Huge TV screens were strategically positioned around the central atrium of Sweetwater, where the signing was taking place. These had been displaying the usual content that ran in a loop in luxury malls: promotional videos for shops and restaurants, catwalk footage of the latest fashion shows, interspersed with fuchsia and gold banners announcing thrillingly that Lexy was signing her book ‘RIGHT NOW IN THE ATRIUM!’ together with a prominent image of the cover of Lexy on the Loose.
No audio accompanied the images, however. Sweetwater had a low-pitched, carefully chosen soundtrack piped through its speakers, calibrated to adjust for different times of day and evening, based on their research into its visitors’ shopping patterns. Now, however, the mood music faded away and was replaced by the very familiar theme tune to the number one reality show in the world, Sugar Girls.
Heads jerked up all around the atrium at the melody: the name of the show was now blazoned on the screens. The theme tune played out, the volume increasing, even though the opening sequence – in which Silantra, Shanté and Summer each popped up in turn, dressed in white and flashing huge smiles in which their perfect pearly teeth were barely visible behind their hugely inflated lips – did not appear. The music was a tease, to catch the attention of every fan of the show. Finally, Silantra’s face and impressive cleavage appeared on screen.
‘Hi Britain, I’m Silantra!’ she said in her hugely well-known sexy purr, and her hardcore fans screamed in excitement at the realization that this was not a clip from an upcoming show, but Silantra actually talking to the gathered crowd.
‘How’re you all doing?’ she asked, and many of them, eyes wide, actually called back: ‘Great!’ or ‘Fine!’ or ‘I love you, Silantra!’ as if she could somehow hear them.
‘So I’ve recorded this clip to say Hi to my new bestie, Lexy! Hey, that kinda rhymes,’ she realized, tilting her head. ‘Bestie Lexy! Hah, you can see this isn’t scripted, yeah? So, like, I hope the book signing went really well, Lexy. I’m like totally psyched to be appearing on your show. And you should come to the States and guest star on Sugar Girls! We had such fun hanging out in London! Everyone, you gotta watch that episode of Lexy’s show.’
Silantra winked, a slow, sexy gesture that was much more significant to Lexy than to anyone else watching. The straight guys present whooped at its sheer eroticism. Only Lexy knew what Silantra meant: if Lexy was willing to spend another wild night with Silantra and her wide array of toys, Lexy would be granted the prize of a guest appearance on Sugar Girls.
It was a huge opportunity. It would open more doors to her in the States than anything else could ever manage. And it was entirely risk-free: there was absolutely no way that Frank would ever in a million years guess that there was a very specific quid pro quo for the tremendous privilege of being in an episode of Sugar Girls. Who would?
Besides, although it wasn’t Lexy’s usual sexual preference, she had thoroughly enjoyed that night with Silantra. It had been great fun; it truly hadn’t even felt like cheating, as it was so removed from her day-to-day life. If she were single, she would do it again in a heartbeat.
But she wasn’t. She was married, and even though she was currently estranged from her husband, she wasn’t going to cheat on him. Which was ironic, considering that she had been perfectly happy to cheat when she had actually been with Frank.
Damn it, this is Doktor Weinstein’s voice in my head, isn’t it? she thought suddenly. In her sessions at Schloss Hafendammer, the doctor had hammered home the point that adults behaved exactly the same way when they were alone as if someone was watching. Children, he had said firmly, sneaked a drink or a cigarette in private, as if it were cheating someone else and not themselves. Adults, however, were able to discipline themselves without the need for observers to keep them in line.
In her sessions with the doctor, Lexy had not talked about her one-night stand with Silantra. It hadn’t even occurred to her as something to feel guilty about, and since it hadn’t been tied into her drinking in any way, it hadn’t seemed relevant.
But it did now.
‘And hey,’ Silantra concluded, ‘don’t forget to watch the new season of Sugar Girls, starting the seventh of September on Bravo TV!’
She waved a theatrical goodbye. It was noticeable that Silantra, whose speech was usually littered with likes and yeahs, was perfectly capable of forming a sentence without either when it came to publicizing her show as clearly as possible.
