Page 40 of All Summer Long
If Alice had been asked who she cried for, she wouldn’t have known what to say.
She cried for herself; sadness for the finality of losing her marriage today even though in reality it had been dead in the water for a while, and she cried tears of pride for how far she’d come since she’d found herself unexpectedly alone.
She cried tears of regret for how much of herself she’d kept buried over the years, and for the time she’d wasted not being the person she really wanted to be.
But most of all, she cried tears of pain for the inescapable truth that she was going to have to give Robinson back to his real life soon.
Beautiful, generous Robinson Duff, the drop dead gorgeous cowboy who’d come to Borne to save his own sanity and somehow saved hers too. She missed him already.
‘Remind me again why I’m doing this,’ Robinson muttered a couple of mornings later, running his hand around the inside of his shirt collar in the back of the car flying along the empty motorway in the early hours.
‘Because I am making hay while the British sun shines, Robinson. Because I haven’t travelled to this tiny rock just to wipe your ass.
Do you know how many strings I had to pull to get you a slot on this show?
A lot, that’s how many, so suck it up and be grateful.
Tell them you love their little country and smile for the camera.
Tell them you’re coming over here on tour soon. ’
‘You’re advising me to lie on breakfast TV?’
‘Doesn’t necessarily need to be a lie, son,’ Marsh said smoothly, snapping his black silk eye mask over his eyes to indicate that that the conversation was over.
Robinson leaned his head back and watched the lights whizzing past his window in a blur.
Trust Marsh to get his money’s worth out of being in England.
The man was always looking for the next opportunity to make money, and to give him his dues he was the best in the business at his job.
Robinson knew that on a professional level he ought to be grateful for the exposure, but coming to England had never been about that.
It had been about the opposite, in fact.
It was an unwelcome intrusion, his real life seeping further and further in around the edges, like ink bleeding on blotting paper.
Alice switched on the TV in the lounge at the manor and curled up in the armchair to watch Robinson appear on Lorraine’s famous morning sofa.
She’d grown accustomed to watching Brad being interviewed when they were together, but the idea of Robinson on TV seemed so much more bizarre.
She didn’t know him in his professional capacity at all, in fact while he’d been here she’d made a point of not looking him up or listening to his music.
It felt important, almost like it would be disloyal to know more about him than he knew of her courtesy of Google and skewed information from people with vested interests.
‘And coming up after the break we’ve our weekly round-up of the soaps,’ chirped Lorraine, ‘and I’ll be talking to Brad McBride about the explosive scenes coming up for his character this autumn in Doctors On Call, plus country music superstar Robinson Duff will be here to tell us all about his latest album. More in five.’
Alice gasped out loud in pure shock and horror. This had to be a mistake. It was just too co-incidental that Brad could end up on the same show as Robinson. Breathing fast, she slid her tea onto the table and covered her face with her hands.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ she whispered. ‘What did you do, Marsh?’
‘So, Robinson, it’s an absolute treat to have you here!
I know your legions of fans here in the UK will want me to ask if you’ve any plans to tour here soon?
’ Lorraine smiled broadly and crossed her fingers at the camera on the viewers’ behalf as she twinkled at Robinson seated opposite her on the couch.
Alice sat dry mouthed on the edge of her seat, her hands gripping the undersides of her thighs with clammy hands.
The camera loved Robinson, picking up the tawny lights in his hair and sprinkling green glitter in his beautiful eyes.
He came over exactly as he was in real life, honest and open, and Lorraine looked so smitten that she might crawl across the floor in her fabulous shoes and mount him at any moment.
Alice couldn’t blame her. Seeing him doing his job was an incredible aphrodisiac; he was confident and sexy, and when Lorraine cut to a clip of him in concert Alice wanted to lick the screen because he was so shatteringly sexy.
In that moment, she saw what the world saw and fell for him afresh as a spellbound fan.
For a few seconds she forgot all about the fact that Brad was coming on and just appreciated the man in front of her.
