Tasmina Perry 3-Book Collection: Daddy’s Girls, Gold Diggers, Original Sin

‘Of course I’m sure. It will be a pleasure. My secretary will call you tomorrow with further arrangements. Ciao, Serena.’

The line went dead with a click and Serena flopped back on the cushions. Thinking of Tom, her mouth tightened into a sour scowl and then, a second later, broke into a broad, victorious smile. She ran out of the boathouse, as fast as her gumboots would take her, skipping playfully as she approached her sisters.

‘Right then,’ she announced, pulling her arms tightly around her poncho as she felt her hangover kicking in. ‘Who fancies going to Mustique?’

7 (#ulink_e066d78d-cbc5-5dca-b16e-856a9b1b1fa2)

Venetia and Jonathon von Bismarck’s Kensington Park Gardens home was the sort of huge Palladian villa that passers-by would look at, wondering who lived there. But inside the premises, its owners looked totally unaware of their good fortune. The mood was quiet, oppressive, the uncomfortable silence only disturbed by the rustling of Jonathon’s Financial Times. Taking delicate sips of the freshly pressed apple juice that their Polish housekeeper Christina had made, Venetia looked at her husband with both sadness and resentment. She was used to the man of the household being a cold and detached entity. As a little girl, days would go by when the only contact she would have with Daddy was when she crept into his study for a stilted goodnight, hoping against hope that he’d shout at her for some infringement of his arbitrary rules. At least it was attention. But now she was living with another man, once again in the same house, but so far apart they might as well have been living in different cities. And they say you end up marrying your father, thought Venetia.

‘When do we have to leave then?’ said Jonathon finally, folding his paper closed.

‘If you’re going to come, you should at least come with good grace,’ said his wife, pouring a cup of dark Colombian coffee from the cafetiere.

Jonathon looked up sharply. One of London’s most successful hedge-fund managers, he wasn’t used to being told what to do. Fully dressed for work in his Kilgour navy suit, his gold cufflinks winking from under the long jacket sleeves, he looked at his wife in her expensive cream silk dressing gown and snorted irritably.

‘I object because you don’t even seem to be trying to get ready,’ he responded tartly. ‘You know I’m in a hurry this morning. I’ve got back-to-back meetings all afternoon and, frankly, I have better things to be doing than sitting here with you.’

Venetia went behind his chair to wrap her arms around him, kissing the back of his neck gently. ‘Don’t be like that, darling,’ she said softly. ‘We don’t have to be there until ten and, really, it shouldn’t take long.’

He shook her off and pushed his chair back noisily across the terracotta floor, snatching up his mobile phone from the table.

‘Are you sure I have to go?’ he asked coldly, one ear fixed to his mobile. ‘How about I get Gavin to drop you off on the way to my office?’

Venetia felt the familiar rush of hot tears prickling behind her eyes. She was feeling terribly vulnerable these days, and the slightest criticism or offhandedness from Jonathon seemed to set her off.

‘You have to come. I need you,’ she whispered.

‘You need me?’ The corners of his mouth turned upwards slightly. Jonathon craved control and he was enjoying this minute of power over his wife. ‘Very well. Fine. Well, hurry up, get dressed then.’

She watched him stalk into the drawing room. When he had disappeared, she rested her forehead on her arms. She didn’t know why she was so upset. She was used to the cold, frosty interchanges between them, his long absences from the house, the lack of support, the total disregard for her feelings. It wasn’t so much that the honeymoon period was over after eighteen months of marriage: if she was honest it had never really begun. She had never felt that bond, that excitement, the closeness she had shared with Luke Bainbridge, her photographer boyfriend of five years, who had left her abruptly shortly before she met Jonathon. After Luke had slipped out of her life like a shadow, she had felt desperate for someone to protect and look after her. And in the pit of despair and loneliness, Jonathon had come along, introduced to her by Oswald, of all people. And he had sort of fitted the bill. He was handsome, almost beautiful, she admitted, thinking of his fine-boned features and the blond hair curling over his shirt collar. But he was no companion. She might be married, but these days she felt more fragile, more isolated than ever.

