Chapter Two
Sandbanks, the peninsula on which Caroline was standing, was known as the British Palm Beach. Unbelievably, it had the fourth highest property values in the world. The forty or so houses that ran around the outside of the sand spur, having direct access to the sea, were worth seven- to eight-figure sums. It was a millionaire’s playground, and a tiny one; it measured just half a square mile.
Looking at the house – no, the mansion – awestruck and daunted, Caroline could quite believe that it had cost a fortune. It was colonial-style, pale blue wood siding with white trim, its roof gabled, its matching white balconies and terraces delicately carved, composed of one long central building with wings on either side reaching away from the entrance gate towards Poole Harbour beyond. What she was looking at was clearly the rear of the house, despite the imposing marble staircase that led up to the large front door; and that was even more intimidating, because the back of this house was more impressive than the front of any other she had visited in her life.
The most elegant of backs, Caroline thought. A supermodel walking away down a catwalk. A ballet dancer gliding offstage. Having been writing for two hours straight, her brain was creatively fired up, primed to find metaphors. Then, as she walked up the marble steps, the big front door swung open, and the vista in front of her made her gasp in appreciation, her brain racing even faster to think of how she would describe it. The mansion, like so many other Sandbanks houses, had been designed to face the sea, making the most of the superb panorama over Poole Harbour and the marina. Its wings opened like arms to frame the view.
A double staircase curved up either side of the huge entrance hall, encircling the vista. Glass walls beyond gave an open perspective all the way through the house to a rich green lawn sloping down to a jetty that reached out into the grey, wind-flecked English Channel. The sky beyond was equally grey, rain falling with increasing strength, creating a veil of water between clouds and sea.
It had a bleak, hypnotic beauty. Caroline imagined herself owning this house, curled up in an oversized armchair, watching the rain beat gently against the windowpanes as classical music played. It was such a compelling picture that for a moment she lost herself inside it, and jumped when the young woman who had let her in said briskly:
‘You leave your coat. Outside is wet.’
The young woman had a light foreign accent, an impressive head of thick black curly hair contained in a heavy plait, and a no-nonsense attitude. As Caroline took off her thin, cheap wool coat, she flinched in horror: someone had started screaming upstairs, the screeches at a near eardrum-piercing level. The young woman, who was opening the hallway closet, paid not the slightest attention. Footsteps sounded above, and a small child dressed from head to toe in pink dashed along the landing, screeching ‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’ so loudly that a recording of her could have been used at riots to disperse crowds. All Caroline’s instincts were to clap her hands over her ears and duck for cover.
The little girl skidded to a halt, pressed a button and stepped into a glass box against one side of the hall at landing level, a lift that Caroline had not previously noticed. As the lift began to descend, the little girl kept screaming, hands clenched into fists, cheeks as fuchsia as her stripy tights, her blue eyes round and bulging. The lift was demonstrably not sound-proof: the screeching was muffled but still audible.
It was an extraordinary sight. Caroline goggled at the child as she sank to ground level, her eyes sliding over Caroline and her companion without a flicker of interest, dismissing them as utterly unimportant. She was screaming all the while, barely taking a breath, the noise persisting even after she had disappeared from sight into the depths of the house.
‘I don’t like children,’ the young woman said flatly, nodding at Caroline to hang her coat up in the closet. ‘There are two here. The boy is not as bad as the girl. But I only like cats.’
No response seemed to be required, which was lucky, as Caroline had no idea what to say. A dispirited-looking, dowdy, drooping young woman came along the upper hallway, glancing at the steel and glass lift shaft as she started to head down one wing of the staircase.
‘I know what you’re going to say, Carmen,’ she said wearily. ‘Kittens are better than children.’
‘Kittens are so fluffy!’ Carmen said, coming fully to life. ‘And they don’t talk! I keep saying to you, you should get a job looking after kittens!’
‘Please don’t make me cry,’ said the young woman, reaching the ground floor. ‘I just hope she hasn’t thrown herself into the swimming pool by now.’
Carmen shrugged with superb nonchalance.
‘She will float,’ she said. ‘In my country we say that. Witches float.’
