by Paige Toon
I look back at Johnny, his green eyes challenging mine as Dana smirks.
‘You make me sick,’ I whisper at him, and a flicker of something passes over his face. Dana laughs, but I ignore her. ‘We’re leaving,’ I tell him resolutely.
‘No, you’re not,’ he replies.
‘Oh, yes,’ I nod and I suddenly feel very, very calm. ‘Yes, we are. And until you sort yourself out and get rid of your fucked-up—’
‘Language,’ Dana butts in merrily.
‘. . . druggie girlfriend,’ I continue, while she sucks the air in through her teeth but pretends not to care, ‘we’ll have nothing more to do with you.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Johnny reiterates, but his conviction is waning.
I raise my eyebrows at him and walk out of the office.
I head upstairs to my room, where Bess is waiting with Barney.
‘Your phone has been beeping,’ she says, handing me my handbag, which she helpfully carried up along with my son.
I take it from her and pull out my phone. Eleven missed calls, mainly from Mum and Dad, and – oh, hell – there are a couple from Susan.
I never did tell her . . .
Christian. I never told him, either.
I cover my mouth with my hand. ‘Can you entertain Barney in his room?’ I ask Bess, tears welling up in my eyes.
‘Of course,’ she replies with concern.
‘Thank you,’ I call after her. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you here.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ she tells me.
But she’s wrong. It will never be just okay from now on. Okay is not a word that can be used to describe our lives anymore. Nor is normal, or average, or run-of-the-mill. From now on, our lives will be – and will forevermore be – extraordinary. I’m no longer an ordinary girl and Barney is no longer an ordinary boy.
I get a flashback to being with Johnny in France – him being there for me when it all came crashing down – and for a moment I feel tender towards him. But then my heart reverts to steel. Steel which turns molten when I remember why I asked Bess to leave.
Christian.
I dial his number. And for the first time since he left me, he answers.
‘Christian,’ I whisper.
Silence.
‘Christian?’
‘What?’ he asks quietly.
‘You’ve seen the news?’
‘Bit hard to miss.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He snorts. ‘Sorry for what, exactly? Because the list is growing longer, Meg. I’m finding it hard to keep tabs on it.’
He sounds so bitter and twisted. So unlike the man I once loved. Still love. ‘My family send you their regards,’ he says nastily and I feel even more wretched than I already did.
I swallow. ‘What did Vanessa and Anton have?’
‘A boy,’ he replies; then adds, his voice dripping with sarcasm: ‘At last our family has a little boy we can call our own.’
‘Please . . .’ I beg and then I’m on a roll. ‘I tried calling you before. I’ve tried you time and time again. I wanted to tell you we were coming here. He wanted to get to know Barney – it’s not like they’ve made it out to be in the papers . . . That party on Saturday night, that was Dana’s doing. I was sick about it. We took Barney to a hotel on Sunday. I’ve told Johnny we’re leaving. We can’t stay here with him if he’s going to put Barney at risk like this.’
He says nothing and, for a moment, I wonder if he’s even there at all.
‘Christian?’ I ask.
‘I’m here.’
Has his tone softened? I hear him swallow.
‘Do you know what?’ His volume is low.
‘What?’ I ask hopefully.
‘It would be easier if you were dead.’
He hangs up on me.
I lie on the bed and sob my heart out for what feels like a long time. I have no idea that Johnny has entered the room until he’s standing right over me.
‘What the hell are you doing, walking in like that? Don’t you knock?’
‘I don’t have to knock in my own house,’ he says nonchalantly.
‘I hate you!’ I hurl the phone at him. Call it an ironic ode to Christian, who did the same thing to me not that long ago.
‘Whoa! Calm down.’
‘Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! I just spoke to Christian.’
He tenses.
‘It’s the first time I’ve managed to speak to him since . . .’ My voice trails off. ‘He hates me,’ I say painfully.
‘Even more than you hate me?’ he asks drily.
‘I don’t hate you,’ I sniff.
