Книга - The Santiago Sisters

The Santiago Sisters
Victoria Fox


‘Exciting, glitzy and gripping… perfect summer reading’-Daily MailThey should have stayed as one. They couldn’t survive apart.It was fate, forever destined to come to this: from birth to death, two halves of the same whole.Twins Calida and Teresita Santiago have never known a world without each other…until Teresita is wrenched from their Argentinian home to be adopted by world-famous actress Simone Geddes.Now, while Teresita is provided with all that money can buy, Calida must fight her way to the top – her only chance of reuniting with her twin.But no one can predict the explosive events which will finally bring the Santiago sisters into the spotlight together…‘The Santiago Sisters’ is a romp of a read, full of passion, thrills and drama, a perfect novel to escape into and enjoy.’-Liz Robinson, Lovereading.co.uk







Praise for the author (#ulink_71aea6af-407a-57f3-899b-79945d0798c6)

VICTORIA FOX (#ulink_71aea6af-407a-57f3-899b-79945d0798c6)

‘Quite simply the best’

Daily Express

‘Must Read’

Real People

‘Jackie Collins for the modern gal’

Grazia

‘Lashings of scandal, shocking secret pasts and steamy romance’

New

‘A proper guilty pleasure’

Now

‘Oozes glamour and revenge. The ultimate beach read’

All About Soap

‘If you think the Made in Chelsea crew live a glitzy life, you ain’t seen nothing yet’

Heat

‘Just too exciting to put down’

Closer

‘Always a fun read!’

Jackie Collins

‘Pour yourself a glass of Pimms because this is guaranteed to get you seriously hot’

Cosmopolitan








For Charlotte

(when you’re big enough)




Table of Contents


Cover (#ub1eba26c-e75e-52df-9e6d-05a96380aa75)

Praise for the author VICTORIA FOX (#ulink_3875fecb-0a06-5700-a470-7c36b79ac6b3)

Title Page (#ua8ef3e6c-9472-5cac-b18b-6c3a83addb75)

Dedication (#u4df05113-86a2-52f2-98be-fa8c4fa7fced)

Prologue (#ulink_c67adc0d-1be7-5425-a4ae-56f13734de46)

PART ONE (#ulink_ea191719-2cc9-5769-ba66-f5b905635738)

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Prologue (#ulink_693a85aa-e607-58b2-be57-3f6fe6feb7d3)


Winter, 2014

NYchronicle.com/News/US-News/Tess-Geddes-disappearance

Live Feed, 10.31AM:

Concerns are mounting over the disappearance two nights ago of Hollywood superstar Tess Geddes. Ms Geddes was last seen leaving her New York home at 21:00 on Friday 19 December and no contact has been made with her since. The vanishing is described as ‘out of character’, despite the actress’s turbulent history. Friend and co-star Natalie Portis released this short statement yesterday: ‘Tess is a fighter. We knew she’d suffered the year from hell—but she knows better than that. She wouldn’t do anything stupid.’

It emerged this morning that Ms Geddes was accompanied by an unidentified female companion on the night of her disappearance. Police are now engaged in a hunt for this person, and witnesses are urged to come forward.

Her scent was deep: familiar and strange both at once. It filled the stairwell; savagery and glamour—one a relic from her old life, the other an emblem of her new.

Fear in her eyes, a pleading fear, begging for understanding. But it was too late for that. It was too late for sorry and too late for tears. She had arrived at her worst nightmare, and when that was over it would all be over: their history, their love, their hate; the cord that bound them unravelled at last. How to kill her? What method could rival her treachery, her greed, her betrayal; what could recompense her evil?

They should have stayed as one. They couldn’t survive apart. It was fate, forever destined to come to this: from birth, to death; two halves of the same whole.




PART ONE (#ulink_04038419-f9d7-5454-b9b3-fcc208178475)


1994—2000




1 (#ulink_4a580884-3739-5f4a-99e8-d3ea77187dde)


Argentina

She wondered, sometimes, if they had started off as one person. All things combined, until a silver blade entered their mother’s womb and curled them apart. She pictured it dividing their heads, their shoulders, their hearts, their hands, and whether or not it had hurt. The change was immediate. Heat poured into her sister, red like fire. Cool stayed behind, with her, blue and quiet and longing for the warmth.

Calida Santiago dismounted her horse and knelt beside the wheezing guanaco. The animal was like a llama, with cinnamon fur and small, straight ears, and had broken its leg; the damaged limb was splayed behind the soft white pillow of its underbelly. She put her hand out to stroke it, and it flinched, fur trembling.

‘Is it going to die?’

Diego, their father, tethered the horses. He secured the guanaco’s neck in the crook of his arm to stop it biting or twisting, while he felt the fracture and then the pumping strain of its heart. ‘We should do what’s right,’ he said, removing the carved knife from his gaucho belt. Diego’s riding trousers were stained with dirt and sweat, his face obscured by dust. The facón blade glinted in the dwindling afternoon sun.

‘Take Teresita away.’

Behind them, Calida’s twin sat sidesaddle on their shared horse. At ten years old, they should both have been children. But Calida, for all of her two-minute head start, would always be the elder. It was what life had decided: she had been built the sensible one, the one who looked out for and looked after. Occasionally she wished to be as carefree as her sister, to dare a little more, to risk, but it wasn’t in her nature.

‘I don’t want to,’ protested Teresita. ‘I want to see.’

Calida took her sister’s dirt-smeared hand, as native to her as her own. Grudgingly, knowing her father couldn’t be defied, Teresita slid from the saddle.

‘Papa will make it better,’ Calida said. ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

Teresita wore a dust-cracked scowl too determined for her years. She was wilful, stubborn, impossible once she set her mind to something, resolute to have her way no matter the cost: she was their mother’s daughter through and through.

The twins picked their way through sun-charred bramble, Teresita trailing behind like a disgruntled wolf cub, and into a ravine that twinkled with water. Calida crouched to rinse her face. The dust got everywhere; it was the taste of home, grit that caught in their teeth and ears and powder that clung to their eyelashes. All around, the dry green Patagonian steppe rolled into the distance; sharp peaks severed the vista and then flattened into grassy plains, like the whipping surface of a vast and angry sea.

‘What’s Papa doing?’ asked Teresita.

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

But Teresita wouldn’t. She always demanded to know, to find out. She was always asking these dumb questions that Calida didn’t know the answers to.

‘I can hear it screaming. Does it hurt?’

‘No,’ said Calida, putting an arm round her. ‘Come here.’

She drew Teresita close. Her sister’s hair smelled of the horses: the rich, solid scent of the saddlebags and the coarse rope of the reins, the leather stirrups, the tangy metal bit they put between Paco’s teeth and heard him crunch on like an apple core.

The guanaco shrieked a final time. Teresita pushed against her; whether with fear or resistance it was hard to say. Calida had felt her twin’s push from the very beginning: when they were born, a strength driving behind her, indignant at having been left behind. Hurry up, come on, get out, it’s my turn … When she had been old enough to identify it, and recognise in Teresita’s mop of black hair and huge jet eyes the sister she would love until the ends of the earth, Calida sensed that push so often in her life. Teresita’s struggle when she was crying and didn’t want to be comforted; her wishful gaze, reaching beyond the perimeter of the farm and into the frightening unknown; her resentment of gravity when all she longed to do was fly. Calida stayed on the ground, arms out, ready to catch her if she fell.

But there was a pull, too; a force of belonging that could never be changed and never be dimmed. It was blood, a mirror heartbeat, a laugh that echoed her own. At night, when they lay in their bunks, giggling in the dark or making hand shadows on the wall, whispering secrets that didn’t need to be told because they already belonged in each other’s hearts, Calida knew that this connection was a rare and precious gem. Faith. Trust. Devotion. Loyalty. No matter what, the sisters were there for each other.

‘What’s going to happen when we’re grown up?’ said Teresita now.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Mama says not to do what she did.’

Calida didn’t reply. Instead, she said: ‘We’ll be together, though, won’t we? So it doesn’t matter. We’ll always be together, you and me. Promise?’

Teresita ran a hand across the brittle earth. She blinked against the sun, and gave Calida a smile that warmed her bones. ‘Promise. Can we go back yet?’

Calida went up the ridge to check. Diego was untying the horses. The guanaco was gone and she saw the slash of blood on her papa’s bombachas and dared herself not to look away, to be the big girl Diego always told her she was.

Paco chewed lazily on a tuft of yellow grass.

‘Come on, then,’ said Calida.

Every day the sisters went riding with their father, while Julia stayed at home. It had been that way since time began. Their mother rarely emerged and the girls knew not to make noise in that part of the ranch, especially when Julia was resting.

Calida tried not to feel sad at how, on Julia’s better days, she would invite Teresita into her bedroom; Calida would listen at the door, shut out of their exchange, desperate to hear and be part of the confidence, until she heard her papa’s tread and shame directed her away. Julia spent hours brushing Teresita’s ebony hair and singing her songs, telling her stories of the past and stories of the future, assuring her what a magical woman she was destined to become. Her mama adored Teresita, because Teresita was beautiful. The twins’ division was responsible for this injustice, marking their physical difference: Teresita as exquisite and Calida as average. Calida knew there were greater things in life than beauty, but still it hurt. She wasn’t special, or in any way extraordinary, like her sister. If she were, her mama would love her more.

Once upon a time, when Julia had first been married, she herself had been a magical woman. Calida had seen the evidence, photographs her father had taken when they had worked the land as a couple: Julia against the melting orange sunset, her head turned gently away and her hair in a thick plait down her back. The horse’s tail had been frozen in time, a blur when it had swished away flies. Calida loved those pictures. This was a woman she had never known. She longed to ask her mama about that time, and what was so different now, but she was afraid of making Julia angry.

Julia told Teresita those things, anyway. At least she was telling someone.

Summer 1995 was unbreakingly hot. Sunshine spilled through open doors, the heat bouncing off wood-panelled walls. The twins were in the kitchen, paper pads balanced on their knees. Their home tutor was a harsh-looking woman called Señorita Gonzalez. Gonzalez was thirty-something, which seemed ancient, and the way she wore her hair all scraped back from a high forehead and her glasses on the end of her nose only made her more alarming. She wore heavy black boots whose tops didn’t quite reach the hem of her sludge-coloured skirt, so that a thin strip of leg could be seen in between. In classes, Teresita would giggle at the black hairs they spied lurking there, and Calida had to tell her to shut up before they got told off. Gonzalez was strict, and wasn’t afraid to use their father’s riding switch if the occasion arose.

‘I’m hot,’ said Teresita, kicking the floor in that way she knew drove Señorita Gonzalez mad. Calida’s own legs were stuck to the wooden chair, and when she adjusted position the skin peeled away with a damp, thick sound.

‘Díos mio, cállate!’ hawked Gonzalez, scribbling on the board. ‘All you do is moan, Teresa!’ It was only the family who called her Teresita: it meant ‘little Teresa’.

Teresita stuck her tongue out. Since the teacher’s back was turned, this failed to have the desired effect, so she tore off a sheet of paper, balled it up and tossed it at Gonzalez, nudging Calida as she did so, to include her in the game. But Calida didn’t like to stir up trouble. The woman froze. Calida gripped the seat of her chair.

‘You little—!’ Gonzalez stormed, blazing down the kitchen towards them, whereupon she grabbed Teresita’s hair and hauled her up, making her scream.

‘Ow! Ow!’

‘Stop it!’ Calida begged. ‘You’re hurting her!’

‘I’ll show you what hurts, you disrespectful child!’

Gonzalez dragged Teresita up to the cast-iron stove and launched her across the top of it. ‘That hot enough for you?’ she spat. Calida felt the impact as sorely as if she were the one being assaulted: Teresita’s pain was her pain. But her sister stayed silent, contained, her dark eyes hard as jewels and the only giveaway to her panic the lock of black hair that hovered next to her parted lips, blown away then in, away then in, flickering with every breath. Gonzalez took the riding switch from behind her desk and drew it sharply into the air. ‘Time for a lesson you’ll really remember!’

‘Wait!’ Calida leaped up. ‘It was me. I threw the paper. It was me.’

There was a moment of silence. Gonzalez looked between the twins. Calida rushed to her sister’s side and shielded her, just as the kitchen door opened.

‘What is going on in here?’

Diego stood, his arms folded, surveying the scene. Calida felt Teresita squirm free, but not before she took Calida’s fingers in her own and squeezed them tight.

‘The girls fell down …’ Gonzalez explained, in a different voice to the one she used with them: softer, sweeter, with an edge of something Calida was too young to classify but that seemed to promise a favour, or a reward. ‘You know how energetic they are, rushing about … Honestly, Señor, I have my back turned for one minute!’

Diego approached and ruffled Calida’s hair. ‘There, there, chica.’

Calida clung to her father. She inhaled his warm soil scent. Diego held his other arm out to Teresita, but Teresita watched him and stayed where she was.

‘Nobody’s hurt?’ he asked.

‘Nobody’s hurt,’ confirmed Gonzalez. She narrowed her eyes at Calida and Calida thought: We’re stronger than you. There are two of us. You can’t fight that.

Winter came, and with it the rains. Teresita was staring out of the window; mists from the mountains pooled at their door and the freezing-cold fog was sparkling white. The reaching poplars that bordered the farm were naked brown in the whistling wind, and the lavender gardens, once scented, were bare: summer’s ghosts.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Calida, coming to sit with her. Teresita always had her head in some faraway place, where Calida couldn’t follow. She was forever making up stories she would sigh to her sister at bedtime, some that made her laugh and others that made her cry. Now Teresita reached to take her arm, looping her own through it, a ribbon strong as rope, and rested her head on her shoulder.

‘The future,’ she said.

‘What about it?’

‘The world … People. Places. What life is like away from here.’

A nameless fear snaked up Calida’s spine. Privately, the thought of leaving the ranch, now or ever, made her afraid. The estancia was their haven, all she needed and all she cherished, by day a golden-hued wilderness and at night a sky bursting with so many stars that you could count to a thousand and forget where you started.

‘But this is our home,’ Calida said.

‘Yes. Maybe. It can’t be everything, though—can it?’

‘What about me?’

‘You’ll come too.’

It was another dream, another fantasy. Teresita would never leave. They were happy here, happy and safe, and Calida comforted herself with this thought every night, locking it up and swallowing the key, until finally she could fall asleep.




2 (#ulink_3262f26a-4b88-5234-adeb-c3d8d5ec4b96)


Teresa Santiago would often think of her twelfth birthday as the day she left her childhood behind. This was for two reasons. The first was the bomb that exploded halfway across the world that same day in March, in a place called Jerusalem. They heard about it on the crackly television Diego kept in the barn, a small, black box with a twisted aerial that they had to hit whenever the reception went. Teresa tried to grasp what was happening—the flickering news footage, the exploded civilian bus, the hundreds of swarming, panicking faces. It seemed like it belonged on another planet. She felt helpless, unable to do anything but watch.

‘It’s a long way away,’ reassured Calida. ‘Nothing can harm us here.’

Her sister was wrong.

Because the second reason was that it was the day Teresa witnessed another type of combat, a different, confusing sort, which reminded her of two maras she had once seen scrapping on the Pampas. Only these were no maras: one was her father, and neither he nor the woman he was fighting with had any clothes on. Moreover, there was the faint inkling that this woman should be her beloved mama—and wasn’t.

It happened in the evening. The twins were outside; shadows from the trees lengthened and stretched in the lowering sun, and the air carried its usual aroma of vanilla and earth. Calida was on her knees, taking pictures with the camera Diego had given her that morning. She had been obsessed with photography for ages, and had waited patiently for this gift. ‘You’re old enough now,’ Diego had told her, smiling fondly as Calida basked in his love, always her papa’s angel. He never looked at Teresa that way, or gave her such special birthday presents. Teresa was too silly, too wistful; too girlish. Instead Diego spent time with Calida, teaching her the ways of the farm and entrusting her with practical tasks he knew she would carry out with her usual endurance and fortitude, while Teresa drew a picture he never commented on or wrote a poem he never read. Calida would be the one to find them later and tell her how good they were, and insist on pinning them to the wall. Teresa remembered she had her mother’s affection. That, at least, was something Calida didn’t have.

‘I’m going to wake Mama.’ Teresa stood and dusted off her shorts.

Her sister glanced up. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not? It’s our birthday.’

‘She already saw us today.’ Indeed, Julia had graced them with her presence that morning, thirty minutes at breakfast in her night robe, pale-faced and sad-eyed.

‘She’ll want to see me again.’ Teresa said it because she knew it would hurt. She loved her sister deeply, an unquestioning, imperative love, but sometimes she hated her too. Calida was clever and useful and smart. What was she, in comparison? The youngest, made to follow directions and do as she was told. Why couldn’t she have been born first? Then her father would respect her. Then she could make her own decisions. Jealousy, a nascent seed, had grown over the years into creeping ivy.

‘Whatever.’ Calida pretended Julia’s preference didn’t wound her but her sister knew better. Teresa knew every little thing she thought or felt. ‘I don’t care.’

Teresa stalked past. It was as though the twins could argue on the barest of words, those surface weapons sufficient, like ripples on the deepest ocean.

Inside the house, it was cool and quiet. Teresa glanced down the hallway and decided she would take her mother a sprig of lavender, her favourite. She knew where the best of the purple herb grew, at the side of the stables, and went to find some. She imagined Julia’s face when she handed her the lilac bouquet, and lifted at the thought.

A strange sound came upon her slowly. At first she thought it was an animal in pain, one of the horses, maybe, and she hoped it wasn’t Paco.

But as she drew nearer, she knew it wasn’t that at all.

Teresa stopped by the stable door. The scent of lavender enveloped her, heady and sweet, and from that day forward it would eternally be associated with sex. In her adult years, in fields in France or in gardens in England, in perfumed tea-blends or in Hollywood spas, it would carry with it an echo of that exotic, bewildering revelation, all the more tender for the age at which she had discovered it.

