Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  ‘You want me to feel sorry for you?’ In the script it was phrased as ‘Should I feel sorry for you?’ but no one picked Turquoise up on it.

  ‘My start wasn’t the best,’ he mused, draining from the words every ounce of self-pity. ‘You know that. I told you I was no good, I warned you. I’m dangerous…’

  No shit you are.

  ‘You should have stayed away from me.’

  Turquoise wanted to laugh, and had to scour the depths to summon anything remotely akin to sympathy.

  ‘You can talk of home all you like,’ she returned. ‘It means nothing. Once you told me home was wherever I was, and that places had no significance.’

  ‘How could they?’ he implored, drawing out the moment. ‘After where I’ve been?’

  ‘And…cut!’ Sam grinned. ‘Superb. Turquoise, I was there with you word for word, every step of the way. You’re pulling at some heartstrings with this one.’

  Turquoise watched her co-star cross the perimeter and mingle with his fans. They lapped up his insincerity and crooned with pleasure when he addressed them in Greek. Couldn’t they see that there was no difference between the act they’d just witnessed and the man standing now in front of them? Couldn’t anyone? Cosmo Angelopoulos was a fraud.

  Tonight, he would be uncovered. What Cosmo didn’t understand and had never understood over all these years was that she knew him better than he knew himself.

  From across the set her assistant held up a cell phone. Turquoise padded over to receive it and was happy to see Ava’s name flash up on the screen.

  Hope Greece is treating you well, honey.

  Trust Cosmo behaving himself? ;-)

  Turquoise wondered if Ava had any inkling about her husband’s infidelities. Surely she must, but then that wouldn’t make sense. Ava was a strong, independent woman and wouldn’t take shit from anybody, least of all a man purporting to love her.

  They were all in for a surprise—and though Turquoise would never deliberately hurt one of the women she valued most in this world, now she was left with no choice.

  25

  Bunny White was no expert in applying make-up. It was ironic since she spent most of her days caked in the stuff, but Ramona was the one who perfected it, and now, armed with one of Kristin’s Magic Liners and an eye like a squinting panda, Bunny had to admit defeat.

  Normally Kristin would help her, but since they’d barely heard a word since she’d been away that wasn’t likely to happen. Nor could it, because Kristin’s very absence was the reason why Bunny was taking three hours with her appearance in the first place.

  She pouted at her reflection and had a last stab with the lipstick. It was a strident shade, too abrasive, and she tried a subtler, brownish tone that complemented her blonde ringlets more kindly. Rummaging about in her sister’s belongings, she experienced a shard of guilt, before remembering that she hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Yet.

  Wanting Scotty wasn’t the same as doing anything about it, was it?

  They were meeting for a milkshake at his manager’s house. Everywhere else they’d get mobbed, Scotty said, and anyway Fenton Fear would be out. Bunny was glad. Fenton was friendly enough but he scared her a little. He was so…big! Like an ogre, with his massive chicken-drumstick arms and wobbly chin, and Ramona whispered that he was ‘a drinker’, as though this were a hazardous precursor to spontaneous combustion and he could implode at any given second, sending his freckles scattering across the walls like gunfire. Once she had seen him in shorts and his calves were wide as tennis racquets and covered in brown dots.

  Never before had she felt so nervous, not even before a pageant! This was a different breed of anxiety that had butterflies in her stomach and a queasy feeling trickling through her whenever she thought of Scotty’s smile. Would he greet her at the door? Would he kiss her on the cheek, as he had at home one dizzying Christmas? Would he hold her hand…?

  Of course not, Bunny! He’s Kristin’s boyfriend!

  It was impossible to forget the facts, and after Bunny’s initial thrill at his having made contact she was forced to concede that he was probably as worried for Kristin’s whereabouts as they were, hence the meeting. There were no romantic intentions whatsoever.

  In the event, Scotty was already waiting on the other side of the mansion security gates when she arrived. Bunny had checked her reflection a zillion times and fretted she looked like a kid who’d raided the dressing-up box (which wasn’t far from the truth) but there was only so late she could be, and, judging by Scotty’s fraught expression, ill-concealed beneath his McLaren red baseball cap, that was just as well.

