Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  33

  Robin’s Beginnings tour opened at San Francisco’s Super-ship. The space was tremendous, shaped like a vast bowl, and at final rehearsal when she shouted into the empty seats her voice swung back at her with clarity from every angle. With the stylised domino stage fronting one end, a silver platform running out into the audience and the swinging glass birdcage glinting like a pendant, her art director’s vision had come spectacularly to life.

  Outside, the crowd gathered and grew like an approaching storm. As she stood backstage amid the dark rigging and her posse of restless dancers it felt like the onset of gladiatorial battle. Robin prayed her audience wouldn’t be baying for blood tonight.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ Barney took her shoulders, his brow sweating.

  ‘Course I am.’ Robin smiled as confidently as she could as a sound technician checked her mic and gave her a thumbs-up. ‘I’m on top of this, Barney. It’s going to fly.’

  The birdcage was lowered for her to step into. She managed it with some difficulty and was afraid its delicate casing wouldn’t hold her though they had practised it a hundred times. Fanning from Robin’s back was a plume of resplendent feathers, oily and purple and green, intricately crafted and tricky to manoeuvre without tearing. On her feet a pair of pick-sharp buckled Louboutins dictated where precisely she had to stand in order not to slip through the heel-size grates.

  ‘You made it.’ Barney smiled as the door to the cage was closed. ‘This is your moment, babe. See you on the other side, yeah?’

  Robin knew he wanted to say more. This was America: the Holy Grail. Barney put his fingers through the grill and clasped hers before slipping away.

  Being raised to the rafters was terrifying. They had played it through tons in rehearsal but actually being here, in the dark, tens of feet above a blackened stage that in several moments would burst with light and noise and the screams of an auditorium was something you could never truly conjure outside the real event…The fact of the night rushed at her unchecked. The cage came to a stop and Robin stared at the back of the facing doors, hearing only her own breath and her own heartbeat.

  Stillness descended. For an eternal instant the crowd’s cheers muted and nothing beyond the certainty of right here, right now, existed.

  And in that crazy calm she thought of one thing. One person.

  Leon.

  His face came to her without warning. His smile. His arms. The skin on his neck.

  And in a bright flash the world exploded, a great torch, the biggest and brightest she had ever seen shone right into her face, and her ears were filled with the deafening roar of fans united—her fans, here to see Robin Ryder.

  The first bass-heavy strains of ‘Told You So’ poured into the arena to a boom of recognition. Robin saw millions of lights, a myriad of camera phones, and from here it was like being in the heart of the cosmos, floating in space and surrounded by stars.

  When the cage door swung open Robin stepped out on to the platform with ease, raising the microphone and belting out the first line:

  ‘I told you I would make it; I never tried to fake it…’

  She had started off with nothing—just a baby in a bin, waiting to die.

  Then along came music; a way to express herself, the only articulation she had.

  Tonight she had America at her feet.

  The track cut and in a spark she vanished. Robin could hear the screams as the invisible platform was dropped to the stage and a second later drew back to expose her reappearance: magic, exactly as her director had said. And then she owned it, feet on solid ground as the rhythm of her opener slipped into her bloodstream and she sang with all her soul. She had skated on the periphery of this state before, being unreservedly in the zone, where time ceased to exist and the only thing that travelled through your mind was, well…nothing. No thoughts, no worries, just the fever and the flash of the instant. It felt like flying.

  ‘You Win’, her newest single, sent the masses wild, and as they took on the chant themselves she thought how bizarre it was that some scribbled lyrics she’d written in her Camden flat while partly drunk and surrounding by picked-at takeaway boxes should be adopted like this, and that this clean, wonderful moment was the outcome of that mess. The song had been a hit in the States, killing the download chart in its first week of release.

