by Tara Hyland
Something in his tone made her relent. ‘All right. I’ll give you five minutes.’
She watched him disappear into the house and settled down to wait.
Cara paced up and down the driveway. Five minutes passed. And then ten. He’d been in the house for fifteen minutes when she finally gave up. Whether he was ready for her or not, she was going in.
Hilda opened the door to her. So it wasn’t her that Max was talking to, then.
‘Mr Stanhope asked that you wait outside.’
‘Well, I’m tired of waiting.’ Cara strode past the woman, refusing to be intimidated by the officious tone.
The house was all on one level, making it easy to search. Cara pushed open the doors to every room, looking for Max: a sitting room, a bright airy kitchen, a small, neat bedroom that was clearly Hilda’s, a family-sized bathroom. As she went, the housekeeper followed behind her.
‘Miss! Please, if you could just wait!’
Finally, Cara reached a closed door at the back of the house.
‘Please! Wait!’
Hilda grabbed at her arm, but Cara shrugged her off. She didn’t bother knocking, but instead threw open the door. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the scene drew her up short. It was a beautiful, spacious room, clearly the master bedroom, with French windows that led out onto the garden. The room was bright and cheerful, and feminine too: the wallpaper was white with large yellow and blue flowers. Another door opened into what was no doubt an ensuite bathroom. But Cara’s eyes were drawn to the bed: a huge king-sized bed, covered in floral sheets which matched the wallpaper. A woman was sitting up in the bed, clearly a very sick woman, her body twisted and jerking; Max had drawn his wheelchair up beside her, and was feeding her.
As Cara watched him carefully, lovingly spooning food into the patient’s mouth, she realised this man hadn’t killed anyone after all.
Because the woman in the bed was her mother.
Chapter Sixty-two
California, December 1959
When Franny woke up in the hospital and found that she was still alive, she started to cry. The nurses assumed it was from relief, but really it was disappointment. Now, she would have to find some other way to kill herself quickly. Because, whatever happened, she was determined not to die a slow, painful death.
Max came to see her. She’d never seen him so angry.
‘How could you do something like that?’ he demanded, pacing the room. ‘How could you be so selfish?’
‘Selfish?’ Franny couldn’t let that go. ‘Is it selfish of me to want to die with dignity? Is it selfish of me to want to avoid years of pain?’
He rounded on her. ‘Me, me, me. That’s all you think about, isn’t it? Yourself.’ His eyes blazed. ‘Well, it’s not all about you. This affects me, too.’
Franny looked at him. She genuinely didn’t understand. ‘How?’
‘How?’ he repeated in disbelief. ‘Can’t you see that this is as devastating for me as it is for you? How do you think I feel, knowing that our time together is going to be cut short? Knowing that my wife, the woman that I love, is going to get sick, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it? And however awful that realisation has been, it doesn’t compare to finding out that you tried to end your life. Because however hard . . .’ tears spilled down his cheeks . . . ‘because however hard these next ten years might be, I want that time together. So you have to promise me now, that you won’t ever do anything like this again, because I’m telling you, Frances, I can’t stand to lose you!’
He fell to his knees then, burying his head in her lap as he sobbed. Franny stared at him for a long moment, stunned by his reaction, his show of love for her. When she’d got into her car that night, she hadn’t given a thought to anyone’s feelings but her own. It hadn’t occurred to her that there were people who would mourn her death. She’d assumed Max would meet someone else in time. And Cara – well, she’d failed her daughter for so many years now that she genuinely felt Cara would be better off without her. But now, seeing Max like this, realising how much he cared for her, changed everything.
She reached out her hand and began to stroke his hair. ‘Please don’t cry,’ she soothed. ‘I won’t do it again. I promise.’
Max had always loved Franny, from that first moment he’d met her in Lloyd’s office. True, she could be difficult and frustrating, and she’d hurt him terribly sometimes with her flirtations and ability to attract scandal, but still, he could forgive her anything.
