Kitabı oku: «Wicked Ambition», sayfa 3

‘What my daughter wants is to be famous.’ Ramona slipped the shades back into place. ‘You heard her. She wants to be exactly like you.’

‘Wrong. That’s what you want.’

‘You’re giving me a migraine, Kristin. Haven’t you got an album to write?’

She didn’t need to be told twice. Storming indoors, Kristin struggled to control her temper. No one made her angry like her mom did.

She flipped open her cell. She longed to call Scotty; he’d make her feel better. But something told her no. After today, if Scotty needed space then that was what she would give him. She would give him anything, because without him she was lost.

Bunny White’s bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Fraternity.

Her infatuation covered every scrap. Fraternity pouting sincerely to camera; Fraternity leaping into the air, their matching grins sparkling like islands in the sun; Fraternity with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders; Fraternity in black and white with their tops off. Like every girl Bunny’s age the five-piece was the apex of teenage idolatry. They were cute, they were funny; they sang about love and cuddling and kittens and birthdays. Bunny adored them with every ounce of devotion her little heart could carry.

Scotty Valentine was her favourite. She could never tell Kristin how much it stung when she saw them together, and though she had tried not to care—really she had—she just couldn’t help it. Naively she had imagined that Scotty would one day turn into her boyfriend. He might have started out like a big brother but over the years her hazy worship had blossomed into a killer crush that was picking her apart day by day. Age gaps didn’t matter so much the older you got, and in a few years he might have started seeing her in a new way.

All her life Scotty had been there, perpetually out of reach, exotic and elusive, the boy against which all others were measured and could never hope to compare.

She pretended that Joey was her number one. Joey was the cute, mischievous member of the group, and she would say yes if Joey asked her on a date, like, obviously she would. But Scotty, with his perfect smile and dreamy eyes, was her ultimate. When she was alone she fantasised about Kristin being out when he came to the mansion, like he had in the olden days, and how they might hang like they’d used to, and he would remember what a cool girl she was and how grown-up she was now and then maybe when he left he’d lean in and…

Bunny had never kissed a boy before. The very thought of touching Scotty was enough to drive her crazy with cloudy, indistinct longing. It made her blood race and her head feel like it was about to explode. Would she ever experience it for herself?

She settled at her Pretty Princess table and began removing the grips that held her wig in place. Her mom had secured them viciously, jamming each one into her hairline till it made her scalp throb. Before long, if she kept on winning trophies, she would be just as rich and pretty as her sister and boys like Scotty would start to notice.

Her best picture of Scotty was a close-up headshot. It wasn’t very big and she kept it in her coral beauty drawer, right at the back where no one would see it. Bunny reached in now and extracted it, tracing her finger around his jaw and pressing the image to her face so she could kiss it. Scotty smiled back at her, a glint of promise in his twinkling blue eyes. He was at the beach in the photo and you could tell he was shirtless, even though it was severed at the neck. His collarbone was deeply tanned with the lightest smattering of freckles.

Bunny kissed the image one more time before replacing it. She could hear her mom and sister arguing downstairs and wished Scotty would come and take her away. Humming Fraternity’s number one smash ‘I Dig U’, she imagined him scooping her up in his strong arms and driving her off into the sunset. Maybe he’d come on a horse and where they would end up or what they would do she wasn’t entirely sure. All she knew was that she wanted Scotty Valentine. She wanted him so badly it hurt.

Soon she’d be vying for the coveted title of Mini Miss Marvellous. It was an international competition for which she and her mom had been preparing for months. Ramona promised it would be her launch, and the battle that propelled her to stardom.

Then, she’d be a woman. Fraternity—and Scotty, always Scotty, despite everything that told her it was impossible—would finally be within reach.

