CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
This time, when Irinka went back to England, she did not wallow.
She did not waft about London, trying to match the Big Smoke in all its gray sprawl.
And that was handy, because it was a lovely summer. Bright and clear—and that meant there was no pretending that she wasn’t, in fact, the great cloud currently storming her way all over the British Isles.
She spent her first night home in her little house in Notting Hill, but everything seemed different to her now. Had she collected all of these things because she truly liked them? Or because she’d liked thinking up a different persona to go with each purchase?
Because she could remember each and every one of them as if they were friends, not parts she’d played. At the same time, she could remember how it felt to play each character, how soothing it was to slip into a different skin, and see the world out of different eyes.
Just as she could remember all the time she’d always liked to spend here, alone, reacquainting herself with those characters. As if she was always auditioning to see which one might fit the new moment she was in.
Irinka had always viewed it as her secret weapon, this ability to become someone else when it suited her.
But now she found herself wondering if what she’d actually been doing her whole life was trying on characters, waiting to see if one fit. Changing roles with every new person to lessen the possibility that anyone might get fed up with her and discard her.
No wonder her own skin felt so strange.
She didn’t call her friends. She did check her voice mail and wasn’t entirely surprised to find a series of increasingly unhinged messages from her clients. Though she would have preferred to ignore work entirely, she decided that the last thing she needed was these men in her life any longer.
So she called each and every one of them and noted that they were all confounded when she did not lapse off into character—the flirtier, sweeter, more amenable character she usually played for them—while talking to them.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” said one man, who’d had Irinka staging scenes to break up with a girlfriend for him for the past two and a half years. On a strict seasonal schedule.
“The way I see it, you have two options, Craig,” she told him calmly. “You could stop dating women that you don’t like, thereby skirting the necessity to get rid of them every three months. Or—and this might come as a shock—you could also break up each one of them yourself. Like a man.”
And perhaps there was something wrong with her that she found herself smiling at his outraged, sputtering response.
But she held that closely, like a personal security blanket, as she went and got on the train. And then sat back, staring out the window as the train slowly heaved itself out of London proper, and on into the countryside.
It only took a bit more than a quarter of an hour before she found herself in the old market town and decided—it being such a lovely day, summery and blue but not too warm—to walk out along the hedgerows into the rambling, wildly green land that made up this part of the countryside.
She had always wanted to walk here.
And so she did, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face and the way her body responded to the motion. Her feet on the ground, her arms pumping.
No characters, just her.
Irinka turned in at an old stile, climbing up and over it, and then followed a path that rambled along until it turned into a bit of a lane. She wandered past a selection of lakes, one complete with its own dramatic folly, before walking up a drive rich in ancient oaks whose branches created a dense green canopy overhead.
And when she got to the top, an imposing stately house sat there. The way it had been sitting there, proud behind its gates and deep in the heart of all this beautiful land, for centuries now.
There were flags flying at the top of the house, because, just like royalty, the Duke always wished the common folk to know when he was in residence. Not so that they would think to call upon him, but so that they would know better than to trouble him at all.
Irinka had no such qualms. She marched herself right up the formidable front steps and rang the actual bell that graced the epically grand front door.
Then smiled at the dour-faced butler who answered.
Eventually.
Really, she was becoming an old hand at presenting herself at the doors of historic old houses and demanding entrance.
“His Grace is not accepting visitors,” the butler told her, with scandalized affront, to make it clear that it was not the done thing to simply appear at the door of a house like this. As if she was a tinker selling her grubby wares.
She only smiled wider. “Luckily enough, I am not a visitor. I am His Grace’s disgraced and illegitimate daughter.”
The butler was unmoved and, in any case, she suspected he knew exactly who she was. It was his job to know such things.
So Irinka shrugged. “If he does not wish to see me, I will simply call the first tabloid that comes to mind and see if they can provide a more sympathetic ear.”
And as she’d known it would, that got her ushered right in. The butler stalked off into the bowels of the house and Irinka followed. When she’d been younger, as much as she’d disliked her father, she’d found herself wondering what it might have been like to grow up in a place like this. So crushed beneath the weight of its own self-importance that even the ceilings seemed to hang lower than they should.
But now she thought of Venice. She remembered the airy rooms of the palazzo, always opened to the world of water and wishes that was just outside. And now as she walked through the Duke’s ancestral home, all she could wonder was how many ghosts lingered in these hallways—and how lucky she was that she’d never spent enough time here to see them.
