Sidney Shelton’s The Tides of Memory
By: Tilly Bagshawe
Blurb:
On the surface the De Vere
family appear to have it all: Wealth, political power, and idyllic life split
between their London mansion, Oxfordshire country house and their idyllic,
sprawling Martha’s Vineyard estate.
But beneath the gilded façade, and the family’s apparently watertight bonds with one another, lie many secrets, some of them deadly. When the mistakes of youth refuse to stay buried, and generation old hatreds resurface, the De Veres find themselves on the brink of losing everything. How far will each of them go to conceal the truth and protect the family?
About the Author:
The late novelist and
screenwriter Sidney Sheldon remains one of the world’s top bestselling authors,
having sold more than 300 million copies of his books. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE
DARK? was his most recent in a long line of huge hits on bestseller lists
everywhere. He is also the only writer to have won an Oscar, a Tony, and an
Edgar. THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS heralds him as the most translated
author in the world.
Tilly Bagshawe is a New York Times Bestselling author. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and London with her husband and children.
Tilly Bagshawe is a New York Times Bestselling author. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and London with her husband and children.
Links:
Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
“Was there anything else, Home
Secretary?”
Alexia De Vere smiled. Home
Secretary. Surely the most beautiful two words in the English language.
Except forPrime Minister, of course. The Tory party’s newest superstar
laughed at herself. One step at a time, Alexia.
“No thank you Edward. I’ll call
if I need you.”
Sir Edward Manning nodded
briefly and left the room. A senior civil servant in his early sixties and
bastion of the Westminster political establishment, Sir Edward Manning was as
tall and grey and rigid as a matchstick. In the coming months, Sir Edward would
be Alexia De Vere’s constant companion: advising, cautioning, expertly guiding
her through the maze of Home Office politics. But right now, in these first few
hours in the job, Alexia De Vere wanted to be alone. She wanted to savor the
sweet taste of victory without an audience. To sit back and revel in the
profound thrill of power.
After all, she’d earned it.
Getting up from her desk, she
paced around her new office, a vast eyrie of a room perched high in one of the
baroque towers of the Palace of Westminster. The interior design was more
functional than fabulous. A matching pair of ugly brown sofas at one end (those
must go), a simple desk and chair at the other, and a bookcase stuffed with
dusty, un-read tomes of political history. But none of that mattered once you
saw the view.
Spectacular didn’t begin to cover it. Floor to ceiling windows
provided a panoramic vista of London, from the towers of Canary Wharf in the
east to the mansions of Chelsea in the west. It was a view that said one thing
and one thing only.
Power.
And it was all hers.
I am theHome Secretary of Great
Britain. The second most important member of Her Majesty’s Government.
How had it happened? How had a
junior prisons minister, and a deeply unpopular one at that, leapfrogged so
many other senior candidates to land the big job? Poor Kevin Lomax over at
Trade & Industry must be spitting yellow, coffee-stained teeth. The thought
made Alexia De Vere feel warm inside. Patronizing old fossil. He wrote me
off years ago, but who’s laughing now?
Pilloried in the press for
being wealthy, aristocratic and out-of-touch with ordinary voters, and dubbed
the new Iron Lady by the tabloids, Alexia De Vere’’s sentencing reform bill had
been savaged by MPs on both sides of the house for being ‘compassionless’ and
‘brutal.’ No parole sentences might work in America, a country so barbaric they
still had the death penalty. But they weren’t going to fly here, in civilized
Great Britain.
That’s what theysaid. But
when push came to shove, they’d all voted the bill through.
Cowards. Cowards and hypocrites
the lot of them.
Alexia De Vere knew how
unpopular the bill had made her, with colleagues, with the media, with lower
income voters. So she was as shocked as everyone else when the Prime Minister,
Henry Whitman, chose to appoint her as his Home Secretary. But she didn’t dwell
on it. The fact was, Henry Whitmanhad appointed her. At the end of the
day that was all that mattered.
