by Emma Grey
‘You’re safe, Tilly, keep breathing,’ Reuben says, with that chocolatey warmth in his voice that makes him so very, very successful – with singing and with girls. But even his particularly smooth brand of emotional first-aid does little to calm her. Tilly is focused right on him, trying to calm down, potentially becoming more enraptured by the second in the process, and who could blame her? Reuben really is so lovely. Such a boy next door. Well, if the boy next door is a mega star with millions of fans across the globe . . .
Belle had been watching from inside the ballroom as the guests arrived at the beginning of the night. Tilly had appeared, wearing something Isabelle still can’t make sense of – it’s either a total disaster or a fashion triumph. Either way, the media had swarmed. Fresh meat.
Reuben had been hanging back, speaking to one of the reporters, and Isabelle had watched his whole being shift the second Tilly caught his eye. His body language had been transparent: Who is that?
And that was before Tilly tripped up the stairs and lost her shoe, and before he’d charged in, chivalrously, not caring how many cameras were capturing every second of the unfolding pantomime. At that point, even Belle, to whom Cinderella fantasies have always been an anathema, had found herself drawn in compulsively for the show: the strange girl in the voluminous green dress on the red carpet, wild red hair, cameras everywhere – caught in a moment she probably never imagined she’d have, with a dashing superstar kneeling at her feet, holding her silver shoe.
But it wasn’t that moment that had intrigued Belle most. It was after that, just as Tilly had spun and walked away from him. All the cameras had swarmed to follow her, but Belle had caught the look on Reuben’s face instead, and she knew at once. This one’s different.
‘Could we have some refreshments, please?’ Henrietta asks a member of staff, asserting her authority as usual.
Belle just wants this night over, now. This photo really isn’t the problem everyone imagines it to be. Yes, it’s unfortunate that this announcement came from the PR company’s Instagram account, but interns make mistakes. Stories are invented every day. It must be possible to untangle this. Make a simple statement and put it right.
‘I’ll retract the post,’ Henrietta says, like she’s reading Belle’s mind. Belle can’t stand the woman, but her professional reputation is unsurpassed, which is why they hired Roche PR in the first place. ‘I’ll issue an apology and explain that our incompetent intern has been sacked.’
Tilly gasps. Belle feels sorry for her, but then, the girl did bring this upon herself, playing with their private lives without any thought to the ramifications.
Henrietta is thinking out loud. ‘I’ll say that what she thought she’d witnessed was nothing more than a private moment between old friends. They were not discussing what she’d mistakenly suggested. It was something else entirely.’
Belle almost prefers the engagement story. This is making her nervous. Reuben is distracted on his phone, typing something. Now? And what’s Jack Guthrie’s part in all of this? If there’s anyone here with a truly incriminating photo of her to share, it’s him. She shivers at the thought of the destruction he could cause in her life if he really wanted to – the fallout with her parents alone would render Tilly’s mistake child’s play.
Reuben makes Tilly sip some water, slowly. What is he? The anxiety whisperer? Isabelle takes a glass of champagne. Not that she feels like celebrating.
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ Tilly explains, somewhat redundantly. ‘I haven’t slept in days!’
Wow. She’s way out of her depth with this PR crisis. And with Henrietta. With the calibre of the evening in general. Certainly with Reuben.
‘I just thought . . . it looked so romantic. Nobody else was capturing it . . .’
‘Nobody else would be so stupid!’ Henrietta snaps.
That is a little unfair, Belle thinks. Things like this are captured every day by media sharks, desperate for a story. The key problem here is the story’s official source. Roche PR. Reuben’s publicist. Why would his PR representatives let the world know about his engagement to a princess if the story wasn’t true? It would be front page on newsstands all over the world, first thing.
‘Your mother is on the phone,’ a royal staffer says quietly beside Belle. No way is she going to speak to her mother, now. Not about Reuben, and her public image, and her propensity for making decisions of any size without it all being managed properly.
She shakes her head. ‘Make an excuse?’ she replies.
