The Santiago Sisters

Teresa’s eyes widened as she saw Brian clasp Simone’s backside and squeeze it hard. Images of Gonzalez and her papa made her shudder. Nausea bubbled in her throat, a sick feeling that took root in her stomach and threaded up like weeds. She remembered her father’s nakedness, his cowardice, and his surrendering groan. Did Simone and Brian do the same thing? Did Emily do it? Did Lysander? For some reason, the thought of Lysander doing it made her insides clench, not unpleasurably.

When Brian had gone, Simone relaxed.

‘English lessons might not be a bad idea,’ she mused. She repeated the suggestion to Teresa, enunciating each word as if she were a dunce. ‘English … you learn … yes? Soon. I will organise.’ She fumbled for the same thing in Spanish. Teresa wondered why they should bother, if she was going home at the end of the month.

The afternoon passed in a glorious whirlwind. Teresa was on cloud nine from the instant she stepped into Simone’s car and they whizzed through the city maze, ducking and diving past shining red buses and gleaming black taxis, over the magical bridges and past the masses of people. When they stopped at the first shop on Bond Street, a crowd surged forward and screamed Simone’s name. Teresa was alarmed. She thought they were being attacked. Simone’s bodyguard drew them safely inside.

‘That’s nothing, darling,’ she giggled, ‘you should see me at a premiere!’ Then she leaned in, a glimmer in her eye, and added, ‘It’ll be you soon, you know.’

Over the next four hours, they tried on every garment in that shop and the next, and the next, and the next, until they collapsed in a heap of happy exhaustion. Everywhere they were treated like royalty: Teresa questioned if, perhaps, Simone Geddes was royalty. She was urged to try on dresses and skirts, blouses and boots, and had no concept of what they cost except for clues from the ladies at the cash desks, who positively trilled when the sums came up. The assistants grovelled around Simone; nothing was too much or any kind of trouble, and every time Teresa emerged from the changing rooms in an exquisite new combination the party flattered and fawned, saying how perfect and beautiful she looked. With her wild dark hair and striking almond eyes, she oozed untamed beauty that, at fifteen, was on the cusp of exploding into something phenomenal. At one point, Simone wept. ‘Que linda!’ she spluttered, dabbing a tissue to her eyes. Teresa beamed. She felt like a million dollars.

They arrived back at the Kensington mansion weighed down but cheerful.

‘Thank you,’ Teresa said in English, meaning it, as tentatively she gave Simone a hug. Simone needed no encouragement to return the gesture.

‘You’re welcome, my sweetheart,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘If you enjoyed today, you just wait for what’s coming.’

Over the next fortnight, Teresa saw and did more than she thought she would pack into a hundred years. She visited majestic palaces with men standing outside in big fur hats that looked like bulrushes. She drifted round museums where the floor was so polished that it shone like silver water, and you could hear the soft, expensive pat of people’s shoes as they walked across it. She went to the cinema, which had a huge TV screen and she ate buttery popcorn that made her fingers salty. She stood on Waterloo Bridge and gazed at the golden spires of Parliament and the pale dome of St Paul’s, which reminded her of a pearl on one of Julia’s old necklaces. She partook in Basic English lessons, and found she had a flair for the language. She posed for a string of daylong photo shoots alongside Simone. She spent nights in the home theatre, where she asked to watch Simone’s movies, and, after a half-hearted show of reluctance, the actress put on her award-winning effort in Two Dozen Men at My Feet, in which she played a rebellious countess who seemed to cry a lot behind closed doors.

On Friday, Simone issued an announcement:

‘We’re having a party. This evening. I want you to dress up.’

Teresa found Vera and asked her about it. ‘Her ladyship wishes to show you off,’ said Vera in Spanish. ‘It’s a party in your honour.’

‘Is it a goodbye party, because I’m leaving soon?’

Vera returned to buffing the marble in Simone’s bathroom.

‘Who’ll be there?’ asked Teresa.

‘Ms Geddes has many friends,’ said Vera. ‘They will want to meet you.’

