Little White Lies Read online

  Tash stopped dead in her tracks. Rupert? Rupert was Lady Soames’ eldest son. So that was why she’d been dragged along. Oh, Christ. Lyudmila was playing matchmaker. A wave of embarrassment washed over her. She could have killed her! Wasn’t it enough that she had to endure the pitying glances of all Lyudmila’s friends? Did she have to endure their sons’ sniggers as well? She glared daggers at her mother’s rapidly disappearing back. Not that Lyudmila would notice. Or care.

  2

  ‘So what’s he like?’ Annick was eager to hear all the details. It was half past ten and the most embarrassing day of Tash’s life was finally drawing to a close. ‘Is he good-looking?’

  Tash snorted derisively. ‘God, no! He’s about half my size.’ She wedged the phone between her chin and neck, attempting to talk and paint her toenails at the same time. ‘And he’s got ginger hair. He’s repulsive, actually. Besides, I don’t want a boyfriend, and even if I did, I’m hardly going to ask my mother for help. I’m perfectly capable of getting one on my own. If I wanted one. Which I don’t.’ She enunciated her words clearly, keen for Annick to get the point.

  ‘Darling, if we wait for you to sort yourself out in that department, we’ll be waiting for ever. You’re so bloody picky.’

  ‘I am not. Besides, I’d rather be picky than a slut.’ She grimaced. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Yes, you did. Anyhow, we’re not talking about me. Can we get back to the subject, please?’

  ‘There is no subject. He came downstairs, took one look at me and fled.’

  ‘Oh, Tash! He did not! You’re making it up.’

  ‘I’m not. You should’ve seen his face. I’d just stuffed a scone in my gob and a bit of cream oozed out, so I scooped it up with my finger and licked it off in front of him. He nearly died. His mother looked at me as though I’d gone mad. It was funny, though. You should’ve seen Ma’s face. Anyway, I’d better go. I’ve still got that history essay to finish. Have you done yours yet?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Er, it’s due tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘You hassle me about boyfriends and I hassle you about homework. How does that not make you a slut?’

  ‘All right, point taken.’

  ‘I’d better get on with it, then. You’d be advised to do the same.’

  ‘I might. I’ll see how I feel.’

  ‘Fine, you’ll get an “F”. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Annick sounded about as interested in her essay as Tash had been in Rupert Soames. ‘Meet you outside the gates at nine.’

  Tash put down the phone, lay back against the pillows and held out her hand. She looked at the tattoo nestling in the fold between her thumb and first finger. It was almost healed. A week earlier, she, Annick and Rebecca had walked past a tattoo parlour on the way home from school. Without saying a word, they’d all stopped in front of it. They looked at each other.

  ‘Won’t it hurt?’

  ‘Oh, Rebecca.’ Both Tash and Annick turned to look at her.

  ‘Sue Parker’s brother got one done the other day. She said he said it hurt like hell.’

  ‘Yeah, but I bet his covered half of his back, or something stupid like that. We’re only going to get something small.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Annick shrugged. ‘How about a rose?’

  Tash rolled her eyes. ‘Bo-ring. Let’s get something that actually means something. To all of us.’

  ‘Like what?’ Rebecca’s curiosity got the better of her.

  ‘How about something . . . something like that?’ Tash pointed at something in the window.

  ‘Which one?’ Annick stepped closer to see.

  ‘That one. The triangle. Three points – that’s us, right?’

  ‘How about a triangle set in a circle?’

  ‘Genius. Fucking genius.’ Tash grinned. ‘The three of us, together, always. I love it. Here, right here where we’ll always see it.’ She pointed to the spot between her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Come on, before Rebecca chickens out,’ Annick laughed.

  ‘I won’t. Does . . . does it have to be right there?’ she looked at her hand. ‘Can’t it be somewhere more . . . well, hidden?’

  ‘Scaredy-cat. You’re afraid of what your mum’s going to say. Don’t worry, when your hand’s closed, you’ll hardly see it.’

  And that was it. They exited the shop half an hour later, each looking a little paler than before, holding a little wad of cotton wool over their bleeding hands. They’d chosen the design together – a thin blue triangle, enclosed in a circle. ‘Best friends for ever, huh?’ The tattoo artist grinned approvingly at his handiwork.

