The Ex Factor (23 page)

I stare blankly at him as my brain tries and fails to make sense of what he’s just said. ‘Frankie?’

He nods. His face is a picture of sadness, mortification and, if I’m not mistaken, fear.

‘My sister, Frankie?’

‘The very same.’

‘But . . .’ I cast around for the right words. ‘But you
hate
Frankie.’

‘No,’ Adam says simply. ‘I love her.’

My shock begins to give way to deep humiliation. And also jaw-clenching indignation. ‘Since when?’

‘Actually, since the first time you went out with Mitchell. Do you remember that night?’

Do I remember? If only I could forget. But Adam had nothing to do with that night . . .

Oh. Bananarama.

‘You came over that night to check on Rama,’ I say flatly.

‘That’s right. And after you went out, Frankie and I got to talking – she’d just been dumped by that Dominic guy.’ There’s a distinctly protective note in Adam’s tone. ‘We had a few drinks and . . .’

I scramble to my feet. ‘You had better not be telling me you slept with my little sister,’ I hiss, waggling my finger in his face.

‘Of course not! I’m a gentleman,’ he says peevishly. ‘But I saw another side of Frankie that night. And she must have seen another side of me, because when I asked her to dinner, she said yes. We’ve been seeing each other ever since. And I’ve fallen in love with her, Kitty.’

My embarrassment has now been fully usurped by anger. I cannot believe this. ‘Wait. Let me see if I’ve got this right,’ I say, fighting to keep my voice level. ‘You’ve been “seeing” my little sister – who is thirteen years younger than you, I might add – for
three months
and neither of you thought to mention it? Were you ever going to tell me?’

My heart thuds painfully in my chest and tears sting my eyes. Of all the secrets and lies I’ve tripped over in the last few weeks, this is by far – 
by far – 
the worst. The two people I love most in the world, sneaking around behind my back. Laughing at me. How could they do this?

‘We thought you had enough on your plate with the move and the media intrusion and . . .’ Adam trails off.

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I can’t begin to explain to him how this feels. The stunning, gobsmacking treachery of it. I am literally speechless.

So I take my mug of Milo and run to my room, like a teenager whose crush has passed a note to some other girl. Because isn’t that just what’s happened?

A few minutes later, I hear the soft click of the front door closing as Adam leaves. Then the house is empty and quiet. I am alone, in every possible sense of the world.

Played for a fool by the man I love. Chastened by the woman who once loved him. Deceived by my sister
and
my best friend. Hell, even my boss had fun keeping me in the dark. Is there anyone in my life who hasn’t had a go at swindling me? I am the world’s biggest fool.

There’s a pity party happening in my bedroom, and I’m the guest of honour.

I lie spread-eagle on my bed, listening to the tick of my bedside clock. Were anyone to walk in right now, they might think me relaxed, at peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. I may be physically still, but inside I feel half-crazed. My stomach churns and my mind whirls as I think frenziedly back over the past few months, searching for a clue, some tiny hint that should have told me all was not as it seemed between Frankie and Adam.

There was the morning after my first date with Mitchell – which, as it turns out, was also the night Adam began his seduction of my little sister – when Frankie came bounding into my bedroom to deliver the newspaper before dawn. I had asked her what she was doing up at such an unholy hour. Had she been with Adam all night? Sure, he
says
he was a perfect gentleman that evening, but how can I believe anything he tells me now?

Then the night some lunatic threw a brick through the window, Adam had been here within minutes after Frankie called him. I assumed she’d summoned him for my benefit, but he must have been here to comfort
her.

The day we fought over that ridiculous clock, Frankie called a friend to vent her spleen about her unreasonable older sister. Was Adam that friend? In fact, all the times my sister had casually mentioned she’d seen or spoken to Adam, when I’d taken for granted that either Rama or I was their topic of discussion, they were instead falling in love with each other.

Or were they? Adam says he loves Frankie, but does she feel the same way? Frankie has never been in love with anyone, and she’s always dished out as much rancor towards Adam as she’s copped from him. Plus, she’s known him since she was fifteen. I just can’t get my head around the seismic shift that must have happened for Frankie to even tolerate being in the same room as Adam, much less find him attractive.

