The following week, Tom Nash flounced out on to the patio where Aurora and her mother were sitting by the pool. Aurora was in a scant bikini, making the most of the California rays, while Sherilyn was wrapped head-to-toe in pashmina, settled under a parasol and gazing vacantly into the middle-distance from behind a pair of dark super-UV-protection sunglasses.
‘Kiddo, I’ve got news for you!’ Tom took a seat at the
end of Aurora’s lounger and she lazily withdrew one of her earphones.
She hoped it wasn’t anything to do with returning to the ranch in Texas. Every time she met her father’s affectionate gaze she experienced a ripe mixture of sadness, disgust and regret when she thought about Billy-Bob Hocker and the ensuing crisis she had endured. She doubted she’d ever fully get over it. She never wanted to set foot there again.
‘What?’
‘That was Rita Clay on the phone.’ Excitedly Tom pushed a recently dyed honey strand from his face. ‘We’ve been in touch for a little while now and, well … she’s agreed to represent you! Isn’t that brilliant?’
A couple of years back this would have been quite cool. Rita was one of Hollywood’s top female agents and responsible for hauling many a sagging career back on track. But Aurora couldn’t summon her father’s enthusiasm. As Tom went on about promotion and recording and image reconstruction she felt the exact same way she had with Farrah the other night: as if there was a great barren distance between her and it.
‘So?’ he pressed. ‘What do you think?’
Aurora sat up. ‘Great.’
‘We’ve been talking about you doing a new album. I even suggested we collaborate, the three of us!’ He threw an eager glance at Sherilyn, who failed to react. ‘If we can get Strike to commit.’ Strike Records was her parents’ label, and the one on which she had released her own, poorly received, album.
The collaboration idea chilled her blood. Nevertheless she said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘No worries, baby.’ He stood and kissed her forehead.
‘We’re just happy to see you getting well again.’ He made it sound like she was in remission. ‘Aren’t we, Sherilyn?’
It was difficult to tell if her mother was asleep behind the glasses. ‘Hmm?’ She raised her head, not listening.
‘Exactly.’ Tom squinted into the sun. A couple of seconds passed before he returned his gaze to Aurora. ‘Rita’s coming to the house this afternoon. You can meet her then.’
Rita Clay was a striking black woman, tall, with cropped blonde hair. No sooner had she arrived at the mansion than she suggested to Aurora that they head back out: ‘If we’re going to talk about your future then we can’t do it sitting in your past.’ Rita was forthright and plainspeaking, said what she meant and meant what she said, and listened as well as talked. Aurora knew she handled a lot of the big names and it was easy to see why.
They went to The Blvd at the Beverly Wilshire. Several paparazzi had caught wind of the arrival and snapped ferociously as they exited Rita’s car. ‘Aurora, over here!’ ‘Aurora, how was the UK? Are you going back?’ ‘Aurora, are you signing to a new agency?’
When she had first started getting papped, Aurora had loved it. Recently it had lost its sheen. Today, however, with Rita Clay at her side and aware of the positive speculation that would cause, it felt a little more like it had at the beginning.
They ordered drinks. Rita asked, ‘Where do you see yourself a year from now?’
Aurora hadn’t thought that far ahead. It occurred to her that she only had one more year of school before she was back in the States for good.
‘I’m not sure…’ she began.
Rita had been told to expect a Hollywood brat—certainly everything she’d seen and read about Aurora Nash supported this verdict—but, to her surprise, the girl seemed rather hesitant, rather uncertain … even rather shy. Perhaps the boarding school boot camp had worked after all.
‘Go on,’ she encouraged.
Aurora felt compelled to tell Rita the truth about how she felt—at least, some of it. ‘It’s my mom and dad.’ She shook her head. ‘This is going to sound totally nuts.’
Rita waited.
She took a deep breath. ‘OK, so, it’s like I was kind of born into this life, you know, Hollywood and everything, and now I’m not sure I want it. But I can’t get out. I’m Aurora Nash—and it’s normal to me, I guess, because it’s all I’ve ever known, but some days it just feels really …
empty …
and I think there could be so much more to life that I haven’t found yet. That makes out like I’m really ungrateful, but there it is, that’s how I feel. And it’s like my dad’s got this grand plan for me, and I love him and everything, but he’s never ever asked even what you just asked—about where I see myself. So maybe that’s why I don’t know the answer.
