Page 46

46

LONDON, 1986

“Are you looking for Cassie?” asks a voice, as Nicole hurriedly makes her way through the teenage throng that has congregated on the concourse outside the Savoy hotel. Hearing her sister’s name, here, out of context, jolts her like an electric shock.

“Where is she?” demands Nicole, turning toward a girl who looks vaguely familiar–but with her scrambled brain, Nicole can’t even begin to work out where she recognizes her from.

The girl chews on the inside of her cheek, as if contemplating whether to tell her or not, and it takes all of Nicole’s self-control not to shake it out of her.

“Cassie told me what you did,” she says, eventually.

“ What? ” says Nicole, her frustration mired with the alarm bell that’s been set off in her head.

“She told me what you did,” says the girl, almost cryptically. “You know, with Ben and stuff…”

The thought of a lynch mob suddenly descending on her only adds to Nicole’s mounting problems. “Who even are you?”

“I’m Amelia, Cassie’s best friend.”

Since when? Nicole stops herself from asking. She’s never heard of her, and in that moment she feels a pang of guilt for being so wrapped up in her own world that she doesn’t know such a simple fact about her sister. “Do you know where she is?” she asks again.

“She’s really upset,” says Amelia.

“Why, what happened?” Nicole asks.

“Who does that to her own sister?” says Amelia. “Why would you even think of getting between Ben and Cassie?”

Nicole bites her tongue, seeing no point in putting her straight, because despite her sister’s insistence that they were in a relationship, she is yet to find proof of anything more than an unrequited crush on her favorite pop star. Though she can’t help but ask herself who’s more deluded: Cassie or herself?

“Everything was going along fine until you showed up,” Amelia goes on. “They were really into each other.”

“She told you that?” asks Nicole, unable to help herself.

“I saw it,” says Amelia brusquely. “Who do you think he was with the other night at the Langham, when you had the nerve to show up? They knew you were coming. That’s why they had to change rooms, so they could get away from you.”

A ticking time bomb goes off in Nicole’s head. “ What? ”

“She told me she knew you’d overheard them making arrangements on the phone, and she knew you’d pitch up and try to ruin things, so she had to swap rooms…”

It’s as if Nicole is being dragged through a vortex, back to when, despite her reservations, she’d succumbed to Ben’s unrelenting pleas to see him. Back to when she’d arrived at his hotel room with a glimmer of hope that perhaps they could turn things around—only for any promise of utopia to be cruelly snatched away when a girl claiming to be his girlfriend opened the door.

“You!” she gasps, suddenly seeing the girl standing in front of her for who she really is. “It was you in that room!”

Amelia shrugs her shoulders.

“Fuck!” Nicole puts her hands on her head and walks around in a circle. “Ben wasn’t even in the shower, was he?”

“Well, you weren’t taking the hint,” says Amelia, without an iota of irony. “You should have backed off when the story about the model came out, but that didn’t seem enough to deter you either.”

“Oh my god,” shrieks Nicole, unable to help herself. “What kind of fucked-up game is that?”

Amelia’s eyes shift, as if sensing for the first time that she may have been played by Cassie as much as Nicole has.

“Do you have any idea of the damage you’ve caused?” yells Nicole. “Of the delusion you’ve indulged? You helped Cassie create a fantasy in her head—one that was never going to happen.”

“She loves him, and all she wanted was for him to love her back,” says Amelia quietly.

“You can’t force someone to love you,” barks Nicole.

“Well, then she’s going to die trying,” says Amelia, turning to walk away.

Fear reaches its talons into Nicole’s chest, making it feel as if her heart is being ripped out. “Where is she?” she roars, taking hold of Amelia’s arm and spinning her around. “Where’s my sister?”

Amelia fixes her with an unmoving glare. “She’s gone to be with her mum,” she says.