Winner Takes It All (29 page)

He started kissing her
again but one again they were interrupted by a knock. This time
followed by a call.

‘
Jack are you
in there or not?’

‘
Oh my God
it’s Lisa,’ he gasped, clambering off Alex.

‘’
ang on!’ he
called.

Alex sat up,
straightening her clothes while Jack walked to the door, smoothing
down his hair and tucking his shirt back into his trousers. By the
time he opened the door to his wife, Alex was sitting primly
looking at the pictures of her new hotel.

‘
The plane was
diverted to Heathrow,’ Lisa said, stepping into the room, still in
her dark blue uniform, looking far more respectable and made up
than the last time Alex saw her. ‘I was hoping I could stay here
the night, finally see this suite you’ve gone on about.’

She suddenly spotted
Alex, stopping dead with that distasteful expression on her
face.

‘
Oh, I didn’t
realise
you
were here.’

‘
I was just
showing Alex the layout for the new hotel,’ Jack
explained.

‘
Yes,’ Alex
said. ‘I was just going actually.’

She stood up, desperate
to get out of this room that suddenly felt so airless she was about
to choke. She couldn’t bear to see the pair of them
together.

‘
Don’t go on
my account,’ Lisa said snootily.

‘
No, honestly,
I’ve got to be making tracks. It’s been a long day. See you soon
Jack. Nice to see you again Lisa.’

Like a frightened animal,
Alex scurried from the room and rather than wait for the lift, ran
down all the stairs to the bottom floor. The physical exertion
prevented her from crying, but as she stepped out onto the busy
Knightsbridge street she broke down. Her mobile rang and she took
it out, her heart sinking even further and that feeling of being
trapped increasing when she saw it was Robin.

‘
Have you
finished your meeting yet?’ he laughed. ‘It sounds very busy where
you are.’

‘
I’m in
Knightsbridge,’ she answered with a sniff. ‘I was just doing some
shopping.’

‘
Great. Well
get yourself over to Chelsea. I’m at Markham Street, I’m just
looking at the most beautiful little cottage we can move into after
the wedding. Come on, I want to see what you think.’

‘
Yes Robin,’
she said quietly. ‘I’ll be over in ten minutes.’

Sixteen

Tom and Fiona had never
been particularly close. As a mother she’d done her best in between
a string of unsuitable boyfriends and equally unsuitable artistic
endeavours. Now in her fifties she’d settled down a little,
teaching in a Camden high school and selling her paintings in the
market by the canal at the weekend. Her fifty-fifth birthday fell
the day before Tom had to go off to Paris and he decided to play
the dutiful son and go and see her.

Fiona still lived in the house in
Parkway that had been part of the Montague estate and given to her
by her father. Back in Victorian times it had been a grand Nash
house but these days it just looked battered and neglected. Her
latest squeeze was a young Morrocan called Ali whom she’d been
teaching privately. He had a rather fervent cannabis habit and as
Fiona welcomed her son into the house, his nostrils burned from the
smell. Fiona reminded Tom of Paula – they shared that same tall
build and beautiful but rangy look. Fiona however was too vain to
admit she was going grey and her latest colour was a pillarbox red
that just served to age her more.

‘
Look at you,’
she said to Tom, observing his new image. ‘How come you’re so
smart?’

His mother had no idea of
his association with Jackson. All she knew was that he was working
with his extended family down in Summerset. She didn’t know he was
working as Estate Manager, just thought it was some low level job
that he’d got by himself.

‘
I thought it
was time I started tidying myself up,’ he said, going into the
messy kitchen, that didn’t smell quite so badly. ‘Anyway, Happy
Birthday.’

He passed her the present
he’d bought her - a painting of Summerset done by his next door
neighbour who was a fledgling artist.

‘Summerset,’ she
smiled. ‘That brings back memories. Do you want a
drink?’

‘
Yes
please.’