‘Miss you, Lexy!’ she finished, blowing Lexy a kiss.
The screen flickered and reverted to the usual mall programming. The audience, which was now swelled with the shoppers who had flooded out of boutiques at the sound of Silantra’s voice, was buzzing with excitement. Lowering their phones, they checked the images and videos and excitedly posted them on social media.
I’d kill to be on Sugar Girls, Lexy thought. Funny expression – you say that without thinking. And when you do think about it, you realize that not only wouldn’t you kill, but you wouldn’t fuck someone to get what you want either.
Not any more.
Lexy was growing up, and not before time. She was the mother of a nine-year-old and a four-year-old, for God’s sake. And by Doktor Weinstein’s definition, her choice to turn down the opportunity Silantra was offering truly counted as an adult decision, because Frank would never know that she had made it. ‘Hey, honey, I’m so committed to you that I’m not going to fuck Silantra any more, not even to get on her show,’ was not a line Lexy would ever be using to convince her husband to come back to her.
Lexy had a sudden, vivid picture of one of the Lego towers London loved to build; once they were as tall as he could possibly manage, he would gleefully knock them down and promptly start to rebuild a different one from the same pieces. That was exactly how she felt – as if she too had been torn down, and now was slowly reassembling herself into a very different shape, from the ground up.
Or maybe she was a Transformer! That was an even better metaphor, and of course it also came via London. He was obsessed with those films, could watch them in an endless loop.
She realized, with a half-smile, that her images were entirely drawn from London’s choice of entertainment. That would never have happened just a few weeks ago; back then, she wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what toys her son played with, what films he loved best.
She really had changed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ten days later
‘And the fifth member of the tribe to be voted off the island,’ Pip said, pausing as he looked back and forward between Caroline and Debbi, maximizing the suspense as much as possible as the two women held hands in solidarity, the camera zooming in for a close-up of their tense faces, ‘is . . . Caroline!’
It was no more than Caroline had been expecting. She was frankly lucky, with her terrible reputation and lack of fan following, not to have been voted off first. Only the miracle of her chemistry with Santino had saved her from that fate, she was sure, and she gained considerable points by frankly admitting that in the exit interview with Pip and Dan. Everything they threw at her she acknowledged, taking the potential sting out of each question.
Yes, she said, she was very grateful to have been voted off fifth, not first. No, she hadn’t expected to last this long, not at all! Yes, she couldn’t believe how well she and Santino had clicked. Yes, she agreed with the messageboard commenters that he was completely out of her league. No, she had no expectation that Frank would be waiting for her when she left the island. No, she couldn’t blame him at all for that. Unusually, the interview was much less about the details of life on the island and more about the love triangle between her, Frank and Santino.
This worked perfectly for Caroline. It was the ideal platform to state her case: before nine million viewers, she could explain that she had not started dating Frank before Lexy snogged Deacon and then left for Switzerland, that she had gone to Sandbanks to help take care of the kids and then had got swept away by spending time
with him, but that she now realized it had been a bad decision to date a married man, even a separated one, and that she truly regretted coming between a husband and a wife.
By the time she stepped onto the boat that would take her off the island, Caroline thought she had done very well indeed. Dan and Pip had been so charmed by her willingness to acknowledge her failings that they had even let her mention that she had a book coming out soon: they usually cut off or mocked contestants who tried to promote their projects too openly.
The mainland was drawing close. Standing in the bow of the boat, Caroline could see the assembled press waiting for her at the dock. Of course, Frank was not the ‘friend or family member’ standing on the red-carpeted jetty. She had never expected him to come to Australia. It would have been too public a declaration of their relationship; he wasn’t even formally separated from Lexy.
So Caroline had nominated her older sister Louise instead. Crammed into a too-small house with a husband and three kids, money chronically tight, Louise had naturally jumped at the chance of a child-free, all-expenses-paid holiday in Australia. There she was on the jetty, waving cheerfully, sporting a very British lobster-pink sunburn and wearing an eye-wateringly bright Matthew Williamson for Debenhams kaftan whose lurid greens and oranges would have been better suited to a woman with much darker skin.
