‘How did you find out? Who told you? Dad?’
‘Saul,’ said Virginia quietly. ‘I don’t know how he knew. He told me he “suspected”. I suppose in the same way that I suspected. You can just tell you know, sometimes.’
Virginia closed her eyes for a moment, seeing it all as if it was only yesterday. She told Emma about the way her husband Jack and Julia had begun to avoid each other on the holiday; about the way her hand used to spring back from his when he touched her at the breakfast table; about the way two people who try to force themselves to be natural in front of one another, just end up looking even more contrived and unnatural. Emma could see the sparkle of a tear slip down her face; she who was usually so cool and restrained, usually such a mask of control. Emma wondered if it had always been that way.
‘Julia and Desmond’s marriage was very rocky,’ she continued. ‘It had been since Tom was born when Julia became very depressed. Several weeks after the Provence holiday Desmond left her; Saul suspected that he had found out about Julia and Jack. So Saul called up Jack and asked him to come round to the manor for a conversation, a man to man chat.’
A small smile pulled at Virginia’s lips. ‘Saul was like that. He was dreadfully irresponsible in some ways but in other ways he really understood his position as head of the family. Anyway …’ she puffed out her cheeks, ‘… that’s when your father’s crash happened. On the way to see Saul.’ She gave a low, angry laugh. ‘The irony was that Des didn’t leave Julia because of any affair she was having. Julia and your father – that was a one-off on holiday. Julia told me that many years later. Des left her because he’d met Helen by then, the South African trollop he eventually went to Durban with. Julia hid it from the kids, she didn’t want them to know that Des was in a serious relationship so soon after he’d left them. She wanted to protect them.’
Tears were now running down Emma’s cheeks.
‘But Cassandra thinks it was all Dad’s fault.’
‘It wasn’t. And I don’t think Saul ever forgave himself for the accident. A fateful intervention,’ she continued with a slow sad smile. ‘Saul used to tell me over and over again that he’d left you without a father.’ She looked at Emma with a more controlled expression as if she was putting her mask back on again.
‘I don’t doubt that’s why he left you the company, Emma. It was his way of trying to make things up to us.’
Emma nodded, taking a tissue from the dressing table and wiping her eyes.
‘Who knows about this?’ she asked.
‘To my knowledge, no one apart from us and Julia.’
‘Cassandra certainly doesn’t.’
Virginia turned to her; the cold eyes were back and the shutters were down.
‘And you must make sure it stays that way.’
‘But she despises me. She’s trying to destroy the company and ruin me because she wants revenge for something she’s got the wrong way around!’ protested Emma.
Virginia grabbed Emma’s hand and squeezed hard.
‘No, Emma. I know Cassandra is hard work sometimes, but she’s suffered enough. Please, for me,’ she said, searching her daughter’s eyes, ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’
In her attic bedroom, a tiny room she had been furious about being allocated, Cassandra was unable to sleep. She sat on the bed, looking over to the small single bed in the corner, where Ruby was fast asleep. She watched the rise and fall of her breath under the duvet and felt a tug of guilt somewhere distant inside her. Did her daughter deserve a father? Cassandra had always rejected marriage in favour of her own career, thinking it would be better that way. That way, you didn’t get hurt. But was she right?
There was a decanter of port on her bedside table and she poured herself a small measure. There was no balcony in the cramped living space in the rafters, but there was a door leading to some narrow steps which led to the ground, a relic from when the chalet had servants living in the attic who needed to come and go without disturbing the family. Cassandra put on her cashmere robe and went out onto the wooden steps. She sank down, and breathed in the ice-cold air. So finally she had told Emma, had told someone. But instead of the sweet relief of sharing a secret she had kept for over twenty years, there was a terrible sense of emptiness – and she had to admit it, embarrassment. I’m such a bloody cliché, she thought, her cheeks flaming despite the cold. All that time, without even knowing it, she had used the pain and hurt to drive her onwards, to transform herself into something bigger and better than that bruised 13-year-old who felt so worthless. If I make myself clever and pretty and successful, then maybe Daddy will come back, she mocked with an ironic smile. But now it had been vocalized, it didn’t seem like such a potent force. Now it just felt like what it was; pain and envy so fierce it stuck in her throat and made her want to choke. Despite all Cassandra’s bluster and threats, Emma had been right on two counts: every kick she gave her did make Cassandra feel better; she simply wanted Emma to suffer the way she had. But Emma was also spot on when she had said it was futile: Milford was successful. She had achieved nothing.
She looked at the dark jagged edges of the mountains and took a deep lungful of air, trying to let go of all the tension so that she could finally sleep. She was about to go inside when she heard the low creak of a balcony door opening beneath her and voices.
‘Come in, Rebecca,’ said a man’s voice. ‘It’s bloody freezing.’
Cassandra peeked over the edge, keeping in the shadows. From her lofty position, she could see the whole balcony beneath her. Rebecca and Roger were talking in low mumbled voices. Rebecca was trying to talk in a whisper but her anger made her words clear.
‘Come on, darling,’ said Roger, ‘we’ll get this sorted. I’ll get the money for the Ricardo deal. Perhaps we can sell this place. That will be a start.’
Moving silently in her cashmere socks, Cassandra moved down two more stairs, cocking her head and holding her breath.
‘I’m not selling Les Fleurs to raise the money,’ hissed Rebecca. ‘People would kill for a place in Gstaad. It’s the only decent thing we’ve got. Forget the Ricardo deal. Something better will come along. And it better bloody had. We have a second-rate house and a 2-year-old BMW. Do you realize how embarrassing it is for me getting it valet parked? I’m sick of living like the wife of middle management.’
‘Ricardo’s business is the something better, darling. I want to make some serious money for us both. I want us to have a better life. One day soon you can have whatever house or car you want. We’ll get her
out of the picture. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’
Rebecca laughed mirthlessly.
‘Or a bitch.’