The Highest Stakes of All

Craven Sara

And it doesn’t suit me at all, Joanna thought bitterly. How long will it be before I can have a real life—the life I once planned?

Teaching languages had been her aim. She’d been studying for her A levels prior to university when her mother had been taken suddenly ill, and diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Two months later she was dead, and Joanna’s relatively stable existence up to that point ended, too.

Denys, summoned home from America as soon as his wife’s condition became known, had been genuinely grief-stricken. It had been his inability to settle rather than any lack of caring that had kept them apart for so much of their married life. Gail Vernon wanted a permanent home for her only child. Denys needed to gamble much as he needed to draw breath.

However, he was a generous if erratic provider, and, to Joanna, he had seemed an almost god-like being, suntanned and handsome, whenever he returned to the UK. A dispenser of laughter and largesse, she thought, his cases stuffed with scent, jewellery and other exotic gifts as well as the elegant clothes he had made for him in the Far East.

‘If he ever gets stopped at Customs, he’ll end up in jail,’ his older brother Martin had muttered.

Yet, somehow, it had never happened. And perhaps Uncle Martin had been right when he also said Denys had the devil’s own luck. But lately that luck had not been much in evidence. He’d sustained some heavy losses, and his recoveries had not been as positive as they needed to be.

He was invariably cagey about the exact state of their finances, and Joanna’s attempts to discover how they stood had never been successful.

‘Everything’s fine, my pet,’ was his usual airy reply. ‘Stop worrying your pretty head and smile.’

A response that had Joanna grinding her teeth. As so much did these days.

At the beginning, of course, it had all seemed like a great adventure. The last thing she’d expected was to be taken out of school and whisked off abroad to share her father’s peripatetic lifestyle, travelling from one gambling centre to another as the mood took him.

Uncle Martin and Aunt Sylvie had protested vociferously, saying that she could make a home with them while she finished her education, but Denys had been adamant.

‘She’s all I have left,’ he’d repeated over and over again. ‘All that remains of her mother. Can’t you understand that I need her with me?’ he’d added. ‘Besides, a change of scene will be good for her. Get her away from all these painful memories of my lovely Gail.’

With hindsight, Joanna wondered rather sadly if he’d have been so set on her company if she’d still been the quiet, shy child with braces on her teeth. Instead, she’d soared into slender, long-legged womanhood, her chestnut hair falling in a silken swathe to her waist, and green eyes that seemed to ask what the world had to offer.

Which, at first, seemed to be a great deal. The travelling, the hotel suites, the super-charged atmosphere of the casinos had been immensely exciting for an almost eighteen-year-old.

Even the shock when she learned that Denys wasn’t prepared to acknowledge their real relationship hadn’t detracted too much from the appeal of their nomadic existence. Or not immediately.

She’d realised quite soon that women of all ages found her father attractive, and tried, without much success, not to let it bother her. But while Denys was charming, flattering and grateful, he was determined to make it clear that it would go no further than that.

‘I need you to be my shield—keeping my admirers at a distance,’ he’d told her seriously. His tone had become wheedling. ‘Treat it as part of the game, darling. Mummy always told me how good you were in your school plays. Now’s your chance to show me how well you can really act.’

But why were you never there to see for yourself? Joanna wanted to ask, but didn’t, because her father was continuing.

‘All you have to do, my pet, is stick close to me, smile and say as little as possible.’

On the whole, Joanna thought she’d managed pretty well, even when the leering looks and muttered remarks from many of the men she encountered made her want to run away and hide.

The mother of Jackie, her best friend at school, had become involved in the women’s movement, and held consciousness-raising sessions at her house. The iniquity of women being regarded as sex objects by men, had been among the favourite themes at those meetings, and while she and Jackie had giggled about it afterwards, Joanna now thought ruefully that Mrs Henderson might have had a point.

Eventually, it had all ceased to be a game, and she’d begun to see her new life for the tawdry sham it really was, and be troubled by it. Realising at the same time that there was no feasible way out. That, for the time being, she was trapped.

Denys was speaking again, his voice excited. ‘I’m going to start making enquiries. Find out who the new arrival is, and if he’s likely to visit the Casino.’ He gave her a minatory nod. ‘I’ll see you back here after lunch.’

Here we go again, Joanna thought with a sigh as she heard the suite door close behind him. Looking for a non-existent pot of gold at the end of a dodgy rainbow.

‘All I need is one big win.’ She had lost count of how many times her father had said this over the past months.

And she sent up a silent prayer to the god of gamblers that the unknown owner would stay safely aboard his yacht for the duration. Although that, of course, would not help with the looming threat of the hotel bill.

She stayed on the balcony for a while, drinking another cup of coffee and enjoying the sunlit freshness of the morning after the unexpected heavy rain with thunder, lightning and squally winds of the previous night. But she was still unable to fully relax, not while the question of how long they could go on living like this continued to haunt her.

‘You’re my little mascot,’ Denys had told her jubilantly in the early days, but she hadn’t brought him much luck recently.

I shall have to start avoiding the front desk and use the staff entrance in the daytime, too, instead of just the evenings, she thought wryly as she pushed back her chair and went through the sliding glass doors into the sitting room.

The chambermaids were due soon, and she had to make sure that all signs of her nightly occupation of the sofa were removed from their eagle-eyed scrutiny.