Playing Dead (39 page)

There was a silence. It was Alberto who broke it.

‘
There are things we have to arrange,’ he said firmly but gently to his elder brother.

‘
Don’t tell me what to do!
’ yelled Lucco.

‘Well
someone
has to think straight around here,’ said Alberto.

‘And you think I don’t?’

Lucco asked him. ‘Lucco,’ said Alberto. ‘You have to show strength now, show everyone that you can hold the family steady. It’s a sad day, an awful day, but you have to be strong. You have to conduct yourself like a Don. Like Papa would. We have to go home, and you have to bring order to those bastards who want to chance their arm. Calm the Mancinis down, make everything right.’

‘But I’m not
him
,’ said Lucco, and, for a moment, Annie thought he was going to burst into tears and throw a tantrum like a petulant child. ‘I can
never
be him.’

Daniella stood up, disturbed by all this. ‘I’m going up to bed,’ she said faintly.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Alberto.

‘Of
course
she’s all right,’ shouted Lucco. ‘She’s
my
goddamned wife, not yours. Will you kindly remember that?’

Now Annie saw that Alberto’s face was set with anger. For a moment it was truly as if Constantine was standing there.

‘I can remember whose wife she is,’ he said. ‘Can you? And can you be
man
enough to treat her with the respect she deserves?’

Now Lucco looked beyond furious. He looked as if he was about to launch himself at Alberto. Quickly, Daniella stepped between them. ‘Don’t,’ she said, putting her hands to her face in distress. ‘
Don’t.
’

Both men subsided.

Annie sat there and thought:
My God, what’s going on here?

Suddenly she could see it. Alberto playing with Daniella in the pool, fussing over her at the races, leaving the room white-faced with rage when Lucco hit her.

‘We should just calm down,’ said Max to all of them. ‘It’s been a pig of a day and we’re all fucked. Let’s get to bed.’

This time, Lucco didn’t argue. He left the room first, looking as if all the fight had gone out of him. Alberto and Daniella followed. The door closed. Annie and Max were left alone in the drawing room.

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Max.

‘What is?’

‘Alberto and Daniella.’

‘You noticed.’

‘Hard not to.’

‘Nothing can come of it,’ said Annie, thinking of Max’s own disastrous marriage to her sister Ruthie.

‘Maybe not,’ said Max. ‘Come on, let’s get over to the hospital. See how Chris is doing.’

They went out of the drawing room and across the vast hall. Alberto and Aunt Gina were at the top of the stairs, talking quietly. They saw Annie and Max down below, and Alberto quickly said goodnight to his aunt and went along the landing to his own room.

Chapter 80

‘I don’t fucking well
believe
you,’ said Ellie, charging at Annie like an enraged animal when they showed up outside Chris’s ward. ‘You know what? Trouble follows you around, Annie Carter. Chris was damned near killed today, and all because he was with
you.
’

Max stepped forward. ‘Chris is alive. Be grateful.’

Ellie’s mouth opened, but she thought about the wisdom of mouthing off at Max Carter and decided against it.

While she thinks nothing of tearing lumps out of me
, thought Annie.

‘Can we see him?’ she asked Ellie.

Ellie gave her one last, disgusted look. ‘Yeah. He’s in here, come on.’

Chris was laid out in bed in a pair of neon-striped pyjamas. His neck was bandaged. As he heard them coming, he opened his eyes. His left eye was red where the blood vessels had burst.

‘They’ve told me his eye’s going to clear,’ said Ellie, bustling forward like a mother hen and taking Chris’s huge hand in both of hers. ‘They said it was lucky he lifted weights; it made his neck muscles dense and that saved him, that’s what the doctor said.’

‘Hi,’ said Chris hoarsely.

‘And he can’t talk, he’s
not
to talk, they said that too.’

They sat down. Chris’s eye caught Annie’s.

‘Not your fault, Mrs C,’ he managed to say.

Ellie’s lips tightened to a thin line and she glared across at Annie.

Of course it’s your damned fault
, her angry eyes said.
Ain’t everything?

Annie sat there feeling like shit. She did blame herself.

All my fault
, thought Annie. Yeah, Ellie’s right.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ said Max to Chris. ‘Ellie’s right. Just shut the fuck up, lie there and get better. That’s all you got to do.’

