Exposure (16 page)

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not? Why can’t you come back?”

“Things will be just the same. The
newspapers will crucify me for running away. I’ll be followed everywhere and
what kind of life is that for a baby? He’ll grow up reading about his mother in
the press.”

“They won’t hound you now. The baby will
change everything.”

“How can he? He’s just a baby.”

“The media loves a baby more than they love
scandal.”

“I doubt that. They probably eat babies for
lunch.”

“They love a baby story, Mel. You should
see today’s headlines. Look.”

He started tapping into his phone, then he
showed me.

NATHAN’S BABY WOULDN’T WAITE

And there was Nathan bare-chested, leaning
against the taxi, looking gorgeous as ever, pictured with his new son wrapped
in the white shirt. They were happy pictures, pictures I’d treasure this time,
but they were the reason I could never go back.

“That’s the problem. I don’t want him
growing up as fodder for the paparazzi, a camera in his face everywhere we go.
He’s not even two minutes old there, and he’s already in the newspaper.”

“We won’t let the photographers near him as
he grows up. We’ll protect him from them and keep him safe.”

“How can we? Someone out there still hates
us. Someone made that video. Someone wanted to harm us, and we still don’t know
who.”

“I do know that. I found out who it was.”

“Who? Who did that?”

“Another note came a couple of days after
you left,” Nathan said. “Whoever sent it didn’t know you weren’t there to see
it, but I opened it. This time, I recognized one of the cut-out letters. It was
that God-awful dark-green color they make the girls wear for their uniform at
your old school. I checked an old newsletter lying on your desk. The typesetting
they use for the title is not very distinctive but with the color I was pretty
sure it came from there. I suppose they got lazy and took letters from anywhere
or they didn’t think about the letters being traced. The only one from school
at the wedding was…”

“Oh my God, Justine,” I said. “I thought
she was jealous, but not that much.”

“I confronted her. She turned white as soon
as she saw me. She thought she was in a lot of trouble, yet she didn’t deny it.
She broke down and confessed. I think she just got carried away with how much
she could make.”

“She never struck me as all that
money-grabbing. I can’t believe it.”

“She and her fiancé were in a lot of debt.
They’d been spending money faster than they earned it. And Justine wanted a
wedding like we had, but she knew there was no way she could have anything like
that. She thought if she got pictures no one else had, she could sell them
without anyone knowing she had done it.”

“I didn’t even think it might be Justine.
Of all the people we suspected. I didn’t even know she was there that night in
the woods.”

“She wasn’t with the others. She hadn’t
managed to take any pictures worth selling at the wedding, but she saw us leave
the reception that night and followed us into the woods. She hadn’t intended to
make a video. She just wanted to get a picture no one else had, but when she
saw what was happening, she got out her phone and started filming.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“The laws are pretty vague about that kind
of thing. I could have sued the newspaper. But I knew you wouldn’t want
everything dragged up again.”

“No, I’d have hated that.”

“And you know I looked at that video again.
It’s not the kind of thing you want your grandma to see but it’s damn
sexy—sexier than any video I ever saw. It’s raw, but you can see the love in
it. I never destroyed it, because it proved how much we had one time, though
you weren’t with me anymore.”

He held my hand again then and ran his
fingers over my wedding ring. I’d never removed it. Never wanted to.

“You cut your hair,” he said, as if he’d
only just noticed. Maybe he had.

“Part of my disguise,” I said. “So no one
would recognize me.”

“Suits you,” he said. “But I liked it the
old way too…” his voice fading as if he was remembering how we used to be.

“I liked it like that too,” I said, not
referring to my hair at all.

He squeezed my hand.

“Anyway,” he went on, as if he wanted to
get to the end of the story and move on from it. “I thought Justine had
suffered enough. Her fiancé left her because he couldn’t believe she’d done
that just to have a fancy wedding. She told me he said he didn’t think he knew
her anymore.”

“But she could have sold the video without
sending those messages. It was as if she hated us.”

