Homecoming (47 page)

I came here to see her and it’s like there’s a screen between us. She knows it and I know it but we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about anything. You’d think she’d want to know how I am, and how awful it all was, but she hasn’t asked a single thing. Is that normal?

In her mind, she could hear more of Eleanor’s advice and that low voice gently saying that she couldn’t change other people’s behaviour. She could only change her own, could only find her own truth.

Megan must have fallen asleep on the bed.

‘Darling, wake up! We’re going out soon. Vincente is home and I can’t wait for you two to meet!’

Marguerite was made up and wearing an ankle-length silvery dress with spaghetti straps. A heavy silver and pearl necklace was coiled around her neck. She’d obviously reapplied the Shalimar with a heavy hand as its scent was very strong.

‘You look great, Mum,’ said Megan sleepily. Her mother had turned the lights on in Megan’s bedroom and in the warm evening glow, with the familiar perfume filling her senses, it was like being a child again, waiting for her mother to go out. She and Pippa loved watching Marguerite put on her face: the careful anointing of her skin with cosmetics and how time seemed to stand still as Marguerite admired herself critically, checking, dusting on face powder, putting on her lips.

‘It takes more work these days,’ Marguerite said now, and for the first time since Megan had arrived, she hadn’t spoken in her bright shiny voice. She sounded tired, serious even.

‘You still look great,’ Megan said, surprising herself with the need to cheer her mother up.

Marguerite’s real laugh rang out. The low, throaty one and not the light, girlish one she used when she was with men. ‘The old girl’s still got it,’ she said. ‘But believe me, it takes longer to get the magic going. Now, sweetie, Vincente wants to go out for dinner. We’re going in ten minutes. Do you want one of my dresses or not?’

Vincente’s photographs didn’t do him justice. He was shorter in real life, and rounder, but no photo could catch the warmth of his smile or the genuine welcome in his tiny black eyes.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ he said, holding her hands in welcome as he kissed her on both cheeks. Aramis fought valiantly to overpower her mother’s Shalimar. ‘It is an honour to meet you at last. You look different in real life.’

‘It’s a disguise,’ Megan said, grinning at him.

Vincente’s black eyes twinkled back. ‘A clever idea,’ he said. ‘Everyone deserves privacy. You will find it here. Many famous people come to Ibiza and we do not like people to take photographs of them. This is an island for being private. You are with me and your mother, you will be safe.’

The club wasn’t the sort of throbbing Ibizan hotspot she’d been to when she’d been here before. Her mother’s club was a large restaurant-cum-bar called Victor’s, and was the hangout of all sorts of expatriates who liked somewhere they could get their own brand of vodka and talk to people who remembered Berlin/London/Washington in the old days.

‘I haven’t a clue why, but everyone calls it the club,’ Marguerite said as she took Megan on a whistle-stop tour of the place. ‘They like the sound of it, I suppose. Whatever makes them happy, isn’t that the motto?’

Megan hadn’t expected to enjoy the night, but she did. She wasn’t the prodigal daughter on show: she was Marguerite’s little girl, and if there was an added factor in her being an actress who’d recently featured in all the gossip columns, then nobody seemed too bothered. Marguerite and Vincente’s crowd were an international gang who didn’t read gossip columns. Their stars were the people in their lives or the people back home. Why had Bobo and Sammy sold their house? Was it true that the widow of a Swiss millionaire was having tax problems?

Who had bought the restaurant beside the club?

Megan wasn’t the youngest person there. There were daughters, sons, grandkids, all eating and drinking, chatting or watching sport on the huge television in the bar area. There was no blasting techno beat: Julio and Enrique Iglesias CDs were on a loop all night, playing just loud enough to be heard over the sound of forks clattering and people eating tapas. Nobody wanted Megan’s life story or details about Rob, even if she spotted recognition in some of their eyes.

‘I did not know Marguerite had such a beautiful daughter,’ said one older man, with the profile and the manners of a Spanish duke. He kissed her hand in greeting instead of shaking it.

Megan loved it. She’d forgotten how nice it was to be flirted with, even if he was just being polite.

‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she replied.