‘I don’t feel as though I know them—my mom, especially—and they don’t know me. And none of us really cares. It’s like we’re strangers, living in the same house.’ Her brow creased. ‘I can’t explain it. My mom’s stoned off her head 24-7 and that can’t be me in however many years’ time, with my husband or whatever—it
can’t
—because they never seem to talk, they don’t even seem to
like
each other. It’s not like a normal marriage, and we’re not like a normal family. If normal families exist. But I never thought
about this stuff before, and now I am it seems so
wrong
, somehow. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I appreciate your being here and the fact you’ve met me and all, but I can’t honestly say my heart is a hundred per cent in this, and I don’t want to waste your time, so I figured I might as well be straight about it.’
Rita raised an eyebrow. This was certainly a breath of fresh air. When she was positive Aurora had said all she wanted to, she prompted, ‘How long have you felt like this?’
‘A while.’
Their drinks arrived. Rita added sugar to strong coffee. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I hear you. And there are too many girls in this town who mess up their lives because of it.’
‘You think?’
Rita nodded. ‘I know. Too much, too young. Nothing left to aim for.’
‘Am I spoiled?’
‘By most people’s standards, incredibly.’
‘So why aren’t I happy?’
‘You’re clever enough to answer that.’
Aurora chewed her lip. Rita continued, ‘My advice? Don’t make any rash decisions. If you don’t know yet what you want out of life, there’s plenty of time to find out.’ Her voice softened. ‘And the only way you’re going to do that is through exploring your options. Don’t close doors on yourself, Aurora—not yet.’
‘I should sign with you, then?’
‘Your experience of a career like your parents’,’ commented Rita, ‘a career here in LA, hasn’t got off to the best start.’ She touched her lips to her drink. ‘Your album bombed, your fashion collaboration got slated and, I’m
sorry to say it, your perfume stinks. I don’t know a single person who’d wear it.’
‘Is this meant to make me feel better?’
‘It’s meant to make you see things as they are. The point is that, with me, it’ll be different. Success changes everything. I’ve seen it happen. Honey, I’ve
made
it happen. See how you feel a year from now. Things might change.’
Aurora sat back. She felt better having confided in someone, though she wasn’t sure she’d communicated accurately what she meant.
Maybe Rita was right. She was seventeen: it stood to reason she didn’t know where she was headed … who did? Apart from Pascale, who said she wanted to be an astronomer and talked about those distant moons with their strange, wonderful names—Ganymede, Io, Europa—and, knowing Pascale, was destined to one day reach them.
She wanted her own personality, just like Pascale: a personality that was nothing to do with Tom Nash or Sherilyn Rose. Working with Rita was a good opportunity, one Aurora wouldn’t get again, and unless she grabbed it now she might never know whether she could make a go of it, achieve something in her own right.
‘OK,’ she told Rita, raising her Coke for a toast. ‘I’ll give it a shot.’
Sherilyn Rose’s therapy session took place twice a week at Hollywood’s Tyrell Chase Center. It was a popular choice with celebrities and, in the past, to her dismay, she’d run into many a face she recognised. Of course acknowledgement was never made on either part. It was accepted that people in their line of work should need an outlet, and
Tyrell Chase offered the best there was. Specifically, Lindy Martin did.
‘Talk to me about the past few days,’ said Lindy now, in her calm, soothing voice, once they had gone through the customary relaxation techniques. Sherilyn was reclining on Lindy’s black leather couch, her eyes closed.
‘Sleeping hasn’t been easy,’ she confessed. That was the understatement of the century: she wasn’t getting off until four each morning.
‘I’ll sign you a repeat prescription,’ said Lindy. Sherilyn omitted the fact she’d been taking so many of Lindy’s magic pills that she’d developed immunity to them, at least as far as sleeping went. Instead they made her feel spacey and numb, her mind alert and her body weak. It was how she was operating.
‘You have things on your mind?’ pressed Lindy. She crossed thin, tanned legs, compact in a navy pencil skirt.