“I think she did hate us at that point. She
arranged to sell the video while we were away on our honeymoon, got cold feet,
and then when you were fired she told herself you were such a big shot now, she’d
probably never see you again, so she went ahead with it. She shared the good
news with her fiancé as soon as it was a done deal. She had money for the
wedding then but suddenly no fiancé. And she had to tell everyone the wedding
was off. We had everything and she had nothing.”

“I feel a bit sorry for her,” I said. “I
don’t know why. Though the original picture was already bad enough so I can’t
blame her entirely for everything.”

“No, if you come back, we’ll have to be
respectable parents and good upright citizens from now on to do the little one
proud.”

He kissed me then. A deep searching kiss,
the kind I had missed so much. I still loved this man, my husband. I’d never
stopped loving him. As our kiss deepened, there was a cry from the cot.

“Do you think he’s hungry again?” Nathan
asked.

“I have no idea. You Waite guys are a
mystery.”

“No more than you Mrs. Waite, no more than
you.”

Even after I fed the baby, without sending
Nathan out the room or needing the nurse this time, when he asked me, “Are you
going to come back?” I was unsure.

“I can’t go back to the Oxford house.
Everyone recognizes me as that woman in the video. Guys leer at me. I want to
teach but I can’t do that there or anywhere they know me.”

Nathan put his arms around me, while I held
my son and wept.

He dried my eyes with a tissue.

“I’m so confused. I thought I’d be able to
leave my baby with a sitter. I’d have to do that here. But now I don’t know. I
don’t think I ever want to leave him.”

It was too big a decision in the state I
was in. My mind went this way and that. I couldn’t see how I could live with
Nathan, people recognizing me, getting hounded by the press, giving up all
ideas of teaching, and I couldn’t see how I could live without him. I knew I
would regret that, too, if I didn’t go back with him.

“We can live anywhere,” Nathan said. “We
don’t have to live in Oxford. We don’t even have to live in England. We could
live in France if you like.”

“But your work...”

“I can travel anywhere. I already do. But I
think we should go back. Those people who talk, who leer, they know nothing of
what it means to love like we do. We can’t let them dictate where we live, what
we do, or they’ve won with their tiny little depraved minds. We should feel
sorry for them, not run from them. I know it’s easy for me to say, but I think
it’s the only answer in the end. Otherwise you and the little one will always
be running, and you’ll always be looking over your shoulder whatever you do.”

He had a point. The paparazzi had found me
in France now. I had to learn to hold my head up high. What we had done was not
so terrible. The French certainly wouldn’t think so. It was our wedding night.
We were in love. People would find other things to point and stare at. We would
become old news before long, and there would be new scandals more newsworthy
than ours.

“And if you want to teach I know one place
where you will always be needed,” Nathan said.

“Where?”

“At home. You can teach me not to be such an
ass, and you can teach the little one everything he needs to know not to make
mistakes like his Daddy as he grows up. Maybe we should have a whole classroom
of little ones to keep you happy.”

“I’m not sure that would make me happy
given what I just went through,” I said, but I smiled.

I looked down at my son, lying content in
my arms now, the tug of his need for me and mine for him so strong. I would
hate to leave him with a babysitter so I could teach other people’s kids if it
could be helped, but I didn’t know if it would be enough for me just to stay
home with him.

I didn’t know how things would turn out,
but as Nathan continued to hold me and our son, it felt right for us to be
together. Nathan kissed the top of my head and I knew at that moment I was
going back, and we would be a real family. I would be brave and face my demons,
holding my head high.

“I’m coming home,” I said.

I gave my notice at the language school and
to my landlord in France and said goodbye to Marie and Claude. They were
astonished that they had missed the drama when they were away in Avignon. At
first they looked sideways at Nathan as if he was a villainous husband who had
tracked me down, but once they heard a watered-down version of the story, they
accepted that we had fallen out and that I had left him for a while. They all
got on much better after that. I promised to visit them whenever I could.

