Wicked Wives

Victoria threw back her Kir Royale and swiped another from an attractive waiter. He was young, twenty-one at most, and she found herself blushing as she imagined herself naked on top of him, riding him furiously. Would his sperm be better than her husband’s? Would it swim harder, faster stronger, towards her willing eggs?

‘Tor!’ Ellie Scott was making her way towards her, two Kir Royales in hand and a beaming smile on her radiant face. ‘Wow! Check you out! You look amazing!’ Ellie said, kissing her warmly on both cheeks and standing back to admire Victoria’s choice of attire, a colourful, eye-catching Mary Katrantzou body-con dress that displayed her slim, curvaceous figure to its finest. It was somewhat of a departure from her usual demure and understated look.

‘I reckon if I didn’t know you were a happily married woman, Tor Mayfield, I would think that you were on a cougar hunt!’ Victoria gave a hollow laugh. Her friend had no idea just how close to the truth she really was.

‘So, how’s the book going?’ Ellie took a seat opposite her friend and glanced around the room at the sea of designer outfits and expensive handbags. ‘Ah, the book!’ Tor replied, swiping a soft-boiled quails egg and Beluga caviar crostini from a passing waiter and slipping it between her glossy Chanel nude lips. ‘Well, let’s just say it’s not exactly writing itself.’

‘Oh?’ Ellie placed her white Birkin on the table for maximum exposure. She’d been on the waiting list for the much-coveted bag for almost six months and couldn’t resist showing it off. She knew it was childish – it was just a handbag at the end of the day – but sometimes it was difficult not to become embroiled in the one-upmanship that was so blatantly rife at these types of affairs.

‘My publishers are on my case about it, but this one’s going to have to wait,’ Tor announced stoically, glugging more Kir Royale. ‘After all, it’s not like I’ve not made them a fuck load of money, now is it?’

This didn’t sound like Tor at all. She’d always been so highly professional, so dedicated to her writing and the loyal legion of fans that ferociously devoured her books.

‘And Lawrence?’

Tor drained the remains of her champagne flute and began to eye the Grey Goose vodka cocktails that were doing the rounds.

‘He’s off to South Africa soon, for six weeks, possibly more. Filming bloody elephants …’ She paused for a moment and looked up at Ellie with a doleful expression, adding quietly, ‘… And I’m still not pregnant.’ For the briefest moment she wondered if she might confide everything in her friend, divulge the secret little plan she’d recently been cooking up in her head, but Tor knew that to say it out loud meant making it a reality and she wasn’t sure she was quite ready for that yet.

Ellie slid her hand across the table and placed it on top of Tor’s.

‘Oh honey, I’m so sorry,’ she said with genuine regret.

Tor swallowed down a lump as sharp as glass. She knew that Ellie meant it, that she above all others most understood the pain and disappointment that had become a seemingly permanent fixture in her life these last couple of years. After all, they had spent a long time under the same fertility doctor, a man who had been hailed as a so-called miracle worker, yet so far had been unable to work his magic where she and Lawrence were concerned. Or the Scotts, for that matter.

‘Your husband’s sperm count is seriously diminished, Mrs Mayfield,’ Doctor Fouad had gently reminded her during her last, and final visit. ‘I’m not saying it’s impossible – I believe nothing is impossible – but I am saying that it is very unlikely that you’ll ever conceive with your husband again.’

With your husband. Those words had haunted Victoria ever since.

‘There’s still hope,’ Ellie said in a bid to pull her friend out of her obvious black mood. ‘You’ve got to keep trying, keep believing. You’re still young …’

Tor gave a derisive snort as she drained the remains of her fourth Kir Royale. All that sweet cassis was beginning to make her feel a bit nauseous now, but to hell with it. On the fertility drugs, she had never imbibed more than one glass of fizz on a special occasion; fat lot of good it had ever done her. She was sick of remaining positive and ‘turning the frown upside down’ as Lawrence was always reminding her; she wanted results, not kind words. You couldn’t love and feed and nurture kind words. ‘Anyway,’ Tor straightened herself out before she unravelled completely. ‘How’s the venue search going? Found anywhere suitable yet?’

Ellie welcomed the conversation’s change in direction.

‘Now that you come to mention it …’ she said, beginning to explain all about the amazing old warehouse in Soho that Vinnie had found. ‘… It’s completely perfect – everything I’ve been looking for.’

