Chapter Seven
Caroline had noticed very smugly that Riz had not said ‘Nice one’ after their morning bout either. Instead, that grin back on his face, he had wiped himself off, dropped a much more enthusiastic kiss than usual on Caroline’s lips, and left her room with the words ‘Congrats again on the book job, yeah? Very cool. Um . . . see you later?’
Caroline managed a nod. She was lying splayed on her mattress, her chest still heaving from their exertions. As the door closed behind him, she realized that she was shaking her head gently from side to side in sheer disbelief at how swiftly her life had changed. Yesterday she had a boring full-time job and regular bad sex. Today she was self-employed, with a book to write and, presumably, regular very satisfying sex.
Lexy’s ‘novel’ was not going to make Caroline rich. She would be paid, Lexy had told her, five thousand pounds on delivery of a manuscript, if it were deemed of suitable quality to be published. Caroline had not noticed the flickering glance of amusement that Miranda had exchanged with Gareth on this announcement; it was common knowledge in the publishing world that if the client negotiated the ghostwriter’s pay, they were much more stingy than the editor would have been.
A thousand would be advanced to Caroline as soon as she signed the contract. She had managed to negotiate travel expenses, too, after pointing out how much of her pay would otherwise be eaten up by them. Bailey and Hart had agreed to pay for a season ticket for her between London and Bournemouth for the next four to five months, plus local taxis in Bournemouth, if someone in Lexy’s entourage couldn’t give her a lift to and from the station.
It would be a scary few months for Caroline, living as cheaply as she possibly could, working all hours of the day and night with no assurance that she’d manage to pull off the feat of writing a novel in such a short time, and only four thousand pounds awaiting her if Gareth decided it was good enough to be published. She was anticipating doing a lot of writing on the train, as the words had flowed so freely on her initial trip to see Lexy.
At first she would be travelling to Sandbanks almost every weekday, interviewing Lexy intensively to get as much material as possible. Although Lexy had a show to film, promotional events to attend, photoshoots to do – a whole raft of her usual activities – she had committed to carving out a morning or afternoon for Caroline each day. They would also meet in London when Lexy visited for work. Frank and Lexy maintained a pied-à-terre in Chelsea Harbour, and the interviews could be conducted there.
Additionally, Lexy’s manager would be sending Caroline what would probably be an avalanche of press clippings about Lexy. The book was to be a slightly fictionalized romp through Lexy’s wild life and times; as many of Lexy’s affairs as she was willing to spill the beans about, the birth of Laylah, the rebound into Frank’s arms and the pregnancy with London. It would end triumphantly on Lexy and Frank’s star-studded, very over-the-top wedding at a stately home, for which Lexy, naturally, had worn an eighteenth-century hoop-skirted dress and full powdered wig, her breasts spilling over the top of her corset.
She had made Frank wear breeches. He had not been happy, but he had done it anyway. And Wow! magazine had paid half a million for exclusive magazine rights to the photos, so, as Lexy had pointed out, he’d got paid plenty for it. Naturally the photographs would feature in the book, including a very tasteful black and white shot of Lexy breastfeeding one-and-a-half-year-old London after the ceremony, with one boob hoicked entirely out of the corset.
The song ‘These Words’ by Natasha Bedingfield started to play by the bed. For a moment Caroline, still sex-dazed, was baffled as to why, before she remembered that in her elation yesterday at having pulled off the incredible feat of being hired as Lexy’s ghostwriter, she had downloaded the song on the bus home to celebrate. It was about writing, the struggle to get the right words down on paper; Caroline had sung along to it many times working on her blog. After all, it had been Bedingfeld’s debut album, and both ‘These Words’ and ‘Unwritten’ had chronicled the scary and exciting process of getting her first creative project out to the world. What could possibly be more inspirational?
She grabbed for the phone and answered the call. The man on the other end of the line identified himself briskly as Jason, Lexy’s manager, needing Caroline’s address for the courier to send over the stack of Lexy’s press clippings.
