Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  On cue Ramona White emerged from the mansion, consummate mother and manager, stepping into the sunlight in her sharply tailored suit and enormous Prada shades. Her silhouette was twig-thin and her hair was pulled back in a savagely tight chignon.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Kristin flatly.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be writing?’

  ‘Day off.’

  ‘Is Scotty here?’

  Bunny suffered a chronic blush and Kristin stifled a laugh. She found her sister’s infatuation funny. Scotty had been part of the family for years. Ever since The Happy Hippo Club days he’d come round for dinner when Ramona was out, making the sisters laugh over pasta with his goofy impressions, or ride his bike over on a Sunday to watch TV and eat popcorn, or bake cookies with Bunny at Thanksgiving, or pumpkin pie at Halloween. When he’d become Kristin’s boyfriend her sister had nearly fainted.

  ‘He left.’

  ‘Why?’ Ramona enquired. ‘Did you fight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve got to keep a man happy, Kristin. Otherwise they’ll walk.’

  Like Dad did?

  ‘Bunny, get upstairs,’ their mother directed, ‘and start scrubbing that make-up off.’

  ‘Can’t I wear it a bit longer?’

  Ramona slid her daughter a look. Bunny retreated without another word.

  ‘She gets to take a break now, right?’ Kristin asked.

  Her mother lit a cigarette, scissoring her way to a lounger, where she elegantly collapsed, drawing sharply on it. ‘Do you think I get a break?’ she retorted. Ramona’s cat Betsy, a white fluffball with one of those squidged-up expressions that looks like it’s been hit in the face by a sledgehammer, leapt on to her mistress’s lap and licked its lips.

  ‘HAIRS!’ Ramona cried, outraged. Immediately the cat was tossed to the ground. ‘Betsy needs a trip to the beautician; this moulting’s going to be the death of me!’

  ‘Bunny’s a kid,’ Kristin persisted, as the white fluffball shot through the patio doors.

  ‘And so were you when you started on your journey.’

  Kristin disliked how Ramona made out as if it were her journey, as if Kristin hadn’t had it shoved on her as the only way of life available. Some days she grudgingly admired her mother’s resolve: yes, they’d come from little, and now, thanks to her child star exploding, had more wealth than they knew what to do with. Most, she hated how she had never been allowed to grow into her own person before being told who she was expected to be. Their mother’s ambition was ruthless. She would stop at nothing to see her two girls succeed.

  ‘This is good for Bunny,’ pronounced Ramona in her don’t-you-dare-argue-with-me tone. ‘It’s character building. She’s got to get used to the pace.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t want to?’

  The shades came down a fraction. A pair of glinting grey eyes narrowed over the top.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know. She might want to try something else? Being a teacher, say, or a vet?’

  Ramona snorted, as though those professions were so far beneath her that she could scarcely deign to look; professions that actually mattered, because while Kristin’s music was enjoyed by many it didn’t contribute to the world, not in any practical way.

  ‘What my daughter wants is to be famous.’ Ramona slipped the shades back into place. ‘You heard her. She wants to be exactly like you.’

  ‘Wrong. That’s what you want.’

  ‘You’re giving me a migraine, Kristin. Haven’t you got an album to write?’

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Storming indoors, Kristin struggled to control her temper. No one made her angry like her mom did.

  She flipped open her cell. She longed to call Scotty; he’d make her feel better. But something told her no. After today, if Scotty needed space then that was what she would give him. She would give him anything, because without him she was lost.

  Bunny White’s bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Fraternity.

  Her infatuation covered every scrap. Fraternity pouting sincerely to camera; Fraternity leaping into the air, their matching grins sparkling like islands in the sun; Fraternity with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders; Fraternity in black and white with their tops off. Like every girl Bunny’s age the five-piece was the apex of teenage idolatry. They were cute, they were funny; they sang about love and cuddling and kittens and birthdays. Bunny adored them with every ounce of devotion her little heart could carry.

