Passion and the Prince

‘Meaning that he didn’t have much time for those close to him?’ Marco guessed.

‘My stepmother was better at dealing with him than my mother, but even she lost patience with him in the end. Rick, my half-brother, worships the memory of our father and wants to follow in his footsteps—but of course he never really knew him properly.’

‘Unlike you. So, Anton and your father were friends?’

‘Yes. I remember the summer I was fourteen he seemed to be at the studio all the time. When Dad wasn’t there he’d ask to take some … some nude shots of me, and I refused. I remember Dad being furious with me when I tried to tell him.’

‘Why? What did he say?’

‘He refused to believe me—accused me of attention-seeking. Being just like my mother. It was a horrible holiday. Dad refused to speak to me, and then just before I went back to school my stepmother told me that she was divorcing him. I liked her. I still do. She was kind to me—that’s why I feel I owe it to her to keep an eye on Rick, as well, of course, as because he’s my half-brother. She’s remarried now, and she lives in California. She’s always inviting me out to stay but I haven’t managed it as yet.

‘Rick always says that it isn’t fair that Dad taught me to use a camera but died before he could teach him. I couldn’t have not learned, really. Well, I couldn’t have had him for a father and not learned how to take a photograph. I always preferred to photograph things, though, not people. It felt safer, somehow. The camera catches things that the naked eye doesn’t always, you see. My mother… . Well, in some of the last photographs of her I think you can see how desperate she was, how alone she felt. I wish I’d been able to help her.

‘Anyway, after that whenever I came home from school for the holidays Anton always seemed to be there, at the studio, and I noticed …’ She paused.

This was so difficult.

‘You noticed?’ Marco repeated, his voice so devoid of emotion that its calmness steadied her.

She still couldn’t look at him, though, so she went to stand in front of the window as she told him in a low voice, ‘I noticed that the models my father was being asked to photograph for Anton’s magazine were getting younger and younger. That wasn’t entirely unusual for the time. The modelling world was changing, and the demand was for younger girls. But Anton’s magazine seemed to use more of them than anyone else. There was one girl—Anna. She was so pretty, so very pretty, and young—only fifteen. I really liked her. She wasn’t like the other models. She was still at school, like me, but I was at boarding school in the country and she was at a London day-school. Her mother was a dancer and her parents were divorced too. Her father didn’t approve of her modelling. She told me that her agent said she thought she’d be doing a Vogue cover by the end of the year, only she didn’t.’

Her voice became suspended. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t … It was so awful, so horrible.’

‘What happened, Lily? ‘

Marco suspected he knew what she was going to say, and he was appalled.

‘It’s the reason I still hate going in helicoptors—because we travelled to the shoot in one that day.’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘I still feel so guilty because I never said anything,’ she told him in a ragged voice, turning round from the window to look at him, her face ravaged by her emotions.

Marco knew all about guilt, and how it ate away at a person. He went to her, wanting to reach out and hold her, but he was held back by his own demons. They told him that if he held her now he would be making a commitment that would bind him to her for ever, and that was a risk he must not take.

He saw Lily’s shoulders lift as she breathed in, taking the kind of breath that someone facing an enormous physical challenge needed to take.

‘Anna said that Anton had raped her and she thought she was pregnant. She said that Anton had been coming to the studio to see her, and he’d sent my father away on some pretext so they’d be alone together. She cried when she told me. She said it had been awful and that she was afraid to tell her mother.’