Chapter 49
Cal
Ican’t believe she’s here.
I keep sneaking sideways glances at her as I busy myself with pouring her a glass of perfectly chilled Chassagne Montrachet from my wine fridge. I told her to keep it casual, and she arrived wrapped up in a Burberry trench that made her look like a very sexy spy.
She’s lost the coat, and now she’s floating around my flat in an olive-coloured longish, silky dress that’s belted at the waist and has buttons the entire way down the front. She’s left the buttons undone from mid thigh downwards and from just above where her bra begins.
All this makes me extremely happy and also a little hard.
When I think about the women I’ve fucked in my lifetime, they’re this faceless blur of hair and limbs, which is awful, I know. But Aida is so unforgettable in every way. She’s searing herself onto my consciousness so sharply I may not survive it.
I have to confess, I’ve fallen down a major Aida Russell rabbit hole online.
Not just to be stalky, which I am. Not just to jerk off to, which I do, especially because I haven’t seen her in person for exactly a week.
But also because I want to understand this woman more fully—this woman who’s let me into her body and her confidence.
Who’s entrusted me with rebuilding her sexuality, in a way.
I watch interview after interview with everyone from Barack Obama to Russell Brand to Jane bloody Fonda, which is epic in itself.
The size of her brain makes my own little brain hurt.
Her ability to think on her feet, to pivot, to ask exactly the right question at exactly the right time in order to eviscerate her interviewee is simply staggering.
It’s like watching Nadal play some fifteen-year-old amateur. Total fucking annihilation, every time.
Don’t get me wrong. I know she has a huge team of people researching on her behalf, and briefing her, and even role-playing to prepare her for big events like the debate she chaired for prime ministerial candidates.
But none of that should take away from her ability to rhapsodise live from the Paris terror attacks or to land exactly the right question at the right time or to perceive, uncannily and seemingly effortlessly, the exact heart of any issue she’s addressing.
She makes it all look easy, and that makes my head spin.
Not to mention, she’s beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts my heart.
She’s grown into her bone structure. Her cheekbones are more pronounced than they were even a decade ago.
Her huge dark eyes are more hooded, more dramatic.
She’s svelte and toned, and I can safely say, with my wealth of experience at hand, that she has the body of a woman ten years younger.
I’ve built her up in my mind into the icon that she is.
You’d think, having fucked her, that feeling would fade with the relative familiarity and intimacy we’ve enjoyed.
But it hasn’t. If anything, it’s grown. I idolise her, and that sense of wonder, of worship, even, grows every time she lets me get close.
And with that sense of wonder comes the responsibility for the wellbeing of a woman the nation adores.
She’s in my flat, and she’s strolling around, admiring the huge abstract oils on the walls and teasing me about my bookshelves—I’m big on sports biographies. I reckon I’d outperform her at interviewing any Premier League manager or England cricket team captain, past or present.
‘You really like Spurs,’ she observes.
‘Yep,’ I tell her. ‘London boy, born and bred.’
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘Interesting. And you really like cricket.’
‘I fucking love it. I’ve played for a club every summer except this one—we opened Alchemy in Cannes so I spent most of the summer down there.’
‘I bet you did, you dirty boy,’ she says, pulling out my Alastair Cook memoir. ‘But I wish I’d had you around this summer. Kit and Pip are obsessed with cricket.’
‘I wish I’d been there, too,’ I tell her softly, and something in my voice makes her turn and give me a once-over. ‘Nah,’ she says, sliding the book back into place. ‘Orgies in the South of France or bowling endless balls to my kids? You don’t fool me for a second, Sinclair.’
* * *
I know two things to be true.
Whatever Aida needs, I’ll give to her.
Whatever she’ll let me have, I’ll take from her.
Need has been building throughout the meal I cooked us—seared fillet on a bed of julienned vegetables if you must know. I have her in my home. We’re less than ten metres from my fucking bed. And all the heady insanity of last week at the masked ball couldn’t make up for what we have now.
Privacy and time.
And I’m a master at availing of both.
But first, when you have the most fascinating woman you’ve ever met to yourself, you listen.
Like I said, we’ve got time.
I resist the urge to ask her what Obama was like in person—because everyone does that, right? Instead I ask, ‘Have you ever had brain freeze live on air?’
She gives a little laugh. ‘All the fucking time.’
‘No way. I don’t buy that for a second. You always seem so terrifyingly on the ball—your mental gymnastics are insane. It’s one of the absolutely most impressive things about you.’ I take a leisurely sip of the very smooth Pomerol I decanted to complement the steak.
‘They were insane. They’re not anymore.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighs. ‘It’s—not embarrassing, but it’s awkward.’
‘Okay…’ I say. I wait and swill my wine.
‘You won’t know anything about this, because you’re thirty-freaking-six, but I’ve been perimenopausal for the last couple years. That’s the period before you hit actual menopause, and it can last years and years.’
I make a sympathetic moue with my mouth and reach over to take her hand, but I don’t say anything, because I have nothing intelligent or helpful to contribute at this point. So I stroke her thumb instead.
‘Anyway, there are a lot of insidious symptoms that creep up on you, and you don’t realise what’s causing them, and you chalk it up to losing your goddamn mind. And brain fog was one of those for me.’
She pauses. ’It’s a stupidly inadequate term for having absolutely no brain function.
I kept losing my train of thought when I was talking.
I found myself trailing off at the end of sentences a lot, and I couldn’t hold a question in my head, you know?
I’d be interviewing someone and mentally queuing my next question while I listened to them speak, and when I cut in it was like poof!
