Power Games (34 page)

This was how he had convinced himself. All the arguments, all the post-rationalising, tripping off his tongue as if he had spoken it yesterday.

‘Look at other stars’ attempts: redirecting their image, going under the knife, turning to drugs. We defended Kevin against all of that. We tried the newest tack of all—and trust me, Joanie, five years from now they’ll all be doing it. Age is a hell of a thing to unpick … but what if it never happens in the first place?’

Finally Joan found her voice. It was a changed voice.

‘You sinful fucking bastard,’ she said. ‘You wicked, wicked man.’

Sketch took it. He deserved it. He would deserve it for the rest of his life.

‘No wonder he was such a mess.’ Joan’s eyes were black. ‘The mood swings. The panic attacks. The anger.’

‘I know.’

‘You punished him for it. And all along you were the one responsible.’

‘We were protecting our investment. For all our benefits—’

‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare make out that I was part of this.’

‘—Kevin’s benefit, and yours, even if right then it didn’t seem obvious.’

‘Get out of this house.’

‘Joanie—’

‘OUT!’

Trey shot from the room. Sketch gathered his things. He had expected Joan to leap at him, to attack him, to batter and to slap him. He hadn’t expected this stark, chilling control. She terrified him. He opened the door, a broken man.

‘I’m so sorry, Joan,’ he choked. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

56

New York

F
it for NYC was shrouded in gloom. Couture treasures sparkled, going for tags that could have fed whole families for a year, but instead were vanity prizes for a Hollywood socialite who would bury them in the back of a Bel Air closet to be worn once, shoes permitting, at a rival hostess’s dinner party. How pointless it all seemed.

Orlando put a hand on his brother’s back. ‘We mustn’t give up,’ he said.

Luca slammed a fist on the glass. With a crack the cabinet splintered, a diamond cobweb, but the impact wasn’t enough, he had more to burn, and he finished the job, smashing the surface so it obliterated into thousands of gossamer shards.

‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ he said. ‘Losing my mind back here or doing a Noah Lawson and losing it on the other side of the world.’

‘We have to stay strong.’

‘It’s all right for you, isn’t it?’ Luca turned with a tortured kind of pride. ‘You don’t have the same regrets as me.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘Dad never knew me—neither did Angela. Now it’s too late.’

‘Screw your self-pity.’

‘You were always the golden child. You walked on water. Now all that’s left is Mom and even she doesn’t …’ Luca’s voice broke. ‘I mean I can’t even tell her …’

Orlando went to his brother. He and Luca had never been close, but if there was ever a time to remedy that, it had arrived. Luca thought none of them knew he had a boyfriend. Truth was, they had known he was gay since he was a teenager. Orlando couldn’t speak for his father—yes, there was a chance that Donald had been kept in the dark, and that Isabella hadn’t discussed it with him, but even if she had, they wouldn’t have known because Donald didn’t speak about things like that.

Every evening for the past decade, when they had stayed up after hours, Orlando had waited for his brother to confess. Luca never did.

‘I know, Luca,’ Orlando said. ‘It’s OK.’

‘You must think I’m some loser, huh. Some coward who parties so hard till he can’t remember who he is. So he doesn’t have to look himself in the mirror. Dad lied about the reason the hotels went under. It wasn’t that he made a bad decision. It was that I flushed the whole fucking thing down the can because I fell apart. I lost the money. Me. Only Dad didn’t want you to know that.’ A teardrop ran down his cheek. ‘I killed him. I made him sick and that sickness finished him off. My own father.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Course it fucking is.’

Orlando had always wondered about the reasons for their debt. It had never felt right. Donald Silvers hadn’t made a bad business move in his life and he wouldn’t have started now. It had been Luca all along.

‘You think you’re the only one who messed up?’ said Orlando.

‘As far as Dad was concerned, yeah.’

‘You’re not alone in carrying a burden. Angela isn’t the only person I lost.’ It hurt him like a physical wound. ‘I knew Eve,’ he said. ‘Eve Harley.’

Luca was quiet a moment, then said: ‘How?’

‘She was carrying something of mine.’

‘What?’

In the silence that followed, in Orlando’s ashen face, Luca understood.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Yeah. Oh.’

