Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  ‘I know,’ she replied.

  ‘You didn’t come back on my messages.’ He grinned. ‘I left a lot of messages.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you like the flowers?’

  ‘I’m not into flowers.’

  ‘Are you into any romantic gestures?’

  Robin held up the cocktails, the surly kid in her raising one finger. ‘How about this?’

  ‘Touché.’

  Shrugging, she took a sip. ‘What are you doing here?’ Finally she appraised Leon properly. He was stupidly handsome.

  ‘Got a dinner in Soho. We’re not staying for the movie.’

  ‘Good of you to come, then,’ she said drily. ‘What’s this about Puff City?’

  ‘You heard about that?’

  ‘I take it you’re not keen.’

  Leon nicked his thumb across his top lip. ‘It was Jax’s idea, so no, generally speaking, I’m not keen.’ A roaming photographer lurched in to snap their picture. Leon hooked an arm round Robin’s shoulders, drawing her in. It happened so quickly it seemed truculent to object.

  ‘Perfect.’ The photographer was thrilled: easily the snap of the night.

  ‘It’s patronising,’ said Leon.

  Robin was still thinking about the photo. ‘No shit it is. Can you try not to paw me in public next time?’

  ‘Next time? Are you asking me out?’

  She blushed.

  ‘I meant the Puff City thing,’ he put in. ‘It’s patronising.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘Not to me: to kids who live with that every day. The single’s anti gun crime, ‘cept the only reason Jax wants to get involved is in pursuit of his own glory—that and the fact he’s bored now the Games are over. He hasn’t got a clue what those kids face but since he figures he’s got it in him to be a hip-hop artist he’ll use it as the hook to get him there.’

  ‘But if it helps raise awareness?’

  ‘Of Jax? Definitely. Slink Bullion? For sure. The issue? I doubt it.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I like your new track, by the way.’

  ‘You can’t have heard it,’ she countered. ‘It’s not out yet.’

  ‘I asked to hear it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Leon regarded her sideways. ‘You’re not getting it yet, are you?’

  ‘Getting what?’

  ‘That when I want something, I don’t quit.’

  ‘Such a man,’ she remarked.

  ‘Are you so different?’

  ‘From a man? I’d like to think so.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ He held her gaze.

  Barney interrupted them. ‘Ready, honey?’

  Leon took her arm as she moved off. ‘Come out with me tonight?’

  ‘I thought you had a dinner.’

  ‘I do. Afterwards. Sack this gig off.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come on. Eight o’clock, my hotel?’ He gave her the name.

  ‘Your hotel?’

  His laugh took her by surprise. It was nice, spontaneous. ‘The bar there’s private but it’s not that private. We could go public, if you prefer, but…’

  ‘You’ll get mobbed by screaming fans?’ She recalled the woman he’d had slung around his neck at LAX. What was she doing even having this conversation?

  ‘I was thinking more of you.’

  ‘Thanks, but no, thanks. It was good seeing you, though.’

  ‘So good that you don’t want to do it again?’

  ‘Have fun at your dinner.’

  ‘I won’t be there long, because I’m leaving to see you.’ He didn’t wait for a reply.

  As Robin entered the theatre she tried to forget the encounter. Where did Leon get off, asking her out and then assuming she’d come? He thought he could get any woman, and the fact he’d concluded she was just like the rest was the only answer she needed.

  A niggling voice asked: Who are you playing against, Robin—him, or you?

  And a second one, softer, reassured her that maybe he’d try again.

  Leon caught a cab back to his hotel at seven-thirty. Making his excuses hadn’t been difficult: he was getting booked for countless appearances all across the world and his management accepted that some he’d have to call short.

  The truth was, he couldn’t wait to see Robin. Man, she got to him. He’d accepted the premiere invite when he’d heard she would be there. His team had been surprised given how skeptical he’d been about the Puff City venture; surely another PR stunt would have been way off the agenda. But the Puff City gig was different. Perhaps it was because Jax was involved, but it had danger written all over it. Leon had met the crew and hadn’t liked them: they’d greeted him shiftily, unable to meet his eye. Slink wanted to record back in LA two weeks from now, and as far as Leon was concerned it couldn’t be over with soon enough.

