Killer Affair

by Rebecca Chance

  In Caroline’s defence, she had never visited the spa before. She had simply dashed around a corner, seen a swimming pool and followed an irresistible impulse to throw Lexy into it. In a normal pool, Lexy would have tipped in, thrashed around in the heavy robe, then either been fished out or managed to unwind herself from its folds. Caroline was quite unaware of the silver bars lying dangerously in wait below the surface of the bubbling water. As Lexy toppled in, her head and shoulder hit the bars with an audible smash. Bouncing off them, she sank like a stone to the floor of the pool.

  Caroline screamed, as did the woman in the pool. The man was sitting up, struggling against the force of the jets to climb off the bed and help Lexy. Caroline dropped to her knees, looking down into the water. Everything was black, however: the walls, the floor, the tiles of the pool. All she could see was the white robe, heavy with water, billowing dramatically against the black background, blown back and forward by the jets; on either side of it were silver bars, and Caroline couldn’t see how to climb down without stepping on a possibly unconscious Lexy.

  The thought that she had injured Lexy, who might actually be lying at the bottom of the pool, knocked out, bleeding, starting to drown – that Caroline could be arrested and charged for what she had just done – was racing through her mind with such terror that she could barely breathe. So when, from the white folds a figure arose, black hair plastered to her face like something from a horror film, dripping with water, the robe discarded, one swimsuit strap slipping down from her shoulder, almost completely revealing one recently enhanced, artificially perky 34DD breast, Caroline barely had time to gasp in shock at the apparition as the creature reached up, sunk its hands into Caroline’s hair and dragged her into the water.

  Caroline tumbled in awkwardly, rapping her ankle so hard on one of the bars that it immediately started to throb. As soon as she hit the water, the robe she herself was wearing weighed her down like a wet blanket, slowing down all her movements. The pool, it turned out, wasn’t deep, and she got one foot under her, unable to stand on the injured one. She brought her fist up to hit Lexy under the jaw, but, since she was trying to undo the tightly knotted belt of her robe with the other hand, neither attempt was successful.

  The next thing Caroline knew, the iron grip on her hair changed: Lexy’s hands flattened on the top of her victim’s head, and, Caroline’s face was pushed underwater. She flailed frantically, her hands coming up to try to grab Lexy’s arms, nails digging in, trying to force Lexy to let go. Air bubbled from her nose and mouth, and she swallowed some water, her body convulsing as she choked on it. Her eyes bulged out in panic. No matter how deeply she sank her nails into Lexy’s arms, the grip on her hair didn’t budge. Lexy had Caroline exactly where she wanted her and wasn’t planning to let her up any time soon.

  Caroline had been underwater for long enough that her breath had run out. She had barely a few seconds left before her bursting lungs compelled her to take in water. In a last-ditch attempt to force Lexy to let go of her hair, she charged forward as best she could in the completely saturated robe, ramming her head into Lexy’s chest.

  Lexy staggered back and let go of Caroline’s head. Caroline bent her knees and pushed upwards with everything she had. After the months of running on the damp sand of Studland beach, her legs were solid muscle, twin pistons driving her torso up as her head broke the surface, water flowing off her eyes, her nose, her mouth – she was dragging in a long, agonized breath, the effort ripping at her lungs. There was a rasping noise in her ears that she realized was her own body: she sounded like a rusty old tractor trying to start up.

  But she was breathing air, not water! Around her, she felt pushing and shoving, other bodies cramming in between the bars. Her scalp was aching. She stumbled and felt a body behind her, raised a hand to wipe water from her face, and saw Lexy with her hair matted to her forehead and arms pinned to her sides, the man who had been on the bubble bed gripping on to her to hold her still as she struggled against him. Her left breast had popped completely out of her swimsuit by now, and a considerable part of the right one, but she seemed completely unembarrassed by this. In fact, as she writhed to get free, it was the poor man holding her who was rearing back, doing his best not to touch her impressive bosoms.

  Someone caught Caroline, restraining her too, and as the pounding in her lungs began to lessen, she looked around to see, to her great surprise, that it was a fully clad man, his clothes sodden, his expression contorted with embarrassment.

  ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘I’m the spa manager, and you’re going to have to leave this area immediately, I’m afraid—’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  The woman on the bed was pointing at Lexy, her voice hysterical as she exclaimed in a heavy Russian accent:

  ‘She’s bleeding! Look at her! It’s all over her head!’

  The dark decor of the spa, the black-tiled pool, the dim underwater lighting, meant that the people in the water were shadowy silhouettes to each other. The woman sitting up, however, could see by the light of the fireplace what the others did not: that it was not water matting Lexy’s hair to her head, but blood.

  ‘It’s going in the water!’ the woman shrieked. ‘Oh my God! François, let go of her! You could get it on you! I feel sick!’

  François did let go of Lexy, who, frowning, put a hand up to the side of her head. Clearly, the adrenalin rush of attacking Caroline had meant that Lexy had failed to realize how badly she had been hurt when she hit the bars falling into the pool. Her hand came away smeared with blood.

  Lexy stared at her palm. It was as if a wide brush had been dragged over it, thick with red paint, glossy and slick. Slowly, she probed her head, feeling for the extent of the damage that had been done when she landed on the bars, realizing for the first time that her shoulder was stiff and bruised as well. Her fingers touched her skull, probed around, and located a deep dent into which her index and middle finger sank right up to the base of her nail.

  With blood dripping down her cheek, dark drops falling one after the other from her chin to her bare breast, her fingers exploring a terrifying indentation in the bone of her skull, Lexy was suddenly overwhelmed by dizziness. Her head felt as light as a balloon: her eyes rolled up, her face went pale as a ghost, her legs buckled and she slumped over, her face slapping onto the surface of the water.

  François, seeing her fall, managed to step forward and catch her under the armpits, saving her from possibly hitting her head on the bars once more. And then he stood there haplessly, Lexy’s unconscious body dangling from his hands as his girlfriend shrieked at him hysterically to let go, get his hands off her, get out of the water now –

  ‘Oh no,’ the spa manager wailed. ‘Oh no, we’re going to have to empty the whole pool!’

  Chapter Forty-One

  Two months later

  ‘It’s a fantastic turnout,’ the bookshop manager gabbled excitedly to Caroline and her publicist. ‘Really, beyond our expectations. And you’re in the Sunday Times bestseller list, the first week the book’s out! You must be over the moon!’

  ‘I am,’ Caroline said happily. ‘I can’t believe it, I really can’t—’

  ‘It’s been an amazing ride,’ the publicist agreed smugly. ‘Did you see the interview with Caroline in the Sun last week? She got a two-page spread and a great review for Bad Girl in their Something for the Weekend review page as well!’

  The interview had featured a photo spread of Caroline in the skimpiest clothes they could coax her into, swimwear with a range of elegant, see-through cover-ups: she had reasoned that she was probably in the best shape she would ever be in her life, with her weight loss on the island and her very flattering tan. The photographer, Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, was famous for her extremely sympathetic and beautiful portraits of women, and Caroline looked positively doe-eyed, her hair curled and soft around her face. Krystyna had assured Caroline that there would be discreet but effective Photoshopping if necessary, and certainly Caroline’s figu
re had never looked better, her jawline as tight as if she had had one of Lexy’s CACI treatments.

  No word of the confrontation in the Corinthia had leaked to the media. That kind of publicity was anathema to a five-star hotel. François had turned out to feel exactly the same: he was a hedge-funder skiving off work for a day with his mistress, something made abundantly clear by the stream of abuse she threw at him once they were both out of the pool and being fussed over by the spa staff.

  She had wanted to go shopping, the mistress had complained very loudly, instead of soaking like a prune for hours; he had promised her a trip to the New Bond Street boutiques, where she knew he had taken his wife last week, and instead she’d had to lie around in stupid pools and watch stupid women bleed into the water, which was absolutely disgusting and something he’d never make his wife do –

  As François and the spa manager lifted Lexy out of the pool, laying her on the tiles to wait for the hotel doctor, the general manager arrived, grasped the situation instantly and offered the unhappy couple access to the best available penthouse suite plus anything they wanted to order from room service, at which point all their complaints magically disappeared. Clearly, neither of them had any idea who Lexy and Caroline were, nor any interest in finding out.

