Summer Madness Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Susan Lewis

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Copyright

  About the Book

  After finishing work on their sensationally successful TV series, Louisa, Danny and Sarah take a much-needed holiday on the French Riviera. All they want to do is party, soak up the sun and have a good time.

  Danny, the actress, with her sensual beauty and impossible temper, soon has the eligible men of the Riviera chasing her. Louisa, the scriptwriter on the rebound from a broken love affair, finds herself more and more drawn to the mysterious Jake Mallory. While Sarah, the producer, just wants to hang out and have fun.

  But they quickly discover that the sparkle of Riviera life conceals a dark presence that pulls them into a game no one can win. And when mayhem and madness begin to stalk them, to their terror they find there is no way out…

  About the Author

  Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty-seven novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol. Having resided in France for many years she now lives in Gloucestershire. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com

  Susan is a supporter of the childhood bereavement charity, Winston’s Wish: www.winstonswish.org.uk and of the breast cancer charity, BUST: www.bustbristol.co.uk

  Also by Susan Lewis

  Fiction

  A Class Apart

  Dance While You Can

  Stolen Beginnings

  Darkest Longings

  Obsession

  Vengeance

  Last Resort

  Wildfire

  Chasing Dreams

  Taking Chances

  Cruel Venus

  Strange Allure

  Silent Truths

  Wicked Beauty

  Intimate Strangers

  The Hornbeam Tree

  The Mill House

  A French Affair

  Missing

  Out of the Shadows

  Lost Innocence

  The Choice

  Forgotten

  Stolen

  No Turning Back

  Losing You

  Memoir

  Just One More Day

  One Day at a Time

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Jo Birch for giving me the invaluable benefit of his yachting expertise and for introducing me to the magnificent vessel, now moored in San Diego and known in this book as the Valhalla. My love and thanks also go to Richard and Tricia Strauss for rescuing me from Mexico and making my stay in San Diego such a happy and memorable experience.

  To all my friends on the Côte d’Azur with whom I have shared so many wonderful summer madnesses.

  Also I would like to thank everyone at Heinemann for their loyalty and support. And a very special thank you to my agent, Toby Eady, whose advice and friendship I wouldn’t be without.

  For Carl and Brenda

  They’d followed it all on the television news – the accident, the murder, the arrest and then the release. It was sensational stuff, with enough speculation and scandal to keep the American, Mexican and Argentinian press in headlines for weeks. There was more money in the two families concerned, the Santinis in Buenos Aires and the Mallorys in San Diego, than the two Mexican peasants, Sanchez and Ortega, could ever hope for in ten lifetimes. But there was plenty, plenty, plenty for them in this lifetime if they kept their mouths shut.

  The battle between San Diego and Buenos Aires rumbled on long after the press lost interest. Still Sanchez and Ortega said nothing. They collected their dollars, drove their flashy American cars, lived it up in grand Mexican style, while they guarded their secret and waited.

  Delacroix, the boss, took care of everything. He alone knew the price they’d eventually be paid for their secret. But for now he played the game, kept Sanchez and Ortega happy while he moved between the underworlds of Buenos Aires and Mexico City letting it be known that his was the gun at the Santini and Mallory families’ heads. He had been feared and respected before, now he was becoming a legend. Oscar Delacroix, one of the three people in the world who knew what had really happened that fateful day off the coast of Puerto Vallarta. Oscar Delacroix, the man of many faces, the man of a hundred photofits, the human chameleon whose gun was for hire and whose soul was committed to the highest bidder that day.

  Delacroix, Sanchez and Ortega, the guardians of a secret that was rumbling steadily, inexorably, terrifyingly, away from the Mexican shores … A secret that was seeping into the ocean and washing itself up on the shores of Europe … A secret that was soon to explode with horror and devastation in the wrong people’s lives …

  1

  ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE it’s over, can you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘It’s the end of an era.’

  ‘The gravy train stops here.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. Some of us have got work to go to.’

