Do you think she never wonders about her mother and father? The ones she never knew?
What was it she wanted to ask? She hadn’t even figured that out herself. She was paralysed by a million questions, a trillion what-ifs.
‘I guess not.’
‘As it goes, baby, there
is
a reason. Rita asked me what I thought about you taking a break after college is over.’
‘It’s school, Dad. How do you mean, a break?’
‘Before you come back to LA. She said it might help you get focused, y’know, back in the game in the right frame of mind.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Make sure, for your mom’s sake, we don’t get a repeat of the last few years.’
The thought of Sherilyn depressed her. ‘Where?’
‘You’ll sort that out between you. But the idea’s a good one?’
‘S’pose. How’s Mom?’
Tom hesitated, but it could have been the slow line. ‘She’s fine.’
Normally Tom papered over the cracks with false enthusiasm. ‘Amazing’ meant ‘good’, ‘good’ meant ‘average’, so ‘fine’ might just as easily mean ‘dead’. Perhaps Aurora’s first instincts had been right, after all.
‘What’s the matter with her?’
Tom sighed deeply. ‘What the heck: we’ve had to cancel our North America tour. Or I might go it solo, I haven’t decided.’
‘Why?’
‘Honey, come on, I’m a professional. I can’t let the fans down …’
‘I mean why isn’t Mom going?’
‘Oh. She won’t leave the house.’
Aurora was confused. ‘What? How come?’
‘Panic attacks.’ She pictured her father running a hand through his tousled hair. ‘She’s become a little, well … agoraphobic.’
‘Agoraphobic?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You can’t be
a little
agoraphobic, Dad.’
‘OK, she’s a lot agoraphobic.’
‘Since when?’
‘A few months.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’ No response. ‘Can I speak to her?’
‘She’s sleeping.’
Aurora chewed her lip. ‘Tell her I said hi. And I’ll email.’
They hung up. Aurora stamped her cigarette into the ground and folded her arms against the cold. She returned to Main School feeling uneasy.
‘Are they trying to freeze us to death?’ Pascale complained in bed that night, yanking the sheets up to her chin. ‘I’m colder than I’ve ever been.’
Aurora turned off the light and lay back. The pillow smelled of hair dye she’d applied on Monday and hadn’t had the chance to wash through properly before their ten p.m. curfew. She’d meant to do her laundry that evening but hadn’t found the energy. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Why don’t you come here?’ Pascale whispered, and Aurora heard the rustle of covers being lifted. ‘Warm me up.’ The girls often lay together when it was cold, small toes touching at the foot of the bed. Some nights they’d drift off like that; others, they’d kiss, maybe more, before returning to their individual beds. Pascale said she couldn’t sleep touching someone.
Aurora wasn’t in the mood. ‘No, thanks,’ she said, rolling over to face the wall.
Pascale flicked the lamp on and sat up. ‘God, you’re in a shitty mood.’
‘I’m allowed to be in a shitty mood, aren’t I?’
Pascale’s scowl was useless because Aurora couldn’t see it. ‘Ever since we came back from Capri you’ve been acting like a cow.’
Aurora hadn’t been called a cow before. She wondered why Pascale didn’t ask her what the matter was. But, then, she never did.
‘I’ve got my reasons,’ she said sharply.
‘Yes,’ snapped Pascale, ‘like you’re too busy fantasising about my cousin.’
Aurora wondered if jealousy over JB belonged more to her friend than it did to her. She didn’t reply—it was too complicated. And in a sense she
was
fantasising about JB.
She was inventing all sorts of possibilities to explain what she had heard on Arnaud’s boat.
‘He’d never look twice at you,’ said Pascale cruelly. ‘You’re not his type.’
Aurora couldn’t help her temper. She pushed back the covers and faced her friend. ‘I couldn’t give a crap about JB, OK? I’ve got stuff on my mind, really deep stuff, and I’ve had a messed-up time of it lately and you haven’t even bothered to notice! All you think about is sex, Pascale, all the fucking time: sex, sex, sex.’ She realised she could be addressing herself two years ago. ‘If it’s not sex with me, it’s sex with someone else.’ The words were out before she could stop them. ‘It’s sex with your own cousin!’
