Do Not Disturb (39 page)

Listening to Ben start up his laptop thousands of miles away, Lucas was shocked to find himself blinking away tears. He hadn’t cried since the day he’d left home at fourteen. But with his world crashing around his ears, Ben’s stalwart friendship moved him more than he could put into words.

“Thanks,” he said, reining in his emotions with an enormous effort.

“I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it, mate,” said Ben cheerfully. “That’s what friends are for.”

By four o’clock Honor was back in her office at Palmers, having made a brief statement to the press. Sam Brannagan’s flight got delayed, and she couldn’t keep them waiting indefinitely. At least, not without looking like she’d gone
into hiding, which was the last thing she wanted people to think.

Even so, a large group of reporters was still hanging around outside the gates, hoping for something juicier than the terse two-liner Honor had given them, blaming Lucas for orchestrating a smear campaign against her family and denying the affair, as Devon had asked her to.

Ideally, she’d have liked to have made a joint statement with Tina and presented a united family front. But typically, her sister, having not deigned to return any of Honor’s calls, had gone ahead with her own press conference in the Beverly Hills Hotel, which Honor had watched on TV along with everybody else.

It was quite a performance. Dressed in a demure cream pencil skirt and chocolate-brown jacket, her hair swept up under a silk Louis Vuitton headscarf, Tina had channeled Grace Kelly for all she was worth. Putting on a faltering, little-girlish voice while her nervous fingers fiddled constantly with a boulder-sized Tiffany solitaire on her ring finger (was she engaged?), she had evidently mastered the Princess Diana gaze (half-shy, half-coquettish, guaranteed to reduce grown men to dribbling idiots from twenty paces). Peppering her public apology with charged words like “betrayal” and “entrapment,” she somehow managed to turn the tables and shift her own role from vixen to victim. By the end of it even Honor was starting to feel sorry for her.

Unfortunately, not all of the guests at Palmers felt the same way. Four families had already cut their stays short and checked out, disgruntled to find their relaxing vacation hijacked and themselves thrust into the eye of a breaking media storm. When not fielding calls from the press, Honor spent most of the hours waiting for Sam desperately trying to convince her fall and winter bookings not to cancel.

“C’mon Danny, you can’t do this to me,” she pleaded, squeezing a rubber stress ball with her left hand while trying to type a begging e-mail with her right.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. No choice.” Danny McGee, an old family friend and Republican senator, was explaining that he would no longer be able to spend Christmas at Palmers. “I just can’t be seen to be endorsing drug taking, in any way. This is purely about Tina and that awful tape, you understand. It’s not about you and Devon.”

“There is no me and Devon,” said Honor, grateful that he couldn’t see her blushes over the phone. Unlike Tina, she was a terrible liar. But it hadn’t made any difference.

“What you do in your private life is your own business,” said Danny. “But it’s different for me. I’m a public figure, and Palmers is indelibly linked in the public mind with you and Tina. I’m sorry, angel, really I am, but I can’t swing it.”

When the knock finally came on her office door, Honor jumped, dropping the phone with a clatter as Betty ushered in a harassed-looking Sam Brannagan.

“Why did you make a statement?” were his first, accusatory words. “I told you not to talk to anyone. And certainly not to lie to anyone. Can’t you see that’s gonna make things worse?”

“Worse?” Honor let out a hollow laugh. “How could they be worse? Anyway, relax. People are far more interested in Tina’s bedroom antics than mine. Devon and I agreed to stick to our story and let it all blow over.”

“Yeah, well,” said Sam, “it looks like your story got a little unstuck.”

“What do you mean?” Honor’s eyes narrowed.

“I mean, lover-boy admitted the whole thing.” Sam threw his arms wide in a dramatic I-told-you-so. “I heard him myself on the radio on the way from the airport.”

Honor shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not possible. He wouldn’t do that. Not without warning me.”

“Well, he did,” said Sam bluntly. “Half an hour ago.”

Poor girl. Underneath her whole tough, feminist facade, she was still terribly young. Devon Carter had pulled the oldest
Indian rope trick in the book, and she’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

The guy was a walking cliché. All that drivel he spouted about family values; it was only a matter of time before he got caught with his pants down. Sam only wished that it hadn’t been with Honor. She could have done so much better.

“Like I say, I only heard it,” he said, more gently. “I haven’t seen the footage yet. But apparently he went the whole nine yards, standing outside the family home with his wife, looking suitably contrite. He said some bullshit about how much he regretted what happened, blah, blah, blah.”

“He said he regretted it?”

Bent forward, clutching her stomach as though she’d just been punched, Honor’s body language gave away her anguish more clearly than any words. Sam’s heart went out to her.

“He asked for privacy for him and Karis, so they could rebuild their marriage,” he went on. “Basically, he painted you as Monica to his Bill. The decent man led astray. I’m sorry, Honor. I did warn you.”

Walking across the room to the window, Honor cracked the blinds open a fraction and peered outside. The rhododendrons were in full bloom, heavy with blossoms that looked ready to drop into the gathering carpet of russet-red leaves already littering the lawn. Between the blanket of fall leaves and the copper-yellow light of the early autumn sun, the whole garden glowed as peacefully golden as a sepia photograph. Only the noisy gaggle of cameramen shattered the idyll. Forced by the local cops into a compact group in front of the hedge, their long lenses jutted out viciously like weapons, and their ugly, furry boom mikes protruded into the still afternoon air like giant mechanical bulrushes.

