At least the looks were real enough. His desire was the one thing she’d never doubted. As for the rest…
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m the original one hundred per cent genuine trophy wife.’ The bitter words spilled out of her before she could stop them. The only difference was that he hadn’t dumped a long-serving first wife for her; on the contrary, she was the one who’d be dumped when he wanted a proper wife. The kind you had kids and grew old with. ‘He was throwing a shooting party last weekend on his estate in Norfolk. A business thing. He wanted me on show. The hostess with the mostest.’ She pulled a face. ‘I don’t have to explain what I’ve got the most of, do I?’ she said as, hand behind her head, she leaned forward, giving the girls a mock cupcake cleavage pose.
‘You’ve got a lot more than that,’ Simone chipped in. ‘Holding down a job in television takes a lot more than a perfect pair of D cups. And the kind of party you’re talking about takes a serious amount of organising.’
‘Not by me.’
Her sister-in-law, Ivo’s live-in social secretary and a woman with more breeding than a pedigree chum, handled all that. But then she had been born to it. Benendon, finishing school in Switzerland, the statutory Cordon Bleu, Constance Spry courses for the girls-in-pearls debutantes. Another world…
‘I’m just there for display purposes to show his business competitors that there isn’t a thing they can do that he can’t do better.’
‘Oh, Belle…’ Claire seemed lost for words.
Simone was more direct. ‘If that’s all there is to your marriage, Belle, why do you stay with him?’
‘Honestly?’ They were high in the Himalayas, the air was stingingly cold, clear, cleaner than anything she’d ever known. Anything but the truth would pollute it. ‘For the security. The safety. The knowledge that, married to him, I’ll never be hungry or cold or frightened ever again…’
The truth, but not the whole truth. Passion, security, she would admit to. Falling in love with him had been the mistake…
‘But you’re bright, successful in your own right-’
‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘From the outside I suppose it looks like that, but every day of my life I expect someone to find me out, expose me as a fraud…’ Simone made a tiny sound, almost of distress, but shook her head quickly as Belle frowned. ‘Let’s face it, there’s no one as unemployable as a past-her-sell-by-date breakfast television host.’ Even as she said it, she knew that she was just making excuses. She was not extravagant and with Ivo’s skilful investment of her money, the only thing she truly needed from him was the one commodity he was unable to give. Himself.
There was an emotional vacuum at the heart of her life that had started long before she’d met him. He was not the only one incapable of making a wholehearted commitment to their partnership. She was equally to blame and now it was time to call it a day. Make the break. Let him go.
She’d known it for a long time, just hadn’t had the courage to admit it, face up to what that would mean.
‘If you want the unadorned truth,’ she said, ‘I hate my career, I hate my marriage-’
Not that she blamed Ivo for that. He was trapped by his hormones in exactly the same way that she was trapped by her own pitiful fears. They were, it occurred to her, very bad for each other.
‘In fact, when it comes right down to it, I hate my life.’ She thought about it. ‘No, scrub that. I guess I just hate myself-’
‘Belle, honey…’
As they reached out to offer some kind of comfort, she shook her head, not wanting it. Not deserving it from these special women. ‘I’ve got a sister somewhere, back there. Lost on the road.’ She didn’t have to explain. She knew they’d understand that she wasn’t talking about the road they were travelling together, but the one leading back to the past. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was four years old.’
‘Four?’ Claire frowned. ‘What happened to her? Did your family split up?’
‘Family?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not like you…’ She sucked in her breath, trying to hold back the words. Then, slowly she finished the sentence. ‘I’m not like you, Claire.’ She glanced at Simone, who was unusually quiet, and on an impulse she reached out, laid a hand over hers. ‘Or Simone.’ Then, lifting her chin a little. ‘We’re here to raise money for street kids, right? Well, that was me. It’s why I made such a big thing of this fund raiser. Why I’m here.’ Feeling exposed in the way an alcoholic must feel the first time he admitted he had a problem, she said, ‘My real name is Belinda Porter and I was once a street kid.’
She’d never told anyone where she’d come from. Anything about herself. On the contrary, she’d done everything she could to scrub it out of her mind. Not even Ivo knew. He’d had the tidied-up fairy story version of her life: the one with kindly foster parents-who she’d conveniently killed off in a tragic car accident-a business course at the local college-not the straight from school dead-end job in a call centre. Only the lucky break of being drafted in to work the phones on the biggest national fund raising telethon had been true, but then she’d been ‘discovered’ live on air; everyone knew that story.
How could she blame him for a lack of emotional commitment to her when she had kept most of her life hidden from him? A husband deserved more than that.
She swallowed. ‘My mother, my sister, the three of us begged just to live,’ she said. ‘Exactly like the children we’re here to help.’
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Claire said, ‘What happened to her, Belle? Your sister.’
That was it? No shrinking away in horror? Just compassion? Concern…?
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing bad. Our mother died.’ She shook her head. That was a nightmare she’d spent years trying to erase. ‘Social Services did their best, but looking back it’s obvious that I was the kind of teenage girl who gives decent women nightmares. Our mother was protective, would have fought off a tiger to keep us from harm, from the danger out there, but I’d seen too much, knew too much. I was trouble just waiting to happen. Daisy was still young enough to adapt. And she was so pretty. White-blonde curls, blue eyes. Doll-like, you know? A social worker laid it out for me. It was too late for me but, given a chance, she could have a real family life.’
‘That must have hurt so much.’
She looked up, grateful for Claire’s intuitive understanding of just how painful it had been to be unwanted.
‘It’s odd,’ she said, ‘because I was the one named after a doll. Belinda. Maybe it was some need in her to reach back to a time of innocence, hope.’ She shook her head. ‘It never suited me. I was never that kind of little girl.’
‘You have the blonde hair.’
‘Bless you, Claire,’ she said with a grin, ‘but this particular shade of blonde is courtesy of a Knightsbridge crimper who charges telephone numbers. She pulled on a strand, made a face. He’s going to have a fit when he sees the state of it.’
She reached for the sewing kit. There was no hairdresser here and no wardrobe department to produce a clean, fresh pair of trousers for the morning. If she didn’t stitch up the tear, her thigh would be flapping in the wind.
‘Daisy was different,’ she said, concentrating on threading a needle. ‘I hated her so much for being able to smile at the drop of a hat. Smile so that people would want to mother her, love her.’ Her hands were shaking too much and she gave up on the needle. ‘I hated her so much that I let someone walk away with her, adopt her, turned my back on her. Lost her.’
‘I lost someone, too.’
Claire, suddenly the focus of their attention, gave an awkward little shrug. ‘It must be this place, or maybe it’s just that here life is pared down to the basics. The next marker, the next drink of water, the next meal. Meeting with the people who exist here on the bare essentials.’ She took Belle’s needle, threaded it, began to work on the torn trousers. ‘There are no distractions, none of the day-to-day white noise of life to block out stuff you’d rather not think about and with nothing else to keep it occupied, the mind throws up stuff you’ve put in your memory’s deep storage facility. Not wanted in this life.’