Chapter 22
Sleep was tricky enough anyway when you were seven months pregnant and had a kicky baby rolling around on your bladder. Add into the mix a man who’d opted out of fatherhood and turned out not to be the love of your life after all, and it became as flimsy and easily destroyed as a spider’s web.
Cami was taking life one day at a time right now – sometimes one hour at a time – because what other choice did she have? If she did manage to sleep, she had dreams in which Simon rejected her over and over again. She never cried in these dreams because even her subconscious knew she’d forbidden it, but the feelings of panic and loneliness were still there. Despite battling with insomnia, sometimes it was actually a relief to wake up. She owed Lizzie so much for letting her stay here, but it was only a temporary solution to a long-term problem. God only knew what would happen once Lizzie had flown back to her real life in LA.
Don’t even think about it, she told herself. Far worse things had happened to other people. Just get on with keeping the baby safe and working hard for Lizzie, because it had been fate that had brought them together and she owed it to them both to do the very best job she could.
Which was why she was down here in the kitchen now, still in her pyjamas, sitting at one end of the enormous scrubbed-oak table with all her work tools spread out before her at six thirty in the morning. She’d start by listening to last night’s audio recording, making notes to remind herself of additional questions she needed to ask Lizzie, then get on with writing up the first draft of the next chapter.
Ten minutes later, sensing movement, she took out her earbud and looked up to see Maeve unlocking the French doors, letting herself into the kitchen.
‘Sorry.’ Maeve had her basket of cleaning equipment with her. ‘I’m earlier than usual. Wasn’t expecting to see anyone up yet. I can come back later if you want.’
Cami shook her head. Each morning, Maeve spent thirty minutes returning the kitchen, living room and ground-floor bathroom to a pristine condition. She was a quiet and efficient worker and not a distraction to have around. ‘No need, it’s fine. I’m just getting on with some work before Lizzie wakes up.’ She took a sip of orange juice, waited until the baby had finished turning what felt like a squished-up cartwheel, then popped her earbud back in and pressed play on the voice recorder.
‘Two days after finishing that film, it was time to fly over to London to make a start on the next one.’ There was a pause and a clink as Lizzie had refilled her glass from the bottle of Cloudy Bay. ‘It’s weird, once you start remembering events from the past, more and more details come back to you. On the plane, I sat next to a woman called Betty who squeezed sachets of mayonnaise into about fifteen little pots of wasabi nuts. It was all she ate during the whole flight from LAX to Heathrow. Anyway, this film was Welcome to the Old Days and my co-star was Zac Meadows, who made a play for me from day one.’
‘He made a play for you? Gay Zac Meadows?’ Cami smiled, listening to the surprise in her own recorded voice.
‘I know. He wasn’t gay back then. Well, he was, but no one knew about it because his management wouldn’t allow him to come out. So like an idiot, I was thrilled and pretty much fell instantly in love with him, because . . . well, he was gorgeous. Except once we’d been papped a few times in public, he seemed to be losing interest in me. I’d suggest things we could do together and places we could go. But Zac always had other places to go that didn’t include me. And we didn’t have sex because he said he respected me too much.’ There was another pause while Lizzie took a gulp of wine. ‘And on the rare occasions he kissed me, he did it with his mouth kind of screwed up as if I might be a tiny bit poisonous. Poor guy, really. It wasn’t his fault. And poor me, because I thought it was my fault, that something must be wrong with me. I’d never felt more unattractive and less desirable in my life.’
‘What?’ Cami had protested. ‘You’ve seen the photos of yourself back then. Even if you didn’t realise it at the time, you must know now how stunning you were.’
‘I suppose I do now. But at the time I blamed myself for not being enough. Zac was simply the latest in a long line of boyfriends who didn’t really want to be with me – he just did what the publicity people told him to do. Ironically, we’re good friends these days. I went to his and Jerrard’s wedding six years ago. Back then though, he said he was too busy to see me on our day off, which was Valentine’s Day, so I ended up spending the whole afternoon and evening in my suite at the Savoy, watching TV and feeling like the last unwanted biscuit in the tin.’
‘Oh Lizzie. I hope you found something to cheer you up. When I was young, if I was ever miserable, I watched Grease . It always made me feel better. Go on, you’re smiling now. What was it?’
Cami paused the recording in order to scribble down a couple of notes. This was why it sometimes paid to jump in with a question, because if she hadn’t asked it, Lizzie might not have been prompted to remember the answer.
Her earbud was crackling, the lead evidently on the way out. Looking up, she saw no sign of Maeve, which meant she’d gone through to attend to the bathroom and living room. Abandoning the earbud, Cami tapped her pen against the voice recorder and pressed play once more; she was looking forward to what was coming next.
