Hushed

by Joanne Macgregor

“Logan!” For a moment, I can’t say more — I’m choked with anger.

  He looks up. His face is pale and his eyes sad.

  “Don’t believe a word she said, do you hear me? It’s not true. It’s all rubbish, self-serving lies!”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes!” Now I’m growing angry at him. I want him to put up more of a fight. It breaks my heart to see him feeling so hopeless and helpless. “Don’t listen to her. How could you even let her talk to you like that? Insulting you and insinuating that you can’t write or even act.”

  He walks over towards me, holding out his hands, as if he can soothe away my temper.

  “Hush, sugar, it doesn’t matter what she said about me. Don’t get all riled up.”

  “Don’t hush me!” I throw up a hand to stop him.

  He looks surprised.

  “I’ve had enough of people shutting me up. I am sick and tired of people shushing me and ignoring me and interrupting me, dammit! Everyone is always telling me to shut up, bite my tongue, be quiet, sit down and listen. I will not be silenced! I’m sick of it. I’m going to have my say.”

  “Well, out with it then.” He crosses his arms and waits.

  “It’s time you stood up to Cilla.”

  “Great,” Logan says, raking his fingers though his hair. “Another woman telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, just what I need.”

  “The difference is, Logan, I want what’s best for you. That — that witch of a woman only wants what’s best for her. And what’s best for her is your flushing any hope of a serious acting future down the s-bend by starring in sewerage! Why would you do what she wants, rather than what you want? Why should you?”

  “I owe —”

  “You owe her nothing. Nothing!” Now it’s me doing the interrupting, and it feels good. Better than good — it feels wonderful to shout everything I’d been holding back. “And you owe Britney nothing! You’ve made them all millions! And they’ll go on to make even more, whether or not you sign on. It’s time you decide what you want — what you want — and fight for it.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself, Romy?” He’s not smiling now.

  “What do you mean?” I say, taken aback.

  “Just that if there’s anyone who needs to figure out what they want, and stand up to the people who want to make them do something different — it’s you. You’re big on telling me what to do, but not so hot on making decisions for yourself.”

  He’s right. Of course he is. It only makes me angrier.

  “Do you really think the whole series will fizzle out if you’re not in it? Do you really think they can’t replace you? Maybe your problem isn’t that you’re insecure, maybe it’s that you believe you’re irreplaceable.”

  “Romy!” There’s a warning edge to his voice.

  “Nobody’s indispensable. Maybe it’s time for them to find a nice, new star. And maybe it’s time for Britney to move on to a different role, too — trust me, she’s no slouch in the acting department. And you’re a big enough name to take some risks. I mean, would the world end if you acted in a play? Or if you came out and said the rumours about you and Britney were rubbish? Or even if — here’s a thought — if we appeared in public, together.”

  “I gave you the choice on that, Romy.”

  “I wanted you to choose, to choose us.”

  “Then you should have said so!”

  I’m dimly aware that I’m being unfair, irrational even, but I can’t stop my fears tumbling out my mouth. “Why can’t you tell Cilla that I’m your girlfriend, and that Brittany isn’t? We sneak about, hiding, catching quick kisses in backrooms, wearing disguises.”

  “Is this about the mullet again?” He’s trying to make me laugh, to distract me.

  “It’s not funny!” Tears are threatening now.

  He sighs, obviously frustrated. “You agreed to keep us a secret. And I told you why I wanted it — to protect you.”

  “Yeah, I remember you saying that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Is it really to protect me, Logan? Or to protect the media hype around you and Britney. Which matters more to you? Who matters more?”

  Logan curses loudly. “You know I care about you. You know I love you.”

  “Love doesn’t make the other person hide in a cupboard, Logan. It’s humiliating. I deserve better than that.”

  He looks at me for a long moment, then his shoulders crumple and he looks away, all the fight drained out of him.

  “Yeah. Yeah, you do,” he says simply, sagging onto the sofa and examining his hands.

  I walk over and sit down on the low table in front of him. “What are you saying?”

