Free Temptation Island by Victoria Fox Page A

eventually get out, it seemed Sherilyn had just about recovered from the shock. Her father informed Aurora she’d been upping her sessions with Lindy the Therapist—no doubt Lindy would have several things to say about the pool-table episode—and had some new pills to pop that came in a fancy pink packet and sat serious as a Bible by her mother’s bed.
    Today was the eve of Aurora’s sixteenth birthday party. They’d had people attending the mansion all week: caterers and planners, stylists and organisers, even a horse trainer attempting to map a route from the drive to the pool, where a white stallion would enter with the birthday girl on its back. She even suspected Tom was sorting a guest appearance from the Black Eyed Peas, and MTV was coming to film a special all-star Super Sweet —it was going to be amazing!
    ‘You’re lucky we’re going ahead with this,’ Tom had said when they’d talked about the celebrations. ‘After the trouble you’ve got yourself in.’
    ‘I know, Daddy,’ she’d said, eyes wide. ‘You and Mom are so kind and generous—I know I don’t deserve it!’
    ‘As long as you’ve learned your lesson,’ Tom had gone on, as stern as he’d ever be and always with a twinkle thatsuggested he didn’t think whatever she’d done was that bad, ‘we’re not going to deny you your sweet sixteen.’
    He’d ruffled her hair, and that had been that.
    Ramon, her hair stylist, arrived. He was doing a colour before her big appearance tomorrow. Sherilyn had insisted on sitting in on the session: Dr Lux had told her she wasn’t to be left alone with men—the girl had a sex addiction that temptation did nothing to ease.
    ‘Mom!’ she yelled up the stairs. The word bounced hollowly off the high ceilings, precise as a tennis ball. ‘Ramon’s here!’
    Upstairs, Sherilyn Rose applied a flush of rouge to her alarmingly pale complexion. She looked bad. The lighting in her dressing room was unflattering, but, even so, she was tired, overworked and under-slept. Opening a drawer in her vanity table, she extracted a bottle of little red pills. She chucked a handful into her mouth and took a slug of water.
    ‘All right, sweetheart!’ she sang, her soft Alabama tones melting down the stairway to her waiting daughter. Sweet-As-Pie-Mom was a hard act to maintain, she thought grimly. It used to come to her naturally—recently she felt like a gruesome monster wearing a little girl’s skin. Ugh, that was horrific. But that was the sort of image residing in her head these days.
    It was hardly any wonder her nerves were shredded. The pills Lindy had given her were the only things that allowed her to sleep at night. She had been enduring terrible dreams of late: memories that she’d thought were buried deep in the past. And yet every time Aurora misbehaved—this latestepisode the worst yet—they returned to her in vivid, appalling detail.
    The vast Indian Ocean. The island. That man …
    If it ever came out, the reasons why they’d done it, her life would not be worth living.
    Another couple of tablets, that was all. Shakily she chucked them down her white throat.
    Was her life worth living now?
    Sherilyn took a deep breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth, just as Lindy had taught her. She tried to smile, making her way slowly down the mansion stairs, one step at a time. As always, she shuddered when she passed the open games room, its equipment cleanly polished and disinfected on her instruction. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of her daughter in that context. It disgusted her.
    Not that her husband seemed to care. People said fathers were always closer to their girls: that the mothers got left out in the cold. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she was jealous of their connection, a bond she had tried so hard to feel, to engage , and, failing that, to manufacture. It hadn’t worked. How could it, when week after week she was subjected to yet another reminder of her daughter’s