6

Turquoise da Luca had been to every major city on the globe, but New York remained her favourite. It made her feel plugged in and part of something crucial, an integral cog in a great and glorious machine. The party she had attended on Friday provided the perfect excuse to hang for a few days and tonight she was catching up with A-list actress Ava Bennett. The women had met at a film premiere two years ago and had swiftly become friends.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Ava told her as they were seated for dinner, tossing her sheet of shimmering platinum hair. Turquoise had chosen her usual spot in Giovanni’s, a cosy, family-run Italian on Waverly Place. ‘Who’re you fucking?’

Turquoise nearly spluttered out her martini. ‘Excuse me?’

‘That glow,’ Ava said, mercifully stalled while a deferential waiter came to take their order. Once he’d gone she elaborated, ‘It’s written all over your face. Who is he?’

‘There is no he,’ Turquoise lied, deciding that Bronx didn’t count. There was no relationship on the cards so why waste time talking about it?

‘You’re lying,’ observed Ava slyly, but Turquoise knew her friend wasn’t any the wiser. She was a good liar. The best.

‘Tell you what—’ Turquoise raised her glass and they clinked ‘—let’s talk about you.’ She loved hearing about Ava’s job and, no matter how famous she herself became, she would always attach a certain enchantment to the movies. ‘How’s work?’

‘Ah, you know.’ Ava waved a bejewelled hand. ‘Promotion for Lovestruck’s going through the roof.’ Ava was playing the young mother in a new teen romance. Songstress sweetheart Kristin White had penned the music and it was causing quite a stir. ‘Cosmo’s been insufferable about this script he’s writing, mind you. He’s being ever so secretive.’

Turquoise’s heart pounced. It was easy to forget that Ava was married to her nemesis.

When her friend and Cosmo Angel had first got together Turquoise had tried to cut contact, feigning illness whenever Ava wanted to meet or claiming her diary was against it. But Ava was a loyal companion and hadn’t given up, and short of explaining why she had embarked on the avoidance campaign there wasn’t a great deal she could do. It meant that on occasion she was forced to see Cosmo, to shake his hand and exchange empty pleasantries as though they were strangers. Never would she risk going closer. Never would she visit Ava’s house. Never would she spend any more time with the man than was absolutely necessary.

‘He’s writing a script?’ Turquoise ventured, relieved when their appetisers came and hoping that might change the subject. Her throat had closed. She couldn’t eat.

‘It’s a break from acting. He wants to give something back. You know, get creative.’

He sure knows how to do that.

‘What’s it about?’ The words were like glue on her tongue. Even as she asked she had the horrible sensation of already knowing the answer.

‘This is the thing,’ Ava exclaimed through a mouthful of basil gnocchi, ‘he refuses to say! It’s centred around a murder; that’s all he’ll give me.’

‘What kind of murder?’ Her voice was tiny.

‘Beats me.’ She laughed. ‘Ask him yourself.’

Turquoise averted her gaze. She scrambled for something to say. It was horrible deceiving Ava, they were close, but she had vowed to take the truth to her grave…the truth of what she’d done and where she’d come from…the truth of what happened.

Secrets she couldn’t tell a soul.

Especially when Ava was Cosmo’s wife.

Fortunately Ava changed tack for her. ‘You seen this?’ she asked, producing a paper from her purse and tapping its front page. On it was an image of Jax Jackson pumping iron.

The article was about the athlete landing yet another brand affiliation. Its headline read: JAX ‘THE BULLET’ JACKSON FIRES A WINNER.

‘Two words for you, honey,’ said Ava. ‘Hot. As.’

Turquoise disagreed. ‘I hung with him once. He’s not all that.’

‘Really? Where?’

She batted off the question. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Well, I’m sure getting an introduction. See if that drags Cosmo out his office!’

‘Jax is a fool.’

‘Imagine it, though.’ Ava leaned in, a wicked smile on her face. ‘He’s got to be an animal between the sheets, hasn’t he?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Not that I’m complaining. Cosmo’s a tiger.’

Turquoise excused herself to visit the bathroom. She almost tripped in her haste to reach it and only when she was alone could she steady her breathing and get a grip of the thumping in her chest. She closed her eyes, stars bursting in her vision, images from the past rushing back though she tried with all her might to stifle them.

