Guilty Pleasures. Tasmina Perry

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СКАЧАТЬ of course, for allowing her husband Desmond to leave. She had tried to put that day in a box at the back of her mind. The day Desmond had left her for another woman, leaving her to bring up Cassandra and Tom by herself. In the years that followed Desmond had given very little financial support to Julia; maintenance payments dwindled to nothing once he’d moved to South Africa twelve months after their divorce. But it wasn’t money Cassandra wanted from her father; it was love, support, approval. So Julia had spent the last two decades trying to make up for it. That was why she had volunteered to bring up Ruby when Cassandra had made the move to New York and it hadn’t been easy. Suddenly burdened with a three-year-old grandchild, Julia had been forced to cut her time back at the Oxford gallery she owned with the result that it had almost gone under. It had taken the business a decade to recover but Julia had taken the sacrifice on the chin: everything she did was for her children.

      Julia held her hand to her breast as if she had been stung.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cassandra with an unusual tone of softness. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just incredibly frustrated by the whole thing.’

      ‘I could sell my shareholding to you, if that’s what you want, darling?’ replied Julia. ‘A gallery space I’d love is coming up soon on Cork Street. The money would certainly come in handy.’

      ‘Mother, you have 5 per cent stock,’ sighed Cassandra, ‘and 5 per cent is neither use nor ornament.’

      They fell into silence as Lucia entered to serve the poached salmon with a spoonful of hollandaise sauce on the side. Julia used the interruption to change the subject – the situation at Milford was all anyone in the village could talk about and for Julia it was getting a little trying – and besides, she was keen to move on to matters even closer to home. ‘Darling, the reason I wanted to see you today is that I’m very concerned about your brother,’ she said.

      ‘What’s the matter this time?’ asked Cassandra. She was aware that Tom had moved back into her mother’s house and expected a tirade about cigarettes, loud music and mountains of washing.

      ‘He wants to go to Goa. Next week. And he wants me to pay for it,’ said Julia, a tone of exasperation in her voice.

      ‘I should think it will do him good to get out of the country for a while,’ said Cassandra.

      ‘But I’ve read about these places in the Daily Mail,’ Julia insisted. ‘It’s rife with disease and drug trafficking and heaven knows your brother doesn’t need any encouragement in that department. Cassandra, can’t you speak to him? Sort him out with a job or something to keep him in the country?’

      Cassandra took a deep breath. It sometimes pained her to think how the role of parent and child had reversed so quickly. Increasingly Cassandra now felt like the head of the family and for once, it was not a position of authority she relished.

      ‘You make me feel like a babysitter,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not here to entertain Tom just to keep him out of trouble.’

      ‘I appreciate that, darling,’ said Julia.

      Cassandra snorted.

      ‘I mean, remember the time I got him work in Xavier’s studio.’

      ‘He really wasn’t cut out for photography,’ said Julia.

      ‘It was nothing to do with his talent behind the lens,’ said Cassandra, dipping her fork into the fish. ‘He was caught having sex with a model in the darkroom.’

      ‘He’s a boy, he’s got hormones.’

      ‘He’s 26, not some randy teenager.’

      Julia met her daughter’s eyes. ‘Darling, please.’

      Cassandra was tempted to say no. She was sick of Tom’s feckless ways, drifting from one half-baked ‘career’ to another and she was annoyed that her mother expected her to pick up the pieces. It wasn’t as if she didn’t help out the family as it was. She introduced Julia to wealthy art patrons on London’s society circuit and constantly promoted artists exhibiting in Julia’s gallery, billing them as the next big thing in the pages of Rive. But there was always something else.

      ‘OK, Mother, I’ll see what I can do,’ she said finally. ‘But this is absolutely the last time: I mean it.’

      Julia patted Cassandra’s hand. ‘Thank you, darling. He won’t let you down.’

      ‘Oh, I am absolutely sure he will,’ said Cassandra. ‘Now let’s eat. I don’t want to be late for my flight.’

      Roger Milford never liked Monday mornings, but today he had woken up in a particularly anxious mood. From the bedroom window of the Old Rectory he could just see the iron entrance gates to Winterfold and it made his stomach ache. Roger was by nature a decisive, ‘to hell with the consequences’ kind of man, but for once, he was at a loss for what to do. On the one hand he had no intention of going into Milford this morning; the last thing he wanted to see was that smug bluestocking niece of his sitting behind Saul’s old desk. My desk, he corrected himself. On the other hand, much as it pained him to do so, he had to put on a good show for Emma, to impress her, to convince her that with himself installed as CEO her majority shareholding was in good hands.

      Rebecca was sitting propped up in the four-poster bed, her mane of pale blonde hair falling perfectly over her shoulders. A tea tray was perched delicately to her side containing a china teapot, smoked salmon and egg-white scrambled eggs which Latvina, their Polish housekeeper, had prepared.

      ‘I don’t know why I can’t come to the meeting,’ she said, her lower lip pouting. ‘I am a member of this family.’

      ‘It’s for shareholders and directors, honeypot,’ said Roger, going over and stroking her cheek. ‘I wish you could be there too, but my hands are tied.’

      ‘What is the meeting actually for anyway?’ asked Rebecca. ‘She’s told you she doesn’t want to be CEO, hasn’t she? So is this meeting to rubber-stamp your appointment?’

      ‘It better bloody had be,’ growled Roger.

      His wife looked at him sharply, recognizing the note of doubt in his voice. The disappointment of not getting Saul’s shareholding had been crushing, but at least it had gone to Emma – having such a good job in Boston, she surely wouldn’t want to leave it for some muddy backwater? But it could so easily have been Cassandra and that… well, that would have been a disaster for Roger. She looked at him again, and squeezed the balls of her fists together. Roger had to be CEO. As comfortable as their present home was, it wasn’t anything very special. She didn’t want to live in the Old Rectory for the rest of her life like some vicar’s wife holding dinner parties and making jam. They had to live in Winterfold. He had promised it to her ever since he had proposed at the Hotel du Cap eight years earlier. She thought back to their wedding day in the tiny church in Chilcot. Half the pews had been stuffed with her friends from the rich, fast social set she had fallen into when she had moved to London to model. The other half were her family from the villages surrounding Chilcot; uncles in cheap suits, cousins in hats from the charity shops. At the time, she hadn’t been embarrassed because she had seen the ceremony as a farewell to her past as she moved to her rightful position in the upper classes. Back then, driving up the gravel drive to Winterfold where Saul had allowed them to have their reception, Rebecca had felt a quiet sense of satisfaction. Despite the twenty-year age difference she had been happy with Roger. He was a dynamic and incredibly attractive man СКАЧАТЬ