She’d blamed him for what had happened to her career, but in fact it was Lloyd’s decision to end her contract. It was the same fate that a lot of former stars had faced in the late 1950s, under shrinking revenues from movies. Max hadn’t intervened on her behalf, because he genuinely stood by his word not to get involved in the creative side of operations. He’d learned his lesson in his early dealings with Lloyd. There had been that time he’d mentioned something to the Studio Head about it being awkward for Franny and Duke to work together. Max hadn’t meant anything by it, but the Studio Head had taken it upon himself to give the male lead in Elizabeth to another actor. When the businessman had figured out what Lloyd had done, he’d made it clear that in future any decisions were to be made on a strictly meritocratic basis – he didn’t want special favours for Franny.
And that business with Leonard, the gardener. Max hadn’t had anything to do with him leaving; from what he understood, the man had just moved to Detroit, thinking he’d have more luck getting a recording contract there. And from what Max had heard, before Leonard left he’d been the one to leak the story about him and Franny, wanting to make some easy money to tide him over while he tried to make it as a musician. Franny had only blamed all of that on her husband because the disease had made her paranoid and unable to think straight. But in truth, Max would do anything to make Franny happy – and that’s what she was counting on now.
It was her idea, of course. Ever the romantic, she was the one who dreamed up the plan to fake her own glamorous, tragic death.
She brought it up the night that she got back from the hospital, after the crash. She’d gone up to her room to rest, but when Max went to check on her, he found that she was awake and sitting up in bed, with a copy of Variety magazine laid out in front of her. She was on the cover, a glamorous headshot, pouting over her bare shoulder at the camera, all big green eyes and sensual lips. The picture had been taken at the height of her career, just before they’d met.
‘I want them to remember me like this.’ She looked up at her husband, her beautiful eyes bright with tears. ‘Those poor, poor patients in that home . . .’ She shuddered. ‘I can’t let anyone see me that way, to even think of me like that.’
Max’s heart melted. ‘Oh Frances, love.’ He didn’t know what else to say. Instead, he walked over to the bed and sat down beside his wife. He tried to take her in his arms, but she squirmed away.
‘No, don’t try to comfort me,’ she insisted. ‘Just listen to me.’
He had so much that he wanted to say, but he could see that she was on the brink of cracking.
‘All right,’ he relented. ‘I’m listening.’
That seemed to calm her. She breathed in deeply, fighting to get her emotions under control, and then she started to speak.
‘On the way back from the care home, all I could think about was James Dean. Dead at twenty-four, killed in a tragic car accident. Who knows what might have happened if he’d lived? He might have made a bad film, fallen out of favour, ended up as a bum. Instead, he’s been immortalised for ever as a promising young star who still had so much more to offer.’
She took Max’s hand then and looked him straight in the eye, so he could see how serious she was. ‘I want that. I want to die young and pretty. I want my fans to mourn me, not pity me.’ She reached out and touched his cheek, and in that moment she looked almost serene as she said, ‘So I’ve come up with a plan. And if you love me, if you really love me, then you’ll help me carry
it out.’
He listened as she told him that she wanted to fake her own death. He longed to argue back, to tell her that she was being ridiculous. But in some ways her words made sense. Looking at her then, beautiful and vibrant, perfect in every way, he wanted her to stay like that for ever, too: to never grow old, to never lose her looks – let alone to suffer the humiliation of a long, drawn-out illness which was going to destroy her body and her mind. Her request might tear Max apart, but as ever, he couldn’t deny his wife what she wanted. And at least this way he could keep her with him for as long as possible. If he didn’t agree, he was terrified that he would come home one day to find that she had taken matters into her own hands.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’
Chapter Sixty-three
‘So you faked her death?’ Cara repeated, still struggling to process the details.
She and Max had gone into the kitchen to talk. Franny hadn’t seemed to recognise her at first, and she’d become agitated, so Max had insisted they go outside, allowing Hilda to calm her down while he explained everything to Cara.
