The Rise, page 4
The obvious question niggled at her.
‘How come I’ve never heard of him?’ If Sarah was ever to have a specialist subject, it would be Glasgow criminals, past and present. She’d spent years studying her subject, reading reports, searching old archives and she didn’t remember ever coming across the name Jono Leith.
Manny’s shaking hand lifted a mug half filled with dark, stewed tea to his cracked lips.
‘That wis Jono’s thing. A bit paranoid. Never bragged about the big stuff and never got busted for it either. Stayed oot the papers and there was nane o’ that internet pish then. Naw, Jono kept it all quiet and tidy. The polis knew him, but they could never tie any of the major stuff to him. Fucking Teflon he was.’
That could have been the conversation-stopper if the journalist in Sarah, trained to keep asking questions until she got something she could use, hadn’t gone for a stab in the dark.
‘Leith’s a pretty unusual name around here though. Don’t suppose he was any relation to Zander Leith?’ Her self-conscious laugh broadcast the message that she realized she was being ridiculous. Zander Leith was a local hero, one of the famous movie trio who’d left the local streets and conquered the world. Zander Leith, Mirren McLean, Davie Johnston. Megastars with more column inches and interviews than any other Scottish export. Hell, Gerry Butler and Ewan McGregor didn’t even come close. If Zander was connected to a shady figure, surely it would have come out long ago? Nah, there was no way she was on to anything here.
‘Zander…’ Manny’s tongue rolled the word around for a few moments. ‘You mean the bloke in the films?’
Sarah was embarrassed. She’d known it was stupid. Too much of a leap. Manny would think she was a complete imbecile now and she wasn’t rushing to disagree with him.
‘Aye, hen, that’s him. Back then he wis just Wee Sandy. And aye, Jono was his old man.’
6
‘WALK THIS WAY’ – AEROSMITH
Davie made his regular morning pit stop at the Nespresso Boutique on Beverly Drive. It was the Rolls Royce, the private jet, the Gucci of the coffee world. It was the only place to be seen to re-caffeinate. Davie bypassed the outdoor patio and went straight for the product. There were twenty-one choices of gourmet grand cru. His was strong, black and fast.
If it was true that the most beautiful people in the world lived in LA, the ones who loved coffee were in here. Over the years, he’d been asked a hundred times how he could live in a society so fake. If the six-foot blonde drinking her iced macchiato in front of him was fake, then the realists of the world could cry him a river.
While he was waiting, he used his iPhone to scan the gossip websites. He’d already seen the news on TMZ the previous night, but somehow, seeing Chloe’s mugshot just made it so much more vivid. His first reaction was irritation that it had knocked Sky Nixon’s overdose off the front page. Shit. They were counting on that to send the ratings on the opening episode of the second series of New York Nixons through the roof.
His second reaction, more of an afterthought, was sympathy. Mirren must be going through hell with that kid of hers. Not that it was any of his business, and he knew she wouldn’t thank him for the pity. Or would she? How long had it been since they’d had any contact? Fifteen years? More? The last time he’d spoken to Mirren McLean, she’d made it perfectly clear there wouldn’t be a follow-up conversation.
Coffee delivered, he headed back to the car, shrugging off the memory. In the Bugatti, he made a call. It went straight to the answering machine of Sky’s mother, a wacked-out heroin-chick-turned-organic-tree-saver called Rainbow, who kept it quiet that her much-publicized, minimalist crusade to be at one with the earth was more than a little out of sync with a lifestyle that created a bigger carbon footprint than the average small town.
They were all the same, the Hollywood tree-huggers. Pontificated about saving the Amazon rainforest while hiring private jets to fly their favourite meal from one coast to the other.
‘Rainbow, it’s Davie. Problem at this end. Sky’s situation didn’t get as much airtime as we thought. Two choices: we need a repeat, another overdose, or else make a press statement saying she’s not recovering. You know the drill. Tears. Prayers. Twitter. Facebook. Call me back to discuss.’
He’d just hung up when the phone rang again. This time, he flicked it to loudspeaker, channelling it through the sound system on the Bugatti.
