Restaurant owner The waiting staff noticed he was very quiet at the table. He didn’t seem to want to bring attention to himself, I think. Although a young boy asked for his autograph and he obliged. Not all stars do that when they’re out for dinner.
Martha Marks Would you say he was intoxicated, or in any way agitated, when he left your restaurant?
Owner He was . . . more animated than he had been. But I wouldn’t say he was intoxicated . . . It was a shock to see everything go off the way it did. One moment we were getting their coats, the next we were calling the police.
M. M. Did you see how it started?
Owner Not really. A diner near the windows had made us aware a small group of fans had gathered and was waiting for him outside. But we had no jurisdiction to move them on from the street, and after he had given his autograph to the boy, we assumed he would be happy with it anyway. He and his party paid and left, the door closed and then we heard shouting. I looked out and saw him start throwing punches. It was as fast as that.
*
Elderly lady He’s a disgrace. He should be banned from the town. And the sport. All sport! Once a thug, always a thug!
*
Chairlift operator I dunno, it’s like he’s got some self-destruct button. Why get announced for this massive deal, and then launch a fist fight? (Taps his head) Ask me, he’s got a screw loose.
*
Boarder Put him back in the water and point his board towards Australia. They can have him back. He’s not welcome here.
*
Another week passed in quiet lethargy. The extent of Kit’s injuries meant training, or even getting on the snow, wasn’t possible and the Saas-Fee trip had had to be pushed so far back, it was now in doubt if they would even go at all. Clover had a feeling of being under house arrest. Only Matty and Johnny ever went out, to film – each time drawing looks of outright suspicion from Kit and concern from Ari – getting short interviews with people on the street about Kit’s ambassadorship of their town. What they came back with was stunningly negative. The fight, and the resulting wave of sensationalist press, had stuck in the craw of this conservative town. Tourism was its lifeblood. Zell am See was known as the Megève of Austria; it couldn’t and wouldn’t become known for ‘loutish behaviour’ and ‘snow yobs’.
But Clover was frustrated as she watched the playbacks each day, noting the questions that weren’t being asked. Opportunities were being missed to get harder-hitting material. People were angry! Appalled! They should be capitalizing on that high emotion; Kit was living down to expectations, but Matty wasn’t a journalist, and half the footage involved her admiring someone’s coat or petting their dog. Johnny wasn’t pushing Matty on it, either – he was purely a visuals man – and Clover still felt troubled by his reluctance the other night to go in hard on Kit and include the fight footage. If he would willingly leave that out, what other material was being missed?
Clover was itching to get back out there herself, but there was no way she could; her blackened, bloodshot eye was still too alarming for public scrutiny, not to mention it made a direct connection with the fight. Instead she spent most of her time with Johnny when he got back, the two of them working in his bedroom together editing the footage and cleaning up the files they did have, cutting them down to pithy soundbites.
Poor Johnny looked wrecked. He was pale from spending too many hours indoors and staying up late, working on screens. Clover couldn’t keep up with him. Her bruised eye tired easily from the blue light, a low-grade headache niggled constantly and settled sleep was evasive.
Everyone was jarred, it seemed, and the atmosphere in the chalet was tense. Kit – leaving his room now, at least – was prowling like a wounded tiger, snapping at everyone and spoiling for arguments with Beau and Ari. He looked rough-shaven and moved stiffly. She supposed it would hurt too if he tried to laugh, but there was no chance of that. The fractional thaw she had sensed in the restaurant, as he had begun to relax into good news and even better wine, had frozen solid once more. He had scarcely looked at her since she’d intruded into his room and she could tell from his bristling hostility that he held her responsible for the fight, and its fallout. She could guess at his logic – her film had vilified him and therefore galvanized his attackers.
Clover was more than happy to keep out of his way. After the way he’d thrown her out, she couldn’t muster the energy it took to put a smile on her face and pretend she was friend, not foe. She felt physically and emotionally beaten up and was beginning to feel worse as the days slipped by without a single arrest being made. Kit’s face was all over the international press – but somehow these people had escaped as anonymously as they had arrived.
