Kara grappled to understand what was going on, but Drea cut right to it, turning her phone around so that Kara could see the screen. There was Sienna. On a flight… Sucking the face off Van Weeks.
Another video. Sienna losing her shit at someone who, granted, was completely invading her privacy by filming her. But then, if Sienna hadn’t been up to no good in the first place, there would be nothing to see.
‘Oh shit, shit, shit! Ollie!’ She went to grab her phone, but her hands were soaking. ‘Drea, can you call him, right now.’
Drea immediately reacted. She dialled, then held the phone against Kara’s ear. Straight to voicemail again. Fuck! This time she left a message.
‘Ollie! I’ve just seen the video. Oh God, I’m so sorry. Where are you? I’ll come to you right now. I’ve got you, pal. Call me back.’
She jumped up, and for once, Drea didn’t give her hell for splashing water everywhere. Just handed her a towel and held out a hand to help Kara climb out.
She tucked the towel around her, as she stood dripping on the bath mat, both of them staring at the phone screen. Nothing. No call back. No text. Nothing.
‘Fuck it, I’m going to his flat.’
Drea had a slight objection. ‘You might want to put some clothes on, unless you want your arse to be all over the internet within the hour. Although, it might get you a new boyfriend.’
‘You’re hilarious,’ Kara said, in the most sarcastic tone she could muster.
She was drying her body like it was a Fiat 500 in the last bit of a car wash, flapping the towel around her bits, when Ollie shocked them both by replying.
I’m on way to airport. Meet me in usual lounge.
What. The. Hell. Was. Going. On?
The sense of urgency switched on for the first time all day. ‘Get a move on, Drea,’ she blurted in her sister’s direction. ‘We need to get to the airport. And I might need your Louboutin stilettos in case I meet Sienna fricking Montgomery.’
15
OLLIE
It was strange how the mind and body reacted when something cataclysmically shite happened to you.
From when he’d started acting at twelve, until he’d landed the role inThe Clansmanwhen he was twenty-five, Ollie had had thousands of rejections, some of them for parts that he’d really wanted. Somewhere along the way, that had given him the ability to compartmentalise disappointment and rejection, to put it in a box and refuse to let it get him down. Before he’d married Sienna, he’d had a few semi-long-term relationships that lasted a few months here and there – even thought he was in love a couple of times. And when the flings ended, usually because he was going off somewhere for work, he’d refused to let it get him down for long.
‘Dust yourself off, son,’ his mum always said, ‘and let’s keep going. You and I can deal with anything life throws at us, because we know the great stuff is on the way.’ She’d drilled that optimism and resilience into him since he was a kid, and it was part of his DNA now. The only time that attitude hadn’t got him through unscathed was when he was fourteen and his grandparents died within months of each other. He hadn’t beenclose to his grandad – he was a man who preferred the pub to his family and didn’t even try to hide it. But his gran… She’d come to every show, every school concert, every football match, and every Sunday she’d taken him to church in that building he’d visited this morning. Like her daughter, she was also called Moira, and her loss had left a huge hole in his life. He still missed her and he knew his mum did too. Gradually though, with the help of Kara, Drea and Jacinta, they’d both picked themselves back up and got on with living again.
What happened today wasn’t a death, but it was a massive blow and he felt like he should be experiencing some kind of devastation. He kept waiting for it to come. It had been a couple of hours now, and he’d had a few coffees. He’d even found a packet of cigarettes Sienna must have left on a shelf just inside the balcony door, and smoked a couple of them too, which did nothing more than make him feel queasy because he’d quit five years ago and not touched one since. He was surprised by what she’d done. Shocked. Blindsided. But he wasn’t pacing the floor or feeling his heart being ripped from his chest. Was the love already gone? Was this blow failing to crush him because he’d already begun building protection? Deep inside, had he already known the end was coming?
That was going to take a whole lot of soul searching to work out, but in the meantime, he focused on the practical stuff.
He’d spoken to his agent, his manager, his publicist, and told them all he wouldn’t be commenting. What did it say about his life that he’d spoken to the people who handled his career before he’d had a conversation with the woman he’d vowed to spend the rest of his life with?
Not that she could get through to him anyway, because he’d also put his phone on silent, muted all notifications and he hadn’t gone near a social media website since he’d watched the video.
Instead, he’d spent twenty minutes letting the jets of the shower pummel his back (for the second time today), got dressed again, packed his case for Hawaii, pulled a beanie hat low down on his head and now he was leaving the building.
He took the back exit to the gated service area where he’d parked the hire car he’d picked up at the airport when he’d arrived last night. Nothing conspicuous. A basic Audi. The last thing he needed was a flash car drawing attention to him every day. When he’d landed the role inThe Clansman, he’d blown his first big cheque on the down payment on a Lamborghini, but he’d realised almost immediately that he was in a constant state of anxiety when he was driving it, because every pothole could cause a blowout, every idiot on the roads could cause a crash and it came with a big arrow above it saying ‘look at me’. After a week, he’d driven it back to the dealership to return it, and then he’d gone to another garage down the road and driven away in the black Ford F150 pick-up truck that he still owned and adored today. It sat next to Sienna’s Porsche Cayenne in their driveway, and she rolled her eyes every time she looked at it.
As he drove out of the back entrance and round onto the street where he could see his main door, he spotted and recognised a couple of press photographers hanging out at the front of the building. He was pretty sure they were just there out of hope and optimism, because no one other than his closest circle knew he was in town. Hopefully he would be gone before the media even knew he’d been here.
There was no ping of an alert from his silenced phone, but the car’s display screen, connected to his phone via Carplay, flashed up a message that he had a voicemail from Kara. He pressed play to listen.
‘Ollie! I’ve just seen the video. Oh God, I’m so sorry. Where are you? I’ll come to you right now. I’ve got you, pal. Call me back.’
He hadn’t even considered not going to Hawaii. Why would he? The only people he wanted to speak to were about to fly with him to London for an overnight stay, before taking a flight tomorrow to Honolulu, via a brief change in San Francisco, so right now there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Everything that had happened deserved more than a rushed phone call, so he texted her to let her know where he’d be.
‘Hey Siri, text Kara.’