Oh god. Does she think he’s
sexy
now? Does she want to tear his clothes off whenever they’re together?
My Adam?
Did she move him into the house while I was away? My return must have thrown quite a spanner in the works for the young lovebirds. Suddenly, Frankie’s recent late nights and weekends at work make a lot more sense.

I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Up is down, right is left. Everything I thought I knew is wrong, wrong,
wrong.

Right now, there’s not a single person in the world I can trust. I’ve been so blind, running around like a crazy person trying to make everything all right for everyone else, and it’s been thrown back in my face every damn time. What do I have to show for any of it? A dented car and a heart that’s a total write-off. As Martha might say, that ain’t much.

I sit up on my bed with a start. I don’t deserve this. I might have my flaws and hang-ups, but I am a good person. I don’t deserve to be lied to and tiptoed around and taken advantage of. I’m sick of being the one left trying to hold it all together while everyone else does exactly what they want.

It’s about time I got mine.

I jump up off my bed and open my wardrobe. The rucksack I carried on my flight back from LA still sits on the floor where I shoved it, unpacked, the day I got home. I upend it, spilling its contents across the floor. I have nothing left to lose, so I might as well do what everyone has assumed I’ve been doing from the word go – make some money.

Amid the tangled headphones, travel documents and dozens of tear-soaked tissues, I find what I’m looking for.

Molly Reid’s business card.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for it?’ comes Molly’s husky voice over Skype from Los Angeles.

‘No, but it’s too late now. Hit me.’

She laughs. ‘Okay, I’m pressing send . . . now.’ I hear a
whoosh
from Molly’s computer as the email races out into the ether. ‘You’ll have it in a couple of minutes. Want me to stay on the line?’

‘What’s the point? It’s not like you’re going to change it if I’m not happy, right?’

‘Right,’ she says, laughing again. ‘Okay then, Kitty. Enjoy the read. Remember this will also go out to other media in the next few minutes, so be prepared for a lot of calls. Like, a
lot
of calls.’

I manage a wry smile. ‘Don’t worry, Molly. I’m kind of getting the hang of this now.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ Molly replies. ‘You know, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you came to me. This is the least you deserve. Don’t forget that.’

Molly hangs up and I refresh my email browser, tapping my fingernails impatiently on the table as I wait for her email to arrive.

Waiting is something I’ve done a lot of this past week. It took three days to hammer out a deal with Molly’s bosses at
InTouch
, and while I waited for them to agree to the dollar figure I’d nominated, I kept expecting to wake up and decide not to sell my story after all. But it never happened. The anger that drove me to call Molly in the first place kept bubbling away below the surface, simmering just violently enough to convince me that if I wasn’t necessarily doing the right thing, then I was at least doing the justified thing.

Then Molly – who, incidentally, hadn’t sounded the slightest bit surprised to hear from me – called to say the proverbial cheque was in the post, and there was no time for introspection after that. I did a marathon Skype interview with her the same day, pouring out my whole sorry tale from the moment I first saw Mitchell on the set of
Solitaire
to the instant Vida Torres gleefully burst my deluded little bubble during the Cleopatra’s Serum shoot.

That melancholy trip down memory lane was followed by a photo shoot at my house with a photographer-to-the-stars called Candi or Brandi, or something, who was flown to Sydney from LA by the magazine. Her job, she said, was to make me look sad and solemn, as though I couldn’t have managed it by myself.

And now the deed is done, and there’s nothing left for me to do but wait for the issue to come out while repeatedly logging into my internet banking to stare at the screen that says I have half a million dollars in my account.

Half a million bucks.
It’s more money than I ever dreamed I’d have to my name. Mitchell earns that much in less than a day. Is my love, my trust, really worth so little? I guess, to him, it is.

I refresh my email inbox again and there it is: a message from Molly Reid, with a little paperclip symbol that indicates an attachment. The actual magazine comes out in the US tomorrow, but it will take a few days for an air-freighted copy to reach me, so Molly agreed to put me out of my misery by emailing me a PDF version of the article. I take a deep breath and open the message, then double click on the attached file.

Oh. My. God.

It’s not an article at all. Well, it is – but it’s not
just
an article. The first page of the PDF is the cover of
InTouch.
And larger than life in the middle of the cover is me.

My poor excuse for a love life is a supermarket rag cover story. My humiliation is officially complete.

