‘I know you two had an argument, and that’s why you left the party without saying goodbye. Only you didn’t say anything to me because you thought it would upset me, so you said you felt ill.’
‘I did feel ill.’ Mimi swallowed past the ache in her throat. It wasn’t a complete lie. She had felt sick at the mess she’d made of everything. ‘And I just wanted to go home.’
‘But Basa thought you should stay and he had a go at you?’ Without waiting for confirmation, Alicia said quickly, ‘I’m sorry. He’s always been protective, but since Mummy died he just wants everything to be perfect for me.’
Mimi breathed out unsteadily. She felt almost lightheaded with relief, but also guilty that Alicia was blaming herself for something that hadn’t even happened. But what purpose would telling her the truth serve except to make herself feel better in the short term?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. And she was—although not for concealing a fictional argument with Basa, but for letting Alicia believe a lie.
‘For what?’
For probably the first time in her life her friend sounded exasperated with her.
‘For feeling sick? For standing up for yourself? I’m the one who should be saying sorry. I know he’s my brother, and I love him to bits, but you could have told me. I wouldn’t have taken his side, you know.’
‘It’s okay to take his side,’ Mimi said gently. ‘He’s your family.’
‘And you’re my family too. I know what your stepfather and uncle did was wrong, but it had nothing to do with you.’
Mimi’s fingers tightened around the phone.
Except that it did.
Maybe not here in Buenos Aires, where nobody knew her, but back in England, she was always on edge—always expecting the past to suck her back into that dark place she’d been two years ago. It didn’t matter if she was on the bus or in a café. She would look up from her magazine or her coffee and find someone looking at her curiously, and instantly she would be terrified that they were putting two and two together and coming up with a headline.
It was that fear of losing her anonymity that was the reason she hadn’t really fought back against those actresses. She had been too scared that if she escalated things inevitably her name would pop up in some internet search and her scandalous past would suddenly be current news again.
‘I know,’ she lied.
Alicia breathed out shakily. ‘And who I choose to have in my life has nothing to do with anyone—including my brother. You’re my friend, and I think Basa accepts that now.’
Like hell he does, Mimi thought, remembering Basa’s parting remark about keeping his enemies close.
Injecting her voice with a note of brightness she didn’t feel, she said, ‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ Alicia admitted. ‘But he did say you two had had a very productive talk and that you had reached an understanding. And that’s the thing about Basa: if you’re on his team he’ll do anything for you.’
Having arranged to call back later, for a longer chat, Mimi promised to send Alicia a photo of herself in the pool and hung up. She felt as if she’d just run a marathon, but at least one positive had come out of the conversation. Alicia believed that she and Basa had ‘reached an understanding’.
As if!
The only thing he wanted was to toss her into the Thames.
She could just picture his dark eyes gleaming as he fed Alicia his carefully edited version of their conversation. Her jaw clenched. All that rubbish about them having a ‘productive talk’ when he’d basically told her that he didn’t like or trust her. He was a disingenuous, loathsome man.
Unfortunately for her, she was going to be staying in his house, with him, for the next forty-eight hours...
She turned her glare back to the window. Outside, clusters of extraordinarily beautiful porteños were making their way to work—or perhaps, given the reputation of the city’s nightlife, on their way home to bed.
Glancing at the back of the chauffeur’s head, she wondered what would happen if she asked him to keep driving around? She would book into some anonymous little hotel off the main strip and then maybe head out to a café and sit outside in the sun with a coffee and pastry, just watch people going about their day-to-day lives.
But there was no escaping her destiny—not least because she’d promised herself that she would see this thing through to the end. Whatever Basa said, and however he behaved, she was going to stay cool and let it wash over her—for Alicia’s sake.
The air bounced out of her lungs. Who knew? Maybe if they spent some time together he might alter his harsh opinion of her and start to see the person she really was.
And there were some upsides to the situation. She hadn’t been on holiday for so long, but now she was in Buenos Aires, and she was going to stay in a beautiful mansion with a swimming pool.
An image of Basa in swim-shorts, water dripping slowly off his smooth, contoured body, parachuted into her head, and instantly she felt that familiar rushing sense of vertigo, as if she was standing at the top of a skyscraper and looking down. And then her heart twitched against her ribs as finally she asked herself the question she’d been dodging since the moment she’d watched him swagger into the restaurant.