‘Hey, Cal. How the devil are you?’ Davie’s tone switched immediately from pissed to positive. Hollywood didn’t do negativity. Even if you were down to your last dollar and the critics had handed you your ass on a plate, you had to maintain the aura of a winner, one that sat somewhere in the middle of the scale between confident and Charlie Sheen delusion.
‘Davie. News.’
The top agent at Creative Stars Agency, Cal Woolfe was always succinct and straight to the point. That’s why he was the most sought-after representative in town. Besides, Davie hadn’t paid him 10 per cent for the last ten years to be his buddy.
‘Am on my way in, bro,’ Davie replied, pre-empting the conversation. His American Stars contract had been discussed and their offer was due to hit the desk that morning.
‘Listen, this is just a holding call. The paperwork isn’t here yet. Pricks string it out every year. We should have added on an extra million just for their aggravating dick-tugging.’
As he hung up, Davie changed course. No point in heading to the CSA offices now. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where to go. The sun was shining, it was 75 degrees, he had all the time and money in the world, and yet he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to do.
At the bottom of Beverly, he made the decision. Instead of heading right, he hung a left. Fifteen minutes later, he was pulling up to the security checkpoint at Captis Studios, the home of Family Three.
The guard treated him like an old friend.
‘Mr Johnston, we didn’t have you on the list for today. Good to see you.’
‘Thanks, Rick.’
It was an old trick. He had an encyclopaedic memory for the names of anyone who may ever be in a position to make his life easier.
‘Just missing the kids and thought I’d pop in to see them.’
Rick gave him a high five as he waved him through. Laying out some love made life easier. Case in point.
Outside soundstage 23, he spotted Bella and Bray being herded from their trailer to the set and pulled over out of sight. As soon as they were gone, he parked up and made for the biggest trailer on the lot.
Opening the door, he congratulated himself on the decision. Vala Diaz, the twenty-five-year-old Mexican star of Family Three, was standing completely naked being spray-tanned by one of the huge entourage employed to keep her looking hotter than the midday sun in Tijuana.
A lazy smile played on her lips when she saw him and she immediately dismissed the acolyte. She didn’t flinch from her position. Hands on hips. Shoulders back. Feet apart. Long, glossy black hair now unclipped and falling in a perfect sheet to her waist. Her golden skin oozing St Tropez and sheer sex.
‘Something is wrong,’ she said, her intoxicating Spanish accent changing the vowels.
‘What’s that?’ It was a game Davie was all set to play.
‘You have been here for a minute and you’re not naked yet,’ she teased.
Davie responded by leaning over and biting down on one of her nipples, just the way she’d demanded every time they’d been together. They’d been screwing for the last year and he’d never known a woman to want it as rough as she did. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if it was passion or consensual combat.
Her impatience was showing. “Are you gonna stand around all day or are you gonna make me happy?’
As he pulled down his zip and lifted her up, her legs automatically wrapped round his waist. Pushing up against the ivory silk fabric that lined the wall of the trailer, he slipped inside her and began grinding as she barked out orders. Harder. Faster. Her hands were in his hair, grabbing, pulling, as her teeth clamped on his bottom lip until it felt like it was bleeding.
The ringing of his cell interrupted his enjoyment. Taking one hand off her ass, he reached round to his back pocket and extracted the phone, immediately recognizing the tone that was allocated to Cal’s number.
Two things happened at once. He answered the call and Vala slapped him hard across the face. He grabbed her wrist, trying to speak as she climbed off him, still slapping and biting.
‘Cal, hey.’
‘Switch on the TV.’
‘What?’
‘Switch on the TV. Sam Rubin. KTLA. Quick.’
Holding Vala’s attack back with one hand, he grabbed the remote from the walnut table in the centre of the room and flicked it onto Channel 5. Rainbow Nixon was standing in front of a press pack, dressed in a long, flowing white robe, a string of fricking daisies round her head, speaking to the crowd.
‘My poor darling Sky is lying in hospital right now, close to death.’
