking up. ‘I have to look better than divine because we’re on the table with Mr & Mrs Forbes this year. You know, all eyes on us.’
‘It’s always the same this time of year,’ the assistant said, barely able to hide her weariness as she fastened the zip of Yasmin’s dress. ‘Everyone coming in for a last minute fitting. I must say though, Lady Belmont, none of them have your amazing figure.’
Yasmin smirked. She knew she had a figure to die for and was not afraid to use it to her advantage.
All the women in the Jones family had been blessed with killer bodies. Her mother, who had ended up using her own to feed her crippling addiction, had said it was more of a curse than a blessing. Yasmin, however, was determined that in her case it would be the latter.
Catching sight of herself in the mirror once more, she wondered what her mother might think if she could see her now; standing in Harvey Nichols, a glass of Perrier-Jouet vintage rose champagne in her hand and a pile of designer dresses being handed to her by an obliging assistant who would break into song if she was asked to. Would she be proud? Envious perhaps? The truth was she probably wouldn’t have given a toss. Junkies cared about nothing save for their next fix. A fact Yasmin knew only too well.
When their mother’s miserable life was eventually claimed by a heroin overdose, Chloe, at just seventeen years old, had given up her ambition to go to beauty college and became a mother to her seven-year-old sister. Social services had wanted to take them both into care but somehow Chloe had managed to convince them that she was responsible enough for the both of them, and, when she had turned eighteen just three months later, with their errant father nowhere to be found, Chloe had been awarded custody of her baby sister, Stacey. They had even got to keep their poky little council flat. A right result.
Though money was tight, they scraped by – and they were never short of what counted most: love. If only Chloe had never met that wretched old slag, June Larkin. That woman had been trouble from the very moment she had set a cheap stiletto-clad foot through their front door. Even at her tender age, Stacey Jones had sensed a bad vibe about June. The very air around her seemed somehow thick with discord.
June Larkin was a local brass who had lived on their estate; she was a looker right enough, but a brass nonetheless. At thirty-one, she was a good few years older than Chloe, wore nice clothes and drove a flash motor and therefore had a bit of sway on the estate. For all her loose morals however, June Larkin had been an astute woman with a nose for business. She had a little number going whereby she supplied ‘hostesses’ to rich men who liked to party with good-looking girls to make themselves feel more attractive than they really were. At least that’s how she had sold it to Chloe anyway.
‘It’s not prostitution, love,’ she had said to her sister, her cheap jewellery rattling in earnest. ‘They just want to hire you for the night to sit there and look pretty. I promise ya, there ain’t no funny business. You get paid a few quid just to wear a pretty dress.’
It had sounded like easy money. Money they had desperately needed.
Chloe had been a striking girl; prettier than most with long naturally blonde bouncy hair and huge, kind brown eyes that were unusual for her colouring. She looked older than her years and her long legs and full bosom were already beginning to draw admiring glances from men and envious ones from women wherever she went.
Yasmin thought of June Larkin then, all teeth and tits and yellow blonde hair and felt a sudden rush of hatred for her. Her sister had trusted her, thought of her as a friend. As it was, not even June Larkin herself could’ve known just what part she would eventually play in the Jones sisters’ destiny.
As far as Yasmin was concerned, there were three people responsible, in their own way, for what had happened to her beloved sister. Fate had taken care of the first two; with her mother already dead, some years later June Larkin would eventually take her own miserable life, citing her guilt of what had happened to Chloe as one in a long list of reasons. Now it was up to her to deal with the third.
Up until the day June Larkin had done the decent thing and topped herself, Stacey had always believed that her beloved sister had died in a tragic car accident.
‘You were too young to know the truth,’ June had written in a final swan-song letter to a fifteen-year-old Stacey. ‘But you’re old enough now to know what really happened.’
She had enclosed a large file of newspaper cuttings in with the note that had taken Stacey a whole evening to read, the print blurred from the tears she cried, her heart burning with hatred as she digested every word.
The contents of that letter were to change the course of Stacey Jones’s life forever. That day she had made a promise to herself and to Chloe; she would avenge her sister’s death if it was the very last thing she did on earth.
Yasmin stared at her reflection in the mirror and saw her sister’s beautiful, kind face staring back at her. Chloe had sacrificed everything to ensure that she be spared a life in care and she felt a sharp stab of sadness in her guts that for all her sister’s valiant efforts, that’s exactly where she had ended up.
Following Chloe’s death, the next eight years of Stacey’s life had been a living nightmare of relentless abuse and neglect – no one wanted to foster the older ones, not cute enough, not malleable enough, so she had been shunted from one ‘care’ home to another, though why they ever called them that was anyone’s guess. No one ‘cared’