Crystal Balls (42 page)

“I’ll send you a copy by post, Mr Hand.” He puts it in his empty briefcase. “Thank you.” Simon looks at his watch and points to the open room. “Tina,
you’ve got thirty minutes to prepare with Nick. You owe him one!”

He stands, shaking Nick’s hand, smiling for the first time since they met but showing me no sign of emotion whatsoever. Then he leaves.

“Okay, Tina, here’s the deal.”

Nick paces around the room pensively, his long legs creating easy access to the four corners. He suddenly changes direction and strides back up to the table to lean across it, facing me head
on.

“I’m going to kill you,” he tells me solemnly.

Help!

“Kill me?”

“Kill you.” He pulls his face back from mine, giving me much-needed space. “I don’t want to but you’ve left me with little choice.”

I can’t move a muscle. He’s turned into some kind of deranged psycho. I force myself to speak, to bargain with him.

“You can’t kill me,” I implore. “Oh God, Nick, I didn’t mean to make you this cross – I’m sorry!”

Nick’s face creases with stifled humour, then his mouth opens wide, letting out a belt of laughter. He smirks at me with his elongated face, in keeping with his lengthy build.

“Classic!” he teases. “Kill you off as Balmy, you idiot!”

My heart rate slows dramatically and I immediately feel the blood-supply flowing around my body once again with understated relief. Once upon a time I would have been with it enough to have
realised the joke for what it was, but these days finding clarity in my mind is like searching for a diamond in a mud bath. I used to be intelligent.

“God, Nick, I thought I was a goner for a moment.” The corners of my mouth turn up and the stupidity of my reaction sets in and I too reciprocate but with embarrassed laughter.

Nick comes to sit next to me and I relax on seeing his easy posture. “Seriously though, Tina, I will have to have you written out. Obviously we’ll still need you for a day or two to
film those scenes but then you’re free to go.” He leans back against the blue fabric. “I think you’re making a mistake though.”

I sit upright, feeling strong and assertive and sure. “You know what, Nick,” I tell him unequivocally. “I’m not. This feels totally right for me and I’ve a business
empire to build up. That’s where I belong and it’s taken this experience to make me realise it.”

“This thing is going to be big, Tina.” He cocks his head to one side. “But it will be even bigger once you’ve fulfilled your side of the deal. And that also involves a
television interview which I’ve taken the liberty of setting up for an hour’s time.”

Dress to impress, indeed.

Crammed into my mum’s lounge we sit like sardines on the sofas with barely enough room to move. My lips struggle to reach the glass of wine as my elbows are pinned down
by the person on each side, which is possibly a good thing actually, given I have pledged to drink less these days. Never turn to alcohol when you’re down – it’s the worst thing
you can do.
Plus it makes you fat!

Everyone has turned up to watch it and I’m actually quite excited to see the interview. The show was recorded yesterday afternoon but is being aired this evening and it really is the
strangest thing to almost be turned into an overnight celebrity as a result of an AWOL disappearance.

Simon, extremely cleverly, devised a plan where my missing-person status could be turned into something positive and he put it to Nick that his advertising budget need not be touched. Why pay
for air time when I was all they needed? I could save them a fortune. Nick jumped at the chance to take advantage of my unfortunate circumstances to get low-cost publicity and keep his production
pot ready for the show’s potential expansion. A well-laid plan. Contrary to his hollow words, there is no way he’s sad to see me go. Not after he made comments like “I
couldn’t have planned this better myself” and “You’ve been all over the press, Tina – what better exposure can a show get!”

Similarly, I’m not sad to go and it’s not because of the saga with Raymond, which seems so trivial now on a scale of things although at the time I don’t ever recall Kate being
so removed from her usual self. Any wonder she forgot to tell me I was missing. It’s a whole host of reasons and, as for fourteen-hour days, one would surely have to ask themselves
“
Why?”
Why the instability? Why the uncertainty of not knowing when your next cheque was coming in? Why drive six hours to a casting just to turn up and know full well you just
weren’t quite what they were looking for? You could see it in their eyes, sense their visible hesitation.

