The Rise, page 5
What the hell was she doing here?
How had she gone from being a little girl in a Glasgow scheme to breathing the rarefied air of the chosen few?
At the next set of lights, she turned left onto the Pacific Coast Highway and started heading north, fighting feelings of envy towards the surfers who chased the waves on her left. Past Zuma, she caught a right and began heading up the narrow, twisting Trancas Canyon Road.
On a clifftop to her right, she could see the rehab clinic that held her daughter and for the first time tears sprang to the back of her eyes. All she’d ever wanted was the stability of a family and enough financial security to know that the fears of her childhood would never come back.
Well, that was lost now. Success had come almost too easily, in part due to her inherent ability to make good judgements when it came to building a team around her. Most of her people had been with her since the first Clansman movie – loyal, dedicated professionals who knew their jobs, did them well and never let her down. Professionally, she’d built something that worked incredibly well.
But her family?
She’d got that one about as wrong as it could get.
The car turned a sharp left and she pulled over into a lay-by on the edge of the cliff. It was the kind of place that teenagers came to make out – in the middle of nowhere, plenty of time to see someone approaching and with a breath-taking view of the ocean below them.
Standing against the metal of the barrier, she pulled her white cashmere cardigan around her to protect against the breeze. Her hair was loose and strands fell across her face as she hugged herself, desperate to feel a glimmer of warmth inside her soul.
Hundreds of feet away, the surfers were just dots, moving, chasing, riding the waves. An image, like a movie in her head, took her back just a few years. Jack was home between shoots; Chloe would have been about fourteen, Logan a year younger. All four of them were out on the ocean, laughing as they surfed and paddled back and forth for hours. Chloe was a natural water baby, Logan the same, and she’d taken a snapshot that day with her mind. The perfect happy family.
What went wrong?
She tried to ignore the voice that said, ‘Karma.’
Sins of the father? Nope, in this case it was sins of the mother. Was that it? Retribution for the sins of the past?
Another shudder. She realized that it came with a vibration in her cardigan pocket. Pulling out her phone, she stared at the text on the screen, trying to decipher the words, as if they were written in a foreign language.
‘Mirren, it’s Davie. Got your number from Cal. Need to talk about Glasgow. Urgent.’
Karma. Coming back to get her. Suddenly, Jack and his betrayal paled into insignificance. This could be worse. Much, much worse. Davie belonged to another world. One she’d escaped from.
If the truth about her past came out, it would be over.
Not just her marriage, but the life she had built.
Maybe it already was.
She would never return that call. Would never reopen that door. It was behind her and there was no going back. Only forward. Even if she had to walk by herself. In fact, right now, that was exactly what she wanted to do.
Mirren McLean returned to the Maserati. Started the engine. Her cheating husband’s favourite possession rolled forward, right through the barrier and over the cliff.
8
‘LANDSLIDE’ – STEVIE NICKS
It was hard to know where Mirren started and Chloe stopped.
Zander saw her every day, usually sitting in the gardens, sullen, uncommunicative, resistant to all attempts by any of the other inmates to speak to her. Of course, the staff didn’t call them inmates, but that was how it felt. Ordered there by the courts or insurance companies or studios. No time off for good behaviour.
They were hostages in a gilded cage. There were three kinds of people in rehab. The ones who seriously wanted to kick their habit and entered voluntarily with no fanfare or public declaration of intent. The ones who viewed it as a publicity stunt – hey, look at me, I’m sorting my life out – and invariably blamed their addiction on prescription pain-killers. They were inevitably out and back on crack by day four.
And then there were the Zanders and Chloes. Detained as a punishment in premises that were more luxurious than a five-star hotel, pampered, cosseted, but deprived of the one thing room service didn’t sell – their next high.
It was no coincidence that the dreams had started again. Five years of 1990s therapy unravelled in a single week, after one brief exchange of words.
After that first conversation with Chloe, he’d kept his distance and avoided further dialogue. It wasn’t difficult. Either she was spaced out on some kind of meds the clinic was giving her, or she’d shut down to escape the reality of this place – either way, she seemed to spend all day just staring out of a window, communicating with no-one.
She was there again now, and as he passed for the last time, he said a silent goodbye. She didn’t even glance in his direction.
‘Hey, my baby boy, I’ll be missing you. Who am I gonna spoil now that you’re gone?’ Nurse Gretta enveloped him in a borderline inappropriate hug and blasted his ears with her gregarious goodbye.
Time to play the game.
He responded to her embrace, rewarding her with a wink when they finally pulled apart. ‘I might just miss you so much I have to come back for you.’
‘I’ll be right here, sweetheart. Right here and waiting.’
He knew she’d be dining out on this conversation for months. Patient confidentiality would be screwed on the back of a tantalizing gossip after too many bottles of Two-Buck Chuck.
He signed his release forms, checked out and shook Lebron’s hand after taking back possession of his wallet, his phone and his car keys. The material trappings of his life, handed back to him. Access to millions of dollars returned to a man they didn’t trust to pee on his own last week.
