Beautiful People (37 page)

    She needed to be at it, Sam realised. If she was there herself— supervising, suggesting, styling, whatever Carlos said, she might be able to prevent complete disaster. Because it wasn't only Darcy's career on the line here. If this next shoot went wrong, Sam knew, Brooke was unlikely to be picking up the telephone to her again.

    She pressed the intercom to Xanthe. "Get me on the next flight to Florence."

Emma looked out of the bus window and felt a surge of optimism. It was a beautiful, bright, blue, and gold day. The vehicle, with its throaty roar of engine, moved briskly along the near-empty roads through the sunny countryside. The brown hills with their thin, green stripes of vineyard looked, Emma thought, exactly like neatly combed green hair.

    She was going to Florence in search of a travel cot. Or rather, she and Morning both were. Mara, at the last minute, had been unable to babysit after all, and Emma did her best to disguise her disappointment at losing a morning's solo shopping. It wasn't as if she had any money anyway.

    They were passing the Rocolo carpark now. Emma looked up, enjoying the fantastical sight of the old village hanging on the top of the hill, shining bright in the morning sun. The buildings crowded together, no shape the same, all shades from terra-cotta to apricot, and bristled with towers, gables, aerials, and satellite dishes.

    In the carpark below, some children were being unloaded from a car. The boy, only visible from the back, was Cosmo's age, while the little girl had white hair. Just like Hero.

    Emma's happy mood disintegrated instantly. A sick, anxious feeling possessed her, and she wondered miserably, as she often did in tired or weak moments, where the children were now, what they were doing, whether they were happy, whether they ever thought of her.

    Her anxiety was followed by the usual burning sense of injustice. Who had put those drugs in her bag? And why? Would she ever find out? It seemed increasingly unlikely.

    Amazingly, within half an hour of her arrival, a travel cot was hers. Florence, Emma gratefully realised, might look all towers and flags and winding cobbled streets between canyons of ancient brown buildings, but it was no slouch when it came to twenty-first-century tourism and the needs of twenty-first-century tourists like Morning.

    Two minutes after entering the tourist information office, she was outside again clutching a map on which a helpful and extremely efficient Italian tourist official had ringed not one possible cot shop but three. Ten minutes after that, she had ordered a cot and arranged for it to be delivered to the villa; that very afternoon, the salesman had promised. "Bello bambino!" he had added, tickling Morning's cheek. "You sleep well now, you hear?"

    And now, Emma decided, for some fun. She had checked the bus return times. She and Morning had, she calculated, an hour free to explore the ancient city.

    "Where first?" she beamed at him. "You choose."

Orlando slid a sidelong glance at his father, who was driving along towards Florence, his forehead creased in thought. Richard was never exactly chatty, Orlando reflected, but the only thing he had said on this trip so far was to ask him whether he knew what an Internet café was. It seemed a strange question.

    Orlando rubbed his eyes, heavy after a sleepless night of worry. It was hot by the window with the morning sun pouring through, but the only burning Orlando was aware of was the shame that would not go away.

    He pushed his long fingers through his corn-coloured locks, squeezing his eyelids to try to excise the memory. But the inside of his own head, Orlando was finding, was not somewhere he could escape from easily.

    He was in shock. He had no idea she had thought of him that way. Laura was a friend of his parents', for God's sake. The wife of a Tory Member of Parliament. And unbelievably ancient—over forty at least.

    The irony was, he had been relieved when the restaurant visit was over, imagining it to be the end of the day's trials. When they got back to the villa, he'd made himself scarce at the first opportunity.

    It had been dark when he opened the door of his room. But when he had felt for the light switch and pressed it, nothing had happened. Orlando had shuffled forward, trying to see in the darkness. But this wasn't London, with its permanently orange-tinged gloom; it was the middle of the Italian countryside, and, therefore, as black as ink.

    Then, to his surprise, the lamp by his bed was switched on. To reveal, lying on the bed, his parents' friend, Laura Faugh.

    "Oh. Sorry," Orlando had muttered, turning away in horrified embarrassment. He had strayed into the wrong room. Into Laura's room. Somehow, he had gone completely the wrong way.

    Then his eyes dropped to the floor and he frowned. Hang on a minute, those were his trainers down there. His CDs and screwed-up T-shirt. This was his room.

    "Don't be sorry." Her deep, gravelly voice came from just behind his shoulder. A hand with red fingernails crept round his front and placed itself over his crotch. Paralysed, he stared down at where it clenched over his balls like a large white spider with red shoes on. The hand began gently to rub.

    Orlando sprang to escape, got his feet tangled in sheets, and fell backwards onto the bed. "Mrs. Faugh!" he squeaked, terrified.

