wealthy middle-aged widow. She had not wanted any unheralded visits from the chalet’s owner while she was in residence, something which she had heard on the grapevine had happened to a beautiful, amoral socialite she knew, who had described the event with a shudder of distaste.
The socialite’s companion, a sleek, too pretty nineteen-year-old boy with homosexual tendencies, had laughed maliciously and taunted, ‘Oh, come on, you must have been tempted. They say he’s a very generous lover, and gives uncut stones as a mark of his appreciation. The more appreciative he is, the higher the carat of the diamond.’ And he had looked pointedly at the brilliantly cut stone she had been wearing on her finger.
Everyone had laughed until she had told him tartly, ‘This, my dear one, is a fake. He also punishes those who don’t please him by knocking them around or passing them on to his bodyguards.’
Silver had no real fears that he would arrive unexpectedly. She moved languidly in the warm water and then got out. The twenty-four hours were almost up, and she had heard nothing from Jake.
She dried herself, standing carelessly in front of the huge window, enjoying the room’s heat. A jungle of plants covered the back wall, turning the room into a luxurious green cavern of tropical indolence, an erotic contrast to the crisp sharpness of the snow outside.
Before she dressed she smoothed body lotion into her skin; it had the same expensive perfume as her scent. It left her skin velvet-soft and with the same lustrous gleam as expensive heavy satin.
Jake had another two hours. After that she would start packing for her return trip.
The phone rang, and she dropped the silk underwear she had just picked up, reaching for the receiver, subduing the wild dance of elation that sang through her blood.
‘Silver?’
It wasn’t Jake. She forced down her disappointment.
‘Annie. How are you?’
‘Fine. Can you make it for dinner on Friday? It will only be a fairly informal affair. Some old friends are passing through. Jake will be there…’
‘Does he know you’ve invited me?’ Silver questioned her, wondering if this was a skilful ploy of Jake’s to evade her time-limit and yet accept her terms at the same time.
‘He doesn’t even know yet that I’m going to invite him,’ Annie told her.
‘Mm… Friday… I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it. I won’t be here.’
There was a short silence, and then Annie queried almost sharply, ‘So you’re going through with it, then? I understand why you feel the way you do, but is it really wise? Wouldn’t it be better to simply leave things as they are? To put the past behind you?’
‘No,’ Silver told her with emotionless economy. They had been through this so many times before, ever since in that moment of weakness she had confessed to Annie how important it was to her that she reach the goal she had set herself—an impossible goal, some might claim; an unhealthy, even dangerous goal, others might say… especially Annie… especially if she knew the full truth. There were certain things that Silver had kept back from her, certain truths which she had suppressed because even now she could hardly accept them herself.
To have learned that the man she loved had not only betrayed her but was also involved in her father’s death, and in supplying drugs to other members of the wealthy and élite circles he moved in, had devastated her.
No, these were not things that could be told to anyone. Charles had boasted to her that he was beyond the reach of the law, that he had powerful friends who would protect him… well, she was going to show him that, though he might think himself invincible, he was vulnerable just as she had been vulnerable… just as her father had been vulnerable. She was going to bring him down… to destroy him… to…
‘Silver, think!’ Annie cautioned her. ‘If you do succeed, what then—what afterwards?’
‘I don’t care about afterwards,’ Silver told her truthfully.
In her cluttered, untidy office, Annie stared at the calendar on the wall. It depicted a paradisiacal Indian Ocean island, all pale yellow sands, emerald seas and waving palm trees. If she was truthful, she had never felt happy about doing Silver’s operation; that was why she had abandoned the lucrative field of cosmetic surgery in the first place. The puritan in her had balked at what she was doing… And yet there had been something about Silver that had called out to her for help… something in her very desolation and determination that she hadn’t been able to resist. She had felt an awareness of the extent of her suffering, of her need… she, who had thought herself armoured against emotionalism, just hadn’t been able to refuse to help her.
And then, of course, there had been the money.
Five million pounds to help finance her clinic here in Switzerland… her very special clinic where she used her skills to treat the victims of human violence and destructiveness, mending ruined faces and bodies torn, ripped apart… destroyed by human cruelty.
All her skill, though, hadn’t been enough to save Tom.
As always, the memory of her husband weakened her, pain sweeping through her, blotting out the environment of her hospital with its orderly, sane demands on her, taking her to another place… another life and the man she had shared them with.
It was no good remembering Tom. He was never going to come back, never going to bound into their flat, sweeping her off her feet and into bed. She trembled, remembering how it had been between the two of them, and knowing that it was as much because of that… because of all she had shared with Tom that Silver would never have… that she had finally been persuaded to carry out the operations which had given Silver her new face.
‘Be careful,’ she said quietly. ‘Be very careful, Silver…’
Silver smiled mirthlessly as she replaced the receiver. She had no need of Annie’s warning. She knew full well the enormity of the task she had set herself, but it would be accomplished, and without Jake Fitton’s help if necessary. There were other men.
But none quite as ideal, she acknowledged bitterly twelve hours later, standing on the platform waiting for the local train which would take her to Innsbruck. She was travelling light, the same way she had arrived: one piece of hand luggage, into which she had managed to pack everything she had brought with her.
In Paris she would buy new clothes, clothes for the woman she had made herself into. For the woman Annie had made her into, she amended grimly. She had no illusions about herself. Outwardly she now bore the physical attributes of a beautiful woman. The ability to reflect those physical attributes inwardly, to project the reality of being that woman—that task lay with her. She had the determination to do it… the motivation… she had the intelligence. And the skill? Only time would tell.
She now possessed the physical body and face of a beautiful woman; in Paris she would clothe that body as it needed to be clothed if she was to attract Charles’s attention and ensnare him. She knew exactly what kind of woman appealed to him. How he liked initially to be challenged, even dominated by the woman he desired… It was only later that his own true character surfaced and he began to need to inflict cruelty and humiliation on his lovers… to subjugate them…
She had learned a good deal about the real Charles since her father’s death… about the Charles who hid behind the mask of almost godlike physical beauty… behind the appeal of his tall, broad-shouldered body and his golden, deceitful face.
Yes, in Paris she would buy clothes: clothes from Valentino and Armani, from Chanel arid Yves St Laurent, clothes from those designers who knew all about how subtly to emphasise a woman’s sexuality without making a parody of it.
And from Paris she would go to London. To a new life… a new identity. Everything was arranged: the exclusive apartment that whispered sleekly of old money… the letters that would allow her to enter Charles’s milieu as an accepted member of that exclusive and very small world.
Everything