by Jules Wake
‘Yes please,’ said Carrie, praying Angela’s presence might dampen his ardour.
‘Where do you want to put him?’
‘He can go in my room and I’ll sleep in one of the other rooms.’
‘Hide, you mean.’
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ said Carrie. ‘I’ll grab a few things and decamp.’
At last Alan emerged, his shirt tails untucked from his trousers, still pulling up his zip.
‘Bedtime,’ said Carrie, with the briskness of Matron.
‘An exce-exce-cellent idea.’
Between them Carrie and Angela wrestled him along the corridor, uttering soothing responses to his increasingly incoherent comments.
‘Here you go. Why don’t you lie down?’ Carrie pushed him to a sitting position on the bed.
‘Come lie with me. My love. You know I love you.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘You still love me, don’t you? I couldn’t bear to lose you.’ He squeezed her hand, pulling her to him. ‘Don’t go. Stay with me tonight.’
His eyes pooled with tears and his face crumpled. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you left me. You’re amazing. We can get over this.’
She traced the lines of the tiled floor with her eyes, anything to avoid seeing the desperate appeal in his eyes.
‘Alan, you need to get some sleep. Let’s talk in the morning.’
Hurt eyes peered up at her. ‘I want to talk now.’
‘It’s not a good idea. Let’s wait until the morning.’
‘Please.’ His heartfelt plea made her feel seven kinds of bitch.
‘Alan.’ This was awful.
‘Just lie down with me. Let me hold you.’
Her gut had knotted itself into a dense mass, like intricate macramé.
‘Let’s get your shoes off,’ she said, shooting a look at Angela over her shoulder. ‘Make you comfortable. Lie down.’
Without another word he flopped obediently onto the pillows and she lifted his legs onto the bed, taking her time to unlace his uncharacteristically scuffed tan brogues. She winced, touching the deep scratches in the polished leather – they looked as if they’d been through the mill today. By the time she’d eased them off, his eyes had closed but his face contorted with sudden frowns as if unpleasant thoughts kept jumping out at him.
‘Spinning thing. Room,’ muttered Alan and then groaned.
‘I’ll get a sick bowl,’ said Angela, and disappeared with unsurprising alacrity.
Carrie stood at the end of the bed, watching him, not daring to breathe in case he opened his eyes again.
She crept backwards towards the door, grabbing her robe, praying he wouldn’t open his eyes.
‘Sorry, took me a while to find something suitable.’ Angela returned carrying a large plastic bowl to find Carrie lurking outside the bedroom door. ‘Is he asleep?’
‘Close enough. He didn’t open his eyes.’
‘I’ll pop this by the bed, shall I?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘That’s what sisters are for.’ Angela winked and slipped through the door and came back into the corridor within seconds.
‘He’s out for the count. Snoring gently. Nothing short of canon fire is going to wake him.’
‘Phew.’ Carrie rocked her head back, stretching the tense neck muscles. ‘I’m a terrible person.’
Angela put her arm around her and hugged her. ‘No, you’re not. You’re a good person. Don’t forget it.’
‘I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t … love him … not the way I should.’
‘And you can’t help that. Better to realise now than later.’
‘I’m not sure that Alan would agree with you,’ said Carrie, conscious of a hollowness in her stomach.
It took her a while to orientate herself the next morning in the strange bedroom and a few seconds to peel her gritty eyes open. Surely she’d only been asleep for an hour. Something had woken her and she lay with her arm over her eyes. There it was again. Her phone. Despite being on silent mode, the damn thing had taken up the Samba. When she leaned out of bed to pick it up to find out who was texting, she realised it had danced out of reach with its constant vibrations.
‘What the …’
It was half-past eight but the screen announced that she’d had umpteen WhatsApp messages, twenty texts and several missed calls.
Sitting upright she read the first text, the second and then a third.
‘Oh shit.’ Throwing back the covers, she jumped out of bed, thrusting her arms into her robe and ran through the house to the kitchen where she’d left her laptop last night.
