CHAPTER FOUR
SOPHIEHADONLYdimly speculated on what a long weekend party might be like. She had mostly thought along the lines of one of those upper-class country affairs where a dozen people wafted around in flowing robes, smoking cigarettes in long cigarette holders and talking in low, restrained, cut-glass accents. She had seen stuff like that in period dramas on television. Generally speaking, there was always an unfortunate death at some point.
Matias’s party, she could tell as soon as guest number one had arrived, was not going to be quite like that.
Through the kitchen windows, which overlooked the spread of lawns at the back of the house and the long avenue and courtyard where the cars would be parked, the first guests arrived in a roaring vintage car, which disgorged a couple who could have stepped straight out of a celebrity magazine.
Debbie, the lovely housekeeper in her fifties who had, the day before, showed Sophie the ropes, had been standing next to her and she had said, without batting an eyelid, that everyone in the village had been waiting for this party with bated breath because the guest list was stuffed full of celebrities.
And so Sophie had discovered as the day had continued and the guests had begun piling up. All told, there would have been getting on for eighty people. Many would be staying in three sumptuous hotels in the vicinity, where chauffeurs were on standby to take them there at the end of the evening and return them to the house in time for breakfast and whatever activities had been laid on.
Through a process of clever guesswork, Sophie deduced that this wasn’t so much a weekend of fun and frolic with Matias’s nearest and dearest, but something of a business arrangement. The scattering of A-list celebrities from the world of media and sport was interspersed with a healthy assortment of very rich, middle-aged men who oozed wealth and power.
Sophie guessed that this was how the fabulously wealthy did their networking.
The supply of food was constant, as was the champagne. Having had a brief respite the day before, when Matias had done as asked and introduced Sophie to the people she would be working with, Sophie had been hard at it since six that morning.
Brunch was the first thing on the menu. An elaborate buffet spread, then tea before supper made an appearance at seven-thirty in the evening.
Sophie had no idea what these people did when they weren’t eating and she didn’t have time to think about it because she was rushed off her feet cooking and giving orders and hoping and praying that nothing went wrong.
She didn’t glimpse Matias, even in passing. Why would he venture into the bowels of the kitchen where the lowly staff were taking care of his needs when he had the movers and shakers there to occupy him? Strangely Art, Matias’s employee,hadput in an appearance in the kitchen and he had been as lovely as she recalled. Kind, gentle, almost making her think that there might be a purpose to his surprise visit, even though he had just briefly passed the time of day with her. And she wasn’t quite sure why Matias had made sure to make the distinction that Art was only hisemployee, because it was clear, reading between the lines, that the two had a close bond, which, in turn, made her feel, stupidly and disturbingly, that Matias couldn’t possibly be the cruel ogre she thought him to be. Didn’t people’s choice of friends often tell a story aboutthemselves? Crazy.
Nose to the grindstone, she nevertheless still found herself keeping an eye out for Matias just in case he put in an appearance and when, at a little after eleven that evening, she made her way up to her quarters, she was foolishly disappointed not to have seen him at all.
Because she needed to make sure that everything was on target for her repaying some of the stupid debt she owed him,she reasoned sensibly. She had worked her butt off and she wanted to know that it hadn’t been in vain, that day one had definitely wiped out the amount that had been agreed on paper.
The last thing she needed was to be told, when it was all over and done with and she’d shed a couple of stone through sheer stress, that he wasn’t satisfied or that he’d had complaints about her or that the food had given his guests food poisoning and so she would have to cough up the money she owed him even if it meant her going bust.
She, herself, had no idea what the reaction to all her hard work was because she didn’t emerge from the bowels of the wonderfully well-equipped kitchen for the entire day and night.
Waiters and waitresses came and went and an assortment of hired help made sure that dirty crockery was washed and returned for immediate use.
In addition to that plethora of staff on tap, Sophie also had a dedicated sous chef who was invaluable and did all the running around at her command.
But it was still exhausting and she had two more days of this before the first of the guests would start departing!
Surely, she thought, she would see Matiasat some point! Surely he wouldn’t just leave her to get on with it without poking his nose into the kitchen to see whether he was getting his pound of flesh!
It was simply her anxiety given the circumstances that resulted in Matias being on her mind so much.
She was cross with herself for letting him get under her skin. She recalled the way her body had reacted to his with a shudder of impatience. He’d given her the full brunt of his personality in all its overpowering glory when there had been no one else around, but now that he was surrounded by his cronies he couldn’t even be bothered to check up on her and make sure he was getting value for money.
It infuriated her that, instead of being relieved that he wasn’t hovering over her shoulder or popping up unexpectedly like a bad penny, she was disappointed.
By the time the festivities were coming to an end and the end of the long menu was in sight, she had reconciled herself to the fact that she would leave without seeing Matias at all and would probably find out the outcome of this exercise in repaying the money she owed him via his secretary.
He’d made his appearance and he wasn’t going to be making another one.
She hadn’t even had a chance, with everything happening, to have a look around the house! Not that she’d wanted to mingle with the guests. She knew her place, after all, but she’d hoped that she might have had a chance, last thing at night, to peep into some of the splendid rooms. No such luck because there had always been someone around or else the sound of voices from one of the rooms had alerted her to the presence of people who seemed to think nothing of staying up until the early hours of the morning.
The guests finally departed during the course of Monday in a convoy of expensive cars. The sound of laughter and chatter filtered down to the kitchen where most of the hired help had tidied, cleaned and left to go back to the village, where they would no doubt regale their family and friends with excited tales about what and who they’d seen.
Had Matias gone? By five-thirty, with just Sophie and Debbie left on the premises doing the final bits of tidying, she knew that he had. Without telling her how she had performed.
For some reason, she was booked to remain in the sprawling mansion until the following morning, and she had naturally assumed that there would be guests to cook breakfast for on that morning, but now she realised that she had been kept on to do cleaning duties after the guests had left.
He’d bought her lock, stock and barrel. She hadn’t been asked to simply prepare meals, which was her speciality, but he had also kept her on to do basic skivvy work and he knew that she had no choice but to comply.