“
Mum,” Sam screeches, “it’s starting!” She rubs my hand lovingly. Her other hand is firmly wrapped around Tim’s. A match made in heaven.

Simon managed to bag the only available armchair and is sitting back, looking rather chilled and extremely comfortable in his sloppy jeans and T-shirt, a look I’d almost go so far as to
say that I’ve missed. Every now and then we exchange knowing glances but nothing that anyone else would pick up on, and I know he is secretly gloating. I can tell. And why wouldn’t he?
He deserves it and I have to hand it to him – it took some balls to steer away from his usual text-book approach and put a more streetwise proposition to Nick. I’m still coming to terms
with how changeable he was as my learned lawyer. He was cold, aggressive, arrogant and pompous, all the things I usually love in a guy for some reason, but I know it was all an act. Thank God. And
he did it for me. Again.

Major Heath-Jones is too wrapped up in his own self-importance to even notice his own wife, let alone the surreptitious glances between his son and the weird youngest daughter from the Harding
family.

Mum and Dad are busying themselves, hosting perfectly, and I note how happy they look, how content. Watching them gives me the most amazing feeling of satisfaction that right now I would be
willing to trade my own happiness for all eternity just to see their contentment prevail. My self-absorbed days are over and right now I am fuelled with everyone else’s joy, a welcome
epidemic.

The titles stop rolling, the music fades and the host skips into view. He is greeted by a rhapsodic applause from the live audience as he takes centre stage in front of the auto-cue.

“Welcome to
The Today Show.”
He welcomes the audience with a responsive gesture and an open invitation to be deafened with planned popularity. The audience cheer again and
again just as rehearsed. “You may recall hearing of the missing girl, Christina Harding. Well, she joins us today to give us her side of the story.” The camera closes in on him.
“Don’t miss it.” More staged cheers.

I squirm uncomfortably. It’s been a long time since I’ve see myself on TV and I’m a little apprehensive, although watching myself as bland, boring Balmy will be far worse, I
imagine, but thankfully short-lived.

The camera pulls back to a wide shot revealing every inch of me and then closes in focusing on my upper half.
I don’t look too bad actually.

Simon is glued to the television and this time doesn’t return my furtive glance.

“Ladies and gentlemen, just to refresh your memory, here is the first interview after Christina handed herself in.”

Cheeky sod, I’m not a bloody convict.
They show a clip of the press conference and my mum dabs her eyes with a tissue.
Ever the drama queen.
Dad squeezes her hand fondly and
they both glance across at me, mesmerised and consumed with love. My stomach flips.

The show’s host, John Kennedy, joins me on the sofa, shaking my hand and welcoming me to the show. As the camera freezes on me the entire living room breaks into a frenzied acclamation.
Oh stop!

“So, Christina, to cut to the chase,” he casts a grave look directly at the camera, “you told everyone you were going on holiday with a friend, but you didn’t.” He
pauses. “Your friend then rang you at work looking for you . . . but of course you weren’t there . . . and that’s when it came out that you were missing.” He shakes his head
at the audience, inviting a hum of antagonism. “You didn’t answer your phone or even try to contact home and nobody knew where you were.”

I simply nod, although inside I’m squirming.

“I imagine they thought you were dead?”

A loud tut echoes from the audience.

Get over it.

“So talk us through your version of what actually happened and explain to us where you where?”

“Well, John, I was working on a TV production called
Stiffs.
”
There you go Nick – the very first sentence.
I turn to the audience. “I told my family and my
work colleagues that I was going on holiday so that I could surprise them when the show was aired.” I shrug with fabricated humour, only this time I’m not convincing myself that I am
telling the truth. “They knew how long I’d wanted to be an actress so I chose to keep the filming a secret from them until the very last moment, only . . .” I chuckle affably,
“only it didn’t quite work out that way.” I pose sheepishly, looking deliberately pitiful. “Hence the small lie I concocted to cover my disappearance. It was all very
innocent and supposed to be a huge surprise . . . especially for my mother of all people.”

Mum mouths to me ‘
I love you’
and I swear my heart is near bursting point.