  The taxi pulled up outside the Langham and a doorman welcomed him. Staying in splendour felt weird. As Leon made his way through the pristine lobby, his footsteps smacking across its gleaming floor, he couldn’t help but think of his mom back in Compton, how he and his siblings had been raised with so little, with nothing, really, except love—but how when it came down to it that was the only thing that mattered.

  He had to remember what he was doing this for. Leon could outpace a wild animal, but he would never escape the shadow at his heels—not unless he turned and faced it. Until the day he found his brother’s killer and made that person pay, he would never be able to rest.

  He reached his suite, slicing his key through the door. Discarding his suit, he showered and dressed quickly. Downstairs, he spoke to his people about procuring a space.

  Eight o’clock came and went. He ordered a second bottle of beer and waited…

  And waited.

  Eight-thirty passed. Nine o’clock. At nine-fifteen he realised she wasn’t coming. Foolishly he had taken it for granted that she would, because despite Robin’s playing hard to get there was a connection between them and it burned. He remembered her hair scented like cinnamon, the curve of her waist and her full red mouth. Standing next to her at the premiere, electricity had sparked like crazy. Touching her had been like fire. Hadn’t she felt it too?

  Egotism was Jax’s style, not his, but even so Leon wasn’t accustomed to rejection. One thing his coach always said:

  Keep your eyes on that line till you cross it. Nothing else, just the line.

  Robin was his.

  At the elevators Leon was set upon by a group of women, who blushed and giggled as he signed scraps of paper. Back in his room, he settled on the bed, flipping open his iPad and typing Robin Ryder into the search engine.

  He clicked on the first entry and scanned the article:

  Robin Louise Ryder (born Hackney, East London, 1993) is an English singer and songwriter who rose to fame after the release of her debut album, Beginnings. She is best known for her breakthrough single ‘Lesson Learned’, which held the UK number one for eight weeks and enjoyed international success and widespread critical acclaim. At eighteen Ryder was famously discovered on the UK television music competition The Launch …

  Leon scanned the document, taking in the awards Robin had claimed and the praise she had attracted—the voice of a generation…relevant and inspiring…—until he reached the section on her personal life. It comprised several lengthy paragraphs and numerous citations and references. Frowning, he read. With each revelation his heart sank.

  Ryder was abandoned as a newborn in one of the most controversial cases of this type in the early nineties, sparking debate between pro-/anti-abortion groups and child welfare organisations. She was found in Victoria Park, East London, by a walker, wrapped in a plastic bag and hours from death. Neither Ryder’s mother or father has ever been located…Ryder entered the care system aged two but was removed from her adoptive parents after reports of violence…A series of foster homes followed before Ryder took to the streets. Ryder auditioned for The Launch after tackling drug and alcohol pr
oblems that she has since attributed to ‘a difficult phase in my life’…

  Reaching the end of the article, Leon stared out of the window. London glittered below, a city busy building dreams as quickly as it broke them. It felt wrong reading this stuff, prying into a life that had been sad beyond measure, a life he’d had no idea she’d lived. He wanted to see her. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to hold her.

  No wonder Robin had front. Anybody would. Shock turned to empathy, gave way to compassion, and hardened to respect. He was filled with the need to protect her.

  Whatever Robin had gone through before, Leon vowed she would never be lonely or frightened again. She was too special to let go.

  The woman who had given her up hadn’t known it, but one thing was sure:

  He did.

  19

  The North London high rise had been built in the sixties, a grim lump of towering concrete, part-derelict, its lower windows smashed and filled with tarpaulin that whipped angrily in the hollow draft. Climbing from a twist of roads, the block loomed immovable, ugly, on bright afternoons casting dark and giant shadows across the metropolis. It was part of the city yet rejected by it: a place nobody wanted to live.