Nathan and I went back to the house in
Oxford as a family.

“Are you going to carry me over the
threshold this time?” I asked.

“Yes, both of you.” I would never have
believed when I fled from that house that I would come back with a new baby in
my arms. A new start!

Our families were delighted for us. Nathan’s
mother gave me a big hug when she came to visit, rushing over from the States
with his sister Chloe to see their new grandson and nephew. And even my mother
could not help gushing with grandmotherly pride when she saw little Daniel.

My sister Suzanne was delighted to be an
aunt.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she
said. “I always thought you were a dark horse, but I wonder what you’re going
to tell me next I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry Suze. No more secrets. I
promise.”

She gave me a hug.

Lauren McCade even came to visit after a
couple of weeks with a big teddy bear for Daniel. She and I were polite but
wary of each other at first. She had been on Nathan’s side when she thought I
left him, and I’d thought the worst about her. But I couldn’t help warming to
her in the end. I hoped she would remain a friend of all our family.

I stayed at home in the early weeks back in
Oxford but I knew I had to face my fears at some point. At first, I was wary
venturing out and about in the neighborhood with Daniel, but if anyone so much
as whispered I didn’t notice. It had been over nine months since the video.
Perhaps we were already old news. Or perhaps I became invisible to the local
louts when I was pushing a stroller. I suspected it was a bit of both.

“Carol wants us to do a couple of picture
shoots,” Nathan said, a couple of months after we got back. “She says the
publicity people know what they’re doing and it will help draw a line under the
kind of coverage we had around the wedding and put an end to any speculation
about me and Lauren.”

Carol was Nathan’s new agent. He’d decided
that Paula had caused too much trouble and had thanked her for her services,
and let her go.

With Carol’s support, I let a few
hand-picked journalists and photographers into our beautiful home so they could
talk to us and take carefully choreographed pictures of our life together.

The new articles didn’t once mention the
photograph or video from our wedding, only our obvious and very real love for
each other. That helped me shed some of the fear I had of being in the public
eye.

I never once talked to the
Globe
or
Lavinia Taylor though, not once. I would never talk to them no matter how much
they asked or how much money they offered.

Five years later

Nathan was still playing the bad boy but
only in movies now. It was something he excelled in. There were no more
pictures of him with co-stars looking like they were an item. He came home to
me and our brood whenever he could.

Our family now consisted of three lively
little boys, mini versions of Nathan: Daniel and twins Jack and Sam. So much
trouble, so like their father. Nathan said he was keeping his promise of giving
me my own school room full of children. But I wanted to stop soon whenever we
had another child. I hoped I’d have a girl next time, but not for a while and
only one baby, not two this time.

We hadn’t made love outside since the
wedding. It was a wonder we ever managed to get together at all, Nathan was in
so much demand, and I was so busy with the boys. Sometimes, I couldn’t believe
I had been hailed as a sex siren in the press.

But Nathan hadn’t changed. Not really. He
came home one day with a twinkle in his eye and a gift in a big box for me that
I wasn’t allowed to open until after dinner, and we were alone.

“Have a nice relaxing bath,” he said, “and
I’ll read the boys a story and get them to sleep.”

They loved it when their daddy read to
them. He put all his acting skills into the reading, and it often made them
more excited than sleepy.

But it was a luxury for me to soak in the
tub. I could only do that when another adult was there to watch the boys or
when they were in bed, and by then I was often too tired to run myself a bath.

Anyway, at last they were sleeping soundly.
Nathan had worn them out enough to get them settled down. He brought me a glass
of wine in the bath and clinked glasses with me.

“I love you, Mrs. Waite,” he said.

“I love you too,” I said, and he kissed me,
getting his shirt soaking wet.

“I think you’d better take that off,” I
said. “You’ll catch your death wearing a wet shirt like that.”

We laughed. A wet shirt at an open-air
performance had been the very thing that started him on the road to fame.