Pascale’s eyes flashed.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with your family,’ Aurora rampaged on. ‘You’re.
weird
. All of you. You act like the rest of the world is beneath you, like you’re royalty or something. Well, here’s your wake-up call, Devereux: you’re not. You’re just like me, only you’re probably a bit more insecure and a bit less brave because you like to make out like nothing touches you, but
I
know it does because
I’ve
taken the time to work that out. I mean you hardly know a single thing about me! I’m just something you carry around, like a goddamn handbag. Except if it came down to it I’m not as important to you as all that, am I?’
‘After everything I’ve done for you,’ Pascale said bitterly. ‘You ungrateful
bitch
.’
‘Didn’t you stop for even a second to think how what happened in Paris affected me?’ Her voice broke. ‘That maybe I needed your support—’
‘Oh, spare me!’ Pascale delivered a mean laugh. ‘You think we all have to fawn over you because you got yourself
knocked up by some inbred farmer? How do you think that made
me
feel?’ Her own voice splintered, just for a second.
‘What do you mean?’
She glanced away. ‘Forget it.’
‘That hurt you?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ Pascale extinguished the light. The room plunged into darkness and silence. Aurora sat still, confused. She wondered if Pascale was crying and listened out for it, but heard nothing.
‘Pascale,’ she whispered, struggling to make sense of their argument. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘He lives on an island.’ This time the French girl spoke with her customary reserve. ‘On the other side of the world, where no one can find him.’
Aurora was thrown. ‘Who?’
‘Who do you think? JB. It’s Reuben van der Meyde’s place. Cacatra.’
Aurora blinked in the dark. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I’ll ask to switch dorms in the morning.’
‘What’s Cacatra got to do with anything?’
Silence. ‘Good night.’
‘Pascale …?’
Aurora’s heart was thumping wildly. Pascale knew something … something about the island and JB and Reuben van der Meyde.
Arnaud Devereux’s words swam towards her through the night.
The concerned fathers, I am sure …
Aurora lay back.
She remembered Rita’s offer to take her away.
It was settled, then. She knew exactly where she wanted to go.
37
Stevie
The headlines in London were the worst. SORDID SECRETS OF A SEX MANIAC screamed the UK tabloids. PERV PRODUCER IN SHOCK DEATH TRYST. Stevie hadn’t realised how intent the British press were on the gory details. At least in LA they treated the episode with a modicum of respect, if not for Linus then for poor Bibi.
Her friend had been inconsolable when Stevie returned from her honeymoon. She had accompanied Bibi to police questioning—a formality, they were assured—before helping her move out of the Posen mansion and into a small apartment of her own, close to where Stevie and Xander were living. Bibi was frail, her body wrung out by drugs and despair, flashbacks from the night her husband died circling in her memory. Stevie thought how small she looked, how fragile, and wondered how anyone, whatever ‘formalities’ might be necessary, could suspect her
of murder at a time like this. It had been a terrible, tragic accident—nothing more.
Mercifully she’d been tied up the past couple of months on the set of her new film, a biopic centring on a fugitive young woman on the run from the government. She was filming in San Francisco, but made a point of coming home whenever her schedule permitted.
Early Friday morning she flew into LAX, politely greeted a handful of paparazzi waiting outside Arrivals and took a cab straight to the Bel Air place she shared with Xander. The villa, a circular-fronted construction half obscured by lush vegetation, was modest in comparison with its neighbouring counterparts. Xander didn’t employ a housekeeper and Stevie was glad: she’d hate not to be able to kick off her shoes when she got in, cook what she felt like or make a mess if she wanted. She fixed coffee and unpacked, knowing she was stalling the inevitable. Bibi would be here in half an hour and there was something she had to do first.
Upstairs in the cool, quiet bathroom, she extracted the pregnancy test. They’d been having unprotected sex for months now—it hadn’t been a conscious decision, just what happened. They loved and trusted each other, and, while Stevie had for a long time carried a horror of falling pregnant again, being with Xander had, slowly but surely, begun the healing process. She was content to let nature run its course.
Only nature hadn’t delivered.