‘Always.’ Wearily Sherilyn raised a hand to her forehead, every inch the damsel in distress. And that was the word:
distress
. The past twenty years had been distressing, right from the moment she’d married Tom. ‘I can’t stop thinking about what we did. If it was a mistake …’
‘We’ve been through this before, Sherilyn. It was seventeen years ago. You have to let the past be.’
‘It’s been a lie.’ Her lips were cracked, her eyes filled with warm, stinging tears. ‘All of it. I can’t even look myself in the mirror any more. Do you know what it’s like to live a lie?’
There was a pause. ‘Let’s keep this about you,’ said Lindy evenly.
‘It eats away at you.’ Vacantly she gazed up at the whirling ceiling fan, as measured in its motion as Lindy was in
her words. Round and round, round and round, its effects rendered nothing to her the moment she left this room.
‘Can you be more specific about what’s troubling you?’
More specific
. Yes, she could be. If she revisited that place.
‘The island,’ she choked, the previous night’s insomnia catching up with her, lulling her into drowsiness and transporting her back across that wide green Indian Ocean, Tom Nash’s hand in hers.
‘Cacatra.’
The syllables sharp as daggers, slicing her jugular.
‘And what was the man’s name?’ Lindy knew, of course. Her client needed to say it, to put a name to her fear.
Sherilyn struggled.
‘Reuben van der Meyde,’
she uttered at last, the words laced in shame.
Lindy nodded. The first time she had treated a client who had experienced the same thing on Cacatra—for Sherilyn Rose and Tom Nash were not the only ones—she had been appalled, disgusted, speechless. Most of all, staggered that someone in van der Meyde’s position would facilitate a scheme like that. Now she saw it
was
exactly why: having all that wealth and power was the very reason he could. When someone had that much money, where did they go next?
Lindy had never discussed the enterprise with any of her colleagues at the Center—not even her husband. What got said in therapy stayed in therapy.
‘And what is your daughter’s name?’ she asked.
‘Aurora.’
‘That’s right. Aurora
is
your daughter, Sherilyn. And you
are
her mother. Remember?’
Sherilyn wrestled the feelings her child’s name evoked.
‘Tom thinks it’s all sweetness and light now she’s been in England,’ she croaked. ‘But nothing’s changed.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
She was snapped from her reverie, frustrated by Lindy’s stupid line of questioning. ‘I mean you try walking in on your kid with a snooker cue up her ass and then try telling me she’s changed into an angel overnight! ’
Lindy was accustomed to clients’ outbursts. She waited while Sherilyn composed herself. ‘It hasn’t been overnight, has it, Sherilyn? It’s been twelve months. People
can
and
do
change.’
‘Not her.’ Sherilyn had convinced herself. ‘She’s evil. And it’s karma, retribution, whatever you want to call it. Punishing me.’
‘Can you explain to me why you feel that way?’ Sherilyn Rose’s sessions always went the same: despair, anger, paranoia. Regular as clockwork.
‘What we did was wrong,’ barked Sherilyn. ‘The
way
we got her was wrong. Our
reasons
for getting her were wrong.’
‘Tom and you were never going to have children of your own.’
‘Of course we weren’t. But still we married. I thought it would be easy. After all, it was right for us: the money, the music, the publicity. How hard could it be? We were friends; there was no expectation. At the time it was bearable, but now … now
it’s slowly killing me
.’
‘Have you told your husband how you feel?’
‘My husband?’ she spluttered. ‘You make it sound like we’re holding hands in bed each night and whispering sweet nothings.’ Her mouth twisted.
‘Hardly. ’
In fact, even if she had wanted to talk to Tom about
any of this, it would scarcely have been possible. In recent months he had been consumed by their new album, barely giving her a chance to get involved—and he knew the creative sessions were her favourite part—and bolting to his ranch in Texas whenever the mood struck. She shuddered when she thought about what he might be getting up to with that farmhand of his. Oh, she’d seen the way Tom ogled Billy-Bob Hocker’s labourer’s body when she’d been out there to visit.
‘Despite your arrangement,’ suggested Lindy, whose preference wasn’t normally to dispense her own opinion, ‘you can still be friends.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ said Sherilyn. ‘It’s too late for any of it. The moment Aurora turns eighteen I’m taking Tom through the divorce courts. I don’t care who finds out why. We’ve kept this to ourselves way too long. It’s high time the world found out our dirty little secret.’
31
Stevie