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

‘How was the wedding?’

‘OK, nothing special,’ replied Serena casually.

There. Cate could see it. She knew her sister so well that she could distinguish her arrogant indifference from evading an issue.

‘I want to know what happened,’ said Cate quickly. ‘And you might as well tell me everything because Nick’s already told me.’

Serena seemed to twitch awake as if she’d been given an adrenalin shot. ‘Oh, and what’s Nick told you?’ she said haughtily.

‘He told me about David.’

‘Oh, what does Nick Douglas know about anything?’ said Serena, tying her cotton gown around her more protectively. Serena was an actress. She was a good liar: convincing, manipulative, natural. But Cate could see a look of pure guilt painted on her face. Not obvious, more soft and subtle like a watercolour, but it was there nonetheless.

‘David went to see Nick yesterday after the wedding. He told him,’ said Cate with false knowingness in her voice.

Serena gazed down at her fingers stretched out in front of her. For a few moments the room fell totally silent.

‘He came on to me, you know,’ she said, looking up suddenly, her eyes blazing defiantly.

The enormity of what had just been said spun around the room. Cate’s breath quickened. Five simple words: ‘He came on to me.’ Me. Serena. Her sister. She felt as if she had been kicked in the chest.

‘It was you?’ she whispered.

Serena’s face was pallid with guilt. ‘Cate, seriously. Nothing happened,’ she said quickly, trying to sound casual.

‘I don’t believe it!’ said Cate, the words starting like a whisper, building in ferocity until she was screaming. ‘You slept with him, didn’t you?’ she spat, jumping up off the sofa.

Serena took a step backwards, beginning to edge out of the room. ‘Cate, I didn’t. I promise,’ she stammered.

‘At least have the guts not to lie to me,’ Cate yelled, struggling to catch her breath. She looked at Serena’s pale face and wanted to summon up a barrage of hate in her voice, but it wouldn’t come. Instead she turned her back away from her sister and started pacing the room, blinking tears back furiously. She felt every muscle in her body crumple.

‘Catey, I’m sorry. I really am.’ She moved forward to touch Cate who recoiled back so quickly she almost stumbled.

‘Get away from me,’ she started sobbing. ‘Get away.’

She sank back into the sofa, her body like a rag doll.

‘Why? Serena, why did you do it?’

‘Cate. I feel so terrible. I was drunk. You know I haven’t been drinking. I didn’t think –’

‘I don’t care if you were drunk,’ she said ferociously. ‘I don’t care if you were so drunk you screwed every man in the room. What I care about …’ Cate could feel her voice crack. ‘Is why him …? When you could have had anybody, why did you have to pick him?’

Serena sat on the edge of a chair, her hands falling in her lap. ‘Because he wanted me,’ she said softly. Her voice was low, calm and controlled. Cate couldn’t tell whether it was with guilt or arrogance.

‘You bitch,’ whispered Cate, feeling her fingernails dig into her palms. ‘You selfish, spoilt, self-obsessed little bitch.’

‘It didn’t mean anything,’ faltered Serena.

‘It didn’t mean anything?’ Cate replied incredulously. She swiped her hand in frustration through the air. ‘Well, it means something to me,’ she croaked. She put her head down and, biting her lip to keep controlled, picked her bag up and headed for the door.

‘Cate, don’t go. Please, let’s talk about it …’

Cate looked back, her eyes simply sad. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she said, opening the door.

‘Cate, wait. No …’

But Cate had gone, running down the stairs and onto the street, feeling as if her whole world had exploded and was raining down around her in a cloud of thick, dark, choking ash.

36 (#ulink_febde660-591d-580a-b68c-56145ece7792)

Sitting in the high-back leather chair in the offices of Mayfair’s most prestigious accountants, Oswald’s blood began to boil. He was beginning to harbour grave reservations about whether the young man in front of him could manage to find his backside with both hands, let alone manage his business affairs.

Six months ago, Lionel Davenport, Oswald’s accountant since the sixties and senior partner in the firm of Davenport Davis, had retired and handed over the reins of the company to Peter Cable, whom Davenport had pitched to Oswald as ‘the firm’s dynamic future’. Since then, Oswald had heard nothing but doom and gloom about his financial situation, and today, it seemed, was no exception.