Because the mean old ghost she saw when she came here was always the same one.
And, tragically, he was still alive and what passed for well. Or so she assumed, because surely someone would have told her if he wasn’t. And she knew perfectly well she would be swept back up in the news coverage once he died.
Something else to look forward to, she told herself tartly as she walked down the hushed corridor decorated with medieval suits of armor on podiums every few feet and ancient banners from old wars proudly displayed.
The butler led her to the same room that she was always led to when she came here. Or was brought here, the way she had been long ago. He opened the door, looked at her as if she was a deep, personal insult to him and this house, and then waved her inside.
Where the Duke, her father despite how arduously he wished to deny it, stood in front of his vast and important desk, vibrating with rage.
At least she assumed it was rage. It wasn’t as if she’d ever seen a different expression aimed in her direction, and every time she saw him, she was forced to reflect that it wasn’t the best look on a man so red of face. And with a belly that made her think that perhaps he was too committed to his puddings, and likely plagued by gout.
She considered it a sign of great personal growth that she wasn’t even tempted to say such things to him.
“Hello, Dad,” she said instead, and yes, she was fully aware that he would probably have preferred to discuss his ailments than listen to her call him Dad .
Irinka had planned this all out on the way back from Venice. After she’d picked herself up off the floor sometime much later that same night. And then had soaked herself in her bath for so long that she thought she’d never unpickle herself. Once she’d dried off, she’d collapsed into bed and had passed out into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
In the morning, she’d begun plotting out her next move.
But this time, she had no intention of playing her usual games. She winced at the word. This time, she had particular questions she wanted to ask, that was all. And she intended to get answers.
Even from the Duke.
Yet before she could launch into the things she wanted to ask, her father took the opportunity to speak instead. Jowls trembling to indicate that he was appalled by her, as usual.
“I knew you would come crawling back,” he spat at her. “I suppose you’ve blown through all the money I already gave you, haven’t you? I told you then that I won’t be footing the bill for your lavish, irresponsible lifestyle. I’ve paid, and I won’t pay more.”
Irinka stood there, gazing at him. Looking at him the way she would any person she might encounter on the street and not coloring the experience with the clips she’d seen of him and her mother when they’d been dating. Not weighting it down with the fact he’d fathered her.
What she saw was an old, sad, unhealthy man who thought his wealth would save him from everything that irked him, even death. Maybe especially death.
“I’m very well,” she said quietly, after a moment. “Thank you so much for asking.”
“You have spent your life skating about on my good name,” he frothed at her, his brows practically tangled together, his frown was so deep. “Embarrassing my family with your shamelessness.”
“Oh, no, Your Grace,” Irinka replied in the same quiet tone. “I’m afraid they do that all by themselves.”
And it was tempting to remind him that his heir was a gambler, his spare was an addict, and his daughter was on her third divorce, but she was certain he knew that. Just as she was certain that somehow, he would find a way to blame her for it.
“I won’t give you a single sodding pound,” the old man told her, his voice trembling. “If you ran through your settlement, that’s on you. I can only hope that you and your mother finally descend into the sewer from whence you came.”
And Irinka couldn’t decide if what she felt as she stood there before him was temper or sadness. It was a kind of grief, that she was sure of, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what kind.
Because she didn’t want a relationship with this man. She had only meant to ask him why he’d thought it was necessary to be so cruel to an innocent girl who had nothing at all to do with what had happened between him and Roksana. She had wondered if now, all these years later, there might at the very least be a frank discussion.
But instead there was this. The same as always.
It wasn’t that she was surprised. This was the man she’d met when she was a girl. This was the man who had revealed himself in all of those tabloids, and in court, as small and mean. Over and over again.
Maybe she had been hoping that in the fullness of time, there could be something other than vitriol between them.
“Do you have nothing to say for yourself?” he demanded. “After all the fine schools I paid for?”
“I had quite a lot to say, actually,” Irinka replied, thinking that she would have been better off having this conversation with one of the empty suits of armor outside. She would have gotten more back. “But now I don’t really see the point of it. I don’t want your money.”
He scoffed. “A likely tale.”
“I think you are confusing me for every other person in your life,” Irinka said gently. “I’m sure you will be delighted to know that I not only have not run through the funds you provided me so generously when ordered to by the court, but have significantly expanded my portfolio since then. No thanks to you.”
