Stolen Beginnings

by Susan Lewis

  Jodi’s mouth curved in a slow, patronising smile. ‘If I told you all I know, Marian, you wouldn’t go to jail, you’d probably die. We both would.’

  Marian suddenly wanted to laugh. Not only was New York like a movie set, but its people were like movie stars. Nobody would ever say anything like that in real life, and mean it. ‘Die?’ she repeated, unable to stop herself grinning.

  Jodi’s face was frighteningly solemn as she nodded. ‘Oh, sure. A lot did, Marian. A lot did, and Olivia . . .’

  ‘Olivia what?’ And when Jodi didn’t answer, ‘Was the newspaper editor one of the dead?’

  Jodi showed no surprise. ‘So you know about him. Sure, he was one.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Marian said, after a pause. ‘That he – the editor, I mean – well, I think he probably told someone else on the paper what he knew.’

  Jodi’s head snapped up. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Startled by the response, Marian went on carefully, ‘They usually do, don’t they? Tell a colleague they trust? Especially if it’s something . . .’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong this time.’

  ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’ Suddenly Jodi was on her feet. ‘Look, I know I said I was free this morning, but something came up at the last minute. I’m sorry, but I gotta go out.’

  Marian stood up, her eagerness deflated by the abrupt dismissal. But then she remembered that she was now able to confirm that there was a cover-up, though of what she still had no idea. More importantly, she was now convinced that the editor had told someone else. The question was, how on earth could she find out who?

  She smiled as Jodi handed her her coat. ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said.

  Jodi waited while Marian buttoned her coat, then walked her to the lift. When Marian was inside Jodi pressed her finger on a button and held the doors open. ‘I’ll call you at your hotel tonight,’ she said. ‘There’s someone you should talk to. The guy’s gone to ground, he’s running scared. I don’t even know if he’ll talk to you. But if he will, before I give you his name I want you to think long and hard about whether you want to go through with this. You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger, Marian.’

  The use of her name sent a cold chill down Marian’s spine. ‘But what about you?’ she asked. ‘Won’t it be the same for you?’

  ‘Sure. But like everyone else in this town, I love Frank and Grace. They don’t deserve what’s happened to them and I wanna help.’ She smiled. ‘Do yourself a favour, Marian, and don’t tell anyone you’ve been here today, it’ll be safer that way for both of us. And if I’m asked, I’ll deny it.’ She let the button go, and as the doors started to slide quietly together she said, ‘I’ll call you, but my advice is, take the easy way out. Go back to England and forget you ever heard the name Olivia Hastings.’

  As Marian stepped outside into the cool, dank air of Park Avenue she glanced up at the apartment building, half expecting it to have disappeared. For days she had felt as though she was drifting through a preposterous illusion. Nothing seemed to surprise her, confound her or even alarm her because she was unable to attach any credibility to anything she was told. In fact, since Jodi had suggested her life might be in danger, she’d given up trying to make any sense out of it. It was all just too absurd.

  Shrugging, she walked off down the street and hailed a cab to take her to the New York City Library. Once there, she buried herself in the newspapers of five years ago. Yet still, when hours later she finally resurfaced and wandered out into the dismal, cloudy evening, she was no closer to accepting that people like those she’d been reading about could possibly be bothered with someone as lowly as her. She felt as though she had been reading a kind of detective novel in which she had to come up with the solution herself. So she saw no harm in having written down the name of the editor who had died, the telephone number of the paper, and a list of the journalists who had worked on it at that time.

  By the time she reached the hotel, it was night. That did surprise her, mainly because she must have been walking in the dark without realising, and also because it seemed only an hour ago that Tony had hailed her a cab to take her to see Jodi. She glanced at her watch, and almost simultaneously her stomach started to rumble. It was just after seven o’clock. She’d look in on Bronwen to see how the meeting had gone with Matthew and Deborah Foreman, then she’d get a sandwich sent up to her room.

  When she reached Bronwen’s room she was on the point of knocking when the door suddenly swung open and Matthew, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his coat, careered into her.

