by Victoria Fox
Aurora wanted to brush her teeth. It was all she could think about to stop herself going crazy. The private clinic smelled of antiseptic masked with air freshener and the smell of it turned her gut. Voices, low and concerned, hummed meaningless as white noise.
Casey tried calling but the hospital didn’t allow cell phones. She noticed he didn’t bother coming in person.
‘Aurora?’ Rita Clay was crouching next to her, full of concern, and for a moment she felt like a kid at a party of grown-ups who were all too busy with themselves to take any notice of her, except one, and that person’s kindness made her cry. Rita gave her a hug. A tear spilled from her as if it had been wrung out, a wet towel twisted over an empty basin.
At last, the news came. A doctor with a grave, sympathetic expression, one well worn, approached the gathered party. She addressed Tom directly.
‘Mr Nash, we were unable to resuscitate Sherilyn,’ she said. ‘We did all we could. I’m sorry. Your wife is dead.’
Over the next seventy-two hours, Sherilyn Rose’s overdose dominated the media. Was it suicide? Speculation raged. The cocktail of drugs found in her body was certainly excessive by any normal person’s standards, but then this was LA, and, for a woman relying on prescription medication, accidents did happen. Moreover, there had been no suicide note.
At least not one that was ever made public.
Tom
It is over for me. It was over a long time ago.
I cannot live this way.
Tell her the truth—
I’m sorry I could not.
Tom Nash had found it alongside his wife’s body. He had known at that moment that she would never pull through. Sherilyn had no intention of waking up.
Nash and Rose. They had been married over twenty years. In happier times, in the beginning, they had been genuinely fond of each other, best friends, allies who had conquered the charts and reaped the fruits of their celebrity, their success ample antidote to the difficulties of their arrangement. For her, admittedly, it was harder. She took lovers, ever discreet, but she would never be able to live an ordinary life, with an ordinary family. For Tom, in the industry he had embraced, he accepted there would always be an element of sham. He did everything to throw them off the scent: the macho ranch, the overt lyrics about women, his vociferous political conservatism. But rumour was a persistent beast. It rumbled on, speculating over his hair, his clothes and the light surgery job he’d pursued in an ill-conceived moment of vanity.
It was harder these days than ever to conceal a secret.
Sherilyn had needed greater persuasion from the outset. It was easier for him, she had argued: he’d probably never have a kid of his own. She, in another life, with another man, a life where she hadn’t expectations to meet and records to sell, might have. For a while they’d discussed either one of them being involved—neither had any desire to pool their genes, it felt too much like conceiving with a sibling—but in the end decided an equal share, a mutual disassociation, was the prudent route. Perhaps that was where they had gone wrong.
Tom struck the match. The amber flame lit the shadows of the yard, bringing the trees into looming frame like onlookers at a masked ball. He held it to the corner of the paper, watched as it licked the edges and curled them brown, then black.
It burned till the words had vanished, dissolved into the air until nothing was left.
After the funeral, Aurora travelled alone. She told them she needed to get away, was going to Europe to stay with a friend. Nobody questioned her desire for change.
Her jet arrived in Paris early morning. Aurora checked herself into a hotel on the Rue de Rivoli, unpacked her small case of belongings, drank several cups of coffee and consulted a map of the city. She didn’t know how long she would be here but was prepared to wait.
The apartment in Montmartre was as she remembered. It was winter and the sky was slate, threatening rain. She sheltered in the wide porch, watching as the doors swung open and residents came and went, as the showers came down, bouncing off the cobbled sidewalks and spraying under car tyres. Bodies, impatient to reach the dry, hurried past beneath umbrellas.
Aurora was without security, without friends, in a city she barely knew. No longer recognisable: her hair was wet and plastered down her cheeks, her eyes tired and sad and fearing things hidden in shadows.
That day, they didn’t come.