Three hours later, the household was teeming with staff. The terrace was strung with fairy lights that danced against the stars and a fountain of sparkling water gushed from a cherub’s trumpet. Guests trickled through, the men in crisp, sharp suits that reminded Teresa of the men in her romance novels: the billionaires. The women drifted like angels in their floor-length, sweeping gowns, slowing to pluck a flute of champagne or a miniature morsel of food. Cloying perfume hung in the air.

Across the veranda, Emily Chilcott shot her an evil glare.

Simone told her she looked wonderful, in a damson Moschino creation that skimmed the patio, her jet hair tumbling free, and kept a proprietorial arm round her the entire time. Occasionally, she would step back and gesture towards Teresa as if she were an item in an exhibit. The guests nodded approvingly, the men regarding her in the same voracious manner as the driver she had hailed back home to take her and Calida into town—a galaxy away, it seemed. They spoke too fast to keep up with, but Simone’s reassuring smile told her she was doing well. She revelled in the spotlight, all the more precious because it would not last, and soon she would be back in South America in the rags she had grown up in and it would all seem like a fairy tale.

Afterwards, Simone kissed her. ‘You were perfect, just perfect.’

Teresa was exhausted, exhilarated, elated. She didn’t need to speak English to understand that these people were important. Power had wafted off them in great, intoxicating clouds. Producers, agents, directors—but what did they want with her?

She scarcely dared think it, but as she prepared for bed that night she allowed herself the luxury. For whatever reason, Simone wished to ingratiate her with the industry, to impress them. Was it possible that when she returned to Argentina, it would be with news that she was going to become an actress? That she was relocating to London, to Milan, to Hollywood? Or might Simone ask her to stay on? Would she teach Teresa the ways of wealth and success, and give her a key that would open the door to her own destiny? She told herself off for fantasising—always her weakness. Most likely the party had been a farewell, just as she had thought. Most likely …

She fell asleep the instant she hit the pillow, and dreamed she was swimming in a deep, deep sea, and on the seabed was a diamond, sparkling, beckoning. Someone was calling her name, but the further she swam, the quieter the voice became.

The day before Teresa was due to go home, Emily Chilcott waltzed into her room. Her eyes were shining and eager and there was a bounce in her step.

‘Hi,’ she said sweetly, ‘are you ready to go?’

Teresa found Emily’s smile disturbing. She zipped up the last of her bags.

‘I expect you’ll miss me,’ said Emily, ‘since we’ve become close.’

Teresa sat on the edge of her bed. She didn’t trust Emily. Several times she had consulted her translation dictionary after receiving a snide comment or sarcastic aside. Emily had said some toxic things: Teresa was a brat, a misfit, a bitch; she didn’t belong here. The other day she had seen Emily kick the family puppy when it got in her way. Only somebody truly horrid would be able to hurt an animal.

‘So I thought I’d give you a goodbye present,’ Emily went on. In a flash she withdrew a glinting pair of scissors from behind her back, brandishing them up high. ‘Time for your makeover!’ She beamed, clicking the scissor blades, her eyes mad.

Teresa didn’t have time to back away before Emily advanced, grabbing a clump of Teresa’s hair and, with a sickening snitch, lopped it off.

‘Oops!’ said Emily gleefully. ‘Better make it even!’

Teresa was so surprised that she couldn’t speak. Automatically her hand went up to meet the amputation and all she felt was bare neck. She tried to escape, but Emily pulled her back. With appalling speed and efficiency, the scissors snipped and chopped. ‘Para!’ Teresa cried, distraught. ‘Basta!’ She tried to wriggle free but Emily had her whole weight bearing down and now she was cropping and slashing and slicing great swathes of hair, cackling giddily as it fell to the carpet, and she hacked more and more, until Teresa’s glossy waist-length locks were up at her ear, bitten and chewed and scruffy. She started to cry. Emily seized her fringe and she tried to pull back but it hurt so much that she couldn’t do anything apart from sit there with her hands in her lap, quivering, as with every devastating slice she became balder. ‘Por favor, no lo hagas,’ Teresa howled, ‘Por favor! Para!’

But Emily didn’t listen. When she was done, she leaned to whisper in Teresa’s ear. Teresa could see their joint reflection in the mirror: Emily flushed with excitement, her pixie face alive with delight; and she, tatty and ugly, threadbare and tear-blotched.