‘As you wish.’
She wishes he’d drop that affectation. This isn’t The Princess Bride. She isn’t Princess Buttercup. She wishes she wasn’t a princess at all. Then she’d be free to fall in love with whomever she liked. No judgement.
The door bursts open and the room lights up. Angie. Their mutual school friend, and Reuben’s highly regarded personal assistant, flies across the room and into his arms for a bear hug, almost knocking him sideways despite her petite stature, as is her way. She clearly wasn’t prepared for an evening out, and has thrown on her usual carnival of colours and prints that would look absurd on nearly any other person.
‘Are you okay?’ Angie asks Reuben, blue eyes bright with concern. Her short blonde hair is mostly hidden under a red cotton bandana. This debacle has probably dragged her away from a binge on Netflix, not that she ever completely switches off from being at Reuben’s beck and call.
‘What’s going on? I came as soon as I heard. The traffic was awful! Oh, hello! I’m Angie.’ She grabs Tilly’s hand and shakes it vigorously, then throws caution to the wind and gives her a hug. ‘You must be the PR intern everyone’s talking about.’
They are? ‘How would they even know?’ Belle says. This room has been in lockdown with the truth since the moment the story broke.
‘It might have something to do with this?’ Angie explains, turning her iPad around to face everyone. The paparazzi image Reuben has re-posted is so striking, it wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of an haute couture magazine. Red carpet. Red hair. Edgy dress. Silver shoe. Media frenzy.
And a string of hashtags, written as if Reuben has seen Tilly’s Instagram royal proposal post and raised her a cryptic one of his own. #popstar #intern #burning #newmusic #newmuse.
Chapter 7
Before anyone can respond, someone pulls open the doors and they’re all hit by a blast of warm air and bright lights from the ballroom. The music stops almost instantly. All eyes and cameras are on Reuben, who is standing between Tilly and Belle. It’s as if everyone has seen the two conflicting Instagram posts – one suggesting his engagement to a princess, the other pointing to his fascination with an unknown girl from the red carpet who is apparently now his muse – and they’re all waiting for clarification. What is going on? Which is fake news and which is real? Who is he going to choose?
His hashtags have done their job, Tilly realises. He’s successfully diluted the focus on Belle and confused everyone. Including her.
People are watching. Someone needs to make the first move. Tilly does not want to be that someone, although she can feel the fight-or-flight impulse kicking in involuntarily, leaning heavily in the direction of making a run for it. Except, she’d have to take off her shoes for that, or she’d break her neck. And Reuben’s tie is still wrapped firmly around her ankle, so she’d lose some time undoing that, and then there’s the crouching-in-the-dress issue, and she’s not going there again, particularly as this whole thing is probably being live streamed across the world . . .
Just as she’s about to faint, or scream, or do anything to avoid standing here in the unwanted spotlight with every second stretching into hours, Reuben’s hand reaches slowly for hers. It’s almost like he’s reading her mind and is scared she’ll escape. His fingers wrap firmly around hers, and she feels exactly the same as she did in Year 5 when she was forced to swap desks and sit beside Jacob O’Dowd, whom all the girls had a crush on and whom Tilly loathed on principle, or said she did, because s
he was terrified of exactly how much she adored him.
She glances at Reuben. He is fully composed, standing beside her in his designer suit – tieless, collar undone. He looks nothing like Jacob O’Dowd, and more like he’s auditioning to be the next James Bond. And like he’ll romp it in. We’re not in Year 5 anymore, Toto . . .
‘Ready?’ he whispers, interrupting her train of thought, which has derailed itself, as usual.
Ready for what?
He doesn’t wait for her reply. It’s like they’re standing together on a high diving board, having made a pact to jump when they both feel totally psyched, except she’s forgotten the pact, and he’s jumping early and taking her plunging into the depths with him, completely unprepared for the freefall.
