There are some things money can’t buy, no matter how hard you try. Like love and the unsolvable problem of one-directional plastic surgery.
Yet money still makes most of the world go round. Or come to a bloody standstill. As it did for seventeen years in my case. Money still makes things happen. Or not happen. It brings out the best in people. As well as the absolute worst. It makes people do all sorts of awful things. To themselves. To those around them. Like what dear Stepmum did to me. And I only found out afterwards.
They say freedom is sweet. It tasted damned syrupy in my case—but only for a few hours.
Before turning sour.
It all began when I stepped off that bumpy boat from hell. Or Hellisay, to be more precise. Blinking in the sunlight like a mole after being swathed in darkness for years. Brimming with suspicions. Fearing that the world had moved on while I’d remained stuck in a goddamned hole. That’s why I went straight to Dad’s lawyer, Reginald Rowe, as soon as I got to London. To find out what had happened to my father’s estate during my extended absence.
Dad had passed on while fucking his nineteen-year-old PA, Nola Barr, at the Ritz hotel, I heard. So Dad came and went. Straight on top of poor Nola, too. The girl must have learned a good lesson from the episode: never fuck a rich old man with a heart problem. He can easily turn out to be a dead weight.
The graying and bespectacled Rowe was most surprised to see me, good old Anna May.
“How much did Dad leave behind?” I said, getting to the crux of my mission. There’s no point beating around the bush with lawyers. They are arseholes who make their money on your fortunes and misfortunes.
Rowe tapped the diary in front of him for a couple of minutes. Pulled out a large file from a drawer and inspected its contents.
“Alan Winchester set up a trust fund in your name a few months after you were born,” he said in a silky smooth voice. Didn’t take him too long to recover from the shock of my arrival.
“You were entitled to receive a monthly income from the age of twenty-eight,” he continued, squinting at the file. “The fund is managed by a firm called Swiss Inheritance Services. It may take a while for them to pay you, though. After all, you’re no longer called Anna May Winchester.”
I nodded. It took me a damned long time to figure out why Dad had forced me to change my name. Then one afternoon, it hit me. Like an arrow piercing the middle of my forehead. As I lay beneath those stunted poplars on Hellisay, squinting at the weak rays of sunlight filtering through them. Embarrassment, of course. His daughter “losing her mind.” Throwing away her pen-and-ink diaries. This must have triggered plenty of undesirable gossip. Especially amongst the folks who frequented the hallowed inner sanctums of his private club. So he got rid of that mighty embarrassment (an act encouraged by his darling wife, Aggie, of course, who was, naturally, delighted to wash me off her scheming paws). He made me change my name to Sophia Alyssa Ayling and packed me off to a godforsaken Scottish island with more nutcases than sheep.
Sophia isn’t such a bad name, actually. It means “wisdom.” I even think I have shitloads of it by now. Alyssa confounded me for a while. Then I read somewhere that it means “sanity and logic. Because of its associations with the flower alyssum. The cure for rabies and madness in ancient times.
I still haven’t got a fucking clue as to where Ayling came from.
“You’ll need to prove to the Swiss that Sophia Alyssa Ayling and Anna May Winchester are one and the same,” said Rowe. “As you’ve been out of the…ahem…picture for a while. But I can help expedite the process for you. You should receive your first payment soon. In about two or three months from now, with luck.”
“I’m not interested in a shitty little trust fund, Reggie. I’m interested in Dad’s estate.”
Rowe began sucking his teeth in response. Tapping his notepad with his silver monogrammed Montblanc. Looking as though he’d developed a sudden bout of constipation.
That was when I knew that I’d been screwed.
Comprehensively.
“Agnessa inherited your father’s estate after his death. All of it.”
“But…but…”
My words were a strangled splutter.
“My apologies, Miss Winchester…er…Miss Ayling,” said Rowe, looking far from sorry as he fingered the ruby-encrusted clip on his tie. “But your father changed his will a couple of years after you went into St. Augustine’s. This is a fact. You can’t change facts.”
He consulted his file again, running a finger down the print. Before reading with a ponderous voice:
“In the event of my death, I bequeath all my assets to my beloved spouse, Agnessa Winchester (née Ivanova).”
His words hit me like a cannonball in the gut. I gaped at him for several moments, acid bile rising in my throat. Yet I didn’t have a fucking choice. I could only beg him to expedite my first payment from the Swiss while sinking my fingernails into my palms to prevent myself from screaming.
I staggered out of his office minutes later, rage blinding my eyes.
Dear Aggie was not pleased to see me the following day. Not pleased at all. She walked in to discover that her precious little Anna May had somehow managed to escape from St. Augustine’s. That I’d spilled coffee from my take-out cup on her upholstered Louis XVI–style divan. That I’d just fed her pet goldfish to her Siamese cat to stop it from hissing at me. After all, her Polish housekeeper did impart a few juicy tidbits of information. Minutes before she scurried off to summon Aggie. Like the fact that grumpy little Khrushchev had a taste for caviar, wagyu beef, and the choicest items from the Harrods fish section.
“Vat ze hell are you doink in zis room?” she said, wincing as she heard her cat crunch down the last of the goldfish bones. “Vy haf zey let you out of St. Augustine’s?”
“Thought I’d pay you a courtesy visit, my little Aggie. To see how you’re getting on. And you’ve traveled pretty damned far, I heard. From your humble working-class Mono roots in Mogilev. With pit stops in a couple of strip clubs in Moscow along the way. A longer spell as a hooker in Soho. You’ve even gone as far as making Dad change his will in your favor.”
“Your pa decided to change his vill himself,” Aggie said with a smug twitch of her lips, the expression she always wore when she knew I was at her mercy. “No one forced him to do so.”
I was reduced to glaring at her through slitted eyes.
“You didn’t need his money, anyvay,” she added. “Not ven you vere doomed to spendink ze rest of your life in St. Augustine’s.”
The smirk on her face grew wider.
What they say about stepmothers is true. Cinderella isn’t a fucking fairy fable. Or a miserable morality myth. It’s a reality show in high definition, featuring blond Belarusans with Botoxed foreheads.
“You definitely know a thing or two about stripping,” I said. “You managed to peel your G-string off in Dad’s presence. While giving him that lap dance in Soho all those years ago. You then stripped him bare. Before moving on to his bank balance.”