Honor closed the blinds. She felt sick.

She didn’t want to believe what Sam had just told her. That Devon would cynically and deliberately sell her down the river,
saving his own reputation without a shred of concern for hers. But she did believe it. Most bizarrely of all, it didn’t even surprise her, not really. On some deeper level, it all rang horribly true.

“He said he was going to deny it,” she said, turning back around.

Sam shrugged. “He lied.”

They both jumped when Honor’s cell phone started jumping up and down on the desk, buzzing like a demented insect. Picking it up, her eyes widened.

“Oh my God. It’s him.” She held the flashing screen aloft. “Should I answer it?”

“No!” said Sam. But she couldn’t help herself.

“You’ve got a nerve, you lying son of a bitch,” she began furiously. “How dare you call me? How
dare you
? You’re not talking your way out of this one, asshole.”

But when she heard the faltering female voice on the other end of the line, her bravado deserted her.

“I didn’t have your number. But I figured my dad would,” said Lola, “so I’m using his phone.”

“Listen, Lola…” Honor began. She had no idea what to say, but felt that she had to say something. “I…your dad and I…”

“Save it,” said Lola, cutting her dead. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say. I’m only calling because I thought you ought to know what you’ve done. We’re in the hospital.”

“What? What hospital? Why?” She hated herself for caring, but she couldn’t help it. “Is Devon…your dad…is he OK?”

“Dad?” said Lola witheringly. “Oh, he’s fine. He’s just peachy. It’s my mom who’s fucked up. You remember my mom? The woman whose life you just ran over with a bulldozer?”

Honor winced.

“After that sick charade Dad put her through for the TV cameras, she totally flipped out. She locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose.”

“No!” It was more of a gasp than a word, and it was out of Honor’s mouth before she had time to think.

“Yeah,” said Lola. Even through her anger, Honor could hear she was fighting back the tears. “She emptied a fucking bottle of painkillers down her throat, and Dad had to break the door down. So if anything happens to her, it’s on your conscience, you heartless bitch. I hope you’re happy.”

And she hung up, leaving Honor shaking, phone in hand, and looking about as far from happy as it was humanly possible to be.

L
OLA
C
ARTER PULLED
her trench coat more tightly around her and struggled vainly with her crappy drugstore umbrella as the rain started to pour in earnest.

She loved London, even though it had rained pretty much ceaselessly since she’d moved here in January. The same week that her father’s affair had hit the press and her home life had come crumbling down around her ears, she’d discovered she’d been offered a place at the prestigious St. Martin’s School of Fashion. At the time she’d been too distraught to give the idea much thought. It felt like years since she’d filled in the application, along with a slew of others, behind her father’s disapproving back, and her long-cherished dreams of becoming a designer seemed frivolous and stupid when she thought about what her poor mom was going through. But as the weeks rolled by and the tension at home went from bad to utterly unbearable, escaping Boston began to look like a more and more attractive possibility.

It was now March and officially spring, but the monsoon season seemed far from over. If anything it was getting colder. Lola could feel the wet tips of her toes growing numb through her loafers as she splashed along King’s Road, jumping in and out of puddles like a naughty five-year-old.

So much had happened in the last six months, good and bad, that in a way it felt appropriate to be in this strange, sodden city, starting again. Already the events of last summer felt so distant they might as well have been someone else’s life.

Devon’s affair with Honor had changed everything. Initially, one of the worst things was knowing it was Lucas who’d exposed it. Despite the way he’d blown hot and cold with her over the summer, Lola had left East Hampton still nursing a serious soft spot for him. She knew he didn’t love her. But she had thought he at least liked and respected her. The idea that a man she’d willingly shared her dreams and fears and body with could throw a nail bomb of pain into her family like that…it shook her. For one thing, it meant she must be a pretty terrible judge of character. She’d honestly thought Lucas was a good guy at heart, but he’d turned out to be a snake of the lowest order. As for Honor, whom she’d come to look up to almost as an elder sister, she was even worse: a lying, calculating bitch. And her father? Even now Lola couldn’t really get her head around it. Sure, she and her dad had never gotten along, even before this bombshell. But deep down she’d always believed that he, too, was a decent, honorable, upstanding man. That he practiced the strict morality he preached, not just to her and her brother, but to the world at large. Underneath all the teenage tantrums, she’d respected him. But now that respect was shredded.

It was harrowing, having to stand by uselessly while her mom crumbled like a stale piece of wedding cake. Her parents might never have been the Waltons, but they’d depended on and trusted each other for the better part of thirty years. The affair blew her mother’s world apart.

Lola could still remember feeling sick to her stomach in the hospital, watching her dad hold her mom’s hand as they waited for her to come around after the overdose, playing the concerned husband when he was the one who put her there in the first place. It was gross. All he seemed to care about was how things looked.

Even so, both he and Nick, who wasn’t normally known for dramatic displays of emotion, burst into tears of relief when Karis finally came to. But not Lola. She couldn’t. She just felt numb inside.

On the drive home, she wouldn’t even look at her father. For the next month, while Karis recuperated in the hospital, the only time Lola agreed to be anywhere near him was during visiting hours, and that was purely for her mother’s sake. At home the two of them rattled around like strangers, Lola having refused point-blank to contemplate retaking her SATs at St. Mary’s.