‘I know. And Christian doesn’t hate you, either,’ he says firmly. ‘No one could hate you, Meg.’
‘Christian does,’ I say fervently. ‘He definitely does.’
‘He doesn’t!’
‘We’re not going to have an argument about this as well, are we? We’re going,’ I tell him determinedly. He puts his hand up to stop me speaking, but I continue, ‘This isn’t going to work.’
‘Stop,’ he says. ‘Don’t say that. I know Saturday night was fucked up—’
‘And Sunday morning . . .’
‘And Sunday morning,’ he concedes. Finding him in the bath is a memory that won’t quickly leave me. ‘But it won’t happen again.’
‘How can you say that?’ I stand up. ‘How can you ever say that to me, ever again? I’ve been through this already with you, Johnny! How many more times are you going to—’
‘I’ll get help,’ he interrupts.
‘You got help! Then you met Dana! Fat lot of good that did both of you!’
‘You can’t blame her.’
‘I don’t,’ I tell him calmly. ‘I blame you.’
I meet his eyes for a long moment before looking away again.
‘Stay another week,’ he begs quietly.
‘No.’
‘Just one more week.’ His words pick up speed. ‘If you still want to leave, I’ll arrange it for you. You can have the jet – go anywhere you want to go.’ He takes my hand and presses it. ‘But you can’t go back to a normal life now,’ he says gently. ‘You’ll need security, protection . . . Barney is a kidnap threat.’
Fear grips me once more.
‘I’ll make sure you and Barney are set up with a house – a safe house,’ he adds. ‘If you still want to leave after a week . . .’
I stare up at him, and for the first time in what seems like a very long time, I feel like I see him again. He’s blurry when he’s with her.
‘Please, give me another chance to make it right for you here,’ he adds.
‘What about Dana?’ I ask flatly.
‘She’s leaving.’
‘For good?’ My eyes widen and my heart quickens.
‘No,’ he says edgily, and my senses return to dull. ‘Just for now. But she’ll be out of your way.’
‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘I’ll give it a week. But only so we have time to sort out security and everything else. We’ll still be leaving at the end of it.’
‘If that’s how you feel, so be it,’ he says bluntly, releasing my hand and taking a step backwards. He stares at me with his piercing green eyes and I feel uneasy. ‘As long as we’ve got a week.’
Chapter 42
Eddie is the last person to leave that night and I breathe a sigh of relief as the house at last falls silent.
‘I’ll join you in that,’ Bess says, exhaling loudly. I suddenly remember something.
‘Oh, God! Bess, I forgot about you and Eddie!’
‘It’s alright,’ she brushes me off. ‘Small fry compared to what’s going on now.’
‘No, no, no, it isn’t.’ I sit up with urgency. ‘Have you spoken to him? Did he say anything to you?’
She laughs it off. ‘Meg, seriously, it’s fine. We don’t need to dissect the whole thing. It really is fine. We had a bit of a laugh about it in the kitchen earlier.’
‘Did you?’ I ask with relief. ‘What did he say?’
‘Neither of us said anything,’ she replies. ‘We just gave each other a bit of a look and then laughed. It’s done. Over. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘What happened with Johnny earlier?’
I fill her in on the details. ‘Aah, that’s good.’ She sighs, putting her feet up on the coffee table. ‘I wasn’t ready to swap LA for miserable old London just yet.’ I nudge her roughly on her arm and she laughs. ‘You know I’m joking. I’ll go whenever you want me to.’
‘I want you to stay,’ I say.
‘Really?’
‘As long as I’m staying.’
‘We’ll be out of here in a week, then,’ she says.
I nod. ‘That’s the plan.’
My phone beeps.
‘Message from Joseph,’ I tell Bess.
‘About time! What’s he saying?’
‘He’s asking me if I’m okay.’
‘Better call him back. I’ll look after Barney,’ she tells me, ‘you know, seeing as I’m your live-in nanny, and all.’
We smirk at each other and I take my phone upstairs to my bedroom.
‘Hey,’ he says upon answering.
