Читать книгу Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals - Тилли Бэгшоу, Tilly Bagshawe - Страница 29
ОглавлениеSasha wandered around Terminal Three, aimlessly looking through the Duty Free shops. Her flight back to New York didn’t leave for another two hours, and she was too antsy to read a newspaper.
Heathrow hadn’t changed in the year since she’d last been here. Still overcrowded, with crazy queues for the lone Starbucks at all hours of the day. Still full of exhausted immigrant families asleep on the floors and benches, their thin brown arms draped protectively over suitcases held together with string, fighting for space with harassed business travellers looking bored or irritated as their eyes flickered between the flight information screens and their FT. Avoiding the Harrods outlet store, already crowded with a gaggle of giggling Japanese tourists, Sasha walked into a deserted Gucci. Picking out a deep purple handbag with an oversized silver clasp, she put it back when she saw the four-thousand-pound price tag. Ridiculous. She could afford it, of course, though she’d never been much of a consumer. Now that her life was consumed with deal making, analyzing the value of everything, it stuck in her craw more than ever to pay thousands of pounds for something that was probably made for forty. Then again, she thought morosely, what am I saving my money for? Today more than ever, Sasha was painfully aware that she had no children, no significant other, no one but herself to spoil. Once upon a time she’d believed that wealth would buy her power, the power to destroy Theo Dexter, the power to right the wrongs of the past, the power to seize her life back. Today it struck her with more force than ever. This IS my life now. There’s no going back. For some reason, the thought was deeply depressing.
No doubt the fact that Jackson Dupree got married last weekend had had something to do with it. Sasha had come to England ostensibly to see her parents and to take a holiday, her first since founding Ceres five years ago. But she also wanted to be out of the States for Jackson and Lottie’s big day, knowing what a huge deal would be made of it in the American press. In England, mercifully, nobody knew who Jackson was. He was like baseball or Thanksgiving, something that only Americans cared about.
Perhaps I’m becoming too American? Sasha thought idly. I’ve gone native. The past two weeks at home had left her feeling unsettled. As if she didn’t really fit in anywhere, not in New York, not in England. Frant and her parents’ cottage remained wonderfully unchanged, the sort of place where you could finish a mug of tea, put it down in a corner somewhere, then return a year later to find it exactly where you left it.
‘Messy, you mean?’ laughed Sue, when Sasha made this observation. ‘A bloody pig sty? Well, you’re not wrong, but you try keeping a house this small tidy when your father comes home every weekend with another sackload of old junk.’
‘It’s not junk,’ said Don, a wounded expression on his face. ‘Some of these artifacts are literally priceless. Look at this.’ He thrust a mangled disc of dirty metal into Sasha’s hands. ‘That’s pre-Roman, that is. Part of some sort of threshing device.’
Still a keen amateur astronomer, Don had recently added a new obsession to his repertoire: treasure hunting. Armed with a metal detector he’d bought at a boot sale in Tonbridge, he disappeared to the South Downs most weekends, returning with sacks full of what, to the naked eye, did indeed look like junk. A few days ago, Sasha had gone with him. She needed to get out of the cottage, and it was clear her dad wanted to ‘talk’.
‘So how are you, love? You happy?’ Don asked, as his battered old Volvo spluttered through the Sussex countryside. Looking out of the passenger window at the green, wooded hills, peppered here and there with flint cottages or sturdy old Norman churches, Sasha felt as if her life in America was just a dream. Ceres, New York, Jackson Dupree … here, in her dad’s car, they could all be figments of her imagination.
‘I’m all right Dad.’ She tried to sound cheerful. ‘I’m a bit tired, I suppose. But the business is going well.’
‘No offence, Sasha, but I don’t give a monkey’s nuts about the business,’ said Don, keeping his eyes on the road.
‘Thanks!’
‘You know what I mean. I’m proud of you and all that, of course I am. But I’m your dad. I want you to be happy. A fat bank account never made anybody happy.’
Sasha wondered about the truth of this statement. It seemed to her that a fat bank account made plenty of people deliriously happy. But Don was right, it hadn’t worked for her.
