Monday, October 11, 2010 THE SUN
It’s the most talked-about book of the year, and you can only read it here! Today, Stacey Blyth finds the proof she needs that she’s the sole – if unknown – heir to billions...
‘WATER STAR WAS MY MA’
I’m in my third strange bed in three days – I can see how the all the wannabes must feel.
Only this is a lush four-poster with great big crisp pillows, not some skanky swirl of satin sheets shared with a boy-band man slag.
Anyway, I can hear Chiara helping herself off the breakfast trolley so I leap out of bed. I’m not letting her wolf everything – and she would, if I let her.
She looks well rough.
‘Alright?’ I go. She looks up and she’s all manic.
Without offering me any food, greedy git, she goes, ‘Guess what?’
Can I guess after breakfast? I think. My stomach’s making jungle noises.
‘I woke up the middle of the night, thinking about the picture’ – I told you, the masks! – ‘and I went back to the papers, knowing what we know now, that Estella Dulac was at the party, and I found something incredible, absolutely incredible.’
I can see pastry things going cold and oily while I don’t eat them.
‘Which is?’
‘Wait here... ’
Chiara dashes back to her room so I cram as much food into my mouth as I can before she gets back, which turns out to be quite a lot, as it happens.
She puts the papers on the table and, on each, points out the name of the woman who made the will, died and had her daughter adopted.
‘I’ve been really scrutinising the writing, and this is what I think it says.’
She holds up a piece of letterheaded hotel paper – the same logo as on the old invite the will’s typed on the back of, well done – and it says: ‘Suhana Tanginika’.
So that’s my mother’s name? More exotic than I was expecting.
‘Do you see?’
Chiara’s nodding with her eyes wide open, like she’s being strangled.
I can see the piece of paper, is that what you mean?
I must be shrugging because she starts to explain.
‘You know we looked up Amy and it means the same as Suki: beloved?’
Nod.
‘Well I looked up Suhana. And guess what it means?’
I try and think but the pastries are taking their sweet time to pass down my throat so I’m more preoccupied with not choking at the moment...
‘Suhana means star! And Tanginika, well it’s not really a person’s name, it’s a Swahili place name.’
Am I really supposed to work out what she’s on about from that?
‘Tanginika is a lake. In Tanzania.’
So my mum is African? (Tanzania’s in Africa, right?) I mean, I don’t look it but maybe my dad was an albino or something.
Chiara’s smug I-know-everything look vanishes and she gets angry.
‘You must see it now? Suhana Tanginika... Star Lake...’
Has my brain died? I still don’t know what she’s getting at.
‘...Estella Dulac! Don’t you see? The woman who had the baby is the woman in the photo. Maybe the people in the picture are the adoptive parents.’
I see. The woman in the picture is... my real mum. Really? So I’m not African? That makes more sense.
Chiara sits back down at the table, pours herself some tea and holds the little glass cup aloft, like she’s toasting herself.
‘Of course, you know what this means?’
She takes a celebratory sip.
‘The daughter, if she’s still alive, is a billionaire.’
The effort of keeping down the pastries is so massive, I feel like they’re going to bounce back off my stomach if they ever even get that far, but when she says that everything inside my skin turns into liquid. I grab onto the table.
‘Billionaire?’
Chiara finishes her tea and tops the glass back up.
‘Of course, because Estella was heir to... do you really not know who she was?’
No, I don’t know, tell me! I just wobble negatively at her.
Chiara notices I’m not well and says, ‘You should eat something.’ At which point I know I’ve lost the pastry battle, so I run off and vomit.
When I come back, she’s looking sympathetic and patronising, all at once.
‘You haven’t been drinking the tap water, have you? Stick to bottled.’
Ta for the tip.
‘So, who’s Estella, then? Why’s she so rich?’
I make myself a really, really sugary tea.
‘Well!’ says Chiara, like she’s doing Shakespeare and I’m deaf, ‘Estella Dulac was the daughter of this old ’30s film star, Louise Dulac, and some oil man. And she had this very sheltered life and no-one saw her until she went to college and then, one day, she was kidnapped and no-one ever heard from her ever again.”
So... ‘Everyone thinks she was killed by the kidnappers?’
‘No, she just disappeared. I mean, I don’t think there was ever even a ransom note. But she never turned up. I saw a documentary about her, I told you.’
‘And the documentary said she got kidnapped and that was it for Estella?’
‘Right.’
‘And when did all this happen?’
Chiara chews the inside of her mouth and thinks. ‘Mid-’70s some time. Let me check.’ So she goes and gets her laptop and looks it up.
‘September 1975...’
My Poirot moment.
‘But the picture was taken at Halloween 1975. After she went missing!’
Chiara’s all excited but I’m more excited because I worked it out and without a pen or paper or anything, just my brain. Well done, me.
‘So it’s the last known picture of Estella alive, then...’ says Chiara.
Gotta be worth a fortune, right? Exclusive first worldwide rights and all that.
I know a few things about selling pictures, don’t I?
‘...And we’ve also got the proof that she’s dead.’
I forgot about that. Bummer. Although – inheritance!