It made sense, she supposed. This beautiful actress not wanting the world to see what she had become. And Max obviously loved her enough to give up everything in order to make her happy. There was only one thing that was still bothering Cara – the body that had burned up in her mother’s Pontiac.
‘I thought the papers reported that there was a woman in the car.’
‘That’s right. There was.’ Max bowed his head.
Cara swallowed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to her next question, but she had to ask it anyway.
‘Well, if my mother didn’t die in the crash, then who did?’
Chapter Sixty-four
Stanhope Castle, December 1959
Gabriel wasn’t sure what was going on with his family. He was in his second year at Stanford now, and he’d got home for the Christmas holidays to find everyone at Stanhope Castle sombre and subdued. Franny and his father were always closeted away together, being secretive. And Olivia – well, she still didn’t seem right. He knew she’d been having some emotional problems, but what could be so awful that it went on for this long? She could only look at him with blank eyes, seeming to hardly register anything that was going on.
In the end, Gabriel went to his father.
‘What’s up with everyone?’ he asked. ‘Dad, what aren’t you telling me? I can’t get a word out of Olivia. Is she sick or what?’
At first, Max said nothing. He simply walked back to the drinks cabinet and poured two large tumblers of whiskey. He brought them back to the table and set one down in front of his son. By then, Gabriel was beginning to grow frightened. He’d never seen his father like this before. Whatever was going on, it had to be bad for Max to encourage him to drink.
‘What I’m about to tell you must stay between us.’ His father’s face was grave. ‘Last year, something happened to your sister.’
As Gabriel listened to what his father had to say, the blood began to drain from his face.
Gabriel blamed himself. He could have done something to stop all this. He’d known Olivia was sneaking out to see someone when they were down in LA, and he’d chosen to look the other way. If it hadn’t been for him, none of this would have happened.
He’d listened to everything that his father had to say. It was the first time he’d felt a closeness between them, bonded in their concern for Olivia. They’d drunk most of the bottle of whiskey together, before Max said he had to go to Franny. Gabriel sensed something was going on there, too, but he had enough to worry about without getting involved with that. His father had counselled Gabriel to be careful about what he said when he spoke to Olivia. After all, she was still so fragile. Perhaps if the young man hadn’t drunk so much he would have listened. But instead he found himself heading up to his sister’s room.
Olivia was sitting on her bed reading. She looked up as he entered the room. Seeing his face, something in her expression changed.
‘You know,’ she said.
It was a simple statement of fact. Gabriel didn’t bother to reply. Instead he walked over to where she sat, and took her in his arms.
‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you,’ he murmured into her hair, as she rested her head against his shoulder.
After what seemed like an age, he gently pulled away. His eyes searched her face.
‘Olivia – tell me. Who was it? Who did this to you?’
Max had told him that Olivia refused to reveal the father’s identity, and he was expecting her to say the same thing to him. But after a moment’s hesitation, she said: ‘It was Duke. Duke Carter.’
Olivia didn’t know why she’d told Gabriel who the father was. For months, she’d refused to reveal Duke’s identity to anyone, because she’d known how much trouble it would cause. She still couldn’t believe she’d been quite so stupid. It was because of the night of her sixteenth birthday. At the end of the evening, the actor had given her his telephone number, and told her to call if ever she was in town. During the next term at school, she’d allowed her crush to grow, daydreaming about what it would be like when they saw each other again.
During the Thanksgiving break, Gabriel had been going to meet friends in LA, and Olivia had asked to tag along. It had been easy enough to call Duke and meet up with him then. She wasn’t sure he’d remembered her at first, but once she’d got a cab over to his place, he’d seemed pleased to see her. She’d spent the night with him and sneaked back to Holmby Hills early the next morning, before anyone realised that she was missing. She’d seen him a handful times after that, since, whenever Gabriel had been going down to LA, she’d go with him: at Christmas, the odd weekend, and lastly, during the Easter break.
