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  ‘I’ll tell her you said so,’ Tara answered drily.

  Gerald continued on without hearing her. ‘And Poppy – well, charming she may be, and pretty in her way, too, but she has something of the infant about her. She’s no more suitable to run a company than Imogen is. No doubt, that’s why your mother left her Loxton, it’s quite obvious she’ll be the one who actually needs it. She won’t marry well and she certainly won’t make her own money. She’s like a needy child, yearning for guidance and protection.’

  ‘Mmm. You can tell her that yourself. She’s coming here later, on her way back from Loxton.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Gerald said loftily. ‘It would destroy what little confidence she has, poor thing. It was one of your parents’ few failings: to spoil that girl and wrap her in cotton wool. Anyway, I shan’t be here to see her later, I’m afraid. I have a business meeting.’

  ‘On a Sunday?’ Tara looked over at her husband, surprised.

  ‘I never stop working,’ Gerald declared. ‘My life is my work and vice versa. Tara, you know very well I never take weekends or holidays, I am always alert and functioning, always thinking of my enterprises. Now …’ He leaned over to the house phone, picked it up and dialled. ‘Yes. Coffee. At once. Then soft scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, granary toast, French butter. And don’t forget – the cutlery on the folded napkin on the left-hand side of the tray. And no crumbs on the plate! I want it perfect this time.’ He put the phone down. ‘Did you want anything?’

  ‘No.’ Tara swung her legs out of bed. ‘I’m going to have a shower and then join the children.’

  ‘Very well.’ Gerald settled himself against his pillows and reached for his book, a biography of Stalin.

  Tara went to her bathroom. A moment later, she was under the hot gush of the shower, scrubbing Gerald away as fast as she could. Her revulsion for him was growing, she knew that. How long could she go on sharing a bed with him, going through this dreadful Sunday morning ritual of arid sex that left her unmoved and unhappy?

  Her desire for him had never recovered from that one frightful night.

  It was a few years before, not long after Imogen was born, that Gerald’s tastes had begun to change – or at least, that he had begun to reveal them to her. He had always enjoyed the rough and tumble of love-making, dominating her with his physical strength, but it had been harmless enough and her pleasure had always been important to him. Gradually, though, things took a different turn: he began to get pleasure from beating her. He didn’t punch her or want to give her a black eye or a bloody nose. Rather, he had wanted to tether her. At first it had seemed rather innocent, as he playfully tied her to the bed. He would bind her to the bedrail with silk scarves and blindfold her with another, then begin to whip her lightly with a slim belt he kept specifically for the purpose. It wasn’t something that aroused her, but she knew he enjoyed it, so she occasionally let him do it. She would writhe on the bed as the leather slapped across her bottom, crying out and begging for mercy, giving a good performance of being in agony even though it didn’t hurt her terribly much. Gerald loved it, though. As soon as he saw the red lines rising across her buttocks, he would begin to breathe more heavily. When she cried out that it hurt, he beat her a little harder, panting more. But after a few minutes, he would be able to bear it no longer and had to drop his little stinging whip and push his short, thick penis into her. He always came within seconds after the whippings.

  Tara grew to hate them, as Gerald wanted them more and more often. He no longer cared about her pleasure, or taking her to the heights of ecstasy. He only wanted to get out his belt and thrash her bottom until the welts showed, then enter her quickly and buck on her until he’d climaxed, leaving her miserable and unsatisfied.

  Then, one day, a strange contraption was delivered, a large wooden frame with leather cuffs for her wrists and ankles, which he’d ordered off some specialist website. She was frightened of it from the first moment she saw it, but he persuaded her to let him tie her to it, telling her that he wouldn’t hurt her, not really. It was just for fun. A game. Eventually, she agreed. He wanted it so badly and he’d promised faithfully that the minute she wanted him to, he would free her.

