Sharee eventually flew back to London and her small studio apartment. She continued to phone Sylvina on her various numbers, but her calls were not returned. It baffled her at first, but then made her feel that somehow she had been moved aside, as if Sylvina had instigated the boat trip. Although she knew it had been her own decision to go, doubts began to surface, and Sylvina’s rejection angered her. Not only had she been used like a whore on the movie producer’s boat, Sylvina had treated her in the same way.
William’s apartment in avenue Hoche was already lavishly decorated with the finest antiques and paintings. All it required were floral displays. Sylvina moved in and, for the moment, William stayed in a suite at the Ritz.
Sylvina checked every society-function guest-list, making copious notes of the hottest faces on the circuit and the most fashionable venues. She had not expected to enjoy herself quite so much, but having a man so dependent upon her was a new experience she relished. And with no sexual chemistry to complicate the relationship, she and William were surprised to discover a genuine mutual friendship growing.
That William knew from the outset that sex with Sylvina was out of the question made him much more relaxed when she questioned him about his affairs. He found himself admitting that perhaps the disasters of his loveless marriages had been his fault. He had been too eager to move up the social ladder.
‘What on earth for?’ Sylvina asked, never having had to climb so much as a single rung herself. Her own family had been titled and she had married Count Lubrinsky at an early age. She had not seen their union as social climbing, because it was his wealth more than his title that she’d married.
Sylvina’s château had never really been a home, just a rambling, cold megalith, and one morning they drove down to the small hamlet where it was situated outside Tours. Even with its high turrets and splendid balcony, it seemed tired and grey.
‘This is where I was brought up, apart from the years I spent at school in England, of course, which I hated but it was still preferable to spending time here.’ It had been years since she had visited the place and she felt an unwelcome surge of emotion as she stopped the car. ‘Do you want to see inside?’ she asked, almost hoping he would say no.
But William got out and looked around, smiling. ‘Yes! This is wonderful!’ They wandered through room after room with empty walls and rotten floorboards. Trees and shrubs sprouted in corners, as if nature had taken over like a secret army. It was a sad wreck of a once beautiful palace.
‘My father gambled away his inheritance. I was never sure whether he married me off to a count so that he could still live here or so that he could still gamble. The Count was an elderly cousin. The marriage was not consummated, and he died a few months after my twenty-first birthday.’ She fell silent. Then she said flatly, ‘They should bring in the demolition people. It’s dangerous.’ Seeing it again, after so many years, had brought home to her her lonely childhood. The barriers placed across the stairs, cutting off rooms too dangerous to enter, were like the emotional barriers that divided her family.
‘This is all I have left,’ she went on. ‘My father spent the money I was left by my husband. Papa was a wastrel,’ she said, looking up to the massive barrel-vaulted ceiling where once chandeliers of the finest crystal had tinkled. The fact that William wanted immediately to restore the château while Sylvina wanted it torn down epitomized their differing attitudes to the past: he was awed; she was indifferent. ‘Why live in the past? It’s better to look to the future,’ she said.
‘But generations of your family lived here.’
‘So they did, and they’re all dead.’ She was starting to feel depressed by it, and over everything loomed her hatred of her father.
On the drive back to Paris William said he could not believe that when she received her money she would not rebuild the place. Sylvina couldn’t contemplate the idea. ‘No one can live in such a monster of a house,’ she said. She had no children to inherit it. Why would she want to resurrect something that was dead? It was a pointless exercise, as pointless, to her, as being overawed by wealth and a title.
‘That’s because you have it, and I haven’t,’ he said, as they returned to avenue Hoche.
‘No, it’s because you think it will give you something. I am telling you it won’t. All you saw was a large white elephant.’
‘No, I saw your past, your family’s past. It’s in every stone of that château.’ She cupped his face in her hands and kissed his cheeks. ‘They are dead and I am alive. The world has changed. I want to live in the present. If I were to spend all my money renovating the château, I would be living in the past. You should be angry that you wasted a second of your time worrying about what has happened to you. You are a rich man. You could have anything, be anything. Go and find yourself a young, beautiful wife. Have more children, and don’t dwell on the past. It will swallow you up.’ Suddenly she stopped. All this had made her forget why she was with him, which, as she had said, was all to do with the past.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing. Memories.’
Sylvina was still anxious when William left for the hotel, convinced she had made him think about what they were doing and worried he might pull out. Why had she been so bloody truthful? The million pounds looked as if it might disappear. But at the same time the images of her childhood would not lie quiet. Tomorrow she would have to work extra hard, just in case she had placed doubts in his mind.
Sylvina need not have worried. William too was caught up in the past he had always tried to submerge. The voices would not lie quiet. He wasn’t thinking about what Sylvina had said, just hearing the cries, seeing his mother press the ice-pack against her swollen cheek. He vividly remembered a particular night when, in tears, he had asked his mother if he should go to the police. She had slapped him and said, ‘You’ll do no such thing. This is private business. It’s nothing, do you hear me? Nothing happened here.’ He knew it had, but his drunken father was sleeping off the booze. ‘Don’t pay any attention to what you see, Billy love, just you get out. If you get to be somebody, this will all have been worthwhile. You can say it made you. Because if there isn’t a reason for it, he might as well kill me now.’
What had his mother meant? He had never stopped asking himself that question. Now he thought of the abuse he had suffered at the hands of the bloodthirsty media. He didn’t need to take their insults, as his mother, who’d had nowhere to run, had accepted his father’s brutality. It frightened him now to think that perhaps he had inherited her wretched acceptance of fate. She had never fought back, and neither had he. Paying out a million pounds to save his face was a cowardly revenge, perhaps as bad as his mother telling him that his success was worth her pain. He was ashamed that he had not fought back, ignored the lawyers by suing, even if it had meant losing money. At least he would have had some respect for himself. And what had he done instead? Run to Justin at his villa.