A primal reflex told her the sound was human, not animal: gasping, close to a scream, as if the person making it was being stifled. There was violence buried inside; but willingness, too, even begging. She picked out a contrasting tone, guttural, which punctuated the silence between the high-pitched yelps, like a pig grunting. Words, perhaps, although she couldn’t be sure: Yes, she kept hearing, yes, yes, yes, and then please, and then yes again. Unable to desist, she drew the stable door wider.

Two figures wrestled on the hay-strewn floor. A bundle of clothes dripped from a rafter. The man, on top, was turned away, his pale, bare bottom pumping up and down. Each time it rose, a shadowy strip appeared between his cheeks, and a soft pocket of fruit, like an over-ripe peach, could momentarily be seen. His back was muscular, the ridge of spine glistening with sweat, and his thighs were scattered with hair. Gradually, the speed of his motions increased. He lifted the leg of the person beneath him and hooked it over his shoulder, pressing deeper, his hand clutching the person’s knee as he tensed and thrust with an urgency that soon became manic. His grunts got louder. Teresa saw the soles of his feet, white, the toes braced on the dry floor. She wanted to call his name, but knew it was impossible. This could never be interrupted: the thought of interruption was somehow cataclysmic.

Abruptly, their position changed. Teresa stepped backwards, scared she would be seen, but she had no need for fear: they were utterly consumed by their task.

The woman, facing her now, straddled the man, her cheeks flushed and her breasts pale and heavy, the nipples large and black, drooping slightly. She had long, mahogany hair. Teresa had never seen the woman’s hair down before, always scraped back off a high forehead, and she looked prettier than she normally did.

What alarmed her most was the clump of hair below Señorita Gonzalez’s stomach. It was close to the man’s belly, and she kept lifting it off him and going back down, and there was something connecting them, something swollen and weird that Teresa had heard only whispers about. The difference between boys and girls: the thing that grew hard. The man’s hands gripped Gonzalez’s waist then ran up to her breasts, squeezing them together, his thumbs on her nipples. Gonzalez threw her head back, all that mahogany hair falling free; her face screwed up tight and her mouth opened wide and the veins in her neck stood out as she released an ear-splitting cry, rocking back and forth and then, at last, she collapsed on to his chest.

The man kept going, raising his hips and thrusting. Gonzalez was thrown into an upright position, her breasts bouncing hectically, and Teresa almost laughed, but she was about to cry as well so it was confusing. In seconds, the man groaned.

It was over.

But that groan lingered on. It released something in Teresa, like a flesh wound in that pale instant before it splurges blood. All at once, she despised her papa. She despised his weakness. She despised his nakedness. She despised that pathetic, defenceless, self-serving groan. She despised him for liking her tyrant teacher, for choosing her over them. She despised him for loving her twin more than he loved her. She despised him for pretending that evil woman was her mama, who was tired and sick and ignorant of his sin. Teresa was filled with rage, but within that rage sat a nugget of conviction that smacked her with total clarity. Her father had committed a basic, unequivocal transgression that she would never forgive and never forget.

Gonzalez lifted herself and tied her hair back. They said something to each other, Teresa didn’t hear what, and laughed softly.

She found herself staring at it. The thing was relaxing now, less stiff and angry than before, and smaller, almost shy as it rested against her father’s thigh.

Soundlessly, Teresa retreated from the stable door. She stumbled back into the house, the lavender forgotten, and went to the bathroom and thought she might be sick.

Later, Teresa decided she would not tell her sister what she had seen. It was something she should keep to herself, a burden she alone must carry, and it would be the very first thing she ever kept from Calida.

Summer turned to winter and winter turned to spring. Skies were bracing and boundless blue, wisps of clouds drifting high in the ether, and far away the snow-capped mountains surveyed their kingdom of open plains. In the evenings, Teresa sat on the veranda to watch the horses run free, their manes wild in the hot wind.

She spent less time with her father, and resisted his embrace.

‘Chica, what’s the matter?’ Diego would ask. But she couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t look at him. She kept remembering what she had seen—it came at her in flashes, accompanied by that pitiful, animal groan, and she could not bear to be kissed good night or even touched by him. In lessons with Gonzalez, she became surly and distant. Gonzalez smacked and mocked her—’What are you doing?’ Calida whispered when their tutor’s back was turned. ‘Stop making her angry!’—and despite the number of times Teresa longed to put Gonzalez in her place and confess to what she’d seen, she never did. She was afraid of hurting Julia, of disappointing Calida, of Diego’s denial, of the question she kept returning to: Why didn’t you run? Why did you stay and watch? And the more she rejected Diego, the closer he grew to Calida, and the more Teresa felt the cool shawl of loneliness close around her shoulders.

What was there left for her here?

Her mama was right. Her mama told her she didn’t belong on the estancia. She was fated for greater, more important things. She had outgrown this life.

How could Calida be content to stay? There were so many worlds to see, so much more to discover, beyond the gate at the foot of the track. Teresa felt the draw of possibility as a physical force, beckoning her, tempting her. Stay here and you’ll never amount to anything. You’ll always be second best. She imagined her existence twenty years from now, as unhappy as Julia, her hopes and dreams snuffed to dust.

Julia hadn’t always been like this. Hers was a cautionary tale, so she said, as she combed Teresa’s hair and gazed in the mirror at the decades between their reflections. Once, Julia had bathed in banknotes and showered in glittering coins. She had been raised in a mansion many miles away and, as the only daughter of a rich man, had had her every need catered for; surrounded by servants, banquets, and ball gowns, she was the girl whose hand every suitor sought to claim. Then Diego Santiago had swept into her life, so different from the polished men of whom her father approved, and they had fallen in love. Julia, as spirited and defiant as her daughter, refused to be cowed by her father’s ultimatum. Given the choice between her family and her lover, she had chosen her lover. Teresa thought this romantic, but Julia was quick to clarify her mistake. She had been left with nothing. No money. No luxury. No furs or sapphires or silk sheets. When her parents died, they left it all to a distant cousin and not a peso came Julia’s way. Her sacrifice lost her everything.

What Julia wouldn’t give to swap her fortunes now! Look where romance had got her: a house that was falling apart, clothes that were tatty and shapeless, a husband who had changed, or so the story went, when he left to fight on the Islas Malvinas, leaving Julia behind with her pregnancy and a rapidly swelling depression. Now, her only refuge was in her romance novels, which she read to Teresa late into the night. The Billionaire’sMistress, The Diamond Tycoon, The Handsome Magnate …

She informed Teresa how her beauty would serve her well; it was a pass into an exclusive club beyond the reach of ordinary people, and it meant she never had to settle. ‘These are the kind of men you must find,’ Julia counselled. ‘Rich men.’ She told Teresa that love was a trap only fools fell into. ‘Men will let you down—all men, eventually, no matter how much you think you can trust them—but money never will. If you have money, you have power … and if you have power, you have everything.’

That night, watching the stars through the window, silver cobwebs in a deep and soundless purple, Teresa prayed for the courage to make her mama’s vision come true. Diego’s betrayal proved that this was a cutthroat, adult world, that the innocence of her childhood was over, and, if she intended to succeed, she couldn’t hide away.

‘Recognise fortune when it comes for you,’ her mama said. ‘And when it does, be ready.’ Teresa was ready. She sensed it like a current at her fingertips. Something vital was about to change, something big: she could almost touch it.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, filling her lungs with promise. In the bunk below, she heard the yield of the mattress as Calida turned in her sleep.




3 (#ulink_8b276cda-3ae7-5fb1-8298-5c87441f02b2)


London

Seven thousand miles across the sea, in a townhouse in Kensington, actress Simone Geddes faced the wall-mounted mirror as her husband drove into her from behind.

Shit, Brian was a lame fuck. He had never made her come—not once. His technique, if that wasn’t too grand a word, was to pound as hard and as fast as he could until her groans of boredom could be mistaken for cries of ecstasy, and so when the time came for him to collapse on her back in a sweaty, sticky heap (three minutes later), he could feel satisfied that she had also reached climax. This made her suspicious that Brian had never made a woman come, because otherwise he’d know.

‘That feel good, baby?’ he growled, rutting away, lightly slapping her bottom.

Do it properly! Simone wanted to scream. If you’re going to slap me, give it some welly! But as with everything with Brian, it was lame. Lame, lame, lame.

‘Let me get on top,’ she instructed. Her husband was close to spunking and she wouldn’t be in with a shot unless she took matters into her own hands. As she flipped his pale, bloated-from-too-many-lunches-at-Quaglino’s body between her thighs and clamped him into place, she thanked God for the mirror she’d had the foresight to install in the mansion’s master suite. At least this way she could get off on her own image, and no one could deny she looked incredible. At forty-eight, Simone Geddes was the ultimate English screen siren: cool, composed, with a chiselled sort of beauty that could freeze even the most experienced co-star into submission. She wore not an ounce of fat. Her ribcage was visible, delicate as a toothcomb beneath flawless white skin. Her breasts were high and small, the nipples tight. Her thighs were long and lean, smooth as the curves on a cherished motorcar. Her bush was honey-blonde and waxed into a neat landing strip. Her arms were slender and sinewy.

‘Baby, you are so sexy …’ Brian echoed her thoughts. She watched his hands reach up to knead her tits, quickly followed by the back of his head, then the feel of his wet, insistent tongue lapping her nipples as she mused on how much hair he had lost from that area. It was turning into a veritable monk’s patch!

‘I’m ready, hot stuff,’ he murmured—what were they living in, the 1970s? ‘Can you feel me deep inside you? D’you want this cock to make you come?’

Brian’s cock was mediocre. Simone would deal with it as one might a sticky gearbox, grinding it into position until finally she was cruising. She kept an eye on her own reflection as she hit orgasm, enjoying the pink flush that built and spread across her chest, and the way her breasts bounced and shook as she surrendered.

Brian shot his load a second later. He did this disagreeable wiggly thing with his hips, like he was stirring the contents of a mixing bowl with a big wooden spoon.

Efficiently, Simone dismounted. ‘Time to get ready,’ she ordered, stalking into the bathroom. Before entering, she called out, ‘Wear the Armani, would you? And the shirt. That shirt’s good. It’s slimming.’ She slammed the door.

Ugh. Doubts over her marriage were at an all-time high. At first, she had been seduced by the muscle of a big-shot director—not that she wasn’t a big shot herself, but Brian Chilcott was one of the hottest names in British film and together they were dynamite. Of course she had hoped the sex might get better, but then, when it didn’t, she’d given up. Brian did nothing for her, erotically. She didn’t even fancy him. Had she ever? Or had she just been in love with his plethora of awards and the allure of being half of the UK’s reigning power couple? No wonder she took other lovers. Men who knew where a woman’s clitoris was located—who knew women had one, for a start—and would happily spend an hour down there sending her to the brink, until the marital sheets were crumpled and soaked. Vera, the Spanish maid, asked no questions. The day Vera did, Simone would fire her so fast her head would spin.

Simone ran a scented bath and climbed in. The hot bubbles soothed her and she applied her cucumber facemask and closed her eyes. Brian’s latest movie was premiering tonight at Leicester Square and she had to look the part: they’d been married five years now and it was always around this time that the gossip columnists decided to speculate. A glowing joint appearance every couple of months normally did the trick. Just remember to smile! Simone told herself, attempting to practise underneath the mask, which had now set solid and cracked like cake icing.

She was beginning to relax when a caterwaul sounded from the bedroom.

‘But Daaaaad!’

Brian’s voice followed immediately: ‘I said no, darling.’

‘You are such a shit, Dad! All my friends are going. It’s only a fucking party—why do you have to be such a moron all the time?’

‘It’s only because I care—’

‘No, you fucking don’t. If you did, you’d fucking well let me go. It’s like I’m a fucking criminal—it’s like you’re keeping me fucking prisoner!’

‘Stop swearing.’

‘Like fuck I will.’

That was enough! Simone rose from the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. Damn Emily Chilcott! The thirteen-year-old was the bane of Simone’s life—she and her elder brother, the awful Lysander. Who would have stepchildren? Soon after Simone had moved in, Lysander and his friends had ‘done a waffle’ in the first-floor wet room, which involved defecating into the shower grill and, well, she couldn’t bear to think of the rest. Vera the maid had been forced to clear it up. Simone had been appalled, but all Brian did was to roll his eyes and chuckle, ‘Boys will be boys.’

Not on her watch, they wouldn’t. Emily and Lysander were begging for a smack of discipline; if they were her own, they wouldn’t get away with a second of it.

But they’re not yours, are they?

And now you’re a dried-up old husk. Barren. Shrivelled. Sterile.

Simone swallowed hard. She put her hand on the bathroom doorknob and stopped, watching her hand, focusing on it, because when she thought of that time, of that secret, it stole her breath away and it was all she could do to keep standing.

It wasn’t like that. I had no choice.

Emily’s tirade shattered her thoughts. ‘Ihate you!’

Simone tore open the door. ‘What the hell is this?’ she demanded.

‘Oh, perfect,’ sang Emily, who privately loved Simone getting involved because that meant she could access her favoured armoury: the ‘you’re-not-my-mother’ diatribe. ‘Now your little bitch on the side is coming to tell me off.’

‘Emily, no!’ objected Brian, who was sweating. ‘You mustn’t say that!’

‘Bloody well let me go to the party, Dad, or I’ll say a lot worse.’

For a pretty girl, Emily Chilcott made an ugly mess of herself. Her permanent scowl erased the loveliness of her blue eyes, and her filthy mouth better belonged on a black-toothed hooker than an heiress to London’s greatest film dynasty. She was attractive, but her attitude made her a grim proposition. The same went for Lysander. Since their mother had left Brian for a female German show jumper named Trudi (a well-publicised scandal ten years ago), it had all gone tits up: all four tits up, if you thought of it that way. Brian’s laissez-faire attitude was one big long apology, and the kids took every advantage of it. When would he grow a ball-sack, for heaven’s sake?

Simone met Emily’s glare and raised it several notches. She would not lose.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, madam.’

‘Screw you, Simone.’

‘You shut that mouth right now or I’ll shut it for you!’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘With pleasure.’

Brian stepped in. ‘Now, now, ladies …’

‘Lysander’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants,’ raged Emily. ‘He’s in his room this minute getting high off his nuts and neither of you two gives a shit.’

‘He’s doing what?’ Simone stormed into the hallway. Behind, Brian crooned, ‘OK, let’s everyone take it easy …’

Simone headed for Lysander’s room and threw open the door. But the sight that met her eyes wasn’t of Lysander—handsome, dark, rangy Lysander, with a curl to his spoiled, upper-class lip—skinning a joint or bent over one of his elaborate bongs; it was Lysander, butt-naked, reclining against his pillows and receiving a dedicated blow job from a redhead. Simone’s lips parted in shock. She didn’t know where to look. Lysander was coming hard. His eyes met hers as he ejaculated into the redhead’s mouth. In the corridor, Emily giggled. ‘Oops,’ she trilled, ‘my mistake!’

Post-climax, Lysander was unfazed. ‘All right … Mummy?’

Lysander’s accent was so sharp you could skewer cubes of meat on it.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Simone rasped. The redhead jerked up, clocked their audience and flung herself off the bed. She grappled for her clothes, her breasts jiggling as she tried and failed to cover her modesty. From the front Simone saw she was older than Lysander—quite a bit older, in fact. Lysander lit a cigarette.

Simone fought to keep her eyes off Lysander’s dying erection. He made no attempt to conceal it. It was huge. Why couldn’t Brian share that family trait?

‘You’re disgusting!’ Mortified, Simone turned on her heel. ‘Do not touch me, Brian!’ She flapped him off. ‘Whatever you do, do not bloody touch me!’

Before she disappeared back inside the master suite, she heard Emily wheedle: ‘So, Daddy, can I please go to the party? See, I’m not as bad as ‘Sander …’

And, predictably, depressingly, Brian’s castrated consent.

‘I just don’t understand why you can’t take control of them more!’

In the back seat of a blacked-out Mercedes rushing through Piccadilly, Brian placed a hand on his wife’s knee. Simone resisted the urge to recoil against the window: after all, they soon had to put on a convincing show for the cameras.

‘I try,’ he said pathetically. ‘You know how strong-willed they are.’

‘Or how weak-willed you are.’

‘They’re yours, too, you know.’ Brian said it as if he were sharing a prized chain of Umbrian holiday homes, not a host of cancerous growths in the armpit.

This time, she did flinch. ‘They already have a mother.’

‘But only one stepmother.’

God, it made her sound like some gnarled old thing in Cinderella. Oh, for a child of her own! Simone dreamed of it night and day. A girl—yes, a daughter, it had to be a daughter—whom she could mould in her own image. The girl would be her legacy, her gift to the world long after Simone’s own legend died. She would raise her as the ravishing, well-mannered, and impeccably groomed young lady that Emily Chilcott wasn’t and never could be. Simone wished for this immaculate creature so fervently that she thought she might explode. Yes, she had fame. Yes, she had riches. Yes, she had a wardrobe, and a stylist, and an army of fans that could topple the fucking monarchy, but all she yearned for was that most prized possession: a girl.

It would never happen. Simone was biologically unable, even before the first flushes of menopause. She hadn’t always been. No, it hadn’t always been that way …

‘Here we are, baby,’ said Brian, as they pulled up at the red carpet.

Their driver opened the door and the wall of sound that crashed in almost knocked her off her feet. Simone gripped her clutch and pasted on a smile. Cameras flashed and sparked. ‘Simone! Brian! Let’s see a kiss for the fans!’ And so on.

Simone had picked out her outfit personally, a Versace emerald-green drape dress with scoop neckline. Everyone said that, after forty, one should cover one’s décolletage, but Simone disagreed. She hadn’t been using five-hundred-pound face and neck creams the last twenty years for nothing.