  “You deserve better.”

  I wait, but he doesn’t say anything more. He isn’t going to fight for himself, and he isn’t going to fight for us, either. My throat closes, my eyes fill.

  He won’t meet my gaze. “This is my life, Romy, this is how it is. You knew that when we started.”

  “You’re right. You warned me. I was a stupid little fool to think I could change anything.”

  “Maybe you were.”

  His comment fires up my anger again, and before I know it, words I don’t intend saying slip out. “Yeah, because I play fair, I don’t blackmail you with threats about your father.”

  Logan’s head snaps up at that. “What do you know about my father?”

  “Everything. And you don’t see me using it against you.”

  “How … How do you know?” Logan’s eyes narrow, his face has gone pale, and his lips are tight.

  My own anger fails in the face of his. I stammer out an explanation of what I discovered and how I tried to tell him.

  “You had no right! How dare you read my private mail?” he yells.

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  “By snooping? Researching my family and my past on the Net like some tabloid reporter?”

  “I’m sorry! But I wanted to see what Cilla had on you.”

  “Is that what you told yourself? I can’t believe you did this. It’s a complete violation of trust.”

  He’s taking this worse than I thought he would. He’s taking it worse than he took Cilla’s threat, and that pisses me off.

  “Trust? Don’t talk to me about trust,” I say hotly. “If you really valued trust, you would’ve been honest with me. Told me who you really are and the reason why you’ll always ultimately do whatever Cilla wants.”

  “I think you should leave now.” Logan’s eyes are blazing pools of fury.

  “With pleasure!”

  I stride across the room, retrieve my shoes, and squeeze my feet back into them, longing to throw them at his head instead. Then I grab my bag and head for the door, but when I yank it open, I fall back in surprise. Britney Vaux stands right outside, wearing nothing but a tiny gold bikini and matching dagger heels. What is with these people — walking around a fancy hotel half-naked or wearing lizards? Who do they think they are?

  “What do you want?” I ask rudely.

  “Manners, Ronnie,” she chides, trying to peer over my shoulder into the room. “I’m here to see Logan, of course. We have a date.”

  “Oh, is that so? Well, let me not get in the way,” I say, stepping aside to let Britney slink into the room on her long, golden legs.

  “Not that I need an appointment,” Britney says, giving me a smile as wide as a tiger’s. “After all, we are married, aren’t we, handsome?” Giggling, she holds up a white plastic card, just like the one Logan gave me. “I can drop in anytime.”

  “You …” Words, ugly and harsh, bubble up inside me. But they stick sideways in my throat and won’t come out.

  I just stand there trembling, staring with furious disgust into his blue eyes. They aren’t the colour of deep water, or the eye of a peacock feather, or dark blue sapphires or any other beautiful thing. They’re the colour of the Pacific Blue Tang, an exotic and peaceful-looking fish whose flesh p
oisons humans, and whose sharp spines pierce skin, leaving deep, painful wounds and lingering infection.

  “Romy. I —” Logan begins.

  “Save it.”

  I slam the door closed behind me.

  Chapter 36

  Temptation

  My anger wars with tears and rising panic as I ride the elevator down from the penthouse to the hotel lobby. My heart pounds in my ears, my tight scalp feels like it’s crushing my head, and my mouth is dry as dust. What just happened? One minute we were holding each other, loving and laughing, and the next we were fighting. And now we’re … over?

  I swipe at my eyes, hating the weakness. Part of me wants to press the penthouse button and head straight back up, fall into his arms, and listen to his explanations, to his reassurances that Britney means nothing to him, that he loves me. To apologise and beg him to take me back — on any terms. But another part of me, a part that has to do with self-respect and pride, refuses to go grovelling.

  When the door opens onto the lobby, I step out, rummaging in my bag with shaking hands to find my car keys. In the back compartment, I discover what I’d earlier been meaning to hand over to Logan. For a moment, I’m tempted to go back and throw his father’s damn letter at him, but I don’t trust myself not to cave once I see him. Or not to kill him if Britney’s still in the room.