  Quickly she bit her tongue to stop herself crying out at the pain of his foot on hers, and was about to apologise for being in the way when he suddenly grabbed her shoulders.

  ‘Where in God’s name have you been?’ he cried. ‘Bronwen’s been half out her mind with worry. I was just about to go out looking for you.’

  ‘Me?’ Marian asked stupidly.

  He rolled his eyes, then letting her go, he stood back and motioned her into the room.

  ‘Where’s Bronwen?’ she asked, when she saw the room was empty.

  ‘Where do you think? Out combing the streets in a taxi. Where the hell have you been all day?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make anyone worry. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘All over, really.’

  ‘All over where?’

  ‘New York.’

  He sighed. ‘I know New York, but where? The doorman said you took a cab to the Upper East Side.’

  She shrugged, then cowering away from his forbidding black eyes, she turned to stare at the window.

  ‘Marian, I think you’d better tell me exactly what you’ve been up to today.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t been up to anything.’

  ‘Then why did you go to Jodi Rosenberg’s apartment?’

  She flinched, but stayed mutinously silent.

  ‘Marian,’ he said, ‘look at me.’ When she didn’t, he put a finger under her chin and lifted her face. Then pronouncing each word with harsh deliberation, he said, ‘What did you think you were doing going to Jodi Rosenberg’s apartment?’

  To her horror, her mouth started to tremble and tears pricked at her eyes. Then suddenly she was shouting. ‘I hate you! You’re always nasty to me just because I’m ugly. Well, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t got feelings.’ She gasped, hardly able to believe what she’d said.

  For a moment he looked startled, then he threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘So the mouse squeaks.’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’

  He held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. No, you’re right, I shouldn’t call you that. But I meant timid, not ugly. And where in heaven’s name did you get the notion I was nasty to you because you were ugly? Which, incidendy, you’re not.’

  She looked at him blankly, and again he laughed.

  ‘You’re patronising me now,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not a child, and I resent being treated like one.’

  ‘Then stop damned well behaving like one. Why did you go to Jodi Rosenberg’s apartment?’

  ‘If you must know, I did it for you. I did it to try and prove to you that I wasn’t a miserable little nobody. I thought if I could find something out that would work for your film, you might be a bit nicer to me.’

  He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, then before he could answer she said, ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’m tired and hungry, so I’m going to my room.’

  She moved swiftly past him, but he was even quicker. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said, grabbing her arm. ‘You’re going to give me a proper answer.’

  ‘Stop treating me like a child,’ she seethed.

  ‘Then answer me!’

  ‘I went to Jodi’s apartment to find out why she said that Olivia was evil,’ she spat.

  ‘And did it ever occur to you to wonder why Bronwen didn’t pursue that herself?’
>
  She’d already taken a breath to answer, but as that had never occurred to her, her mouth fell silently closed. She shook her head.

  ‘Was she in? Did you speak to her?’

  ‘No and no.’

  ‘Are you telling me the truth?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then it’s lucky for you that she wasn’t. You can’t go around dabbling in this sort of thing, Marian. It’s not a game, it’s serious, and dangerous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know the answer to that. There’s been a massive cover-up in this town to conceal what really went on before Olivia disappeared. Now Bronwen’s told me about the ideas you came up with earlier, they’re excellent, and as far as we are concerned, we leave it at that. OK? We’re film-makers, not detectives.’

  ‘But don’t you want to know what happened to Olivia?’

  ‘Of course. Everyone does, Frank Hastings most of all. But leave the spade-work to him, Marian, and don’t attempt anything like that again – especially not for me.’

  Suddenly she was so choked with misery that she couldn’t speak, and terrified she might break down in front of him, she shot to her feet and ran out of the room.