‘Oh my God, Caz, look how thin you are!’ she exclaimed as Caroline stepped onto the red carpet.
Louise could not have said anything that would have pleased Caroline more. She could only be called thin by comparison to the weight she had been for most of her adult life; Debbi, for instance, who had started the show at a slim size ten, was now positively skinny after the scant rations they were given, her fake breasts looking like tennis balls bolted onto her ribcage. But this was certainly the thinnest Caroline had ever been in her life, and she was hellbent on not putting on a pound. She couldn’t help being aware that beside her plump sister, she looked even slimmer by contrast.
‘Don’t let me eat anything but steak and salad without dressing while we’re here, okay?’ she whispered in her sister’s ear as they hugged, too quietly for the boom mikes to pick up.
‘But it’s all free!’ Louise said, wide-eyed. ‘Booze too! It’s like fucking paradise here, Caz!’
The journalists were yelling questions about Santino, Frank and Jamie-Lee, the breakout star of this season. Caroline kept smiling as she walked back to the hotel arm in arm with her sister, answering the questions that related to the show while ignoring anything to do with Frank, no matter how many times they shouted his name.
The show lasted for six more days, during which time Caroline managed an entirely carb-free diet. Salad without dressing, grilled protein, an occasional vodka with diet tonic: the fantastic seafood in Australia, the gloriously warm weather, plus the demands of wearing a bikini by the hotel pool, made this diet regime much easier than it was back home. She almost – nearly – just about – if she stood with her legs in a strange contorted way – had the highly coveted thigh gap, and she was determined not to lose that.
Day by day, more contestants trickled back from the island. It became increasingly clear that the top three was going to consist of Joe, Jamie-Lee and Santino, the most attractive and popular members of this year’s cast.
Santino’s three sons flew in, accompanied by his mother and sister-in-law. The two Italian women, as slim and tanned and elegant as Louise was large, brash and sunburnt, were polite to Caroline when they met in the hotel; this happened fairly often, as there was really nowhere else to go but the sprawling grounds of the resort. They did not, however, make any effort to get to know her, and despite Louise eagerly encouraging her to go over and talk to them as they sat by the pool or sipped drinks in the bar, all Caroline’s instincts told her not to force an acquaintance on them when they weren’t seeking it out.
After all, she rationalized, they were doubtless waiting until Santino returned from the island to see how he greeted Caroline – with an affectionate hug that would relegate her to the friend zone, or, as she naturally hoped, a passionate embrace that made the strength of his feelings for her very clear. Happy as she was that he was so popular that the British public kept voting to keep him on the island, the longer she waited the harder it became to see him onscreen, laughing and joking with Joe and Jamie-Lee as easily as if he didn’t miss her in the slightest.
She filled her time with gym workouts and aquarobics classes, and with proofing the manuscript of Bad Girl, which her editor had FedExed to Australia. Re-reading what she had written, all the ways in which she had satirized and parodied Lexy, Caroline could only be glad that things were broken off with Frank, who had not been in touch. She had not realized quite how much fun she had made of her erstwhile employer; there was no question that Frank would be furious at the picture she had painted of the mother of his children.
The day of the finals dawned. Caroline spent the morning first at the gym, then in the hotel beauty salon. The cannier of the women on the show had booked well in advance, knowing that appointments would be in very high demand. As Caroline and Debbi sat side by side in the pedicure massage chairs, watching their feet be buffed to perfection, Debbi babbled non-stop about how excited Caroline must be to see Santino and how romantic it would be to throw herself into his arms.
Having been there right from the start of Santino and Caroline’s island romance, Debbi was hugely invested in its success, and her encouragement was a massive boost to Caroline. By the time she was primped and preened, highlights newly done, false lashes discreetly applied, nails perfect, her weight loss on the island almost completely maintained, Caroline was almost breathless with anticipation, and absolutely sure, with Debbi’s encouragement, that the reunion would be magical.