She poured them both a glass of
red wine and sat with him at the table. They went through the usual
niceties, discussing each other’s lives. Tom told her that he was
being sent to Paris by Alex Cusack and she was impressed that her
son was finally achieving something.

‘
It’s good of
that side of the family to accept you,’ Fiona said, drawing hard on
her third cigarette in the past twenty minutes. ‘My mother wanted
to exhume Mick O’Connell you know?’

‘
Yes, so I’ve
been told.’

‘
She only
hated them because Ben Cusack never wanted her. All that sectarian
rubbish was just an excuse. If Ben had married her, she would have
converted at the drop of a hat.’

‘
No one in
Summerset seems to have a good word to say about our side of the
family. Were they really that horrible?’

‘I can’t lie Tom,’ she
sighed. ‘They were. All that stuff about Finn Healy working for the
Sheridans was true. I can’t say whether or not the Cusacks have
helped the IRA, but I know for a fact my grandfather had a fair
number of Loyalist groups in his pockets. I always remember once I
was out riding on the hills with my friend and I came across Lucy
Cusack; she was no more than about five or six. She’d ran out of
Layton House and made it all the way across the hills and she was
exhausted.’ She laughed. ‘She was such a pretty little thing, all
golden hair and a baby face.’

‘
She still
looks like that,’ said Tom.

‘
Does she?
Anyway, I picked her up and took her back to The Cherry Tree to
Mick and Barbara and when I got back to Claremont Hall and told my
mother, she put me over her knee and beat me with my own riding
crop while my father watched.’

‘
Just for
helping a little girl?’

‘
I’d touched a
Cusack and I was soiled in my mother’s eyes.’

Tom said nothing to his
mother but felt physically sick to know he had been drawn into this
horrid web of deceit. Now he had no way out and right now he wished
he were dead.

In a rare show of
affection, Fiona reached forward and grasped her son’s
hand.

‘
But you can
change that Tom. You can make amends with the Cusacks; end this
silly feud once and for all.’

***

The following morning Tara picked
Tom up and drove him all the way up to London to Waterloo Station.
Tom didn’t want to go to Paris. He didn’t want to double cross Alex
by letting Maurice Bannerman know what she was willing to bid for
Le Boutique. All he wanted was to turn the car around and drive
back to Summerset with Tara, living the rest of their lives
together in peace.

‘Promise me you’ll
email every day,’ Tara fretted.

‘
I promise,’
he laughed.

‘
And don’t go
kissing any sexy French girls.’

He smiled and stroked the
back of her head.

‘
Why should I
want a sexy French girl when I’ve got you?’

Tom’s relationship with
Tara was like something he should have had when he was about
fifteen. He’d have loved to have dated a beautiful, innocent, nice
girl like Tara – perhaps she would have set him on the path of more
normal relationships. Instead he’d just sort of drifted from one
disappointing, unfulfilling sexual encounter to another. He always
seemed to pick girls who wanted to cheat on their boyfriends and
chose him to be the one. Or else they were anorexic or overweight
or had emotional problems and he had to act as counsellor as well
as lover.

He was getting to have
that ideal teenage courtship at thirty-two Like a pair of
clandestine teenager lovers of old, he and Tara had done no more
than kiss or hold hands. He wanted to make love to her more than
anything, but there was something about the thought of doing it
that terrified him. It would take their relationship a step nearer
to marriage and he knew if he asked her, Jackson wouldn’t be far
behind, waving his pre-nuptial agreement about, expecting Tom to
divorce her on their first anniversary.

By mid morning Tom was in
Paris, and stepping off the train he couldn’t help but feel a
frisson of excitement. He’d last come here when he was eighteen; a
self-financed trip, staying in a shabby hostel close to the Moulin
Rouge, sharing a disgusting toilet and a room with two other boys
whose idea of fun was shooting up every couple of hours. Today he
was heading for a four star hotel off the Place de la Concorde -
all paid for by Alex Cusack. The first week was going to be nothing
more than a holiday, all that was required of him was to keep an
eye on the workings of the hotel and the rest of the time was his
and he was determined to do all the things he hadn’t been able to
afford to as a boy.