When she’d realised she was pregnant, she’d called Duke several times, feeling increasingly desperate as she left each message – wanting to tell him in person what had happened. But he’d never phoned her back. Eventually, his assistant had told her to stop calling, or he’d get the police involved.
Olivia hadn’t known what to do after that. Then her stepmother and father had got involved, and she’d decided it was best to keep Duke’s name out of it.
And then Gabriel had come home, and whatever their father had told him, he’d started asking those same old questions tonight, about who had fathered her child. Needing to confide in someone, and thinking her brother would understand, Olivia had let him in on her secret. After all, he’d seemed so sympathetic about everything. It was only after she’d told him that his demeanour had changed. She could see his fury as he cursed Duke; she could smell the alcohol on his breath, fuelling his anger. Now she watched as he headed to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ she said, feeling frightened.
‘To confront him.’ He spoke through gritted teeth.
‘Gabriel! No!’
‘I have to!’
Olivia saw the resolve in his eyes, and made her decision. ‘Then I’m coming with you.’
They hurried downstairs together. The garage had returned Franny’s Pontiac earlier that day, all repaired after her crash a few weeks earlier. It was parked in front of Gabriel’s Mustang, blocking him in. Luckily, the mechanics had left the keys in the Pontiac’s ignition. Perfect. He would take that instead.
Max was with Franny, in their bedroom, when he heard the squeal of the car. He hurried to the window and saw her Pontiac speeding out of the driveway, with Gabriel at the wheel and Olivia in the passenger seat. He knew instinctively that this had something to do with what he’d told Gabriel earlier, and cursed himself for thinking that his son would be able to handle the news.
‘What is it?’ his wife asked, alarmed, as he rushed for the door.
He didn’t stop to answer. Instead, he ran down the stairs and out to his own car. The Pontiac already had a head start on him, but Max had seen Gabriel turn left out of the driveway, and guessed that his children were on their way down to LA. He sped off in pursu
it, hoping to flag them down before Gabriel did anything crazy.
The roads were dark and empty, as always on this stretch of Highway 1. Occasionally Max would round a corner and catch sight of tail-lights ahead of him, and know that he was on the right route. Certain that he would catch up with them soon, he was just beginning to relax a little, when he heard a screech of tyres ahead, and the crunch of metal on concrete. He put his foot to the floor.
As he rounded the next corner, he saw what had happened. It was the exact hairpin bend where Franny had had her accident, too. The Pontiac had obviously ploughed off the road, and looked as though it had flipped over several times, before coming to rest on the cliff’s edge. Max brought the Lincoln to a halt and leaped out to help his children.
The Pontiac rested precariously on the edge now, and as Max drew closer he saw that the front right wheel was dangling over, the car dipping forward and back, as though it was about to plummet downwards. Gabriel had been thrown clear of the car during the crash, but Olivia was still inside. Max assessed the scene quickly. His son was sitting up on the verge, apparently unharmed if a little dazed still, and Max rushed to check on his daughter. Even from a distance he could see that she was slumped in the passenger seat, her eyes closed. The angle of her head suggested that her neck was broken, but Max wasn’t about to give up. He ran towards his daughter, calling her name, already trying to figure out how he could get her to safety.
But just as he was about to reach her, there was one last creak of metal. Max stood frozen as he watched the Pontiac tip over the side and fall down the cliff edge, the car smashing on the rocks below, exploding on impact. Olivia was lost for ever.
Max never knew whether he’d made the right decision that night. But having lost one child already, he had no intention of losing both. He was aware how much his son had had to drink and realised that he couldn’t let him near the police. No one was around for miles, so he drove Gabriel, who was frozen in shock, back to Stanhope Castle, took him to his room and warned him not to speak to anyone. Then he went to Franny to tell her what had happened – and what he planned to do.