A Girl Called Summer

by Lucy Lord

  Summer, sitting next to Bella and holding her other hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. Bella, incapable of speech, squeezed back.

  Her mind was a jumble of terror, guilt and anguished hope, as again and again she made pacts with a God she’d never believed in.

  Please let her be OK. I don’t care about anything else in the world. I’ll do anything, anything . . .

  Why didn’t I look after her better? I’m so sorry, my beautiful little angel. I’ll never forgive myself if . . . no no no . . . don’t even think it . . .

  Hurry up, Andy, please. I can’t do this without you.

  As if on cue, the door burst open revealing a sweaty, panting Andy.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘I don’t know – just look at her! Oh, Andy . . . our little girl.’ Suddenly the tears that Bella had been holding back were pouring down her face. As Andy held her tightly in his arms, she sobbed, ‘Please don’t let her die, God, please.’

  ‘Shh, shh, she’s going to be OK,’ he said, with more conviction than he felt, anxiously scanning Daisy’s dear little body, with all the wires coming out of it, over Bella’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when it happened. I’m sorry for everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry for everything too . . .’ Bella’s words were muffled against his broad chest. ‘None of it matters. Nothing matters apart from Daisy getting better.’

  ‘She will, darling. I promise you she will.’

  Beeeeep. Beeeeep. Beeeeep.

  Bella and Andy sprang apart, and Summer leapt out of her chair at the sound of the alarm.

  ‘What is it? What the fuck is it? Oh Jesus, what’s the matter? Where’s the doctor?’ Bella was out of her mind with fear now, and Andy opened the door and ran down the hospital corridor, shouting, ‘Somebody come, please, please!’

  Within seconds a female doctor was at Daisy’s bedside, checking the monitors and lifting her eyelids to gauge the reaction.

  ‘Her temperature has dropped rapidly. Before it was very high . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Bella practically screamed at her. But as she looked at Daisy’s face she saw that instead of being flushed and sweaty, it was now deathly pale.

  ‘What’s happening? Why?’ asked Andy, in more measured but no less urgent tones than Bella’s.

  ‘Sometimes the poison affects the body this way,’ said the doctor gently. ‘We need to monitor her heart, now.’

  ‘What?’

  But already the doctor was summoning nurses, who with impressive speed arrived in the room with a scary-looking contraption that they proceeded to strap to Daisy’s little chest.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Summer.

  ‘It’s an electrocardiogram – an ECG,’ said one of the kind nurses. ‘You must not worry, it is only to monitor her heart rate, because her temperature has dropped so rapidly.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, this can’t be happening,’ sobbed Bella. ‘I want my little girl back.’

  Chapter 24

  The New Horizons Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre was situated right on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico, overlooked by the Guadalupe mountain range. The warm rust-coloured adobe buildings that housed the centre were designed to look like Native American pueblos, surrounded by spiky cacti and bathed in rich sunlight. There was a strong holistic, spiritual emphasis throughout, an emphasis on treating the body, mind and soul as one, which made the whole business of rehabilitation a lot less nightmarish than it might have been.

  Yes, as rehab went, it was pretty cool, thought Tamara, as one of the Native American therapists put another hot stone on her back. The actual detox had been as horrible as it always was – hot sweats, nightmares, violent shakes and vomiting, the full-on self-hatred shebang – but she had to admit that Lars had found her a good place in which to recover.

  Lars had been very kind to her – probably kinder than anybody had ever been in her entire life. He had told Miles Dawson why Tamara had gone AWOL, and exactly who was to blame. Miles – and Tamara could scarcely believe this – had actually agreed to schedule filming around Tamara’s rehab, to film all the scenes she wasn’t required in first, and to wait until she’d fully recovered to shoot hers. He really must value her acting, she thought in awe, and with enormous gratitude.

  What’s more, he had fired Peter O’Flanagan, replacing him with another, equally well respected (but far kinder) veteran actor. He had sworn all the cast and crew to secrecy, stressing that anybody who leaked anything to the Press would be out on their ear as swiftly as O’Flanagan had been dispatched.