The nanny snorted out through her nose and went through a side door which presumably led to a staircase to the basement and the swimming pool in which the small child would be floating.
‘Are you the housekeeper?’ Caroline asked her politely, closing the cupboard door.
‘I am the cleaning lady,’ Carmen corrected her. ‘That was the nanny. But she won’t be here long. She’s weak. Her hair is thin. It’s because she is vegetarian. I tell her many times what to do about her hair, but she won’t listen.’
‘What should she do?’ Caroline asked, fascinated. ‘Eat meat?’
‘Of course,’ Carmen said, looking at her with mingled contempt and pity. ‘But also, when you brush your hair, you must always leave the hair outside for the birds, to make their nests. Then your hair will grow long and thick like mine.’
She tossed her plait back over her shoulder complacently and pointed ahead, towards the view.
‘You go there,’ she said. ‘Lexy is in there.’
Tentatively, her nerves on edge, not knowing how to react to the scene she had just witnessed or whether she should mention to Lexy that her daughter might be floating – or sinking – in the swimming pool, Caroline crossed the hallway. It was a long walk, and she was acutely aware of Carmen’s eyes on her back as she went, judging everything about her. God knew what comments Carmen would be making about her to the nanny in due course, but she already guessed that they wouldn’t be positive.
Caroline had seen multiple photographs of the huge sitting room online. It had featured in spreads for weekly magazines for which Lexy, Frank, London and Laylah had posed, modelling clothes from Lexy’s fashion line. Running the entire length of the main part of the house, it was even more spectacular than it had appeared in pictures, partly because it was visually extended by the stone terrace beyond, which also ran the length of the house and was fully visible through the glass back wall.
Like the sitting room, the terrace had groups of square, modern furniture composed into conversational areas, interspersed with decorative planters or vases. The sofas and armchairs inside were grey suede, the ones outside pale grey with white cushions, all neatly protected against the rain by transparent covers. The effect was to double the size of the already enormous room. It was like walking into the lounge of a generously proportioned boutique hotel rather than that of a private home. On the various glass coffee tables were bowls of flowers, platters of fruit, and fanned-out magazines, which only increased the resemblance to a chic hotel.
‘Over here!’ instructed a very familiar voice, and Caroline turned to see Lexy reclining on a chaise longue, a tablet in her lap and a pile of magazines scattered next to her. ‘It’s Caroline, yeah?’ she said, not waiting for confirmation. ‘Find it okay?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Caroline said, her heels clattering across the expanse of beautifully polished wooden floor.
As she had known she would, she felt hugely self-conscious about her walk, her outfit, her hair, her make-up. She had spent a considerable amount of time debating what to wear for this crucial meeting, and decided that there was no point her trying to look like a less attractive, much fatter clone of Lexy, dressed in tight jeans, with cascading hair and cleavage popping out of an animal-print T-shirt, the look finished off with shiny jewellery and heavy eye make-up. Instead, Caroline was positively dowdy in her grey jersey top and long black skirt. She had tonged her hair into loose waves that morning, but the rain had put paid to those, and it was hanging limply on her shoulders. After her sweaty dash from the bus stop, her BB cream felt greasy on her cheeks, but she didn’t dare blot it, in case she rubbed it off and revealed her rosacea.
Lexy’s eyes flickered up and down Caroline’s body as she approached. And Caroline, a born observer, could tell straight away that she presented no threat to Lexy, none at all. Caroline had very enterprisingly found back copies of Lovely! magazine at her local library, in which Lexy had a weekly column; she had soon noticed how often Lexy feuded with women she saw as her rivals, how rarely she complimented or spoke positively of them. In all her research, Caroline could barely find photographs of Lexy smiling and posing with fellow glamour models or other footballers’ wives. She seemed to have no real female friends, nor feel any need for them.
So, in choosing her outfit, Caroline had avoided any suggestion that she might be on Lexy’s level, any presentation of herself as a potential equal with whom Lexy might form a bond. Caroline’s outfit and bearing were humble and self-effacing, presenting herself as a person who would be easy to have around, who would not seek attention or put herself forward. Someone to whom you could tell your stories; someone who would structure them into books. Someone who wouldn’t dream, however, of bothering you with their own stories in return; someone who had no pretensions to anything like friendship with you.