Cosmo can’t hurt you now. You have to get a hold on this; otherwise it’ll kill you.

Maybe that was what she deserved. She deserved to die and if it weren’t by electric chair then it would be by her own conscience.

He made me. It wasn’t my fault.

Or was it? She had been seventeen, old enough to know her own mind.

Stop. STOP! She put her face in her hands, pressing her temples till they ached.

What if it came out? What if the facts escaped? Every hour of every day she lived in terror of that revelation and what it would mean. Armageddon: the end of her world.

It won’t. Cosmo has his own reputation to protect. He’s the only one who knows…

Turquoise drew air in and out, in and out, slowly, till her pulse regained its rhythm. Gradually light seeped through and her goals readjusted. The first was to get through dinner.

Cosmo Angel had known her a lifetime ago. He had known her when she was a girl, vulnerable, weak. When she was someone capable of…

He didn’t know her now.

She made her way back through the restaurant and greeted Ava with a smile.

Grace Turquoise da Luca was born in Hawaii in 1986, the only child of religious parents. When she was a baby her father took her mother for a drive in the country and they never came back. The car was found battered and burned at the foot of a ravine and despite efforts to ascertain the truth of what happened, no definitive clues were found. Some said her father had been cursed by debt and had decided to end it; others that it was an act of God for having birthed Grace two months before they were married.

Grace had no memory of them throughout her childhood, save for photographs and scraps people told her. Her mother had been a striking woman, very dark, and her father ‘a stubborn man’. That was all she knew. Her parents were strangers.

After their deaths she stayed with a village woman, a friend called Emaline, because it was believed further disruption would damage her beyond repair. There she passed a safe, happy few years; she went to school, she made friends and she listened to the records piled high at home. Wonderful old-world singers like Billie Holiday, Ella and Etta, as well as Emaline’s own voice as she sang softly with a guitar on the veranda, sipping lime cordial. For her eighth birthday Emaline gave her a guitar of her own. From an early age Grace Turquoise knew that music would be her life-long obsession.

On rainy nights they would sit side by side on the couch, the fire burning, a woollen rug across their knees and Emaline’s arms safe and warm as she pulled the child close to kiss the top of her head. They would watch black-and-white movies together, get lost in worlds of romance and betrayal, lovers and wars, glamour and fantasy. Emaline would whisper stories about when she was a girl, and how one summer she had run away from home and spent long hot weeks acting for a theatre until her father had found her and brought her home. Grace’s imagination had been filled with the glittering characters Emaline had played, the handsome leading men she had known, and how Emaline had dreamed of some day becoming a Hollywood actress. ‘Do you know what I believe?’ Emaline whispered into Grace’s hair one sunset. ‘I believe that’s going to be you one day. My little star.’

Soon after her eighth birthday Grace was sent to live with her uncle on a farm in Pennsylvania. Ivan Garrick hadn’t seen her mother in years but it turned out he was her only living relative. Grace didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave her friends or Emaline. She didn’t want to live with someone she had never met. But that was the law and she could do nothing to dispute it. When she turned up on Ivan’s doorstep she was frightened.

But Ivan was a kind man. He was fifty or thereabouts and admitted to having had a dispute with her mother, after which he had been cut out of her life. He had always longed to meet Grace and had petitioned long and hard for her custody. Like her he had no surviving family and so they had to stick together, he said. Blood was blood, he promised. Lots of things happened in life but that could never be changed.

If her parents had been devout then Ivan was in another league. Every day he spent hours at church, talking with the pastor and praying for his sins. Grace couldn’t understand. Ivan was a gentle, lonely man and she couldn’t imagine him sinning any more than she could Emaline refusing her a kind word. Bad people existed but Ivan wasn’t bad.

A short time later, they received word that Emaline had passed. Grace travelled alone to her funeral and cried as she had never cried before. Ivan organised her return ticket and was waiting at the station to meet her when she arrived. ‘You’re home now,’ he said.

