Chapter Twenty-Three 5 November 2023 #2
I’d never known that. Our career aspirations were not something Amira and I had ever discussed in school, both our futures already laid out before us, not a single twist or deviation from the path allowed.
She was meant to marry up. I had no higher to rise, so I was to marry someone with a respectable name and a face that looked nice on a tea towel.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Vikki smiled sadly. “I’ve learned to stay out of the lives of my children.”
Gingerly, I put my feet flat on the floorboards, testing my sore arches. But the pain was so great that I groaned, remembering how it felt to come back down to Earth after a day spent en pointe during my ballet years.
Vikki jutted her chin at the So Kates lying on the floor. “If you want to wear those, you need to get your lady-in-waiting to buy you some numbing spray from the chemist. Then you’ll be able to stay up that high as long as you like.”
“Doesn’t that just delay the pain?”
She shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. But the more you do it, the less you feel it.”
We were quiet again. She seemed to sense that I had something to say.
“Vikki.”
“Yes, darling.”
“Can I ask you something? And it stays between us?”
“Of course, darling.”
My heart was making a low, heavy thud in my chest. “I might need to… that is to say, I haven’t decided yet… but I might need to give someone money. I’m not sure he’ll take it. I’m not even sure this would work. But I might have to try.”
It had occurred to me during one of my many late-night ruminations that Davide Rossi would not be willing to reveal what happened the night Mum died unless he was being paid handsomely for his story.
He had been silent for twelve years. Going public now could only mean photographers pressed up against the gates of his home in an apocalyptic swarm, coronial inquiries reopened, death threats in his mailbox.
Whatever Richard was offering him had to make it worth it.
But I was fairly certain that money was the one thing Richard didn’t have.
There were whispers about loans from arms dealers and tycoons, suitcases stuffed with cash that were meant to be charitable donations.
All of it was rumoured to be spent on lavish holidays, private jets and designer clothes in a matter of months, so that he was continually seeking more.
If Richard was yet to deliver on his promise to Davide Rossi, I had an opportunity to get in first.
“Lexi,” Vikki said carefully, “are you in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what kind of trouble you’re in?”
“No, I’d rather not,” I murmured. “All I can say is that someone knows something about me. And I thought, maybe, I could go to him and ask that it remain a secret.”
“How much money do you need?”
“I have no idea.”
“How much time do you have?”
“I’m not sure.” I remembered Richard’s face on the stairs in Scotland as I’d stumbled away from him. “I think until the end of the year?”
“Good,” she said. “Well, in a situation like this, I recommend going in quite hard. Perhaps ￡1 million would do it. Don’t ask them for a number, and don’t try to low-ball them. Just have it done with.”
I looked at her, but she was still lounging against the staircase. Vikki was a certain breed of woman, like Barbara, who knew what needed to be done and didn’t hesitate to act.
“You realise, Lexi,” she said, “that you’ll need an emissary. You can’t just walk up to this man with a cheque and ask if he’d mind staying quiet.”
I hadn’t given much thought to the logistics, although I’d assumed Davide and I were pair-bonded by that awful night, and that if he saw me, he might take pity on me again.
Vikki sat up and took my hands. “I know you don’t like to ask for help, but this isn’t the kind of thing one can do alone. Especially you.”
I wished suddenly for another So Kate to toss, but I was out of shoes. “I don’t want to involve you in this any more than I already have.”
She winked at me. “Too late for that.”
We sat for a while in familial silence, her fingers still holding mine, but her face grew sombre.
“You know, if you’d come to me with a problem like this a year ago, I would have made you take a cheque and sort this out.
I want you to be queen, Lexi, and not just because it would mean that you could always protect Amira.
And not even because it would be, well… advantageous for me.
” She waited until I met her eyes. “I want you to be queen because I know you’d be very good at it. ”
It was the nicest thing she’d ever said to me, even if I didn’t see how it could possibly be true.
“There was a time when all I wanted was to be where I am,” she went on.
“But I didn’t quite realise the sacrifice that it would require.
I didn’t realise I’d lose my baby. I didn’t realise what it would be like—living on a landfill of secrets, the stench of it making me sick all the time, making it impossible to sleep. ”
Her eyes grew wet, and I squeezed her hands. She had lowered her children into the whirlpool and watched as they were both sucked into its gaping black centre. Only Amira had emerged, like flotsam on a tide.
“If you want to do this, I will help you,” she said.
“We never have to tell Amira, or Madhav, or anyone else. Say the word, and I’ll write you a cheque, or put it all into a crypto account, or however these things are handled these days.
But once you do something like this, there’ll be no turning back. You must understand that.”
She kissed my knuckles and got off the stairs, stooping to collect my So Kates from the floor.
“I’ll have the staff take these to the cobbler as well,” she said.
The needle-like heel on the right shoe was now hopelessly askew. Vikki looked at me as I sat at the bottom of the steps like a broken-down doll in my couture and ugg boots. She smiled at me sadly.
“I don’t think you’re ready to be up this high, do you?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet. Maybe soon.”