Chapter Nineteen
‘What? Fuck, no way! What? Tell me you’re fucking joking!’
‘Frank, lots of people are doing it,’ Emily, no coward, said loudly to cut through Frank’s torrent of resistance. She named a very famous reality star who had staged an affair between her boyfriend and her best friend, all elaborately planned; the two women had feuded bitterly all over the tabloids, with the friend having been paid a substantial sum to play the villainess. In a few years’ time, they would reconcile; the boyfriend, meanwhile, had expressed extreme contrition and agreed to extensive counselling for sex addiction. He had been photographed for six months attending the offices of a therapist who had agreed to let him hang out there for an hour, streaming shows on his iPad.
After that, he had declared his ‘addiction’ under control and proposed to his girlfriend. The wedding was the storyline for the next season of her show. Viewers always, always loved a wedding.
‘Emily, I don’t fucking care if half the world is doing it!’ Frank almost yodelled, such was the level of his distress. ‘This is my wife we’re talking about! I don’t want people thinking I’d cheat on her with some little tart – I mean, no offence to this Josie girl, though fuck knows why she’d want to be known as someone who’d go after a married man! And what about the kids? How’re they going to cope with all this?’
‘Oh, they’ll be fine,’ Lexy said breezily.
Too breezily: this, for Frank, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
‘Fine?’ he yelled. ‘Fine, with paps staking out their schools every morning and afternoon, yelling stuff at them about their daddy not loving their mummy to make them cry? You know how many times my mates’ve told me about the shit that’s been shouted at their kids? I always told ’em that it was their bloody fault for not keeping their dick zipped up round the slappers at the clubs. They have their fun, but it’s the wives and kids that pay the price. And you know what – they respected me because I keep it in my pants myself! They’d listen to me and hopefully sort their shit out a bit for the sake of their kids! So how the fuck do you expect me to go along with exactly the kind of behaviour I’ve been lecturing the guys about for nearly twenty fucking years now?’
His hands were in fists on his hips, his eyes blazing, his jaw thrust out furiously. He looked magnificent, a warrior ready for battle. Not just Caroline, but most of the PR team were ogling him in blatant admiration.
‘It’s really for the kids, if you look at it the right way!’ Lexy said in a last attempt to convince him. ‘We’re not going to be raking it in forever – no one’s going to want to watch me getting a bum wax when I’m sixty, are they? We have to coin it now so that—’
‘Oh, bollocks, Lexy! That’s just bollocks!’ her husband yelled. ‘This isn’t about Laylah and London getting big trust funds! It’s about you being fucking addicted to publicity! We all know that – everyone here knows that! Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining!’
Frank’s trainers squeaked on the marble hallway floor as he turned and strode off, his powerful hamstrings flexing, his calf muscles bulging. Reaching the central staircase, he took the treads two at a time in his haste to get away from his wife.
‘Well, that’s a washout,’ Lexy said gloomily, sagging back in the armchair and pulling up her knees to wrap her arms around them. ‘Honestly, this is my job, you know? You’d think he’d see it like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, it was worth a try!’ Emily said, shrugging. ‘So on to Plan B. Annika, you want to take this pitch?’
Caroline did not wait to hear Plan B. She was on her feet, slipping from the room as discreetly as she had entered it, taking the side staircase up to the first floor, which actually brought her out closer to Frank and Lexy’s master suite than the main one. The speed with which she was able to dash up the steps took her by surprise; she arrived at the top as if she had been shot out of a cannon, with no shortness of breath. The regular beach running and her weight loss had all kinds of extra benefits.
She intercepted Frank just as he came marching down the corridor, his tread heavy, his head hanging low. He looked completely taken aback at the sight of Caroline popping like a Jack-in-the-box out of the stairwell; having been designed for staff access, it was cramped and narrow and rarely used.
‘Uh, Caroline,’ he said, barely breaking stride, ‘I can’t talk right now—’
‘I know what happened,’ she said quickly. ‘I was downstairs in the meeting. I just came up to say how sorry I was you got upset. I’m sure she didn’t really mean it . . .’
Frank stopped dead and flopped down into the window seat beside him as if someone had just cut his leg tendons with a straight razor.
‘She did mean it,’ he said simply, sinking his face into his hands. ‘You know she did, and so do I.’
‘Oh, Frank . . . I’m so sorry . . .’