Sometimes Ivan disappeared at night. She would wake to find the big house empty and pad through its dark chambers, calling his name. The next morning he’d stay asleep until the afternoon, and would emerge looking tired and haunted. Those days he prayed the most.

Grace settled into her new life and concentrated on her music. At ten years old she learned to read compositions; at twelve she was strumming on the guitar Emaline had given her and at fourteen she realised she had a voice to go with it. Ivan would ask her to sing and would sit and watch her, telling her how beautiful she sounded and what a lovely young woman she was becoming. Grace liked it when he said that. Not a girl any more but a woman. It made her feel grown-up, ready to embrace the exciting life ahead of her.

Soon after, she became a grown-up for real. Playing outside one day, she felt wetness in her skirt and when she went to the bathroom she found blood. Her first thought was that a monster had crawled inside her; the monsters Ivan talked about that he promised the Lord would protect them from. She shook in his arms, and Ivan had to explain as best he could that this wasn’t a disease but a natural progression—one he had, in fact, been counting on.

We’ve been waiting, he told her. Fear nothing, my angel. You’ve arrived.

It was six months before his meaning became clear. The last six months of innocence.

It happened on a Tuesday night. She would always remember the moon, crisp and white like a marble in the sky. Ivan crept to her bedroom and told her to come outside, there was something she needed to see; it was a present he’d bought for her. He was sweating and his fingers trembled, waxy in the dark, but she’d thought it was the puppy she’d longed for and so in her nightgown had descended the stairs and pushed open the door to the yard.

Outside was a circle of people, dressed in black robes and hoods that covered their faces. They were chanting. At the centre a fire sparked and burned, hot and red and orange, an angry fire that told her this was wrong. Something was wrong. They wanted to hurt her.

No, she wept, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to. It became her mantra for the years ahead. But nobody listened.

And they didn’t listen then. Grace struggled to break free but they pinned her down, tying her wrists above her head and looming like giants, the chant building and gathering pace, becoming frenzied and wild. Through the vestments she recognised the pastor’s eyes, flashing grey and watery with lust as he knelt between her legs…

Her agony shattered the night.

The next day, she ran. In a sense the ordeal was the anaesthetic she needed. All Grace could focus on was escape, numb to everything but the terror she had endured and the lone goal of freedom. Ivan was sloppy, a careless, cowardly man. He’d underestimated her spirit. She packed a small bag and left the next afternoon, walking the road out of town, walking and walking until she didn’t care any more if her legs gave in and she lay down and died. She thought of Emaline. It made her cry but it also made her strong. Emaline’s voice told her to keep going and not to give up. Songs she loved played in her head, all the women she’d grown up with walking alongside her, holding her upright and pushing her on.

Some time before dawn a car picked her up. ‘Hey, baby, you wanna ride?’

The guy in the driver’s seat was young. He had a nice smile.

Grace Turquoise pulled open the door. Sleep rushed at her like a tidal wave and she embraced it, secure in the knowledge that now she was saved. Now it was over.

But she was wrong. It was only just beginning.

7

Robin was wired when she came offstage. She had performed her breakout single ‘Lesson Learned’ at the annual Palace Variety to rapturous reception.

‘They’re loving you, babe,’ encouraged her manager Barney when she stepped into the wings. ‘Twitter’s going off the wall.’

‘One more time for Robin Ryder!’ The host’s voice boomed through the studio.

‘Wanna go out?’ Robin headed to her dressing room, Barney in close pursuit. ‘I’ve got an invite to Level 7, the new place off Poland Street. It’s worth checking out.’

‘Are we celebrating?’

‘We’re always celebrating.’

‘We will be when you hear who I’ve been talking to.’

She turned. ‘Who?’

‘I’ve just taken a call from Arcadia,’ announced Barney triumphantly. Arcadia was Puff City’s management. ‘They’re interested in a partnership, Robin. Slink Bullion likes what he sees. Your profile’s rocketed and they want a piece of it.’