‘How about your love life?’
‘Dad.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Still no one serious?’
Unbidden, and unwanted, an image of Jackson’s face popped into Sasha’s mind. ‘No,’ she said, irritated. ‘I don’t have time for all that, Dad. Building a business like Ceres is no joke. You’re fighting to get to the top, day after day after day. Then when you get there, you think you can rest for a while, but of course you can’t. Turn your back for a second and someone’s stuck a knife into it. The retail real estate business is brutal. It’s cut-throat and it’s unrelenting.’
‘It sounds horrible. You should jack it in.’
Sasha laughed.
‘I’m serious,’ said Don. ‘You’ve made enough money, haven’t you? Quit while you’re ahead. Get a boyfriend, get married, have some kids. Have some fun. It’s not too late to go back to science, you know.’
Yes it is, thought Sasha sadly. It is too late. Life has moved on and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
They’d arrived at Wilmington, a small hamlet famous for its Long Man, a giant human figure carved into the chalk hill like an oversized police drawing of a murder victim. No one knew for sure how old the Long Man was. Although it probably only dated from the sixteenth century, the area around it had been associated with religious rites and festivals since pagan times, and was a popular spot for local treasure hunters. Sasha used to come here as a kid to pick sloes, bitter, dark blue berries that Sue made into sweet sloe gin for Christmas. Stepping out into the cold, misty morning air, a wave of nostalgia hit Sasha like an oncoming truck. Out of nowhere, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Are you crying?’ Don’s face clouded with concern.
‘No! Why would I be crying?’ said Sasha, forcing herself to snap out of it. It wasn’t fair to worry her dad, especially as she didn’t know herself what was wrong. ‘The cold just made my eyes water, that’s all. So come on then, where’s this treasure? I was expecting Aladdin’s cave of wonders, not some dreary old hills in the drizzle.’
The day passed pleasantly enough, with Don wisely dropping the serious father-daughter stuff and chatting away about local gossip. ‘You remember Will Temple, that boy you were so mad about your last year at St Agnes’s?’
It was a name she hadn’t heard in a million years. Sasha blushed. ‘Will! God, yes, of course I remember. Whatever happened to him?’
‘He made a ton of money as a developer. Not in your league, I dare say, but he’s a big cheese in this neck of the woods. Bought that lovely house in Tidehurst, the manor.’ Sasha remembered it well, an idyllic Tudor pile with a maze and a walled rose garden. It was a wildly romantic house. The Will she remembered would not have appreciated it. ‘Anyway,’ Don went on, ‘his wife left him a few months ago, ran off with a mate of his or some such.’
‘How awful!’ said Sasha sincerely. ‘Poor Will.’
‘Rattling round there alone he is now. Single dad. Very good looking still, according to your mother.’
It wasn’t until this point that Sasha realized he was trying to set her and Will up. Reunite her with an old flame so she could move home to Sussex and live happily ever after. If only life were that simple. ‘Oh Dad!’ she grinned. ‘You don’t think …? Will Temple and I had nothing in common when we were kids! That’s why we broke up. What on earth would we have to say to one another now?’
Don shrugged. ‘You’re both in the property business. You’re both young and single and rich. And lonely.’
‘I’m not lonely. I’m busy,’ insisted Sasha.
‘Anyway, I thought you broke up because of that wanker Dexter. Don’t suppose you ever see him, do you?’
‘No.’
Normally it amused Sasha the way that her parents seemed to think she might have ‘bumped into’ celebrities, simply because she lived in America and was now rich and well known herself. As if New York were like Frant, and she might pass the time of day with Tom Cruise or the President in the post office on a Tuesday morning. When it came to Theo Dexter, however, she couldn’t see the funny side.
‘Your mother and I saw him on some “ Hollywood Special ” the other night. I don’t know what he’s done to his face but he looks more and more like Joe 90 every time I see him, all waxy and frozen. No glasses though, obviously. Just those damn stupid teeth. You can see them from space, I bet, the colour they are. Looks like he’s got a mouthful of burning magnesium. And his house was just ridiculous, all marble and gold, like a bloody brothel.’