A voice from behind him interrupted the goodbyes.
‘You’re going, Zander?’
He knew it was Chloe who had spoken. She’d said his name, as if they were friends. She had the same voice, yet different from the one in his dreams. That one was Mirren’s and it had his accent, was deeper, harder.
‘Yeah, they’re letting me out.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
It struck him as a strange thing to say. This was only the second conversation they’d ever had.
‘I liked watching you here. Made me feel… safe. I don’t know why.’
No, not again. No. No. No.
His palms began to sweat, a small distraction from the heart that was about to explode in his chest.
There wasn’t a second of the last week that she hadn’t been in his mind and now this.
His fight-or-flight instinct chose flight.
He took two steps towards the door, hoping Lebron didn’t notice his trembling hand and the sheen on his forehead.
‘Can I come find you when I get out?’ The question was calm, almost dazed, with no trace of desperation or pleading.
No. No. No. This wasn’t Mirren. He hadn’t spoken to her in twenty years. That connection was buried. Like everything else that had happened.
Yet somehow what came out was, ‘Yes.’
The door banged behind him and he broke into a run to his car, the silver Aston Martin DB7 that sat in the space nearest the door. A few minutes later, his heart was still racing as two cop cars with sirens blaring screeched past him, heading in the direction of a helicopter that was circling overhead. Must have been an accident up near Trancas. Only when he was ten miles away, crossing the boundary line into Santa Monica, did his breathing return to anywhere near normal.
He dialled Wes’s number using the buttons on the dash.
‘Hey, how’re you doing?’ The familiar greeting.
‘A free man,’ Zander replied jovially, a display of acting worthy of his third Golden Globe.
‘Great. Knew you’d do it, son. Listen, shooting has been moved up and they want you tomorrow. Can you make that work? The insurance company has agreed to sign off on you, with regular drug tests going forward.’
When it came to Wes, there was only ever one answer.
‘Sure. I’ll be there. Just ask someone to fire all the details over to my office.’
‘It’s done. And, son…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’
‘No problem at all. I’m good, Wes. Really good.’
Christ, he almost believed himself. What was he supposed to say? No, man, I’m completely fucking rattled and ready to implode. He had to get it together. His career was on the line here. Time to pull this back, get over this shit. Bring down the shutters on a teenager sitting in a Malibu clinic freaking him the fuck out.
Time to get back to real life. He’d go home, grab a shower, head to the beach, catch a few waves and then spend the night rereading the script for tomorrow. It was the best one yet. His character goes into Iraq and finally tracks down the weapons of mass destruction that started the last war. A win-win for America. A financial injection into the movie industry and fictional justification for the conflict. Not that he gave a toss about the politics, but as a career move, it didn’t come much better.
All he had to do was keep off the booze and the drugs and do his job. Right now, he was psyched up on all counts. What did they drum into him in rehab? Choices. He had choices. And he was going to choose to get positive, focused, keep it together.
The traffic was still heavy. It would be at least another twenty minutes until he made it to his Venice home.
More to pass the time than out of any interest in what he’d missed, he hit the voicemail button on his phone. With any luck, the MTV hottie he’d hooked up with on the night of the brawl with the reality-show wanker had left a message.
‘You have thirty-seven new voicemails.’ And that was just today. His PA, Hollie, made a point of going through his messages and filtering them every morning, passing on the details of any that were important. He hit the number one button.
‘First new message.’
There was a pause, a crackle, before the voice filled the car.
‘Mr Leith, this is Sarah McKenzie from the Daily Scot. Apologies, I know this will come out of the blue, but I would very much like to speak to you. You see, I have a few questions about the disappearance of your father…’
Zander Leith swerved his car into the side of the road, put his head on the steering wheel, tried to stop the fear that had just battered his natural high to death.
No use. It was growing. Churning. Taking control. Seeping under his skin. Overtaking his brain. Screaming.
Make it stop. Make it stop.
On the dashboard, a Seb Dunhill bobblehead stared at him, a gift from a fan, customized by Zander. He leaned over, snapped it at the neck and put out a hand to capture the fine white powder that flowed from its fractured skull.
Everyone had choices in life. Right now, his was clean or coke?
9
‘RELAX’ – FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
GLASGOW, 1984
She was there again. Sitting on the bench in the dark. Alone. Staring into space. Doing nothing. Yet he couldn’t stop watching her.
It was summer but it was Glasgow, so it was cold. If Davie’s mum knew he was still awake at almost eleven o’clock, he’d be in trouble, but he didn’t care. Anyway, she worked three jobs and tonight, Saturday, was her only night off, so she’d already been dozing when he got back from the chippy with the fish suppers a few hours ago. She was probably now crashed out downstairs on her brown Dralon armchair, bottle of her favourite American Cream Soda and discarded newspaper on the teak side table next to her.
