Sheer Abandon Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  The Main Characters

  Prologue

  The Year Before

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  PART TWO

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  PART THREE

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  ALSO BY PENNY VINCENZI

  Copyright

  For my four daughters, Polly, Sophie, Emily, and Claudia, for every possible kind of help and support in a very long year.

  Acknowledgements

  I have been bothering even more people than usual in my quest for background information for Sheer Abandon; the book covers a rather large landscape. First of all, I would like to thank the many people who had been abandoned or adopted or given their own babies up and who shared their experiences with me so generously; and then the politicos, as I think of them, both MPs and political journalists, all of whom made the workings of the House of Commons feel both wonderfully intriguing and almost comprehensible; the lawyers and medics who answered all my questions so patiently; and of course everyone who shared their memories and experiences of traveling and backpacking with me.

  I am very, very grateful to all those wonderful people at Hodder Headline who published the book so brilliantly in the UK; and to Tim Hely Hutchinson for welcoming me so warmly into the Headline fold.

  And so much gratitude to Steve Rubin, publishing supremo, who has welcomed me equally warmly into Doubleday and the US fold; and everyone Over There who is publishing me with such inspired passion. Most notably, Deborah Futter, my editor, whose enthusiasm is a total joy; Dianne Choie, who keeps the nuts and bolts neatly lined up; and Alison Rich, who is making sure everyone the length and breadth of the United States knows about the book.

  Huge thanks to Clare Alexander, my wonderfully supportive agent, and in memoriam Desmond Elliott, so well known on both sides of the Atlantic and who looked after me and my books for so long and is, I am sure, now brokering astounding deals at the great publishing lunch in the sky.

  And, finally, my husband, Paul, so unfailingly there for me, so swift to respond to my frequent wails of despair, and so unselfishly ready to share in my (rather rarer) whoops of delight.

  As always, in retrospect, it looks like a lot of fun. And I think it really was.

  The Main Characters

  JOCASTA FORBES, a dazzling tabloid reporter

  NICK MARSHALL, Jocasta’s political-journalist boyfriend

  CHRIS POLLOCK, their editor

  CARLA GIANNINI, a fashion editor

  JOSH FORBES, Jocasta’s slightly hapless brother

  BEATRICE FORBES, Josh’s barrister wife

  HARRY AND CHARLIE, their small daughters

  GIDEON KEEBLE, a retailing billionaire and political benefactor

  AISLING CARLINGFORD, one of Gideon’s ex-wives

  FIONNUALA, their teenage daughter

  CLIO GRAVES, née Scott, a charming and clever doctor

  JEREMY GRAVES, her overbearing surgeon husband

  ARTEMIS AND ARIADNE, her sisters

  MARTHA HARTLEY, a brilliant corporate lawyer

  PAUL QUENELL, her boss

  ED FORREST, Martha’s lover

  PETER HARTLEY, Martha’s father, a vicar

  GRACE HARTLEY, his wife

  KATE TARRANT, a beautiful teenager, abandoned at birth

  HELEN AND JIM TARRANT, her adoptive parents

  JULIET, Kate’s sister

  JILLY BRADFORD, Kate and Juliet’s glamourous grandmother

  SARAH, Kate’s best friend

  NAT TUCKER, Kate’s boyfriend

  JACK KIRKLAND, a politician and leader of the Centre Forward Party

  MARCUS DENNING, CHAD LAWRENCE, and ELIOT GRIERS, all prominent members of Parliament

  JANET FREAN, a dynamic having-it-all politician

  BOB FREAN, her husband

  FERGUS TREHEARN, a public relations consultant

  Prologue

  AUGUST 1986

  People didn’t have babies on aeroplanes. They just didn’t.

  Well—well, actually they did. And then it was all over the newspapers.

  “Gallant aircrew deliver bouncing boy,” it said, or words to that effect, and then went on to describe the mother of the bouncing boy in some detail. Her name, where she lived, how she had come to be in the situation in the first place. Usually with a photograph of her with the bouncing boy and the gallant crew.

  So that wasn’t an option.

  She couldn’t have a baby on an aeroplane.

  Ignore the pain. Not nearly bad enough, anyway. Probably indigestion. Of course: indigestion. Cramped up here, with her vast stomach compressed into what must be the smallest space in the history of aviation for what?—seven hours now. Yes, definitely indigestion…

  Didn’t completely solve the situation though. She was still having a baby. Any day—any hour, even. And would be having it in England now instead of safely—safely?—in Bangkok.

  That had been the plan.

  But the days had gone by and become a week, and then two, and the date, the wonderfully safe date of her flight, three weeks after the birth, had got nearer and nearer. She’d tried to change it; but she had an Apex seat; she’d lose the whole fare, they explained very nicely. Have to buy a new ticket.

  She couldn’t. She absolutely couldn’t. She had no money left, and she’d carefully shed the few friends she’d made over the past few months, so there was no danger of them noticing.

  Noticing that she wasn’t just overweight but that she had, under the Thai fishermen’s trousers and huge shirts she wore, a stomach the size of a very large pumpkin.