  Miles had visited her at New Horizons a couple of times, as had Lars, but other than that she hadn’t had any visitors. She hadn’t bothered telling her parents where she was – as far as they were concerned she was still on the Dust Bowl set. Had she confided in them, they would only have seen the information as something else with which to feather their unscrupulous nests.

  The recovery programme comprised regular, delicious and healthy meals, yoga at dawn, meditation twice a day, an afternoon hike in the mountains, spa therapies ranging from hot stone to acupuncture, aura cleansing to crystal healing, and counselling. God, was there a lot of talking! Tamara’s regular sessions with her therapist back in LA meant that she was used to talking about herself, but never before had she admitted to her sex addiction. And once the floodgates had been opened, there was no going back.

  The counsellors suggested that the reason she behaved the way she did was because she was desperate for the love she had never received from her parents. It was so fucking obvious, when you thought about it, it was almost insulting that she hadn’t recognized it before. They helped her dissociate meaningless sex with random strangers from the concept of love. Most of all, they encouraged her to love herself.

  ‘Are you sure I don’t love myself too much already?’ Tamara had joked to the counsellor who had first mooted this, a kind-eyed Cherokee in his mid-sixties.

  ‘My child, nobody as hell-bent on self-destruction as you have been could be considered to love herself,’ had been his reply. He had a point, she supposed.

  While she would once have scoffed at all the New Age baloney, she had to admit that, as a package, it was incredibly effective. And soothing. Soothing was the word, she thought. She had been soothed. The only element she didn’t like was the insistence on group sessions, in which one had to open up to the other drunks and addicts in the time-honoured ‘My name is Tamara and I’m an alcoholic’ fashion. Having been outed in the Press as a sex addict, it felt way too raw and painful to be opening up to a roomful of strangers about her deeply embarrassing and personal problems.

  Here, Lars had intervened on her behalf.

  ‘I think these sessions may be doing her more harm than good, huh?’ he had said to the counsellor in his mild manner after he’d found Tamara in tears on one of his weekly visits. ‘I know you say they are a part of the recovery plan that everybody must go through, but not everybody has had to endure having their personal problems exposed by the media. Can you think about making an exception?’

  And amazingly, they had.

  Lars. Oh, Lars. Tamara’s mind went all dreamy at the thought of him. She looked forward to his visits more than anything. She owed him everything. He had turned her life around. And – she had to admit it, now she was being honest with herself – she had developed an enormous crush on him. He was so big and strong and male – the memory of how it felt to be wrapped up in his arms still made her shiver with delight. Nobody, not even Jack, had made her feel that safe. In fact, she realized, the reason she had resented Jack so much was that she had expected him to make her feel safe, but he hadn’t.

  Nothing could come of it, of course. How could Lars ever desire her after seeing her hit rock bottom so spectacularly? But oh how she relished those precious hours in his company.

  *

  Summer was starting to get her life back on track. Having witnessed Bella’s and Andy’s total devastation at the prospect of losing Daisy, she r
ealized she had to stop feeling so sorry for herself over what she now recognized as having been nothing more than a brief fling. A few days of great sex. A grubby little interlude. Whatever.

  She had started working at the crèche again, Jorge’s revelation about Jack and Tamara’s ‘open relationship’ having relaxed the attitudes of Britta’s customers towards her. Now that the paparazzi had lost interest she had been able to move back into her flat and – despite the memories of Jack – it was good to be home, to feel independent again.

  She had managed to land a couple of freelance commissions – for an inflight magazine and a rival English-language website to Island Life. But she missed the freedom of having her own column, so she’d decided to start a food and travel blog, which already had an impressive following. At least her fling with Jack had done her some good, she supposed, under no illusions that her celebrity-by-association wasn’t partly responsible for the blog’s instant popularity.

  In truth, she was doing herself a disservice. The blog attracted followers not because of her notoriety but because she was a terrific writer and her years at Island Life had given her a good eye for what made a visually appealing site. The blog had a clean, unfussy style, with vividly coloured photos springing from a stark white background, and a humorous, chatty tone.