It took all the courage Caroline had to take the few steps needed to cross the width of the corridor, and then, heart in her throat, sit down next to Frank on the padded cushion made especially for the bow window embrasure. It was capacious enough for there to be plenty of space between their bodies, but Caroline’s pulse was racing now in a way it had not when she sprinted across the hall and up the side staircase.
She folded her hands in her lap so that she couldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him. His thigh was so close, his skin so glossy, his scent so intense . . . and then her senses were completely overwhelmed, because, quite unexpectedly, Frank reached out and put his arm around her shoulders, a solid, heavy weight, thick with muscle. Caroline had a sudden, vivid image of his arm as a python that had draped itself over her, sexual and dangerous, pulsing with life. There was a sudden lump in her throat, and the only way to get rid of it was to swallow it down; she almost choked herself in the process.
Fortunately for her, Frank was oblivious to anything but his own pain. His hug was entirely comradely, the kind of embrace he might have given to console a teammate who had scored an own goal or fumbled a crucial pass.
‘I can’t believe she’d even ask me that!’ he said, his voice sounding as if it were being dragged out of the pit of his stomach. ‘She knows what I think about guys who put it around! She’s heard me bang on about it often enough!’
‘She wasn’t thinking,’ Caroline said softly.
‘Well, you got that half-right,’ Frank said bitterly. ‘She wasn’t thinking about anyone but herself. We both know that the kids getting stick for a story about me playing away never even crossed her mind!’
Caroline heaved a sigh.
‘I’d hate Laylah and London to be pestered by paps shouting horrible things,’ she agreed. ‘They’re such great kids. I really care about them.’
This was rewarded by Frank’s arm tightening around her, his hand on her shoulder pulling her closer.
‘They are great kids,’ he said. ‘Laylah’s like my own, you know that. She’s never had any dad but me. The two happiest days of my life were when the adoption came through for her and when London was born. Could have done without them both being filmed, of course, but that’s Lexy for you. Only thinks it’s real when it’s on camera.’
This was an opportunity to make trouble, and Caroline grabbed it with both hands.
‘It must have been really hard for you and Laylah with the legal delays,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I know Lexy needed to spin the adoption process out as long as possible for the TV show – I mean, that’s her job. But still, when it’s a little girl in the middle of endless back and forths with lawyers, it had to be very painful for you to wait it out until the series had finished shooting—’
‘What?’
Frank spun round to face her, gripping her arm.
‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded, his breath hot on her face.
Caroline was genuinely frightened, her heart battering at her ribcage so violently that the pulse was visible at her throat. Had she miscalculated? What if Frank stormed away and took this information straight to Lexy?
‘I thought you knew!’ she whimpered. ‘I really did! I didn’t think that could have happened without you knowing! I’m so sorry, Frank –’
She allowed herself to say his name again: it always gave her such a secret, blissful, erotic thrill.
‘Lexy was talking about it in the meeting, really openly,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t have any idea you didn’t know what she was doing with the lawyers . . .’
‘The lawyers? What are you talking about?’
Frank almost shook Caroline in his impatience to find out what she knew. Lowering her eyes, unable to look directly at him, Caroline explained in stumbling, disconnected sentences what she had just heard: that Lexy had artificially drawn out the process of Frank formally adopting Laylah, had fomented trouble between herself and Jamal, even changing legal teams to make sure that as much drama as possible could be extracted from the adoption process before the triumphant ending of the series.
The colour drained from Frank’s handsome face.
‘I want to say I don’t fucking believe it,’ he said slowly, and to Caroline’s deep disappointment, his hand dropped from her arm. Once again, he covered his face with his palms.
‘But I do,’ he said into them. ‘Of course I do. It’s exactly the kind of shit she’d pull. All those months, I was so fucking furious with Jamal! I kept telling Lexy I was ready to get on a plane, fly over to the US and knock his head against a wall to get it sorted out, make him sign the papers – no wonder she looked so worried every time I said it! Now it turns out it wasn’t Jamal putting a spanner in the works after all!’
‘I’m so sorry, Frank,’ Caroline repeated, her voice still frightened. If he stormed downstairs to Lexy and confronted her with this, Caroline’s goose would be not just cooked, but burnt to a crisp. ‘Please, please don’t tell Lexy you heard it from me!’
Frank rubbed his face as vigorously as if he were trying to exfoliate it. And then he reached out and rested his left palm on top of Caroline’s folded hands. A thrill ran through her, a stab to her ribcage that pierced straight down to the centre of her pelvis.