Tor forced a smile; it was the only way she knew how these days.

‘So it’s all systems go!’ she said, mustering up her best excited face.

‘Provided we win the auction,’ Ellie interjected.

‘Well, surely being married to a billionaire property developer must have its perks.’

Their giggles were interrupted by a horse-faced blonde woman wearing a Jil Sander paisley skirt suit that did absolutely nothing for her robust frame.

‘Ladies,’ it was Lady Davinia Sexton-Lloyd, one of today’s hostesses, and arguably one of the most prolific gossips this side of the Thames. She was married to Lord Sexton, a bloated old buffoon whose name suited him.

‘Lovely to see you, Davinia,’ Ellie stood to shake the woman’s diamond-encrusted hand. ‘I trust you’re well.’ It was all the opening Davinia needed as she plonked her cumbersome bulk down to join them.

‘Marvellous, darling,’ she replied, displaying a little red lipstick and canapé between her teeth as she smiled brightly. ‘You know how busy it is at these events; I think I need to clone myself.’ Ellie balked at the very idea. ‘—And this is …?’ she turned to Victoria, precariously placing her copy of HELLO! magazine on the glass table which had been lavishly decorated with scented Jo Malone tea lights and tiny Swarovski scatter crystals. No expense spared for the orphans of Uganda.

‘Victoria Mayfield – a very good friend of mine.’

‘The Victoria Mayfield?’ Davinia looked impressed. ‘Of Mirror, Mirror fame?’

‘The very same,’ Ellie sang, giving Tor a surreptitious wink.

‘Well, Victoria, this is a pleasure,’ she gushed, her gaudy Bvlgari jewellery rattling as she shook her hand vigorously. ‘I’m an avid reader of all your books. Took Mirror, Mirror with me to Courcheval last year, couldn’t put the bloody thing down.’ Tor thanked her politely, finally releasing her hand from the woman’s vice-like grip.

‘It’s been a week from hell, I tell you,’ Davinia placed a palm over her shiny botoxed forehead, ‘trying to organise this lunch on top of Seaton’s wedding. I ask you,’ she rolled her eyes in exaggerated exasperation, ‘I really should’ve gone into events management you know,’ she turned to Victoria. ‘Seaton’s my son,’ she explained as an afterthought.

Tor looked at Ellie with an expression that begged the question, Seaton Sexton? She called her son Seaton Sexton! ‘He’s getting married in Monaco next week and there are still a million and one things to organise. I mean, he’s left everything to me and his father – good job we’ve still got all our faculties!’

Debateable, Tor silently thought as she watched Lady Seaton throw her head back with a roaring laugh. ‘Kids eh? You know how it is?’

Victoria shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Actually, two years ago I found my baby girl dead in her crib and now my husband has crippled sperm so, no, actually I don’t know ‘how it is’ and probably never fucking will!

‘Tell me, are any of the glossies going to cover it?’ Ellie interjected, in a bid to steer the conversation back towards Lady Sexton’s favourite subject: herself. Davinia’s delight at the opportunity to brag was almost palpable.

‘Funny you should mention but yes! They’ve even given it a plug in this week’s issue of HELLO!,’ she said, the magazine miraculously falling open to the well-thumbed exact page in question. ‘‘An exclusive peek behind the scenes at Lord Seaton Sexton-Lloyd’s wedding to Florence Corbett-Wellesley!” It’s marvellous isn’t it?’ she gushed with such pride that Ellie thought the woman was about to explode.

‘I take it she won’t be using her full name,’ Tor smirked, the Kir Royales loosening her tongue. Lady Seaton shot her a sideways glance but Ellie missed it, her attention having been caught by the news story opposite. Loretta Fiorentino. Jesus, there she was again! And this time there was no mistaking her. The small photograph showed her standing outside a church dressed in a jet-black couture dress, unmistakably McQueen, her enormous comedy breasts spilling over the top like rising dough. She was holding a small Chihuahua underneath her arm as though it were a clutch bag, its tiny face peering out at the camera. The headline read: ‘Widow Grieves for Top Plastic Surgeon Husband as Muldavey Rumour Mill Continues …’ Ellie stared at the face of a woman she had once, a long time ago, thought of as a friend, and felt a tight knot of nausea form in the pit of her stomach.