Without a second glance at Belle, he leads Tilly into the bright lights of the grand ballroom, where everyone who is anyone and seemingly half the world’s media watch him escort her across the enormous floor, towards the far exit. There’s silence, apart from muffled whispers of ‘who is that?’ and ‘what’s happening?’, and the occasional chink of crystal champagne glasses being set down on flat surfaces so people can poise their cameras.
Halfway across the room, and with their escape route now in sight, the music starts again unexpectedly. They’re right in the middle of the dance floor, alone, with everyone watching, as if someone has scripted Tilly’s worst nightmare and yelled, ‘Action!’
All that’s missing is a spotlight. She wants to leave. Now. But she senses him slow his pace, as if he’s intrinsically lured by rhythm. Musicians! Don’t stop, Reuben. Please.
Camera flashes go wild as he pauses. She takes two steps ahead, hoping to drag him along with her as their arms extend to full stretch. Instead, the action allows him to draw her back, and she finds herself standing close, facing him – one of his hands in hers, the other on the small of her back. She Officially Freaks Out. She does NOT dance! Not like this. Not like anything! Weren’t they leaving?
‘I can’t,’ she whispers desperately. She really can’t. She has a personal rule to dance only when nobody’s watching. And not even then, in case somebody walks in. Reuben cannot make her do this, in front of the entire world.
‘Maguire,’ he says, ‘just follow me.’ He pulls her closer. His mouth is millimetres from hers. During a moment of what can only be described as temporary loss of sanity under extreme duress and the influence of jet lag, Tilly realises she wants to kiss it. What. The. Heck? In a panic, and because she has clearly lost her mind, she puts her hands flat on his chest, pushes him back, and says, ‘Don’t kiss me! You don’t even know me!’
‘Tilly!’ he says, growling her name. ‘What’s wrong with you? I have no intention of kissing you!’
Right. Her mistake. And yet she continues blundering through it – ‘I’m not one of your vapid groupies,’ she hisses. She is acutely aware that there was a time when she might have been the Vapid Groupies’ Head Girl, but this is no time to get snagged on the technicalities of her regrettable fangirl history.
Cameras flash as hundreds of mobile phones spread the second half of Reuben’s Charity Ball Exploits across the planet. She’ll be all over the internet again within seconds, and not in a good way.
‘I thought you were going to kiss me,’ she says in clarification. Why is she still talking about it? She’s devoured enough of Dr Phil during school holidays to know she’s projecting, but she can’t seem to retrieve her foot from her mouth.
He looks exasperated. ‘Romantic though it undoubtedly is to be trying to extricate you from this publicity scandal in front of everyone, I’m not about to lose my head in a fit of passion.’
No. But she is.
Bad dress. Bad hair. Bad attitude. Of course he’s not going to kiss her. She is a lunatic, and the exhaustion has finally pushed her over the edge. And, great! Here come the tears. DO NOT DO THIS.
Reuben softens. ‘I’m not the player the magazines make me out to be,’ he explains. He’s not making the mistake of touching her this time, but he’s speaking so softly he has to lean close to her ear. The scent of expensive aftershave swirls in her nostrils, snapping her lagging body clock from halfway across the world straight into the here and now. Do not inhale the pop star, Tilly . . .
‘But I don’t want to be your girlfriend,’ her mouth argues. It has entirely unshackled itself from her brain.
He smiles. ‘My muse, Tilly.’
Yes, but I am not the muse. I’m the writer! This is all completely backwards!
‘You implicated me in one of the biggest fake scoops in the history of the monarchy,’ Reuben says. ‘You’re currently enemy number one of the most ruthless PR firm in the world. Don’t get on the wrong side of the British Royal Family and of my band’s management. Together, they’ll eat you alive. I’m trying to help you. And take the focus off Belle – she doesn’t need it. Work with me here?’
