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Brentwood, Los Angeles.
May 12, 11 p.m.
It never rains in Los Angeles in May, so the light mist falling on my bare arms is a surprise. The last surprise I will have on this earth. But that’s OK. I’ve come to hate surprises.
Our yard looks beautiful, lush and green. I am standing under the magnolia tree Doug planted in the spring, just a month before his accident. Accident. I have to stop using that word. I know now that my husband’s death was no random act of fate. The night that Doug crashed on the 405, burned alive in his beloved Tesla: that was the beginning.
Not that I knew it at the time. I didn’t know anything back then.
The gun in my hand, a 9mm Luger, feels small and harmless, like a toy. The man who sold it to me called it ‘a lovely gun for a woman’, as if I were buying earrings or a silk scarf. I tried to take my own life once before, right after Doug’s … after he died. I took pills, more than enough, but I was unlucky. My housekeeper, Rita, found me and called 911. Not this time. This time my little toy gun will get the job done.
I’m not afraid of death. Never have been, although as a psychologist I’ve treated countless patients who are. It’s a control thing, ultimately. Fear of the unknown. The way I see it, what I’m about to do is the ultimate act of control. Leaving the world on your own terms is a luxury.
Not everybody gets that chance.
Too many people have died because of me. Tonight another kind, decent man lost his life. A man I cared about. A man who cared about me.
This can’t go on. I have to end it.
The rain is getting heavier. I wipe my hand on my jeans to dry it and make my grip less slippery. No mistakes this time. I raise the gun to my temple and turn around, looking back at the house that Doug and I built together. A white clapboard, East Coast ‘estate’, beautifully lit, with a romantic balcony off the master suite that has views all the way to the ocean. Our dream home. Back when we still had dreams. Before there were nothing but nightmares.
I close my eyes and see their faces, one by one, like patterns on a kaleidoscope.
The ones I loved: Doug. Anne.
The ones I could have loved. Lou. We’ll never know what might have been.
The ones I let down: Lisa. Trey. Derek. I’m so very sorry.
My last thought is for the ones I hated.
You know who you are. May you rot in hell.
I start to cry. I know this is wrong. I wish there were another way.
But wishing never fixed anything.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
CHARLOTTE
Ten years earlier …
Charlotte Clancy felt the warm summer breeze caress her skin and with it a tingle of excitement. It was part sexual excitement, part happiness, and part the unfamiliar thrill of doing something illicit. Something naughty. Dangerous, even.
Charlotte wasn’t usually the naughty type. At eighteen years old she’d always been a straight-A student at her San Diego high school, where the most trouble she’d ever gotten into was for allowing her girlfriend to crib her Social Studies paper on early Mexican civilizations. Charlotte just loved Mexico – the history, the language, the food. She’d literally had to beg and plead with her parents to allow her to work the summer in Mexico City as an au pair.
‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ her dad said skeptically. Tucker Clancy was a firefighter and a deacon at the local Episcopal church, about as upstanding and conservative a family man as you could hope to find. ‘You hear stories. People get kidnapped down there. And the drug gangs … you read about beheadings and God knows what other terrible things.’
‘That’s true, Dad,’ Charlotte countered. ‘But those things are only happening in certain parts of Mexico. Not where I wanna go. It’s El Salvador and Colombia where you really have to be careful. And this agency, American Au Pairs International, AAPI – they have an amazing safety reputation. Like, zero incidents in twelve years working down there.’
Tucker Clancy listened with pride to his only daughter’s negotiating skills. One thing you could say for Charlie: she never did anything half-assed. As usual she had all the facts and figures at her fingertips. And she wasa very sensible girl.
In the end though, it was Charlotte’s mother, Mary, who had tipped the scales in her favor.
‘I’m nervous too, honey,’ Mary told Tucker over dinner at the Steak ’n’ Shake one Friday night. ‘But I don’t think we should let ourfears hold Charlieback. She’ll be at college in the fall, living on her own, making all these decisions for herself. She needs some independence.’
‘College is in Ohio,’ Charlotte’s dad countered. ‘They don’t cut people’s heads off in Ohio.’
Mary frowned. ‘Well, according to Charlie, they don’t in Mexico City either. And the lady at the au pair agency was super-reassuring. This family they’ve got lined up for her sound wonderful. The parents are lawyers, they live on this phenomenal estate … Come on, Tucker. Let the girl live a little.’