But he didn’t stop at the shirt. He peeled
off his clothes and got in the bath with me. I lay against him, luxuriating in
the warm water. Bliss!

“It’s a long time since we did this,” he
said.

“Too long.”

“Yes, far too long,” he said. “I got you a
present today.”

“I know. I saw it. I can’t wait to open
it.”

“I thought it was something you needed.”

“What, like a new toaster?”

“Yes, a new toaster.”

I slapped his arm “You’re a tease, Nathan
Waite.”

“So I am,” he said, laughing, his fingers
delving below the soapy water and between my legs, running them over my soft
folds, until I was panting and had to put my glass down.

“You’re making waves,” I said, seeing the
water slopping over the side of the bath.

“I don’t care. It won’t be the first time
we made waves, nor the last I hope.”

“Remember our honeymoon before the
photographer turned up to spoil our peace.”

“Yes, we’ll have to go back there for
another honeymoon once everyone has forgotten my name. I’m going to take you in
the sea again, Mrs. Waite.”

I gasped as he circled my sensitive nub
with his finger.

“And on the beach.”

He entered me with his index finger,
stroking in and out, exploring my inner walls until I moaned.

“And inside, on that big bed.”

His fingers took me over the edge then and
I came, leaning against him, my limbs shuddering as he kissed the side of my
neck and held me tight.

“What about you? Do you want me to...?” I
asked.

“I’ll wait until we get out. You can thank
me for your present after you open it.”

“That good is it? I wonder what it’s worth.
A kiss?”

I turned and kissed him on the lips.

“A caress?” I grasped his shaft in my hand
and stroked gently along the hard length.

“Better than that,” he said. “Maybe much more
than that.”

“I’ll have to get you out the bath for much
more than that,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”

We got out, and he dried me tenderly with a
soft towel, and wrapped me in another, before getting himself dried. It
reminded me of when he proposed to me in the Savoy bathroom.

“Can I open my present now?” I said.

“Yes, it’s in the bedroom.”

He brought the bottle of wine and the
glasses.

“I hope you’re not disappointed. I’ve
raised your expectations too high,” he said.

“I’m sure I’ll love it.”

“Well, open it. Put me out of my misery.”

It was a big box, quite heavy, well-wrapped
with a huge bow. I was sure Nathan hadn’t done this. He was useless with paper,
Scotch tape, and string. I had no idea what was in it. I grabbed the ribbon.

Inside, there were a lot of little pebbles.
No wonder it was heavy. I didn’t get it. I looked at him. “Sometimes you have
to dig for treasure,” he said.

I moved the pebbles aside. There was an
envelope buried among them with “Melissa” written on it in Nathan’s
handwriting.

I turned it over. It wasn’t sealed.

Inside, there was nothing but a card with a
photograph stuck on the front.

I didn’t understand.

“It’s an island,” he said. “Your own
private space.”

“You bought me an island!”

“I did.”

“What? Where is it? How can you do that?”

“It’s a tiny island off the coast of
Scotland—uninhabited—and there are just a couple of abandoned cottages on it.
It’s the remotest place I could find so that I could be alone with you. No one
will find us there. Not a single photographer will care to follow us all the
way up there now we are married with children and too settled and boring for
them to care about.”

“What about the kids?”

“Sometimes we’ll take them on adventure
holidays up there. We’ll have a boat and camp out and cook around a fire, all
the things we can’t do now because there would always be someone to spot us and
spoil everything. Sometimes we’ll leave the boys at home with their
grandparents. Mom said she would come over and look after them for a week or
two anytime we want.”

“They will love that. She spoils them so
much,” I said, getting excited at the thought of being alone with Nathan for a
whole week, free from prying eyes.

“And I will love having you to myself, wild
and free on that island,” he said, grinning. “I’m going to make the most of
that. Do you like your present?”

“I love it,” I said, throwing my arms
around his neck. “I think this deserves a very special thank you. One I’m going
to enjoy just as much as you.”

THE END