His face began to mottle, so she smiled. “I would rather sleep rough than take anything else from you, ever. I wanted only to ask you a question, daughter to father. But I suppose you’ve answered it, haven’t you?”
“You can see yourself out,” the Duke snarled at her. “And don’t come back.”
Irinka shook her head. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
And it was the strangest thing, but as she walked away, out of the gloomy halls of his old house and into all that waiting sunshine, she felt as if a set of weights she hadn’t known were strapped to her came loose. She could almost imagine they were floating off like rogue balloons, and no doubt getting trapped in the eaves.
But it didn’t matter where they went. They weren’t hers any longer.
She took that long walk back into town, and took her time with it. Then she sat and waited for the train, understanding that this time, she really wouldn’t be returning.
This time, she really was done with everything involving that man.
Except, of course, his good name.
Irinka laughed about that all the way back into London.
And once there, she didn’t head toward her little house again. Instead she made her way over to her mother’s current flat in a desperately chic and outrageously expensive block of them on the Thames. She announced herself in the lobby and then took the dark, metallic elevator up high. She was not surprised to find her mother waiting for her when the elevator opened directly into that sleek, dramatic living room, the low-slung mid-century modern pieces disappearing against the view of London from every vast window.
In the midst of all that, Roksana looked like a goddess.
Perhaps that was the point.
“Now we are dropping by?” her mother demanded. “Without even a call?”
She was as brusque as ever, but Irinka noticed that she came closer as she spoke. Her gaze moved all over her daughter’s body, as if she was looking for signs of damage.
“I have some questions for you,” Irinka said, when it looked as if Roksana was slightly mollified not to find any blood or obvious bruising. “I think I’ve been waiting to ask them all my life.”
“Beware a question whose answer must be excavated to be known,” Roksana intoned. “I would sooner take my chances with wolves.”
Another question Irinka wanted to ask her mother, but not now, was why wolves featured so significantly in her conversation when as far as Irinka knew, her mother had never encountered one. Nor the woods she often claimed was their home.
But that wasn’t why she was here. “Do you love me, momochka ?”
Roksana flinched, as if Irinka had taken a swing and punched her straight in the face.
“What is this question?” She sounded cross, but Irinka had seen that flinch with her own eyes. “Have you taken ill?”
“I know you won’t answer me,” Irinka said. “But I wanted to ask anyway.”
She looked at her mother and, as always, it was like looking into her future. The same black hair. The same blue eyes. Irinka had always thought her mother was more beautiful because of the way her face was sculpted into near otherworldliness, though she knew some people considered that a kind of hardness.
They had the same build. At different points, they’d shared the same clothes. People had often said they looked like sisters, and Irinka had never found that insulting. How could she? Roksana was still considered one of the most beautiful women on the planet.
Besides, her mother had only been eighteen when she’d had Irinka. She had already been famous for years. And Irinka had read many articles that claimed that a fame like Roksana’s meant she wasn’t any sort of typical teenager. That she’d had been wise beyond her years , which was the thing that men always said to excuse the fact that they were apparently too immature for theirs.
Roksana had been told by everyone who mattered that her career would be over if she had her baby, much less kept it. Irinka knew that she had always taken great pleasure in proving them wrong.
“Of course I love you,” her mother said, belting the words out as if she thought that if they lingered on her tongue, they might bite her. “Can this be in any doubt?”
“What about all of your lovers over the years?” Irinka asked. “Did you love them, too?”
She had made a pact with herself long ago only to remember the ones she liked. Mats, the Viking, who had made them all laugh so much. Olivier, the great reader, who still sent Irinka book recommendations from time to time. Byron, whose sweetness had seemed like a miracle to her in the midst of a rather bruising few years there.
Roksana looked at her for a long moment and then she turned, making her way across the vast living space. She paced across the room like it was a runway and managed to look the part despite wearing the most casual of clothes, and then settled herself dramatically in the chair she preferred, likely because it resembled a throne.
She picked up the drink that she’d left there. There was a time when Irinka might have investigated to see if it was vodka or not, but that didn’t matter now. Her mother could do as she liked. She had earned that.
Surely they all had.
“I think you must tell me why you are asking me these things,” Roksana said, in a neutral tone. That was her mother at her most suspicious.