‘Howdy, stranger,’ I reply jovially.
Pause. ‘Sorry I didn’t call you yesterday.’
‘Don’t worry about it, we were a bit busy doing drugs, having threesomes and drinking each other under the table.’
He chuckles. At least he has the same sense of humour.
‘You’ve read the papers, I presume?’
‘Afraid so.’
I sigh. ‘It was going to happen, but I didn’t think they’d make it out to be quite so tawdry.’
‘That’s the tabloids for you.’
‘You’ll have to deal with it, too, when you’re a huge Hollywood A-lister.’
He laughs. ‘I doubt that very much.’
I don’t.
‘So,’ he says. ‘I guess you won’t be free for dinner anytime soon?’
‘Afraid not. Can I call you when it all blows over?’
‘Of course you can.’
I know he’s smiling, and as I hang up I smile, too, but mine is tinged with sadness. If I’m honest with myself, I may never see Joseph again – face to face, at least. Not if we’re leaving. But I’ve got enough on my mind without dwelling on that as well. I’ll try not to think about it.
I have to wait a few more hours, with the time difference, before I can tackle my European calls, and then it’s a question of who first: Mum and Dad or Susan? Urgh. I decide to get my sister out of the way.
‘About bloody time!’ she squawks before I even have a chance to say hello. ‘How do you think I felt reading about THAT in the papers?’
I stifle any retort. She’s right: she deserved to know the truth from me. ‘Not great, I imagine. I’m sorry, Susan.’
‘Yeah, well, thankfully Mum had already told me.’
‘What?’
‘What did you expect? She said she’d asked you time and time again to fill me in – I’m your sister, Meg – and you didn’t.’
True again. I can hardly blame my mum for doing what I should have done myself.
‘Alright,’ I sigh. ‘I’m glad you know the truth. I’d better go and call Mum and Dad.’
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ she erupts. ‘I want to know everything. All of the details. How did you end up with Johnny Jefferson’s son?’
An image comes to me of her sitting on the edge of her seat, pressing the phone eagerly to her ear. She’s such a gossip-monger. But I don’t have it in me to even care anymore so I fill her in, skimming over anything I don’t want to go into. At the end of it, she’s satiated. I hang up with barely enough energy to speak, let alone the strength to talk to my parents, but I know I have no choice. I keep our conversation as short and sweet as they’ll allow, but I reassure them that I don’t condone Johnny or Dana’s behaviour and that I’m going back to England as soon as we can sort everything out. They accept, with worry, that our lives are different now.
‘Why don’t you come to France?’ Dad presses.
‘I don’t know, Dad,’ I reply. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
We could go back to France – but staying with my parents? No. It’s long, long overdue, but I think it’s time I did this on my own.
Chapter 43
True to Johnny’s promise, Dana doesn’t return to the house over the next few days. Bess and I spend our time watching movies, or, if we’re feeling brave, out by the pool, trying to ignore the sound of helicopters persistently buzzing like flies overhead. Sometimes Johnny joins us, and sometimes he takes Barney off to spend some time with him alone.
I’ve heard Lena and Eddie muttering to each other about the state of things outside the gates. It’s hard for all the staff to get in or out with the hordes of paparazzi out there.
The degrading stories about me being Johnny’s ‘second wife’ have kept coming throughout the week. I’ve stopped reading the papers now, and I’ve asked my parents to do the same. I know there’s no use in asking Susan to comply – she’s addicted to the tabloids.
On Friday, Bess and I are sitting out by the pool. It’s an unusually warm day for November. I couldn’t be bothered to change out of my jeans when I realised how hot it was, but Bess is in her tankini and wearing the largest, darkest pair of shades I think I’ve ever seen.
‘I can’t stand this,’ I snap, out of the blue.
‘What can’t you stand?’ Bess asks me lazily.
‘This! Being stuck here! I feel like I’m marooned!’
She lifts up her sunglasses and gazes at me. ‘There are worse places you could be, you know.’
‘I know.’ I sigh and try to enjoy the sunshine, but I can’t. I’ve got itchy feet.
