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Vivien Lockhart rolled over in the warm glow of Californian sunshine, and stretched inside satin sheets. Outside, the green ocean sighed, waves lapping against a golden shore. What day was it? Ah, yes, an important one. Tonight, she would accept her first Leading Lady Award at the annual Actors Alliance. Everyone knew it was in the bag – her recent turn in the mega-hit Angels at War was unrivalled: she was a tour de force, a masterclass, a vision to behold, and the only way was up. Vivien was the brightest star in Hollywood. She had it all, everything she had fantasised about and more. Every studio wanted to work with her, every designer wanted to dress her, every rising starlet wanted to be her. Oh, and every man wanted to bed her.
‘Hey, baby…’
The model-slash-actor she’d brought back last night reached for her: bronzed arms, a mane of jet hair like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. She couldn’t remember his name. No doubt this was, for him, the start of some grand love affair.
‘Screw, is that the time?’ Vivien swung out of bed and headed for the shower; she had brunch with her agent at ten. ‘I gotta get ready. Dandy’ll kill me if I’m late.’
‘You don’t want breakfast?’ The model-slash-actor was disappointed.
‘No.’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘By the time I’m done, I want you out.’
*
She bagged the award, of course. It had never belonged to anyone else. As Vivien went to collect her gong and deliver her speech, she reflected on the glittering crowds gazing up at her from the ranks. Envy on the women’s faces; lust on the men’s. Vivien’s crown was untoppleable: her beauty and talent were second to none.
‘Don’t you think you oughtta slow down a little?’ Dandy asked as they took a car to the after party off Broadway. Vivien unscrewed the cap off a Chambord miniature – her third. But that wasn’t counting the brandy.
She drained it. ‘Say what?’
‘You’ll be drunk.’
‘Haven’t I earned it?’
‘The night’s not over yet. You’re still on the clock.’
‘And I’m still fine.’
Dandy knew better than to press the issue. As Vivien applied lipstick, she decided that if it was a choice between the warm burn of alcohol in her throat and any approval Dandy could offer, she would choose the alcohol every time. For many years, she’d been dead against it – her father had been enough to put her off. But these days, it was all that would do. It kept her moving and stopped her thinking; it sped the days and nights along like a leaf in a rushing stream, never pausing or getting caught.
That was her motto: Keep going, keep striving. Looking back never did anyone any favours. Learn your lessons and wear them like armour.
Their car pulled up outside the warehouse venue. Owned by Warhol, inside it was a tropical, decadent paradise of exquisite creatures. Vivien was regaled on entering, the Halston jersey dress she had changed into after the ceremony admired and revered, her shimmering trophy marvelled at as if she held the sun in her hands.
‘Congratulations, Vivien,’ ‘Darling, well done,’ ‘Oh, you look ravishing!’
Compliments fell about her like rain. Dandy steered her through as best he could but everyone wanted to stop and take her hand, tell her how much they adored her and what a stunning performance she had achieved, hoping to delay her long enough that a paparazzo would pass and take their picture together and it would appear in the glossies in the morning. Fame was contagious, or so they hoped. Vivien was the golden lamp: touch her arm and she might just make their wish come true.
Her own wishes, of course, had come bountifully to fruition. Perhaps that was why, amid the clamour of appreciation, Vivien could only see the hollow truth beneath. These people had got her wrong. They imagined her to be the girl Dandy sold to the press – a butter-wouldn’t-melt ingénue who had walked into a Burt Sanderson audition one balmy afternoon and claimed the part she was born to play.
Nobody knew about her sordid beginnings, her violent father or her shameful work-for-tips at Boudoir Lalique. She was determined it would stay that way.
The hours passed in a haze of booze, drugs and dance. Vivien moved across the spotlit floor, disco balls shattering kaleidoscopic light and she was in one man’s arms and then another’s and then another’s, each of them faceless, nameless. She thought about the girls she had known in Claremont and at the Lalique – what did they make of her celebrity? Did they respect her, or pity her? Did they wish for the studs in her bed or did they have husbands of their own, children, families?
Vivien wondered if she herself would ever have a family. The one she’d left behind had injured her so badly that she vowed never to be beholden to one again. Besides, she was too sullied. These men thought they wanted her, and they did for a night, a week, a month – but for always? No. Not once they saw the hidden scars.
She was drifting to the bar when a voice pierced her from behind.
‘Hello, Vivien.’
It was like being stabbed in the back by a thin, sharp blade.
Not you. Please, not you.
‘Jonny Laing,’ she forced herself to answer. ‘What a surprise.’