‘I loved Grease too, but I came across this teatime game show and got sucked in. The host was asking the contestants what they’d do if they won the prize money, and there was this one guy who said he and his wife were desperate for a baby but they’d used up all their savings trying IVF so this was their last chance. And he seemed so nice, and his wife was sitting in the audience and she looked lovely too. Well, I just got invested and really wanted them to win. All the way through, I was yelling at the TV, willing him on, and it was so close in the final round, but in the end he just missed out. It was all or nothing, and he went away with nothing, and he and his wife must have been devastated, but he put on a brave face and congratulated the woman who’d beaten him, even though she was going to spend the money on a trip to see Barry Manilow in Las Vegas.’
‘That’s so unfair.’
‘I know! If they’d won, it would have cheered me up and made my night better. But they lost and I was gutted for them. It just made me more miserable, and mad at the world, because how could life be so shitty and cruel?’
‘Go on,’ Cami prompted on the tape after a prolonged pause. ‘What happened after that?’
‘I ordered two chocolate puddings from room service and ate both of them. Then I felt sick. Then I fell asleep. Then I woke up at four in the morning and had a great big cry because I’d eaten two chocolate puddings and my crappy so-called boyfriend didn’t want me and the nice people on the TV show hadn’t won the money they needed.’ There was the clink of glass again as Lizzie took another sip of wine. ‘Then I searched for the show online, found out the name of the production company and sent them an email to tell them I wanted to pay for the couple’s next course of IVF.’
‘Wow. Amazing! And?’
‘So that’s what I did. They emailed me back later that morning. I had to call them to prove it was me and I really meant it . . . you know, because sometimes they get hoax calls or drunk people making promises they can’t keep. And that was it, I sent them the money.’
‘Hang on, though. How have I never heard about this before?’
‘Because I told the production company they couldn’t tell anyone it was me. It had to be anonymous. Like, completely anonymous. And they agreed to that.’
‘What about the couple themselves? They were allowed to know, right? Oh my God, can you imagine how they must have felt when they heard?’
‘I could imagine it. That was what was so nice. But no, they didn’t know it was me.’
Cami heard herself on the tape sounding incredulous. ‘ What? Whyever not?’
‘This was back when social media had just taken off, and all of a sudden the whole world had a way to say whatever it was they wanted to say. The year before, I’d made a big donation to a fundraiser and my agent spread the word because he thought it would be good publicity. Except everyone thought I was just showing off, bragging about how much money I had, and it backfired completely. Thousands of people on Twitter and in the press were mocking me, calling me names and saying I was desperate for attention. It was just awful. I never wanted anything like that to happen again. From then on, any donations I made had to be anonymous.’ Lizzie sighed audibly and went on, ‘I don’t know why I’ve told you this story. I don’t think I even want it to go into the book.’
‘We can talk about that later. But does this mean you never had any contact with the couple? You didn’t ever discover if the IVF worked?’
‘Oh, it worked.’ Cami could hear the satisfaction in Lizzie’s voice now. ‘They sent a letter via the boss of the TV production company, thanking their anonymous donor, and he forwarded it on to me. They said I could never know how happy they were that I’d made their lives complete. And they included a photo of themselves with the baby, taken a couple of hours after she’d been born. She was so gorgeous.’
‘So they had a little girl. Just call me Sherlock,’ said Cami on the tape. ‘Did they tell you her name?’
‘They did. She was called Hannah.’
‘Pretty name.’
‘Pretty baby.’
‘You’re mad if you don’t put this into the book.’
‘No, I really don’t think I want to. Damn, this bottle’s empty . . . Shall we have some ice cream now?’
Cami pressed pause again and made a note on her pad to ask Lizzie if she still had the letter from the parents, and the photo too. It would be so great to include them in her life story if she could just persuade her to change her mind about—
‘All done. I’m off.’ From the far end of the kitchen, Maeve’s voice interrupted her train of thought; she really was a fast worker. Glancing up, Cami said absently, ‘Bye,’ as the girl and her cleaning basket disappeared through the French doors.
But ten minutes later, when she went to help herself to a glass of iced water from the fridge, she was surprised to see an unwashed mug and a few bits of cutlery lying next to the sink. It was odd, because it was out of character for Maeve to leave anything unwashed. When she’d finished cleaning, the place was always spotless. And had she even had time to do the living room and downstairs bathroom? Hmm, she was definitely skipping off early.
Better mention it to Lizzie when she woke up; it wouldn’t be fair on her if standards were to drop.