by Clare Naylor
CHAPTER 32
He was actually closer to home than she thought. But not that much closer. For unbeknown to Amy he was on the selfsame Caribbean island as Lucinda and Benjy. Shooting had been postponed due to torrential New Zealand rains, and he’d taken a breather from everything, returning to a place where he and Lily had once had a holiday. It was thus that Lucinda and Benjy found themselves there.
“You absolutely must go there,” Lily instructed. “In fact, if you could bear the intrusion, I’d love to come, too.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Lucinda agreed. She knew that wherever Lily led, good times and fun would follow. So it was on a distinctly more exotic beach than the Dorset one that Lily and Orlando met again. Lily was lying splayed out on a towel with her Walkman for company.
“I’d recognize those legs anywhere,” Lily said, screwing her face up into the sun as Orlando stood above her. Yelping and hugging followed, and when Benjy and Lucinda returned from their diving lesson they found the two sipping piña coladas from half coconuts and looking like a scene from a tacky postcard.
“Orlando,” Lucinda shrieked in surprise.
“All right, mate?” Benjy was more sedate and, knowing his sister, was less than surprised. Murphy’s law—she always ran into someone she knew. They all sat under a straw canopy and, after several piña coladas, had got over the small-world element and progressed.
“I can’t believe how beautiful this place is. Why don’t we just come out here and open a bar?” said Benjy.
“If you can make cocktails like this, I’ll be beside you all the way, darling,” said Lucinda.
“And Olly and I will be bouncers if you like,” Lily volunteered. There was a gap where Amy should have been. They all noticed but only Lily asked.
“And where does Amy fit into all this, Olly?” she asked boldly.
“Always rely on Lily to get to the heart of the matter.” Orlando smiled.
“Olly, what’s the story?” she urged.
“Well, your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen her since the day we were in the hotel and she left. I keep seeing her mentioned in the papers, and I saw that cover story about that video thing, poor love. How is she, Lucinda?”
“Unbearable, but irresistible as usual. I haven’t actually seen much of her this past week. She was a bit into the whole media thing to be honest, I got a bit pissed off.”
“Yeah, I could see that coming, but the way things are going, I guess it won’t last long. She’s a bright girl and she’ll get pretty sick of it soon,” said Orlando, more hopeful than prophetic.
“Poor Olly, she’s the nicest woman you’ve ever been out with. Don’t worry, sweetheart, she’ll be back soon,” said Lily, slathering her stomach with sun cream.
“I really hope so,” said Orlando.
“So that’s the plan, is it?” asked Lucinda. “Clever, I have to say. Amy’s not the kind of person to be immediately attracted to what’s best for her, but she does come round eventually. A stroke of genius, Mr. Rock. You may be the first guy our Amy has ever really fallen in love with.” Orlando held up his hand to show crossed fingers and sipped his piña colada through his straw.
“So what about you guys, when are you going to get married?” Lily continued her onslaught.
“Oh, you know, the longer you go on, the less you need to get married. We’re all right, aren’t we?” Benjy leaned over and took Lucinda’s hand.
“Yeah, we’ll be around forever, but no wedding bells just yet. I haven’t really got a thing to wear for a wedding.” They dissolved into laughter and turned their attentions to Lily.
“Oh, I’m going to be one of those old spinsters with lots of cats. The village children will think I’m a witch and I’ll buy a broomstick just to scare the hell out of them.”
“No one special lurking in your coal shed then, my love?” Orlando asked.
“Nah, my last encounter was with Amy, and you stole her from me, Mr. Rock, so I’d just keep your counsel and stop asking questions before I start to cry.”
“I suppose you could share her,” suggested Benjy, ever one for a novel solution to a problem, particularly if it involved risqué sex.
“Yeah, she’d love that,” said Lucinda. “It would make her feel like a lead part in a Noël Coward play, ménage à trois and all. Maybe you could suggest it.”