The only bright spot was that Matty had managed to get hold of the fight footage. It had been widely shared in the public domain, and whoever had taken it clearly had no intention of claiming copyright. But there was precious little else to be happy about; they had zero source material of weight, just some angry locals for B-roll filler, and now they had lost a key week of interview opportunities in Switzerland. They had yet to have a single sit-down taping with even Ari or Beau. Clover had been trying to establish trust with them first, but time was fast slipping away and no one was growing any closer.
Johnny and Matty had gone up to the snowpark after lunch to get some more material from the other local snowboarders. Clover was still pressing them hard to find out – now that the dust had settled a little – how Foley was regarded in light of the fight, and in view of the fact that his face was supposed to represent their town and sport on the world tour.
Johnny had gone out reluctantly, in a gloom of frustration, and Clover knew that whatever they came back with today, it wasn’t going to bring any meat, any heart to this film. There was a gaping great hole at the centre of it – there were too many delays and too much tiptoeing around a hostile subject. There were only a few people whose opinions actually mattered and every time she thought she was inching closer, something happened to repel them again. But she couldn’t go in too early. Regardless of the ticking clock, she knew she had to wait. She might only get one shot with each of them – Tipper, Ari, Beau, and of course Foley himself. There couldn’t be multiple takes; to do reshoots and to repeat questions would be to give them time to rehearse and finesse their answers – the worst thing that could happen. She needed them firing off their instincts, she needed them to be raw and unguarded and shooting from the hip.
Clover looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She had never – literally never – looked worse in her entire life. The swelling around her eye socket had now dissipated and the bruise had faded to a ghoulish yellow that was almost imperceptible in low light, but she looked drawn and worn down. At least she would be able to cover the shadows with make-up now, she thought, pressing the area gently with the pads of her fingers. Then she could get outside again and escape this gilded cage. Just to go for a walk, a coffee . . .
She closed her eyes, desperately wishing she was back in her London flat, wandering around in her underwear and over-watering her plants. She wanted to have brunch at Bluebird, watch a film at the Picture House, get plastered at the Duke of Cambridge. She wanted to be able to walk into a room and not feel despised by the people sitting in it. She wanted to go for a run in Battersea Park, go shopping on the King’s Road, get her hair done and maybe – blow the doors off! – her nails too.
She bent down and splashed cold water on her face. It felt good on the bruise. Diminishing. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Perhaps she should go for a swim? It would do her good to move her body. She could feel her inertia beginning to depress her mood.
She changed into her bikini and grabbed the towel, walking carefully downstairs. Her balance had fully recovered once the eye patch was off and she walked into the pool room, immediately feeling the warmth and humidity against her bare skin.
She dropped her towel on the lounger and—
She froze.
There was a body in the water, halfway along. It was facedown and floating, arms and legs limp, spread apart.
It was Kit.
Clover cried out in horror. She ran down the edge, diving in at a shallow pitch. The depth was less than two metres but there wasn’t even time to jump and duck dive. Her arms reached for him, encircling his chest, as her feet found the floor and she pushed up towards the surface . . .
Even before she could take a breath, he tore free of her grasp; she saw him wince as the violent movement jarred his bruised ribs.
What? She stared at him in disbelief.
‘What the fuck?’ He was panting, breathless. But definitely not drowned. He hadn’t inhaled any water.
‘I thought . . .’ She trod water in utter bafflement, trying to make sense of what was happening. Why had he been lying there like that if . . .?
‘Thought what?!’ he demanded. He looked wild. Again. He was furious with her. Again. ‘That I’d drowned?’ The word was mocking.
She felt her anger burst through at last. She couldn’t do it anymore – pretend to take the high road. He was insufferable. ‘Yes! What was I supposed to think?’ she cried. ‘You were just lying there!’
