Power Games

by Victoria Fox

The mansion was still shuttered, reams of mail and clusters of flowers heaped up at the door. Sketch began to sort through some of it before losing patience and kicking it to one side—then, on second thoughts, he lifted an attractive bouquet, tore off the message card and presented it just in time for Joan to open the door.

  She looked awful. Fat and bloated, pale and yellow-eyed, and shoddily dressed in a pair of baggy lime-green sweat pants that Sketch had seen Kevin in once.

  Inside, it was worse. Photos of Kevin were scattered across the floor, boxes of his belongings exploded in a kind of sprawling, shapeless shrine, and cartons of half-eaten takeout were tossed across counters and wedged under couches.

  Sketch flicked the window blind and flooded the room with light, prompting Joan to dive onto a beanbag, shielding her face with her arms and crying for the dark.

  ‘Joanie …’ he coaxed, approaching with caution. ‘Joanie, this can’t go on …’

  ‘I can’t go on!’ Joan spluttered, her blotched, angst-riddled face careening up at him, and the shock made him stumble back. Joan had always been a meek character, someone Sketch had regarded as a necessary if slightly irritating supplement to his client, but now she was demonic. She had lopped her hair off, the ends hacked and chewed, and it was stuck up at the back in a stiff nest, like a tuft of candy-floss.

  Unexpectedly, she fell against him, weeping.

  Sketch patted her through the worst of the sobs, and as she succumbed to more pedestrian tears looped an arm round her, gently stroking the ruined hair and telling her it was OK, things would work out, everything would be all right …

  It was the worst thing to say. Joan clawed at it like a drowning woman.

  ‘Is there news?’ Her head knocked his chin on the way up. ‘He’s been found?’

  Ruefully, Sketch shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Joanie. No news.’

  Trey scampered in, sniffing at the takeout boxes.

  Sketch took her hand. ‘I think we have to accept facts, Joan.’

  ‘I don’t!’ She scooped up the dog, dressed in a jumpsuit and baseball cap—Kevin’s favourite outfit. Trey was licking sweet and sour sauce from his nose and didn’t give a happy shit about Kevin. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Even if they did make it through whatever happened up there,’ said Sketch, ‘it’s over now.’

  ‘I’m his mom,’ she said, squeezing Trey so hard the dachshund’s eyes bugged. ‘I believe.’

  ‘You’re killing yourself.’

  ‘Not fast enough.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Don’t I? You think I don’t wonder every second of the day what his final moments were like? How he died, and if he called for me, his mommy—and I couldn’t be there? I’ve always been there for Kevin—always.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How could you know? You don’t have kids.’

  ‘It felt like I did.’ Sketch splurged it, hadn’t meant to. ‘With Kevin, Joanie—I know it’s not the same but sometimes Kevin felt like mine. The closest thing I had, anyway. I want him back just as much as you do. Every morning I wake up and I’m thinking, Maybe today’s the day—yeah, maybe today—and I check the date in case I have to remember it: this special day they found him and brought him home.’

  Joan blubbed.

  ‘D’you know the worst thing?’ she whispered. ‘I did everything with Kevin. I did everything for him. Yet I don’t know if I knew him at all.’

  It wasn’t like Joan to pose deep and meaningful questions. Sketch rode it out.

  Bleakly she gazed up at him. ‘He was my son … but he had so many secrets.’

  Sketch didn’t reply.

  ‘I know he was sick, Sketch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All those pills.’ Joan licked her lips. ‘I’m not an idiot. You always thought I was, so did Kevin, but I’m not.’

  ‘Joanie …’

  ‘You were all too chicken to tell me—everyone at Cut N Dry. And yes, maybe I would have fallen apart, but I’d still have rather known. Whose decision was it? Yours? Kevin’s? Who decided to keep it from me?’

  Ice dripped down the back of Sketch’s neck. He had thought it was over: that the tragedy of Kevin, appalling as it was, meant at least—at last—the sinking of the pills.

  The pills …

  ‘Well? I was his mother.’