‘You look tired.’ Michelle Horner, Simone’s manager and one of the most cutthroat women in the business, stole her at the end of the press queue. Simone had always thought Michelle resembled a whippet, especially tonight, in a grey trouser suit and pumps, her nose appearing even longer under the lighting. Michelle wore glasses on the end of her nose, amplifying the effect. ‘All OK on the home front?’

‘Same old.’

They entered the atrium, where champagne was circulating. Heads turned. In certain spheres Simone was known as The Ice Queen. She wasn’t sure where or how she had picked that up, but it was certainly an easier façade to maintain than the poor joke-a-minute suckers who had cultivated a comedy precedent and had to spend the rest of their days working the room like a court buffoon.

‘Terry Sheehan wants you for January Fight,’ Michelle was saying. ‘I told him we’d consider the script but it would have to be something special what with the Jonasses ringing off the hook and Sindy Reinhold at Paramour calling every hour of the day. I said, “Terry, we’re not getting out of bed in the morning for less than ten, and if you don’t like it you can bite me.” Between you and me, he’ll be scrabbling in his toilet bowl for coins. This is a waiting game and we’ll wait.’

Simone was only half paying attention. Across the space, a fellow forty-something actress had arrived. The woman was single, attractive if not ragingly successful, and in her arms she carried a gorgeously sweet black baby boy.

‘Where’d she get that from?’ Simone cut in.

Michelle followed her gaze. ‘The kid?’

‘Of course the kid—I thought her husband ran off with that bit of fluff.’

‘He did. She wanted a child, though. So she adopted.’

Simone narrowed her eyes. That sounded awfully simple. ‘Is it awfully simple?’

‘For ordinary people, I shouldn’t think so. For her, maybe.’

‘Where do you get them from?’

‘That one came from Africa.’

‘The internet? Are they in a catalogue or something?’

Michelle stepped back. ‘You’re not considering it, surely,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘What does Brian think?’

Right then, Simone couldn’t give a hooting crap what Brian thought. He wouldn’t know what it was like to go through life with no child to call her own. He wouldn’t understand. As with all else in their marriage, Simone would make the decision herself and then she would inform him of it. His opinion mattered not a jot. ‘Michelle, I want you to look into it for me.’

Michelle was used to dealing with her clients’ whims—this one would blow over in a week. ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Do you want a brown one?’

‘No.’

‘A Chinese one?’

‘No.’

‘Mexican? Filipino?’

‘I’m not ordering a goddamn takeaway. I don’t know.’

‘I’ll get you some information.’

‘Good. This could be the missing piece, Michelle. It really could.’

Brian joined them. On a happy impulse, Simone leaned in to kiss his cheek. A passing paparazzo captured the moment. ‘Hello, baby,’ he said, chuffed.

Hello, baby …

Except it wouldn’t be a baby. She had her own reasons for that. It would be a child. Hello to the child who was somewhere out there, halfway across the world, waiting to be plucked from poverty to riches, from obscurity to the spotlight, from nothing to having it all. What little girl wouldn’t want that?

She smiled. It would happen—and soon.

For, when Simone Geddes put her mind to something, she did not fail.




4 (#ulink_c39f7568-4c1e-5c79-a873-d68f5cdeffee)


Argentina

In the autumn, without explanation, Señorita Gonzalez was fired. Diego appeared to make the decision overnight, and Calida didn’t dare question it—except to her sister.

‘What happened?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you think he found out what she was really like?’

‘Maybe. Who cares? She’s gone now.’

Teresita was flicking through one of their mama’s romance novels. Calida frowned: she could read her twin just as easily as the words on the page.

‘You know something,’ she said. ‘About Gonzalez—I can tell.’

‘No, you can’t. You don’t know everything about me.’

‘I know you can’t actually like those books. Come on, A Prince’s Affair?’

Teresita bristled. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ she countered.

Calida could list the reasons from the covers alone—plastic men in open shirts with chests like dolls, smooth and hairless, and bright white teeth; how Julia swooned over their aeroplanes and chunky watches and forgot about the life that was right here in front of her. Calida thought the books looked like nonsense, but she didn’t say so, because she didn’t want to prove her twin right. They did know everything about each other—and in that case Calida didn’t need to explain what she disliked, nor Teresita what she enjoyed, so it seemed safer to walk away, and to try not to think about what Teresita was keeping from her, and why she hid it so deep, out of sight.

A month later, the girls were watching television in the barn when the phone rang.

Calida went through to the house. She lifted the receiver.

‘Hello?’

The voice on the line sounded far away. It was a woman.

‘Es la policía,’ it said. ‘My name is Officer Puerta and I need to speak with Julia, wife of Diego Santiago. Is that her?’

They manoeuvered Julia into the back of the Landrover with difficulty: she hadn’t taken the car out in years and professed to have forgotten how—and besides, how could she operate a vehicle at a time like this? She was a wife in crisis.

‘My husband,’ she kept gasping. ‘What’s happened to my husband?’

‘We have to get to him, Mama,’ said Calida. She was terrified but she couldn’t show it. She had to stay strong. She helped her sister into the passenger seat and held her hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told her firmly. ‘It will be all right.’ Teresita gazed back at her with a stoic expression, and it was an expression Calida couldn’t decipher. She couldn’t find a way into it. It closed on her as firmly as the car door.

Calida had driven on the shrubland before, but never on the roads and never without Diego. She crunched the gears as they rocked and bucked down the pot-holed drive, and she tried to remember what her papa had taught her about checking her mirrors and coordinating her feet. It helped to hear his voice, guiding her.

Please be OK, Papa. Please, please be OK.

Eventually, they met the highway. Vehicles rushed past at speed. When a gap opened in the traffic she set the Landrover in motion and immediately stalled, trapping them across the oncoming lane. ‘Move!’ screamed Julia from the back.

Calida floored the gas and the car lurched forward. Car horns screeched. The wheel spun in her fingers and she grappled for control, finally setting them straight.

She followed the police officer’s directions. Everything was alien, sinister. Thoughts whirled as she turned south to the waterfront. Mauve clouds streaked the sky over the town lake. Calida could see the pulsing red beams from the police vehicles and the lump in her throat swelled.

You’re going to be OK. You have to be OK.

In her heart, though, she knew.

All her life her father had been a rock, as solid and constant as the mountains of home—but lately, he hadn’t been right. Since Gonzalez had left, Diego had become unpredictable, suspicious, checking up on the girls, calling them trouble, shouting at them for the tiniest thing. What had happened? What had changed? Once, he would never have left them at night while he went to town. Now, it happened more often than not. She had listened at the door while her mama spoke to Officer Puerta, watching Julia’s knuckles grow paler by the second. There had been an accident.

They reached the blockade: a ribbon of tape, police talking grimly into their radios, and, beyond that, into the dark, dense fog of the night, a shape she couldn’t make out and didn’t want to see. Calida brought the car to a stop. They opened the doors and climbed out. Calida attempted to be close to her sister but her sister didn’t want to be close. Instead, Teresita wrapped her arms round herself and turned away. Calida swallowed a lump of sadness. I need you, she thought. Don’t you need me?

A woman saw their approach and crossed the tape.

‘Come with me,’ she told Julia. ‘The girls stay here.’

Teresita was watching the police lights. ‘What’s happened to Papa?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is he dead?’

The question stalled Calida. She knew the word that wanted to form on her tongue, the natural, logical word, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Calida would reflect on that moment and the tormented days that followed as frozen segments in time, as still and silent as the images on her camera. Diego pinned against the tree, the brief, ruthless frame of his body before he’d been covered; Julia with a handkerchief to her face, crying for him or for herself; Teresita refusing to weep, even once, and refusing her sister’s sympathy and shutting herself away.

It transpired that Diego had been drinking. Not just that night but every night before. Calida didn’t understand why. Her papa was a responsible man—not a drunk who got smashed in a bar and walked out into the middle of the road in front of a truck and got hit so hard his lungs collapsed and his heart stopped beating.

Diego had been her compass, her anchor and her ally. Now, he was gone.

Calida mourned him quietly and alone. Her mama’s door remained closed.

‘Are you awake?’ she whispered into the dark.

Weeks later, in bed, listening to her twin’s sleeping breath, Teresa shivered. She thought of her papa picking her up when she was five and swinging her over his shoulder, tickling her until she screamed with laughter. Tears sprang to her eyes.

You killed him. You have to live with that for the rest of your life.

Guilt and confusion hounded her every minute.

Papa died because of me.

Teresa had pushed him to it. In telling her father what she knew, she had set the wheels in motion. She had watched his face fall, heard his pleas not to tell her twin, delighted when he’d dismissed Gonzalez. She’d enjoyed that he spent more time in the bars, away from the farm and away from Calida. She hadn’t considered that his shame had turned him into an addict, or that he would wind up killing himself.

How was she to know that?

‘Are you awake?’ She tried again.

Silence came back at her. Perhaps, if it hadn’t, she would have told Calida the truth. Her sister would have kissed her and told her she wasn’t to blame—it would all be OK; they would get through it together. But there the silence was, cold and accusing. Teresa sat and climbed down the ladder, her feet meeting the floor, pale toes against dark wood. Her nightdress was thin and her legs were bare. She crept into Calida’s bunk and lay down next to her, felt the heat of her sister’s body, and put an arm round her slumbering shape, using the other to pull the blanket up to her chin.

Calida moaned as a freezing ankle touched hers.

A yawn, a sigh, then nothing. Sleep.

Teresa longed for the same oblivion. She snuggled into her twin’s back and held hard, thinking if she held hard enough they could be close again, like they had been when they were little. Everything seemed so complicated these days. It wasn’t simple, like it used to be, when all that mattered was each other. She had kept her father’s secret because she’d been scared—and then because she had wanted to shelter Calida in the way Calida had always sheltered her; she hadn’t wanted her sister to lose faith, like she had, in the only man in their life. But the more time passed, the deeper this wedge drove—a point of divergence on the cusp of adolescence. Teresa inhaled her sister’s skin, a scent she would never lose because it lingered on her own body, and wished she were more like Calida. She had thought she was doing the right thing in getting rid of Gonzalez—but since when had she been any good at that? Calida was the one who did the right thing, who fixed, mended, and made better.

Since Diego’s death, Calida had set to with grit and purpose while Teresa hung back, thinking, I’m twelve. I don’t want this to be my life.

Every time she looked at Calida, she saw her own failings—at having robbed them of their papa, at not wanting to stay and toil, at wishing she could be far away from their home—and the reasons why Calida would always be the better twin.

At last, she withdrew from the covers and left the safety of her sister’s side. For a moment she stood alone in the gloom, the boards scratchy beneath her feet. Through the window, the gate at the foot of the track seemed alive, pulsing in the moonlight, lit up like a pearl. She returned to her own bed, her heart thundering.

I’ll get away from here one day. I’ll make Mama proud. I’ll be rich and successful and all the things she wants me to be. Then I’ll have done something right.

Comforted by this, Teresa reached for Fortune’s Lover and read it beneath the blankets for a while, until her arm started to ache from holding the torch.

When at last she surrendered to sleep, the story grasped for her unconscious and, in her dreams, she walked through the farm gate and kept on walking.

She dreamed of billionaires and red carpets, of palaces and yachts, of sparkling blue swimming pools and satin purses stuffed with notes.

She dreamed of the elusive heroes of her mother’s novels, their shirts crisp and parted at the collar. So unlike any of the men she had encountered, these men were of a different breed, exotic and treacherous and holding out for her.




5 (#ulink_1b187120-4a02-5370-ba93-3214f4f1ae89)


He arrived on a day in July, when the sky and earth and everything in between was enhanced, as if she was looking at it through her camera lens and could draw it into sharper focus. All week they had drowned in a storm—angry, grinding clouds dousing the soil and filling the lakes—and now it had cleared the air was silver-fresh.

Calida was inside. The door, loose on its hinges, trembled gently within its frame. She heard him before she saw him—the heavy bag that fell from his shoulders and hit the soil, the deep, single cough—and the sound of a man took her by surprise. It was a year since Diego’s death. At first, illogically, she thought it might be him.

‘Hello,’ she said, stepping on to the porch.

The stranger was standing at the wooden gate, his back to her. Paco the horse was nuzzling the palm of his hand, and the way he leaned into the animal, and the animal into him, struck Calida as secretive and rare. When he turned, she caught it in stages: the lifting head, the profile, the crease in one cheek as he smiled. He was in front of the sun, making his hair blonder and his face darker, though his eyes shone like bursts of blue water on the arid steppe. He was taller than her, lean and muscular. He wore a grey T-shirt, the kind that’s been used so much it becomes soft to touch, and faded blue jeans. The jeans were tucked into cow-leather gaucho riding boots.

‘Señorita Santiago?’

He had a sure voice. Paco responded to it, nudging the stranger with his muzzle. A weird thing was happening to Calida’s tongue. It seemed soldered to the roof of her mouth. She tried to unstick it.

‘I’m here for the work,’ he explained. ‘I saw your ad.’

On her mama’s instruction, Calida had pasted the fliers up months ago. Calida wasn’t sure what she had expected—certainly not for someone to turn up out of nowhere, without warning, someone who looked like this: certainly not him.

‘My name’s Daniel Cabrera.’ He put out his hand.

She experimented with the words in her head. The surname sounded like a kiss and a dance, maybe both at once. She took his hand. It was cool and strong.

‘I got talking with Señor Más at the market and he said you were still looking for help. I figured it was better to come straight out here and meet you in person …’

She nodded. Speak, for God’s sake! Say anything!

‘I’m Calida,’ she offered at last.

Daniel’s smile widened. She guessed he was seventeen, maybe eighteen. His forearms arrested her—the colour of them: a deep tan; and powerful—on the outside was a scattering of light, fair hair, and on the tender skin closest to his body a strong vein was visible. His wrists were thick, and around one he wore a leather band.

‘Your home is amazing,’ he said.

‘Gracias.’

‘It’s quite the legend in town, Calida.’ How come no one else could make her name sound like that? ‘People look out at this land. They can’t believe one family owns it all. It would be a privilege to be out here every day, with you.’

Every day … with you … Calida blushed. Her eyes darted to the ground.

‘Beautiful horses,’ he said. ‘I used to work on an estancia in the south—rides for tourists, that kind of thing. I grew up with animals—they’re my family.’

Calida struggled for something to say. If Teresita were here, she’d have no trouble talking. ‘What about your real family?’ she blurted, and instantly knew she’d said the wrong thing. Daniel’s face, formerly so open and friendly, fell into shadow.

‘They live in Europe,’ he said. ‘Where I’m from.’

‘Oh.’ There was a pause.

He was looking directly at her. ‘Calida, is your mother in?’

Just like that, the illusion of her maturity was shattered. Of course Daniel saw her as a kid: she was only thirteen, even if sometimes she felt twice that age.

‘She’s indoors,’ said Calida. ‘I’ll take you to her.’

He smiled a smile she would carry with her forever. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Daniel Cabrera got the job. Julia took one look at him and hired him on the spot.

‘A good solid man about the place,’ she said, brushing her hair for the first time in weeks. Calida noticed how her mama’s eyes lit up when Daniel walked in, and how she kept playing with her hair and erupting into light, tinkling laughs.

‘She likes him,’ Calida confided in her sister.

Teresita was unfazed. ‘You’re only mad because you like him too …’

‘I do not!’

‘Liar.’

‘Cállate, shut up!’

‘I’ve seen how red you go.’ Teresita put on a silly voice and danced around: ‘Oh, Daniel, you’re so handsome! You’re so perfect! I think I love you, Daniel!’

Calida smiled in spite of herself. ‘You’re an idiot.’ But she couldn’t help her blush—and she couldn’t think of anything else to say except to repeat her protest, but the more she repeated it, the more it exposed that Teresita was right. Daniel Cabrera occupied her thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Whenever she was alone, she pictured his arms around her, his golden head bowed to hers and his warm breath on her neck. They stayed like that in her imagination, just still, unsure how the moment moved on. Calida felt there was more, but it was reckless and adult and she didn’t understand it, and to feel his embrace, if only in her mind, was, for the moment, enough.

But it wasn’t Julia she should have been afraid of. It was her twin.

‘Daniel should move into the outhouse,’ said Teresita, after supper one night.

She delivered the suggestion with a careful insouciance that immediately rang alarm bells. Calida looked up, tried to find a way into her sister’s countenance but, as happened so often lately, she could not. Her heart quickened. Teresita took a tight sip of her drink and in that moment she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. They had been twins too long. Her sister wanted him, too.

‘There’s running water out there,’ Teresita went on, ‘and he could come up to the house for food. I’d like to have him close all the time … Wouldn’t you, Calida?’

Teresita’s eyes met hers, but, instead of the reassurance she’d been hoping for—that the proposition was for Calida’s benefit, a selfless act made in knowledge of her devotion—instead she met a dead-on challenge. Teresita’s gaze was one of sheer resolve. Turns out I’m into him. What are you going to do about it?

‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ said Julia.

Calida swallowed her distress. She stood and cleared the bowls. All night she refused to talk to Teresita, or even look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ her sister asked. ‘Are you angry with me?’ But Calida couldn’t form her accusation. Teresita would deny it, in any case; say she’d imagined it. But Calida knew better. She had seen the confrontation in her sister’s regard, the glint of cunning. It made her want to give up, because if she were ever pitted against Teresita in a game of love, she knew who would win. Her twin was magnificent, and she was ordinary. It was as simple as that.

And so it happened. Over the coming months, Daniel became part of the ranch, as integral to Calida as the horses and the mountains and the sunset. Slowly but surely, she fell in love with him. She loved the fact he only spoke when there was something to say. She loved his smile, which seemed to find humour not just in the joke but in a private comedy that existed only between them. She loved his focus as he worked. She loved his passion. She loved his strength. She loved his silhouette as he rode off into the dust, the black shape of his cowboy hat and his boots upturned in the stirrups.

