‘Tell me about it,’ Gareth said ruefully.
‘So we thought a memoir would be safer,’ she continued, ‘and God knows Lexy’s got enough stories to tell! It wasn’t like Caroline even needed to pad it out.’
‘The bloody ironic thing is, it’s a great read!’ Gareth said in a very annoyed tone, and although she had already been told this, Caroline beamed with pleasure. Authors, it turned out, could not hear too much praise of their work.
‘I mean, this whole thing’s so messed up!’ Gareth moaned. ‘We both had huge doubts about you, Caroline – that’s not a secret, we were very open about it at the time. Lexy insisted, which is also bloody ironic, but she was right. You’ve turned out something that’s honestly much better than I thought it was going to be, and on deadline to boot. You did a really good job, and now you’ve gone and fucked up your own bloody work! It was going to be hard enough pushing a book about Lexy finding true love with you living with her husband. But now we’ve got to deal with the media screaming about her not even writing the book, and here’s your name coming up all over again! How the fuck did that even happen?’
‘Do we know who leaked it to the media?’ Miranda asked.
‘NFI,’ Gareth said. ‘But it wasn’t anyone at Bailey and Hart, I can tell you that. We’ve done tons of ghostwritten books and no one’s ever breathed a word. They know better than that. Apart from anything else, it almost always fucks with the sales figures. It’s not in our interest to tank a book, is it?’
‘Same with us,’ Miranda agreed. ‘No one at my agency would say a thing.’
Gareth drew in a deep breath.
‘Look, Caroline, the main reason for this call is to say that we had you under option to write a follow-up book for Lexy,’ he said, ‘and obviously that’s not going to happen. We’ll send you an official letter to that effect. But that doesn’t mean the confidentiality clause isn’t still in effect. You know that, right? You can’t say a word about this to anyone, or even drop the smallest hint on social media. You keep your mouth shut and let us push the official line, that you helped her out a bit with structure and research, blah blah. I’ll email the press release over to you now so you can see exactly what we’re saying.’
‘Of course,’ Caroline said, sounding as heartfelt as possible. ‘I won’t say a word about it.’
‘Not on your blog either,’ Gareth warned, his tone almost threatening.
‘I haven’t said anything!’ she protested. ‘You can check it out right now! I haven’t updated it for a while. And you can check my Facebook and Twitter too!’
‘Oh, we have, believe me,’ Miranda said. ‘I got Campaspe to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb first thing this morning. You’re clean as a whistle.’
Of course I am! Caroline thought. I’m not stupid! I called the pap agency on Gabriela’s mobile and put on an Eastern European-sounding accent so if anyone ever tried to track down the number, it would look like she did it . . .
She didn’t truly think anyone would go that far; it wasn’t exactly a matter of national security. But she read enough crime novels to know how easy it was to trace calls, or to pay someone at a phone company to look up the name in which a number was registered.
‘So how do you think the press got this info, Caroline?’ Miranda asked, with a certain edge to her voice that Caroline couldn’t quite interpret. It might have been accusatory, or it might have been something else entirely.
‘The only thing I can think of is phone tapping,’ Caroline answered, delighted to be able to give the answer that she had formulated in case anyone asked this very question. ‘I was here the day Frank locked Lexy out, and all the paps saw me come in. If one of them wondered who I was and managed to find out, they could have been tapping my phone for the last month. And we’ve been back and forth a lot about the edits, haven’t we?’
‘Hmn. Well, it’s a theory,’ Gareth said.
‘Look, it is what it is,’ Miranda chimed in. ‘Lexy’s coming in to Bailey and Hart as soon as her plane lands tomorrow, and we’ll see what damage control we can do on all of this. Caroline’s assured us she isn’t in breach of the confidentiality clause, and you’ve told her she obviously won’t be writing any more books for Lexy – as if it needed saying. We’re done here. I’m going out for a real fag, okay?’
‘You wound me,’ Gareth said. ‘I thought I was real fag enough for you, darling!’