My question had just vanished. It started happening on air more and more.
There were a couple times my producers had to rescue me through my earpiece. ’
I’m staring at her in horror. ‘Jesus,’ I say, squeezing her hand. ‘I can’t imagine how bloody terrifying that is.’
‘Terrifying and humiliating. I felt like such a cliché—that middle-aged woman who’s losing her mind, or losing the plot, as you guys say. There are some very nasty TikTok montages of it.’
‘Seriously? That’s so fucking rude.’
‘Uh huh. People are shitty. I haven’t watched them, obviously.
But it was one of the reasons I stepped down from the nightly news.
It really dented my confidence—I’d panic right before I was due to go on air.
You know those dreams where you’re on stage and you don’t know your lines, and then you realise you’re actually naked, too? Oh, and the play is in Japanese?’
‘Yeah. They’re the worst.’
‘They really are. But it felt like that was happening all the time, just in real life and live on air in front of millions of people. So I pulled back. The BBC was amazing about it, and they supported my decision.’
‘I read a book about a guy who that happened to.’ I attempt to wrack my brain for the name. ‘He had a full-blown panic attack live on air. It sounded horrifying. He was a US news anchor, but think it was drugs-related.’
‘Yeah, Dan Harris. I read that too. 10% Happier. It’s a great book—hilarious in some ways.’
‘He was funny as fuck,’ I agree. ‘But you’re always incredible on Centre Stage. You always seem so on it.’
‘Aww, thanks. Well, I’ve been on hormones for a few months now, and they’ve helped me get some of that clarity back, thank God.
It’s also easier on that show than on the news—I’m way more in the zone, I’m better prepped, and there’s less chance of being blindsided, I guess.
And, obviously, it’s recorded a few hours in advance, which makes all the difference in my head. ’
‘I’m sorry you’ve had a tough time of it, though,’ I tell her.
I really am. She’s so smart, so able. Her brain is her thing: she’s known for her lucidity, her razor-sharp mind.
For her to have felt like she was losing her mind must have been nothing short of terrifying.
‘That and the whole divorce—what a fucking year.’
She laughs. ‘What a fucking year. Amen to that. I was struggling before John’s fuck-fest even went public, but when a huge crisis hits like that, you think that’s to blame for everything. I couldn’t see beyond it, you know?
‘I thought I was depressed and weepy and preoccupied because my husband was cheating and the paparazzi was stalking me, but it turns out there were a whole host of deeper issues that made things far worse. And had I been aware of them or treated them, I could maybe have had more resilience. As it was, my capacity for dealing with that whole shit storm was pretty fucking limited.’
She wipes a tear off her cheek angrily. ‘Fuck’s sake. I thought I was done with my pity party. I’m so—I’m embarrassed. Sorry.’
‘Hey.’ I scoot my chair closer and wrap both my hands around hers.
‘Why on earth would you be sorry? You’re amazing—you’ve had the worst year ever, and you’re still going strong.
You’re out there, building your career, nailing every sleazy politician to his own cross and holding them accountable, and you’re pushing all your own boundaries with this Paradise stuff. You’re my hero.’
She gives me a watery smile and sniffs. ‘I’m sorry because we’re supposed to be having fun tonight, and here I am, being Debbie Downer.’
‘No you’re not. You’re being human, and you’re letting me in, which I appreciate more than you know,’ I tell her. It’s true. She’s a fortress, and sometimes the age gap between us feels far more than a decade when I think about how much actual adulting we both do.
Unlike when I get her on a bed, when everything feels equal and right and perfect.
‘Besides,’ I tell her with a trademark Cal wink, ‘we’re definitely going to have fun tonight, baby.’
That gets me a wider smile, one that reaches right to the stunning dark eyes that sparkle with unshed tears.
‘This is why you’re so good for me,’ she tells me, squeezing my hands. ‘Honestly, you and my little guys are by far the best things about this year.’
‘Yeah?’ I ask, and yes, I’m shamelessly digging. ‘Why am I good for you, again?’
She runs her tongue over her lower lip in that way I love before answering.
‘You make me smile,’ she says. ‘You lighten me up. You’re such a warm, open-hearted person.
It’s infectious, you know that? And’—her mouth twists—‘you have certain skills that, when you employ them, make me lose my fucking mind, in a good way, this time. Like, a really, really good way. You make me feel sexy and desirable and strong, like I’m not some broken, faded old hag.
Instead, I’m this woman who’s brave enough to gaze into the darkest parts of herself and trusting enough to hand the keys over to someone who can take her to places she never thought she’d visit. ’
She swallows. ‘Places that are more extraordinary and transformational than she could ever have imagined. I don’t know who the fuck I am with you, but I like her a lot. And helping me find her is the best gift you could ever have given me.’ She lowers her voice. ‘So thank you.’
There are so many things I have to say. So many words I could use to describe how angry and betrayed I feel on her behalf, how brimming I am with admiration, how conflicted I’ve felt.
I could tell her she’s simply the most incredible woman I’ve had the privilege of laying eyes on.
I could tell her how much my desire to take her, control her, fracture her into pieces haunts me, because it makes me wonder if I’m some kind of pathetic, misogynous monster who gets off on subduing women who are eminently more impressive than him.
But she’s sitting here telling me that my twisted appetites work for her. That they help. That, by some fucked-up alchemy, the things she’s let me do to her are as freeing for her as they are for me.
So, yes, there are a million things I can say in this moment.
But all I need are two words.
‘Come here.’