Clover paced on the balcony. The wind was getting up, blowing loose powder off the uppermost surface of the handrail. She trailed a finger through the thick seam of snow; it went up to her knuckle, the freezing sensation delayed for a few seconds.
She stuck her hand in her pocket, counting back through the time zones. Midnight here meant it would be early afternoon over there right now. The boys would be at school. No doubt they’d have been in the water already . . . surfing from sun-up, like their dad used to.
‘Hello?’
‘Mia, it’s Clo.’
‘Clo!’
‘Is now a good time? I can call back later if you’re busy?’
‘No, it’s all good. The boys are at school and it’s my day off. Cue six hours of me trying to get the house back in order before they come back and destroy it all over again!’ She laughed lightly.
Clover gave a small smile. ‘Endless, huh?’
‘Definition of madness. Repeating an action over and over and expecting a different outcome.’ Clover heard her pause and she closed her eyes. How was she supposed to say this? ‘. . . How’s everything over there? Still in Austria?’
‘Uh . . . Switzerland now actually. St Moritz.’
‘Oh.’ There was another pause, the sound of a soft snort. ‘. . . Y’know, it doesn’t matter how much I try and visualize it, I just can’t see Kit Foley in the fricking snow. Wearing clothes. He practically had webbed feet.’
‘. . . Yeah . . . It takes some getting used to.’ She swallowed, feeling sick. How should she start it? How could she mitigate the shock? How could she say these words that needed to be said?
A silence buzzed down the line. Clover could hear the Pacific thumping down in her back garden.
‘Is everything okay, Clo? You sound . . . strained.’
‘I’m fine.’ But her voice was strangled and weak.
‘. . . Did you find something out?’
Clover’s throat felt stoppered. Where were her words?
‘. . . Should I be sitting down?’ Mia pressed into the silence.
‘. . . Probably.’
There was a long pause. ‘Okay . . . I’m ready.’
Clover became aware of her rapid breathing, adrenaline flushing her veins. She had to say it. ‘I know who bought your house.’
In the silence that followed, she listened to the sound of the faraway waves. On the lake in front of her, there wasn’t even a ripple. Every day, every hour, the ice thickened, freezing the landscape into a static pose. She could see someone walking down by the water’s edge, their footprints black depressions scowling behind them in the moonlit snow.
‘. . . It’s Kit, isn’t it?’
Clover’s breath snagged in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well, who else could it be to have you sounding so depressed?’
‘Mia . . .’ But what could she say?
There was a long pause. Mia’s voice sounded altered when she came back on. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘No. I broke into his room the first night we got here and found some architect’s drawings beside the bed. I didn’t connect the dots till . . . well, today.’ Her initial thought on seeing Mia’s photo had been that the house looked familiar because it closely copied what had originally been there. It hadn’t crossed her mind that it was what she’d seen beside Kit’s bed – and she’d forgotten about it in the next instant anyway, as the news about Mikey had broken.
‘Does he know you’re telling me?’
‘God, no!’ Clover winced. ‘I think he knows you would reject the house if you knew it was from him.’
‘Of course I would! He already tried once before.’
‘What?’
‘. . . Straight after the accident, when Cory was still in the hospital, he made an approach. Said he wanted to make amends.’ A bark of scorn split the word into two as Mia sank into the memory. ‘I never told Cory about it. How could I? Kit Foley did this to us and now he wanted to make himself feel better? He’d taken away my husband’s ability to earn! Can you imagine how Cory would have felt if he’d learned Kit fucking Foley was bailing us out?’
Clover closed her eyes, well able to imagine what Cory’s response would have been.
A silence opened up as the truth was allowed to settle.
‘I can’t bear it.’ Mia’s words were almost whispers. ‘I told myself he wouldn’t be so arrogant as to pull that stunt again. I made myself believe Eddie had set it all up . . . How do I tell the boys we’ve got to go again?’
‘Mia, no,’ Clover gasped. ‘You don’t have to leave!’
‘But how can we stay? This is guilt for what he did . . . it’s a form of blood money!’
‘No, that’s the thing . . . I think it’s a form of love—’ Clover’s own voice broke from the emotion. ‘. . . I think he’s trying to make amends in the only way he can . . . Yes, he caused the accident, but Cory was his friend.’ Clover’s voice was quiet. ‘You’re his friend. The boys . . . I know it isn’t obvious, but he’s been trying to . . . protect you, I think.’
