Wicked Ambition (35 page)

Dread surged. ‘You stay away from me. You just stay the
hell
away from me!’

‘Oh, no, sweetheart.’ Ava got to her feet. ‘That’s a risk you must appreciate we’re unwilling to take.’ Her eyes danced with the thrill of blood sport before flashing a warning. ‘We have to know you won’t try this again.’

The door opened. A bulky figure stood silhouetted in its frame.

‘What are you going to do?’ Turquoise demanded, paralysed by fright.

Slowly, wordlessly, Cosmo joined them. He knelt to her level, the spearhead of his wife hovering behind. Cosmo’s eyes were pools, obscure as oil and hooded by a heavy brow, the look of a man whose dove had returned to the cote. The liquid contours of his nose, so dark and Greek and brutal, sniffed out her panic. He produced a zipped-up bag.

‘I’ve missed our sessions,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Welcome home, Grace.’

44

B
unny White’s funeral took place a week after her body had been discovered. They hadn’t needed long to verify the cause of death and so arrangements were swiftly made. The coffin was ivory, gold-buckled and bound by cream ribbons, with a bouquet of pale lilies positioned on top, spelling the words PRINCESS ETERNAL.

Kristin didn’t need to bite back tears because she had no more weeping to do. Her body had been sapped of its grief, she’d cried till she could no longer see, and all she had been left with was an enduring numbness. She felt as dead as her poor baby sister.

The Mercedes pulled up at the cemetery to a flashing circus of paparazzi. Even at this, the darkest hour, they were unrelenting.

‘Kristin, Ramona, do you have a comment? Is Fraternity to blame? Is that why Bunny ended it? How are you?’

How are you?

The question was offensive in its banality. A fourteen-year-old
girl had died—a beautiful, kind, sweet darling with so many years ahead of her had taken her own life—and Kristin was meant to turn and say,
Ah, you know, we’re bearing up. Lovely day, by the way, isn’t it?
What a fucking joke. She wanted to slap the man who’d said it but already his face had been lost in the reeling crowd. Instead she stepped from the vehicle, a stooped Ramona trailing behind, and shielded her eyes from the glare as she passed through the gates.

Inside the grounds, a more appropriate air prevailed. Hushed tones greeted them with careful, practised tact. The priest shook Ramona’s limp hand and delivered a platitude that sounded like, ‘She’s at rest now, with God,’ which prompted in her mother a wet blub of woe but Kristin to feel lonelier than ever, because Bunny hadn’t been religious—none of them were—and the pretence of reaching for invented faith in their hour of need was bleak.

‘Get it over with quickly,’ Ramona sobbed. ‘I’m not long out of the house, Father.’

‘Of course,’ he vowed solemnly.

Kristin regarded her mother sideways. Ramona cut the perfect mournful figure in a sleek black dress and heels, just a dazzle of diamonds at her ears and throat. Since Bunny’s demise she had holed herself up in her bedroom, swooning in the limelight of her angst, and though Kristin resisted the thought she couldn’t help but wonder if a tiny, infinitesimal part of their mother—no, not theirs any more, just hers—was revelling in it.

Bunny’s suicide was being publicised for all the wrong reasons. In the aftermath of the Scotty/Fenton explosion, reports had flown in from across the globe of teenage girls
threatening to kill themselves, making online death pacts and winding up in the ER with stomachs full of painkillers, and Kristin had no doubt that the boy-band scandal might well have tipped her sister over the edge. Yet the fact remained that Bunny had already
been
at the edge, and the person responsible for that was standing next to her with a silk handkerchief pressed rather elegantly to her nose. Ramona. The pressures of the Mini Miss title, those expectations Bunny could never have hoped to meet, had laid her vulnerable to influences beyond her control. That was what the media didn’t seem able to grasp: they were quick to pin such tragedies on the controversial bent—the better, tighter, more marketable story—without examining the currents that ran silently beneath.

What will people think?
Ramona had asked, once the initial bout of crying had subsided. Even then, even after Bunny was lost, the family’s image was paramount. There was something almost admirable about it, Kristin thought: so resourceful, so ready to recover—precisely how Ramona had achieved, through her girls, all she had.