Johnny comes out to the terrace. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asks me curiously. I’ve started to hop on the spot.
‘Sort her out, Johnny,’ Bess says casually.
‘What is it?’ He frowns.
‘I’m fed up with being stuck in this goddamn house!’ I explode.
He stands and stares at me for a moment. ‘So let’s get out of here.’
‘Ooh, you sounded just like Johnny from Dirty Dancing, then!’ Bess says gleefully.
Johnny gives her a weird look, not understanding the reference. ‘Are you okay looking after Barney for a couple of hours?’ he asks her, moving on.
‘Sure . . .’
‘Come with me.’ He grabs my hand.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Out,’ he says shortly.
I glance back at Bess. She raises her eyebrows, smiling.
He drags me all the way around the outside of the house to the garage. I could have shaken his hand off ages ago, but for some strange reason I’ve let myself be pulled along by him. It felt kind of nice, somehow. A break from the norm. And I’m bored – so bored – of the norm.
He flicks on the lights in the garage and stalks determinedly to the Ducatti. He passes me a helmet and a jacket. I hold them up and look at him with a grin.
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he says firmly as he shrugs on his biker jacket. He straddles the machine and looks over his shoulder at me. I climb on behind him and then he starts up the engine with a roar and we ride out of the garage. He lifts his hand at his security team up ahead and they open the gates and hold back the crowd with perfect timing. The paps don’t know what has hit them. I can barely hear anything over the noise of the engine as we shoot past them and down the winding roads, but I know what a frenzy they’ll be in as they scramble into their cars to try to follow us in hot pursuit. They’ll never get close. They’ve got no chance. I hold tighter to Johnny’s waist and scream with delight. I can feel his stomach tensing as he laughs.
I have no idea where we’re going, but the freedom of this is mind-blowing. Johnny keeps to the hills and out of the city, but after a while we head to the ocean.
‘Hungry?’ he asks over his shoulder as we approach a petrol station.
‘Always room for chocolate,’ I reply.
‘I should’ve known you’d say that.’
He pulls in and fills the tank, while I run inside to pick up some snacks and pay. The man behind the desk gives me a funny look and I wonder if he recognises me from all the press this week, but we’re out of there and on the road again before he can do anything about it.
Eventually we arrive at a cliff overlooking the ocean. Johnny climbs off and helps me down and for a moment I feel like we’ve flashbacked to a few years ago when everything was new and exciting and far less complicated. He meets my eyes and I wonder if he’s also remembering back then, when I was merely his employee, or even a few months later, when he claimed he was in love with me. But as quickly as it appeared, that look in his eyes has gone again. We walk as close to the cliff edge as we dare and then sit down on the grass, taking off our jackets. I lean back on my elbows and tilt my face up to the sun. Contentment settles over me. Johnny lies down beside me. Neither of us says anything and it’s perfect; just what I needed. I rest my head down on the grass. I find myself taking a series of deep breaths and the weight I’ve been feeling inside seems to lift a little. For a brief moment I remember the lone blonde doing yoga on the hill in Cucugnan. Next to me, Johnny moves and I feel alert again. I open my eyes and turn my head. He’s propped up on one elbow, looking down at me. My heart flips.
‘Better?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply, feeling vulnerable and exposed in a strange way.
He reaches over and pushes a strand of hair off my face, doing nothing to alleviate this feeling.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says quietly, and for a while I’m lost for words. I just stare back at him until my pulse begins to quicken.
He starts to hum a tune and I muse to myself that if any other guy did this it would seem corny, but that’s not a word that could ever be used to describe Johnny.
‘What’s that?’ I ask. ‘Something you’ve been working on?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Sing it to me?’
‘I don’t have all the words yet.’
‘Hum it to me, then.’
‘I am.’
I smile across at him and he winks at me. My heart flips again and for once I don’t chastise myself for the feeling. Right now, I just want to be. I’ll be back to reality soon enough – I can’t be in danger of losing myself in the space of an hour, surely?