Nor did they come the next. Hours she was inside that porch, scanning every face that passed, now and then being moved on by the building’s security, pitying her as they would an orphan child. She sat against a wall, knees under her chin, and waited.
On the third morning, she thought they might have gone away. Perhaps they had moved. Perhaps the trip had been a bad idea. She had committed on a whim and there was every chance they weren’t in Paris at all. They could be halfway across the world.
Then, as daylight was fading on that third, final day, the man materialised, approaching through the driving, incessant rain. He was wearing a long black coat that went right to the floor and a brimmed, formal hat.
Arnaud Devereux.
Rainwater trickled down her hairline and into the hollow behind her ear. She was shivering, her skin laced with goose bumps.
For a moment he did not recognise her.
When he did, his features changed.
‘I want to know everything,’ Aurora told him. ‘From the beginning. Everything.’
54
Stevie
‘I wouldn’t go if you paid me.’
The matter wasn’t up for discussion. Stevie had no intention of setting foot on that godforsaken island ever again.
Xander turned the card over in his hands. Gold on one side, white on the other.
‘Don’t tell me you’re considering it?’ Disgustedly she took it from him.
60
VDM Communications in partnership with La Lumière
invite
Stephanie Speller
Xander Jakobson
60 years of Reuben van der Meyde
‘“Sixty years of Reuben van der Meyde”? They make him sound like a political regime.’
It had arrived by courier that morning. Just when they had been back in LA sufficient time to feel as though things were slowly getting back to normal, their marriage gradually back on track, here it was: a reminder of her husband’s past. On Xander’s return from London, Wanda Gerund had been straight on the line, informing Stevie that the papers were running a story about the UK being the scene of crisis talks between them. London had been the scene of crisis talks, of course, the irony being that the press had no bloody idea how critical.
‘They want to keep me sweet,’ Xander commented. ‘It’s in their interests.’
‘I bet it is.’ She threw the invitation down.
Reuben van der Meyde turning sixty was no big secret, but exactly what he had planned was fuelling plenty of theories. Stevie, for one, could quite happily never find out a damn thing about it. Knowing what she knew, anything and everything that man did was of the lowest order.
Xander took her hand. ‘It’s over,’ he promised. ‘Van der Meyde’s party is the last place we’re going to be this summer.’
Bibi Reiner had landed a part in a candyfloss rom-com. It wasn’t the starring role, but her ex-girlfriend-scorned was funny and original and there was plenty of scope for Bibi to take it in the direction she wanted. Finally, the role she had always dreamed about.
She and Stevie had spent the morning at a spa in Beverly Hills. For Stevie, it was a chance to celebrate her friend’s happy news.
‘I’m overjoyed for you.’ She’d squeezed her when they’d met that morning. ‘No one deserves it more.’
But for Bibi, relaxation, never mind celebration, was impossible. Any thrill she’d felt at landing the part was quickly replaced by panic, because it meant only that now there was further to fall. For weeks she’d kept the threats to herself, pretended it wasn’t happening. But the facts were inescapable.
/>
He’d been biding his time to take her down, to expose her as the criminal she was …
The murderer.
Back at the house, Stevie fixed lunch. ‘Stop worrying about something that might never happen,’ she teased, clocking Bibi’s worried expression. She went to chuck salad wrapping in the bin and caught sight of van der Meyde’s ripped-up invitation. She slammed the lid shut.
Bibi was checking something on Stevie’s MacBook. Her head snapped up, imagining for a second that her friend had read her mind. ‘What?’
Stevie sucked the end of her finger where she’d lightly cut herself. ‘It’s like you’re scared of messing up, and I get why, because it’s a big opportunity, but you have to believe in yourself, B. We all do.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ She closed the laptop. ‘Guess I’ve been a long time out of the game.’
Stevie brought the plates over. ‘But it’s never too late to get back in. You’re the proof. This is your chance. No one’s going to take it from you.’
Bibi found she had suddenly lost her appetite.
‘Steve, can I tell you something?’
