Page 78 of Private Lives

Someone at the far side of the pool looked up from their daybed.

‘I’m sorry that we hurt you, Anna, but we fell in love,’ Sophie said, lowering her voice to avoid a scene. ‘And ask yourself this: did you really love Andy? I’m not sure, because if you did you wouldn’t have put your career above him.’

‘Don’t try and make out that this is my fault.’

‘I miss you, Anna.’ For a moment her words sounded heartfelt. ‘I miss you and I can understand why you don’t want to come to the wedding, but please, at least come to my hen party.’

‘To celebrate the happy occasion,’ Anna said bitterly.

‘Because you’re my sister.’

Sophie’s voice trembled, and Anna felt a wave of regret so strong she felt as if it could knock her down.

How bad could it be? a little voice in her head reassured her. It’s time to move on.

‘Please,’ pleaded Sophie. ‘There are lots of people coming and they’re going to wonder why you’re not there . . .’

Anna snorted.

‘You almost had me there again, Soph.’ She shook her head ferociously. ‘You know, I don’t believe you’re a bad person. Just an extremely selfish one. You expect people to give, give, give. And you take, take, take, even things that aren’t or should never be yours, and you don’t care what depths you have to plumb to get what you want, because you expect them to be yours. The food column you lied to get your hands on – the editor told me all about your years of work in the Dorset Nurseries restaurant, which is funny, because I thought you were in Thailand while you were apparently sharpening knives in Dad’s kitchen. But then those came in handy, didn’t they, for when you stabbed me in the back and slept with my boyfriend. How many times did you tell me it happened? Once, twice? Funny, I don’t believe that any more.’

‘It was a handful of times,’ Sophie said sheepishly.

‘How long?’ Anna snapped, the details that she had never dared broach again suddenly seeming of urgent importance.

‘We were together for about two months before you found us.’

Anna inhaled sharply, and when she breathed out, she felt an enormous sense of relief.

‘I know all I need to know now. You can’t hurt me any more.’

‘Anna, please,’ said Sophie, grabbing her sister as she pushed past her at the side of the pool. Anna tried to shake her off, and as she did so Sophie slipped. In slow motion Anna saw her falling away from her, her arms waving, hands clutching at the air, her mouth in a perfect ‘O’, landing in the swimming pool with a huge splash.

‘Anna!’ shouted a voice. It was her mother, full of anger and disapproval and disappointment. ‘What have you done . . .?’

Anna ran so fast out of the spa, she didn’t hear another word of what her mother was about to say.

23

‘I assume you’ve seen page eleven of the Sun this morning?’

Helen watched with satisfaction as Anna Kennedy flinched. It was 7 a.m. and the Donovan Pierce boardroom already had half a dozen people sitting around the table; Helen’s team for the Jonathon Balon libel case. They were in court first thing and she wanted a counsel of war before they started.

Well, at least she has read the papers, thought Helen as she watched Anna sip her coffee, obviously trying to appear unruffled. Interesting. Perhaps there’s more to this than the story suggested.

Helen spread the newspaper out on the long walnut table.

‘“Celebrity Chef in the Drink”,’ she read aloud. The story was accompanied by a grainy photograph of Sophie Kennedy emerging from a swimming pool – bedraggled, but still sexy. ‘So what’s the real story?’ she asked, silently noting two trainees who craned their necks to read the piece. She expected her employees to be completely up to date with all media – TV, papers domestic and foreign, even reading the wires from AP and Reuters. These two would be made to pay for their slackness, even if it was early.

Anna put her coffee cup down and shrugged.

‘I was at the spa with my mum and my sister. My sister fell in the pool and someone must have taken the shot with a mobile phone. There’s nothing more to it than that.’

Isn’t there? thought Helen. She hadn’t got to her lofty position in the legal profession without being able to sniff out a lie. Usually she wasn’t interested in the private lives of her employees, unless they were doing something that might impact on the firm – and this could quite easily fall into that category. Anna Kennedy had been castigated over the Sam Charles debacle and Helen really hadn’t been pleased to see her name in the tabloids again: ‘sister of the bride-to-be and solicitor for shamed actor Sam Charles’. She knew it could have been worse, of course. Only last week she’d seen Donovan Pierce referred to as the lawyers behind ‘the bungled Charles injunction’. That had put her in a bad mood for days.

‘All right,’ she said, looking around the table expectantly, ‘any ideas what damages we could seek for Anna or her sister here?’

Trainee Sid Travers raised her voice nervously.