There was another heavy silence. It stretched out like a mist on water. ‘You sound sympathetic to him,’ Mia said finally.
‘I guess I am, a bit.’
‘A bit? Or a whole lot?’ Suspicion glinted off the words. ‘Has he turned you, Clo? Have you fallen for his story?’ She gave a gasp of surprise. ‘Oh god, have you fallen for him?’
‘It’s not that!’ Clover replied quickly, her words falling over each other. ‘I just know more now. There was so much more than I knew.’ She swallowed. ‘More, I think, than even Cory knew. He didn’t recover all his memories from the concussion.’
There was a long, loud pause. ‘. . . Didn’t he?’
Clover frowned. What did that mean?
Neither woman spoke, but Clover could feel the connection between them begin to thrum, a vibrating guitar string intoning across the globe. ‘. . . Do you think I don’t know why he lay in that room in the dark for all those weeks . . .? Why he hated himself? Why he raged?’ Mia’s voice was low, ominous, like a faraway storm rumbling over the horizon.
Clover hardly dared to breathe. Her body felt as if made from glass, fragile, as though with one knock she might break. She had thought Mia knew nothing. That was the point – wasn’t it – of this film? The reason why Clover was here?
‘Mia, what exactly are you telling me? What do you know?’ Her eyes were pinned to the lonely figure on the bank of the lake, standing now, staring out at the moonscape.
There was a long silence, then a distant sniff. ‘. . . I’ve been keeping up with the news. I’ve seen what Amy’s said about Kit beating her.’ She gave a scornful laugh. ‘She always was a scheming bitch. Never liked me because she knew I could see right through her little games.’
Clover swallowed. ‘You don’t believe her allegations?’
‘They’re bullshit!’ Mia scoffed. ‘Anyone who knows Kit knows he’d never hit a woman. Not after everything that happened with his father. But he’s letting her get away with it because . . . well, he’s our guardian angel, right? Silence, in this case, is golden. Better this than the truth.’
Another quiet spell settled over them, like a fresh sheet thrown over a bed. Clover didn’t break the spell with words. She could imagine Mia picking the blades of grass and winding them between her fingers as she always used to do, when she was thinking on things.
‘. . . Cory loved us, I know that. He just wanted that title too badly, that was the problem. To finally be the best . . . He wanted it too much and he lost sight of himself.’ Mia tutted sadly. ‘The rivalry had gotten out of hand; they’d gone from being friends to bitterest enemies. It was personal and it was getting worse and worse with every comp . . . It didn’t matter what I said to him, that we didn’t care about the title, we didn’t care about being rich. We just wanted him . . . But Cory never had Kit’s self-belief. He didn’t believe he could do it by winning, only by Kit losing . . .’ There was a long pause. ‘I think he thought she was the only way to throw Kit off his game, the only way to hurt him – even if it meant betraying me.’
It was the confirmation she had dreaded. Clover closed her eyes, Kit’s own words echoing in her head: He hated me even more than he loved his own family.
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
‘Do you think Kit found them together?’ Clover’s voice was almost a whisper.
‘I’m sure that would have been the idea . . . just before the final, to get Kit shaken up.’ Mia’s voice was flat. Toneless.
Clover felt sick at the thought of what it must have been like for him, walking in on them – but the plan had backfired. Instead of being broken, Kit had been angry. He knew how to translate pain into competitive edge. It was what made him a winner.
‘But why would Amy have done it? She and Kit were engaged; he had rescued her from an abusive relationship—’
‘Yes, and then she cheated on him too, because that’s what she does! She’s married to one of the richest guys in Sydney – do you really think that’s a love match? She’s clever; takes what she can get. Cory was on the cusp of becoming world champ and she was realizing she had backed the wrong horse – Kit was coming back from injury, some folk were saying he was past his best . . . He wasn’t. Truth was, falling in love had just made him soft. He didn’t have the same fire in his belly.’
Clover swallowed. She couldn’t imagine Kit soft, or not on fire.
She watched the figure pick up a stone by the water’s edge. He pulled his arm back and threw it far out of sight across the frozen surface. Faintly, the sound of it skipping over the ice – alone on the water – travelled to her ear. She felt a memory prick at the edges of her consciousness, a ghostly image trying to find form.
‘Look, I’m not saying Cory was innocent in all this. I know it would have been his damned plan, but he paid for his mistake a hundred times over. But her? She gave him just enough to think she was the answer to his problem . . . and when it all went wrong, she walked away and never looked back. While we were left broken.’ She began crying, angry, rasping sobs finally breaking through.
