Page 100 of Home Grown Talent
And, God, how Owen wanted Mason’s arms around him then, wanted his smile and his warm, reassuring touch. Wanted him.
Hands shaking with shock and outrage, he pulled out his phone. There were dozens of missed messages, but he ignored them all, swiping through his contacts. He hesitated at the last moment and then dialled.
“Owen?” said the familiar voice immediately. “Thank fuck.”
Owen closed his eyes, stupid tears bunching in his throat. “They’re hanging me out to dry, Lewis. You have to help me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Get over to my place right now,” his brother growled. “We’re going to fucking war.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mason
Monday afternoon had turned grey and drizzly in South West London, and Mason sat hunched against the weather on a damp bench overlooking the Thames. On the other side of the river, joggers and cyclists made use of the towpath that ran along the water’s tree-lined bank, while on his side a young mum and a little boy threw bread into the water for the hordes of swans and geese.
A shrubby embankment shielded Mason from the street behind him, but he could still hear the hum of traffic and the hiss of tyres on the wet road.
All of it, though, seemed to be happening elsewhere. At a distance. Ever since everything had fallen apart on Saturday, Mason had been living in a spiralling nightmare, disconnected from the real world.
He hadn’t thought it could get any worse than Owen ending things between them, walking away without even hearing Mason’s side of the story.
“Owen, please, I love you!”
His throat closed at the memory.
And then it had got worse.
It had started with the comments about Owen’s behaviour on the show. Mostly from Mason’s fans, disgruntled with Owen’s failure to play the part of besotted lover on live television. That had been bad enough—seeing Owen being called surly and cold and not fit to lick Mason’s boots had angered and shamed Mason in equal measure—but then someone had posted that photo again. The one Mason had taken of Owen in his own garden, with his own pineapple plants. And before he knew it, there were photo comparisons being posted, and links about how to grow pineapples, and accusations being thrown about Owen’s credentials as a gardening expert. Within hours, #pineapplegate was in full swing.
When the story first erupted on Insta, Mason had prayed it would be contained there—or, at least, contained online so that Owen, social media luddite that he was, wouldn’t have to know anything about it.
He’d prayed the story would burn out fast, blink and you’d miss it.
Neither prayer had been answered.
Instead, Misty had posted her vile lies about Owen—clearly, he’d been chosen as the sacrifice to appease the ravening mob—and Mason had spent the night watching his notifications blow up, while ignoring his agent’s desperate urging to Just like Misty’s fucking post, will you?
He hadn’t liked it, and he hadn’t posted any comment himself either. What’s more, he had no intention of doing so until he figured out a way to actually make things better, rather than just pour more fuel on the fire.
Maybe that’s why he’d come here, to the place where Frieda and the girls lived. A childish instinct to run home and seek comfort from his mum. Not that she’d be able to offer much more than a cup of tea. Frieda was part of the problem, after all. A big part.
He sighed and looked down at his phone, at the article Frankie, his agent, had sent him that morning—“Sex, Lies, and Tropical Fruit: What #pineapplegate tells us about gender, class, and privilege in the post-truth world.”
Even if Owen had escaped #pineapplegate over the weekend, he’d bloody well know about it now. This shitty article had been published in the online edition of one of the national broadsheets and picked up by loads of online feeds. Everyone had seen it, and it had been shared and liked all over the place. Someone Owen knew was bound to have mentioned it to him.
The words of the article were warped by the spiderweb of cracks across Mason’s screen, the result of flinging his phone across his bedroom when he’d first read it. The author was none other than Misty’s journalist pal, Austin Coburn—because, of course—and Mason could hear his sneering, pompous tone in every word.
If you’ve been entranced by the delightfully quirky lifestyle show, Weekend Wellness (10 a.m. Saturdays), you’ll be familiar with “gardening hottie” Owen Hunter, the erastes to model-turned-presenter Mason Nash’s post-ironic eromenos.
Last Saturday saw trouble slither into W12’s Garden of the Hesperides, although in this case, pineapples, not apples, were the forbidden fruit.
Eagle-eyed viewers cried foul when a clearly imported pineapple was paraded around the studio. Why? Because ‘honest gardener’ Owen Hunter wanted us to believe he’d grown it himself in his small South London garden. In a fortnight.
Step up trusty Twitter fact-checkers. Insisting the claim was impossible, they began to question Hunter’s horticultural bona fides. Among other things.
Which was when the plot thickened…
It transpires that Owen Hunter is actually the brother of Lewis Hunter. Yes, the Lewis Hunter, writer of Leeches, that saccharine vampire melodrama so beloved by your teens. Leeches is produced by Reclined Pigeon Productions, who, surprise surprise... also produce Weekend Wellness.