‘Bloody, bloody hell.’ Pain pinched in the back of her shoulders as she leaned over the screen. How on earth had the papers got hold of this information? She was so screwed.
Yesterday’s pictures had been enhanced with a new headline.
Mr and Mrs Maddox take a stroll on the beach.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Richard Maddox’s mystery bride has been unmasked as high school drama teacher, Miss Carrie Hayes. Capsholt High School, Head teacher, Mr Nigel Lyndon, 46, said that none of her colleagues had any idea that the glamorous Miss Hayes, 29, was married, let alone to an international movie star. ‘We’re all stunned. She never said a word to anyone here.’ He refused to comment on Miss Hayes’ future at the school following the publication of the revealing photos.’
Apparently the couple married in secret after a whirlwind romance on the Riviera, where Mr Maddox is filming at the moment. Mr Maddox’s spokesperson declined to comment when or where the secret ceremony had taken place or how long the couple have been married.
A member of the cast, who didn’t want to be named, said, ‘It’s all been terribly romantic. They were together at a party this week and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.’
She stared at the screen, willing the words to vanish, wishing she could press the backspace button to delete them, word by word. Her throat closed as a sob of panic started to rise. The stark, uncompromising warnings of all those e-safety lectures at school came home to roost. Once a picture is out there on the internet, it’s there for ever. You can’t erase or remove it. Like some awful spell, the words had been cast and couldn’t be pulled back. She couldn’t even hope that no one might see them: an awful lot of people already had, judging by the state of her mobile.
Bloody thing. She shoved it out of reach. If she picked it up, she’d be tempted to look at the messages, like any of them were going to help. Gossip-mongering or official ones from the Head or his PA demanding an explanation and calling her into school. The Chair of Governors, Olive Martin, a mean old stick, who disliked the drama department on the principle that it wasn’t academic enough, was no doubt revving up her broomstick and convening the coven to call for her to be sacked.
What was Alan going to say? What had Richard said? When had the newspaper spoken to his ‘spokesperson’ and why hadn’t he warned her?
Wearily, she picked up the phone, handling it like a bomb about to explode in her hand and scrolled through the list of texts, missed calls and voicemails. Half of the numbers were unfamiliar but there was Richard’s.
She listened to his voice message, urgent and low.
‘I’m filming this morning; I can’t get out of it. I’ll be over as soon as I’ve finished. I’ve got Caroline, my press agent on it, trying to find out who leaked the story. We’ll have to go to the media with our own story, to take the heat out of everything. Don’t worry, she’s a pro, she’s done this plenty of times. Whatever you do, don’t talk to the press or any friends, they’ll quote you, you can bet. She’s drafting a statement, which we’ll issue later. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Press agents. Statements. This wasn’t her world. Talking to the media. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, she wanted to bolt down a rabbit hole and stay there.
The gate buzzer sounded and Carrie flinched as she walked into the hall Angela had picked up the intercom telephone.
�
�Hello … who? Oops Magazine?’
‘Don’t let them in!’ Carrie grabbed the phone from her and slammed it down.
‘Okay.’ Angela stepped back. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The press found out who I am.’
‘How?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
The buzzer sounded again.
Carrie snatched it up. ‘Can we talk to Carrie Maddox? Just an interview. A couple of photos. We pay well.’
She put it down without saying anything.
‘Thank God for the gates.’
The buzzer didn’t stop for the next ten minutes until, finally, Carrie took it off the hook. Unfortunately, that left the intercom channel open, allowing what sounded like thousands of tinny voices buzzing down the line. It added to the torture of being under siege, along with the dread of Alan waking up.
After a long shower, Carrie pinched a T-shirt from Angela, and took herself off to veranda at the side of the house. She turned up the volume full on her iPhone, plugged in her earphones and lay down on the rattan sofa, out of view from everyone.
