by Emma Grey
Then there is how she’d felt when she was with him on that rooftop day bed. And in his bedroom at the country house. How right that had been. How close they’d come . . .
But, when she tallies up the ways he’s let her down, and the questions she has about him, it doesn’t look good. There’s the weird stuff with Belle. The secret he insists on keeping for her, without budging, even if it drives a wedge between them. And the fact that he’s admitted he’d copied her chapter, but wouldn’t admit to any involvement in Jack Guthrie having received it, despite Jack’s insistence to the contrary. Jack, who sounds incredibly charming on the phone . . .
And Reuben is, right at this moment, being questioned by police after having broken in, trespassed and then vandalised a person’s property. If Tilly had been going for the ‘bad boy’, technically she’s found him.
But she hadn’t been. She’s scared of bad boys!
‘Can I get you something?’ Angus asks, rummaging around at a sink in the corner. ‘No-name tea? Instant coffee?’ He pulls a face.
His voice herds her random thoughts into line. In what universe does Tilly Maguire who, over the years, has perfected the art of keeping a low profile, now find herself in a police station conference room while one of the biggest pop stars in the world offers her tea or coffee? In what universe?
‘Coffee. No, tea!’ she answers. Her default state is ‘confused’. About everything.
He flicks the switch on a small kettle. Under the bench are a few mismatched mugs and a glass jar stuffed with plain tea bags, one of which he extracts, before applying himself to the search for a mug that isn’t chipped. She tries not to think about the bacteria she imagines lurking there, because this is nice of him.
Angus Marsden is making me tea, she thinks. While our mutual friend is potentially being charged in the other room. It’s as if she has to silently narrate the goings-on just to convince herself this situation is even real.
‘There’s no milk,’ he says. ‘I would pop out and get some, but . . .’ He waves his hand as if they are playing a game of charades and she is supposed to guess the clue, ‘thousands of fangirls’.
‘Black tea is fine,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’
He sits beside her again while it brews.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ she asks quietly.
‘The break and enter will go away as soon as I can get our producer to call in. He’s the owner, which is why we all have access. The assault . . . well, there’s clear evidence against him,’ Angus says. ‘And witnesses, including you. I think it depends on how hard the paparazzo fights for charges to be laid as the “victim”. The Crown Prosecutor will take his views into account. If that pap is out to destroy Reuben, he’ll do everything in his power. After all, imagine the scoop . . .’
Angus is right. The more trouble Reuben is in, the better the story. Never mind the provocation. Never mind that he was actually just trying to stop the guy from getting photos of her. And look where it has landed him.
‘Reuben only ever operates in other people’s best interests,’ Angus observes.
She thinks of Belle. And of the laptop. And how he’d slowed things down with her because he wanted her to know what being with him was really going to be like. And how he skipped out on the movie premiere to take care of her. And smashed the camera to stop anyone seeing her with the paramedics and making a mountain out of that.
‘It’s like he lives by some medieval code of chivalry. Always rescuing,’ Angus says.
She looks up and notices through glass windows the photographer, pacing excitedly in the next room, speaking on his phone. The cat that got the cream.
Always rescuing, Tilly thinks, an idea forming. Never being rescued.
Chapter 42
Reuben has been in the interview room for half an hour and, on instruction from his lawyer, has said nothing. He’s done the wrong thing and will own up to it, but not until the moment he is instructed to. Owning up to it isn’t the same as being sorry about it. And he isn’t. In fact, if the guy ever points his camera at Tilly again, when she is vulnerable and unwell, he can’t guarantee he won’t damage more than just the equipment. And this is so not like him. It’s probably for the best that he isn’t talking.
He and his lawyer are told to wait, while the detective speaks to the cameraman for his perspective. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what that perspective will be. The guy will play the victim to the hilt. ‘Reuben Vaughan broke my camera and they let him off’ is nowhere near as seductive a headline as, ‘Pop star hit with record sentence over paparazzi assault’. There is no way out of this but through a whole lot of unwanted scandal.
