Let's Pretend, page 14
I came out of the bathroom to find someone waiting in the hall outside. I’d been a while, what with the primping. ‘Sorry,’ I said. Then I saw it was Zalandra.
It was as if I’d fallen on the cliff path again. The ground sliding under my feet, the ringing and roaring of panic in my ears. I even put my hands out in front of me, as if searching for a grip. My vision blurred.
‘There you are,’ Zalandra said. She gave a tiny, sly smile but her face was otherwise blank. She was still fat and pale, still dressed in her thick black layers. It was uncanny how ghostly she appeared, despite her stolid form. ‘I told you I’d keep turning up. I told you there’d be a reckoning. Didn’t I?’
I looked around wildly, but we were alone. ‘Stay away from me,’ I wheezed. I backed away on wobbly legs, half-expecting the girl to lunge at me, shouting obscenities, but she stayed where she was, hands in pockets, staring after me with the same sly watchfulness as before.
A knot of people were coming up the stairs and I pushed through them so violently they shouted in indignation. Where the fuck was Adam? The rest of these morons would be of no help. I’d be a joke to them: the crazy ex-girlfriend, pursued by a ghost. On the ground floor, I saw Adam’s sister rolling around on a couch with some bearded guy, sucking face with sloppy abandon. She looked up as I stumbled past, her lipstick smeared bloodily around her mouth. ‘I know all about you,’ she hissed. ‘I always did.’ I was trapped in a hideous carnival where everyone was reeling drunk, manically laughing caricatures of their real selves.
Finally, I spotted Adam. He was outside on the patio with Rafael. They were having words. Or at least Rafael was – he was gesticulating and shouting, spittle flying in the air. Adam was idling against the railings, infuriatingly relaxed.
I wrenched open the sliding doors. When Rafael saw me he froze for a moment, made a furious gesture and spat out something incoherent of everything but rage. Then he shouldered past me into the house.
Adam and I were alone at last, but for a few moments I couldn’t get the words out. My heart felt monstrously swollen in my chest, beating hard enough to burst out from my ribcage, squeezing all the air from my lungs.
‘Za– Za– Za– Za– Za–’
He laid his hands on my shoulders. ‘Whoa. Slow down. Deep breaths.’
‘Zalandra,’ I finally got out. ‘Your stalker. She’s here. Now. In the house. You have to call the police, right now –’
But Adam started laughing. ‘Shit, Lily, it’s fiiiine. I invited her.’ He did jazz hands. ‘Surprise!’
I stared at him. My mouth gaped.
‘’S’no biggie. After the two of us broke up, she waited for me outside my agent’s and apologised for freaking you out. Said she’d been off her meds or whatever. She’s kind of an impressive person, once you get to know her. So I gave her a job.’
‘You what?’
‘She’s in charge of my official fan-site. She’s done great work, actually. Very smart, very organised. Then I was emailing her about some promotional thingie, and I told her about this weekend and said she could come along if she wanted to.’ He giggled. ‘Admittedly, I was caning it at the time.’
‘You are unbelievable.’ I wanted to smash his face in. My fists were clenched so hard my nails dug into my flesh. ‘The drugs have fried your brain. Or maybe Talia’s right. Maybe your self-esteem is so pathetically low you actually need a lunatic stalker in order to feel good about yourself.’
Adam looked at me calmly. ‘That’s not what this is about. Zalandra is an interesting person. I think she’s important. And how she acted towards you –’
‘Shut up. Just shut up, OK? You did this to mess with me. You lured me out here, made all those promises, just to humiliate me. Again. What did I ever do to you to deserve this?’ He started to speak but my voice rose and flowed, swelling with fury. ‘No, really. You treated me like crap, ended our contract in the shittiest way possible and got me thrown off a job – at the exact same time you were presenting Dido to Kash on a silver platter.’
‘Now, hold on –’
‘Shut up. You schmooze my cousin and my best friend, fake-date my other friend and tell her you want her babies. And then you ambush me with the freak show who tried to physically assault me the last time we met! You’re a sociopath, you know that? An actual sociopath. A user and abuser and –’ My voice choked.