‘So,’ Chiara taps the screen of the laptop – I hate that, it smears and you can’t see yourself properly, ‘Estella Dulac goes missing in 1975, ends up pregnant in Marrakech a couple of months later, gives birth to Suki/Amy, dies and her daughter’s adopted.’
‘And she made a will.’ Don’t forget the will!
‘So sad.’
Easy come, easy go. I had parents, then they weren’t really my parents, then I found out my real mum was dead, then I found out she was rich. You learn to cope.
‘So sad,’ I agree, for show. ‘So what do we do now? Shouldn’t we tell someone, the papers, maybe? This is a big story, isn’t it?’
Chiara’s looking all wistful, like it’s her long-lost, not-known-about mum who’s died and left her a fortune. Get a grip, I’m fine!
‘Well, I think it’s obvious what we need to do first, isn’t it?’
Weirdly, she closes her laptop as she said this, and I think, Are you going to email the news using the power of your mind?
Then she goes, ‘We need to work out who the couple are, who adopted Amy.’
Whoa, what? Slow down. No need to bring them into it.
‘I mean, is this them in the picture?’
‘What are the odds of that?’ I go, all flustered. ‘There must have been loads of people at the party, right?’
‘But there was only this one picture of Estella Dulac, so...’
I can hear myself going all shrill: ‘You’re jumping to conclusions again!’
And then, thank f***, Chiara calms down and goes, ‘You’re probably right.’
We finish the tea and then, sounding all sweet but really being bitchy, she goes, ‘You are allowed to use the shower, you know, help yourself.’
And I think, How dare you – have you not looked in the mirror today, then? but I say, ‘Looking forward to it, it looks much more powerf
ul than the one in your flat’ so I go and lock myself in the bathroom and spend ages using up all the toiletries.
Thing is, I finally get out, and it’s all been a trick. Bitch!
Somehow, Chiara knows I’ve taken the picture – maybe she’s seen it sticking out of my, her, dress or whatever – so she just wants to distract me and nick it back.
But she’s not just going to put it back in the album, oh no. She’s way more devious than that! She puts it back in the album, then goes and asks Hamid about the people in the picture.
She tells me this when I’m lounging outside in a gown, drying off by the pool.
‘You were taking so long in the shower, I had to amuse myself somehow.’
I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking what Hamid said, so I just go, ‘That’s nice’.
But she just goes ‘Very revealing,’ and I think she means the gown at first so I tie it tighter around my waist, then she says, ‘more in what he didn’t say, of course.’
I close my eyes and pretend I’m snoozing.
‘And of course he explained the costume – here’s me thinking it’s just some revival thing – like after Cabaret – but that makes much more sense...’
And then I really drop off and I don’t know how long I sleep for but at some point Chiara throws cold water over my face and says, ‘You’re going red.’ I mean, she could have said something, an hour or so earlier when I wasn’t red yet, and I’d have been fine, but whatever. I suppose she could have left me so I suppose I’m grateful.
She must be feeling guilty so she lends me some La Prairie face cream to take the redness down, so I scoop out as much as I can because I know what it costs. And I think, ‘I can always buy her some when my money comes through, can’t I?’ Only I won’t.
Then she goes, ‘Do you want the good or the bad news?’ and I think, Well I might be a bit sunburnt for now, but I won the stand-off so I’ll be gracious.
‘Bad news, first,’ I say, because that’s how they always do it in films, isn’t it?
‘We still don’t know who the parents are.’
That’s great news – how good was the good news going to be?
‘They’re a British diplomat and his wife, in the picture, but Hamid can’t remember their names so we can’t compare them to the papers.’
Excellent!
‘Oh well,’ I act, ‘never mind. And the good news?’
‘The good news,’ says Chiara, over-enunciating for the Hard Of Hearing again, ‘is that’s definitely Estella Dulac in the middle.’
‘Hamid confirmed it, then?’
‘No. He denied it.’
At which point I think, I’ve got sunstroke. Or maybe Chiara has?
But she goes, ‘I showed him the picture – back in the album’ – house points to Head Girl – ‘and I said, “I know that’s Estella Dulac in the middle, but who are the couple?” And he goes, “Such a pretty, pretty girl...” then stops himself and goes, “Oh, no, you mean Louise Dulac, she’s dressed as Louise Dulac, whoever she is, this girl”.’
Doesn’t sound like proof, does it?
‘If you’d seen his face, you’d have known he was lying,’ Chiara goes, ‘he looked really guilty. Like, he’d told a secret or broken a promise or something.’
I just go ‘Maybe... ’
So Chiara gets out her laptop again and shows me this picture of Louise Dulac from her heyday and she’s totally wearing the same sort of clothes as Estella in the photo.
‘Could be the same woman,’ I admit.
‘Exactly! It’s too similar to be a coincidence. And also, who’s heard of Louise Dulac these days, or even back in the ’70s? Why would you go as her if you could go as...’ and she reels off this list of names that mean absolutely nothing to me so I don’t remember them, sorry about that.
‘So what isn’t Hamid saying?’ says Chiara. ‘How can we get him to tell us?’
I have an idea...
IN TOMORROW’S PAPER: ‘Estella was being wheeled out... under a blanket’