‘Mia, I’m so sorry,’ Clover whispered, feeling desperately useless. She was so far away. What could she do from here? ‘I only wanted to help.’
‘You did . . . you already did.’ She heard Mia sniff and gasp, could imagine her wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. ‘When you first turned up here, he was lying in that room being eaten alive with guilt. But you went and sat with him, in silence and companionship for days on end . . . you showed him he hadn’t been forgotten, that people still cared. You threw him a lifeline.’
‘But what I put in the film, it wasn’t true.’
‘No, it was, Clo. It was the truth! Just not the whole truth . . . You acted in good faith. And if you . . . deified Cory, or vilified Kit, it was because we let you. Kit went straight on to win back the title the next year; he didn’t miss a beat. The way we saw it, what did it matter if he copped a little bad press?’
Clover didn’t stir. She’d been so ready to believe the best of Cory and the worst of Kit.
‘. . . Thing is . . . all this time, I’ve been hating on the wrong person, haven’t I? Kit got hurt the same as me, but I ignored that. It was easier to go after him and ignore what my gut was telling me. The whole world could see what he’d done . . .’
‘Did Cory know that you knew?’
Mia didn’t respond immediately. ‘I’m not sure. I never mentioned her name, not once, in the years after the accident, even though her name was always there, right on the tip of my tongue. Every day I woke up wanting to ask him – was she the reason this had happened to us? I could see it in his eyes too, the need to confess what he’d done. He wanted to clear his conscience . . . But we were both cowards. We never said her name because then we would have to face what that meant for us.’
Clover sighed. She felt drained. Everything was a mess, nothing as it had seemed. Black was white and up was down. ‘I’m sorry, Mia. I wanted this film to give you peace. An answer.’
‘A different answer. I wanted it to give me a different answer to what I feared. When Cory died, all I had left was the hope that it was all Kit’s fault. I needed him to be the bastard everyone believed him to be.’
Clover watched the man in the midnight snow as he walked back to the hotel. He looked up as he stepped into the pools of light from the windows and she felt her heart catch as Kit’s eyes found her immediately, standing on her balcony. Instantly, she felt the gravitational pull between them. She wanted to run to him and tell him that she knew exactly what he was – and what he wasn’t. That she’d been so wrong, about all of it.
But he kept on walking, disappearing a moment later into the hotel, and whatever instincts flashed between them, she knew he wasn’t coming to find her. He had lost everything – if Pipe Dreams had amplified a perceived truth about what he had done, the new film had unearthed another truth, so much worse, about what Cory had done. Kit had kept his secrets for good reasons and now she’d blown his world apart. He had been right all along not to trust her.
The jarred memory fragment had bloomed now and she remembered him, alone on his surfboard at the paddle-out – apart from everyone, already on the outside. He’d been wronged by a friend, betrayed by the woman he loved, rejected by the sport he’d made his home, yet still he’d continued, quietly, trying to do the right thing anyway. He’d been everything Mia hadn’t wanted. A good guy, with all the bad luck of an early worm.
*
Clover walked slowly, forgetting to look in the windows of the boutiques. She was supposed to be doing some Christmas shopping – there was a dress somewhere down here that Matty had spied and was coveting. She was going to need some cheering up. Julian hadn’t returned any of her calls, all worst fears now confirmed.
The streets were busy; Clover had to step off the kerb numerous times as assertive couples strode past. Christmas was beginning to feel imminent, with children building snowmen in the playgrounds and carols playing in the shops. The competition had swelled the town’s population, of course, but the sight of occasional snowboarders in oversized layers and drab colours was strangely jarring. The town felt not just frozen, but frozen in time. It was like being in the 1950s, as sable coats were clutched tightly against the bitter wind, the jingle of bells tinkling in the background as the horse-drawn sleighs were pulled through the streets, passengers bundled under blankets and against hides for warmth. Clover half-felt she should be ‘promenading’ in an opera coat and heels, not her jeans and Uggs.
She turned a corner, into a narrow side street. Matty had mentioned it was past the church and off to the left. Clover stared blankly at the luxury goods as she passed by the windows – Rolex watches on blue velvet pillows; cashmere jumpers in rainbow-hued stacks; glossy dragées and truffles in rows beneath giant chocolate angels; wooden toys and giant snowglobes on pedestals. Everything was the best, glittering and beautiful. Clover could buy what she liked. Liam had already come in with a negative pickup offer for a worldwide distribution deal that was six times what she’d got for Pipe Dreams. The full inside story of Kit Foley’s fall from grace was hot property. She could name her price.
