The Tides of Change

  THE TIDES

  OF CHANGE

  (previously published as PLATINUM)

  JOANNA REES

  PAN BOOKS

  For Emlyn

  Hell hath no fury like three women scorned . . .

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BEHIND THE HOURGLASS

  1. INVENTING MISS CASEY

  2. SIXTY SECONDS

  3. KING’S CROSS

  4. HEADLINES

  5. EROS

  6. THE GIRL IN A GREEN COAT

  7. TAXI

  IN THE SHADE OF THE BLOSSOM TREE

  THE GIRL FROM LACE ISLAND

  CHAPTER ONE

  Peaches Gold knelt on all fours on the antique ebony bed and examined her hair for split ends as Valentin pumped her from behind. Thankfully, her trademark chestnut mane was still perfect, but a trim wouldn’t hurt. She made a mental note to swing by Rodeo Drive and see Sebastian at the salon in the morning. After all, he often told her she was one of the only five women in LA who he’d waive his six-week waiting list for.

  Through the slit in the handmade red silk blinds covering the floor-to-ceiling windows in the penthouse suite of Boulevard 19, Tinseltown’s newest – and certainly priciest – hotel, Peaches could see that the sun was already high in the sky. It was sure turning out to be a scorcher.

  And it was crazily hot in here too. Peaches wished she could stop for a moment and turn up the air-con, but if Valentin got horny for her in black silk underwear first thing in the morning, hell, she wasn’t complaining.

  There was nothing like a credit crisis for making Peaches’ business boom and she was determined to ride out the recession . . . literally. And now that she’d beaten off the competition to become Hollywood’s most exclusive madam, it wouldn’t be long before Peaches could stop seeing clients herself entirely. But she’d be reluctant to give up Valentin. Thanks to him, over eight hundred and fifty thou had already found its way into Peaches’ bank account. Only a few more Valentins and Peaches could retire, sooner than she had planned. Certainly before anyone found out that she was five years older than anyone thought she was.

  But then her youthful appearance did seem to be fooling everyone for the time being, thanks to the genius of her best friend, Ross Heartwood, California’s most celebrated plastic surgeon. But Peaches knew the score. Ross couldn’t keep her young for ever. Besides, she was smart. She was going to get rich and get out. And then maybe she’d really shock everyone and grow old gracefully.

  ‘Yeah, baby, just like that,’ Peaches purred, turning her attention to the job in hand. ‘Deeper, baby. Oh yeah . . . let me feel it all.’

  ‘My God, I can see why you’re called Peaches,’ Valentin said, in his gravelly Russian accent. He rubbed the soft skin on her taut buttock appreciatively before giving it some firm slaps.

  Peaches flicked back her hair and looked over her shoulder. Valentin stood behind her, holding on to her hips, his teeth clenched, a vein throbbing at his temple. He had shaggy dark hair and his tanned face was pock-marked with bygone acne, but there was a roughness about him that appealed to her.

  ‘You got it, baby,’ she said, winking slowly.

  He smiled back at her, revealing a gold tooth that matched the thick gold chain nestling in his hairy chest. He leant forward over her, wrapping his arms around her slim waist. His breath was hot and fast through her hair and smelt of the Diaka vodka Peaches had got in especially. Valentin had been excited when he’d seen it – as he should be. It was the world’s most expensive vodka, distilled through diamonds. But Peaches lived by her motto: always the best of everything.

  ‘So what you want? You like this, huh?’ he asked.

  She felt his fingers reach down and graze the carefully sculpted heart-shape of pubic hair and slide down into the hot moist crevasse below. Obligingly, Peaches let out a slow moan. It was important that her clients felt that their efforts were appreciated and not just their money.

  Usually, she didn’t allow herself to become too aroused. She had to monitor carefully how Valentin was feeling. Make sure that she held back her own pleasure. But she’d seen him quite a few times now and she’d become accustomed to his touch. Despite the early hour, she felt the familiar tingle spread through her abdomen.

  ‘Oh yes, baby. I like that,’ she gasped, wriggling back on to him for a while, before kneeling up and sliding her hand up behind her into his hair.

  She could see their reflections in the teak-framed mirror at the end of the bed. With their heads side-by-side like this, there was something about them that looked compatible. In another life, maybe they could have had a real relationship.

  ‘Oh . . . keep going . . . keep going. You’re making me want to—’

  ‘But I want to undress you. I want to see all of you,’ he said suddenly, pulling out of her and leaning back to undo the hooks on her silk basque. ‘This is so sexy, but I need to feel you.’

  Bull’s-eye, Peaches thought. It had worked. She’d been designing her own exclusive lingerie line with Christoph Zerelli for six months now. Peaches’ old friend Monica DuCane, the famously busty soap actress, had agreed to front the whole business, which was Peaches’ retirement project.

  The silk basque was an experiment Peaches had insisted upon, even though Christoph had claimed it wasn’t sexy enough. But Peaches had explained that underwear should be like the best wrapping paper. Peaches knew what turned men on better than almost anyone. And, judging from Valentin’s reaction, she’d been right on the money.

