by Victoria Fox
‘No wonder she’s such a mess,’ Stevie commented sadly.
‘She doesn’t know,’ Xander reminded her. ‘None of them do. The kids never find out.’
‘And that’s meant to make it better? That’s the worst part of all, surely. How could they, how could you, know this when they don’t? People’s lives, their core, toyed with like—’
‘It was an error of judgement. I’m not proud.’
‘And the surrogates? How could they give up their own baby?’
‘Ethics are the luxuries of the well off. You lead a lucky life, Steve.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘I’m not. I’m saying that desperation does strange things. We’re not talking fifty-dollar bills here: we’re talking millions. Safety, security, insurance, a certainty of future.’
‘And they see the money, do they, these surrogates?’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Come on, Xander, what’s to stop van der Meyde pocketing the cash himself? I shouldn’t imagine there’d be much the average woman on the street could do about it.’
‘I’d have known if that was what JB was doing.’
‘But not if that’s what van der Meyde was doing.’
Silence.
Stevie rubbed her forehead. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘You don’t need to tell me.’
She wrapped her coat tighter, watching as the world carried on, ignorant of its change, as though every person that passed, every car and dog and smiling child, were flipped inside out, colours reversed like the negative of a photograph.
‘That’s the real reason you didn’t want me to go to Cacatra,’ she said quietly. ‘Isn’t it? Not because of Moreau or your friendship or his parents or any of that, but because of this.’
There was a long pause, before, at last: ‘You think I’d want my wife going anywhere near a man who makes a living from couples who can’t have babies?’
She rested a hand on his back. A small gesture, but she felt him crumple beneath it.
‘How could you imagine I would ever, ever in a million years, consider something like that?’
Xander turned to her. His eyes were tired. She hated what he’d done, the fact he’d been part of it, but she could not hate him. They were on the same side. It was what being married was about. ‘I came here to tell you I’m sorry,’ he said gravely. ‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Stevie. Please, give me a second chance.’
She looked at him and took in his sins and felt her love cling on despite it all. She leaned into the warm solidity of his shoulder.
Everything he’d said, the promises he’d made … from here on in, it was about trust. A fresh start. A new beginning.
‘You have to keep it to yourself,’ Xander murmured. ‘Do you hear me, Stevie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean it. Promise me. You have to stay quiet.’
She looked out at the water and didn’t say a word.
52
Lori
‘We have to go out with it,’ said Jacqueline Spark. They were at the One Touch offices on Pico Boulevard. ‘There’s no other way.’
Lori nodded. She sat at her publicist’s desk with her hands in her lap.
Jacqueline got up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, coming round to join her. She might have hugged the Lori she used to know, but not this one. This one was harder, fossilised by the depth of JB Moreau’s betrayal. ‘I did try to tell you.’
‘And I didn’t listen,’ Lori replied. ‘Don’t worry—I’ve been through it a thousand times. I know everything you’re going to say.’
Even if her client was steeled against her emotions, Jacqueline was incensed enough for both of them. Who the hell did Moreau think he was? He had a wife, a business. He was one of the most important men in Hollywood. And he thought he could knock up a poor sweet girl like Lori Garcia and leave her to deal with the consequences? She had always thought him a cold sonofabitch, but this? It was unbelievable.
She touched Lori’s arm, deciding what she needed now was a friend, not a colleague. ‘If I were you I’d have left it on his voicemail. That’s what he’d do.’
Lori put a hand on her stomach. ‘I’ve made it clear enough. He has to know, or at least be able to guess, what’s happened.’
‘That would explain the silence, then.’ With each revelation, Moreau plunged in Jacqueline’s already low expectations. ‘He messed up. He was probably counting on you getting rid of this kid, but, seeing as you haven’t, he’ll have to pretend like it never happened.’ She winced. ‘What a bastard.’
‘He told me he—’
‘Pulled out in time? Was allergic to condoms? Couldn’t have kids?’