Emily’s voice was a hiss: ‘You’ll never be part of this family,’ she said. ‘Go home, little peasant. Get out of my house and my country. Or this is only the start.’

She replaced the scissors on the dresser, and quietly left.

Simone Geddes went insane with anger. She slapped Emily round the face and shook her like a ragdoll. Through it all, Emily remained calm and composed, satisfied at both her offence and at Simone’s reaction. Teresa hadn’t uttered a word about who was to blame, but it hadn’t taken a genius to figure it out. Brian, when he came in from work, chided Emily in a bored fashion before sitting down with a sherry and The Times.

Hysterical, Simone gathered Teresa’s butchered mop under a cap, grabbed her hand and led the way upstairs. Vera was cleaning Teresa’s bedroom.

‘I cannot believe that little harlot would do this!’ Simone was raging. Her whole body convulsed with anger. ‘That girl is vile! She is the devil incarnate!’

Simone barked something at the maid and obediently Vera translated. Teresa could understand Simone’s fury, for what was Julia going to say when she saw the state of her daughter? Vera explained that Simone would be hiring London’s most exclusive hairdresser to pay a private visit in the morning.

‘But I’m going home in the morning,’ said Teresa, in Spanish.

Vera relayed this to Simone.

Simone had her back to her, and turned round slowly. A glance passed between her and the maid. As if reaching an important decision, Simone steered Teresa to a chair and sat her down. She took Teresa’s hands and held them.

There was a long pause, before Simone said, ‘You’re not going home.’

Vera’s fingers fastened in her apron. At Simone’s command, she translated.

‘I hate having to be the one to tell you,’ Simone went on, swallowing hard, ‘but I must … This isn’t a vacation, darling. Your mama told you that because we thought it would make things easier. It was never a vacation. It’s permanent.’ A beat. ‘I’ve adopted you, sweetheart. You’re going to live with me now, and be my daughter.’

Teresa didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Vera interpreted each of Simone’s words. As the revelations unfolded, one layer after another, the maid’s voice became quieter. Not once did she look at Teresa.

‘Your family do not want you any more,’ Simone said, licking dry lips. ‘They asked me to take you away. Your mama needed the money. She … She sold you.’

There was a strange sound in Teresa’s ears. She struggled to process what was being said. She felt as if she was floating several feet above her body, rudderless. Her past, her life, her identity: all of it collapsed beneath her like a house of cards.

Her first thought was: It makes sense. She had asked for this. Told Julia she wanted it. Jointly, they had mapped her future, as far away from the estancia as possible. Simone would have paid handsomely. Everyone was happy.

But it hurt. It hurt. Julia had lied.

She didn’t want me.

‘You’ve had a nice time here, though, haven’t you?’ Simone was saying, nodding at her encouragingly. ‘Would it be so bad to live with me, in London?’

Something stuck. Something wasn’t right.

‘Speak, sweetheart.’ Simone squeezed her hands. ‘Please … say anything.’

There was only one word that made sense: ‘Calida.’

It took a second for Simone to connect the dots. The sister. The twin. The one she hadn’t chosen. Her expression faltered a moment before righting itself.

‘Calida knew about this, too,’ Simone explained gently. ‘She and your mother both made this decision. Together. For everyone’s benefit.’

Vera’s rendition confirmed it. In a reel of sun-kissed images, her childhood with Calida flashed before her eyes. The closeness, the connection … the drum of her twin’s matching heartbeat … the horses, the land, the dust, the laughter.

She had run from it all. Run far and run fast and never looked back.

I wish you’d just disappear.

‘They don’t want you,’ Simone said again. ‘Your sister chose to give you away as freely as Julia did. I’m your new mother now. I’m your new family.’

A flood of emotions washed over her.

Here it is, she thought, your new life.

She had prayed for this outcome, and now it was here.

So why was there this glaring hole in the centre of her heart?

‘You’re Tess Geddes now,’ Simone said. ‘My daughter.’

All night—that long, lonely night—the stranger’s name floated in her half-consciousness like a phantom, daring her to step into it, to let it swallow her up.

To hell with you both, she thought. I don’t need you.

I’ll show you just what I’m made of—and then you’ll be sorry.

12

‘Looking great, everyone. And … action!’