‘Tonight I mean it,’ he said, without relinquishing her hand.

‘Antonio, what would Erica say if she saw you holding on to this young lady so tightly?’ Vincente joked.

‘But she will not see!’ said Antonio triumphantly. ‘She is sitting down over there, look. I am not in her vision.’ He beamed.

After so much enforced staying in, Megan found the evening wonderfully relaxing.

‘Your mother is wonderful,’ Vincente informed her when Antonio had gone.

Megan knew he meant it. She’d been watching him and saw how often his eyes followed her mother, whether she was giggling up at the bar with one of her girlfriends, or chattering with one of their husbands. ‘She brings light into the world.’

‘I know. She seems very happy with you,’ Megan said. She’d never spoken to one of her mother’s men before with such frankness. Then, she wondered if she’d ever spoken to anyone with such frankness. It was hanging around with Connie and Eleanor. They’d created a filter in her head so that all words sounded fake unless they were coming straight from the heart.

‘I wish I was good at saying the sort of things people want to hear,’ Connie had said to her once. ‘You know, artless, girlish talk. I just can’t do it. What I think comes out instead and people don’t really want to hear what you think.’

They might not want to hear it, Megan thought in a wave of self-realisation, but it’s fantastic to be able to say it. Speaking the truth felt fantastic. She tried it again.

‘Are you going to get married?’

Vincente didn’t have a heart attack at this question. He considered it.

‘I have thought of asking her, but you know your mother. She is not interested in being tied down. In that, she is unusual, the most unusual woman I know. She is a free spirit, you cannot tie her down.’

Someone interrupted them at that moment, and the chance to reply was gone but Megan kept thinking about it. Her mother as a free spirit. Certainly that was how she liked to be seen by everyone and by the men she’d lived with over the years.

Keep it light, never let them know how you feel,’
she’d told Megan and Pippa.

But that didn’t always work out. Sometimes you had to let people know how you felt.

Keeping it light, concealing your true feelings, meant nobody knew you. You were a mystery, and being a mystery was all well and good, but it was a lonely way to live.

As they drove home to the Villa Aphrodite, Megan sat in the back of the car and listened to her mother chattering away to Vincente, discussing the evening and their friends. It was happy gossip from a couple who were comfortable with each other. So different from all the other men Megan could remember. Then, there had been so much effort on her mother’s part. Megan could remember no sense of ease. It was all hard work.

The car stopped outside the villa as the wooden gates opened slowly.

‘Tonight was fun, darling, wasn’t it?’ Marguerite said, turning back in her seat to smile at her daughter. The same hopeful look on her face, Megan realised, as she’d had all those years ago when she talked to Gunther.

Her mother had desperately wanted Gunther to marry her. She’d craved it. Not the ring so much as the security. There was no fun being the woman who raced around the world with her two little girls. She’d been prepared to put up with anything for the security and it had never come.

Even now, she pretended to be happy and carefree because that’s what she thought Vincente wanted.

Never let them know how you feel.

Marguerite had been trying to find peace all along, she just hadn’t known how to go about it. Just because her mother had lived her life that way, didn’t mean Megan had to copy her.

Her mother went upstairs to change her high heels and Megan went out on to the verandah where Vincente stood smoking a cigar.

‘Vincente,’ she said urgently, ‘do you want to get married to my mother?’

Of course,’ he said.

‘Ask her to marry you, then. She would love it.’

‘But she says we are happy like this, she is a free agent –’

‘Vincente, trust me on this: what a woman says and what she means are sometimes different things. If you ask her, I guarantee that she will say yes.’

‘You think?’

‘Yes,’ Megan said, ‘I think.’

‘What makes you tell me this?’ Vincente asked curiously.

‘Mum won’t tell you how she truly feels because she’s afraid of rejection,’ Megan said. ‘She doesn’t say what she thinks. Not that she lies,’ she added, ‘it’s not that at all. It’s just that she thinks it’s easier not to say what you really think instead of telling the truth.’

‘And you?’

‘I do the same. I’m a chameleon, I can change to fit the mood. But not any more,’ Megan added. ‘Nowadays, I tell the truth.’

