Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday - Cathy Kelly - Страница 22

Suki sat in the Petersens’ great room in their holiday mansion on the Cape, a glass of Krug in one hand, and wondered why she’d come to the party in the first place. It had been a long time since she’d bothered with these sort of events: parties in huge mansions with waiting staff, the finest champagne on tap and exquisite canapés cooked by the finest chefs.

At least she’d found somewhere to sit – there were rarely enough seats at these affairs and there was nothing worse than standing for hours. Here, in her corner seat, she was signalling taking a break from the party. Here, she could simply watch.

After the divorce from Kyle, people had continued to invite her to parties because she remained a part of the great Richardson clan, and so far as hosts and hostesses were concerned, even a tenuous connection with Kyle Senior was worthy of a place on the guest list. For their part, the Richardsons hadn’t cast Suki out, because they knew better than to alienate her; the last thing they wanted was a bitter divorcee who’d been privy to life on the inside telling the world all their secrets.

Back then, Suki had also enjoyed the status of a minor celebrity; a feted author appearing on chat shows and in the press.

But since she’d hit skid row, there had been no embossed, gilt-edged cards on her mantelpiece inviting her to dinners or elegant parties in the moneyed enclaves in Massachusetts.

So when she’d bumped into Missy Petersen in the health-food shop in Provincetown, the best one by far in the area, she’d been surprised when Missy had hugged her and said it had been too long.

‘What have you been up to?’ Missy said, tucking a strand of glossy, recently blow-dried blonde hair back with a perfectly manicured hand. Her engagement ring, a pink diamond the size of a conker, caught the light.

‘Working on a new book,’ Suki said pleasantly.

She’d always liked Missy: she was genuinely nice, not like some of the rich men’s wives, who viewed all other women as competition.

‘Oh, I don’t know how you do it,’ said Missy. ‘You career women. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to have a career. Charlie says I’d make a good interior designer, though. I have thought of it, you know.’

Rich women always wanted to be designers. Making a house look pretty was easy when you had a million-dollar budget to play with.

Suki smiled and prepared to move on. ‘Lovely to see you, Missy,’ she said truthfully.

‘Do you know, I clean forgot to invite you to Charlie’s birthday party,’ Missy said. ‘He’s fifty-nine, can you believe it? He’s planning something wild for his sixtieth, but you know men, they like a party, anyway. What’s your address now?’

Suki dutifully gave it, thinking that it was a nice gesture on Missy’s part but not expecting it to come to anything. Charlie, a money-mad alpha male, would nix her from the guest list if he saw her name on it. Charlie only wanted players at his parties.

To Suki’s amazement, true to her word, Missy sent an invitation: Charlie’s fifty-ninth, the run-up to the Big One. Come dressed up or come as you are.

Suki didn’t know what made her do it, but she accepted. However, she didn’t tell Mick. He wouldn’t like that sort of party, she reasoned: Chopin playing on the Bang & Olufsen, or maybe an actual string quartet. No, he wouldn’t like it.

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t fit in, she told herself. It wasn’t that at all.

She went to the salon and had her hair done; something she rarely did these days.

‘A file and paint,’ she told the manicurist. She couldn’t afford the extra ten dollars for proper cuticle work.

Money – why did it always come back to money?

There was plenty of money in the Petersens’ house, a timber-framed mansion on the Hyannis side of the Cape with more rooms than the Louvre.

Because this wasn’t a ‘big’ party, Missy explained as she greeted Suki, they didn’t have a marquee or anything. ‘It’s only us at home.’

‘Home’ was filled with modern art and enough odd sculptures to convince people that Charlie and Suki had artistic sense. In reality, Suki knew they’d have an art expert on the payroll, looking out for nice ‘pieces’ that would ensure they kept their place in the art fashion loop.

That was the trick when you had new money. Old money people could have paintings of the family home and deranged great-grand-uncles who’d had four wives and twenty-six children and had owned half of East Manhattan when horse-drawn carriages drove the streets.

New money people had up-and-coming artists and a selection of hideously expensive pieces to show how rich they were.

The Petersens at home turned out to consist of a collection of rich men scattered around the place, comparing their assets – or wives.

I should never have come, Suki thought again, accepting a glass from a waiter.