  ‘Yup.’ They all spoke at once. The triangle had been Tash’s idea, the circle enclosing it, Rebecca’s. Annick concentrated only on not crying. Unbelievable how something barely the size of a ten pence piece could hurt so much, she said weakly. Lyudmila nearly fainted when she saw it, as did Aunt Mimí, Rebecca’s mother. Annick’s mother hadn’t seen it yet and probably wouldn’t notice it anyway. Her parents were barely there, and when they were, their attention was always claimed by someone else, someone more important.

  Tash traced the still-puckered flesh with her fingers. She rolled over onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow. She didn’t like lying to anyone, least of all Annick. The afternoon hadn’t been quite as funny or as entertaining as she’d made out. Lyudmila and Lady Soames disappeared as soon as Rupert finally came down, leaving the two teenagers locked together in a silent agony of sullen resentment. Every so often, a tinkling laugh could be heard down the corridor, making the silence between them even more uncomfortable. Rupert looked at his shoes. Tash looked down at her hands. The silver tray of scones and tea lay untouched in front of them. Tash racked her brains for something to say.

  ‘So what’s Eton like?’ she asked finally.

  He looked up. His expression hovered somewhere between boredom and disgust. ‘’S’all right,’ he muttered.

  Tash felt a rush of feeling at the tip of her nose; any second now it’d turn red and shiny and she’d burst into tears. She forced herself to look away. ‘D’you want some tea?’ she asked after a moment.

  ‘No.’ There was another monumentally awkward pause. Then he jumped to his feet as if he’d been bitten – or possibly shot. ‘Look, I’d better go. I’ve forgotten something—’

  Tash opened her mouth to say something – anything – then snapped it firmly shut. He ran out and suddenly the room was quiet. She looked around her slowly and poured herself a cup of tea. In a flash of inspiration, she poured a second cup and drank that as well. Then she polished off the scones. When the adults returned half an hour later, two empty cups sat side by side on the tray. Not even a dollop of cream remained.

  ‘Did you enjoy yourselves?’ Lady Soames said, beaming. ‘Where’s Rupert?’

  ‘You just missed him. He’d forgotten his homework or something,’ Tash said calmly. It was half true. She saw Lyudmila glance at the empty teacups with a small, self-satisfied smile. Job done. She beamed at Tash. Tash blinked slowly and looked away.

  3

  ANNICK BETANCOURT

  Mayfair, London

  Several miles and an entire world away from Tash’s cramped little basement flat, in her own enormous but empty apartment overlooking Hyde Park, Annick Betancourt sat down and opened the history book she’d been half-heartedly thumbing through before the phone call. She struggled to concentrate. How far was Henry VII’s government threatened by rebellions in the years 1485 to 1509? She stared at the question. The problem with it – as with most history questions – was that she didn’t actually care. She found it hard to summon up any kind of enthusiasm for things she had absolutely no interest in . . . and therein lay the problem. Although she wasn’t the only girl at St Benedict’s Sixth Form College who wasn’t academically inclined, she was certainly one of its most high-profile. In a school filled with the offspring of rock stars and royalty, Ann
ick Betancourt was both. Her father, the handsome, charismatic Sylvan Betancourt was the president of Togo (not that anyone knew where Togo was). Her mother, the gorgeous, glamorous Anouschka Malaquais, was a bona fide film star. Rarely a day went by in her native France without some mention of her in the press. She was perhaps lesser known in Britain for her roles than her robes, but Annick had long got used to the sight of her mother’s face staring impassively back at her from the cover of Hello!

  With two such illustrious parents it was inconceivable that their only child should turn out to be a dunce. But that was exactly what had happened. When it became known that Annick Betancourt would, in all likelihood, fail her A-levels, the school suggested (perfectly nicely) that she might perhaps be better off somewhere less, er, stringent in its pursuit of academic excellence. Anouschka immediately flew from Lomé to London (via Paris and the haute couture shows, of course), to protest. In person. As the excited girls whispered to each other afterwards, the headmaster was so overcome at the sight of Anouschka Malaquais-Betancourt, all high heels, flowing blonde hair and the unmistakeable whiff of power and wealth that clung to her like perfume, that he immediately capitulated. Annick stayed on.

