Chapter Sixteen
Caroline couldn’t sleep. She had been home for an hour and she was pacing her room, unable to calm down. A mug of camomile tea stood on her bedside table. She made herself walk over, blow on it, try to take a sip: it was coming up to two a.m., and if she didn’t get to sleep, she would be in no state for the considerable amount of writing she needed to get done the next day.
The discovery she had made back at the St Pancras Grand, however, was so enormous that she was having serious trouble processing its implications. She had walked out of the hotel in an absolute trance. Seeing the line of black cabs on the curving forecourt, she had found herself nodding at the doorman when he asked if she wanted one, getting inside without even thinking about how much it would cost.
The awards show had finished at eleven, the after-party had run past one in the morning; there was no way she could get home at that time on public transport without a night tube journey to Seven Sisters and then a night bus. The journey itself was fairly speedy; it was the company of the drunks on tube and bus, plus the distinctly insalubrious atmosphere of the bus stop at which she would have to wait, and the walk down Edmonton Green at that hour of night, that she dreaded. Especially because she was conspicuously dressed in party clothes: in her experience that always made women more of a target.
Climbing into the cab, she decided to expense it to Bailey and Hart. If they objected, Caroline would have Lexy intercede; Caroline now had a very powerful weapon, if she used it carefully. From this moment on, if she wanted legitimate extra expenses, for instance, all she had to do was joke about how Lexy had told her that Silantra wanted to have sex with her, or ask casually what time Lexy had made it back to the Chelsea flat after her post-party meeting with Silantra.
Lexy couldn’t possibly know that Caroline was aware of the true reason she had stayed on at the hotel, but she would be desperate to shut down any speculation on the subject in case she was thought to have violated that terrifying confidentiality agreement. Lexy would be horrified if she knew that Caroline was even aware of the agreement’s existence.
Caroline’s antennae had registered something unusual about the way the PA had bustled Lexy away as they arrived at the party, murmuring that they wanted to get her contact details so they could discuss possible future projects. Why wouldn’t Silantra’s team just give Lexy a card, or ping over their contact details and ask her manager to get in touch in due course, which was what had happened every other time someone wanted to work with Lexy?
No one else noticed but Caroline. The other guests were too busy vying for Silantra’s attention, taking selfies with her: this was the opportunity of a lifetime to raise their profile by association. Darrell Rose, who, to Lexy’s annoyance, had been invited back to the St Pancras Grand, was particularly egregious, his veneered, megawatt smile flashing repeatedly as he held his phone above himself and Silantra, snapping away.
Caroline was the only person who sat quietly to one side. And when plenty of time had elapsed, more than enough to provide an email address and phone number, Caroline slipped unnoticed from the living room. She was nothing and nobody, the least important guest of all. It would have more impact on the party if one of the waiters disappeared.
The meeting room was private, with no floor-to-ceiling glass panel which would allow anyone passing to see inside, as Lexy could not possibly be spotted at a table reading a thick contract. But Caroline could hear a murmur of voices inside, and besides, there was nowhere else they could be. The doors of the other rooms down that corridor – a second bedroom, a kitchen, a staff room with ironing and laundry facilities – were all ajar.
The bedroom adjoined the meeting room; Caroline darted inside. As she had hoped, the rooms were connected by an internal door, but Caroline did not dare to try to edge it open, even fractionally. Instead, using a technique she had seen on an old daytime TV show, she snatched a water glass from the shelf over the minibar and placed the rim of it to the door, pressing her ear against the base.
To her great surprise, it worked.
‘This is longer than the contract for my TV show!’ Lexy was saying.
Caroline could just make out the sound of tightly bound pages flicking heavily as Lexy leafed through them. Caroline was absolutely agog. It didn’t take her long to grasp what was happening. She scrambled to her unfashionable little satchel for her phone, silencing it, turning it on to record and pressing it to a chink between the door and the jamb, just in case; it was very disappointing to find out later that all it had captured was the fuzziest murmur of voices, sounding as if they were twenty feet down a well. But Caroline had heard everything.
When the meeting ended, she quickly transcribed the conversation she had overheard, then slipped back into the living room as unobtrusively as she had left it. Lexy and Silantra were standing together, the mobile phones of everyone present trained on them: clearly, the announcement that Silantra would be filming with Lexy the next day for Lexy’s show had just been made.
Silantra, her arm wrapped round Lexy’s sequinned waist, was smiling like the cat that had got the cream. Exactly the same smile Caroline saw her give later, when the manager and PA started to bustle the other guests out, saying that Lexy and Silantra needed to discuss their filming schedule for the next day . . .
The camomile tea had cooled down. As Caroline sipped it, she found herself picturing Silantra and Lexy’s naked bodies entwined around each other. It didn’t take much imagination. Both women had posed naked or barely clothed so often that some of their fans must know the voluptuous curves of their bodies better than their own.
I can’t believe this is the first time Lexy’s cheated on Frank, Caroline thought. She agreed so easily! She barely paused for a moment before she went right into negotiating what she could get from it! She’s a total whore. She’s married to the most wonderful, kind, thoughtful man, a man who’s far too good for her, and instead of going home to him she’s spreading her legs for another whore who sold a video of herself having sex to kickstart her career.
She’s disgusting. And she doesn’t deserve Frank, not for a moment. I can’t believe he doesn’t know what’s going on. I can’t believe he doesn’t see what she’s really like.
Someone should tell him.
Someone should be there to love him and look after him and his kids the way they deserve.
Caroline looked up and met her own eyes in the wall-mounted full-length mirror that hung beside the bed. Setting down her half-drunk mug of tea, she stood up and, very deliberately, peeled off the loose nightdress she was wearing. Standing naked in front of a mirror was something she never did; she had included herself in the observation that many of Lexy and Silantra’s fans knew their idols’ bodies better than their own.
The excess weight wasn’t pleasant for her to look at, but she had a reasonably good shape underneath it. She wasn’t pear-shaped; she knew from women’s magazine articles that the only solution for that was liposuction for the saddlebags. Her breasts were big and firm, her hair was thick and her skin had been very much improved by the vitamins and omega-plus supplements, the products and treatments Lexy had bought her. After a month of slogging Tuesday to Friday over the damp sands of Studland beach, then limping back to the gym to do a series of situps and press-ups recommended to her by Frank, while sticking to the calorie-counted meals from Lexy’s cook, Caroline had quite clearly toned up and lost weight.
Until now, Caroline had been maintaining the exercise and diet regime on the weekdays, letting herself off a morning run on Monday because that was when she travelled down to Bournemouth, giving herself licence to eat and drink what she wanted at the weekends. But now, she realized, the game had changed. The slow, gradual weight loss she had been achieving was no longer enough.
I need to work out and watch what I eat every day, she resolved. I’ll live off slices of chicken and salad, no dressing. I’ll cut out booze completely – Frank’s always telling Lexy that even if you drink vodka and soda, which has no calories, it breaks down your inhibitions so when you get pissed you either raid the fridge or go for the fags, like Lexy does.
I need to lose a lot of weight. I need to get a spray tan. I need to wear more make-up, get eyelash extensions, hair extensions, tighter clothes.
I need to look as like Lexy as I possibly can, as fast as I can.
Because I want to take her husband away from her.
Lexy’s nickname for Caroline had been biting into her like caustic acid for weeks now. But, making her resolution, seeing her jaw tighten as she pressed her lips together in determination, she realized that she could use the rage it provoked and turn it to her benefit.
Because Lexy would never see Ghost Mouse coming.