Davie couldn’t help a twitch of a smile. That was quick work. He’d only left the instructions an hour ago. Damn, she was playing the part well. If she’d acted as well as this back in the 1980s, she’d be a fucking megastar now.
‘And I can no longer keep quiet and tolerate this situation. It’s time people knew the truth about these so-called reality shows. The lies. The manipulations. We’ve fallen victim to the very worst kind of evil and now my beautiful girl lies in a hospital bed and I don’t know if she will ever wake up.’
He froze. What? This wasn’t in the script. She was supposed to spin them a line, whip up a few headlines. What the fuck was she doing? A cold chill rose from his toes, collapsing his erection as it passed on the way to his stomach.
‘I discovered this morning that my daughter deliberately overdosed in order to get publicity for the Season Two premiere of our family’s show, New York Nixons. I had absolutely no knowledge that my baby planned to do this.’
Lie. That was a lie. It had originally been her idea. Sure, he’d been happy to go along with it, but… shit, she was throwing him under the bus. Stop speaking. Stop. Speaking.
‘Her actions were on the instructions of the producer of our show, Davie Johnston.’
The press went crazy, bulbs flashed, and dozens of voices shouted out questions at once. The suit standing next to Rainbow put his hand up to hush them, then pointed to a journalist on his left, who immediately reacted to his cue.
‘Rainbow, these are very series accusations. Do you have any proof of this?’
‘I do. Only minutes ago, I received this call from that vile man.’
Rainbow held a recording device to the microphone and pressed play.
Davie froze. Paralysed. Mute. His entire brain hijacked by an internal voice screaming, ‘No!’
‘Rainbow, it’s Davie. Problem at this end. Sky’s situation didn’t get as much airtime as we thought. Two choices: we need a repeat, another overdose, or else make a press statement saying she’s not recovering. You know the drill. Tears. Prayers. Twitter. Facebook. Call me back to discuss.’
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Vomit rose from his stomach, making his oesophagus twist so tight it felt like he was being suffocated. No breath. No air. No strength in his legs.
He sank to his knees. This was bad. Really bad. A life-changer.
His phone fell to the floor and somewhere in the distance he could hear Cal say his name. He grabbed the handset and pummelled it with his fist, intending to switch it off, smash it, anything to make this stop.
Instead, he heard the modulated tones of his answering machine: ‘First new message.’
His assistant’s voice joined the cacophony of noise exploding in his head.
‘Hi, Davie. This is Jorja. We’ve had an interview request from a journalist called Sarah McKenzie at the Daily Scot. I know you love to keep your profile up in the UK, so shall I set up a date? She wants the focus to be your life back in Scotland, growing up with Zander Leith and Mirren McLean. Oh, and she said something really weird, something about wanting to meet the families the three of you left behind.’
An echo. ‘The families the three of you left behind.’
Davie Johnston’s world faded to black.
7
‘FAKE’ – ALEXANDER O’NEAL
‘I never meant this to happen, Mirren.’
Oh, dear God, she was in cliché hell. Any minute now, he’d tell her he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
‘And I never meant to h—’
‘Stop! Which bit did you not mean, Jack? The bit where you shagged her, or the bit where she accidentally got pregnant with your kid?’
Yes, she knew she’d switched from cliché to dialogue straight out of an afternoon soap opera, but she obviously hadn’t read the manual on how to deal with a husband of nineteen years who had just ceremoniously shafted your life.
They were standing in their indoor kitchen. There was an outdoor one too, but that was more functional. This was her dream room, every item hand-picked. The red lacquer La Cornue Grand Palais range cooker, copper sink, Hammacher juicer, Mugnaini pizza oven and the Meneghini Arredamenti fridge in solid oak, a contrast against the hand-painted scarlet solid-wood doors on the cupboards and drawers. The white marble worktops glistened under the rack of spotlights overhead. In the corner, a turret, her own addition, accommodation for a semi-circular booth that had been the backdrop to years of family dinners, homework and long nights at the laptop.
They’d planned and built it with no expense spared because they’d wanted it to last a lifetime. Shame she’d had to find out that he didn’t have the same view on monogamy.