‘Takes one to know one, Lily-pet. It’s why the two of us were meant to be. I told you that, right at the start.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘But it’s different now, because I understand you. Really understand you. That’s why it’s going to be OK. If you’ll just calm down a minute, I can explain everything, and then we’re going to put things right, together. I can help you. I promise.’
He put his hand out, as if to stroke my cheek. I jerked away. ‘Fuck you.’
Adam smiled. It was the smile of someone who could not only get away with anything, but made you long for him to try. I looked at him for the last time and saw, in spite of it all, moonlight on marble. Superheroes and presidents. The man of my dreams.
‘You’re dead to me,’ I said.
CHAPTER FOUR
I needed to get out of that insane asylum. I needed untainted air and space and silence. Another minute among those people and I would combust.
I grabbed my bag and forced my way back through the party and out the main entrance of the house. The driveway was jammed with luxury cars; more vehicles were parked haphazardly on the grass surrounds. I started walking down the drive, fast and hard, needing the reassurance of hearing my footsteps on the tarmac. Slap, slap, slap.
A dark figure suddenly straightened up in the shadows by the side of the drive. My insides lurched. But it was the boy-bander I’d stumbled into earlier. He’d been rummaging in the front of his car, which was parked on the slope.
‘Sorry,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘Didn’t meant to startle you. I was just getting my charger … Hey! It’s you again. You know, you really don’t seem OK.’
I stared back blankly. ‘It’s been a bad night.’
‘Has it? I’m sorry. I know who you are. You’re Lucie. Lily, I mean. Lily Thane. You and Adam used to date.’
I did a half-shrug of acknowledgement and started to move on.
‘No, wait. Please wait. I’m only saying this cos I’m wasted, but Snow Angels used to be my all-time favourite film. Seriously. It wasn’t just a Christmas thing for me. I’d drive my parents nuts because I’d watch it all year round. I was, like, obsessed.’
Eurgh. A fan-boy. I squinted at him. ‘What are you, twelve?’
He gave a happy laugh. ‘I’m twenty-one! I’m an actor too. That’s how I know Adam. Well, I don’t really know Adam. We worked on this fashion campaign a while back, and then …’
On he burbled. His name was Tig, and he looked just Adam’s type: fair, slim, pouty. But straight, given the hopeful way he was appraising me.
‘Can you give me a lift?’
Tig flung out his arms. ‘Where to, milady?’
Good point. It was midnight and I was stranded in a salt marsh. ‘There must be a hotel somewhere. Or a B & B.’
‘There’s only one local hotel. A bunch of us are staying there – Adam said the house wasn’t really equipped for sleepovers.’
I thought of the bare echoing rooms and that ridiculous iron chair. ‘No.’
‘It’s just down the road. I think there’s supposed to be a shuttle bus?’ He looked around doubtfully, then belched. ‘I mean, I’m delighted to be your chauffeur, but to be honest, my fine motor skills are fuuucked.’
‘Give me the keys,’ I said brusquely. I felt bruised all over, inside and out, but I was also as sober as I’d ever been in my life.
We squeezed into the car, a beaten-up Toyota, and I – slightly nervously – pulled into the drive. When we reached the gates at the bottom, I saw there was now someone on sentry duty. He had got out of his little cabin to have words with a driver waiting to be let through. ‘Cool ride,’ said Tig. It was. A vintage 1970s Porsche 911S in hunter green. I recognised it because I knew the owner.
‘Lily!’ Nick called, leaning out of the car. ‘Thank Christ. I could do with some help here.’
I rolled down my own window. Close up, I saw that the security guard was the same spotty teenager I’d seen unloading glasses from the catering van a few hours earlier.
‘I’m trying to get to the party but this moron won’t let me in,’ Nick fumed.
‘There’s a password,’ said the youth sulkily. ‘I was told not to let anyone in without the password.’
‘Lily,’ said Nick, trying to sound matey. It didn’t suit him. ‘Help me out, would you? I really need to talk to Dido, and I know she’s here.’
‘I don’t actually know …’
Tig stuck his head out of the passenger window. ‘It’s “vanquish”,’ he called out helpfully.