  ‘Hey.’ He buzzed her in. ‘Thanks for coming.’ There was no kiss or hug or anything. Bunny was relieved because being in such close proximity to the boy of her dreams was sending her to the cusp of a swoon (not that she’d ever swooned before, but she imagined this was how it felt). If he’d attempted to touch her she might have collapsed.

  Fenton’s place was modest in comparison with Ramona’s efforts at The White House, but it was still impressive. Every surface hosted Fenton’s accolades and evidence of his chart successes, his trophies and gold discs lovingly mounted in clean glass frames, amassed with photos of him alongside stars the world over, some from many years ago when everyone had puffy hair and square shoulders and Fenton himself looked not much older than Scotty.

  ‘This way,’ said Scotty flatly, leading them into what must have been the den. Three mammoth white leather couches dominated the space, one of which confessed to a Scotty-shaped dent and a crackling nest of half-eaten bags of Lays potato chips and rainbow-coloured candy balls. The TV was blaring and Scotty reached for the remote to kill it.

  ‘Been watching too much crap,’ he mumbled, and with the proximity of his words she caught a sour gust of breath, which wasn’t quite enough to counter her strawberry-scented love for him but was troubling nonetheless.

  It was when he removed his cap that she almost gasped.

  He looked awful. Well, not awful as in ugly, because Scotty Valentine could never look ugly, but awful as in tired. Desperate. He looked like he hadn’t gone to sleep in a month, or he’d been crying, or puking, or had become ‘a drinker’. Bunny was overwhelmed with affection that until now had been selfish longing, but at this moment thought only of making him feel better because she couldn’t see him so sad, she just couldn’t! Her tongue bloated with the struggle of how to articulate the crossing of this new frontier, and no words came.

  ‘D’you want a drink?’ Scotty asked miserably. His mop of hair was scruffy and his blue eyes had lost their sparkle. Wow, thought Bunny, he’s really missing Kristin. And a little piece of her expired with the knowledge.

  ‘OK, that’d be cool,’ she replied.

  The promised milkshake didn’t materialise. Instead he came back with lemonade for her, a beer for him. Bunny had hoped he might be able to see past her age, especially with the make-up, but given he had barely glanced at her since she’d arrived she wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said despairingly, sinking back into the Scotty-shaped hole and anxiously rubbing his temples. Bunny chewed her lip. In the corner of the room she noticed a marble ass bolted to the wall and struggled to remember if Fenton had a wife.

  ‘Sit down.’ He gestured a touch impatiently. Hurriedly she obeyed, settling opposite. She’d have preferred to sit next to him, maybe rest a hand on his knee if it all got too much, because every time she raised her eyes to Scotty she felt the bottom go out from under her and fly away, like being thrown off the top of a New York skyscraper.

  ‘What’s up?’ she squeaked.

  ‘It’s Kristin,’ he admitted, taking a slug of his beer. He burped gently and she wished he wouldn’t do that, because Scotty Valentine never burped, in fact he never endured any bodily expulsions because he was a god, a prince, and thus above the mess of human biology. Only yesterday Bunny had been watching Fraternity’s dreamboat Christmas single ‘Keep You Warm’ a
nd lusting after his cute smile and the poetry that flowed from his lips, so the reality was faintly disheartening. But she’d forgive Scotty anything—absolutely anything.

  ‘We’ve split up,’ he announced, eyes flitting suspiciously across his captive audience’s face. ‘You knew about that…right?’

  Bunny wrung her hands together. ‘Is that why she’s gone away?’

  Scotty assessed her for the first time, as if he was trying to figure something out. ‘She hasn’t spoken to you?’ he hazarded, visibly relieved.

  ‘No. She just left. Mom and me don’t know why, but I guess…I guess it makes sense if it’s about you…’ Bunny would run to the ends of the earth if Scotty ever dumped her, and toss herself into the abyss.

  ‘OK.’ He put his fingers together, resting his chin on their tips, thinking carefully. He was so sexy when he concentrated! She had no idea how he’d even got through school without being suffocated by hordes of girls. ‘Do you think she’s told anyone that we’ve split? Or—’ again he squinted at her ‘—the reasons why?’