She loved how he taught her bareback riding; and when they went together to retrieve a wild pony that had strayed from their neighbour’s land, he showed her how to capture the animal and rein her in, bucking and twisting, until she calmed.

Once, Calida witnessed him showering. It was dawn, and he wouldn’t have expected them to be up yet. She watched from her window, her blood pounding.

Daniel used an outdoor steel tub, a bar of soap, and a hose connected to a hand-driven pump. He removed his T-shirt. His chest elicited in her a confusion of feelings: desire at the map of taut, bronzed muscle, and the trail of hair that vanished into his jeans, but also a sharp tug somewhere deeper and more affectionate. She felt that she knew him, every part of him, even though she hadn’t met those parts yet. She saw him as a stallion, wounded by a past encounter, untamed and untrusting, but that she might whisper to him and find she could gain that trust, and it would be a gem far rarer than the rarest treasure in the deepest well in the most distant part of the earth.

He pumped the handle, tendons in his back rippling, and the water came quick and hard. He bent over the basin, head bowed, and his hair turned light to dark.

Only when his hands went to his jeans and he started to unbuckle them did Calida look away, pulling the material over the window. Part of her wanted to peel it back and see, but the other part was stronger. It knew that one day it would be her hands on Daniel’s jeans, her unbuckling, and she would wait patiently for that day because it would be perfect, and that as fast as she undid him he would be undoing her, unravelling and unravelling until she was a spool of silk in his fingers.

December arrived, and with it the first flush of summer.

In the kitchen, Teresita was up, already dressed in her riding gear. The sisters never went riding without the other, and Calida asked: ‘Where are you going?’

‘Cattle herding,’ said her twin, as if this were something she did alone every day. Calida heard Daniel getting the horses ready in the yard, and, in her own nightshirt, felt panicked and unprepared.

‘I’ll come too.’

‘We’ll be fine on our own.’

Daniel came in. He smiled when he saw Calida. ‘Ready?’

‘Calida’s not coming,’ said Teresita.

‘Actually, I am.’ She recalled her sister’s defiance over the supper table and a flash of anger spurted in her chest. ‘You’ll wait for me, won’t you?’ she asked him.

His smile widened. ‘Sure.’

‘It’s a stupid idea.’ Teresita scowled, folding her arms.

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Daniel.

By nine o’clock they were crossing the steppe. The wilderness was dotted with beech forests and glittering rivers. Calida was uncomfortable on Diego’s old criollo, and, despite the extra sheepskin she had piled on top of the saddle, she lagged behind.

All morning she was forced to watch Teresita up ahead, riding alongside Daniel, as if it were just the two of them.

Approaching midday, the heat became searing. Dust swirled in their eyes and nostrils, and they tied scarves around their faces to ward off the worst. The horses’ hooves picked a path between rocks and boulders. Calida saw Daniel finish an apple then lean forward, deep over his animal’s mane, to feed him the remains. When they stopped to rest, he tethered the horses in the shade and, before fetching a drink for himself, he filled a bucket with water from the stream and poured it gently over their heads, working it through their coats and removing the metal bits from between their teeth. Calida wished her father were here, because Diego would have liked Daniel.

The herd was on the other side of the valley and they rode hard to reach it in the light. Mustering was one of her favourite things: the rush of the cattle as they swarmed across the plains and the beat of their tread echoing across the land; the chase the horses gave as they circled the drive—and how, when the job was done, the beasts poured like water through a funnel into the next prairie. When night came, they set up camp in a sheltered vale, by the remains of a fire all ash and dust from their last visit.

Daniel warmed empanadas, and cooked an estofado stew, which he prepared on a wooden board. The handle of his facón was silver and intricately carved, and Calida decided it was of personal importance to him—a gift, perhaps—and remembered the family he had mentioned, so briefly, in Europe. Who were they?

After they had eaten, Daniel lit a cigarette and lay back on the arrangement of sheepskin and leather that would serve as his bed. His features danced in the flames. He let smoke out in a thin plume that shot deep into the night.

‘Daniel, will you help me?’

Teresita was struggling to lift the saddle from the ground, caught up as it was in her stirrups and reins. Calida sat on a log, her chin on her knees, and watched.

‘Here, like this,’ he said. Teresita giggled. Calida glanced away.

‘Should I set up next to you?’ Teresita asked.

‘It’s the best shelter,’ he replied. ‘Better to be under the trees.’

‘Better to be private …’

The voice Teresita said this in was older, more adult, than her thirteen years. From where had she got this way of speaking—their mama’s books?

Daniel didn’t respond, but then maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe he was looking at Teresita in the way Calida prayed and hoped he would one day look at her.

Unable to bear it, she got into her own bed. Normally, staying overnight, she and her sister would share, warm safety in the reassuring shape of each other’s bodies. Safety? All she thought now, when she thought of her twin, was danger. She wanted to scream: What are you doing? They were meant to be allies, not rivals.

A tear slid out of Calida’s eye. If only Diego were still here. Everything had gone wrong after he’d died. Teresita wasn’t the same girl she had been.

‘Calida?’ Daniel’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Come sit with us?’

‘I’m tired,’ she replied, rolling over. Daniel wouldn’t be able to trace the upset in her voice, but her sister would. A small, silly part of her expected Teresita to come and lie down next to her, squeeze her tight until she fell asleep like they’d used to do when one of them was sad. But the bed remained cold. Teresita stayed out in the night, a sovereign queen. She had never needed Calida in the way Calida needed her.

Over at the fire, she heard the slosh of a bottle passing between them, and talking, but mostly her sister talking. Whenever Daniel spoke she strained to hear, grasping after his words like a desert after a drop of rain. It was unfair, so unfair, that she should be shut out on account of her being plain, and nothing special, and nothing remarkable, or anything that would make Daniel look at her twice. She pictured Teresita flicking her long hair, cat eyes twinkling in the night. The bottle passed again, followed by the catch of a lighter as Daniel lit another cigarette, enjoying the evening and wishing to prolong it. Calida longed to block her ears in case she heard something she could never un-hear—or, worse, stopped hearing things, because that meant they might be, they could be … No, Daniel wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Above, the stars were out in force. A warm breeze shivered on the leaves. Calida thought of the photographs she had taken of Daniel, back on the farm, without him knowing, ones she would pore over in private. What had seemed romantic at the time now seemed desperate and hollow, paper wishes that would never come to anything. He would never look at her and think she was beautiful—not the kind of beauty Teresita possessed. That power would forever be beyond Calida’s reach.

In a depressing instant, Calida’s life rolled out ahead of her, as average as the face she saw whenever she looked in the mirror. She would always be behind the camera … never in front of it. Teresita was different. She was destined for more. And in her mind’s horizon, before she drowned in sleep, Calida glimpsed the ship that was coming to take one of them away, sailing stealthily through the night towards them.




6 (#ulink_56cc9ba2-f0b1-5d60-80b5-06363c08cd88)


At fourteen, Teresa Santiago’s body was changing. Her breasts were growing—now, when she put her hands on them, their fullness filled her palm. She compared them with Calida’s, glimpsing her twin’s flatter chest under a smock, and wondered why some girls had them and others didn’t. Her legs were lengthening and her waist was shapely. There was hazy fuzz between her thighs. It reminded her of Señorita Gonzalez in the stables: the mysteries of the body that played on a loop in her mind.

Today, the house was empty. Teresa ventured into her mama’s bedroom and sat at the dressing table. It was a claw-footed thing in eggshell-beige with an oval glass top: a relic from Julia’s former life, and at odds with the austerity of the rest of the farm. Above the dresser was a mirror, mottled where it met its frame, and in it Teresa appraised her reflection, the effect uncanny because she looked so like Julia in her younger years that it could well have been the same person. She reached for a brush and ran it through her hair, black as coal and sheer as silk. Her eyes were green, wide, and Cleopatric, and her brows were thick. Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow.

Your beauty will serve you well … Julia’s voice reached her—or was it her own? It will be the thing that gets you out of here. She clung to it, her pass, her ticket to freedom: the one thing she had that was all hers, not her twin’s, not anyone else’s.

Her reflection gazed back at her for so long that she began to lose her grip on which was the real version—the one here or the one in the mirror.

Quickly, she left the room.

Calida wasn’t speaking to her. Teresa understood why, but the further she climbed in, the deeper she dug, the harder it became to turn back. She was testing her beauty; how far it would take her and the currency it held—and Daniel would give her her answer.

Every time she felt bad about Calida, knowing how her sister adored him, she reminded herself of the many things Calida had taken from her. Forever being the one in control, telling Teresa what she could and couldn’t do, always making the decisions and treating her like a child. Being the apple of their father’s eye, the one people trusted and relied on and respected. Being born first: the eternal offence.

What did Teresa have? Her looks. They were all she had.

Many times she wanted to forget the whole thing, say sorry to Calida and go back to how they were. But then she thought of the cracks in their companionship, and the glaring rift where she had kept the facts of their father’s death to herself. Teresa felt wronged by it, made to protect his affair and then watch him die and feel responsible for it. Calida hadn’t had to go through that, had she? Her memories of Diego were untainted. Teresa carried the burden and resented her sister for it.

Moreover, her father and Gonzalez had proven one unambiguous truth: that there was no justice, no integrity when it came to love. In an adult world, it was every person for herself: a question of survival. Realising that was just part of growing up.

Friday night, she made a decision. Daniel was in town—she had overheard him making arrangements to meet at Luz de Las Estrellas.

Teresa prepared carefully: her best outfit, lashings of mascara, high heels she had practised walking in. Finally ready, she stumbled into the kitchen—only to find that Calida had beaten her to it. Her sister was in the process of sneaking out of the door. Calida’s face was painted with lipstick and eye shadow, badly applied, and with a pang Teresa thought of the dozens of times their mama had taught her to put on make-up and had never done the same for Calida. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

Calida was defiant. ‘To find Daniel.’

‘Oh. So am I.’

Calida broke out and went ahead down the lane. Teresa followed, seeing her twin’s balled fists and tight shoulders and feeling sorry but at the same time proud.

Finally, here was something she could take control of. A judgement she alone could make. Besides, why was it fair that Calida got Daniel all to herself? Did she feel entitled, because she was older? Did that mean Teresa deserved only scraps for the rest of her life? In truth, she had no feelings for Daniel. He was a gaucho, not a billionaire, and he had Calida’s soul, the soul of the ranch, the soul of Argentina …

Her own soul felt confused.

But she had to know if he liked her. If beauty was everything Julia vowed it was. Daniel was a test, the results of which decided her survival in the outside world.

The moon was whole in the sky, illuminating the track that led the half-mile to the highway. When they reached the road, Calida looked like an abandoned child, shivering in her skirt and top, her arms wrapped round her waist.

‘How are you going to get there?’ Teresa asked.

‘I’ll think of something. I don’t need you.’

Teresa put her arm out to hail a car. Calida slapped it down.

‘Someone will stop!’

‘That’s the idea.’

It wasn’t long before a truck pulled over.

‘Hi.’ Teresa leaned in the window. She looked older than she was: they could easily have been sixteen-year-old friends on a night out. ‘Give us a ride?’

‘Jump right in.’

She slid on to the back seat. Calida hesitated, before cutting her losses and joining her. The girls sat as far apart as possible, Calida staring resolutely out of the window at nothing, hating every perilous moment but unwilling to allow her sister to go alone. The man driving was middle-aged, with thinning hair. He wore a beige shirt and slacks. Teresa couldn’t see his face, only his darting eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘Where you headed?’ he asked as the car pulled away.

‘Las Estrellas,’ Teresa answered.

The man sneered. ‘You old enough?’

‘We’re eighteen.’

His eyebrow lifted. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Something the matter with your amiga?’

‘She’s shy.’

‘You’re the chatty one,’ he said. ‘I like that.’

Teresa took her eyes from the man’s. Her heart was beating like crazy. The way the man ogled her, like a bear in need of a meal. She could say or do anything and he would still want her. She could ask for anything and he would say yes.

Minutes later, their ride pulled up outside the club. Calida got out and slammed the door. The entrance was heaving. A crowd swigged from beer bottles, blowing smoke into the air. The deep, heady thrum of music leaked out to the street.

A guy on the door stepped forward. ‘ID,’ he demanded.

Teresa lifted her chin. ‘I don’t have mine. I’m eighteen.’

‘Sure you are. ID, or you’re not coming in.’

Teresa batted her lashes. ‘Come on, give me a break …’

The man looked over her head to the next in line. Scowling, Teresa stepped to the side. Just as she was working out a Plan B she saw Daniel Cabrera emerge from the club, his arm round an attractive blonde. Behind her, Calida stiffened, appalled at the notion he had a girlfriend. Teresa stalked over without a backward glance.

‘Hi,’ she said.

Daniel was shocked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then: ‘Calida? Is that you?’

Teresa sensed rather than saw her sister approach. She stood her ground. ‘We came separately,’ she said.

‘Does Julia know?’

‘She doesn’t need to know.’

‘Hey, Dani, what’s going on?’ The blonde came over.

‘Nothing,’ Daniel said, stepping away from her.

‘Who are they?’

‘Girls I work with.’

‘Shit, what are they, like twelve?’

‘Too young to be out, that’s for sure.’

Teresa glared. ‘I’m still here, you know. I can hear just fine.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t be here,’ Daniel said. His voice softened somewhat when he addressed Calida. ‘I’m surprised you did this, Calida,’ he said. ‘You should have known better. Why did you bring your sister with you?’

Teresa wanted to scream. Why do they have to treat me like a baby?

All Calida did was to grimly lift her shoulders—and then, to everyone’s embarrassment but most of all her twin’s, a sob broke out of its carefully assembled cage. Calida sniffed and wiped her eyes, trying to contain it so nobody would notice.

Daniel extricated himself from the blonde and pulled her into a hug. Teresa heard her sobs honking against his sweater. Daniel held the back of Calida’s neck tenderly, and the blonde became agitated. ‘Are we going or not?’ she said irritably.

Calida drew away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I just … I’m sorry.’ Her face was blotchy with tears and humiliation and the wound of an exploded dream.

Daniel led his girlfriend away and began speaking to her intently. The girlfriend sighed, rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel and went back inside.

‘Come on,’ he told the sisters, ‘we’re going home.’

‘We don’t have any money,’ said Calida. She sounded utterly dejected.

‘It’s a good job I do, then, isn’t it?’

On the ride back to the farm, they barely spoke. Calida was curled against the window. Teresa wondered if she was asleep, and leaned into the front so that her mouth was inches from Daniel’s shoulder and she could smell the smoky scent coming off him. ‘You won’t tell Mama, will you?’ she whispered.

Daniel waited a moment before responding. When he did, he reached into the back and touched Calida’s knee. Perhaps he thought she was the one who’d asked it.

‘I won’t tell,’ he said.




7 (#ulink_49468581-6998-5ed4-b556-a0dae602bcd1)


‘Money,’ said Simone Geddes’ manager, as they took a car from the airstrip and began the long drive through northern Patagonia, ‘plain and simple. Once we show these people the kind of cash we’re carrying, it’s a free pass straight to your kid.’

Simone opened her diamond-encrusted compact and reapplied SOS lip cream. Travel made her horribly dehydrated, and the trip from London had been exhausting; first the city-hop to Amsterdam, then the fourteen hours to Buenos Aires, then the final leg to this deadbeat part of the world that looked as if it had never seen a car on four wheels, let alone a Range Rover Lumma CLR with built-in sound system and a sun roof that allowed Simone’s headscarf to whip prettily in the breeze.

‘Well,’ she turned to Michelle, ‘I trust you know what you’re doing.’

‘Naturally. I’ve had my contacts working round the clock on this for over a year, Simone. I don’t make mistakes.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Simone lit one of her super-slim menthols—she was trying to give up, but these hardly counted. ‘That’s why you’re my manager.’

Michelle Horner delivered a tight smile, the equivalent of a raucous laugh from an ordinary person, and consulted her papers. She passed a file to Simone.

‘Six daughters, the right age, and a nice spread of light and dark.’

‘I’d like one with dark hair.’

‘I meant skin tone.’ Michelle tapped a sharp red fingernail on the photo, which showed half a dozen grinning tweens holding hands on a farm. They looked poor, but happy. ‘We’ve got everything from mocha to cappuccino.’

‘I feel like I’m buying a puppy!’ Simone trilled joyously.

‘With any luck this one won’t pee all over your floors.’

Simone flicked ash out of the window. Some of it blew back on her and without needing to be asked the driver activated the rear-seat ashtray; a crystal plate slid smoothly from the leather footrest. Simone tapped her cigarette into it.

‘So, which has your vote?’ Michelle asked.

‘Hmm, I’m not sure. Maybe the one in the middle.’

‘That’s my favourite, too.’

‘They’re a bit scrawny, aren’t they? Will they grow into their looks? It’s important, Michelle. This girl is going to be my ambassador, among other things.’

‘I understand that,’ Michelle replied. ‘I even had one of those photo-fit experts draw up estimates of what they’ll be like in ten years’ time, like they do for missing people.’ She handed the printouts to Simone. ‘Feast your eyes on this.’

Simone consulted the images. She thought they all looked a bit creepy, to be honest: half botched cosmetic surgery victim, half low-budget drag act.

She turned to gaze out at the sprawling rustic geography. Argentina. Who would have thought it when, all those months ago, she and Michelle had spoken of adoption for the first time? Since then Michelle had been true to her word. She had dispatched the finest team to every corner of the globe in search of treasure. After countless meetings, endless back and forth, and a spate of ugly arguments with Brian, who couldn’t understand any of it and refused to try, Simone had settled on South America. She desired an exotic-looking daughter. The girl had to be poor, because poverty would make her grateful: Simone wanted to be thanked for this. They had narrowed their quest to an estancia on the Pampas, and a single father with six children to feed and not two pesos to rub together. Simone would be their saviour.