There’d been no sign of Alan yet, for which she was fervently grateful, although she could only hide out here for so long, but she needed some time alone.
She managed to stay under the radar until eleven o’clock, when Alan tracked her down.
‘Ah, this is where you’re hiding. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
His usual ruddy complexion had a definite greyish tinge to it this morning.
‘You and the world’s press,’ she sighed, removing her earphones and sitting up.
‘How did they find out who you were?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she lied. She’d been pondering that very question for the last two hours. Exactly five people in the whole wide world knew for sure it was her in that photo. One, being her, which narrowed the number down to four. She could scratch Phil from the list, as she doubted he even knew her surname, Richard again, equally unlikely, Angela even less so, which by the law of diminishing returns left Jade, who had kept rather a low profile this morning, despite the fact that her own phone must be red hot with messages from friends, besides themselves at the celebrity-relation angle.
‘Well, it’s scuppered things. Have you heard from Nigel? I bet he’s not best pleased. Wish you’d said something before. It makes me look an idiot. Proposing when you were already married.’
‘I haven’t checked. My phone’s gone into meltdown.’
‘But he’s your boss.’ He twisted his hands in and out of each other as he spoke, clearly unable to keep them still. ‘You ought to check. Call him. He’ll need to hear from you. God forbid, but you might have been suspended or something. You know how cautious the governors are.’
Carrie nodded. ‘If they decided to suspend me, they’ll have made that decision whether I speak to them or not. There’s not a lot I can do about it from here.’
‘Of course there is. You have to fight it. That’s what the union’s for. You need to get on to your union rep. I’ve been thinking and I reckon that you’ve got a good case. It was a private beach and you were with your husband. You and I know it’s in name only, but no one else does. The papers think you’ve just got married, which means we’ll have to postpone the wedding for a while. But that’s just as well.Let things lie low. We don’t want another media storm.’
He was a good man and she didn’t want to hurt him, but she owed him honesty.
‘Alan, I can’t marry you.’
He took both her hands, his familiar face earnest. ‘I know you think you can’t, but this will all blow over. I still love you and I know we can get over this. Once the new term starts and things settle down, everyone will forget about this. The union will back you. It’s not like you’ve broken any laws.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She pulled away from him as gently as she could. ‘We can’t go back to how we were. I’m so sorry, Al, but it’s over.’
He grabbed at her hand, like a man scrabbling for a rope. ‘Don’t do this now. This is a knee-jerk reaction. You need to give us time. Out here, it’s not real life. You’ll see when we get home and go back to normal …’
Carrie shook her head. ‘That’s the thing, I don’t want to go back to normal.’
‘Well now you’re being silly.’ Alan sighed. ‘No one wants to go back to normal. It would be lovely to be on holiday forever, but we all have jobs and responsibilities.’ Carrie appreciated his tone about as much as twelve-year- old would have done and with heavy heart realised that trying to explain to him was pointless. He would never understand.
He stood up, about to step away, when he turned, his expression fierce. ‘Seriously, Carrie, don’t do it. We can get through this. You’ve had your head turned. Who wouldn’t? It’s gorgeous out here. This lovely house. Parties on yachts. Private beaches. It’s not real. You’re going to regret it when you get back to England and real life.’ It was the most passionate and animated she’d ever seen him and she hated that it was for all the wrong reasons.
‘I’m sorry.’
Alan narrowed his eyes, his mouth firming into a small, mean line before he said, ‘It’s him, isn’t it.’
Before Carrie could deny it, he struck like a cobra, his voice full of venom, ‘You do know that if he wanted you, he would have come looking for you before now.’
‘It’s not about Richard. There’s no future there either. I realise now, that we, you and I, would be wrong.’
‘You’re sure.’ He bit his lip, still hopeful as he pushed his hands into his pockets, standing his ground.
She nodded, unable to speak.
Eventually with the sort of look that would have made Eeyore proud, he turned and walked away.