But right now the only part in any play Amy felt like was the back of a horse in a pantomime. She was missing her other half and missing her friends. She hadn’t even asked Lucinda where she was going. But she had to get on with things, today was Wednesday and as any secret Hello! fan knows but will refuse to admit to knowing, the aforementioned publication has its debut on the newsstands on that day. Amy thought it was all a bit bizarre actually, dressing up to buy pictures of herself dressing up. But it had to be done. Imagine if the man in the newspaper shop recognized her and she looked as bad as she felt. That was the thing about Tracy Sunshine-style celebrity, always look as if you’ve won the lottery and been invited to the best party in the universe, even if you’re boyfriendless and miserable. That’s what people love you for. A mascot. A happy shining smiling groomed mascot. The nearest affinity Amy felt to any mascot was to one of those troll dolls you put on your desk during exams, but, folks, the show must go on. I’ve made my bed, now I have to lie in it, thought Amy, wheeling out some more proverbs and curling her eyelashes for that Bambi look.
She strolled down the street and the spring sunshine made her feel much happier. No one would have guessed she’d been awake half the night crying. She sought out the largest newsagent within walking distance and made her entrance, but the only people in there were an Indian lady and her daughter, who sat behind the till not really noticing anything at all, least of all Amy and her Hello! lifestyle. The new issue was still tied up in a bundle on the floor, which was a bit embarrassing because she had to ask for a pair of scissors to undo it, and even if you regularly grace the pages of this glossy creation, you’re still hard-pushed to admit that you actually buy it rather than steal it from the doctor’s waiting room. So, blushes and scissors aside, Amy hastily purchased it and scuttled out of the shop. Life’ll be so much easier when I have someone to do my embarrassing shopping for me, she sighed. It was only then that she realized that it wasn’t her on the cover but some horsey-looking European Royal. This was quite a shock, as in her mind she’d always imagined that it would be her on the cover. Perhaps that picture with the nice yellow Versace jacket she’d worn, or the one of her with the cat—they’d found it outside the back door and borrowed it for a while—that would have been a perfect cover. But no, so she tried to juggle looking famous (sunglasses always help) with walking along the street and trying to find herself in a magazine that she was trying to seem as though she wasn’t reading because it was not Vogue but a naff magazine. Oh dear. Her debut seemed to have got lost somewhere among those pictures of massacres and world tragedy and the accompanying sensitive prose. All very distasteful really but Amy fought on valiantly. Eventually she found herself, tucked between Gary Lineker’s baby and Sharon Stone’s brother. A double-page spread: “ ‘My Hurt at Media Lies’ Former Lover of Actor Orlando Rock Tells of Her Pain and How Life Can Never Be the Same Again.” She scanned the text and was utterly embarrassed. On nought to ten, if buying Hello! was embarrassing, how about appearing in it. Way off the scale, she thought. Somewhere between fifteen and seven hundred and eleven. She looked like Julie Andrews in the yellow Versace number, like a bloody plastic daffodil, she thought. With the cat she looked like she was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, and the rest were too pitiful to look at. And all this victim bollocks. Oh, I can’t bear it. Amy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If only someone were here to share this with me, if only Lucinda and I could curl up on the sofa and wet ourselves laughing about it, if only Orlando had been around, he’d have said something sane like, “I don’t really think it’s a good idea, sweetheart.” If only she’d listened. The flat mons
ters would just read it and snipe even more when she wasn’t around, cows that they were. She returned home and found they’d all gone to work. Work, that was another thing. She was still employed but hadn’t made it in for a few days now. She’d assumed celebrity leave was a bit like compassionate leave, everybody would be really understanding and put their arm around you. But now she was plunging back to earth without her parachute she began to see that actually she might be in trouble, would have to face the music sometime or other. Anyway she was sick of daytime television, Richard and Judy were OK but there were only so many gardening slots and recovering anorexics one could bear and when it got to lunchtime she was totally at a loss for what to do. Aussie soaps reminded her of Orlando (no apparent reason other than the Australian connection) and she could never be bothered to go to the supermarket or out, ostensibly because she might be spotted, but really because she hated having to put so much makeup on in the maintenance of public image, and mothers with pushchairs depressed her. What goes around comes around, I suppose, she told herself.