Looking at him now, Mirren thought she’d never seen a man look so utterly pathetic. Jack Gore was from the Liam Neeson school of manhood. Tall, broad, with a naturally muscular, lean physique and a face that was undoubtedly attractive but stopped just a shade on the craggy side of movie-star handsome. It had always been obvious that Chloe took after her: same hair, same features, same smile. Logan had his father’s blond hair, wide grin and deep blue eyes, yet somehow they were proportioned slightly differently, giving her son an all-American cuteness instead of his father’s rugged appeal.
He was still speaking, but she wasn’t listening.
For the first time in many, many years, she wanted to physically hurt someone, to smash his face until it was pulp. In all her married life, she could never have comprehended feeling this way about him. Jack. Her easy-going, macho husband, the one who could walk into any room and make her instantly feel at ease because he was there. That wasn’t the guy who was standing in front of her now. This one was needy, weak, pitiful.
‘You’d just been so busy and—’
‘Don’t you dare blame me.’ Her voice was low and edged with pure ice. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she repeated, stopping there, biting back the urge to justify herself, to rhyme off the contributions she’d made to this family. She’d brought up those children while he travelled the world working on movies; she’d run the home; she’d forged a career that made more damn money than him; she’d handled every single one of Chloe’s incidents and problems; and she’d done it all while waiting for this lying, cheating prick to return home to her.
And she’d loved him. My God, she’d loved him.
‘Help me, Mir. You’ve got to help me. I don’t want this. I want us. You and me. I swear on the kids’ lives it was nothing. Don’t let it change us. You know I couldn’t live—’
‘Get out.’
He reacted like he’d been slapped. It didn’t even come close to the physical pain she wanted him to feel, but it was a start.
‘Get out, Jack. We’re done.’
‘Mirren, you can’t throw away the best part of twenty years on one fling that didn’t mean—’
‘I didn’t. You did. And it’s not one fling, Jack. It’s a lifetime. The baby is yours, I take it?’
He clenched his jaw tight, the way he always did when he was stressed. A pang of pain shot through her as she realized that she used to think the gesture was endearing. She’d watched him do that as he waited for her answer when he proposed. When he watched her crease with pain when she was in labour. When a movie deal fell through or an actor was playing up. He’d done it the first time the police had brought Chloe home, and he did it now. Caught betraying everything they had for a midlife-crisis fling with a twenty-two-year-old.
‘Yeah, well, you know. She says it is and we were… together… but I don’t know. I just don’t know, Mir. It was only a couple of times.’
The twitch in his right eye confirmed he was lying. It was all lies. Even the fact that he was here proved a lie. Two more weeks in Istanbul, he’d told her, yet here he was, saying they wrapped early. Lies. He’d probably planned a couple of weeks end-of-shoot R&R with the mistress and now he’d had to cut it short to dig himself out of the huge crater his treachery had kicked him into. And still he was talking…
‘Obviously we’ll do a DNA test. It might not be mine. That’s happened before. Look what happened to Sly Stallone…’
Her hand gripped the edge of the marble worktop as a wave of dizziness kicked in. It was all so sordid. So cheap. If she stayed in this room a minute more, it would destroy her.
She couldn’t breathe the same air as him any longer. If he wasn’t leaving, she’d go instead. Reaching over for the car keys that lay on the counter, she eyed him with undisguised hatred.
‘Be gone by the time I get back,’ she told him. ‘And take your faithless dick with you!’
The slamming of the solid-mahogany door put the exclamation mark on the end of the sentence. Outside, she realized she’d picked up his car keys instead of hers. It was his pride and joy, that car. His baby. He let no-one else drive it but him. Well, fuck it. She headed for his brand-new, bright red Maserati and jumped in. How predictable. How could she possibly have omitted to notice that he was swimming in the pool of the midlife crisis?
The engine roared as she powered out of the drive and turned right. Five hundred yards along the road, she stopped at the checkpoint that kept the residents of Malibu Colony protected from the scrutiny and threats of the outside world. These were some of the most expensive homes in the country, populated by people who spent half their lives earning enough money to live there, and the other half feeling paranoid that it could all be taken away.