‘Terrible business, that,’ Davinia remarked, having clocked Ellie’s interest in the story. ‘Poor Miranda. She’s an old friend of the family’s actually,’ she pulled her mouth into a thin line, pleased to be able to make such a topical namedrop. ‘Says there that she’s going after Hassan’s wife for a spot of compo for the disastrous mess he made of her face …’

‘Serves the old bitch right,’ Ellie shot back, forgetting herself. Just the sight of Loretta’s face seemed to rancour far more than she had expected. Davinia’s eyes widened, her gossip antennae twitching wildly.

‘Someone you know, darling?’ she carefully enquired.

Ellie quickly closed the magazine.

‘Oh no,’ she lied, watching the look on Davinia’s face slip with disappointment. ‘She just reminds me of someone I once knew. Someone a long, long time ago …’

CHAPTER 12

Tess woke with a heart-stopping start, and for the briefest moment felt a sense of relief as she realised she was alone. But it was a fleeting state, and was soon replaced by a rod of ice-cold fear as it rapidly dawned upon her that she was not in her own bed. Her head was audibly pounding, a sickening, resounding throb either side of her temporal lobes, causing her vision to blur and the nausea in her belly to instantly rise to her throat.

Disorientated, she made to stand. It was then she felt the searing pain shoot through her body, sharp as a splintered arrow. Groaning, her joints felt brittle as glass, like her bones were about to shatter with her weight upon them and the soreness she felt down there caused her to wince aloud in pain. She felt as if she’d been hit by a truck and dragged for ten miles. Tess sat back down onto the bed and it was only then she realised that she was completely naked. Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell was going on? Gripped by fear and panic, she hurriedly covered her modesty with a white bed sheet, her eyes darting around the room as she tried to piece her shot-to-shit memory back together again. The room was unrecognisable; rudimentary bare white walls and terracotta tiles, a double bed with a pair of small wooden tables either side of it, and a tiny shuttered window allowing only the thinnest sliver of sunlight to creep into the darkened room. She glanced at one of the tables in search of something to drink, her thirst was such now that she felt at the point of collapse, and was horrified to see that among the discarded empty bottles and wine glasses there was an assortment of sex toys; ugly, giant, life-like dildos staring back at her in an array of different shapes and sizes and colours. Rubbing her temples in angry frustration, she forced back tears as she desperately tried to locate her clothes, her bag, her phone, anything … And then she remembered; oh my God! Allegra! She was sure she had been with her friend the previous evening, but where the fuck was she now? And why was she here, in this room, naked and alone? It was as if someone had torn a page from her memory; it was all just a gaping black hole, and she had a gut-sickening feeling it wasn’t something she’d want to put on a postcard to her parents back home. Jesus, what the fuck had she done?

Burying her head despairingly in her hands, Tess heard voices approaching and instinctively threw herself back down onto the bed and feigned sleep.

‘Jesus, man,’ a male voice said. ‘She’s still sleeping … exactly how much of that shit did you give her last night?’

‘Too fucking much, probably,’ a gruff voice shot back. It sounded familiar, though she did not know why. ‘She’ll wake with one motherfucker of a headache, I can tell you that.’

‘And the rest …’

‘I told you I’d found us a wild one didn’t I?’ He sounded pleased with himself. ‘They’re all the same those posh chicks … filthy little bitches, up for anything. All that dough corrupts them you know … turns them from convent schoolgirls into game little whores. I have to say though; this one gave a pretty special performance last night.’

The pair of them gave a chuckle that made Tess want to throw up. She could sense their presence from underneath the thin bed sheet and could hardly breathe through her terror.

Don’t panic. Stay calm.

‘You think we’ll make top dollar on that video then … I mean, everyone loves to watch a good roasting don’t they …?’

Tears were escaping the corners of Tess’s eyes now. They’ll be gone in a minute she reassured herself. Then you can get your stuff and get the fuck out of here, fly home and forget any of this shit ever happened, right? Only she didn’t need to forget because she couldn’t actually remember in the first place, and judging by what she was hearing, it was probably just as well.

‘Nah, I’ve got something better in mind for this one,’ the familiar voice said. ‘I did some research, found out who she is …’

‘What, is she, like, famous or something?’

‘Her pops is none other than Vincent Scott my friend …’ the voice sounded triumphant.

‘Vincent Scott?’