What Alex didn’t know was
that Tom had felt obliged to let Maurice Bannerman know of her
plans so he could come up with a counter offer. Tom knew if he
didn’t say anything and Bannerman discovered he was taking this
trip he would be putting himself in mortal danger.

Le Boutique was small but
chic. The French flag hung from a pole outside and on the doorstep
a smart concierge in immaculate red livery stood awaiting arrivals.
He greeted Tom with a friendly
Bonjour
and helped him in
with his luggage. The pretty receptionist gave him his keys to his
room and a bellboy took his bags up for him.

Although the suite wasn’t
luxurious, compared to the dingy hovel he’d stayed in all those
years ago, it might as well have been. He was four floors up and
from the tiny balcony, he could see practically all of Paris - the
Arc de Triomphe close by. In the distance the Eiffel Tower was just
slightly obscured by the clouds and for a moment Tom daydreamed,
imagining travelling up it with Tara and when they got to the top,
he would propose. He then remembered what he was supposed to do to
her and the dream went further; after he’d slipped the ring on her
finger, they would jump off it together – dying like Romeo and
Juliet to escape the evil that was around them.

Shaking himself from his
misery, Tom went back into the room and got himself a miniature of
Scotch from the mini bar and drank it down all in one go. It was
all he could do to try and cope with the enormity of his situation.
Flopping down on the Empire bed, he looked around, noting that the
room was exactly the sort of thing Alex was aiming for. At eighty
euros a night, it was quite affordable, but smart and clean. The
bed linen was immaculate, the TV brand new. There was a trouser
press, a small armchair and a table upon which he could put his
laptop. Tom had brought several DVDs with him, intending to spend
his evenings vegging out and catching up on the films he’d hadn’t
time to watch recently.

After unpacking and
washing his face in the small, marble bathroom, Tom left the room
and headed down to the restaurant on the ground floor where he
hoped breakfast was still being served. The smells of freshly baked
croissants, coffee and bacon made his stomach rumble. Most of the
morning trade had gone, leaving the restaurant empty, but Tom
didn’t care. He went up to the counter and ashamed that he spoke no
French, tried his hardest to indicate to the server what he wanted.
He jumped a little when someone sidled up to him and gave his order
for him, in perfect French. He looked round to find it was a young
woman, small and pretty with long dark hair and a huge pregnant
tummy.

‘
Thank you,’
he said. ‘I didn’t do French at school.’

‘
You’re
welcome,’ she replied in a surprisingly cut-glass accent. ‘It’s
nice to hear an English voice.’

‘
I wish I had
done French but we were made to do Spanish.’

‘
You were
lucky,’ she replied. ‘My father’s French so I had it drummed into
me from an early age.’ She chuckled. ‘Lucky I ended up marrying a
Frenchman isn’t it?’

‘
I guess
so.’

‘
Are you here
on business?’ she asked.

‘
Sort of.
You?’

‘
Sort of. I
own the place.’

Tom’s ears pricked up. So
this was Natalie Favreau; no wonder she wanted to sell the hotel.
She’d hardly be able to run it
and
look after a
newborn.

‘
Tom
Montague,’ he said, offering his hand.

‘
Natalie
Favreau. Sorry for imposing myself on you, it’s just that even
after all these years I still get excited when I hear an English
accent. So many Brits come over and try their hardest to speak the
lingo.’

‘
Well it’s
nice to speak to someone from home. Do you live here at the
hotel?’

‘
No, I live a
few streets away, but I like to come in most days and see what’s
going on.’

‘
Is it
busy?’

‘
Very. With
all these cheap flights all over Europe and a great exchange rate,
we’re never short of customers.’