‘You actually thought I had drowned? In a fucking pool?’ he sneered, looking back at her. ‘Yeah, well, I guess you would think that. Wishful thinking?’
‘What?’ She could hardly believe what she was hearing.
‘Kit Foley found drowned! What a headline! What a fucking coup!’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’
‘You could have got live footage! Brought Johnny down here with his camera! There’d be your ending! Got what he deserved in the end, right? What goes around comes around! First Cory, then me!’
‘You’re disgusting!’ she cried, swimming away from him. She couldn’t stand even to look at him. She tried to put a foot to the floor but it was too deep, the water closing over her head. She surfaced again with a gasp. It sounded like a sob.
‘Is that what it’ll take before anyone forgives me?’ he shouted at her back, not giving up as she staggered away. ‘I need to fucking die too?’
She stopped at the words and turned back at him. His voice had cracked and he was staring at her with a different look. The wildness, the anger, the contempt had shifted into something else.
She stared at him. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t trying to repulse her.
‘Of course not.’ Her voice was quiet and thin with shock. ‘Kit, no. No one wants you dead. You can’t honestly believe that?’
He looked away; she could see the tension in his jaw as he tried to draw back. To hold back. She could see he felt he had said too much, revealed himself. He shook his head just once and began wading back to the shallow end; he was unable to pull himself out at the sides, the bruises on his ribs still vivid on his torso, the shadows of the punches that had rained upon him.
‘Kit!’ she said, reaching for him with her arm as he went to pass her, but he shook her off like a fly on a horse.
‘Don’t pretend to give a damn.’
She lunged in front of him, blocking his way. ‘I’m concerned! How can you think anyone would want that to happen to you?’
He stared back at her. ‘Just admit it. You’d be glad.’
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t.’
He stepped closer to force her out of the way but she didn’t move this time. She wouldn’t let him bully her again, using his size to intimidate her.
She could feel the hairs on his leg against her skin underwater and a moment contracted as they processed their sudden proximity to one another. It felt dangerous to be that close to him. He was clearly not okay and experience had shown her he was unpredictable at the best of times.
He stared down at her. ‘I know you’re a good person, Clover.’ There was a curl to his lip. ‘You’re everything I’m not. You want justice and rainbows. You tried to save me in that fight. You tried saving me just now. It’s your instinct, you can’t help it.’ His voice was low and flat and sarcastic. ‘But a part of you, deep down inside, also believes I’d deserve it. Just admit it.’
She shook her head again. ‘No.’
‘Just say it. You hate me.’ He was completely still and she had that feeling of the ominous calm in the seconds before a calamity – birds flapping from the trees before the earthquake; the sucking back of the ocean before the tsunami’s charge . . .
‘No.’ She could feel her heart clattering inside her chest, panic surging, confusing her.
‘You hide it from the others, but I can feel it. You hate me.’ He was so close now, their bodies swayed towards one another by the movement of the water. She could see the droplets on his eyelashes, the faint scar on his lip, the yellow bruises that matched hers. She could feel his heart pounding beneath his chest, as fast as hers.
‘No.’
‘You hate me.’
She couldn’t stop staring at him, staring at her. What was happening? He didn’t have a hand on her – not this time – but his gaze was on her mouth and she felt as caught as in a vice. She couldn’t step back, move away from him.
‘You hate me.’
He could see right inside her. Suddenly she knew it. She couldn’t lie to him.
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I hate you.’ The words fell from her lips and they were like the springs on a gate, letting the hares run, because in the next instant, she was kissing him, or he was kissing her; they had moved in complete synchronicity, with an anger, an urgency she had never known. His lips were rough, his stubble harsh against her skin. She didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer, kiss him harder. It wasn’t enough.
She felt his hands lift her easily and she wrapped her legs around his waist, gripping him as tightly as she could. He took two, three steps to the side of the pool, pushing her back against the wall, pushing against her. She felt his mouth on her neck and shoulders as she gasped for breath. Her entire body was trembling. She wanted to scratch him, bite him, consume him.