‘Sure.’ She passed her cutlery.
‘Someone’s been …’ Bibi hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Someone’s been blackmailing me. I got the recording just after you left for London, but I didn’t say anything then because it’s not as if you haven’t been good enough to me already—’
‘What recording?’
‘I’ve got it here—’ Bibi twisted her hands ‘—if you want to listen.’ She went to her bag and rummaged through its depths. ‘I thought I could deal with it myself,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice easy. ‘But now I’m not sure I can. When I heard about the part I realised that’s what he’d been waiting for. So I could get a taste for recovery only to have it snatched away.’
Alarm bells were ringing. ‘Hang on, B. Who’s “he”? What are you saying?’
Bibi held up a small disc. ‘Can I play it?’
Anxious, Stevie led the way into their office. On the desk was a script Xander was editing, papers strewn across its surface. She took the disc and slipped it into an adjacent stereo.
To her surprise, it was Bibi’s voice that filled the room.
‘I had to do it … there was no other way …’
‘What is this?’
‘Listen.’
With mounting horror, Stevie realised what she was hearing.
‘I hated him … It wasn’t difficult because I hated him … everything he had put me through. It was payback time …’
‘What the—?’
‘Shh!’
‘I lured Linus into his favourite game, he had plenty of favourites, and I tied him down. I wanted to make him suffer like he’d made me suffer. I wanted him to know confusion and pain and humiliation … I put the rope around his neck and I pulled it hard. I wasn’t about to show him the mercy I had always begged for and he had never given me …’
The voice sounded drugged, lethargic. It was indisputably Bibi’s, but spaced out and distant, as if she was half asleep.
‘I’d do it again if I had to. I’d kill him again …’
The recording ended, leaving only furry silence. Stevie’s heart dropped like a stone. Into the quiet, to her immense dismay, emerged the unmistakable gravelly baritone of Dirk Michaels.
‘So you see, Ms Reiner,’ he said, ‘I have interests to protect. Linus was a friend of mine and I am loyal to my friends. I am also loyal to my enemies. I never forget who they are or what debt I owe them. Remember that. ’
The recording clicked off.
The women stared at each other. Bibi’s eyes glistened with tears.
‘I thought I was free,’ she rasped, ‘but I’m not. And I don’t deserve to be.’
‘How did he get that?’ Stevie demanded. ‘How did he get you to say all that?’
‘It was recorded on Cacatra.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Those spa sessions I went to.’
‘What fucking spa sessions? You went in for a massage and ended up in a confessional?’
‘I’ve been trying to work it out, OK? I’m as confused as you are. I’ve listened to it a thousand times and what scares me is I don’t remember saying it! Any of it! It’s like they drew it out of me without me knowing!’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘Is it? Don’t you remember those cutting-edge “methods” Dirk was telling us about? How Cacatra was at the frontline of remedial breakthroughs? How their rehab therapies were second to none?’ She closed her eyes. ‘I was set up.’
‘By who?’ Stevie’s mind was staggering from one explanation to the next. ‘By Dirk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ Even as she questioned it she knew the answer. Dirk’s warning at the Actors League returned with gruesome clarity. What with Xander’s revelations, she’d totally forgotten.
Ms Reiner should watch herself …
‘The spa sessions,’ elaborated Bibi. ‘Dirk booked them all. I mean, shit! He booked me on to the island in the first place!’ Her hands were shaking. ‘He kept calling it their “initiative”, this curative approach they use on stars who’ve undergone trauma. It had a name. He called it “Rooting”. They use hypnosis to draw out the base cause of the disturbance.’
‘Hypnosis?’
‘Of course I didn’t know that before I went,’ she babbled. ‘I just knew I was getting special treatment and that Dirk understood and that maybe he felt bad because of what he and Linus had done to me …’ She bit back a sob.
Stevie wrestled her disbelief. The deceit. The trickery. The island. What more was it capable of? Would Reuben van der Meyde stop at nothing?