The breathless tone continues as I scroll through six pages devoted to ‘the biggest scandal to rock Hollywood in years’. It’s all here. How Mitchell tracked me down after our fraught first meeting; our first kiss, in full view of the paparazzi and obviously stage-managed for maximum exposure; his super-fast promises of commitment and entreaties for the same from me; the extravagant gifts; the ever-present spectre of Vida Torres in our relationship; my long, lonely weeks in California; our split and my return to Sydney. And then the pièce de résistance: our near-reconciliation and Vida’s nuclear bombshell.

I finish reading and quietly close my laptop. Nothing in Molly’s story is untrue, but seeing it all there, chronicled in black and white, makes it feel totally surreal. Celebrities manufacturing relationships to further their careers! People who get paid to pretend being even more duplicitous when the cameras stop rolling! Superstars with more money and power than some countries using gullible civilians as pawns to settle petty rivalries! The seedy Tinseltown publicity machine exposed for what it really is! Not even a Hollywood screenwriter could make this stuff up.

What Molly hasn’t done is seek comment from Mitchell, Vida, or even Mitchell’s publicist, Debi. The story makes him out to be very much the bad guy, but doesn’t give him the right of reply. No doubt that’s because they’ll devote six pages in next week’s issue to Mitchell’s side of the story. And Vida’s the week after that. Not that Mitchell could say anything that would make any of it okay. What he did is unforgiveable, at least in my mind.

And yet I can’t help wondering what Mitchell will make of it, how he’ll feel when he reads the article. I know he will – that snake Debi is probably already in the midst of an epic meltdown over it. Somehow I don’t think her ‘all publicity is good publicity’ philosophy extends quite this far. Will Mitchell be angry? Sad? He put so much
effort
into deceiving me; this was truly a long con. Will he feel any remorse about his scam, or will he only feel sorry that I’ve blown his cover?

As if on cue, the home phone starts to ring. I open my laptop and the Skype ringtone sounds, followed by a dozen pinging email alerts. And so it begins.

Then my mobile rings, and Mitchell’s name flashes up on the screen. Before I can even think about it, I hit ‘Answer’.

‘Yes?’

‘Why, Kitty?’ I have to strain to hear him over the jangle of ringtones in the background, but Mitchell’s voice sounds plaintive, almost strangled. ‘Why would you do this?’

I realise he’s holding back tears and my heart leaps into my throat.
Not this.
Outrage I was prepared for. Threats of litigation and ruination I expected. But not this. Not hurt, confusion, unvarnished pain.

‘I might ask you the same question,’ I say, fighting to keep the steel in my voice.

‘It’s not true, Kitty. I swear to you, it’s not true.’

‘What’s not true? The part where you sold your soul to a movie studio? Or the bit where you and Debi decided to ruin my life?’

‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ He sounds desolate. ‘I can explain everything.
Why
did you talk to the press? You should have come to me.’

And there it is. The insistence that this is all
my
doing; that I’m in a situation entirely of my own making. The arrogant presumption that I should have given the big important celebrity another opportunity to lie to me.

‘Listen,’ Mitchell goes on. ‘If we could just —’

‘No, Mitchell.
You
listen! You’ve lied to me from the moment we met and I don’t want to hear any more lies. I can’t take it.’

‘I’ve never lied to you. Not once!’

‘Really? You told me you don’t drink, but you claimed to be drunk in that video when you said . . .’ my voice falters. He knows what he said in the clip. ‘You must have been sober. You lied.’

‘I
was
drunk,’ he almost shouts. ‘And I don’t drink.’

‘Well, that clears things right up,’ I say sarcastically.

‘I don’t drink because I’m a terrible lightweight. Whenever I touch alcohol I get into embarrassing scrapes like that one, so usually I stay away from it. That night was different.’ Mitchell sighs hopelessly. ‘Haven’t you ever had your heart broken, Kitty?’

Did he really just ask me that? Is he
serious
?

My voice wavers as tears well in my eyes. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done to me, Mitchell, to my life. I don’t know why you chose me, but I wish you hadn’t. I wish I’d never met you.’

‘Kitty, please. You don’t mean that.’

‘I do. And I mean this, too: don’t ever contact me again. Forget my name. Forget my face. Forget all of it.’

And I hang up, knowing that I’ll never be able to forget any of it.