Val and Didi sat on the bed watching the TV, not saying a word. Val had taken three or four yellows she wasn’t sure, yet she still felt wired. She saw the images on the screen laughing and joking, her costars one after the other saying how thrilled they were to be there. She couldn’t have cared less about them and turned down the sound. She sat bolt upright in bed when a limo arrived and out stepped Nicky. He looked like a million-dollar movie star. He helped her mother out of the limo. Val couldn’t get over how beautiful she looked. Then Karen appeared. The reaction from the crowd said it all—they went crazy. They made, to say the least, an exceptional looking threesome as they stopped to speak to people and pose for photographers.
Val didn’t want to listen to what they were saying. It was probably scripted by someone else anyway. Only one thought played on her mind. The three people there on the screen had been the cause of every emotion she had ever been capable of feeling: love, hate, happiness, tears, disappointment, silly, serious. Now look where she was. Sitting in bed with a woman in Boston, looking at the man she had loved and trusted. And then her mother who she loved, she supposed, but who had caused her so many tears. Then Karen. Who as far as she was concerned had rejected her when she’d needed her. She’d been a good friend, but Val felt like she was now a threat to what she and Didi had… although to be honest she was stuck trying to find the word to describe what they had. Whatever it was, it was a secret. No one could ever know.
The three of them stood there on the screen with smiles a yard wide. Nicky was treating her mother as if she was the queen. It was all too much! When Karen blew a kiss at the camera it was the last straw. As the trio disappeared into the theater, Val lost it completely and started to sob.
Didi could do nothing to console her and ended up calling Glen.
“You have to come to our room immediately. It’s an emergency.”