Sitting in her armchair, champagne glass in hand, she surveyed the room. It was a world she thought she’d left behind. Everyone here was rich or married to someone rich. The result was a roomful of people all hell-bent on outdoing each other while trying not to be too obvious about it.

During her years on the ultra-rich social circuit, Suki had noticed that the women generally fell into one of two tribes: the more ordinary women, who got by with a little regular maintenance, and the trophy second wives, for whom maintenance was a way of life. First wives tended to avoid standing beside second ones. The sole exception was one exquisite first wife, Delilah Verne, who managed to look younger than her forty-eight years, having been rejuvenated so many times that a second wife could no doubt have been assembled from the bits she’d had surgically sucked out of her.

It was Delilah who descended upon her quiet corner now, teetering on her platforms. Not quite Prada witch but not far off it, she was dressed in something designer-ish (Balmain?) that Suki knew had commanded a sum that would have paid her own household bills for three months.

‘Suki! Hello!’ trilled Delilah.

Class A or anti-depressant drugs, Suki wondered. Or merely the permanent ultra-happiness required if one wanted to stay married to a grumpy billionaire? Clark Verne, in common with most billionaires, was always grumpy. The amassing of money seemed to do that to people, a fact which mystified Suki. If she was rich, she’d be so happy she’d never stop smiling.

‘Hello, Delilah,’ said Suki, tilting her cheek to be air-kissed. Once, she’d thought it made sense to stay friends with people like Clark via their wives. Now, she couldn’t really see the point of fake friendships.

‘You look super, darling!’ Delilah went on enthusiastically.

Suki flashed the regulation thank-you smile, and followed it up with, ‘And so do you!’

They were not pals and never would be. For a start, Delilah didn’t do women friends. Secondly, Suki didn’t fit comfortably into any niche. She wasn’t rich, but she wasn’t one of the eager women hanging round the fringes of power, either. She’d had a very public career and wouldn’t hesitate to remind men of that if they fell into a discussion of money and politics, ignoring all female interjections. That gave her a certain power, as did her former marriage. To these billionaires, Kyle Senior still represented the seat of power, and Suki had evolved various strategies to make sure they knew that separation from her husband had not meant separation from the Richardson clan: ‘I dropped by the compound in Hyannis over the summer,’ she’d say idly, and suddenly they’d all be hanging on her every word.

Suki knew she was pretty glamorous in her own right. The liaison with Jethro hadn’t hurt in that regard. And her heavy lidded eyes with the death line of block kohl and the rippling hair told the world that she was a somebody. But the Richardsons bestowed extra glamour, no doubt about it.

Tonight, however, Suki was fed up with all the fakery. Truth was, she wasn’t part of the Richardson clan any more. She was only invited to the compound on the rarest of occasions, and only then because Kyle Senior was a great believer in the old adage: ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

‘I got a phone call from a friend recently,’ Delilah said idly.

Suki waited.

‘Well, not a friend, exactly. More of an acquaintance.’

Suki tried to maintain an expression of polite interest. As if she cared about Delilah’s friends. A chat with her dermatologist about the latest laser treatment was probably Delilah’s notion of female bonding.

‘She’s had a couple of phone calls from someone who’s a researcher for Redmond Suarez. It seems the latest book he’s working on is about the Richardsons …’

Suki could barely hear the rest of the conversation. She didn’t want to hear it.

‘… I said we were friends and, of course, you know them – after all, you married one of them! But I’d have to check with you first.’

Somehow, Suki’s expression remained neutral.

‘Yes, Delilah, he’s writing a book about the Richardsons,’ she confirmed, her heart fluttering with panic. Always better to sound as if you knew everything up front. Knowledge was power.

‘I don’t know much about it, but if someone wants to write a book about a great American dynasty, I’d hate it to be tawdry,’ Suki managed to go on. ‘You know how Kyle Senior and Antoinette value their privacy. The Family –’ she deliberately emphasized the word in the way people said things like the President – ‘want us to meet to discuss it.’

In reality, Antoinette had left a crisp message on Suki’s answering machine that sounded more like a command than an invitation: ‘Come to the compound on Tuesday afternoon. You can stay overnight. We need to talk about Mr Suarez and his nasty little book.’