‘You know it was Max O’Neill’s camera you broke?’ the lawyer says quietly, after the police have left the room.
No. He didn’t know. Hadn’t even stopped to take that in. Max O’Neill: winner of ‘scoop of the year’ three years running at the British Press Awards. Ruthless. Completely devoid of moral fibre. Or heart. Personally responsible for hounding more than one innocent celebrity all the way into rehab. And now seemingly on a mission to hunt Tilly down. There isn’t a journalist in England he’d trust less with her story.
‘That’s it, then,’ Reuben predicts, ‘couldn’t be worse, could it?’
The lawyer shakes his head. ‘You haven’t a hope of someone like him dropping this. He’ll want to wring every last cent out of it.’
‘I can see the bidding war already.’
Reuben has been in the news before, of course. He’s not so concerned about that. He’ll pay for the camera. And this story, like all the others, will blow over eventually. It’s the impact it will leave on Tilly that worries him. The dirt O’Neill will dig for. The privacy he’ll invade. Tilly isn’t media-resistant in the same way that he’s taught himself to be. That armour has taken him years to develop. Someone like O’Neill will eat her alive. Possibly in one mouthful.
‘Okay, we’ve spoken to the victim,’ the investigator says as he returns to the room and closes the door, shuffling some paperwork. ‘He specifically requested we don’t press charges.’
They don’t press charges? This couldn’t be right.
‘You’re free to go, Mr Vaughan, but take this experience as a warning. Assault is a serious offence. You won’t get this lucky again.’
This isn’t luck – it’s a miracle. And one he instinctively doesn’t trust.
The lawyer packs away his things, and looks as perplexed as Reuben feels. The whole thing feels too weird. Too eerily good to be true.
Back in the waiting area, Angus looks up and smiles at him. ‘Don’t know how you pulled that off! Relieved?’
He would be, except for the obvious absence of Tilly from the room. He barely wants to ask the question. In fact, he can’t.
Doesn’t need to, as it turns out. ‘Once I sorted out the property charges, I couldn’t convince her to stay,’ Angus explains. ‘I’m sorry.’
Sorry, Reuben thinks. It has to be one of the saddest words in the English language. Nearly as sad as the word ‘almost’.
Chapter 43
Max O’Neill orders a second coffee and tells Tilly she should have one. She intends to do no such thing. Not with him. The sooner she gets this ordeal over with and goes back to some semblance of normal life, the better.
He drags out a dog-eared notepad and fishes around in his pockets for a pen. The pen lid is mangled. Chewed. Yuck. There is nothing about this guy that Tilly likes, and his scruffy appearance isn’t even the biggest factor in her repulsion. It’s how incredibly smug he seems that he’s managed to pull off this apparent ‘coup’. They’re not even speaking about anything worthwhile.
She takes another sip of water, and considers how utterly stupid it is that this guy is even interested in her story. He knows only what the media have dragged up before Caitlin went into Tilly’s accounts and set everything to private. He doesn’t even mention her writing. All Max O’Neill cares about is getting the juice on the mystery girl th
e media has billed as having dragged Reuben Vaughan’s attention away from royalty.
Perfect tabloid fodder. So perfect, it is apparently worth dropping the charges over the camera destruction.
‘You and Reuben,’ Max begins, ‘is it serious?’
She considers the fact that she is stumped by the first question. Is it? From where she sits, she and Reuben are effectively over. And that is serious. Very.
‘Reuben’s a complicated person,’ she says carefully. ‘With a complicated life.’
‘What’s so complicated about it?’ Max asks. ‘Looks like a case of straight-down-the-line pop stardom from here.’
He sounds bored. Being bored about it makes her even more annoyed. Yes, that’s exactly how it looks: bright kid made big through TV talent quest. Mega fame. Blah, blah. Met some girl from Australia . . .
‘Come on. You know him better than anyone else,’ Max presses.
She doesn’t. That’s mad. She met him less than a week ago!
