Chapter 3
THREE
‘Did you know that people with weak chins secretly lack willpower and self-confidence, and often struggle to make it through when the going gets tough?’ I say to Harriet as we bomb down the Pacific Coast Highway in the cherry red Mustang I’ve been renting for the last two months. Apparently only rollercoasters offer more thrills than a Mustang, said the rental guy about the last available vehicle left on the lot. I reckoned I’d done the rollercoaster, so what was there left to fear?
‘What on earth are you talking about, Mum?’ She looks up from her phone.
‘I googled him. Lewis. Malibu. Writer.’ I tell her there was a LinkedIn page for a bald, bespectacled Bob Lewis with atrophy of the chin, who lives in Malibu and writes entertainment media franchises in the film industry. ‘We all know that chins run in families.’ I send her the side-eye. ‘I’m just saying it’s highly likely that the children of this man’s children will be cursed with that thing.’
We’re approaching what looks to be an upmarket shopping and dining development that sits directly across the highway from the ocean, called Trancas Country Market. I spot a Starbucks. ‘Hurrah! Coffee.’ I indicate to turn right.
‘Can’t you wait? Aiden’s dad hates late people.’
‘He’s a writer nobody’s heard of who expects people to be at his house by ten a.m. on a Sunday, and he hates late people. Could he get any more appealing?’
‘Ooh!’ She looks me up and down. ‘I didn’t realise you were hoping to find him appealing. This could be interesting.’
I cluck my tongue in disapproval. ‘Firstly, you couldn’t pay me to have anything to do with another man, as long as I live. But I’ve seen Chinless Bob, remember?’ The satnav says I’ve gone too far. I try to see where I can safely turn around.
‘If you call him Chinless Bob behind his back, you know it’s only a matter of time until you call him it to his face, don’t you?’
I titter. Okay. I’m going to try to stop being a bitch. For my daughter’s sake.
‘Oh look,’ I say. ‘It must be down here.’ It’s telling me we’ve arrived at Broad Beach Road. There’s a turning off the highway that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it. We follow it down an incline and it loops into a very long street of houses. The properties all occupy the same side of the road – the ocean side. Some of them are gawk-worthy mansions, others like cottages from a different time. Bursts of hot-pink bougainvillea climb the walls and overhang doorways, which is Mediterranean style pretty, but makes it virtually impossible to see the house numbers. And it’s so very quiet, as though the highway just dissolved.
Harriet peers around like a curious meerkat: ‘7856… 58… We must be close.’
There is very little sign of life. A few guys working on a new build. Parked cars and workmen’s trucks on a grassy verge. An obese, uniformed security guard stands beside his SUV tinkering on his phone. It all feels very extra , as Harriet would say.
‘I’m going to text him we’re nearly here,’ she chirps.
I watch her out the corner of my eye, her lips curling into a cute little self-satisfied smile as she types, the chestnut-brown hair scraped back into her trademark high ponytail, the profile that is so much like her dad’s. The way her elegant neck curves to her pale, pronounced clavicles in her boat-neck black T-shirt.
Ping!
‘Okay. He says we’re super close. He’s coming out to meet us.’
‘I think I see someone,’ I say, slowing to a crawl. Yes. A guy is standing on the road. A tall, slim, dark-haired figure in navy shorts and a teal-coloured T-shirt. He spots us and waves.
‘There he is.’ She does a spontaneous little clap. ‘It’s him, Mum!’
‘Really? You’re sure it’s not just some random Malibu millionaire who’s excessively happy to see us?’
She chuckles. ‘Nope. Just my Aiden.’
Oh my God, I can’t unhear it. ‘Harriet,’ I say. ‘He’s nobody’s Aiden. He’s his Aiden. Just like you are your Harriet. You can’t own another human being.’
She lets out a lustful, almost feral little noise, then she lowers the window and waves like her life depends on it. Even from this distance, I can see his face launching a great big, charismatic smile. She wasn’t exaggerating. He is gorgeous. Fit, sporty, classily put together. The male version of her. And he somehow looks way more assured, and a lot less twenty-two, than I had imagined.
When we park and climb out, Aiden Lewis greets me like he hasn’t dreaded this nearly as much as I have. ‘Mrs Fitzgerald…’ He looks me levelly in the eye and shakes my clammy hand. It’s a genuine smile, a sincere display of affection. Everything about him shrieks upstanding good guy.
This is how I know I’m doomed.