That conversation had been three months ago. Charlotte had been in Mexico for two months now, and boy, had she lived a lot. She’d smoked her first joint, got drunk for the first time, cheated on her boyfriend Todd for the first time and(she could hardly believe it, even when she said it to herself) fallen in love with a married man.
It wasn’t the dad of the family she was working for, the Encerritos. That would be cheap and tacky, and besides, Charlotte really liked Señora Encerrito, her boss, and would never do that to her. Not that what she wasdoing was OK. She knew it was wrong to have an affair. In fact, it was worse than wrong. It was a sin, a mortal sin. Charlotte came from a solid ‘church’ family, and there wasn’t much wiggle room when it came to morals, especially sexual morals. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, either. She cared plenty, and she felt guilty and all of that. But none of that mattered. Not when he was there. When hewalked into a room, when he looked at Charlotte, when he said her name, even when she heard his voice on the telephone, everything else went out the window. Her caution, her values, her fear, her regrets. Poof. Gone. And when he took her to bed and made love to her? Good God. There were no words to describe the bliss, the absolute ecstasy. Charlotte had had sex with Todd hundreds of times, but never like this. Never, in Charlotte Clancy’s wildest imaginings, had she believed sex could be this wonderful. So she wasn’t going to heaven? Big deal. She had heaven right here and his name was … Shhhh. She giggled to herself. She mustn’t say his name out loud. Not ever. Not to anyone.
‘What we have is a secret, cara,’ he told her, every time they made love. ‘No one must ever know. You understand?’
Charlotte did understand. He was married, and much, much older, and an important man. Their affair had to be discreet. What she didn’t understand was all his other secrets. The mysterious ‘meetings’ he would disappear off to in the middle of the night. The attaché cases stuffed full of US dollars that she’d seen him hand over to the local chief of police in one of the fancy hotels in town.
‘You can tell me, you know,’ she would whisper coquettishly in his ear in bed. ‘I can keep a secret. I just … I want to know everything about you. I want to be part of your life as much as I can. I love you so much!’
He always smiled, and kissed her, and assured her he loved her too and that he found her little outbursts ‘adorable – like you’. But he never told her anything. ‘It’s for your own safety,’ he would say, throwing in a thrilling element of danger to the already exciting situation.
In short, Charlotte Clancy was having the time of her life.
And tonight was going to be even better, the best yet.
Following the map he’d given her – so romantic! – she got out of her car and weaved her way on foot through the maize fields and down towards the river.
She’d taken a big risk a few nights ago, following him in the little Nissan the Encerritos had provided for her use, headlamps off so as not to be seen, only a few hundred yards behind him. It was hard to see along the bumpy roads, no more than tracks really, that he turned on to once they’d left the city. She’d started to panic, wondering how she would ever get back if somehow she lost him, but at that moment the track gave way to a hidden clearing in the trees and he came to a halt. She could make out rows of semicircular sheds, like giant pipes cut in half; inside, men were working at tables, their stations illuminated by old-fashioned oil lamps that made each shed glow softly in the moonlight. Charlotte watched as her lover got out of his car and moved from shed to shed, overseeing the work. It was all quite fascinating, but Charlotte couldn’t see what the men were actually doing from where she was parked. With a boldness she didn’t know she possessed till that moment, she’d got out of her car and walked over towards the shed where he was. She’d got to within about ten yards of the door when two men armed with machine guns leapt out in front of her.
Charlotte screamed so loudly they could probably hear it back in the city. ‘Don’t shoot! Please!’
Her lover turned around, a look of shock and anger on his face. But it quickly softened to a smile, and then a laugh.
‘Cara!’ he chuckled indulgently. ‘You followed me?’
‘I … I wanted to know,’ stammered Charlotte, her long legs still shaking involuntarily at the sight of the guns. ‘You wouldn’t tell me anything.’
He gestured for the men to let her pass, opening his arms wide and pulling her into a tight hug. ‘I never would have thought you had it in you,’ he grinned, ruffling Charlotte’s hair as if she were a disobedient but adorable puppy. ‘You’re a brave little thing, aren’t you, hm? I see I underestimated you.’
Charlotte swelled with pride and relief. He wasn’t angry. He was pleased! She’d been right to take the risk, right to show him she was more than some silly little girl, some au pair he was having a summer fling with.
‘Come.’ He took her hand. ‘As you’re here, let me show you around.’