‘I hate you,’ she whispered as she felt his fingers move her bikini bottoms to the side.
‘I know,’ he breathed, making her cry out as he began to move inside her. ‘I hate you too.’
‘Honey, we’re ho— Oh!’ Matty’s pseudo-American drawl died midstream. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Clover looked up from the end of her bed. How long had she been sitting there? She was still wrapped in her towel. Her bikini was almost dry but she couldn’t stop shivering.
‘Shit, Clo, what’s happened?’ she asked, dropping her bag as Johnny shut the door behind him.
Clover blinked back at them both. How on earth could she say it? She still couldn’t believe it herself. She couldn’t give what she’d done a sound, a shape, a body, a heft.
Matty crouched down in front of her. ‘Clo? Do you need me to call the doctor? Is it your eye? The headaches?’
She shook her head, feeling so . . . stupid! What had she done?
‘Clo, you’ve got to say something. You’re worrying us,’ Johnny said, sitting on the end of Matty’s bed.
She stared at them both for what felt like an eternity. Johnny was right. She knew she had to tell them. She had to explain why they couldn’t stay here now.
‘What’s that rash?’ Matty frowned, brushing the back of her hand against Clover’s jaw. She realized in the next instant. ‘Wait—’
‘I slept with him.’
A thunderclap of silence rang through the room.
Johnny gave a laugh. ‘What do you mean you . . . you . . .?’ The laughter faded with the initial shock. ‘. . . Who?’
She blinked. They all knew perfectly well there was only one ‘him’. There was only one person with the power to blast her world apart like this. ‘Kit.’
Matty’s hands went to her mouth as she rocked back on her heels.
‘There’s a punchline . . . right?’ Johnny asked, staring at her in abject disbelief.
Clover shook her head, absorbing their stunned expressions. They were right to be horrified. There was no other response to this. It was shocking. Unimaginable. How could it have happened? She still didn’t know.
There was a long, long pause. Clover was aware her friends were thinking hard and fast, trying to process the bombshell. She’d had an hour and a half to think on it and it still made no sense.
Matty’s hand found hers on her lap; she was looking at Clover with an expression Clover had never seen before. ‘You need to be honest with us . . . What . . . what happened? I mean, did he . . .?’
‘No! He didn’t force me, if that’s what you mean,’ Clover said quickly. ‘It wasn’t like that! I wanted it to happen. In the moment, I . . . I wanted him.’ Her face fell. The words were incredible to her. How could she even be saying them?
Matty looked even more horrified.
Clover got up from the bed, unable to bear their stares. Her hands kept going to her head as if, if she just squeezed hard enough, sense would come to her. ‘I don’t know what happened! I just went to go for a swim.’
They looked back at her, waiting, and she realized she had begun.
Her shoulders slumped. ‘I went to go for a swim and I found him lying face-down in the water.’
‘What?’ Matty yelped.
‘I know! That was what I thought! I thought he’d drowned – slipped and knocked his head or something. It looked so awful.’ She swallowed. ‘So I jumped in. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Johnny nodded.
‘But he hadn’t drowned. And instead he was furious with me. He was . . .’ She frowned. ‘Actually I still don’t know what he was doing.’ She looked back at them both. ‘He really looked dead.’
Matty waved a hand dismissively. ‘Fine. Go on.’
‘Well then he started shouting at me. Said, didn’t I think it was a shame that he wasn’t dead? That I thought he deserved to be dead.’ She looked back at them both. ‘He was so . . .’
They waited for her to supply the word.
‘So mad?’ Matty prodded her.
‘No. So sad. He sounded broken.’
Neither Johnny nor Matty stirred as she sank back into the memory of it. She could still see him forcing back the emotion; the forward set of his jaw, the heaviness of his brow . . . It had been a side to him she’d never seen. A side he’d hidden again in the very next breath.