‘Hmmm.’ Sasha did not want to talk about Theo Dexter. Not today, not ever. His continued existence, prosperity and apparent happiness all reminded her of her own abject failure.
‘I wonder what his old muckers at Cambridge think of him now? Whether any of ’em have thought twice about what they did to you, taking his word over yours?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Sasha, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘He was part of their little boys’ club. I wasn’t. They were real scientists. I was just a kid.’
‘Maybe, back then,’ said Don. ‘But no one thinks of Dexter as a real scientist now. He’s more like an actor, isn’t he? A celebrity.’ Don’s lip curled with distaste at the word. ‘I’ll bet they all hate him these days.’
It was an interesting thought, one that, oddly, had never occurred to Sasha. As she remembered, the Cambridge establishment was notoriously bitchy. Many of Theo’s contemporaries had disliked him even before his big break, back when he was still a tutor at St Michael’s, sleeping with all the prettiest students. She wondered if it ever bothered Theo, being cast out into the scientific wilderness, even if it was into the welcoming arms of Hollywood? Sasha herself had grieved intensely for physics and Cambridge and the life she’d left behind. At Harvard Business School she had recurring nightmares of the university court, her utter humiliation and devastation at being branded a liar, at seeing her work appropriated by someone else, someone she had loved. Back then she thought often of her fellow undergraduates, of Georgia and Josie and her St Michael’s friends, but more often of her rivals in the physics faculty, guys like Owen McDermott from Caius or the fat, nerdy Hugo Cryer who spent his days locked in the particle physics labs at the Cavendish. What had happened to them? To their research? Had they gone on to make breakthroughs, to become professors, to make a difference in the physics world, the real world, the only world that mattered?
Over the years, Sasha had learned to stop tormenting herself with such thoughts. Her life had moved on, first to Wrexall, then Ceres, and soon there was no time to brood on what might have been, the doors left unopened. But it was curious to imagine Theo Dexter having the same thoughts. Most people, looking at his life, would have thought it laughable, the idea of a global TV star pining for academia. But Sasha knew better than anyone that wealth and fame weren’t everything. Physics was Theo’s first love, just as it was hers. You never got over your first love, not really.
‘I read something the other day about St Michael’s. What was his name, that old git who was Master there in your day?’
Sasha gritted her teeth. ‘Anthony Greville.’ The name would be engraved in her memory until the day she died. Greville had chaired the show trial that had ruled in Theo’s favour, sealing her fate.
‘Greville, that’s it. Well he’s finally retiring. They’re holding elections for a new Master, next spring, I believe.’
‘Oh,’ said Sasha, not sure how she was supposed to react. It was getting dark. The mist sank lower over the rolling chalk hills, wrapping the landscape in a cold, wet blanket. Sasha shivered, thinking of her mother’s homemade fruit cake and the crackling log fire that would be waiting for them back at the cottage. ‘Come on, Dad. It’s late. We should be getting back.’
They turned and walked back to the car, with Don still muttering, ‘I’m serious about Will Temple, you know. You’re a modern girl. Ask him out for dinner.’
‘Virgin flight twenty-four to New York, boarding at gate twelve.’
The tannoy announcement brought Sasha back to her senses. Tired of window shopping she’d made her way up to the first-class lounge where she sat staring into space, an untouched plate of cheese and crackers in her lap. A number of her fellow passengers recognized her, but she’d grown adept at tuning out the nudges and whispers and disappearing into her own world.
Gathering up her hand-luggage bag, she made her way down to the plane where the upper-class passengers were boarding first. A kind-looking, slightly podgy stewardess showed her to her seat, her large bottom straining against the red fabric of her skirt as she bent down to offer Sasha various things she didn’t want: a glass of champagne, warm cashew nuts, a hot towel. ‘I’ll just leave you these, and I’ll get out of your way. They’re all new,’ she said cheerfully, dumping a stack of fashion and gossip magazines into Sasha’s lap.
