Chapter Twenty-Three
Lexy had always been indomitable, priding herself on her ability to face whatever life threw her way. Barely eighteen when she shot to fame on Who’s My Date?, she had had to navigate her way through the shark-infested seas of producers, agents, presenters, many of them wanting something in return for promoting her career. She had dodged and ducked as much as she could, smiling as she slipped out of this one’s grip, that one’s attempt to kiss her; but she hadn’t always been able to get away scot-free, not from a few very important men who had made it clear that this was not a negotiation but an ultimatum.
She had chosen her career, every single time. She had gone along with what she couldn’t decline without losing a crucial work opportunity, and done her best to scrub her mind of the memory directly afterwards. Her mantra had been to always look forwards: to keep herself motivated, she had pictured herself as Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, a smile on her face and a spring in her step. Her fans wanted a Lexy who was upbeat, funny, positive, a fighter and a survivor, an ideal version of themselves. To use another very useful American expression, she had always made lemonade out of lemons.
But this situation with Deacon was so serious that she could see no possibility of spinning it successfully. Lexy’s mouth tasted as acid and bitter as if someone had squeezed one of those lemons directly onto her tongue.
Her usual bravery had completely deserted her. She couldn’t summon the strength to pick up her phone and dial either the home number at Sandbanks or Frank’s mobile; it would be better to wait until she could see him in person. Lexy had always been able to rely on her beauty, her charm, her quick wits, to talk her out of trouble. She was almost sure that when she saw Frank, if she cried profusely and begged him to believe she was telling the truth, he would eventually forgive her.
She had been rehearsing her version of events all during the drive. She had been in the women’s toilets: Deacon had followed her in there of his own accord. She had had a few drinks, Deacon had thrown himself on her, she’d got carried away for a moment or two, he’d taken advantage of her, she’d been so guilty she couldn’t bear to tell Frank what had happened, so she had skulked back to Chelsea Harbour, taken a sleeping pill, cried herself to sleep . . .
The car was heading down Banks Road, the only way to reach the small peninsula. The road looped to the left, a short turnoff running down to the chain ferry, which was currently docked, a couple of cars and a bus driving slowly off it; the car swooped around the wide curve which became Panorama Road, and Lexy braced herself. She knew what was coming in three . . . two . . . one . . .
And there they were, the paparazzi. Massed outside the gates of her house, sipping coffee out of takeaway cups, chatting desultorily to each other, checking their phones for updates, waiting for her to come home. How often had she returned home to precisely this sight? How often had her heart raced with excitement at the proof that she was important enough to generate this level of interest? Whether the story they were waiting to report was real, fake or wildly exaggerated, never before had Lexy been anything but delighted as her car slowed down, as the paps realized that their target was inside and sprang to attention, cameras raised, video equipment hoisted to their shoulders, the pack forming around the car as it turned into the driveway, coming to a halt by the big wooden gates . . .
‘Lexy!’ they screamed as one.
Faces pressed eagerly into the windows of the car, cameras snapped away.
‘Lexy! Where’ve you been? Why didn’t you come home last night? Were you with Deacon? What does Frank think? Have you talked to him yet? Lexy, Lexy, Lexy . . .’
Normally she would have rung the house to buzz open the gates so that she didn’t have to get out of the car. But Emily had told her to do the walk of shame, and Emily was right.
‘I’m getting out to unlock the gates,’ she said to the driver, who stared at her in disbelief in the rearview mirror, shocked that she was going to walk the gauntlet. Taking a deep breath, Lexy reached out and opened the car door.
There was a brief resistance: the bodies thronging around the car were tighly packed. However, as soon as they realized what was going on, the paparazzi closest to the door backed away, yelling:
‘She’s getting out! Back off! She’s getting out!’
Every moment of Lexy’s exit from the car was captured. They gave her just enough room to walk over to the electronic panel set into one of the stone gateposts, but they were screaming questions the entire time. It was hell. Her head was ducked, but they still got a good view of her face, pale and drawn, her lips pressed tightly together, her shoulders hunched.
There were only four numbers to enter, a simple sequence, yet when she inputted the code there was no responsive click from the lock, no whirring of machinery as the mechanism of the gate opener started up. She tried it again, thinking that her nerves were to blame, realizing for the first time that she had had nothing to eat since a couple of canapés at the Cloudberry launch party; after that, the cocaine had kicked in, obliterating any appetite she might have had.
