Tangled Webs

CHAPTER ONE

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Islas Del Penta, Panama, New Year’s Day

Sage woke early after a long night of broken sleep.

The rising sun’s rays, already strong, were glaring through the dilapidated wooden shutters of her bedroom window.

Not yet ready to face the world, she kept her eyes tightly closed.

Her dry throat constricted as she tried to swallow.

Lifting a hand to her face, she gingerly traced the swelling around her left eye.

She suspected that the delicate bone beneath the eyebrow was broken and knew that this time, she would leave.

The sound of gentle breathing reminded Sage she was not alone in the bed.

Carefully so as not to wake him, she pulled the solid, comforting warmth of her three-year-old son towards her and encircled him gently with her arms. The tempo of Hal’s rhythmic, sweet breaths soothed her jangled nerves sufficiently for her to finally open her eyes.

She turned onto her back and gently moved away from the sleeping child.

She found that she was fighting to keep her breathing even, strung out and taut in every frightened sinew.

Today was going to be fraught with complications.

Her husband and his mother would make her escape from the island as difficult as possible.

She had guessed that Santiago would not have slept in their bed last night – he rarely did any more – but she was apprehensive nevertheless and looked around the large room, which was somehow still elegant despite its shabby state.

Reassured to find that she and Hal were alone, she let out another sigh into the warm and heavy air; one of relief this time, which she had not realized she had been holding in.

Young women all over the world had mourned when American playboy racing driver and renowned bachelor Santiago Deverill had married her.

She knew that even now, people still envied her.

They saw the nineteenth-century plantation estate set on this Pacific island with its hundred acres surrounding the grand but crumbling colonial mansion where she was raising their child, and immediately reached the conclusion that Sage Deverill must be happy.

Happiness, however, had eluded Sage for the last four years.

Hearing the muffled squawks of her mother-in-law’s African grey parrot from the confines of its cage on the veranda below the window, Sage sat up cautiously and edged her way over to the side of the bed, taking care not to wake Hal, still peacefully sleeping.

She hoped, as she swung her legs off the side of the bed, that she would have a chance to compose some semblance of a plan before he woke.

She pulled on an old pair of denim cut-off shorts and a faded blue linen shirt that she had been wearing the day before, then swept her thick, tangled hair off her hot neck and tied it into a hurried plait.

She bent down to pick up her espadrilles with one hand before grabbing her dark glasses from the dressing table with the other.

It was dawn, a quarter past six, and the temperature already felt as if it was up in the thirties.

Sage felt the stifling, humid heat closing in on her as she stepped out into the stale air of the hallway.

She yearned for a sharp, white, frosty English morning.

A wave of homesickness crashed over her without warning, causing her to let out an involuntary sob.

She clapped a hand over her mouth as though to trap in the grief.

Squaring her shoulders and sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she padded purposefully across the polished teak floorboards on bare feet.

As she passed the mirror that hung in the gloom of the ornate upstairs landing, she paused at the sight of her reflection and winced; her green, swollen eyelid was casting a purple shadow over her high cheekbone like some sort of grotesque stage make-up.

Carefully, she put on the glasses and crept downstairs.

The maids had not started work yet; all the downstairs shutters were still closed and a putrid smell of stale cigarette smoke hung heavily in the semi-darkness.

Sage found the front door ajar and pushed it open, stepping out onto the enclosed wooden veranda that wrapped around the huge house.

The bamboo blinds had been lowered but enough of the morning light was shining through to show the scattered debris from last night’s after-party.

Empty bottles were strewn across the tables and floor, and every available surface was crowded with empty glasses, overflowing ashtrays and discarded packets of cigarettes.

Beneath the bright, beating sunshine, Sage could see a similar extent of wreckage surrounding the pool outside.

At the far end of the veranda, on a chaise longue, lay a supine body which Sage recognized as that of her husband.

She approached cautiously, willing him not to regain consciousness, but as she got closer she heard his comatose snoring and knew that it was safe for a while at least; he would not wake easily now.

One of Santiago’s arms was hanging limply to the ground, his hand still clutching a crystal tumbler filled with amber liquid.

Rum always brought out the very worst in him.

Sage angrily swiped away a tear, furious at herself for still caring, enraged that she still felt anything for the man who had hurt her, time and time again.

It had not always been like this. She had fallen in love with his fun side – he could be sweet and amusing and would know how to lift your mood – but he was no longer remotely kind to her; his mother had seen to that.

He was still undeniably the life and soul of every party.

Too much party, though, Sage thought ruefully, as she noticed the remains of the lines of white powder that had been regimentally lined up on the glass tabletop.

She examined her husband a little more closely.

His handsome face looked dreadful and considerably older than his twenty-eight years.

His dark hair was greasy with dried sweat.

Red veins threaded along puffy cheeks, under closed feline eyes, his golden, sunburnt skin looked as dry as paper, crinkling where it touched the cushion, and Sage noticed, shuddering with revulsion, that he had white discharge trickling out of one broken-veined nostril.

She wondered how many girls had been there last night.

It was the first time that Santiago had actually brought the party back to the house.

Normally he kept his extracurricular activities at a distance, but not last night.

Things had taken a turn. It still hurt horribly but knowing that she was finally going to leave managed to lessen the usual pain and somehow made it feel more distant; almost as though it were affecting someone else.

Santiago’s phone, as ever almost surgically attached to him, lit up and buzzed next to his head, startling Sage, but still he did not move.

The rank smell of tobacco smoke was starting to make her feel sick, so with one last look at her handsome, abusive, pathetic husband, she hurried back inside to check on their son.

She was still careful to tread lightly as she passed through the downstairs hall, for the last thing she wanted was to alert her mother-in-law, who would be upstairs in the master bedroom.

When Sage first arrived at Finca Azucar, she had been full of hope.

Santiago had been depressed and irritable since the accident that forced him to retire a few months previously with a busted shoulder.

A change of scene seemed the answer to it all when Lucilla had asked Santiago to return.

It was the most beautiful house on the island and she had tried to make it her home; she had been nervous about being so isolated so she had tried, every day, to forge some sort of relationship with Lucilla and had genuinely wanted the cold older woman to like her.

Lucilla had always treated Sage like an unwelcome visitor though.

She would mostly ignore Sage but if she did speak to her, she would feign forgetfulness and call her ‘Lotta’, who had been Santiago’s previous girlfriend.

Sage had not really even particularly minded that; she’d been so fiercely lonely that at first she had just been pitifully grateful to be addressed at all.

Now she found the silent treatment easier to bear.

Lucilla had been there the previous afternoon.

Santiago had been high on drugs and already full of alcohol when Sage had tentatively suggested that he might drink less rum and more water.

Santiago had smacked Sage with the back of his hand, sending her across the drawing room and into his new enormous flat-screen television, which had smashed on impact.

It was not the first time he had hurt her but it was the first time he had purposefully hit her, and this time it had been in front of Hal and Lucilla.

Their young son had been paralysed with fear, while Lucilla had simply looked the other way and moved into the hall to rearrange a vase of lilies.

Sage had scooped up a shaking, ashen Hal and fled with him in her arms to the sanctuary of their bedroom.

Not just frightened but furious, she had finally stopped believing she could, or should, make her marriage work.

Hal had been traumatized, sobbing and shaking until he finally fell asleep in her arms. Sage, in that moment, vowed to get him away from Islas Del Penta as soon as physically possible.

She would do whatever was necessary to protect him.