Mistress of the Game

Chapter Twenty-Three

MAX WEBSTER WAS ON HIS HONEYMOON.

He and Annabel, his young English bride, were walking on Table Mountain. Annabel raced ahead, her long honey-streaked hair dancing in the wind. Her feet were lost in a carpet of flowers. Above her head, the sun shone a dazzling azure blue.

Max shouted: "Be careful! Don't get too close to the edge!" But the wind whipped away his words. Annabel danced on. She was singing an old folk tune Max's mother used to sing to him in the bath when he was a little boy. Uncanny. How does she know that song? Max tried to hum along, then realized he had forgotten the melody.

The other walkers had gone now. They were alone, and the distance between them was growing. Annabel was right by the edge of the cliff.

Max was screaming. "Come back! It's not safe!"

"What did you say?"

Thank God. She heard me. Annabel stopped and turned around so Max could see her face. Except it wasn't her face. It was Lexi's, swaying back and forth over the abyss like a reckless child.

Max rushed toward her. "Lexi, come back. I love you. I'm sorry." He reached out his hand to pull her to safety, but he was too late. Her fingers slid through his and she staggered backward. She was falling.

Max leaped after her. They were in each other's arms in midair, the ground rushing up to meet them. Lexi's features began to morph grotesquely, like melting plastic. She was turning into Eve.

"You killed Keith. You murdered your father. You didn't really believe you'd get away with it, did you?"

But, Mother, I did it for you. Everything has been for you. Mother!

"Max." Annabel Webster shook her husband awake. "Max! You're dreaming. Wake up, darling. It's all right. It's only a nightmare. It isn't real."

She held him in her arms till he calmed down, like a baby. This was the third time this week. Whatever pills Dr. Barrington was prescribing, they evidently weren't working. When he stopped shaking, she said: "Honey, you need to talk to someone. This isn't normal."

Max mopped his brow with the bedclothes and slumped back against the pillow. "I'm all right. I'm a little stressed at work, that's all. It'll pass. Go back to sleep."

The marriage had been Eve's idea. Everything was always Eve's idea.

She was berating Max over one of their weekly lunches. "You need an heir. Someone to take over the business and undo all of your mistakes. Someone who can make Kruger-Brent great again."

"I'm trying, Mother," Max said weakly.

"You're failing. Get married."

Max knew he was a poor chairman. He knew that Kruger-Brent's once bright light was fading, spluttering out slowly like a dying star. It didn't help having his mother second-guessing his every decision, bullying him into taking one direction then blaming him when the hoped-for profits failed to materialize.

It was Eve who had insisted that they sell their holdings in the Ukraine: "If there was oil in those fields, they'd have found it by now. Alternative energy, that's the future. Are you completely stupid?"

Max dutifully sold Kruger-Brent's five thousand acres to Exxon, investing the money from the sale in a wind farm in Israel. Six months later, Exxon struck oil. A year after that, the wind farm filed for bankruptcy. Eve blamed Max.

"You never drilled that land properly. What do you expect if you do a half-assed job? This is business Max, not some childish game. God help me, you're your father's son."

Eve brought up Keith's name more and more often these days. It was almost as if she'd transferred the hatred and rage she once felt for her husband onto her son. Max had destroyed Keith Webster, but the monster Keith had created lived on in Eve. Max had done everything his mother wanted. Killed Keith. Betrayed Lexi. Won back Kruger-Brent. But every trophy he brought her was like gasoline poured on the flames of Eve's hatred. He could feed the fire. But he could never put it out.

Meanwhile, Lexi's star continued its inexorable rise. No one remembered the sex scandal that had driven her out of Kruger-Brent. When people saw Lexi Templeton today, they thought of glamour, of resilience, of success. No one at Kruger-Brent said it to Max's face. But the whispers behind his back were deafening:

We made a mistake. We should never have gotten rid of her. Lexi's the winner in the family, not Max. We backed the wrong horse.

By the time he met Annabel, Max was drinking heavily. He was thirty-five but looked ten years older. His looks were fading. Like everything else about me. Annabel Savary was fifteen years Max's junior, beautiful and everything he was not: sensible, happy, healthy and uncomplicated. The product of a blissfully happy marriage - her father was an English lord, her mother an American socialite - Annabel was in New York doing an internship at Christie's when Max met her at an auction. He was outbid on the Constable he was after. But he left the auction room that day with a far more valuable prize.