‘How long?’

‘Would’ve been six months.’ Orlando’s chest ached. ‘I said I didn’t want it. I told her she was on her own. She died knowing that. They both did.’ Every baby he saw on the street, every picture in a magazine, every crawling infant in a bloody stupid TV commercial, squeezed him inside out. Becoming a father had been something he might do later, at some distant, invisible point, because life went on for ever, right? And there was always a more important job to be done, like cutting a deal or checking into a hotel or getting drunk with his cronies. None of it amounted to anything. Not like Eve’s baby.

Not like my baby.

‘Shit,’ said Luca. ‘I had no idea.’

‘How could you? I didn’t tell anyone.’ How he wished now he had told Eve: that he wanted this child, that he wanted her, that he wanted the whole damn lot.

If only he’d put his pride aside and had the balls to admit it.

A siren screamed outside.

‘Now I’ve told you,’ said Orlando, ‘and you’ve told me, for what it’s worth, we’re in it together—we’re brothers,
Luca. My regret isn’t fixable, but yours is. You can still make Dad proud. We can still buy out of the Zenetti deal and rebuild from scratch. We’ll make it better than ever. It’s what he would have wanted—Angela too.’

‘You think we can?’

‘I know we can. I’m letting Silvers go over my dead body.’ Orlando tasted his resolve, sharp and intoxicating. ‘It’s everything to me. It’s all I have left.’

His cell beeped.

‘Carmine Zenetti wants us in Vegas,’ he said, grabbing his keys. ‘Says he’s got some news—and we’re gonna want to hear it, apparently.’

57

The Midwest

M
ielinda Corrigan entered her neighbour’s garage and told him it was over.

She didn’t dress it up and she didn’t let him down gently. She had more on her mind than the frankly insignificant matter of hurting Gary’s feelings.

He had been pestering her non-stop. If he didn’t quit, she was getting a restraining order.
I have to see you
, his messages said.
Let me comfort you.

‘Why?’ Gary begged now.

‘I’ll credit you with some intelligence,’ said Melinda, ‘and take that as a joke.’

‘Of course it isn’t a joke,’ said Gary. He had transformed his garage into a gym and he slumped down onto one of his bench presses. ‘I love you.’

‘Don’t you dare say that again.’

‘I can’t help it!’

‘Bullshit you can’t. You’re married to Mandy, and I’m married to Mitch.’

‘But Mitch is …’

‘What?’ Melinda saw herself in that moment, hair unwashed, face scrubbed clean, because what was the point of make-up when you cried it all off anyway?

‘Mitch is what, Gary?’

Gary reached for her. She slapped him off. Call her an idiot to have come in the first place—sneaking like a thief from her basement into Gary’s: imagine if the paps got hold of it! But fire had to be fought with fire. If Melinda didn’t sort this today, the papers would surely catch a sniff. Gary was a leaky bucket. Any moment he would crumple under his wife’s steely gaze and the whole charade would explode.

The kids.
She could not risk them finding out.

What would the world think? Boffing her married neighbour while her senator husband was in the ocean somewhere with a mouthful of fish.

Once, when Melinda had been sitting at home with the children, attempting to explain what had happened to their father in any terms they, or indeed she, could understand, Gary had barged into the house and demanded to speak.

Mitch’s disappearance was terrible, he conceded once they were alone, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker.

A deal-breaker?

She had told him to get lost. He hadn’t listened. He had come back again, and again, as if Mitch’s disappearance was a fucking aphrodisiac.

‘Well?’ she pushed. ‘
What is he?
Go on, Gary—say it!’

Gary stumbled. ‘Mitch is dead.’

The words hit her like a punch, despite the number of times she had experimented with them in her head.
My husband is dead.

The president’s latest delivery said as much. Melinda had heard it so many times since its release, played on a loop, she could remember it verbatim:

‘As a nation and a world, we are distressed and shocked by the events that took place over the

Indian Ocean on July 1st, 2014. Those who have been lost to the sea were known the world over—but they were also regular people. People like you and me. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues: their loss cannot be measured against the box office or the billboard, it is measured in the hearts of those they have left behind …’

What a heap of horseshit. Melinda respected that man, but the tripe he got asked to churn out was beyond the pale. Naturally, the White House was doing all it could to extend the arm of comfort. Mitch had been ‘a supreme human being’, ‘a fine leader’ and ‘an exemplary father’. Anything they could do to ease her pain …

They could start by bringing back the bodies.