Suki took Delilah’s hand and held on to it. ‘They will be so thrilled you didn’t talk about them, that instead you came to me with this,’ she said, smiling ingenuously.

If Delilah was discomfited by Suki’s apparent calmness, she didn’t show it. Botox, naturally. Delilah’s brow was smooth as alabaster.

It was time for her to go.

‘Thank you,’ Suki said again, embracing Delilah’s bony frame. ‘I must phone Kyle and tell him this,’ she added with a hint of sadness.

Last time she’d spoken to Kyle, they’d had a blazing row. But Delilah didn’t need to know that.

Suki never drove up to the Richardsons’ compound in Hyannis without feeling a sense of mild astonishment that she’d once belonged there. The seat of political power, a bit down the road from the Kennedy compound. It was all heady stuff. Back in the day, the Richardsons had been friends with the Kennedys in spite of their political differences. Kyle Senior had socialized with JFK and Jackie, and Suki used to love listening to his stories about those far-off days before it all ended so horribly in Dallas. Of course she’d exhibited only idle interest. Nothing marked someone out as a rubber-necker more than ‘Tell me more …’ requests.

And yet all that seemed so long ago. Suki had lived many lifetimes since she married and divorced Kyle Junior.

Antoinette, the family matriarch, was seventy-nine now, with steely grey hair and a steely grey attitude. Her day uniform had never deviated in all the time Suki had known her: cashmere twinset, pearls and woollen skirt in winter, and silk or linen blouse and silk skirt in summer, also with pearls. Of an evening, she opted for crocodile pumps (never during the day – far too common), something in crêpe de Chine in a jewel colour, and a hint of face powder and lipstick that had probably been on her bureau since Roosevelt was in power.

Suki couldn’t imagine Antoinette sitting in Dr Frederik’s office asking for a top-up of Botox. Her frown lines presumably did as they were told, much the same way as the compound staff leapt to do her bidding. Worrying about physical beauty was for lesser mortals.

In her day, Antoinette had been what people called a handsome woman. Noble bones, a strong chin and a gaze that made her son quail. Nothing much had changed. Handsomeness certainly lasted longer than prettiness.

An uneasy truce had existed between Suki and her former mother-in-law since the first day they met. Suki’s background – checked ruthlessly by Kyle Senior’s private investigators – was certainly top drawer. Impoverished gentry, but gentry nonetheless.

Even Antoinete had been charmed by Suki’s father, who was the perfect example of an Irish gentleman landowner with more than a whiff of academia thrown in for good measure.

Adding to the patina of class, Suki could talk the talk about antiques, thanks mainly to Tess’s interest in the subject.

‘Daddy had a full set of Audubon prints, you know, but they had to be sold,’ she might say, which was entirely untrue but impossible to check. Her father only remembered the things he’d had to sell when they’d had some special significance to the family, so should Antoinette ever ask if this was true, he could be relied upon not to recall one way or the other. Suki was clever enough to know that the best lies were the ones where you couldn’t be caught out.

Her father had cried over selling the Walter Osborne portrait of his grandmother, but a growing interest in Osborne as a painter and the roof in the west wing falling in had coincided and it had made sound economic sense. She’d mentioned the sale of the Osborne too and had craftily added in a little Pissarro and a minor Watteau as well. She had no intention of letting her new in-laws spend too much time with her family, so it was safe to lie. For all Antoinette’s much-vaunted blue blood, she hadn’t grown up in a house with beautiful art, had she? She’d had to marry it.

Throughout the marriage to Kyle, Antoinette never ceased to remind Suki that she wasn’t a suitable wife for her darling son.

In return, Suki got to slip little digs into her conversations with Antoinette. Like the time she’d meanly identified Antoinette’s charming collection of floral bowls as fake Meissen rather than the real thing. Suki had absolutely no interest in antiques unless they were worth something and Meissen certainly was, so she could tell the difference.

Plus, during her one and only visit to the compound, Tess had told Suki she thought it was wonderful that Antoinette wasn’t hung up on original everythings, but kept items of sentimental value like the Meissen copies. Tess, silly girl, had meant it as a compliment; she admired people who collected valuable and non-valuable things and displayed them side by side. It meant they liked what they liked, rather than what was expensive.