The eliminated contestants, plus friends and family, gathered in the hotel ballroom to watch the final show. Joe was voted out first, as had been expected. Jamie-Lee and Santino were the bookies’ favourites, with very little to choose between them. While Joe’s parents and brother were down at the jetty greeting him, the final vote was announced: Jamie-Lee was the Queen of the Island.
To everyone’s amusement, Santino’s boys bellowed their disappointment: this was captured by the camera crew, who then panned to Caroline, sitting on the other side of the ballroom, not wanting to seem as if she were trying to ingratiate herself with Santino’s children before she was an official girlfriend. Having been thoroughly dragged through the mud by newspaper columnists for her closeness to Laylah and London, she was not going to make the same mistake again.
As soon as the winner was announced everyone poured out of the ballroom, heading for the dock. Caroline, flanked by Debbi and Louise, felt her heart beat savagely in her chest as she saw the boat carrying Santino draw away from the island, moving ever closer across the narrow strait of water. It was like a scene at the end of a film, the hero returning from a quest: Santino was standing in the bow, balancing with effortless ease, waving with both his arms at his three boys, his mother- and sister-in-law, as if he were semaphoring an urgent message. He was lean as whipcord by now, barely an ounce of fat on his body, his skin tanned so dark that his resemblance to a Native American was even more pronounced.
‘Papa! Papa!’ the boys were screaming happily, and as the boat reached the jetty, the tears pouring down Santino’s face were proof of his joy at being reunited with his sons. He didn’t wait for the boat to be tied up to the mooring. As soon as it bumped against the jetty, he jumped straight onto the red carpet and ran to his boys, dropping to his knees so that he could hug all three of them at once. Many of the observers started sobbing too, the drama so heightened that Santino might have been returning from the wars rather than a reality show on an island just across the bay.
Floods of Italian poured out as the family babbled away to each other. Finally, Santino wiped his face, did the same, with great tenderness, for each of his sons, kissed his mother- and sister-in-law, and then swept the smallest boy up into
the crook of one arm. Turning to walk back to the hotel, his free hand was clasped by both of the older boys. It was the perfect picture of fatherly love.
And now, of course, every head swivelled to Caroline, because they had all seen the father entwined with Caroline for days on end. The cameras focused on her face as she swallowed hard, looking into Santino’s coal-black eyes as he passed her. He nodded as their eyes met, a brief greeting, and then looked straight back at the little boy whose legs were wrapped around his waist, smiling at something his son had said.
That was it. A nod was all she got. He hadn’t mouthed, ‘See you later,’ or even given her a smile or a wink, and now she was watching him walk away from her. Caroline was unable to move, sweat icy in the small of her back. It was as if, if she stayed completely still, if she didn’t even breathe, she could rewind time somehow. Santino would come back, kiss her, draw her into the bosom of his family . . .
‘He’s with his kids,’ Debbi said, doing her best to sound breezy and unworried. ‘He’s got to be with them for a bit.’
‘Yeah, he’ll call you later, once he’s settled in,’ Louise chimed in, making a similar effort to reassure her sister, but her high-pitched tone betrayed her nerves. ‘No worries. Bound to happen!’
Caroline knew everyone was still looking at her, whispers of speculation running around the group, catching fast as wildfire. She mustn’t look defeated or disappointed; it was very likely, after all, that Debbi and Louise were absolutely right.
‘Yeah, bound to happen,’ she echoed, managing a smile.
Caroline knew she had to wait on the dock until the boat brought Jamie-Lee over, looking superbly regal in the golden crown and sceptre given to the King or Queen of the Island, as the cameras were waiting avidly to pick up on any hint Caroline gave of disappointment or heartbreak. Instead, she had to look both poised and delighted for Jamie-Lee’s triumph.
Trumpets played, fireworks burst over the island: escorted off the boat by Pip and Dan, Jamie-Lee walked down the red carpet waving and smiling like a cross between a monarch and a Miss World winner. All attention was on her, mercifully, or almost all; Caroline knew perfectly well that even as they applauded Jamie-Lee, people were still sneaking looks at her, whispering about how odd it was that Santino hadn’t even said hello to her after all of their kissing and canoodling.
Killer Affair Page 39