Miranda snorted. The leather chair squeaked again, presumably as Gareth leaned forward to terminate the call.
‘Okay, Caroline. Good work on the book,’ he said. ‘Excellent work, actually. Oh, the irony! Bye.’
He hung up before Caroline could say ‘Goodbye’ in turn, but she couldn’t really blame him. Her relationship with Frank alone was enough to make Lexy’s editor irritated beyond all measure.
There was a hollow feeling in Caroline’s stomach. She had, however, been hoping – stupidly, she could see that now – that Gareth might have added that, if she had any ideas for books of her own, he’d be very interested in hearing about them. But clearly that had never been even the remotest of possibilities.
In the pocket of her jeans, her mobile started to vibrate. She pulled it out and saw, with a surge of mingled surprise, excitement and terror, that Miranda was calling her. Had Lexy’s agent guessed that it had been Caroline who had told the press about having written Lexy’s book? But why wouldn’t she have accused her of it five minutes ago, if that was the case?
‘Caroline? Hi. I’m outside now, there’s no one around,’ Miranda said, audibly taking a drag on her cigarette. ‘So, look. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s been going on, okay? No need to confirm things one way or the other. But what I’m seeing here is an author who’s very much in the public eye at the moment, who’s got a lot of self-promotional skills – which, believe me, is key in publishing nowadays – and who can turn a book around really fast.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Caroline said, confused, thinking that Miranda, standing outside the offices of Bailey and Hart, was looking at a writer she knew.
‘I mean you, for fuck’s sake!’ Miranda said impatiently. ‘Can you write another book as quickly as possible? Ideally a novel with a thinly disguised Lexy character in it – think The Devil Wears Prada. Your character is the innocent heroine, she’s the crazy bitch. You couldn’t be her ghost, of course. Maybe you’re the nanny. Or a secretary.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Caroline breathed. ‘You think I could—’
‘You’d have to get it right,’ Miranda said. ‘But the tone could be very like the book you’ve done already.’
Another drag on the cigarette.
‘I couldn’t rep you myself, of course,’ she said, to Caroline’s great disappointment. ‘Or give you to someone else in the agency. That’d be too messy, and Gareth would never forgive me. But there’s someone I used to work with who’d be perfect for this, really commercial, and I owe her a massive favour. No one needs to know I connected you two.’
‘That would be amazing—’
‘Have a think about it, sit down, see if you can knock out a chapter or two ASAP. And an outline. Publishers’ll want to see that much before they’ll give you a contract. But this’d come with a whole raft of built-in publicity, and they always love that in a proposal. You’d have to do a lot of interviews to promote the book, so you’d have to be okay with all of that . . . think it over, I need to go for a meeting with another editor here in a few minutes, so I need to go—’
‘I want to do it,’ Caroline said breathlessly. ‘I want to be a full-time writer. That’s always been my dream.’
‘Easier said than done! But you’ll make more money from this than you did for Lexy’s book, that’s for sure,’ Miranda said. ‘Her name’s Naomi, the agent I know. I’ll give her your info. And if you want this, I’d get going right away. Sit down and start it now. Today. Ideally, the book’ll come out while the scandal’s still fresh in everyone’s minds.’
‘I will! Thanks!
Thanks so much!’ Caroline babbled, before realizing that she was talking to a dial tone. Miranda had hung up.
Caroline put the phone slowly down on the desk, her gaze moving gradually around this room, which had become her cosy nest. Frank’s office was furnished with capacious chestnut leather sofas, a coffee table made from a gilded antique door mounted under a sheet of glass, a huge flat-screen television on the wall, and framed photographs of Frank playing for Kensington and for England, holding high the FA cup, rendered in tasteful black and white, hanging on the walls. The interior designer had made it as much den as office, much cosier than the sprawling living room downstairs, and it was one of his favourite places in the house.