Sasha flipped through them idly. Vogue’s Ten Must-Have’s for Winter! Fashion had always bored her, and she found it bizarre the way that her own outfits were analyzed and commented on in the press. Most of the time her PA, Jeanne, shopped for her online. In winter Sasha wore whatever was nearest and warmest. Passing Vogue to her neighbour, she opened People magazine and immediately wished she hadn’t.
‘JACKSON DUPREE’S FAIRYTALE WEDDING TO LONG-TIME LOVE, CHARLOTTE GRAINGER!’ There were six pages of it. Six! Despite herself, Sasha turned to them immediately, skimming through shot after shot of Lottie smiling beatifically. Jackson looked happy too, feeding her wedding cake, holding her close for the first dance as every socialite in New York looked enviously on. It did look like a fairytale. Just not hers.
‘Excuse me.’ Sasha stopped the stewardess. ‘I don’t need these.’ She handed the magazines back to her. ‘Do you happen to have today’s Wall Street Journal?’
‘Of course. I’ll bring it right over.’
Work, that was what she needed. Tomorrow she’d be back in the office, back in the fray, with no more free time to think about things like Jackson and Lottie, or the St Michael’s Mastership, or what Theo Dexter was or wasn’t thinking.
Holidays were definitely over-rated.
‘Come on, baby. Harder! Do it like you mean it.’
Even in bed she wants to direct, thought Theo with a sigh. Putting a hand over his wife’s mouth – Dita wouldn’t mind, she liked it when he was masterful – he continued fucking her. But his heart wasn’t in it.
Yesterday he’d had a call from his accountant, Perry Margolis.
‘I’m just going to give it to you straight, Theo. You’re living beyond your means. Something’s going to have to give, and fast. I’m not kidding.’
‘But, Perry, how is that possible? My salary on Universe just went up. I’ve got the aftershave deal, Kenco coffee renewed. I know Sony haven’t signed on the dotted line yet, but …’
‘This is nothing to do with Sony. Your income’s healthy, that’s not the problem.’
Theo sighed deeply. ‘I know.’
The problem was four letters long, and it was lying beneath him now, sucking the very life out of him like a fucking preying mantis. Dita’s spending, always excessive, always impulsive, had recently become borderline pathological. It was as if there were a direct link between her self-esteem and the bills she ran up on her Amex card – one went down and the other went up. In the last six months, Dita had been passed over for two major movie roles, in both cases for younger actresses. The irony was that she still looked fantastic. But keeping her that way was like running a grand old stately home. It required an army of professionals, hair-dressers, stylists, personal shoppers, make-up artists, trainers, facialists, yoga instructors and therapists just to get Dita out of bed in the mornings, and all of them were on full-time payroll. That was before you got to the nannies, tutors and tennis coaches for the children, the French ballet instructress for Fran, the twenty-four-hour on-call allergist for Milo.
‘Your staff alone cost more than you’re earning for the new season of Dexter’s Universe,’ said Perry. ‘I’ve seen countries run more cheaply. You have to let at least a third of them go.’
Theo had broached the subject with Dita last night, and again this morning. ‘No,’ she said defiantly. ‘I’m not going to live like a pauper because you can’t manage our finances.’
Theo had lost his temper, pointing out that if it weren’t for his earnings they would have lost the house years ago. Dita shot back that without her stardom, he would never have made those earnings; that all his endorsement deals, not to mention his film career, such as it was, were a direct result of his marriage to her; that he was little more than a gigolo – a gigolo who, quite frankly, had become lazy and boring and no longer excited her in bed. Theo raised a hand to slap her, Dita grabbed his arm, and before they knew it they were making love, clawing at one another like a pair of wild animals in heat.
The sex had been great until Dita started talking, goading and taunting Theo (she called it ‘coaching’) until he could happily have ripped her head off with his bare hands. Now it was all he could do to finish the job, forcing thoughts of bills and unpaid IRS demands out of his head and fantasizing about Lorna Fox, the teenage actress who had ‘stolen’ Dita’s latest role, just to get himself to come.