‘There are boxes and boxes,’ Jason said. ‘And boxes. Be prepared. I’ll send you the link and password to our online archives too, but Miranda told me you’ll work faster going through them on paper. I’ll book the courier now – that’ll give you enough time to get them into your place before you meet Lexy this afternoon. She’s having a facial and she wants you to go along to make notes. Says you think readers will want to read all about her beauty regime.’
‘Her skin’s really good,’ Caroline said, feeling that Jason might mean this sarcastically. ‘You realize it when you meet her. I thought her fans would be interested in—’
‘Oh yes, it’s a great idea!’ Jason said quite unironically. ‘Considering how much she drinks and smokes, it’s a miracle how good she looks, trust me!’
Lexy was already at Skin3, the salon, when Caroline arrived. Caroline had taken the overground to Swiss Cottage, walking down from the Finchley Road, and the change in atmosphere during the short descent was palpable. Once she turned away from the chain stores and charity shops on the parade, the ugly 1970s council flats above them with their heavy steel doors and graffitied balconies, the architecture shifted almost immediately into huge and beautiful, wedding-cake, white-painted mansions with pillared entrances and charming modern mews-style houses, set back from the road behind tree-lined drives.
Many were as pretty as New Orleans carriage houses, with their little balconies and cascading greenery reminiscent of Louisiana Spanish moss. Caroline couldn’t even imagine how many millions each house must cost, but the BMWs, Mini Cooper convertibles and Range Rover Evoques, all as gleaming as if they were fresh from the dealers’ forecourts, indicated that the homeowners had considerable disposable incomes.
The Skin3 salon was very clearly the latter rather than the former, its facade sleek and expensively designed, transparent glass with pops of deep pink and white, intended to both attract and reassure its female clients. Look, it said, how smooth and clear I am! This is what your skin will look like once you step through these doors and let my skilled beauticians go to work on you! Ranks of cosmetics and creams were arranged in illuminated recesses inside the salon; lavish orchids stood in an elegant vase on a side table. Beside the flowers were two jugs of water, one full of lemon slices, one of cucumber, the pale yellow and green refreshing against the pink and white of the salon. And on a smart grey sofa Lexy, wearing a cashmere onesie, was holding court.
‘So I said, I don’t care if her clothes are all classy now, I remember her back in the day with the fake boobs and the fake hair and the fake voice – ’cause she can’t sing and she knows it – and for all those tabloid pics of them playing Happy Families with their kids, that husband of hers’s been shagging around forever. And not just with the ladies either, like she wants to make you think!’ she was saying to a couple of beauty therapists, who were giggling at Lexy’s salacious gossip.
The therapists were young, very pretty and utterly intimidating. Skincare employees at department stores could look eerily perfect, but Caroline could always console herself that they had plastered on so much make-up that morning that it was impossible to tell what they really looked like. With the Skin3 beauticians, however, that excuse wouldn’t work. Their skin was, magically, both luminous and matte, which seemed impossible until you saw it for yourself; and they were wearing very minimal make-up.
Additionally, they were both very slim and immaculate, with elegant dark uniforms and smooth hair. Caroline could only be grateful that she had the memory of the excellent sex she had had that morning to bolster her confidence. If not, with her self-consciousness about her skin and weight issues, it would have been very hard for her to feel that she had any right to be in a place like this.
‘Oh hey, Caroline!’ Lexy said as her ghostwriter entered. ‘Don’t get comfy, I’m just getting up. You wanted to see what I do to get my skin all glowy and gorgeous, yeah? Well, brace yourself. You’ve never seen anything like this before, trust me.’
‘Lexy was just telling us about the book you’re writing together,’ one of the young women said, smiling at Caroline. Her eyes were wide-set, her nose delicate and with a slight ski-jump tilt at the tip: she looked like a Disney princess. ‘Hi, I’m Davina. It’s so exciting. I really wish I could write.’