  Now, at half past five on an early September afternoon, she was strolling along the length of Playa Las Salinas, en route to meet Jorge, who had suggested a drink at Sa Trinxa, one of the coolest beach bars on the island. By any standards, Las Salinas was stunning. The mile-long, crescent-shaped stretch of powdery white sand backed by a small pine forest behind the dunes was packed with beautiful people wearing very little indeed. The sea was gin-clear here, the music pumping out from the string of chic bars running along the beach giving a feeling of pure summer happiness, all day long.

  Sa Trinxa was an Ibiza institution, built up on a wooden platform at the back of the beach, sheltered from the still-fierce Balearic sun under a canopy of bamboo and banana leaves. DJ Jon spun classic tunes to a chilled-out, glamorous crowd, many of whom had come ashore via speedboats from yachts moored further out in the glimmering turquoise bay.

  ‘Hola, Summer!’ cried Luis, the head waiter and bar manager, delighted to see her again after her virtual disappearance from the scene for the latter part of the season. ‘Que guapa!’

  ‘Hola, Luis, y gracias,’ Summer smiled. ‘¿Jorge es aqui?’

  ‘Si, si.’ Luis nodded to the far end of the bar, where Jorge was in deep conversation with an extremely wealthy-looking middle-aged man – all bare barrel chest, mahogany tan, Gucci shades and Patek Philippe watch.

  Summer gave a wry smile. For all his talk of retirement from his lucrative source of income, it didn’t seem as if Jorge was in any hurry. Oh well, it was none of her business, hadn’t been for years, and it wasn’t as if his customers didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for.

  ‘Hola, Summer.’

  ‘Hola, Jorge.’

  The wealthy stranger got to his feet, smiling, and Jorge introduced them.

  ‘Hola, Summer. ¡Que bonita!’

  ‘Si, si, Summer es muy bonita,’ laughed Jorge, rolling his eyes as she sat down with them at the corner table.

  Forty minutes later Summer was eating her internal words. Yup, she had to admit she’d done Jorge a serious injustice. The man was head of one of Spain’s biggest cable channels and he did, indeed, think that Jorge had the potential to host his own chat show. He had also taken an enormous shine to Summer, and tried to persuade her to do a screen test too, but Summer was adamant – she could think of nothing she’d like less, especially after her experience with the paparazzi earlier that year.

  ‘So – shall we take a walk?’ Jorge asked, after the TV exec had gone back to the large and riotous table he’d been lunching at.

  ‘Sure,’ said Summer, wondering what was coming next.

  Sa Trinxa was the last bar at that end of Salinas, and as they walked further the crowds thinned out, until it was just the two of them, Jorge and Summer, barefoot under the deep blue sky.

  Jorge scrambled up a sandy dune, closely followed by Summer.

  ‘Do you remember the first time we came here, when we were kids?’ said Jorge, sitting down and looking out to sea.

  ‘Sure I do,’ said Summer casually, sitting down next to him. ‘It was the first time we kissed.’

  Jorge turned to look her in the eye.

  ‘I have never said sorry to you for what happened back then.’

  Summer shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You were sixteen years old, carita. For you to see . . . that night . . . after everything we had together . . .’

  ‘Yeah, well, it kinda forced me to grow up quickly.’ Summer gave a dismissive laugh. ‘Maybe not such a bad thing.’

  ‘I loved you very much,’ said Jorge sadly. ‘Sometimes I wonder, if I had not been so stupid—’

  ‘Don’t . . .’

  ‘Oh, I know, it is too late. Anyway, now I have Paloma, and maybe a new life, in Madrid . . .’

  ‘You would leave all this?’ She gestured down at the view of the white sandy beach, the expanse of glittering sea. The sound of happy chatter and mellow beats from Sa Trinxa came in waves across the salty air.

  ‘You did.

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Yes, I know, you returned. But you did leave, you saw what else was out there. I think maybe I need to do that, maybe to grow up . . .?’ He gave her a beseeching smile.

  ‘So you did listen to what I said that night.’