  Scotty Valentine was her favourite. She could never tell Kristin how much it stung when she saw them together, and though she had tried not to care—really she had—she just couldn’t help it. Naively she had imagined that Scotty would one day turn into her boyfriend. He might have started out like a big brother but over the years her hazy worship had blossomed into a killer crush that was picking her apart day by day. Age gaps didn’t matter so much the older you got, and in a few years he might have started seeing her in a new way.

  All her life Scotty had been there, perpetually out of reach, exotic and elusive, the boy against which all others were measured and could never hope to compare.

  She pretended that Joey was her number one. Joey was the cute, mischievous member of the group, and she would say yes if Joey asked her on a date, like, obviously she would. But Scotty, with his perfect smile and dreamy eyes, was her ultimate. When she was alone she fantasised about Kristin being out when he came to the mansion, like he had in the olden days, and how they might hang like they’d used to, and he would remember what a cool girl she was and how grown-up she was now and then maybe when he left he’d lean in and…

  Bunny had never kissed a boy before. The very thought of touching Scotty was enough to drive her crazy with cloudy, indistinct longing. It made her blood race and her head feel like it was about to explode. Would she ever experience it for herself?

  She settled at her Pretty Princess table and began removing the grips that held her wig in place. Her mom had secured them viciously, jamming each one into her hairline till it made her scalp throb. Before long, if she kept on winning trophies, she would be just as rich and pretty as her sister and boys like Scotty would start to notice.

  Her best picture of Scotty was a close-up headshot. It wasn’t very big and she kept it in her coral beauty drawer, right at the back where no one would see it. Bunny reached in now and extracted it, tracing her finger around his jaw and pressing the image to her face so she could kiss it. Scotty smiled back at her, a glint of promise in his twinkling blue eyes. He was at the beach in the photo and you could tell he was shirtless, even though it was severed at the neck. His collarbone was deeply tanned with the lightest smattering of freckles.

  Bunny kissed the image one more time before replacing it. She could hear her mom and sister arguing downstairs and wished Scotty would come and take her away. Humming Fraternity’s number one smash ‘I Dig U’, she imagined him scooping her up in his strong arms and driving her off into the sunset. Maybe he’d come on a horse and where they would end up or what they would do she wasn’t entirely sure. All she knew was that she wanted Scotty Valentine. She wanted him so badly it hurt.

  Soon she’d be vying for the coveted title of Mini Miss Marvellous. It was an international competition for which she and her mom had been preparing for months. Ramona promised it would be her launch, and the battle that propelled her to stardom.

  Then, she’d be a woman. Fraternity—and Scotty, always Scotty, despite everything that told her it was impossible—would finally be within reach.

  6

  Turquoise da Luca had been to every major city on the globe, but New York remained her favourite. It made her feel plugged in and part of something crucial, an integral cog in a great and glorious machine. The party she had attended on Friday provided the perfect excuse to hang for a few days and tonight she was catching up with A-list actress Ava Bennett. The women had met at a film premiere two years ago and had swiftly become friends.

>   ‘You look gorgeous,’ Ava told her as they were seated for dinner, tossing her sheet of shimmering platinum hair. Turquoise had chosen her usual spot in Giovanni’s, a cosy, family-run Italian on Waverly Place. ‘Who’re you fucking?’

  Turquoise nearly spluttered out her martini. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That glow,’ Ava said, mercifully stalled while a deferential waiter came to take their order. Once he’d gone she elaborated, ‘It’s written all over your face. Who is he?’

  ‘There is no he,’ Turquoise lied, deciding that Bronx didn’t count. There was no relationship on the cards so why waste time talking about it?

  ‘You’re lying,’ observed Ava slyly, but Turquoise knew her friend wasn’t any the wiser. She was a good liar. The best.