Suki knew Antoinette too well to fall for that. Clearly her mother-in-law thought those bowls were the real McCoy.

‘I do adore Meissen copies,’ she’d said, waving a hand over the display of bowls occupying pride of place in the formal drawing room. ‘So very clever, and equally adorable, aren’t they?’

Antoinette’s lips had tightened imperceptibly.

The next day, the bowls were gone.

Life as Kyle Junior’s wife was all about savouring such victories. It was petty of her, Suki knew, but her mother-in-law was equally petty – and Suki liked to win. She wasn’t the matriarch, not yet. But watch this space, she seemed to be saying to Antoinette.

And then it had all ended when Antoinette found out. But by then, Suki’s daydreams of becoming the next Jackie O had been dust for a long time anyhow.

The fierce animosity between the two women had not diminished with time. Suki and Antoinette still loathed each other, but these days they met so rarely that they could just about manage to put up with each other. Especially with Senior on hand to remind them to keep it civil.

‘Nobody needs to know our business – understand, girls?’ he’d growl in that gravelly voice that brooked no disagreement.

And the ‘girls’ had both toed the line.

As Suki approached the front door, she knew that, for today at least, Antoinette would have declared a truce where she was concerned. The Redmond Suarez biography was threatening the family and they needed to join forces to fight off the common enemy. After that, they could resume the old hostilities.

Mrs Lang, the housekeeper, opened the door with a frozen smile on her face: ‘Hello, Mrs Suki. Lovely to see you back again.’

‘Mrs Suki’ was the courtesy title decided upon by Antoinette once the divorce was final. It wasn’t quite as bitchy as ‘demoting’ her to Miz Power, but was another telling detail.

‘Hello there, Mrs Lang,’ Suki said, marching into the hall, pulling her weekender suitcase behind her. She knew Mrs Lang didn’t like her, but she didn’t care.

As usual, the house smelled of money and beeswax polish. The antiques – all genuine, Suki was pretty sure because she’d looked – gleamed from constant dusting, while the pictures, all by major American artists, were beautifully lit. Two old leather couches – the sort of thing Ralph Lauren was famous for, but clearly a much earlier vintage than his iconic designs – sat on either side of the huge hall with tapestry cushions scattered upon them, decorated mainly with nautical themes and the American flag.

Suki went straight to her bedroom. She was always assigned the blue bedroom at the back of the house where they were no views of the sea. It was definitely one of the lesser bedrooms. Once you were put in a bedroom in the compound, it was your spot for life. She tidied up, put on a soft pink sweater and went down into the great room.

The lights were set Hyannis-style for November – Antoinette was a penny-pincher who insisted that no bulb could be of a high wattage. Consequently, the house was like an ill-lit restaurant and reading was impossible, except in places like Senior’s study or your bedroom, provided you’d had the foresight to smuggle in a decent bulb. It had been many years since she’d stayed there, nothing had changed lighting-wise; fortunately Suki had brought a little battery-powered reading light, just in case. On the other hand, the wine was always good and she expected to imbibe well tonight.

The bad news was that Kyle Senior wasn’t home yet. That didn’t suit Suki. If there was one person who’d understand what this all meant, it was Senior. He was the one she needed to talk to before dinner. Senior liked his booze and, once dinner started, she’d never get to talk to him alone.

A swish of silk and a hint of Rochas Eau de Parfum in the sea-facing drawing room signalled the arrival of Antoinette Richardson.

‘Good evening, Suki,’ said Antoinette, a gracious smile fixed on her face. ‘How lovely to see you. You do look well.’

Antoinette regally proffered both cheeks for a brief kiss, a habit picked up on travels to Europe. Though she would have preferred to shake hands, Antoinette was nothing if not an elegant hostess and her manners almost never slipped, not even when greeting the woman she considered had come close to ruining the political career of her first-born.

Greetings over, Antoinette withdrew, sat primly on a couch and gestured for Suki to do the same.

‘What have you been up to, Suki dear?’

Suki smiled back. Two could play this game. Bloody bitch probably knew exactly what she’d been up to: living in that pokey house, struggling to resurrect her career and make ends meet. If Antoinette was half the matriarch she pretended to be, she should have made damn sure that anyone connected with the Richardson family didn’t need to scrape a living by doing appalling lectures in cold college halls.

