Escape for the Summer (46 page)

“What?” she said to Mel, who was looking at her and shaking her head.

“If you don’t know then I won’t spell it out,” Mel replied wearily. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her BlackBerry. “Let’s call a taxi, shall we? Si can pop it on his account – don’t go scrabbling for money while your hand is gushing blood.”

Andi swallowed back her disappointment and nodded. Jonty wasn’t going to change his mind. And why should she want him to? She was better off just relying on herself. Hadn’t she learned that much from Tom? She took a deep breath. From now on she was doing things on her own. It was better that way.

Two hours, five stitches and several very bad cups of hospital coffee later, Andi was feeling exhausted and starting to wonder whether she’d made the right decision. It might have been nice to have somebody to chat to while she waited in the bleak A&E reception. It would have been even better to have had somebody there to tell her that everything was going to be fine and to hold her other hand while the nurse stitched up the wounded one. The hospital staff were kind enough but she could see how run off their feet they were. Andi felt bad for taking up time that could have been better spent on somebody who was genuinely sick rather than clumsy. Whatever had she been thinking, to get so blindingly drunk like that? Hadn’t she learned from her past mistakes? Andi felt utterly appalled with herself.

She hadn’t intended to return to Jax’s house. Once the doctor was happy with her hand and she’d been discharged, Andi’s only thought had been to get back to the caravan, dive into her narrow bunk and sleep for as long as she could, possibly for at least a day. The thought of being able to close her eyes and put this horrendous day behind her was a very welcome one. The only problem was that she’d left her bag in Jax’s kitchen with her keys, purse and mobile in it. The hospital receptionist had called a taxi for Andi but had looked so pained as she went about it that Andi had started to feel that this one call would be to blame for the collapse of the NHS. Andi had had no means of getting back to Rock via public transport and no desire to be stranded in Truro at this time of night. So she’d had little choice but to request the taxi and then persuade the driver to take her all the way to Jax’s place and wait outside while she fetched her bag.

It was a beautiful August night and, although it was sweet with the scent of lavender and stock, there was crispness in the air that hinted of autumnal days to come. The Virginia creeper around the front door had already turned a deep crimson, although in the darkness it looked like a reddish-brown smudge, and Andi could feel the last days of summer sighing in the light breeze. She had the profound sense that something was drawing to a close and, in spite of herself, Andi shivered.

Jax’s rented house was beautiful, a double-fronted Victorian villa with big bay windows that looked out onto an immaculate garden. It was late now, almost midnight, and as she crunched up the path Andi steeled herself for another tongue-lashing. The guests must have all gone by now but hopefully Jax would still be up and not too put out. Closer investigation revealed that the light was on in the sitting room. Andi felt relieved. Jax had to be awake; maybe she was chatting to the last stragglers – or perhaps, and far more likely, she was ordering the other helpers about. The sash window was up and the curtains fluttered. Andi couldn’t resist peeking in; at least this way she’d know what she was in for.

Shadowing the brick wall, she edged along – skirting the flowerbed – until she was right next to the window. Reaching up onto tiptoes, Andi peered around the edge and into the room. When her eyes adjusted to the light she realised exactly what she was looking at and her heart twisted.

Jonty and Jax were alone in the room. His broad back was against the window but it was as clear as the moonlight outside that Jax’s slender arms were twined around his neck.

Feeling like a voyeur, Andi crept back to the taxi as quietly as she could. She’d have to wake Gemma or Angel to let her in and borrow the fare, because there was no way she was disturbing whatever was going on inside. All she wanted to do was hide away and never see either of them again.

Andi closed her eyes in defeat as a cocktail of emotions raced through her nervous system: shock and embarrassment and anger, but most of all jealousy.

Chapter 41

Angel was beyond frustrated. It was all very well having an absolutely
genius
idea, but if every time you tried to get it up and running people wouldn’t co-operate then what was the point? Honestly, she could have screamed with annoyance. Normally she couldn’t move in Rock for practically tripping over Andi or Gemma or Cal, but now, just when she had the solution to all of their problems in the palm of her hand, they all decided to go AWOL. Andi was uncharacteristically out late and then sleeping in; Gemma had locked herself in her small room and was refusing to come out, and Cal was presumably in hiding from the tabloid press behind his very high gates.

