Chapter Forty-Two
Lexy made sure her exit from the bookstore was suitably dramatic. Striding down Piccadilly as onlookers turned to stare, her killer heels struck the pavement with satisfying force, as if she were grinding Caroline beneath them. She kept this up until she had passed the frontage of the bookshop; then she stopped to let the photographer and cameraman catch up to her, reviewing their footage, making sure that they had everything they needed. With this confirmed, they shot off to ring their agencies. The coverage of Lexy humiliating Caroline at her own book launch would be online in a couple of hours, maximum.
Many fans had followed Lexy out of the bookshop, and she happily signed autographs and took selfies with them. Her smile was unwavering as she refused politely to answer questions about the state of her marriage, while encouraging them all to buy Lexy on the Loose and watch the premiere of the new season of her show. When the tide of admirers had finally slowed to a trickle, she waved the last fans a very warm goodbye and resumed her progress down Piccadilly, drawing stares of recognition and appreciation all the way to Fortnum and Mason.
Entering by a side door, she wove her way through the store to the Diamond Jubilee tea salon. This was an oasis, decorated in white and pale blue, presumably to exert some kind of calm to balance out the babbling, excited children present who were busily feeding their sugar highs. At the entrance, a piano tinkled away, gentle tunes obviously intended to have the same effect.
Lexy spotted her family almost at once. Frank, Laylah and London were ensconced at a table by the far wall, London kneeling up on the pale blue leather banquette, reaching for a petit four from the top plate of the cake tower, a curlicued white stand layered with white china plates with blue and gold rims. The plate rattled perilously as he grabbed it; Lexy took a moment to relish the sight of her happy husband and children, jam smeared over Laylah’s face as she stuffed a cream scone into her mouth, London demolishing the petit four, Frank chuckling at the sight of his kids in the throes of pleasure.
Two tables over, a woman sipping pink Ruinart champagne with a friend, bags from their shopping spree piled around the table, glanced over at Frank. Her eyes softened with that unmistakeable glow typical of a certain type of female when they see a man looking after his children. It was like being broody by proxy: they wanted not just a baby, but the whole package.
Just as Caroline had done.
Lexy had missed the multiple times Caroline must have cast just that dewy-eyed, hopeful, admiring gaze at Frank. That wasn’t all Lexy had missed, of course; she hadn’t realized the value of what she had till she had nearly lost everything. Her kids, her husband, her home. She shivered with relief when she thought how close she had come to losing it all.
Thanks, Caroline, she thought for the umpteenth time. Weirdly enough, I owe you. For showing me what I had, for making me fight for it. Even for cracking my head open in that vitality pool.
Whatever Frank had been intending to say to Lexy later on the evening of that fight in the Corinthia Spa, she would never know. Had he been going to tell her he wanted to reconcile? She had never risked asking him that question. Because once the hospital called him, everything had changed. On hearing that she had a severe concussion, he had dashed over there immediately. Lexy had been groggy, barely conscious, having just emerged from a CT scan which had mercifully been negative; Frank tore into her room, horrified at the sight of her pale face, the bandages on her head. Once Lexy had managed to smile and tell him she was basically okay, that she had been cleared for bleeding or swelling of the brain, he had started crying in relief, which had caused her to start crying too, and then they were hugging and crying together, and after that it had all been smooth sailing.
Thank you, Caroline, Lexy thought quite genuinely, for shoving me into that pool and knocking me out, so that my husband would realize he still loved me and couldn’t stand the thought of me dropping dead from a head injury.
That’s the last thank you I’ll ever bloody give you, though. The woman with the pink Ruinart champagne had been staring wistfully at Lexy’s husband for quite long enough. Stepping up to the table, as London yelled: ‘Mummy!’ with ecstatic glee, Lexy bent over Frank and placed a long, thorough kiss on his lips, both children hooting and pointing at Daddy wearing lipstick.
Picking up a napkin, she dipped it into a glass of water and wiped her lipstick from his mouth.
‘Sorry, babes,’ she said, sitting down next to him and glancing briefly sideways in triumph at the Ruinart woman, who was looking deflated. ‘I just can’t resist you.’
Frank took her hand and squeezed it hard, smiling lovingly at her.
‘I got you macaroons,’ he said, indicating the plate.