  ‘Tell you what—’ Turquoise raised her glass and they clinked ‘—let’s talk about you.’ She loved hearing about Ava’s job and, no matter how famous she herself became, she would always attach a certain enchantment to the movies. ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Ah, you know.’ Ava waved a bejewelled hand. ‘Promotion for Lovestruck’s going through the roof.’ Ava was playing the young mother in a new teen romance. Songstress sweetheart Kristin White had penned the music and it was causing quite a stir. ‘Cosmo’s been insufferable about this script he’s writing, mind you. He’s being ever so secretive.’

  Turquoise’s heart pounced. It was easy to forget that Ava was married to her nemesis.

  When her friend and Cosmo Angel had first got together Turquoise had tried to cut contact, feigning illness whenever Ava wanted to meet or claiming her diary was against it. But Ava was a loyal companion and hadn’t given up, and short of explaining why she had embarked on the avoidance campaign there wasn’t a great deal she could do. It meant that on occasion she was forced to see Cosmo, to shake his hand and exchange empty pleasantries as though they were strangers. Never would she risk going closer. Never would she visit Ava’s house. Never would she spend any more time with the man than was absolutely necessary.

  ‘He’s writing a script?’ Turquoise ventured, relieved when their appetisers came and hoping that might change the subject. Her throat had closed. She couldn’t eat.

  ‘It’s a break from acting. He wants to give something back. You know, get creative.’

  He sure knows how to do that.

  ‘What’s it about?’ The words were like glue on her tongue. Even as she asked she had the horrible sensation of already knowing the answer.

  ‘This is the thing,’ Ava exclaimed through a mouthful of basil gnocchi, ‘he refuses to say! It’s centred around a murder; that’s all he’ll give me.’

  ‘What kind of murder?’ Her voice was tiny.

  ‘Beats me.’ She laughed. ‘Ask him yourself.’

  Turquoise averted her gaze. She scrambled for something to say. It was horrible deceiving Ava, they were close, but she had vowed to take the truth to her grave…the truth of what she’d done and where she’d come from…the truth of what happened.

  Secrets she couldn’t tell a soul.

  Especially when Ava was Cosmo’s wife.

  Fortunately Ava changed tack for her. ‘You seen this?’ she asked, producing a paper from her purse and tapping its front page. On it was an image of Jax Jackson pumping iron.

  The article was about the athlete landing yet another brand affiliation. Its headline read: JAX ‘THE BULLET’ JACKSON FIRES A WINNER.

  ‘Two words for you, honey,’ said Ava. ‘Hot. As.’

  Turquoise disagreed. ‘I hung with him once. He’s not all that.’

  ‘Really? Where?’

  She batted off the question. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure getting an introduction. See if that drags Cosmo out his office!’

  ‘Jax is a fool.’

  ‘Imagine it, though.’ Ava leaned in, a wicked smile on her face. ‘He’s got to be an animal between the sheets, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Not that I’m complaining. Cosmo’s a tiger.’

  Turquoise excused herself to visit the bathroom. She almost tripped in her haste to reach it and only when she was alone could she steady her breathing and get a grip of the thumping in her chest. She closed her eyes, stars bursting in her vision, images from the past rushing back though she tried with all her might to stifle them.

  Cosmo can’t hurt you now. You have to get a hold on this; otherwise it’ll kill you.

  Maybe that was what she deserved. She deserved to die and if it weren’t by electric chair then it would be by her own conscience.

  He made me. It wasn’t my fault.

  Or was it? She had been seventeen, old enough to know her own mind.

  Stop. STOP! She put her face in her hands, pressing her temples till they ached.

  What if it came out? What if the facts escaped? Every hour of every day she lived in terror of that revelation and what it would mean. Armageddon: the end of her world.

  It won’t. Cosmo has his own reputation to protect. He’s the only one who knows…

  Turquoise drew air in and out, in and out, slowly, till her pulse regained its rhythm. Gradually light seeped through and her goals readjusted. The first was to get through dinner.

  Cosmo Angel had known her a lifetime ago. He had known her when she was a girl, vulnerable, weak. When she was someone capable of…

  He didn’t know her now.

  She made her way back through the restaurant and greeted Ava with a smile.