The dress – a flutter of cobalt blue silk – announced itself as Matty’s even just on the approach. It was so perfectly her, Clover didn’t even check the price. Whatever it cost, her friend must have that dress.
She pushed on the door and went in, pointing to it in the window. Within minutes, a new one was being tissue-wrapped for her, Clover still staring blankly out of the window, unable to feel any festive cheer. She felt numb, last night’s conversation with Mia still playing on a loop in her head.
She watched an elderly lady walking on the other side of the street. She was hunched and taking tiny steps in her sheepskin bootees; Clover couldn’t imagine how long it must take her to get anywhere.
‘That will be six hundred and ninety euros, please.’
Clover’s attention was back on the shop assistant in a flash. ‘Six . . .?’ She dipped her head, rifling in her bag for her purse and trying to hide her shock. Was this something she’d get used to? Did she want to get used to it – a life of six-hundred-euro dresses?
She handed over the card just as a sound outside made her look up. The elderly lady had tumbled, Clover just able to glimpse a couple of kids sprinting past in the opposite direction.
‘Oh god, that lady!’ she cried, just as someone began running to her aid from the near side of the street.
‘Oh. She’s okay. Someone’s with her,’ the shop assistant smiled, watching the man crouch down beside her and begin talking to her.
Distantly Clover heard the buttons being pressed on the till as she watched the man reach over and gently lift the woman to standing again. She was so tiny, she couldn’t weigh more than his leg. He was tender with her, clearly checking she had no pain.
She watched the old woman say something to him and smile. Clover watched him watch her as the old lady took a few tentative steps; he had his arms outstretched towards her like an overprotective father, lest she should fall again.
‘Ms Phillips?’
Clover turned abruptly. ‘Huh?’
‘Your PIN, please?’
‘Oh. Yes.’
She punched in the number, checking she was pressing the right buttons for ‘confirm’. By the time she looked up again a few moments later, the old lady and Kit had gone.
She turned in to the hotel, clutching enough bags to feel she probably now looked like one of their guests. After buying Matty’s dress she had bought a high-end (and high-priced) remote-control Aston Martin for Johnny, a blouse for Charlie, some silver ski cufflinks for Tom, a wooden train set for Elliot and a toy elephant for Bella.
A group of carollers was gathered by the giant Christmas tree and singing ‘Stille Nacht’ – much, it appeared, to the chagrin of the photographers still gathered on the other side of the road. Still awaiting their next opportunity with Kit, the man of the moment, the man everyone was loving to hate.
He’d be back sooner than later, she knew, setting them all off into a frenzy. It felt like a minor miracle that they weren’t shadowing him down the streets. It had been a minor miracle too that she hadn’t bumped into him. If she hadn’t ducked into the boutique . . . But fate had had other ideas, conspiring to keep them apart.
She pushed on the revolving doors and stepped into the lobby. It was bustling, with a low hum of conversation and the muted tinkle of a piano playing somewhere, but she wasn’t in the mood to people-watch. She just wanted to get to her room.
She went straight to the lifts and pressed the button. Through the windows, she looked back at the press pack, waiting like vultures. Did they ever stop to think what it must be like for someone to be doorstepped by them? Did they ever consider the vitriol that followed after their lurid headlines, the catcalls in the streets of passers-by, the trolling online . . . Was what she had done to him any better?
The lift doors opened and she turned back—
Kit was leaning against the back wall, his arms folded against his chest. He glanced up as she failed to walk in.
For a moment, she couldn’t move. Lie low, she’d told herself. Stay out of his way. It had been the entire point of going out this morning . . . She hadn’t wanted to even glimpse him before tonight. She had a plan and she had to stick to it. Now, for the second time in an hour . . .
‘Quick then. Before they see me.’
She stepped into the lift’s opposite corner, keeping as much distance as she could. He seemed to notice.
‘How did you . . .?’ She glanced back at the photographers again, still waiting pointlessly out the front.
He reached forward quickly and pressed for the doors to close. ‘They’re letting me use the kitchen entrance,’ he muttered.
‘Oh.’
‘. . . Which floor?’
‘Uh, four.’