She was elated. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all week. Get us a meeting?’

‘You bet I will.’

Robin pushed open the door with her name on it. The first thing she noticed was the enormous bouquet of peonies and roses on her make-up table, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a purple ribbon. There was a card sticking out of the top.

‘What’s this?’

‘They got delivered to the office,’ said Barney. ‘I had a runner bring them down.’

‘Why?’

‘Some kid dropped them by. He said to make sure you received them, or the guy he worked for wouldn’t be happy.’

She turned the card over. It read:

But I want to be friends with you

Robin frowned. She pretended not to know who it was, but she knew straight away.

‘Who’re they from?’ asked Barney.

‘I have no idea. There’s no name.’

The last words she’d thrown Leon’s way. Make friends with someone else.

‘It’s a fan,’ she said dismissively. ‘And I’d rather this stuff got filtered.’

She had decided not to tell Barney about the creepy stuff she’d been receiving in the mail recently. Last week a weirdo scrapbook had arrived filled with cutouts of her image and inscribed with the note: I’m closer than you think. Before that a ream of paper, in which her name was reproduced over and over, line after line, page after page, like something from The Shining. She thought the handwriting was the same on both but couldn’t be certain.

It was freaky but there was no point mentioning it. Some fans were nuts; it went with the territory. She could take care of herself.

‘I thought you preferred to see everything?’ said Barney.

‘Not any more.’

Seizing Leon’s bouquet, she crossed to the wastebasket and dropped it in.

Barney was shocked. ‘Can’t you take them home? They’re hardly offensive. You never know, they might brighten up the place…’

Robin tried to imagine the arrangement in her flat. It didn’t work for a second. Her first-floor space in Camden was minimalist to the extreme, the walls blank, the bed unmade and the cupboards empty. All she had in the fridge was a half-drunk litre of Coke and some leftover Chinese noodles. A single coffee cup rattled round the kitchen.

‘I don’t like flowers,’ she said. ‘They’re sickly.’

‘I think they’re pretty.’

‘You would. And anyway, I don’t want a stranger’s shit in my space.’ Especially when she didn’t have her own shit in her space. Other people’s houses were stamped with their history, mementoes of a time gone by, but Robin’s displayed evidence of nothing but the necessities of here and now. It came from a life of being constantly uprooted, spat in and out of the system like an unwanted toy—and Robin had been unwanted, she was unwanted by definition. Why else would she have been given up? Her own mother hadn’t wanted her.

At four days old Robin had been left in a bin in an East London park, wrapped up in a plastic bag. She hadn’t been Robin Ryder then, she’d had another name, one the hospital had given her, but they had never found the woman responsible and Robin had long ago given up on dreams of reunions and forgotten sisters and brothers, replacing that need with the iron resolve that she would never rely on anybody ever again. When things got tough, people abandoned you. It was a fact of life. The only person you could trust was yourself.

So she didn’t need Leon Sway or his stupid dumb flowers.

‘Let’s go,’ said Robin, pulling on her jacket. ‘First round’s on me.’

‘Encore, encore, oui, oui, oui!’ The girl arched her back, craving his touch with animal reflex. She had never had a lover like Leon Sway. ‘Vous êtes magnifique!’

Leon hardened for what time he’d lost count, pulling the girl on top of him and kissing her fiercely. Their tongues entwined, hungry for more.

She gasped as he filled her. Strapping his powerful hands to her waist, the girl rocked back and forth, marvelling at Leon’s physique, the immaculate, glorious body of a world-class player. Every tendon and sinew was a model of perfection, the summit of strength and beauty; a machine shaped and honed for the sole purpose of winning. Her palms were spread across his pecs, dwarfed by the canvas of his chest, as she moved to his rhythm, quickening and quickening as their hips locked and Leon pulled the hair from her face as she sweated and pulsed on top of him, loving the muscle and the tenderness and how one was indistinguishable from the other, until, in a crescendo, they both reached their pinnacle.

