Cruel Summer (6 page)

“See…you are a fag,” Max murmured. His head lobbed over to rest heavily on Dante’s shoulder. “I knew it.” After that, the guy was out cold.

Dante tilted his head against the cushion. And then everything faded into black.

S
ophie Keith exploded into Pippa’s room with no warning knock. “Who is Max?” She wasn’t asking the question so much as demanding the answer.

Pippa rolled over to give her intruding mum an evil glare. “Don’t you ever knock? God! You’re such a commoner sometimes.”

“I want to know who this Max person is,” Sophie said in a low, seething voice. “I also want to speak to his parents.”

Against all argument from her listless, still hungover body, Pippa rose up to get a better beat on the situation. What she noticed next nearly stopped her heart cold.

Nestled in the palm of Sophie Keith’s right hand was Pippa’s mobile phone.

“You read a text!” Pippa accused hotly. She didn’t care what the message said. It was a
total
invasion of privacy. Somehow she called up the strength to leap from the bed, cross the room, and snatch the device from her nosy mum’s manicured paw. It helped that she was furious. This gave her loads of sudden energy. Once in possession of
her
property, she diddled with the tiny keypad to see what had the bitter divorcee channeling Inspector Jane Tennyson or some such telly detective.

U give gr8 head when u r drunk.

Pippa scanned the text but betrayed nothing. She didn’t have to. Max was just having a laugh on account of the fact that she got totally trashed and passed out. She flashed an icy look over to her mum. “We’re just mates. I haven’t even snogged him. It’s a joke. That’s all.”

“I don’t think it’s very funny,” Sophie said primly. “It’s disrespectful to write filth like that to a girl.”

“Who cares? You’re
not
the intended audience,” Pippa countered.

Sophie zeroed in with a full-on stare. “You look awful. Were you drinking last night?”

“I didn’t booze up. I just had one or two.
Please.
I’m about to start senior school. I’m
not
a child. When are you going to realize that I’m a woman?”

“Is that why you didn’t answer my call last night? Because ‘as a woman’ you were too drunk to have a conversation?”

“Bollocks! Max came ’round the house after you went to bed. I didn’t even have my phone with me. I forgot it,” Pippa lied. She proceeded to ignore her interrogator while typing out a reply to the troublemaking text.

Don’t remember that at all. U must have a tiny wanger.

Hoorah! Take that, cheeky lad.

“As far as I’m concerned, going somewhere after I’ve gone to bed is sneaking out of the house,” Sophie said.

“Not when you go hiding under the duvet at seven o’clock,” Pippa argued. “What am I supposed to do? Watch old
Hollyoaks
tapes till I’m in a coma? You should be happy that I found a few mates that I get on great with.”

Wearily, Sophie leaned against the door frame. Her eyes were puffy. No doubt from another crying jag. “I’d still like to meet this Max person before you see him again.”

Pippa rolled her eyes. “Whatever. He’s a junior. Max Biaggi’s firstborn, if you must know.”

Sophie’s brow lifted in surprise. “The movie star?”

Pippa nodded. “And he’s got a bod like Becks and a face like Brad’s. Reminds me of that footie captain I went mad for last summer. But don’t worry. He’s just a boy bud. I won’t go rushing in.”

“Again, I look forward to meeting him,” Sophie said firmly.

“Fine,”
Pippa relented, crawling back into bed as she wished her moaning mum would bugger off.

But Sophie Keith continued to linger.

Pippa wrestled with the pillows until she got comfortable. Then she stared up at the ceiling and announced, “Here’s something to really stress about—I need a cash solution. Everything costs the Earth here. I can’t sort out a life on sixty a week. I feel like an old blue rinser who’s watching her pension.”

Sophie sighed. Almost defeated. But there was a speck of hope. “I’m doing the best I can, Pippa. I need you to understand that. This private school is going to break our budget in the fall, but I know how important it is to you.”