‘Thank you.’ Nic revved the engine with unnecessary force. ‘Vanquish it is.’
The sulky youth looked considerably sulkier. In the end, however, he merely pointed to the CCTV camera, in what he no doubt imagined was a threatening manner, before returning to his box to press the button for the gates. I reversed – cursing and stalling – into the verge so that Nick could drive through.
Without so much as a wave of acknowledgement, he tore up the drive and then came to a screeching halt outside the house, boxing in all the other cars. As I inched back onto the road, I started laughing to myself.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked my new friend.
‘Adam’s night is about to get a lot more complicated.’
The hotel was the other side of the village and chintzy as hell. ‘Night cap?’ Tig asked, predictably, as I was being told, predictably, by the yawning concierge that they were at full capacity. So we went up to Tig’s room and raided the mini-bar. I’d already decided I was going to have to sleep with him, which meant I was going to have to have a drink. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I hadn’t had sex for over a year, and as aspiring models-slash-actors go Tig wasn’t so bad. Soft skinned and puppy-ish and eager to please. In bed, he kept calling me ‘Lucie’, but he was hardly the first, and at least he was drunk enough to make the slip borderline acceptable. I writhed about and made the requisite sounds and faces, and let him spoon me afterwards, so I suppose he was happy enough.
I couldn’t sleep. The hot meat of Tig’s body was uncomfortably packed against mine, my head pulsed, and my mouth tasted as fetid as my thoughts. After a couple of hours of fitful dozing I woke up for good.
I lay listening to Tig’s bubbling snores and let the self-loathing wash over me. What had I been thinking, coming out here? How could I hate on Adam’s machinations when I was – literally – tripping over myself in my eagerness for humiliation? I wasn’t just a dupe; I was a masochist.
All I’d had was a couple of drinks but I was crashing hard: hollowed out and twitchy, suffused with dread. I had a looming sense of having made an undefined yet soul-shredding mistake. And I couldn’t shake the idea that some kind of retribution was coming.
Dawn was breaking; I reached for my phone to check the time. Half-past five. Then I saw a message from Dido, sent two hours earlier.
I want to talk to you.
I did something dreadful.
Are you still here?
It was almost a relief, knowing my foreboding was justified. I remembered seeing Nick drive furiously up the drive, and how I’d laughed. My thoughts were foggy – the flickering shape of my fears was just out of reach – but I was now gripped by the certainty that a catastrophe was coming. Or had, in fact, already arrived.
I called Dido but her phone was switched off. I didn’t have Nick’s number. I hesitated, then tried Adam. No answer. I lay in bed for a minute or so more, heart racing. Tig let out a slobbering groan and burrowed himself deeper into the bed.
I got up and gulped down some water. I didn’t stop to shower or brush my teeth, just pulled on some clothes and stuffed the rest of my things into the bag. The house was only a couple of miles or so away; if I walked fast, I could be there in half an hour.
It was a beautiful early summer’s morning, the sky limpid with the promise of brightness to come. The village streets were deserted, and so was the bus stop where I’d disembarked. I’ve never trusted the quiet of the countryside, and now I was thinking of horror movies – that shot filled with sunshine and birdsong and waving grasses, just before the zombie hordes burst out of a wood.
The walk took longer than I thought and it was just past seven when I reached the house. The teenage guard had left his post but someone had helpfully propped the gate open with a traffic cone.
The light was growing richer by the minute, but the shadows were still cold and blue; walking under the trees, the air felt liquid. A number of cars were parked in the driveway but I didn’t see Nick’s Porsche. I didn’t know if this was a good or bad sign. (What, even, was I expecting to find – smashed windows? Shell-shocked bystanders? Dido wringing her blood-spattered hands?) I tried the front door but to my surprise it was locked. The place seemed even more lifeless than when I’d first arrived.
No matter – I knew another way in. I walked around to the salt-marsh side, following the little path to the studio by the pine wood and the garden gate. The door to the studio was wide open, so I decided to risk putting my head round. It was unoccupied and in the same sort of disarray as the hotel rooms I’d shared with Adam – scattered clothes, bottles, glasses. The bottle of painkillers lay empty on the threshold; I recognised the label.