At twenty-four, Leon was one of the greatest American athletes of all time.

Without contest he was the greatest lover.

‘That was amazing,’ she moaned, her accent thick. She collapsed on to him. Leon held her, trailing his fingertips down her arm and listening as her breathing slowed to sleep. It had been too long in the run-up to competition. All that effort and fury, all the passion and drive, had nowhere to go once the finish was crossed. Desire, the simmering volcano Leon had held at bay through months of training, of replacing his urges with the promise of victory and the unwavering commitment that required, fired his run from the splinter of the starting pistol. But now it was over? Another person’s skin; their warmth: the softness of a woman.

He closed his eyes, trying to picture anything else but what he always did:

Another man’s tread crashing over the line before his.

As the sun swam into the darkened room, Leon rolled over and checked his watch. Eight-thirty. He needed to be at the airport. He had been putting off returning home, knew he had his reasons but that didn’t make it right. Somehow there was always a TV appearance to be filmed, a gala to be attended, a photo shoot to make…Each day brought with it a fresh deluge of offers: luxury watch brands pursued him as the face of their sports range; global drinks manufacturers were desperate to secure his allegiance; designer labels coveted him to front their new campaign. Just yesterday he had been stripping off in a Paris studio, replacing a soccer legend as the face of an underwear giant. His almost naked pose, a vision in black-and-white of rippling torso and bulging crotch, had been blown up to the size of an airbus and would already be winging its way across the Atlantic for its debut in Times Square.

Quietly Leon extracted himself from the bed sheets and parted the blinds. The French capital was spread before him, the glossy River Seine and the glinting Eiffel Tower, in the bronzed early morning like a jewel city. Imposed against its skyline was his own reflection: dark hair, almond skin, green eyes that had stared down a legion of opponents…except one.

The tyrant he couldn’t defeat, the rival he hated: Jax ‘The Bullet’ Jackson.

Swiftly Leon showered and dressed. As far as he was concerned, Rio couldn’t come around soon enough. Bring on the competition—because next time, he would win.

He packed his belongings, checking his phone for a missed call or a voicemail. Nothing. Robin would have received the flowers by now: he had put his digits on the back of the card and wondered if she’d make the move. Leon couldn’t get her out of his head, ever since they’d met—since before they had met, if he were truthful, because he’d noticed her in the press, admired her from afar, and when he’d been offered the spot on The Launch he had taken it partly as a way to meet her. He could never have guessed that their first encounter would be quite so memorable.

Robin wasn’t his usual type, if he had one, but then she wasn’t his usual anything because she wasn’t at all…usual. He kept replaying that initial face-to-face (though he could think of other ways to describe it); the VIP room he’d been told was empty, the glimpse of Robin’s smooth back, the delicate, bare shoulder, and the curve of her waist beneath the hastily pulled-on shirt. She thought he’d seen more but he hadn’t—honestly he had been as embarrassed as she, and had tried to make light of it but instead it had backfired. How Leon wished he could go back to that night and play it differently. Robin was sexy and feisty and rude and wilful and she fascinated him. Was it the attitude that came off so brutal, yet in a dropped gaze betrayed her fragility? Was it the big fringe, beneath which shone those huge, careful eyes? Was it the way he had seen her laughing with her friends before she’d come over in the club, a generous smile that he suspected she saved for people she loved? He had to see her again. They had to start over.

‘Hey.’ Leon woke the girl, brushing her hairline with his thumb. ‘I gotta split.’

She smiled. ‘Is it too much to ask for a second date?’

‘Never say never.’

‘Last night was incroyable. So was this morning.’

He kissed her.

She tried to pull him back but he resisted. There were things he had to get home to; people who needed him. He made for the door.

This is a long game, his coach always said. Never lose focus.

Leon didn’t intend to. It was time.

Los Angeles: back to the streets where he grew up. Back to where it began.