The black dress is so flattering. It is a little dark for the spring season but it never fails to impress and the loss of a few pounds allows it to sit perfectly around my hips and not crease up
like it usually does. My face is caked in make-up but beneath the heavy lights it looks faded and natural. I grin with wonderment at how a man like Simon can have known me so well that he ordered
me to dress with glamour, knowing this would have been top of my agenda, certainly for a television appearance. We had only met on a handful of occasions and on each one of those I had behaved like
a total freak.

“Why didn’t you tell them the truth about what you were doing?”

I decide to answer him honestly. “Because I’d already tried my hand at acting and, while I had some successes, it wasn’t enough to carve a career out of it.” I clear my
throat. “Plus I didn’t really know why I was doing it, especially with a business to run, so all things considered it wouldn’t have gone down well with anyone.”
Apart
from my mum.
“I got the part by sheer default and, to be honest, it never ever felt right seeing it through so I lied about it.” I don’t mention Kate who warned me to steer
clear of her.

John raises his eyebrows towards the live crowd who are
oohing
and
aahing
their way through the show. I tell all how it was when I auditioned for the role, right through to being
found out, planting the odd white lie here and there to glamorize it, but mostly I plug the show at every given opportunity. It was so tempting to talk about Harding Homes but that wasn’t the
deal and I’m a woman of my word. And I want out.

The crowd gasp with excitement as I tell of my trip to the funeral parlour and I leak authorised snippets of the storyline to wet their appetite.

“What’s next for you then, Christina?” John asks.

“Watch the show and see for yourself. I can say no more than that.” I smile at him and he stands up, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek.

“Thank you for telling us your story, Christina.”

He takes centre stage, once again reading from the auto-cue.

“That’s it from
The Today Show,
ladies and gentlemen.” The camera zooms in. “Just remember that honesty really is the best policy.”

The camera takes one last shot of me sitting there serenely without a care in the world.
If only they knew.

I activate the alarm and yank the door closed as I leave.

Today was a long, lonely day without Chantelle and it felt like I had lost my right arm. I miss her, I need her, and all the more to keep me grounded after last night’s show was aired. I
have barely been able to walk down the street without being mobbed. Okay, slight exaggeration, but I have lost count of how many autographs I’ve signed today and the most irritating part of
it all is that I’m desperate to sell houses and get on with business as usual. But everyone else wants to focus on the celebrity gossip and the apparent glamour of this rather peculiar
industry. Momentarily I imagine how life would look with a permanent role in a long-running, successful series or more importantly, in my temporary vision, how much money I would earn. And then I
laugh. I don’t care.

Glad to see the long day drawing to a close, I lock the door, thrusting against it with my hip to check it’s firmly secured. Stepping back I feel my heel penetrate something soft and a
loud yelp belts down my right ear.

I swing around. “I’m so sorry!” I apologise to the owner of the foot and then look up at him. “Brian!”

He hops around like a fool, rubbing the front of his expensive suede shoe. “Why do women never wear flat shoes?”

“Some do.”

“Like who?”

I stop dead, pensively. “Traffic Wardens!”

Brian pulls me towards him, planting his lips on mine. How I’ve missed them! Missed him. And by the looks of things he’s missed me.

“Uniforms – now we’re talking,” he replies indecently. He behaves like we have never been apart. His blue eyes are alight and incandescent as he checks me out sinfully.
“You were great last night by the way.” He surveys me, making no attempt to hide his lustful scrutiny.

You’re not so bad yourself, Mr Steen.
I look towards the sky, praying silently.
Thank you, God! Oh, by the way, there’s just one other thing I need some help with . .
.

The small row of town houses are immaculately groomed and the street is free from debris. A neighbour waves across at me, continuing to scrub the small doorstep on her hands
and knees. The scent of bleach stings the warm air, cleaning it abrasively.

I press down on the metal latch of the rusty gate, pushing it back as it creaks with aged fatigue. The narrow concrete path is lined with an array of potted plants bursting with colour and
oozing a summer scent slightly premature for this time of year, and the small square of grass is immaculately mown with newly turned borders.