  So none of the publicity arranged by Caroline’s publisher had been tarnished by news of her bashing Lexy’s head in. She had been deluged with interview requests, had even been invited on live breakfast TV to promote her book, an almost unheard-of feat for a first-time author. The crowds today, filling the bookstore, spilling out onto Piccadilly, were proof of how effective Celebrity Island Survivor had been in making Caroline a household name. Lexy might have set Caroline up for humiliation, but the side-effect had certainly been to markedly raise her victim’s profile.

  Caroline was dressed to look as relatable as possible – a word that her editor and publicist had used repeatedly in every conversation with her since her return to the UK. There should be nothing sexy, nothing provocative in her clothes or demeanour that could give off a homewrecker vibe. It was all very well to do a photoshoot in swimwear, to write taboo-breaking racy sex scenes, but in real life Caroline should look like the girl next door.

  So, after handing herself over to a personal shopper at Selfridges, Caroline had emerged with the perfect outfit: a silk ruffled chiffon blouse by Chloe over fitted J Brand jeans, and on her feet, blue velvet Charlotte Olympia ‘Kitty’ low heels, with cat’s faces embroidered in gold thread on each toe, playful, fun, and, slightly less relatably, costing five hundred pounds. The personal shopper had described these confidently as an ‘investment’, and Caroline had bit her tongue to avoid asking how on earth a pair of shoes you were planning to wear could be an investment, because the shoes were adorable, and she wanted so desperately to be talked into buying them.

  Simple gold jewellery was draped round her neck and dangling from her ears, her hair loose and tonged at the ends in the current faux-effortless style. Her publicist had nodded approvingly, commenting that she not only looked like the girl next door, but the one you wanted your son to date, bring home for Sunday lunch and eventually impregnate with adorable grandchildren.

  And as Caroline signed copies of Bad Girl, the reaction from the people queuing up to buy it was surprisingly positive, much more so than she had imagined. Popular as Lexy was, the reality star clearly had plenty of detractors, or wannabes who were secretly envious of her glamour and success.

  Just like Caroline. The irony did not escape her. Here she was, making a considerable amount of money by channelling the resentment felt towards Lexy by women less talented and attractive than her: women who were jealous of her many lovers, her handsome husband, her lovely children. Like them, Caroline had wanted to be Lexy, to step into her shoes, take over her life. Instead, she had managed only to ride Lexy’s coattails for a while before Lexy contemptuously shook her off and took a devastating revenge.

  Well, enough of that! she thought as she smiled and signed the next copy, aware that her hand was starting to cramp. Lexy and I have done enough damage to each other. After this book, I never want to have to talk or write about her again. I want to pretend she doesn’t even exist . . .

  Which made it even more annoying that she could hear Lexy’s name now, being murmured eagerly in the crowd; not by the people closest to the signing table, but at the front of the bookshop, by the big plate-glass windows facing onto the street. It was a name that was very easy to distinguish, with that X both hissed and tongued to pronounce it; the word Lexy, Lexy, Lexy ran through the bookstore like a wave far out at sea, gathering strength, breaking hard, sending up a spume of white foam, and then crashing hard against the shore with a smack as it rolled into land . . .

  And now the sea was parting. Caroline could see ripples at the front of the store, bodies moving, pressing closer together. The crowd was splitting down the centre, creating a channel down which a woman could pass, a woman dressed in a pillar-box red trouser suit cut tight to the body, a sliver of white silk bodysuit showing underneath it, its neckline low to show off her impressive bosom. Her black hair was piled high on top of her head, her heels so high that she positively stalked down the avenue formed for her by the people pressing back on either side.

  Lexy’s ears were hung with glittering diamonds; a chain of pearls was wound around her neck, dropping down to a larger stone that nestled at the base of her cleavage. Her lips were the same shade of red as her suit, her big blue eyes outlined dramatically in black, and from Silantra she had copied the idea of mink lashes. Caroline could only gawp at how magnificent Lexy looked. She might have been a younger version of Joan Collins in Dynasty, confronting a rival in a cliffhanger scene from the legendary soap opera.