Annabel Savary loved Max Webster in the same way that she had once loved her pony, Trigger. Everybody told Annabel that Trigger was too old and bad-tempered to be broken in. But the nine-year-old refused to give up. Trigger was a beautiful pony, intelligent, strong, fast as a bullet. With patience, and after suffering numerous bites, kicks and other signs of Trigger's displeasure, Annabel transformed him into a sweet-natured, loving animal. By the time he died, when Annabel was eighteen, Trigger had won a boatload of "first" rosettes and was famed across Derbyshire for his devotion to his young mistress.

Annabel was as certain that Max could change as Max was certain that he could not. He knew he should let her go. She has no idea how fucked up I am. But Eve wouldn't hear of it. She thoroughly approved of Annabel, believing her to be too young and naive to pose any threat to her influence.

"Marry her quickly, before she changes her mind. Get her pregnant."

Max did as he was told. The wedding was a blur. When he looked at the photographs later, he could barely remember having been there. All he could think about on the way to the church was whether Lexi would show up - she didn't - and whether his mother's pleasure with him would last this time.

Max knew how badly Eve wanted a grandchild. For different reasons, Annabel was also eager to give him a son. Max found the performance pressure unbearable. With Lexi, he'd allowed his sexuality free rein. Somehow, in his mind, Lexi and Eve had merged into one being, the mother-lover, the fulfillment of all his deepest, darkest fantasies. Lexi had allowed him to pour his rage and frustration into her body. She knew the wildness in him, the twisted savage inside, and she wanted it. Sodomy, violence, bondage, nothing had been forbidden. With Lexi, Max had gorged his inner beast. But Annabel must never know that monster. She was pure and lovely. Max must not defile her, the one piece of goodness in his life.

Only Annabel's stubborn, superhuman patience saved the marriage. After six miserable, sexless months, she took matters into her own hands, literally. Ignoring Max's protests, she reached over in bed one night and began stroking his limp penis. Nothing happened.

"I'm your wife, Max. I'm a woman. Put it inside me."

"Stop it!" Max loathed hearing her talk this way.

"No, I won't stop it. Enough is enough."

"Christ, Annabel. I can't get it up on command, okay?"

She took him in her mouth. In spite of himself, Max started to get hard. Images, hateful, degrading images of his mother and Lexi, poured into his mind like sewage. "Please stop." But Annabel didn't stop. Straddling him, she inserted his penis between her legs, bucking and squeezing until at last, with a sob, Max came. Afterward he cried in her arms for hours.

That was the night Annabel realized he was sick. It was also the night she conceived their twin sons.

Max waited till Annabel's breathing settled into a deep, regular rhythm before getting out of bed. Taking a handful of prescription pills from the bathroom cabinet, he swallowed, splashing his face with cold water. His reflection in the mirror looked ghostly.

I have to get it together before tomorrow's board meeting. August Sandford's out to get me. One sign of weakness and he'll move in for the kill.

It was Sandford who'd demanded tomorrow's emergency session. From the start, he had been a vocal opponent of Max's strategy to abandon foreign real estate and focus exclusively on the U.S. market. August wanted Kruger-Brent to follow Templeton's lead. Eve wouldn't hear of it.

"You're not Lexi's puppy, Max. Kruger-Brent leads, it doesn't follow."

Hundreds of millions had been wiped off the firm's balance sheet as a result. Now the board wanted answers.

Tiptoeing into the nursery, Max gazed in wonder at his sleeping boys. George and Edward were almost three now. They were so perfect, sometimes Max felt scared to touch them. Tiny, male replicas of Annabel, blond and sturdy and sweet.

"Darling. It's four in the morning." Annabel stood in the doorway, yawning. "For heaven's sake, come back to bed."

"Coming. Sorry."

Max followed her into the bedroom.

I wonder if my father ever looked at me while I slept?

I wonder if he loved me, like I love those boys?

The dreams began again.

Tara McGregor giggled to herself as she put the children's cake mixture into the oven. Ridiculous! I'm behaving like a sixteen-year-old. But her happiness refused to be contained.

Gabe was coming home early this afternoon. It was his birthday. The kids had baked him a cake and made homemade presents from toilet paper, glitter and glue. Jamie opted for a magnificent rocket, while Collette had surprised no one with her Little Mermaid-themed effort. Gabe would be thrilled. But Tara was saving the best present for last. She couldn't wait to see the look on Gabe's face when she told him.

She was pregnant again. A complete accident. At forty-one! Ever since she saw the pink line on the pee stick yesterday morning, she'd been unable to stop laughing. She looked at the kitchen clock: three-thirty. Gabe should be home by four.

The doorbell rang. He's early! Two miracles in one day. Tara skipped to answer it before Mala, the maid, beat her to it.