She needed to see. She needed to know.

The search had thrown up nothing. After a passionate mission in those early days, they were now engaged in a lack-lustre limp to recover corpses.

‘Don’t ever let me hear you speak Mitch’s name again,’ Melinda said.

‘But there’s nothing to stop us being together now! I’ll tell Mandy—’

‘Are you
insane
?’

‘I’ve never been thinking so clearly.’

‘Then think on this. You and I are over, Gary. Finished.’

‘Can’t you see how it’s all worked out?’

‘You think I would have
chosen
this? Haven’t you a shred of decency?’

Gary stood. His muscles bulged and Melinda caught him sneak a sidelong glance into the gym mirror to check out his
guns. All of a sudden he was repulsive, a giant inflatable sex toy she had reached for in her hour of loneliness.

‘I didn’t hear you crying out for decency while I was nailing you to the wall,’ he said.

Melinda couldn’t bear to hear any more. She rushed for the door but he seized her arm. Filled with rage and regret, she spun round and spat in his face.

Gary staggered backwards. Numb, he wiped his cheek.

‘You psychotic bitch!’

‘Come near me again and you’ll see just how right you are.’

She didn’t hang around for an answer.

58

Day 15

M
itch Corrigan had been missing three days.

‘This is crazy,’ said Angela. ‘He can’t have vanished into thin air.’

‘He has,’ said Kevin, gutting one of Jacob’s fish. ‘He’s gone.’

‘People don’t just disappear.’ Angela paced the camp. ‘What about the forest?’

‘Nothing,’ said Eve.

‘The mountain?’

‘We’ve been all over. Kevin’s right.’

Angela looked out to sea. She had thought it strange when Mitch had asked if anyone had been down on the bluff. As if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.

‘I think he’s snuffed it,’ said Kevin.

‘Shut up.’

‘This place’ll kill you unless you know what you’re doing.’

Of course, that was the logical thing. Mitch had gone for a swim, neglected to tell anyone, and had been taken by a shark. Mitch had gone exploring in the heat and tumbled down a rock. Mitch had toppled into a swamp and drowned.

‘He’s depressed,’ said Eve. ‘I don’t blame him for what he did.’

Her suggestion didn’t need to be voiced.

Mitch wouldn’t be the first of them to contemplate a quick way out.

The shelters were crude, but gave the illusion of an organised society. They consisted of woven branches cracked and bent to a curve, rooted in the sand and forming a half-tunnel in which it was possible to feel, even for a short time, alone. The need for privacy, however thrown together, was acute.

Eve was resting on the heap of moss she called a bed. It was draped in material scavenged from the cabin, raised from the sand, and used one of the jet’s life jackets as a bolster. Sunlight filtered through the cracks in shimmering ribbons.

Kevin’s meat loot had sustained them for days. Eve remembered when the pop star had brought it back, the mouth-watering aromas as it started to cook, salty skin and the tempting pop and frazzle. Angela had advised they fill up slowly because their systems were out of practice, but it hadn’t been easy: the instinct to feed and be filled was primitive. Eve had eaten until she could stomach no more, with every mouthful imagining it travelling into her baby. Even Tawny, who had vowed to abstain, had eventually been enticed, her reluctant, supermodel-squeamish pickings giving way to a devoted campaign—juice on their fingers, shredding with their bare hands.

Ever since the senator lost his wig, more than his hair had gone AWOL. Nights ago, while the others had been asleep and the sun edged over the lip of the world, Eve had caught him by the pool, naked in the violet light, his hands lifted to the sky. It had been a strangely religious pose. Another time she had startled him at the forest perimeter, just as it was
getting dark. ‘I thought I was alone,’ Mitch had said, once he caught his breath. ‘I thought you were … You could have been …’

Eve knew what he had meant. It was as if the mask had come down, as if the veneer had been wiped, leaving only … fear.