‘Aren’t our children enough?’ Brian had complained, the day she’d told him.

Simone had bitten her tongue—hard. Never mind the fact that Emily and Lysander weren’t hers, they were hideous. Especially Lysander, who had possessed the nerve to pinch her bottom by the swimming pool last Friday, in front of all her friends and during the barbecue she had put on as a charity fundraiser. Hey! magazine had been covering the event and Simone could only imagine her flushed, affronted face, spicy sausage hanging between the grill tongs, as she’d opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. Oh, she’d wanted to slap him! Too quick, Lysander had dived into the water.

‘I need to do this, Brian,’ she had said. ‘For me.’

‘This new one won’t be yours either.’ It wasn’t like meek, mild Brian to take that toxic tone and Simone had been startled. She had almost liked it.

‘It will be as close as I can get,’ she replied.

Brian had stared her down for a moment, but Simone always won a stare-off and predictably her husband cowed, his shoulders rounding, before he skulked away. How could she expect him to understand? He didn’t know. She’d never told him. No child would ever come from her womb because her womb was incapable.

Hostile, they’d informed her. A hostile womb. Cripes.

Michelle brought her back to the present. ‘This family is going to get the shock of its life when we turn up,’ she was saying smugly. ‘We told them who you were but of course they’d barely even heard of the bloody Beckhams.’

‘Gosh, it must be remote.’

The car was slowing. ‘Are we there?’ called Michelle.

Their driver pulled over. He consulted the GPS.

‘José, is there a problem?’

The man didn’t speak much English. ‘We are lost,’ he said eventually.

‘Lost?’ Michelle snapped. ‘How can we be?’

‘Ah no, it is right way.’ The car started up again. Michelle and Simone exchanged sidelong glances. Does he know what he’s doing? mouthed Simone. She had visions of being driven to a hilltop plateau and sacrificed like a mountain goat.

Michelle nodded curtly, but didn’t take her hawk eyes off the wavering GPS.

‘We’ve lost signal,’ she said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘Typical!’

José had the indicator on. They came off on to a dirt track.

‘Is this it?’ Simone enquired. She was tempted to light another cigarette, but it was so overheated inside the car that she feared something might explode.

‘I do not know. We follow trail, ask at house.’

Before they could stop him, José climbed out of the car and opened the gate, tying it with rope to a knackered wooden post. The sun beat down. Simone sighed.

‘I want my hotel, Michelle. I’m tired and I’m cranky. I knew it was a bad idea to do this on the day we arrived.’

‘You know what I say: strike while the iron’s hot.’

‘Everything’s hot. Too bloody hot.’

José jumped back in. The engine gunned. They had barely set off when a crunching sound erupted from the belly of the car, quickly followed by a burst and a hiss, like a balloon deflating. ‘What was that?’ shrieked Simone.

‘Tyre is gone,’ said José. ‘Problem with tyre.’

‘So fix it!’ Michelle roared. She wound up the windows and blasted the air-con, as poor José sweated and heaved outside, attempting to jack the vehicle’s considerable weight. Michelle assaulted her phone for a moment, fishing for signal. The networks were down. Simone rolled her eyes. This was hardly shaping up to be the glamorous entrance she’d envisaged, sweeping into the beggars’ idyll like a fairy godmother. This broken-down heap of trash was hardly the ball-bound pumpkin.

José was out there for forty-five minutes. The women became crotchety. Simone finished her bottle of Perrier then admitted to needing the loo.

‘I can’t go here, what if somebody sees?’

‘We’re in the middle of nowhere,’ said Michelle.

‘Yes: a completely flat, no-damn-bushes-in-sight nowhere. What about him?’

‘José?’

‘Of course José—whom else would I be talking about?’

But Michelle lifted a thin eyebrow and nodded through the windscreen.

‘Our knight in shining armour,’ she said. A man of about twenty was riding towards them on a horse. He came in a cloud of dust, his blond hair reflecting the sun. As he neared the Range Rover, his horse began circling and stamping its hooves.

José stood, and the men conversed in Spanish. The stranger climbed down, tied his horse to a shrub and came towards the car. He had a rugged, tanned face and startling blue eyes. The word gaucho ran through Simone’s mind, and it had the same effect as someone pinching the tender skin on the underside of her arm.

Michelle opened the door. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked José.

‘He say we get help at farm. We leave car here.’

‘And walk? You’re asking Simone Geddes to walk?’

The men exchanged something else, and laughed.

‘May I ask what’s funny?’ Simone got out and slammed the door. She removed her headscarf and held it over her mouth: she had never been anywhere so dusty! Dust was rolling across the landscape; you could see it churning like tumbleweeds. ‘I am perfectly capable of walking, thank you very much—is it far?’

José pointed to a shack in the distance.

‘Right.’ Simone began to pick her way delicately across the rocks. ‘Let’s go.’

It was dusk by the time they made it to the house. Simone’s feet ached and she was so thirsty it was as if someone had spent the entire afternoon sandpapering the inside of her mouth. At Michelle’s insistence she had been persuaded on to the horse, which she found horrifying, because all there was to hold on to was a knotted leather rein. The gaucho had to heave her into the saddle, if a lump of rags and sheep wool merited that description, pushing her backside as she attempted to get a leg over, and, as Simone hung there, close to tears, she thought it was just about the most undignified position she had ever been in. The horse smelled. The reins made her hands black.

She longed for the Kensington mansion. For once, she longed for Brian!

‘We are here,’ said José at last.

‘And where exactly are we meant to be?’ Michelle demanded through gritted teeth. José talked to the stranger before replying:

‘He say this place we need to go is other side of mountain.’

‘We have to cross a mountain?’

‘Sí. I take wrong highway.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know. You’re fired.’

‘I sorry.’

‘Just get me inside and to a goddamn telephone.’ Michelle turned to her client. ‘I’m getting straight on to the agency and they’ll send someone out here ASAP—in a fucking helicopter if they have to.’

The gaucho helped Simone off the horse. This way was slightly less unseemly, but only just. He sort of caught her arse in both his hands, and her legs churned air like a first-time swimmer without armbands. She thanked him in English, only afterwards realising she should have done it in his language, and he grinned and didn’t reply. God only knew what he was thinking.

Simone was being led inside when something happened. She was alert at first to the sound: a sweetly hummed tune, sung by an angel she couldn’t yet see. And then the vision appeared—a girl of about fifteen materialised around the side of the house with the languid, cat-like indifference that was the hallmark of adolescence.

Simone gasped. The girl was hands-down the most ravishing creature she had ever encountered. Her hair was long and sleek, her limbs slender and brown. Her eyes were huge and inky, the lashes impossibly thick. Her mouth was a rose bud.

The girl stopped singing.

‘Hello,’ said Simone.

Another child, nowhere near as appealing though clearly related, came in her wake. She, too, was brought up short at the sight of the uninvited guests.

The gaucho said something to them. Simone held a hand out to the prettiest and tried not to let the other one’s glower put her off. The other one looked feral.

‘Hola,’ she stumbled, ‘mellamo Simone. Soy de Inglaterra. Cómo se llama?’

There was a long silence. Gently does it, thought Simone, unwilling to blow the chance now it had arrived so conveniently in her lap. To imagine they were never even supposed to have come to this godforsaken place! But this was it. Here. Now. The One. And she saw it all clearly. She understood what was meant to happen, starting with securing this girl’s trust. Like coaxing a fox in from the cold.

‘Teresa,’ the girl replied, at last.

Simone inhaled and exhaled deeply. ‘That’s a pretty name.’

She turned to Michelle. ‘She’s it,’ she said.

Michelle attempted discretion even though it was doubtful their company understood. ‘One thing at a time, Simone,’ she hissed. ‘Let’s not get carried away.’

But Simone had never felt less carried away. She felt totally level headed, as if all she had done was to walk into a fate that had already been mapped for her. Teresa was the one. She was it! The beauty would be returning with her to London, even if Simone had to swim across the Atlantic with the child on her back, like a giant turtle.

The gaucho led them inside. The kitchen was painfully basic, with a single wooden table, an iron stove, and a collection of battered pots and pans that hung from a rafter in the ceiling. Heavens! How did people live like this? Simone thought of her own kitchen, with her diamond-granite worktops and Sub-Zero Pro fridge freezer.

A woman—their mother?—emerged from the hall. She was dressed in a tatty robe, her hair limp, and her eyes sunken. She and Simone appraised each other, across time, across continents; in another universe, the woman the other might have been.

José addressed her. ‘Disculpa, señora, perdóname, pero puedo usar su fono?’The woman listened to the gaucho for a moment before pointing hesitantly into the back. Michelle followed, accompanied by José, until Simone pulled him to her. ‘You stay here,’ she commanded. ‘I need you to help me talk.’

The woman, who would once have been beautiful but whose embittered expression robbed her of any lingering shred, eyed her suspiciously.

‘I have a proposition for you,’ said Simone, after introductions had been made. The air in that hot, Patagonian kitchen, glowing amber from the melting sun, seemed to vibrate with anticipation. ‘One that could change your life.’




8 (#ulink_bb20a33d-10a9-5ee0-95f1-d83a2aee44d0)


Over supper that night, Julia was in an unusually good mood.

‘What a wonderful person Simone Geddes was,’ she kept saying. ‘And such good fortune that they should stumble across our lowly abode! I’m only glad that we were able to help—those poor women, breaking down in the middle of nowhere …’

Calida ate quietly, while Teresita quizzed her. ‘Is she rich?’

‘Beyond our wildest dreams.’

‘Is she famous?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Julia said. ‘Simone’s an actress. She lives in a mansion in England.’ Their mother lifted her fork precisely to her mouth and chewed carefully. ‘We’re going to stay in touch and then I might have some exciting news to share with you.’

Teresita danced up and down in her seat. ‘What news?’ she pressed, while Calida stayed quiet. Their visitor had unnerved her. It was as if the woman had deposited a trick in her wake, a sting in the tail, a nasty surprise, the nature of which would not be apparent immediately but would soon reveal itself in a horrible, startling flourish.

Julia closed her eyes, as if with the effort of concealing a truth too thrilling to keep at simmering point. ‘Simone wishes to offer one of you girls a special vacation,’ she said, ‘as a way of thanks. To stay with her in London over the English summer.’

Calida didn’t know why her mother bothered to make it a mystery. Maybe she wasn’t just embittered, maybe she was cruel too, and wanted to make Calida believe she had a chance at taking the prize before snatching it out of reach. Calida knew she would receive no invitation. Simone would prefer Teresita. Everyone preferred Teresita. Did Daniel prefer her? Ever since their disastrous trip into town, her twin had made it perfectly clear where her ambitions lay. Calida had been stupid to think she could pull off a stunt like that, anyway—chasing Daniel into a world she had no place in, not once stopping to think about his reaction, or whom he might be with, or what he would say. Teresita could wing these things, but she couldn’t. It had been so unlike her, her silly attempt to be more like her sister, and see how it had backfired.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if Teresita went away.

‘I can’t wait!’ Teresita could scarcely contain her excitement. Calida had seen the way her sister had eyed Simone’s jewellery, admired her gleaming car, envied her chic wardrobe and, at one point, salivated over the bulging wallet that the actress had laid down on the counter, fat with banknotes. This was what her twin desired.

Afterwards, Calida stayed behind to wash the dishes. She recalled a phrase her papa had used, as they had lingered outside the store in town for her photographs to be developed. He’d stroked her hair and said: Good things come to those who wait.

She couldn’t help wondering if bad things did, too.

Later, when Julia had gone to bed, Calida sat on the veranda and gazed up at the stars. Are you there, Papa? Are you with me? If Diego were alive, he would be on her side. She wasn’t even sure what battle she was fighting, but she knew he would be on her side. Now, it seemed as if everything was slipping from her grasp, too fast, too much change, and she didn’t know who she was any more. She didn’t know who her twin was, and, in a lifetime of reflections, of using the other to define oneself, it was a question that frightened her to death. She longed to find a way to reach Teresita, to remind her that the bond they had was stronger than this. But she couldn’t.

Her thoughts were punctured by the sound of laughter. She stood and followed. Who was her sister talking to? Julia had long since fallen asleep.

It was with a growing sense of dread that she arrived at Daniel’s cabin, and heard Teresita talking inside. Her twin spoke animatedly and vivaciously—no wonder people liked spending time with her. Words didn’t come so easily to Calida; they seemed too important, too permanent. She’d never be able to charm Daniel that way.

Anxious, she peered through the window, and saw the pair sitting at his table.

Jealousy boiled in Calida’s blood. Her sister hung on to his every word, every so often touching his arm, or resting her chin on her hand in a way she had learned from their mother. Sensuous. The word, sinuous and sinister, sewed itself under Calida’s skin with a sharp needle. You’ll never be sensuous. You’re not pretty enough.

‘Calida’s confused, you know,’ Teresita was saying.

Calida froze, her heart wedged in her chest. She wanted to interrupt, but all she could do was stay and listen, her feet rooted to the ground, her breath held.

Daniel hesitated. ‘About what?’

Teresita sighed as if she were about to expose a truth she would rather not. Calida saw their mother, again, in the mannerism. ‘She likes this boy …’ she began.

‘Oh,’ said Daniel. For a crazy second, Calida thought her sister was going to do the right thing, at last, to tell him how Calida felt, describe her unwavering commitment; although the prospect was appalling it was also a kind of relief—perhaps it took a soul as brave as Teresita’s to make it happen. But then she said:

‘It’s this boy in town. She’s obsessed with him. That’s why we came to Las Estrellas. I kept telling her she should give up. She can be so desperate sometimes.’

Calida began to tremble. Her ears rang, high and sharp.

‘She should set her sights lower,’ Teresita finished.

Daniel looked confused. Disappointed. No, she couldn’t work out his expression. ‘I don’t think your sister needs to do that,’ he said.

‘She likes him because he’s rich. Money’s really important to her. Once, I suggested that you two might have a thing … but the fact is you’re not her type. Calida wants someone who can treat her—buy her things …’

No! Calida silently stormed. No! That’s you! That’s all you! That’s not me!

‘Not like me,’ said Teresita, on cue. She put a hand over Daniel’s.

Mud filled Calida’s mouth and lungs. Heat prickled her fingertips.

‘I really like you, Daniel.’ Teresita’s beauty was amazing in this light, her huge, soulful eyes glittering. ‘I’ve never kissed anyone before. Will you teach me?’

Calida could hear no more. Without knowing how, she stumbled to the outhouse door, her vision splintering and a roar in her throat, and knocked.

‘I need Teresita at the house,’ said Calida, when Daniel answered. She was stunned at how steady she sounded. She even smiled for her sister. ‘It’s important.’

Teresita shot Daniel a lingering look before slipping out into the night.

‘You can’t control me for ever, you know,’ she slammed, striding ahead through the dark. Calida didn’t respond. She was mute with hurt and fury.

She watched the back of her sister’s head and for the first time ever, hated it. Calida had disliked her in the past, envied her, coveted her, but she’d never hated her.

Only when they were in their bedroom, and Calida shut the door behind her, did she cough up the rope that was strangling her. ‘How dare you?’ she spat.

‘What?’

‘I heard everything. The lies you told Daniel.’

‘So?’

‘How could you?’ Calida choked. ‘I know you like him. I know you don’t care that I do as well. I might not understand it, but I know it. But how could you lie?’

Teresita turned away, started fumbling pointlessly with her belongings.

‘Don’t you dare turn your back on me,’ Calida seethed.

Her twin whirled round. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what to do! I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do!’

‘You knew how I felt,’ Calida said, her voice shaking, ‘how I feel.’

‘Am I not allowed to have feelings?’ Teresita lashed. ‘Have you got first dibs on those too? Tell me something, Calida: just what do I have that wasn’t yours first?’

Calida blinked. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I’m sick of it.’ Teresita’s voice skidded, a flicker of vulnerability, but she caught it. ‘I’m sick of playing second. I’m sick of you deciding what my life should be. Can’t I have a little fun? Can’t I be my own person? Or do I have to ask your permission every time?’

‘It isn’t like that.’

‘It’s always been like that. And I thought you knew every little thing about me, Calida. You know me better than I know myself, right? That’s what you always say. Have you ever stopped to think about how that makes me feel? Like I don’t even have that. I don’t even have me, because you got there first!’

‘How can you say this? After everything I’ve done—’

‘I didn’t ask you for any of it! Just because you chose to hold my hand doesn’t mean I have to be grateful for it. You thought you were helping but all you were doing was holding me back. So, what, I’m supposed to kiss your feet for the rest of my life? Thank you for stifling my dreams? Carry a debt I never even wanted?’

‘I thought I was looking after you.’ Calida tried to understand, to see things from another point of view, but her thoughts jammed. ‘I’m your sister—’

‘No.’ Teresita looked deep into her eyes, that steely resolve the last remnant of the twin Calida recognised. ‘Let me tell you who you are, for a change. You’re someone I’m not sure I even like any more. You’re someone I’ve already left behind. You’re someone I don’t have anything in common with except the misfortune of a birthday.’

Calida opened her mouth but no words came out.

‘Daniel’s not interested in you, Calida. I was doing you a favour. The longer you carry around this pointless torch, the more embarrassing it’s going to get.’

Calida’s eyes filled with tears but she kept them from falling.

‘But he’s interested in you … right?’

‘He was an experiment,’ said Teresita. ‘To see if I could.’

That was the worst part. At least if she cared, it might have made sense.

Calida’s face burned. ‘So all this was for nothing.’

‘Not for nothing: he was a decent enough distraction.’

‘You don’t know a thing about him.’

‘I know more than you. I know he likes pretty girls—like me.’

It was the first time their physical difference had been acknowledged: even at this hour, a cheap, callous shot. The words hit Calida like a punch.