‘So what can we do then?’ challenged Oswald, his irritation mounting. ‘Lionel said you were creative, so come on. I need to raise about two and a half million by the end of the year. A forty-five per cent share in my daughter’s business is up for sale. Her husband died in that terrible fire, didn’t you hear?’ a hint of a smirk appearing on his lips. ‘And I need liquid funds to buy them.’

‘Well, that might take some time,’ said Cable hesitantly, peering at the figures in front of him.

‘Time? There isn’t any time,’ snorted Oswald. ‘My daughter is talking about expanding into America and I don’t doubt the share valuation will increase if she does. So I have to find the money quickly. How are we going to do it?’

Peter Cable shuffled a pile of papers in front of him uncomfortably, and rested his elbows on the leather-topped desk. He was struggling to find the right words to break the news to his client.

‘I have to advise you, your lordship, that you shouldn’t be raising money to expand your business interests at this particular time. Instead, I would strongly recommend that we shore up the Balcon family accounts and even think of a contingency plan.’

‘What do you mean “contingency plan”?’ scoffed Oswald, leaning back in his chair. ‘The Balcon estate has flourished for the last three hundred years, and I certainly don’t envisage that financial situation changing any time soon.’

Peter Cable, normally an efficient and composed man, had to stop himself exhaling loudly in front of his client. He’d been warned that old Oswald Balcon was the firm’s most difficult client but, even for Davenport Davis, he was prestigious business. It was worth putting up with his mood swings to have a client as connected as Lord Balcon. It was better to keep the man sweet, however bloody-minded he became.

‘Financially, it has been a poor eighteen months,’ said Cable. ‘And I think we need to look at some damage limitation by the end of the financial year. Paying last year’s tax bill, which is due very soon – well, we can probably just manage. But next year’s bill: frankly it could be catastrophic for the whole estate.’

Oswald sighed loudly and deliberately. ‘I pay you a great deal in professional fees to sort out this kind of thing. I assume you are able to do something, or perhaps I should take my business elsewhere?’

‘Lord Balcon, I can only work with what I have,’ said Cable, beginning to get exasperated. He leafed through a sheaf of spreadsheets, raising his eyebrows like a cartoon character.

‘Frankly, every pillar of your potential income is crumbling at the moment. Huntsford is costing a fortune to maintain and the gallery is also suffering. I don’t know a great deal about the art world but, looking at the figures, I really don’t think your investments are bringing you the returns you need there.’

Oswald averted his gaze to prevent Peter Cable seeing the flicker of anxiety there. He was finally beginning to see what his gallery manager, Mark Robertson, had been trying to tell him for months: that Oswald’s decision to invest in eighteenth-century Dutch bronzes had seemed like bad timing. They were beautiful, true. And at the moment, they were very cheap, but only because that market had temporarily fallen away. They had been buying art that nobody wanted.

‘On top of that, the trust fund is low. That’s the culmination of twenty years of business investments that perhaps haven’t been – shall we say? – terribly successful,’ added Peter, trying to be as diplomatic as possible since he could see his client beginning to flush around the cheeks. In an instant, Oswald was reminded of the Daily Telegraph piece months before, where they’d described his business interests as ‘harebrained schemes’ and ‘badly-planned ventures’. How dare they! He thought again now. All he had ever tried to do was speculate to accumulate. He was a good capitalist, and how did they repay him?

‘What bothers me the most,’ said Peter, wondering if the seriousness of the situation was finally beginning to sink in with Oswald, ‘is the loan agreement you signed to raise money for the Huntsford Musical Evening.’ He pulled another stack of papers out of a file. ‘Now, although Davenport Davis didn’t do the accounts for that event, I have been forwarded the financials from it and – well, it is clear it did make a considerable loss.’

‘It was a new business in its first year!’ huffed Oswald, waving a hand in front of his face to dismiss the idea. ‘Any entrepreneur will tell you that you need to take an initial hit if you are to raise the scale and profit the following year. It’s basic business practice.’

‘Oh, so you plan to have another one next year?’ said Peter, genuinely surprised.

Oswald ignored him and continued to gaze around the room like a child whose attention span was waning.