  ‘And some of us don’t ram it down other’s throats.’

  ‘Now, now girls.’

  ‘Any more boxes going? I’m full up over here.’

  ‘Fred’s bringing some more.’

  ‘Put some music on someone.’

  A few seconds later the chaotic, open plan offices where a slightly bemused and future-wary production team were throwing and catching, shouting and banging around as they packed up their belongings, began to throb with the catchy beat of the series’ theme tune. Instantly everyone stopped. They weren’t sure whether this was what they wanted to hear right now, but somehow it was appropriate. One of the secretaries began to cry. Private Essays, the series they’d all devoted their lives to for the past three years, was at an end.

  A door at the far end swung open and Louisa Kramer, the series’ creator and Sarah Lovell, the series’ producer, teetered into the mayhem.

  ‘Looks like someone’s had a good lunch,’ one of the PAs remarked.

  ‘Not a drop has passed our lips,’ Sarah hiccoughed.

  ‘Not a drop,’ Louisa echoed, trying to keep a straight face.

  Everyone was grinning.

  Sarah looked around at the packing cases, the open filing cabinets, the empty noticeboards, the general debris of three years’ hard labour. ‘Oh God, I suddenly feel depressed,’ she groaned.

  Laughing, Louisa took hold of her and danced her through the cane partitions and cluttered desks in the hilarious swing and bob routine some wag had choreographed to go along with the theme tune.

  ‘Champagne’s on its way,’ Sarah cried, waving out as she disappeared into her office to begin her own packing.

  Louisa’s secretary came beetling over with a stack of unedited cassettes. ‘What shall I do with these?’ she asked.

  ‘Sling them!’ Louisa cried dramatically, and with a jaunty backward kick of her heel she threw open her own door and s
himmied into her office.

  It was chiefly due to Louisa and Sarah that the Private Essays ship had been such a happy one these past three years, for Sarah’s dry and often risqué wit coupled with the infectious ring of Louisa’s laughter and remarkable talent for writing scripts that were not only brilliant but shootable had bonded everyone into a formidable team. The series was only ending now because Louisa felt it had run its course, that it was better to go out on a high – in other words around number two or three in the ratings – than drag it on the way so many other producers did with their successes. She was ready to start something fresh and the fact that the TV station which broadcast Private Essays had lost its franchise had given her the perfect opportunity to call it a day. As soon as they’d heard that Private Essays, the nation’s leading one-hour drama series, was about to be pulled other broadcasters had bombarded Louisa with offers to continue with them, but she’d remained firm. Not that the decision had been easy for it was Private Essays that had made her, Sarah and Danielle Spencer, the star, household names. Were it not for the fact that Louisa and Sarah were so young the press probably wouldn’t have paid them much attention, but to be heading up a multi-million pound production at the age of twenty-seven in Louisa’s case and twenty-nine in Sarah’s was obviously, at the time, deemed newsworthy. And that the three of them had become such close friends during the course of the production, partying the nights away in all the trendy night spots of London, mixing with the rich and the famous, causing wonderfully juicy scandals and still managing to churn out a hit show had made them great fodder for the gossip columnists. Danny most of all, for hers was the beautiful, unbelievably sensuous face the public saw on their screens every Friday and her stormy, sensational and riotous love life made spectacular reading.

  The break-up of Sarah’s marriage just after the series started had brought the press flocking again. Was someone else involved? Was it true she was seeing Phillip Standeven, one of the TV station’s more flamboyant controllers? Was he going to leave his wife? So many questions about something that had made Sarah’s head spin with the sheer incredibility of it all. I mean, had they seen Phillip Standeven!

  It had been much the same with Louisa when just over a year ago her relationship with Bill Kovak, a freelance director, had ended. During the time they were together the speculation about wedding bells, the outrageous suggestions of miscarriage and stolen pictures of blissful togetherness just went to show how wrong the press could be.