Reaching into a box, Alexia
pulled out some family photographs. She preferred to keep her work and home
lives separate, but these days everyone was so touchy-feely, having pictures of
one’s children on one’s desk had become de rigeur.
There was her daughter Roxie at
eighteen, her blonde head thrown back, laughing. How Alexia missed that laugh.
Of course, the picture had been taken before the accident.
The accident Alexia De Vere hated the euphemism for her daughter’s
suicide attempt, a three story leap that had left Roxie wheelchair bound for
the rest of her life. In Alexia’s view, one should call a spade a spade. But
Alexia’s husband, Teddy insisted on it. Dear Teddy. He always was a soft
touch.
Placing her husband’s
photograph next to their daughter’s, Alexia smiled. An unprepossessing, paunchy
middle aged man, with thinning hair and permanently ruddy cheeks, Teddy De Vere
beamed at the camera like a lovable bear.
How different my life would
have been without him. How much, how very
much, I owe him.
Of course, Teddy De Vere was
not the only man to whom Alexia owed her good fortune. There was Henry Whitman,
the new Tory Prime Minister and Alexia’s self-appointed political mentor. And
somewhere, far, far away from here, there was another man. A good man. A man
who had helped her.
But she mustn’t think about
that man. Not now. Not today.
Today was a day of triumph and
celebration. It was no time for regrets.
The third picture was of
Alexia’s son, Michael. What an insanely beautiful boy he was, with his dark curls
and slate-grey eyes and that mischievous smile that melted female hearts from a
thousand paces. Sometimes Alexia thought that Michael was the only person on
earth she had ever loved unconditionally. Roxie ought to fall into that
category too, but after everything that had happened between them, the bad
blood had poisoned the relationship beyond repair
After the photographs it was
time for the congratulations cards, which had been arriving in a steady stream
since Alexia’s shock appointment was announced two days earlier. Most of them
were dull, corporate affairs sent by lobbyists or constituency hangers-on. They
had pictures of popping champagne bottles or dreary floral still-lifes. But one
card in particular immediately caught Alexia’s eye. Against a stars and stripes
background, the words ‘YOU ROCK!” were emblazoned in garish gold. The message
inside read:
‘Congratulations, darling
Alexia! SO excited and SO proud of you. All my love, Lucy!!!! xxx’
Alexia De Vere grinned. She had
very few female friends – very few friends of any kind, in fact - but Lucy
Meyer was the exception that proved the rule. A neighbor from Martha’s
Vineyard, where the De Veres owned a summer home – Teddy had fallen in love
with the island whilst at Harvard Business School - , Lucy Meyer had become
almost like a sister. Lucy was a traditional home-maker, albeit of the
uber-wealthy variety, and as American as apple pie. Alternately motherly and
child-like, she was the sort of woman who used a lot of exclamation points in
emails and wrote her I’s with full circles instead of dots on the top. To say
that Lucy Meyer and Alexia De Vere had little in common would be like saying
that Israel and Palestine didn’t always see exactly eye to eye. And yet the two
women’s friendship, forged over so many blissful summers on Martha’s Vineyard,
had survived all the ups and downs of Alexia’s crazy political life.
Standing by the window, Alexia
gazed down at the Thames. From up here the river looked benign and stately, a
softly flowing ribbon of silver snaking its silent way through the city. But
down below, Alexia knew, its currents could be deadly. Even now, at fifty nine
years of age and at the pinnacle of her career, Alexia De Vere couldn’t look at
water without feeling a shudder of foreboding. She twisted her wedding ring
nervously.
How easily it can all be washed
away! Power, happiness, even life itself. It only takes an instant, a single
unguarded instant. And it’s gone.
Her phone buzzed loudly.
“Sorry to disturb you Home
Secretary. But I have Ten Downing Street on line one . I assume you’ll take the
Prime Minister’s call?”
Alexia De Vere shook her head,
willing the ghosts of the past away.
