Orla took another sip of her wine.
‘I’ve often thought how scarily quickly a fan can turn. One minute, you’re their favourite person on the planet and they’re singing your praises and then, the next, they want to destroy you.’
Luke puffed out an anxious sigh. ‘What happened?’
‘I turned to Kelli. We’d been working on the same project together. It was funny but, since I got that job she’d walked out of, we’d become something of a pair in the industry. It felt good having an ally and I learned a lot from her, but she was becoming more reckless. I think she was drinking or doing some kind of drug. I’m not sure. Anyway, she didn’t seem completely there most of the time. She had this sort of glazed look and her behaviour was erratic. I tried to reach out to her, but she kept pushing me away, denying that there was a problem, even though she was constantly late for assignments. It was so sad to see her going downhill so rapidly. She was a really beautiful woman. Far more beautiful than I ever was, but I ended up getting more jobs than her simply because she was getting a bad reputation in the industry and was either turning up late or not at all. Anyway, I shared my fears about Brandon with her.’ Orla paused.
‘And what did she say?’
‘“Get used to it, honey. It could be a lot worse.”’
‘Ah, so not exactly helpful.’
‘No.’ Orla stopped again, her vision fixed on her now empty wine glass.
‘And I’m guessing it got a lot worse?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper now. ‘I was walking home one day after a shoot. I usually got a taxi, but the weather was so glorious and I wanted to walk through the park. It was warm for March and I was wearing this big heavy coat because the week before had been so cold. I remember stopping to take the coat off, but my phone went and I was trying to get it out of my bag when I heard these footsteps running towards me. I thought it was a jogger and I went to scoot out of the way but, when I looked up . . .’ Orla stopped, her eyes gazing straight ahead as if seeing into the past at that very moment. Her heart was hammering and her palms felt sticky with sweat.
‘Orla? Are you all right?’
She nodded, but tears pricked her eyes.
‘I haven’t talked about any of this. Not since . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ Luke told her. ‘Just take your time.’
She was shaking now, and One Ear came forward, licking her hand and sticking his wet nose into her face and whining.
‘When I looked up, I saw a man wearing a dark jacket. The hood was up and I didn’t pay much attention, to be honest, because I was still trying to find my phone, so I looked down into my bag, and that’s when it happened. He threw something at me. I thought it was water at first, but then it started to burn. Really burn.’
Luke cursed. ‘It was acid, wasn’t it?’
Orla nodded. ‘If I hadn’t turned slightly at the precise moment he threw it, the damage would have been a lot worse. The doctors say I would probably have lost my left eye completely. As it was, I just lost my vision for a few months. And my ear. Well, you can see I lost that. My hair, too, and half my face, the skin on my neck. If my phone hadn’t gone and I’d taken my coat off, it would have been much worse. I was just wearing a cotton dress underneath. But the acid ate right through the coat. I managed to get it off in time and a passing jogger doused me with her water bottle before the ambulance came.’
‘God, Orla!’
‘I never knew a pain like that could exist. There was no getting away from it. It just seemed to go on and on for ever. And I couldn’t stop screaming. I wondered what it was at first – this inhuman sound – and then I realised that it was me.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Have you ever smelled burning flesh?’ she asked him. ‘No, of course you haven’t. I hope you never will because, once you do, you can never forget it. It never quite leaves you. It’s like nothing else. I think it was the smell that scared me the most. I mean, the pain was bad. Indescribable. But the smell – that was truly terrifying. I couldn’t get away from it.’
She got up and picked up the wine bottle, motioning to Luke, who shook his head.
‘Please tell me they got him?’
‘Oh, yes. CCTV caught him leaving the park and the idiot had managed to spill acid on himself so there was no question it was him.’ She came back to the sofa, where she quickly drained her glass of wine. ‘I don’t feel so good.’ She swayed forward and gasped. ‘Oh, dear.’
One Ear, who’d returned to his basket at some point, was now back by Orla’s side, and she gave a choky sort of laugh and stroked his head.
‘He’s my prince,’ she said softly. ‘My knight in furry armour.’
Luke smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s get you upstairs.’
As she had helped him into bed on that first meeting, so he helped guide her now. She didn’t say anything else as he gently led her to the bedroom and went to get a glass of water for her, placing it on her bedside table.
‘Is One Ear here?’ Orla asked.
‘He’s right behind me.’
Orla put her hand out and One Ear came forward to give it a soft nudge before making himself at home on the floor by the bed, as if knowing his mistress needed him tonight.
‘Leave the hall light on, won’t you?’ she said, aware of how like a child she must sound to him.
‘If you want me to,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he told her. ‘You know where I am.’
She nodded, her dark hair hiding her face as she sat on the edge of the bed.
He paused before speaking again. ‘And I’m so sorry. What Brandon did to you was unforgivable.’
Luke turned to leave the room.
‘No,’ she said, her voice thick with sleep now. ‘You don’t understand.’
Luke frowned. ‘What don’t I understand?’