She padded down the hallway in her pink leather slippers, past the huge arrangements of pale magnolia verbena roses and up the long flight of stairs into her bedroom. She walked through into the en-suite wet-room and, standing in front of the long mirror next to the shower, let the gown slide off her milky shoulders. She stared at the reflection of herself and ran her fingers across her neck. Not too crepey, she mused, tracing her fingertips up her cheek and into her short, champagne-blonde hair. Her skin was very smooth for a thirty-seven-year-old, she thought: not too many lines, wrinkles or traces of Botox, unlike the frozen faces of half the ladies who lunched around Knightsbridge.

She was doing OK, still attractive. Not that Venetia minded getting older. Always old for her years compared to most, as a result of being the mother-figure in her family, she almost welcomed being forty. It was like a reassuring plateau. She reached down to stroke the smooth curves of her bare belly. If only they had a family, her life would be exactly as she would want it to be. A baby would surely soften Jonathon’s uncompromising mood swings and give them a much-needed bond. But, despite twelve months of trying and an adorable pale lilac nursery waiting at the top of their house, there was still no patter of tiny feet. She was hardly a spring chicken any more, but she knew plenty of friends who’d got pregnant in their late thirties without too much trouble, so it was time to consider fertility problems. She’d long given up hope that they would be one big, noisy family driving down to Huntsford, kids and dogs cluttering up the four-by-four. But surely one child wasn’t too much to ask?

Freshly showered, she walked over to the bed, where she had already laid an outfit on the crisp Frette linens. Old habits die hard, she smiled as she dressed, thinking back to her days as a fashion assistant at Vogue, when she’d spent her whole time in the fashion cupboard ironing and hanging up the beautiful designer clothes. She’d turned her sharp, creative eye from fashion to interior design over a decade ago, but she still got a thrill from picking fabrics, shirts and shoes and mixing them all together to delicious effect.

‘Are you ready yet?’ Jonathon’s voice boomed from the bottom of the staircase. ‘Gavin’s here.’

Venetia slipped on her thick cashmere overcoat, grabbed her python clutch bag and ran down to where Jonathon was already sitting in the back seat of a slate-grey Jaguar.

‘Let’s go,’ muttered Jonathon to Gavin his driver. ‘Take Knightsbridge, it’ll be quicker.’

His pale, slightly hairy hand was resting on the cream leather seat, his little gold signet ring glinting in the sun; Venetia took hold of it to squeeze it. He reached over to her cheek and stroked it with his index finger. ‘Sorry, darling, I apologize.’ His gesture startled her. After almost two years of marriage she still could not get used to his hot and cold emotions. They’d squabble and, just when he knew he’d pushed her too far, he’d throw her a morsel of affection and reel her back in again. She was sure it was some management technique he’d learned at one of his fancy business schools. She turned her head to look out of the window, lest Jonathon see the tears in her eyes.

The journey to the offices of Doctor Vivienne Rhys-Jones, the finest gynaecologist in Europe, took less than half an hour. The building was the usual white stucco-fronted mews, and through the wide red door there was a sombre, formal atmosphere more like a library than a doctor’s surgery. Venetia stepped inside with a sense of dread. She was sure it was all going to be terrible news.

‘Mr and Mrs von Bismarck, good morning,’ said a pretty blonde pony-tailed girl sitting at the front desk. ‘If you’d like to go upstairs to Dr Rhys-Jones.’

The couple made their way up the wide staircase to the first floor, where they were greeted with a faint smile by a short, grey-haired lady behind a large desk. ‘Venetia, isn’t it? And this must be your husband.’

‘Jonathon,’ he replied brusquely, stretching out his hand.

‘I’ve been sent your notes by Dr Patrick,’ said Vivienne slowly, peering intently and owl-like at a sheaf of papers before her. ‘But we might as well start from the beginning.’