‘This and that,’ Suki replied, smiling as if she’d been accepting Pulitzers and heading the UN all the while, instead of worrying about money. ‘And how are you, Antoinette? And Kyle Senior – how is he?’

‘Fine, really fine. He’s away tonight. Junior will be here any minute now though.’

Antoinette’s face warmed when she spoke of her son. It always had. Junior brought out both the best and the worst in her.

Mrs Lang came in with the sherry tray. Antoinette disapproved of liquor being kept in any of her rooms, although Senior insisted on a full bar in his study. So sherry was brought in before family dinners and cocktail trays before dinner parties.

Suki accepted a thimble of sherry with a smile. It was going to be a long night.

Half an hour of excruciating small talk later, Junior rolled up in his Porsche. Hearing the growling engine, Suki wondered if he’d brought his second wife with him. She didn’t mind Leesa. She was beautiful in a very WASP-ish way, with a straight nose and a slim, boyish figure, and she was gloriously stupid. She was sweet to everyone, said things like ‘I’m not a brain surgeon, folks,’ and deferred to Junior like a child to Daddy. That was the only thing that annoyed Suki about Leesa.

Ten minutes later, Junior and his wife appeared, obviously having rushed down because Antoinette didn’t like being kept waiting.

‘Hello, everyone!’ said Leesa excitedly, going over and giving Antoinette a big hug.

To Suki’s intense surprise, Antoinette seemed pleased to see her daughter-in-law. There was a definite show of warmth as Leesa embraced her. Now this Suki couldn’t figure out. She felt a frisson of irritation: Antoinette was the type of woman who would never approve of any woman her darling son was married to. Suki had always assumed that was why Antoinette had hated her.

And Leesa was precisely the sort of woman she’d have expected Antoinette to look down her patrician nose at. Even though Leesa had all the right connections, came from old money and had no aspirations for herself beyond taking care of Junior, she was entirely brainless and invariably had to be kept away from reporters at fund-raisers in case she said the wrong thing.

Yet Antoinette seemed to like her. Crossly, Suki drained her sherry and wished it was a double vodka tonic.

Junior was looking well. He was a tall, well-built man, tanned from lots of outdoor pursuits, and he had the same mane of leonine hair as his father. The difference was that Kyle Senior looked like the wily old lion that he was, while Junior was a slower, duller version. Not that this seemed to have harmed his inexorable rise in the direction of the Republican presidential nomination.

‘Good evening, Suki,’ he said, giving her a dutiful peck on the cheek. She could feel the frost in the air.

‘Hello, Suki,’ said Leesa, holding out a hand for Suki to shake, as if she were a duchess.

Suki felt herself getting angrier.

She could have been the wife who’d get Junior into the White House, not this idiot. Instead, she was being made to feel like a total outsider – and it hurt.

As usual, Antoinette didn’t beat around the bush but got straight to the subject everyone else would have preferred to avoid.

‘We must discuss this wretched book,’ she said. ‘I’ve had four telephone calls this week from friends who’ve been approached by his researchers. They’re all saying the same thing: Redmond Suarez wants to hear “the real story” of the Richardsons.’

She paused while Mrs Lang came in with drinks for Leesa and Junior. Suki was outraged to see that they were getting cocktails. Leesa’s drink looked suspiciously like a martini. Nobody had offered her a martini.

‘I think we need someone we can trust to meet him and find out what he knows,’ said Leesa.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ snapped Suki. ‘That’s like saying, We’ve got something to hide, so tell us what you have found out.’

Antoinette interrupted. ‘I think Leesa has a point,’ she said. ‘Not one of us, not one of the family. But we need someone who is loyal to us to meet with this Suarez.’ She spat the name out. ‘Kyle Senior has some ideas on how to do this …’ She coughed and took a sip of the water on the small table beside her.

Leesa got up and sat beside her mother-in-law, patting her gently on the arm.

‘Don’t get all worked up, Antoinette, my dear. You know what the doctors told you, you’ve got to take care of your heart.’

‘What doctors?’ demanded Suki.

Junior looked lazily at her over the top of his highball glass. ‘Mother had a minor heart attack last month,’ he said.