I’m like a governess, Caroline thought with a quick flash of inner amusement, in a nineteenth-century novel by the Brontë sisters. Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey. Quiet, retiring, unobtrusive, there when you want me, slipping away like a shadow when you don’t. Look at me! I’m even dressed in grey, just like the governesses in those books!
And as Lexy gestured at Caroline to sit in an armchair facing the chaise longue, she gave a small nod of approval. This could have been a set-up for therapy, the therapist sitting while the patient stretched out on a sofa, vulnerable and open. But there was nothing vulnerable about Lexy in her black velour diamante-trimmed onesie, unzipped enough to show off the upper curves of those recently plumped and lifted 34DD cups. She adjusted the zebra-print faux fur cushions behind her, swivelling to fix Caroline with those famously big blue eyes that were identical to Laylah’s.
‘I saw your daughter just now,’ Caroline said, lowering herself into the armchair. ‘She’s really pretty.’
‘She’s a right little madam,’ Lexy said with unabashed frankness. ‘Goes through nannies like a knife through butter. And not a butterknife, either. A steak one. Fuck knows what we’re going to do with her – she’s always kicking off at school too. They’ll be telling us we’ve got to take her out if she carries on like this. Wouldn’t be the first one she’s been chucked out of.’
Caroline had no idea how to respond to this, and she was sensible enough not to try. Lexy continued almost immediately:
‘So you’re a blogger, yeah?’
Caroline nodded, unable to stop staring at Lexy. Her face and body were so familiar and so beautiful, her skin extraordinarily smooth and clear; her eyes were outlined with black pencil and carefully shaded and highlighted, her eyebrows perfectly shaped, thick and dark. Even in the unforgiving clear cold daylight, her skin had a smooth texture which made her look ten years younger than she was.
Her lips were clearly enhanced. There was that tell-tale fullness to their outer corners, a shape that never occurred in nature, indicating the presence of injectable fillers. Her forehead was Botoxed, and the corners of her eyes too. From a distance, it looked as if Lexy had been frozen in time at the age of twenty; closer up, one could see that parts of her face were fighting silently with others, the nose wrinkling too much because the forehead couldn’t, the mouth fractionally stretched against the cheeks when she smiled.
But these were tiny flaws, and only noticeable if you were Caroline, accustomed to sitting quietly in a crowded room, people-watching. By any standard, Lexy was breathtakingly pretty, with those huge blue eyes, the tightly curling dark ringlets which were pinned up today on the crown of her head, the cupid’s-bow mouth and pale creamy skin.
She held herself, too, with the air of a woman who knew exactly how lovely she was. She might have been a queen reclining on that chaise longue, talking to a lowly lady in waiting. But her confidence was even higher than that, because Lexy hadn’t been born to this celebrity royalty status: she had created it herself. Plenty of very pretty girls had sat on the Who’s My Date? stool over the course of the series, girls with quick wits and good personalities. But only one of them had ever broken out as Lexy had so successfully done. Only one girl had ever managed to forge an entire career on the charisma she had projected sitting there, chatting to Darrell Rose, making a nation fall in love with her.
Lexy’s fashionably heavy eyebrows were raised. Caroline snapped out of her reverie, realizing that there was a question that required answering.
‘Yes, I’m a blogger,’ she said, and was about to elaborate when Lexy continued:
‘But it’s not your day job, right? You’re not one of those people who make money from blogging?’
‘No,’ Caroline admitted. ‘That works if you do recipes, or run a gossip site, something that you can sell ads for. Book reviewers do it for love and free copies, but me putting up my writing is basically a pitch to get a book deal. That’s the dream.’
Lexy nodded.
‘Money in writing books, is there?’ she asked.
‘I don’t really know,’ Caroline said honestly. ‘I’ve never published one. Everyone in the online writers’ groups says it’s really hard to make a living doing it. The big names make loads, but what they call the mid-list doesn’t. And romance novels – the branded ones – don’t pay much at all, apparently. You’d need to write loads a year to make a living.’