  Bunny shrugged. ‘I don’t think she can have,’ she replied innocently. ‘Like, it was so quick. She just came back on my birthday, and…’ A pause. ‘You remember my birthday?’

  ‘What? Oh. Yeah. Course.’ But clearly he didn’t remember that he was supposed to have made it and the fact he hadn’t bothered had cracked her fourteen-year-old heart in two.

  ‘And she started packing.’ Bunny pouted. ‘No explanation or anything.’

  Scotty rubbed his chin. Oh, it was a handsome chin.

  ‘I need you to do something for me, Bunny,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I need you to get Kristin back.’

  Bunny grimaced, hating to disappoint him. ‘We’ve tried, only she won’t listen.’ Against his desolate expression, she tacked on, ‘I’ll ask her again to come home. Promise.’

  He shot up off the couch. ‘I don’t mean that,’ he said gruffly, running a hand through his hair. ‘I mean, yeah, obviously she needs to do that, but what I’m saying is that I want her back. I need her back. With me.’

  His words were torture. Kristin was so lucky and she didn’t even know it!

  ‘Why did you split up?’ she asked, quiet as a mouse.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Scotty quickly. ‘The important thing is that it hasn’t leaked to the press, and hopefully we can paper over Kristin’s disappearance once we work out a plan.’ He was nodding, as if formulating his next step. ‘We have to work out a plan.’ Scotty’s eyes flitted to a framed photograph of Fenton, and Bunny guessed that Fenton wasn’t happy about the split either. Together, Kristin and Scotty were the perfect package.

  ‘She listens to you,’ Scotty continued, coming to crouch, imploring, in front of her. ‘If you tell her…’ He stalled, putting a hand on each of her knees and sending sparks of electricity zooming through her bloodstream. ‘Just tell her I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and that I can explain.’ His face changed, more like the old Scotty. ‘It’s her I love; tell her that. You just have to get her back for me, Bunny, you have to—I don’t know who else to ask. I’m trusting you with this, OK? Do you trust me back?’

  Bunny nodded. Her heart shivered. Scotty Valentine needed her! He needed her, and no one else would do. She gazed at him with love unadulterated, her hero, her safe place, and vowed she would not prolong his suffering, whatever it took.

  What they said about losing someone was true. First, there was the shock. Grief pounced soon after, then, finally, anger set in. Anger was where Kristin was at, and though she knew acceptance would be coming, she wasn’t hanging around to wait.

  Five weeks she had spent weeping and feeling sorry for herself, and the thing about being miserable was that after a time it got boring.

  ‘I’m done here,’ she had told her rep the previous morning, making an early call to LA and setting the wheels in motion. ‘Get me a flight home.’

  ‘You bet. Good to have you back, Kristin.’

  But they weren’t getting her back. Kristin White wasn’t the same girl she had been: she had shattered into a thousand pieces and had been forced to reassemble, but putting something back together rarely achieved an identical mould and parts had switched, shifted, integral parts. Over the past month she’d had endless time to work out where the fuck it had gone so wrong, and the resounding answer she’d kept coming back to was:

  I’m too good.

  All her life she’d been good, doing what was bidden, holding her temper, nodding along like a stupid dumb puppy. All her life she had tolerated other people’s crap: her mom’s, her record label’s, her fake boyfriend’s. All her life she’d borne it uncomplaining, and look where it had got her. It had to stop. How much longer could she be the fool?

  Kristin showered and packed her bag. Her jet would depart in an hour. At the mirror she took a pair of scissors to her long pale hair and began cutting. She took it to her chin, satisfied as great sheets of blonde wafted to the marble floor like silk, until she was standing in a mountain of it: Rapunzel after her true love’s desertion. Scooping it up, she cleared the bathroom and left a generous tip for her maid along with a note:

  Thanks for everything. I’m checking out.

  26

  The weather in London had been uncharacteristically clear for November. Nights were cold and cloudless, and domed with stars that were normally seldom decipherable through the city smog. In flat 39B, Ivy Sewell stepped out of her bedroom and into silence.