  It had been terrible. When she was fixed on the frame at her wrists and ankles, he hadn’t taken out the belt, as usual. Instead he had produced a bunch of birch twigs and begun to slap her with it lightly, watching as the blood rushed to the surface of her skin in response to the blows. She had gone along with it at first, moaning and screaming as usual at the slightest touch, waiting for Gerald to be overcome with excitement. But when she begged for mercy this time, he didn’t stop. Instead he increased his pace, beating her harder and harder. Soon, the pain was real and unpleasant. Her buttocks were stinging badly, the twigs cutting into her flesh with a burning bite. She demanded he stop and release her. He ignored her and only increased the strength of his blows until she began to weep as the pain grew more intense. This only inflamed him more and as she begged him to stop and let her down, he began to thrash her seriously, until she could feel blood smeared over her bottom and thighs and the agony was almost making her faint.

  He did not even enter her. The thrill of hitting her was so great that he came without touching her, the jet of sperm splattering her back and thighs as he moaned with delight.

  When he released her, she could not look at him. She had crawled away to the bathroom to dip her poor, broken bottom in cool water and sob quietly to herself. Over the weeks it took for her skin to heal, she avoided him at every opportunity. He acted as though nothing had happened and seemed oblivious to what he’d done, while the frame vanished somewhere, probably hidden in some attic.

  He had broken her trust and abused her, and it left her devastated and in turmoil. But she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him about it; it was too strange and humiliating, almost unreal. All she knew was that her desire for him vanished in one moment, leaving her utterly unable to feel aroused by him.

  It had killed her love for him, too, she knew that now, even though she had tried to forget and forgive, and cling on to whatever was left.

  Then, one night, to her horror, he asked her to mount the frame again.

  ‘No!’ she cried, tears springing to her eyes. ‘Never again! It’s revolting. How dare you? How dare you ask me? You know what you did!’

  He did not force her or even try to convince her. He simply said ‘Very well, my dear’ and it was never mentioned again.

  She didn’t dare think about how Gerald was indulging his lust for beatings since then. As far as she could tell, his appetite was satisfied by the weekly Sunday morning rut in the bed, with nothing more extreme than his fat body heaving on top of hers until he came.

  How much longer she could endure even that, she did not know.

  They were in the garden later when Poppy arrived. The afternoon had turned delightfully hot and sunny, a foretaste of summer in an otherwise wet and blustery spring, and Tara had taken the opportunity to catch up with the Sunday papers sitting on a rug under the old beech tree at the end of the garden while Edward and Imogen played nearby. Sometimes they squealed as they chased each other around; at other times, she would look up to see the two of them engrossed in something, their heads close together as they squatted next to a flower bed, observing the slow progress of a snail or watching a wood louse curl up into a ball when they prodded it.

  She saw Poppy approaching down the long lawn, and folded away all the news pages before her sister reached them.

  ‘Look who it is,’ she called to Edward and Imogen, who rushed towards their aunt, yelping with joy, for hugs and kisses.

  ‘Hello, sweeties,’ laughed Poppy, trying to return all the kisses as fast as she could.

  She disentangled herself after a few moments and headed for Tara, beaming.

  ‘They’re so adorable!’ Poppy glanced over at her nephew and niece as they ran over to their playhouse, a perfect miniature Swiss chalet with an upstairs and a downst
airs, all furnished in beautiful, to-scale furniture, right down to a tiny white porcelain sink. There was even electric lighting and running water. ‘I wish I saw more of them.’

  ‘So do I, darling,’ said Tara lightly. ‘We’ve just been enjoying some quiet time together before we go in for tea.’

  ‘No Gerald?’ Poppy looked about, as though she expected Gerald to pop out from behind a bush.

  Tara shook her head. ‘Working today.’

  ‘He’s tireless.’ Poppy made a face. ‘I’m exhausted by Monday to Friday – let alone Sunday too.’

  ‘How was Loxton?’ Tara asked, patting the rug beside her. Poppy sat down next to her. The soft spring wind lifted strands of her hair as she curled her arms round her knees and sighed.

  ‘Oh … strange. Very strange to be there without Mother. Even odder to go into her bedroom to get the Tea Rose and for her not to be there. I half expected to see her sitting in bed, propped up on all those pillows with her tray next to her – that Georgian silver teapot she always used, remember that? – saying, “Ah, Poppy, my dear, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”’

  Tara smiled. Poppy had their mother’s deep, syrupy tones down to a T.