  Grace Turquoise da Luca was born in Hawaii in 1986, the only child of religious parents. When she was a baby her father took her mother for a drive in the country and they never came back. The car was found battered and burned at the foot of a ravine and despite efforts to ascertain the truth of what happened, no definitive clues were found. Some said her father had been cursed by debt and had decided to end it; others that it was an act of God for having birthed Grace two months before they were married.

  Grace had no memory of them throughout her childhood, save for photographs and scraps people told her. Her mother had been a striking woman, very dark, and her father ‘a stubborn man’. That was all she knew. Her parents were strangers.

  After their deaths she stayed with a village woman, a friend called Emaline, because it was believed further disruption would damage her beyond repair. There she passed a safe, happy few years; she went to school, she made friends and she listened to the records piled high at home. Wonderful old-world singers like Billie Holiday, Ella and Etta, as well as Emaline’s own voice as she sang softly with a guitar on the veranda, sipping lime cordial. For her eighth birthday Emaline gave her a guitar of her own. From an early age Grace Turquoise knew that music would be her life-long obsession.

  On rainy nights they would sit side by side on the couch, the fire burning, a woollen rug across their knees and Emaline’s arms safe and warm as she pulled the child close to kiss the top of her head. They would watch black-and-white movies together, get lost in worlds of romance and betrayal, lovers and wars, glamour and fantasy. Emaline would whisper stories about when she was a girl, and how one summer she had run away from home and spent long hot weeks acting for a theatre until her father had found her and brought her home. Grace’s imagination had been filled with the glittering characters Emaline had played, the handsome leading men she had known, and how Emaline had dreamed of some day becoming a Hollywood actress. ‘Do you know what I believe?’ Emaline whispered into Grace’s hair one sunset. ‘I believe that’s going to be you one day. My little star.’

  Soon after her eighth birthday Grace was sent to live with her uncle on a farm in Pennsylvania. Ivan Garrick hadn’t seen her mother in years but it turned out he was her only living relative. Grace didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave her friends or Emaline. She didn’t want to live with someone she had never met. But that was the law and she could do nothing to dispute it. When she turned up on Ivan’s doorstep she was frightened.

  But Ivan was a kind man. He was fifty or t
hereabouts and admitted to having had a dispute with her mother, after which he had been cut out of her life. He had always longed to meet Grace and had petitioned long and hard for her custody. Like her he had no surviving family and so they had to stick together, he said. Blood was blood, he promised. Lots of things happened in life but that could never be changed.

  If her parents had been devout then Ivan was in another league. Every day he spent hours at church, talking with the pastor and praying for his sins. Grace couldn’t understand. Ivan was a gentle, lonely man and she couldn’t imagine him sinning any more than she could Emaline refusing her a kind word. Bad people existed but Ivan wasn’t bad.

  A short time later, they received word that Emaline had passed. Grace travelled alone to her funeral and cried as she had never cried before. Ivan organised her return ticket and was waiting at the station to meet her when she arrived. ‘You’re home now,’ he said.

  Sometimes Ivan disappeared at night. She would wake to find the big house empty and pad through its dark chambers, calling his name. The next morning he’d stay asleep until the afternoon, and would emerge looking tired and haunted. Those days he prayed the most.

  Grace settled into her new life and concentrated on her music. At ten years old she learned to read compositions; at twelve she was strumming on the guitar Emaline had given her and at fourteen she realised she had a voice to go with it. Ivan would ask her to sing and would sit and watch her, telling her how beautiful she sounded and what a lovely young woman she was becoming. Grace liked it when he said that. Not a girl any more but a woman. It made her feel grown-up, ready to embrace the exciting life ahead of her.

  Soon after, she became a grown-up for real. Playing outside one day, she felt wetness in her skirt and when she went to the bathroom she found blood. Her first thought was that a monster had crawled inside her; the monsters Ivan talked about that he promised the Lord would protect them from. She shook in his arms, and Ivan had to explain as best he could that this wasn’t a disease but a natural progression—one he had, in fact, been counting on.