Thankfully Dita came too, her nails digging painfully into Theo’s buttocks as she moaned and gasped beneath him. ‘Not bad,’ she said, lighting a cigarette as he rolled off her. ‘At least you’re making an effort.’
Ignoring her, Theo walked into the bathroom. Pressing a button on the wall, a torrent of hot rain exploded out of the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The ‘invisible shower’ was another of Dita’s extravagances, but in this case Theo wasn’t complaining. The hot jets of water felt wonderful on his back, invigorating and relaxing at the same time.
His depressing conversation with Perry yesterday wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Ed Gilliam had forwarded him an email, a news piece about his old Cambridge college, St Michael’s. Apparently, old Tony Greville was retiring and elections were being held for a new Master. Ed had only sent it as a piece of idle gossip, something it might amuse Theo to know. But the news had opened up a floodgate of feelings in Theo that he’d barely had time to process.
He could picture St Michael’s now, as if he’d never left. The ivy-clad, medieval courts, the formal gardens rolling down to the peaceful Cam, his rooms in First Court and all the exciting, intelligent, adoring young women he’d taken to bed there. He still had young lovers in LA of course, physically perfect specimens all. And Dita, to give her fair credit, was no slacker in either the looks or the lovemaking department. But it was a long time, a long time, since Theo had fucked a truly intelligent woman.
What would it be like to go back to Cambridge now? To return as the conquering hero? As a fantasy, it had a lot of appeal, though it was hard – impossible – to fit Dita and the children into that picture. Plus Perry had made it painfully clear that now would not be a good time for Theo to walk away from his lucrative endorsement deals, never mind jack in the TV show that had made him.
Drying and dressing in long shorts and a James Perse t-shirt, his LA uniform, Theo came down to breakfast in a thoughtful mood. Unusually, Dita was up already, wrapped in a silk robe and picking at a waffle with Milo on her lap when he came in.
‘Hi, Dad,’ Milo said shyly. It irritated Theo, the way the boy was always so nervous around him, clinging to Dita like Bambi to his mother, but he tried not to show it.
‘Morning, Milo. How’s that cough this morning?’
‘Better,’ he smiled wanly. ‘I think I can go to school today. I feel fine.’
‘That’s great,’ said Theo, but Dita shook her head.
‘Not today, honey. Rosetta said he was wheezing a lot in the night,’ she explained to Theo. ‘I want Dr Gray to see him before we make any decisions.’ She sprinkled powdered sugar into a square of waffle and fed it to her son, as if he were a helpless baby bird. Theo felt his anger building.
‘He just said he feels fine.’
‘Drop it, Theo, OK?’ Dita snarled. ‘You know nothing about how to care for Milo. You never have.’
Unwilling to be drawn into yet another fight in front of the kids, Theo changed the subject.
‘I heard something interesting yesterday,’ he said pouring himself a bowl of Kashi GoLean cereal and ruffling his daughter’s hair. Throughout her parents’ tense exchange, three-year-old Fran had continued happily stuffing her face with Cheerios, washed down with chocolate milk. ‘St Michael’s is looking for a new Master.’
Dita frowned. ‘What is that, code? You wanna be a priest, now? Or a spy?’
Theo looked at her and thought, You really are a deeply stupid person.
‘No,’ he said patiently. ‘St Michael’s is a college at Cambridge university. My old college, as it happens. The Master is like the principal, the head of the college. It’s a very prestigious post.’
Dita shrugged, bored. ‘So?’
‘I don’t know.’ Theo tried to keep his voice casual. ‘I mean, it’s kind of a crazy idea. But, you know, I could apply.’
‘You?’ Dita laughed insultingly. ‘What the fuck do you know about running a school? You’re a TV presenter.’
‘Actually, I’m a physicist who happens to have a television career,’ said Theo stiffly.
‘Right. And I’m a NASA astronaut who happens to make movies,’ taunted Dita.
‘Is that so?’ Theo shot back. ‘When was your last movie role, darling? I forget. Perhaps it’s time to give your old buddies at the Space Center a call.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Dita. Milo started wheezing.