  ‘Joan—’

  ‘When was I going to find out? When the pills stopped working, when my baby finally got poorly? The same time as the fans?’ Her lip quivered. ‘At first I believed you about the vitamins. Then I realised it was all a charade.’

  Countless times Sketch had imagined this conversation. With whom he would have it, what the evidence would be, how it would play out … Now it was actually happening, he found he was stumped for words. Saying the truth was impossible. The facts were too absurd. The deception was too extreme. Joan could never grasp it.

  ‘Now he’s gone,’ said Joan, ‘and I never had the chance to comfort him. To tell him it was OK, I knew, and I would be there with him through it all, whatever it was and however it happened. He must have been so scared. He tried to protect me, even though he was the one that needed protection. I should have noticed. He was always small. What was it, Sketch? Something bone-wasting?’

  A channel of sunlight fell across a framed picture of Kevin, mounted on the wall. In it the star was performing at the Olympics Closing Ceremony, fist raised to the sky like a warrior. Sketch stood. He crossed the room.

  What did it matter any more? The boy wonder was gone. There were no more performances, no more tours, no more fragrance launches or book signings or red carpet junkets. No more protection. No more secrecy.

  Joan Chase was a mother in mourning. How could he let her believe that her son had kept a terminal disease from her? He might be a coward, but he wasn’t evil.

  ‘The pills weren’t because Kevin was sick, Joan.’

  Sketch could feel her scrutiny on his back. He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

  As the truth unravelled, he kept his eyes fixed on Kevin in the frame—just Kevin.

  ‘The pills weren’t vitamins either,’ he said. ‘That was what we told Kevin, and that was what he accepted. We chose not to think of it as a lie—rather, a shield.’

  Silence.

  ‘The pills were hormones.’

  Dense as lead, the admission heaved from Sketch’s mouth.

  ‘Kevin didn’t know. They were hormones. Female hormones, Joan.’

  He heard her sit down. Collapse—that was a better word.

  The door swung open and the rest came free in a deranged rush.

  ‘Picture it. We signed Kevin when he was twelve years old—this cute-as-a-button, candy-cane kid, with this butter-wouldn’t-melt voice and little-boy dimples. We wanted him to stay that way. We wanted him to remain the boy we had found, and, for a couple of years, he did.’ Sketch remembered when Kevin’s voice had started to wobble, the deep notes creeping in. ‘But by the time he turned fourteen, changes were starting to happen. The voice was about to drop. There were wisps round his chin. We had to take action.’ Sketch was fired up by his own propaganda despite the fact it reeked of bullshit. Did we? Did we really? The question had haunted him for seven years—but once they had embarked on the campaign it was impossible to stop.

  ‘It wasn’t an easy decision,’ he said. ‘It was a mindfuck. But consider the evidence, Joanie, just for a second’—his own argument, the ideas that had been batted across the board at Cut N Dry—’child stars across history lose their appeal: Culkin, the two Coreys, Fred fucking Savage. Why? I’ll tell you. Puberty, Joan. These guys lose their fan base because their fan base changes. It grows up, and the new fans that take their place are looking for the same thing, only those guys aren’t the same any more. Enter a new king: a new Kevin. What we did was give Kevin the ability, the right, to keep that crown. We gave him immortality.’

  Sketch turned. He was shaking.

  Joan’s lips formed around a word that
made no sound.

  ‘Oestrogen arrested his development,’ he said. ‘Not enough to give Kevin female assets, but enough to prevent the male ones: it stopped the hairs growing, it kept his voice young, it made him delicate, unthreatening, even pretty. It never hurt him and it never caused him pain. He was our star and we wanted to keep him—that was all. We did this in Kevin’s best interests, Joanie. Remember how much he wanted this career? How much both of you did? Kevin knew what it took to succeed—and what it took to stay at the top. We enabled that to happen for him.’

  This was how he had convinced himself. All the arguments, all the post-rationalising, tripping off his tongue as if he had spoken it yesterday.