‘Reuben and the princess?’ Max prompts.
‘Friends,’ she explains.
‘And?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nuh. Not buying it. Years of chemistry!’
Really? Years of something, but Tilly isn’t sure what. She is only sure that Reuben is keeping a secret for Belle that she desperately doesn’t want the world finding out. A secret Tilly mustn’t even hint at now – not to a tabloid journalist.
‘They’re friends,’ she reiterates. ‘That’s it.’
He smirks. ‘There is not a shred of doubt in your mind that Reuben and Isabelle would ever, in a million years, if all the stars collided, get together?’
Not a doubt in her mind. Well, maybe a tiny doubt. A fleck.
‘None,’ she says confidently, and sips the water.
He looks at her. ‘What’s it like being the latest girlfriend?’
The ‘latest’? How would she know? This is beyond irritating!
‘What’s it like,’ he adds, ‘knowing he’s been with all these other girls, and now he’s with you, and you’re probably in some sort of girlfriend assembly line?’
Oh my GOD. Seriously? She can actually feel the last shreds of her patience snapping. This is the calibre of question he is asking?
‘You said you wanted the dirt on me!’ she says firmly. ‘I have a potential future career. I don’t care about his fame, his fortune, whatever . . . There’s more to me than who I am in relation to him. I have ambitions, and me knowing him is nothing! It’s irrelevant! He’s nothing next to the dream I have for my own future, not that you seem remotely interested in that.’
Max scrambles to take notes. He checks his phone to make sure it’s recording properly.
‘Is this too complex for your amoebic publication?’ she adds angrily. ‘The idea of a vacuous pop star having an intelligent girlfriend with a life of her own?’
Max looks shocked, and then even more smug. He smiles. And she suddenly feels shocked herself at what she’s said. ‘No, this is great!’ Max says. ‘Perfect, actually.’
Great?
‘Vacuous’? Is that what she’d said? She didn’t mean that. That’s just one totally invented version of his public image. She didn’t mean . . . Wait!
But Max O’Neill is pressing ‘stop’ on the recording on his phone and closing his notepad and putting away his pen. And Tilly wants to re-record everything she’s said and rip the pages out of his book and burn them.
This hasn’t gone the way she’d planned.
Chapter 44
Don’t believe everything you read, Reuben tells himself a few days later, right before breaking his own rule and clicking on Max O’Neill’s exclusive exposé, Definitely Unrequited: Whingeing Matilda’s Epic Takedown of ‘Vacuous’ Vaughan.
The ensuing three minutes of reading time remind him why he made the rule in the first place.
‘Knowing him is nothing . . .’
‘He’s nothing . . .’
‘Irrelevant . . .’
‘Vacuous . . .’
Ouch.
‘On the surface,’ O’Neill has written, ‘Matilda Maguire’s curious blend of naivety and volatility shows none of the practised PR expertise she was infamously brought to London for in the first place. She’s gone so far “off script”, I was left wondering if she is genuinely a loose cannon, or if she’s hoodwinking us all – and sweeping Isabelle and Vaughan into a masterful PR stunt of her own making, perhaps even to publicise her upcoming and as-yet-secretive career move —’
It isn’t pretty. Not just her apparent dismissal of him from her life, but the way O’Neill is portraying her. Snake-like. Calculating. Everything Tilly isn’t. He wonders how she is taking it.
The call goes through to her voicemail. Reuben tries again. On the second attempt he leaves a message. ‘Saw the article. You okay? Miss you, Maguire.’
He ends the call. He wants to turn off his phone. Every media outlet in the northern hemisphere, and every single one from Australia, is calling for his comment. Henrietta is phoning him on the half-hour about it. His response is the same every time. No comment.