Her hand was shaking. Shockingly, the second try was no more successful than the first. She dragged her phone out of the pocket of her coat, frantically searching for the fake contact entry under which she had stored the codes: no, she hadn’t made a mistake. Those were the right numbers, and yet they weren’t working . . .
‘What’s up, Lexy? Locked out?’ yelled a voice in her ear. There were cameras on either side of her face, pressing in, everyone now taking up the cry: had Frank locked her out? What was going on? Tell us, Lexy, turn round, give us a statement –
Her whole body was trembling now. It was hard to get control of her fingers as she tapped in the door code for the third time, desperately hoping that the gate mechanism was just having a glitch, that she would be able to take refuge in the safety of her home . . .
But no reassuring click followed, no familiar buzz to indicate the gates were opening. Nothing at all.
There was only one conclusion to draw, and the paparazzi had got there much faster than her. Frank had changed the code so she could not get in.
Lexy would genuinely never have thought this possible. Frank, her loving, devoted husband; Frank, who loathed the idea of washing one’s dirty laundry in public, who hated any kind of scene; Frank, the man she had always been able to trust implicitly, her rock, her comfort, had stranded her outside her own home, at the mercy of the paps, humiliating her with absolute, deliberate intent.
It was this realization, as much as the fact that her mortification was being captured and transmitted all around the world, live-streamed to gossip sites, that caused the tears to form in her eyes. She turned away from the gatepost. There was an intercom button there, of course, but she was not going to press it, to plead futilely with her husband to let her in for the benefit of all the microphones around her.
How people would love to watch that! No, it was enough for them to see her humbled like this, Lexy who finally, after many ups and downs, had managed to get it all: career, beauty, handsome husband, healthy children, wealth and happiness. How the women who didn’t have every one of those things would gloat as they watched the videos, scrolled greedily through the photographs, read the coverage speculating about whether Frank was already meeting divorce lawyers, picking one who handled the big-name celebrity clients and was famous for wringing every last drop out of their spouses . . .
Lexy wasn’t even trying to hold back the tears. They were flowing down her face in sheets of salt water. And because she knew that she deserved to cry, deserved to be punished, she didn’t even raise a hand to wipe them away. She walked slowly back to the car feeling as if she had just been slapped violently across the face.
The driver was out of the car now, shouting to the paps to fall back, make room for her. It wasn’t his job: he wasn’t a bodyguard. But the sight of beauty in distress had stirred his protective instincts. Miraculously, the paparazzi actually obeyed him, shuffling to either side, creating a path for Lexy back to the car, another gauntlet to walk. The driver was holding the door open; safety beckoned if she could only make it down the narrow passage whose walls were shifting, pressing bodies, ranks of cameras clicking. For a few seconds, there was silence, almost as if it was a funeral, the journalists paying a kind of instinctive respect to the sight of her tear-streaked face.
It didn’t last, of course. Their job was to provoke a reaction, get a killer quote, and after the brief hush of reaction they were feral beasts again, yelling questions at Lexy: what was she going to do? Had Frank been in touch? Was he getting a divorce? Had she been shagging Deacon last night? Had he lasted longer than in the Camden Club toilets? It was a full-on barrage, and she was shaking so badly by the time she reached the car that the driver had to help her step inside.
She literally fell onto the leather seat as the door slammed after her and the driver started up the car.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, careful not to meet her eyes in the rearview mirror, putting the car into reverse and starting to back, gingerly, onto Panorama Road, going as slowly as possible to avoid hitting one of the many paparazzi who were surrounding the car again, taking their last pictures of a white-faced Lexy looking like an aristocrat during the French Revolution being driven to her execution in a tumbril.
Lexy thought suddenly of the Ferry Hotel. Even though she, and many Sandbanks residents, nicknamed it ‘Fawlty Towers’, it was very close by, just a few minutes’ walk away. She could ask the driver to take her there, see if a suite was free, ring Frank and plead with him to let her in . . . and if he agreed, she could wait it out until the paparazzi packed up and left, then slip back to her home . . . and if Frank didn’t answer, she could still go back to the house, lean on the bell, beg him, sobbing, with everything she had in her, to please, please let her come home . . .