‘Shut up,’ she whispered.

‘Why should I?’ Teresita threw back. Now the flame had been lit, an inferno galloped in its wake. All the suffocated hurt, the petty jealousies, the spite, all the hidden scars and buried grudges and smothered indignations, it all came tumbling out. ‘For once I won’t shut up when you tell me to—I won’t do a thing you say. I’m tired of doing what you say! And do you know what, Calida? If you’d given Daniel five more minutes, he’d have kissed me—and he’d have liked it. I’d have told you and loved every second, because finally I’d have something you didn’t have—I’d be the winner, not trailing behind, being told she’s too small or too precious or whatever you use to tie me down. I hate it here! I hate it! Can’t you see that?’

Calida felt herself disintegrating, like a pillar of salt in the wind.

There may have been a moment when Teresita could have reached out, like a hand over a cliff edge, and hauled them both to safety; a point at which it was still salvageable, the damage could be explained, taken back, remedied with trust and confidence and time.

The moment never came.

Calida saw red, then. She thought of all she had done for this person, loved and cared for her, put her first and kissed away her tears—and this was how she was repaid? Suddenly she was across the room, she didn’t know how, and her arm was in the air. She struck her twin round the face, sharp and clean, pushing her into the wall with a loud, sickening thump. Calida hit her again, and again, this perfect princess who had turned into a monster, her blows carrying the weight of a thousand soldiers.

‘I wish you’d just disappear,’ said Calida, when she was done.

The words hung between them, growing in the silence, and the longer they hung there, unrescued, untempered by an antidote, the huger they became.

‘Simone Geddes is going to choose me,’ hissed Teresita. ‘You do realise that, don’t you? And when she does, and when I’m gone, I hope I never come back. I hope I never see you or this dying shit-hole ever again. I’m going to make it, Calida. Do you understand? I’m going to make it, far away, without your help or any fucking thing you do for me. I’m going to make it on my own.’

Calida didn’t stay to hear any more.

She turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.




9 (#ulink_16558679-ce1f-5851-a35f-cab2d3e53b72)


A week later, Teresa left for England.

Simone Geddes organised her travel, starting with the glimmering car that collected her from the estancia, and a suited driver who touched his cap when she climbed in. It was cool inside; a citrusy fan that came from vents in the front. The seats were made of leather, polished and smooth and the colour of vanilla ice cream.

The road dissolved in a blur as the car hurtled towards the airport.

Teresa held the locket around her neck, its pendant clutched in her palm. It was pebble-sized and gold. Diego had given both his daughters identical ones when they were small; she remembered the day she and Calida had unwrapped them, delicate in tissue, and had helped each other tie the catch. Packing the last of her things for London, Teresa had thought twice about bringing hers, had fastened it only at the last moment, a final, muddled grasp at the sister she didn’t say goodbye to.

A tear slipped out of her eye. Fiercely, she wiped it away.

She would not cry. She would survive. She didn’t need Calida.

A sign flashed past. AEROPUERTO 10KM.

Teresa closed her eyes. Simone’s invitation was a chance at the life she craved. A chance to leave the slums behind and head for the starlight …

Besides, she would be back in a month—and it would all feel like a dream. She would confront her sister then. For now, she wouldn’t think of her at all.

But it was her mama’s face that stayed with Teresa, then and all the way to England. How Julia had clung on tight as she’d said farewell, hardly able to speak through her tears. How she’d said to her: ‘I’ll always love you. This is for both of us.’




10 (#ulink_c91ee868-4e15-5569-9147-a7f88344e436)


December 2014

Night

She woke with her hands bound. They were bound at her waist, the fingers clasped as if holding an invisible bouquet. Her ankles were tied, too. She kicked out and both legs moved together on the hinge of her knees. A dry expulsion, half breath, half groan, seeped from her throat and hit a damp, mysterious wall. Instinctively, she bit down. Her mouth was stuffed with cloth. Her lips were sealed with tape.

At first it was pitch dark, then, as her eyes adjusted, she became aware of a faint, pulsing orange. It shone from high and crept across the floor in a ladder. She imagined climbing it, unsure which way was up, and escaping that way.

Escaping what?

The question emerged with little sense of urgency. She lived each second, gradually, one second then another, deciding whether or not she was alive.

Sounds filtered through. A city siren, screaming to loud then fading to quiet then gone; a dog barking; a man calling to another man, their voices passing at an unknown distance. She wondered where they were going, if she could go with them.

Soft things pattered at a window, then her eyes adjustedand she saw white flakes, thick white flakes of winter tumbling through the black night like moths.

It was Christmas in New York. The idea was an anchor, some reminder of where she was and where she had come from. Out on the street, passers-by would be wrapped in coats and scarves, mittened hands holding another’s, noses red and hearts warm as they planned their trip home, to heat, to friends, to safety.

She closed her eyes. Perhaps if she fell asleep a while longer, she was so tired, so very tired, and when she woke up she would be home … Home …

And then she heard a voice, pulling her back from the brink of slumber:

Get out.

It was clear and precise and she trusted it.

You’re in danger. Move. Get out. Now.

She tried to push herself up on her elbows but her stomach couldn’t take it. Ropes inside her twisted and pulled; she whimpered, growled, writhed in anger.

The door opened.

She blinked, drinking the room in, desperate to see more.

Footsteps.

Someone was with her, standing right there, over her, looking down. She froze. The person stood very still. Time stopped.

She tasted terror.

‘Hello,’ said a voice. ‘I’m glad I found you. Are you glad to see me?’




PART TWO (#ulink_7f19d215-d9ed-5c96-882f-db1ac25a7808)


2000–2005




11 (#ulink_1aa39413-e4eb-590f-a86e-dd59c4aef9a3)


London

Teresa Santiago woke to the sound of shouting. It was in a language she didn’t understand, and the ferocious, high-pitched squawks shot back and forth like two cats scrapping in a yard. One belonged to Simone, a literal far cry from the dulcet tones in which she addressed Teresa. The shouts were coming from downstairs, a concept she was only now getting used to since she’d only ever lived in a single-storey dwelling. She got out of bed and stood in her silk pyjamas, wondering if it was safe to emerge.

After a while, the screams died down. There followed a series of stomps and the bang of a slamming door. Teresa pictured the other girl who lived here, the blonde with the upturned nose, throwing herself on the sheets and bawling.

She stretched, and the room yawned with her. It was enormous. The ceiling stood at three times her height, with delicate cornicing like the icing on a birthday cake. A glinting chandelier hung from a central floret. The curtains were duck-egg blue and billowed gently against the open windows, of which there were three; huge and as perfectly rectangular as if they belonged in a dolls’ house. Through them, the hum of London swam up on the breeze. Her four-poster bed was swathed in peach satin, plumped with dozens of pink cushions, and the mattress was as deep and squidgy as the honeyed brioche Teresa was occasionally served for breakfast.

It was a princess’s bedroom. At lights-out, Teresa would lie still and wait for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark, and when they did she would test herself by closing and then opening them again, half fearing that the room would have been swallowed up, and she would find herself back at home in Patagonia, Calida asleep on the bunk below and the moon looking in through the window. She couldn’t believe that all this was hers. OK, it was on loan, it wasn’t forever, but boy was it something else. London was another universe. Simone Geddes’ mansion was incredible. At the beginning she had got lost every hour, exploring the furthest reaches of the house and then forgetting her way back. Simone had a loft, a cellar, a games suite, and a spa; they had a library and a music room and a reading room; they had a separate area where they ate their meals and drank their drinks and the lounge alone was bigger than the entire farmhouse back in Argentina. All the floors were piled one on top of another, like a stack of pretty boxes. When Teresa first arrived, she’d hurt her neck looking up at them all and Simone had laughed affectionately and stroked her arm.

‘Welcome to my world,’ she’d whispered.

It truly was the realm of her imaginings. Everything she had hoped for and dreamed of. Her old life ceased to exist. Poverty, struggle, longing. And Calida …

Teresa pushed away thoughts of her twin. She suffered a tangle of emotions whenever she thought of her: anger, hurt, frustration, and sadness; it was easier to bottle them up. Calida had wished her gone. She would be happy back on the farm, with Daniel, who was the only person who mattered to her anyway.

I wish you’d just disappear …

Though the bruises had faded, the scars were still tender to touch. Fine, Teresa thought, you got what you wanted. See if I care. I’m having the time of my life.

There was a knock at the bedroom door. ‘Ms Santiago?’

The maid stepped in. Vera was a kind, plump, Hispanic woman. Once or twice they had chatted in Spanish, but Vera always cut it short because, she explained, she wasn’t meant to converse with the household. ‘I’m not the household,’ Teresa said, ‘I’m a guest.’ But Vera had backed out of the room and stayed quiet on the matter.

Privately, Teresa wondered if the maid was content working here. Simone spoke sharply to her, as did the other children. The blonde girl, Emily, acted as if Vera didn’t exist, yet had vicious words to impart when her trail of bubblegum wrappers, cigarette butts, and empty bottles of cola failed to be cleared promptly from the side of the swimming pool; while the boy, Lysander, with whom Teresa hadn’t had much contact because she found him daunting, but thrillingly so, liked to make her blush.

Now, the maid wheeled a silver trolley across the carpet, which she brought to a stop at the foot of Teresa’s bed. She bobbed a short curtsey.

‘Gracias,’ said Teresa, marvelling at the sight.

‘De nada—can I bring you anything else?’

‘No, thank you.’ Teresa had never been treated with such reverence: she felt she could ask for anything—a bicycle, a sandcastle, a unicorn—and it would be brought straight to her, with apologies for the delay. Vera nodded and left the room.

The breakfast was sumptuous. Teresa lifted the metal cloche and underneath was a spread of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and tomato, diamonds of toast with the crusts cut off, a pat of butter in the shape of a seashell, a bright glass of orange juice and a goblet of fresh yoghurt topped with blueberry compote. She wolfed the feast.

Excitedly, she dressed. Simone was taking her shopping today and she couldn’t wait. She’d heard so much about luxury clothes and seen Simone’s own dazzling wardrobe, and could picture the stores with their polished displays and glossy sales people; the buzz and zing of money as it flashed in and out of the till.

In the hallway, she stopped. Emily was blasting music from her bedroom and a sign on the door read: KEEP OUT: BITCH WITHOUT A MUZZLE.

Emily’s room was forbidden territory and Teresa knew she wouldn’t be welcome. Since she’d arrived, Emily had barely said two words to her. Frequently she caught the girl scowling at her, and once Emily had brought her friends over and Teresa knew they were giggling and gossiping because they kept looking over and then hiding their smiles behind their hands. Teresa wished she could speak English because then she could explain that Simone had invited her and, since she was here, they might try to get along … It was only a couple more weeks, after all.

Holding the banister, she descended the staircase. It was wide and carpeted, its lofty white walls adorned with giant photographs of Simone at work; Simone in the director’s chair, mingling with co-stars or donning a variety of glamorous wigs. Down in the vestibule stood an impressive cabinet of awards. Julia had said that Simone was famous, but Teresa was beginning to see that for the severe understatement it was.

In the kitchen, the actress was stirring coffee and gazing out of the window to where a pool boy was raking leaves from the water. She was muttering something ominously to her husband, and Teresa identified the sound of Emily’s name.

Noticing their guest, Simone’s face lifted. She turned, arms outstretched.

‘Good morning, sweetheart!’ She gave Teresa a hug. Simone was very affectionate for a hostess and Teresa never quite knew what to do, so she hugged her back and this seemed to be the right thing. Over her shoulder, she spotted Brian eating toast messily at the counter. Brian Chilcott was a director, which meant he told people on movie sets where to go and how to act. He was overweight, and had a florid, disinterested face, and wore ties that looked uncomfortably tight at the neck.

He delivered a wink to Teresa. Diego used to wink at her sometimes but this wink was different; there was something latent in it, a threat too cloudy to name.

‘Are you ready for our shopping trip?’ Simone encouraged.

Teresa didn’t understand. Brian put in: ‘Are you going to teach her English?’

‘Shut up, Brian. Keep your booze-addled nose out of it.’

Teresa didn’t grasp what they were saying, but she heard the bitterness in Simone’s voice. Brian put down his toast and shrugged on his jacket. On his way out, he pecked Simone on her cheek. She turned away but he wouldn’t be deterred.

Teresa’s eyes widened as she saw Brian clasp Simone’s backside and squeeze it hard. Images of Gonzalez and her papa made her shudder. Nausea bubbled in her throat, a sick feeling that took root in her stomach and threaded up like weeds. She remembered her father’s nakedness, his cowardice, and his surrendering groan. Did Simone and Brian do the same thing? Did Emily do it? Did Lysander? For some reason, the thought of Lysander doing it made her insides clench, not unpleasurably.

When Brian had gone, Simone relaxed.

‘English lessons might not be a bad idea,’ she mused. She repeated the suggestion to Teresa, enunciating each word as if she were a dunce. ‘English … you learn … yes? Soon. I will organise.’ She fumbled for the same thing in Spanish. Teresa wondered why they should bother, if she was going home at the end of the month.

The afternoon passed in a glorious whirlwind. Teresa was on cloud nine from the instant she stepped into Simone’s car and they whizzed through the city maze, ducking and diving past shining red buses and gleaming black taxis, over the magical bridges and past the masses of people. When they stopped at the first shop on Bond Street, a crowd surged forward and screamed Simone’s name. Teresa was alarmed. She thought they were being attacked. Simone’s bodyguard drew them safely inside.

‘That’s nothing, darling,’ she giggled, ‘you should see me at a premiere!’ Then she leaned in, a glimmer in her eye, and added, ‘It’ll be you soon, you know.’

Over the next four hours, they tried on every garment in that shop and the next, and the next, and the next, until they collapsed in a heap of happy exhaustion. Everywhere they were treated like royalty: Teresa questioned if, perhaps, Simone Geddes was royalty. She was urged to try on dresses and skirts, blouses and boots, and had no concept of what they cost except for clues from the ladies at the cash desks, who positively trilled when the sums came up. The assistants grovelled around Simone; nothing was too much or any kind of trouble, and every time Teresa emerged from the changing rooms in an exquisite new combination the party flattered and fawned, saying how perfect and beautiful she looked. With her wild dark hair and striking almond eyes, she oozed untamed beauty that, at fifteen, was on the cusp of exploding into something phenomenal. At one point, Simone wept. ‘Que linda!’ she spluttered, dabbing a tissue to her eyes. Teresa beamed. She felt like a million dollars.

They arrived back at the Kensington mansion weighed down but cheerful.

‘Thank you,’ Teresa said in English, meaning it, as tentatively she gave Simone a hug. Simone needed no encouragement to return the gesture.

‘You’re welcome, my sweetheart,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘If you enjoyed today, you just wait for what’s coming.’

Over the next fortnight, Teresa saw and did more than she thought she would pack into a hundred years. She visited majestic palaces with men standing outside in big fur hats that looked like bulrushes. She drifted round museums where the floor was so polished that it shone like silver water, and you could hear the soft, expensive pat of people’s shoes as they walked across it. She went to the cinema, which had a huge TV screen and she ate buttery popcorn that made her fingers salty. She stood on Waterloo Bridge and gazed at the golden spires of Parliament and the pale dome of St Paul’s, which reminded her of a pearl on one of Julia’s old necklaces. She partook in Basic English lessons, and found she had a flair for the language. She posed for a string of daylong photo shoots alongside Simone. She spent nights in the home theatre, where she asked to watch Simone’s movies, and, after a half-hearted show of reluctance, the actress put on her award-winning effort in Two Dozen Men at My Feet, in which she played a rebellious countess who seemed to cry a lot behind closed doors.

On Friday, Simone issued an announcement:

‘We’re having a party. This evening. I want you to dress up.’

Teresa found Vera and asked her about it. ‘Her ladyship wishes to show you off,’ said Vera in Spanish. ‘It’s a party in your honour.’

‘Is it a goodbye party, because I’m leaving soon?’

Vera returned to buffing the marble in Simone’s bathroom.

‘Who’ll be there?’ asked Teresa.

‘Ms Geddes has many friends,’ said Vera. ‘They will want to meet you.’

Three hours later, the household was teeming with staff. The terrace was strung with fairy lights that danced against the stars and a fountain of sparkling water gushed from a cherub’s trumpet. Guests trickled through, the men in crisp, sharp suits that reminded Teresa of the men in her romance novels: the billionaires. The women drifted like angels in their floor-length, sweeping gowns, slowing to pluck a flute of champagne or a miniature morsel of food. Cloying perfume hung in the air.

Across the veranda, Emily Chilcott shot her an evil glare.

Simone told her she looked wonderful, in a damson Moschino creation that skimmed the patio, her jet hair tumbling free, and kept a proprietorial arm round her the entire time. Occasionally, she would step back and gesture towards Teresa as if she were an item in an exhibit. The guests nodded approvingly, the men regarding her in the same voracious manner as the driver she had hailed back home to take her and Calida into town—a galaxy away, it seemed. They spoke too fast to keep up with, but Simone’s reassuring smile told her she was doing well. She revelled in the spotlight, all the more precious because it would not last, and soon she would be back in South America in the rags she had grown up in and it would all seem like a fairy tale.

Afterwards, Simone kissed her. ‘You were perfect, just perfect.’

Teresa was exhausted, exhilarated, elated. She didn’t need to speak English to understand that these people were important. Power had wafted off them in great, intoxicating clouds. Producers, agents, directors—but what did they want with her?