My foot crunched on something in the deck. A couple of little yellow tablets lay on the wooden slats. I picked one up and slipped it into my bag for later, just in case. The headache had receded to a distant throb but I liked the idea of having something knock-out in reserve. Adam’s amethysts glinted on my hand. I’d had a notion of hurling the ring into the marsh, but maybe it was best to keep it as a reminder: All That Glisters Turns to Shit.
Now I was here, it should’ve been easier to dismiss my fears. Dido was prone to theatrics. She and Nick were probably long gone. It was hardly surprising there were no signs of life: the last of the revellers had likely only just gone to bed. Which was just as well, because I definitely didn’t want to run into Adam. Or Nina. Or Zalandra. Or anyone. I’d take a quick peek inside, then head back to the bus stop.
How sensible this train of thought seemed. Yet it failed to distract me from the thread of fear that was winding its way, tighter and tighter, around my skin.
I pushed open the gate to the walled garden.
The swimming-pool enclosure basked in the morning sun. The paved surrounds bore testament to a successful party: more empty bottles, more glasses; an upturned trilby used as an ashtray. A black lace thong was puddled on one side, next to a curiously neat pool of vomit.
And there, in the water, the body.
A man in briefs and an open shirt.
Not floating, but suspended in the depths, face down.
Later, I learned that dead bodies only float once they start to decay. It’s the putrefying gases that make them buoyant. There was no breeze that day and the water was perfectly still, so when I found Adam, he was more like something encased in ice or glass. His skin was pearlescent; the frozen billow of his shirt was pale; the frozen drift of his hair was dark. The mirrored lining of the pool meant he was hanging over his own distorted reflection. I could see his shadow in the sides of the pool, too; indistinct as an echo.
My first impulse was to dive in. Not to rescue Adam – he was clearly beyond that. But the water was so beautiful. It must be peaceful to be held, gently and silently, in its shining depths.
My second impulse was to walk away. I had come through the briars and found the enchanted castle with its sleeping prince. I didn’t want to be the one to break the spell.
I didn’t want this to be my story.
For a long time, I stood beside the water and wept. My cries sounded thin and trivial, swallowed up by the landscape and the stillness of the morning. After a while I grew ashamed of the sound.
Then I walked through the second garden and slid open the doors to the dreaming house. There were six or seven bodies passed out on the ground floor. I realised that the front door had never been locked – an iron coat stand had simply fallen across it. I righted the stand and felt a brief glow of accomplishment. There.
I wiped my wet cheeks.
I could just go, I thought. I could just walk through the door and forget I’d seen any of this. I could head straight to London or back to Tig. He probably wouldn’t even know I’d been gone. A warm body in a soft bed wasn’t such a bad prospect right now. And I was so, so, so tired.
I went back to the main reception room. The blinds were drawn and it was comfortingly dim. Sarah and her beardy hook-up were entwined on the couch, half-unclothed and snoring gently in their sleep. Stassia’s fur coat was in a chocolatey heap by the fireplace.
I lay down on the floor and curled myself into a ball under the coat. It was perfumed and silken yet unmistakeably animal. I closed my eyes, gripped Adam’s ring and held it to my quaking chest, and despite it all, despite everything, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
You’re dead to me.
And now he truly was. To me, to everyone. A tabloid cliché, a cautionary tale. Another sad little entry for the listicles: ‘Top Twenty Celebs Killed By Drugs!’
The official cause of Adam’s death was accidental drowning, but according to the coroner’s report, the major contributing factor was ‘mixed drug toxicity’ from the fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol found in his system. Most likely Adam had started to feel unwell shortly before going to bed. He would have experienced chest pains, dizziness and difficulty breathing. He would have then stumbled out of the studio and towards the house in search of help, but suffered a seizure at the side of the pool. Water found in his lungs indicated that he was alive when he hit the water. However, the inquest concluded that unless he’d received immediate medical attention, his level of drug intoxication was likely lethal in any case.