“These aren’t questions meant to trap you.” Irinka trailed after her mother, and sat down on one of the low couches. “I honestly want to know. The thing is, I don’t…” It was so hard to say out loud, even to Roksana, who made a habit out of not reacting to anything. It had always made her a safe space, really. “I don’t know how to love anybody. I think I’ve been pretending.”
“Don’t be silly,” her mother said at once. “You have those friends of yours.” She swirled her drink around in its tumbler. “I have always been impressed that you were able to do this, Irinka. Have these friendships and maintain them. This is not something that was available to me.”
“Was it not available to you or did you not know how to do it?” Irinka asked.
Roksana looked out toward that endless view over London for a moment, though Irinka didn’t think she was examining Big Ben in the distance. She took her time looking back again.
“I was terrified to bring a daughter into this world,” she said, in a voice very different from the one she normally used, so brusque and harsh. Roksana sounded…hushed. Irinka would have thought her uncertain , but that was not a state she could imagine her mother inhabiting. Not even for her. “I already knew what it was like to be a girl and I could not recommend the experience. I learned many things too young. And I did not want you to have to figure out how to survive those things as you went along, so I did my best to make you tough. If you started tough, you would not have to learn toughness the hard way, by surviving.” She did not smile. She looked at Irinka, her gaze stark and direct. Blue to blue. “I did what I thought was necessary to keep you safe.”
What she did not say, because everyone else who had seen them always said it for her, was that she had understood that Irinka was beautiful. Just as she had been. And she’d understood that their kind of beauty was as much a burden as it was a boon.
Roksana had made sure she’d comprehended that young.
Your face is so lovely that the rest of you must be sharp, like a knife, she had told Irinka when she was very young. So it would sink in early and stay.
And Irinka really did love her mother, despite the things she’d done, and hurdles she’d made her daughter jump over, time and again. She really did love this woman who she knew, with every fiber of her being, would have died for her a hundred times over.
Sometimes she thought that’s what Roksana’s court case against the Duke had been about. She’d had her own money. She hadn’t needed his.
But she didn’t like the way he’d felt he could talk about her daughter.
Roksana might not have been a tender parent. She was not cuddly. Irinka had heard her say, more than once, that she was not tactile and that had extended to her child.
But her love was fierce and dangerous. Her love was like a weapon, and Irinka had always known that it was hers whenever she might need it.
So she did not tell Roksana that some of the ways she’d made her daughter tough had broken her where it counted.
Because maybe that was her own fault, in the end. There was a certain point that everyone had to take responsibility for their own lives, wasn’t there?
It was love at first sight, Zago had told her, and his voice still rumbled around inside her. Like thunder.
Irinka went over and hugged her mother. And then held on, even though she knew Roksana hated it. Because even though she did hate it, and stiffened at first, Roksana eventually relaxed. With a sigh.
And patted Irinka on the back. Again and again, until she let go.
“There,” Roksana said, looking somewhat wild-eyed, as if she had passed a treacherous test of some kind. “All is well, yes?”
“I love you, momochka ,” Irinka murmured.
Then she kissed her on the cheek, and left.
She thought a lot about her friends that evening when she was tucked up in her house with a takeaway. And the fact that a woman like Roksana, who trusted no one and was proud of that, had noticed that Irinka’s friendships were real. And good.
A glance at the text chain showed that her friends had moved on to a rousing conversation about the potentially dueling weddings they were all planning.
Irinka joined in, presenting them with hastily assembled mood boards designed to make each one of them scream in horrified laughter, and found herself laughing too, sitting cross-legged on the cozy sofa in her living room as she sent them all a barrage of images.
Each one more outrageous than the last.
When she looked around and saw all the characters she’d played up there on her walls, she realized that she’d forgotten to include her friends in all of this reckoning she was doing.
These women who had loved her no matter what state she was in, or what character she was playing. These women who had supported her, and laughed with her, and were never afraid to tease her or call her on her nonsense.
These friends who allowed her space and always welcomed her back as if she’d never been away.
These friends who asked for nothing but her, however she showed up. In whatever role she was playing that day.
How could she say that she didn’t know love, when of course she did?
How could she think that she didn’t have the slightest idea how to have a relationship, when she’d been having four rather deep and consuming ones all this time? Individual relationships with each one of her friends, and then the group relationship they all had together?