She scarcely dared think it, but as she prepared for bed that night she allowed herself the luxury. For whatever reason, Simone wished to ingratiate her with the industry, to impress them. Was it possible that when she returned to Argentina, it would be with news that she was going to become an actress? That she was relocating to London, to Milan, to Hollywood? Or might Simone ask her to stay on? Would she teach Teresa the ways of wealth and success, and give her a key that would open the door to her own destiny? She told herself off for fantasising—always her weakness. Most likely the party had been a farewell, just as she had thought. Most likely …

She fell asleep the instant she hit the pillow, and dreamed she was swimming in a deep, deep sea, and on the seabed was a diamond, sparkling, beckoning. Someone was calling her name, but the further she swam, the quieter the voice became.

The day before Teresa was due to go home, Emily Chilcott waltzed into her room. Her eyes were shining and eager and there was a bounce in her step.

‘Hi,’ she said sweetly, ‘are you ready to go?’

Teresa found Emily’s smile disturbing. She zipped up the last of her bags.

‘I expect you’ll miss me,’ said Emily, ‘since we’ve become close.’

Teresa sat on the edge of her bed. She didn’t trust Emily. Several times she had consulted her translation dictionary after receiving a snide comment or sarcastic aside. Emily had said some toxic things: Teresa was a brat, a misfit, a bitch; she didn’t belong here. The other day she had seen Emily kick the family puppy when it got in her way. Only somebody truly horrid would be able to hurt an animal.

‘So I thought I’d give you a goodbye present,’ Emily went on. In a flash she withdrew a glinting pair of scissors from behind her back, brandishing them up high. ‘Time for your makeover!’ She beamed, clicking the scissor blades, her eyes mad.

Teresa didn’t have time to back away before Emily advanced, grabbing a clump of Teresa’s hair and, with a sickening snitch, lopped it off.

‘Oops!’ said Emily gleefully. ‘Better make it even!’

Teresa was so surprised that she couldn’t speak. Automatically her hand went up to meet the amputation and all she felt was bare neck. She tried to escape, but Emily pulled her back. With appalling speed and efficiency, the scissors snipped and chopped. ‘Para!’ Teresa cried, distraught. ‘Basta!’ She tried to wriggle free but Emily had her whole weight bearing down and now she was cropping and slashing and slicing great swathes of hair, cackling giddily as it fell to the carpet, and she hacked more and more, until Teresa’s glossy waist-length locks were up at her ear, bitten and chewed and scruffy. She started to cry. Emily seized her fringe and she tried to pull back but it hurt so much that she couldn’t do anything apart from sit there with her hands in her lap, quivering, as with every devastating slice she became balder. ‘Porfavor, no lo hagas,’ Teresa howled, ‘Por favor! Para!’

But Emily didn’t listen. When she was done, she leaned to whisper in Teresa’s ear. Teresa could see their joint reflection in the mirror: Emily flushed with excitement, her pixie face alive with delight; and she, tatty and ugly, threadbare and tear-blotched.

Emily’s voice was a hiss: ‘You’ll never be part of this family,’ she said. ‘Go home, little peasant. Get out of my house and my country. Or this is only the start.’

She replaced the scissors on the dresser, and quietly left.

Simone Geddes went insane with anger. She slapped Emily round the face and shook her like a ragdoll. Through it all, Emily remained calm and composed, satisfied at both her offence and at Simone’s reaction. Teresa hadn’t uttered a word about who was to blame, but it hadn’t taken a genius to figure it out. Brian, when he came in from work, chided Emily in a bored fashion before sitting down with a sherry and The Times.

Hysterical, Simone gathered Teresa’s butchered mop under a cap, grabbed her hand and led the way upstairs. Vera was cleaning Teresa’s bedroom.

‘I cannot believe that little harlot would do this!’ Simone was raging. Her whole body convulsed with anger. ‘That girl is vile! She is the devil incarnate!’

Simone barked something at the maid and obediently Vera translated. Teresa could understand Simone’s fury, for what was Julia going to say when she saw the state of her daughter? Vera explained that Simone would be hiring London’s most exclusive hairdresser to pay a private visit in the morning.

‘But I’m going home in the morning,’ said Teresa, in Spanish.

Vera relayed this to Simone.

Simone had her back to her, and turned round slowly. A glance passed between her and the maid. As if reaching an important decision, Simone steered Teresa to a chair and sat her down. She took Teresa’s hands and held them.

There was a long pause, before Simone said, ‘You’re not going home.’

Vera’s fingers fastened in her apron. At Simone’s command, she translated.

‘I hate having to be the one to tell you,’ Simone went on, swallowing hard, ‘but I must … This isn’t a vacation, darling. Your mama told you that because we thought it would make things easier. It was never a vacation. It’s permanent.’ A beat. ‘I’ve adopted you, sweetheart. You’re going to live with me now, and be my daughter.’

Teresa didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Vera interpreted each of Simone’s words. As the revelations unfolded, one layer after another, the maid’s voice became quieter. Not once did she look at Teresa.

‘Your family do not want you any more,’ Simone said, licking dry lips. ‘They asked me to take you away. Your mama needed the money. She … She sold you.’

There was a strange sound in Teresa’s ears. She struggled to process what was being said. She felt as if she was floating several feet above her body, rudderless. Her past, her life, her identity: all of it collapsed beneath her like a house of cards.

Her first thought was: It makes sense. She had asked for this. Told Julia she wanted it. Jointly, they had mapped her future, as far away from the estancia as possible. Simone would have paid handsomely. Everyone was happy.

But it hurt. It hurt. Julia had lied.

She didn’twant me.

‘You’ve had a nice time here, though, haven’t you?’ Simone was saying, nodding at her encouragingly. ‘Would it be so bad to live with me, in London?’

Something stuck. Something wasn’t right.

‘Speak, sweetheart.’ Simone squeezed her hands. ‘Please … say anything.’

There was only one word that made sense: ‘Calida.’

It took a second for Simone to connect the dots. The sister. The twin. The one she hadn’t chosen. Her expression faltered a moment before righting itself.

‘Calida knew about this, too,’ Simone explained gently. ‘She and your mother both made this decision. Together. For everyone’s benefit.’

Vera’s rendition confirmed it. In a reel of sun-kissed images, her childhood with Calida flashed before her eyes. The closeness, the connection … the drum of her twin’s matching heartbeat … the horses, the land, the dust, the laughter.

She had run from it all. Run far and run fast and never looked back.

I wish you’d just disappear.

‘They don’t want you,’ Simone said again. ‘Your sister chose to give you away as freely as Julia did. I’m your new mother now. I’m your new family.’

A flood of emotions washed over her.

Here it is, she thought, your new life.

She had prayed for this outcome, and now it was here.

So why was there this glaring hole in the centre of her heart?

‘You’re Tess Geddes now,’ Simone said. ‘My daughter.’

All night—that long, lonely night—the stranger’s name floated in her half-consciousness like a phantom, daring her to step into it, to let it swallow her up.

To hell with you both, she thought. I don’t need you.

I’ll show you just what I’m made of—and then you’ll be sorry.




12 (#ulink_c275f4f5-3bf7-5f7d-81ed-beeb52f608f8)


‘Looking great, everyone. And … action!’

Simone, or rather her character Miranda Fenchurch, stepped out of the Royal Courts of Justice in a navy pinstripe suit, faced the wall of cameras, and delivered the gut-wrenching oration that would conclude the most anticipated political thriller of the year. As with all Simone’s scenes, they canned it in one.

‘You’re a special lady, you know that?’ the director told her afterwards, as the first spots of rain began to fall and an assistant ushered her under cover.

‘Don’t patronise me, Greg.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘What a dreadful sycophant that man is,’ Simone muttered to her aide, once the director had skulked off. ‘Calling me a lady—who does he think he’s talking to, Camilla Parker Bowles? God forbid.’ Privately, however, Simone knew that she was special. Playing Miranda Fenchurch in An Eye For An Eye was a departure from her usual: she was embodying a cutthroat, hard-nosed barrister who wasn’t afraid to rattle the cage. The awards cabinet at home had better make way for a shiny new addition.

On the way to her car, a female co-star flagged her down. ‘It was wonderful meeting Tess at the party,’ the woman said. ‘What a beautiful girl.’

‘Isn’t she?’

‘When will you be announcing the adoption?’

‘When the time is right,’ Simone replied. ‘It’s a complex process, you understand.’ She could picture the headlines already: SELFLESS SIMONE RESCUES TEEN FROM POVERTY. GEDDES GIVES GIRL A CHANCE. Any star could traipse halfway across the world to buy a baby, but there was something unusual and intriguing about Simone’s decision to make that difference for an older child.

The media would lap it up like piglets at a watering hole.

‘It must be,’ said the woman. ‘Is she finding it hard to adjust?’

Simone thought: None of your damn business. But she felt compelled to say, ‘Not a bit. She loves it here. She loves her new life. She loves me.’

With that, she climbed into the Mercedes and shut the door.

The mansion was quiet, which meant no Emily. So much for Brian’s pledge to ground her. She found her husband in his office. ‘Where’s Tess?’

Brian turned in his chair. ‘Still in her room,’ he replied.

‘No change?’

‘No change.’ Brian got up. He looped his arms around Simone’s waist and she did her best not to wince. She could feel Brian’s gut pressed up against her gym-toned stomach, and endeavoured to focus instead on the wall-mounted shots of him mixing with the power set. That was what had drawn her to him in the early days—how was she to know that underneath the façade lurked an overweight spineless doormat? No wonder Brian’s first wife had left him for a woman. If it weren’t for Brian’s bi-weekly ruts she would begin to doubt if he possessed anything between his legs at all.

Simone went upstairs and knocked softly on Tess’s bedroom door.

‘Tess, sweetheart?’ she called. ‘Can I come in?’

It had been like this for weeks. Tess emerged only to wash and eat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t engage. She held herself stiffly, as if she were made of glass. What was going on in her head? Anger, sadness, shock; which was the overriding emotion?

It would take time, Simone knew. A bit like training a dog. She was able to close her heart to Tess’s plight because once, many years ago, she too had been forced to make a sacrifice, one for the good of a child, and it had made her tough. If she could get through it, then the rest of the world ought to be able to as well.

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, to stop herself gagging on the past. When she thought of it, she could still feel the weight of the baby in her arms.

The baby …

Taking Tess was karma. Simone deserved her child.

‘Still pissed with you, is she?’ Lysander passed her in the hall. He wore peppermint shorts and a polo shirt with the collar turned up, and looked offensively handsome. Wasn’t he meant to be at college? ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘You know nothing about this, Lysander.’

‘I know it’s abduction dressed as Armani.’

‘It is nothing of the sort!’ Simone was aghast.

He grinned.

‘You just stay away from her,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

Lysander took a step closer. He put a hand on the small of her back and her entire body tingled. ‘What,’ he whispered, ‘like you told me to stay away from you?’

Blushing wildly, Simone turned and flew downstairs. The sooner Lysander moved out of the mansion, the better. He was a diversion she could well do without.




13 (#ulink_3cfc7563-9c7c-54ca-a8b9-1a86a112eb5e)


Argentina

Calida’s sixteenth birthday drowned in all the other days.

If she had been capable of feeling, she would have felt her twin’s absence. She would have known that this was the first birthday they had ever spent apart. She would have touched the wound, the searing wound where Teresita had been ripped from her side in the same way she had been ripped at their inception. She would have looked at her hands, her arms, her knees, her chest, heard her breath and her pulse, and questioned what their mirror reflections were doing at this moment, the precise minute and second they had emerged, as two, into the world, sixteen years before.

But she didn’t, because it was any other day, and every day was submerged in the same numb disbelief so that it became impossible to make distinctions.

Her sister had gone. She wasn’t coming back.

Julia admitted it a week into the so-called vacation, unable to hold her tongue any longer. ‘Teresita begged me to let her go,’ she explained, as she exhibited another new acquisition: satin shoes, expensive perfumes, watches and jewels. Calida had thought it strange that Simone had been so generous—but she hadn’t known then the product she had paid for. ‘She begged Simone to take her. Told us she was ready—she was desperate. It’s permanent, Calida. Your sister’s been adopted. She’s gone to live in England. The sooner you come to terms with it then the easier it will be.’

Calida’s body was kicked and punched by her mother’s words. But her mind remained steady, and told her, quite calmly, through the noise: Of course. It was what Teresita had sought: to get away, to flee her humble beginnings, to forge her fortune.

Calida remembered every poisonous sentiment that had spilled from her twin’s lips on the night they had fought and in a ghastly way it added up. Being adopted by a movie star was the opportunity of a lifetime. Teresita hadn’t cared what she was leaving behind—it was no sacrifice to her. When I’m gone, I hope I never come back. I hope I never see you or this dying shit-hole ever again …

After the news, when the shock moved from sky-collapse to mere earth tremors, Calida wrote dozens of letters. Unable to extract Simone’s details from her mother, she instead located her manager online: a Michelle Horner, who had an office in Mayfair, London, and an address to go with it. On searching for the actress, pages brimmed with doppelgangers of the sweating, dishevelled woman who had graced their ranch that day: this one was ravishing. There were stills from her films and onstage; snapshots from articles and interviews, some of a young, wide-eyed Simone, and others where she was older and standing next to a suited fat man, or posing with a blonde girl and a black-haired boy, and looking a little less pleased with herself.

In her letters, she pleaded with Teresita to come home. She said she was sorry for the spiteful words they had exchanged, vowed that their friendship was worth more and had to be saved. No matter what … right? No matter what, they were there for each other. She wished to explain that there was a way back. There always would be. She wasn’t mad with Teresita for the decision she had made—it would have been a decision borne of the hurt and frustration of their showdown, and she understood.

Calida didn’t know what she had expected from initiating correspondence—but whatever it was, it wasn’t what she got. Silence.

Each one of her letters went unanswered. She waited every day at the gate for mail, hoping for change—but nothing. She imagined Simone and Teresita scrutinising the notes, her increasingly despairing tone as she implored her twin to reconsider, to come home, and laughing cruelly at her efforts. Though she tried with all her soul to deny it, she knew she had to face the truth. Teresita had closed the door on her family—what was left of it, anyway—and had no intention of opening it again.

She had always possessed a harder heart than Calida. But to read those letters and not be touched by any of it, or moved to reply, if for nothing else than to cement the choice she had already made? To ignore the twin who asked for understanding, for help, for forgiveness; not stopping once to acknowledge her part in the collapse of their relationship?

It wasn’t the sister she knew … or thought she had known.

It was a stranger.

The year 2000: a new millennium, a new start. Instead, it felt like an end. As the days passed and turned into weeks, Teresita became a ghost in her mind; the sudden ring of her sister’s laugh or the mischief that danced in her eyes assaulting her from nowhere, like a ghoul from the shadows. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep.

Calida’s sadness solidified into fury. Right now her twin would be in London, loving every moment, living out the fantasy that she and Julia shared, the fantasy that had always turned its back on Calida because she couldn’t understand it. How could she be so unfeeling, so pitiless; and for what—a palace of fakery? Yet despite Calida’s indifference to the glamorous lifestyle, and the painstaking denials she made to herself that she desired anything whatsoever to do with it, she couldn’t help the worm of envy that burrowed its way into her heart. Why hadn’t Simone taken her? Was she not pretty enough, lovely enough, exciting enough? What was it about Teresita that drew people like moths to a flame, while Calida stayed in darkness?

One day, Julia came to her and said: ‘I’m leaving. You’re sixteen now. You’ll live. I’ve renewed a friendship in the city and I’m going to stay there for a while.’

Calida’s mouth fell open. ‘What? But what about …?’

‘The farm?’ Julia swished a silk scarf over her shoulder. ‘Tell you what, Calida: it’s yours. You always did like this place better than I did.’

‘I can’t look after it on my own.’

‘You’ve got Daniel.’

‘Mama—you can’t. It’s not …’ Her throat closed, making it hard to speak. She felt like sand in an hourglass, time rushing through her fingers. ‘There isn’t—’

‘Come now, Calida. You’re an adult. Teresita’s started her new life. You can’t expect me to hang around here for the rest of my days playing the doting mama.’

And, just like that, the next morning, Julia left. Just like her daughter, she was able to turn away from her past and her responsibilities without a backward glance. She left behind no cash—but Calida wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. It was blood money, testament to the devil-sent pact the three of them had orchestrated, the abomination of that unholy exchange. Calida would have nothing to do with it.

Alone, she summoned Diego’s voice. Speak to me, Papa. Tell me what to do. And she heard his reply: Every path has an ending. Every problem has an answer.

It was the same guidance he’d bestowed on her when she took her pictures, telling her to be still and quiet and at peace, because only then was she truly able to see. Calida had become a lone pillar in a sandstorm, after the rest of the building had blown down. All her life she had been taught to be self-sufficient, to rely on no one but herself. Now, after the dismantling of her family, she understood for the first time how crucial this independence was. The way forward was to become the pillar; to lean on no other supports, neither props on either side nor a foundation beneath her feet.

Winter blew in. It was the harshest season Calida could recall, sleet lashing and winds crying, and some nights the gale threatened to tear the wooden farmhouse from the ground. The land froze and with it the ghosts of their crops. Food was scarce. The old roof leaked and dripped, and as fast as they repaired one fissure, another appeared. Calida lined up buckets on the kitchen floor, the slow seconds counted by the pit-pit of water as it spat into the tin. Each day she prayed for sun, a sliver of promise in the clouds, but the sky churned grey and limitless as a deep, livid sea.

Paco the horse became sick. It started with a waning in his eyes, a burning ember reduced to a flickering wick. He became listless and depressed, and lost his appetite. ‘Strangles,’ Daniel called the disease.

Calida couldn’t survive losing Paco as well. She floundered against his illness, unsure what steps to take. But Daniel knew. He said: ‘I know how much he means to you—it will be all right,’ and in the same grave, capable way as he tackled so much else on the farm, he did what was required to save Paco’s life. Calida questioned why Daniel was still here; the pay had long since dried up, but he never graced her with a response. Just once, he asked if she would refrain from enquiring again.

‘I’m part of this,’ he told her. ‘That isn’t going to change.’