She should have been more careful. She had checked tonight’s list and he hadn’t been on it, but clearly he’d managed to slide his way in, insidious, horrible, Jonny all over. She’d got sloppy; she had to be smarter. Vivien avoided her adversary at all costs, for the mere sight of him chilled her. Jonny relished the cards he held: even after all this time, he still believed he could have her. He believed that one day she would capitulate and he would get a return on his investment. The higher her star climbed, the more of a payout it would deliver. Tonight, she was stratospheric.
‘It seemed a shame not to congratulate you,’ said Jonny acidly. ‘You’re a hard woman to get hold of these days. To think of the partnership we once had…’
Vivien was desperate to shake him off, scrub herself down and erase any trace of him. Her heart galloped and her lungs strained. Everywhere she turned, her fellow luminaries appeared grotesque, made up like circus clowns, laughing and roaring.
Jonny held the key to her downfall. Imagine if they found out…
‘Leave me alone,’ she forced out. ‘Please. I’ll do anything.’
‘Anything?’ He grinned. ‘You know what I want.’
Vivien shook. Even if she did sleep with him, he would never leave her alone.
‘Never,’ she croaked. ‘Not that.’
‘Then we’re stuck.’
‘I’ve got money. You can have it. I’ll pay back every cent—’
He laughed, horribly. ‘Come on, Vivien, listen to yourself.’
‘I won’t sleep with you, Jonny.’
He licked his lips, slow, tantalising.
‘Come along, sweetheart, you never know – you might even enjoy it.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Remember I know about you,’ he said. ‘I know everything.’
It took all her will not to spit in his face. She was trapped – as trapped as she’d been back in Claremont, hiding in her bedroom awaiting the sting of her father’s belt.
‘Jump off a cliff, you bastard,’ she said.
Vivien stepped away but he seized her arm, just as he had that day in his office. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, the world spiralling out of control. Twisting from him, she lost her balance and stumbled, fell, was caught—
‘Oops!’ Suddenly Dandy was with them, holding her up. ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we, darling?’ Casual smiles for their observers; it was nothing, a long day and an exciting night; he’d spin it right in the morning. ‘Come along, Viv.’
Grateful, she allowed herself to be led. And she heard Jonny’s parting hiss:
‘I’ll tell the world, Vivien… if you don’t give it to me.’
*
Over the coming weeks, Vivien lay low. She became a recluse in her apartment, too paranoid to go out but at the same time afraid to stay in: afraid of the bell ringing or the phone going, and Jonny reiterating his menace. She ignored calls from Dandy.
How had it come to this? All the glitter and fortune she had longed for, and yet at its heart a whistling void. She felt invisible, a ghost girl, not really here.
She drank to escape the pain. And one Friday night, things came to a head.
She had started with one gin, the alcohol rushing to her head, making her eyes sting. Next time she looked, the bottle was empty. That was the way of it, great blackouts, time losses she couldn’t account for. Just as she was nodding off on the couch, the telephone rang, startling her. Bleary-eyed, forgetting, she reached for it.
‘Hullo?’
‘Vivien, it’s your aunt, Celia.’
Vivien sat, rubbing her eyes, her blotted brain struggling to kick into gear. She hadn’t heard from Celia since… well, since she’d left. Since the last Sunday service they had both attended in Claremont. The woman’s voice severed her.
‘I’m afraid I have bad news,’ Celia went on. ‘Your mother is dead. The funeral is on Sunday. Your father told me not to bother but I thought you’d want to know.’
The conversation must have continued after that, but Vivien played no conscious part in it. When Celia hung up, she dropped the phone. She drank more. She stared her image down in the mirror and when she could stand it no longer she punched the glass, cracking it like a beautiful mosaic. Alcohol – she needed it. She needed to be numb. But there was none left, the cupboards empty, her secret stash under the bed depleted. Only one thing for it: she grabbed the keys to the Mustang.
It was kamikaze to go driving. Directionless, delirious, drunk, Vivien was the last person who should have got behind a wheel. It was a wonder she hadn’t been killed, the newspapers said afterwards, or that she hadn’t killed anyone else.
Vaguely she was aware of heading downtown. Once she had a drink she could work out what she was going to do. Saying farewell to her mother would mean seeing her father again. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her father had been right. God only did look after the virtuous. She had always been destined for the gates of hell.
The car spun off the road and, after that, only black.
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_d6b70b8a-fa27-5c66-8ac6-01f46fe4c8e4)
Italy, Summer 2016
It rains all weekend, a damp, flat, rolling sky bursting with pent-up heat.
