by PJ Adams
She clicked through to the story and was immediately relieved that the only pictures were a PR photo of Ray and an old paparazzi shot of him with his estranged wife Róisín, arm in arm at some red carpet do. She started to read, her throat dry, her heart pounding.
His long-awaited forthcoming album wasn’t the only new thing in Ray Sandler’s life, the story told her. Recently he’d been seen at some discreet megastar haunts with the new love of his life, a mystery beauty with ‘more curves than a Monte Carlo racetrack’.
“Just thought I’d let you know.”
She’d forgotten she was even on the phone, and before she had a chance to respond to Mo the line went dead.
The story was almost completely lacking in specifics, but it was clear that it was referring to L’Auberge. Their private dining room had been tucked away from view, and Emily had barely laid eyes on another customer when they had been there. But all it would have taken was for someone to see them. Someone peering through that archway, someone losing their way to the toilets.
Or a member of staff...
How many staff-members had served them, or passed within view? What had been said in the kitchens?
She went back to the Cans Fans Facebook page and skimmed through the comments. Jealous female fans. Jokes about Ray’s wild past and how anything more than one date counted as a long-term commitment for him. Outraged Róisín groupies – she had been the kind of celebrity wife who either alienated the fans or developed a cult following of her own. Again, just gossip; nothing of substance.
Emily slipped away from her desk and went down to the street to call Marcia. This wasn’t the kind of chat that could easily be disguised as a business call.
§
“It’s all over the place,” she said into her phone. “Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter. Everywhere. What if they identify me? What if Thom finds out? What if all the fuss scares Ray off? He’s so edgy when it comes to attention from the press. And the stories... Why do they keep calling me curvy? I’m not fat, damn it. I’m hourglass. There’s a difference.”
“In. Two. Three. And out. Two. Three.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Hey: ‘mystery beauty’. While you’re busy obsessing over the digs at your curves, you’re completely ignoring the ‘mystery beauty’. Hell, girl, I’d go with that any day of the week.”
“Are you reading it now?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Do you think it’s bad? Is this going to wreck everything?”
“You listen to me, Emily. Are you listening? Good. Just what exactly are you scared it’s going to wreck? You and Thom have been history for the longest time now. You’ve got an exciting new man and up until you grabbed him he was free and very single. So people are talking: so what? Enjoy the ride, my lovely. The only person threatening to wreck things here is you and all your worrying.”
§
Back at her desk, she read through the main story once again. Marcia was right. She just had to deal with this. Suck it up and enjoy the ride.
After hesitating forever, she texted him.
We still on for Saturday? E xx
She waited nervously for the response. What if all this scared him off?
She kept checking her phone. Kept reminding herself that he was in Berlin on business. He’d be in meetings, he’d be entertaining and being entertained. He might even be on a flight back by now – she didn’t know his schedule. There was any number of reasons why he might not reply immediately.
Finally, almost two hours later, her phone buzzed with his answer:
Of course. Why wouldn’t we? ;-) Rxx
9
She went to Kayleigh’s house. Uncle Bill was there, quiet and unassuming in his grief. Just wanting to make things work for his daughter. Emily sat with her cousin in the conservatory and went through the lists, making sure everything had been done, checking off all the last-minute details. She’d just kind of assumed this role. She wasn’t even a bridesmaid, but they all had their own roles and now that Helen was gone... Someone had to step in.
“She really had everything organized, didn’t she?” said Emily.
Kayleigh smiled. Her mother had recorded everything in meticulous detail, with lists and timelines all set out for the run-up to the wedding.
“She was a phenomenon,” Emily said. In fact everything was so well organized that her role here was more a gesture of solidarity than anything else. “You are too, Kayleigh. It takes balls to do what you’re doing.”
“It’s what she’d have wanted,” said Kayleigh. Then she went on: “Anyway. You. What’s with all the messages? Is there something you’ve been meaning to tell me?”
Emily faltered. She’d thought she was being discreet, just checking her phone occasionally to see if Ray had been in touch, or Marcia, or even Thom. She wasn’t checking it all the time. She smiled, raised her eyebrows in her best attempt at an innocent look, and said, “No. No secrets. Just a lot going on, that’s all.”
“Damn. I was hoping for gossip. Feels like my head’s full of nothing but weddings and funerals at the moment and I’m not even in a Richard Curtis film.”
They laughed, they hugged, and Emily tried not to feel guilty at having been so distracted, and at misleading her cousin and generally not living up to the standards of her late Aunt.
§
She grabbed a sandwich at the station and ate it on the train into the city, then, after a twenty minute cab ride, she was stepping out in front of Ray’s house.
This was a very genteel part of the city. Leafy trees lined the street, each surrounded by its own tight ring of iron railings, like an unforgiving leg-brace. More iron railings separated the rows of immaculately restored Victorian houses from the street, marking off a drop down to the basement level. The railings were interrupted by flights of stone steps which led up to column-flanked front doors, the wood of each painted the same deep blue and with identical brass knockers and fittings.
