Lucy Ellis - Innocent in the Ivory Tower

‘Danni was right. You are a cold bastard.’

Alexei didn’t have a clue who Danni was—didn’t particularly care. He just wanted Tara out of the room. Out of his life.

He wanted the people outside off his boat.

He wanted to turn the clock back to Sunday.

Mostly he wanted his control back. Control over the situation.

‘How in the hell are you going to raise a child?’ Tara snarled as she strutted out through the door.

Control. His dark eyes fixed on the Florida coastline, visible through the wraparound windows. He would begin by doing what he needed to do. Speaking to the people outside. Speaking to Carlo. Most of all speaking to Kostya, a two-year-old infant. But first he needed to fly across the Atlantic to do it.

‘“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat,”‘ sang Maisy in a soft contralto, her body arced over the small boy curled on his side in the crib. He had been sucking on the plump flesh of his fist, but as sleep claimed him his pink mouth closed and presently his barrel-shaped chest rose and fell beneath the delicate ribbed cotton singlet he wore.

She had been singing to him for a while now, after a full half-hour of reading, and her throat felt dry, her voice slightly hoarse. But it was worth it to see him like this, so peaceful.

Standing up, she scanned the room, checking everything was in its place. The nursery was as it had always been—a place of womblike security—yet everything outside it had changed. For this little boy, for ever.

Tiptoeing out, she closed the door. The baby monitor was on and she knew from experience he would sleep now until after midnight. It was her chance to get some food and then some sleep herself. She’d been awake so much of the past thirty-six hours she couldn’t even gauge how much sleep she’d had.

Two floors down, the kitchen was dimly lit. Valerie, the Kulikovs’ housekeeper, had left the spotlights over the benches on for her, and they cast an almost ghostly glow. Valerie had also left a dish of macaroni and cheese in the fridge to be reheated, and Maisy silently thanked her as she slid the bowl into the microwave.

The older woman had been a godsend this week. When the news had come through of the crash Maisy had been in her room, packing for a vacation that was due to start on Tuesday. She remembered putting down the telephone and sitting by it for a full ten minutes before she even thought of what to do next. Then she had rung Valerie and life had resumed movement.

She and Valerie had both expected Leo and Anais’s families to sweep in, but the house in the private London square had remained silent. Inside, Valerie continued to do her hours and return to her family at night, and Maisy cared for her charge and waited for the plea that had not yet come. I want Mama.

The press had been there for a couple of days, pushing up at the windows, clambering over the iron railings to drop to the basement. Valerie had kept the blinds drawn, and Maisy had only taken Kostya out once, to the private garden across the road. Maisy had worked for the Kulikovs since Kostya’s birth, and lived in this house all that time. Leo and Anais had travelled frequently. Maisy was accustomed to being alone with Kostya for weeks at a time. Yet there was something—empty—tonight. The house felt too quiet, and Maisy found herself jumping as the microwave pinged, pressing open the door with a hand that trembled.

Get a grip, she told herself sternly, using an oven mitt to carry the bowl over to the big French provincial table. She didn’t bother to turn on the main light. There was something comforting about the darkness.

Steam rose off the macaroni. She ought to be hungry, and she needed to keep her strength up. Her fork made a cruise around the edges. In her mind’s eye she could still see Anais in this very room a week ago, laughing in that full-throated way at a drawing Kostya had done in crayon on the floor tiles of a giraffe with a head like his mummy’s. Anais had been almost six feet tall, and mostly legs, which had been the focus of her modelling career. It was clearly how her little son had seen her from his diminutive position.

Maisy remembered the first time she had met Anais. She had been a small, dumpy swot, detailed by her headmistress to introduce the skinny, impossibly tall Anais Parker-Stone to the rituals of St Bernice’s. Anais hadn’t known then that Maisy Edmonds was a charity girl, her place in the very exclusive girls’ school arranged for her on a government programme. When she had found out, Anais hadn’t changed her allegiances. If Maisy had been ostracised for her background, Anais had been victimised for her height.

For two years the girls had been close friends, until Anais dropped out at sixteen and four months later had started modelling in New York. Two years later she was famous.

As Maisy had matured she’d lost her puppy fat, gained a waist and some length in her legs, and her curves had become an asset. She had gone on to university but dropped out before the first term had even begun. Her only contact with Anais had been via the glossy magazines Anais stalked through. When Maisy had run into her at Harrods it had been Anais who’d recognised her—probably because she had hardly changed, Maisy thought ruefully.

Anais, all sleek blonde bob and three-inch heels, had shrieked with joy, thrown her skinny arms around Maisy’s small shoulders and jumped up and down like a teenage girl. A teenage girl with a baby bump. Three months later Maisy had been ensconced in Lantern Square, with a newborn baby in her arms and a completely overwhelmed Anais weeping and threatening to kill herself and trying to escape the house every chance she could. Nobody had ever told her motherhood wasn’t a job she could walk away from, that it was for life.

A far too short life, as it had turned out, Maisy thought heavily and stopped pretending to eat. She pushed the plate away. She had cried for her friend, and she had cried for tiny Kostya. She imagined at some point those tears would dry up. Right now it seemed they had.

She had more pressing considerations.

Any day now a lawyer for the Kulikovs, although more likely for the Parker-Stones, would land on the doorstep. People who would take away Kostya. Maisy knew nothing about the Kulikovs other than that Leo had been an only child and his parents were deceased. But she remembered Arabella Parker-Stone, who had seen her grandson once, a few days after his birth. It had been a brief visit, involving calla lilies and harsh words between Anais and her mother.

‘I hate her, I hate her, I hate her,’ Anais had wailed afterwards into a sofa cushion, whilst Maisy rocked Kostya in her arms.

Arabella had upset everyone. But her mind was failing and she was now in a nursing home. Kostya would not be going to live with his grandmother.

Nor will he be living with me.

Maisy didn’t know how she was going to hand Kostya over to strangers. Wild thoughts of simply absconding with him had crossed her mind yesterday and today. It all seemed possible, with the world ignoring them, but once it paid attention how on earth would she manage it? She was jobless and her only skill was as a carer for the infirm, the elderly, or the very young. Her vocation was loving that little boy upstairs. He had become her family—but, more painfully, she was his. Somehow she had to find a way to stay with him. Surely whoever stepped forward would need a nanny? Would not be so cruel as to separate them … ?

Maisy took a deep breath and pushed the hair out of her face. She reeled her bowl back in and, head resting on one hand, picked at a first mouthful of pasta, munching by rote. She needed sustenance; this would give it to her. Tomorrow she would have to go through Leo’s office and phone people. Such had been his mania for privacy, very few outsiders had been in this house. Anais had never complained—she had merely gone out. Another excuse to leave her son. Maisy had never understood Anais’s inability to bond with Kostya, but she had excused it.