‘OK,’ Savannah said, feeling stupid and scared simultaneously. She tried to brighten the mood, which she was brilliant at. ‘Gosh, must try and get less stressed.’
‘Yes, that would be a good idea,’ said the doctor, looking at her carefully.
‘It’s just work, you know work, oh, crazy,’ said Savannah hopping off the doctor’s couch. ‘At least I know what it is now and I don’t think I’m having a heart attack.’
‘Stress affects your whole body and over long periods of time, it can seriously damage your health,’ the doctor went on.
Savannah had given him her television smile. ‘How awful,’ she said. ‘Better avoid that.’ And she laughed, as if the very idea of her being stressed was ridiculous.
Now, she wished she’d been more honest with him because, at this precise moment, it did feel as if she was having a heart attack. There was a vice-like grip around her heart. Worse, it felt like there were hands around her neck and encircling her slim wrists, squeezing, angry, furious and she felt the intense fear of having done something wrong. Again.
‘Anthony,’ she said, still clinging to the notion that she needed to sound calm. ‘I think I’ll join you in a cigarette outside for a celebration.’
‘You? Smoke?’ He was stunned.
‘Coffee and a cigarette to celebrate!’
She had to get out into the air and do something with her hands, take something, stop the fear. She hated smoking but it would make her feel ill and that would stop the fear …
‘I’ll make coffees,’ said Siobhan, suddenly energised. ‘I don’t smoke but let’s all sit outside!’
‘Yes,’ said Savannah as she pushed the door open. Outside. She’d breathe outside. She didn’t want a blasted cigarette: Rory had been the smoker but she needed something to calm her and cigarettes did that, didn’t they?
In the outside, the three of them sat with coffees on a little bench and smoked. The cigarette made Savannah feel sick. Why had she smoked?
She knew the answer to that: to take away the fear. She would have done anything to take away the fear.
Savannah had started Velvet Beauty before she met Calum. She often thought that if she had met him first, the business would never have happened, but then Calum probably wouldn’t have been interested in her. He had been attracted to both her beauty and her success. Eden had once said this to her, a statement that had shocked her.
‘You’ve got quite the package going there, sis,’ Eden had said, idly and yet perhaps with a hint of envy. ‘Me thinks the handsome Calum fancies you and your business. You’ll be quite the power couple.’
It wasn’t Eden’s fault that she got envious, Savannah knew. She adored her twin sister. But they were so different for all that they looked exactly the same, the same hair that was dark strawberry with occasional blond hints, the same eyes, the same noses for goodness’ sake, the same way their freckles came up when the sun shone.
Both of them slathered themselves in Factor 50 suncream, and it was really annoying that Indy and Rory took after Mum and Dad and were beautifully olive skinned.
‘You must have adopted us,’ Eden sometimes said when she was younger at the fabulous parties in the hotel when she’d sneak around taking little sips out of other people’s glasses of wine.
‘As if,’ Mum always said, ruffling Eden’s hair lovingly. ‘Eighteen hours of labour; ask your sister what that must be like.’
But Eden had been born with that little hint of envy and Savannah understood that. Eden always wanted to be the best at everything.
She had been like that in school, even when she was going through her particularly wild phase. Savannah had wanted to blend in, which was why she knew it was odd that she had started up a business that seemed to require her to be front and foremost. It was just that the idea had come to her and being the front woman had come later, too late to back out.
‘Fake it till you make it,’ Eden had said before any presentations her twin had to make. ‘The secret is to look confident and people think you are.’
Easy for Eden to say. She had confidence oozing out of every pore.
Savannah had had to force herself to be the public face of her company. But she loved what she did. It was her dream. She adored perfumes, creams and unguents. When she’d been young and Eden had been inexpertly layering their mother’s black eyeliner on her lids, Savannah had been making creams with rose petals and lavender, although they generally separated into liquid and gunk in about two days. It had taken time before she learned how to make a proper emulsion the way the Nivea people had in the 1890s.
But she’d held on to that dream: the idea of starting a business using wonderful herbal recipes with the scents she loved as a child from walking around the old gardens in the hotel. That dream had kept her going through lots of difficult times.
She’d started the business with a loan from the credit union. Back then it really had been kitchen-table stuff.
She’d worked on it in the farmhouse in Greystones when she was studying chemistry in college, they were terribly broke and Mum was working all the hours. Savannah’s first lab was out the back in one of the sheds, which had been a nightmare in every respect. And then, she’d got a proper business loan. Suddenly, Enterprise Ireland had taken an interest, she’d had a mentor. Everything had taken off. There had been terrible pain when her darling mentor Terry had left, had gone to New York to marry a wonderful man who worked for the UN. Savannah had felt so lost then.
And then Calum had come into her life and changed it. Utterly.
Twelve Years Previously
