The Santiago Sisters. Victoria Fox

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      ‘You are such a shit, Dad! All my friends are going. It’s only a fucking party—why do you have to be such a moron all the time?’

      ‘It’s only because I care—’

      ‘No, you fucking don’t. If you did, you’d fucking well let me go. It’s like I’m a fucking criminal—it’s like you’re keeping me fucking prisoner!’

      ‘Stop swearing.’

      ‘Like fuck I will.’

      That was enough! Simone rose from the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. Damn Emily Chilcott! The thirteen-year-old was the bane of Simone’s life—she and her elder brother, the awful Lysander. Who would have stepchildren? Soon after Simone had moved in, Lysander and his friends had ‘done a waffle’ in the first-floor wet room, which involved defecating into the shower grill and, well, she couldn’t bear to think of the rest. Vera the maid had been forced to clear it up. Simone had been appalled, but all Brian did was to roll his eyes and chuckle, ‘Boys will be boys.’

      Not on her watch, they wouldn’t. Emily and Lysander were begging for a smack of discipline; if they were her own, they wouldn’t get away with a second of it.

       But they’re not yours, are they?

       And now you’re a dried-up old husk. Barren. Shrivelled. Sterile.

      Simone swallowed hard. She put her hand on the bathroom doorknob and stopped, watching her hand, focusing on it, because when she thought of that time, of that secret, it stole her breath away and it was all she could do to keep standing.

       It wasn’t like that. I had no choice.

      Emily’s tirade shattered her thoughts. ‘I hate you!’

      Simone tore open the door. ‘What the hell is this?’ she demanded.

      ‘Oh, perfect,’ sang Emily, who privately loved Simone getting involved because that meant she could access her favoured armoury: the ‘you’re-not-my-mother’ diatribe. ‘Now your little bitch on the side is coming to tell me off.’

      ‘Emily, no!’ objected Brian, who was sweating. ‘You mustn’t say that!’

      ‘Bloody well let me go to the party, Dad, or I’ll say a lot worse.’

      For a pretty girl, Emily Chilcott made an ugly mess of herself. Her permanent scowl erased the loveliness of her blue eyes, and her filthy mouth better belonged on a black-toothed hooker than an heiress to London’s greatest film dynasty. She was attractive, but her attitude made her a grim proposition. The same went for Lysander. Since their mother had left Brian for a female German show jumper named Trudi (a well-publicised scandal ten years ago), it had all gone tits up: all four tits up, if you thought of it that way. Brian’s laissez-faire attitude was one big long apology, and the kids took every advantage of it. When would he grow a ball-sack, for heaven’s sake?

      Simone met Emily’s glare and raised it several notches. She would not lose.

      ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, madam.’

      ‘Screw you, Simone.’

      ‘You shut that mouth right now or I’ll shut it for you!’

      ‘Oh yeah?’

      ‘With pleasure.’

      Brian stepped in. ‘Now, now, ladies …’

      ‘Lysander’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants,’ raged Emily. ‘He’s in his room this minute getting high off his nuts and neither of you two gives a shit.’

      ‘He’s doing what?’ Simone stormed into the hallway. Behind, Brian crooned, ‘OK, let’s everyone take it easy …’

      Simone headed for Lysander’s room and threw open the door. But the sight that met her eyes wasn’t of Lysander—handsome, dark, rangy Lysander, with a curl to his spoiled, upper-class lip—skinning a joint or bent over one of his elaborate bongs; it was Lysander, butt-naked, reclining against his pillows and receiving a dedicated blow job from a redhead. Simone’s lips parted in shock. She didn’t know where to look. Lysander was coming hard. His eyes met hers as he ejaculated into the redhead’s mouth. In the corridor, Emily giggled. ‘Oops,’ she trilled, ‘my mistake!’

      Post-climax, Lysander was unfazed. ‘All right … Mummy?’

      Lysander’s accent was so sharp you could skewer cubes of meat on it.

      ‘What on earth is going on?’ Simone rasped. The redhead jerked up, clocked their audience and flung herself off the bed. She grappled for her clothes, her breasts jiggling as she tried and failed to cover her modesty. From the front Simone saw she was older than Lysander—quite a bit older, in fact. Lysander lit a cigarette.

      Simone fought to keep her eyes off Lysander’s dying erection. He made no attempt to conceal it. It was huge. Why couldn’t Brian share that family trait?

      ‘You’re disgusting!’ Mortified, Simone turned on her heel. ‘Do not touch me, Brian!’ She flapped him off. ‘Whatever you do, do not bloody touch me!’

      Before she disappeared back inside the master suite, she heard Emily wheedle: ‘So, Daddy, can I please go to the party? See, I’m not as bad as ‘Sander …’

      And, predictably, depressingly, Brian’s castrated consent.

      ‘I just don’t understand why you can’t take control of them more!’

      In the back seat of a blacked-out Mercedes rushing through Piccadilly, Brian placed a hand on his wife’s knee. Simone resisted the urge to recoil against the window: after all, they soon had to put on a convincing show for the cameras.

      ‘I try,’ he said pathetically. ‘You know how strong-willed they are.’

      ‘Or how weak-willed you are.’

      ‘They’re yours, too, you know.’ Brian said it as if he were sharing a prized chain of Umbrian holiday homes, not a host of cancerous growths in the armpit.

      This time, she did flinch. ‘They already have a mother.’

      ‘But only one stepmother.’

      God, it made her sound like some gnarled old thing in Cinderella. Oh, for a child of her own! Simone dreamed of it night and day. A girl—yes, a daughter, it had to be a daughter—whom she could mould in her own image. The girl would be her legacy, her gift to the world long after Simone’s own legend died. She would raise her as the ravishing, well-mannered, and impeccably groomed young lady that Emily Chilcott wasn’t and never could be. Simone wished for this immaculate creature so fervently that she thought she might explode. Yes, she had fame. Yes, she had riches. Yes, she had a wardrobe, and a stylist, and an army of fans that could topple the fucking monarchy, but all she yearned for was that most prized possession: a girl.

      It would never happen. Simone was biologically unable, even before the first flushes of menopause. She hadn’t always been. No, it hadn’t always been that way …

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