  (The people at the check-in hadn’t noticed either, thank God; had looked at her, standing there, hot and tired and sweaty, and seen simply a very overweight girl in loose and grubby clothing.)

  So there was no one to borrow from; no one to help. The few hundred she had left were needed for rent. As it turned out, an extra three weeks’ rent. She’d tried all the things she’d heard were supposed to help. Had swallowed a bottleful of castor oil, eaten some strong curry, gone for long walks up and down the hot crowded streets, feeling sometimes a twinge, a throb, and hurried back, desperate to have it over, only to relapse into her static, whalelike stupor.

  And now she had—indigestion. God! No. Not indigestion. This was no indigestion. This searing, tugging, violent pain. Invading her, pushing at the very walls of the pumpkin. She bit her lip, clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. If this was the beginning, what would the end be like?

  The boy sitting next to her,
as grubby and tired as she, whose friendliness she’d rejected coldly as they settled into their seats, frowned as she moved about, trying to escape the pain, her bulk invading his space.

  “Sorry,” she said. And then it faded again, the pain, disappeared back where it had come from, somewhere in the centre of the pumpkin. She lay back, wiped a tissue across her damp forehead.

  Not indigestion. And three hours to go.

  “You OK?” The boy was looking at her, concern mixed with distaste.

  “Yes. Fine. Thanks.”

  He turned away.

  They had landed; everyone was standing up, pulling their luggage down from the lockers. The moment had coincided with a very violent pain. She sat in her seat, bent double, breathing heavily. She was getting the measure of them now; they started, gathered momentum, tore at you, and then departed again. Leaving you at once feebly grateful and dreadfully fearful of their return.

  Well, she hadn’t had it on the plane.

  For the rest of her life, when she read of people describing bad experiences of childbirth, of inadequate pain relief, of briskly bracing midwives, of the sense of isolation and fear, she thought they should have tried it her way. Alone, in a space little bigger than a cupboard, the only pain relief distraction therapy (she counted the tiles on the walls, more and more as the time went by), her only companion a fly buzzing relentlessly (she worried about the fly, the dirt and disease it might be carrying, looked at it thankfully as it suddenly dropped, exhausted, on its back and expired). And then there were some brushes and mops and some clean towels—thank God for those towels, how could she ever have thought one pack of cotton wool would be enough? Her isolation was absolute, her only midwife herself and her precious book, propped against the wall as she lay on the floor, studying its explicitly sanitised diagrams desperately, heaving her child into the world. How could she be doing this, so afraid of pain she couldn’t have a filling without a local anaesthetic, so clumsy she could never fasten her own Brownie tie?

  But she did.

  She managed because she had to. There was nothing else for it.

  And when it was all over, and she had cleaned herself up as best she could, and the room too, and wrapped the baby, the tiny, wailing baby, into the clean sheet and blanket she had packed in her rucksack (along with the sharp, sharp scissors and ball of string and large bottle of water which was the nearest she could get to sterilising anything), she sat on the floor, slumped against the wall, feeling nothing, not even relief, looking at the baby, quiet now, but breathing with astonishing efficiency, its small face peaceful, its eyes closed.

  It was over. She had become a mother; and in a very short while she would be one no longer, she could walk away, herself again, free, unencumbered, undisgraced.

  She could just forget the whole thing. Completely.

  It was over.

  Wonderfully, neatly, absolutely over…

  The Year Before

  AUGUST 1985

  They sat there in the departure lounge, on two separate benches, consulting the same departure board: three girls, strangers to one another, the faded jeans, the long hair, the beaded friendship bracelets, the sneakers, the small rucksacks (vastly bigger ones already checked in) all marking them out as backpackers, and about-to-be undergraduates. With school and parents shaken off, a few hundred pounds in their new bank accounts, round-the-world tickets in their wallets, they were moving off to travel a route that would take in one or all of a clearly defined set of destinations: Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Nepal and the Himalayas, and even the States.

  They were very excited, slightly nervous, above all impatient for the journey to begin; constantly exchanging looks, half smiles with one another, moving slowly physically closer as more and more people filled the lounge and the space surrounding them.

  It was the announcement that brought them finally together: the announcement that their flight to Bangkok had been delayed for three hours. Their eyes met, eyebrows raised, and they all stood, picking up their bags, moving towards one another, smiling, annoyed at so early an interruption to their journey, and yet welcoming it as an excuse to meet. They settled at a table, and, over some fairly unpleasant coffee, began to talk. Jocasta Forbes, tall and skinny with wild blond hair, opened the discussion; she was travelling, she said, with her brother Josh, “If he ever turns up. He’s the baby of the family, totally hopeless.”

  “Like me. I’m the baby too,” said the second, “pretty hopeless as well I’d say…Clio,” she added, “spelt with an ‘i.’ Clio Scott.” She was neither tall nor skinny, distinctly plump indeed, but extremely pretty with dark curly hair and big sparkly brown eyes.