‘Fuck me, Fabrizio, anyone would think you lived in a fucking cave under the sea. Vincent Scott … of Great Scott Properties,’ Tess heard the antagonism in his voice and it scared her. They knew her father’s name … this was bad; really fucking bad.

There was a slight pause.

‘And?’

‘And you fucking prick, he’s a billionaire. One of the richest dudes in the whole of fucking Europe!’

The other voice began to laugh then, a horrible manic chuckle that suggested the owner was a little unhinged.

‘Bingo!’ it said.

‘Bingo indeed my brother; bingo in-fucking-deed.’

CHAPTER 13

The tension inside the private poker longue at The Player was thick enough to cloud judgement.

‘I’m out,’ the cowboy said, flatly. ‘I fold.’ He slammed his glass down onto the table, causing the ice inside to crack in objection. Howard Stanley shook his head and quickly followed suit, abandoning his cards with reluctance as he looked over at Tom Black and the two remaining players, Willy Grey and the Japanese businessman who, flanked by two burly minders, looked as if he had more money than sense and would probably need a generous slice of both before the night was over.

‘How about you, Willy?’ Tom remarked, deadpan, his poker face an expressionless blank as he made eye contact with the old man opposite.

Willy returned his stare, his left eye twitching.

He eventually nodded after a long moment’s pause. ‘And I’ll raise you another million,’ he casually added, pushing a pile of neatly stacked burgundy chips across the table towards the dealer.

‘That’s three million in the pot,’ the dealer announced without emotion, accustomed to hearing such high numbers; it was all in a day’s work for him.

Willy Grey carefully peeled back the corners of his cards, only briefly breaking eye contact with Tom. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than screwing Tom Black to the wall tonight.

Candy rubbed the inside of Tom’s thigh from underneath the table. At his insistence she had worn a long bubblegum pink sequinned Cavalli dress with a plunging neckline that stopped at the navel, displaying her enhanced young breasts like a pair of perfectly round globes. It had been a calculated choice of attire, aimed at distracting his fellow players, and one that seemed to be working its magic this evening to great effect.

She took a tentative sip of her Dirty Martini cocktail, her sixth and counting, and played with the diamonds around her neck seductively.

‘We win big tonight baby and you get to keep the lot,’ Tom had promised her as he’d fastened the delicate clasp of the Graff pink and yellow diamond waterfall necklace around her slim neck earlier that evening. ‘I want you to dazzle ’em tonight,’ he had instructed. ‘Smile and flirt, make like you’re available …’

‘Jeez, I ain’t no hooker …’ she’d pouted.

‘It’s just a game, baby,’ he’d reassured her, kissing the back of her creamy neck, giving her goose bumps. ‘It’s all about distraction … if those guys start thinking about their dicks, it means they ain’t thinking about the game, you get me?’

Candy had responded with a conspiratorial giggle. Frankly, she’d be prepared to do anything if it meant keeping hold of all this awesome bling.

Tom looked down at his cards as the tension in the room escalated.

‘I gotta go pee,’ Candy stated a little too loudly, her caustic LA twang breaking the tension.

‘I dunno why you bring broads to the table, Tom,’ Willy gave him a wry smile, once Candy was out of earshot. ‘You know what they say about women and poker …’

Tom raised an eyebrow.

‘Call,’ he said in response, stacking his burgundy chips in a tall pile and carefully placing two blue gaming cheques on the top ‘… and I’ll raise you another million …’ he paused, ‘no, you know, what?’ he signalled to the dealer, ‘make it two.’

The room fell silent but for the sound of the oscillating fan churning above them. Tom’s raise had just taken the game into new territory.

‘That should just about cover the girl’s agency fees for tonight, eh Tom?’ the sarcasm dripped from Willy Grey’s voice, his left eye twitching manically.

Tom remained silent. True to his name, Willy Grey was always trying to get a rise out of people.

‘Your old man was the same, Tom,’ Willy surmised, as his left eye went into some kind of spasm. It was an affliction he’d had since his teenage years and it still drove him fucking nuts. ‘He was a good hustler, all flash suits and Cartier cufflinks, much like yourself, but it was the pussy that ruined him in the end.’ The corners of Grey’s thin little mouth turned outwards, like he was imparting the gospel of the Lord himself.

Tom didn’t much care for the man’s overfamiliarity. He may have done the casinos with his old man once upon a time, but frankly who in Vegas hadn’t?

