She had two boxes to open today, mixed bags from a recent auction, and as she went to collect them, she realized that the light on the answerphone was winking red at her.
Sometimes people rang asking if they could bring something in so she’d value it, or saying they had antiques to sell and perhaps she’d like to see them.
The answer machine voice told her the message had been left at nine the previous night. ‘Hello, my name is Carmen, I’m working with Redmond Suarez on a biography of the Richardson family in the United States, and I’m trying to contact a Therese Power or …’ the voice faltered. ‘Therese de Paor. Sorry, I don’t know how to pronounce it. We’re looking for connections of Ms Suki Richardson. If you can help, please call this number and we’ll ring you right back. Thank you.’
Tess stood motionless for a moment. Every instinct in her body screamed that there was something very, very worrying about this message.
If Suki knew of anybody working on a book about the Richardsons, the wealthy political family into which Suki had once married, then she’d have told Tess. The Richardsons were powerful people and if someone wanted to talk to anyone connected with the family, a note on their fabulous creamy stock paper would have arrived, possibly even a phone call from Antoinette herself – not that Tess had had any contact with the Richardsons since Suki’s divorce. But she was quite sure that, if someone was digging into the past, they’d have been in touch, loftily asking her not to cooperate. That was the way they did things, with a decree along the lines of a royal one.
But there had been nothing. No correspondence from the Richardsons, no mention of this from Suki herself.
No, there was something strange going on.
Suki Richardson stood in the wings at Kirkenfeld Academy and wondered why she’d agreed to trek all this way into the middle of nowhere in a howling gale.
As in so many of the colleges where she was asked to speak, the radiators were ancient and stone cold. Suki knew from years of delivering speeches in draughty halls that an extra layer made all the difference, so tonight, under her purple suit, she wore a black thermal vest.
‘Where does your idea for a lecture begin?’ an earnest young girl had asked earlier, probably hoping to steal a march on the second-year students by putting a direct question to Suki, author of the feminist tract on their Women’s Studies course. ‘Is it an idea previously addressed in your books, or something new?’
Suki had smiled at her, toying with the idea of telling the truth: It begins with the phone call telling me the fee for showing up. That and the latest bill.’
‘It’s an idea I’d like to explore further,’ she’d told the student in a husky voice thickened by years of smoking. She couldn’t tell the truth: that her days of making money from TV and book sales were over; that since Jethro she’d been broke; that the bank kept sending hostile letters to the house.
Life had come full circle: she was poor. Same as she’d been all those years ago, growing up in the de Paor mausoleum in Avalon, always the kid in the shabby clothes with the jam sandwiches for school lunch.
Suki shivered. She hated being poor.
The woman at the lectern coughed into the microphone and began:
‘Our next speaker needs no introduction …’
Under her carefully applied layers of Clinique, Suki allowed herself a small smile. Why did people kick off with that – and then, inevitably, follow it with an introduction?
Nevertheless, she enjoyed listening to the introductions. Hearing her accomplishments listed out loud made her seem less of a failure. The litany of things she’d achieved made it sound as though she’d done something with her life.
‘… at twenty-four, she married Kyle Richardson IV, future United States ambassador to Italy …’
Poor old Kyle; he’d had no idea what he was letting himself in for. His father had, she recalled. Kyle Richardson III had soon realized that Kyle IV had bitten off more than he could chew, but by then the engagement was in the Washington papers and they’d been to dinner in Katharine Graham’s house, so it was a done deal. The Richardsons were fierce Republicans, flinty political warriors and very rich. There had been many women sniffing round Kyle IV, or Junior, as his father liked to call him. Junior would inherit a whole pile of money, the company – highest-grossing combat arms manufacturer in the US, what else? – and possibly his father’s senate seat. It was the way things were done.
‘… the enfant terrible of politics published her debut polemic, Women and Their Wars when she was twenty-nine …’
The reviews had been fabulous. Being beautiful helped. As her publisher at the time, Eric Gold, had pointed out: ‘Beautiful women who write feminist tracts get way more publicity than plain ones. People assume that unattractive women turn feminist because they’re bitter about their lack of femininity. They’re intrigued when someone as gorgeous as you speaks out for the sisterhood.’
Nobody could accuse Suki Richardson, with her full cherry-red lips, blonde hair and a figure straight out of the upper rack of the magazine store of being bitter about her femininity.
‘… she was one of the most respected feminists of her generation …’
What did that mean – was and of her generation? That lumped her in with a whole load of greying, hairy-armpitted members of the sisterhood who’d written one book before sloping off into obscurity.
She’d expected more, given that Women and Their Wars was on the Women’s Studies foundation course here at Kirkenfeld College.
Realizing that the head of the faculty was looking at her, Suki forced herself to smile again. That damned book had been published years ago; she had written three more since then, yet Women and Their Wars was all anyone ever talked about. That and her marriage to Kyle Richardson, her years with Jethro, and the fact that she was beautiful.
How ironic that, for all her feminist credentials, she seemed doomed to be defined by the very things she railed against: her men and her looks.
Of course it didn’t help that the next two books she’d written had bombed spectacularly. She’d done a coast-to-coast tour for her last book and still nobody had bought it, despite her enduring countless visits to radio stations where she was questioned endlessly about the Richardsons and what they were really like.
At least people still wanted to hear what she had to say, particularly when she got on to her pet subject about women and children: ‘What is this rubbish about biological clocks? Younger women should have children, not older ones. If there’s one thing I hate it’s hearing about some movie star who reaches fifty, then realizes she hasn’t had kids yet and plays IVF roulette until she gets one. Kids need young mothers who can roll on the floor with them and play. Not older ones …’
But it seemed as if Suki Richardson’s diatribes had lost their appeal. Once upon a time, audiences used to tune in hoping that she would tear into some television host who dared question her or fellow panellists who didn’t share her views. Producers used to think she was TV dynamite. But not these days. She’d become invisible since the years with Jethro. Add to that the fact that her books were out of print, apart from Women and Their Wars, which was only available in selected college bookstores, and it all added up to one equation: penury.
It