“Of course Edward. Put him
through.”
South of the river, less than a
mile from Alexia De Vere’s opulent Westminster office but a world apart,
Gilbert Drake sat in Maggie’s café, hunched over his egg and beans. A classic
British ‘greasy spoon’, complete with grime encrusted windows and a peeling
linoleum floor, Maggie’s was a popular haunt for cabbies and builders on their
way to work on the more affluent north side of the river. Gilbert Drake was a
regular. Most mornings he was chatty and full of smiles. But not today. Staring
at the picture in his newspaper as if he’d seen a ghost, he pressed his hands
to his temples.
This can’t be happening.
How is this happening?
There she was, that bitch
Alexia De Vere, smiling for the camera as she shook hands with the Prime
Minister. Gilbert Drake would never forget that face as long as he lived. The
proud, jutting jaw, the disdainful curl of the lips, the cold, steely glint of
those blue eyes, as pretty and empty and heartless as a doll’s. The caption
beneath the picture read ‘Britain’s new Home Secretary starts work.’
Reading the article was
painful, like picking at a newly healed scab, but Gilbert Drake forced himself
to go on.
‘In an appointment that
surprised many at Westminster and wrong footed both the media and the bookies,
junior prisons minister Alexia De Vere was named as the new Home Secretary
yesterday. The Prime Minister, Henry Whitman, has described Mrs De Vere as ‘a
star’ and ‘a pivotal figure’ in his new look cabinet. Kevin Lomax, the
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who had been widely tipped to
replace Humphrey Crewe at the home office after his resignation in March, told
reporters he was ‘delighted’ to hear of Mrs De Vere’s appointment and that he
‘hugely looked forward’ to working with her.’
Gilbert Drake closed his
newspaper in disgust.
Gilbert’s best friend Sanjay
Patel was dead because of that bitch. Sanjay who had protected Gilbert from the
bullies at school and on their Peckham public housing. Sanjay who’d worked hard
all his life to put food on his family’s table, and faced all life’s
disappointments with a smile. Sanjay who’d been imprisoned, wrongly imprisoned,
set up by the police, simply for trying to help a cousin to escape persecution.
Sanjay was dead. While that whore, that she-wolf Alexia De Vere, was
riding high, the toast of London.
It was not to be borne. Gilbert
Drake would not bear it.
The righteous will be glad when
they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Maggie, the café’s eponymous
proprietress, refilled Gilbert’s mug of tea. “Eat up, Gil. Your egg’s going
cold.”
Gilbert Drake didn’t hear her.
All he heard were his friend
Sanjay Patel’s voice begging for mercy.
Charlotte Whitman, the Prime
Minister’s wife, rolled over in bed and stroked her husband’s chest. It was
four in the morning and Henry was awake, again, staring at the ceiling like a
prisoner waiting for the firing squad.
“What is it Henry? What’s the
matter?”
Henry Whitman covered his
wife’s hand with his.
“Nothing. I’m not sleeping too
well, that’s all. Sorry if I woke you.”
“You would tell me if there
were a problem, wouldn’t you?”
“Darling Charlotte.” He pulled
her close. “I’m the Prime Minister. My life is nothing but problems as far as
the eye can see.”
“You know what I mean. I mean a
real problem. Something you can’t handle.”
“I’m fine, darling, honestly.
Try and go back to sleep.”
Soon Charlotte Whitman was
slumbering soundly. Henry watched her, her words ringing in his ears.Something
you can’t handle…
Thanks to him, Alexia De Vere’s
face was on the front page of every newspaper. Speculation about her
appointment was rife, but no one knew anything. No one except Henry Whitman.
And he intended to take the secret to his grave.
Was Alexia De Vere a problem
that he couldn’t handle? Henry Whitman sincerely hoped not. Either way it was
too late now. The appointment was made. The deed was done.
Britain’s new Prime Minister
lay awake until dawn, just as he knew he would.
No rest for the wicked.
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