Chris managed to raise a smile at that. He nodded and mouthed
okay
.

When Max and Annie had left the hospital, Ellie sat there still, gazing at Chris and wondering why she was such a fool and couldn’t tell him how much she loved him.

Well, she knew why. She was afraid of rejection. She was fat. All right,
curvy
according to her friends
.
But in her own eyes she had only ever been
fat.
And Chris’s late wife Aretha had been so beautiful, so tall and lithe; Aretha had carried herself like a warrior queen. She’d worn clothes like they were made for her; she could turn the cheapest market tat into designer gear just by putting it onto her exquisite body.

And then there’s me
, thought Ellie as she sat there and Chris drifted off into sleep.

Fat, insecure little Ellie, always diving in the biscuit tin.

Oh, she knew she was Madam now, and she’d upped her game considerably, dressed accordingly; but in her own mind she was still the same little Ellie her mother had called
dumpling.
All the cutting remarks made to her over the years, she could remember every single one.

Her dad, when she was going out to a party aged twelve: ‘Christ, she looks fat in that.’

Her first boyfriend: ‘No one’s ever going to call
you
Twiggy, are they?’

And so on.

She was fat dumpling little Ellie, who was – who always had been since the minute she first saw him – in love with Christopher Brown, who had nearly
died
today.

And if he had died, she would never have got the chance to say how much she loved him. And now . . . his eyes were closed; he was asleep anyway.

She stood up; time to go. She looked down at him: a huge, ugly, hairy-arsed thug who stood guard on a knocking-shop door to scare away the lairy punters . . . all right, he wasn’t pretty. But Chris was noble, in his way. A gent. A lovely, lovely guy.

He wouldn’t hear her say it anyway. It didn’t matter. So – what the fuck?

‘I love you, Chris,’ she said.

And then she turned and left the ward, and she didn’t see Chris’s eyes slowly open as her words sank in.

Chapter 81

‘You know, Ellie’s right,’ said Max as they were leaving the hospital. ‘You certainly do attract trouble.’

Annie shot him a glare as they went out into the car park.

‘Well, I attracted
you
so I suppose she got that right.’

He grabbed her wrist and yanked her to a halt, turned her in to face him. His eyes held hers.

‘I thought it was mutual,’ he said.

‘It
was.
’

‘But within a few months of my “death”, you’re off playing doctors and nurses with Constantine Barolli.’

Annie took a deep breath. She was tired, so tired of trying to explain, trying to make everything come out right.

‘Look,’ she said at last. ‘You owe Constantine.’

‘Yeah? Explain that.’

‘He saved me. He saved Layla. He looked after us when you weren’t there to do it.’

Max was silent, his eyes on her face. ‘And you loved him for it,’ he said.

‘Not for that. It was never about gratitude. You were gone. I was devastated by that, but you were
gone.
And then he came along.’

‘And you loved him.’

‘Yeah. All right. I loved him.’

‘And forgot about me.’

‘I
never
forgot about you,’ said Annie fiercely. ‘How the hell could I do that?’

‘Pretty damned easily, by the sound of it.’

Annie wrenched her wrist free and turned away. ‘Oh what’s the fucking
use
?’ she spat, and went over to the car.

He was never going to believe her. Or forgive her. It was hopeless.

Chapter 82

‘So how are they doing?’ asked Dolly, polishing glasses as Annie sat at the bar of the Palermo the following day.

It was only mid-evening and still quiet – not many punters in. The girls were already up on their podiums, swaying along to ‘Get It On’.

‘They?’ asked Annie.

‘The Yanks,’ said Dolly, tutting at her ignorance. ‘You said they showed up here. How you getting along with them now?’

Worse than ever
, thought Annie. The Barollis were, so far as she could tell, in tatters. Lucco was losing it, Cara and Rocco were dead, Aunt Gina was in heavy mourning, Alberto too; the whole thing was
crazy.

‘They’re all flying back to the States tomorrow,’ said Annie. She hadn’t told Dolly about all that had gone down with the Barollis, and she didn’t want to start now. It made her feel weary, just to think of it.

