The Movie (53 page)

‘Who is it?’

Her voice on the speaker was cautious and muted. ‘R.oxana, baby. Let me in. It’s Sam,’ he said.

There was a long pause. He could hear the crackle of static through the metal grille.

‘It’s Sam Kendrick, sweetheart. Let me in,’ he repeated. Finally he heard a click as she released the lock. Sam pushed the door open and walked into the house, shutting

it carefully behind him.

‘loxana?’ he called.

She was nowhere to be seen. He could hear the constant sound of phones ringing and the babble of different voices, angry voices, as four separate answering machines took messages. Through the door to the home oce Kendrick saw the lights of her fax machines glowing red as sheets of paper inched slowly out of the tops of the machines and crashed onto the floor.

T m in the bathroom,’ loxana called. Her voice was flat and strained, hoarse, as if she’d been crying. Sam raced upstairs to the bathroom, that sanctuary of polished wood and brass and cool marble, a place where he’d made love to her so many times he’d lost count. She was sitting on the floor, wrapped in a voluminous white towelling robe, her legs crossed, her eyes glazed, seemingly staring into space.

‘loxana,’ he murmured, and then she looked up at him, her liquid brown eyes narrowed with such vicious hatred that he took a step backwards.

‘You took everything,’ she said bleakly. ‘Everything. Bob Alton was so pleased to be able to tell me I was fired. Unique won’t represent me. Elite and Ford and Models

One wouldn’t take my call. Jackson Cosmetics cancelled the contract - forty million dollars, Sam. And no other house will use me. I can’t work. My Vogue cover for next month is going to Christy now.’ She took a breath, and continued. ‘Jordan won’t talk to me. She wouldn’t accept a call. Neither would Susie Metcalf or any of those society bitches. I’m dead, Sam. You took everything.’

‘It wasn’t me, sweetheart,’ he said, inwardly recoiling at the poison in her gaze. ‘It was Isabelle. And I told her I wanted a divorce, I wanted to marry you.’

‘It was your w. It was because of you,’ tkoxana hissed, her gaze st/J.l fdled with venom “She did this, she led them to me. But you don’t know what it was like, none of you! None of you!’

Her voice rose to a banshee wail, and she started to weep, hot blinding tears coursing down her cheeks. Sam took a step towards her but loxana lashed out at him, wildly, like a madwoman, her long fingernails slicing through the cloth of his pants.

‘Get the fuck away from me! Don’t touch me!’ she screamed, and then, as he watched in horror, she started to tear at her hair, tipping strands of it from her head, rocking backwards and forwards in a violent fit ofgrieŁ Kendrick lunged forward and caught her wrists, trapping them, forcing her to be still.

‘Roxana! Poxana!’ he said, and was shocked to hear the tears choking his own voice, so distressed was he at the sight of her anguish. ‘Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can trust me. I love you, whatever .you did. I don’t care what you did. I love you, don’t you understand that?’

She froze, stating at him, her eyes suddenly calmer, flatter. It was as if the hatred had vanished, to be replaced by… what? What is she feeling? Sam wondered uneasily He didn’t understand the strange look on her face. She seemed to be…

.. laughing at me…

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‘You are so fucking dumb, you know that?’ tkoxana said, her voice suddenly subdued, filled with scorn, mocking him. ‘I was using you, Sam. For the picture, so that you wouldn’t stop me wrecking the shoot. So that you would help me fire Megan Silver. For whatever you could do for me. And because of the way you spoke to me at Isabelle’s party, I was going to break your heart as soon as it was over. Why do you think I told Jordan? I wanted her to tell everybody else. I wanted to show the world the great Sam Kendrick was just another puppet dancing on my strings.’

Dazed, Sam released her wrists, stumbling backwards, numb from the malice of her tone.

‘Your wife did this. You mean nothing to me. Nothing.’ loxana’s brown eyes held only contempt. ‘I despise you, Sam. Get the fuck out of my house.’

Sam turned blindly round and walked down the stairs, his heart so full of pain it felt like a thick stone in his chest. He said nothing to the policemen standing around his car who looked at him curiously as he came out. He couldn’t speak. For the first time since he was a boy, Sam Kendrick was fighting back tears.

