by Unknown
‘Why?’ I ask. Ben knows it’s an all-encompassing ‘why’ and that, right now, I’m too frail and battered to be specific.
‘Because when I’m walking next to Scott I feel drenched in this feeling of success and possibility,’ says Ben simply and quietly. His explanation rolls off his tongue. It doesn’t sound rehearsed – it’s heartfelt. I know the feeling he means, I once thought it was mine alone. I don’t feel it at all any more.
‘Was that the only time?’ I ask.
‘It was the first time.’ Is he making a distinction?
‘Did you seduce him or did he… you know… chase you?’ It’s a stupid question to ask. It doesn’t matter and yet at the same time it’s vital that I know. Ben looks away, he’s reluctant to satiate my curiosity. No doubt he’s guessed he can’t; one question will lead to the next, and the next, and then to another, and no matter what he confesses, he can’t explain things to me. This level of betrayal can’t be rationalized, or justified or even apologized for. ‘Who made the first move?’ I demand.
‘I, I don’t remember.’ He had his bits waxed, he was wearing his lucky pants – I think I can assume Ben took the initiative. I can’t decide if this is a comfort or the cause of further distress. Who do I want to have betrayed me the most?
‘Was he drunk?’
‘A bit.’
‘How could you let him drink?’ I demand angrily.
‘Not slaughtered, if that’s what you are implying. I didn’t have to get him drunk to get him to agree.’
‘Was it planned?’
‘I –’
‘Did you plan it?’ I insist.
‘Maybe on some level.’ My breathing is fast and shallow. So are my friends, it appears. Ben turns to me and pours a complicated expression my way. I can’t decide whether he pities me or hates me. Then he asks, ‘What if he’s gay, Fern?’
‘He’s not gay, Ben. He likes experimenting. We all know that. He’s slept with thousands of women. He was trying you on for size.’
‘Yeah, well, I think I fitted. I think he’s gay,’ says Ben firmly.
‘That’s just your wishful thinking,’ I reply sharply.
‘I’ve thought it for a while now. I had no idea how to tell you.’
I remind myself that before I met Adam I firmly believed sex wasn’t in any way tied up with responsibility, reliability or even love. As far as I was concerned sex was all about hedonistic pleasure, meaningless delight. This is what Scott thinks too. I tell myself that what he’s just done – what they’ve just done – doesn’t have to matter; Ben seems insistent on proving otherwise.
‘So you decided shagging him in front of me was the best way.’
‘No. But let’s face it, whatever I’d have said you would have ignored. You’ve become an expert at burying your head when faced with inconvenient truths.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say forcefully but I know that it is. I’m an ostrich, it’s an essential survival tactic, especially as I know now for sure that I’m still in love with Adam and he doesn’t want me. Scott’s my only option, that’s an inconvenient truth.
‘Women haven’t made him very happy and he didn’t even want to sleep with you. Is that the behaviour of a heterosexual man? You look as delicious as a –’ Ben searches for the right words – eventually he comes up with, ‘a strawberry low-fat smoothie. Even I fancy you a bit. Shouldn’t he have shagged you?’
‘He wanted us to be special,’ I reason.
‘That’s just your wishful thinking,’ replies Ben.
Ben has betrayed me so entirely that I’m finding it hard to stand in the same room as him without clawing out his eyes, but then, there’s something that’s pulling me towards him. He’s been a great friend for four years now. He recommended the only hairdresser I’ve ever trusted, he introduced me to M&S sushi lunches, since we met I’ve never bought an item of clothing or (lord forbid) a pair of shoes without consulting Ben’s impeccable taste first. He was the one who gave me my first decent job, he sent me on expensive training courses when he could barely afford them, he gave me pay increases before I even had to ask for them – he has always been fair and honest with me. I don’t understand.
‘Why did you sleep with him, Ben? Just to show me he might be gay?’
‘No, sweetheart. I slept with him because I’m in love with him,’ says Ben sadly.
‘Oh please.’ I can’t keep the scepticism out of my voice.
