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

Brix sat back down and stared intently at her tea cup, dipping a silver spoon into the liquid and watching it go round and round in spirals.

‘Brix, tell me! You know something, I can see it!’ said Venetia, her voice stern.

‘No, I don’t know …’ said Brix quietly.

‘Tell me! Is it about Diego and Jonathon?’

Brix looked up, her eyes meeting Venetia’s. ‘Jonathon and Diego did know each other. They were … friends. I’ve seen them around town together over the summer.’

Brix had paused slightly on the word ‘together’ and Venetia hadn’t missed it. An ugly thought rolled to the front of her mind that she tried to bat away. Together? Did she mean together?

She knew in her heart that Jonathan had had affairs in the time that she had known him. Mysterious receipts for florists and hotels, female callers putting down the phone as soon as she answered, the rumours he’d been seen at one of those high-class sex parties where the rich and decadent explored the darker side of desire. But she had become an expert at ignoring anything in Jonathon’s life that she did not see with her own eyes. She knew that Brix knew more, but at that moment she didn’t want to know.

‘I’m going with the police,’ she said softly.

Brix nodded. ‘Do you want me to do anything? Do you want me to come with you?’

Venetia shook her head and turned to follow Sergeant Finch. Her Range Rover was outside, but she could not drive, her hands shaking like a blender on low speed. She sat in the back seat of the police car – isolated, vulnerable, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing. On autopilot, she punched Camilla’s number into her mobile phone and waited for it to ring. Cool, calm Camilla. She needed her.

‘Hello, Camilla Balcon.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Venetia? Are you OK?’

‘Not really, I … I …’ The voice down the line was soft and cracked. ‘Listen, Camilla, where are you?’

‘Working from home.’

‘Cam, I need your help.’

Her voice was beginning to wobble now, the tears beginning to come.

‘Van, where are you? What’s going on?’

There was silence. ‘Look, tell me where you are,’ said Camilla urgently. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

Venetia had never been to a mortuary before. Her mother’s death had been the only death she had experienced, and she’d been ten years old then. The nearest she had come to the body was seeing the walnut casket at the funeral from the front row of the church, festooned with lilies and roses the size of saucers. But she had seen enough crime dramas on Sunday-night television to know what to expect. A sterile, fluorescent-lit building, like a long, deserted school.

Venetia and Sergeant Finch were greeted by a mortician who led them silently into a cold, plain room. Her shoulders clenched with tension as the mortician led her to a slim table, on which a long shape was covered in a sheet.

‘It was the smoke inhalation that was fatal,’ said Sergeant Finch, trying to sound reassuring. ‘The face largely escaped burns.’

Her clammy palms gripped the leather straps of her handbag as Gillian Finch pulled back the sheet covering the top of the body. Instinctively Venetia flinched and looked away. Cursing herself, she forced herself to look at the face of the body. The eyes were shut, leaving two dark crescents beneath the forehead, but she would recognize the shape of Jonathon’s face anywhere: the high cheekbones, the continental nose, the stern lip. She resisted the urge to choke.

‘It’s him,’ she said, turning to look at the policewoman. The mortician slid the sheet back over his face, silently closing a chapter in Venetia’s life.

Camilla was sitting on the grey plastic chair in the reception area. As she saw Venetia, she stood up and walked slowly towards her, stilettos tapping on the bare floor.

‘I am so sorry, Van,’ said Camilla, hugging her. ‘Come on, I’m taking you to my house.’

Camilla looked at Sergeant Finch. ‘Is there anything else?’

The policewoman looked at Venetia sympathetically. ‘No, I have Mrs von Bismarck’s number and your address. I will have to come and speak to you later today or tomorrow to ask some more questions.’

Venetia looked at her. ‘What else is there? What more do you know? Please tell me,’ she croaked.

‘Early word from the fire investigation officer is that it was probably started by a cigarette down the back of the sofa. There were several wine bottles near where the fire had started. I think the two men had been drinking.’

‘Where were they found?’

Sergeant Finch avoided her gaze.

‘Where were they found?’ Venetia repeated, her voice trembling. She knew the answer. She predicted the words that were to come out of the policewoman’s lips before she had time to say them.

‘In bed,’ said Gillian Finch softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Venetia clasped her sister’s arm as they walked across the car park towards Camilla’s Audi. It was drizzling, the lunchtime sunshine having given way to iron-grey clouds. They sat in the front seat of the car. The only sound was the tap-tapping of rain on the windscreen as the inside of the car steamed up. Venetia stared down at her lap, examining a piece of thread on the seam of her trousers, trying to remember the last thing Jonathon had said to her. She couldn’t remember. She laughed. It came out cruelly, like a bully’s laugh.

‘We were both having affairs, did you know that, Camilla?’ said Venetia. ‘Both with other men, as it turns out.’

Camilla remained silent.

‘I know things weren’t perfect between Jonathon and me, far from it. But what did I do that was so wrong? Why was he seeing Diego? A man?’ She gulped for breath and her composure crumbled, her head slumping to her chest as she sobbed. ‘What did I do?’

Camilla reached over and took her trembling hand. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault,’ she repeated quietly.

Venetia inhaled deeply and struggled to pull herself together, staring in front of her and trying to count the splats of rain falling on the glass. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I won’t be seeing Jack Kidman again.’

Camilla knew exactly what her sister was trying to do. Punish herself for Jonathon, punish herself for trying to find affection outside a loveless marriage. ‘Van, you don’t have to …’

‘I’ve got to cancel the show as well,’ said Venetia coolly.

‘Are you sure?’ asked her sister. ‘But you’ve worked so hard.’

‘I have to,’ said Venetia quietly, pulling at the loose thread until it came unravelled completely. ‘I have to do it for Diego.’

Camilla looked at her, not understanding her loyalties. ‘But he was seeing your husband.’ She stopped herself.

Venetia laughed sadly. ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it? Nothing makes sense.’

The show did go on. Oswald insisted on it.

‘Until Jonathon’s estate has cleared, I still have forty-five per cent voting rights in this company,’ he had told her, grinding down her best intentions until, ultimately, she was too weak to resist.

The timing of her debut collection couldn’t have been worse: the day after her husband’s funeral. Her world, once so calm, ordered and simple, was shifting beneath her feet like sand.

Venetia couldn’t spend a second at rest or her head would become a hive of guilt, doubt and pain. It wasn’t the grief that was unbearable, it was the betrayal. Had her husband really burnt to death? Was he really having an affair with another man – her own designer? Was it all her fault, some twisted retribution for her own infidelity with Jack? And Jack: she couldn’t allow him to creep into her thoughts. Not now.