  Caroline braced herself. She had not seen Lexy since that afternoon at the Corinthia, when Lexy had been treated by the hotel doctor and then taken to hospital for what they had described as an accidental slip and fall in the spa. Caroline herself had been escorted from the premises and curtly informed that she was banned from the hotel for life. For all she knew, Lexy might be out for physical revenge.

  Caroline glanced nervously at Lexy’s hands to see if she was carrying anything. She wouldn’t have put it past her to be armed with a brimming martini glass, ready to throw its contents dramatically in Caroline’s face.

  But as Lexy arrived at the signing table, it was clear that her attack was to be purely verbal. Lexy’s perfectly painted red lips parted. Looking down at Caroline, she said:

  ‘I’d like a couple of books signed.’

  The gasps from their audience were audible. This was the last thing anyone had expected.

  ‘You what?’ Caroline stammered.

  ‘You heard me,’ Lexy said, her tone very clear, aimed to carry to the farthest corners of the bookshop. ‘I want two copies. One for Frank, one for Santino.’

  Louder gasps resulted, followed by a positive babble as people who didn’t even know each other repeated the extraordinary request that Lexy had just made to their neighbour.

  Lexy’s eyes bored down into those of her former ghostwriter.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘It’s a book signing, isn’t it? Get on with it and sign some books!’

  In retrospect, Caroline realized she could quite easily have refused. But Lexy’s stare, her physical presence, were as warlike and intimidating as an Amazon. Meekly, Caroline picked up her pen again and, her publicist wordlessly sliding the next pre-opened book towards her, wrote the words: ‘To Frank, love Caroline’ on the title page as if on automatic pilot. As soon as she finished the word ‘love’, she cringed: but it was too late to change it.

  ‘Now do one for Santino,’ Lexy commanded, inexorable.

  Caroline didn’t understand what was happening: but what she wanted more than anything was to make Lexy disappear. So she took the second book and wrote: ‘To Santino, from Caroline’, at least managing this time to avoid the word ‘love’.

  She closed the second book, slid
ing it over to Lexy in its turn. Lexy picked up the two books and fixed that piercing blue gaze on her victim once more.

  ‘Good luck finding someone else to leech off,’ she said. ‘You came into my home and tried to steal my husband, and now you’ve tried to steal my story. Good luck finding someone else to thieve from. Because from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look as if you have a man or a story of your own.’

  Lexy was no actress, but for years she had uttered heavily scripted and rehearsed lines for her show. This little speech had been thoroughly practised in advance, and she delivered it in heartfelt tones, nailing every emphasis, every beat, pausing to let it sink in before she turned on her heel and swept back down the channel at the centre of the room.

  Someone at the back started to clap in appreciation. It was swiftly taken up. By the time Lexy reached the doors, most of the people inside the bookstore were applauding. Lexy stopped, cast a smile of thanks around the room, and then said to the bookstore employee who was standing nervously by the door:

  ‘Can I get a dustbin?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ the young man stammered.

  ‘A dustbin,’ she said, and behind her, someone in the crowd said:

  ‘Lexy wants a bin! Is there a bin anywhere?’

  The room buzzed with activity, people at the edges turning to look around them to see if there was a dustbin against the wall; over at the cash desk, an employee called: ‘I’ve got one here!’ and hoisted it in the air. The person beside her reached out and took it, passing it over his head towards the front of the shop. The dustbin crowd-surfed through the air, held by its base, until it reached the bookstore employee, who reached out, took it and set it down in front of Lexy.

  Like everyone else in the bookstore, Caroline’s attention had been entirely on Lexy in her red suit and glittering diamonds. It was only now, with horror, that she saw a photographer at the back of the store, busy capturing every moment of this scene; staring more intently, she saw someone else with a professional-looking video camera, holding it high . . . and of course the mobile phones were out, of course everyone was frantically snapping and recording away, capturing Caroline’s latest public mortification at Lexy’s hands . . .