‘Well, you won’t miss them,’ said Dolly, tossing aside her cloth and coming to lean on the bar. She looked at Annie with brightly inquisitive eyes. ‘So, what about you and him, then? Any news?’

Annie shook her head. Max had driven her here and dropped her off, saying he’d be back in an hour. But would he come back at all? He had Layla now; she was his for the taking. She expected . . . well, what she really expected was that he wouldn’t come back for her. That she’d phone the Holland Park house, and that one of the staff would answer and say, no, he wasn’t there; he’d gone, and he’d taken the little girl with him.

‘No news,’ she said wearily. ‘He’s threatened to take Layla and he probably will, sooner rather than later. And he’s right, there’s nothing I can do to stop him. Nothing at all.’

‘That don’t sound like the Annie Carter I know,’ said Dolly. ‘Giving up? Come on.’

‘Doll,’ said Annie, ‘if you’d been through what I’ve been through these past few months . . . well, let’s just say it’s been rough. You know it has. And now . . .’

‘What? You’ve lost your nerve? Lost your taste for a fight?’ Dolly sniffed and straightened. ‘Sorry. Don’t believe you.’

Now Annie jumped down from the bar stool and stared at Dolly.

‘What should I do then?’ she demanded. ‘What
can
I do? He’s got the boys on every street corner, this whole manor’s shut down tighter than a duck’s arse. He’s in control, not me.’

‘Well,’ said Dolly, ‘we’ll see. Won’t we?’

Chapter 83

Next day, they gathered in the hall of the Holland Park mansion to say their goodbyes. Fredo and two heavies were loading the bags into the car ready to take Alberto, Lucco, Daniella and Aunt Gina to the airport to board the private Gulfstream jet.

There was a sombre air over the whole gathering – as well there might be, Annie thought, as she came out of the breakfast room and stood there watching them. The visit to England had been intended as an interlude of light relief and as homage to Constantine’s memory.

But look what had happened. Rocco and Cara were dead. The whole family was shattered, blown apart.
Just like Constantine was
, she thought.
What goes around comes around.

Lucco was standing in the doorway, looking tetchy and tense, exchanging a word or two with Gina. As Annie closed the door to the breakfast room, he looked across at her with a deep and bitter loathing.

‘Don’t forget,’ he said to her. ‘Leave your keys with the housekeeper when you go this time. You got it?’

‘Loud and clear,’ said Annie.

He turned on his heel and went out of the door. Aunt Gina glanced over at her, her face without expression. Annie nodded. To her surprise, Gina nodded back, and then hurried outside.

‘Stepmom,’ said Alberto, and came over to her.

Annie thought he looked strained and pale, not himself. Of course he wasn’t. He’d lost his sister not too long after losing his father. It was a hard and very bitter pill to swallow, a double loss, tragic.

He stopped in front of her and raised a thin smile.

‘You’ll come over and see us soon?’ he asked as Daniella joined them.

‘Very soon, I promise.’ Annie assured him. ‘I’ll be opening the club in September, remember.’

‘It’ll be a big success,’ he said. ‘I know it will.’

‘I hope so. Are you going to be all right?’ asked Annie in concern.

Alberto’s smile widened. ‘Perfectly. There, you see? Smiling.’

But bleeding on the inside
, she thought.

‘Now stop fussing, Stepmom, and hug me,’ he ordered.

Annie hugged him hard. It was like holding Constantine, and the moment was both sweet and heartbreakingly sad, because he wasn’t his father, he could never be; Constantine was lost forever.

Over Alberto’s shoulder she saw Max appear on the top landing, watching her. She pulled back from Alberto and looked instead at Daniella, who was smiling shyly. Annie held out a hand, and Daniella took it.

‘You okay, sweetie?’ she asked her.

Daniella nodded. Annie pulled her into her arms and hugged her tight. Then she pushed her back a little.

‘You know what? I’m going to miss you two,’ she said truthfully. She looked from Daniella to Alberto and thought that it was so sad that Daniella was tied to Lucco when it was clear that Alberto would have been the perfect match for her.

You got that one wrong, my darling
, she thought. Even Constantine could make mistakes: that much was clear. She just hoped that Daniella didn’t have to pay too hard and too long for it.