  “Swine!” I mutter under my breath as I stalk across the lobby. “Jerk!” I’d like to shove him in a cupboard. I hope I crushed his new shoes while I crouched there.

  This is how it is — you knew that when we started. Things can change, can’t they?

  We are married, aren’t we handsome. Bitch.

  I think you should leave now. Bastard.

  I’m fuming so hard that I don’t notice the small man standing in my way until I crash straight into him.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the little lady who protects Rush’s trashy secrets,” says the weasel-faced paparazzo, studying my face closely. “What’s got you all hot and bothered?”

  “None of your business.” I try to step around him.

  “It is my business if it’s about Logan Rush,” he says, nimbly stepping in front of me again. “Is it him who’s got you so angry? What’s he done? Who’s he done it to? Come on, you can tell me.”

  Why is it that the only person in the world who wants me to speak is the one person I don’t want to talk to?

  Or do I?

  He notices my hesitation and pounces. “It looks like you’ve got something you want to get off your chest, hmm? They say confession’s good for the soul.”

  Involuntarily, my hand dips into my bag. It’s all there, inside — the letter, the newspaper articles, the photo of him at the courthouse. I’m suddenly aware of my own power. I could stab him in the back right now with the sharp truths I know, the secrets I’ve kept. I could get some blood on my hands to match the blisters on my feet.

  It would serve him right if he was forced to come clean — it would do him good to be completely honest and open. Plus, it would finally end Cilla’s hold over him. Yes, leaking what I know to this horrible little man, letting it go public, might bring Logan’s career momentum to a screeching halt, but Cilla was right about one thing — a week was a long time in Hollywood. There would be a crazed media shitstorm when the news hit the tabloids, but it would die down eventually. It wouldn’t kill him, just hurt him some.

  And if I can’t be happy, why should he be?

  “C’mon girl, you know you want to. Tell me what you know,” the reporter urges.

  And so help me, I do.

  When I finish with the reporter, I drive straight to Zeb’s house. His mother answers the door but tactfully makes no mention of my red, swollen eyes and puffy face. She hands me over to my friend, brings us tea and cookies, and then leaves me to fall apart. I tell him the whole sad story, what Logan said and failed to say. What I said. What I did. He lets me vent my anger and my grief and my guilt. And I tell him in detail about Britney.

  “She had such long legs,” I wail.

  “I think we might need to break out the ice cream,” Zeb says.

  Over spoonfuls of Rocky Road, I sob, “And I already miss him, Zeb, I love him, but I can’t …”

  “No,” he agrees. “You definitely can’t.”

  I slide over to nestle into his shoulder, and he puts a consoling arm around me, but my head doesn’t fit — it keeps rolling off — and when he pats my back, it only makes me want to cough. It’s the wrong shoulder, the wrong hands.

  “It’s a damn shame, I was beginning to like him. But he didn’t appreciate what a catch you were. He needs to figure out what’s important, and what isn’t,” Zeb says loyally when I eventually subside into sniffles and the odd hiccup. But he also adds, “And, sorry to say it, Romy, but you’ve got some growing up to do, too.”

  Feeling a bit queasy from all the tea and sugar, and the reality-check, I drive home. When I walk inside, the house seems strange to me — too small, different in some indefinable way.

  Once, in my second-last year of high school, I went back to visit a teacher in my primary school, and I experienced the surreal sensation of the place being both completely familiar and yet utterly strange. The staircases, which had once been so wide and so high, were now narrow, the steps too shallow and too few. The teachers who loomed large in my memories, were now shorter than me and seemed too young, and the basins and toilets in the girls’ cloakrooms were teeny and too low for comfort. Everything was different, alien. Nothing about the school had changed, of course — I had. I no longer fit there.

  I feel like that now, here at ‘home.’ It’s as though I’m looking at my world through new eyes.