But what had changed was the lost ease of their companionship, when Calida’s youth had excused her bumbling infatuation and Teresita had never said those wicked things. She can be so desperate. She should set her sights lower.

She cringed whenever she thought of it. Calida yearned to unpick it, correct it, tell Daniel there was no boy in town that she liked; Teresita had lied about everything. But if she did that she was confessing to having eavesdropped, and admitting to him her true feelings. Why couldn’t she admit it? What did she have left to lose?

Teresita would tell him, she tortured herself. Teresita would dare.

‘Do you miss her?’ asked Calida one afternoon, as she hung up Paco’s reins, stopping to rinse her hands beneath the outdoor tap. The water choked a splurge of brown before clearing. It was accompanied by the sharp stench of iron.

Daniel didn’t speak for several moments. She was wondering if he’d heard, when at last he said: ‘You know, Calida—I’m glad it’s not you who went away.’

Calida wasn’t glad. If she had gone away, she could have proven her sister wrong: she could have an adventure; she could take a chance … The trouble was, a chance never took her. It stung that he hadn’t answered her question.

‘She really wanted to go, didn’t she?’ said Calida.

Daniel faced her. ‘Sometimes, if you’re unhappy, you have no option but to leave. It’s self-preservation.’

The wind moaned in the rafters. Calida examined the nail on her thumb.

‘She hated it here that much?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Daniel. ‘She’s young. She doesn’t know what she wants.’

‘I do. And I’m the same age.’

‘But you’re …’ Daniel smiled a little, with compassion, humour, she didn’t know what. ‘You’re different, Calida. You’re not like other girls.’

‘You left your home,’ she said. ‘Do you think about your family?’

His blue eyes held hers. Calida could see him about to open up, the last bud in spring, but then his face fell into shadow, as it had on the day they’d met.

‘I’ll never go back,’ he said bluntly, turning from her. ‘That part of my life is over. There’s nothing left. I can never return.’

‘You never talk about it.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’ Daniel started stacking saddles on the barn ledge; the weight of sheepskin and the tangle of reins. ‘But the more distance there is between that place and me, the happier I am. I’ll die before I cross that ocean again.’

He stopped, then, and said, ‘It’s not the same for Teresita. I swear to you. I know that much. You’re too important to her. This place is too important. She doesn’t realise it yet, but she will … She thinks she wants more—that whatever’s out there is better, that it’ll solve her problems, answer her prayers. It won’t, because the problem she’s trying to figure out isn’t this place—it’s her. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t leave herself behind. One day soon, she’ll look around at her new world and consider what she swapped it for … and then she’ll see her mistake.’

Calida bit back tears.

‘I don’t want anything to happen to her,’ she said. ‘I can’t help it. What if it does, and I’m not there? I’ve never not been there.’

Daniel came to her, put his hands on her arms. A spark raced up Calida’s spine and set fire to her blood. ‘It’s nice that you care so much,’ he said.

She nodded. There was a long pause.

‘I broke up with my girlfriend,’ he said.

‘Oh.’

Daniel waited for her to speak, as if he had offered a handshake and she’d left him hanging, unsure when to pull away. He returned to ground they’d been on: ‘I know what it’s like to be parted from your family. It hurts … but you’ll find a way.’

She nodded. A flush of shame crept up her neck.

He feels sorry for me. I can be so desperate sometimes …

‘Thanks, Daniel,’ she muttered, and hurried back inside.




14 (#ulink_a7140caf-c277-5676-9ccd-037efe6ca22a)


Paris

Tess Geddes mounted the wide stone steps of the Collège de Sainte-Marthe de Paris and gazed up at the building. From the bell tower, a deep clang resounded.

In the heart of the Quartier Latin, Collège de Sainte-Marthe de Paris was the most prestigious and exclusive boarding school in the French capital, if not in Europe. It was set apart from the standard education system and reserved for those with elite money and standing, a finishing school to prepare young ladies for world domination.

Pretty, polished students wearing knee-high socks and frilled skirts dashed ahead of her, glossy manes bouncing and leather satchels slung elegantly over one shoulder. Tess watched them, appraising the challenge. I can do this, she thought. I can do anything. When Simone had informed her she was going to Paris, it made no difference. England, France, wherever it was—as long as it wasn’t Argentina, with people who didn’t want her and who got rid of her the first chance they got.

Simone stood back as her staff hauled the baggage: a huge buckled trunk with gold studs that resembled a coffin. Tess thought, I know who’sburied in there. She wondered, if she sprung it open, whether she would find, instead of daintily laid blouses scented with pockets of fragrant rose pomander, the body of her old self, curled up in a ball like a kitten in a straw nest, hair brittle and eyes closed.

‘You’ll make so many friends,’ Simone was saying, as she pressed a tissue to her nose. Several other parents glanced over at this show of emotion, their attention snagged by Simone’s sizeable entourage and the incognito dark glasses that marked her out as a celebrity. Although, judging by the throng of gleaming four-by-fours parked at the school gates and the ranks of bodyguards talking grimly into Bluetooth headpieces, Simone wasn’t the only VIP on the premises. Their audience glanced between Simone and Teresa, who couldn’t have looked less alike, and smiled politely.

‘And you’ll even have Emily for company!’

Simone could barely choke out this sentiment, but she made a valiant effort. Up ahead, Emily Chilcott was linking arms with a fiery redhead and shooting Tess death glares. Emily had been attending Sainte-Marthe for three years, one thing Brian had insisted on, and was apparently Queen Bee of the dormitories.

‘Mademoiselle Geddes, I believe?’ A middle-aged woman was walking towards them, one arm held out, as pale and goosebumpy as a raw chicken thigh. ‘I’ll take you to your lodgings, shall I?’ she said in English. By now Tess had a competent grasp of the language. Simone’s lessons hadn’t been fast enough so she had taken matters into her own hands, devouring every book and magazine she could, reading it alongside her dictionary into the small hours of the night. ‘See if we can’t get you settled in. My name is Madame Aubert and I am your house mistress.’

Simone kissed her farewell. ‘I’ll see you in a few weeks, darling …’

As Tess followed Madame, she eliminated the echo that rebounded through her brain. A few weeks … That was exactly what Julia had said as she had been driven away from Patagonia. Fuck them, she thought. They don’t deserve my tears.

The school was like a cathedral. Stained-glass windows spilled red and gold on to the cool, chequered floor. Baroque pillars ran to a huge glass dome, ornate with gold, and weeping religious figures. ‘This is where chapel is held in the morning,’ said Madame Aubert. Through that space they emerged into a giant courtyard—’La Cour Henri Jaurès’—which was marked with white and red lines and a vertical pole at each end that was capped with a net. The surrounding structures were high and arched and, above, through little square windows, excited squeals could be heard drifting from the dormitories, against a blast of music. Up a set of winding stairs, Madame Aubert led her down a corridor and pushed open the farthest door.

‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Your home from home.’

The room had ten beds, five down each side, each pristinely made with the sheets pulled tight, and with an accompanying side cabinet and closet. Madame Aubert informed her that supper was at six in the dining room and left her to unpack.

It was eerily quiet. Tess went to the window, which faced away from the courtyard and towards the rest of the school: a collection of grey-slate rooftops, still slick from the morning’s rain. She removed the items from her trunk and laid them on the shelves, like someone else’s belongings. With a jolt, she realised she had left behind the diary she’d been keeping, tucked behind the bed at Simone’s mansion.

The diary had become her steadfast friend, and she had spilled into it her innermost emotions—about Julia, about Calida, about the life she’d left behind; about her regrets and hopes and the strange land she now found herself in, unsure which way was forward, afraid of her own powers because she had implored the gods for this providence and somehow they had answered. She fingered the locket around her neck. Every time she went to take it off, something stopped her. She wanted to rip it from its chain, stamp on it, toss it from a cliff, but somehow she was unable to.

She was distracted by a burst of giggles at the door.

A clique of girls tumbled in. They stopped when they saw her. Leading the pack was, of course, Emily Chilcott, resplendent in her power zone, and at her side stood the redhead Tess had seen at the gates. The redhead had the most incredible-coloured hair Teresa had ever seen—bright, flaming orange, with golden highlights around the top like a halo. Emily said something in English—Simone had explained she was ‘too thick to get a handle on French’—and they all laughed again, but not in a way you could join in with. Tess decided they could bitch and laugh at her all they liked. She had been through worse than anything Emily could throw at her.

The group paraded down the aisle between the beds, showing off lithe, tanned legs and releasing a mist of musky scent. With a sinking feeling, Tess realised they were her roommates. Madame Aubert had probably arranged it, thinking she would want to be with her family. Emily, her family? That was some joke.

‘I’m Tess,’ she told the redhead, deciding to ignore her stepsister. But Emily was having none of it. She charged forward, blue eyes flashing, and like a magnet drew the others into formation. She smiled openly and said:

‘They don’t care who you are. They’re my friends, and you’re the impostor. Rest assured, Teresa, you won’t survive here. I’ll make sure of it.’

As the redhead passed, her slanted green eyes narrowed in malice. Tess felt a sharp yank at the back of her neck, so quick as to be unsure whether it had happened. Her locks were scarcely mended after the attack. Despite Simone’s efforts, Emily’s scissors had triumphed. ‘Nice hair,’ said the redhead unkindly, and closed the door.

It was easy enough to stay away from Emily during the day—Tess spent most of her time in Fast-Track French and was scheduled to join the main curriculum at the end of spring term—but, at night, there was no escape. Emily’s clique clustered into one another’s beds after lights-out and giggled and tittered under the sheets, sucking on illicit squares of bitter chocolate and sipping from bottles of Orangina, which Emily’s outside contact had supplemented with vodka. Sometimes they would throw things at her in the dark—nothing that hurt, just a sock that one of them had worn in Games, or a balled-up note written in French that she couldn’t understand and, sometimes, Emily’s favourite, a tampon or a sanitary towel from the supply under her bed.

The redhead’s name was Fifine Bissette, but everyone called her Fifi. She was the only daughter of France’s premier power couple; her father was a renowned surgeon whose services graced only the affluent, while her mother was an ex-model-turned-socialite. A running joke at Sainte-Marthe was that Fifi’s papi had once borrowed cold-blooded Fifi’s heart for another patient and forgotten to replace it.

She and Emily made the perfect match.

Through it all, Tess forged her vendetta. Slowly but surely, her plan took shape, and became the fuel that kept her going. She used her hatred for Emily as a way to endure the monotony and loneliness of the days at Sainte-Marthe, in which she got up alone, dressed alone, and ate breakfast alone; in which she withstood her solo French classes with Madame Fontaine and saw no other girls, then when she did felt too unsure of the language to attempt a friendship, and the longer she left it the more difficult it became and the stranger they decided she was. She used her anger as a passage through the emptiness of the night, the moonlight and the taunting laughs, as she lay still as a corpse because then they might leave her alone.

Every moment, she was thinking. She was plotting.

It was risky, but the risk was worth it. Tess had no fear. She had nothing. In the days and weeks since the adoption revelation, she had shut out the world. It had been necessary, a method of reassembly, of digging inside herself and cancelling out all those weak parts, the parts that cried for her twin and longed to be held by her.

She had wiped the slate clean and started again—with the person she wanted to be: strong, intrepid, powerful. Emily deserved it. She deserved her revenge.

The following week, before chapel, Tess approached Fifi in the waiting line. The other girls backed away: breaking rank was the ultimate offence.

‘Where’s Emily?’ Tess asked in French.

‘None of your business.’

‘I wanted to wish her luck.’

Fifi was sceptical. ‘With what?’

‘The song,’ Tess widened her eyes, ‘for Monsieur Géroux? Oh, no, don’t tell me she forgot. Aubert will go crazy—she told us about this ages ago!’

‘Told you about what?’ Fifi was impatient, but Tess detected a sliver of anxiety, of wanting—no, needing—to do right by Emily. Not to mess up.

Tess sighed. ‘Look, I know Emily’s been skipping Fontaine’s classes.’

‘She doesn’t need to speak French,’ Fifi jumped in, and the clique nodded in agreement. ‘She’s going to Hollywood to become an actress. So it’s irrelevant.’

‘I know,’ Tess was all sympathy, ‘but you know what our mother’s like …’

It felt weird saying it, but she had to remind Fifi of their allegiance. That she did have a connection with Emily, and it might stand to reason, despite Emily’s bullying, that she should wish to help her. Anyway, it was true. Emily was meant to attend Madame Fontaine’s lessons. Instead she spent the entire time smoking around the back of the music block. What wasn’t true was that Tess actually gave a shit.

‘Aubert told us weeks back that Géroux was leaving,’ Tess went on. Monsieur Géroux was their music teacher. He caused quite a stir among the pupils, due to being thirty-six, inoffensive looking, and in possession of all his own hair. He was moving to Switzerland to take up another position. ‘She asked us to prepare a song,’ she lied, ‘with Fontaine’s help, to perform for Monsieur today. As in now, in chapel.’

Fifi looked horrified.

‘Oh dear,’ said Tess. ‘I worried this would happen. She hasn’t done it, has she? Aubert will go mad! Not to mention Simone … Emily really is going to get it for this. Like, big time. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was suspended.’

Fifi stumbled. ‘I don’t think she’s done any song—she hasn’t said anything …’

‘Alors,’ said Tess, handing over a piece of paper, ‘just give her this, OK?’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the piece I wrote.’ She waved her hand, as if it were no big deal. ‘I don’t mind if Emily shares it. We can pretend we arranged it together. I’ll go tell Aubert now. Just make sure she gets it, OK? Or it’s going to be majorly embarrassing for her in there.’ Oh, she’ll get it. She’ll get it all right.

Fifi clutched the paper. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked suspiciously.

Tess lifted her shoulders. ‘Fifi, we’re family. Haven’t you heard of loyalty?’

Satisfied, she turned on her heel and went inside. Quickly, she located Madame Aubert and tied up her ploy. Tess explained that she had wished to perform a farewell song for Monsieur, and would it be OK if she and Emily interrupted morning service for a few moments to do so? Aubert thought it was a wonderful idea, and no doubt couldn’t wait to report back to Simone on how well her girls were getting along. Ha, Tess thought as she took her place in the pews, if only you knew.

Minutes later, the assembly was called into chapel. Tess spotted Emily looking suitably worried. She was frantically reading through the sheet of handwriting, and each time Fifi or one of the others attempted to peek over her shoulder, she swiped them away, unwilling to admit she hadn’t a clue what words were written there. Emily could barely introduce herself in French, let alone tackle the complex structures Tess had toiled hard on, looked up in the library, and double-checked with a bunch of geeks in an online forum. Excitement surged in her chest.

She didn’t have to wait long. After the school refrain had been sung in its usual dispassionate drone—’Aujourd’hui, nous sommes graines; demain, nous sommes des arbres’—and an announcement had been made about the forthcoming hockey tournament against the rival girls’ academy, L’École de Françoise Barbeau, it was time for Tess and Emily’s performance. Across the pews, Tess shot her a sweet smile.

‘Beloved Monsieur Géroux,’ crooned Madame Aubert from the lectern, as there was a general expectant shuffling in the ranks, ‘our girls in Special French wished to say goodbye to you in the way you taught them best. I think this is a lovely gesture and proves how much you mean to them—and to everybody here. So, without further ado, please welcome them to the stage: Tess Geddes and Emily Chilcott!’

Emily hesitated and, for a horrible moment, Tess thought she wasn’t going to fall for it—but, at the last moment, she shuffled up to the front. She shot Tess a strange look, half gratitude and half loathing. It serves you right, Tess thought, remembering how her hair had been slashed, and every cruelty and unkindness she had suffered at Emily’s hands. You underestimated me. You all did.

Tess saw Monsieur Géroux in the pews, his expression open with happy surprise. The piano struck up a lively tune. The song began.

The first verse went without a hitch. The teachers beamed through all Tess’s carefully constructed sentences, praising Monsieur’s delightful teaching style and prowess on the instruments, and Emily mumbled alongside her, finally falling into the tune. Then something strange happened. As they hit verse two, Tess’s voice gradually receded. She turned to stare at Emily, a practised mask of disbelief on her face, as Emily continued to belt out the words, her cheeks flaming with the effort of her botched—but still, lamentably, understandable—pronunciation, and when she realised she was singing out of kilter with Tess she sang even louder to make up for it.

‘Emily …!’

An elfin blonde named Claudette squeaked from the ranks, as Emily’s clique, including Fifi, turned ashen, along with the professeurs. Emily, thinking the shout had been some show of support, continued to sing as clear as a bell, her voice ringing out above the music, before suddenly, at Madame Aubert’s signal, the piano stopped. Emily’s voice travelled alone to the end of the refrain, and then fizzled out.

The congregation was staring, appalled. A few nervous laughs rose up from the chapel. Madame Aubert rushed over, red and flustered. Without a word she snatched Emily by the elbow and led her off the stage. Tess followed. On the way down they passed Monsieur Géroux, whose eyes were trained on the floor. The tips of his ears were bright red. Tess could sense the gaze of every girl boring into her.

‘Vous horrible fille!’ Madame Aubert lambasted Emily when they reached the courtyard. ‘What were you thinking? Was that some kind of joke? Allez au bureau de la directrice, immédiatement! Until then, consider yourself a month in detention!’

‘But—’

‘No buts, young lady.’

‘I don’t—’ Emily turned to Tess, but Tess gave her nothing. ‘But she … I—’

‘Go. Now!’

When Emily had scurried off, Tess said, ‘I’m sorry about that, Madame. I don’t know what got into her. It must have been some prank she and Fifi thought up. I mean,’ she blushed, ‘not to wrongly implicate anyone, it’s just I saw them talking outside and giggling over something. Emily was fine in rehearsal.’

Madame Aubert, who hadn’t been sure whether or not to be cross with Tess, thought a moment then shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, ma chérie,





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