Pippa stifled a groan. As if she should be
so
grateful that her mum was sending her to a private prep. That was a basic necessity. She wanted to sing and dance like Jennifer Lopez. And you couldn’t learn that by getting wanded down for metal objects in some knackered public school. To keep up in Miami, what Pippa really needed was new clothes, her own car, and endless bits of cash.

All of a sudden, thoughts of Annabelle Somerset, her best mate in London, crowded Pippa’s mind, triggering a deep pang of sadness. She wondered what Annabelle was doing right now.

Before the scandal, the two girls had been inseparable—shopping like heiresses, going on chat rooms, having a right laugh about everything. Life was perfect. Pippa wondered if she’d ever be as happy as that again. And who wouldn’t have been? They lived in a Soane and Lutyens-designed home with thirty-two bedrooms!

And now she was trapped in a riches-to-rags nightmare that seemed to have no end. To go from an English estate to a dodgy cottage with a single loo was enough to give anyone screaming gut-rot. It was as if God had decided to single her out for the tedious moral lesson of “less is more.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Sophie said. “If money’s an issue, then maybe you need to think about getting a job.”

Pippa shut her eyes. Oh, how about that magic? Being forced into child slavery for a decent wad of spending money. What a pisser!

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” Sophie said. “I’m tired, and I have an early call in the morning.”

Pippa refused to respond. She just lay there, wondering if there could be a bigger waste of sperm on the planet than her father. After all, he was the cause of the upheaval in their lives.

“Good night, sweetheart,” Sophie said softly. “I love you.” Her voice sounded so needy and forlorn, as if she only said the words to hear them boomerang.

Pippa caved instantly. “I love you, too, Mum.”

And then Sophie stepped out of the room and shut the door quietly behind her.

More often than not, Pippa could be a royal pain. She knew this. But her mum loved her unconditionally just the same. And she loved her mum straight back.

Sophie had been an American college student studying abroad for a semester when she met Drummond Keith, a self-made commercial property developer with projects in London, New York, Paris, and Hong Kong. As a teenager, Pippa had lived out the tragic, bitter end to their romance. But she still loved the fairy-tale beginning.

Scrapbooks of their early years together captivated Pippa because seeing the photographs was no yawn. Her parents had been stunning in their youth, and she gazed upon them like Posh and Becks. Pippa felt wacky admitting this, but her dad had been a super hottie as a lad. It was no wonder her mum ditched school and never looked back at the States.

After a movie montage courtship and a countryside wedding, Pippa—their first and only child—had been born almost nine months to the first honeymoon night, spent in Greece on Christina Onassis’s island.

The real trouble began several years into the marriage, when Drummond Keith’s business became successful enough to earn him the privilege of high-leverage living. Sophie freely admitted to having seen early danger signs but was too young and naïve to shrewdly interpret them. Apparently, from the very beginning, inevitable clues of heartbreak had been there, bubbling beneath the surface—suspicions of philandering, occasional hell-raising…and reclusive addictions.

With his business going bang-on, Drummond went pogo like a total loon, spending money so fast that people thought he was scooping it out of the River Thames. There were new homes, cars, boats, a Learjet, a helicopter, gambling trips to Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, parties that stretched on for entire weekends. And then the rumors started to circulate. About her father being a bum bandit. About the drugs. For a long time, Pippa and Sophie just went on with their lives, dismissing the talk as vicious gossip.

But when the behavior escalated to public humiliations, there was no room for denial. Her father had morphed into a degenerate. His homosexual dalliances became openly promiscuous. His cocaine habit became so sinister that he was an outright junkie. And his development company collapsed as he squandered millions of pounds and ignored important business affairs.

Then came the violent meltdown. Drummond—wrecked on coke and vodka—had been behind the wheel of his new Bentley when he hit a Vespa. He jumped out of the car, raged at the injured man for damaging his gleaming hubcaps, grabbed a tire iron from the trunk, and proceeded to beat the rider and his motor scooter completely senseless.