  In the centre of the stage was a silver disc, which she now positioned herself on, and with both her arms high to herald the blare of the chorus, the disc released and began to climb, jettisoning her out over the crowd’s outstretched arms. She reached down, directing the mic to pick up the voices that accompanied her beloved track, and took hands in hers that seemed to be their own entities, unattached to any human body, clammy, cold, hot, small, rough, yielding, so that the swaying sea of pink beneath was like a coral bed swishing on the movement of the blue tide and waving her down to the deeps.

  She’d watched a documentary once about an ocean diver, who had become caught in a mass of weeds, had struggled to break free and in his fear had been starved of oxygen.

  When the hand first touched hers, she felt it was bad, like an apple soft and rotten. When it held on tight, too tight, and the platform juddered to a stop, anxiety trickled through her. The disc was geared to halt at obstruction so to the delight of the fans she was suspended, tethered by the bad hand, pulling to break free but the fingers on hers were crushing. Never before had she been on the receiving end of such malicious intent. The hold was on her knuckles, her nails, her wrist, prodding and kneading the bones, curiously, darkly, insistent.

  In a moment the experience was flipped, like two sides of the same coin, from euphoria to panic, light to dark, good to bad, yes to no.

  No.

  The hand was squeezing. It was strong and she could feel the thumb pushing viciously into the flesh of her palm. Somehow she maintained the words, battling off fears that this was it, that whoever had been watching her was here; they had caught up with her at last and now they wanted to hurt her. As the beat drove on and miraculously Robin kept singing, kept smiling, she thought how easily and quietly a crowd of this number could consume her, as smoothly as a pebble swallowed by the sea.

  Abruptly, the hand released. With it the disc broke free and she was up again, being brought back to the security of the stage with its pulleys and trapdoors and places to hide.

  I’m OK. I’m OK.

  But not before she detected a flash of red. She thought she must be delirious, because in the instant before the woman was obscured, it was like looking in a mirror.

  Robin blinked.

  She was confronted by her own image…weirdly distorted, a version of herself, thinner, different hair, but the same face, same eyes, the same only…not.

  It was a dream, a hallucination brought on by adrenalin. Robin searched for the woman, horror whistling through her…but she’d vanished, absorbed by the mob.

  Back in the spotlight she wrapped up her final numbers, safe with the army of dancers at her back and Polly and Matt where she needed them.

  When finally she came offstage she collapsed into Barney’s arms and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or all three at once.

  Next morning she was up early, ate two pieces of toast to counteract a burgeoning hangover and drove Matt’s hired Ford Mustang to the Golden Gate. Parking on an empty vantage point, she switched radio frequencies, striking on one of Kristin White’s new tracks, and settled back in the driver’s seat. Wasn’t Kristin dating Jax Jackson now? Since the release of their charity single Jax had been papped every night at some club or other with a variety of similar-looking blondes on his arm. He was an idiot. What did Kristin see in him? It had to be contractual, a way to get both their images on track. Most of LA was.

  Robin watched the cars crossing the bridge, commuters in shirts and ties sweating with the windows down. San Francisco was a city she had always hoped to visit, and this a structure so renowned it felt as if she already knew it. Yellow mist rose fr
om the bay, hazy over the pastel water. Sunshine gleamed off the red towers and set them alight.

  The flame-haired woman glimmered once more in her memory. Try as she might Robin could not forget how the hand had felt, gripping hers so savagely; the face she knew as well as her own—because it was her own, it was and yet it couldn’t have been—from which those cold eyes glared…She had to be mistaken. It was fear that had done it, made her think she was seeing things that weren’t, that couldn’t, be there. A delusion brought on by a panic attack. It was little wonder after the stalking campaign she had endured. She had to get her head straight. Was she losing her mind? She’d thought she had been dealing with the fame thing; that she’d been managing to stay intact where so many had fallen apart.

  Was that as much of an illusion as her phantom perpetrator?