  ‘I always listen to what you say. And . . . I just want to say that I’m sorry.’

  Summer smiled. ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘And also . . .’ Jorge paused, ‘that I will always love you.’

  ‘You know what, Jorge.’ Summer smiled again. ‘I think I will always love you too.’

  And for the first time in nearly ten years, they hugged.

  *

  ‘How is she?’ asked Andy, walking into Daisy’s nursery with two mugs of tea.

  ‘Fine, I think,’ said Bella, stroking their daughter’s soft cheek through the bars of her cot with one hand and accepting one of the mugs with the other. ‘Thanks.’

  They had been back from the hospital for a week now, all the medical staff agreeing that it was perfectly safe for Daisy to go home, but that didn’t stop both parents checking her condition anxiously at intervals throughout the night, and as soon as they woke up every morning.

  Bella looked around the sunny little nursery, with its yellow-and-white gingham curtains, painted cot and Beatrix Potter hardbacks lined up neatly on their shelves, and felt her chest constrict so much she could barely breathe.

  Andy, seeing the look on her face, gently put both their mugs of tea down on the wooden floorboards, helped Bella to her feet and put his arms around her.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  ‘Just imagine . . .’

  ‘No need to do that. She’s safe now.’ He tightened his arms around her and Bella took a few deep breaths before repeating, almost like a mantra,

  ‘She’s safe now. She’s safe now.’

  Chapter 25

  India Cavendish was sunbathing on one of the large terraces of her opulent modern villa, trying to read Vogue. But none of the autumn/winter fashions featured within were of any interest or relevance to her, and she was too preoccupied with her own misery to be able to concentrate anyway.

  She had a dreadful hangover and coke comedown and it was taking all of her internal resources not to pick herself up with another couple of lines and a drink. But she knew that that would only prolong the agony. Jamie was being meaner than ever, if that were possible, and it had got to the stage where Milo was too scared to be in the same room as his father. Today she’d asked the nanny to take him to the beach, out of harm’s way.

  She knew her husband was screwing that little slut that he’d introduced her to at Pacha (Tiffany? Somet
hing ghastly and common anyway), but India was beyond caring about that. Let somebody else cater to his warped fantasies. The one thing she did care about was getting out of this hellish sham of a marriage. Bella and Andy’s words kept ringing in her ears, and she knew she should be contacting her family lawyer, for both her own and Milo’s sake. But she was too depressed and permanently exhausted.

  Raised voices from inside the house made her sit up straight, and she strained to make out what was being said. She had been keeping tabs on her husband’s dodgier business practices of late, hoping the information would prove useful when it came to the divorce. Determined to eavesdrop, she tied a fringed batik sarong around her near-skeletal body and crept through the French windows into the large, sunny downstairs sitting room, which was adjacent to Jamie’s study.

  ‘Listen, Jamie, we need to cool off a bit in New York,’ said a voice that India recognized as belonging to David Abrahams. ‘My contact is starting to ask questions.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to field them, won’t you?’ Jamie drawled back. ‘Listen, you little toad, you owe me big-time for all the leads I’ve given you this summer. Your photo of that Summer whore with the film star must have netted you more than a year’s crappy journo wages.’

  India froze. David took the photo of Summer with Jack Meadows? And then went on to kiss and tell himself, painting her as a brazen slag to the rest of the world? What an absolute shit.

  ‘Yeah, man, I know, I owe you for that one.’ David’s voice was wheedling.

  ‘And for Miley Jackson with Jared Salter, and for . . .’ As Jamie’s voice droned on and on, listing celebrity after celebrity, India understood what had been going on. It looked as though her husband had been giving David leads on celebrity gossip in return for information from New York. Whatever this information was, she’d bet her bottom dollar it wasn’t legal. Yes! This might, at last, be the information she needed to have him by the short and curlies. Yes! She and Milo would finally be free. Yes!

  Such was India’s elation that she forgot the necessity for absolute silence. She must have made some sort of noise, because the next moment the sitting-room door burst open and the tall, menacing figure of Jamie loomed into view.