‘How come I’ve never heard of him?’ If Sarah was ever to have a specialist subject, it would be Glasgow criminals, past and present. She’d spent years studying her subject, reading reports, searching old archives and she didn’t remember ever coming across the name Jono Leith.
Manny’s shaking hand lifted a mug half filled with dark, stewed tea to his cracked lips.
‘That wis Jono’s thing. A bit paranoid. Never bragged about the big stuff and never got busted for it either. Stayed oot the papers and there was nane o’ that internet pish then. Naw, Jono kept it all quiet and tidy. The polis knew him, but they could never tie any of the major stuff to him. Fucking Teflon he was.’
That could have been the conversation-stopper if the journalist in Sarah, trained to keep asking questions until she got something she could use, hadn’t gone for a stab in the dark.
‘Leith’s a pretty unusual name around here though. Don’t suppose he was any relation to Zander Leith?’ Her self-conscious laugh broadcast the message that she realized she was being ridiculous. Zander Leith was a local hero, one of the famous movie trio who’d left the local streets and conquered the world. Zander Leith, Mirren McLean, Davie Johnston. Megastars with more column inches and interviews than any other Scottish export. Hell, Gerry Butler and Ewan McGregor didn’t even come close. If Zander was connected to a shady figure, surely it would have come out long ago? Nah, there was no way she was on to anything here.
‘Zander…’ Manny’s tongue rolled the word around for a few moments. ‘You mean the bloke in the films?’
Sarah was embarrassed. She’d known it was stupid. Too much of a leap. Manny would think she was a complete imbecile now and she wasn’t rushing to disagree with him.
‘Aye, hen, that’s him. Back then he wis just Wee Sandy. And aye, Jono was his old man.’
6
‘WALK THIS WAY’ – AEROSMITH
Davie made his regular morning pit stop at the Nespresso Boutique on Beverly Drive. It was the Rolls Royce, the private jet, the Gucci of the coffee world. It was the only place to be seen to re-caffeinate. Davie bypassed the outdoor patio and went straight for the product. There were twenty-one choices of gourmet grand cru. His was strong, black and fast.
If it was true that the most beautiful people in the world lived in LA, the ones who loved coffee were in here. Over the years, he’d been asked a hundred times how he could live in a society so fake. If the six-foot blonde drinking her iced macchiato in front of him was fake, then the realists of the world could cry him a river.
While he was waiting, he used his iPhone to scan the gossip websites. He’d already seen the news on TMZ the previous night, but somehow, seeing Chloe’s mugshot just made it so much more vivid. His first reaction was irritation that it had knocked Sky Nixon’s overdose off the front page. Shit. They were counting on that to send the ratings on the opening episode of the second series of New York Nixons through the roof.
His second reaction, more of an afterthought, was sympathy. Mirren must be going through hell with that kid of hers. Not that it was any of his business, and he knew she wouldn’t thank him for the pity. Or would she? How long had it been since they’d had any contact? Fifteen years? More? The last time he’d spoken to Mirren McLean, she’d made it perfectly clear there wouldn’t be a follow-up conversation.
Coffee delivered, he headed back to the car, shrugging off the memory. In the Bugatti, he made a call. It went straight to the answering machine of Sky’s mother, a wacked-out heroin-chick-turned-organic-tree-saver called Rainbow, who kept it quiet that her much-publicized, minimalist crusade to be at one with the earth was more than a little out of sync with a lifestyle that created a bigger carbon footprint than the average small town.
They were all the same, the Hollywood tree-huggers. Pontificated about saving the Amazon rainforest while hiring private jets to fly their favourite meal from one coast to the other.
‘Rainbow, it’s Davie. Problem at this end. Sky’s situation didn’t get as much airtime as we thought. Two choices: we need a repeat, another overdose, or else make a press statement saying she’s not recovering. You know the drill. Tears. Prayers. Twitter. Facebook. Call me back to discuss.’
He’d just hung up when the phone rang again. This time, he flicked it to loudspeaker, channelling it through the sound system on the Bugatti.