By this time Sophie had endured enough. She did
not
want to be anybody’s put-upon wife. The only answer was to get out—in every sense of the word. And Pippa offered up no protest. At this point, she was suffering socially, suddenly isolated as the daughter of a coked-up knob-jockey nutter. Only Annabelle stuck by her during this horrific period, and even she’d grown increasingly distant.

With Drummond facing a labyrinth of lawsuits, massive debts, pending criminal charges, and frozen accounts, Sophie and Pippa barely escaped London with their lives. To raise cash, they set up a stall outside their estate and sold valuable things at knockdown prices. Pippa had cried as her huge collection of Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hermès, Gucci, and Christian Dior bags got scooped up by bitchy ex-friends who laughed at her circumstances while walking off with their loot.

Deciding to move to Miami had been an easy call. Sophie had a job waiting there that would pay just enough to support her and Pippa. Though she never finished college and had no formal training, Sophie was a natural home design talent. Her approachable demeanor gave domestic workers, office staff, and young entry-level career strivers a comfort level about asking her advice on decorating their dingy little flats. A path began to show. Sophie found that she adored transforming living spaces on meager budgets. And she was good at it. Channel Four put up a deal to host her own program, then shut it down after three successful airings when the worst of the scandal crashed the front pages of the British press.

From out of the blue, an offer arrived to topline a new decorating show,
The Frugal Designer: South Beach Style.
The series was being launched by INT, a new cable network dedicated to all things interiors. It was a chance at a new life. Though it’d be a far different one. INT was in start-up mode, which meant salaries were modest at best, especially for Sophie Keith, who was an unproven commodity with American audiences. Still, it was a decent opportunity. So here they were, giving it a go in Miami.

Pippa’s mobile rang, breaking her free from the so-recent painful past. It was Max. She picked up and blasted him straight off. “My mum read that text, you wanker!”

Max laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Yes!” Pippa confirmed. “I left my phone in the kitchen, and she came roaring into my room. Now she’s insisting on meeting you before we can go out again.”

Max groaned. “Shit. First Christina’s mom, now yours. Am I losing my charm? Guess that means you can’t hit a few clubs tonight.”

Pippa gave her body a long, languid stretch, like a cat in the sun. “
Please.
I’m still recovering from last night.”

“You just have to start drinking again,” Max said, his voice ringing with an annoying authority and even more annoying pep. “It’s the best way to deal.”

“My mum’s already in bed. She’s not going to meet you tonight,” Pippa said, punctuating the bad news with a lazy yawn.

“Sounds like you’re in bed, too,” Max said.

“I am. I’m
so
tired.” Pippa yawned again. “How much did I drink last night?”

“I don’t know. But it was enough to have you sucking off me and Dante before you passed out,” Max said.

The flood tide of Pippa’s shock collided with the breakwater of Max’s unexpected words. “I did not!” Her denial was absolute. But then came the moment of dreadful doubt. She played back the previous evening on superspeed fast-forward in her mind. The missing moments worried her. Hardly a full-on blackout, but there were definitely some half memories to sort out.

“Why do you think I sent you that text?” Max went on. “Be proud, girl. You could suck the chrome off an exhaust pipe.”

Pippa’s heart banged in her chest. She bit down on her lip. Oh, God, could it be true? She wondered this for several long, terrible, torturous seconds.

And then Max started to laugh. “Gotcha!”

“You shitbag!” Pippa shouted. But then she found herself laughing with relief.

“For a minute there, you really thought you were the BJ queen of Star Island, didn’t you?”

“I did not!” Pippa insisted. “Listen, if you and Dante chucked your muck last night, then it was the two of you cracking each other off.
I
had nothing to do with it.”

Max’s laughing thundered on. “Damn, I love the way you talk.” One beat. “So what are you wearing?”

“Why?” Pippa asked.