Orla took a deep breath before she answered. ‘It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Brandon.’
Chapter 11
As Luke stared up into the darkness of his bedroom, he couldn’t begin to imagine what Orla must have gone through. How did you get over something like that? Well, he saw how – you hid yourself away in a medieval castle – and he couldn’t blame her. There was nothing to adequately describe the fear and the pain she must have endured and he’d never forget her distress when telling him her story.
Although Luke wasn’t a great one for keeping up to date with the news – and he’d certainly never heard about Orla’s attack at the time it had happened, even though it must have been a big story – he knew enough about acid attacks to know that it was a crime which was on the rise. A disturbing fact. How could anyone do something so destructive and inflict so much physical and emotional pain on somebody? Luke just couldn’t imagine how anyone could arrive at such a decision, and he hoped – whoever it was – they were locked away for a very long time.
But, if it hadn’t been Brandon who’d attacked her, then who could it have been? She’d said it was a man wearing a hood. Was it just some random mad person? Had Orla been mistaken for somebody else? Or had she had another mad stalker fan who had managed to hide in the shadows behind the massive presence of Brandon? It had crossed Luke’s mind that he could do an internet search to find out more – if she’d been well known as a model, there was sure to be press coverage about the case. But it would feel like a kind of betrayal if he did, so he didn’t. Perhaps she would continue her story in the morning. One thing was for sure, Luke didn’t think he was going to be able to sleep tonight – not after what Orla had told him. He kept playing it over and over in his mind. The beautiful young woman who’d been enticed to follow a career which so obviously wasn’t a good fit for her. Now he understood why she hid behind a camera these days and how she regretted the day she’d stepped out from behind its protective shield.
As predicted, Luke slept pretty badly, but at least he got a couple of hours at one point. Somewhere between three and four, he thought he heard crying and got up to check on Orla. The
landing light was still on and he walked towards her bedroom, gently knocking on the door so as not to disturb her if she was asleep, which he saw she was when he quietly entered. Perhaps she’d been crying in her sleep, he thought, giving One Ear a nod as he backed out of the room.
He’d slept on and off after that, waking at first light before drifting off an hour later. By the time he got up and went downstairs neither Orla nor One Ear were about so he went into the garden in search of them and, when it was obvious they weren’t there, decided that they must be at the beach.
It was a perfect morning to be by the sea. There was a freshness to the air which made his bare arms tingle, and the sky was a bright aquamarine dotted with friendly white clouds. There was a young mother with a couple of toddlers in bright yellow wellies paddling in the sea and, in one of those flashes of the imagination, Luke saw a future that he and Helen wouldn’t ever share. He closed his eyes for a moment, grief and anger surging through him at the thought of their future having been stolen from them. So many things, so many moments, had been cruelly snatched away when those two trains had collided, and Luke realised he was only just beginning to process it all. It would take months, years, to truly understand what had happened that night.
He opened his eyes and soon spotted Orla. She was a dot in the distance on the beach and it took a while to catch up with her.
One Ear saw him first and started barking and leaping across the sand towards him.
‘Hey, boy!’
Orla turned around and Luke waved to her and she stopped, waiting for him.
‘How’s your head?’ he asked her, noticing her larger than normal sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat.
‘Sore!’
‘Oh, dear. Did you sleep okay?’
‘No, not really. You?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Sorry. I mean – if that was my fault.’
‘Don’t worry. Me and sleep haven’t been on the best of terms recently.’
She stopped walking and turned to look at him, slowly removing her sunglasses.
‘You should really think about taking something to help you sleep,’ she suggested.
‘Nah! I don’t want to get into all that. It might prove addictive.’
‘Just for a little while. It might help.’
‘It’s not for me.’
They continued walking, the sound of gulls screeching high above them as One Ear galloped ahead.
‘Orla?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I ask you something? Last night – you said it wasn’t Brandon who attacked you. Then who was it?’
Orla stopped walking and then she did something unexpected. She sat down, right there on the sand in the middle of the beach. Luke joined her and they both stared out at the blue-green waves.
‘It was Kelli,’ she said at last.
‘The model?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I thought you said it was a man.’
‘Yes. It was a man. But it was Kelli who paid him to do it.’
‘You’re joking! I thought she was your friend.’
‘I thought so too. Turned out I was wrong. Horribly wrong.’
‘But why would she do something like that?’
Orla sighed. ‘Kelli blamed me for taking what she saw as her career.’
‘But that’s crazy! You said she was out of control and couldn’t work.’
‘And that’s true, but she obviously didn’t see things that way. She saw me as a threat, some interloper who shouldn’t even be in the business, and she was right because that’s exactly what I was. I should never have been in that line of work. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the acid attack was a kind of punishment.’
Luke’s mouth dropped open. ‘What do you mean?’
‘For my vanity.’
‘No, Orla! You can’t mean that!’
‘I do. I really do. I should never have taken that first job or been tempted by the offers that came in after that. I let my colleague down at the photography studio, I walked out on a job that meant something to me, and all for money.’