  ‘It’s OK, cariad,’ Bronwen said later, ‘it was my fault. I got you all worked up with curiosity and it was only natural you should do what you did. But I thought Stephanie had told you . . . I should have told you. I didn’t take what Jodi said any further because, you see, it was enough. To have pursued it might have meant putting not only us in danger, but Jodi too. Frank explained all this to us right at the start – don’t dig too deep, he said. Of course, just like you, my own curiosity made me want to, but my sense of self-preservation stopped me. Something very nasty’s been going on in this town, but there are a lot of very influential people involved, that much we know, so that’s where we must leave it.’

  Marian looked at her, wanting to tell her that she had seen Jodi, but she couldn’t. She’d promised Jodi, and after all, Jodi hadn’t actually told her anything. And when Jodi called later she would simply tell her that she had decided to take her advice to leave things alone.

  ‘Now, are you coming down to dinner?’ Bronwen said. ‘Matthew wants to buy you a drink to say he’s sorry for upsetting you.’

  Marian smiled. ‘Is that what he said? Well, please thank him for me, but tell him I’ve already ordered some dinner to be brought up to my room and then I’m going to bed.’

  ‘As you like. I’ll tell him the lady has pride and can’t be bought off that easily, shall I?’

  Marian giggled. ‘Yes, you tell him that.’

  By the time the phone rang at half-past nine Marian was asleep, but the moment she heard Jodi’s voice she was alert. She started to tell her that she’d decided to take her advice and didn’t want to know any more about Olivia, but Jodi interrupted.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He won’t speak to you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Marian answered, aware of the tension seeping from her body.

  ‘So can we forget today ever happened?’

  ‘It’s already forgotten.’ And when the line went dead, Marian got out of bed, fumbled in her coat pocket for the notes she’d taken at the library, and tore them to shreds.

  It was some time before she fell asleep again, but when she did, it was with a smile at the memory of Matthew telling her she wasn’t ugly.

  – 11 –

  ‘My feet are killing me,’ Madeleine groaned. ‘Why don’t we go and get a coffee somewhere?’

  ‘What a wonderful idea,’ Shamir sighed. ‘I think we’ve successfully managed to buy up Bond Street, so I’d say we deserve one.’

  They looked around at the expensive shops, and when nowhere seemed to offer itself, Shamir hooked her arm through Madeleine’s and started to walk her towards Grafton Street. ‘We’ll go to Brown’s Hotel,’ she said, ‘they do a terrific afternoon tea there and I’m starving.’

  ‘It’s not far, is it?’ Madeleine wailed.

  ‘No, just round the corner in Dover Street.’

  ‘Bastard!’ Madeleine screeched as a taxi swerved into a puddle and soaked them up to the knees.

  ‘I swear he did it on purpose,’ Shamir snapped crossly, kicking off her shoes and emptying out the grimy water.

  They had met several times since the day Madeleine had gone to the Marmoth Studios to do her shots for The Sun, and since at first the two of them were doing quite different kinds of modelling, they had become friends rather than rivals. Then Madeleine’s success had started to blossom and she began taking on the same kind of work as Shamir – the occasional fashion show, a TV commercial for a soft drink and another for a shampoo, a series of advertisements for underwear – but their closeness had unexpectedly continued. The world they moved in was not only highly competitive, but bitchy, devious and downright cut-throat at times, so that Madeleine was extremely proud of their friendship, particularly since Shamir had a reputation for being not simply aloof, but thoroughly supercilious. But though she was dubbed by some the Queen Bitch, Madeleine felt that she had come to know the other side of her that was occasionally shy, always self-critical, and often inordinately generous – as she was with her compliments on Madeleine’s glamour work.

  Madeleine had appeared in Men Only and Playboy so far, but there were features to come in other magazines that had not yet gone to press. Since she had appeared as the centrefold in Men Only letters had poured in by the sack-load, and she, Deidre and Shamir spent hours giggling, and very often blushing, at what her fans proposed to do to her should they be lucky enough to get their hands on her. At night she would recite some of the letters to Paul in a way that made it sound as though the readers’ fantasies were a reality, and the savagery with which he made love to her as a result would leave her reeling from such violently sated lust. But she would never, no matter who the man or what the situation, be truly unfaithful to Paul. He was the focal point of her life, nothing was as important to her, not even her steady rise to fame. She was as devoted to him as any one person could be to another, and despite his unpredictable temper – which meant that he could be savagely cruel as well as wonderfully kind – she believed him when he told her that he loved her just as much as she did him.