The phone lights up again, this time with a message from Kat Hartland. I’ve convinced her to stay here for a while. She’ll be okay. Try not to worry. K. x
He doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s great she is with Kat and Angus, but clearly she still isn’t speaking to him. No doubt she’s received his voicemail and asked Kat to respond. Not hearing from her is killing him, as is not having a chance to explain his comment at the police station about taking a copy of her work. Yes, he’d saved it. But he hadn’t sent it. Even if he had thought of using his connections to find a publisher who might be interested, the last person he’d approach would be Jack Guthrie.
The ring tone goes again, and he’s about to silence it when he notices the international number. He’ll have to take this one.
‘Mum?’
‘Reuben,’ she says, a catch in her voice.
‘You haven’t been paying attention to the media stories, have you?’ he asks. ‘You know it only upsets you.’
He’d had to coach his mother through the early period of his fame. She’d taken every article to heart. Every tweet. Every snippet on Entertainment Tonight. No doubt she’d seen this latest scandal unfold and was up to the part where he was dragged off by the police and threatened with arrest. That would not have gone down well —
‘Reuben, listen. This isn’t about the media. It’s not about that . . . kerfuffle. I read that. Assumed you’d have phoned if you needed . . .’
‘Who are you and what have you done with my mother?’ he jokes, but his humour falls flat.
‘Reuben, there’s something serious I need to tell you.’
His heart sinks. Every time in his life his mother has told him she has something serious to say, his life has careened off into a different direction shortly after the conversation. And never in a direction he’s wanted.
‘Mum – is this something that can wait?’
‘No, I’m afraid it can’t,’ she says.
He hears the beeping of an incoming call. It’s Belle. ‘Can you just hold for a minute, Mum? I’ll be right back.’
He switches to the other call. ‘Belle, I’ve got Mum on the line – you okay?’
‘No,’ she says between sobs. ‘It’s my parents! I told them, Reuben. And they did not handle the news well!’
Ugh. He’s torn. ‘Let me tell Mum I’ll call her back, okay, Belle?’ He switches again.
‘Reuben,’ his mum says gravely, ‘there’s no easy way to tell you this. It’s about your father. The illness. It’s back. Reuben, he’s dying.’
Chapter 45
‘It’s really not as bad as it seems,’ Kat says as Tilly throws the iPad onto the couch beside her. ‘People don’t believe everything they read . . .’
Familiar advice. ‘Been talking to Reuben?’ Tilly asks.
Kat looks apologetic.
Had she been? Tilly just
meant Kat was parroting Reuben’s media mantra. She wasn’t asking literally.
‘I texted him – just to let him know you were here.’
That’s all Kat says. Has he texted back? Tilly wants to know, but can’t really ask, given she is going for ‘too angry to speak’ about the Jack Guthrie situation.
Kat opens the fridge in the Notting Hill apartment she shares with Angus, and stands in front of it like a hungry teenager. Brown hair straightened and in a high, messy bun. Flannel pyjama bottoms. Singlet top. If Tilly could blot out how luxurious the apartment is, and the sight of the grand piano placed in what would usually be a dining area and the recording gear and platinum albums framed on the walls and the fact that there is an ARIA on the bookshelf being used as a bangle holder, she could almost imagine she and Kat were just two Australian girls on a uni break, bumming around in London for a while.
Until Angus Marsden walks into the room like he owns it, which of course he does, outright, even though it’s in one of the most sought-after areas of London. He goes straight over to Kat. He pushes the fridge door shut and puts his hands on her waist as she spins around in time for him to kiss her, slowly, as if he is doing it for the first time.
‘Morning,’ he says, his voice gravelly. Definitely not kissing her for the first time, Tilly thinks.
‘Ah, Angus . . .’ Kat begins, motioning at Tilly.
He hasn’t seen her sitting there, and he immediately looks embarrassed, which makes the entire tableau seem even more incomprehensible.
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘Oh, no. Th-that’s okay,’ Tilly stammers. ‘Don’t mind me!’
What is she saying?
‘I mean, forget I’m here,’ she repeats. ‘No. Just . . .’ Could she possibly not?
‘We were just talking about Reuben,’ Kat says, rescuing her.