Simone, or rather her character Miranda Fenchurch, stepped out of the Royal Courts of Justice in a navy pinstripe suit, faced the wall of cameras, and delivered the gut-wrenching oration that would conclude the most anticipated political thriller of the year. As with all Simone’s scenes, they canned it in one.

‘You’re a special lady, you know that?’ the director told her afterwards, as the first spots of rain began to fall and an assistant ushered her under cover.

‘Don’t patronise me, Greg.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘What a dreadful sycophant that man is,’ Simone muttered to her aide, once the director had skulked off. ‘Calling me a lady—who does he think he’s talking to, Camilla Parker Bowles? God forbid.’ Privately, however, Simone knew that she was special. Playing Miranda Fenchurch in An Eye For An Eye was a departure from her usual: she was embodying a cutthroat, hard-nosed barrister who wasn’t afraid to rattle the cage. The awards cabinet at home had better make way for a shiny new addition.

On the way to her car, a female co-star flagged her down. ‘It was wonderful meeting Tess at the party,’ the woman said. ‘What a beautiful girl.’

‘Isn’t she?’

‘When will you be announcing the adoption?’

‘When the time is right,’ Simone replied. ‘It’s a complex process, you understand.’ She could picture the headlines already: SELFLESS SIMONE RESCUES TEEN FROM POVERTY. GEDDES GIVES GIRL A CHANCE. Any star could traipse halfway across the world to buy a baby, but there was something unusual and intriguing about Simone’s decision to make that difference for an older child.

The media would lap it up like piglets at a watering hole.

‘It must be,’ said the woman. ‘Is she finding it hard to adjust?’

Simone thought: None of your damn business. But she felt compelled to say, ‘Not a bit. She loves it here. She loves her new life. She loves me.’

With that, she climbed into the Mercedes and shut the door.

The mansion was quiet, which meant no Emily. So much for Brian’s pledge to ground her. She found her husband in his office. ‘Where’s Tess?’

Brian turned in his chair. ‘Still in her room,’ he replied.

‘No change?’

‘No change.’ Brian got up. He looped his arms around Simone’s waist and she did her best not to wince. She could feel Brian’s gut pressed up against her gym-toned stomach, and endeavoured to focus instead on the wall-mounted shots of him mixing with the power set. That was what had drawn her to him in the early days—how was she to know that underneath the façade lurked an overweight spineless doormat? No wonder Brian’s first wife had left him for a woman. If it weren’t for Brian’s bi-weekly ruts she would begin to doubt if he possessed anything between his legs at all.

Simone went upstairs and knocked softly on Tess’s bedroom door.

‘Tess, sweetheart?’ she called. ‘Can I come in?’

It had been like this for weeks. Tess emerged only to wash and eat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t engage. She held herself stiffly, as if she were made of glass. What was going on in her head? Anger, sadness, shock; which was the overriding emotion?

It would take time, Simone knew. A bit like training a dog. She was able to close her heart to Tess’s plight because once, many years ago, she too had been forced to make a sacrifice, one for the good of a child, and it had made her tough. If she could get through it, then the rest of the world ought to be able to as well.

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, to stop herself gagging on the past. When she thought of it, she could still feel the weight of the baby in her arms.

The baby …

Taking Tess was karma. Simone deserved her child.

‘Still pissed with you, is she?’ Lysander passed her in the hall. He wore peppermint shorts and a polo shirt with the collar turned up, and looked offensively handsome. Wasn’t he meant to be at college? ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘You know nothing about this, Lysander.’

‘I know it’s abduction dressed as Armani.’

‘It is nothing of the sort!’ Simone was aghast.

He grinned.

‘You just stay away from her,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

Lysander took a step closer. He put a hand on the small of her back and her entire body tingled. ‘What,’ he whispered, ‘like you told me to stay away from you?’

Blushing wildly, Simone turned and flew downstairs. The sooner Lysander moved out of the mansion, the better. He was a diversion she could well do without.

13

Argentina

Calida’s sixteenth birthday drowned in all the other days.