‘Hey, Cal. How the devil are you?’ Davie’s tone switched immediately from pissed to positive. Hollywood didn’t do negativity. Even if you were down to your last dollar and the critics had handed you your ass on a plate, you had to maintain the aura of a winner, one that sat somewhere in the middle of the scale between confident and Charlie Sheen delusion.
‘Davie. News.’
The top agent at Creative Stars Agency, Cal Woolfe was always succinct and straight to the point. That’s why he was the most sought-after representative in town. Besides, Davie hadn’t paid him 10 per cent for the last ten years to be his buddy.
‘Am on my way in, bro,’ Davie replied, pre-empting the conversation. His American Stars contract had been discussed and their offer was due to hit the desk that morning.
‘Listen, this is just a holding call. The paperwork isn’t here yet. Pricks string it out every year. We should have added on an extra million just for their aggravating dick-tugging.’
As he hung up, Davie changed course. No point in heading to the CSA offices now. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where to go. The sun was shining, it was 75 degrees, he had all the time and money in the world, and yet he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to do.
At the bottom of Beverly, he made the decision. Instead of heading right, he hung a left. Fifteen minutes later, he was pulling up to the security checkpoint at Captis Studios, the home of Family Three.
The guard treated him like an old friend.
‘Mr Johnston, we didn’t have you on the list for today. Good to see you.’
‘Thanks, Rick.’
It was an old trick. He had an encyclopaedic memory for the names of anyone who may ever be in a position to make his life easier.
‘Just missing the kids and thought I’d pop in to see them.’
Rick gave him a high five as he waved him through. Laying out some love made life easier. Case in point.
Outside soundstage 23, he spotted Bella and Bray being herded from their trailer to the set and pulled over out of sight. As soon as they were gone, he parked up and made for the biggest trailer on the lot.
Opening the door, he congratulated himself on the decision. Vala Diaz, the twenty-five-year-old Mexican star of Family Three, was standing completely naked being spray-tanned by one of the huge entourage employed to keep her looking hotter than the midday sun in Tijuana.
A lazy smile played on her lips when she saw him and she immediately dismissed the acolyte. She didn’t flinch from her position. Hands on hips. Shoulders back. Feet apart. Long, glossy black hair now unclipped and falling in a perfect sheet to her waist. Her golden skin oozing St Tropez and sheer sex.
‘Something is wrong,’ she said, her intoxicating Spanish accent changing the vowels.
‘What’s that?’ It was a game Davie was all set to play.
‘You have been here for a minute and you’re not naked yet,’ she teased.
Davie responded by leaning over and biting down on one of her nipples, just the way she’d demanded every time they’d been together. They’d been screwing for the last year and he’d never known a woman to want it as rough as she did. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if it was passion or consensual combat.
Her impatience was showing. “Are you gonna stand around all day or are you gonna make me happy?’
As he pulled down his zip and lifted her up, her legs automatically wrapped round his waist. Pushing up against the ivory silk fabric that lined the wall of the trailer, he slipped inside her and began grinding as she barked out orders. Harder. Faster. Her hands were in his hair, grabbing, pulling, as her teeth clamped on his bottom lip until it felt like it was bleeding.
The ringing of his cell interrupted his enjoyment. Taking one hand off her ass, he reached round to his back pocket and extracted the phone, immediately recognizing the tone that was allocated to Cal’s number.
Two things happened at once. He answered the call and Vala slapped him hard across the face. He grabbed her wrist, trying to speak as she climbed off him, still slapping and biting.
‘Cal, hey.’
‘Switch on the TV.’
‘What?’
‘Switch on the TV. Sam Rubin. KTLA. Quick.’
Holding Vala’s attack back with one hand, he grabbed the remote from the walnut table in the centre of the room and flicked it onto Channel 5. Rainbow Nixon was standing in front of a press pack, dressed in a long, flowing white robe, a string of fricking daisies round her head, speaking to the crowd.
‘My poor darling Sky is lying in hospital right now, close to death.’
Davie couldn’t help a twitch of a smile. That was quick work. He’d only left the instructions an hour ago. Damn, she was playing the part well. If she’d acted as well as this back in the 1980s, she’d be a fucking megastar now.