  “And I’m the eldest,” said the third. “Martha Hartley…Not sure if I’m hopeless or not.” She smiled at the other two; studying her they felt sure she was not. Martha was not pretty in the conventional sense; she was small and pale with long straight brown hair, but she carried an air of quiet assurance with her that Jocasta with all her wild beauty lacked.

  They chatted easily after that, discovering one another, liking one another increasingly; interrupted by Jocasta waving furiously across the room. “At last. You made it. Wow. Well there he is, everybody, my brother Josh.”

  Martha and Clio watched him coming towards them; he looked so like Jocasta it was almost shocking. The same wild blond hair, the same dark blue eyes, the same just slightly crooked smile.

  Edgy suddenly, Jocasta introduced him. “You’re incredibly alike,” said Clio, “you could be—”

  “We know, we know. Twins. Everyone says so. But we’re not. Josh, why are you so late?”

  “I lost my passport.”

  “Josh, you’re so hopeless. And fancy only looking for it this morning.”

  “I know, I know. Sorry.”

  “Was Mum OK, saying goodbye to you? He’s her baby,” she added to the others, “can’t bear to let him out of her sight.”

  “She was fine. How was your dinner with Dad?”

  “It never took place. He didn’t get back till twelve. And this morning he had to rush to a meeting in Paris, so he couldn’t see me off either. What a surprise.”

  “So how did you get here?”

  “Oh, he put me in a cab.” Her expression was hard; her tone didn’t quite match it.

  “Our parents are divorced,” Josh explained. “Usually we live with our mother but my dad wanted—”

  “Said he wanted,” said Jocasta, “to spend yesterday evening with me. Anyway, very boring, let’s change the subject. I’m going to the loo.”

  She walked away rather quickly.

  There was a silence. Josh offered a pack of cigarettes, and Martha and Clio each took one. Josh’s arrival had brought a tension into the group that was a little uncomfortable. Time to withdraw, at least until the flight…

  Their seats were far apart, but they managed to spend some of the flight together, standing in the aisles, chatting, swapping magazines, comparing routes and plans. They would all be going in different directions after a short time in Bangkok; even Josh and Jocasta were splitting, starting out together only to make their parents happy. They spent three days together in Bangkok, three extraordinary days in which they bonded absolutely, adjusting to the souplike heat, the polluted air, the uniquely invasive smell—“I’d call it a mix of rotting vegetables, traffic fumes, and poo,” said Clio cheerfully—staying in the same bleak guesthouse on the Khao San Road. It was an incredible and wonderful culture shock—hot, noisy, heaving with people, alight with Technicolor flashing signs, lined with massage and tattoo parlours and stalls selling everything from T-shirts to fake Rolexes and illicit CDs. Every other building was a guesthouse, and all along the street neon-lit cafés showed endless videos.

  The girls all kept diaries, writing in them earnestly each night, and evolved a plan to meet in a year’s time to read of one another’s adventures.

  Jocasta inevitably took hers particularly seriously. Reading it many years later, even while wincing a
t a rather mannered style, she was transported back to those early days, as they moved around the filthy, teeming, fascinating city. She felt the heat again, the nervousness, and along with it, the sense of total intrigue.

  She tasted again the food, sold from stalls on the street, tiny chickens, “the size of a tenpence piece,” stuck four in a row on sticks, to be eaten bones and all, kebabs, even cockroaches and locusts, deep-fried in woks; she stared out again at the waterfalls of warm rain hitting the streets vertically, which, in five minutes, would have them ankle-deep in water—“Bangkok has the opposite of drainage”—shuddered again at the shantytown ghettos by the river, and smiled at the incredible near-standstill of traffic which filled the vast streets all day long, the overflowing buses, the tuk tuks—motorised three-wheel taxis—hurtling through the traffic, and the motor scooters transporting families of five, or occasionally glamorous young couples, snogging happily as they sat in the midst of the fumes.

  They went to Pat Pong, the red-light district, and watched the lady-boys plying their trade—“You can tell they’re men, they’re much better turned out than the women”—to the post office to write to their parents and tell them where they were, checked the poste restante desk where a horde of backpackers queued to pick up letters from home, messages from friends arranging meetings; they water-taxied through the stinking canals, shocked at the poverty of the hovels where the river people lived, wondered at the gilded and bejewelled palace and temples, and visited the shopping centre, packed with Gucci and Chanel—“This is mostly for rich men’s mistresses apparently, and you can get real tea, not the endless Lipton’s, wonderful!”

  What none of them wrote about—with that year-off meeting in mind—was the other girls, or even Josh, but they learned a great deal about one another very quickly in those three days. That Jocasta had fought a lifelong battle with Josh to gain her father’s affection and attention; that Clio had grown up miserably envious of her older sisters’ beauty and brilliance; that Martha’s jokey complaints about her straitlaced family masked a fierce defensiveness of them; and that Josh, easily charming, brilliant Josh, was both arrogant and lazy. They learnt that Jocasta for all her wild beauty lacked self-confidence; that Clio felt herself acutely dull; that Martha longed above all things for money.