  After the show her crew had been buzzing, but something had stopped her letting go. It was as if out there she had slipped into another world, one not Polly or Barney or anyone else could understand, one where she had transcended flesh and bone to something else, and while that was the drug performers craved it had scared her to death. It was one thing to be adored in a situation as intense as that, and another to be pinioned like a butterfly on a nail.

  Her phone rang. Dragged from her thoughts, Robin reached to collect it. Rufio.

  ‘I’m in the shit,’ he announced.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fucking slow connection, hang on.’ There was a muffled pause. ‘That better?’

  Actually the connection was fine. Robin just hadn’t believed he would dive straight into talking about himself before asking how the biggest night of her life had gone.

  ‘Sure,’ she replied, a headache coming on. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Shit’s hit. I’m shitting myself.’

  ‘So you said.’ She wondered in how many ways he could conjugate the word ‘shit’.

  ‘Fight broke out last night, innit. Wasn’t my fault but that didn’t stop the heat rocking up and cuffing me.’ Rufio liked to imagine he was in an Al Pacino movie, constantly referring to the police as ‘cops’, ‘pigs’, or ‘the heat’.

  ‘You’ve been arrested?’ She sat up. ‘Are you OK? Where are you calling from?’

  ‘It’s cool, it’s cool,’ he mused, relishing how it sounded. ‘I’m on bail.’

  ‘What happened?’ She could only imagine what the UK press were doing with this.

  He sighed heavily. ‘Some twat started on me outside the Spar.’

  The Spar? ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Does there have to be a reason?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Made out like I was hitting on his girl,’ he grumbled. ‘Total bollocks, which I told him, ‘cept actions speak louder than word, innit, so I floored him.’

  Robin’s heart sank. East Beatz had a reputation and Rufio was the media’s archetypal council-estate British bad boy, so it stood to reason—in fact it was probably advised—that he got into stuff like this. Right now she couldn’t be dealing with it.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she asked tiredly. ‘He’s not in hospital or anything?’

  ‘I mashed him up good,’ Rufio replied, as if her question had been a slight on his potency, ‘but he’ll live.’

  ‘That’s reassuring.’

  ‘I gotta go. Figured I’d give a heads-up cos your phone’s gonna be off the wall. They’ll want statements and shit, you know, what my girlfriend makes of it and stuff…’

  ‘Thanks for that.’ A pause. ‘The tour started last night, you know?’

  ‘Oh yeah!’ Another silence. ‘It going all right?’

  Robin realised he’d had no idea of her itinerary. There would be coverage in the tabloids at home today but it sounded like Rufio had more serious matters to attend to.

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, electing not to expand.

  ‘I’ll keep you posted, yeah? Catch you later.’

  The line went dead.

  Robin sat for a moment, thinking hard. Always thinking of the same thing.

  She gunned the Mustang’s engine, grinding the wheels in reverse. Turning from the shimmering Golden Gate and the strident red that haunted her dreams, she realised that the one person she really wanted to talk to wasn’t here. He’d tried to be, but she’d blown it.

  34

  Ivy Sewell swam a length underwater, her shape refracting beneath the ripples, silent and deadly as a crocodile. Emerging at one end, she squeezed the drips from her rope of red hair. A chill breeze licked her between the shoulder blades. She turned to the fence dividing her pool from next door’s and narrowed her eyes. There was nobody there.

  She was looking too deep into shadows: they hadn’t found her yet.

  Ivy spread her towel on the ground, slipped on her sunglasses and peered over the top at her LA stronghold. Already the London flat she’d shared with Hilda was light years away, a necessary prelude to her final destination. Idly she wondered about her mother’s body being found but it failed to trouble her: they’d had no visitors, the neighbours never dropped by…who knew when the absence would be detected? Would the rats get at her first? Would she decay in her chair, the windows closed, the flat steaming with the fresh smell of rot, till only a skeleton remained? The thought made her calm. Ivy was sleeping more soundly than ever.

  Blue sky scorched overhead. She smiled.