  I remember Cilla — cursed lizard witch! — telling me that working in the movies would spoil me for real life, and I sigh. It’s going to be insanely difficult going from love and passion and magic, to a soulless vac job among the academic or commercial fishes. I broke the surface of my life, looked around, and had a taste of love and adventure, but soon I’ll sink back down again. I’m about to settle, just like my sisters did before me. Maybe even worse — they at least had actively made their own choices, while I’ve been reactive, basing my decisions on the plans and actions of others.

  “I thought I heard the door.” Mom comes into the entrance hall, followed by my father. As soon as she sees me, she knows something’s very wrong. “What is it, love, what happened?”

  Both their faces — the wrong faces — are concerned.

  “It’s over,” I say. “With Logan, with the movies — it’s all over.”

  “My poor baby,” Mom says.

  “Did he …? What did that boy do to you?” Dad bellows.

  “He didn’t do anything, okay? It just didn’t work out — it couldn’t work out. You were right. There, happy now?”

  “How can we be happy when you’re so sad? We never wanted this for you,” Mom says.

  “It’s what we tried to protect you against, Rosemary. I told —”

  “So help me, Dad, if you say ‘I told you so,’ I won’t be held responsible for what I do or say.” I am through biting my tongue.

  There must be something in my expression that warns him, because he stands aside without another word and lets me run upstairs to my bedroom. Nana is there within minutes.

  “I’ve heard. Oh, my dear, my dear,” she says, enfolding me in her arms, pressing me up against the sweet smell of her scent. The wrong arms, the wrong smell.

  “It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”

  I grind my teeth. I love Nana and don’t want to snap at her, but I can’t stand any more advice on love.

  “Never mind,” she consoles. “It may not feel like it now, but your heart will heal. And, after all, there are plenty more fish in the sea.”

  “I don’t want a fish — I want Logan!” I cry, perilously close to bawling my eyes out again. “But I can’t have him. I don’t fit in his world. And now I don’t fit here an
ymore, either. I’ve changed.”

  “Of course you have. Life changes us, love changes us! And you’ve been living and loving with a passion. When I ran away from home, I was just a little younger than you are now, dearest, and there were oodles of gentlemen offering me … er … a room. But I turned them all down. I wanted to live alone — alone! — for a while, even just a little while, to find out who I was when I wasn’t someone’s daughter, or sister, or sweetheart. And I’m glad I did it because I grew up and learned an awful lot about myself. And also, sadly, about the breeding habits and virtual indestructability of cockroaches.”

  “Nana, you know I love your stories, but now? Really?” I fling myself on my bed, trying to blink away my tears, but everywhere I look, there are reminders of him.

  “What I’m trying to say in my muddled way, is that you need to find your own element.”

  Huh. My own element. I had thought it was with Logan. But maybe not.

  Nana comes over and bends to kiss me on the cheek. “You have a little nap now — I always find a broken heart to be odiously exhausting! I’ll come visit in the morning, and we’ll go shopping. Spending money frivolously invariably cheers me up, and my goodness,” she says with a glance at my dolphin calendar, “it’s the fifteenth already. There are only ten days left to shop before Christmas!”

  Nana leaves and I glare around at my bedroom. This house is definitely no longer my own element, if it ever was. My room seems childish and silly to me now, decorated with reminders of broken, foolish dreams.

  I spring off the bed and lunge at the posters of Logan, ripping them off the wall and tearing them to shreds, which float like confetti down to the floor. Lobster barks and tries to catch them in her teeth.

  “Go away! Out!” I shout at her, and feel guilty when she slinks out of the room, tail between her legs. I know the feeling.

  I grab the little figurine of Chase Falconer off the drawer handle and throw it against the far wall. It bounces off and lands in the rubbish bin — a broken-hearted slam dunk. I yank open my wardrobe door, snatch off the poster, and trample it underfoot. Then I descend on the whale and protest posters, crumpling them up and pitching them on top of the binned Beast. The calendar follows — it’s been a craptastic end to a disappointing year, with nothing to look forward to in the future. I wrench the last remaining picture — the poster of the majestic Syrenka — off the wall and hurl it at the growing pile.