  Still, she reflected, tipping the contents of her top drawer into a shoe-box, at least it was over now, mainly thanks to Danny who had rescued her from the trap of her own misguided attraction to the wrong men. Violence had been a part of her life from such an early age that until Simon, the gentle, crazy and adorable man she lived with now, had come along she’d been terrified that maybe in some appalling, masochistic or unthinkably deranged way, she was responsible for it. That maybe she was incapable of having a relationship with a man without the constant threat of both physical and mental abuse. However, knowing Simon had put her mind at rest on that score and it was only the packing away of old newspaper cuttings that had made her think of Bill now.

  ‘Oh shit, what a mess,’ she grumbled aloud as she pulled open a deep bottom drawer and gazed despairingly down at the chaos. She looked hopefully around the room searching for something marginally less daunting to tackle, then started to laugh. Next door Sarah was complaining so loudly about her own slovenly state of affairs that Louisa decided to go and sympathize.

  ‘It’s so fucking depressing,’ Sarah complained as Louisa strolled into her office to find her sitting in the midst of a pile of old scripts and story outlines staring down at a photograph of the three of them, she, Louisa and Danny, taken for the launch of the series. ‘Talk about a trip down memory lane, I feel like slitting my wrists all of a sudden.’

  Louisa’s luminous brown eyes were dancing with laughter. ‘Why don’t you have some more champagne?’ she suggested.

  ‘Good God no, if I do I’ll start seeing double and its bad enough as it is. How are you doing?’

  ‘Not much better. I knew we should have gone to Spain with Danny.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’ Sarah’s round, cheerful face and normally bright, laughing blue eyes were filled with despondency.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Louisa laughed. ‘Only an hour ago you were telling me how much you were looking forward to making a new start.’

  ‘That was before I was sitting here facing all this. For some nasty little reason it’s reminding me how long it is since I last had sex and I swear to you I didn’t set out to break any records.’

  ‘Hey everyone!’ Camilla, the redheaded associate producer called out. ‘Frank’s just rung from wardrobe, they’re selling off the costumes if you’re interested.’

  ‘Have the sets gone into the crusher yet?’ Sarah asked, tucking her sleek, short blonde bob behind one ear as she looked up at Louisa.

  ‘I imagine so,’ Louisa grinned, her lovely eyes sparkling with mischief. She was tall, extremely slim and her soft, tawny brown hair framed her elfin face in a sixties, Quant sort of way. Her full, wide mouth had a gentle hypnotic quality and her smile could make people blink with its radiance.

  ‘Why do I feel that my whole life is going through a shredder?’ Sarah grumbled. ‘It’s all right for you, you know what you’re doing next …’

  ‘Sssh,’ Louisa said, putting a finger to her lips as she glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Sarah grinned, ‘your secret’s safe with me. How are you feeling about it now?’

  ‘As nervous as hell.’

  ‘Yeah, I imagine I would be too,’ Sarah commented. ‘And I’d be ecstatic. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I’m going to get some coffee. Want some?’

  A few minutes later Louisa was back in her office, sipping her coffee as she gazed thoughtfully out the window. What a day this was! Talk about immaculate timing. To have discovered she was pregnant on the very day Private Essays was coming to its final conclusion seemed quite stupendously fateful. She’d only told Sarah so far, she would tell Simon tonight when, for once, they had managed to make their busy calendars coincide to give themselves an evening at home in their still relatively new apartment in Bedford Park. They’d really pushed the boat out when they’d bought it, sinking every penny they both had into it and virtually crippling themselves with mortgage repayments. But neither of them had ever had money before, they’d come from ordinary, working-class backgrounds where to have an extra couple of quid in your pocket at the end of the week was almost unheard of. Well certainly in Louisa’s gran’s case it was, probably it wasn’t quite so drastic for Simon’s parents. Nevertheless, the thrill of earning such inordinate sums of money had intoxicated them both and they’d spent and squandered and lived it up this past year as if they were Bonnie and Clyde at the height of their luck. Well, Louisa had, Simon was more sensible when it came to money, only ever buying things that virtually guaranteed a return on his investment. He was the smart thinker, the steady influence and the man who had given Louisa more confidence in herself. She could hardly wait to see his face when she told him about the baby, he’d be over the moon, she just knew it.