‘I hope you’re not expecting to get rich writing for me,’ Lexy said. ‘I’m really tight. Everyone knows that.’
‘Well, if they read your column about your vaginal surgery, they do,’ Caroline blurted out, and then went cold with horror. She literally could not believe what she had just done: she’d referred to the fact that Lexy had told anyone who’d care to listen that after the birth of London she had had vaginal rejuvenation surgery.
Lexy stared at her, mouth falling open, and Caroline’s entire body tensed, going as taut as, presumably, Lexy’s now-restored vagina.
‘You are fucking kidding me,’ Lexy said, and if Caroline could have got up and fled the room, clumsily, stumbling over the edge of her long cankle-hiding skirt in her cheap boots, she would have done. But her muscles were cramped too rigidly for her to be able to move, and she sat there mutely as Lexy went on:
‘That’s fucking funny. I’m going to put that in my column. Nice one.’
‘Thanks,’ Caroline said, her voice a faint thread of relief, fresh sweat puddling in the small of her back.
Lexy’s eyes were narrowed now.
‘Do you think I write my column myself?’ she asked Caroline.
‘Um, I don’t know,’ Caroline said carefully.
‘Well, I don’t! Not a word of it!’ Lexy flashed her a beautiful smile. ‘None of us do! Honestly, some of the other bitches are so fucking thick they can barely even sign their own names! Some poor editor rings us up, same time each week, tells us what’s been in the news and what the latest jealous wannabes are saying about us, and then we mouth off about them and what we think of the name the latest silly slag gave her baby, and they write it all up and put “Love, Lexy!” at the end with a lot of kisses. Pretty much like what I’ll be doing with this book.’
She lay back on the chaise longue.
‘You’re just filler,’ she continued. ‘You know that, right? They only sent you ’cause I didn’t like anyone they sent so far, and I was kicking off about wasting my time with writers who were really posh and up themselves, or thick as planks. They must have panicked – gone googling for people on the internet and found you in some random search. I’ve got two more bloggers coming in the next couple of days.’
Unflattering as this was, it did not come as a surprise to Caroline. She couldn’t flatter herself that she would have been anyone’s first, or even tenth, choice for a ghostwriter. Although she hadn’t known much about the profession until Campaspe’s email, she had researched it on the internet with the same dedication she had invested in finding out about Lexy’s vivid life story to date.
Ghostwriters for sports stars’ autobiographies, apparently, could make a great deal of money. The good ones were in high demand, and the use of them was an open secret, as no one expected a cricketer or rugby player who could barely talk in full sentences to produce an entire book on their own. Writing autobiographies for other celebrities, however, was a more ambiguous affair, as was the authorship of the novels to which they put their names.
Generally, the celebrities liked to pretend that they had written the book themselves, with the most minimal amount of ‘help’ from someone hired by the publisher to, as they tended to phrase it in interviews or book acknowledgements, ‘put together the novel’. A pop star had recently been exposed as not having written her own bestselling novel, and the young woman who had actually done the work had apparently been paid very little. From online newspaper reports Caroline had googled, it looked as if the book had been written in under two months and the writer had been paid a measly flat fee, just eight thousand pounds, with no stake in the millions the novel had made. Exposed, the pop star had insisted that the ‘story and characters’ were hers, but had refrained from adding that she now felt that the person who had done the work should be getting a proportion of the royalties.
It was shockingly low pay. But Caroline would have leapt at the offer to ghostwrite for the pop star as eagerly as the novelist had probably done. Caroline had done the annual challenge to write a novel in the month of November, NaNoWriMo, the year before, and despite the demands of her day job, she’d pulled it off. It hadn’t been much good, but it had had a beginning, a middle and an end, and she was sure that if she were offered eight thousand pounds, a fortune to her, she could manage a novel in two months . . .
Campaspe had made it clear already that there wasn’t much money on offer. Lexy’s frankness hadn’t been a surprise. The only celebrity who openly acknowledged her ghostwriter, as far as Caroline could see, was Katie Price, and hers had apparently been paid very well; but that seemed to be an exception to the normal rule. Caroline had no expectation of getting rich if she were lucky enough to be chosen to write Lexy’s novel-cum-autobiography. But her hope was that if she did a good job, Campaspe or some other agent would read the book and take her on as a client, get her a publishing deal to write a novel of her own.