‘But that’s only natural. We all have to do things to make money. That’s life! There’s no getting away from it.’
‘But I was so unhappy in that job. I went on taking all those assignments, even though I knew it was all wrong for me.’
‘Not as wrong as someone attacking you and leaving you scarred for life. God! I can’t imagine what you went through. How do you begin to recover?’
‘Slowly!’ She took a deep breath and stared out into the waves. Her glasses were still in her hands and Luke could see the terrible scars left by the acid attack as her dark hair blew back from her face. ‘It took months of hospitalisation,’ she told him. ‘There was so much damage. Half of my face and my neck had melted away, and part of my arm, where the acid had dripped down my hair and burned into the skin there. I lost my ear and – well – you’ve seen my eye, haven’t you? I’m lucky that it functions at all. My own reflection horrified me. I made the mistake of looking shortly after the attack. I really shouldn’t have done that. And I don’t any more. You must have noticed that there are no mirrors in the castle. I can’t even bear the windows sometimes if they dare to throw my reflection back at me.’
Luke shook his head. He was truly appalled at what had happened to her, but he was equally frustrated at the effect it still had on Orla even years later. She had no idea how beautiful she was. The scars were just superficial and her damaged eye did nothing to detract from her inner beauty. Did she not know that?
‘Do you know how terrifying it is to look in a mirror and not recognise yourself? I saw this strange, red monster of blood and bone staring out at me.’ She closed her eyes and Luke rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘They made me wear this mask for twelve hours a day so that my scars didn’t heal bumpy. It should have been a breeze after what I went through, but it made me feel so claustrophobic – like I was being held in a vice. I lost count of the number of operations I had to have. It was in the high forties, I think, and they advised more, but I couldn’t bear it. They told me about a special clinic I could go to, but the whole hospital thing left me traumatised. I just wanted to be left alone and I needed to get out of London. I couldn’t bear being there any longer. I had to get away.’
‘And that’s when you came here?’
‘It seemed perfect. I’d never been to Suffolk before. I was just vaguely aware of it from my school days and all the fuss about some Anglo-Saxon treasure.’
Luke smiled. ‘I remember that too. Maybe we should go and see the place. I don’t think it’s that far from here. Sutton Hoo, right?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’ve not been, then?’ Luke asked before he could check himself. Of course she hadn’t been. She hadn’t been anywhere that was further away than this beach. She hadn’t even seen the other end of the village. ‘Orla – I know we’ve had a disagreement about this already, but I do think you’re missing out on so much here. It seems such a shame to be in this beautiful place and not see any of it.’
‘But I do!’ she said, motioning to the sea and the beach all around them.
‘Yes, I know you come here.’
‘And you can see for miles from the castle rooftop. You saw when you went up.’
‘Yes, it was amazing, but it isn’t the same as going out and seeing new places and meeting new people.’
‘Luke – I’ve told you—’
‘I know you have and, at the risk of you throwing me out again, I want to bring it up once more – not because I want to upset you, but because I really believe that it would do you good to get out. It would build your confidence too.’
‘I don’t need to build my confidence. I’m happy as I am. Besides, you must understand now how I feel about going out.’
Luke suddenly realised how insensitive he was being in trying to encourage her to venture outside.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Orla. I d
idn’t mean to upset you.’
She gave him a tight smile. ‘Besides, it’s not good for me to go outside. My mother told me that.’
Luke frowned, shocked by her words. ‘She said that?’
‘It’s not good for me to be out in public. She said that, even if people aren’t dangerous, they’ll always be staring at me and that isn’t good for me. She said . . .’
‘What did she say?’ Luke encouraged after Orla had stopped.
‘She said that I would be putting myself at risk every time I left my home.’
Luke swore under his breath. ‘She really told you that?’
‘Yes. And she was right too. She knows me better than anyone and she was there with me every day in the hospital, and she knew that I’d be happier on my own.’
Luke shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t believe that.’
Orla glared at him. ‘Why not? Why do you find it so hard to believe that I’m happy?’
‘Because people need people. We’re not made to isolate ourselves. Even after what happened to you. Think about it – think of your presence on Galleria and how much you enjoy that connection with other people.’
‘I enjoy that because it’s on my terms. It’s safe.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Luke said. ‘A lot of crazy things go on online.’
‘I know and, if they do, I simply delete it or block the crazy people.’
‘But don’t you think it’s time to venture out again? I mean, how long have you locked yourself away like this for, Orla? It’s been a couple of years, hasn’t it? And don’t forget that Helen didn’t want you to isolate yourself like this either.’
Orla shifted her feet in the sand. ‘Luke—’
‘I know – I shouldn’t interfere.’
‘No,’ she said, her tone managing to be both calm and frustrated all at once, ‘you really shouldn’t.’
She whistled for One Ear and he trotted over to her, his big paws foamy with the surf he’d been paddling in.
‘He’s a great dog,’ Luke said, thinking it best to change the subject before she decided it might be better to throw him out again.
The Beauty of Broken Things Page 13