‘I did feel better on Cacatra, Steve. Couldn’t you tell?’
Numbly, Stevie nodded.
‘I felt great and have done ever since. That must have been why. The release!’
‘Who did you tell it to? Who was there?’
‘A woman,’ she said tremulously. ‘We were in a white room with a couch in the middle of it and I lay down and shut my eyes and.’ Frustration stalled the memory.
‘That’s all you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘So the implication,’ said Stevie, ‘is that you admitted all this while you were under?’
Bibi collapsed into a chair. ‘Naturally it’s meant to be confidential. But Dirk … he must have organised it so the whole thing got recorded. But, then, how could he?’
Everything was starting to make sense. Stevie felt as if she were underwater, her ears and throat and head full of liquid.
‘B,’ she said, ‘when I was last in NYC I bumped into Dirk Michaels. He told me he suspected Linus’s death hadn’t been an accident.’
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought he was bluffing.’
‘But Cacatra? How?’
‘Dirk is friendly with Reuben van der Meyde. Linus was, too. My guess is Dirk called in a favour from the man himself, got the place to use its “remedial breakthroughs” to draw a confession out of you and then get it all on tape. Believe me: van der Meyde has no scruples whatsoever. He’s powerful beyond the law.’
‘This is why Dirk organised for me to go to Cacatra and not someplace else?’
‘I’d say so.’
Realisation hit. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’
‘You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault.’
‘What do I do?’ Bibi jumped up, started pacing the room, wracked with fear. ‘I’ll never be free of it now, never! I’ve got to confess, I’ll go to the cops, it’s the only way—’
‘It’s not.’ If Bibi fessed up it would almost certainly mean life imprisonment—if not worse. Stevie could not let it happen. It was too gross an injustice. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
The main door opened and closed.
‘Hello?’ Xander called out.
After a few seconds he appeared in the doorway, went to kiss Bibi on the cheek with a fon
d ‘This is a nice surprise,’ then, on seeing the women’s expressions, stopped. ‘What’s happened?’
Stevie’s eyes flicked between the two. Bibi gave a brief nod to acknowledge it was OK.
‘Do you want to or shall I?’ Stevie asked.
Bibi gestured to the stereo. ‘The recording says it all, doesn’t it?’
Xander was baffled. ‘Can someone tell me what’s going on?’
‘I’ve got an admission of my own,’ Stevie said gravely, ‘and you’re not going to like it.’
Her finger hovered over Play.
‘We might be accepting our invitation to Reuben van der Meyde’s party after all.’
55
Lori
Lori hadn’t returned to Tres Hermanas in over three years. She barely recognised it.
For starters, it was busy. As she peered through the once-murky windows, expecting to see that half-forgotten palette, as usual deserted, maybe Anita examining her nails over an abandoned counter or Rosa through the back with a cigarette, nothing could have prepared her. It was positively bustling. Two women she didn’t know, about her age, seemed to be managing things. The decor was changed, rustic in style, warm and welcoming but with a polish missing in its previous incarnation.
She hadn’t been back since the day she’d met JB Moreau.
Lori didn’t believe in ghosts, but here she was surrounded.
Out front, gone was the battered Tres Hermanas sign. In its place was a modest Maria’s.
She smiled. For once, remembering her mother, she felt at peace.
At Tony’s house, she knocked tentatively. Omar was asleep in his pram and she rocked him, waiting for the discordant song of her stepmother’s instructions, or of Anita and Rosa arguing about who should get the door, and when they didn’t come she assumed he must be out.
Without warning, it opened.
Her father looked altered, sharper and healthier. The last time they had spoken had been in anger, but as soon as she saw him she knew he felt the same regret.
‘Hi, Papa.’
Tony was unable to take his gaze off Omar, who was awake now, blue eyes curious, tiny hands reaching out and grabbing fistfuls of air.