‘Caroline writes amazing filthy stuff,’ Lexy said gleefully, standing up and reaching for her Birkin bag. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but she’s got a dirty, dirty mind. The book’s going to be scorchio.’
‘Ooh, that sounds brilliant!’ the other young woman said. ‘I can’t wait to read it! I’m Eva, by the way.’
She held out her hand for Caroline to shake.
‘I do Lexy’s treatments,’ she said. ‘Feel free to ask me anything you want about them for the book – I’m more than happy to answer any questions you have. Lexy asked me to tell you what I’m doing as we go along.’
As Eva led Lexy and Caroline downstairs to a treatment room, Caroline was given yet another lesson on how the top one per cent lived. She had, with online discount vouchers, bought plenty of facials in an attempt to tame her rosacea and her period spots. But she was used to cut-price high-street salons, decorated with cheap flock wallpaper in baroque curlicues of silver, black and fuchsia; so cramped that you had to wriggle past a drying rack of towels imperfectly concealed behind a screen if you needed to use the tiny, not very clean loo; the treatment rooms narrow and partitioned by MDF sliding doors which swung and rattled loudly in their cheap channels every time they were opened or closed.
None of the facials, unsurprisingly, had worked. But she could see why. They had been the Poundland version of the beauty salon world, while this was Harvey Nichols. Its white paint was immaculately clean, its walls hung with huge black and white photographs of women’s flawless faces; outside each treatment room was a bud vase affixed to the wall, each filled with a single perfect yellow rose. The bed in the room into which Eva ushered Lexy was not a rickety massage table with a flimsy paper cover and a lone towel which was never big enough to cover both boobs and bum if you were getting a full-body treatment.
No, this looked like an actual, proper single bed, the kind you got in First Class airline seats – white leather, with wide adjustable arms. It was made up with a dark grey bottom sheet, with matching towels laid on top; it had not only a proper pillow, but an actual duvet, all in the same elegant shade of charcoal. Caroline’s eyes were wide. A duvet! She couldn’t begin to imagine how much all of this would cost. And when Eva started Lexy’s facial, explaining to Caroline the scientific research behind the salon’s approach, the reasons for the various supplements Lexy took daily, Caroline realized that she should have brought a Dictaphone, or whatever recording device journalists used. This was the Rolls-Royce of beauty regimes, and there was simply too much information for her to process, even making frantic notes. She had been going to buy one for her interviews with Lexy; she’d bring it back next time Lexy visited Skin3.
Eva put a heating pad behind Lexy’s neck for extra comfort; she cleansed and moisturized Lexy’s face and décolletage; she applied terrifying-looking twin oversized plastic forks the size and shape of salad servers, attached by wires to a machine she wheeled out from a built-in cupboard, to Lexy’s neck and lower face.
‘This is our Precision Lift treatment,’ she said, pinching the forks onto what would be jowls if Lexy had them. ‘It’s a microcurrent therapy called CACI, originally developed to treat facial palsy – you know, after a stroke your face gets saggy on one side? They worked out they could bring back muscle tone by running microcurrents on the saggy bits. Lots of cosmetic improvements come from medical innovations, actually. We call it a non-surgical facelift – lots of ladies get it because they’d rather tone up than get plastic surgery. We really promote alternatives to that here.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’ Caroline was unable to resist asking, watching the forks dig into another section of jawline.
‘Like buggery,’ Lexy said, as best she could with the forks deep in her skin. ‘But that’s how you know it’s working. I don’t know why they say “Like buggery”, eh? That’s much more fun!’
Caroline and Eva both sensibly decided not to respond to this last statement, though Caroline scribbled it down so that she could use it for the book; it was so very Lexy.
‘And you can feel the current going through?’ Caroline asked.