If a parrot were to have flown over a particular Caribbean beach right now, he would have seen four young, tanned, and delightful people. Two girls in swimsuits were lying flat out on sun loungers, flipping the pages of an inexplicably popular magazine, their heads together. They hadn’t the heart to laugh at the pictures; being good friends, they winced.
“What on earth possessed her to do it?” asked Lily.
“Oh God, this is the act of a desperate woman,” said Lucinda.
“What are you girls crowing about?” Orlando picked up a towel from the sand and rubbed the water from his body.
“You don’t want to know,” Lucinda said bluntly. She was sickened by the photographs, Amy looked so smug and ridiculous. And how dare she take Orlando’s name in vain. Lucinda wasn’t one to slag off her friends readily but, God, Amy was pushing it. Orlando presumed it was some magazine article about whether size mattered. He picked it up and, sitting on the edge of Lily’s sun lounger, flicked over the pages. He stopped.
“Fucking hell.” You said it, Orlando.
“She looks like a plastic daffodil,” noted Benjy, leaning over Orlando’s shoulder and not wanting to be left out. There was a sense of communal horror. They were afraid for her, afraid for what she might do next. But what does come next? Humiliation on breakfast television? An exercise video? Why not just have done with it and put yourself in the stocks, Amy. That’s a more direct way of inviting the public to throw rotting tomatoes and bitter insults at you.
“Orlando, I’m really sorry.” Lucinda sat up and watched Orlando’s stony expression anxiously. Lily and Benjy had become engrossed in some article on Pamela Anderson in the Express.
“Christ, Lucinda, it’s not your fault.” He shook his head, reading through the article. “I just really can’t believe she’s done this.”
“I knew she was a bloody liability and should have warned you sooner. She was like an idiot possessed with all her talk of agents and journalists.”
“Why do you think she did this?” Orlando looked so desperate, so miserable. Lucinda didn’t know which way to go. She couldn’t bear that Amy had behaved so badly, dragged Orlando into all this. But neither could she bear that he was so hurt. Her mother looked after hurt animals, Lucinda inclined toward hurt men.
“Do you think I should call her and get her side of the story?” He was longing for Lucinda to give him some excuse, some reason for him to forgive Amy.
“I think her side of the story is pretty clear, Orlando. Look, it’s here in black and white. ‘I felt there was great sadness in Orlando’s life.’ She’s the only sad thing in your life,” said Lucinda, who was having trouble blunting her pique.
“I think you’re both overreacting. What she did was tasteless but she’s only a child, you can’t blame her. Anyway, this guff won’t last more than three minutes.” Lily waved her hand dismissively at the European Royal on the cover of the magazine. “I think we should call her, tell her to pack her bikini, and come over. You can talk it through when she gets here. Olly, you can pay.”
“Thank you so much for the kind offer, Lily,” Orlando said sarcastically, but inside, excitement was splintering and crashing around. God, it would be so good to see her, I’d fly her to the moon if I had to and what better excuse than this island with her friends. But then he looked down again: “We had a fantastic holiday in Australia. We stayed in a lovely little house in Sydney and just spent days on the beach. Orlando was a wonderful companion.” Well, wouldn’t it make you want to throw up? But for Orlando the issue was a little deeper. A lifetime with Amy might not turn out to be any different from a lifetime with Joanna or any number of other women who couldn’t get enough of this crap. He’d thought she was different but obviously not. And how bloody dare she do this without asking him? This was big-time betrayal. Orlando decided that Amy should suffer a little bit more, that she shouldn’t win him back just yet, that the more pain she had, the more joy she would feel, vain and mean maybe but we think Amy deserves it. But then again maybe Lily was right, maybe if he saw her, he’d understand.