With the children tucked up in bed and the door locked, Caroline and Frank had had sex on one of the sofas last night, taking it as slow as they could, Caroline straddling him, working away with her newly strong, muscled thighs, Frank’s fingers between her legs making her come over and over again as he watched her face contort in pleasure, his dark eyes huge. Just the memory of his hands on her, his soft gaze delighting in the pleasure he was giving her, his cock inside her, hard as a pole, refusing to quit, holding out as long as it could, made her legs twitch together, her centre start to dissolve to a liquid thick and rich as honey. And after they were done, they had walked slowly up to bed together, holding hands, and cuddled in Caroline’s bedroom, spooning for a few hours, until Frank slipped away, as he always did, so that Laylah and London would find him in the master bedroom if they got up early and came to look for their dad.
The sex with Frank was the best Caroline had ever had in her life, as was the relationship she had with him. But if she wrote the book Miranda had proposed, Caroline would sacrifice all of that in one stroke. Frank would never stay with a woman who had published a tell-all about the mother of his children, dragging them even deeper into the tabloid mud.
However, if she didn’t, it was by no means guaranteed that she would eventually find an agent for any other books she might write, let alone get them published. This was her big chance to get her name out there, to write a novel that would reach as many people as possible, show readers that Caroline Macintosh’s name on a book meant a really good read.
And wasn’t this where Caroline had been heading all along? Why else had she tipped off the paparazzi agency that she would be picking the kids up with Frank, and told the media that she was the ghostwriter for Lexy’s book? Caroline had pushed hard to get herself into the news; Miranda hadn’t needed to tell her that publishers loved a book proposal that came with built-in publicity.
In one of the framed photographs of Frank playing football that hung on the wall opposite her, Caroline made out her own reflection, the shape of her head and torso floating, superimposed, over the silhouette of one of Frank’s teammates. Her physical transformation had happened so fast that sometimes she barely recognized herself in the mirror. This was one of those times; the slim-cheeked young woman in a V-necked blouse with smooth straight hair falling around her face looked enviably poised and composed, very different from how Caroline was currently feeling.
She was hugely conflicted. After all, she had been secretly trying to get pregnant during the last few weeks; but looking back, hadn’t that been completely insane of her? She had got wildly carried away, so excited that Frank wanted her that she had jumped right into the fantasy with both feet, seeing herself as the mother of his kids, living here with him, having Lexy’s life. It was the dream she had been incubating ever since she’d visited The Gables for the first time.
Caroline watched as her reflection pursed its lips together, thinking hard. Ever since that first meeting with Lexy, Caroline had been calculating odds and options, working out potential moves far in advance. She hadn’t even known that she was capable of this kind of planning; but then again, wasn’t it very similar to writing a book, plotting it out in advance, like the outline for the novel that Miranda had suggested she write? Ideas for the story were already burgeoning in her mind, seeds germinating in fertile dark soil; she could feel them twist and turn and grow.
Caroline was realizing that having Lexy’s life was actually a twofold proposition. The husband, the home and the family were half the balance, but the other half was her thriving career, which had required Lexy to put so much of her private life on public display. Frank would certainly not want to replace Lexy with a woman who had the same need for publicity as his wife did.
The trouble was that, now she felt relatively attractive, Caroline did have the same need for publicity. Every time she saw her name in print or online, she felt as excited as if she’d taken drugs. Her heart raced, her head span, she felt light and dizzy, and she wanted more. Since the paparazzi photos had broken, she had set up a Google alert for her name and had been glued to her phone. She didn’t care, it turned out, about the snarky journalese pointing out that she was less attractive than Lexy, the comments that called her a homewrecker and a slut.
They knew her name. They were talking about her. That was all that was important. She, who had been nothing, a dowdy, plump drudge picked out by Lexy partly because she was no competition, nicknamed Ghost Mouse for a good reason, was now, in a way, Lexy’s equal!
Caroline knew she wasn’t a great beauty, but she looked pretty enough in the photographs, a woman who it was plausible for Frank to be dating, her hair done, her skin clear. Lexy had forgotten to cancel her offer of her credit card to Caroline for her beauty treatments, and Caroline had happily continued with them at her ex-boss’s expense; after all, Lexy had allowed Caroline to be paid a very meagre sum for working all hours on the book to which Lexy was going to affix her own name.
