Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals. Tilly Bagshawe

You should jack it in.’

      Sasha laughed.

      ‘I’m serious,’ said Don. ‘You’ve made enough money, haven’t you? Quit while you’re ahead. Get a boyfriend, get married, have some kids. Have some fun. It’s not too late to go back to science, you know.’

      Yes it is, thought Sasha sadly. It is too late. Life has moved on and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

      They’d arrived at Wilmington, a small hamlet famous for its Long Man, a giant human figure carved into the chalk hill like an oversized police drawing of a murder victim. No one knew for sure how old the Long Man was. Although it probably only dated from the sixteenth century, the area around it had been associated with religious rites and festivals since pagan times, and was a popular spot for local treasure hunters. Sasha used to come here as a kid to pick sloes, bitter, dark blue berries that Sue made into sweet sloe gin for Christmas. Stepping out into the cold, misty morning air, a wave of nostalgia hit Sasha like an oncoming truck. Out of nowhere, her eyes filled with tears.

      ‘Are you crying?’ Don’s face clouded with concern.

      ‘No! Why would I be crying?’ said Sasha, forcing herself to snap out of it. It wasn’t fair to worry her dad, especially as she didn’t know herself what was wrong. ‘The cold just made my eyes water, that’s all. So come on then, where’s this treasure? I was expecting Aladdin’s cave of wonders, not some dreary old hills in the drizzle.’

      The day passed pleasantly enough, with Don wisely dropping the serious father-daughter stuff and chatting away about local gossip. ‘You remember Will Temple, that boy you were so mad about your last year at St Agnes’s?’

      It was a name she hadn’t heard in a million years. Sasha blushed. ‘Will! God, yes, of course I remember. Whatever happened to him?’

      ‘He made a ton of money as a developer. Not in your league, I dare say, but he’s a big cheese in this neck of the woods. Bought that lovely house in Tidehurst, the manor.’ Sasha remembered it well, an idyllic Tudor pile with a maze and a walled rose garden. It was a wildly romantic house. The Will she remembered would not have appreciated it. ‘Anyway,’ Don went on, ‘his wife left him a few months ago, ran off with a mate of his or some such.’

      ‘How awful!’ said Sasha sincerely. ‘Poor Will.’

      ‘Rattling round there alone he is now. Single dad. Very good looking still, according to your mother.’

      It wasn’t until this point that Sasha realized he was trying to set her and Will up. Reunite her with an old flame so she could move home to Sussex and live happily ever after. If only life were that simple. ‘Oh Dad!’ she grinned. ‘You don’t think …? Will Temple and I had nothing in common when we were kids! That’s why we broke up. What on earth would we have to say to one another now?’

      Don shrugged. ‘You’re both in the property business. You’re both young and single and rich. And lonely.’

      ‘I’m not lonely. I’m busy,’ insisted Sasha.

      ‘Anyway, I thought you broke up because of that wanker Dexter. Don’t suppose you ever see him, do you?’

      ‘No.’

      Normally it amused Sasha the way that her parents seemed to think she might have ‘bumped into’ celebrities, simply because she lived in America and was now rich and well known herself. As if New York were like Frant, and she might pass the time of day with Tom Cruise or the President in the post office on a Tuesday morning. When it came to Theo Dexter, however, she couldn’t see the funny side.

      ‘Your mother and I saw him on some “ Hollywood Special ” the other night. I don’t know what he’s done to his face but he looks more and more like Joe 90 every time I see him, all waxy and frozen. No glasses though, obviously. Just those damn stupid teeth. You can see them from space, I bet, the colour they are. Looks like he’s got a mouthful of burning magnesium. And his house was just ridiculous, all marble and gold, like a bloody brothel.’

      ‘Hmmm.’ Sasha did not want to talk about Theo Dexter. Not today, not ever. His continued existence, prosperity and apparent happiness all reminded her of her own abject failure.

      ‘I wonder what his old muckers at Cambridge think of him now? Whether any of ’em have thought twice about what they did to you, taking his word over yours?’

      ‘I doubt it,’ said Sasha, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘He was part of their little boys’ club. I wasn’t. They were real scientists. I was just a kid.’

      ‘Maybe, back then,’ said Don. ‘But no one thinks of Dexter as a real scientist now. He’s more like an actor, isn’t he? A celebrity.’ Don’s lip curled with distaste at the word. ‘I’ll bet they all hate him these days.’

      It was an interesting thought, one that, oddly, had never occurred to Sasha. As she remembered, the Cambridge establishment was notoriously bitchy. Many of Theo’s contemporaries had disliked him even before his big break, back when he was still a tutor at St Michael’s, sleeping with all the prettiest students. She wondered if it ever bothered Theo, being cast out into the scientific wilderness, even if it was into the welcoming arms of Hollywood? Sasha herself had grieved intensely for physics and Cambridge and the life she’d left behind. At Harvard Business School she had recurring nightmares of the university court, her utter humiliation and devastation at being branded a liar, at seeing her work appropriated by someone else, someone she had loved. Back then she thought often of her fellow undergraduates, of Georgia and Josie and her St Michael’s friends, but more often of her rivals in the physics faculty, guys like Owen McDermott from Caius or the fat, nerdy Hugo Cryer who spent his days locked in the particle physics labs at the Cavendish. What had happened to them? To their research? Had they gone on to make breakthroughs, to become professors, to make a difference in the physics world, the real world, the only world that mattered?

      Over the years, Sasha had learned to stop tormenting herself with such thoughts. Her life had moved on, first to Wrexall, then Ceres, and soon there was no time to brood on what might have been, the doors left unopened. But it was curious to imagine Theo Dexter having the same thoughts. Most people, looking at his life, would have thought it laughable, the idea of a global TV star pining for academia. But Sasha knew better than anyone that wealth and fame weren’t everything. Physics was Theo’s first love, just as it was hers. You never got over your first love, not really.

      ‘I read something the other day about St Michael’s. What was his name, that old git who was Master there in your day?’

      Sasha gritted her teeth. ‘Anthony Greville.’ The name would be engraved in her memory until the day she died. Greville had chaired the show trial that had ruled in Theo’s favour, sealing her fate.

      ‘Greville, that’s it. Well he’s finally retiring. They’re holding elections for a new Master, next spring, I believe.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Sasha, not sure how she was supposed to react. It was getting dark. The mist sank lower over the rolling chalk hills, wrapping the landscape in a cold, wet blanket. Sasha shivered, thinking of her mother’s homemade fruit cake and the crackling log fire that would be waiting for them back at the cottage. ‘Come on, Dad. It’s late. We should be getting back.’

      They turned and walked back to the car, with Don still muttering, ‘I’m serious about Will Temple, you know. You’re a modern girl. Ask him out for dinner.’

      ‘Virgin flight twenty-four to New York, boarding at gate twelve.’

      The tannoy announcement brought Sasha back to her senses. Tired of window shopping she’d made her way up to the first-class lounge where she sat staring into space, an untouched plate of cheese and crackers in her lap. A number of her fellow passengers recognized her, but she’d grown adept at tuning out the nudges and whispers and disappearing into her own world.

      Gathering up her hand-luggage bag, she made her way down to the plane where the upper-class passengers were boarding