‘Mummy’s favourite!’ Laylah chanted. ‘Mummy loves macaroons!’
Lexy looked at the plate of low-fat macaroons.
‘Ah, sod that,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a really good afternoon. Give me one of those scones, and pass the cream while you’re about it. Hey, kids, I have some news. Mummy isn’t going to be shooting her show any more. No more cameras in the house following us around all the time.’
‘You told them, then?’ Frank asked. Before dropping in on Caroline’s book signing, Lexy had been in a long meeting with her TV producers at their Soho offices. ‘How’d they take it?’
‘Not too well at first,’ she admitted. ‘But I gave them another bone to chew on. If we can pull it off I’m going to be hosting a new show, called something like Lexy Knows Best. I’ll be taking the latest reality show winners and working with them so they’re not flashes in the pan, you know? I’ll decide how to steer their careers, what they should be doing, who they should be dating, how they should be maximizing their fame. I might start with that Jamie-Lee. She’s an ambitious little madam – just the kind that does well at this kind of thing.’
‘You’ll be brilliant at that,’ Frank said loyally, releasing her hand so that she could dig into the highly fattening scone.
‘It’s a great idea.’
‘Yeah, it was mostly me who came up with it,’ she boasted. ‘And you know what? If it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.’
‘Why aren’t we doing the show any more, Mummy?’ London asked.
‘Mummy,’ Frank muttered, rolling his eyes. ‘Ever since they’ve been spending time with Sophie, they’ve got so bloody posh!’
‘Your dad doesn’t want you kids on TV any more, babes,’ Lexy said. ‘And he doesn’t want to be on TV any more either – not on a show about us, anyway. He never did. I made him.’
Frank’s smile of acknowledgement was a beautiful thing to see.
‘But I like it, Mummy!’ Laylah wailed. ‘I like being on telly!’
Her big blue eyes, so like her mother’s, widened in distress as she looked from her mother to her father, begging for some sort of reprieve.
‘I’ve got so many followers on Instagram!’ she pointed out. ‘They’re always asking when I’ll be on telly again! And Snapchat too! Mummy, I need to be on telly, you don’t understand! I need it so I can get more and more followers, I want thousands and thousands . . .’
Her voice was rising perilously. In the old days, this meltdown would have been dealt with by a hapless nanny, who would have been expected to whisk Laylah off to the toilets till she calmed down. Now it was squarely on her parents’ shoulders. Frank blanched, but Lexy leaned across the table, grabbed Laylah’s hand and hissed:
‘If you don’t calm down right now, young lady, your phone’s being taken off you for a week, d’you hear me? I’m not pissing around!’
Sorry, Sophie, she thought guiltily. Still got some work to do on not effing and blinding in front of the kids.
The sob issuing from Laylah’s cupid’s-bow lips was caught midway as she stared at her mother in utter horror, her eyes now so stretched that she looked positively comical. With animal instincts, she took a swift inventory of her mother’s expression and read in it nothing but absolute willingness to make good on her threat.
‘Can I never be on telly any more, Mummy?’ she said piteously, trying a plea since the threat of a meltdown had failed. ‘Not ever?’
Lexy looked at her beautiful, wilful daughter, a miniature version of herself in so many ways, and her heart sank at the thought of the years of trouble that lay in store for her and Frank as Laylah grew up.
‘Oh, I think you probably will,’ she said grimly. ‘But nothing your dad doesn’t approve of.’
Laylah turned to Frank, cast a frantic look of appeal at him and then buried her face in her hands.
‘You’re ruining my life!’ she moaned.
‘That’s early,’ Frank said, deadpan. ‘Didn’t think we’d be hearing that till she was in her teens.’
He shoved his leather armchair closer to Lexy’s, put his arm around her shoulder.
‘Kids, your mum and I are a team now,’ he announced. ‘We make our decisions together. No more going behind one of our backs to try to get what you want from the other one. Those days are over.’
It was London’s turn to look appalled.
‘London!’ Laylah said, still into her hands, quoting a line they had recently heard in a film. ‘You know what this means? We’re doomed.’
And her delivery was so perfect that not just her parents, but her younger brother, who didn’t usually like to give her credit for anything, dissolved in floods of laughter.