‘Oh yeah. It buzzes a lot.’ Lexy produced a little giggle. ‘She’s got no idea what’s coming next, does she, Eva? Hope she doesn’t freak out!’
Eva smiled, a perfect professional smile; she was clearly used to Lexy’s teasing ways. The CACI treatment completed, the machine was returned to the cupboard and Eva started to mix up a facial mask, thick and gelatinous. To Caroline’s amazement, Eva applied this to Lexy’s entire face and neck. Eyes vanished entirely under the viscous white substance, as did lips, till only Lexy’s nostrils were visible. Caroline felt a palpable sense of panic on Lexy’s behalf, which only increased when Eva wheeled out a second machine, and, incredibly, attached electrodes on clips to the edge of the mask, which had already jellified enough for this to be feasible.
‘The current drives the nutrients in the mask much deeper into the lower layers of the skin, where they’re really needed. We use very fresh Vitamin A and C, plus antioxidants,’ Eva told Caroline. ‘This will stimulate her collagen production and increase her hydration, making her skin much smoother. Without the machine to force those nutrients into the lower dermis, it’s all just cosmetic. You get a nice glow for the day, but that’s all it achieves.’
Caroline heaved a sigh.
‘That’s exactly what happened when I had facials. I looked nice and shiny afterwards, but my spots never got any better,’ she said gloomily.
‘Nothing that you can get over the counter or in a beauty salon will make a difference deep down where the skin needs it,’ Eva explained, now massaging Lexy’s arm with long flowing strokes. When she had had facials, Caroline had always been left alone in the room while the face mask sank in, but this, again, was not a discount voucher beauty treatment. Clients were tended to every moment they were in the treatment room.
‘That’s why our clients take their vitamins and omegas every day,’ she added. ‘We treat the skin from inside and outside. It’s called Feed, Fortify, Finish.’
As Caroline scribbled this down, the machine beeped. Eva unfastened the electrodes, took hold of one side of the mask and lifted the whole thing off in one smooth go. It had set to a rubbery consistency now, like something from a science fiction film, the underside moulded to Lexy’s features. Eva disposed of it and started working a light oil into Lexy’s face to finish off.
‘Hey, Eva,’ Lexy said once this was done, ‘while I’m getting dressed, why don’t you take Caroline upstairs and give her the skin consultation? Then she can write about that for the book, too.’
The consultation entailed Caroline sticking her face into a light-filled machine so that her skin could be scanned and photographs could be taken of the condition of her dermis. Then she had to look at one terrifying scan after another covered with ominous-looking coloured dots, and be told by the lovely and smooth-skinned Eva about the bacteria and lack of hydration that was adversely affecting her rosacea and period acne. This was particularly hard as she knew there was nothing she could do about it; the treatments Lexy had just undergone, with all the expensive machines and gadgets, were far beyond the reach of a self-employed ghost-writer who had to live on a thousand pounds for four to five months and would have to negotiate an overdraft to cover her rent and food, as her meagre savings certainly wouldn’t cover those expenses . . .
As Lexy came upstairs again, Eva slipped away to do her make-up. Caroline remained in the consultation room, filling her notepad with information for the book. After all, Lexy sold herself so much on her appearance. There were photoshoots and press launches for which she wore eye-grabbing costumes and hairdos for the rollout of each of her new products; modelling gigs for her various clothing lines; spreads in weekly gossip magazines; endless pap photos in the dailies and tabloids and gossip sites; videos for her YouTube vlogging channel.
And in all of these Lexy needed to look wonderful, her skin smooth and glowing, her hair thick and glossy. Her fans and haters alike pored over her images, eagerly dissecting them, both ripping her apart and getting tips on how to dress, how to do their own hair and make-up like hers. Brands she talked about on social media saw instant spikes in their internet traffic: Caroline knew it was Jane Iredale make-up Eva was applying to Lexy because she had seen Lexy enthusing about it repeatedly on her Instagram. Clothes from Lexy’s brand sold out instantly if she was photographed wearing them.