  Annick herself wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or annoyed. She was relieved not to have to leave – that would have meant leaving Tash and Rebecca behind, in itself an unthinkable prospect. Between St Benedict’s and the Hyde Park apartment, she had little else to call ‘home’. Her father spent most of his time in Lomé, the Togolese capital, where she holidayed once a year – twice, if she were lucky. Her mother flitted back and forth between Lomé and Paris with the occasional stopover in London if the fashion shows were on. Annick very occasionally joined her at the beautiful Left Bank apartment in Paris for Christmas but it had been several years since she’d spent Christmas anywhere other than at Rebecca’s – which was daft because Rebecca was Jewish and didn’t celebrate it. Still, Aunt Mimí always put on the most fabulous lunch for the thirty-odd friends and relatives who always came to Harburg Hall on the day itself – and it sure as hell beat sitting in her own living room, alone or having Christmas dinner with the housekeeper, which was worse.

  A sharp tap at the door interrupted her.

  ‘Come in,’ she muttered.

  ‘Everything all right, Annick?’ Mrs Price asked, her eyes quickly sweeping the room. Like a lighthouse, Annick thought to herself irritably.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Mrs Price,’ she murmured. ‘Just doing my homework.’

  ‘I thought I heard you on the phone earlier and I know you’ve got a lot of homework on.’

  ‘Yeah.’ They both hesitated. Mrs Price was clearly waiting for Annick to elaborate further and Annick was determined not to. Annick always found it difficult. Although the palace in Lomé was stuffed full of servants, Mrs Price unnerved her. She didn’t quite fit the category of servant, at least not in the way the servants back in Togo did, and yet she was definitely not a family member. Still, there were times when Annick came home from a particularly bad day at school or she’d been waiting a week for one or other of her parents to call and the only person in the world she had to talk to was Mrs Price. On days like those, instead of going straight to her room, she hung around the kitchen, watching Mrs Price expertly slice onions or roll out a sheet of pastry for a pie and for a few minutes she could pretend she was like all her other friends with a mother to talk to, a father somewhere in the house . . . people who cared. Not that her parents didn’t care, she always reminded herself quickly. They just happened to live six thousand miles away and each had a job to do. They were busy people.

  ‘Well, don’t stay up too late, then,’ Mrs Price said finally, acknowledging defeat.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Price.’

  The door closed behind her. Annick blew out her cheeks and began to tidy her desk. She didn’t like thinking about her parents, especially not before going to bed. At night, without the distraction of traffic outside or the occasional sound of the neighbours, the flat was at its most silent. It was the silence she dreaded. When she went home in the holidays to Lomé, the house was always full of noise and laughter, people talking, arguing, debating, shouting. Life flowed around them: it was everywhere, in every visitor, every car that swept up the impressively long driveway; in the noisy, excited chatter of the many servants who lived in the quarters to the rear of the palace . . . noise, noise everywhere. In Lomé it was impossible to feel alone. London was the opposite. There were nights she felt as though she were the loneliest person alive.

  She shut her eyes tightly, trying to picture them – Maman, Papa and her – sitting in the sunny, spacious salon de thé in the apartment on rue Matignon. As always, she could see herself quite clearly but whenever she tried to focus on her mother or father, the image slipped, becoming fuzzy and unclear. She could picture certain things – the colour of her mother’s hair, especially after a visit to the hairdresser, or the small gold necklace with the three diamond circles that she always wore; her father’s dark tweed suits, smelling faintly of cigar smoke and aftershave and the way his beard always showed up dark and bruised under his skin. But not the whole picture. Not the three of them, together, complete. That image stubbornly refused to come. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to think of something else. Anything. No point in ruining another weekend by feeling homesick. Although how could you be homesick when you didn’t really have a home?