He pulls Harriet in for a Kodak moment hug. I watch as her arm slides around his waist, as though his body is her natural habitat, how she gazes up at him with so much adoration, almost pride. And it’s mutual. The way his eyes lovingly orbit her face, Aiden Lewis is obviously just as besotted with my daughter. I am so deeply affected by their tender show of togetherness, that I forget – briefly – that this is a terrible thing. So much so that when they pull apart, my jaw is slightly hanging open and I almost can’t snap out of my stupor.
We are standing on the blue-tiled driveway of a modest, shingle-style, white house that reminds me of those you read about in books set in Nantucket, kept real by the fact that it could use a fresh coat of paint. It is beachy and sun-blasted. Two pots that contain giant cacti flank double garage doors, their bases surrounded by dust and leaf debris.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Aiden says, leading us into a lift.
‘There’s an elevator?’ Harriet looks at me in astonishment. ‘In your house?’
Oh my God, she’s already calling a lift an elevator. Whatever next?
‘Dad’s house. Not mine.’ He raises his hands in surrender, sending an apologetic glance my way. Then – to possibly downplay the fact that his family is clearly loaded – he gives us a benign engineering lesson, explaining how houses here are built on a slope and that many of them are six or seven stories below street level. Presumably that’s why they have to be so massive. ‘And besides, Dad’s getting on,’ he adds. ‘He’s going to need a way to get between floors soon.’
So Chinless Bob will have all his needs met in his old age. Lucky him.
When we land, however many levels down, and the door opens, it’s hard even for me to contain a gasp. We have arrived in an enormous, open-plan, sun-drenched living room, with distressed, wide-plank, walnut floors, and a high, wood-beamed ceiling reminiscent of a well-kept country cottage. By contrast, a strikingly modern, U-shaped floating staircase sits centrally, dramatically separating the place into two zones: a comfy living area with a couple of easy upholstered sofas and a tall, stone-walled fireplace; and a sparkling, high-tech kitchen with a vast Carrara marble breakfast bar. The counter is bare except for an open newspaper with a pair of reading glasses beside it. A pushed-back chair gives the impression that its occupant just absconded. Straight ahead, ceiling-to-floor windows show off a breathtaking view of the ocean that looks like it’s practically in the back yard.
‘Good heavens,’ I say. ‘It’s extraordinary.’ Clearly there’s a lot of money in writing entertainment media franchises – whatever they are.
‘You’re right on the beach!’ Harriet trills. ‘You never said.’ She has wandered outside to a vast, paved patio with a collection of lounge chairs clustered around a sunken fire pit. Aiden follows, placing a hand in the small of her back. ‘I can’t believe you’d choose a shared house in Westwood with a bunch of smelly students, over living in this paradise. Do you own part of the sand, too?’ She gazes up at him dotingly, and a little bit cockily.
He sends her a fondly scathing look. ‘Come on. You can’t own the actual beach.’
She grins, then glances at me, like she quite loves him giving her a little telling-off.
‘Why didn ’ t you tell me though?’ She pokes him in the ribs. ‘Were you worried I’d see you differently or something?’
He pretends to recoil at her finger. ‘It wasn’t relevant. And like I said, this is my dad’s place, not mine…’ He holds up his hands again, and I realise that if he does this don’t blame me because I’ve got a rich daddy act one more time, I’m going to want to slap him. ‘Anyway,’ he adds, ‘once you get past first impressions it’s really just a house at the end of the day.’
He stares out at the ocean, almost like Harriet’s enthusiasm has just made him see it with new eyes. I notice there’s a five-feet tall, all-glass fence at the property line, designed to maximise the view, and a dense and delightful ground cover that looks like a succulent with its shiny green leaves and purple daisy-like flower. I ask him about the enormous rock retaining wall on the other side of the glass, and he explains how the race is on for homeowners on this mile-long stretch of sand to protect their properties from the storms and erosion due to climate change. He’s knowledgeable on the topic and he talks about the lengths owners have gone to – some legal and some not.
‘So do you have any famous people for neighbours?’ Harriet asks, excitedly.
He nods. ‘Yes. Loads.’ He says it like it’s nothing. ‘A lot of the Hollywood greats used to live here. Frank Sinatra lived four houses down. Robert de Niro… Charlize Theron walks past here all the time. Goldie Hawn too.’
To keep things real, I ask him if he surfs.
‘Yeah!’ He seems to welcome the change of conversation. ‘I mean, I did. Until I was about eighteen. I’m kinda rusty after all these years.’
All these years? What? All four of them?
He asks me if he can pour me a coffee. I tell him that right now I would probably take it intravenously. We follow him back inside. As he walks around the enormous breakfast bar, I note how he’s got a gazelle-like grace to the way he moves that’s not something I’d normally associate with a guy his age. ‘I still can’t believe you grew up here,’ Harriet says, slightly chastising, as she perches on a stool.