‘You should have told me!’ said Suki, shocked.

‘I wanted to keep it very private,’ Antoinette announced. ‘Keep it in the family—’

‘I was family once,’ Suki said quietly. She stared at her former mother-in-law and ex-husband. Both of them knew why she was no longer a part of the family, and she needed their help to keep Redmond Suarez out of her life too.

Perhaps they needed reminding of the past.

‘Immediate family,’ Junior said coldly.

Suki knew then that she hadn’t been imagining the polar blast she’d felt when he’d said hello. She was truly on the outside now, it seemed. They’d obviously decided that she had sunk so far down the totem pole that what she knew couldn’t hurt them.

Well, she’d get him back. He knew what had happened, he had to know that it hadn’t really been her fault. And if he’d given her a decent divorce settlement, then she wouldn’t need to scrape to make a living. She bet bloody Leesa had never done a day’s work in her life.

‘Suki, you mustn’t be upset,’ soothed Leesa, sensing the anger raging inside her but misunderstanding the reason. ‘Mother didn’t want anyone to know, and the easiest way to keep it quiet was to tell nobody, that’s all.’

Suki forced herself to smile. ‘How are you now, Antoinette?’ she asked, as politely as she could. ‘Was there any damage to your heart?’

That was a joke – Antoinette had a heart of cold, black stone, so how could that be damaged? Suki had a sudden vision of herself leaking the news of Antoinette’s heart attack to the papers. She could see the headline now: Antoinette Richardson Has a Heart – Doctors Astonished.

Antoinette talked about how awful it had all been and how she was so grateful to Junior and – she smiled up at her doting daughter-in-law – to darling Leesa for being there for her. Jacqueline and Anastasia, Junior’s younger sisters, had both been away at a wedding in Europe when it happened, so Antoinette had had to rely upon Leesa for so much.

Jacqueline and Anastasia were always away. Both had married rich men and spent their time trailing round the world on endless holidays with friends. Suki didn’t know what they had to take holidays from, since neither of them had worked a day in their lives.

When Mrs Lang came back into the room to check on drinks, Suki ordered a martini.

‘Make a strong one, Mrs Lang,’ she muttered grimly. ‘Make it a Kyle Senior Special.’

That was code for double measures of everything. Suki had never asked for such a thing in the Richardsons’ house before – that was the prerogative of Kyle Senior – but she didn’t feel like playing the dutiful ex-daughter-in-law right now. A martini with a powerful kick was what she needed.

When dinner was ready, the four of them made their way to the dining room and sat in state at the huge dining-room table.

The food was good, but there wasn’t enough wine. Suki emptied her glass quickly and had to wait an age before anyone filled it up. They were on to a cheese and fruit course before the subject of the unauthorized biography was raised again.

‘Father says that nobody –’ Kyle stared hard at Suki – ‘nobody is to cooperate with this man.’

Suki glared back at him. ‘I have no intention of cooperating, and I’m insulted at the implication that I might,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not as if I don’t know where all the bodies are buried in this family, but I have never spoken about any of that, to anyone.’ She paused purposefully and looked Antoinette straight in the eye. There was a silence and then Antoinette intervened.

‘Of course nobody is suggesting that you would do something like that, Suki,’ she said. ‘Kyle is merely reiterating his father’s wishes. Nobody in this room would do anything to upset the family, we know that. But other people, other people don’t have the same loyalty. Loyalty is something that is sadly missing today. I’ve often said that. When I was young, loyalty was one of the most respected virtues, but not today, sadly.’

‘My grandpa always says that loyalty is so important,’ echoed Leesa virtuously.

‘I believe in loyalty,’ said Suki, looking from Antoinette to Kyle. ‘As long as people are loyal to me in return.’

She’d had enough. She couldn’t understand why they’d summoned her, unless it was to intimidate her. She got to her feet. ‘You must forgive me, everyone, I am overtired and I think I’ll go to bed.’

Unable to endure one more minute with them, she said goodnight and went to her room, where she sat on the bed and tried not to cry.

The Richardsons were so much more powerful than she was. Compared to them, she was a nobody. If the truth came out, they could easily twist it so that she came out the villainess. One way or another, the family would come up smelling of roses, while her name would be mud.