She’d seen it all then, all the workings of his empire.
Cocaine.
Even the word sounded dangerous to Charlotte, like something from an episode of Miami Vice. She’d never been offered coke in her life, never even seen it. And now, here she was, in the eye of the storm, actually watching the stuff being produced. It was fascinating, and he showed her around with pride, as if this were any other factory or business he’d built. It was also extraordinarily complicated.
In one of the sheds, sheaves of dry coca leaves were being finely ground and dusted with lime before going under a misting machine like a weak garden sprinkler to be moistened with water. From there, the mixture was taken to another shed where it sat in giant vats like cement mixers, into which kerosene was added. The third shed was the ‘extraction plant’, where cocaine was first separated from the leaves, and then subjected to a complicated process of heating, filtering, pressing, siphoning and mixing with sulfuric acid, before being transferred to yet another building where eventually a gummy, yellow solid emerged that he identified as ‘coca paste’. The paste was then carried to a purifying shed, where it was mixed with diluted ammonia and filtered to produce cocaine hydrochloride.
All the while Charlotte listened, and nodded, holding his hand, acting as if this entire experience were perfectly normal, the sort of thing she did back in San Diego all the time.
‘Are you shocked?’ he asked her at the end of the tour. ‘Do you still want me, now you know I’m a criminal?’ He grinned as he said the word, tongue in cheek. But it was true, Charlotte thought. He was a criminal.
‘I’ll always want you,’ she told him, gazing up adoringly into his mesmerizing eyes. He took her back to his car then and made love to her, more passionately than ever before. Then he drove slowly back to the city, with Charlotte following.
Afterwards, she didn’t hear from him for almost a week. She was starting to panic that something had happened, that he’d decided to end things, when she’d finally got his text this morning: I’ve missed you, cara. Meet me here at 7 p.m., he wrote, sending her a link to a map as well as written directions. I have a surprise for you!
Charlotte’s heart soared. He’d never written anything like this to her before. I’ve missed you. That wasn’t his style at all. Nor were little maps and romantic surprises. Something had shifted between them since she’d learned the truth. He sees me as an equal now. As a partner.
A feeling of deep happiness surged through her. This, then, was love.
She was almost at the meeting spot, a place so remote and isolated there couldn’t possibly be anything there. Maybe he’s set up a picnic? Charlotte thought, imagining a soft blanket laid with silver and crystal, and buckets of champagne on ice. It was the sort of thing she could see him doing. Private but luxurious. Different, special, like he was. She felt sure now that her future lay with this man, despite his wife and the age difference and the dangerous things he did for a living. She couldn’t see yet exactly how this future would come to pass. How she would ever reconcile her parents to this new life she’d found. But she trusted, somehow. She was Charlotte Clancy, Charlotte the brave. He’d underestimated her, but only because she’d underestimated herself.
I can be whatever I want to be.
Frederique didn’t understand. ‘Don’t go, Charlotte. Or at least don’t go alone,’ her friend had begged her, when Charlotte showed her the ‘secret’ map. Frederique Zidane was an au pair too, and Charlotte’s only close girlfriend in Mexico City. She knew about Charlotte’s older, married boyfriend, but not enough to piece together who he was or what he did. ‘These places aren’t safe in the daytime, never mind at night. Anyone who lives here knows that. He must know it.’
‘Stop being such a scaredy-cat,’ Charlotte giggled. ‘I’ll be fine.’
But Frederique wasn’t laughing. ‘There are bandits out there. I’m serious. People get robbed, kidnapped, murdered. People disappear.’
‘Well, I’m not going to disappear,’ Charlotte replied robustly.
‘And you know this because …?’
‘Because I won’t be alone,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’ll be there, won’t he? He’ll protect me.’
It was the last conversation Frederique Zidane and Charlotte Clancy ever had.
CHAPTER THREE (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
LISA
‘So, Lisa. How has your week been?’
Dr Nikki Roberts leaned back in her faded black leather armchair and smiled warmly at her patient.
Lisa Flannagan. Twenty-eight years old. Former model and long-term mistress of Willie Baden, septuagenarian billionaire owner of the LA Rams. Recovering Vicodin addict. Narcissist.
‘Pretty good actually,’ Lisa smiled back and, pressing her palms together, leaned forward in a little bow of gratitude. ‘Namaste. I’m really feeling at peace about moving on from Willie. Like, I’m in a place of light, you know?’