Caroline didn’t know why Lexy had just challenged her about her lowly status. But she sensed that Lexy wanted to see whether Caroline had a backbone.
‘I’m surprised you even wanted to meet me, then,’ Caroline answered. ‘You’re surely too busy to bother with someone who’s just filler.’
‘It’s not much trouble for me,’ Lexy said nonchalantly. ‘I just have to lie around in my own cosy house. You’re the one that had to trudge here from wherever you live.’
‘London,’ Caroline said equably. ‘It wasn’t like I had to come from the Hebrides. And I quite fancied a nice day out by the seaside.’
Lexy grinned at this.
‘Bad luck for you with the rain,’ she said.
‘It’s good for the skin, my grandma used to say,’ Caroline countered, and hoped that her BB cream was still doing its job well enough so that Lexy wouldn’t observe her rosacea and comment that her skin could do with all the help it could get.
‘Yeah, I’ve heard that too,’ Lexy said. ‘It’s the way all the British people make themselves feel better about the shitty weather. I’d be in Dubai right now if I could. You know what’s really good for skin? The absolute fucking fortune I spend on vitamins and omega oils and facials and mineral make-up. Costs me a shitload of money, even with my VIP discount. But it’s totally worth it.’
She glanced at Caroline.
‘Think I should put that in my book? What I spend on my skin?’
‘Definitely,’ Caroline said without hesitation. ‘Your skin’s lovely. I noticed it already. People will be really keen to know what your regime is.’
‘My regime,’ Lexy repeated, and Caroline thought that she was being mocked.
‘It means—’ she started hurriedly.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Lexy said. ‘The beauty places always talk about regimes. It’s a good word. Like something out of a book.’
She was still staring at Caroline, those big blue eyes penetrating.
‘How do you know you can write a book?’ she asked.
Caroline took a deep breath and prayed that her hands weren’t shaking. She couldn’t mention that NaNoWriMo novel; it wasn’t good enough to show anyone.
‘I don’t yet,’ she said. ‘But it sounds like you didn’t like any of the people who’ve proved they can.’
Lexy tilted her head a little to the side. Caroline would come to know that this gesture meant she was thinking hard.
‘Some of them had a go at writing stuff,’ she said. ‘I read bits of what they wrote, and it didn’t sound like me.’
Caroline frowned.
‘I don’t think my stuff would sound like you either, though,’ she said honestly. ‘That comes after, surely? I mean, someone needs to sit down with you for a while, talk to you, see what story you want to tell, and then work on it till you feel they’ve got your voice.’
She paused, wondering if she should say what was on the tip of her tongue. Being direct with Lexy had worked well before, but still . . .
‘Spit it out,’ Lexy said, reading her mind with disconcerting accuracy.
‘Well, I was thinking that they’d have to cut out a lot of your swearing,’ Caroline said. ‘I don’t think a publisher wants a book full of effing and blinding, unless it’s an East End gangster novel.’
‘That’s fucking funny,’ Lexy said for the second time, nodding in approval. ‘I could use that in my column too. I want to give updates about the book as I write it –’ she had the decency to raise her hands and pantomime quotation marks around the word ‘write’ – ‘to fire up the fans on my social media, too. Make them excited for it as I go along, get them pre-ordering online.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ Caroline said, but Lexy wasn’t listening to her; the doorbell had rung, and the clattering of equipment, bustle and overlapping voices filled the hall.
‘Here we go,’ Lexy said, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise longue and standing up, pulling the bunched-up crotch of the onesie out of her own with an absolute lack of embarrassment. ‘Time to get to work. I’m filming my show this afternoon. We’re doing a scene where I get my anal bleaching done.’
She grinned at Caroline, not in an entirely friendly way.
‘Tell you what. You watch the whole thing, then write it up like it was in a book, happening to me, but me telling it. I’ll have a read and see what I think. That’s further than any of the other writers got with me. I see your writing, you get to see my arsehole. Looks like this is your lucky day, eh?’