She frowned. ‘But then he . . . switched it onto me and started saying I hated him. That he knew I did and I had to say it. I had to say it. He just kept on, forcing me to just admit it. And the thing was, I couldn’t lie because I could see that he knew the truth. Because I do hate him. I hate him so much. I hate everything he did to Cory and everything we’ve seen he is. I hate him almost more than I can bear.’ She looked away, staring into space. ‘And saying it to him . . . finally being honest at last after all these lies and this . . .’ Her hands gestured hopelessly at her bruised face. ‘It felt like a sort of release. We could just as easily have been punching each other.’ She looked back at her friends. ‘I hate him and he hates me.’
Her voice trailed off and no one spoke for several minutes. Johnny dropped his face in his hands and gave an exhausted sigh. Matty sank onto the bed and let her head hang, her elbows on her knees.
‘Right, well . . .’ Johnny said finally. His voice was barely audible, all of them trying to take in the afternoon’s unexpected twist.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Clover whispered.
Johnny sighed again. ‘I just didn’t see this coming.’
‘Nor did I! You have to believe that.’
He looked up at her. ‘. . . So how did you leave it with him?’
‘Huh?’
‘Well, was it all hearts and flowers? I take it from the way we just found you that he’s not taking you for dinner anytime soon?’
Clover looked away, remembering his lips on her shoulder, his breath in her hair. The moment of perfect stillness immediately afterwards, just the hammering of their hearts, one against the other as madness gave way to sense. ‘We didn’t say anything. He just left.’
‘Bastard,’ Matty breathed.
‘Well, what was there to say?’ she said defensively. ‘He was as stunned as I was. I didn’t want to talk to him. It had happened before we knew . . .’ She dropped her face in her hands. ‘God, how could I lose myself like that?’
‘Hate sex,’ Matty said coolly. ‘It’s pretty much the best there is. Any girl can lose her shit over a guy she despises. There’s nothing like it.’
Clover and Johnny’s heads whipped up in surprise.
‘What?’ Matty shrugged. ‘I had three months of the best sex of my life making and breaking up with my ex.’
Johnny stood up and walked over to Clover, giving her a hug. She was near tears. ‘Look, cut yourself some slack. You said it yourself, it was a release, right? You’ve both been through a lot, what with the fight and everything. I dunno – it could have been some twisted moment of shared connection; a bit of PTSD? Strong emotions can slide into something else sometimes. Like you said, you could just as easily have been punching each other instead.’
‘But I’ve betrayed Cory . . . and Mia! What do I tell her? How can I say that I ruined everything in a moment of madness?’
‘Nothing’s ruined.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Well, so long as Liam doesn’t get to hear about it.’
Clover stared at him. He still didn’t know that there was no Liam. She felt another stab of longing for her flat; bought with her inheritance, it had given her a home when she’d lost her family. If this film didn’t get made and find a distributor, there was no way she could pay back the remortgage. She would lose her home, their office . . . But how could she possibly make the film now?
Clover stiffened suddenly. ‘. . . Oh god.’
‘What?’ Johnny asked.
A terrible thought was running through her mind. ‘What if . . . that was the plan?’
‘What plan?’
‘To get me to walk away. Make it impossible for me to continue.’
He frowned. ‘You mean . . . he seduced you on purpose?’
There was a long silence as they all thought it through.
‘He couldn’t have planned it, though,’ Matty argued. ‘He didn’t know you were going to find him in the pool like that and think he’d drowned!’
‘No,’ Johnny agreed. ‘But it might have crossed his mind that sleeping with her – somehow, at some point – was an option; a tactic to throw her off her game and get the upper hand? It makes her position fairly untenable.’
Clover stared at him, feeling a rising tide of horror. ‘Cory always said he would stop at nothing . . . Kit knew that by sleeping with him, I would be betraying Cory. He was my friend and I’ve just had sex with his enemy. With the very man responsible for . . .’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. Tears filled her eyes. ‘It’s the ultimate betrayal. Even if Kit didn’t plan this outright, he’ll know what this means for the film.’