  ‘OK, here we are,’ Shamir declared a few minutes later. ‘And I’m going to stuff myself rotten.’

  ‘All right for those who can,’ Madeleine griped, as she followed her into the hotel.

  ‘Well, some of us aren’t blessed with deliciously voluptuous figures,’ Shamir pointed out. ‘Instead we carry the curse of the great god bean-pole, whose only blessing is that we can eat cakes. Now, where shall we sit?’

  As a waiter showed them to a sofa in the corner, every eye in the room followed their progress. It would have been difficult to say which of them was the more striking. They both wore loose, trench-style raincoats, jeans and white polo-neck sweaters – a coincidence that had made them laugh when Madeleine picked Shamir up from her Kensington apartment earlier – but while Shamir had her mass of thick black hair curled into a knot at the back of her head, Madeleine’s was loose and straight and fell around her shoulders like a shimmering fountain of white gold.

  They dumped their bags on the floor, and Madeleine would have kept her coat on but for the trio of businessmen who were sitting at a table in the opposite corner, watching them. She shrugged off the coat and gave her shoulders a quick jiggle before sitting down, which elicited an extremely satisfactory response from the three men.

  Shamir sighed. ‘You really should wear a bra sometimes, Maddy. Your boobs are too big, and they’ll start to droop if you aren’t careful.’

  ‘I know,’ Madeleine answered, ‘but Paul doesn’t like me wearing a bra. He says when he wants me, he wants me now, and not after he’s fumbled about with hooks-and-eyes, and straps and whalebones.’

  ‘But you’re out shopping, you could have worn one today.’

  ‘If I had one! He threw them all away when we moved t
o London.’

  Shamir smiled fleetingly. ‘You’ll need one if you’re going to buy that dress you were trying on in Chanel.’ she said.

  Madeleine picked up the menu. ‘I’m not too sure about that dress, actually – but I need something to wear for this charity ball at the Grosvenor. Are you going, by the way?’

  ‘Can’t. I’m off to Turkey to do a video for a holiday company the day after tomorrow. They’re paying a fortune, you know. You ought to get Deidre to organise one for you.’

  ‘She’s asked me to pop in later, I’ll ask her then.’ But Madeleine doubted if she would, she knew that Deidre was handling her career in her own way and didn’t much relish interference. But Madeleine couldn’t admit to Shamir that she was paying Deidre rather than the other way round. Of course, she received the occasional fee for her work, but Deidre kept the money to use as an incentive to magazines to change their front covers at the last minute, or to encourage newspapers to include her and Paul in their gossip columns.

  After Shamir had ordered she turned in her seat to face Madeleine. ‘Now tell me all about this cosmetic range,’ she said. ‘It sounds fascinating. No – first tell me when your commercials are going out.’

  ‘Apparently the shampoo one starts next Wednesday. I’m still not sure about the other.’

  Shamir nodded. ‘Sometimes it takes ages before they reach the screen. Still, as long as they do . . . Have you seen the edited versions yet?’

  ‘Of the shampoo, yes. It’s fantastic. We shot it at Holmes Place, you know, the health club in the Fulham Road. I got a free membership out of it.’

  ‘Oh, I did something there, ages ago now. Can’t even remember what it was, but they gave me a membership too. They’ve got a swimming pool, haven’t they?’

  ‘That’s where we shot the commercial, in the pool. Did I tell you, there was this bloke in it too, all he had to do was put his arms round me at the end – outside on the street. Could he get it right? He was fantastic to look at, but queerer than a nine-bob note. I was obviously such a turn-off he couldn’t bear to touch me. And I can tell you, the feeling was mutual. Ugh! I don’t like queers, do you?’