  She made another mental note to call Christoph and tell him that the basques should definitely go into production. She liked the idea of them in red. The same shade as those blinds, maybe . . .

  But she’d think about that later. Right now she watched in the mirror as the basque fell away and Valentin reached around her, his hands massaging her breasts.

  Peaches always liked the way her perfectly full double Ds, with their dusky pink nipples, looked in a man’s hands. Especially in hands as strong and dangerous as Valentin’s.

  She was savvy enough to know that young Russian businessmen like Valentin – what was he? A few years older than her? Thirty-seven, thirty-eight maybe? – might not have an entirely legitimate background. In fact, she wouldn’t mind betting he had links with the Bratva: the Russian mafia, or Brotherhood, she’d heard talk of. He certainly didn’t look as if he’d been born
into the money he flashed around. She wondered whether its source would ever dry up, like the rumoured gas pipeline from which it came. Hopefully not in the near future.

  Valentin knelt behind her out of sight and, starting in the crease of her bottom, began kissing up her spine. She could feel herself responding to him and began caressing her own breasts now, catching a glimpse in the mirror of her thighs starting to tremble above the lace tops of her hold-ups.

  She felt behind her for Valentin’s cock, but he ducked out of the way and stopped kissing her. For a moment he examined her back and then, stretching her skin, pressed his tongue hard on to the scar just below her left shoulder blade.

  It felt like an electric bolt to her spine. Her whole body seemed to lock.

  ‘It’s like a sickle,’ Valentin said, intrigued. He ran his finger over the scar. ‘Same shape.’

  Peaches felt the hot sexual energy that had been seeping through her evaporating. She hated being touched there. She knew that some girls were turned off by their belly-button being touched, or their feet. For her, it was that small scar. It triggered a nauseous feeling in her and the shadow of a dark and terrible memory, just a whisper, a flicker that left her feeling unsettled and confused.

  She closed her eyes for a second, beating down the nausea, desperate to focus on the shard of memory. But nothing was clear except the feeling that the scar was connected to her being very young, in an unrecognizable, strange place, surrounded by people shouting in unfamiliar voices. And that whatever had happened there had left her vulnerable and violated. She wished she could remember more. But as always, further details were elusive, and the feeling was gone in an instant.

  Was it because her subconscious wouldn’t let her remember? she wondered. Or had she imagined something sinister when there wasn’t anything sinister at all? But still the scar remained. The proof that somewhere, somehow, someone had branded her like a piece of meat.

  She couldn’t stand Valentin touching it any more. ‘Don’t,’ she said, more harshly than she meant to, and jerking away.

  ‘Ah!’ Valentin grabbed a handful of her hair. A knowing smile played on his lips as her eyes flashed at his in the mirror. ‘You know, if you weren’t American, I could swear you have Russian blood in you.’

  She quickly pulled away from his grip and turned around to face him, away from their reflection in the mirror. He didn’t frighten her, or intimidate her. There wasn’t a man in the world who frightened her. Or a man she didn’t reckon she could control.

  ‘Where are you from, Peaches, huh?’

  She didn’t answer him. He didn’t get to pry for personal details. That wasn’t the deal. And Valentin was a fool if he thought he could see inside her. Nobody ever had. And nobody ever would.

  This was about sex. Sex he was paying her for.

  Still kneeling on the bed and face to face with him, she raised her eyebrows at him and then lunged down and flicked her tongue over the end of his cock. Swiping her hair to one side, she looked up directly into his grey eyes as she held his throbbing flesh in her fist.

  ‘I can be from wherever you want me to be. Do you want me to be Russian, Valentin, huh?’ she enquired archly, pulling away from him. His cock, suddenly deprived of her, quivered in the soft lighting.

  She slid quickly up the bed, still looking into his eyes. ‘You vant me to be your little Russky?’ she asked, her Moscow accent perfect as she dramatically spread her legs into sideways splits and touched herself with one hand. They always liked that. An early career in pole-dancing had ensured that Peaches was as supple as a gymnast.

  Valentin smiled and, with a deep, lusty laugh, lunged after her. Peaches clenched her perfectly manicured nails into his buttocks, the way he liked it, as they rolled together on the bed.

  But then, just as he was about to come, his cell phone bleeped. He growled with frustration as he scrambled off her. He grabbed the phone from on top of the pile of clothes on the velvet sedan.

  Peaches hated cell phones and she usually insisted that her clients turned them off. After all, she cost a hell of a lot more per hour than the best seats at Madison Square Garden. She should be treated with at least as much courtesy and respect. But somehow she’d forgotten with Valentin.

  Valentin looked at the number and took the call. He gabbled something in Russian, which she didn’t understand, then he waited a moment, and when he spoke again his manner had changed, his voice had become smooth and subservient, as if he were trying to impress someone.

  But no one was more important than Peaches. She grabbed the ice-cold vodka from next to the bed and, making sure he was watching, trickled some over her erect nipples. She didn’t care about the sheets. That’s what maids were for.

  Valentin winked at Peaches and said something else. This time, she understood one word, because he wasn’t the only Russian client she had. And that word was ‘whore’.