‘That’s great.’ Nikki nodded encouragingly. Raindrops were tap-tapping against the window. This was her last session of the day, thank God. All she wanted was to get home. Switch off. Let the rain lull her to sleep.
‘I know, right?’ Lisa beamed. ‘Your advice in our last session helped me soooooo much.’
Lisa talked like this a lot: in clichés and exclamation points, like a teenage girl who’d swallowed her first self-help book whole, and now considered herself ‘a spiritual person’. As a psychologist, and a highly successful one at that, Nikki didn’t judge. She merely observed, and offered techniques to help her patient modify harmful behaviors and break destructive cycles.
As a person, however, it was a different story.
As a person, she judged plenty.
Lisa Flannagan was a user. A homewrecker. A baby-killer. A slut.
Sinking back into Dr Roberts’ soft, over-stuffed couch, Lisa Flannagan poured out her heart.
‘I moved out of the apartment,’ she announced proudly. ‘I actually did it.’
God, it felt good! Such a release, to come to a place where she was truly seen and understood and just let it all out.
‘Willie was, like, in shock. He was so mad, I thought he was going to hit me. Screaming and yelling and smashing things up.’
‘Did he threaten you?’ Nikki asked.
‘Oh yeah. Sure he did. “You can’t do this to me. I own you. I’ll destroy you. You’re nothing without me!”All of that. But I was super calm. I was like, “No, baby. You need to understand. This is something I need to do for myself. Like, I’m twenty-eight years old, you know? I’m not a child.”’
Lisa looked forward to her Wednesday-night therapy sessions at Dr Roberts’ plush Century City offices the way she used to look forward to scoring Vicodin, or getting laid by one of Willie’s big, black NFL players in the Beverly Hills apartment he’d bought for her two years ago. Back then, she hadn’t seen how totally controlling Willie was being. Like he was trying to buy her or something. Dr Roberts had totally opened her eyes on that score.
She’d also helped Lisa to realize how much inner strength she had. Like, kicking the pills was a big deal. Willie had picked up Lisa’s tab at Promises, but it was Lisa who’d agreed to go to rehab, Lisa who’d changed her own life.
I’m a good person.
If left the drugs behind, I can leave Willie Baden behind.
She would keep the apartment, of course. Or rather, she would sell it and keep the money. Ditto the Cartier sapphire-and-diamond necklace Willie had bought her for her twenty-fifth. New starts were all well and good, but Lisa Flannagan wasn’t about to walk away destitute from an eight-year relationship with a billionaire.That would be plain stupid. Besides, it wasn’t as if Willie needed the money back. Plus she’d done the responsible thing and terminated his baby, not hung around and demanded baby-momma money for the rest of her life, like most girls would have. The way Lisa saw it, once Willie got over the initial blow to his pride, there was no reason why she and her married lover couldn’t part as friends.
As she talked, sipping cucumber water from the jug on Dr Roberts’ coffee table, Lisa Flannagan stole occasional glances at the woman sitting opposite her, the therapist she had grown to rely on and to think of almost as a friend.
Dr Nikki Roberts.
What was her life like, outside these offices?
Thanks to Google, Lisa already knew the basic facts: Dr Nicola Roberts, née Hammond, thirty-eight years old. Graduated from Columbia before doing a postgrad in psychology at UCLA and an internship at Ronald Reagan Medical Center.
Lisa wondered whether that was where Dr Roberts had met her husband, Dr Douglas Roberts, a neurosurgeon and specialist in addiction-related brain disorders. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask. Asking your therapist personal questions was against the rules.
What Lisa did know was that Dr Roberts’ husband had been killed in a tragic car accident last year, right about the time she first started coming to therapy. The LA Times had reported on his death, because by all accounts Doug Roberts had been an amazing guy and a big deal in the LA charity world, campaigning tirelessly to help the city’s addicts wherever he found them, from downtown’s skid row to the mansions of Bel Air.
It was bizarre to think that the poised, attractive, professional woman sitting opposite Lisa, with her sleek brunette bob similar to Lisa’s own hair, her slender figure and intelligent green eyes was actually a grieving widow, whose own inner life was presumably in total turmoil.
Poor Dr Roberts, Lisa thought. I hope she has someone to talk to.
She deserves to be happy.
‘I’m afraid that’s our time, Lisa.’