Lori grimaced. ‘How did you know?’
‘I didn’t, till half a second ago. Guys like him don’t use protection. It’s a slight on their ego or some shit. He fed you a line, honey. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. The last thing I need is people feeling sorry for me.’
‘You don’t want to try him one last time?’ Privately Jacqueline thought Moreau would deserve everything he got—or everything he didn’t get, as the case may be—but she had to keep her opinions in check before they made the call to go it alone. She didn’t want Lori turning round months down the line and resenting her railroading them into a decision.
‘Why?’ Lori challenged. ‘I agree JB ought to be told the kid is his, but what am I hoping for? That it’s going to make everything OK? That he’s going to say, “Wonderful, now let’s run off into the sunset and play house”?’ She looked down. ‘It’s a fairytale. It’s not real. It’s time I realised that and moved on.’
Jacqueline frowned. ‘He’s done this before, you know, just vanished for months on end. He can, because he’s got Kirsty running things at La Lumière and an army of subordinates wiping his ass all across America. And before you tell me you thought you were special or different or whatever, don’t let yourself walk into the biggest cliché that ever there was.’
‘I know.’
‘So—’ Jacqueline stood, back to business—this was one approaching shitstorm if they didn’t take cover now ‘—let’s get to the facts. Your baby is due in a matter of months and it’s clear to me Moreau has no intention of being involved.’ She faced the window, arms folded, circling through options. ‘If I felt for one second that it would be any use to you—and you alone—to admit this child is his then I wouldn’t hesitate in advising it. But, I don’t.’ She turned round. ‘I think it will make you appear a marriage wrecker, a tramp and, worst of all, a girl who’s cheated her fans into believing she’s a virgin sweetheart when in reality she had way too much to drink one night and ended up sleeping with the boss.’
Lori moved to object, but Jacqueline held a hand up.
‘I’m not saying that’s what happened, just that’s how it will be perceived.’
‘And it’s exactly what he wants,’ Lori conceded. ‘To keep the whole thing quiet.’
‘I don’t give a crap what he wants. You’re my priority and fessing up to a one-night stand with a married fashion mogul, when you’re deep in the industry yourself, is a very bad idea. We have to keep this to ourselves or it’s game over.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘We hit the press with it now. Or there’ll be too many unanswerables.’
‘And say what?’
Jacqueline hesitated. ‘Two words,’ she said. ‘Maximo Diaz.’
Maximo Diaz was an unthinkable option. And yet it was the only one they had. It made sense. Lori had been dating him, they’d been photographed together; he’d been harping on in the press—at least before last month’s encounter—about how much he admired her. Was it so out of the question that he’d been the man to at last claim her virginity? If they spun it right, it was the perfect story. Girl from the wrong side of the tracks weds (for there would have to be a wedding) into aristocracy when finally she meets her prince, and he was worth waiting every second for, because everyon
e knows a prince doesn’t accept sullied goods. It was a lesson for young girls everywhere. Lori shuddered to acknowledge its farce.
How could she confide in Jacqueline—in anyone?—the humiliation of what had happened at Maximo’s apartment? In any context, let alone the one she found herself in after the debacle with JB? There was no way. She detested Maximo and yet acknowledged he was the only one who could save them from the questions that would arrive at her door. She was at his mercy.
And so she was forced to go along with it, hands tied, belly swelling, like a witch led head-bowed to the river. She found herself swept along in a plan she had no alternative but to follow, a scandalous, fraudulent plan born out of sheer desolation.
JB had put her in that position. She despised him for it.
Tony had been attempting to get in touch. She didn’t want to hear from him. It was too little, too late. At the point she had needed her father’s support he had turned her away. She would do this by herself. It was her body, her child and her decision. She had become a fortress, gale-beaten on an outcrop, standing resolute, old as time. She’d need to be for what lay ahead.