It didn’t mean anything was wrong. Couples spent years trying to get pregnant, and it wasn’t even as if she and Xander were trying in earnest. Even so, Stevie could admit to the fear that terminating her first had left her unable. Or, if it wasn’t that, retribution for her duplicity.
She remembered the day she’d found out. They’d just spent a blissful weekend—his wife had been away, she hadn’t asked where—holed up in a hotel, having sex and ordering room service and showering together and sleeping in each other’s arms. He’d told her for the fiftieth time that his divorce was imminent: the affair had been going on for months now and it was she he was in love with. And Stevie had looked into his eyes and believed with the whole of her heart that she had loved him truly, and it didn’t matter that there were nearly twenty years between them, or that he was a father or the man she worked for—they were technicalities. So when she’d registered on Monday morning that her period was late, and decided to buy a test at lunch to put her mind at rest, there’d been a part of her that knew that even if the unforeseen were to happen, and even if the timing were impossible, he would be happy. Because wasn’t this what he wanted? A future with her, a family? He said he did.
It hadn’t happened that way.
In that toilet cubicle on the seventh floor of an office building on Fleet Street, a twenty-six-year-old Stevie had sat alone with the news, letting it sink in, deep breaths, deep breaths, and practising how she’d put it to him, what she’d say.
I’m pregnant
, she’d told him late that night. He’d been in meetings and the relief of letting it go was immense. She’d waited for the smile, the outstretched arms.
You’re what?
I’m pregnant
.
Whose is it?
The question had been a knife to her throat.
It’s yours
.
It can’t be
.
And he’d denied it, saying he didn’t believe her and she must have been with other men, and she’d been so stupid, so
weak
back then, that the first thing she’d cared about was that he doubted her fidelity and how she could prove it to him.
I’ll get a test when the baby’s born
, she’d said.
Then you’ll know
.
It’s not getting born
. Which was surely a contradiction, because if he’d honestly thought he had nothing to do with it then why put in the request?
Request. It hadn’t been. It had been an order.
I don’t want to. I’m keeping it. It’s my child, too
.
That was the first time he had hit her. His fist came from nowhere, slamming her backwards, and she remembered hearing her head crack against an expensive Escher print he had framed on his office wall. He’d hit her so hard her ear bled. Then came the threats…
Stevie shook her head against the past. She ran a hand over her stomach, brushing off superstition. What would be would be. She had to have faith. With Xander, it would be different.
Last month she’d waited in ignorance, savouring a maybe, her late cycle ripe with promise, before she’d bled into her knickers. Today was the same. She needed to stop using these tests that spelled the damn thing out: NOT PREGNANT.
She stood, washed her hands, unlocked the door (seclusion was weirdly necessary) and made her way downstairs, just in time for the main-gate buzzer to sound.
It was Bibi, clad in a headscarf and huge shades that shrank her already tiny features.
‘Talk about
Thelma & Louise
,’ Stevie teased, enveloping her in a hug. Bibi was feeble in her arms and so she didn’t squeeze too tightly.
‘Want to run away with me?’ Bibi enquired weakly, attempting humour as she stepped inside. When she took off the dark glasses, Stevie could see the haunted look around her eyes, the badge of sleep deprivation and bad nutrition.
‘Let me make you a sandwich,’ she offered. ‘And tea.’
‘Tea?’
‘Cures all ills.’
‘You’d better make a lot of it, then.’ Bibi sat at the breakfast counter and unwound her scarf. Underneath, her hair was patchily dyed, alternating clumps of harsh blonde and redorange—but that wasn’t the sole reason she wore the camouflage. Since her husband’s death, paparazzi had been trailing her non-stop. Though she had been cleared of any involvement in his killing, at least any involvement with intent, she was fast becoming a black-widow figure, elusive and remote. Nobody considered that perhaps she was still in shock.
‘Are you OK, B?’ Stevie put two mugs on the counter and settled opposite. ‘You look a million miles away. Aren’t you sleeping?’
Bibi endeavoured a smile. ‘Not much.’ Try not at all. At night she lay terrified, convinced she was about to hear a knock at the door, a warrant for her arrest, or that she’d wake to find herself rotting on death row and the time since Linus’s demise would all have been a dream. She couldn’t believe she was still walking free. People didn’t get away with murder … did they?