‘You spend a fair chunk of your time globetrotting, life must be pretty stressful,’ Lorraine said, leaning towards him a little. ‘What do you do to relax in your down time?’
A loud off-screen clatter made Lorraine jump violently in her seat, and as Robinson looked over his shoulder Brad stumbled into view, shaking his foot free of a trailing camera cable that he’d clearly tripped on as he barged onto the set.
‘I’ll tell you what he’s doing with his down time, Lorraine,’ he shouted, jabbing his finger wildly in Robinson’s direction. ‘He’s boning my wife!’
Lorraine looked as if she might be about to have a heart attack on the spot, and Robinson got to his feet.
‘I’m real sorry about this, darlin’,’ he said to Lorraine, and then to a purple-faced Brad, he said ‘this is neither the time nor the place.’
‘Oh, I think it is,’ Brad said. ‘And you can tell my slut of a wife from me that …’
He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Robinson’s fist connected squarely with his jaw.
‘Never miss a good chance to shut up,’ Robinson said, shaking the blood from his knuckles as Brad stumbled backwards out of view again and could be heard screaming loudly at Lorraine’s crew to get off him as they hauled him off set.
Robinson sat back down again as if nothing untoward had happened, and after a moment Lorraine followed suit and smoothed a hand over her perfectly coiffed hair.
‘Where I come from, it’s not polite to speak like that about a lady.’
Lorraine looked as if she might commando roll across the floor and kiss Robinson’s feet. She coughed to clear her throat and then smiled into the camera.
‘Quite. Coming up after the break, all the inside gossip from the cobbles of Coronation Street . We’ll be right back.’
They cut to adverts, and Alice switched the TV off and curled up on the sofa in silence. As far as she was concerned, real life wasn’t just ink seeping in around the edges, it was crashing in over them like a tidal wave, and she was drowning in it.
He came home and found her at the kitchen table.
‘I guess you saw what happened.’
‘Did Marsh set it up?’
Robinson sat down beside her. ‘He says not. But yeah, I reckon he did.’
She put her hand on his thigh, wincing when she noticed Brad’s blood on Robinson’s shirt. ‘You shouldn’t have hit him.’
‘I should have hit him harder.’
‘Will it damage your reputation?’
He shrugged. ‘Marsh thinks not. No publicity is bad publicity, that old chestnut.’
‘I shouldn’t think Brad’s manager is looking at it that way right now,’ Alice said, a small smile hovering despite everything. She kissed his cheek.
‘Thank you for protecting my honour, even if he was technically correct.’
‘What was that phrase he used? Boning?’ Robinson said, frowning.
‘As in having sex with,’ Alice said, grimacing.
Robinson looked sideways at her and then started to laugh under his breath, and then pulled her into his lap.
‘As in “let’s take our clothes off and bone”?’ he asked, sliding his hands inside her t-shirt.
‘Not sure that makes literal sense,’ she said, settling into him. ‘At least he didn’t say fucking. Lorraine really wouldn’t have liked that.’
‘I like how you sound when you say it,’ he said, pulling her t-shirt off and lifting her up onto the kitchen table in front of him as he stood up.
‘I like how it feels when we do it,’ she breathed, gasping as he pushed her backwards, dragged her hips to the edge of the table and settled himself between her thighs. And then, as had become their way, they blocked out everyone and everything else and lost themselves in each other.
She made them omelettes at midnight and he opened the beers.
They sat close at the kitchen table and spoke quietly, then went back to bed and slept tumbled together, wrapped up in the sheets and each other until someone unceremoniously woke them the next morning by banging on the door knocker and shouting through the letterbox.
‘Open the damn door, Robinson Duff. I know you’re in there and I’m not going anywhere until you open this door!’
Robinson dragged the pillow over his head and groaned, and Alice pulled it back off again and looked at him, still half asleep.
‘Who is it?’
Robinson sat up and rubbed his hands over his face.
‘I hate to say it, Goldilocks, but it sounds very much like my ex-wife.’