‘You’ve done so much for us, Caroline,’ he said heavily. ‘I know you’re getting paid bugger all to write Lexy’s book, and you’ve not only never complained, you were a godsend helping out with the kids when we were between nannies. Even now, you’re brilliant with them. I’d never dump you in the shit. Don’t worry about that.’
Relief flooded through Caroline. Although she was sitting still, she felt as battered by emotions as if she were tied to one of the worn wooden posts that marked out the sea lanes for the ferries that plied between Poole Harbour and the Channel Islands; waves crashing over her, the wake of the ferries slapping as they passed. Fear, excitement, love, lust, hope, reassurance . . . after this, she was definitely going to need to lie down on her bed to recover from the intensity of the moment when Frank had put his hand on hers and told her how much he valued her.
‘Thanks,’ she said softly. ‘That means a lot.’
‘You mean a lot,’ Frank said, but rather more absently than she would have liked. ‘God, what a fucking mess. What am I going to do? How’m I going to tell Lex that I can’t stand it any more? I can’t take it being all about her show all the time. Me and the kids are just actors in it. They actually call us cast members, did you know that? And that’s how she treats us.’
Caroline made a sympathetic mmn of agreement, but Frank, deep in misery about his wife’s behaviour, was barely aware of her any more. Patting her hand, he stood up, rolling his shoulders back as painfully as if he had been carrying a heavy load of boulders up a steep hill.
‘Sorry,’ he said, turning away to the door that led to the master suite. ‘I just need to . . .’ He let out a long sigh, and, without finishing the sentence, walked slowly down the corridor.
Caroline watched him go, her body motionless, her brain racing. She was processing everything that had just happened, the sheer rush and sweep of it. Frank had reached out to her physically, not once but twice; the memory of his arm around her, his hand on hers, was so powerful that she didn’t want to move from the window seat. As long as she sat here, she could close her eyes and remember what it had felt like to pretend in those moments that she was his wife, that they were sitting together, sharing a break in their day, catching up with what had happened to each of them . . . after all, what she had just told Frank had felt a little like that, a confidence that the two of them now shared . . .
Caroline clung on to that image for as long as she could. But gradually, the creeping awareness that she was crushing on a married man, her boss’s husband, whose arm around her shoulders was just a crumb falling from his and Lexy’s banquet table, forced her to open her eyes again.
She looked down at herself, at the breasts that were no longer so prominent that they obscured her view of her lap, at the flatter stomach and the thinner legs, clad in size 12 jeans that weren’t even digging into her waist. The jeans were baggy boyfriend cut, however, and her narrower, more sculpted torso was concealed under a loose sweater. These were very strategic clothing decisions. No one at Sandbanks had noticed the extent of her weight loss. She was Ghost Mouse to Lexy, and in a way she was still Ghost Mouse to everyone here. Frank had reacted to her just now as a friend, not a woman to whom he could be sexually attracted.
And that’s how it should stay for a while, she thought. I have to keep my head down if I want to stay in Frank and Lexy’s lives. Lexy may not notice that I’ve lost a stone and a half, but she will as soon as I start wearing clothes more like hers. And she didn’t hire a sexy Lexy lookalike – she hired dowdy, plump Ghost Mouse. I need her to see me like that for as long as possible.
While she was showering, Caroline had realized that the manuscript of Lexy on the Loose would surely require edits which would need to be turned around in lightning-quick time. So could she manoeuvre to come back to Sandbanks during that process? The excuse of needing to be close to Lexy for research would barely apply, but Caroline had done everything she could to insert herself into the daily life of the house, become as familiar a face to Lexy and Frank as the housekeeper, the chef or the nanny; her fingers were very tightly crossed that, once Gareth had read through the draft and given her his edits, she would be able to return to the guest suite, her morning beach runs, her free diet food, her daily contact with Frank . . .
Her stomach grumbled, and Caroline realized that she was starving. She was hungry most of the time, of course, having taught herself to welcome it as a sign that she was losing weight. Glancing at her watch, however, she realized that it was past two. She’d grab some food and have a much-needed post-lunch nap before reading over what she had written that morning and deciding whether it was ready to be sent off to Gareth.
Lexy and the PR team were already in the dining room, tucking into the lavish lunch buffet provided by the chef. The drinks fridge was stocked with bottles of white wine, lagers and an extensive selection of vitamin waters and non-alcoholic mixers; Emily, chatting away to Lexy, was clasping a large glass of Pinot Grigio, signalling to her team that it was fine for them to follow suit.