Why did she think that love only mattered when it involved a man?
She had to sit with that one some while.
And eventually, it led her around to her job. And how she’d researched all the details in each case, but had never spent any time figuring out who the woman was in each instance whose heart she was pummeling with her antics.
It wasn’t that she thought she was more responsible for the way those men had handled their relationships than they were.
But she also had to wonder why it was she’d never given a second thought to any of those women.
Except one. And only because her brother had insisted she think about her actions.
And that was how she got the bright idea to go find Nicolosa Baldissera and apologize to her.
Not only because she was Zago’s little sister, but because she was representative of all the women that Irinka had believed she was saving. When, maybe, she was more like Roksana than she wanted to admit—and her version of saving a person was harsher than she wanted to admit.
Maybe she’d learned that cruelty was kindness a long time ago and had never had occasion to question it until now.
“But now,” she told herself as she left her house that evening, “you are questioning everything .”
It had been easy enough to find the younger girl. Because it was easy enough—if a person had a particular set of skills and access to certain databases—to locate the properties owned by her brother, look them all up, and then determine which one she thought would appeal to a younger university student.
Then it was nothing at all to turn up at the lobby of Nicolosa’s building, pretend to be one of her friends, and have the very nice security man—who probably should have been less forthcoming, and likely needed someone to tell him that, though it wouldn’t be her—tell her in a chatty sort of way that Miss Baldissera had popped out for dinner.
“Over the road at the brasserie,” he confided. “If I heard it correctly.”
Irinka smiled. “I’m sure you did.”
She walked back outside and decided that she felt different as she made her way down to the zebra crossing, then over the road. It was a pretty night and the light was lingering. The air was cool, and even though she thought that ought to have felt gray straight through after all the revelations she’d had since Venice, she didn’t.
Maybe she couldn’t.
There was a freedom in confronting both of her parents, choosing what to take and what to leave. There was a freedom in acknowledging that she didn’t know how to love, and hadn’t, for years now. Not the way she wanted to.
Not the way Zago did.
She had to think that there would be a freedom in this, too. In acknowledging the role she had played in another person’s life. No matter what her intentions might have been, she had contributed to someone else’s pain, and she wanted to acknowledge it.
And she didn’t think about what her reception would be or what it might accomplish. She knew she needed to do this and she wasn’t thinking about the future. She wasn’t tallying up these revelations, like she thought a certain amount of one thing or another would help her find her way back to a man with dark amber eyes in a flooded city.
The future would do what it would.
That, too, felt like a freedom.
Irinka walked into the brasserie, not surprised to find it high-end and crowded. She smiled at the ma?tre d’ as she walked past him. She looked around, certain that she would be able to recognize Nicolosa based on the pictures she’d seen online.
Maybe she was a little bit embarrassed that she couldn’t remember her from that night in Felipe De Osma’s flat.
But she saw Zago instead.
And she froze.
He was seated at a table with a pretty young girl, and she knew immediately that it was his sister. Something she probably would have guessed even if they didn’t look so much alike, and she hadn’t just been examining Nicolosa’s pictures online.
But there was that moment first.
That split second when the pit of her stomach opened and it was like concrete dropped straight through, making her feel sick and dizzy at once.
And she understood in that moment how little she’d really grasped about the service she’d been performing.
Irinka stood there, watching Zago and his sister talk. She saw him smile engagingly, and tease an answering smile back.
And it was like a key into a lock.
The bolt was thrown, and now she understood at last.
It was a wonder that it had taken her this long. But, by the same token, if events hadn’t happened in the precise sequence they had, she knew she never would have gotten here at all. She would likely have been in a new costume, haunting this very restaurant.
“May I help you, madam?” asked the ma?tre d’ from beside her.
And when Irinka turned, she made sure to keep her back to the table until she was sure she was out of sight, smiling at the man as she went.
“I was looking for someone,” she told him. “But I think… I think I must have gotten it wrong.”
Deeply and surpassingly wrong, she told herself when she pushed her way outside.
She took a deep breath when she hit the street, filling up her lungs and then letting out again. Then she walked all the way back across Central London to her sweet little house on the Portobello Road, and cried again the moment she shut the door behind her.
This time, for the opposite reason.
Not because of what she’d lost.
Not because of what hurt, what was broken, what she was hiding.
But because, at last, she knew exactly who she was.
And better still, what that meant.