“How about you just give her a call, don’t tell her I’m here? Lie, say something like you’ll pay through work expenses.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, she’d never fall for that.” But she did. Amy was so accustomed to freeloading after just three weeks of celebritydom that she wouldn’t think twice about a gratis holiday in the sun.
“Lucinda, hi, where are you? I thought you were on holiday.” Amy was thrilled to hear the familiar rounded vowels and endearments from Lucinda.
“Listen, darling, just put a little case together and book a flight, let us know when you’ll be arriving, and we’ll sort accommodation out this end. C’est parfait.”
“OK, sounds lovely, but I’m not going to be a third wheel, am I, Luce?” Lucinda mopped imaginary sweat from her brow in relief. The little telltale signs that Amy was back in the land of the thinking were beginning to surface, and not a moment too soon.
Amy pulled at the foil on the peanut packet with her teeth and they spilled out on her lap. The man in the seat next to her smiled sympathetically. She darted her gaze away. There was no escaping people on airplanes; the sooner the flight was over the better.
“The fasten-seat belt sign hasn’t been switched off yet, madam.” The air hostess pointed meaningfully to Amy’s midriff. God, she was sick of people getting at her; she felt so victimized and exposed. Paranoia maybe, but it was miserable. She had nearly resorted to theft when she saw a copy of the offending Hello! sticking out of some woman’s travel bag in the departure lounge. The woman was now sitting just two rows in front of her, and Amy was convinced that she and her husband kept turning round and looking at her while pretending to be seeing if the loo was free. It was horrible, she felt really misanthropic and fed up. And what’s more it was all her own fault; she’d gone to the press not vice versa, she didn’t have anyone to blame but her stupid self. As soon as the dust had begun to settle, she’d stopped feeling quite so embarrassed about her bad outfits and started to fret for Orlando instead. What a bitch I am. He goes to all that trouble to be careful not to talk to the press, and then I come along and bugger it all up. I’m no better than his ex-wife, in fact I’m worse. She was consumed with self-loathing. And Lucinda. How can she bear to be so sweet to me after I’ve been such a cow?
To the schmaltzy music of the hotel lobby they planned how best to surprise Amy. Benjy and Lily pushed for maximum shock factor, like having Orlando push his way out of the wardrobe as Amy unpacked in her room, or perhaps have him disguise himself as a hairy German and chat her up in the disco. Orlando however decided to go for maximum punishment and keep himself concealed until the eleventh hour. He’d begun to have doubts about the wisdom of this plan. Reading over the interview again, he’d started to doubt if Amy was at all interested in him anyway. Maybe he’d totally misjudged her; Lucinda certainly seemed pretty down on her and she was supposed to be her
closest friend. Maybe she loves being headline news. She certainly looked happy in that yellow dress. Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this.
So when Amy walked in through the doors of the hotel there was no welcoming committee, no flags, no friends. There were, however, an abundance of women who had decided that Orlando Rock was to be their holiday romance. Though most of them had no idea of his celebrity he was by far the most fling-worthy man in the resort, thus he was the basis of many a fantasy and the cause of a drain of the hot-water supplies when at six o’clock the women would leave the beach en masse and make for their boudoirs where they would shower away the day’s sand and sexy thoughts, and perfume, blow-dry, and drape sarongs for optimum flesh exposure and maximum Rock appeal. Then they’d sit at supper fiddling oh-so-sexily with the straws in their cocktails until Orlando Rock fixed them with the stare to end all stares and dragged them in a fireman’s lift back to his room … oh, how they wanted him. But Amy knew nothing of this as she walked up to the reception desk and brushed sand from her smooth, long legs, her silk slip clinging alluringly to her dusty, hot body. She had no idea of the strategies that were being hatched to have her eliminated from the competition for Orlando, depilatory in her shampoo, steal her foundation, etc. For surely this languid beauty was a threat to their plans for a steamy holiday encounter, and they watched and resented as she remained luscious and oblivious.