She watched him press the button, felt the lift begin to move. She could have bitten on the tension between them. It was the first time they had been alone since the night of the casino, since she had brazenly taken a bath in his room and climbed into his bed, pushing for secrets he had been right to hide. It didn’t matter that she had wanted to believe the best in him; they both knew she had brought this situation to bear and, standing in opposite corners, their night together might as well have happened between two entirely different people than the two of them here now.
The lifts were polished brass interiors – anywhere they glanced, their eyes could meet. His gaze fell to her bags. To safety.
‘Christmas shopping,’ she explained in a quiet voice. ‘Mainly for my brother and his family.’
‘Nothing for me?’
She looked back at him but only a wry look flickered in his eyes as he looked away again. A joke. Small talk. He was locking her out; she was just another stranger in a lift.
‘So what were you doing just now?’ she asked.
‘Outside?’
She nodded.
‘Just went for a walk. Trying to clear my head.’ He didn’t mention helping the little old lady off the frozen pavement. Being a Good Samaritan. But she knew now that he never did.
‘Are you nervous about tonight?’
‘Not really.’
‘Really?’
‘. . . Maybe a bit.’
She caught his gaze but he looked away again, elusive as a fox.
His phone rang. He checked it with a sigh. ‘. . . Ari,’ he muttered in a low voice. ‘I’m just with Clover.’
He frowned as his manager said something to him. Clover watched the number three run past on the digital display. A few more seconds and she could be out of here. She had a desperate urge to get away as quickly as she could—
His arm shot forwards, pressing the stop button. The lift lurched, making her stagger slightly as he looked back at her.
‘What is it?’ she asked worriedly, feeling her heart begin to pound as she felt the full weight of his scrutiny.
‘Ari says you have something important to tell me?’
She had hoped that Ari would break the news to Kit himself, but there was so much to explain . . .
She watched his expression as she told him what she knew: Julian’s family’s business troubles, their scorched earth plan, the ambush outside the restaurant, Amy’s allegations timed to coincide with the press gathered outside the casino . . . Outwardly, he scarcely reacted. He stood still, breathing deeply and slowly as he listened. She saw him swallow at the particularly pertinent moments, he was blinking more rapidly than usual, but other than that, no one would have known he was hearing anything more than the weather forecast. She tried to imagine his face as he’d walked in on Amy and Cory . . .
‘Is that it?’ he asked finally.
She nodded, wishing the lift was smaller, that he would reach an arm towards her, catch her with his gaze, that he would say again the things he had said to her in the dark.
Instead, he leaned back against the far corner, his head tipped as he stared at the ceiling, absorbing the extent of Julian’s manipulations.
Finally, he looked back at her. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘Thanks—? That’s it?’
‘What is there to say? It was a business strategy.’ He shrugged. ‘Good luck to him.’
She stared at him, open-mouthed. His response was exactly as it had been the night of Amy’s allegations too. He was Teflon-plated; bullet-proof. ‘Kit, this isn’t okay. What he’s done to you . . . It’s awful.’
His gaze slid across to her. ‘I’ve had worse.’
She stared at him, seeing how he just absorbed the shock, the pain and moved on, never missing a step. He would take this betrayal and turn it into the will to win, just as he had after the split from his father, then his father’s death, in the year after Cory’s accident, he would keep driving onwards. Unstoppable. Uncatchable. Invulnerable now . . . No one could hurt him. No one could get close anymore. Amy had taught him – and she had too, in her own small way – that he could trust no one.
He reached forward and released the stop button. The lift lurched again, rolling upwards.
She wanted to tell him she knew about all of it, everything that had been hidden: Cory and Amy; what he’d done for Mia and the boys; the lies that had been endured as a secret kindness . . . But she would be doing it for herself. What did he care if she knew now he wasn’t a monster? The damage had been done.
The number four appeared on the digital display. The doors slid open and she reluctantly stepped out.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, turning back to him.
‘You know what they say: success is the best revenge.’
She hesitated. ‘. . . Isn’t it happiness? . . . Happiness is the best revenge?’
He looked bemused. ‘Success is happiness.’
‘. . . Is it though?’ He had won every trophy there was for him to win. He didn’t seem happy to her.
He smiled – beautiful, broken – and for a moment, his gaze roamed her face like she was the conundrum. She sensed he was going to reach out and pull her to him. She felt the avalanche powder cloud clear around them momentarily, revealing blue skies and sunshine. But in the next heartbeat, he had drawn back. The doors began to close, preparing to take him from her. ‘. . . You’ve got some funny ideas, Clover Phillips. You’ll be saying you believe in the Easter Bunny and happy endings next.’