  On the seventeenth floor, in flat 39B, Ivy Sewell and her mother disturbed no one. They saw no one, they spoke to no one; the world outside was fearsome, too much of it, too plural, too menacing. On the street they called Ivy names—weirdo, loser, freak—and they were right. Ivy was rotten on the inside, beyond redemption, useless. That was what Hilda had always told her. It would have been better if she’d never been born.

  An orange glow seeped through the blinds in a weary, perpetual stream, illuminating the frayed sofa and mottled chair in the living room. No living went on here. Hilda was slumped on a cushion, glaring out to nothing. Occasionally a TV flickered to life. Game shows were her favourite; she liked the prizes and shiny cars and the host with his straight white smile. In a still hour, when the traffic had died and the world outside was bathed in slumber, a coarse breath escaped as she slept. But neither Sewell slept soundly. The walls knew their secrets.

  Ivy went to her bedroom after midnight. Her mother would stay snoring with her mouth open, bulging ankles forced into slippers that rested like blind, foetal creatures on the tortoiseshell carpet, her head tilted back so that Ivy could detect the sparse white hairs that sprang from her chin. A hostess trolley sat stained in the corner, neglected for years, its innards fragrant with trifles of long ago. Fringed, moth-eaten lamps housed dead bulbs and the corpses of flies littered the electric fire. If Hilda woke she’d drink, a bottle, two, maybe more, drinking for the day when at last the poison killed her, watching the clock and daring it to keep on ticking so that sometimes Ivy wondered if she might not put her out of her misery herself. Ivy imagined Hilda in a bloated coffin, her face greasy and brash with the mortician’s efforts, pickled in her splendour, flaccid as the chicken dinners that swam in their gravy-filled packets and whose membrane had to be pricked with a fork.

  Ivy had spent her life in hope of a warm embrace or a gentle word but had been left wanting. If Hilda tried now she could not trust herself to resist wringing what life was left from her bones. Mother. The word meant nothing.

  Ivy’s bedroom was small, the window sealed, and in the corner a single mattress had split, exposing foam guts. The walls were bare, except for one. No family photos or happy memories. Instead it was covered in photographs and newspaper clippings:

  ROBIN RYDER ROCKS AT HAMMERSMITH!

  RYDER CLAIMS COVETED CRITICS’ PRIZE!

  ROBIN SOARS TO SECOND NUMBER ONE!

  What was visible was only the start of it. Inside drawers and boxes there was more of the same. Every picture Ivy had seen of her twin sister, every article she had read, every recording she had heard, was pinned, taped, labelled, filed, a library of everything Robin had achieved and a reminder of everything Ivy could destroy.

  She longed to destroy her—oh, how she did. For Robin had escaped.

  It had been so delicious to introduce herself, subtly at first: Ivy’s lovingly prepared album; the notepad in which she had executed her most careful handwriting; the tracking of her sister through Camden; the phone call to LA…It had been beyond delectable to hear her voice—just the two of them together, chatting like twins, the way it should be…

  Turning to the cracked mirror, Ivy removed her clothes. At nineteen her body was achingly thin. Dark circles ringed her eyes, which glittered dark blue, lit by the flame of revenge. Her chest was flat, her red hair lank, and her stomach concave over her pale cotton knickers. The years had contorted her features, calcified by hatred, so that where they should have been identical they were divided by a twist of difference. Ivy’s skinniness, her dyed crimson locks, the crouching hardness in her eyes and the grim set of her mouth had people glance twice, thinking she reminded them of somebody but not quite enough to say who.

  She turned, the light catching the angles of her face in a new way.

  There she was, a glimmer of her twin. There was the woman she could have been. Robin’s life should have been hers. The injustice made her tremble.

  Ivy had been too young to remember the day Hilda had returned, drunk as usual, saying she’d got rid of the other one. The twins’ father, a bum who had drunk his way to the grave when Ivy had been six, relayed it to her one night after Hilda had passed out.

  I’ve done it, Hilda had snarled. I’ve thrown it away.

  But in abandoning Robin she had set her free. Ivy was the girl who had stayed, and suffered, and been beaten and bruised…The visible scars were never the worst.