  It must have been a shock for her twin to rest eyes on her after all these years. Ivy could hardly contain her thrill when she remembered seizing Robin’s hand at the Super-ship. Amid all those people, theirs had been a shatterproof tie.

  The bond was unbreakable. It was family.

  ‘Hey.’

  At first Ivy failed to hear the voice. People were white noise.

  ‘Ivy?’

  She withdrew her shades and sat up. A man’s head appeared over the fence.

  ‘I never told you my name,’ she said frostily, absorbing her unwanted visitor.

  Connor grinned. ‘Thought you could use some company,’ he commented lightly.

  ‘I said,’ she repeated, ‘I never told you my name.’

  The grin faltered. ‘One of the guys in the complex told me…’ He grappled under her gaze, his pink hands appearing at the top of the boundary like a pair of mouse’s feet, as if holding on to something solid might steady his nerve. ‘He overheard you. On the phone.’

  Her job interview for the Palisades Grand—their questions had been more rigorous than she’d anticipated but she’d managed to bring them round.

  ‘I guess he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping…’ Connor offered limply.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He took her comment for jest. ‘Do you want to go out some time?’

  ‘I told you, I’m not interested.’

  His eyes twinkled behind the glasses. ‘You’re quite the secretive one, aren’t you?’

  Ivy stood. She saw him pull back, in fear or desire, scoping her exposed flesh and the mane of hair that flashed in the sunlight like a warning.

  ‘You don’t want to know my secrets.’ She came nearer. ‘Believe me.’

  Connor licked his lips. The proximity of her exhilarated him. He’d never had a girlfriend, apart from a brief encounter in college that had culminated in him losing his hard-preserved virginity in someone’s parents’ bedroom shortly before vomiting over the carpet. It had been too long since he had felt a woman, and Ivy, mysterious Ivy, with the blazing hair and sharp tongue, was a fine discovery indeed. He loved that she was taller than him. She reminded him of the German au pair who had looked after him as a child. Once, passing the au pair’s bedroom, he had seen her undressing, naked save for a pair of high red patent heels.

  Anticipation made him shudder. With a muted choke he ejaculated into his pants.

  ‘Get out of my sight,’ said Ivy, disgusted. ‘And don’t come back.’

  Overcome with a heady brew of longing and shame, Connor retreated, certain then that he would do just about anything this wom
an asked.

  Ivy didn’t move until she heard his footsteps stumble across the yard. She resolved that if Connor insisted on getting in the way then she would be forced to dispose of him. When it came to attaining her goal, everyone was expendable.

  35

  On the other side of town, tangled in a nest of sweat-soaked bed sheets, Turquoise surrendered to the rush of her orgasm and lifted her hips to drive her lover deep.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ Bronx murmured, grabbing a handful of coal-black hair and staring into her emerald eyes and wanting to say more but afraid that if he pushed her too far she’d vanish again. Turquoise cried out her climax, her throat exposed over the edge of the bed, and Bronx kissed it hungrily, burying his face and inhaling her scent.

  They stayed with their arms wrapped round each other. Turquoise saw her body beached on a golden shore, blue sky above and green sea below. After months without sex she felt united, her soul and her self joined together once more.

  Bronx’s lips trailed down her chest, tenderly grazing her nipples and kissing the small freckle on her ribcage. Gently his fingers traced a line south, brushing across the soft hair there and making her shiver. She widened her legs, wet from having come so fiercely, and felt his touch plunge between them, pushing her apart and sliding in with a force that made her gasp. Next his mouth was on her, his tongue running across that sensitive swell over and over, sucking and teasing and tasting, a moan escaping his lips but muted in her warmth, and she widened again as she advanced on the flare of a second crescendo. Bronx increased his pace, the wet from his mouth as wet as her body until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. This time it hit Turquoise with the slam of a freight train, and she pulled Bronx’s head closer, her thighs gripping and shuddering as she rode the wave.