In bed, at night, Lori felt the scale of the mansion, vast and open with emptiness. She pictured herself inside its floating space, as her baby was now inside hers, a being within a being within a being, like she was trapped inside a Russian doll and running out of air.
Late March, Lori gave birth to a boy. She named him Omar.
Everyone told her that all babies had blue eyes in their first months of life but she knew this type of blue like the back of her hand. Pale, silvery: the eyes of JB Moreau.
‘He’s beautiful,’ they crooned, and she and Maximo Diaz, proud parents, showed him to magazines and TV cameras and all the while Lori wished she had no part in this parade.
Maximo had taken the bait. He couldn’t believe his luck. For a while he’d feared Lori would do something stupid like go to the cops—he’d never known a woman to react so unreasonably to his advances—so to have her come crawling with such an epic request was deeply rewarding. He was told the father was an ex-boyfriend, someone Lori had made a mistake in sleeping with, and that the man was happy to stay out of the child’s life.
For Maximo, the offer was the answer to his prayers. It meant he no longer had to prowl the beds of single actresses and see on their faces, regular as clockwork, the disappointment and disgust when finally he unveiled his shrivelled member. It was also a dream move for his career. Who knew, maybe he’d get bored in a couple years’ time and sack her and the kid off, but for now he was on the threshold of the big league. Stepping into Lori’s world was all it took.
Lori could neither love nor respect him. She refused to leave Omar with him for even one second. She existed, numb to the pain. She got through one day and then the next. It was enough. It had to be.
How she wished she could close her heart to JB Moreau. She loathed him, yet she needed him. She hated him, yet she could not let him go. She wanted to hit him till her fists bled, yet she wanted to kiss him more.
How could she abandon the man who was half the child she adored?
Motherhood propelled Lori to megastar status. Having a child qualified her to enter a community of women interested in more than just fashion and glamour.
‘A woman in your line of work must feel pressure to shed the baby weight.’ Petra Houston, queen of the talk show, was chatting to her on the Saturday Fix sofa. Petra was known for her incisive lines of questioning.
‘I’m realistic. Health is the most important thing.’
‘How’s Maximo as a father?’
‘Great.’ As a father, not necessarily Omar’s, he was fine. ‘We’re settling into it well.’
‘People were surprised by the pregnancy,’ Petra suggested.
‘None more than us. It happened quickly but it felt so right.’
‘Was it love at first sight?’ She raised an eyebrow. Cynically, Lori thought.
‘If you believe in it,’ she replied, ‘yes.’
‘So you always wanted kids.’
‘I did after I met Max.’
She found the deception astonishingly straightforward. If anything, it was easier to read a script, play a part, than it was to be real. For the public, it was nothing. None of these people, these millions of viewers, knew anything about her. She was a product, an idea.
After the show, Lori was obliged to mix with Petra and several TV notables before making her excuses. All she could think of was returning home and seeing her baby, looking in on him while he was sleeping and marvelling over his tiny parted lips and soft dark sweep of hair. Every night the nanny spent with him was one she missed.
Maximo was out of town on a junket and the mansion was quiet when she returned. The nanny updated her in hushed whispers and exited the house with practised gentleness.
Upstairs, Lori stood at the door to her son’s nursery, the light from the hall illuminating his cradle. His tiny head was turned to one side, fists curled by his ears like sea-shells. Her heart ached with love, pure and uncomplicated. She watched him till she began to feel sleepy herself.
It was only when Lori went to fix a drink that the envelope caught her eye, propped up in the hall by the nanny. It must have been delivered while she was out.
Plain white, like the others.
Opening it with care, she peeled out the paper inside.
N OT L O NG
I’ M C O MI N G F OR Y O U
Lori stood, mind ticking over while she held it, until she reached a conclusion.
Slowly, she folded the note back and pressed down the seal.
It was obvious.
How could she have missed something that was staring her in the face? Her obsession, her single-mindedness, her devotion to the wrong man.