It felt odd, standing here like this. She felt exposed and out of place.
She peered around, but the street was quiet. Just a low-slung sports car cruising past and over on the far side an elderly couple walking painfully slowly, minding their own business.
When she looked back at the house he was standing there in the now-open doorway, studying her, smiling, waiting.
“Aren’t you worried the press will be watching?” she asked, still not approaching, allowing this moment to draw itself out.
He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Don’t worry about the press,” he said. “They’re like flies. Sometimes useful flies, but bugs nonetheless.”
He blew so hot and cold. So often he was the one stressing about the press and yet now he seemed prepared to dismiss them.
She approached the steps, and started to climb, slowly. She felt like a fish being drawn in by those dark eyes.
She reached the top, one pace away from him, her eyes locked on his, and kept right on walking.
She pressed against him, and took another step, forcing him backwards until he came up against the doorframe and now she was squashed against him and her mouth found his and, body hard against body, they kissed, not a care in the world for the fact that they were in an open doorway on a public street and they were supposed to be being discreet.
It was a release, a wave washing over her. She realized that she was undergoing some kind of transition, that Ray’s world was becoming her world and that the other world – Thom, work, day to day reality – was rapidly retreating. This was what mattered to her now. This was what was real.
Inside. The door fumbled closed behind them, and they stood in each other’s arms, clinging on tightly.
“I’ve missed you.” Stupid. It had only been two days. But two days when she had felt as if she was being swallowed back into her old life, into Thom’s life.
“I’m here.”
He released her, reached down for her hand, and led her through to the front room. She hadn’t been in here
before. The floor and walls were painted white, stark contrast to black leather furniture, and the dark wood of an upright piano. The only color in the room came from the scuffed chestnut body of a well-used and clearly well-loved acoustic guitar propped up on a stand against the far wall.
The room looked cold, as if it had been done out as some kind of photo-set: an arty illustration of how rock stars live. There was a big, framed black and white print hanging on one wall: an industrial landscape of broken-windowed warehouses and burnt-out cars.
Odd, how sharply a mood could change.
“‘Useful flies’?”
He looked puzzled, and went to stand by the window, leaning with his back against the frame.
“You said the press were like flies: ‘sometimes useful flies’.”
He shrugged. “You learn to use them,” he said. “That’s what Mo does. He’s a master at dripfeeding them stories so they think they’re doing all the work. He’s the master of spin.”
She almost left it at that.
She knew that’s what Mo did. She knew all about the ghost accounts Mo used to manage the social media feeds, steering and building stories that kept Ray’s and the Cans’ profiles high when they needed it.
But he glanced away. He wouldn’t hold her look.
She’d known Ray behave like this before: those moments when something special was happening and they’d both sensed it and they’d both been unnerved by the sudden intensity of feeling. But this was subtly different: he was looking away because he was uncomfortable about something.
“The stories,” she said, approaching the subject cautiously. “Those journalists who got into the Roxette show. Just how accidental was that?”
That shrug again. The same evasive look: briefly at her and then away. Why did she suddenly feel like the grown-up here? She didn’t like this new dynamic between them. Didn’t like that it had sprung up out of nowhere like this.
“Or were they invited by Mo? Was it all part of the PR job he’s doing for the new album?”
“It’s what happens,” said Ray. “It’s how the business works.”
“So why were you so angry about it?”
“Because I didn’t know. Because Mo had just gone off and done what he thought needed to be done and didn’t tell me there were hacks in the crowd. It wasn’t meant to be like that.”
“And the story that appeared online on Thursday? ‘Curvy lurv for Ray. He’s back in the game!’ What about that? Was that him, too? Was that just part of the game? Am I just part of the game? What is this, Ray? I never did know what you could possibly see in me...”
“No! You have such a low opinion of yourself. You blow me away, Emily. Right from the first time I set eyes on you in the crowd. Do you know what it’s been like? Right now I should be focused, committed, but instead you’ve set my head spinning and all I can think of is you. You don’t know what I see in you? I see everything I could ever want. I see a beautiful person. I see the woman I long for. I see my dreams.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Like I’ve possessed you.”
He looked hurt. He looked like everything was bottled up and he was about to explode. A man accustomed to being in control who now did not know what to do or say. Rocking from foot to foot, he opened his mouth, then closed it. Opened it again.
“You have,” he said softly. “Possessed me. Obsessed me. Become the focus of everything. And you know what? I love it.”
She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. She didn’t know what she wanted. All at the same time.
He came to her, reached out, put his hands on her arms and drew her in against him so that she could breathe his scent, feel the solidity of his lean body, hear the thudding of his heart as she tucked her head into the hollow between neck and shoulder.
“I love you, Emily. This isn’t a game. It isn’t a ploy. I love you.”
10
She should have said it back. That was what you did, right? Guy says he loves you, it’s only polite you say the same.