If she had been capable of feeling, she would have felt her twin’s absence. She would have known that this was the first birthday they had ever spent apart. She would have touched the wound, the searing wound where Teresita had been ripped from her side in the same way she had been ripped at their inception. She would have looked at her hands, her arms, her knees, her chest, heard her breath and her pulse, and questioned what their mirror reflections were doing at this moment, the precise minute and second they had emerged, as two, into the world, sixteen years before.

But she didn’t, because it was any other day, and every day was submerged in the same numb disbelief so that it became impossible to make distinctions.

Her sister had gone. She wasn’t coming back.

Julia admitted it a week into the so-called vacation, unable to hold her tongue any longer. ‘Teresita begged me to let her go,’ she explained, as she exhibited another new acquisition: satin shoes, expensive perfumes, watches and jewels. Calida had thought it strange that Simone had been so generous—but she hadn’t known then the product she had paid for. ‘She begged Simone to take her. Told us she was ready—she was desperate. It’s permanent, Calida. Your sister’s been adopted. She’s gone to live in England. The sooner you come to terms with it then the easier it will be.’

Calida’s body was kicked and punched by her mother’s words. But her mind remained steady, and told her, quite calmly, through the noise: Of course. It was what Teresita had sought: to get away, to flee her humble beginnings, to forge her fortune.

Calida remembered every poisonous sentiment that had spilled from her twin’s lips on the night they had fought and in a ghastly way it added up. Being adopted by a movie star was the opportunity of a lifetime. Teresita hadn’t cared what she was leaving behind—it was no sacrifice to her. When I’m gone, I hope I never come back. I hope I never see you or this dying shit-hole ever again …

After the news, when the shock moved from sky-collapse to mere earth tremors, Calida wrote dozens of letters. Unable to extract Simone’s details from her mother, she instead located her manager online: a Michelle Horner, who had an office in Mayfair, London, and an address to go with it. On searching for the actress, pages brimmed with doppelgangers of the sweating, dishevelled woman who had graced their ranch that day: this one was ravishing. There were stills from her films and onstage; snapshots from articles and interviews, some of a young, wide-eyed Simone, and others where she was older and standing next to a suited fat man, or posing with a blonde girl and a black-haired boy, and looking a little less pleased with herself.

In her letters, she pleaded with Teresita to come home. She said she was sorry for the spiteful words they had exchanged, vowed that their friendship was worth more and had to be saved. No matter what … right? No matter what, they were there for each other. She wished to explain that there was a way back. There always would be. She wasn’t mad with Teresita for the decision she had made—it would have been a decision borne of the hurt and frustration of their showdown, and she understood.

Calida didn’t know what she had expected from initiating correspondence—but whatever it was, it wasn’t what she got. Silence.

Each one of her letters went unanswered. She waited every day at the gate for mail, hoping for change—but nothing. She imagined Simone and Teresita scrutinising the notes, her increasingly despairing tone as she implored her twin to reconsider, to come home, and laughing cruelly at her efforts. Though she tried with all her soul to deny it, she knew she had to face the truth. Teresita had closed the door on her family—what was left of it, anyway—and had no intention of opening it again.

She had always possessed a harder heart than Calida. But to read those letters and not be touched by any of it, or moved to reply, if for nothing else than to cement the choice she had already made? To ignore the twin who asked for understanding, for help, for forgiveness; not stopping once to acknowledge her part in the collapse of their relationship?

It wasn’t the sister she knew … or thought she had known.

It was a stranger.

The year 2000: a new millennium, a new start. Instead, it felt like an end. As the days passed and turned into weeks, Teresita became a ghost in her mind; the sudden ring of her sister’s laugh or the mischief that danced in her eyes assaulting her from nowhere, like a ghoul from the shadows. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep.

Calida’s sadness solidified into fury. Right now her twin would be in London, loving every moment, living out the fantasy that she and Julia shared, the fantasy that had always turned its back on Calida because she couldn’t understand it. How could she be so unfeeling, so pitiless; and for what—a palace of fakery? Yet despite Calida’s indifference to the glamorous lifestyle, and the painstaking denials she made to herself that she desired anything whatsoever to do with it, she couldn’t help the worm of envy that burrowed its way into her heart. Why hadn’t Simone taken her? Was she not pretty enough, lovely enough, exciting enough? What was it about Teresita that drew people like moths to a flame, while Calida stayed in darkness?