Recovering from the drama of the scene with Frank, permitted the release of a couple of drinks, the young staffers were buzzed already, and the lunch gathering was in full swing. As per her status as Ghost Mouse, Caroline was barely noticed as she entered the room, merely garnering a few friendly nods of acknowledgement as she picked up a plate and served herself with two big spoonfuls of shrimp and salad leaves. Eschewing the tempting rose-pink of the cocktail sauce in a silver gravy boat on the side of the platter, she limited herself to squeezing half a lemon and a twist of black pepper over the contents of her plate.
Caroline had been abstemious since embarking upon her hardcore diet, but the sight of everyone with a glass in their hand was hugely tempting: and besides, that morning she had not only finished the first book she had ever written, but earned five thousand pounds. If there was ever a time to celebrate, it was now.
So she poured a wine glass a third full with Pinot Grigio, topped it up with soda, and took a seat at the far side of the table. Most of the PRs were around her age, but their London hipster style – girls in crop tops with their heads shaved on one side, boys with ironic facial hair and elaborate jewellery – was a world away from Caroline’s boring ponytail and comparatively loose clothes. Edmonton wasn’t that far from Hoxton as the crow flew, but it might have been separated by an ocean as far as their relative styles were concerned.
And Caroline didn’t aspire to Hoxton, not at all. She had no desire to live in a trendy shared loft, throwing dusk-to-dawn parties while doing the latest drugs and having sex with boys so skinny she couldn’t get into their jeans; she’d never seen being a writer as a career that came with a wild lifestyle. She wanted what Lexy had: a solid bourgeois, middle-class life, a home, a husband, kids. Friendly as the PR team was, she couldn’t see herself having much in common with them.
So she sat quietly, sipping her spritzer as she cut the shrimp into small pieces to make it seem a larger portion than it was, chewing and swallowing each one as slowly as she could, all part of her new diet regime.
‘Hey, Ghost Mouse! Drinking at lunchtime? Thought you were on a whole health kick!’
Strolling over, perching her tight little bottom on the edge of the dining table, Lexy flicked a shellacked nail against Caroline’s wine glass.
‘Emily’s asking about an ETA on the book,’ she said. ‘She wants to get proofs out to journos as soon as we can. No offence, but should you be boozing it up this time of day with the kind of psycho deadline you’ve got?’
It was a fair question, but it still made Caroline bristle. Especially as, from the pitch of Lexy’s voice, Caroline could diagnose her employer as having already drunk one full glass of Pinot with lemon; the one she was currently holding must be her second. There was an extra fizz and vivacity to Lexy’s affect when she was at this stage of wine consumption, and by now Caroline could recognize it very well indeed.
‘I finished the book this morning,’ Caroline said, as coolly as she could. ‘So I’m celebrating. It’s just a spritzer,’ she added, and then mentally kicked herself for even saying that; she didn’t owe Lexy an explanation of what was in her wine glass. ‘I still have stuff to go over, but I wrote “The End”.’
‘Wow, get you!’ Lexy said, clinking her glass with Caroline’s.
‘I’m not sure about the ending, though,’ Caroline admitted. ‘I was thinking I should get you to have a look at it before I send it off?’
‘Honestly, Ghost Mouse, just bung it over to Gareth and see what he thinks,’ Lexy said. ‘I’m no editor, you know that. Let him have a look at it first. I can’t be arsed checking something if he’s just going to want to change it anyway, and I’ve been fine with everything you’re written so far, haven’t I? And he wants it as soon as poss.’
‘Okay,’ Caroline agreed. ‘I genuinely can’t believe it’s done!’
When do I get paid? it occurred to her to wonder. Probably only when I’ve finished the edits, which means a few weeks yet . . .
‘Yay! Then you should go home, crash for a few days,’ Lexy said cheerfully. ‘Or get one of those cheapo last-minute holiday deals somewhere with a bit of your bonus – Fuertaventura, Mallorca, something like that. Grab a bit of sunshine while you can. ’Cause you’ll have to have another go at it once Gareth’s done his editing job, won’t you?’
Caroline nodded, but she was bristling again at Lexy bracketing her into a cheap and cheerful downmarket destination, somewhere people went to get sunburnt and tipsy.
‘I was actually looking at weekend package getaways to Venice,’ she said, her tone defensive.