  That was it, Peaches thought. This guy was toast. After today, she would be giving Valentin up for good, no matter how much he was willing to pay her. He hadn’t been respectful enough for her liking. And Peaches required respect.

  ‘Da. Pushkin,’ Valentin continued, then snapped the phone shut. ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked automatically, even though she knew it was none of her business.

  ‘Yuri.’

  ‘Who the hell is Yuri?’

  ‘Yuri Khordinsky.’

  ‘Oh?’ Peaches raised her eyebrows at him. She knew perfectly well who the billionaire Russian was. When lots of his countrymen had lost everything, the shrewed Oligarch had reportedly cleaned up, tripling his fortune in short-selling as the banks had gone down. From what Peaches had read, Khordinsky hadn’t just played the fiddle as Rome had burned, he’d danced a jig as well. ‘You work with him?’ she asked, suddenly realizing how lucrative such a contact could be.

  ‘I work for him,’ Valentin said, making it clear there was a big difference. He started towards her, clearly anxious to carry on where they’d left off. ‘But forget it, I’m all yours now.’

  Yet as he slid between her legs and started licking the vodka from her cleavage, Peaches knew the pleasure had gone and she was on auto-pilot.

  But even though she was still annoyed, pondering it now, she thought perhaps she wouldn’t give Valentin up. The guy clearly had good contacts. And contacts were the most valuable currency in Peaches’ business because, in one way at least, they made her more powerful than Valentin could possibly imagine.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Like an untouchable celebrity, the mega-yacht Pushkin towered over its competitors. It reeked of class. This evening, moored up alongside the harbour wall in St Tropez, it looked vast, but sleek too. An undeniable statement of power, wealth and permanence. A bold reminder that the smartest of the über-rich stayed rich. Even in times of global recession, they could still afford to keep their toys afloat.

  Rumours abounded concerning the sumptuous luxury on board and the amazing parties attended by the world’s super-rich élite, even though as yet there’d been no glossy magazine spreads featuring the ten guest state rooms, the lavish saloons and bars, or the sun-decks bursting with jet skis, scuba gear, water-skis and wake boards. Or even the helicopter landing pad on the top deck with its bespoke helicopter in the same stylish midnight-blue livery as the rest of the yacht.

  But whilst everyone sipping sundowners in the exclusive club above the Café de Paris on the front admired the elegant spectacle of Pushkin and dreamt about being invited on board, they had no idea that on the other side of the sparkling blue hull, deep in the bowels of the yacht, twenty-five-year-old Frankie Willis was folding sheets in the laundry room and longing for a taste of their freedom.

  A taste of their fresh air would be a start. The harbour wall might have been only a few metres away from where Frankie was standing at the ironing board, but it might as well have been on the moon.

  Frankie changed the playlist on her iPod to some French hip-hop in the hop
e that it would lift her mood, but it was no good. She still felt like bloody Cinderella.

  Would she have been any better off if she hadn’t taken the job on board this stinkpot? she wondered as she picked up the hissing steam iron. No. She knew that in these uncertain times she was lucky to have a job. And she should be grateful for it.

  Besides, she didn’t want to think about her old life. About her home back in South Africa. Pushkin was Frankie’s fresh start. Her way out. Her ticket to a brighter, safer future. Her way to see the world. Her chance to forget all about who she once was, and to discover who she might become.

  The only problem was that two months into her fresh start, Frankie was thoroughly disillusioned. It seemed that the closest she was ever going to get to anything remotely interesting, or glamorous for that matter, was watching beautiful harbours slip by through a porthole whilst she scrubbed out yet another toilet bowl.

  She’d have been better off watching it all on TV.

  There’d been guests on board Pushkin for a solid month, most recently a group of boring fat Russian businessmen. The first week had been fine, when they were on board with their wives. But then the wives had left and their girlfriends had come instead: a noisy, trashy set of diamond-clad party girls, who left revolting sex toys in the beds and crotchless panties littering the bathrooms.

  Whilst they demanded to be taken from one shopping port to another, coming back laden down with designer carrier bags, Frankie hadn’t stepped ashore in weeks. Now she truly understood the meaning of the phrase ‘cabin fever’. Everything was bugging her: the petty rules, the hierarchy, the excess, the waste and, worst of all, the work. Christ, she’d never worked this hard in her life.

  It was the numbing, relentless grind of it. Up at five a.m., straight into her crew polo shirt and short navy skirt for her shift in the galley with Bernard, the sous-chef, prepping the guests’ breakfasts, then serving the crew’s breakfast in the crew mess. And all that before each day’s marathon of cleaning.

  Roz, the chief stewardess and purser, a fiery, mean-faced Scottish woman, made it her job to spy on the guests and predict their movements. The second a guest left one of their cabins, Frankie, Simone and Trudy, the stewardess SWAT team, would race in and strip the beds and manically clean the cabin and en-suite bathrooms with their sunken Jacuzzi baths and surround showers, replace all the lotions and potions and even fold the padded toilet roll into a point, so that when the guest returned, it was as if a magic fairy had waved a wand and made everything pristine.