Nobody rushed to fill the silence. She’d been played and they all knew it, for how could she sit opposite him and interview him now?
‘Bastard!’ Clover cried, beginning to pace, her heart pounding all over again. ‘Bastard! That’s why he did it!’
Johnny watched her walk in looping figures of eight. ‘Okay, well look, even say it was – you don’t have to let him get away with it. If he assumes you’re just going to run out of here from shame . . . Then do the opposite. Call his bluff and face him down. Brazen it out. You can be sure that’s what he’ll be doing!’
She stared back at him. She knew it was true. He would. ‘But I can’t . . . He’ll have told them – Ari and Beau.’
‘So? You’ve told us.’
Was he right? Was this going to come down to a matter of nerve?
She looked at Matty. ‘. . . And to think I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to keep you and Julian on the right side of professional!’ She gave a mildly hysterical laugh that looked like it might slide back into tears. ‘And I ended up being the one to cross enemy lines!’
Matty and Johnny swapped looks. She was flip-flopping like a landed fish, not knowing which way to go.
‘Okay, here’s what you’re going to do,’ Johnny said, taking charge. ‘You’re going to go up there right now and act like it never happened.’
‘What? N—’
‘Yes. And if anyone says anything – either directly or indirectly – just shrug it off. Don’t deny it, but say it was nothing. Heat of the moment. A mistake. Boredom. PTSD, whatever you like. Just don’t invest it with any emotional significance whatsoever.’
She blinked. ‘Well, that’ll be easy enough. Because there wasn’t.’
‘Good. So we’ll start now, then, and go up there.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Just get it done. The first time seeing him will be the hardest – he’ll be looking to see how you react, so give him nothing. Less than nothing.’ He headed for the door. ‘We’ll ask Carlotta for some tea and cakes, then come straight back down here. Boom, done, the worst bit will be out of the way.’
Clover hesitated. ‘I can’t go up there . . . right now.’ She needed more time, just to settle herself down. Her emotions were flying around like rockets, exploding unexpectedly and making her jump. ‘I . . . I need to get dressed,’ she procrastinated, looking down at herself. She was, thankfully, still in her swimwear.
‘Just put this on.’ Matty picked up a slouchy jumper and wrestled it onto her.
‘But—’ Clover tried to think of more reasons why they should delay.
‘Come on.’ Johnny led the way, but Matty grabbed her by the arm, stopping her.
Clover looked back.
‘Was it amazing though?’ Matty whispered.
Her mouth dropped open. ‘. . . What kind of question is that?’
‘What kind of answer is that?’ Matty shot back, an eyebrow arched. They both knew it hadn’t been a denial.
Clover shot up the stairs as Johnny reached the top step.
‘Hi Carlotta,’ he said with forceful friendliness, striding into the living room. Clover had never seen him so assertive before.
‘Ah you are back, good. The fire is all ready for you. Would you like some tea and cake?’
‘God, yes! Matty and I are just in from a monster filming session in the park.’ Johnny openly scanned the space to see who was around. No one. ‘. . . And Clover’s done thirty laps in the pool so she’s famished,’ he murmured.
Clover gave a small smile as Carlotta glanced at her, seeing her strangely dressed, bare-legged and barefoot in just an oversized jumper.
‘Of course. I shall let Fin know.’
‘Thanks.’
Carlotta turned to leave.
‘Carlotta, where are the others? Are they in the games room?’ Johnny asked, jerking a thumb towards the far door.
‘. . . No. They left an hour ago.’ Carlotta looked confused. ‘I assumed you knew.’
‘Sorry?’ Johnny shot Clover a panicked look. ‘Left for where?’
The housekeeper shrugged. ‘Why, Saas-Fee, of course. They’ve gone to Switzerland.’