Robinson threw his clothes on and jogged downstairs pulling his t-shirt down his chest, craning his neck to look through the small, bevelled hall window to get the full picture before he opened the door.
‘Fuck,’ he said, banging the back of his head lightly against the wall as he cursed. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Opening the door had just become even more of an issue, because it wasn’t just Lena out there on the driveway. From what he could tell, the entire British press had set up camp on his doorstep as well.
Grabbing his mobile from the hall table, he called Marsh on speed dial. His manager answered after a couple of rings.
‘What the fuck did you do?’ Robinson said, dispensing with any greeting.
‘Good morning to you too,’ Marsh said, sounding pithy and bored.
‘I’m not in the mood for your games, Marsh. Did you do this?’
His manager sighed heavily down the phone. ‘I’ve done what needed to be done, Robinson, because you weren’t going to man up and do anything yourself any time soon.’
‘So what, you called every newspaper in the whole of goddamn England to tell them where I am, and then threw my estranged wife in to the mix for good measure?’
Behind him he heard Alice’s footsteps on the stairs and turned to glance at her.
She looked stricken, and he wasn’t a bit surprised.
The only thing she’d asked of him was that he didn’t bring the press to her door again, and here they were surrounded by long lens cameras.
He mouthed sorry as she fastened her robe around her waist and sat on the bottom step of the stairs to wait for him to finish on the phone.
‘What the hell are you saying, Duff?’ Marsh barked. ‘The press are over there?’
‘Don’t even bother playing the innocent, Marsh.’
His manager fell silent for a minute and then, typically, started yelling at the top of his lungs.
‘Under no circumstances do you open that door until I get there, do you understand me? One sniff of there being truth to that infidelity story and your fans will throw you under the nearest goddamn bus!’
Marsh hung up, and from the way Robinson heard him cursing as he stabbed the end call button of his mobile he felt fairly confident that although Marsh had contacted Lena, he wasn’t the one responsible for the press invasion. But if not Marsh, then who?
‘Robinson! Let me in, for God’s sake,’ Lena hissed loudly through the waist-high letterbox. ‘If you don’t let me inside this house in the next thirty seconds I swear to God I’ll give them something to point their lenses at.’
Robinson crossed the hall and dropped down on his haunches in front of Alice. Reaching out, he cupped her cheek in his hand.
‘Alice, I’m so sorry. I’ll make this all go away, I promise you. By the end of today you’ll have your privacy back, okay?’
Her eyes were blue in every sense of the word; cornflower in colour, melancholy in mood. They both knew that the only way to get the press off the driveway of Borne Manor would be for Robinson to leave too.
‘You’re going to have to let her in,’ Alice said. ‘They’ll eat her alive.’
Robinson laughed sourly. ‘You haven’t met Lena.’
Alice stood up. ‘No. And I’m not planning on meeting her in my robe.’ She squinted through the bevelled window and saw the sea of press part to allow the tiny but mighty Marsh to march through the middle of them. ‘Marsh is here. I’m going to take a shower while you guys talk.’
‘Alice …’ Robinson caught hold of her hand as she turned to go upstairs and Marsh thumped heavily on the door. She stepped back down and kissed his cheek, lingering to breathe in the scent of him for a precious second.
‘It isn’t your fault, Robinson,’ she sighed, bringing his fingers to her mouth and kissing them. ‘This day has been coming from the moment you arrived. That’s the thing with holiday romances. They have to end.’
Across the village, Davina flicked the open sign over to closed as she locked the door and jumped into the waiting taxi.
There’d be no catching the bus for her today, nor for the foreseeable future thanks to the tidy sum she’d received in exchange for revealing the whereabouts of Robinson Duff.
After his performance on live breakfast TV he was the hottest story in the country; opportunity had come knocking and Davina hadn’t needed to think twice before answering.
She was taking the morning off, and she might even buy Hazel’s stupid bird some fancy seeds as a thank-you for his insider info.
She probably wouldn’t have trusted the intel from a human; she’d yet to meet one who didn’t lie for his own convenience. She wasn’t one bit sorry.