‘I am. I’m not saying he’s in love with me. I’m just telling you why I couldn’t help myself. I slept with him because he’s delicious. He’s irresistible.’ Ben starts to walk towards me but thinks better of it as I shrink back towards the door. ‘I am so, so sorry that I hurt you, Fern, but you more than anyone know how irresistible he is. You left Adam for him. And what’s more, I won’t be the last one to demonstrate this weakness. There will be better and worse men than me who will feel the same. Do the same. Men and women. Anyone he wants. That’s the way it is.’
‘No, there won’t. There won’t be opportunity,’ I say firmly. ‘Once we are married and having sex, Scott won’t need anyone else.’
There’s a stunned silence and then Ben splutters, ‘You can’t still be thinking of marrying Scott.’ He looks sick and horrified, he sways a little and then sits back down.
‘Yes, I can and I am,’ I say determinedly. Truthfully, I’m not one hundred per cent sure I mean this. I’m saying it aloud to make it seem more real. In the moment I saw Ben and Scott together I said goodbye to the dazzlingly glamorous and beautiful Jenny Packham wedding dress and all the associated dizzy, glitzy fabulousness that was to be my future. I assumed that wasn’t going to be my route any more. But what else is left for me now? Adam doesn’t want me. I discovered how much I love him too late in the game. There’s no future there. He said it; you can’t go back. I have to go forward. At least Scott wants me. He chose me. He could have chosen anyone and he chose me. That has to mean something. That has to stand for something because that’s all I have.
‘Fern, you can’t marry Scott. You’ll be living with constant infidelity. I know his millions are attractive but you have to see what you are getting yourself into.’
I shoot poisoned darts from my eyes; if looks really could kill, the undertakers would be measuring Ben up right now. How dare he? How dare he! This isn’t about Scott’s money.
‘You can’t marry Scott,’ says Ben again.
‘I can, if he still wants me to.’ I’m in the habit of being full and frank with Ben, so before I realize how stupid my honesty is, I add, ‘I asked Adam to take me back and he said no.’
‘And that’s it? That’s the reason you are marrying Scott?’ Ben leaps to his feet dramatically once more. He flings his arms in the air and then places them heavily on his hips. He scowls at me. ‘Well, why am I surprised? Let’s face it – that was the reason you got together with Scott in the first place, because Adam didn’t want you. If he’d proposed on your birthday you’d never have been here, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. You just want to be married! For fuck’s sake, Fern, enough with this obsession of getting married because you are thirty. These are real people with real lives you are talking about. Mine being one of them.’ He’s yelling now, which I think is unfair – surely I’m the one entitled to do all the yelling tonight.
‘This isn’t about Scott’s money and it isn’t about my obsession with getting married. I just need something. I need a future of some sort. This is the only offer on the table.’
‘You’re panicking. You’re rushing things.’
‘Scott wants to marry me. Scott loves me. This thing you two did tonight –’ I gesture towards the bed ‘– it doesn’t have to mean anything. People get through these things.’
Ben looks suffocated with rage. His chest is heaving up and down as he tries to catch his breath. He makes a huge effort to recapture some calm. He’s silent for a moment and then he adds, ‘Fern, Scott wants to win over the American market, he thinks you’ll he
lp him do that. You are part of that deal.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He doesn’t love you, he needs you, or some bride at least – to guarantee Wedding Album will resonate with the Americans. They demand sincerity and you are the nearest he could come up with.’ Ben’s face is granite.
‘No, no, that’s not true.’ I cower away from Ben as though he might hit me. But I already know that no physical blow could hurt me as much as the words he’s just spoken. Everything is unravelling, like knitting stitches, and I’m the wool, I’m left knotted and damaged. ‘You were a fling. He was drunk. I’m his true love,’ I insist. ‘He’s written songs about me. Wedding Album has my name in three tracks.’