There was only one person who could hate her this much.
They had given themselves away. She knew exactly who it was.
53
Aurora
The trouble with a grounding sentence was that the instant normal life resumed, she hit it like there was no tomorrow.
As far as Aurora was concerned, there wasn’t. Hours merged into days, days into weeks, a glass-eyed paralysis that had her living for the brief respite of night when she would hook up with people she disliked and get high with them and have sex in somebody’s apartment who she didn’t know and wake up the next afternoon before she did it all again. Paparazzi chased her wherever she went, incessant bulbs snapping like jaws at a piece of meat. Her image was plastered across the tabloids, synonymous with everything wrong with Hollywood kids: proof that it was only a matter of time before the evils of excess spat out the monsters they had made, and the world looked on in smug complacency as their theories about the corruption of money were gratified and they were able to think, I might be poor but at least my kid’s not like that.
Rita Clay did everything to try and get through to her. Aurora, you’re losing control. Aurora, this isn’t what you wanted. Aurora, don’t let it happen to you.
But the point was she wasn’t letting anything happen. Life had happened to her and there was fuck all she could do about it.
She woke in a house in Malibu. Couldn’t remember how she got there.
The room was shrouded in semi-darkness and she was lying on the floor, her head on someone’s crumpled-up sweatshirt. When she sat up, a sliver of acute, disabling pain splintered behind her eyes.
Casey Amos was on the couch, asleep with his shirt and pants off but with a grubby sneaker slung off one foot. A blonde not dissimilar in appearance to Aurora was sprawled across him, naked from the waist down.
She took a cab back to Tom and Sherilyn’s. She didn’t care that the driver spent the entire journey ogling her in the rear-view mirror and absorbing every detail so he could cough it up in a magazine deal, like a cat with a hairball, soon as she was out. Whatever turned him on.
‘Roadblock up ahead,’ he informed her as they turned into the street.
Aurora
tossed a wodge of dollar bills into the front of the cab and opened the door. It was hot, the sun blinding, and she realised she hadn’t properly seen daylight in a while. She groped around in her bag for her Ray-Bans but couldn’t find them.
As she got closer to the mansion it became clear what the roadblock was.
A barrier of cop cars was wedged together, front wheels up on the sidewalk, their blue and red lights pulsing. Cops were talking urgently into their radios; one, thriving on the drama, stood with his foot resting inside the passenger door, a lean, tanned elbow on the roof of the car.
Up ahead, the flash of an ambulance.
The ambulance was right outside her house.
Aurora increased her pace, held back momentarily by the cop, who was older in the face than he’d appeared from behind, and who didn’t realise, such was her shambolic appearance, who she was, before he told her to wait and stand back and not go any further, but she didn’t listen. The house and the ambulance came towards her in dislocated, shivering images, like an old movie. Her bag was thumping against her leg and she felt it drop to the ground.
Tom was there. A stretcher was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. Aurora caught a flash of white-blonde hair as the rear doors slammed shut.
‘Dad?’ The word she hadn’t spoken in months was the only logical thing to say.
‘Baby.’ Tom held her. ‘Baby, I’m sorry.’
‘What’s happened?’ Against his chest, her voice came out little more than a squeak.
Behind the ambulance, she saw a second raft of police cars. Beyond that, a crawling swarm of ravenous photographers clicked aimlessly, shouting things she couldn’t hear. Aurora in Tom’s arms sent them wild.
‘It’s bad news, honey,’ he said, stroking her hair as he had when she was little, ‘real bad news. It’s your mom.’
They had to wait hours at the hospital. Tom’s PR arrived on the scene, his management intermittently issuing statements to the press outside. Yes, Sherilyn Rose was still alive. No, they had no further news. Yes, they were expecting confirmation of a suspected overdose.
Stuart Lovell, Head of Production at Strike Records, turned up. Aurora watched him shake Tom’s hand and the men pulled each other into a swift, efficient embrace.