She watched him, her breath catching with a tinge of sadness but also a sense of calm, knowing she was finally doing the right thing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
With no fanfare or fuss, Alan gathered his things together and with grim politeness thanked Angela for having him. When Carrie went to kiss his cheek as he walked out to the waiting taxi, he turned his head away before saying stiffly, ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
Watching the taxi trundling up the drive to the gates, she crossed her fingers. She hoped so too.
Angela linked her arm through Carrie’s and they walked back to the kitchen, which felt like a command centre.
‘Sit down,’ said Angela. ‘You look done in.’
‘I think I’ve been scooped up by a tornado, done a few spins and chucked out.’
‘Definitely over with Alan, then.’
‘Yes. It wouldn’t have worked. I should have realised that.’
‘I was starting to wonder.’
‘You were?’ Carrie sat up straighter. ‘Since when?’
‘The day you came back from lunch with Richard. Your hair was down and the light had been switched back on. You used to look like that all the time. Bit like an eager and rather naughty lion cub on the lookout for the next thing to pounce on. I realised then.’
Carrie reached out and touched her sister’s hand. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ Angela squeezed her hand.
Carrie laughed. ‘For being you and for me not having to explain. I tried to tell Alan but he didn’t get it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
Carrie rounded up the crumbs on the table like a sheepdog, chasing down the errant ones at the edge of her place setting.
‘Finish our holiday. Summon up the courage to look at all the messages on my phone and see if I still have a job when I get home.’
‘I meant about Richard.’
‘Nothing.’ As Alan had helpfully pointed out, Richard had always known where she was. He hadn’t bothered looking her up before. She knew where his priorities lay.
‘Jade!’ Her niece, who had popped her head around the doorway and then retreated when she’d seen Carrie, reappeared, her posture ram-rod straight.
‘Have you got something to tel
l me?’ Carrie spoke in an I’m-very-disappointed-in-you schoolteacher tone, which usually worked. Jade stared at the floor, wrapping her ankle around her leg like a wayward stork.
‘Erm … er. There’s a man in the garden.’
‘What?’ Carrie wheeled round.
‘Not there, coming from the wall down by the road from the gate. On that side of the house.’ She pointed to the far side of the house, where the bedrooms were.
‘Shit, a journalist?’
‘I think so.’ Jade winced and there was a distinct apology in her puppy-dog posture.
‘Did he have a camera?’ Carrie rose, indignation burning.
‘Not sure,’ said Jade.
‘Hmm, he wouldn’t want to get it wet, now would he?’ She paused and then held up her hand. ‘Hold up. He wants pictures.’ She scanned the kitchen and a slow, vicious smile lit her face.
‘Angela, there are some of mine and Jade’s T-shirts drying. Can you grab them?’
Without question, Angela sprang into action and returned with two crumpled white T-shirts.
‘Put that on,’ Carrie tossed it to Jade and grabbed two large dark tea towels. With urgent fingers, she tied one onto Jade’s head using one of the fabric bands Angela used to keep her hair out of face and then put the second on her own head. ‘Sunglasses.’
Jade frowned, not following. Carrie marched towards the door, beckoning her.
‘Come, young Jedi. We have work to do, defending the perimeter. Angela, don’t answer the front door.’
‘Defending the … oh.’ Jade’s eyes widened in astonished horror. ‘We can’t … can we?’
‘You bet we can. Grab The Terminator. We’re gonna kick some ass.’ She pulled down her sunglasses. ‘Shutters down.’
Jade followed suit, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘I know.’ Carrie grinned back.
‘Shoot to kill,’ said Carrie handing the big purple water gun to Jade. ‘If we hide behind the furniture on the end veranda, when he comes around the corner we let him have it with both barrels.’
Jade nodded, hopping up and down on the spot. ‘Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?’
‘Hell no,’ drawled Carrie, toting her gun with her best badass gangster swagger. ‘I know we can.’