‘He wrote most of those songs before he even met you. He dropped your name in and changed the odd word. You are not essential to this. You are just a small part of a big show, a member of his supporting cast. He’d already decided he needed to marry someone or other, you just came along at the right time. The engagement announcement, the presentation of the ring, the date for the wedding and the album release were all choreographed.’ Ben says this formally. I’d have been less frightened if he’d bawled at me. His serious, calm tone is more convincing than hysterical rage.
‘How long have you known this?’
‘A while.’ He looks at his feet.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
Ben sighs and clasps his hands over his head, elbows touching as though cradling his thoughts. ‘At first I thought it might work, that he might make you happy. You seemed happy. You left Adam for him. You made your choice. You’re a big girl, I assumed you knew what you wanted.’
‘So why tell me now?’
‘I’m in love with him. You’re in love with Adam.’
‘Adam doesn’t want me.’
‘But two wrongs don’t make a right.’ Ben’s tone is pleading but I can’t be sympathetic.
‘You just don’t want him to marry me because you want him to yourself,’ I argue, lamely.
‘You know what, Fern? I think I could make him happy, at least for a while, because I know him, faults and all. You think you do, yet you don’t. But I’m not trying to stop this wedding to save Scott for myself. I’m trying to stop this wedding to save you. You are my friend and you are throwing your life away.’
69. Scott
What is it with these people? The more you tell them you are unreliable and unstable the more they cleave to you and then they are disappointed. I told Fern I wasn’t to be trusted. I told her addicts are fucking terrible people to care about and pop stars are worse. I told her I could resist anything other than temptation and now she’s all surprised because I slept with her best friend.
OK, I admit it, not my wisest move ever, nor the kindest. I am genuinely sorry I hurt her but what could I do? Ben made a pretty determined play and yes, I was curious. He’s a bright guy; he’s funny, interesting and, well, he’s hot.
‘You shouldn’t have been doing this abstaining from sex thing,’ grumbles Mark. ‘You were pushing yourself too hard, testing yourself too severely. No drink, no drugs and no sex, it’s not rock and roll. You’re straight back in the clinic, as soon as we get this mess straightened out.’ He scowls. ‘Although how the hell I straighten this one out, I don’t know. There’s a real danger that everything is properly fucked now. If this gets out, you have so lost the American market. Who the hell is going to buy the records of a cad who swaps teams for his fiancé’s best man the night before the wedding?’ Mark looks really stressed. He’s sweating and pacing and swearing by turn. ‘You’re going to have to go on a full charm offensive and win her back, son. Quickly. And I mean quickly. You’re supposed to be getting married tomorrow.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten.’
In a way he’s right, it is properly fucked now. I can’t see a happy way out of this. If I don’t marry her, if I tell her how I’m feeling about Ben, then my career is over, but if I do marry her I’m only going to continue hurting her and that’s not right. I don’t want to hurt Fern. We should never have picked an innocent. I am surrounded by women who would rather die than imbibe carbs but would swallow the sperm of an influential stranger faster than you could say ‘coke or poke’. I should have got engaged to someone like that. Someone robust enough for this life. But I liked Fern, still do. Love her, perhaps. What I feel for her is a lot like love. Yes, sometimes I can go as far as to say that. But it’s my experience that loving one person doesn’t stop you loving another and it certainly doesn’t stop you having great sex with someone else. And the sex with Ben was excellent. Mark must catch me smiling to myself, and he probably catches the drift as to why I’m smiling because he hitches his anger up a notch.
‘This isn’t a fucking joke, Scott.’ He’s a total guttersnipe when he’s under pressure. ‘Do you know how much bloody money is riding on this? Besides the cost of the wedding – a limitless, dazzling exhibition, a multi-million-pound trifle – there’s all the money we stand to lose if Wedding Album sinks. How could you have been so fucking stupid?’ Neither of us actually expects me to respond to that, so he just carries on. ‘Well, we’ll get her posh mate in. What’s her name?’
‘Lisa.’
‘Yeah, Lisa, she seems a bright girl, she’ll point out what side Fern’s bread is buttered. She’ll talk Fern into going ahead. She likes nice handbags. And Colleen and Saadi, they can have a word too. Do you think between them they might be able to persuade her to go through with the wedding?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t?’ Mark was grey before; now he’s so pale he’s practically transparent.