‘You poor thing,’ came the consolations, sad-faced Hollywood players she had met once or twice and Bunny maybe never; Mini Miss competitors and their parents; PR girls on Bunny’s creative team who hung back and checked their iPads when they thought no one was looking. ‘She was so young…We can’t understand it…A dreadful shame…’

The hole in the ground looked way too small, the coffin too slight and the whole thing so…so
wrong
! So unfair! Kristin wanted to scream her suffering to the sky but knew it would be absorbed unanswered.
Oh, Bunny
, she wailed in wardly.
Why didn’t you talk to me?

‘We’re assembled here today to pay dutiful respect to our most loved and treasured Beatrice White, taken from us too soon.’ Kristin kept her head bowed, stoic and still, because the minute she let the priest’s words mean anything at all she’d be overtaken with anguish. ‘Our departed loved one will always be present in those lives that she touched…’

Across the gathering she spotted Joey Lombardi—a courageous move given the press were baying ruthlessly for Fraternity blood—whose eyes were rimmed with grey and whose normally fresh face was tinged with sickly pallor. What was occurring in the ranks of that outrage was something Kristin had not yet brought herself to consider, but she knew the guys would be in torment. She felt a glow at his presence and his kindness in consenting to come.

‘Beatrice has become a part of each of you here; she will live on eternally in your memories.’ At this, Ramona stifled a sob. Kristin rested a hand on her mother’s back and felt the brittle quiver beneath. ‘Blessed be God, our supreme comforter…’

The worst part was the lowering of the coffin. Ramona openly bawled as the ribbons were loosened and Bunny—dear sweet Bunny—was taken from them for ever and put in the cold, dirty ground. All those overblown TV dramas where a grieving relative threw herself on top of the coffin in a yowling fury suddenly didn’t seem so ridiculous.

No! This isn’t right! There’s been some mistake, this isn’t it; this
can’t
be it!
But it was it. That was all. Bunny was dead. She would never see her sister again.

Joey caught up with her when the service was done.

‘Oh, Kristin,’ he murmured, hugging her tight. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

Sympathy made it worse. She pulled back so she could see his face. ‘How’s Scotty?’ she asked, longing to think of anything but this. ‘How’s everything?’

‘Bad.’ He made no bones about it. ‘Scotty’s place is overrun. He can’t go anywhere, he can’t do anything—Christ knows what it means for the rest of us. I still can’t believe it.’

‘I couldn’t, either.’

He nodded sadly. ‘Well, that whole thing makes more sense now. We just didn’t get it when you guys broke up. You seemed so solid.’

‘And Fenton?’

‘He’s being taken through the courts.’

‘What?’

‘They don’t know yet when the affair began—it could’ve been when Scotty first emerged and that would make it criminal.’

‘Oh, God…’

‘Was it you?’ Joey asked softly. ‘Scotty says you’re the only one who knew, and Fenton wouldn’t have risked it leaking to the press…’

‘No.’ Vehemently Kristin shook her head. ‘Never. Look at what it’s meant…not just for them but for Bunny.’ She choked on the name. ‘This destroyed her. I knew it would.’

They were ushered out of the graveyard, where the press resumed in force.

‘Kristin!’ the reporters yelled, shoving microphones and recorders in her face. ‘Who do you blame? Do you blame Scotty Valentine?’

Joey followed her into the car and slammed the door. Behind the tinted windows Kristin finally let the tears flow, burying her head in her hands.

‘I don’t blame Scotty,’ she said at last, her voice wracked. ‘I blame Jax Jackson. He’s the one who let it go. I made him swear not to tell a soul and he spilled his guts to the whole fucking world. I hate him. It’s his fault.’

Scotty Valentine hauled the sheets over his head and moaned. Regrettably the tranquillisers he was popping were only capable of knocking him out for a finite period of time, and when he awoke the world was still there, demanding to be faced, and nothing had changed.

‘Someone kill me,’ he gurgled from the den of his bed, wondering if it was possible to will yourself to death; if you tried hard enough and wanted it that much maybe you’d just stop breathing and your heart would stop beating and then it would be finished.

What kind of life was this? He couldn’t even step outside his front door without being set upon. Photographers camped out at the gates of his Beverly Hills estate and shouted his name day and night with no reprieve. The phone rang off the hook. The bell went constantly. He was too afraid to check the web, deciding if he did that the backlash would be so great and so overwhelming that his head would literally implode.

Splattering his brains across the wall was one way of doing it.

Weakly, he mewled. How had it come to this?