  I don’t want them. They’ve ruined my life. Hilda had wanted to dump both babies, had only saved one because he had forced her to.

  Never mind the daughter whose life she had created, who had never had a say in whether or not she was born. Ivy hadn’t asked for this. She’d had no choice.

  It hadn’t mattered which one had been kept. Hilda hadn’t cared which one she gave up. It could just as easily have been the other way around. If Ivy had escaped her mother’s clutches she could have had a shot at life, had the courage and the confidence to claim what Robin had, for when Ivy sang she heard the exact same voice. They were one and the same.

  Two fates decided on the toss of a coin.

  Ivy clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palm. Hilda knew who Robin was. She pretended she didn’t, acted as if she didn’t recognise Ivy’s shadow beneath that long straight fringe, in those deep blue eyes…but Ivy had seen. She knew. She’d seen how the channel changed whenever that show pervaded their TV screen. She’d seen how the radio got switched each time one of Robin’s songs came on. She’d seen how Hilda drank.

  Robin’s reprieve had been the grossest wrong. She had been spared, a last-minute pardon from a ghastly execution. And the best part, the almost funny part, was that they all felt sorry for her. The stupid public actually felt sorry for her. Ivy had read simpering articles, fawning interviews, where Robin had been made out to be some kind of saint who had achieved against the odds. What about the odds Ivy had faced? Robin would never be where she was now if their fortunes had been reversed. Did she realise? Of course she didn’t.

  So now Ivy had to show her.

  She reached out to stroke her reflection.

  That meant sweet retribution against her lucky bitch twin. Ivy had done the research. Robin’s tour was going to America and so was she. The plan wasn’t easy, it wasn’t quiet and it wasn’t discreet—it was vengeance, loud, hard, messy, merciless vengeance.

  She stepped out into the dark of the flat.

  ‘Mother?’ she ventured, a lonely silhouette in the doorway. There was no response.

  She checked that her mother was breathing, releasing her gnarled clasp on the brandy glass and gently setting it down. Briefly she kissed Hilda’s forehead and left the room.

  Watch out, Robin Ryder. Ivy’s eyes flashed in the moonlight.

  I’m closer than you think.
>
  PART 2

  20

  Jax Jackson woke at seven o’ clock on a sunny morning in LA, his cock hard.

  Lazily he slid his gaze over the sleeping form next to him, sheet pulled up to her waist and long glossy hair swept over a bronzed shoulder. They all looked pretty much the same from behind, so he pushed himself up on one elbow to get a better look. Cute. Jax lifted the sheet and clocked her ass. Not bad. This one would keep.

  Jax swung his legs out of bed and rose to his feet, stretching his arms high till they almost touched the faux-crystal chandelier above his head. He reminded himself to get it removed—damn thing obscured the ceiling mirror. His head felt woozy and there was a taste like soil in his mouth. What had he done last night? He looked at the woman in his bed, the curve of her tits. Oh yeah. There’d been liquor involved, people buying him shots all over the joint, and vaguely he recalled racking up lines of coke on a naked back. Whatever, he deserved it. Jax was number one, the don, el capitán… fastest man in the world! Technically he was doing them a favour, making the suckers feel special for a night.

  He padded to the bathroom, slid his feet into a pair of towelling slippers and checked his reflection in the mirror. There was no getting around it: Jax Jackson was a god. Six foot one of pure dark muscle glared back at him. Sometimes he liked to imagine he’d been carved out of marble, like that Italian dude. Sculpted—yeah, that was the word. Raising his right arm, he bent and flexed, marvelling at the way his biceps pushed at the skin, tendons chasing up to his neck where they met the straight hard line of his collarbone. And his arms weren’t even what he was famous for! Turning his attention to his powerful legs, lightly coated in tight coils of black hair, he wondered at their awesome strength. These were the legs that took the world record and knew more speed than any other man on Earth. These were the legs that saw the limit, looked it dead in the eye and broke right through it. They didn’t call him The Bullet for nothing—Jax was faster than a cheetah in pursuit. OK, so his cock could do with a couple more inches, but he didn’t hear the ladies complaining.