As the doctor stared quizzically at the couple, one eyebrow raised slightly above the rim of her glasses, Venetia decided she liked this woman’s confident approach. Dr Rhys-Jones was the second fertility specialist she had consulted. The first, Dr Ebel, had been far too trigger-happy with his IVF suggestions for Venetia’s liking. Jonathon meanwhile had been offended by Ebel’s suggestions that the infertility might be his fault. How dare he make him take a sperm-count test, in that revolting little cubicle with its grubby porn magazines? Jonathon could have told him about the von Bismarck family tradition of producing a line of healthy male heirs, though perhaps less readily about Suzie Betts, his former secretary … How could she have been so stupid? All he had wanted was to feel her stilettos striding up and down his back in a Mayfair hotel once or twice a week. But the little slut had got pregnant. It had cost Suzie an abortion and Jonathon fifty thousand pounds in hush money.

Venetia took a deep breath and began recalling their history of trying for a baby, trying to overcome her embarrassment at telling her such personal, intimate details. The number of times they had sex per week, the family history of fertility, her menstrual cycle, which under the stress of not being able to conceive, had faded away to almost nothing in the past three months.

‘It’s your menstrual cycle I’m most worried about,’ said Dr Rhys-Jones, tapping the file gently with the back of a pencil. ‘Especially as you say you’ve become irritable, hormonal, and been suffering from insomnia …’

‘Women, eh?’ said Jonathon, who was ignored.

‘I know you’re looking for answers on how you can conceive, Mrs von Bismarck, but for the minute I’m interested in the why not.’

‘It’s not me,’ blurted out Jonathon, suddenly riled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sperm count.’

‘So it seems,’ said Dr Rhys-Jones, thumbing down the notes.

‘What do you think it could be?’ asked Venetia anxiously.

The doctor smiled thinly and pulled the glasses from her nose. ‘Infertility in women, as Dr Ebel might have told you, can be a result of lots of things. Hereditary factors, viral infections, many things. I want to take some blood tests, measure your hormone levels. I don’t think we should rule out the possibility that you’re going through a premature menopause.’

Venetia felt her guts twist. ‘The menopause? That hasn’t been mentioned as a possibility before.’

Dr Rhys-Jones looked at her kindly. ‘It often isn’t. Some practitioners, usually men, I might add, tend not to consider premature menopause as a potential cause of infertility, but about two per cent of women do have the menopause before the age of forty, so it must be considered. Some even have it pre-puberty,’ she added, as if to suggest, ‘Look, it could be worse.’

Venetia felt her hands tremble as a flood of emotion built up inside her. ‘And if it is … what about children?’

‘A high-resolution ultrasound scan can show if you have eggs left. But you have to prepare yourself: you could have only a few months left in which to try and conceive. If you don’t have any eggs left, then a natural conception is, of course, impossible. The standard IVF process, as I’m sure you know, requires your egg and your husband’s sperm, so we can also rule that out. There is the option of egg donation,’ she continued slowly.

Jonathon let out a cynical snort. ‘Someone else’s eggs? Surely not, Venetia?’

Both women turned to look at him. ‘It depends on how much you want children, Mr von Bismarck.’

Outside the surgery, Jonathon and Venetia stood on the street, a sharp wind pinching their cheeks. Jonathon motioned to Gavin to let him into the car.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Venetia, looking to her husband for answers.

He looked at her contemptuously. ‘You know people are expecting us to have children. What am I supposed to tell them? My wife is incompetent?’

Venetia glared at him – for once her upset was overtaken by her fury. ‘Incompetent?’ she snarled. ‘I’m not one of your staff.’

‘I assume you knew this before we got married,’ replied Jonathon coldly, one foot already in the car. ‘You’ve been forcing me to come to these ridiculous sessions, making me feel that this problem has been something to do with me.’

Venetia felt punch-drunk – so stunned, she could barely get her words out. ‘Are you still going to the office?’ she whispered.

He got in the car. ‘I should have been there two hours ago. Do you want Gavin to drop you at the house?’