  Four a.m. The dismal hum of the North Circular droned on, and if she listened closely she could hear her mother’s brittle breath as she slept. An empty bottle of brandy rocked on its side by Hilda’s chair. Her neck was tipped back and she was exhaling through her mouth, eliciting an occasional whimper, as if she were being chased by nightmares. Hilda must have spent the last twenty years being chased. Never had she turned and faced her sins, content to have them pursue her to the grave and beyond. Who knew what lay past death? Hilda wore a silver cross around her neck but that didn’t mean she could claim redemption.

  Some things were beyond forgiveness.

  Ivy was ready. Her destination: Los Angeles. Her target: Robin Ryder.

  Only her sister could answer to this. Ivy could not be held responsible for what happened. Robin’s ignorance was the culprit, her ability to live like a queen with no thought to the wreckage she had left behind. If Ivy had been given that exit, what could she have become? She would have been capable of anything: a life with no limits, a life hunting her own desires, a life of luck and grace, one lived for her and her alone…

  A life without Hilda.

  Calmly Ivy collected the cushion and squeezed it in her dry hands. It smelled musty and the dust caught in her throat, forcing her to suppress a cough.

  Sickly light drained into the living room, syrup-thick.

  It wasn’t difficult to hold the cushion over Hilda’s face. It wasn’t difficult to apply the pressure that would steal the last breath from her mother’s lungs. It wasn’t even difficult when the struggle began and Ivy had to restrain the flailing, panicking limbs.

  Suddenly, still.

  Just like that, it was over. Slowly she removed the pillow, her mother’s eyes and mouth wide open in terror, as empty in death as she had been in life.

  Ivy straightened, the merciless soldier. She felt nothing.

  How easy it was to kill. How unfortunate that was for her twin.

  LA was the city of sunshine. Ivy had seen it on TV and in Hollywood films, the rich blue sky under which tanned, slim bodies skated beachfront or rode past in open-top Jeeps. People lived frivolously here, bent on a cycle of self-gratification and excess.

  It was like stepping into the movies. Only Ivy wasn’t the pretty starlet dreaming of Tinseltown fame; she was the disease in the veins, the glitch in the blood. Fame would be hers, but not the hollow vanity for which this place was renowned. They said that celebrity should be a festival of achievement…could it not be a festi
val of destruction?

  Her intent was to destroy—and oh, it would taste sweet. No drama the movies could bring would ever rival the cataclysm she was set to release.

  Downtown Ivy passed through the streets as darkly and invisibly as a virus, sweating beneath her clothes, her flamered hair matted to her scalp. Opening the door to the shop, she locked on to the nervous trainee and produced her wad of cash. She had rinsed her dead mother’s savings, shocked at how much Hilda had stowed away. Not that she’d ever seen any of it, of course; the witch had kept that one quiet. Had Hilda once had wealthy relatives? Had a loser boyfriend chucked guilt money her way? Ivy no longer cared. All she cared about was that she had inherited more than even she had planned, and the reward was simple: freedom. After all this time she deserved it, and she deserved the best.

  ‘Do you want to make a sale today?’ She took a seat, slapping the money down on the table and fixing him with a dead glare. ‘I’m your buyer.’

  An hour later, Ivy was proprietor of a two-bed single-storey villa with its own pool. Next she purchased a car to park in the drive. She claimed a mass of new clothes to hang in the closet. She acquired a TV, a radio and laptop: all the better to carry out the final leg of surveillance.

  On the day she moved in, a neighbour dropped by.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, watching her unpack, ‘I’m Connor. Have you got everything you need?’

  Connor was extremely short, with glasses. Every time he spoke a small pink tongue darted out and swiped his bottom lip, like something in a tree canopy that dives at prey.

  ‘Yes.’

  Connor shifted his weight. ‘It’s not long since I arrived here, as it goes. What do you say we hang out some time?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He gulped. ‘Right. OK.’

  Ivy went to close the door but he stopped her.

  ‘Wait.’ Behind his spectacles, he blinked nervously, like a mole surfacing from the earth. ‘Would you like to come for dinner this week? I’ve invited the others.’ He gestured round the block. ‘They seem a good crowd.’ Anticipating her response, he added, ‘I can fit in with your dates—’ and the voice sagged as her withering glare bored into him ‘—if you want…’