Angel’s chin had a determined tilt to it as she worked the idea backwards and forwards in her mind. There had to be a way she could reach Cal and pitch her idea to him. He’d love it, she knew he would, and it was only a matter of time before she found a way to talk to him.

“Maybe you should just let it go?” Laurence sighed as they pulled up outside the Alexshovs’ mansion in Trav’s Aston Martin. The roof was down and it was a glorious day. Not that Angel noticed such details: her head was far too full of schemes to be distracted by sparkling waves and cotton-wool clouds. “I agree that it’s a marvellous idea but it all seems very complicated.”

“It really isn’t! It’s actually very simple. I just need to talk to Cal,” Angel said, with great confidence. “He’s the key to all of this, and Gemma too if she ever comes out of her room. Seriously Laurence, if I can get Cal on side then I know we’re onto a winner. Kenniston will be saved. Better than saved!”

Laurence covered her hand with his large, strong one and in spite of the warmth of the sunshine beating down on her head, Angel shivered. Those hands of his worked some kind of magic; that was for sure. Laurence only had to touch her with a brush of his fingertips and she was jelly. Since they’d got together she’d hardly been apart from him and it was proving very tricky to keep focused when all she wanted to do was drag him back upstairs! But after two delicious days of scarcely moving from the big four-poster in the master bedroom of Travis’s house, it was time to take control of circumstances again. Project Rich Guy may have gone slightly pear-shaped but this was an even better idea! Laurence had taken a little persuading at first, but he’d done the figures and some research and could see the potential. He was firmly onside now – which may or may not have had something to do with those two days in the master suite!

“I won’t be very long here,” Angel told him. “Vanya’s mother’s come to stay and she only wants a couple of manicures.” Leaning across, she brushed his mouth with hers. Wow. How could just a simple kiss send all her senses spiralling out of control?

Laurence glanced down at the plain diver’s watch Angel had bought him in Padstow. The borrowed Rolex had been safely returned to Travis.

“I’ll see you at half eleven,” he promised. “Wish me luck at the bank.”

“You have a copy of our business plan: you won’t need luck,” said Angel.

As she sauntered up the drive to Vassilly and Vanya’s, the KGB-style security guards on the gate waving cheerily when they saw her, Angel felt buoyed up with determination. Unlike Andi and Gemma, both of whom seemed to be doing more than their fair share of moping lately, Angel was a firm believer in grasping Fate by the short and curlies. Callum South might think that his reality TV career was dead in the estuary, but if her hunch was right this was just the start of bigger things to come…

“Angel! Darlink!” Vanya cried when Angel entered the opulent sitting room. Today the Russian woman was channelling her inner Joan Collins and sporting more leopard skin and flowing mane than London Zoo’s big cat area. As they air kissed, Angel nearly had her eye put out by one of Vanya’s Sky-dish sized earrings. More was definitely more in Vanya’s book.

“Vanya! Wonderful to see you,” Angel replied, dodging the second earring and smacking her lips somewhere above the Russian woman’s razor-sharp cheekbone.

Vanya stepped back and regarded Angel thoughtfully. “You look different, darlink. Radiant! Haff you had hair done? Hmm? An oxygen facial? I know! A leetle filler?”

Angel laughed. In her dreams! No, odd as it seemed, wearing no make-up and spending half the night doing terrible things to Laurence Elliott was proving far more effective than any beauty treatment. The glitter in her eyes and inner luminescence hadn’t come for Clarins, that was for sure. That was all House of Elliott.

“Anyway, you look beautiful,” Vanya decided, stepping back and clicking her fingers at one of the servants. “Now, some champagne?”

Champagne at nine thirty in the morning was the norm at the Alexshovs’. They drank the stuff like Angel drank Diet Coke. Probably bathed in it too. Accepting a glass, Angel followed Vanya from the drawing room and along echoey corridors filled with priceless works of art and countless photographs of family members, lined up with military precision on mahogany sideboards. Enormous chandeliers sparkled above. The whole place screamed money. It was a long way from the shabby and faded elegance of Kenniston Hall.

“My mama is visiting for a leetle holiday,” Vanya explained as they traversed a marble hallway, their heels clicking on the polished floor and then padding over thick Turkish rugs before they climbed the sweeping staircase. “She has been unwell and is staying for a rest. I think haffing nails done cheer her up.”