She was all right, his mum. Strict, a wee bit bossy, but at least she wasn’t stuck-up like Zander’s mum, all ‘Leave your shoes at the door and go to Mass every Sunday.’
His gaze flicked around to the other houses in the square. A party going on at number 2. Old Mrs Squinty McGinty at number 18 had her windows open and was singing those old songs at the top of her voice again. ‘You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road…’ He heard his neighbour shouting that he wished to fuck she would and then maybe they’d all get some sleep.
That was the thing about living in Crofthill – there was only a window or a wall between you and everyone else’s lives. In his street, there were four blocks of five grey pebble-dashed terrace houses, arranged in a square. Communal ground in the middle with benches and a play area. It was supposed to enhance community spirit. Instead it just meant every bugger knew everyone else’s business.
The drift of smoke from the girl’s cigarette dispersed into the night sky as she stubbed it out on the leg of the concrete bench she was sitting on. There had been wooden benches there once, but the council had replaced them after one of them had ended up in the garden of the weird bloke at number 6. He claimed he’d bought it in a pub. The council decided not to bring in the police, and instead just replaced the whole lot with concrete seating that hurt your arse, but at least wasn’t going to get flogged for a tenner down the King’s Arms.
The council blokes were always round doing things to the scheme. They’d planted flower beds in the middle of the play area last year. All right to look at, he supposed, but the soil didn’t half bugger your trainers when you were taking a penalty.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ was silenced in the middle of the chorus by the stop button on his Walkman. He still couldn’t believe he owned one. Zander had given it to him for his twelfth birthday. He’d overheard his mum saying it fell off the back of a lorry, but hey, Frankie Goes to Hollywood didn’t seem to mind where it came from, so neither did he.
The catch on his window resisted his first attempt to push it open, but he succeeded on the second try. He slipped over the sill and walked towards her as casually as a twelve-year-old who’d just snagged the crotch of his jeans on a window catch could manage.
As he crossed the tiny lawn in front of his house and headed to the centre of the square, getting closer to her with every step, she didn’t look up, didn’t look in his direction, not even once.
‘How’s it going?’ he said, his breath making clouds in the freezing night air.
Just when backing away slowly seemed like the only possible way to salvage a shred of dignity, she finally spoke. No eye contact. No smile. Just words.
‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing. Just, erm, I’m Davie. Live at number 15.’
‘I know.’
‘You just moved in?’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, erm…’
Why hadn’t he just stayed in his bedroom with his Walkman on, ignoring the world? The answer was already in his head and there was no way he was saying it out loud.
Because he’d seen her out here every night this week. And she was gorgeous. Crazy mad dark red curly hair. Huge eyes. Really skinny, like that dancer chick from Flashdance.
Eventually, after what seemed like an hour and a half, she put him out of his misery with a bored ‘Yes’.
This was too hard. OK, one more try and then he was giving up, heading back inside for a heat.
‘So why are you out here, then?’
Another pause. His Adidas Bamba took a step backwards. He’d wanted Sambas, but his mum said there was no point paying extra when you could hardly see the difference.
He paused, about to pivot, when her voice stopped him.
‘Because she’s in there with a bloke and I don’t like hearing them.’
Wow. It took him a minute to catch up.
‘So every night you’re out here because…?’
‘She’s in there with a bloke,’ she repeated.
And again, wow. Davie’s dad had pissed off before he was born and since then the closest his mum got to a conversation with a bloke was shouting out the answers to the questions on the general knowledge round of Mastermind.
His brain had no answer for this girl’s quiet, blunt manner. Usually he could talk his way out of anything. His teachers said he talked too much. His mum said she couldn’t hear herself think for him sometimes. Even his gran would deliberately take out her hearing aid when he’d been in her house for more than ten minutes. However, now his mind was racing, but his vocal cords were parked.
A noise behind him made him start. For a horrible moment he thought he was about to suffer the indignity of being dragged back inside and bollocked every step of the way by a mum that smelt of vinegar, American Cream Soda and Embassy Regal.
When he realized it was Zander, he muttered a strangled. ‘Yes!’
They’d lived on the same block their whole lives, Alexander Leith – Sandy to his mum and dad; Zander to his pals – on one end and Davie on the other, which put this new girl smack bang in the middle.
Zander’s house may have been identical to his once, but now it was completely different. His dad’s mates had painted the front, put on a new door, added an extra room on the side and put a garage on the communal grass next to them. No one complained. A council officer came round once and hadn’t been back since.
‘How’s it going, pal?’ Davie greeted him, his trademark grin back in place for the first time since he’d dropped out of his window.
Zander countered the question with one of his own. ‘What you doing out?’
‘Just talking to… to…’
‘Mirren,’ she offered, and Davie noticed that for the first time her stare had left the space in front of her and was now fixed on Zander’s face. Her reaction was nothing new. Half the girls in school fancied him. Even the posh ones who came to school in a car and lived up in the bought houses.