‘Don’t shout,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t like shouting.’
‘Sorry, my angel.’ Dita smothered the boy in kisses, immediately switching into doting-mother mode. ‘Daddy’s being silly, that’s all. Mommy’s not really mad. Daddy was joking, weren’t you, Daddy?’
Not trusting himself to say anything, Theo stalked out of the room, bumping into Rico, Dita’s stylist, in the hallway. It’s like living in a fucking office, he thought darkly. I can’t get to my own front door without tripping over the hangers-on. ‘Watch where you’re going,’ he barked.
Rico raised an overplucked eyebrow. ‘Temper, temper. Looks like someone got out of her ladyship’s bed on the wrong side this morning.’ Rico, like the rest of Dita’s entourage, who were all either female or gay, fancied Theo like mad. He couldn’t understand how anyone could be dissatisfied with a husband as ruggedly handsome, rich and brilliant as Theo Dexter. As for that British accent, it was enough to give one a teeny orgasm on the spot.
‘She’s out of control,’ said Theo, tearing at his hair like a man distracted. It was rare for him to confide in Dita’s staff, especially the flamboyantly flaming Rico. But he needed to let off steam. ‘The spending is beyond all reason. I’m not the Aga fucking Khan, and she’s not the star she used to be. Someone needs to get that through her brainless, blonde skull before we’re all living under a bridge.’
‘So you’d rather I didn’t give her these tickets for the preview of Marc Jacobs’ Spring Collection, then? He’s doing it in Rome this year. I thought we’d make a week of it, stay at the Hassler, you know, a spot of shopping on the Via Veneto.’ He held up a pair of stiff, gold-embossed tickets wickedly.
Theo snatched them out of his hands and pocketed them. ‘Not unless she’s planning to swim there.’
Rico watched as he picked up his car keys from the hall table and swept angrily out of the house. He loved it when Theo got all macho. Dita must be out of her mind to push him the way that she did.
Outside, the blazing LA sunshine lifted Theo’s spirits somewhat, as it always did. It was impossible to pull out of the gates of his $15-million mansion in his new red Bugatti Veyron with the thick black centre stripe, and not to think of how far he’d come from his childhood in Crawley. Crawley where it always rained, and the height of anyone’s ambitions was a souped-up Ford Escort and a paid-off mortgage.
Do I really want to go back to England? Leave all this behind?
He argued with himself all the way to his new offices on Canon Drive in downtown Beverly Hills. It’s not England. It’s Cambridge. It’s the Mastership. Hollywood had plenty to offer, but that was something that couldn’t be replicated. To be a living part of history, to perch triumphantly at the very top of academia’s tallest tree. Best of all, it was a golden ticket back into the academic fold, the world that had turned its back on him, but it was a ticket that did not involve him having to go back to research or, heaven forbid, come up with a new idea. I’m too old for that, he told himself. I’ve already earned my laurels. What I want now is to be able to rest on them.
There were numerous hurdles, of course, and he ran through them mentally on the elevator ride to his twelfth-floor office.
The college might not want me. They might see me as too ‘flash’.
I’ve got work commitments here and around the world I can’t just walk away from.
Dita will divorce me. Although this morning that feels like more of a plus than a minus.
‘Good morning, Mr Dexter.’ The new receptionist, Candy or Kiki or some sort of stripper name, gazed at him adoringly. ‘Your mail’s on the desk. Can I get you anything this morning? Coffee? Bagel?’ Blow job? her eyes added, brazenly.
‘No, thanks.’ He went into his office and shut the door. Turning on his computer, he clicked open his emails and scrolled down to find the one from Ed Gilliam, about St Michael’s. There must be a way. If I could fit the work around it somehow … shoot in the long summer vacation, come to some deal with the fellowship.
He thought about Dita and their row this morning. The mockery in her voice. ‘You? What do you know about running a school?’
It was, Theo decided, high time he grew back a pair of balls.
Clicking on ‘reply’ he began to type.