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Eleanor Marshall walked quickly up the sunlit steps of Victoria Hospital, followed by Fred Florescu, her agitation betraying her nerves. Zach Mason and Megan Silver had been found alive, shorfly after sunrise, by a guide trekking through the AnseJasmin estate in the northernmost part of the jungle. He had fetched help and had the two Americans taken to the nearest village, where somebody called an ambulance. Beyond that she knew very little.

‘Ms Marshall and Mr Florescu,’ Heanor said to the thickset woman statiing the reception desk. ‘We’ve come to see the two people that were found in the mist forest this morning. Are they OK?’

The receptionist checked the names on a printed sheet in front of her and nodded, giving them a warm smile. ‘You want rooms twelve an’ thirteen, jus’ down the corridor there.’ She pointed straight ahead of her. ‘The gendeman told us to call Mr Florescu here. You with him?’

‘Yes. Thanks,’ Eleanor replied, striding down the corridor the woman had showed them.

‘Jesus, do you think they’re all’right!’ Florescu asked, his face clouded.

‘We know they’re alive,’ Eleanor said, checking the door numbers.

‘Yeah. But it was a long way to fall,’ the director said. They looked at each other, neither wanting to say it. What if either of the kids had cracked their heads open, or broken their necks? What if they were paralysed? Or if

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they’d cut themselves open and the wound had become gangrenous?

‘Twelve,’ Eleanor said, coming to a stop outside a dosed blue door. There was no sound from inside the room. She hesitated.

‘We have to see them,’ Fred Florescu told her softly. Eleanor nodded, her heart crashing against her chest. What if they are paralysed? she thought miserably. It was my fault that they were fdming in a monsoon. I didn’t double-check my own location reports because I was so wrapped up in Jordan Goldman’s baby. If I’d have been doing my job, Jake Keller would never have gotten away with it. And this would never have happened.

Florescu glanced at Eleanor Marshall, standing there twisting her hands, her face as white as chalk. He was frightened too; Zach and Megan were such talented kids, both of them, and so young, and who knew what the hell had happened to them out there?

He slowly twisted the handle and opened the door. Zach Mason was sitting up in bed, an empty cereal bowl

stacked on the table behind him, sipping from a long, ta]l glass of milk, fresh dressings wrapped round his bare chest. Megan Silver, in a pair of green hospital pyjamas and a dressing gown, was lounging in a spartan easy chair beside him, eating a delicious-smelling croissant and looking at a copy of the Herald Tribune, her right foot in a tartan slipper and her left foot bandaged up in a splint. Both of them looked up, smiling, aS Fred and Eleanor walked into the

room,

‘Hey, gys, it’s good to see you,’ Zach Mason said.

‘Are’you OK?’ Horescu asked, hardly daring to believe his eyes.

‘We were a little hungry, but we’re fine now,’ Zach told him, adding, ‘I sure as hell hope those scenery shots were worth it.’

Eleanor felt weak-kneed with relieŁ

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‘Eleanor! What are you doing here?’ Megan asked her. ‘Looking for you,’ the older woman said.

‘Oh yeah? We wondered if all those helicopters last night were something to do with us,’ Megan said. She held up the paper she was reading. ‘So what’s the story with tLoxana Felix?’

By the time the cab drew up to her house Eleanor was feeling jet-lagged and exhausted. She tipped the guy a twenty and carried her small Louis Vuitton case into the porch, reaching into her purse for the keys. Her fingers fumbled around for a minute before she found them and managed to let herself in; she was so tired she tkied to unlock the front entrance with the back door key.

I’ll take a nap for a couple of hours before I head back to the studio, Eleanor told herselŁ. I’m no use to Tom or anyone else in this state.

It had been a sleepless night, all coffee and doughnuts in a suite at the M6ridien, supervising the air searches and taking phone call aer phone call of reports - somebody had found a strip of cloth from Mason’s shirt, another man said he’d seen footprints - but there’d been nothing of substance, and despite her best efforts Eleanor had slumped into unconsciousness towards dawn. When the phone shrilled by her bedside to say they’d been found, she’d been asleep for barely three hours. The relief at knowing Zach and Megan were alive and almost completely unharmed had carried her through the rest of the morning as she paid off the Seychellois” involved in the search, packed her handful of clothes and bdoked herself on the first flight off the islands. But that euphoria couldn’t last forever, and when the jet had taxied off the runway and soared into the clear blue skies above the Indian Ocean, Eleanor Marshall had had to face the rest of her problems.