  Poppy smiled back, a little ruefully. ‘But of course, she wasn’t there. The place feels deserted. Just Alice in the kitchen, still keeping everything ticking over until I’m in a position to make some decisions about the old place.’

  ‘Did you feel like you wanted to live there?’ Tara asked, brushing her hair from her face.

  ‘Live there? I don’t think I could imagine anything worse. Just me, in that big huge place?’ Poppy shuddered. ‘I say just me, but of course, I wouldn’t be alone. All the ghosts that are there … I could feel the echo of the days we’d spent there, as tiny children through to teenagers, and the desperation we all felt in the end to escape. You must remember … And not just our ghosts either …’

  ‘No,’ Tara agreed. ‘Not just ours.’

  They exchanged a significant glance.

  ‘Hasn’t all this made you feel differently about the parents?’ Tara asked after a moment.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Poppy thought. ‘Not really. It’s just confirmed what I already knew. I suppose I always realised that something was wrong. I mean, even if they had been happy – well, Jecca changed that, didn’t she?’

  ‘So it was Jecca who caused all the unhappiness?’

  ‘We’ll never know,’ Poppy said softly. ‘Not now.’

  Tara watched as her children called to each other in the playhouse. A tiny shuttered window on the upper floor opened and Edward poked his head out, calling to his mother and aunt to watch him. They waved and smiled and obligingly said they were watching.

  After a while Poppy said, ‘I always knew I was their favourite. But it was only because I didn’t challenge them, not like you and Jemima.’

  Tara frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you were clever. And very grown up. They must have known you could see right through them, and that soon you’d be asking uncomfortable questions. And Mimi was so obviously destructively unhappy with the way things were and they didn’t have the first idea how to cope. But me … you know I was always docile, always eager to please. Happy to be fussed over. I was the easy option.’

  There was a long pause. Then Tara murmured, ‘Maybe there’s something in that, you know. It certainly explains a lot.’

  ‘But they adored you too,’ Poppy said hastily. ‘I know that. They loved us all, even if they struggled to show it.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Tara watched Imogen run out of the little chalet and slam the front door behind her with relish. ‘I guess that one good thing to come from it is that I always show my children how much I love them.’

  ‘Good,’ said Poppy fervently. ‘Good. You must.’

  Tara sighed. ‘I just wish I had your certainty. That they loved us, I mean.’

  ‘But this awful thing, this challenge to bring Trevellyan to life again … well, I think it’s proof.’

  ‘You do?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘Absolutely. I think Mother knew it would bring out the best in all of us.’

  ‘We shall see,’ Tara said grimly. ‘You certainly have more faith in her clairvoyance than I do. Come on.’ She climbed to her feet, stretching up and sighing. ‘Viv’s putting out tea in the conservatory. Let’s go and have some.’

  Poppy got up as well. She smiled at her big sister. ‘Yes please. As long as we can take those cute little things with us.’

  ‘Try keeping them away from Viv’s apple scones and you’ll see a whole other side to those cute little things,’ said Tara wryly. Then she called the children to join them as they walked back across the lawn.

  21

  IT WAS A week later when a svelte, fashionably dressed woman, her hair a sleek, dark bob, stopped outside the famous old Trevellyan shop. She appeared to be admiring her reflection in the glass of the shop window. She was wearing an elegant, beautifully cut berry-coloured suit, with a sharp little jacket over a crisp white shirt, and a knee-length pencil skirt – an outfit of timeless chic. However, when she made a face at the glass and said, ‘Dieu!’ it became obvious she was looking at the inside of the shop.

  A moment later, she marched through the front door.

  ‘May I help you, madam?’ asked a shop assistant, coming forward to greet her.

  ‘Yes, if you please,’ she replied curtly in a strong French accent. ‘I am ’ere to see the lady in charge.’