‘Ooh, get you!’ Lexy said, laughing and drinking some more Pinot and lemon. ‘Very posh! Or is it a romantic thing? You seeing someone, Ghost Mouse?’
Caroline had been working for Lexy for months, and this was the first time Lexy had asked her that question.
‘There’s a guy in London,’ Caroline said. ‘But it’s not that serious. More a sex thing.’
‘Good for you!’ Lexy said with a salacious wink. ‘I should’ve known – you’re a dark horse, aren’t you? Like your writing. All quiet and butter-wouldn’t-melt on the outside, but dirty porn on the inside. Come on, let’s toast! To finishing the book, plus you getting your leg over in Venice! Nice one! I’ve always wanted to do it in a gondola, but they’re just too wobbly.’
Caroline raised her glass to Lexy’s, not letting her seething resentment show on her face. Caroline had spent months slaving away, for very little pay, on a book that required her to get to know Lexy in forensic detail, while Lexy didn’t even know whether Caroline was dating, or that she would prefer Venice to a sun and beach getaway if given the choice.
‘You heard all the kerfuffle with Frank, yeah?’ Lexy said, clearly in a chatty mood. ‘I got carried away with the pitch, but I should have known he’d react like that. He’s all “my kids are so precious and any dad who cheats on the mother of his children should be flogged in the middle of Trafalgar Square”, blah blah blah. I suppose I’ll have to apologize to him on my knees to make up, if you know what I mean.’
She flicked Caroline a wink, her mascaraed lashes fluttering theatrically up and down. Caroline, who had devoted two pages to Lexy’s vivid description of her blowjob technique, did indeed know exactly what her boss meant, and she felt a vivid, burning resentment at the image of Lexy with Frank’s cock in her mouth.
‘So what are you going to do for an extra publicity push when the book and the series come out?’ Caroline asked, dragging her brain back to the subject under discussion. ‘What was the Plan B?’
Caroline had a very keen interest in Lexy on the Loose becoming a runaway bestseller. Although she was not in line to earn royalties, if the book hit the Sunday Times top ten it would be a strong negotiating point for Caroline as she tried to get a book contract of her own, or to ghost another book for Lexy for a higher rate of pay.
‘Ah, not much,’ Lexy said gloomily. ‘Stage a feud with that Josie slag. Say that she was coming on to Frank and I had to drag her off – you know, keep any idea that Frank was flirting with her out of it, just make it about me being jealous. But I was like, why should I give her any publicity? The whole catfight thing’s so been there, done that. Half the stupid cows who’ve got columns in the weeklies just make ’em up if they’re running short of stuff to say – Michelle thinks Katie’s new hair extensions are ugly, so Katie slaps back next week saying that Michelle still hasn’t got the baby weight off – I mean, the fans aren’t morons, they just flick past it. Besides, Josie’s fifteen years younger than me. I’d look like an insecure older bitch worrying about the younger slags on the scene.’
Caroline had to admit that Lexy’s instincts were spot on. As good as Lexy looked at thirty-seven, Josie Santana was not only stunning but had the full freshness of youth, possessing not only a pneumatic figure and a naturally good head of hair, but the impressive flexibility of someone who had been taking dance classes since she was five. She was a very average singer, but her signature move, which was to touch her toes with one hand while holding the microphone in the other, still singing while she wiggled her bottom in the air, never failed to draw attention.
‘That’s the thing about PRs,’ Lexy continued, barely bothering to lower her voice, even though the room was filled with them. ‘They never work for just one client, you know? Unless you’re, like, Tom Cruise. So they’re never thinking of only your interests. This Josie shit’s very typical – Emily represents her as well, so for them it’s easier to tie us together, get two campaigns for the price of one. But to quote Marilyn Monroe, there’s always one person who gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop, and that’s not going to be me. They’ve had loads more of my money over the years than they’ve had from Josie Santana, for fuck’s sake!’
And this was simply the perfect opportunity served up to Caroline on a shining silver platter.
‘If there’s going to be an age difference, shouldn’t it be a younger guy chasing you?’ Caroline suggested as casually as she could manage. ‘Everyone would believe it. Look how Deacon came on to you at the awards ceremony! I haven’t shown you that bit, but I put it in the second to last chapter of the book – all the back and forth banter and the “MILF on Fire” stuff. It came out really well. He was totally into you.’
She stood up.
‘I should get back to work,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually sending the book off today!’
But Lexy’s hand closed around her forearm, guiding Caroline back down to the dining chair.
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘What did you just say?’