  ‘Look at other stars’ attempts: redirecting their image, going under the knife, turning to drugs. We defended Kevin against all of that. We tried the newest tack of all—and trust me, Joanie, five years from now they’ll all be doing it. Age is a hell of a thing to unpick … but what if it never happens in the first place?’

  Finally Joan found her voice. It was a changed voice.

  ‘You sinful fucking bastard,’ she said. ‘You wicked, wicked man.’

  Sketch took it. He deserved it. He would deserve it for the rest of his life.

  ‘No wonder he was such a mess.’ Joan’s eyes were black. ‘The mood swings. The panic attacks. The anger.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You punished him for it. And all along you were the one responsible.’

  ‘We were protecting our investment. For all our benefits—’

  ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare make out that I was part of this.’

  ‘—Kevin’s benefit, and yours, even if right then it didn’t seem obvious.’

  ‘Get out of this house.’

  ‘Joanie—’

  ‘OUT!’

  Trey shot from the room. Sketch gathered his things. He had expected Joan to leap at him, to attack him, to batter and to slap him. He hadn’t expected this stark, chilling control. She terrified him. He opened the door, a broken man.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Joan,’ he choked. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  56

  New York

  Fit for NYC was shrouded in gloom. Couture treasures sparkled, going for tags that could have fed whole families for a year, but instead were vanity prizes for a Hollywood socialite who would bury them in the back of a Bel Air closet to be worn once, shoes permitting, at a rival hostess’s dinner party. How pointless it all seemed.

  Orlando put a hand on his brother’s back. ‘We mustn’t give up,’ he said.

  Luca slammed a fist on the glass. With a crack the cabinet splintered, a diamond cobweb, but the impact wasn’t enough, he had more to burn, and he finished the job, smashing the surface so it obliterated into thousands of gossamer shards.

  ‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ he said. ‘Losing my mind back here or doing a Noah Lawson and losing it on the other side of the world.’

  ‘We have to stay strong.’

  ‘It’s all right for you, isn’t it?’ Luca turned with a tortured kind of pride. ‘You don’t have the same regrets as me.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘Dad never knew me—neither did Angela. Now it’s too late.’

  ‘Screw your self-pity.’

  ‘You were always the golden child. You walked on water. Now all that’s left is Mom and even she doesn’t …’ Luca’s voice broke. ‘I mean I can’t even tell her …’

  Orlando went to his brother. He and Luca had never been close, but if there was ever a time to remedy that, it had arrived. Luca thought none of them knew he had a boyfriend. Truth was, they had known he was gay since he was a teenager. Orlando couldn’t speak for his father—yes, there was a chance that Donald had been kept in the dark, and that Isabella hadn’t discussed it with him, but even if she had, they wouldn’t have known because Donald didn’t speak about things like that.

  Every evening for the past decade, when they had stayed up after hours, Orlando had waited for his brother to confess. Luca never did.

  ‘I know, Luca,’ Orlando said. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘You must think I’m some loser, huh. Some coward who parties so hard till he can’t remember who he is. So he doesn’t have to look himself in the mirror. Dad lied about the reason the hotels went under. It wasn’t that he made a bad decision. It was that I flushed the whole fucking thing down the can because I fell apart. I lost the money. Me. Only Dad didn’t want you to know that.’ A teardrop ran down his cheek. ‘I killed him. I made him sick and that sickness finished him off. My own father.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Course it fucking is.’

  Orlando had always wondered about the reasons for their debt. It had never felt right. Donald Silvers hadn’t made a bad business move in his life and he wouldn’t have started now. It had been Luca all along.

  ‘You think you’re the only one who messed up?’ said Orlando.

  ‘As far as Dad was concerned, yeah.’

  ‘You’re not alone in carrying a burden. Angela isn’t the only person I lost.’ It hurt him like a physical wound. ‘I knew Eve,’ he said. ‘Eve Harley.’

  Luca was quiet a moment, then said: ‘How?’

  ‘She was carrying something of mine.’

  ‘What?’