  ‘Lady in charge?’ The shop assistant blinked. ‘You mean Mrs Armstrong? I’m afraid she’s on a tea break …’

  ‘No, no,’ the lady said impatiently. ‘Not Meesus Armstrong. Pierreson.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Madame Pierreson.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.’

  ‘The lady ’oo runs thees company!’ cried the woman crossly, ‘’oo is your owner?’

  ‘Oh, the owner! You must mean Miss Trevellyan – one of the Miss Trevellyans, that is.’

  ‘If you say so.’ The lady closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to reveal a piercing brown gaze. ‘Ooever it ees – please take me to her at once!’ The piercing brown gaze was insistent.

  A few minutes later, the French woman was standing in the reception area, peering at the displays of perfume bottles.

  ‘Mademoiselle Deroulier?’ Tara came into reception. ‘I’m Tara Pearson.’

  ‘Oui…’ muttered the French lady to herself. ‘You see – Pierreson, just as I said. These people are imbeciles.’ Then she looked up with a smile. ‘Bonjour. I am Claudine Deroulier. Enchantée, Madame.’

  Tara took in the woman’s appearance from top to toe. She’d hoped for a typically elegant French woman and Claudine Deroulier did not disappoint. She was probably in her forties but she had an elegant agelessness that came from a lifetime of looking after her complexion and figure. Her thick dark hair brushed her jaw line in a chic bob, and her make-up was so expertly applied she appeared to be wearing nothing but the bright red lipstick that contrasted with her creamy, smooth skin. Her clothes were subtle but clearly very expensive. She carried a silver Chanel 2.55 bag over one shoulder, and her low pumps were also discreetly engraved with the linked Cs of Chanel.

  ‘And I’m delighted to meet you. Thank you for meeting with us – it is a great honour. You come very highly recommended, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Merci. But I cannot say I am surprised – I am very good at my job. That is why you want me, I know that.’

  ‘Absolutely. If you’re ready, my sisters are waiting for us in the boardroom.’ As Tara led the way down the hall, she said, ‘I trust the hotel is satisfactory?’

  ‘Oui, oui, very good. I am most comfortable. It is not quite as fine as the Crillon in Paris but it will do.’

  ‘It is hard to match the Hôtel Crillon. I stay there myself when I’m in Paris.’

  ‘An oasis of luxury in a terrible world,’ agreed Mademoiselle De
roulier. She sighed longingly. ‘I mees Paris already.’

  ‘You left yesterday, didn’t you?’ Tara asked. She was impressed by the woman’s excellent English, and found the strong French accent charming.

  Mademoiselle Deroulier’s smile dropped. ‘Oui. But to be away from Paris even for a day is like a lifetime.’

  ‘How lovely to feel so strongly about your city. I don’t think I feel quite the same way about London.’

  ‘London ’as its charms but … I agree, it does not have the true elegance of Paris.’

  ‘Here we are.’ Tara opened the door and led the way into the boardroom. Once again a selection of the Trevellyan scents were laid out on the table, along with plenty of paper testing slips and refreshments. ‘May I introduce you to my sisters?’

  Jemima stood up and came round the table. In honour of their French guest, she was wearing white Yves Saint Laurent wide-legged trousers and a dusky pink Dior scoop-neck top, looking as fresh and springlike as the day outside.

  ‘Mademoiselle Deroulier, what a pleasure to meet you. I’m Jemima Calthorpe. Please call me Jemima.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ murmured Claudine Deroulier. She looked approvingly at Jemima’s outfit. ‘Charming.’

  ‘And I am Poppy Trevellyan.’ Poppy stood up. She had decided to go a little wild today and was a wearing a leopard-print blouse with black trousers, her coppery hair brushed back in a long curling mane.

  Claudine raised her eyebrows. ‘Enchantée. And you three ladies are sisters, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Oui, Mademoiselle. Nous avons herité la maison de notre père,’ said Jemima in pretty French. ‘Un de nos ances-tres a fondé la maison au dix-neuvième siècle et maintenant nous voudrions sécuriser l’avenir de nos parfums célèbres.’