    She had unbuttoned her fitted, herringbone-patterned blouse. Beneath her demure double rope of pearls he glimpsed a neat black bra with small, white polka dots on it, trimmed with a small white ribbon. "Call me Laura," she said, smiling as she shrugged off the shirt. Her eyes under their hoods glittered blackly as they travelled him slowly up and down. The dry red lips twisted in amusement.

    "You're married," Orlando, still tangled in the sheets, reminded her desperately.

    He heard her gravelly chuckle. "Yes, but Hugh and I have a very open marriage."

    He watched transfixed, as she peeled her bra off. Her breasts, larger than Orlando had expected, sprang out. They looked hard and pointy, with jabby little nipples on the end. Rather like a pair of missiles, he thought, nonetheless feeling a jolt of desire that horrified him. He wrenched his gaze away.

    She was unzipping her black skirt now. Frozen to the spot, he watched her step out of it. Bells clanged chaotically in his head. Laura wore no knickers, and her pubic hair was neatly trimmed and demure, black against her milk-white flesh, as the straps of the garters were black. Orlando had never seen the full rigout in real life before, had never believed anyone besides Jordan and possibly Russell Brand actually wore it.

    "What's the matter?" she asked huskily, kneeling up so her breasts pushed into his face. "Don't you like girls?"

    Orlando swallowed heavily, the newly arrived equipment in his throat ratcheting noisily as he did so. He had no idea whether he liked girls. They had changed from rejecting him to wanting him virtually overnight, and he was completely confused about them. And, in any case, no way could Laura Faugh be described as a girl. She was forty-five at least. The friend of his parents, just feet away down the corridor. The wife of her husband, also feet away. The mother of her children, who were there as well. All this Orlando knew, and yet the insistence in his trousers was swelling, pressing, throbbing. He felt as if he might explode if he did not give way to it.

    "Come on, Orlando. You know you want to." Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked apart from her garter belt. Her smile was sly, mocking.

    As she opened her long white legs in their black garters, Orlando saw the hoods over her eyes flick upwards to reveal a glittering, predatory expression, that of a snake hypnotising a rabbit. He knew he should resist and yet felt pulled helplessly towards her by the magnet in his crotch.

    He stared about him in panic.

    On the bed, Laura cupped her missile breasts in her hands and caressed the nipples with her thumb. "I've just had them done. They cost the equivalent of a year's school fees."

    The mention of school fees, the bane of his life, brought Orlando to his senses. His more practical senses, that was. He realised that, contrary to what his examiners always said about him, he could think ahead. He did have an idea of consequences after all. He leapt to his feet. He opened the bedroom door and fled out into the dark corridor.

    Should he tell his parents? Laura and Hugh's long-standing friends? He had concluded that probably he should, but he couldn't. He was physically incapable of telling it, and Georgie, in particular, highly strung as she was, was probably incapable of being told it. Even now, side by side with his father in the intimate atmosphere of the car, Orlando's jaw still remained clamped shut on the subject.

In Florence's famous Piazza della Signoria, Emma felt awed at the great, brown mediaeval Signoria palace rearing up before her, the row of painted shields along its front shining in the sun and its long, thin, central tower pointing into the bright blue sky.

And just over there, looking rather smaller than she had imagined,

but nonetheless instantly recognisable, was Michelangelo's statue of David. Emma crossed the wide, paved square towards him, weaving between knots of tourists.

    A couple of children reached the statue before she did.

    "It's Daddy!" announced the smaller of the children, an adorable pink-cheeked moppet with dark curls who Emma guessed, with a pang, to be Hero's age. The parents, harassed and obviously English, came panting up and swooped on their brood.

    "Look, Daddy, it's you," repeated the smaller child, pointing at the naked statue.

    Daddy, who Emma guessed walked around the house unclothed a lot, flushed a deep red.

"There you are, Dad." Orlando stood before the silver, purple, and red logo'd door of the first Internet café his father had ever visited.

    "Er, Orlando…" Richard cleared his throat and searched for an excuse. "Thanks for your help. But I, um, I'll be fine now. I can manage. In there." He stabbed a finger through the hot air at the shop doorway.

    Orlando pushed back his locks in surprise. "Manage? You? In an Internet café?"

    "I'll be fine. Really." Richard grinned a rictus grin. There was no question of Orlando coming with him and seeing what he had come to see. It would be embarrassing beyond belief. "You go and do some sightseeing," He rummaged in his pocket for his wallet. "Here. Buy yourself a drink."

    "Oh. Okay. Thanks."

    "I'll give you a ring on your mobile when I've, um, finished." And with that, Richard disappeared into the Internet café.

The shoot was taking part in a smart Florence shoe store. Cubbyholes in the red velvet walls held variations on the stilettoheeled, sparkling, skinny-strapped look that had made this particular designer a household name.