This can’t be real. There’s nothing extraordinary about Tilly’s life and that’s just the way she likes it. She’s an unknown eighteen-year-old. Someone who writes stories in secret and was socially anxious before school camps as recently as the Year 12 retreat this year. Coming to London at all was a massive step, but she’d made so much progress with her psych over the last couple of years, she thought she could do this. Maybe she could have, if this was panning out like an ordinary gap year. She’s just not in any way prepared to become an overnight enemy of the Royal Family or Roche PR. Or Unrequited’s management. Or Reuben Vaughan, famous celebrity and would-be muse-wrangler, who is standing in front of her, apparently waiting for her to capitulate to this stitch-up.
And then . . . does she imagine the amused twinkle in his eyes, or the way the corner of his mouth twitches, threatening a smile? A jolt of something, jet lag probably, makes her sway.
‘I’m trying to protect you,’ he explains gently, and she can feel a part of herself – the insane part – crumbling dangerously.
Actually . . . no. She cannot be here! All these lights. These cameras. This . . . person!
Without saying another word, she reaches down – one hand trying unsuccessfully to cover her chest, the other undoing the threads of his tie, which she unwinds from her ankle and slips off, along with her shoe. She tries to separate his tie from her broken shoe strap, but he’d knotted it too tightly, so she’s either going to have to stand here for a few minutes, easing it loose while viral live streams all over the world drop out from boredom, or she’ll have to donate her shoe to him, mad though that option is. She pushes the shoe and tie into his chest, spins, and limps out of the room – leaving him standing there, amazed to be on the ballroom dance floor, alone. They want a story? They’ve got it.
Halfway out of the room she kicks off her other shoe and leaves it on the floor, too, then runs out of the ballroom in bare feet, her path lined with security and waiting staff, fighting back tears as she reaches an enormous door that is flung open by startled doormen as she tries desperately to remember what she’d read in the guidebooks about how to hail a cab in this country.
It’s ten o’clock at night, but the sky erupts with the light and sound of hundreds of flashbulbs as she appears on the threshold of the museum, barefoot. She is instantly blinded, and wishes she’d thought through this exit. Panic rises in her chest. Anxiety begins to choke her – she can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. It really feels like she’s dying. She’s seconds from blacking out. For real, this time . . .
‘This way,’ she hears Reuben say as he slides off his black dinner jacket, throws it across her shoulders and holds it up over her face like a shield against the cameras. She has no choice but to let him push her gently into a car that seems to teleport right there out of nowhere. Then he climbs in after her and slams the door.
The car nudges a throng of paparazzi out of its way, all beating wildly on the windows and taking pictures of anything they can get in the hope of an even bigger overnight scoop. Tilly finds herself sinking lower into the plush leather seat and further
into the folds of Reuben’s jacket, hiding from the world.
The jacket is still warm from his body. The lining is satiny soft. Tilly wonders if there’s anything else she’d like to pause and take in while she sits here making an international spectacle of herself. The faint scent of sandalwood soap on Armani? The feel of a pen in the inside pocket? If only she had some paper . . . Her writerly thirst for details is getting way out of control —
She feels Reuben’s hand brush across her body and touch her shoulder. Reflex kicks in and she slaps his arm away. What on earth? Here? In the back seat of a car flanked by cameras beaming their every move to everyone in the entire universe? Unbelievable! She pushes him away, emerging from her hideaway in his jacket, hair springing to attention with static electricity, mascara running – cameras hungrily recording every detail.
Reuben puts his hands up like he’s been arrested. And so he should! Seriously. Thinking he can just kidnap her like this and then reach over and start —
‘Fine,’ he says gruffly. ‘Put your seatbelt on yourself.’
She feels her jaw drop.
The mortification . . .
He mutters something barely audible, but not quite so inaudible that she doesn’t catch the words: ‘higher maintenance than a princess’.
She laughs. ‘Don’t let me get in the way of your love life.’
Reuben takes out his phone and scrolls through his contacts without even looking at her.
‘No chance,’ he says, sending a text. Then he starts dialling someone’s number.
Chapter 8
Angie hurtles through the English countryside in her bright orange VW Beetle, fighting back tears. The darker it gets, the more annoyed she becomes that she’s allowed herself to get this upset about Reuben and Belle. Again.