You shouldn’t hesitate. You shouldn’t still have that tiny part of your mind saying, Wait up, Emily, what if this really is all just some kind of ploy, a bit of a fling to feed the gossip mill?
That tiny voice that’s always determined to question everything, undermining anything that might be good in your life.
The tiny voice that stops you from saying the words that rush to the surface. I love you, Ray.
And then the moment had slipped away and she was still standing there, tucked into his tall frame, and he was holding her, and they were both wondering–
§
“So where did that come from?”
She looked up into those dark eyes. “Everything’s moving so fast,” she said, knowing that wasn’t the complete explanation. “I think I know where I stand and then I don’t. And I don’t like feeling as if I’m being manipulated. I have enough at stake in my life without having to worry about whether I’m being used or not.”
He nodded, then stepped back and guided her down to the big, dark sofa where he sat with one leg tucked up under him so he could turn to face her, holding her hands in his.
“You’re not being used,” he said. “And this isn’t a game. I’m dead serious. That story in the press... I don’t know. It could have been Mo. He pulls that kind of shit every so often if he thinks it might help ‘build the buzz’, as he puts it. I’ll ask him. It could have been someone else. Your friend Marcia knows about us: maybe she’s been indiscreet. Or maybe someone saw us: Caffè and L’Auberge are public places, after all – we could have been spotted at either of those. But I’m not fooling with you, Emily. I know what’s at stake. You have to believe that.”
Hesitant, she nodded. “I do have to believe that,” she said, knowing that if she didn’t, then what did that leave? “I’m sorry.” She had to try to explain. “I do believe you. It’s just... my head’s spinning. I can’t concentrate. I just leap from thought to thought.”
His words from moments ago came back to her then: Right now I should be focused, committed, but instead you’ve set my head spinning and all I can think of is you.
What she was feeling was what he was feeling, only he’d put it so much better.
I love you.
She’d been staring at her hands, clasped in his, but now she looked up at him. “Hold me,” she said. “Hold me, and don’t ever stop.”
§
“So how was Berlin?”
This afternoon hadn’t gone quite how she had anticipated. How long had they been sitting like this? Settled back into that deep sofa, her head on his chest, just being together, no words. Letting that awful tension that had come from nowhere pass.
Maybe it was seeing Kayleigh and Uncle Bill this morning that had put her in this strange mood. Organizing the wedding while the funeral loomed; planning a future that wouldn’t include Kayleigh’s mother, Bill’s wife. Such an awful, awful thing.
“Berlin? Have you ever been? I always think it’s one of the strangest cities in the world. Place looks like a building site, even this long after the Wall came down. It’s stark and austere, but they’re some of the coolest, most creative people on the planet. Or some of them are, at least.”
“And the rest of them?”
“Sadly, they’re the ones I do business with.”
There was a tension in the way he held himself now. It was a shift she had learned to recognize. Ray was a man who didn’t like to lose control of things, didn’t like being pushed around, didn’t like it when he didn’t know for sure what was happening. It was why he could record an album in twelve days straight and then spend months mixing and tweaking the recordings, because he wanted to get it just right.
“Mo said it was TV people you were seeing?”
“TV. Record company crew came along for the trip. They all want a piece. There’s a lot at stake with this new album. I’m a lot of people’s pension plan and they all want to call the shots. And everyone tells me I have to just go a
long with it all. I haven’t been this much of a corporate whore since I was a nineteen year-old kid from nowhere on the cusp of breaking through.”
“When all you really want is to make music, right?”
He looked at her, as if he thought she was teasing, or mocking, but then relaxed when he saw she wasn’t.
“I don’t need all this.”
“So what do you need? Why are you flying to Berlin and jumping through the corporate hoops again? Do you need the money? Is that what this is about?”
He snorted a laugh. “No,” he said. “Ray Sandler Inc isn’t about to run dry.”
“So why are you doing it? To prove a point?”
“Is this what you do? In your business consultancy? I bet you’re good.”
“I’m very good.” They were both smiling now. “I’m very very good.”
“Oh, I know!”
They kissed. Slow and tender.
“So what would your advice be?” asked Ray, as Emily settled her head on his chest again. Such an intimate way to be: half-sitting, half-lying like this.
“I wouldn’t give advice yet,” she said. “I could offer you some truisms, of course, like try to understand what you can control and learn to let go of what you can’t. Treat people well. Try to dictate the pace and the rules. That kind of thing. But you can get that kind of advice anywhere. What I do is work my way into your business mindset, understand it from the inside. I’d keep asking questions until I understood what made Ray Sandler Inc work, or not work.”
“So ask.” He’d moved a hand to the back of her head now, the thumb gently stroking the nape of her neck, sending thrills right through her.
“Why are you doing it?”
“‘It’?”
“This comeback. You say it’s not for the money, and yet you’re frustrated because you’re being pushed around by the people who do control the money. Why?”
There was a long pause while he thought about her question, then he said, “Because that’s how the business works?” His answer had turned into a question, because he clearly didn’t understand his own motivations.