On meeting Lexy, Caroline had craved what she had: fame, fortune and Frank, the three Fs. But not even Lexy, Caroline was beginning to realize, had managed to hold on to all of those things.
So if Caroline couldn’t have all of them, she wondered, which would she be prepared to sacrifice?
Chapter Thirty
‘What are we going to do?’
Frank stared hopelessly at his wife. They were sitting on sofas in the Chelsea Harbour flat, face to face across the coffee table, an oddly formal way for a married couple to talk to each other. His back was to the big windows that looked over the water below, the boats moored in the shelter of the small marina, and the clear daylight meant that he could see Lexy’s face very clearly. She was make-up free, her hair pulled back, modestly dressed, very much as she had been the day when she had come down to Sandbanks only to find herself surrounded by paparazzi, locked out of her own house.
‘You look pale,’ he found himself saying when she didn’t immediately answer his question.
‘Yeah,’ Lexy said, managing to sketch a smile at her own expense. ‘No sunbeds or spray tans at Schloss Hafendammer! No drink either. And I’ve kicked the fags, you’ll be happy to hear.’
‘That’s great,’ Frank said with huge relief. ‘I always wanted you to do that.’
‘It wasn’t that hard,’ Lexy admitted. ‘No one there smoked, so it wasn’t like you saw someone at it and got a craving. Same with the drink. After a while I stopped even thinking about fags and booze. It was herbal teas and filtered water from morning to night. Honestly, not having coffee was the worst thing of all.’
She managed a grin.
‘I’m really going to watch the drinking now I’m back, I promise. Did you see I lost weight? That’s from not having wine for a month.’
Frank nodded, and a memory of Caroline gently dismissing Lexy’s detox by calling it a diet retreat couldn’t help but pop into his head.
‘It’s like a miracle! No one ever loses weight giving up fags, do they?’ Lexy said lightly. ‘I got bloody lucky, eh? I’ll be sending everyone I know who wants to quit to Switzerland for a month! You can’t nip out to the shops for extra snacks when you get the munchies – you’re stuck up this mountain with them feeding you vegetable soups and tiny little portions of poached fish and making you chew every bite twent
y times.’
‘Doesn’t sound much fun,’ Frank said.
‘It’s not supposed to be fun,’ Lexy said. A slight edge came into her voice. ‘I wasn’t at a spa in the Maldives getting massages every day, Frank.’
‘I didn’t think you were,’ Frank muttered.
Silence fell, and not for the first time. Frank stared down through the glass coffee table at the rug below, a black and white swirling design that he had never much liked. Lexy’s gaze, however, was fixed on him as she tried desperately to read his mind, to work out what he wanted. It was the day after her return from Switzerland, and she had asked him to come up and see her in London: she was unable to bear the idea of asking to come to Sandbanks, only to have him tell her that she wasn’t wanted there because Caroline was in residence.
Frank, however, had taken the request that he come to London as just another sign that Lexy wasn’t committed to their marriage or their children. She had asked after Laylah and London, of course, as soon as he arrived, and said how much she had missed them; but how much did that actually mean?
A very straightforward man, he had never been more conflicted in his life. Although he had resisted the awful, sick temptation to watch the video of Lexy and Deacon getting hot and heavy, the photographs of them together were etched into his memory. What if those images never left him? How was he supposed to deal with that?
He didn’t know how to tell Lexy about these doubts. They were too scary for him to articulate; it was as if speaking them aloud would make them concrete. So he stayed quiet, waiting to hear what she had to say.
‘Look, Frank, I’m not going to make any excuses. I really fucked up. I’m sorry,’ Lexy said, leaning forward, trying to meet his eyes. ‘I wanted to get publicity, like Emily suggested. That’s why I went along with it and didn’t push Deacon off me straight away. But that’s not an excuse, I promise. It’s an explanation. I was a bit pissed, and I got carried away, and I should have come home straight afterwards. I did everything wrong, okay?’
Killer Affair Page 30