‘Yeah, pussy and bourbon eh, what a way to go?’ Tom replied tightly as he held his gaze, hoping it might throw the miserable, twitching prick off kilter.

Candy returned from the restroom, refreshed from a little line of coke from the wrap Tom had given her earlier and immediately felt the palpable pressure in the room, her initial stride reduced to a tentative tiptoe.

‘Something to keep your energy levels up,’ he’d said earlier as he’d handed her the small wrap of powder. ‘But don’t go overboard eh?’ Tom hated to see women strung out on coke, and Candy, with her Barbie doll looks and high-pitched voice, was sailing dangerously close to the edge.

‘Gentlemen,’ the dealer cleared his throat, ‘your hands please.’

Tom instinctively squeezed Candy’s thigh, convinced it would bring him extra luck. If the cards were on his side tonight all his worries would be over.

Candy held her breath in anticipation, her heart pumping rapidly from adrenalin mixed with grade-A cocaine.

As the Japanese businessman turned over his cards Tom took a silent intake of breath.

‘A flush,’ the dealer said, clinically, ‘two cards; king of spades and ten of spades.’

Willy Grey’s eye was flicking like a faulty light bulb. This was in the bag, he thought smugly as he flipped his cards.

‘High full house,’ the dealer announced evenly as Grey continued to study Tom’s expression. Gotcha!

Tom sat back into the comfort of the padded Louis antique gold chair and linked his fingers together, his knuckles cracking as he stretched them. He wanted Grey to see that he was worried. He wanted him to walk blindly into a false sense of security.

‘Your hand, sir,’ the dealer prompted Tom.

Sighing, Tom looked over at the Japanese businessman and then at Grey; the two men, so utterly physically opposite from each other, were now wearing the same pensive expression and could’ve been mistaken for brothers.

‘Do the honours Candy, will you?’ Tom nodded at the pair of playing cards lying face down on the table.

‘Me?’ she squeaked.

‘Yeah you,’ Tom winked at her and so, shrugging, she did as she was told and turned the cards over.

There were gasps and claps in the room. The Cowboy whistled.

‘The five of spades and seven of spades – that’s a straight flush my friend – highest cards.’

Willy Grey felt all the air leave his body as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. He was fucked; royally, regally fucked. In that split second he realised his life was over; finished, finito. His new wife, the greediest of the lot so far, would leave him after this and his business would be dead in the water. He’d lost everything.

‘OH. MY. FUCKING. GAAAAD!’ Candy Wilson leapt into the air like a rocket had gone off underneath her and threw her slim arms and legs around Tom’s body, attaching herself to him like a limpet.

‘You did it, baby!’ her voice was high and tight with euphoria. ‘You just won over ten … million … dollars,’ she said the words slowly, over and over again, like a child learning to speak. Laughing, Tom twirled her to the ground before draining the dregs of his Courvoisier. He nodded at the Japanese man, who graciously returned the gesture. Grey, however, looked like he’d been dead for a week and someone had just dug him up.

‘Willy,’ Tom proffered his hand; he could feel the old man’s hatred coming off him in waves. The prick had always been a bad loser.

Tipping the dealer twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of chips, Tom turned to Candy, her face lit up like a picture as she played with the Graff diamonds around her neck; her new necklace.

‘So then,’ Tom said, buzzing with adrenaline, a smile as wide as the Thames, ‘looks like the first round is on me.’

CHAPTER 14

Ellie Scott couldn’t sleep. She’d been tossing and turning for most of the night, drifting in and out of a shallow, fitful slumber.

She still hadn’t heard from Tess and her concern had now, in the grip of a sleepless night, escalated into full-blown paranoia. Her maternal instincts were screaming that her daughter was in some kind of trouble.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, Ellie restlessly rolled onto her side and wished that Vinnie were here and that she could shuffle into the familiar reassuring warmth of his body; her very own comfort blanket. But Vinnie was in the US on business and so once again she found herself alone with her thoughts, thoughts that had begun to coast towards the moribund.

As a shallow sleep eventually threatened to claim her, Ellie’s subconscious mind took her back to the summer of 1989. It had been the hottest summer on US record for over fifty years and she could still recall the stickiness of her skin against the thin, cheap polyester bed sheets that she’d slept in. She had been about to turn sixteen years old …