  Turning back to the onerous task of clearing out her desk Louisa set down her coffee and began sorting through the clutter. It was such a drag doing this sort of thing, especially when she just couldn’t make up her mind what to keep and what to junk. Sighing wearily and putting her feet up on the desk she flicked idly through a batch of photographs, wondering if maybe it wasn’t an idea to junk it all. She had a video cassette of every episode, Simon had had a copy of each script bound in leather and embossed in gold for her thirtieth birthday and she couldn’t think of anything else she really needed. Except the odd bric-a-brac she kept on her desk – the silver paperweight, the leather blotter from Aspreys, the Tiffany pen and pencil set. And of course the framed photograph of her gran with the entire cast of Private Essays
.

  Louisa smiled mistily to herself as she picked the photograph up. She could almost hear her gran’s voice, filled with awe and pride the day Louisa had won her first award for writing. She’d been fourteen at the time and her play, her very own play, had been put on at the Royal Court in London! She and her gran had never been to London before, so when they’d got there everything had been an adventure. The big shops, the thundering Underground, the dazzling theatre lights and the overwhelmingly swish hotel in Chelsea. They’d been too shy to go down to the posh restaurant for dinner with its formal waiters and glittering chandeliers, and not even knowing that such a thing as room service existed they’d popped out to see if they could find some fish and chips.

  Louisa laughed to herself. She knew now of course that Chelsea wasn’t big on fish and chips, but what fun they’d had during that first trip to the Big City. Her gran had treated herself to a new suit in the C&A and had almost burst with pleasure when an assistant told her she looked pretty snazzy. Louisa had bought a new dress in Top Shop which had cost her nearly twenty pounds, and the play’s producers had sent a taxi to take them to the theatre on opening night. There were even pictures of them in the paper the next day, mainly because Louisa was so very young. Whenever Louisa looked at those pictures now she wanted to laugh and cry at how lamentably under-dressed and awkward they had looked among so many glitzy, sophisticated people.

  Over the years that followed they’d become more used to the limelight as Louisa’s talent for writing had blossomed. When she was eighteen she was offered a job on a script-editing team for BBC radio and it had almost broken her heart to leave her gran and the little council bungalow they’d shared since Louisa was two. Her gran had put on a brave face, telling her she had to get out there and make something of herself and not worry about an old woman who had more friends than she knew what to do with.

  When Private Essays finally went on air the press who had come to know Florrie Kramer over the years made almost as much fuss of her as they did of Louisa, Sarah and Danny. Florrie had become one of the nation’s favourite grans and to her chuckling delight she even received fan mail. That her success had brought such happiness to her gran was more than Louisa could have hoped for. Life hadn’t been easy for Florrie, not that she ever complained, but taking on a two year old at the age of sixty-one had been quite a challenge when all she had was her old age pension and a paltry child allowance to live on. But she’d always managed to keep a pound back to go to the bingo on Saturdays. She’d won fifty pounds once and had put it into a post office account for Louisa. There had been so many gestures like that over the years, like giving Louisa an extra lamb chop because she was a growing girl and going without herself, or making sure that Louisa’s shoes were as smart and tidy as the other children’s when her own had holes in them, or saving up to take Louisa on the bus to the zoo with enough left over to buy nuts for the monkeys and ice-creams for themselves. The list was endless and too painful to think about now. But at least she had managed to give her gran something back when she’d started to earn herself. Florrie loved hats and Louisa never failed to turn up with a new one each time she visited. And she’d taken her gran on holiday to Butlins because that was where Florrie had wanted to go, and she’d bought her a spanking new colour TV to replace the second-hand black and white one a neighbour had generously given her.