He shoots her a look that says this is getting a bit tiresome, which is almost cute. ‘Can we, like, drop this now please?’
She beams and shoots me one that says isn’t he fantastic?
He pours my coffee and places the creamer in front of me like he’s well used to playing host. I note the way his thick, chocolate-brown hair is cut closely at the back of his tanned neck, and his arms are toned, like a tennis player’s. ‘My mom and dad divorced when I was a kid,’ he explains, directing it to me. ‘I mean, I came here a lot. Dad’s been here years. But I lived mostly with my mom in the valley.’ He stands there beside me, quite at ease. ‘Believe me, I’m not some trust-fund kid like the kind my dad writes about.’
I’m a little puzzled as to what trust-fund kids have to do with media franchises, but I don’t get to ask because he says, ‘At the end of the day, this is Dad’s world, not mine. Besides,’ he adds, in a final sort of way, ‘famous people are just people like everybody else.’
Harriet and I smile. He asks us if we’d like to come sit outside. There’s a moment where I stare at him and find myself saying, ‘Wow, you really do have enormous eyelashes! Harriet was right.’ They are long and curly and so thick, a slightly lighter shade of brown than his lovely hair.
‘See.’ Harriet chirps. ‘Didn’t I tell you? They’re unreal.’
He laughs. ‘Okay, you guys are embarrassing me now.’
As we’re about to go back outside I glance again at the open newspaper and the pair of reading glasses, the pushed-back chair.
‘Dad’s really looking forward to meeting you,’ he says, clocking me looking. ‘He should be out soon.’
We sit by the fire pit and gaze at the mountain of rocks that rather hinders the view of the sand once you’re seated – a problem I find myself mentally trying to fix. We chat about UCLA, his film studies, the architectural landmarks they’ve ticked off Harriet’s bucket list. The Getty Center, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, the home where Frank Gehry lived for most of his life in Santa Monica. Harriet lights up when she talks about her favourite subject, and Aiden seems so captivated as she retells, for my benefit, an experience they’ve obviously both shared. We sip our coffees. The topic gets around to the Malibu fires and recent mud slides, politics and back to global warming. Harriet and Aiden engage in hot debate, but the heat comes not in their opposition, but from the fact that they agree on so much. His hand, with its slim, artistic fingers remains on Harriet’s knee the whole time, and my eyes remain the whole time on his hand. I’ve always been fascinated by couples who touch each other in public a lot. Rupert was never tactile. Ironically, he once said that when couples are always pawing each other it usually means one of them is cheating.
Then there’s a lull. Aiden glances back into the house. ‘Dad’s finishing up some stuff. He’ll be down soon. Promise…’ He sends me a look of apology.
‘Of course,’ I say. In my world people don’t keep their guests sitting around waiting for them. ‘Haven’t missed him for a second.’
Fortunately, we are saved by the bell. Or, rather, Aiden’s phone pinging. ‘Oh.’ He jumps to his feet. ‘Brunch is here.’ As he strides off back inside, he says, ‘Dad doesn’t keep much food in the house, unless you want a jar of mayonnaise and a spoon, so we ordered in. Gonna run up and grab it.’
Harriet offers to help but he tells her to chill. After he jogs across the living room then disappears into the lift, Harriet whispers, ‘What do you think?’
‘Truthfully? I think he’s a rude git.’
‘What?’ She gawks at me. ‘How is he rude?’
I throw up my hands and look around. ‘Well, where is he? I mean, we’ve been here forty minutes.’
‘Oh!’ A relieved smile. ‘His dad! I thought you meant Aiden.’
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Aiden seems like a fine young man, with far better manners than his father. But,’ I playfully add, ‘I don’t really know him. And neither do you.’
Her mouth twists in displeasure.
‘I mean, you didn’t even know he grew up in a mansion on celebrity beach.’
Fortunately, she smirks. ‘Not a bad discovery though! And he didn’t really grow up here, like he told you. He lived with his mother.’
Aiden suddenly reappears. He’s balancing two large paper bags in his arms, so we get up and go back inside to assist. ‘It’s remotely possible we’ve over-ordered.’ He nudges them onto the breakfast bar. ‘And there’s more if you can believe it.’
‘Let me come help,’ Harriet says, and scampers after him.
As they disappear into the lift, I’m left standing in the middle of the floor trying to resist the urge to set the table or otherwise put myself to good use. But then my eyes are drawn to a huge black and white art print set into an alcove just off the kitchen. It’s of a yacht, and a woman who has dived into the water, and all you see of her are her long, sexy legs.
Then a voice says, ‘It’s called Splash , by Riley Harper.’