  In the silence that followed, in Orlando’s ashen face, Luca understood.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Oh.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Would’ve been six months.’ Orlando’s chest ached. ‘I said I didn’t want it. I told her she was on her own. She died knowing that. They both did.’ Every baby he saw on the street, every picture in a magazine, every crawling infant in a bloody stupid TV commercial, squeezed him inside out. Becoming a father had been something he might do later, at some distant, invisible point, because life went on for ever, right? And there was always a more important job to be done, like cutting a deal or checking into a hotel or getting drunk with his cronies. None of it amounted to anything. Not like Eve’s baby.

  Not like my baby.

  ‘Shit,’ said Luca. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘How could you? I didn’t tell anyone.’ How he wished now he had told Eve: that he wanted this child, that he wanted her, that he wanted the whole damn lot.

  If only he’d put his pride aside and had the balls to admit it.

  A siren screamed outside.

  ‘Now I’ve told you,’ said Orlando, ‘and you’ve told me, for what it’s worth, we’re in it together—we’re brothers, Luca. My regret isn’t fixable, but yours is. You can still make Dad proud. We can still buy out of the Zenetti deal and rebuild from scratch. We’ll make it better than ever. It’s what he would have wanted—Angela too.’

  ‘You think we can?’

  ‘I know we can. I’m letting Silvers go over my dead body.’ Orlando tasted his resolve, sharp and intoxicating. ‘It’s everything to me. It’s all I have left.’

  His cell beeped.

  ‘Carmine Zenetti wants us in Vegas,’ he said, grabbing his keys. ‘Says he’s got some news—and we’re gonna want to hear it, apparently.’

  57

  The Midwest

  Mielinda Corrigan entered her neighbour’s garage and told him it was over.

  She didn’t dress it up and she didn’t let him down gently. She had more on her mind than the frankly insignificant matter of hurting Gary’s feelings.

  He had been pestering her non-stop. If he didn’t quit, she was getting a restraining order. I have to see you, his messages said. Let me comfort you.

  ‘Why?’ Gary begged now.

  ‘I’ll credit you with some intelligence,’ said Melinda, ‘and take that as a joke.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t a joke,’ said Gary. He had transformed his garage into a gym and he slumped down onto one of his bench presses. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that again.’

  ‘I can’t help it!’

  ‘Bullshit you ca
n’t. You’re married to Mandy, and I’m married to Mitch.’

  ‘But Mitch is …’

  ‘What?’ Melinda saw herself in that moment, hair unwashed, face scrubbed clean, because what was the point of make-up when you cried it all off anyway?

  ‘Mitch is what, Gary?’

  Gary reached for her. She slapped him off. Call her an idiot to have come in the first place—sneaking like a thief from her basement into Gary’s: imagine if the paps got hold of it! But fire had to be fought with fire. If Melinda didn’t sort this today, the papers would surely catch a sniff. Gary was a leaky bucket. Any moment he would crumple under his wife’s steely gaze and the whole charade would explode.

  The kids. She could not risk them finding out.

  What would the world think? Boffing her married neighbour while her senator husband was in the ocean somewhere with a mouthful of fish.

  Once, when Melinda had been sitting at home with the children, attempting to explain what had happened to their father in any terms they, or indeed she, could understand, Gary had barged into the house and demanded to speak.

  Mitch’s disappearance was terrible, he conceded once they were alone, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker.

  A deal-breaker?

  She had told him to get lost. He hadn’t listened. He had come back again, and again, as if Mitch’s disappearance was a fucking aphrodisiac.

  ‘Well?’ she pushed. ‘What is he? Go on, Gary—say it!’

  Gary stumbled. ‘Mitch is dead.’

  The words hit her like a punch, despite the number of times she had experimented with them in her head. My husband is dead.

  The president’s latest delivery said as much. Melinda had heard it so many times since its release, played on a loop, she could remember it verbatim:

  ‘As a nation and a world, we are distressed and shocked by the events that took place over the

  Indian Ocean on July 1st, 2014. Those who have been lost to the sea were known the world over—but they were also regular people. People like you and me. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues: their loss cannot be measured against the box office or the billboard, it is measured in the hearts of those they have left behind …’