‘And I can no longer keep quiet and tolerate this situation. It’s time people knew the truth about these so-called reality shows. The lies. The manipulations. We’ve fallen victim to the very worst kind of evil and now my beautiful girl lies in a hospital bed and I don’t know if she will ever wake up.’
He froze. What? This wasn’t in the script. She was supposed to spin them a line, whip up a few headlines. What the fuck was she doing? A cold chill rose from his toes, collapsing his erection as it passed on the way to his stomach.
‘I discovered this morning that my daughter deliberately overdosed in order to get publicity for the Season Two premiere of our family’s show, New York Nixons. I had absolutely no knowledge that my baby planned to do this.’
Lie. That was a lie. It had originally been her idea. Sure, he’d been happy to go along with it, but… shit, she was throwing him under the bus. Stop speaking. Stop. Speaking.
‘Her actions were on the instructions of the producer of our show, Davie Johnston.’
The press went crazy, bulbs flashed, and dozens of voices shouted out questions at once. The suit standing next to Rainbow put his hand up to hush them, then pointed to a journalist on his left, who immediately reacted to his cue.
‘Rainbow, these are very series accusations. Do you have any proof of this?’
‘I do. Only minutes ago, I received this call from that vile man.’
Rainbow held a recording device to the microphone and pressed play.
Davie froze. Paralysed. Mute. His entire brain hijacked by an internal voice screaming, ‘No!’
‘Rainbow, it’s Davie. Problem at this end. Sky’s situation didn’t get as much airtime as we thought. Two choices: we need a repeat, another overdose, or else make a press statement saying she’s not recovering. You know the drill. Tears. Prayers. Twitter. Facebook. Call me back to discuss.’
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Vomit rose from his stomach, making his oesophagus twist so tight it felt like he was being suffocated. No breath. No air. No strength in his legs.
He sank to his knees. This was bad. Really bad. A life-changer.
His phone fell to the floor and somewhere in the distance he could hear Cal say his name. He grabbed the handset and pummelled it with his fist, intending to switch it off, smash it, anything to make this stop.
Instead, he heard the modulated tones of his answering machine: ‘First new message.’
His assistant’s voice joined the cacophony of noise exploding in his head.
‘Hi, Davie. This is Jorja. We’ve had an interview request from a journalist called Sarah McKenzie at the Daily Scot. I know you love to keep your profile up in the UK, so shall I set up a date? She wants the focus to be your life back in Scotland, growing up with Zander Leith and Mirren McLean. Oh, and she said something really weird, something about wanting to meet the families the three of you left behind.’
An echo. ‘The families the three of you left behind.’
Davie Johnston’s world faded to black.
7
‘FAKE’ – ALEXANDER O’NEAL
‘I never meant this to happen, Mirren.’
Oh, dear God, she was in cliché hell. Any minute now, he’d tell her he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
‘And I never meant to h—’
‘Stop! Which bit did you not mean, Jack? The bit where you shagged her, or the bit where she accidentally got pregnant with your kid?’
Yes, she knew she’d switched from cliché to dialogue straight out of an afternoon soap opera, but she obviously hadn’t read the manual on how to deal with a husband of nineteen years who had just ceremoniously shafted your life.
They were standing in their indoor kitchen. There was an outdoor one too, but that was more functional. This was her dream room, every item hand-picked. The red lacquer La Cornue Grand Palais range cooker, copper sink, Hammacher juicer, Mugnaini pizza oven and the Meneghini Arredamenti fridge in solid oak, a contrast against the hand-painted scarlet solid-wood doors on the cupboards and drawers. The white marble worktops glistened under the rack of spotlights overhead. In the corner, a turret, her own addition, accommodation for a semi-circular booth that had been the backdrop to years of family dinners, homework and long nights at the laptop.
They’d planned and built it with no expense spared because they’d wanted it to last a lifetime. Shame she’d had to find out that he didn’t have the same view on monogamy.
