‘Gabriel, what’s wrong? Can’t you tell me?’
Finally he looked at her, and Grace didn’t know when she had ever seen anyone look so sad.
‘It’s my brother. He’s dead.’
‘Honey,’ she whispered, moving towards him, but he just backed up against the door and threw it open. ‘Gabriel!’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t go, not in this state.’
‘I just need to be alone,’ he called over his shoulder. Running out on to the drive behind him, she caught a shower of dust as he gunned the jeep away.
The hours ticked slowly by. Four o’clock. Five o’clock. Her doctor’s appointment was missed. She would go there tomorrow. She stayed in the kitchen preparing supper, cleaning, reading, anything to take her mind off where he was. Every ten minutes she put her nose to the window, staring out on to the street, hoping that the silver jeep would come rolling up the drive again. But as the sun set, the streets grew dark and there was still no sign of him. Tiredness engulfed her again, so she crawled on to the sofa and pulled a blanket on top of her.
When she opened her eyes, Gabriel was sitting on the floor next to her, gently stroking her hair, his face wet with tears, his breath stale from alcohol. She pulled him up on to the sofa and they held each other for a while.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said quietly. Despite the hours she’d had to rehearse what she should say, everything else seemed to escape her.
‘He was shot dead coming out of a restaurant,’ said Gabriel, his voice barely a whisper. ‘He’d just been meeting friends . . .’
For a few seconds there was silence.
‘I’m going back to Parador,’ he said finally.
She felt a thickness in her throat, but she nodded. ‘Of course.’ ‘Not just for the funeral. I’m going back to stay. My family want me to take over the political party.’
His voice was a monotone; his eyes were just fixed on the wall in front of him.
She sat up to face him. ‘Is that what you want?’ she said, being careful with her tone.
‘I don’t want my brother to have died pointlessly. If I can go back and make a difference, then it’s the right decision.’
‘Then you must go,’ she said as evenly as she could. What more could she say? Don’t leave me? Stay here to look after me? She couldn’t – wouldn’t – make him think she was springing a trap. She had already resigned herself that she had to face up to this pregnancy alone and she would do so with dignity, especially given the circumstances. But Gabriel took both her hands in his and stared into her eyes.
‘I want you to come with me, Grace,’ he said urgently. ‘I want us to have this baby.’
For a second she could hardly breathe, and then thick tears of relief and sadness coursed down her cheeks.
He pulled her back into him and began stroking her hair.
‘I love you, Gabe,’ she whispered.
‘I love you, too,’ he said into the top of her head.
She had no idea if he meant it, but right then, in his arms, it felt like the only place in the world she wanted to be.
18
December 1991
Annalise Tuttle was the client from hell. Not quite rich enough to afford couture, she was still snobby and spoilt enough to want to look both spectacular and unique in front of her friends on London’s flashy society circuit. Sasha groaned as she stood outside the Tuttles’ white stucco house in South Kensington, not just in dread at the thought of the evening ahead, but under the weight of the five huge cloth bags that contained a selection of evening dresses for Annalise to try on.
Still, at least she was seeing clients on her own, thought Sasha as she rang the doorbell. She had been working as the assistant to stylist Venetia James, the woman she had met at the D&D party, for almost a year, and in that time she had done little but make coffee, iron clothes and pack suitcases, progressing to doing a little styling of her own. She had always been good at putting outfits together, but she had been delighted to discover she had a real talent for gauging what would look good on a woman. Venetia, however, wasn’t so pleased, belittling her selections in front of the clients while secretly using them to her advantage. Sasha had been sorely tempted to try her hand at modelling again, but she stuck with styling because she could see that it was a growing area in every branch of the industry. The biggest names from Vogue magazine were being wooed away to lucrative creative jobs at the fashion houses, while others were making their marks styling runway shows for the collections in Paris, Milan and New York. But Sasha had her eye on something else, a niche few other stylists had grasped the potential of. She could see the huge potential in giving individuals their own unique style. Whether you were a celebrity, a politician or a socialite, image was increasingly everything and as most of them couldn’t be trusted to come up with that fashion identity themselves, the business of personal styling looked set to explode. Sasha intended to be in the middle of it. Which is why I need to make this work today, she thought as she pressed the bell again.
‘Where’s Venetia?’ snapped Annalise, as she opened the door and saw Sasha wrestling with the bags.
‘Family emergency,’ she lied. The truth was, Venetia was losing her grip on the business, spending more and more time partying with minor celebrities and her coke dealer. She had spent the night with the bassist from a rock band and had rung Sasha at eight that morning, begging her to take this job on her own.
‘And who are you?’ Annalise sniffed.
‘Sasha Sinclair,’ she said as brightly as she could, struggling to extend a hand from under the bags. ‘I’m Venetia’s partner.’