  4

  REBECCA HARBURG

  Hampstead, London

  Sitting opposite Adam Goldsmith, her second cousin on her father’s side whom she’d never met, Rebecca Harburg was in an agony of embarrassment – and, face it, lust. The object of her desire sat with his legs (in ripped and faded Levis) spread insouciantly apart, a cup of tea calmly balanced on his muscular thighs, chatting easily to the elderly aunts, spinsters, mothers and three other cousins who’d come to gape at this Goldsmith from the Belgian branch of the family, a creature from another planet. Blonde, blue-eyed, athletic and well over six foot tall, Adam Goldsmith looked like no other Harburg, dead or alive. He was twenty-three years old, fluent in half a dozen languages, now a trainee banker with the family firm and had recently returned from a two-year stint in the Israeli army. This last, of course, was the icing on the cake. No Harburg had ever done anything like it. He’d volunteered to serve in the Israeli army? What a mensch! Despite those rather uncomfortably Aryan looks, no one could accuse him of not being Jewish enough. In a sea of dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale and sensitively intelligent faces, the man who looked as if he’d stepped off the catwalk was going down a storm.

  Embeth Hausmann-Harburg, known to friends and family as Mimí, was sitting opposite him, her teacup and saucer balanced daintily on her knees, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a frown. The Friday afternoon gathering was at her house and it was her daughter whose mouth was hanging open. She stared at Rebecca, trying to get her attention. Pointless. Rebecca, along with everyone present – a half-deaf grandmother, three elderly great aunts, four girlish, simpering cousins and the maid – were dumbstruck. Orit, the maid she’d brought back from Tel Aviv, had almost dropped the tray when she saw him. She’d gone beet-red when he opened his mouth and said, ‘Shalom’ and then had to leave the room, quite overcome and without serving anyone to boot. Silly women. Had they never seen a good-looking man before? ‘Rebecca,’ Mimí hissed. ‘Rebecca! Cierra la boca! Close your mouth!’

  But Rebecca was beyond hearing. She was sitting close enough to reach out and touch him. Those long, lean, finely toned thighs; the broad chest underneath the cream Fair Isle sweater that offset his tan; the bulge of his biceps; the thick, sandy blonde hair; and those tanned, rugged cheeks with a morning’s worth of beard already showing through. She was rendered completely dumb. He reminded her of the marble statue of Adonis, the beautiful Greek god who stood outside the library at school. An image of the statue’s limp penis suddenly slipped into her head and she
choked on her scone, sending crumbs flying out of her mouth.

  ‘What’s matter with her?’ Eleanor, the oldest of the great aunts, suddenly spoke up. She was hard of hearing and squinted anxiously in the direction of the noise.

  ‘She’s choking! Get her some water!’ Another great aunt sprang into action.

  ‘The girl’s choking?’ Aunt Eleanor fumbled for her spectacles.

  ‘Will someone get the girl some water?’ Aunt Rosa yelled. ‘You want she should choke to death?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m fine,’ Rebecca stammered, furiously wiping away her tears. The embarrassment was almost as bad as the coughing fit. ‘No, really . . . I’m fine.’ She waved off their concern.

  ‘She’s fine. It just went down the wrong way, that’s all.’ Mimí soothed her anxious relations. ‘Why don’t you go and wash your face?’ she turned to Rebecca calmly. ‘And get some fresh air,’ she added firmly.

  Rebecca jumped to her feet, stealing a quick glance at Adam. He was eating his scone as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she heard one of the aunts say to another as she left the room. ‘Such a fright she gave me! D’you remember the Meyerson boy? The tall one? Had an allergy to nuts. Dropped dead, just like that! One minute here, the next . . . gone!’

  ‘Oooh, don’t remind me, please! Terrible business, terrible. It took them years to get over it—’

  ‘Such things you don’t get over, Miriam. Never.’

  Rebecca stifled a giggle as she closed the door behind her. Every Friday, her mother served afternoon tea for a never-ending stream of aunts and great aunts, followed by the traditional Friday night seder. Lesser family members fought over the invitations like dogs over scraps of meat. Embeth’s seders were beautiful occasions, more social than spiritual. An invitation to Harburg Hall on a Friday night was a sign that you’d arrived. There was to be a special seder that evening to welcome Adam to London. He was about to join the family bank, starting with a position right at the bottom. It was the way they did things at Harburg’s. In three generations, no one had ever made director without having worked everywhere, ‘from the mail room to the boardroom,’ as Lionel, Rebecca’s father, liked to say. It seemed rather unlikely that Adam would be delivering mail, Rebecca thought to herself as she hurried to the bathroom. If she was lucky and found herself seated next to him at dinner, perhaps she could ask him what he would be doing? At the thought of dinner and possibly being seated next to Adam, she brightened.