‘Oi, Caroline!’
Lexy’s head popped round the corner of the room. Caroline blinked. Lexy’s skin, post-BB cream, hydrating spray and powder, was even more eerily perfect than usual.
‘Davina’s had a cancellation,’ Lexy announced. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one? I said you should take the appointment. My treat,’ she added before Caroline could panic at how much this would cost her.
Caroline was struck dumb with shock and gratitude. She was to learn that this kind of impulsive gesture was typical of Lexy. As she had already told Caroline, she was very tight, quite happy to take a quarter-million advance on her book while only paying the ghostwriter who would actually do the work a tiny five-grand flat fee, with no percentage of any royalties that might be earned.
The flip side of her fierce economizing, however, was an impulse to spontaneous generosity. This had been suppressed during the years she’d been building her career, fighting her way ruthlessly up the ladder, refusing to be just a flash in the pan, the latest pretty face/pair of tits combo, to be discarded after a few years by the media as fresher female meat came along.
Now, however, having heard the wistfulness in Caroline’s voice as she commented on her facials not having done anything for her, seeing Caroline’s bumpy rosacea cheeks and the scarring on her chin from past acne breakouts, Lexy had yielded to her better instincts. She was pleased to see Caroline’s flush of happiness, her smile of delight; it was very pleasant to be generous, but it was even more rewarding to see the recipients showing gratitude.
Caroline was stammering a fervent ‘Thank you!’ as Lexy carried on:
‘Oh yeah, and why don’t you get a train down tomorrow morning and bring a suitcase? You could stay in the guest suite for a few days. We can do tons of work, you get an inside view of the whole setup, kids and all – what do you say? It’d turbo-charge getting started on the book, yeah?’
‘I – yes – that sounds—’
‘Frank’s around tomorrow,’ Lexy swept on. ‘If you text me to let me know what train you’re on, he can pick you up. And bring a swimsuit. We’ve got a pool, sauna, Jacuzzi, rainforest shower with colour change, the works. You might as well make the most of it. There’s a gym too, if you fancy working out.’
I am never, ever, ever wearing a swimsuit around Lexy, was Caroline’s first thought. But her second, and the one that made her feel hot all over, was:
Oh my God – Frank! If he saw me in my swimsuit I think I’d genuinely drop dead from mortification!
And that image hit her with a positive flash of self-revelation, a white light illuminating a hidden corner of her subconscious. She was forced to admit to herself that while she and Riz had been fucking yesterday and today, the image she had seen whenever she closed her eyes had not been slightly pudgy, palest brown, sparse-bearded Riz. It had been golden-pecan-skinned, curly-haired, taut-muscled Frank.
Lexy’s husband. The man she was going to be sharing a car with tomorrow, making conversation as best she could, smelling his aftershave . . . whose house she would be staying in, who she might – God help her! – see in the gym sweating as he pounded the treadmill, as he lifted weights or did lengths in the pool, effortlessly levering himself out from the deep end with his strong upper body, drops of water pouring from his muscled frame . . .
Caroline closed her eyes briefly, telling herself to get a grip. She knew, of course, that she was quite safe. Frank wouldn’t glance her way for a moment. She could indulge herself in fantasies as much as she wanted without any fear that she would get into trouble for flirting with her boss’s husband.
Even if Lexy guesses how much I fancy him, she thought sadly, I won’t get the sack – she’d laugh her head off instead. She’d think it was hilarious that a spotty chubster like me would have a crush on her gorgeous husband.
Flicking through her notes, making sure that everything was committed to paper before she had her facial and completely zoned out, Caroline read the scribble of Lexy joking about buggery being fun, and another image flashed vividly before her eyes: Riz, doing precisely that, as she smushed her face against a pillow and imagined it was Frank kneeling on the bed behind her.
Riz, she reflected, wasn’t going to believe his luck when she got back to Edmonton that evening.