I’m inside when the Barbarossa’s phone rings. Having been chastised for answering the front door, I don’t go for it myself, and instead continue my work cleaning and sorting the old study. This morning I discovered a photograph in one of the desk drawers, of Vivien as a young woman. Without question, she had been fabulous, gazing into the camera, her blonde hair curled round her ears and a smile on her face. I’d wondered who had taken the picture – from the way she was posing, it was someone she had been in love with. In the background, I could make out the castillo. The note on the back, scribbled in pencil, read: V, 1981. And it wasn’t so much Vivien’s appearance that had arrested me, how young and vibrant she looked; it was the hope in her. The optimism. All that was gone now.
Forget it, I tell myself. Don’t go there. After my scare at the library, I’ve resolved to put a lid on my curiosity. The man was a journalist, I know it. By now he will have reported back to London, to some ravenous editor in an office on Southwark Street, a woman not unlike Natasha, polished and cutthroat, with the toothpaste-white smile of an angel but with a dagger concealed in her silk blouse. The woman will be celebrating, kicking off her heels, opening a chilled bottle of wine… But she won’t tell anyone, not yet, this story is too hot and too precious. Just for tonight, it’s hers alone. The story of the year: a tale of seduction, betrayal and murder.
And love…
I can’t risk meeting the same fate as my predecessor. I can’t risk being sent home. Right now, the Barbarossa is the only protection I have.
Yesterday, I overheard Vivien in conversation, presumably with Adalina. I was outside, clearing the rain-clogged gutters of leaves, head bent against the downpour, when from an open window I detected her voice. ‘You mean you really can’t see it?’ I fought to catch Adalina’s response over the spit of drops bouncing off the veranda roof, but what followed from Vivien filled the blanks. ‘God, woman, it’s unmistakeable. It’s like looking at a photograph. She’s too like her; I can’t bear it…’
Too like whom? Who was Vivien talking about?
I had to get Vivien on side. For as long as I was here, secluded in these hills, I was safe. She had succeeded for years in hiding from the world. Why couldn’t I do the same? I’m used to hiding, after all. Those years I spent at home caring for my broken family – maybe they were as much for me as for them. I needed to be closeted away. I needed to be forgotten.
Adalina appears at the study door.
‘It was for you,’ she says.
‘What was?’
‘The telephone.’
I’m startled. I haven’t given this number to anyone, not even Bill.
‘Who was it?’
‘They did not say. They only asked for Lucy. I told them to leave a message.’ She frowns. ‘And they hung up.’ Adalina is clearly annoyed, though at the distraction to her busy day or by her suspicion that I’m spreading Vivien Lockhart’s personal contact details all over Europe it’s hard to know. ‘They sounded… impatient.’
Fear scatters through me, and I ask: ‘Was it a man or a woman?’
‘A woman.’
The slice of hope that it might have been him (never mind the fact he has no clue that I’m in Italy and, even if he did, wouldn’t be able to track me down: love makes us believe in the impossible) is pinched out. ‘A woman?’ I repeat.
‘Please tell your friends not to call the house in future.’
‘It can’t have been a friend. Nobody knows this number.’
Adalina doesn’t buy it. Just tell them, her expression says, before she leaves.
I listen to my breath for a moment, fast and short.
I’ve been found.
*
I return to the library that evening, only this time I’m not chasing Vivien’s story. I’m chasing my own – and I have to reach it before someone else does.
I have to make contact with him. Now the time is here, now it’s happening, I feel strangely calm. All the things I’ve rehearsed to say go out of the window.
I take a breath and begin. Compose message.
So, here I am. It’s been a while. I never thought it would be so long, and longer still when every moment hurts. I’m sorry. That’s the first thing to say. I’m sorry for what happened.
The cursor blinks. I delete what I’ve written and start again.
I have a question, and it’s this. Am I bad? Am I evil? Tell me, because I don’t know. My crime is that I fell in love with a man who told me he was single. You told me you were single. I fell in love with your laugh and your hands and the gentle frown you wear when you are concentrating. I fell in love with adventure, with excitement. I fell in love with the girl you promised me I was: the girl I’d always wanted to be.
My fingers hover over the keys. When words aren’t enough, what then?
I remember the day we met. He interviewed me for the role, and all I could think of right the way through was a line from the job description: The position of PA requires you to work intimately with the director. Here he was. Intimately.
He’d been cool, calm, everything I wasn’t. Steel-grey eyes, burning in some lights, thawed in others; a sharp, square jaw; messy gold hair. I kept seeing those eyes. I see them now. Where absence forces other details to fail, that one never does. I’ve looked into them too many times. They’ve looked into me.
I was shocked by the revelation he was married, ready to walk. Don’t, he said. They were estranged. There were children but he barely saw them; his wife was with someone new, a man they called Daddy. It broke his heart. I loved him more.
Had I really been that stereotype?