Cautiously Scotty climbed out of bed and stood naked at the window, feeding a finger into the wooden blind to part the slats. It was enough to send the pit of lions crouched below into a feeding frenzy, their cameras bursting and sparking as his name was clamoured from the whirlwind.
Scotty gasped, retreating fearfully. The blinds clipped shut but the drone went on: a single glimpse was enough to keep them going for hours.

His cell rang and without thinking he snatched it up.

‘Scott? It’s Luke. Thank God, we’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.’

He hung up. The shame was unbearable. Since the revelations he had spoken once, briefly, to Joey, and that was all he could stand. He couldn’t face it. He was a coward.

A second later it rang again.

‘Don’t you think you owe us an explanation?’ This time the voice was harder.

Scotty sank on to the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Everyone hates me.’

‘Whatever,’ Luke said impatiently, ‘nobody hates you.’

‘Liar!’ he howled.

There was a long pause. ‘We’re confused, man, OK? I mean, shit. Shit!
Fenton?
’

‘I don’t need this,’ Scotty wailed, panicking, ‘not off you—or anyone else!’

‘Quit being a dick, Scott, for Crissakes. It’s not just about you, is it? What about the rest of us? We’re up shit creek, too, you know. Sorry,’ Luke mumbled, ‘bad choice of words.’

Scotty blubbed.

‘Come on, dude, enough feeling sorry for yourself already.’

‘I’m not,’ he simpered.

‘We’ve been worried about you for months—getting sick, missing dates, turning up late to everything. Fenton, too, it’s like he just…gave in. At least now we get why you’ve
been acting so messed up.’ A pause. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? We’d have understood.’

Scotty’s head sank. ‘Like hell you would.’

‘Why? We’re not rednecks, bud, we’d have got it.’

‘With Fenton?’

Quiet. ‘It was a shock. A big shock, as it goes.’

‘Are you grossed out?’

‘Not ‘cause he’s a guy…maybe ‘cause he’s, like, our dad…’

‘And that’s meant to make me feel better?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What do the others say?’ Scotty asked in a miniature voice.

‘Joey’s cool. Doug’s all right. Brett’s freaked, you know what he’s like, but that doesn’t mean we’re not at your back…’ Luke added quickly, ‘I mean, not like that—’

‘I know what you meant,’ Scotty snapped.

‘We just figured you liked girls. Everyone did.’

Scotty cracked a couple more pills and downed them with a stale glass of water. He took a deep breath. Amid the wreckage of his life there was some relief to be had from finally setting those forbidden words free.

‘I thought if I lived it that way, with Kristin…’ He winced as he said it, pinching the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘I don’t know, I thought if I lived it long enough then I might learn to convince myself.’

‘Come on, bro,’ Luke responded gently. ‘That’s not the way.’

‘I know that now, don’t I?’ he quailed. ‘Now all this shit’s blown up in my face!’

‘It’s just damage control, all right?’ Luke offered, the lie
thick in his voice. ‘We’ll get through it.’ But there was no way through. Both of them knew.

‘Are we over?’ Scotty asked feebly.

‘The rest of the world thinks so.’

‘And you? What do you guys think?’ He realised too late how much he cared.

‘We’ve lost the market, Scott. I don’t know.’

Exhaustion capsized him and he surrendered to its lulling drift. ‘We worked so hard for this,’ he said, ‘and I lost it for us. I laid everything on the line for Fenton, not just my career but yours, too. I’m sorry. Will you tell the others? I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Why don’t you tell them yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘No way, man. If I thought this was laying low then I don’t know the half of it. It’s a fucking stakeout here.’

‘It’ll get better…’

‘Will it? I’m going to be in quarantine for a year until this blows over. If it ever does.’

‘It won’t be that bad.’ But Luke’s voice held no conviction.

Scotty gritted his teeth. ‘I can’t believe she did it.’

‘Huh?’

‘I knew she was mad but I never thought she’d take it this far.’

‘Who?’

‘Kristin. Who else? She’s ruined my life…and yours, and Fenton’s. I can’t let the bitch get away with it.’ Scotty’s eyes narrowed. ‘And I won’t, goddammit, I won’t.’

45

B
etween cities was a better time, the soporific motion of the tour bus and the gentle hum of her team’s conversation steering Robin towards oblivion for a few welcome hours.