“There’s nothing like a manicure to perk you up,” Angel agreed. She glanced down at her own nails. Oh dear, they were looking a bit neglected. Making a mental note to give herself a French manicure that evening, she followed Vanya into a large bedroom where, sitting in a big chair by the window, all ice-cream-cone hair and boot-button eyes, was none other than Mrs Yuri.

“You!” cried Mrs Yuri. Her bright red mouth fell open. “You!”

It was one of those awful moments when time seemed to free-fall. Suddenly, Angel was right back in Blush, where she had been screamed at in both Russian and English and sacked with such speed her head had spun for days.

Mrs Yuri rose to her feet. “My husband, he haff been looking for you!”

Angel’s mouth was dry. Vanya was Mr Yuri’s daughter? Did Fate really hate her this much? Suddenly, now she was in the heart of the Alexshovs’ house and surrounded by the kind of security that made the Kremlin look slack, all those stories about concrete boots no longer seemed quite so far-fetched.

“Mrs Yuri, I—”

“He haff searched everywhere but nobody could find you!” Mrs Yuri interrupted. She was pulling herself up to standing now, her hands clutching the armrests of her chair until her knuckles were white. “Everywhere! But nobody knew where you go! The salon, they no tell me!”

“Mama? You know Angel?” Vanya asked, looking from her mother to Angel in confusion.

“Ya, ya!” Mrs Yuri nodded. “This is the girl I tell you about? Angelique? The one who didn’t like my mole?”

Angel groaned. She would never, ever try to do anyone a good turn again. “It wasn’t that I didn’t
like
it. I just thought it looked a bit suspicious and I was worried. I never meant to insult you or hurt your feelings!”

But neither Mrs Yuri nor her daughter was listening to a word Angel was saying. The older woman was gabbling away in frantic Russian and gesticulating wildly, while Vanya’s eyes grew wider by the second. Angel tried to work out what her chances of escape were. Pretty slim, since she was on the second floor and Rottweilers prowled the garden.

“It was you?” Vanya gasped finally. “You are the girl who didn’t like my mama’s mole?”

Angel opened her mouth to try to explain, but before she could speak the words were literally knocked from her as Mrs Yuri engulfed her in a massive bear hug. Kisses were smacking against Angel’s cheeks and hey! Was the older woman crying?

“Sank you! Sank you!” gasped Mrs Yuri, in between sobs and kisses. Stepping back so that Angel could see her properly, she pointed to her chin. “Has gone, ya?”

Angel’s eyes widened. Where only weeks ago there had been a large mole, there was now a faint scar. Mrs Yuri had had the mole removed? After all the fuss she’d made about ignoring it? God, weren’t people odd?

“I explain,” said Vanya, after yet more machine-gunfire Russian from her mother. “My mama, she go away after she see you and she think very hard.”

Mrs Yuri added something else in furious Russian and her daughter nodded.

“OK, I tell her! Angel, Mama say that nobody had ever dared to mention her mole before. You first one. She very hurt by it.”

“Sorry, but—” Angel began, but Vanya held up her hand.

“I not finish! Mama very cross at first but then she think, ya, mole is sore and maybe she need to see doctor? Has got bigger too. Maybe you right? So, Papa take her to see specialist and is bad news. Very bad news. Is cancer. Mama, she has to haff operation very quick. Doctor say that if she left it longer, pah!”

“You save my life!” Mrs Yuri cried. “If you not say about mole, nobody else brave enough. I die!”

“If you not mention it, maybe Mama not get treatment and get better,” Vanya agreed. “Angel, you save her life. Papa he haff looked everywhere for you. He not know how to thank you.”

Angel was stunned. Not about the mole – she’d seen enough of those to know when one was suspicious – but at how the circumstances of the past few months had all come together to this point. This was beyond weird. It was like something from one of Gemma’s cosmic-ordering books.

“You save our little Dmitri too, when he hurt foot,” continued Mrs Yuri, tears sending her mascara down her cheeks in sooty rivers. “Our family, we owe you so much.”

“Honestly, you really don’t,” said Angel. She was a bit embarrassed at this outpouring of gratitude, to be honest. “Anyone would have done the same.”