She went upstairs to bed, thinking of what she’d left unsaid. That she was going to live the truth from now on too. Never again was she going to fall for a man like Rob Hartnell. Never again would she be that silly, naïve girl who believed in fairytale endings with the handsome, protective prince. She’d be her own prince, not wait for someone to rescue her. Megan would rescue herself.

Carole Baird was staring at the wall in her central London office, eyes on the photos of her famous clients, mind elsewhere. There were so many client photos, the wall itself was barely visible. She knew of one Los Angeles agent who kept photos on his desk. His assistants were charged with changing the photo library depending on which client was coming into the office.

She was so lost in contemplation that she barely noticed her private phone was ringing. When she didn’t answer her office line, it went back to her assistant after four rings. But this wasn’t the office line: it was the private line, for which very few clients knew the number.

She snatched it up. ‘Hello,’ she said briskly.

‘Carole, it’s Megan.’

Carole smothered a sigh. Megan made her feel simultaneously guilty and annoyed. Guilty because she wondered if she and Zara should have put Megan up for the role in
Warrior Queen
in the first place; annoyance, because Megan’s fall from grace had made their agency look unprofessional. No matter what the talent did, the agency were supposed to be on top of it. By not having a clue that Megan Bouchier was having a fling with Rob Hartnell, they’d looked like idiots.

‘How are you, Megan?’

‘Great,’ was the entirely unexpected reply.

Carole sat up a little straighter in her black leather Arne Jacobson chair.

‘I’ve made a decision. I’m going to come out of hiding and tell the truth.’

‘The truth?’ Carole thought the truth was over-rated.

‘Not the truth as in stand on a pillar and proclaim what happened, but I’m going back to work. Theatre, if you can get it for me. I think I’ll stay away from film for a while. And hiding is a mistake. This will never go away, I have to face it. I’m not doing a spill-the-beans interview. I’ll deal with questions whenever I’m promoting my next job.’

‘They’ll skewer you,’ Carole said.

‘I know.’ Megan’s voice didn’t falter.

‘Fine by me. It’s a good decision, brave but good.’

‘I was thinking that I’d try theatre in New York. Something off-Broadway, low-key but good training,’ Megan went on. This new life would have to be totally different from the old one if it were to work. She was saying goodbye to the crazy ‘it’ girl life and saying hello to proper training at her craft. She missed acting so much. It was time to get back to it properly.

‘One more thing. I want to talk to one person first.’

‘OK, shoot. Who?’ Carole was taking notes now.

‘Katharine Hartnell.’

Now Carole was surprised. Beyond surprised. ‘You want to talk to Katharine?’

She could understand Megan wanting to talk to Rob. It could be the ‘You scumbag, why did you disappear on me?’ conversation or the ‘I love you, let’s try again, we could be a Hollywood power couple’ conversation. But Carole couldn’t envision any discussion between Megan and Katharine Hartnell that Megan would want to have.

‘Yes, I need to talk to her, if possible, as soon as possible.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Absolutely,’ Megan replied. ‘Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?’

Katharine Hartnell woke to the sound of pigeons squabbling under the eaves near her bedroom window. The noise hadn’t woken her up. Now, she woke before six every morning, pigeons or no pigeons.

Once, she’d bought a daylight alarm clock so that soothing natural light would wake her up on dark winter mornings when she had to get up for an early call.

The simulated daylight was meant to help the body clock adjust to morning better, although she’d never noticed the slightest difference. If only the makers had known about the shocking affect on the system of your husband betraying you, Katharine thought.

The Pain Stimulation Alarm clock might sell billions. And you woke up instantly: no fuzzy confusion about where you were. No, you knew it all straight away. Your husband had humiliated you in front of millions and you were in your superkingsize bed on your own.

At least she didn’t feel so shattered when she woke up any more.

She’d had seven months to recover from Rob’s betrayal. Seven months was too long to lie in bed all day and cry. She’d moved on to the next stage of grief: doing what she wanted, instead of what people expected.

She clicked on her bedside lamp, reached for the television control and lay back on her pillows, searching for something to watch. She’d watched a lot of television since Rob left. Soaps, movies, cooking shows. She loved the cooking shows most of all.