‘I think I have to go to her. I have to be honest.’
‘We are dependent on you being honest?’
‘It’s our only hope.’
‘Well, it’s like I said then. We’re fucked.’
70. Fern
I tell Ben to get out of my room. I don’t expect to sleep, but I need some time to think. My body is aching with tiredness and so, despite my squeamishness about lying on the scene of their treachery, I flop on to my bed. What to do? What to do?
Scott has the decency to look terrible when he turns up in my room. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see him. I can’t imagine a time when I gaped at his image on a calendar, let alone ogled him in the flesh. I wonder whether he’s going to tell me to leave the wedding dress in my closet because he’s coming out of his. After one sneaky glance at him, to check he looks genuinely remorseful, I stare at the ceiling. He sits down on the end of the bed, leans forward and lets his head fall, like a tonne weight, into his hands.
‘Have I a hope of getting back in your heart?’ he asks.
I think about what he’s just said. It sounds oddly familiar and I can’t help but worry whether it’s a lyric from one of his songs, or, worse – someone else’s song. I don’t answer. He moves up the bed towards me. Gently he places his arms around me and I’m so in need of comfort that I allow myself to sink into his chest and start to cry. He rocks me backwards and forwards, patiently waiting for my tears to subside. He thinks it’s the least he can do because he thinks he’s the cause of my tears. But he’s not. I’m crying for Adam. I’m crying with regret at my own actions, not Scott’s.
He whispers, ‘I can’t love you any more than I do right now.’
And that might be true. But it’s not the comfort he wants it to be.
He says he’s sorry. He says it over and over again. He says it so often his voice is hoarse. He hums his songs to me. He kisses my tears away as they fall down my cheek. He asks how he can make it up to me and in the end I start to feel bad about allowing him to shoulder all the blame for my sadness. He talks about his inadequacies and frailties; he reminds me that he warned me he was weak and stupid, he warned me weeks ago.
‘You didn’t tell me I was part of your plan to conquer America,’ I point out.
‘Don’t be like that. Don’t think of it like that. Don’t think of it,’ he pleads
. ‘You understand. You understand me.’
‘Maybe,’ I mutter. And maybe I do. Maybe I understand how you can want something so, so much that you fail to notice the consequences it might have on the people around you. Because isn’t that what I did when I backed Adam into a corner with that damned ultimatum?
‘Don’t go, Fern, don’t leave me on my own,’ he begs.
‘You won’t be on your own, Scott, you’ll be with this ocean of people who wash up every morning. You’ll be with Ben,’ I point out.
‘Ben,’ he mutters. He rolls my friend’s name on his tongue like a delicious sweet. I glance up at Scott and I think I see indisputable regret in his face. What I can’t be sure of is whether the regret is that he slept with Ben or that he won’t have the opportunity to do so again.
Somehow we wiggle about and I find that he’s no longer holding me, I am holding him now. His head is resting on my lap and, as I stroke his hair, it’s easy to forget that he was unfaithful to me, on this very bed, just hours ago. It’s possible to overlook the fact that he’s a mega pop star who needs me to launch his career here in the States. It’s almost feasible to submerge all recollection of the fact that I too have been unfaithful tonight; I begged Adam to take me back. To take me.
I remember being out-of-this-world giddy and irreparably starstruck by Scottie Taylor when we first met, but now I see him for what he is. When he’s lying with his head on my thighs, all I see is a man. A man who is actually a bit boy-like. I try to remember everything we have talked about in the last six weeks. I remember how he described his ambitions and his addictions. He warned me. And I remember that he’s given me the ride of my life, although not quite the ride I was expecting – but at least he wanted me to hitch along. I remember moments when he trusted me, defended me and, right at the beginning, spent lots of time with me. True, we don’t play cards much now, but then I think I know all there is to know about hearts versus diamonds and clubs versus spades. On Santa Monica beach and at the premiere we had a blast.