Looking at him now, Mirren thought she’d never seen a man look so utterly pathetic. Jack Gore was from the Liam Neeson school of manhood. Tall, broad, with a naturally muscular, lean physique and a face that was undoubtedly attractive but stopped just a shade on the craggy side of movie-star handsome. It had always been obvious that Chloe took after her: same hair, same features, same smile. Logan had his father’s blond hair, wide grin and deep blue eyes, yet somehow they were proportioned slightly differently, giving her son an all-American cuteness instead of his father’s rugged appeal.
He was still speaking, but she wasn’t listening.
For the first time in many, many years, she wanted to physically hurt someone, to smash his face until it was pulp. In all her married life, she could never have comprehended feeling this way about him. Jack. Her easy-going, macho husband, the one who could walk into any room and make her instantly feel at ease because he was there. That wasn’t the guy who was standing in front of her now. This one was needy, weak, pitiful.
‘You’d just been so busy and—’
‘Don’t you dare blame me.’ Her voice was low and edged with pure ice. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she repeated, stopping there, biting back the urge to justify herself, to rhyme off the contributions she’d made to this family. She’d brought up those children while he travelled the world working on movies; she’d run the home; she’d forged a career that made more damn money than him; she’d handled every single one of Chloe’s incidents and problems; and she’d done it all while waiting for this lying, cheating prick to return home to her.
And she’d loved him. My God, she’d loved him.
‘Help me, Mir. You’ve got to help me. I don’t want this. I want us. You and me. I swear on the kids’ lives it was nothing. Don’t let it change us. You know I couldn’t live—’
‘Get out.’
He reacted like he’d been slapped. It didn’t even come close to the physical pain she wanted him to feel, but it was a start.
‘Get out, Jack. We’re done.’
‘Mirren, you can’t throw away the best part of twenty years on one fling that didn’t mean—’
‘I didn’t. You did. And it’s not one fling, Jack. It’s a lifetime. The baby is yours, I take it?’
He clenched his jaw tight, the way he always did when he was stressed. A pang of pain shot through her as she realized that she used to think the gesture was endearing. She’d watched him do that as he waited for her answer when he proposed. When he watched her crease with pain when she was in labour. When a movie deal fell through or an actor was playing up. He’d done it the first time the police had brought Chloe home, and he did it now. Caught betraying everything they had for a midlife-crisis fling with a twenty-two-year-old.
‘Yeah, well, you know. She says it is and we were… together… but I don’t know. I just don’t know, Mir. It was only a couple of times.’
The twitch in his right eye confirmed he was lying. It was all lies. Even the fact that he was here proved a lie. Two more weeks in Istanbul, he’d told her, yet here he was, saying they wrapped early. Lies. He’d probably planned a couple of weeks end-of-shoot R&R with the mistress and now he’d had to cut it short to dig himself out of the huge crater his treachery had kicked him into. And still he was talking…
‘Obviously we’ll do a DNA test. It might not be mine. That’s happened before. Look what happened to Sly Stallone…’
Her hand gripped the edge of the marble worktop as a wave of dizziness kicked in. It was all so sordid. So cheap. If she stayed in this room a minute more, it would destroy her.
She couldn’t breathe the same air as him any longer. If he wasn’t leaving, she’d go instead. Reaching over for the car keys that lay on the counter, she eyed him with undisguised hatred.
‘Be gone by the time I get back,’ she told him. ‘And take your faithless dick with you!’
The slamming of the solid-mahogany door put the exclamation mark on the end of the sentence. Outside, she realized she’d picked up his car keys instead of hers. It was his pride and joy, that car. His baby. He let no-one else drive it but him. Well, fuck it. She headed for his brand-new, bright red Maserati and jumped in. How predictable. How could she possibly have omitted to notice that he was swimming in the pool of the midlife crisis?
The engine roared as she powered out of the drive and turned right. Five hundred yards along the road, she stopped at the checkpoint that kept the residents of Malibu Colony protected from the scrutiny and threats of the outside world. These were some of the most expensive homes in the country, populated by people who spent half their lives earning enough money to live there, and the other half feeling paranoid that it could all be taken away.