Tom Goldman’s call had come through at eight p.m. the night before - eight a.m. in Los Angeles. tLoxana Felix was

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the newest front-runner in the worldwide bad-girl stakes a prostitution scandal that had completely buried her career in a matter of hours. And he wasn’t exaggerating: a flick of the remote control and CNN confirmed everything to her, fight there and then in her hotel room.

‘The markets think this will kill the movie,’ Goldman had told her, his voice terse and pressured. ‘They know it was a cosdy flick. They know we’re in desperate need of a hit.’

‘What’s happening to the stock?’

Goldman laughed caustically. ‘Are you kidding? What stock? It’s going downhill faster than an avalanche! At this rate the SEC’s gonna suspend trading, before it hits zero.’

‘Christ,’ Eleanor muttered. Tve got about two million dollars’ worth of stock!’

‘Well, now you have about forty thousand dollars’ worth. If it’s any consolation, I’ve got a lot more than that. Do you want me to call your broker and give him your number there? Perhaps you could still off-load some of it.’

‘No. No, thanks,’ she replied. Two million dollars, up in stnoke! ‘I’m the president, I don’t want to be seen to be dumping stock in my own company.’

On the other side of the world, Tom Goldman smiled, feeling a strong rush of affection for her. ‘You know, I said exactly the same thing.’

‘Great minds think alike,’ Eleanor told him.

‘And fools seldom differ.’

She chuckled. ‘You’ve got me. Look,just hold on, OK? The second I know what’s happened to Zach and Megan I’ll be on my way home. We’ll figure something out.’

‘Will we?’ Tom sounded sceptical. ‘I called so you’d know what was happening, Eleanor. I don’t think I’ll be here when you get back. I have sixteen messages in front of me from assorted board members, and I don’t think they want to chat to me about the weather.’

‘No way, Tom. You’re not going anywhere. They can’t

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fire you for something oxana Felix did, and if they try, you just pull the same number on them I pulled on you before. Ca]/your personal lawyer and check your contract. Tell them you’ll sue. I’m sure they won’t want any more scandal right now.’

A pause, then, ‘You could be right.’

‘You know I’m right. And you’d have thought of that yourself given time,’ Eleanor said. ‘Tell them al/to hold onto their stock. If it’s plunged that low, there’s no point in selling now anyway, right?’

‘That’s true. Maybe we should look on the bright side - we’ve got nowhere to go at this point except up.’

‘That’s my boy,’ Eleanor said. She glanced down and noticed that she had her hands on her stomach, covering her womb. Somehow, without having even conscious/y considered it, she knew she was going to tell Tom the truth about this’child when she got home. What would he say? And should she tell Paul? What would be best for her baby? All the anxieties pressed around her, crowding her, crushing her. Eleanor felt as if she were being swept along in the most fearsome current, swimming with all her might against the flow, fighting not to give in, not to be felled by each fresh disaster. It was her baby that gave her the strength, the deep, new knowledge of what was really important. They could take away her reputation, her wealth and her job, but they couldn’t t,4ke that. And she was going to fight like hell before they took anything.

‘And there’s another silver lining you haven’t thought of,’ sh added. ‘Now the stock’s dropped .through the floor, Jake Keller has nothing left to threaten you with. So you might as well sack him this morning.’

‘Don’t you want to wait until you get home?’

‘No,’ Eleanor told him. ‘Sam Kendrick’s already recalled David Tauber. I think you should just sack him now-no reference, no compensation. Make it as public as you can. Humiliate the son of a bitch.’

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‘You got it,’ Goldman told her, hanging up.

So now she was back, Heanor thought wearily. Back to

a company in crisis, a media frenzy, an exposed leading lady, and…

‘Where the hell have you been?’

Paul stood in the doorway of their bedroom, his arms folded, glaring at her. He was wearing a dark blue suit and smelt of too much aftershave. He had a brightly patterned tie on, and his hair was meticulously parted. She hated this side of him: the peacock, the dandy. It seemed too vain, almost effeminate. Tom Goldman wouldn’t be seen dead in that outfit, Eleanor told herself.

‘Y.ou know where I’ve been, Paul. I called and left messages here and at your office.’

‘You went halfway around the world to supervise some pathetic little rescue attempt,’ he said angrily. ‘Who do you think you are? lambo?’